247 Pentecost 22: Who Am You?
“How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!” ~ Psalm 119
Who Am You?
Who am I talking to? That’s the real question. I want to know why you read Mad☧Mondays. I want to know what you think we should do about what you read here. Who are we, and how can we grow into who we’re meant to be? I want to understand where we stand together so we can work for the Kingdom in ways that matter.
I believe Mad☧Mondays is a news source to help wake the church to the forces she is up against. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? What has Washington to do with Wittenberg? We need to decide. The state has crept into our homes and churches and we need to be informed and spur each other to love and good works.
What would inspire you to share Mad☧Mondays with your friends, with the people around you? How best can I lead you? I have a lot to say, but until I know you better, I don’t know what’ll serve us best right now. Reach out when you’re ready. You know where to find me—feedback is always welcome on the contact page.
PS Hey y’all, If I’ve ever meant anything to you…
The Hebron Collegium in Rockford Illinois, is a Spiritual Retreat Center and Gap Year Bible School for Men. After three years of “proof of concept” success we have 1 year to raise our annual operating costs of 40k/year in independent and congregational donors.
If I’ve ever meant anything to you, if I’ve ever helped you, if you feel you owe me any love or gratitude, this is the project I built my life to launch, and I can’t do it without you. I need your help.
Reach out at HebronCollegium.org or SP815.org for our Donor-Onboarding Packet. Ask about our 10-Day free Sabbatical program for Pastors. Send tax deductible gifts to Dark Shore NPC, 4204 Shorewood Dr Rockford Illinois 61101.
Till angel cry and trumpet sound,
R.J.M.F
Births, Deaths and Marriages
The pro-life group “Do No Harm” released a report naming and shaming American hospitals that are conducting sex change procedures on children. “The group conducted their research by looking at insurance claims data and identifying procedure codes and national drug codes (NDC) used in ‘gender-affirming care.’” (Not the Bee)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a Dallas doctor for breaking state law by giving cross-sex hormones to 21 girls, some as young as 14 years old. (WNG)
A new report says Canadian physicians are feeling unsettled about deciding criteria when offering euthanasia to patients, especially when taking the lives of those whose situation could be improved with money, housing or social connection. (WNG)
Crime and Punishment
Updated crimes statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation show that contrary to previous reports, violent crime actually increased in 2022. The Bureau “quietly revised” its stats with new data including “thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults”. Media outlets continue to say crime has been dropping over three years but the FBI has not been hasty to correct them. (Real Clear Investigations)
Two new Netflix series have renewed interest in the case of brothers, Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are serving life sentences for the brutal murder of their parents in 1989. The documentaries claim the brothers were physically and sexually abused by their father for years but evidence was overlooked in their original trial. (Screen Rant)
Coming to America
Former president Bill Clinton has been on the stump for Vice President Kamala Harris but pundits noticed his discussion of illegal immigration has actually been undermining Democrat messaging. Clinton said that Laken Riley, who was murdered by a man who crossed into the U.S. illegally would still be alive if her killer had been “properly vetted”. In another speech, Clinton said that Americans were not having enough babies to replace themselves and therefore we need to have foreigners come in to keep the economy growing. (ZeroHedge)
Think tanks and media reports have warned that the Trump-Vance promise to deport those living in America illegally will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. However, the cost of keeping them in America is likely more, according to the calculations of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. (Not the Bee)
Thunderdome 2024
A man found outside a rally for Donald Trump in California with firearms in his possession has denied he was there to shoot the former president. Vem Miller said he always travels with guns and is a Trump supporter. He was charged with two misdemeanor weapons charges and released. (Fox, BBC)
The Department of Justice is suing Virginia for its effort to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. The D.O.J. says the move has violated the National Voter Registration Act 90-day “quiet period” rule, which prevents eleventh-hour election changes. Governor Glenn Youngkin began the action by executive order exactly 90 days out, but the Department argues that this pushed into the quiet period. Governor Youngkin is pushing back saying he is only enforcing a law signed by Democrats in 2006 which requires clean voter rolls. (Not the Bee, NPR, The Blaze)
Donald Trump made a short visit to a McDonald’s in Philadelphia, learning how to work the deep fryer and posing for photos in the drive-thru window. (Washington Free Beacon)
President Jimmy Carter has fulfilled his wish of living long enough to vote for Kamala Harris. President Carter, who turned 100 earlier this month cast his vote for the Vice President by mail-in ballot in Georgia. (AP)
Politics
The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has had to make “operational adjustments” after threats from “armed militias” in North Carolina. Ashe County Sheriff's Office says that misinformation about relief efforts is putting FEMA staff in danger. One North Carolina man, William Parsons, was charged with “going armed to the terror of the public” and released on bail. Parsons says he called for citizens to take over the FEMA site in Lake Lure after he "went up and saw that there was absolutely nothing there." (Washington Examiner, Newsweek)
