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8009/20950I got to spend a couple of hours in the company of an Olympian this afternoon, as I interviewed Sir Chris Hoy for my Book Club podcast, then him and his friend Matt interviewed me for theirs. I don't have many celebrity fans but Chris has followed me on Twitter for a while and said he likes my stuff, so before talking to him about his moving and positive cancer memoir I had to witness him doing Peter Dibdin impressions to me, which was pretty surreal.

THOUGHTS ON COMMUNION: What a sweet comfort to us that our Lord Jesus Christ was once known in the breaking of the bread. In earlier Christian times, believers called the Communion "the medicine of immortality," and God gave them the desire to pray: Be known to us in breaking bread, But do not then depart; Savior, abide with us and spread Thy table **in our heart [not just in our mind]. Some churches have a teaching that you will find God only at their table-and that you leave God there when you leave. I am so glad that God has given us light. We may take the Presence of the table with us. We may take the Bread of life with us as we go. Then sup with us in love divine, Thy body and Thy blood; That living bread and heavenly wine Be our immortal food! In approaching the table of our Lord, we dare not forget the cost to our elder Brother, the Man who was from heaven. He is our Savior; He is our Passover!

I hate to compare any minister of God to a gangster. But the sad truth is that today there are a handful (well, maybe more) of unscrupulous preachers who share some of Capone's most disgusting traits. They are notoriously greedy. They are masters of deception and manipulation. They have bought their way into the charismatic religious subculture and used their uncanny hypnotic ability to control major Christian TV networks. And, like Capone, their days are numbered. Justice will soon catch up with them. These false prophets probably all started out with a genuine call from God, but success destroyed them. They were lured away from true faith by fame and money, and when their ministries mushroomed they resorted to compromise to keep their machines rolling. Now, in the midst of the Great Recession, God is closing in on them. But before we rejoice that these imposters are being removed from their pulpits and yanked off the airwaves, let's hit the pause button and reflect. How did these false preachers ever achieve such fame? It couldn't have happened without help from us. We were the gullible ones. When they said, "The Lord promises you untold wealth if you will simply give a thousand dollars right now," we went to the phones and put the donations on our credit cards. God forgive us. We were the undiscerning ones. When they said, "I need your sacrificial gift today so I can repair my private jet," we didn't ask why a servant of God wasn't humble enough to fly coach class to a Third World nation. God forgive us. We were the foolish ones. When it was revealed that they were living in immorality, mistreating their wives or populating cities with illegitimate children, we listened to their spin doctors instead of demanding that ministry leaders act like Christians. God forgive us. We were the naïve ones. When they begged for $2 million more in donations because of a budget shortfall, we didn't feel comfortable asking why they needed that $10,000-a-night hotel suite. In fact, if we did question it, another Christian was quick to say, "Don't criticize! The Bible says, 'Touch not the Lord's anointed!'" God forgive us. We have treated these charlatans like Al Capone-as if they were untouchable-and as a result their corruption has spread throughout charismatic churches like a plague. Our movement is eaten up with materialism, pride, deception and sexual sin because we were afraid to call these Bozos what they really are-insecure, selfish, egotistical and emotionally dysfunctional. If we had applied biblical discernment a long time ago we could have avoided this mess. There is no way we can know how many unbelievers rejected the gospel because they saw the church supporting quacks who swaggered, bragged, lied, flattered, bribed, stole and tearfully begged their way into our lives-while we applauded them and sent them money. When well-meaning Christians quote 1 Chronicles 16:22 ("Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm," NASB) to cover up corruption or charlatanism, they do horrible injustice to Scripture. This passage does not require us to stay quiet when a leader is abusing power or deceiving people. On the contrary, we are called to confront sin in a spirit of love and honesty-and we certainly aren't showing love to the church if we allow the charismatic Al Capones of our generation to corrupt it. ~ J. Lee Grady is contributing editor of Charisma and author of the new book The Holy Spirit Is Not for Sale. Follow him on Twitter at leegrady.

