#berlinsky

[godsfavdarling]

Thoughts on The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Berlinski (no spoilers because I need everybody to read it)

I rarely write a post focused on just one book—I usually save everything for a monthly wrap-up (except for that ACOSF rant, of course). But I just can't stay quiet about this one.

I first heard about this book on TikTok about two years ago. Some girl mentioned that if you loved Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter, you had to read this.

Naturally, I went straight to Amazon and bought it for way too much. It’s not translated into my language, so I had to order it from abroad. 

I started reading it back in 2022, but for some reason, I really struggled to get through the first chapter. Maybe it was because I'd fallen out of the habit of reading in English, or maybe it was the small print that overwhelmed me, but I put it down and kept telling myself I’d come back to it eventually. Well, I finally did, and oh my god.

Was it a perfect book? I’m not sure. It’s one of those that, if it’s for you, you’ll love it. But I know it won’t connect with everyone—it’s slow-paced, and not a lot happens, at least on the surface.

I’ll try not to spoil anything and just focus on a few key aspects.

Let’s start with the basics—what’s it about?

The story centers around three sisters: Grace, the eldest at 17, who is deeply moral and devoted to God, always striving to be a good, kind, and selfless person.

Then there’s Jory, the 13-year-old middle sister, who isn’t as perfect as everyone might expect her to be. She’s a bit rebellious and prone to making questionable choices, but she’s just a young girl trying to figure things out—of course, she won’t be perfect.

And finally, there’s little Frances, the youngest.

The sisters live in Idaho with their parents—a stay-at-home mom and a father who teaches astrology. The entire family is deeply religious and very involved in their church community.

When Grace leaves home for a missionary trip to Mexico, she returns believing she is pregnant with the child of God. In response, their father sends Grace and Jory to an isolated house, away from the rest of the world.

The plot is kind of insane. I wasn’t sure where it was going.

Is Grace actually pregnant with a new baby Jesus? If not, does she genuinely believe she is, or is she lying? And if she’s lying, why would she?

I had so many questions.

What I love, though, is that even though Grace is the one who’s pregnant, the story follows Jory. She’s the main character, trying to navigate everything—her complicated relationship with their mother, starting at a new school, and the typical struggles of growing up. She wants to experience things that most teens do: falling in love, making new friends, testing boundaries. But her parents forbid so much, trying to keep her from living like a “normal” teenager.

Suddenly, Jory and Grace are living alone together. They get more freedom, but they also have to fend for themselves.

I loved reading about how they figured things out on their own, but I was also incredibly angry with their parents. These are just kids, yet they’re expected to act and think like adults.

It’s probably very realistic, but all the projection from their parents was so frustrating. Their father, especially, is neurotic and obsessed with doing things a certain way. He’s more worried about what people will think than actually listening to and taking care of and loving his children.

What enraged me the most, especially toward the end, was how the parents turned everything into being about themselves—their pain, their grief, their struggles. 

It became all about how they were suffering, completely disregarding what their daughters were going through. That really hit me hard because it felt so relatable.

Jory, in particular, was left to handle everything on her own. While Grace had her own issues, Jory was basically abandoned emotionally, expected to navigate this chaos without any real support.

It angered me how, in the middle of all this, her parents never seemed to realize or care that she was still a child. 

They were so wrapped up in their own lives and expectations that they couldn’t see the weight they were putting on her shoulders. Jory was left alone to deal with things that no teenager should have to face, and that isolation, not even the physical one but emotional one, was heartbreaking.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this book. I don’t like knowing too much before I dive into something, and in this case, that was easy because not many people have read it. I’m really glad I stumbled upon it.

That being said, I didn’t expect it to be a coming-of-age story. I definitely didn’t expect it to center around a 13-year-old girl left to figure things out on her own.

I went in thinking it would primarily be about religion, faith, and people trying to hold on to that faith—some clinging more tightly than others as real life unfolded around them.

I found myself underlining so many lines as I read. I was using a pencil as a bookmark. I’ll share some of those parts below, without any spoilers!