A panel of California lawmakers has denied Space X more frequent launch spots for its rockets, citing Elon Musk’s political views. Meanwhile, the European Union and Brazil are considering whether they can fine all of Musk’s companies – SpaceX, Tesla and the Boring Company – for not censoring speech on X. (New York Post, Reclaim the Net)
Michigan University is doubling down on its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion policies, with most students required to take “at least one class addressing “racial and ethnic intolerance and resulting inequality.” A New York Times journalist who visited the Ann Arbor site said “few of the people I met questioned the broad ideals of diversity or social justice. Yet the most common attitude I encountered about D.E.I. during my visits..was a kind of wary disdain.“ He notes that Michigan’s own data suggests that in “striving to become more diverse and equitable, the school has also become less inclusive.” (Tax Prof)
Does DEI training accomplish anything? A new study says no. (Intellectual Takeout)
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization which seeks to raise awareness of the damage of nuclear weapons. The group collects testimonies from eyewitnesses of the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and advocates for global nuclear disarmament. (WNG)
The Digital Age
A new report says Apple was working with Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD from 2017. Collaborative efforts were aiming to refine batteries which could be used in Apple’s autonomous electric vehicle. Apple canned the project earlier this year after investing a decade and about $10 billion. (Car Scoop)
Chinese hackers are believed to have accessed backdoor systems at major US telecommunications companies, including Verizon and AT&T. Government agencies have encouraged tech companies to include portals where they can pursue ‘lawful interception’ of broadband traffic, which can also be exploited by bad actors. The hackers may have had access to all sorts of data for months, “including court-ordered wiretaps collected in the name of national security.” (Tech Radar)
Apple engineers have demonstrated the “brittle” nature of reasoning used by artificial intelligence algorithms. Large language models are “not capable of genuine logical reasoning” but mimic examples from their training data in an “illusion of understanding. "(ArsTechnica)
The new Tesla Optimus robot made a splash at a recent event, walking amongst the party goers and serving drinks. The gloss wore off a bit later when it was evident that the automatons had human help. (Tech Crunch)
Hackers have taken control of robot vacuums, with several owners of Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2 saying their machines were broadcasting obscenities and chasing pets. (ABC)
Amazon announced a Kindle reader with a colour screen. (CNBC)
Hey Monday, is it too much to ask?
Money, Markets and Jobs
The Federal Trade Commission will require that subscription services are as easy to cancel as they are to sign up for. A “click to cancel” rule will go into effect in about 6 months. FTC Chair Lina Khan said, “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription." (NPR)
President Joe Biden has announced he has canceled $4.5 billion in student debt for tens of thousands of teachers, nurses and firefighters. A statement released by the Education Department says that around $74 billion of debt has been cancelled since President George W. Bush formed a program in 2007 which let “certain not-for-profit and government employees have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of monthly payments…Before President Biden took office, only 7,000 public servants had ever received debt relief”, but this administration has chalked up an additional $100 billion canceled in three years. (CBS, CNN)
BMW Group CEO Oliver Zipse says the E.U. must cancel its intended 2035 ban on internal combustion engines. Zipse says Western vehicle manufacturers cannot compete with lower priced Chinese electric vehicles and there is not enough time to catch up before the ban would take hold. (Inside EVs)
New stats show that 75% of shipping containers which arrive in the U.S. full, return to their point of origin empty, “a stark reminder of the ongoing trade imbalance” in America’s imports and exports. (Quartz)
Tech companies look to be tightening their belts after the pandemic-conjured glut of homebound customers has dwindled. Meta has fired a few employees for using meal vouchers to buy other things. Amazon has told employees to quit if they’re not willing to come back to work at the office five days a week. (The Guardian, USA Today)
New numbers from LinkedIn show that retirees and Americans aged between 60 and 78 are looking for work, up by 23 percent this year. (The Post Millennial)
Berkshire Hathaway has increased its share in satellite radio company, SiriusXM. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Religion and the Church
For any woman determined to kill her baby, the Satanic Temple in Virginia has opened an abortion clinic where she can engage in a “destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite”. Lord, have mercy. (Not the Bee)
A man on trial for the murder of two teen girls has been accused of engaging in ritual killing. Richard Allen, the man accused of killing the girls in a forest in Indiana in 2017, was only charged last year, after a search of his home. He denies the charges and that he is a follower of Norse pagan religion, Odinism. (Journal and Courier)
And some light in this darkness.. Lutheran Public Radio has a YouTube channel featuring 46 hymns with lyrics to sing along! (Issues Etc via YouTube)
“Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an Armenian church dating back almost 2,000 years, making it the oldest structure of its kind in the country and one of the oldest in the world.” (CBS)
Arts, History and Sport
Italian fashion house, Prada, has helped design NASA’s new astronaut suits. (Gizmodo)
