Readers bought about 184 million print adult fiction books this year. That’s roughly as many as they bought last year and 66 million more than in 2019, the last year before the pandemic gave book sales a jolt. (Harris & Alter, The New York Times)
Read MoreI’ve spent a lot of time over the past year talking to frustrated conservative Christians. They complain about their fellow believers’ tendency to make idols out of political power. But they also criticize the media’s simplistic depictions, especially in stories about Christian nationalism and a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. (Worthen, The New York Times)
Read MoreIt is one of the most surprising music stories of the year. While streams of new music — releases from the last 18 months — were down from last year, one genre is on the rise: Christian and gospel music, according to industry data and analytics company Luminate’s 2025 Midyear Report. (Sherman, AP News)
Read MoreFive families [have filed] wrongful-death lawsuits against OpenAI in recent months, alleging that the world’s most popular chatbot had encouraged their loved ones to kill themselves. A sixth suit filed this month alleges that ChatGPT led a man to kill his mother before taking his own life. (Tiku & Schaul,The Washington Post)
Read MoreThis year, the church laid to rest Christian leaders whose names were sullied by scandal and those whose persevering faithfulness will echo long after their death. Those whose public ministry mingled precariously with personal politics and those who stood against the majority to champion the voiceless. Their families and loved ones, churches and communities, miss them deeply. (Christianity Today)
Read MoreThere are several factors at play in this year’s meme slowdown, one major element being that the feeds where people go to tune into funny videos are now being inundated with gravely unfunny AI slop. (Sommer, InsideHook)
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