Reading Time: 4 minutes Stewardship is huge these days. From environmentalism to welfare, we’re bombarded with the message that we, as the virtuous people we know ourselves to be, need to focus on saving things: democracy, the planet; feelings. Companies accept diktats under the acronym “ESG,” standing for “environmental, social, and corporate governance.” You’ve got to keep that ESG score up, so accept the messaging you’re given and promulgate it. Yet often what we…
Reading Time: 2 minutes An old coworker once told me that he was spending a good deal of money on a website where he could subscribe to a certain girl and watch her perform sexual acts and apparently also work on cars while naked. It was easy for me to list off the reasons I didn’t think this was healthy, moral, or financially prudent (and sure enough, his marriage fell apart). I think that…
Reading Time: < 1 minute I love roller coasters and have a particular fondness for ones made by the Swiss company Bolliger & Mabillard. Through the ups and downs of the run, I’m able to have fun because much thought went into the design, and I know I’m going to be safe in the end. The ups and downs of life are also much easier for me knowing that I’m following a design made by…
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Let them come. There is still one dwarf yet in Moria who still draws breath.”
Reading Time: 2 minutes Deranged religious cultists are once again spreading their intolerance and bigotry abroad.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Big tech suppresses certain ideas through social mechanisms and disallowing certain interactions. You’ve seen the playbook, which includes things like removing dislikes from ideas they support, prohibiting sharing of certain information entirely, banning heterodox thinkers who seem most open and might attract others, posting “fact-checks” which are factual though not truthful (and in some cases which are purely fallacious), and promoting certain concepts while disallowing others.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Thanks to the events of the recent past, many people have been putting a huge emphasis on avoiding people who seem ill. They want to avoid contagion, so unless they’re healthcare workers, they don’t spend all day around sick people.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Part of being “self-sufficient” is having a close network that helps you. Self-sufficient communities exist far better than self-sufficient individuals, as there’s a need for human connection, and of course on the more technical side of things, people tend to specialize and have different strengths and weaknesses. In fact, one of the most successful such societies in the United States is probably the Amish. They survive so well because they focus on…
Reading Time: 11 minutes Examining the telltale signs of a culture marching toward totalitarianism at breakneck speed.
Reading Time: 9 minutes A look into the history of Marxism, Nazism, and Christianity.
Be ready. Be active. Don’t lie. Serve others. Live Not by Lies.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Hey there good lookin’! What’s cookin’—in your character, that is? *finger guns* And how can you find out?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It has been said that politics is a conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized. If you do not think this is true, read about the October Revolution of 1917, where Lenin and the Bolsheviks proved that a dedicated minority can gain absolute power over a disorganized, leaderless, indifferent majority.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Thoughts about a study I had with a friend on the concept of some people in Christianity being “very special.”
Reading Time: 2 minutes We often wonder about “fate,” or a predetermined outcome that we can’t escape. Does it exist?
Reading Time: 6 minutes In an age that seeks to force you into mental compliance, because surely you alone are left, do not give in, no matter how the temptation is packaged. Live Not by Lies.
Reading Time: 3 minutes What does it mean to “live not by lies?” People will soon either come to find out, or they will live by lies.
Reading Time: 2 minutes It is hard to be thankful for pain when you consider all the moments you got to hold you kid and listen to her floating laugh echoing in the halls, which now ring only with the high-pitched, tinny whine that your ears pick up when there is only silence. It’s hard to be thankful for the times your mom cooked you your favorite dinner as you stand in the kitchen, now empty forever, helping load boxes of items you have to do, well, something with. It’s hard to be thankful for the pain as you tell your best friend and confidant, “I finally got rid of his toothbrush today. I guess this makes it real.”
Reading Time: 14 minutes Although I’d known the various views on immersion that churches today tend to hold, I was curious about what Christians closer to the time of Jesus thought. In this post I explore a number of their early writings, and then offer my own conclusions.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Saved by faith alone? A little more? What’s the answer?
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the past I’ve run into unexpected cruddy behavior and found myself asking, “What in the world do I do now, and how can I make it as painful for them as possible?”
Reading Time: < 1 minute “I will come again and conquer you, because as a mountain you can’t grow, but as a human, I can.”
Reading Time: 3 minutes Humans have an amazing ability to adapt to bad situations. Our minds can take terrible circumstances and slowly normalize them, leading us to cope and even find happiness when things are rough. But there is a flipside: this same ability allows us to become desensitized to evil. Vile acts simply become a new normal over time.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Look at that picture. It’s funny, and for me, it’s almost entirely true. I like having maybe one close friend/girlfriend and then one other friend besides that. It makes my life simple. As a rule, I am an introvert and not that adept at understanding my own feelings and navigating relationships…
Reading Time: 2 minutes In a prayer with me last night, a little kid requested, “God, please make bad people into good people so that they can be our friends.”
Reading Time: 2 minutes You must never upset anyone. You must avoid confrontation at all costs. You must be quiet in the face of an intolerant minority, that they not be offended. Instead of acting like men and being strong, you most nobly ponder, “What is a man? Is there a difference even between men and women? It seems messy and hard to tell.”