Modern day butlers do exist, but they are in short supply. They may not wear a top hat and tails, but they will need to be able to do “what the boss doesn’t have time to do.” Butlers are being “reinvented for the modern world with a more wide-reaching, and unusual, perch in the lives of the jetsetting global rich.” (Rob Report)
A new study reveals that people were more stimulated mentally when viewing real paintings in a gallery compared to viewing reproductions. (Modern Met)
A Monet drawing stolen by Nazis has been returned to a Jewish family, 80 years later. (CNN)
A frozen foot found on Mt. Everest may prove whether British duo Irvine and Mallory reached the peak, thirty years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. (Not the Bee, CBS)
A century-old time capsule was opened at Kansas City’s World War 1 museum. The box contained newspaper clippings, a copy of the Constitution and a Bible. There was also seeds and a tube of letters, including one from President Calvin Coolidge. (CNN)
What makes for good airport design? (Architectural Digest via YouTube)
Last week in history:
1066 King Harold II of England is defeated by the invading Norman conquest. The Normans ruled England for 300 years. (Britannica)
1947 Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. (History)
Health, Medicine and Food
The fire retardants in black plastic kitchen utensils may be dangerous. (Food and Wine)
The trend for low sugar snacks has seen the meteoric rise in the popularity of jerky sticks. (Food Dive)
A new study claims that strolling with short stops requires more energy than continuous walking. (The Guardian)
Leg strength may be linked to cognitive health. (Very Well Health)
How many times does your heart beat every day? (Live Science)
From the Mad☧Tank
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Hearts and Minds
“There comes a moment in life, often in the quietest of hours, when one realizes that the world will continue on its wayward course, indifferent to our desires or frustrations.” A thoughtful post on paying attention. (Stormrider)
Arts and crafts can be a mood booster and give a sense of purpose. (Nice News)
Sluggishness can compound if you don’t wrangle it. A very well-organized man gives some tips for breaking out of a laziness spiral. (and for every day you fail to live up to your own to-do list, Jesus gives more.) (Less Wrong)
Turning the worst offenders into the best defenders. (The Hard Parts of Growth)
God’s Green Earth
University of California San Diego will soon require students to pass a course on climate change. (The Guardian)
Florida’s Secretary at the Agency for Health Care Administration has tapped “water cube” technology to provide water to hospitals after Hurricane Milton. The units can pull a hundred gallons of water from the air per day. (Wired)
Science
Inception? Two people have been able to send a message to each other while they were asleep. The participants, sleeping in their own houses were able to exchange a message through remote monitoring equipment while lucid dreaming. (Interesting Engineering)
SpaceX’s latest launch has pushed closer to fully-reusable spaceships, with the Super Heavy Booster being “caught” in mechanical arms. It’s certainly an impressive feat and space geeks say it makes the possibility of humans on Mars all the more likely. (BBC, Quillette )
A “de-extinction” start up says it’s one step closer to reviving the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which died out in 1936. Some scientists say the idea is “fairy tale” science and raises many questions about putting a long-gone species back into an ecosystem. (Sky News)
Astronomers believe that most meteorites that have hit the earth broke off from just a handful of asteroids. (Cosmos)
War and Rumors of War
The head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar has been killed by Israeli forces, in Rafah, Gaza. Sinwar had only recently inherited the job, but reportedly dreamed of provoking a wider war against Israel, stating explicitly that Palestinian deaths were necessary for that revolution. While this is a significant achievement for the Israeli Defense Forces, commentators seem to agree that this is not the end of Hamas nor of the war. (The Guardian, Netanyahu via X, Quillette)
The mayor of Nabatieh, one of Lebanon’s largest cities has been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Lebanese authorities have condemned the attack, accusing Israel of deliberately targeting a municipal building where community leaders were meeting to discuss aid distribution. (The Guardian)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented his “victory plan” which includes an invitation to join NATO, more weapons and in return would give the U.S. and European partners special partnerships in its lithium, gas and titiuamin industries. Critics say the plan is very vague and relies too much on outside help. (Politico)
Italy has expelled a high-profile pro-Hamas imam, while France has ordered the eldest son of Osama Bin-Laden to leave. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said pro-terror messaging would not be tolerated. (European Conservative, Times of India)
China has been conducting military drills around Taiwan, sending a record number of jets and ships circling the island nation. (CNN)
North Korea has blown up unused roads and railways which used to join it to South Korea.accused the south of flying drones over its capital. (AP)
Before the current war, Ukraine had another fight on its hands: persuading Ukrainians to have children and raise them there. (Mercator)
Technology That Honors Tradition
Hello, I'm Mac. With over 20 years of experience in web and app development and a deep love for Lutheran theology, I’ve launched Triglotta—a suite of website tools built specifically and exclusively for Lutheran churches. Triglotta only builds and hosts websites for Lutherans (primarily churches), I personally work with you to integrate our rich Lutheran heritage with modern technology to create a digital masterpiece that's easy to maintain.
