TGFI, Volume 566: a great roiling bouillabaisse of links

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

1. Stop Pathol­o­giz­ing Ordi­nary Life (Clay Rout­ledge, New York Times): “The more fix­at­ed we are on men­tal health, the more sen­si­tive we become to any­thing that might qual­i­fy as a symp­tom and the more we use clin­i­cal lan­guage to describe nor­mal emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences like grief, burnout and lone­li­ness. This broad­en­ing of what we think counts as a dis­or­der — known as con­cept creep — encour­ages us to pathol­o­gize ordi­nary life and see our­selves as men­tal­ly unhealthy.… Near­ly a third of Amer­i­can adults and half of Gen Z adults have giv­en them­selves a diag­no­sis of a men­tal ill­ness based on infor­ma­tion from social media. And research sug­gests that peo­ple who rely on social media for infor­ma­tion about men­tal ill­ness­es tend to have less accu­rate knowl­edge about them.”
2. Coun­ter­feit Prov­i­dence: Why Chris­tians Must Reject the Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Mind (Mitchell Bahnsen, Sub­stack): “The believ­er has been cat­e­chized, right­ly, to reject the sec­u­lar pic­ture of his­to­ry as a direc­tion­less churn of mat­ter and acci­dent. He knows in his bones that events mean some­thing, that his­to­ry is going some­where, that appear­ances deceive and a deep­er order under­lies them. Con­spir­acism takes the prov­i­den­tial instinct, a the­o­log­i­cal­ly healthy one, and trans­fers its object from the father­ly hand of God to the hid­den hand of the deep state. Where prov­i­dence teach­es that his­to­ry is gov­erned by a God who is for us, con­spir­acism teach­es that it is gov­erned by pow­ers who are against us.”
3. US pros­e­cu­tors charge Atlanta man after Graphe­neOS phone wipes itself dur­ing air­port search (Skye Jacobs, TechSpot): “The case rais­es ques­tions about which con­sti­tu­tion­al rights apply at US bor­ders, includ­ing inter­na­tion­al air­ports, where author­i­ties have broad­er search pow­ers.… Graphe­neOS is designed to improve pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty on Pix­el phones. Sup­port­ers say those tools are legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tions, not evi­dence of crim­i­nal intent. Boutry point­ed to France and Spain, where author­i­ties have strug­gled to gain access to secured devices. He said author­i­ties have treat­ed the use of Graphe­neOS itself as sus­pi­cious. In Cat­alo­nia, Spain, police have been pro­fil­ing peo­ple car­ry­ing Pix­el phones, assum­ing they have Graphe­neOS installed and are drug deal­ers or gang mem­bers.”
4. A rev­o­lu­tion is unfold­ing. Vot­ers every­where are furi­ous. (Fareed Zakaria, Wash­ing­ton Post): “We sum­mon a car in three min­utes. A pack­age arrives the same day. AI answers com­pli­cat­ed ques­tions in sec­onds, and does more com­plex work that took peo­ple months in mere min­utes. Nat­u­ral­ly, cit­i­zens begin to expect sim­i­lar effi­cien­cy from gov­ern­ment. But democ­ra­cy is not designed for speed. It is designed for legit­i­ma­cy. It bar­gains, com­pro­mis­es, con­sults courts, pro­tects vul­ner­a­ble groups and bal­ances com­pet­ing inter­ests. Those safe­guards are pre­cise­ly what dis­tin­guish democ­ra­cy from author­i­tar­i­an­ism. Yet in an age shaped by technology’s warp speed, they increas­ing­ly look like paral­y­sis.”
5. How the mod­ern plea bar­gain under­cuts the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a jury tri­al (Matt Martens, The Hill): “Jury tri­als, by pub­licly air­ing and test­ing the evi­dence of the crimes, serve the dual func­tions of both pro­tect­ing the accused from false accu­sa­tions and coer­cion to wrong­ly admit guilty and pro­tect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty from lenient sen­tenc­ing of dan­ger­ous offend­ers. Mod­ern Amer­i­can-style plea bar­gains wreak hav­oc on both those vital inter­ests.”
   • The author is a lawyer and a well-known Chris­t­ian thinker on the sub­ject of jus­tice. He has a sem­i­nary degree in addi­tion to his legal train­ing and attends Capi­tol Hill Bap­tist Church in DC.
