213 Lent 2: All Men Are Brothers
“He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him, He heard.“ ~ Psalm 22
All Men Are Brothers
"When my friends all come, there should be sixteen of us but there are not many days when all can come. Yet except on days of great winds or of mighty rains, there are few days when none can come. Usually six or seven of us gather together each day. When my friends are come they do not necessarily drink wine; if they like to do so, they may, but they need not if it is not their wish - each man to his own heart. We do not depend on wine for happiness. Conversation is our delight. "What we talk of is not the affairs of the nation. This is because not only do I feel it right to keep to my humble position, but also because our place is far distant from affairs of state, and political news is only hearsay and hearsay is never true and it is a waste of saliva to talk of it."
-from An Author's Preface to All Men are Brothers by Shih Naisan of Tung-Fu, 14th century
Till angel cry and trumpet sound,
The Mad Christian
Lent
The steady work of Pastor Franson and his merry band of paladins and seminarians has resulted in this year’s MadPX Lenten Devotional. This is a wonderful, free resource to accompany your observance of the season:
The Blitz
Media
Politico is worried about the Christian Nationalists that orbit around Donald Trump. One of the authors went on MSNBC to warn of the dangers of Americans who believe that human rights come from God. So, dear lady, where do you think your rights come from? (Politico, The Federalist)
CBS has come under scrutiny for unexpectedly firing Catherine Herridge (apparently one of its better journalists) and seizing all her research. The move follows reports that she was digging into the scandal around Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop. (New York Post, ZeroHedge)
Writer Ann Coulter amazed liberal TV host, Bill Maher, last week by boldly predicting that she was sure the perpetrator of Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting was not white. Maher said she “must have superpowers” but Coulter’s point is a sad indictment of our media landscape. “If the shooter was white, we would already know,” she said. And it turns out, she was right. (Not the Bee, The Blaze)
Corporate media has blamed Oklahoma’s “anti-transgender” laws for the death of a “non-binary” student. The girl died a day after an altercation in a school bathroom where she reportedly bashed her head and blacked out. The New York Times also implicated Chaya Raichik in the death of the teen. Raichik’s X account Libs of TikTok is a favorite pariah for pro-LGBTQ activists who insist she foments hate against trans kids. (Reason, CNN - ridiculous pronoun warning.. )
Births, Deaths and Marriages
Florida’s legislature has passed a bill which would see the release of transcripts from the grand jury trial of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In related news, Jeffrey Epstein's brother, Mark, has shared photos from Epstein’s autopsy with the media, saying he no longer believes his brother took his own life. (CBS, The Blaze)
Alabama’s historic IVF ruling:
News flash! Men and women’s brains do work differently according to science. But apparently we had to wait for AI to prove it. (The Telegraph)
A Catholic advocacy group has asked New York’s attorney general to investigate a vile funeral held at the historic St Patrick’s cathedral. Church officials say transgender activists deceived them into allowing a service for an atheist drag queen. A Mass of Reparation was held after to resanctify the building. (The Federalist, Fox)
Presidency
House Democrats have said that the influence-pedaling inquiry against President Biden and his family is “essentially over” after the credibility of a key witness, Alexander Smirnov, was called into question recently. Smirnov has been an FBI informant for over a decade with ties to Russian intelligence, but was arrested on charges of lying about bribes paid to the Biden family. Republicans have continued their impeachment inquiry as Smirnov’s testimony was only one piece of evidence in the case. A House Committee interviewed James Biden in a closed-door session. The younger Biden testified that the President had no involvement in any of the family hustles, but evidence suggests otherwise. (Just the News, The Federalist, Daily Mail)
The Heritage Foundation is compiling a playbook to guide the Administration should the Republicans win the White House. (Semafor)
Victor Davis Hanson: “This Will Be The Nastiest, Dirtiest, Scariest Election In Our History”. So, time to get praying! (Triggernometry podcast)
Politics
The US government is tracking a “high-altitude balloon of unknown origin” which is currently floating across the country. (New York Post)
