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
Today’s Kindle deals include quite a selection of newer titles and older ones.
Recommended Reading
Ryan Burge often shares interesting observations about churches and denominations, and in this article, he does that with Roman Catholicism. He brings data to back up what many of us have observed: That there is a vast gulf between what the Catholic Church formally teaches and what its members actually practice and believe.
There’s a running joke in American religious life that goes something like this: ask ten Catholics what the Church teaches on a given issue, and you’ll get eleven different answers. It’s meant to be affectionate, a nod to the big-tent nature of a tradition that has managed to hold together nearly a billion people across wildly different cultures, languages, and political contexts. But like most jokes, it contains more than a little truth.
The Catholic Church is one of the most doctrinally specific institutions in the world. The Magisterium — the Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops — has issued detailed guidance on everything from the mechanics of salvation to the appropriate use of birth control to how often a faithful Catholic should receive the sacrament of Reconciliation. These aren’t suggestions. They are, in the Church’s own framing, the authoritative teachings of an institution that believes itself to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
And yet, anyone who has spent time around American Catholics knows that the distance between official Church teaching and the lived experience of the average Catholic in the pew can be considerable. This isn’t a new observation — sociologists of religion have been documenting it for decades. But it raises a genuinely interesting empirical question: just how Catholic, in the doctrinal sense of the word, is the average American Catholic?
Read: The Conformity Gap: What American Catholics Actually Believe and Practice.
Pangram is currently considered the leading A.I.-detection tool, and many people rely upon it, including teachers and professors, not to mention troublemakers who want to bring down writers. Freddie deBoer put the app through its paces and found it extremely unreliable.
So let me get to the nut of this thing before I do my usual meandering. Recently, someone accused me of using AI to write this old post from about a year ago, specifically highlighting the section about Ta-Nehisi Coates. I replied by saying that the post contained no AI writing; nothing I publish has been written or edited by an LLM. My accuser proceeded to say that the AI detection tool Pangram flagged that portion as 100% AI written with high confidence, a result I replicated. (Pangram report.) As the man who wrote that piece, I knew that I wasn’t guilty, but I also knew that wasn’t going to fly with other people. I was sufficiently annoyed that I paid for a Pangram license and found that, when I entered the entire essay, Pangram cleared it as 100% human written with high confidence. (Pangram report.) That is to say, the essay of about 5,000 words was declared 100% human written with high confidence even though it contains the section of about 300 words which was declared 100% AI written with high confidence. Subsequently, I’ve found that I can produce the same sort of inconsistency in the opposite direction – I can break the section that was called 100% AI into pieces that are then called 100% human written. (Pangram report of an example.) So pieces that Pangram call 100% human written are part of a larger piece that Pangram calls 100% AI written which in turn is part of an essay that Pangram calls 100% human written, a Russian doll of contradictory results.
Note that there is some bad language in the article. Also, if you scroll down, you can see Pangram’s founder’s response in the comments.
Read: I Wouldn’t Say Pangram Is Broken, but I Would Say That It’s Brittle.
The New York Times has an interesting article on dementia patients who seem to “return” just before they die, a phenomenon that is apparently fairly common.
In the spring of 2000, while completing his degree in psychology at the University of Vienna, Alexander Batthyany received an unusual call from his mother. She had just gotten off the phone with Batthyany’s grandmother. “I do not know what happened — but you should call,” his mother told him. “Somehow, she’s back again.” Batthyany was confused: His grandmother, who lived in a nursing home in Switzerland, had vascular dementia and, for the past year, had hardly been able to speak — let alone pick up the phone and initiate a conversation, as his mother claimed had just occurred.
Doubting his mother’s story, Batthyany nevertheless said he would call. He dialed his grandmother’s number. When she answered, it was in the refined, elegant German he remembered her speaking in his childhood. In shock, he found himself wanting to shout: Oh, you can talk!
His grandmother greeted him affectionately. She told him that for the past few months, she hadn’t really been herself. She had been, she said, “very, very, very tired.”