"The Florida Baptist Convention has taken a proactive stance to encourage all churches to run background checks on employees and volunteers-as we do with every volunteer who works with children and teens in Convention-sponsored events and programs" - How ironic that this is brought up in the context of the Gilyard saga. Had Shiloh Baptist done a background check on Gilyard he would have come out clean back in 1993 - he had no criminal record. But he was KNOWN to be a serial adulter by Paige Patterson and Jerry Vines, and had confessed to having sex with women he had counseled in his churches prior to coming to Shiloh, yet a background check would never have revealed that when Shiloh hired him in the early 1990s. Of course now if we run a background check, he is a convicted sex offender. - Christa Brown and others have called for the Southern Baptist Convention to establish a database to track ministers who have been convicted of crimes, or credibly accused of serious misconduct. The SBC heavies have opposed such a system, and the Gilyard disaster is example #1 of why such a system is required. The FBC statement above painfully points this out. -- "Christ Tabernacle Baptist Church (sic) in Jacksonville has been affiliated with the Florida Baptist Convention since 1998. During that time, the congregation has not demonstrated cooperation as defined by our Bylaw 2, which includes participating in the Cooperative Program giving and providing statistical information. They have given nothing in the past six years." -- OK, that is interesting. Glad to know that in addition to hiring a pedophile and kicking the kids out of the church, they also are guilty of the terrible offense of not giving any money to the Cooperative Program. Who really cares that they have given no money to SBC missions, if they are putting a pedophile in the pulpit?

Former Republican presidential candidate and TV evangelist Pat Robertson's has flipped on his stand on legalizing marijuana. The straight-laced preacher's mind-blowing comments were made last Wednesday to the New York Times. It was merely an echo - and amplifying - of previous statements he's made about how the war on drugs has been unsuccessful. "Marijuana," he said, "should be treated legally like alcohol; offenders are wrongly locked up with violent criminals." ... Opponents to Robertson's proposal might argue that marijuana is an entry drug and by legalizing it, legal use of the drug might lead users to more powerful drugs. Scientific evidence would support such an argument. So, is Robertson right? That depends on whether taxpayers are willing to continue to pay for the imprisonment of pot users and dealers at such an extreme price. Further, the war on drugs has failed in that marijuana is more widely used today than when the "war on drugs" fired its first political shot. Well-known evangelical blogger Brett McCracken, managing editor of Biola Magazine at Biola University, said young evangelicals "laugh at Robertson, as a caricature of an evangelist and wouldn't see him as a role model, even if their cohort would be expected to be more open to legalizing drugs. That harsh assessment of the evangelist might just derail his efforts of legalize pot."

There's a new form of Christianity sweeping the U.S. Its main focus: sex. Don't be surprised. We already have a Christian denomination catering to every other worldview, comfort zone and obsession, so why not sex? As I said in "The Marketing of Evil": No matter what kind of person you are, a form of Christianity has evolved just for you. There's a politically liberal Christianity and a politically conservative Christianity. There's an acutely activist Christianity and an utterly apolitical Christianity, a Christianity that holds up a high standard of ethical behavior and service, and a Christianity for which both personal ethics and good works are irrelevant. There's a raucous, intensely emotional Christianity drenched in high-voltage music, and there's a quiet, contemplative Christianity. There's a loving Christianity and a hateful, racist Christianity, a Christianity that honors Jews as God's chosen people and a Christianity that maligns Jews as Satan's children. So, it was just a matter of time before we got a version of Christianity for people obsessed with sex.