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) says it is very strange that no one knows who erected gallows at the Capitol riot, January 6, 2021. (PJ Media)
Christopher Caldwell: The Case Against Human Rights. “Human rights is the assertion that…our equality perdures even if the Creator is not in the picture.” They are a “stalking horse for American power” and serve the “frivolous purpose of ‘equalizing dignity’ among citizens.” (The Lamp)
Health, Medicine and Food
A study examining safety signals for covid vaccines has found a significant increase in adverse conditions including inflammations of the heart, convulsions, and Guillian-Barre syndrome. The study included 99,068,901 vaccinated people across several countries to look for 13 different adverse reactions within 6 weeks from the shot. Even still, the researchers believe that “COVID-19 infections have consistently been found to be more likely to cause the conditions observed in this study than vaccinations.” (The Hill)
Stevia, a popular sugar alternative made from a plant of the same name, may have negative impact on gut biome and other systems. (Epoch Times)
Norwegian salmon farmers say there is not enough fish-meal “in the whole world” to keep up with the demand, so they are turning to vegetable proteins and bugs as food for their fish. Some worry that the novel diet is too far removed from the fish’s original food and that farmed salmon could pollute wild stocks. “The more different the new salmon is, the riskier the genetic pollution of natural stocks becomes.” (France 24)
The Digital Age
People noticed last week that Google’s AI chat bot, Gemini, has a difficult time generating images of white people, especially white men. The bot said that pedophilia was a moral gray area. It also refused to generate a photo of an “ideal nuclear family” or a “church in San Francisco” because those images may be offensive. There was an apology of sorts issued and the image generation capability was paused, but it’s pretty clear that the top dog on the Gemini team is pretty sold out to identity politics. (New York Post, The Industry, Not the Bee)
AT&T experienced a massive outage last week, affecting at least 70,000 customers across its brands. The company says the glitch was due to a software update, not a cyberattack. US healthcare technology giant Change Healthcare also experienced an outage as the result of a hack. Change Healthcare supplies services to 129 million Americans. (Daily Mail, Tech Crunch)
Chat GPT had an outage of its own, generating nonsensical answers, at times in a mash of languages. (Gizmodo)
Yikes! Researchers managed to successfully recreate most fingerprints from the sound made when swiping a touchscreen. (Tom’s hardware)
Apparently, shutting background apps is a waste of time. (Gizmodo)
Money, Markets and Jobs
President Biden is determined to transfer student debt from young voters to working class America. The President announced he would “forgive” $1.2bn in debt, however it will only apply to those who took out less than $12K initially and have been paying it back for a decade or more. (CNBC)
Kevin O’Leary, a Shark Tank judge and entrepreneur, has explained very simply to a news anchor that the Trump fraud verdict will deter investors from New York. (Louder with Crowder)
Boeing has ousted the head of its Max aircraft program after multiple investigations into safety issues. (Just the News)
The Securities Exchange Commission has approved Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social going public. (Not the Bee)
Investors purchased 26% of the most affordable homes in the US last quarter. (Redfin)
Science
NASA is asking for volunteers to live in a 3-D printed Mars-like habitat. (The Guardian)
Swedish scientists say they have been able to recover most of the cobalt from electric vehicle batteries using urine. (Yahoo)
Scientists have discovered how whales make their songs underwater. (Upworthy)
Scientists have found genomic evidence of Down Syndrome in prehistoric children. Burial evidence shows that “these individuals were cared for and appreciated as part of their ancient societies,” according to the lead author of the study. (Max Planck)
Bioluminescent waves return to San Diego. (Axios)
From the Mad☧Tank
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This week:
Recent stuff from our archive:
Arts, History and Sport
Identity politics makes for bad TV? Who knew? People prefer older TV shows to new ones. Also, "there has been a demographic shift in the writing staff for television. “According to Writers Guild of America West data, between 2011 and 2020, staff writers moved from 35% to 63% women, and 72% to 44% white.” Which is not to say men or white people write better, but when the priorities of the studio is diversity, it is easy to see how the content could suffer. (Front Page Mag, Inquisitive Bird)