Let’s talk. Reach out to me directly—email or call—and we’ll create something that's distinctly Lutheran, easy to manage, and affordable: triglotta.org
Stories from Far Away
🇬🇧A British man has been charged with praying within a “buffer zone” outside an abortion clinic. “In its decision, the court reasoned that his prayer amounted to “disapproval of abortion” because at one point his head was seen slightly bowed and his hands were clasped.“ (Alliance Defending Freedom)
🇮🇳 🇨🇦Relations between India and Canada remain frosty as investigations into the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar continue. Nijjar, a Sikh activist had been living in Canada since the 90s and was shot down in a Vancouver suburb last year. Canadian authorities say Nijjar’s murder is tied to the Indian government but India refutes that and has refused to let its diplomats be questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In related news, the US has charged a former Indian intelligence officer over a foiled assassination plot against an American citizen. (WNG, BBC)
🇭🇹 Haiti’s national police have arrested members of a gang that killed 70 people in one village. (WNG)
🇮🇹 Italy’s Senate has approved a law banning citizens from seeking surrogacy services abroad. (The Hill)
🇳🇬 Dozens of people have died in Nigeria after a fuel tanker exploded. Villagers had rushed to the overturned truck hoping to scoop up the spilled fuel when it exploded. (Al Jazeera)
🇺🇿 Uzbekistan is negotiating to take in Afghan asylum seekers turned away by Netherlands in exchange for more guest work visas for Uzbeks. Germany already has a similar deal in place. (Eurasia Net)
🇨🇳 China has reported its economy has expanded by a rate of 4.6%, falling short of the offical target of 5%. (ABC News)
🇲🇲 The head of Myanmar’s military government has invited pro-democracy militia groups to negotiate after its forces lost ground in much of the country. The military junta seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and has faced stubborn opposition from militias since. (AP)
🇬🇧British P.M. Keir Starmer has removed a number of portraits from the walls at his residence at No 10 Downing St, saying his “I don’t like images and pictures of people staring down on me.” Cue much pop psychology anaylsis.. (The Telegraph)
🇬🇧 British broadcaster Channel 4 has announced a program of targeted advertising. Using data gathered from millions of registered users, advertisers will be able to focus ads to particular street addresses. Viewers will be able to opt out. (MSN)
🇰🇿 Kazakh’s national soccer coach has been fined for comparing Kazakh language to French. The coach also completed counselling about “the importance of respecting the state language.” Stanislav Cherchesov, a Russian national, has been in trouble previously for trashing Kazakh culture before. (Radio Free Europe)
🎶A kid wows TikTok with his accurate bird calls
👹 Mapped: Almost every country has a boogeyman
🍸 Actor Hugh Laurie asks the internet to explain the chemistry of a vodka martini
🧼The world’s smallest washing machine
🇪🇬 A dog climbed the pyramid at Giza to bark at birds
🐈 You may have suspected but…Cats may be “somewhat liquid”
🍝Ravioli-shaped objects and their uses
🍂 October theory: TikTok thinks that Fall is the best time to make changes, not January 1st
🍂 Butterfinger is releasing its first new flavor in over a century. And it’s not pumpkin spice..
On Starfall2029 this week, Meridith quizzed Jonathan about what he might tell his 18 year-old self. Plus a lot of great stuff about decision making, suffering and grounding yourself in the Bible’s lore. Watch on YouTube or Rumble, or listen here.
If you missed it, Meridith put out a call for anyone who would like to make a quilt for men who stay at the Hebron Collegium. If that is something you would be interested in helping out with, please reply to this email or send a message through madpxm.com/contact.
This Week Preached:
No video this week.
Podcast Release:
Let us pray. O God, Your divine wisdom sets in order all things in heaven and on earth. Put away from us all things hurtful and give us those things that are beneficial for us; 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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