Facebook Moves to Block Ad Transparency Tools
What it all adds up to, said Knight First Amendment Institute senior attorney Alex Abdo, is “we cannot trust Facebook to be the gatekeeper to the information the public needs about Facebook.”
How Twitter could be the death of liberal democracy
What Twitter shows us is a real-time ultrasound of the souls of America’s cultural and intellectual elite and its most committed activists — the people in charge of disseminating knowledge and who take the lead in organizing political action in our society. The picture it reveals is ugly, vulgar, shrill, and intolerant, with souls exhibiting an incapacity to deliberate, weigh evidence, and judge judiciously. They display an impulsiveness and unhinged rage at political enemies that is incompatible with reasoned thinking about how we might go about governing ourselves, heal the divisions in our country, and avoid a collapse into civic violence that could usher in tyranny.
Here’s how crazy spam calls went in 2018
The biggest takeaway from the report: an out of control trend in robocalls, citing a 46% increase in 2018 for a total of 26.3 billion in the year.
Other key highlights show that on average, people are receiving 114 phone calls per month. Of that, an average of 61 are from numbers not in their contacts. Of those unidentified calls (not saved in contacts), only 24% are answered.
Releasing Resources: Diaspora & Dollars
We must dispel the myth that national churches from low to middle-income countries have no resources to contribute to the wide missions initiative of the global church. Consider this thought-experiment based on conservative figures from the Philippines, my own country of origin:
Operation World reportedthat 12.3% of the Philippine population identified as Evangelical Christians, and Joshua Project reportedthe Evangelical Christian population to be closer to 13.93% of Filipino nationals.
If 2.3 million Filipinos are Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), and we apply the percentage suggested by Operation World at 12.3% of Filipinos to the number of reported OFWs, we estimate that 282,900 migrant Filipinos would identify as Evangelical Christians. Now imagine if 282,900 OFWs sent a portion of the $33 billion (sent in remittances to the Philippines in 2017 alone) to the homeland church for intentional support of global missions. What a vast resource that would be.
How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing
It’s really hard to get enthusiastic about fishing when you believe there are no fish in the lake. That’s where Simon was at, right? He was convinced there was nothing to catch. But God knew there was a tremendous haul awaiting him. And I wonder if we can think that way when we share the gospel.
How Patton Oswalt’s Feud With a Troll Ended With Him Paying the Man’s Medical Bills
Oswalt found a GoFundMe for Beatty’s hospital bills. The amount sat at barely $600. Oswalt dropped $2,000 into the campaign and then asked his followers to help. As of Thursday evening, the comedian’s efforts have raised over $20,000.
8 Days, 2 H-Bombs, And 1 Team That Stopped A Catastrophe
Nearly 60 years ago, a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying two hydrogen bombs broke apart over rural North Carolina.
The bombs fell into a tobacco field. They didn’t go off, but if they had, each 3.8-megaton weapon would’ve been 250 times more destructive than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Housekeeper stuck in elevator for 3 days
On Friday, Marites Fortaliza, 53, was cleaning floor by floor in the five-story private townhouse when she got stuck in the elevator between the second and third floor, according to a law enforcement official.
She was rescued Monday morning after a delivery man came to the house and was concerned when no one answered the door. The homeowners were away for the weekend, the law enforcement official said.
The CPR Episode of The Office Just Saved Someone’s Life
Scott had no prior first aid training, so he had to think quick. “I’ve never prepared myself for CPR in my life,” he told the Arizona Daily Star. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
But then he recalled the CPR scene in “Stress Relief.” As awful of an example as the scene was in how to save a person’s life, the one accurate aspect of it was using “Stayin’ Alive” as the correct tempo for chest compressions.