In Rick Warren To Be Featured At Desiring God 2010 - I was among the few who broke the story that Dr. Piper had made the ill-advised decision to invite Leadership Network's propped-up Purpose Driven Pope Rick Warren to DG 2010 as a keynote speaker. Then, as I shared in Rick Warren Doctrinal And Sound?, unfortunately it got even worse when Dr. Piper decided to defend his decision: At root I think [Rick Warren] is theological and doctrinal and sound. ... So whether one even knows it or not, Warrengate still is slowly simmering; Dr. Piper's choice here has had the rippling effect of people, even outside of any discernment ministries, beginning to look a little closer at his theology, educational background, and associations; e.g. his charismatic bent, his connection to Fuller Theological Seminary, and with the late Ralph Winter. I had received a tip from a source back in June of this past year; and as I followed up on it, it would eventually lead me to discover some disturbing information which I orginally began sharing in Questions Concerning Dr. John Piper and Dr. John Piper And Unanswered Questions. When I wrote those initial articles Dr. Piper was on his much talked about sabbatical; now however, he is back and a few of the mystic books I pointed in the latter piece are no longer in the BBC online library. ... What I just showed you here should give us real concern as the obstensibly Reformed, "happy," and "romantic," Calvinist Dr. John Piper is sounding less like a charismatic and more like a mystic as he points us to apostate teachers of Roman Catholicism and its spiritually bankrupt mysticism; and from what we can see, this has been going on for quite some time now. Perhaps, now that his discernment is so far off he's even promoting the double-minded Rick Warren, the time has finally arrived for some of his DG speakers to take a closer look at what's going on in this neo-Reformed camp.

It's true that there is a hidden NWO agenda [now more visible and more widely known to the public] and it's understandable that secular groups [i.e. UN, Think Tanks, Universities, CIA, Skull & Bones, etc.] would seek to impose a secular [ultimately Satanic] rule of order among all people and all Nations - But what is completely unacceptable is that so many in the Church movement [i.e. Chuck Smith, Dave Hunt, Norman Geisler, Jerry Falwell Jr., Rick Warren, John Piper, John MacArthur, Lee Strobel, R.C. Sproul, Brian Broderson, Ergun and Emir Caner, etc.] would so actively participate and join in an emergent Antichristian/Antichrist movement [of deliberate lies and deceit formed against the true Christian Church] to the extent that it is now completely reasonable to question whether (since 9-11-2001) they are any longer or [in some cases] ever were Christians?

MADISON, Wisc., Dec. 22 /Christian Newswire/ - Focus on the Family has a story on Glenn Beck, a Mormon, on their CitizenLink Website. Glenn Beck was a CNN host and will move to Fox News in January. Beck is currently promoting his book, "The Christmas Sweater." The CitizenLink story focuses on Beck's faith and why he wrote "The Christmas Sweater." ... Through the years, Focus on the Family has done great things to help the family and has brought attention to the many social ills that are attacking the family. However, to promote a Mormon as a Christian is not helpful to the cause of Jesus Christ. For Christians to influence society, Christians should be promoting the central issues of the faith properly without opening the door to false religions. Some of the false doctrines of Mormonism include polytheism, an attack on the trinity, that Jesus was the spirit-brother of Lucifer, that God the Father is married to Mother God, temple baptisms for the dead, the Bible has missing parts and many errors. Christians are to stand up against the social ills of society, however, we are to put Christ first and His essential biblical truths.

I will be joined by a very special guest Alex Grenier of the website Calvary Chapel Abuse. We will sit down and discuss the CC movement and the patterns of abuse that are growing at an alarming matter. We will discuss his meeting with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel lawyer Janet Carter. Just a warning, this will not be for the weak of stomach or those who freely drink down the Calvary Chapel Kool-Aid! Please plan to join us as we deal with Devils! -- This just in! We were able to get Chuck Smith on the phone and he was open and honest about his feelings toward Alex and the problems concerning the "movement". I was shocked at his willingness to talk. This is a must listen you will get a truly unique look behind the Calvary Chapel curtain - Check out our web-site @ www.remnantXradio.com

