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Jun 6, 2026, 12:11 AM

A Blueprint for Using LLMs as Knowledge Tools: Humanities and Social Sciences

By Joe Nalven + Claude + Gemini + ChatGPT What shifts is not who creates but what creating means. Not the one who makes meaning from nothing, but those who are listening to the question, feeling the pressure, what emerges...

Allen S. Maller

Jun 5, 2026, 3:03 AM

Tahrif Is Moses’s Will Of Pluralism

The Jewish Rabbis stated that 55 Jewish Prophets in the Hebrew Bible were know by name. The Talmud counts 48 male prophets and 7 female prophets. Muslim scholars like Ibn Atiyya report that Ibn Abbas and Muqatil ibn Sulayman interpret...

Jun 2, 2026, 10:11 AM

Why Time Feels Faster as We Age

Time feels faster as we age — same years, different density. Image © Ivan Bassov, 2026. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Theories of Time Perception and a Life-Remaining Model In Life Remaining: Rethinking Time and Perspective, I explored a simple question: Instead of asking “How old am I?”, what if we asked “How much life do I actually have left?” Using life expectancy...

Jun 2, 2026, 6:45 AM

Edgar Morin (1921–2026): A Complex Mind

Photo/collage: Atmane Tazaghart, Global Watch Analysis

I learn of his death in my home, 3,500 miles away from Paris. To speak about the French-Jewish Edgar Morin, it would be good to go a little back in time. The thread that began in Spain –the West...– of...

May 30, 2026, 10:13 AM

Gender-Rich and Gender-Poor Languages

There is more than one road to Dublin. Different societies can move in different linguistic directions and still converge on the same human values. Image © Ivan Bassov, 2026. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Poetess and Avtorka Languages evolve. But they do not always evolve in the same direction — even when societies claim to pursue the same values. Consider English. Once upon a time, feminine professional forms were common: poetess authoress doctoress actress Today, many...

May 28, 2026, 2:15 PM

A Crisis of Leadership

It is a moment unparalleled in the whole Torah. Moshe, until now the Jewish People’s greatest advocate, reaches his breaking point. He complains that he was given the burden of leading the Jewish People; he says his death would...

May 28, 2026, 4:00 AM

Reality Is Not What It Seems: A Scientific and Chassidic Exploration

At first glance, certain Chassidic stories can seem puzzling, even unsettling. They appear to defy the orderly structure of Halachah, time, and physical reality we are accustomed to. Yet when examined more deeply—especially in light of Chassidic teachings and...

May 27, 2026, 4:20 AM

Why the Chareidi & Dati Leumi Divide Goes Deeper Than Strictness

We are looking inside a world that outsiders flatten (David Katash, FrockInStock.com).

It is not a frumkeit ranking, but a question of religious instinct, cultural memory, and which world feels like home. Recently, I saw an online discussion on Imamother — a popular online forum for frum women — about whether there...

May 26, 2026, 9:03 PM

The Breath Between: Consciousness, Evanescence, and the Art of Re-Entry

The evanescent self

By Joe Nalven + Claude + Gemini This essay revisits my earlier essay on consciousness. The process we often use to describe the experience (from our own first-person awareness to investigators who seek to measure it) requires that evanescent memory...

May 26, 2026, 1:41 PM

The Selective Fluidity of Identity

Some identities are liberated. Others remain externally policed. Image © Ivan Bassov, 2026. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Why Some Identities Become Subjective While Others Remain Objective In my previous essay, Demystifying Gender, I explored how the word gender gradually evolved from a grammatical category into something far larger and more abstract. Originally, gender referred primarily to classification in...

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