{"id":6544,"date":"2021-04-09T20:33:54","date_gmt":"2021-04-10T04:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=6544"},"modified":"2021-04-09T20:33:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-10T04:33:54","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-296","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2021\/04\/09\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-296","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 296"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is volume 296, which is the number of partitions<\/a> contained in the number 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  1. The Woke Meritocracy<\/a> (Blake Smith, Tablet Magazine): \u201cThe contemporary ideal, increasingly, is no longer someone so charmingly personable that others forget he is in fact a ruthless competitor, but a person who so convincingly narrates her having overcome some kind of social injustice that others forget she is in fact a beneficiary of systems of privilege.\u201d The author is a history prof at U Chicago. This essay is straight fire, and I believe he took an x\u2011ray of some of your souls before he wrote it.<\/li>
  2. Some Principles & Observations About Social Justice Politics<\/a> (Freddie deBoer, Substack): \u201cOnce you have made the prevention of emotional harm the central focus of your politics, you will find yourself running up against the fact that emotional harm is a ubiquitous and ineradicable part of the human experience, far beyond the ability of any political movement to prevent.\u201d deBoer, one of my two favorite atheist socialists to read (the other being Steven Brust), brings it with excellence in this one. It was hard to find the best excerpt \u2014 there are so many.<\/li>
  3. Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus<\/a> (Gina Kolata, New York Times): \u201cFor her entire career, Dr. Kariko has focused on messenger RNA, or mRNA \u2014 the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell\u2019s protein-making machinery. She was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines. But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year.\u201d This is a heartwarming story that should also make you very sad \u2014 it illustrates how broken the academic system is and how we came very close to losing a lifesaving breakthrough.<\/li>
  4. This should not happen more than once<\/a> (Alexandra Petri, Washington Post): \u201cThe moments when people make up their secret minds about what is normal and what is acceptable are never big. They are always in private, when no one can see that you have failed the test, when all you were doing was trying to avoid any discomfort, be cool, play along. But there is a price. The price is that the Matt Gaetzes out there will leave the interaction thinking they have understood the world correctly. That what they are doing is working. That this is how the world is. But it is the accumulation of these little assents that make the world this way.\u201d Well-written and true. Also, don\u2019t take nude photos of yourself nor allow others to do so. It is unlikely you will be happy with the outcome.<\/li>
  5. A Heathen\u2019s Easter<\/a> (Steve Randy Waldman, Interfluidity): \u201cMy theological sophistication is about candy-wrapper level. But for whatever it\u2019s worth, I consider this aspect of Christianity\u2019s founding myth or event remarkable, and underemphasized. \u2018Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do,\u2019 represents a profound plea from the lips of a man being painfully murdered. That a parent, one with fire and brimstone readily at hand and a notorious history of smiting, would forgive is perhaps even more astonishing, even more wonderful.\u201d Recommended by a friend of the ministry.<\/li>
  6. The effects of Black Lives Matter protests<\/a> (Jerusalem Demsas, Vox): \u201c[The researcher\u2019s] main finding is a 15 to 20 percent reduction in lethal use of force by police officers \u2014 roughly 300 fewer police homicides \u2014 in census places that saw BLM protests. Campbell\u2019s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests.\u201d<\/li>
  7. A whole passel of trans-related articles: