Meanderings, 2 December 2023
Every week, for years, more than a decade, we’ve found links to blogs and substacks and news articles. Most of them from Kris and friends. Most of them. I’m grateful. It’s Christmas time so give a thought to a gift subscription of this Substack to someone you know would benefit from reading it. Thanks.
Photo by Frede Langlois on Unsplash
Casey McIntyre wanted her legacy to be clearing medical debt for others. But her husband Andrew Gregory says they never dreamed it would get this far.
Who is she? McIntyre was a mother, wife and publisher at Penguin Random House.
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years ago and died earlier this month, aged 38.
McIntyre's job provided her with health insurance that her husband described as "really excellent," and as a result, her family was not saddled with thousands of dollars of medical debt.
This isn't the case for many other Americans — it's estimated that 4 in 10 Americans households owe some sort of health care-related debt.
What did she do? Inspired by the philanthropy of others, McIntyre and Gregory orchestrated what they called a "debt jubilee" in her honor.
They set up a fund with the nonprofit group RIP Medical Debt, which buys up debt for millions of dollars at a time at a fraction of the original cost. The group says that for every dollar it recieves in donations, it can relieve about $100 of medical debt.
The post went viral, gaining thousands of likes and impressions on Instagram and X.
At the time of publication, the fund has received more than $680,000 of the nearly $700,000 goal — which equates to almost $70 million in medical debt for Americans across the country.
RIP Medical Debt buys the debts just like any other collection company, according to NPR's Yuki Noguchi. But instead of trying to profit from them, they simply notify people that their debts are cleared.
HT: LNMM
The cold winter days are now at our doorsteps (though many of us may experience a warmer winter this year), which also means getting into a cold car if you want to go anywhere.
Maybe you sit in the car, shivering as you wait for the heat to kick in. Or maybe you’re lucky enough to have a car with remote start, so it’s already warm and running by the time you get in.
Either way, you probably don’t have to let your car warm up at all.
Decades ago, when cars relied on carburetors, you would need to let your car warm up in order for it to work properly, The Washington Post explained in a 2014 article. If you didn’t, your car could stall.
That changed in the 1980s and 90s as car makers started using electronic fuel injections instead of carburetors. The new technology uses sensors that don’t need to be warmed up to supply fuel to the engine, according to industry experts.
Drivers were also once advised to let their cars warm up to allow the oil to warm up. When cold, oil becomes thicker, which makes it more difficult for the engine to be lubricated. This could in turn cause wear and tear on the engine, according to Todd Wenzel Chevrolet, a dealership in Hudsonville, Michigan.
But again, with modern cars and oils, warming up the car for more than a few minutes may not be necessary. Engine oils and modern engines have been designed to work better in the cold.
Speaking of warming up, how about 9229?
FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. (KTVI) – While many people struggle to do even one full pull-up, a teenager in Illinois has just completed thousands within 24 hours.
Nineteen year-old Brandon Garrett grew up playing several sports and was a serious runner. At one point, he ran 10 miles every morning. A few months after becoming a personal trainer at Club Fitness in O’Fallon, Illinois, Garrett set a new goal.
Garrett wanted to break the world record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours: 8,600. To break it down, Garrett would do 10 pull-ups a minute to get to 5,000 before switching his rep pace.
“Once I’m committed to something, I’m going to get it,” Garrett said.
Nexstar’s KTVI reports he spent eight months training while juggling clients at the gym. During that time he committed 25 hours per week doing pull-ups, completing 70,000 every seven days.
Last Friday, it was time for Garrett to test his limits….
In the end, Garrett said he completed 9,229 pull-ups — 629 more than the previous record. He’s sent the video of his pull-ups to the Guinness Book of World Records for confirmation, which could come at the perfect time this holiday season.
Protecting wolverines, not the UMich sort:
The North American wolverine has officially been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and will receive long-anticipated federal protections, US officials announced Wednesday, as the climate crisis melts away their snowy mountain habitats.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to list the wolverines as threatened in the contiguous US comes as scientists warn that warming temperatures are rapidly diminishing the mountain snowpack that the species rely on for food, reproduction and ultimate survival.
“Current and increasing impacts of climate change and associated habitat degradation and fragmentation are imperiling the North American wolverine,” Fish and Wildlife Service Pacific Regional Director Hugh Morrison said in a statement. “Based on the best available science, this listing determination will help to stem the long-term impact and enhance the viability of wolverines in the contiguous United States.”
Adding wolverines to the list triggers legal protections for the threatened species under various environmental laws, preventing the population from further declining. It also encourages better conservation efforts and more scientific research to better understand the vulnerable species.
David Swartz on the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Statement:
This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Declaration, the evangelical left’s founding document. In honor of this significant moment in American religious history, I’ve posted the full text below….
As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the
Word of God, we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We
cannot, therefore, separate our lives from the situation in which God has placed us in the
United States and the world.
We confess that we have not acknowledged the complete claim of God on our lives.
We acknowledge that God requires love. But we have not demonstrated the love of God
to those suffering social abuses.
We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated
his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social
and economic rights of the poor and oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We
deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the
conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal
attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color
lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad
by our economic system.
We affirm that God abounds in mercy and that he forgives all who repent and turn from
their sins. So we call our fellow evangelical Christians to demonstrate repentance in a
Christian discipleship that confronts the social and political injustice of our nation.
We must attack the materialism of our culture and the maldistribution of the nation’s
wealth and services. We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance
and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry
neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and
promote a more just acquisition and distribution of the world’s resources.
We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, we must
challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might – a proud trust
that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at
home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions
objects of near-religious loyalty.
We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to
irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active
discipleship.
We proclaim no new gospel, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who, through the
power of the Holy Spirit, frees people from sin so that they might praise God through
works of righteousness.
By this declaration, we endorse no political ideology or party, but call our nation’s
leaders and people to that righteousness which exalts a nation.
We make this declaration in the biblical hope that Christ is coming to consummate the
Kingdom and we accept his claim on our total discipleship until he comes.
November 25, 1973, Chicago, Illinois
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is authentic—the term for something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever.
A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023, driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.
Authentic has a number of meanings including “not false or imitation,” a synonym of real and actual; and also “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary.
Authentic is often connected to identity, whether national or personal: words frequently modified by authentic include cuisine and dish, but also self and voice. Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their “authentic voice” and “authentic self.” Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.
And with the rise of artificial intelligence—and its impact on deepfake videos, actors’ contracts, academic honesty, and a vast number of other topics—the line between “real” and “fake” has become increasingly blurred.
Authentic is what brands, social media influencers, and celebrities aspire to be. Elon Musk made headlines when he said that people should be more “authentic” on social media. Apps and platforms like BeReal make recording “authentic” experiences their main purpose. No matter how much artifice and calculation goes into the production of these videos, as Rebecca Jennings of Vox puts it, “wherever people are supposedly being ‘authentic’ on the internet, the money will follow.” Ironically, with “authentic content creators” now recognized as the gold standard for building trust, “authenticity” has become a performance.
Other words also stood out in the dictionary’s 2023 data, including… [like rizz, deepfake, and EGTOT]
Good morning Scott . I always appreciate your meanderings. Thank for the reminder of the Chicago statement, I forgot all about it. As for warming up the newer cars I keep telling my wonderful wife that.