The conversation remained, in Batthyany’s words, “an inexplicable personal experience,” until one day in 2009 when he came across a paper in The Journal of Near-Death Studies, an academic outlet for discussion of death-related phenomena that have no ready scientific explanation. The article, written by a German biologist and parapsychologist named Michael Nahm, drew attention to reports of unexpected mental clarity in gravely ill people. Evidence of such events existed going back to antiquity, but the phenomenon had been largely forgotten since the 19th century.
One thing that jumped out to me was that, for all the advances we have made over the past decades and centuries, scientists still do not understand what consciousness is or where it resides. It’s fascinating that something so foundational to humanity is still so mysterious and misunderstood.
Read: Why Do Some Dementia Patients ‘Return’ Just Before They Die?
This is a strong essay from Brad Littlejohn as he considers the rise of AI and interprets it through the lens of Tolkien.
You’ve all heard it now a million times. Anytime anyone has the temerity to dare a conversation about AI, or smartphones, or the internet, someone in the group can be relied upon to intone sagely, “Well you know, it’s important to remember that technology is just a neutral tool; what matters is how you use it.” Heads will nod solemnly, you will stammer and stutter for a moment, then shrug and let it go, and another little opportunity to grow in wisdom together will have been lost beyond recall.
To be sure, there is a grain of truth in this cliche. Inasmuch as technology is designed as an instrument of human purposes, it remains responsive to the human will, which is almost infinitely varied in its desires, and whenever the technology is used, we attribute moral agency and responsibility to the user, not the tool. I may pick up a hammer to repair a neighbor’s house damaged in a storm, or to crack my neighbor’s skull in a fit of rage. If I do the latter, the law will take me, not Black and Decker, to task.
And yet as soon as we scratch beneath the surface, we find the concept of the “neutral tool” beginning to break down.
Read: One Tool to Rule Them All.
On that note, you may also enjoy AI and Ethics: 10 Concerns by Paul O’Brien.
David Oks did some digging to try to figure out why some ambulance rides in America are so incredibly expensive. This leads to a look at where ambulance services came from (funeral homes originally, as it happens) and how their billing system originated.
American ambulance bills are enormous and unpredictable because of how American law forces ambulance services to work. In 1965, almost as an afterthought, Medicare decided to pay for ambulances the way it paid for everything else: as a per-ride fee, after the fact, as though a trip to the hospital were just another medical procedure. Commercial insurers, who build their payment systems on top of Medicare’s fee schedules, followed suit.
In the decades since then, the cost structure of ambulance services has changed enormously, and very little of their cost now comes from the ride itself: nearly all of it goes to standing ready—the stations, the vehicles, the crews waiting around the clock for a call that may never come. But the way we pay for ambulance rides has stayed the same. And nearly everything strange and cruel about ambulance billing follows from that disjunction.
To understand what went wrong, we need to learn a little bit about the economic logic of ambulances, and why ambulance services are more like option sellers than taxi companies. It’s more interesting than it sounds.
Read: Why American Ambulance Rides Are So Expensive.
I don’t know when I first heard the term “passive income,” but I do know that I have heard it an awful lot lately. The Wall Street Journal reports on the phenomenon of people who try to generate a stream of passive income. As you would expect, there are some who succeed and many others who claim to succeed while they actually try to defraud others.
If the mythos of the American dream is to work hard and get ahead, it’s being eclipsed for some by the dream of not having to work at all.
It’s not that the fantasy is new. But it is gaining fuel from a growing feeling that traditional work is broken. In March, the shares of U.S. workers who were satisfied with their pay and opportunities for promotion were the lowest they have been since the New York Fed started asking in surveys in 2014.
On social media, passive-income obsessives test out eccentric schemes and compare notes. Some seekers make real money and win back time. But many ideas thrown around online are duds or, worse, scams. In recent years, the Federal Trade Commission has taken enforcement action against several operations that it said bilked consumers out of millions of dollars with the lure of effortless money.
Read: Forget Work. Passive Income Is the New American Dream.
Aaron Renn explains that he has had early insight into several cultural trends, such as the rise of the manosphere, the change in culture’s view of Christianity (that became the basis of his book Life in the Negative World), and the coming of Donald Trump. With that in mind, he provides his take on what he thinks may be coming after today’s populism declines.
