Blogaround

1. Millions on brink of starvation under Taliban rule (December 2)

2. Why are Lyft and Uber letting Christian drivers preach at passengers? (December 3) This is really interesting to me because I used to be on the other side of it, so to say. I was really into evangelism and always looking for opportunities to manipulate people into having conversations about "the gospel." (Yeah, not cool.) It's interesting to me that the things I was worried about when doing evangelism (I won't be able to convince this person to change religions, this will damage our friendship) are different than the concerns in this post (religious harassment, feeling uncomfortable in the conversation but with no way to end it without risking the evangelist getting angry at you).

But yes, if someone (probably most people!) is uncomfortable talking about religion with a random stranger, their right to not talk about religion with a random stranger should be protected.

3. Not Only is the Right Unapologetic For Violent Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric-- It's Doubling Down (November 28) "The functional lack of concern over the mass shooting—that his son murdered five people—and the relief that his son isn’t gay is the attitude that begets this kind of violence. This is dehumanization: killing gay people is not a cause for concern, being gay is."

4. Perspective (December 6) "Luther was neither a New Testament scholar nor a historian. He was an Augustinian monk dealing with a European church that was calcified and, in many ways, corrupt. And thus Luther read Paul as though Paul were also an Augustinian monk struggling against corrupt medieval Catholic bishops."

5. A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more! (December 5) 

6. Without giving details, disgraced pastor Matt Chandler returns to pulpit (December 6) This whole thing is so confusing. Matt Chandler apparently sent "inappropriate" instagram DMs to a woman, but they weren't "sexual or romantic", but that was bad apparently and he had to step down. And now, 3 months later, he's back, and his church is so happy. Like............... what? 

I like Mehta's take here:

If this was innocent banter that crossed a line, then it’s a matter that could’ve been handled privately. There was no need for public shaming or temporary banishment.

If it was something more serious—and it clearly seemed to be—then the church had an obligation to tell the congregation what the hell he did. Why are these people so damn secretive about everything? When has that approach ever worked for them?!

Also I stand by what I said back in September:

A. Maybe this church just really really really believes "men and women can never be friends" (which is a logical conclusion of evangelicals' teaching about sex and lust and temptation and the differences between genders) so any time a man and woman are sending friendly direct messages online, it's automatically seen as sinful. I don't think this is the right explanation though, because it doesn't seem realistic to me that a church would literally hold a leader to such a high standard, going so far as to hire a law firm, over something that everyone outside the church sees as no big deal. So there has to be more to it than this.

B. Maybe Chandler is telling us it wasn't "sexual or romantic", but that's a lie. Maybe in a few months we're going to hear a very very different version of this story, which this church is currently covering up.

C. Maybe there is some other very big issue here, something that's not sexual or romantic, but is still very bad (possibly abusive or illegal?). Chandler says the sin was that he was too "familiar" and there was "coarse and foolish joking" but perhaps that's a very misleading and inaccurate description of the actual situation. Perhaps there is some huge other problem that is not being mentioned.

So in other words, I'm not buying it. 

Links 7, 8, and 9 are all from the same blog- I just discovered this blog and read a lot of posts:

7.  If Professional Investors Missed This... (November 16) "Normally a crypto exchange going bust isn't something I'd pay that much attention to, aside from sympathy for its customers, but its Future Fund was one of the largest funders in effective altruism (EA)."

8. Bets, Bonds, and Kindergarteners (2021) "I wanted to go to a park, but Lily (6y) didn't want to go to that park because the last time we had been there there'd been lots of bees. I remembered that had been a summer with unusually many bees, and it no longer being that summer or, in fact, summer at all, I was not worried. Since I was so confident, I offered my $1 to her $0.10 that we would not run into bees at the park. This seemed fair to her, and when there were no bees she was happy to pay up."

9. Counterfactual Trust (2014) This is really interesting as it related to organizations that "match" donations to charity. I guess it can be explained like this: If an organization says "any amount of donations to charity X up to $Y we will match" then the "trust" aspect is you believe that they really will donate- for example if you donate $10 then the organization will also donate $10 to the charity. But the "counterfactual trust" aspect is that you believe that if you do not donate, then the organization will not donate. But! Often the way this works in reality is if the donations don't reach the whole amount ($Y in this case), the organization donates $Y anyway- which people may find deceptive.