Troubling Theology

“Nothing surprises our God. He is perfect in omniscience. He knows everything that can be known including what is going to happen in the future. In other words, what happened on the Friday before last came as no surprised to God. Neither will it prove any kind of meaningful impediment to the advance of His kingdom. We serve the God whose plans could not be derailed by the unjust death of His Son. His church survived the Roman Empire. It survived Christendom. It survived the Enlightenment. It survived Darwinism. It survived Stalin. It survived Mao. The church is surviving ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda. Christians holding to the historically orthodox position on sex and marriage should in no way think that the legalization of same-sex marriage in this country on the basis of the opinion of five people will pose any kind of an existential threat to the church.”

Source: What I said to my conservative church about same-sex marriage | Baptist News Global Perspectives – Conversations that matter

This strand (fractal?) of a theology is so troubling to me.

Screen Addiction is a Generational Complaint

The new grandparent’s dilemma, then, is both real and horribly modern. How, without coming out and saying it, do you tell that kid that you have things you want to say to them, or to give them, and that you’re going to die someday, and that they’re going to wish they’d gotten to know you better? Is there some kind of curiosity gap trick for adults who have become suddenly conscious of their mortality?

Source: Why Grandma’s Sad – The Awl

Recommended response to the alarmist piece in the NY Times this weekend regarding “screen addiction” and children.

The Reddit Revolt and Social Silos

The sudden revolt has thrown one of the world’s most popular sites into chaos. It wasn’t immediately clear why Taylor, who joined the company in 2013, was fired. But the response by moderators was as swift as it was ruthless. Within hours, the moderators of /r/IAmA took the subreddit private, effectively shutting it down. That started a cascade of moderators shuttering dozens of subreddits—/r/askreddit, /r/todayilearned, and /r/pics among them—that is still growing, crippling a site with some 160 million users. Many more subreddits, including /r/science, have expressed solidarity with Taylor but remained open.

Source: Reddit Is Revolting | WIRED

Reddit is in a state of turmoil from the firing of a popular staffer as well as a continual breakdown of communication from company officers and subreddit moderators. Reddit itself functions primarily due to the hard work of popular and niche subreddit moderators who laboriously spend time curating and improving the experience of the “internet’s front page.”

What’s interesting to note here is that moderators from hundreds of subreddits are using this as an opportunity to voice their frustration with how the company supports and enables them to do what they do. There’s also ongoing questions and antagonism between community leaders and the company’s new CEO due to her attempts to limit harassing and defamatory posts by users.

Reddit’s distributed model lends itself to such rebellion. Similar things happened to Digg when it began its decline, which gave Reddit a boost of audience. There are cautionary tales of dozens of forums undergoing similar events and eventual departure of key users and members as well.

What does this mean for other social silos such as Facebook or the post-open Twitter or Google+? In my mind, one of the key benefits to the path that Facebook has taken with making key features into standalone services or apps (Messenger, Pages, Instagram, Whatsapp etc) or Twitter with Vine is that these social networks are now more insulated from being left behind due to a mass exit based on inner turmoil.

Much like NASCAR fans decrying the sports’ and associated tracks’ latest announcement asking for Confederate flags to be left at home and, passionate people who feel entitled due to a conception of buy-in can feel betrayed and threaten to leave. Social spaces on the web are built to fail, and companies have to both diversify and continue to attract a membership that is comfortable with evolution.

 

The problems with ebook subscription models

Way more people watch TV and movies and listen to music than read books or magazines. That’s why we’re starting to see that Netflix is Netflix, Spotify is Spotify, and ebook and magazine subscription sites are, well, something else.

Source: What Scribd’s growing pains mean for the future of digital content subscription models » Nieman Journalism Lab

You have to be careful of those romance novel readers.

I’ve been fascinated by the concepts of ebook monetization since self-publishing and ebook publishing became a bona fide option for mainstream publishers and authors. It’s one of the reasons I’m excited about what Merianna is doing with Harrelson Press and the ultimate direction we’ve mapped out there (more on that later).

However, it’s clear that a subscription type model from Scribd aren’t the best way forward. The ebook industry is a weird and complicated beast as companies from Google to Apple to Amazon have discovered in their various attempts to become the “Netflix” of this respective market.

Regardless, publishers are going to be the ones that have to change and adapt to make sense of this newish form of reading and producing/consuming content. We’ve seen how the music industry seemingly collapsed during the last decade when singles become the prime selling vehicle, replacing albums. Now, we’re seeing a period of consolidation by the major labels and partners such as Apple or Spotify to allow for the labels to make the most profits from agreements while artists are paid fractions of a cent per streamed play. That will change as artists figure out the game and we see more Taylor Swift’s pushing their weight around the industry.

I don’t think we’ll see a similar contraction / consolidation in the book publishing universe because the tools for making and consuming books are more democratized and the industry is ripe for disruption.

 

Thomas Jefferson Was Obsessed with Mammoths

“For most of his life, Thomas Jefferson was obsessed with mammoths. (More correctly, he was obsessed with American mastodons, tree-chewing cousins of mammoths that lived in the Northern part of the continent—but at the time, he and the rest of the world thought they were mammoths.) He liked theorizing about mammoths, he liked talking about mammoths, he liked making his friends rack up exorbitant postage bills in order to mail him mammoth teeth. And for decades, from the mid-1760s onward, he was particularly dedicated to one surprisingly high-stakes activity—convincing a famous French naturalist that mammoths were still out there, tearing up the wild West with their tusks.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson Built This Country On Mastodons

I had no idea.

MH and the White House

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After (over) 10 miles of walking around D.C. during one of my tour guide specials, the girls were still excited to see “where President Obama lives and works.”

We’ve got amazing kids.

Our Week in Washington D.C.; Or How do I explain to my daughters how important this all is?

“The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the United States Friday in a closely divided ruling that will stand as a milestone in its 226-year history.

The justices ruled 5-4 that states cannot deny gay men and lesbians the same marriage rights enjoyed for thousands of years by opposite-sex couples. Within days if not hours, the decision is expected to trigger same-sex marriages in states that still ban the practice.

“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his 28-page ruling. “The Constitution grants them that right.”

Source: Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage

Saving this for posterity because I’ve been in Washington D.C. this week with my wife, our soon-to-be-born baby boy, and my young daughters (age 7 and 5). While we’ve been doing the touristy stuff, we’ve also been in the midst of two major Supreme Court decisions on “Obamacare” and marriage equality.

My girls have gotten to walk past the Supreme Court and stand with us while we took the chants and the applause in after these rulings. I didn’t hide my tears.

What a week. As the Confederate flags come down across Southern states and my own beloved South Carolina after the terrible massacre of innocents in Charleston, we see the rise of something different in our country.

Here’s to new beginnings based on love, reconciliation, and the bridging of divides that those in power have used to try to keep us apart.

Here’s to the future United States and a country that is better for my daughters and son than the one I grew up with.

Amen.

 

Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling

Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner.

Source: Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling – Bloomberg Politics

I’m really hoping that Sanders can convince Democratic primary voters that he’s not a socialist (that seems to be the drawback) and bring some competition to the seeming inevitability of another Clinton vs Bush race.

To support an oligarchy seems very much against the spirit of what I felt today while standing in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol here in Washington D.C. and pondering how George Washington could have been king.

I’m still not completely sure on my own allegiance to a particular candidate, but issues such as this are troublesome to me.