Tag: brazil

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.

I’m a sim­ple man, and I appre­ci­ate that vol­ume 336 is com­prised of dig­its eas­i­ly put into an equa­tion: 3 + 3 = 6.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. This Inno­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Home­less Shel­ter Is Ris­ing To Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Hous­ing Chal­lenge (Liza Van­den­boom Ash­ley, Reli­gion Unplugged): “…Orange Coun­ty Res­cue Mis­sion [is] an inno­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian home­less shel­ter based in Tustin with sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions. The Tustin cam­pus, known as the Vil­lage of Hope, runs with­out gov­ern­ment fund­ing or pri­vate debt and employs an orga­ni­za­tion­al and aes­thet­ic ethos that more close­ly resem­bles a col­lege cam­pus than a home­less shel­ter.” This is an uplift­ing read. Rec­om­mend­ed.
2. Christ and cocaine: Rio’s gangs of God blend faith and vio­lence (Tom Phillips, The Guardian): “Drug lords, some reg­u­lar church­go­ers, have incor­po­rat­ed Chris­t­ian sym­bols into their ultra-vio­lent trade. Pack­ets of cocaine, hand­guns and uni­forms are embla­zoned with the Star of David – a ref­er­ence to the Pen­te­costal belief that the return of Jews to Israel rep­re­sents progress towards the sec­ond com­ing. Gang-com­mis­sioned graf­fi­ti offers spir­i­tu­al guid­ance and heav­en­ly praise.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. What a wild sto­ry! See­ing their blind spots, my main take­away is to won­der what my blind spots are.
3. Noth­ing Sacred: These Apps Reserve The Right To Sell Your Prayers (Emi­ly Bak­er-White, Buz­zFeed): “It is com­mon for free apps to prof­it from shar­ing their user­s’ data and to be vague about exact­ly how and with whom they share it, but users feel like Pray.com’s data prac­tices are at odds with the deeply per­son­al nature of prayer itself. Jen­ny, a recent col­lege grad­u­ate who prayed about the infi­deli­ty of a roman­tic part­ner in the app, said ‘there is an expec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy’ among Chris­tians shar­ing prayers.”
   • From lat­er in the arti­cle: “At least one gov­ern­ment has tak­en an inter­est in prayer app data, too — the US mil­i­tary bought exten­sive loca­tion data mined from Mus­lim prayer apps back in 2020 for use in spe­cial forces oper­a­tions.”
4. PDF: So Long, And No Thanks for the Exter­nal­i­ties: The Ratio­nal Rejec­tion of Secu­ri­ty Advice by Users (Cor­mac Her­ley, Microsoft): “For exam­ple, much of the advice con­cern­ing pass­words is out­dat­ed and does lit­tle to address actu­al treats, and ful­ly 100% of cer­tifi­cate error warn­ings appear to be false pos­i­tives. Fur­ther, if users spent even a minute a day read­ing URLs to avoid phish­ing, the cost (in terms of user time) would be two orders of mag­ni­tude greater than all phish­ing loss­es. Thus we find that most secu­ri­ty advice sim­ply offers a poor cost-ben­e­fit trade­off to users and is reject­ed.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
5. Super­hero Secret Iden­ti­ties Aren’t Pos­si­ble with Today’s Com­put­ing Tech­nolo­gies (Jason Hong, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the ACM): “Super­heroes have to wor­ry about hav­ing their iden­ti­ty being revealed, but the rest of us in the real world have to wor­ry about just how much infor­ma­tion about us is out there, how wide­ly avail­able many of these tech­nolo­gies are, and how both of these can be eas­i­ly abused—sometimes acci­den­tal­ly, some­times intentionally—by adver­tis­ers, gov­ern­ments, employ­ers, stalk­ers, crim­i­nals, and more.” I enjoyed this.
