OnlySky

Reading Time: 2 minutes Today, I’m bringing sad news: OnlySky is shutting down. This will be my final post here. OnlySky launched in 2022 with grand ambitions, seeking to blend secular storytelling with journalism, commentary, and humanist philosophy. We dreamed of being a home and a haven for the world’s rising nonreligious population. We wanted to give a voice to the secular perspective, which is important and valuable yet all too often overlooked in the marketplace of ideas.

Reading Time: 4 minutes All good things come to an end. Everything changes in one way or another. That’s just how life is. That constant sense of change is why I call our humanness a situation, not a condition. At some point, humans hunted the very last mammoth. Built the last active shrine to Inanna. Brushed their fingers against the last nevel harp. Somersaulted for the last time across an enraged bull while their eardrums throbbed with the roar of approving crowds.

Reading Time: 4 minutes The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, said the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. Burns, as the plowman, destroys the nest of a mouse who then has no resources or wherewithal to rebuild it over the winter. Burns, as the plowman, rues his own plans that have often gone awry. The mouse is the lucky one as it has no concept of the past or the future and lives only in the present. The man, on the other hand, understands past predicaments and future dreads.

Overview: At the close of OnlySky, a reflection on the media economy we need, the challenges that this effort faced, and the work to be done going forward. Thank you, everyone, for the time you contributed to this space, and to its attempt to build a better discourse.

Reading Time: 2 minutes After more than two years of sharing the perspectives of the nonreligious here at OnlySky, we’ve made the difficult decision to stop publication. The current landscape for online media, the turmoil of social media, and a difficult investment climate made it impossible to continue. We’re deeply appreciative of the time, support, and hard work of so many people who made OnlySky possible in the first place and helped bring this vision into reality.

Overview: Amid many concurrent global crises, it's easy to forget what we can address. But surviving a polycrisis is and always has been a much more everyday affair. Reading Time: 6 minutes For weeks, as the official Gazan death count neared and surpassed 30,000, talk of a ceasefire was dangled in political and media channels, with vague promises of a general shape arising to soothe an outraged world.

Overview: A humanist kids' book by Rebecca Vitsmun teaches science and wonder, as well as the representation of disabilities rarely depicted in fiction. Reading Time: 4 minutes [This post is a solicited book review. I received a digital copy of the book, but no other compensation in exchange for writing it.] Humanism is for everyone. If we want to win people over, we have to tell our story in a way that reflects that.

Overview: The recent IVF ruling shows scant regard for some rudimentary philosophizing we can do. The Justice needs some critical thinking lessons. Reading Time: 4 minutes The Alabama Supreme Court has recently classified frozen embryos as people—or as they put it, “extrauterine children”. In addition to all sorts of consternation and arguments, the decision has presented a large problem for the Republican Party as it shifts into campaign mode ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Overview: Oral arguments for two social media cases before SCOTUS highlight the complexity of defending free expression on our private-public internet. Reading Time: 10 minutes On February 26, oral arguments for two cases came before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), which will have serious implications for online media depending on the ruling. In Moody v.

Overview: The Alabama Supreme Court hands down a religion-laden ruling that embryos are people, with the side effect of ending IVF treatment. It's another step in the religious right's plan to return women to a state of reproductive subordination. Reading Time: 6 minutes It was never going to end with the fall of Roe. The Christian right’s goal was never just to ban abortion. That was only the first step in a bigger plan.