Rick Warren Clarifies His Position Re: Islam -- Pastor Rick Warren said he does not believe Muslims and Christians worship the same God. "We worship Jesus as God. Muslims don't," he wrote. "Our God is Jesus, not Allah." Source: www.ocregister.com/articles/muslims-343997-warren-christians.html -- {Note: This is a highly deceptive remark by Rick Warren in insinuating that there is more than one God and that Christians simply worship one God that we happen to call Jesus while Muslims simply worship their God that they happen to call Allah. In all it is a very misleading series of events and statements coming from the very deceptive and misleading Pastor Rick Warren. A simpler, better and more accurate comment is "God is Jesus, not Allah" while Rick Warren's convoluted and contrived rebuttal of "Our God is Jesus, not Allah" is simply disinformation that is designed from the start to be misleading in a dangerously deceptive way that is extremely harmful to the truth of Christianity.}

If you'll notice the diagram behind him, the Kingdom Circles are part of the session. Basically, it's a simple but highly questionable [completely wrong] evangelical tool that people are being taught to draw (sometimes called the "napkin drawing") to demonstrate how those of other faiths can enter the Kingdom of God without converting to Christianity. If you've not heard of this, you need to. The video from the Common Path Alliance as well as this article from the Jesus in the Qur'an organization explains it: -- {Note: In the misleading demonstration three circles are drawn first a lager Kingdom of God (KoG) circle and then two small identical circles supposedly representing Christians and Muslims outside the larger KoG circle, yes in the completely misleading diagram Christians are placed outside of the Kingdom with all the other unsaved Gentiles. Apparently the already saved Christians are still attempting to enter the Kingdom of God and in the demonstration Jesus is not mentioned so their kingdom is not the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Interestingly though not explicitly explained it seems that entrance into their KoG is not directly through the cross of Jesus Christ but apparently through special knowledge (Gnosticism), enlightenment (Occult), and works (i.e. Service and Tithes) it sound very familiar, is sounds like the New Age gospel.} -- Colossians 1:12-23 "Giving thanks unto the Father [God], which hath made us [Christians] meet [assembled] to be partakers of the inheritance **of the Saints in Light: Who [God] hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us **into the Kingdom [of God] of His dear Son [Jesus]: **In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins: [Jesus] Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn [inheritor] of every creature: For by Him [Jesus] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: And He is [Eternal] before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head [Authority] of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the firstborn [Resurrection] from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father [God] that in Him [Jesus] should all fulness [Godhead] dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, **by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you [Gentiles], that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled In the body of His flesh through death, **to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight: If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the [True] Gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I [Apostle] Paul am made a minister ..."

By R. SCOTT MOXLEY Thursday, Apr 14 2011: Legendary Garden Grove televangelist Robert H. Schuller once noted, "High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly." The creator of Crystal Cathedral, a best-selling author and star of Hour of Power broadcasts, Schuller has long served as Exhibit A of that credo. In the 1950s, he saw an opportunity to build a profitable church, grabbed it and-thanks largely to donations from poor and lower-middle-class folks trying to win the blessings of God-created an $89-million religious empire with hints of opulence. ... Records also show that the reverend wasn't a cheapskate in one charity case. Indeed, the recipients of his generosity weren't poor at all. They were a wealthy Newport Beach couple, Kenneth and Glenia Reafsnyder. Ken's first wife was a member of Buena Park's Knott family, founders of Knott's Berry Farm. He also palled around with actor John Wayne. In 1995, Schuller agreed to divert $4,000 a month in church donations to the Reafsnyders for the rest of their lives in exchange for a quarter ownership in the couple's home. Ken has since died, but the deal calls on Crystal Cathedral Ministries to continue to pay Glenia. In 2008, the ministry increased the payments to $4,500 a month while reducing its ownership percentage. This means that the church's current 8.5 percent portion of the house has cost more than $1,250,000-$55,000 more than the value of the entire house. Speaking of houses, over the years the Schuller family has purchased oceanfront property in Orange County, a Big Bear vacation house, a San Diego County time-share, a Colorado mansion and a Honolulu condo. Just before filing for bankruptcy, Schuller sold a San Juan Capistrano property that had been bequeathed to the church decades ago and pocketed $22.5 million. The reverend's son, Robert Anthony Schuller, has lived in a $2.2-million oceanfront Laguna Beach dream house worthy of an Architectural Digest feature. Fred Southard, a longtime Schuller aide, lives behind palatial, guarded gates in a 13-room, 13,600-square-foot Newport Coast estate that could fetch $3 million on the open market. ... In court filings, they've remained optimistic that, despite a 50-percent drop in church membership to 5,000 attendees, the ministry can eventually pay off all of the debt. To accomplish that feat, however, the Schuller clan is going to have to stir up the congregation and then, despite all the unsettling revelations, ask them to dig deeper into their wallets.

