A kitten once seen dodging traffic and running away from everyone is now living out her dreams. ClaudieChatonsOrphelinsMontrealA tiny stray kitten was seen meowing and zigzagging across a busy street. Trying to dodge traffic and hide, she ran around in all directions.A few passersby from the neighborhood heard her cries and rushed to her rescue. "Alone without a mother, she was lost and panicking," Chatons Orphelins Montreal shared. "Several people jumped into action to help her."When they located the kitten, they found her hiding under a vehicle, refusing to come out. ChatonsOrphelinsMontrealThey surrounded the car and lay on the ground, trying to coax the kitten with food in their hands. Within seconds, the little one smelled the food and leaped for it.Despite being terrified, the kitten threw her face into the food, eagerly devouring it. When she was within reach, one of the rescuers picked her up to secure her while the kitten fought tooth and claw. She was very hungry when she was rescuedChatonsOrphelinsMontreal"Fortunately, she wasn't able to escape and was finally brought to safety."The kitten, named Claudie, was starving and just skin and bones. Though shaken after the ordeal, she seemed relieved to have food before her and scarfed it down in large bites. ChatonsOrphelinsMontreal"She ate as much as she could and fell asleep with a full belly. She was so lucky to have a group of people who came to her aid and saved her life."Chatons Orphelins Montreal stepped up to take Claudie, providing her with medical care and a loving foster home. They treated her for fleas and stomach troubles. At about two months old, she weighed less than one pound and had much growing to do. She warmed up to her people when she realized she was safeChatonsOrphelinsMontrealWith gentle strokes, the kitten lowered her guard, giving slow blinks, and let her foster mom wrap her in a blanket for cuddles. As she warmed up to people, she found her purr. Within days, her confidence grew, and she blossomed into a people-cat."She is very expressive with her ears and has a voracious appetite. She has gained a lot of strength and feels content and comfortable at her foster home." She came out of her shell at her foster homeChatonsOrphelinsMontrealAfter a few weeks of good food and care, Claudie has filled out nicely and finally caught up in size."She is both sweet and mischievous. She likes to follow her humans everywhere, curious about what they are doing. She is a ball of energy and can turn any moving thing into a toy." Her playful side quickly emergedChatonsOrphelinsMontreal"She zooms around after feathers and can keep herself entertained for a long time with little crinkle balls.""She may be tiny but has a diva-like attitude. She meows at her humans when she thinks they aren't paying enough attention to her, and she prefers sleeping next to them, on their face or in the crook of their neck at night. Sometimes, she wakes them up by licking their nose in the morning." ChatonsOrphelinsMontrealClaudie switches on her purr engine the moment she's petted and relishes every play session with her people. She doesn't allow closed doors and isn't shy about expressing her "opinions.""She wants to be with her humans at all times." She's blossomed into a happy, boisterous young catChatonsOrphelinsMontreal"She enjoys napping in front of the window and spying on the neighbors. If she smells food, she wakes up and comes running."The former stray found on the busy street is now thriving in foster care, doing what she loves and living out her dreams. ChatonsOrphelinsMontrealShare this story with your friends. More on Claudie and Chatons Orphelins Montreal on Facebook and Instagram.Related story: Big Tom Cat Comes to a House for Food One Day, Changing the Course of His Life

