Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 360

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

360 is, of course, the num­ber of degrees in a cir­cle. It’s also due north on a com­pass.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The God Gap Helps Explain a ‘Seis­mic Shift’ in Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics (David French, Sub­stack): “Count­less polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues don’t have a clear ‘Chris­t­ian’ pol­i­cy solu­tion, yet when a party’s mem­bers per­ceive it to be the par­ty of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, then the plat­form is wrong­ly infused with reli­gious fer­vor, even on issues (like tax rates, gun pol­i­cy, envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy, for­eign pol­i­cy, and count­less oth­ers) where the cor­rect reli­gious answer is far from clear.”
   • The excerpt is not the main point, which is also good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
2. I’m a Scam Pre­ven­tion Expert, and I Got Scammed (Natasha Lupinia, per­son­al web­site): “This scam went against every­thing I thought I knew about social engi­neer­ing attacks. The caller was pro­fes­sion­al, knowl­edge­able, patient, and easy to under­stand (con­nec­tion issues notwith­stand­ing). He had so much infor­ma­tion about me already that, even know­ing how easy it is to find sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about peo­ple, I was inclined to take him at face val­ue…”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
3. A clus­ter of links which touch on com­mon col­lege sce­nar­ios:
   • Bomb­shell alco­hol study fund­ed by Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion finds only risks, zero ben­e­fits for young adults (Chloe Tay­lor, For­tune): “Researchers said that for peo­ple aged between 15 and 39, the rec­om­mend­ed amount of alco­hol that could be con­sumed before risk­ing their health was ‘a lit­tle more than one-tenth of a stan­dard drink.’ They defined a stan­dard drink as 3.4 flu­id ounces of red wine or 12 flu­id ounces of beer.”
   • When We Con­sent, We Shouldn’t Feel Ter­ri­ble After, Right? (Emma Camp, New York Times): “Con­sent edu­ca­tion takes already anx­ious, inex­pe­ri­enced young peo­ple, and gives them a sim­plis­tic, bina­ry way of under­stand­ing sex. It’s no sur­prise then that many of us have absorbed the mes­sage that sex is a straight­for­ward trans­ac­tion with lit­tle room for com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings — and that we’re con­fused when we expe­ri­ence the inevitable com­pli­ca­tions that sex­u­al inti­ma­cy brings.”
     • A cri­tique of uni­ver­si­ty mes­sag­ing around sex. It does­n’t say all I would like, but it accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fies prob­lems with the cur­rent sys­tem.
   • First base is hook­ing up, sec­ond base is talk­ing, third base is going on a date and fourth base is dat­ing (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “In terms of attrac­tive­ness, the bot­tom 80% of men are com­pet­ing for the bot­tom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are com­pet­ing for the top 20% of men.”
     • Fas­ci­nat­ing through­out.
   • Pro­nouns: Progressivism’s Pre­pos­ter­ous Plight (Farhana K, Tra­vers­ing Tra­di­tion): “With­out the abil­i­ty to define a woman as female, for exam­ple, encroach­ment into women’s only spaces will become com­mon­place. There is no way for the state to pro­tect the needs and wants of women, because noth­ing is essen­tial to being a woman and no defin­i­tive fea­ture of women that require such pro­tec­tions, because a woman is any­one who defines them­selves as one. Yet for the Mus­lim woman who abides by the shar’i com­mands to veil from unre­lat­ed men and min­i­mize phys­i­cal con­tact, increas­ing­ly decon­struc­tive atti­tudes to gen­der will pose a clash that few pol­i­cy­mak­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic have had the strength to accom­mo­date.”
     • Inter­est­ing to see a Mus­lim per­spec­tive.