Though it still has some time to play out, it looks to me like the populist moment is coming to an end in America. In its place we’ll likely see multiple things, but one is what I call a “new constructivism,” one that is already present and growing.
When I say populism, I’m referring to three things, a style, a movement, and a program. The populist style is highly combative, very confrontational, hostile to elites and institutions, typically anti-intellectual, abrasive, often transgressive of established norms and ideas, and often with a revolutionary affect. A populist movement, in the mass media age, weds this style to a reciprocal bond of personal affection and loyalty between a popular mass and a charismatic, often outsider political leader. A populist program typically involves policies designed to benefit the popular classes or satisfy their preferences, usually at the expense of the interests of the powerful, wealthy, or big institutional incumbents. 19th century populists wanted free silver. Trumpian populists want America First.
I believe the populist style, in particular, is going to be fading soon, along with the populist movement. I expect the movement to be played out by 2030, and the style even sooner. Though in part this is because the populist program has succeeded in many areas. Why do I say this this?
You’ll have to read to find out. I lack the insight to surmise whether or not he’s accurate, so I guess only time will tell!
Your Recommendations
Chelsea is enjoying Swiftlit, a tool to aid memorization and reading. “Are you a grad student drowning in terminology? A seminary student working through Greek and Hebrew vocabulary? A literature lover trying to commit poetry to heart? Swiftlit is not just another app. It is a modular study app to help with various aspects of school and life.”
Todd recommends the PrayerMate app, which I have used for years now, so I echo his recommendation.
John recommends an e-cargo bike by the US brand Yuba. “We bought one and it is awesome! We can transport 2 kids on the back and are planning many family adventures.”
Andy read and enjoyed Jen Wilkin’s new Dust to Dust (as did I, so I also echo his recommendation).
Larissa has been reading my book Devoted, and says it has been inspiring her and leading her to Gresham Machen’s works like What is Faith? “This work is a firm counter-point to what he calls ‘absurd’ modern pedagogic theories of which, sadly, I am a product.”
Tracy recommends the podcast Bible Talk by 9Marks. “Theologians Jim Hamilton and Sam Emadi talk the listeners through the Bible, passage by passage, prompted by moderator Alex Duke. They have helped me to see the recurring themes and types that occur throughout Scripture.”
Meredith says that Kevin DeYoung has started uploading his classroom lectures on Revelation to his website, Clearly Reformed. “I had the privilege of taking this class this summer and can highly recommend!”
Dayna recommends Charles Martin’s “The Keeper” series with the main character Murphy Shepherd. “Well written, a selfless hero dealing with modern-day issues, great character development; I highly recommend this series.”
TJ wants you to know that although Paradise Lost is a slow read, it’s worth it. “Milton’s beauty and creativity are unmatched in the English language. I am drawn to think carefully about the events of the Garden and the Fall, even as the poetry washes over me. At the very least, read Book IV!”
William is reading the biography of Stephen Lungu, Africa’s Billy Graham. It’s titled Out Of The Black Shadows. He says he can’t put it down.
Thomas recommends getting out and taking photos with a real camera. “Leave the distractions of your phone at home. Using a dedicated camera instead of your phone replaces a content-consumption device with a creative tool, better connecting you with the world around you and the interesting things you want to capture.”
Kristine recommends “The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion” by Beth Brower. It is an “ongoing series of 8 books set in the late 1800’s that chronicle the events in the life of a young woman who faces difficulties and triumphs with honesty and a ready wit.”
Tehila picked up “a beautiful little set of a 5-book devotional set by F.B. Meyer called Our Daily Homily.” I am certain I love Meyer as much as she does!
Steve thinks you should tune in to Doyle Dykes Sunday String-Along each Sunday.
Stay tuned on Monday so you can add your recommendations to next week’s Weekend A La Carte.
Flashback
When Christians Disagree. Wouldn’t it be heavenly if believers ever only experienced peace? I suppose it would be heavenly and, therefore, more than we can realistically hope for in this life. That being the case, we need to learn to deal with conflict—conflict within both the local church and the wider church.
Other men may preach better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.
—George Whitefield