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I apologise. Last night when I used my e-mailing program to send out the Behold News, the program timed out twice. Each time I had to restart it and I had never done that before. It was supposed to start up where it left off, but I found that 82 people ended up getting two of my mailings. That wasn't intended and I hope those who got two copies were not too annoyed.

On the download page, in the "how did you find out about Behold" box, I just got an answer that says: "Another person who uses it". Now that's how I would love everyone to find out about it!

On Thursday, I'm going to Vancouver for a cousin's wedding. So I'll probably be away from my e-mail for a few days, but I'll respond to any messages I miss when I get back.

Finally! There are now bookmarks for the spouse and the family information. The bookmarks now internally use the GEDCOM ID number rather than the Behold generated number. The hyperlinks and Forward/Backward functions seem to work as they should. The forward/backward locations will deactivate if they cease to exist after the file is reorganized. And the right-mouse clicks select the person at the cursor correctly. That seems to be done and I've fixed a few related bugs along the way. There may be one or two bugs in the new code that I missed, but I'll rigorously test for them during the upcoming beta.

I really didn't want that to take three weeks, but if I work hard, I still may be able to get the beta out by my self-imposed deadline of the end of October, if I'm lucky.

Next: to clean up the error and warning messages in the log file.

Time for a bit of an interlude. There are a few things I found that don't work exactly right. Any hidden items need the sources they contain to be hidden as well. Hidden items must be numbered differently. References to notes are not being displayed. Concatenated lines used for titles of sources and citations are not being processed correctly.

I could fix each of these individually by adding patches to my code. For the hidden items, that code is already in a dozen places and already has gone through several versions of improvements. That all happened while I was still building my final data structure. Doing the patching would take time and would have to be done case by case checking each one along the way. Rather than doing that, it's probably worth my time right now to rework two important parts of Behold.

The first is to rework my input routine so that the Concatenated lines are pre-concatenated. Then I won't have to check for them everywhere. This would involve pre-reading the next line, and that's a little tougher than it sounds because of the way I've "globalized" that routine. It should only take a day or two.

The second and more important task is to get my five different types of GEDCOM objects that I'm handling combined into just two, and have both of them use a similar data structure, thus merging the separate functions into single ones that will work in all cases. This will "formalize" my implementation of what I call Behold's "Extended GEDCOM" data structure. There are two structures involved: Records and Links. Each can have subordinate data. Records can contain Links. Links always point to Records and can contain other Links. When a Link contains subordinate data, it becomes a citation. Now that may all sound confusing to you, and you need not worry about it, but the exact structure has been eluding me up to last night. It took a bike ride, a 2 a.m. awakening, and a shower for me to finally figure it out.

The nice thing about doing this now is that the beta coming up will be perfect to ensure this improved implementation is all bug free. Nothing on the outside will change because of it. The Everything Report will look the same except some bugs will be fixed. The code will be simplified and generalized, hopefully becoming somewhat faster because of improved data structures. But future changes will be much easier, and Behold will be better prepared for the reading in of data directly from other programs, and later for GEDCOM output and editing.

