Not sure where to put this, but Jesse White Jr has been a public servant for his entire career, never seeking the limelight or power, just working diligently at bureaucratic public jobs that need doing (like Recorder of Deeds…ooh, how exciting!) plus of course his amazing idea to create the Jesse White Tumblers. It’s sad to see him retire, but he’s left behind a great legacy:
(2-minute read)
To put it bluntly, effective altruism allows people to exploit or even defraud others to become rich, so long as they expiate themselves by giving away the surplus portion of their riches in accordance with an approved set of criteria. Its ideological function is cemented by the criteria themselves, which call for discrete interventions with measurable outcomes; these can be applied to philanthropic donations but not to the more systemic interventions addressable by politics.
I wasn’t quite sure where to post this:
Given the kind of Christians that seem to dominate our attention, this doesn’t surprise me at all…
there has been a shocking drop in the number of people ditching Christianity
Should that say a shocking rise, instead of drop?
Yeah, it probably should.
Here’s the underlying data for anyone interested. I probably should have linked this above.
No catacombs in the US to retreat to and hide out in… so the Carlsbad Caverns may turn out to be their Alamo.
Might also cross post to the holiday thread. (If you read it, you’ll know why.)
Nice piece, thank you. Certainly does make me feel a little less anxious about upcoming gift giving, and especially receiving.
Build that wall…with the hinges in the opposite direction!
My 20-something nephew told me he enjoyed the book, “The Nine Nations of America.” Here is a follow-up article by the author, Joel Garreau, which left me wondering how much this might change in the next 30 years:
Quite cool.
Archive version: https://archive.ph/VEgEt
Definitely… interesting.
Really interesting to consider the ramifications of this.
The question of Mary’s status has some important ramifications for how we think about Jesus himself. As Smith told me, “In any slave society, a child born to an enslaved woman is born enslaved” in other words “Mary’s child, Jesus, is born enslaved.” This facet of Jesus’s socio-economic status can explain other details in his biography, explained Smith. Take, for instance, the fact that Jesus did not seem to have been active before the age of 30. Under legislation passed in A.D. 4. by the emperor Augustus, 30 was the age of manumission for enslaved men (though women, and many men, waited much longer, if not the entirety of their lives, for freedom). Viewing Jesus as formerly enslaved can help explain why he waited to begin his ministry.
Archive version: https://archive.ph/P5G8e
Interesting… but still… Virgin Mary was tired…
Also, can I say, I think that many Catholics probably think about the Virgin Mary much more than protestants… so, she might be marginal to many protestants, but given how central she is to Catholic teachings, Catholics think about her much more than other Christians might… there are definitely prayers to her in Catholicism, for example - asking her to intercede for the faithful with God/Jesus.
Just a little note since he started out kind of dismissive of the religious practices of so many Christians…
Repost.
