Good morning, and welcome to Weekend A La Carte. If you scroll right down, you’ll find all kinds of great recommendations from other readers. They cover books, YouTube channels, podcasts, and much more. Before then, you’ll find some long-form articles and think pieces. Happy reading!
Sales & Deals
A new month brings some new Kindle deals. I’ve got several from Baker Books today and will have many more from other publishers in the days to come.
Recommended Reading
Carl Trueman is just the person whose commentary I’d look to after the recent terror attack at the Berlin Pride festival. Why? Because I know he’ll be able to interpret the bizarre phenomenon of the LGBTQ movement forging a one-way alliance with Islam.
The last few years have presented us with the bizarre phenomenon of members of the LGBTQ movement donning keffiyehs and campaigning for Hamas. In a world where considering the concept of “woman” to be connected to biology renders one subject to threats of rape and even death, it seems odd to have supporters of LGBTQ rights expressing support for an organization for which homosexual acts are death penalty offenses. But such is the spirit of negation that defines this present age. It is what the ideological family of critical theories does: dismantle what is, with little or no concern for what will replace it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even when said enemy’s vision of the future involves stoning me to death rather than merely refusing to use my preferred pronouns.
Similarly, the responses of British politicians to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis—a long way geographically and politically from Westminster—and that of Henry Nowak—a British man who was fatally injured, handcuffed by police, and falsely accused of racism by his killer—reveal a dramatic contrast. The former, despite being none of the U.K. government’s business, was swiftly politicized, with knee-taking being as de rigueur in Chelsea as in Manhattan. When JD Vance commented on Nowak’s murder, the Labour government was indignant about foreign interference. The difference? The details of the Nowak case did not conform to the tastes of identity politics.
And what would happen when radicalized Islamic fundamentalists and Pride celebrations meet in the real Western world, rather than online or in the imaginations of those anti-Western poseurs who promote that most Western of phenomena, the sexual revolution? Well, now we know.
Read: Berlin and the Contradictions of Identity Politics. (First Things uses a metered paywall system, but since it’s the first day of the month, you should be okay to read it without a subscription.)
You may not know that you are familiar with Tim Carleton’s “Opus No. 1,” but I’m pretty sure you are. Would you like proof? Just click here and listen for a few moments. Yup, it’s that omnipresent on-hold music. This story from Smithsonian tells the unlikely story of how it came to be the nearly universal option for sitting and waiting for an agent.
Millions of people know “Opus No. 1” without knowing its name. For generations of callers trapped on hold, listening to its endlessly looping melody as time ticks by, it has become the soundtrack to life’s eternal questions: What is this? How did I get here? Or simply, Why?
Understandably, then, Tim Carleton, its creator, has a complicated relationship with his creation. He first wrote the melody around age 10, then fleshed it out in 1989 on a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer he’d bought from Gordon’s Music & Sound in Fairfield, California, with money from his 16th birthday.
A teenager’s take on New Age music, drawing inspiration from Yanni, Kitaro and Art of Noise, the instrumental was never meant for public consumption.
“‘Opus No. 1’ was really just me figuring out how to record,” says Carleton, who retired after a career in information technology at a California bank. “There are sections that make me cringe because you can hear me making mistakes. It was just a practice song.”
Read: A Brief History of Hold Music, From Early Patents to the Soundtrack of Customer-Service Purgatory.
There is a lot to disagree with in this article from The Atlantic, but I think it highlights something that I haven’t yet read in other media. Here’s how it begins:
This should never have been news in the first place. But on Thursday, a TikToker posted a video of a pair kissing on a bench in New York City’s Central Park. “Get a room,” he tells them as he approaches, clearly filming. “There’s kids around.” By today, the clip had received 3.9 million views. Commenters had identified the kissers, noting with glee that one of them appears to be married to someone else. Thousands flooded in to offer takes. (“Nice of you to teach them a lesson!”) One person posted a close-up picture of the woman’s face, making fun of her appearance. Several took it upon themselves to ridicule the man’s socks. Soon, the New York Post had published an article identifying the two as lawyers involved in defending OpenAI in a lawsuit (as if that gives their makeout public-interest relevance) and referring to the incident as “the kissyface.” The Daily Mail shared that the woman “appears to have called in the cavalry—her parents Tracy and Matt have flown in from California to New York.” I’d call mine too.
I think we can use videos like this to remind ourselves that the Lord is always watching and that we ought to be upright in all our actions and all our PDA. Well and good. But I think there’s another story, and it’s the one this author captures, even if through a very secular lens. It’s that many young people today are already hesitant to date, and that the risk of being caught and outed makes that risk all the greater.
Read: The Horrible Rise of the Makeout Police.
I appreciate a lot of what Aaron Renn writes, as he nearly always offers me something to think about. In this recent article, he explains why even thinkers on the left predict that Zohran Mamdani will ultimately fail in his desire to transform New York City (and possibly the rest of the nation).
I’m a fan of capitalism. But many people aren’t, so it’s probably not possible to use capitalist arguments to convince them that Zohran Mamdani-style DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) populism is unlikely to work in cities.
However, a number of left-wing thinkers have provided powerful ideas of their own that can help us understand, within a left-wing framework, why the “socialism in one city” of DSA leaders like Zohran Mamdani is unlikely to succeed in its policy ambitions.
Read: Why the Left’s Own Thinkers Predict New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Will Fail.
This is just a brief piece, but I thought it was worth highlighting. In it, church historian Thomas Kidd explains how he uses AI in his vocation.
