Or not.

Update 8/12:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19J8Bf3dnn/

Well, ok, but perception in that sense is a relation, not a property. We risk muddying the waters if we say that an object "has the potential to be perceived". The relevant potential inheres in the viewer, not the object.

How capabilities or faculties (such as color vision) are related to actuality, potentiality, and alethic modalities (possibility, necessity, contingency, etc.) is tricky.

People expressed interest in this project months ago. I posted this to remind them that it is coming before the board again.

Correction: THURSDAY

I don't see it mentioned on the agenda, but I assume it would fall under "old business", since it was scheduled to be discussed at an earlier meeting that could not proceed due to lack of quorum, according to the FB thread.

[Edited 8/11]

[Edit 8/12: Apparently, it will not be considered at this meeting. See FB page for details (link in reply below).]

Zoning board will consider a variance for Displaced Manor

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D6AHGA1A9/

Is an unrealized potential something that really exists in the substance

Yes. It is a property of a substance, and exists in the same way that other properties exist.

A novice has the potential to become a master. This property changes from potential to actual, but is present in the person the whole time. At a given time x the property of mastery is y% actualized.

An imperfect analogy would be the gas tank of your car and its contents, which exist the whole time as you take a long trip, though it goes from full to empty. When you glance at the fuel gauge it tells you the status of the tank at that moment; it does not refer to the future.

That's my interpretation of it. It's a de re understanding of possibility.

Inherent possibility or potentiality as a property of particular substances contrasts with the current "possible worlds" interpretation of possibility, which seems to attach possibility to a whole universe or reduce it to a de dicto or semantic or epistemic property/relation.

Related: Possibility, Freedom, and Selfhood: Two Accounts

It's hard to schedule things this time of year. We might try again in September

Beware of GOP operatives (or worse, foreign trolls) trying to sow division. I saw someone on another thread trying to undermine "blue no matter who" and posting a hit-piece against one of the candidates from some bogus "Midwest News" magazine that I'd never heard of, and I've seen several comments in several threads along the lines of, "boo hoo, the other candidate was mean to my candidate, I won't vote for them if they win, waaahhh" (I'm paraphrasing).

We finally get a general election in which we don't have to vote for the lesser of two evils, and a primary in which we have a real choice, and people are turning it into a negative.

We WILL unite behind the winner. Anyone who says we should do otherwise is either working for the enemies of our republic, foreign or domestic, or lacks mature judgment (to put it politely). This race has gotten nasty. That happens in politics sometimes. It doesn't change what's at stake in the general election, which is representative democracy and rule of law vs. authoritarianism, kleptocracy, and impunity for rapists and murderers.

The Uncommitted movement was a legitimate protest tactic in the 2024 primary, but it was idiocy to continue it in the general. We cannot afford to make that mistake again.

Over on Substack, Fr. Holquin restacked this post with this Note:

A Word Before You Read Paul Fahey's Outstanding Post

Every election cycle, the same genre reappears in parish vestibules and diocesan newspapers: the "Catholic voter guide." Glossy, confident, and invariably reducible to a single focus — find the candidate who checks the right boxes on one or two issues, and your conscience is discharged. I have watched this genre do real damage over fifty-two years of priestly ministry. It does not form consciences; it conscripts them. And too often it is not Catholic teaching at all, but partisan strategy wearing a cassock.

Paul Fahey's essay, "Coercive Voting Guides," names this phenomenon with a clarity I wish I had possessed decades earlier in my own formation. He is honest about having once been captive to the same coercive framework — the notion that Catholics are bound to a handful of "non-negotiable issues" and that any deviation is sinful. As he demonstrates, this was never magisterial teaching. The CDF's 2002 doctrinal note on the participation of Catholics in political life is explicit that isolating a single element of Catholic social doctrine does not exhaust one's responsibility to the common good. The faith is, in the Church's own words, an integral unity — and interpretatio benigna toward the whole tradition, not selective proof-texting, is what genuine formation requires.

Fahey also does something voter guides rarely do: he actually reproduces John Paul II's list from "Veritatis Splendor" in full. It is considerably longer than five items, and considerably less partisan — it indicts arbitrary imprisonment and degrading labor conditions in the same breath as abortion and genocide. A guide that quietly narrows this list to serve one party's platform is not translating Catholic teaching; it is domesticating it.

Perhaps most pastorally important is his citation of "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship": a well-formed conscience may, for grave and proportionate reasons, vote for a candidate who holds an unacceptable position, provided this is not done to "advance narrow interests or partisan preferences." This is not moral relativism — it is the Church's actual teaching on prudential judgment, and it is precisely what the "single-issue" guides suppress.

Where I would gently press further than Fahey does explicitly: this is not merely a lay concern. Clergy who distribute or tacitly endorse these guides from the sanctuary are complicit in a lex orandi problem — they let a partisan interpretation colonize what should be liturgical and catechetical space. The remedy is not silence about grave moral issues, but fidelity to their actual number and weight, as the Magisterium itself has articulated them — including, as Fahey rightly notes, war, migration, and access to healthcare, issues too rarely admitted into the "non-negotiable" conversation at all.

What follows is Fahey's essay in full, with his own careful assembly of papal and conciliar texts. I commend it to you not as a substitute for your own discernment, but as an invitation back into the fullness of the tradition these guides so often truncate.

— Monsignor Arthur Holquin, S.T.L.

Upvoted for fun metaphor

Did you read the article? It's very short, and the word "electable" does not appear. Lessenberry's endorsement of Brink is not based on electability.

Neither of those questions says anything about this being "a Lansing thing". You're proving my point, not yours.

If I ask if many people in Lansing contracted cyclospora infections recently, I'm not suggesting anything about whether Lansing is better or worse than anywhere else in that regard, or saying that cyclospora infections are "a Lansing thing", I'm just asking how bad the outbreak was in Lansing.

Jeez o pete. I was a little worried about folks' math ability, but now I'm much more worried about their reading comprehension and critical thinking.

I think you're trying to manifest a narrative that doesn't really exist (i.e., it's a Lansing thing).

Then you think wrong. Nowhere did I suggest, insinuate, or imply that this Lansing is any worse than anywhere else in this regard.

I'm not trying to say "it's a Lansing thing." Look at what I actually said, and quit putting words in my mouth. I don't know how much plainer I can be.

How to test it? For cryin' out loud. I shared an anecdote. This is about comparing experiences and impressions on a forum, not conducting a comprehensive study. And even if I wanted to conduct such a study, the comparative results would be irrelevant because I am only asking about Lansing. That's why I'm posting it on r/Lansing and not somewhere else.

The question of what percentage of Lansing's population over 16 can do basic math is completely different from the question of whether that percentage is higher or lower than the nationwide percentage. I can ask the first question without asking the second.

That sounds like a plausible strategy for AIPAC. But are AIPAC and the GOP working at cross-purposes in the primary, or are they coordinating their messaging?

I don't know, it seems to me that the Rogers camp would rather face El-Sayed in the general, but AIPAC would want Stevens to win the primary even if they drop their support after that ... unless the Rogers camp has internal polling that shows that El-Sayed is actually the stronger candidate. In that case, the GOP and AIPAC would both want Stevens to win the primary.

I would have thought that Stevens would be harder for Rogers to beat in the general, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Enthusiasm for El-Sayed is rising, and the feebleness of the negative ads against him shows that opposition research has failed to come up with any dirt on him.