You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting
On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.
Things Glen Found Interesting
- Tech boss uses AI and ChatGPT to create cancer vaccine for his dying dog (Natasha Bita, The Australian): “Heartbroken when his fur-baby was diagnosed with a deadly mast cell cancer in 2024, Mr Conyngham threw thousands of dollars at veterinary chemotherapy and surgery, which slowed but failed to shrink the tumours. Now, after treatment with a custom mRNA cancer vaccine over the Christmas break, the tennis ball-sized tumour on Rosie’s hock has shrunk in half, in a recovery that has astounded researchers at the cutting-edge of human cancer treatments.… [A scientist said,] ‘Usually we don’t support direct-to-consumer type DNA sequencing because while generating data for genomics is relatively easy for us, interrogating that data is really hard and challenging,’ he said. But Paul said, ‘No worries, I’m a data analyst and I’ll figure this out with the help of ChatGPT’.”
- Note that he did not cure the cancer, just treated it. Stunning nonetheless.
- The Danger of AI Isn’t Misinformation. It’s Mis-Formation. (Jonathan Sams, The Gospel Coalition): “In each of these examples, it’s possible AI could churn out a biblically accurate answer. But the danger isn’t purely a matter of misinformation; it’s a matter of formation. The real issue is what habitual AI use does to us. It turns into muscle memory that, over time, will reshape basic Christian habits like what we pay attention to, what we expect, and where we look for counsel.”
- Paying College Athletes Has Created a Mess. It Was Still the Right Thing to Do. (Joe Nocera, The Free Press): “What is a problem, I acknowledge, is the transfer portal. In the bad old days, athletes couldn’t transfer without losing a year of eligibility—even if the coach who had recruited them left for greener pastures. But when players switch two or three times in the course of their college career, that creates a whole other set of problems. Smaller schools, in particular, have a difficult time holding on to their best players because the major sports schools pick them off with NIL offers. (Prediction: There will be fewer upsets in this year’s tournament than there used to be.) College athletes have become free agents rather than college students. One astounding statistic: In the Southeastern Conference, only one basketball player spent four years at the same school. One!”
- Sex is not a symbol (Kristen Sanders, Substack): “But there are a few threads in some of the conversations swirling about fertility that I think we might pull on. For one, marriage, and not sex, is the metaphor for union between God and humans. This matters quite a bit! .…What I object to, most strongly, is a view of God and his workings in the world that relies on a ‘hidden’ order or structure that it is our job to discover. God is present in the world without hiding behind every tree or bush. In saying that sex is a gift, we are saying all that we need to say about it. Making it sacred, for me, actually impedes the kind of divisions being made in Leviticus between the holy and the profane. The profane is simply that which is good, but not good for use in the order of revealed knowledge of God. It is good for its own sake. For it, we can return thanks, joyfully, relishing its gifts- of communion and hospitality, of sexuality and its nourishments, of children if they are granted to us. None of these need to be made holy to be good. That is how we receive the world as gift.”
- The mysterious Redditor who’s changing the way we do laundry (Alex Abad-Santos, Vox): “He has singlehandedly changed the way people do laundry. He is the reason the word ‘lipase’ has become a topic of conversation across elder millennial group chats. He can move the market. His adherents clamor for their faceless champion to give them advice. They praise him for a 12-hour process called ‘spa day’ and post their disgusting but satisfying results for the world to see.… Most of the world uses powdered laundry detergent, which allows for more enzyme flexibility; Americans generally prefer liquid, which doesn’t always contain these precious enzymes.”
- Scripture, Creation, and Accommodation (Michael Horton, Substack): “[I]n 1896 Andrew Dickson White introduced the fiction that, through its promotion by Bertrand Russell and many other prominent thinkers, has proved influential. White says, ‘Calvin took the lead (against Copernicanism) in his Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the ninety-third psalm, and asked, ‘Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’’ However, Calvin never mentions Copernicus, here or anywhere else, and he does not condemn heliocentrists. As [Margaret] Osler notes, ‘Few astronomers adopted Copernican astronomy during the first fifty years following the publication of De revolutionibus.’ This included Bacon, of course, so it would not be surprising if Calvin was not even aware of Copernicus. More egregious is White’s spurious quotation, put into circulation by F. W. Farrar a decade earlier and, through White, passed on by Bertrand Russell and many others. Instead, what Calvin says is that scripture is accommodated discourse. Regarding Genesis 1 he cautioned, ‘The Holy Spirit had no intention to teach astronomy.’ ”
- I consider myself well-informed in this area, and Horton has got some good info here I don’t recall running across before.
- American Diner Gothic (Robert Mariani, The New Atlantis): “You’re in a small town in Wisconsin, the heart of Normal America. The transgender assistant manager at CVS has a septum piercing, a wolf cut, and a nametag that reads ‘Finn.’ A block away, the 4channer construction worker in the Sam Hyde shooter shirt listens to Bladee and plots his impending virality. At Target, the anime section has metastasized from one shelf to an entire aisle. These aren’t random weirdos and they aren’t teenagers in a phase. Walk through any office park and you’ll find the same aesthetic bleeding through the cubicles: anime stickers on laptops, Discord running on second monitors. They’re a new American type, young but trans-generational, as distinctive as the organization man or the valley girl once were. I call them dinergoths: what you get when economic mobility dies, suburbs become psychic deserts, and Discord becomes more real than your cul-de-sac.”
Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen
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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a similar way, we need to become wise people whose faith interacts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may continue the tradition of Issachar.
Disclaimer
Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey’s agenda and we are not about the elephant’s agenda — we are about the Lamb’s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ideological Turing test and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say “I agree” or “I disagree” until I can say “I understand”) and may at times share articles that have a strong partisan bias simply because I find the article stimulating. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with everything an author says in an article I mention, much less things the author has said in other articles (although if I strongly disagree with something in the article I’ll usually mention it). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent.
Also, remember that I’m not reporting news — I’m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s not making an appearance here because I haven’t found stimulating articles written about it.
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