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed 2008

[a-canvas-of-ones-own]

Tova Berlinski (1915 - 2022) “Portrait of my family”, 1998 and Untitled, 2000-2005.

[preporodbn]

ISELJAVANJE BOŠNJAKA U TURSKU

Uvod U Berlinu je od 13. juna do 13. jula 1878. godine, pod pokroviteljstvom carevine Njemačke i pod predsjedavanjem njenog prvog bundes kancelara Ota von Bizmarka, održan kongres velikih sila. Odluke tog kongresa su za duže vrijeme odredile sudbinu naše domovine. Razlog za održavanje Berlinskog kongresa je bilo veliko nezadovoljstvo zapadnih sila, prvenstveno Velike Britanije i Austro-Ugarske,…

[preacherman316]

Not All Scientists are Evolutionists

Not long ago my Canadian facebook friend, Rob DE Man, posted a quote from the renowned physicist, David Berlinski. It’s from his book “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.” Berlinski, who appeared in Ben Stein’s 2008 documentary, Expelled, which exposed the silencing of educators who questioned the theory of macro evolution, has long been a fierce opponent of the…

[mariacallous]

In a product demo last week, OpenAI showcased a synthetic but expressive voice for ChatGPT called “Sky” that reminded many viewers of the flirty AI girlfriend Samantha played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 film Her. One of those viewers was Johansson herself, who promptly hired legal counsel and sent letters to OpenAI demanding an explanation, according to a statement released later. In response, the company on Sunday halted use of Sky and published a blog post insisting that it “is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

Johansson’s statement, released Monday, said she was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” by OpenAI’s demo using a voice she called “so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.” Johansson revealed that she had turned down a request last year from the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, to voice ChatGPT and that he had reached out again two days before last week’s demo in an attempt to change her mind.

It’s unclear if Johansson plans to take additional legal action against OpenAI. Her counsel on the dispute with OpenAI is John Berlinski, a partner at Los Angeles law firm Bird Marella, who represented her in a lawsuit against Disney claiming breach of contract, settled in 2021. (OpenAI’s outside counsel working on this matter is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner David Kramer, who is based in Silicon Valley and has defended Google and YouTube on copyright infringement cases.) If Johansson does pursue a claim against OpenAI, some intellectual property experts suspect it could focus on “right of publicity” laws, which protect people from having their name or likeness used without authorization.

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University, believes Johansson could have a good case. “You can't imitate someone else's distinctive voice to sell stuff,” he says. OpenAI declined to comment for this story, but yesterday released a statement from Altman claiming Sky “was never intended to resemble” the star, adding, “We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”

Johansson’s dispute with OpenAI drew notice in part because the company is embroiled in a number of lawsuits brought by artists and writers. They allege that the company breached copyright by using creative work to train AI models without first obtaining permission. But copyright law would be unlikely to play a role for Johansson, as one cannot copyright a voice. “It would be right of publicity,” says Brian L. Frye, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Law focusing on intellectual property. “She’d have no other claims.”

Several lawyers WIRED spoke with said a case Bette Midler brought against Ford Motor Company and its advertising agency Young & Rubicam in the late 1980s provides a legal precedent. After turning down the ad agency’s offers to perform one of her songs in a car commercial, Midler sued when the company hired one of her backup singers to impersonate her sound. “Ford was basically trying to profit from using her voice,” says Jennifer E. Rothman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote a 2018 book called The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World. “Even though they didn't literally use her voice, they were instructing someone to sing in a confusingly similar manner to Midler.”

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners. In the legal system, there is a big difference between imitation and simply recording something “in the style” of someone else. “No one owns a style,” she says.