6. The Apples and Oranges Tri­bunal (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Hayek nailed it in The Mirage of Social Jus­tice: jus­tice is about con­duct — how one per­son treats anoth­er. An employ­er who defrauds his work­ers, an employ­ee who steals from the till, a prod­uct sold under false pre­tens­es — con­demn them, take them to court. But the pat­tern of prices that emerges from mil­lions of vol­un­tary trades is nobody’s con­duct. No one chose it, no one designed it, no one can be guilty of it. The con­stel­la­tion of prices is, in Ferguson’s phrase, the result of human action but not of human design. Demand­ing that prices be just is a cat­e­go­ry error, like suing the weath­er. Prices don’t grade our mer­it; they guide our actions. Ask them to do the first and they can no longer do the sec­ond.”
7. Some thoughts on AI:
   • What will more intel­li­gence actu­al­ly do for us? (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “So although we don’t know yet, it’s pos­si­ble that humans were already hit­ting the point of dimin­ish­ing returns with regards to indi­vid­ual cog­ni­tive capac­i­ty, and that super­in­tel­li­gent machines will nev­er be as far beyond us as we are beyond dogs. But even if that’s true, I can think of at least three rea­sons why machine super­in­tel­li­gence could still deliv­er huge pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains.… (1) The most obvi­ous advan­tage that machine super­in­tel­li­gence con­fers is replic­a­bil­i­ty.… (2) in the age of AI, dis­trib­uted tac­it knowl­edge might not be near­ly as big of a bar­ri­er to tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fu­sion.… (and 3) there may be laws of the uni­verse that humans can’t under­stand but AI can.”
     • This is real­ly good and worth a pon­der.
   • The Hid­den Cost of China’s Free A.I. (Tal Feld­man, New York Times): “When researchers asked DeepSeek to write code for users whom the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment views with hos­til­i­ty, such as Falun Gong or Tibetans, DeepSeek wrote code with secu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, mak­ing it eas­i­er for hack­ers to pen­e­trate.… Imag­ine an employ­ee inside an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny who was smart and hard-work­ing and whose goal in life was to pro­mote the inter­ests of a for­eign gov­ern­ment. We would call that per­son a for­eign agent. We are now hir­ing mil­lions of them through the use of Chi­nese A.I.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• $200,000 Spent On Trav­el Ball Final­ly Pays Off With Son’s $500 Col­lege Schol­ar­ship (Baby­lon Bee): “Ben­son’s uncle Matthew, a finan­cial plan­ner, had advised years ago that if the fam­i­ly would put all the trav­el ball mon­ey in a 529 account, young Bray­den would have rough­ly one mil­lion dol­lars to pay for his col­lege edu­ca­tion. ‘Who’s laugh­ing now, Matthew?’ said Mr. Ben­son. ‘What a dope. I can’t wait to text out pic­tures of the schol­ar­ship offer. He’s going to feel so stu­pid.’ After 10 years of miss­ing church, school, birth­days, wed­dings, and funer­als for trav­el ball, the Ben­son fam­i­ly was thank­ful their per­sis­tence had paid off. ‘I admit, there were times I ques­tioned if we were doing the right thing,’ said mom Jes­si­ca. ‘When we skipped my sis­ter’s wed­ding because there was sup­posed to be a col­lege scout at this tour­na­ment in Alaba­ma, I had my doubts. Hold­ing this $500 check in my hands, those doubts are final­ly gone.’ ”
• Cal­i­for­ni­a’s icon­ic wel­come signs are get­ting a dra­mat­ic makeover (Tes­sa McLean, SF Gate): “Aside from being ‘warm and wel­com­ing,’ Cochrane said the goal for the new designs was to present ‘a legit pho­to op’ for pass­ing motorists. He said they’ve already become ‘social media mag­nets’ in just the short time they’ve been dis­played.”
  • They look real­ly nice. I’m impressed.
• Datatype: a vari­able font that turns text into charts: “Datatype is an Open­Type vari­able font that turns sim­ple text expres­sions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no ren­der­ing library — just type the syn­tax and Datatype­’s lig­a­ture sub­sti­tu­tion does the rest.”
  • THIS IS SO COOL! Note: this is for web­sites, won’t work on a Word doc­u­ment.

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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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.