"On December 24, 1968, one billion people—more than for any television program before or after in the history of mankind—tuned in for Apollo 8’s short broadcast. [...] Then, mid-sentence, they crashed into the crystal sphere surrounding the world, because it turned out there were far fewer things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in almost anyone’s philosophy."

I accept it as a *premise*, but I intensely *dislike* it. It's like the opposite of my kind of spirituality.

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I remember the "find true divine names by permutation" idea from Umberto Eco's "Foucault's pendulum" (which also gives source code for the program, and does similar things with conspiracy theories).

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"Experimental theologian", ha. I like the sound of that. Like "excellent heretic". Or "liturgical special operations".

(The last one was used by @Frau_Sanders to refer to things like not TECHNICALLY preaching as a woman because now THAT wouldn't be allowed, would it)

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"Fifty years ago, Apollo 8 cracked the sky open and people started discovering the Names of God. A decade later, corporations started patenting them, demanding license fees for anyone who wanted to work miracles with them. A few years after that, they codified the whole system into international law and created UNSONG—the United Nations Subcommittee On Names of God—to enforce it."

Late-stage capitalism 😑

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“I want to give my laptop a soul,” I said. “Llull only works on Macs, remember?”

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

(Obviously, this was written before the mass usage of LLMs...)

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Obviously, this can be compared to R.F. Kuang's "Babel" and "Katabasis": language as technology. It doesn't have the colonialism lens and focus, though, and focuses more on what this tech does to the lower classes.

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"The overt meaning of singer is “someone who sings.” The kabbalistic meaning is “someone who tries to be good.” This reading we derive from Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who explored the depths of moral obligation."

Oo-kay. I know Singer's a famous moral philosopher. But I know him primarily for his views on disability, which I disagree with. So this feels ironic.

(I am no Utilitarian; I don't think this weighting of interests is possible IRL)

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"No? You can’t imagine the story ending that way? Neither can Reality. That was Dylan Alvarez’s secret. He always tried to be the protagonist of whatever story he was in, and the protagonist never dies."

Sounds like a classic dudebro fallacy to me.

(The protagonist also usually has a lot of shit to work through. I'd rather be the nerdy sidekick.)

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You have to imagine me looking at the fractal, everything-is-connected, numbers-have-significance kabbalistic parts of this book wearing safety goggles.

My brain loves patterns. And it loves systems. This stuff is VERY attractive.

It also is REALLY unhealthy for me.

I certainly can't walk in there alone again, without safety gear.

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This degradation of technology is interesting: it stops working because the physical laws themselves are buggy.

Reminds me a bit of Vernor Vinge's "Zones of Thought", where automation and thought work differently in different regions of space. But it's scarier: space is just space, but to rely on an overworked angel using Sapphires on a Path and Ruby on Rails feels pretty daring.

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"Still other texts say the Messiah will come in a generation that is both the most righteous and the most wicked. I don’t even know what to think of that one."

I don't know either but the 20th century must have been very high on both the "most wicked" and "most righteous" list. I am still surprised we survived it, to be honest. So there's that.

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"Tried to tell you that the equations and correspondences held more of God than all of your songs and swords and shields combined."

Look, I know this book is about clever wordplay and absurd ideas and totally not serious, but.

YES THIS

🥹

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"Atheistic science should be thought of not as a literal attempt to say things like “Space is infinite and full of stars” or “Humankind evolved from apes” that were now known to be untrue, but as an attempt to record, in the form of stories, our ancestors’ answers to those great questions."

Funny reversal. Like "the Lambertians have no need of this hypothesis" in Greg Egan's "Permutation City", which is an interesting comparison by the way.

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“If God wanted the sick to be cured, why would He make them sick? If He wanted the righteous to be saved, why would He put them in danger? God lets people perform miracles to make a statement.”

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