Other legal experts don’t see what OpenAI did as a clear-cut impersonation. “I think that any potential ‘right of publicity’ claim from Scarlett Johansson against OpenAI would be fairly weak given the only superficial similarity between the ‘Sky’ actress' voice and Johansson, under the relevant case law,” Colorado law professor Harry Surden wrote on X on Tuesday. Frye, too, has doubts. “OpenAI didn’t say or even imply it was offering the real Scarlett Johansson, only a simulation. If it used her name or image to advertise its product, that would be a right-of-publicity problem. But merely cloning the sound of her voice probably isn’t,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean OpenAI is necessarily in the clear. “Juries are unpredictable,” Surden added.

Frye is also uncertain how any case might play out, because he says right of publicity is a fairly “esoteric” area of law. There are no federal right-of-publicity laws in the United States, only a patchwork of state statutes. “It’s a mess,” he says, although Johansson could bring a suit in California, which has fairly robust right-of-publicity laws.

OpenAI’s chances of defending a right-of-publicity suit could be weakened by a one-word post on X—“her”—from Sam Altman on the day of last week’s demo. It was widely interpreted as a reference to Her and Johansson’s performance. “It feels like AI from the movies,” Altman wrote in a blog post that day.

To Grimmelmann at Cornell, those references weaken any potential defense OpenAI might mount claiming the situation is all a big coincidence. “They intentionally invited the public to make the identification between Sky and Samantha. That's not a good look,” Grimmelmann says. “I wonder whether a lawyer reviewed Altman's ‘her’ tweet.” Combined with Johansson’s revelations that the company had indeed attempted to get her to provide a voice for its chatbots—twice over—OpenAI’s insistence that Sky is not meant to resemble Samantha is difficult for some to believe.

“It was a boneheaded move,” says David Herlihy, a copyright lawyer and music industry professor at Northeastern University. “A miscalculation.”

Other lawyers see OpenAI’s behavior as so manifestly goofy they suspect the whole scandal might be a deliberate stunt—that OpenAI judged that it could trigger controversy by going forward with a sound-alike after Johansson declined to participate but that the attention it would receive from seemed to outweigh any consequences. “What’s the point? I say it’s publicity,” says Purvi Patel Albers, a partner at the law firm Haynes Boone who often takes intellectual property cases. “The only compelling reason—maybe I’m giving them too much credit—is that everyone’s talking about them now, aren’t they?”

[santoschristos]

Vessel of the Cosmic Eye

Santiago Licata

“Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments, raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences, the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream.”

--David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

[lesser-known-composers]

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) - String Quartet No 1 in A

Borodin Quartet : Mikhail Kopelman, Andrei Abramenkov, Dimitri Shebalin, Valentin Berlinsky

[math1089]

Age Calculation Trick - Calculate your age in Seconds!

The nature of mathematics itself is in a certain sense eternal, and that’s why it’s so closely connected to the notion of time and age. David Berlinski Welcome to the blog Math1089 – Mathematics for All. Imagine a scenario where you want to guess someone’s age, but instead of asking directly, you use a clever mathematical trick. This trick will allow you to calculate their age based on their…

[godsfavdarling]

My Monthly Wrap-Ups 2024

(I reentered my reading era in March, so there are no previous months) my goodreads

March

A Court of Thorns and Roses by SJM ☆☆

A Court of Mist and Fury by SJM ☆☆☆

Bride by Ali Hazelwood ☆

My Husband by Maud Ventura ☆☆☆☆☆

A Court of Wings and Ruin by SJM ☆☆

Unfurl by Elodie Hart ☆☆☆

April

Happy Place by Emily Henry ☆☆☆☆

A Court of Frost and Starlight by SJM ☆

The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman ☆☆☆☆☆

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu ☆☆☆☆

A Report for an Academy by Franz Kafka ☆☆☆☆

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig ☆☆☆☆☆

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig ☆☆☆☆☆

May

Bliss by Katherine Mansfield ☆☆☆☆

Priest by Sierra Simone ☆

June

Funny Story by Emily Henry ☆☆☆☆☆

Peaches & Honey by R. Raeta ☆☆☆☆☆

Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville ☆☆☆

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig (reread)

July

Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig (reread)