If all goes well, this all could be done within a week or two. Then back to the show.

Fr. Ted asks whether you will choose to be a person of the light or a person of the darkness.

Fr. Apostolos Hill shares a short homily reflecting on the Gospel theme of the second Bridegroom Matins service.

The White House sides with Israel's ground assault of Lebanon while much of the world calls for a ceasefire. / Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, Iran is said to be preparing to launch a ballistic-missile attack. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A long profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose new book criticizes Israel and the corrupting influence of power. "I'm sad, but I was so enraged." / New York Magazine

Things to watch for in tonight's Vance-Walz debate. / Wake Up to Politics

Helene slamming a small town in North Carolina may disrupt the global supply chain for microchips. / NPR

A nuclear plant in Michigan will be the first in US history to restart. / CNBC

Your weekly white paper: "A systematic review about similarities in dog-human dyads." / Science Direct

A fascinating survey of how religious believers are using new technologies in their daily practices. / rest of world

An audio dive into Google's new niche product Notebook, which can turn a bunch of PDFs into a convincing podcast. / The New York Times [+]

See also: Barry C. Lynn on "Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech." / Harper's

From July, have you seen the trend of new books using multi-panel illustrations on their covers? They're called "bento books." / I Need a Book Cover

A celebrated new short story collection is about "people who just can't hang." / The New Yorker

Also, have you noticed worse service at restaurants lately? For the sake of society, that might be a good thing. / Economist Writing Every Day

See also: Britain experiences a rise in "zebra striping," where pub patrons alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer. / Semafor

Japan's smaller museums are praised for their elegance. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Photographs of Japanese forests shimmering with fireflies. / Colossal

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Hurricane Milton, headed for Tampa, becomes the second-fastest storm to reach Category 5 status. / Vox

John Morales: The proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense levels is projected to increase. / The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tells her followers that the government controls the weather. / Grist

Unrelated: Ancient monsters from indigenous folklore. / Atlas Obscura

Britain opened the world's first coal-fired power station in 1882. It's now the first G7 nation to phase out coal power completely. / CarbonBrief

American communities are beginning to "decommission" dams, fearful of climate impacts. / Undark Magazine

A fun online quiz about "the weird, wild, wired world of new vehicles." / rest of world

See also, from last month: "Hollywood Can't Ditch its Teslas Fast Enough." / Hollywood Reporter

California becomes the first state to ban "sell-by" dates on food. / Food & Wine

Dr. Pepper ties Pepsi as the second-best selling soda in the US. / MSN

The style of Jula Child's kitchens was "subservient to flexible functionality," helping usher in Universal Design. / Places Journal

A relaxation of rules around using apostrophes in German has "triggered existential fears." / The Guardian

Tressie McMillan Cottom explains what it was like to interview Diddy at his Malibu home. (Very weird, not good.) / The Independent

A lovely visual essay about author Jaime Lowe rediscovering her libido by learning how to dive for sea urchins. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

A brief cultural history of cocaine. "I enjoyed myself hugely." / aeon

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Due to some unforseen events, we missed a couple days last week. Sorry about that! All is better and we appreciate the readers who reached out.

Israel reportedly says any attacks on Iran will target its military, not nuclear or oil facilities. / CNN

Republican campaigns spend more money at Shake Shack and Jimmy John's while Democrats eat at Sweetgreen and Le Pain Quotidien. / The Washington Post [+]

People whose homes were damaged by recent storms are likely to be forced to "build up or move out." / Heatmap

Related: Emergency workers in North Carolina were withdrawn for fear of trucks of armed militia "saying they were out hunting FEMA." The local sherriff's office says otherwise. / The Guardian, Citizen Times

Nepalese teenager Nima Rinji Sherpa breaks the record for the youngest mountaineer to summit Earth's 14 highest peaks. / BBC News

A team finds the remains of one of the first climbers to attempt Mount Everest. / National Geographic

