Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 485

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.

In this first email of 2025, I’d like to pass along an alum­nus’s obser­va­tion that 2025 is equal to 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ + 5³ + 6³ + 7³ + 8³ + 9³ which is also equal to (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)².

Even cool­er, he point­ed out that 2025 equals (20+25)^(20/(2*5)) or just (20+25)²

Num­bers do fun things.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. How Intel­lec­tu­als Found God (Peter Savod­nik, The Free Press): “Instead of smirk­ing at reli­gion, some of our most impor­tant philoso­phers, nov­el­ists, and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als are now reassess­ing their con­tempt for it. They are won­der­ing if they might have missed some­thing.”
2. H5N1: Much More Than You Want­ed To Know (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I con­clude that the most plau­si­ble esti­mate for the chance of an H5N1 pan­dem­ic in the next year is 5%.”
   • Pret­ty much exact­ly how much I want­ed to know and explained well. Reas­sur­ing.
3. How to like every­thing more (Sasha Chapin, Sub­stack): “In my expe­ri­ence, high-lev­el enjoy­ment, like a sport, is com­posed of many inter­lock­ing micro-skills that must be trained indi­vid­u­al­ly, but which rein­force each oth­er.”
4. Amer­i­ca, the beau­ti­ful (Chris Arnade, Sub­stack): “We are an ide­al for a large por­tion of the world, and while that ide­al isn’t always a real­i­ty that we live up to, very few peo­ple come here, then turn around and go back, because with enough ded­i­ca­tion, you can cre­ate your own form of ful­fill­ment here. The US is a vast fed­er­a­tion of micro com­mu­ni­ties and micro cul­tures, all bound togeth­er by the belief, how­ev­er ten­ta­tive and neb­u­lous, in the Amer­i­can Dream.”
   • A fre­quent crit­ic of Amer­i­ca explains why he loves it nonethe­less.
5. Africa Has Entered a New Era of War (Gabriele Stein­hauser, Andrew Bar­nett and Emma Brown, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Africa is now expe­ri­enc­ing more con­flicts than at any point since at least 1946, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed by Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty in Swe­den and ana­lyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Insti­tute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two insti­tutes have iden­ti­fied 28 state-based con­flicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 coun­tries, more than in any oth­er region in the world and dou­ble the count just a decade and a half ago. That tal­ly doesn’t include con­flicts that don’t involve gov­ern­ment forces, for instance between dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, and whose num­ber has also dou­bled since 2010.”
   • Vast­ly under­re­port­ed in Amer­i­ca. If you ask most Amer­i­cans what wars are rag­ing right now they’d be able to iden­ti­fy Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas and not much else. But there’s a lot else. Wikipedi­a’s sum­ma­ry puts the cur­rent tal­ly at 19 full-blown wars, 20 sig­nif­i­cant con­flicts and 15 skir­mish­es.
6. Can You Can­cel a Coun­try? (Russ Roberts, Sub­stack): “The fans of set­tler colo­nial­ism love hat­ing Israel because Israel is so young. You can’t return Amer­i­ca to 1619, say. In Amer­i­ca, there are over 325 mil­lion set­tlers and only 7 mil­lion Native Amer­i­cans. Decol­o­niz­ing the Unit­ed States is unimag­in­able. So is decol­o­niz­ing Israel, real­ly. But it’s more imag­in­able than the Unit­ed States. The defend­ers of Israel see Israel as the tip of the sword fight­ing against ter­ror­ism and Jihadism. For the those who use the set­tler colo­nial­ism lens, Hamas is the tip of the sword against set­tler colo­nial­ism.”
   • Roberts is an econ­o­mist, a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion, and the pres­i­dent of Shalem Col­lege in Jerusalem.
7. A Cen­tu­ry of Human Detri­tus, Visu­al­ized (Den­nis Over­bye, New York Times): “ ‘The web­site enables many com­par­isons that, once seen, can no longer be unseen,’ he said. For instance, humans out­weigh wild ani­mals 10 to 1, a fact that sur­prised Dr. Ménard. (‘In my expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple expect the oppo­site.’) But we weigh only half as much as the live­stock herds we main­tain to eat. Per­haps more omi­nous­ly, humans use 100 times their own mass in plas­tic.”
   • Unlocked. Also, you can see the inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tion at https://biocubes.net/

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Prayer Emo­ji (Pearls Before Swine)
• Dis­ney Announces Live-Action Remake Of Ani­mat­ed Remake Of Live-Action Remake Of Ani­mat­ed Remake Of Live-Action Remake (Baby­lon Bee)
• 100-Foot Wave Surfed at Mav­er­ick­’s? Poten­tial­ly. (Dashel Pier­son, Surfer): “Nev­er­the­less, there’s a new con­tender for the Guin­ness World Record of ‘Largest Wave Surfed,’ as tossed into the ring by Alessan­dro ‘Alo’ Slebir with his mon­ster ride at Maverick’s from Decem­ber 23rd, 2024. It’s spec­u­lat­ed, poten­tial­ly, that Alo’s wave mea­sured 108 feet. And that would smash the cur­rent record held by Sebas­t­ian Steudt­ner and his 86-foot­er at Nazaré, Por­tu­gal in 2020.”
  • Mav­er­ick­’s is, of course, at near­by San­ta Cruz. Here’s a two-minute news seg­ment about it: San­ta Cruz man rides poten­tial record wave (NBC Bay Area)
• Lost Veg­gi­eTales Episode Dis­cov­ered Where David Brings King Saul 200 Sev­ered Pick­le Tips (Baby­lon Bee)

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.