Beach Read by Emily Henry ☆☆☆☆

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones ☆☆☆☆

A Court of Silver Flames by SJM ☆

The Serpent and the Wings of the Night by Carissa Broadbent ☆☆☆☆

August

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer ☆☆☆☆☆

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor ☆☆☆☆☆

People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry ☆☆☆☆

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid ☆☆☆☆

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn ☆☆☆☆☆

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber ☆☆☆☆

September

The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Berlinski ☆☆☆☆☆

Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

October

November

December

[themonsterp]

The idea that science is the only way to understand the world is itself a piece of dogma.— David Berlinski

[radiogornjigrad]

Romano Belković: 🆉🅸🅴🅶🆁🅽🅸🅺 A 🅴🅵🅴🅺🆃

🆉🅸🅴🅶🆁🅽🅸🅺 🅴🅵🅴🅺🆃 Zasigurno jedan od najpoznatijih našijenaca u Berlinu slikar je Lovro Artuković. Sreli smo se nedavno, na odlasku iz Berlina u Zagreb, i to je naš jedini berlinski susret. Poznajemo se kratko, par godina, a upoznali samo se prilično neobično: raspitujući se o mogućnosti kupovine njegove slike „Spavaćica“, sredinom 2006. napisao sam Lovri mail čije je sadržaj bila analiza njegova…

[fofoqueaqui]

Novela no streaming HBO Max inicia gravações de ‘Dona Beja’ com Grazi Massafera no papel principal

[doorsblacksea]

DOORS MML goes ahead in Ukraine!

On 1st of September, DOORS 1st Mutual Mobilisation Learning Workshop was organised in Ukraine. 26 representatives of local stakeholders responded affirmatively to the invitation of Odessa State Environmental University (OSENU).

The goal of the first round of MML workshops was to bring together experts and users of marine products, to raise awareness and share knowledge and skills, using Responsible Research and Innovation principles. A first step in setting the scene for the introduction of DOORS SoS was made by presenting the beta version of the System of Systems.

Video: A short working demo of the Systems of Systems interface. © DOORS Black Sea

The main objective was to engage Black Sea citizens and stakeholders in highly participatory training and co-creation activities to ensure suitability of existing and future Research Infrastructure services to the Black Sea region.

Sessions include plenary expert talks, round table discussions and hand-on practical exercises to explore an effective pan-European marine data infrastructure: Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service and Euro-Argo ERIC.

Image: The workshop was led by the OSENU team including Nikolai Berlinsky, Youseff El Hadri and Mariia Slizhe. © DOORS Black Sea

The participants were trained about the functionalities and how to work on the Ocean data visualisation tool MYOCEAN PRO of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service and how to independently obtain input data for calculations from the Argo platform using of EuroArgo Selection Tool.

The Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops give a voice to regional and local stakeholders, including regional and local authorities, business or members of civil society and an “ecosystem” of stakeholders in Responsible Research and Innovation.

[angelsbodie]

Hejka motylki

podsumowanie z soboty 20/05/2023 Bylam w pracy przez 8 godzin w markecie na dziale piekarnicznym. Bylam praktycznie non stop w ruchu. Poza godzinami pracy zrobilam jeszcze 11tysiecy krokow O-O Ale za to troche pojadlam wczoraj...

Kcal spalone: 2130 kcal

Praca: 1800 kcal

kroki: 330 kcal

Kcal spozyte: 2080 kcal + te ktorych nie pamietam :(

rano

Nie pamietam co jjadlam rano: ?! kcal

croissaint: 350 kcal

w pracy

Duza kanapka (smos): 900 kcal

Taki paczek berlinski: 221 kcal

po pracy

lody: 300 kcal

jakies ciastka, kawalek szynki i troche arbuza: 200-300 kcal

Nie jest to moj najlepszy bilans, ale chyba najlepiej spalony dzien do tej pory.

jedyny powod poza pieniedzmi by isc do pracy

[kathor]

David Berlinski on Sam Harris' Philosophical Blunder