Many people have come to feel or believe — even against their will — that technology is now the one unstoppable force in the world. I think that the root of this techno-fatalism, which is the animating force behind both the optimist and pessimist versions on display today, is a judgment that tech wins out over everything else because, unlike everything else, tech stands on its own shoulders — it’s reliant on no foundation other than its own. We’ll continue to spin around in confusion until we understand that tech is not the ouroboros. It is not perfectly recursive, self-reliant, and self-referential. The ground truth about tech is that it depends — like all else, when you look carefully — on faith. Looking deeper, lurking around the heart of this judgment that tech is uniquely self-propagating or recursive is a still more radical idea: Technology simply is the recursively self-propagating, that which exists and grows and advances without having to rely on, defer to, or pay tribute to its origins. You can think here of George Soros’ famous recursivity theory, which led him to his unique position of power, wealth, and influence today. At a more ancient level, you can think of the ouroboros, the mythical snake eating its tail, a pre-eminent alchemist and occultist symbol. The post of the day belongs to @vikhyatk, formerly of Amazon Web Services and now at Moondream AI. In it, he suggests an old entry in Sam Altman’s blog “fully explains OpenAI’s vibe.” The line from Altman is this: Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions. But it’s a quote, or at least a citation. Here’s the rest of Altman’s 2013 post: I heard this from Qi Lu; I'm not sure what the source is. It got me thinking, though – the most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion, and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so. In general, the big companies don't come from pivots, and I think this is most of the reason why. Now is the right time to resurface that old post. Some of us have been warning for years now that the unfolding of events today depends on technological and theological matters because these are interlinked in a way that digital tech specifically reveals in new and dramatic ways. More Americans are catching on to this, but many still struggle to make heads or tails of the phenomenon, much less come to grips with it and coordinate an effective response. We’ll continue to spin around in confusion until we understand that tech is not the ouroboros. It is not perfectly recursive, self-reliant, and self-referential. The ground truth about tech is that it depends — like all else, when you look carefully — on faith. And the question facing all tech companies is exactly what faith they demand of you: faith in what, exactly, to be precise. Some insist that it’s just faith in tech itself, but that’s a parlor trick. From a certain distance, the ouroboros looks like a deity. But it’s really a simulation of one — a perpetual evasion of our created origin and therefore of our Creator. The longing for a meta-religion that overcomes all the pesky details and commitments concerning our origins and our Creator can be powerful, in tech as much as anywhere else, and the occult worship of alchemically powerful recursivity feeds that longing as much as anything else. But tech's reliance on the longing for religions — for gods to worship, on the one hand, and for the power and authority that comes from inventing new systems and structures of worship — reflects a deep-seated human longing for something much more visceral and specific than a meta-religion that spins you forever in a cosmic Möbius strip. The simulation of the infinite isn’t enough to satisfy — or even spiritually nourish — human hearts. For tech really to advance in a direction that strengthens and protects our hearts and their deepest, purest longings, it will have to receive with humility the reality that the temptation to keep churning out new gods, new cults, and new spiritual scams will lead more to ruin than spiritual riches. It will have to locate its religious foundations somewhere spiritual seeds can grow and the spiritual footing is firm. On rock, so to speak, and not sand, silicon or otherwise.

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The Apple Watch SE in its current form looks just like an Apple Watch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It’s impressive watching Apple sell people virtually the same Apple Watch design year in and year out, adding a feature here and there but changing precious little about the way it looks. It’s also fine — nobody actually needs to buy a new watch annually, but it does make the yearly refresh sort of ho-hum. But there’s something rumored on the horizon that might invigorate things: the plastic Apple Watch SE. I found the rumor intriguing last month when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman set it loose, but haven’t thought much of it since. However, today he wrote to his Power On newsletter subscribers that Apple is using plastic to make the watch “more kid-friendly,” adding that this “could allow for a better array of colors.” Then it clicked. There’s... Continue reading…

The OnePlus Pad’s keyboard case and stylus run an additional $149.99 and $99.99, respectively. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge The $549.99 OnePlus Pad 2 may have just recently launched, but the original version remains a worthwhile option that’s now undercutting the new model’s price by $170. Now through August 6th, you can pick the first-gen OnePlus Pad at Woot for $379.99 ($100 off), its lowest price ever. Sure, the older Pad may not have a 12.1-inch display or a nifty vibrating stylus that makes it feel like you’re writing on paper, but its 11.6-inch LCD has some great specs of its own — including a speedy 144Hz refresh rate and sharp, 2800 x 2000 resolution. OnePlus’s first tablet was a pleasant surprise when it launched last year, as the brand’s freshman effort offered great performance at an affordable price. That’s thanks in part to a snappy MediaTek... Continue reading…

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch offered a warning to people demanding court reform, telling them to "be careful."

Israel is already in a "multi-front war" with Iran and its proxies, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday, as the United States and allies prepared to defend Israel from an expected counterstrike and prevent an even more destructive war.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday implored former President Donald Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to put aside their differences and focus on winning the Peach State in November's general election.