{"id":7641,"date":"2025-03-21T14:35:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T21:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7641"},"modified":"2025-03-21T14:35:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T21:35:33","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-496-christianity-in-silicon-valley-bogus-world-happiness-and-smut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/03\/21\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-496-christianity-in-silicon-valley-bogus-world-happiness-and-smut","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume #496: Christianity in Silicon Valley, Bogus World Happiness, and Smut"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>\n\n 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

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Christianity Was \u201cBorderline Illegal\u201d in Silicon Valley. Now It\u2019s the New Religion<\/a> (Zo\u00eb Bernard, Vanity Fair): \u201cIt used to be that the 20-something whiz kid who coded a viral game and dropped out of Stanford was a venture capitalist darling. \u2018VCs used to throw money at that guy,\u2019 said a woman who manages communications at a top-tier venture firm. \u2018Now if someone comes in and says, \u2018I love my parents so much, I grew up going to church, and then I joined the Army and that\u2019s what gives me my work ethic,\u2019 VCs will be like, \u2019Oh my God, that guy.<\/em> Let\u2019s fund that guy.<\/em>\u2019\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Sex Without Women<\/a> (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic): \u201c\u2026the force that through the green fuse drives the flower (and the money) is heterosexual male desire for women. And here was porn so good, so varied, so ready to please, so instantly\u2014insistently\u2014available, that it led to a generation of men who think of porn not as a backup to having sex, but as an improvement on it. They prefer<\/em> it.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. The World Happiness Report Is a Sham<\/a> (Yascha Mounk, Substack): \u201cWhen you walk around the\u2014admittedly beautiful\u2014centers of Copenhagen or Stockholm, you rarely see anybody smile. Could these really be the happiest places in the whole wide world? So, to honor World Happiness Day, I finally decided to follow my hunch, and look into the research on this topic more deeply. What I found was worse than I\u2019d imagined. To put it politely, the World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems. To put it bluntly, it is a sham.\u201d