Musings & Links for June 26, 2026
Checking in, and look a thing I built
Hi friends,
Summer is in full swing here. I used some of my under-employment time volunteer at St. Alban’s Vacation Bible Camp the other week, and it was fun, refreshing, and inspiring. The theme was “living waters”, so there was plenty of talk about baptism (awkward questions ensued with the Baptist kids who attended), water slides, and the fire department came out for to talk about safety and spray the kids with a firehose.
The links for this entry are pretty light. To be honest, I’ve not been doing much internet reading lately. There’s good stuff, to be sure, but pre-AI, we were already inundated with slop. At this point, I think dead internet theory is no longer theory, and the bar for me to read, watch, or listen to anything online is very high. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Here’s some stuff that will hopefully be low-noise, high-signal.
As I’ve mentioned before, I recently did a cross-platform rebuild of the mobile app for Mockingbird Ministries. It presented some interesting technical challenges, and I wrote about one of them over on my blog. Spoilers: the solution was Cloudflare Workers.
My friend and Law & Gospel Thought Leader™ David Zahl was interviewed by former Senator Ben Sasse on his podcast, Not Dead Yet. After an unfortunate encounter with AI submissions at Mockingbird, it was natural to be suspicious of an invitation from the American Enterprise Institute, but it was legit! Click the link below, or listen on your favorite podcast directory.
People say God puts certain people in your life at the right time. I say the same applies to books. This unplanned season of discernment has forced me to confront a lot about how I’ve been shaped — professionally, spiritually, personally — over the last decade of work and life. Longer review pending, but Luke Burgis‘s new book The One and the Ninety-Nine met me where I am with what I needed to here. Burgis challenges us to pursue communion with one another while still building solid selves. By grace, maybe we can all repent of our frenetic activity and posturing, even just a bit.
This essay on suburban manhood captured a lot of tensions I feel and think about. But if you’re suffering from sad suburban dad syndrome, I have some guys you might wanna meet.
That’s it for this entry. Hope you’re keeping cool as we go into the summer. I’m excited to consume free poolside soft-serve and hot dogs on a cruise in a couple weeks.
Cheers,
R