The French cinema industry is very different to Hollywood. (Nerdwriter)
People are damaging priceless artworks by backing into them when they take a selfie. Oops! (Hyperallergic)
27 levels, no doors: life in a brutalist apartment. (Sight Unseen)
Writing and creative rest: “The blank page is that field where we go to lie down, a field where our thoughts can stretch out.” (LitHub)
Historians say the decimal point was in use in the 1440s – 150 years earlier than previously thought. (Nature)
The siege-ready caves of WWII Gibraltar. (Now I Know)
Last week in history:
1836: The Alamo is seiged by Mexico’s army. (Britannica)
1913: The sixteenth amendment to the Constitution went into effect, permitting federal tax in America. (Britannica)
1962: John Glenn becomes the first American in space. (Britannica)
1997: Dolly the sheep cloned. (Wikipedia)
Coming to America
Texas has cleared vegetation from an island in the Rio Grand river, described as “the most violent part of the border.” (Newsweek, Not the Bee)
Education
Yale and Dartmouth have reinstated standardized testing as part of the entry requirements. Yale has said it will expand student options though to include “Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams as well as the ACT and SAT tests.” During covid, many elite schools abandoned SATs. (ABC News, USA Today)
War
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has released his plan for post-war Gaza, which would see the Strip largely under Israeli control for the foreseeable future. War cabinet member, Benny Gantz, said he was optimistic that a hostage deal could be reached with Hamas. In related news, the US has used its power of veto to stop a UN resolution which would call Israel to a ceasefire. The US offered an amended version, which acknowledged the desire of Israel to recover its hostages before agreeing to ending the conflict. (Financial Times, Reuters, Semafor)
Russia has claimed control of the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. (Reuters)
A Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine has been shot dead in Spain. (BBC)
Vladimir Putin has gifted North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, a limousine. (BBC)
The widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, has vowed to continued his work. Sanctions for Navalny’s death. (Times of Israel, Politico)
Iran has sent Russia lots of ballistic missiles. (Reuters)
Stories from Far Away
🇬🇧 Julian Assange has launched a last-ditch appeal to ward off extradition from the UK. (Spiked)
🇯🇵 The US has charged a Japanese Yakuza leader of trafficking nuclear materials. (BBC)
🇮🇳 X has complied with the Indian government’s request that it suppress posts from farmers currently protesting, but let the administration know it does not agree with quashing speech. According to a recent report, YouTube also plays a critical role in India’s politics. (India Times, Rest of the World)
🇨🇦 A 31 year-old Canadian man has been charged with setting fire to a church in Regina, Saskatchewan, earlier this month. Many Canadian church buildings have suffered damages since the purported discovery of mass graves of indigenous children were reported in 2021. However, the reports were premature and no human remains were found at the sites. (WNG)
🇵🇬 Dozens killed in tribal violence in Papua New Guinea. (WNG)
🇵🇰 Senior Pakistani official has admitted to vote rigging, as political unrest over recent election results spreads. (The Guardian)
Quick Hits for the Eyebuds
🐟A small town church punches above its weight with its Lenten fish fry
🤷♂️George Foreman’s sons are all named George
🇬🇧 World’s first desktop computers found in London house clearance
⛸️ This is so awesome!
⌨️ A keyboard in an Altoids tin
👀 Linoleum is making a comeback
🎨 Color schemes drawn from history
🐋 Amazing underwater photos
💎 Math can be beautiful: Max Brückner’s meticulous polyhedra models
🏎️ Caught in the headlights: playful wood carvings
🇦🇺 When you’re an itchy wombat, everything looks like a place to scratch
Promo of Friends
A Good Word: Links from the Show Notes
Out of his fever dream, Jonathan joined Meridith for Stop the White Noise discussing cultivating wise speech and how to teach our kids modesty. You can catch it on YouTube or Rumble.
Sweetness You May Have Missed
This Week Preached:
Podcast Release:
Let us pray. O God, You see that of ourselves we have no strength. By Your mighty power defend us from all adversities that may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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