6. On Russia/Ukraine:
   • US Blun­ders, Ukraine’s War (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Putin or no Putin, no Russ­ian leader could allow Ukraine to join NATO, any more than any Amer­i­can leader could allow Mex­i­co to join a defen­sive alliance formed out of oppo­si­tion to Amer­i­can pow­er. Every Amer­i­can pres­i­dent since James Mon­roe has upheld the so-called Mon­roe Doc­trine, which claims the entire West­ern hemi­sphere as a zone of Amer­i­can influ­ence. By what crack­pot log­ic can we advance and defend that claim, but expect Rus­sia, anoth­er great pow­er, to acqui­esce to Ukraine, a bor­der state to Rus­sia, join­ing NATO?”
   • Rus­sia as the “Great Satan” in the Lib­er­al Imag­i­na­tion (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “…the US for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment believes that every coun­try in Europe should even­tu­al­ly be part of the EU and NATO, and none should be allowed to get close to Rus­sia or adopt a ‘non­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic’ form of gov­ern­ment, with “democracy” again being defined as mak­ing inter­nal deci­sions that reflect the pol­i­cy out­comes that State Depart­ment offi­cials wish a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent would imple­ment at home.”
   • Defend Cher­nobyl Dur­ing an Inva­sion? Why Both­er, Some Ukraini­ans Ask. (Andrew Kramer & Tyler Hicks, New York Times): “Mr. Prishepa said he would pre­fer that Ukraine set up the defen­sive lines fur­ther south, giv­ing the irra­di­at­ed zone over to whomev­er might want it. ‘It’s a waste­land,’ he said. ‘No crop will ever grow here.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
7. Pan­dem­ic per­spec­tives:
   • I Had COVID. Am I Done Now? (Emi­ly Oster, Sub­stack): “I think part of what has made this tran­si­tion dif­fi­cult, even if we say we have accept­ed it, is the resid­ual fear of the unknown that has been hard to shake. It’s not unknown to as many of us as before. I spent the past two years tak­ing a mil­lion PCR and rapid tests, which were all neg­a­tive. When I final­ly got a pos­i­tive result last week, I felt a bit of loss and defeat but also a bit of release. Maybe it’s the same for others.“The author is an econ­o­mist at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.
   • Why Are We Boost­ing Kids? (David Zweig, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Mon­i­ca Gand­hi, a doc­tor and an infec­tious-dis­ease spe­cial­ist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, was blunt in her assess­ment. ‘I am not giv­ing my 12 and 14-year-old boys boost­ers,’ she told me. Dr. Gand­hi is not the only expert to pub­licly state an inten­tion to not com­ply with the CDC’s rec­om­men­da­tion. Dr. Paul Offit is the direc­tor of the Vac­cine Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia, a mem­ber of the FDA’s vac­cine advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, and is con­sid­ered one the country’s top author­i­ties on pedi­atric vac­cine pol­i­cy. He recent­ly said that get­ting boost­ed would not be worth the risk for the aver­age healthy 17-year-old boy, and he advised his son, who is in his 20s, not to get a third dose.”
   • Soci­ety has a trust prob­lem. More cen­sor­ship will only make it worse. (Hamish McKen­zie, Chris Best & Jairaj, Sub­stack): “…as we face grow­ing pres­sure to cen­sor con­tent pub­lished on Sub­stack that to some seems dubi­ous or objec­tion­able, our answer remains the same: we make deci­sions based on prin­ci­ples not PR, we will defend free expres­sion, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to con­tent mod­er­a­tion. While we have con­tent guide­lines that allow us to pro­tect the plat­form at the extremes, we will always view cen­sor­ship as a last resort, because we believe open dis­course is bet­ter for writ­ers and bet­ter for soci­ety.” Bra­vo to Sub­stack.
   • The Fol­ly of Pan­dem­ic Cen­sor­ship (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “Cen­sors have a fan­ta­sy that if they get rid of all the Beren­sons and Mer­co­las and Mal­ones, and rein in peo­ple like Joe Rogan, that all the hold­outs will sud­den­ly rush to get vac­ci­nat­ed. The oppo­site is true. If you wipe out crit­ics, peo­ple will imme­di­ate­ly default to high­er lev­els of sus­pi­cion. They will now be sure there’s some­thing wrong with the vac­cine. If you want to con­vince audi­ences, you have to allow every­one to talk, even the ones you dis­agree with. You have to make a bet­ter case.” Parts of this are straight fire.