Prior to the 20th century, oyster reefs covered more than 1.7 million hectares across European oceans. / Bloomberg [+]

Do more people die from heat or cold? Cold, but most die from "moderate cold." / Sustainability by numbers

The amount of tents on the streets of San Franicsco is down 60% since July 2023. / The San Francisco Standard

New Yorkers deploy "anti-influencer architecture" in neighborhoods popular with TikTokers. / Curbed

See also: A nonprofit called Mothers Against Media Addiction aims to follow the model of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. / The Information

Fitness bros on TikTok participating in "locktober" may not know the term's history as a chastity kink. / Them

Author Rumaan Alan's solution for his midlife crisis is to get tattooed with things he doesn't want to forget. / Esquire

An argument for skipping wellness and personal development for "wasteful intervals of pure, delicious nothingness." / The Good Question

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Russia has suffered catastrophic losses during its invasion of Ukraine, but its policies suggest the end justifies the means. / The Guardian

Mara Karlin: An era of limited war has ended; an age of comprehensive conflict has begun. / Foreign Affairs

A new rideshare company in South Africa is reportedly using intimidation to coerce drivers and passengers. / rest of world

In the past two years, Donald Trump has called for every major American TV news network to be punished. / Reliable Sources

An ethicist says making presidents and candidates share their medical history is a bad idea. / STAT

Street psychiatrists in Los Angeles offer a solution for mentally ill people—basically, "DoorDash for meds." / The New York Times [+]

Related: Observations from an hour spent last week in an LA coffeeshop. / Meditations in an Emergency

The WNBA players union opts out of its collective bargaining agreement, two years before its expiration. / The Associated Press

Unrelated: Multiply the number two by itself 136,279,841 times, minus one, and you get the new largest known prime number. / The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search

The late-in-life partner of Oliver Sacks movingly recalls the neurologist's search to build a cohesive life. / The New York Times [+]

Anthony Bourdain's french fries recipe. "If you don't blanch your fries first, you'll get a scandalously bad result." / The Melt

See also: Remembering Ka, the "quiet sage" of underground rap (and firefighter). / Pitchfork

"A group of woodcocks is a fall. A flock of seagulls is annoying." Some ruminations on words connected to wood. / Harper's

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Saudi Arabia and Iran conducted a joint military drill last week in the Sea of Oman. / TRT World

A good summary of current conflicts in the Middle East from Spencer Ackerman. / Forever Wars

Oren Yiftachel: "Apartheid is not only a moral abyss and a crime against humanity; it is also an unstable regime." / +972 Magazine

President Biden waits in line for 40 minutes to cast his vote in the election. / The Associated Press

Philadelphia's District Attorney sues Elon Musk over his million-dollar sweepstakes for voters in battleground states. / Deadline

Unrelated: SpaceX wins a new round of military contracts worth $733 million. / Ars Technica

The term "clippers" refers to people influencing the political news cycle by making snappy videos for social media. / CNN

Related: A brief online test to check your susceptibility to misinformation. / University of Cambridge

A deep dive into how Chinese firms are evading US controls on advanced technologies. / Semianalysis

Collectors spent roughly a third less on art in 2023 than in 2022, with the largest decrease in spending at the highest levels. / Artsy

A book review connects recent novels about women's midlife crises to older stories about witches. / The New Yorker

United Airlines prints its final in-flight magazine, the last connected to a major US carrier. / Columbia Journalism Review

See also: A short film about the States' last fabric flower factory. / YouTube

Analysis of baseball's minor leagues finds persistent bias against Black and Latino players dating back to 1950. / The Guardian

An argument for enjoying the World Series aurally: "Listening to baseball on the radio requires a patience—and provides a catharsis." / GQ

Confessions of a Spotify vandal. / Hearing Things

Some thoughts on what exactly is human spirit. "Our energies often come from a combination of neurotic drive and positive response." / Lapham's Quarterly

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