I have been exploring AI applications in history research this year. One of my outstanding Midwestern Baptist Seminary Ph.D. students recently helped me learn to use a curated notebook for research. It is one of the most promising applications I have yet discovered.
I use Google’s Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), which is free. There are many other notebook options out there, including ones that would likely have more functionality and capacity for sources. But Notebook is very easy to use and is quite adequate so far in my current research (for a Charles Finney biography, co-authored with Obbie Tyler Todd).
What I find interesting is that he uses this app to perform functions that could otherwise be carried out by a research assistant. I think this is something many of us will need to consider: Is it okay to use AI to take on tasks of this kind? If we would pay a person with a relatively modest skill set to do research, and we can have it done much faster with AI, is it necessarily wrong to use AI? As I have said before, we are on the frontier of a new technology, and we will need to explore its functionalities and ethics together, granting one another a lot of grace along the way.
Read: Using Gemini Notebook for Research.
A few years ago I read a book titled Tomatoland. The author had noticed a tomato thrown from a vehicle hit the ground and remain intact. That had sent him down a rabbit hole of researching how tomatoes are grown, picked, ripened, and sent to consumers like you and me. The book’s subtitle gives a clue as to what he thought about it: “How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.”
An article from Offrange tells much of the same story, though without passing judgment on the process.
Tomatoes are climacteric fruits, like bananas, avocados, and mangos, which means they can be harvested unripe and complete the process later. Ethylene sends the hormonal signal to ripen. When that process happens naturally, cells near its seeds start producing the gas and it diffuses outward through the fruit. Each cell the gas reaches begins its own production, and the cascade softens the flesh and the tomato turns red from the inside out. That allows the fruit to be picked much greener, shipped far, and then ripened when they’re close to their eater.
To do it artificially isn’t complicated, but it is expensive. Ethylene floods the room at carefully calibrated amounts, and the operator compresses what might take weeks into five days. Sensors log temperature, humidity, and gas concentrations around the clock. The tomato turns red from the outside in.
Food scientists have known since 1901 that ethylene caused certain plants to ripen quickly, after a Russian botanist discovered that lamps off-gassing the substance were ripening pea plants. They also discovered ethylene has the tendency to violently explode at high volumes; its adoption by the produce industry was not immediate. Then in the 1970s, a banana distributor found out that the safer and cheaper option was to generate small volumes of the gas in the rooms where you needed it.
Read: Gassed Up.
Canada is currently known as a country that leads the way in secularism, but this was not always the case. In fact, true secularism is relatively new to this country. This article from the Association for Reformed Political Action shows how, for much of Canadian history, the Christian faith was of great concern.
Canadian history is more than just the secular revolution and its aftermath. There is a rich Canadian history of religion in the public square before the secular revolution that is little known and even less appreciated today. Peeking into this history not only allows us to appreciate the magnitude and scale of the secular revolution; it also can inspire us in the twenty-first century to see how the Christian faith can influence public life.
So, here’s one story of where we came from before the secular revolution. This is the story of clergy reserves and Canada’s formal establishment of the Protestant Christian religion.
Your Recommendations
Every week I ask readers what they recommend. (Check Monday A La Carte if you’d like to have a say.) Here are some of this week’s recommendations:
Jono recommends Brick, and I’m actually surprised it took this long for someone to recommend it! “This device has helped me reclaim freedom from my phone. I use it 24/7, except when I’m traveling, to block all unnecessary apps. I want the internet to be a place I go, not something I carry with me all the time.”
Charissa wants you to know about Joyful Mothers, a Facebook group led by Rachel Zwayne that is meant to encourage mothers.
David recommends the daily podcast from WORLD magazine, “The World and Everything In It.”
John thinks you should know about Pastor Al Martin’s sermon archive website.
Elizabeth and her family have recently begun using Parkrun, which is a free, weekly, 5k and 2k community event around the world. “My family has recently started doing them whenever we are at home for the weekend. It is such a great way to start the weekend and force us to get out the house, get some fresh air, and exercise.”
William says that “if you’re after a biblically rich, soul-stirring book on communication, War of Words: Getting to the Heart of Your Communication Struggles by Paul David Tripp is a top choice.”
Jim suggests you get an indoor antenna for your TV, which he says allows you to be a good steward of money and drop cable.
Jason points out that since someone last week recommended using a real camera, he thinks it’s just as valuable to listen to music with real audio equipment. “Check out your local used record shop and experience your music listening in a whole new (old) way.”
A different Elizabeth recommends A Book of Comfort for Those in Sickness by P. B. Power, “a short but powerful read for anyone dealing with physical affliction, or lingering suffering of any kind.” I echo her recommendation.
Matthew recommends memorizing Psalms and then using them to fuel your prayers to the Lord.
Matt recommends the Light Phone 3, and says “I have been enjoying it because it’s a phone that’s just a phone, not a portal to distractions and avoidance.”
Betty very kindly recommends my book God’s Great Big Global Church. She has been reading it with her Sunday school class at a pace of one chapter per week.
Sean recently began re-reading Sproul’s Chosen by God. “I forgot just how thoroughly he addresses the issue of predestination. It’s definitely a good and concise read for anyone struggling with the doctrines of grace.”
Check Monday’s A La Carte to make a suggestion of your own!
Flashback
What Grows in the Local Church. Because we live out our Christian faith in such proximity to one another and because we are natural imitators, we are likely to imitate poor qualities as well as good ones. So if love can spread in the local church, so can suspicion.
False freedom: “Be true to you.” True freedom: “Be true to him.”
—Matt Smethurst