4. The Great Fic­tion of AI (Josh Dzieza, The Verge): “…it might not be such a bad thing to have to apply a Tur­ing test to every­thing I read, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the more com­mer­cial­ized mar­ket­ing-dri­ven cor­ners of the inter­net where AI text is most often deployed. The ques­tions it made me ask were the sorts of ques­tions I should be ask­ing any­way: is this sup­port­ed by facts, inter­nal­ly con­sis­tent, and orig­i­nal, or is it coast­ing on pleas­ant-sound­ing lan­guage and rehash­ing con­ven­tion­al wis­dom?; how much human writ­ing meets that stan­dard?; how often am I read­ing with enough atten­tion to notice? If this is the epis­temic cri­sis AI-gen­er­at­ed text is going to bring, maybe it’s a healthy one.”
   • I found this one super inter­est­ing and some­what amaz­ing.
5. The Hypocrisy of Elites (Erik Toren­berg, Sub­stack): “…we see this every­where: elites pro­mote body pos­i­tiv­i­ty — the idea that being over­weight is healthy — while being most obsessed with main­tain­ing per­fect health. Elites pro­mote sex­u­al inde­pen­dence and polyamory, yet them­selves are most like­ly to be monog­a­mous in sta­ble long-term rela­tion­ships. Elites com­plain about over­pop­u­la­tion and car­bon foot­print, but they’re the ones hav­ing the most kids and inflict­ing the largest car­bon foot­print.”
6. The Fall of His­to­ry as a Major–and as a Part of the Human­i­ties (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Amer­i­can cul­ture has lost faith in his­to­ry as a vehi­cle for under­stand­ing the human expe­ri­ence. Our high cul­ture ques­tions the very con­cept of shared human expe­ri­ence. It is hard for history—or any of the humanities—to flour­ish in a world that does not put much stock in the human. By adopt­ing inter­sec­tion­al ide­ol­o­gy as their own, the pro­fes­sion­al human­ists have con­firmed that they do not believe in the promise of their own dis­ci­pline. And if they do not believe in it…. why should any 18 year old stu­dent?” This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly insight­ful essay.
7. 33 Prob­lems With Media in One Chart (Nick Rout­ley, Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I now know what astro­turf­ing is.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Tur­ing Test (But A Jape)
• These peo­ple lost their dog and when it returned lat­er in the day it was wear­ing a rib­bon it won at a dog show (Not The Bee) — some­times a dog has dreams, you know? Read the actu­al sto­ry — it’s less fun­ny than the head­line but con­nects the dots.
• Net­flix Los­es 1 Mil­lion Sub­scribers, Leav­ing 10 Mil­lion Peo­ple Won­der­ing Why Their Net­flix Login Does­n’t Work Any­more (Baby­lon Bee)
• ‘Bees are real­ly high­ly intel­li­gent’: the insect IQ tests caus­ing a buzz among sci­en­tists (Don­na Fer­gu­son, The Guardian): “He thinks bees have emo­tions, can plan and imag­ine things, and can recog­nise them­selves as unique enti­ties dis­tinct from oth­er bees.… He began to realise some indi­vid­ual bees were more curi­ous and con­fi­dent than oth­ers. ‘You also find the odd ‘genius bee’ that does some­thing bet­ter than all the oth­er indi­vid­u­als of a colony, or indeed all the oth­er bees we’ve test­ed.” Spec­u­la­tive but quite inter­est­ing.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Dis­hon­esty of the Abor­tion Debate (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “The argu­ment for abor­tion, if made hon­est­ly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire con­se­quences to women of mak­ing a very sim­ple med­ical pro­ce­dure ille­gal. The argu­ment against it doesn’t take even a sin­gle word. The argu­ment against it is a pic­ture…. The truth is that the best argu­ment on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowl­edge that fact, you aren’t speak­ing or even think­ing hon­est­ly about the issue. You cer­tain­ly aren’t going to con­vince any­body. Only the truth has the pow­er to move.” First shared in vol­ume 227. I know I shared this recent­ly in light of the Dobbs deci­sion, and it is def­i­nite­ly worth shar­ing again.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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.