Thom Ryng
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Thom Ryng
@thomryng.bsky.social
660 followers 560 following 960 posts
Tell me, have you found the Yellow Sign?

Catholic Hobbit, husband, (grand)father, author, writer, editor, amateur monk, pilgrim, liturgy geek, medievalist, gamer. Immigrant. Not necessarily in that order. I like pie.

https://linktr.ee/thomryng
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Thom Ryng @thomryng.bsky.social · Feb 12
Practical Pilgrimage – Now Available!

My new book, Practical Pilgrimage, is now available for purchase. Subtitled "Useful Rules for Walking the Camino de Santiago", it's a deeper exploration …

#camino #caminodesantiago #pilgrimage

www.thomryng.com/camino/pract...
Practical Pilgrimage – Now Available!
Practical Pilgrimage, is now available for purchase. Subtitled “Useful Rules for Walking the Camino de Santiago”, it’s a deeper exploration and expansion of a blog post that appea…
www.thomryng.com
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - Notre Dame de Rocamadour

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: the Chapel of the Black Madonna
highlight of Rocamadour – even greater than the Basilica church next door – is undoubtedly the chapel of Notre Dame de Rocamadour. For nearly a thousand years, pilgrims from all over th…
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November 14, 2025 at 7:31 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's blog post. TL;DR: please pray for Francine.

www.thomryng.com/amateurmonk/...
November 14, 2025 at 7:05 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - the second chapel

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: Divine Radiance
chapel of Saint Blaise in the Sanctuary district of Rocamadour also contains an altar to the Divine Mercy. I was particularly struck by the play of sunlight filtered through the stained glass windo…
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November 13, 2025 at 10:39 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
The latest from the blog

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All Saints of the Benedictine Order
again we come to a feast of All Saints. “But wait!” I hear you cry, “wasn’t that back on the first of November?” Right you are! But today on the Benedictine calendar i…
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November 13, 2025 at 6:53 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - the first chapel

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: La Chapelle Saint-Jean-Baptiste
the first chapel in Rocamadour’s Sanctuary district. It’s appropriate that it is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, since it is by Baptism that one enters into the Church. There&#8217…
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November 12, 2025 at 5:15 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - critters

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: Fossils in the Stairs
Rocamadour is carved out of the great limestone cliffs overlooking the Alzou valley. And where there’s limestone, there’s fossils! You can see them most clearly in the many steep stairc…
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November 11, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social
Look at what this garish, classless, tasteless fool has done to the People’s House.
November 11, 2025 at 12:04 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
The latest from the blog

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Happy Martinmas!
seems fitting that Veterans’ Day – Armistice Day – is celebrated on November 11, for this is the memorial of the soldier-saint, Martin of Tours. He was a soldier turned monk turne…
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November 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - the church of the Black Madonna

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: Sanctuaire Notre Dame de Rocamadour
the entrance to the church of Notre Dame de Rocamadour. Within is the little statue known as the Black Madonna – more on that in coming days. The first small chapel was built into the cliff h…
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November 10, 2025 at 4:40 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
This day in 1975. Requiescat In Pace.
youtu.be/yGvmuFu5zb4
Gordon Lightfoot - The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald ( Lyrics )
YouTube video by Don Mac
youtu.be
November 10, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
twigtechnology.bsky.social
On the left, Alan Turing’s 1950 paper introducing the imitation game, where he says that using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent is absurd.

On the right, yesterday’s NYT opinion piece using public polling as a guide to whether machines are intelligent.

🧪🤖
The introduction to Turing’s paper titled ‘Computing Machinery and intelligence’: I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think ?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine' and "think'.The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think' are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think ?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. Introduction to an opinion piece published in the New York Times on 8 November 2025, by Barbara Gail Montero, titled ‘A.I. Is on Its Way to Something Even More Remarkable Than Intelligence’: Not long ago, A.I. became intelligent. Some may dismiss this claim, but the number of people who doubt A.I.'s acumen is dwindling. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, a clear majority of U.S. adults say that computers are already more intelligent than people or will become so in the near future.
November 9, 2025 at 12:09 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
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From Living and Chosen Stones
would be forgiven for thinking that the Pope’s main church is St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It’s certainly the largest. But no. The Pope’s own church, his episcopal s…
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November 9, 2025 at 2:48 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - steeply, steeply

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: the Endless Stairs of Rocamadour
From the medieval town, there are more stairs upwards, ever upwards, to the shrine churches. There are several here, and in the coming days, we’ll explore them. Meanwhile, you can get a prett…
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November 8, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
jackjenkins.me
UPDATE: Reached out to the Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist minister who was there that day and has been active in religious demonstrations at Broadview.

“They are making it clear that they are scared of prayer … it speaks the truth that what they are doing in that building is evil.”
They are making it clear that they are scared of prayer and all the diverse faith witness that has been at Broadview because it is powerful - it speaks the truth that what they are doing in that building is evil. But we will not stop until the evil stops. They have stolen our neighbors, they cannot steal our love and prayers for their return.
November 8, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social
I’ve never seen an American elected official fight so hard to starve people.
November 8, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
This really hasn’t gotten enough attention this week.

@wired.com #ICE
www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...
November 5, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
marklemley.bsky.social
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
November 6, 2025 at 4:58 AM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - time to find another set of stairs

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

www.thomryng.com/camino/camin...
Camino Photo of the Day: Looking Up in Rocamadour
difficult to capture the sheer otherworldliness of Rocamadour in photographs. This is a view looking up from the main medieval street of the town. There are additional levels of the town clinging t…
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November 6, 2025 at 4:45 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - tourists and pilgrims

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: the Streets of Rocamadour
main street of Rocamadour is very touristy during the day, though in the evening, after the tourists left, it was actually quite charming. This is one of the most visited Catholic shrines in France…
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November 5, 2025 at 10:26 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
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Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot
this day in 1605, a cabal of Catholic plotters, hoping to turn back the tides of reformation and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne of Great Britain, attempted to assassinate the very Protest…
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November 5, 2025 at 4:20 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - up the stairs to the mystical hill town

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: Into Rocamadour
town and shrines of Rocamadour are built into the side of a cliff. This stair is the main access to the old medieval town. It is just the first of many such stairs I will climb today. I took this p…
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November 4, 2025 at 7:12 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
www.thomryng.com/amateurmonk/...
Praying for the Dead
We finally got Francine’s autopsy results on Monday. The whole week was kind of a blur after that. I didn’t even go to OCIA on Tuesday. I did manage to make soup for my friends Adam and…
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November 3, 2025 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Thom Ryng
erininthemorning.com
Devastating. Teen Vogue's politics coverage has been incredible and this is a major loss for journalism.

Legacy journalism keeps on getting rid of the only people making it worth anything anymore.
leximcmenamin.com Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 11d
I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.
November 3, 2025 at 9:02 PM
thomryng.bsky.social
Today's #CaminoPhotooftheDay - breathless

#Camino #ViaPodiensis #CaminodeSantiago

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Camino Photo of the Day: the First View of Rocamadour
Alzou Gorge trail ended in a parking lot, which was something of an anticlimax. And then, as I walked into the field beyond, I caught my first view of Rocamadour. It was like something straight out…
www.thomryng.com
November 3, 2025 at 9:26 PM