   • How an Anony­mous Report­ing Sys­tem Made Yale a COVID ‘Surveillance State’ (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “At Yale, those lost social con­nec­tions have killed more peo­ple than COVID-19. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, a Yale fresh­man told the Yale Dai­ly News that the iso­la­tion of the pan­dem­ic had made her wor­ried about her men­tal health. In March 2021, she com­mit­ted sui­cide in her dorm. Since the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, there have been no report­ed COVID deaths among Yale’s stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, or staff.” The arti­cle describes a few absolute­ly bonkers encoun­ters.
   • The NYT’s polar­iz­ing pan­dem­ic pun­dit (Joanne Kenen, Politi­co): “Oth­er pub­lic health experts Night­ly­in­ter­viewed — some of whom are sources for New York Times health jour­nal­ists or have media gigs of their own — didn’t want to be quot­ed, or said they were too busy tak­ing care of patients, ciao. One well-known research sci­en­tist, who is part of this crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion but who admires Leon­hardt over­all, wouldn’t even praise him on the record.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• We Don’t Talk About COVID — “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” Par­o­dy (The Hold­er­ness Fam­i­ly, YouTube): four min­utes
• Card Stab (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine min­utes
• World’s cold­est marathon at blis­ter­ing minus 53C is com­plete in Yaku­tia (Siber­ian Times): “The win­ner was Vasi­ly Lukin, teacher from Chu­rapcha Insti­tute of Phys­i­cal Cul­ture and Sport. This is his sec­ond vic­to­ry in the extreme race; this year he reached the fin­ish line at Tom­tor in three hours twen­ty two min­utes.”
• Guin­ness World Record award­ed to Russ­ian for the world’s first tru­ly retractable lightsaber (Joel Abbott, Not The Bee): “The lightsaber pro­duces a plas­ma blade mea­sur­ing over 1 m (3.28 ft) in length. Reach­ing tem­per­a­tures over 2,800°C (5,072°F), the blade has the abil­i­ty to cut through steel.”
• The Hitler Fam­i­ly Name (Bill Burr, YouTube): two min­utes
• Who Was Tra­di­tion­al­ly Dressed In Pink And Called A Girl? (QI, YouTube): three and a half min­utes
• The Dif­fer­ence Between A Nerd And A Dork (Don McMil­lan, YouTube): five min­utes
• Con­spir­a­cy Mag­ic (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): eight min­utes
• ACCUSED of keep­ing a baby in my suit­case (Would I Lie To You?, YouTube): three min­utes
• Is Mon­ey Even Real? An Econ­o­mist Explains (John Stew­art, YouTube): six min­utes
• Stu­dent dis­traught to dis­cov­er that her Zoom crush is actu­al­ly 5’4 (Michelle Fu, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “When pressed for fur­ther infor­ma­tion, the 5’2’’ John­son said that ‘it just hurt that he wasn’t actu­al­ly 6’6” as I’d imag­ined in my head.‘”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have If Lib­er­als Won’t Enforce Bor­ders, Fas­cists Will (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Demagogues don’t rise by talk­ing about irrel­e­vant issues. Dem­a­gogues rise by talk­ing about issues that mat­ter to peo­ple, and that more con­ven­tion­al lead­ers appear unwill­ing or unable to address: unem­ploy­ment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immi­gra­tion now. Vot­ers get to decide what the country’s prob­lems are. Polit­i­cal elites have to devise solu­tions to those prob­lems. If dif­fi­cult issues go unad­dressed by respon­si­ble lead­ers, they will be exploit­ed by irre­spon­si­ble ones.” I high­light­ed a piece by Frum with a sim­i­lar theme back in issue 175. This is a very thought­ful arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 194.

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.