Floods, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, and Wildfires

In the U.S., we’ve always had floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires. What’s new is how many people now live in the paths of those risks. Cheap housing, job growth, and lifestyle have pulled people into places that once were left alone. I get it. But the storms still come.

It’s very possible, even likely, that the rising cost of storm damage isn’t just about stronger storms. It’s about what we’ve built in their way. Since 1980, the U.S. has seen nearly 400 billion-dollar disasters. Climate change grabs the headlines, but many experts agree the real cost driver is us.

We’ve packed more homes, businesses, and infrastructure into risky zones. Florida is a good example. The fifteen counties hit by Hurricane Milton grew from 3.7 million people in 1980 to over 9.1 million in 2023. Their economic output more than quadrupled.

The same story plays out with wildfires. From 1990 to 2020, homes in fire-prone areas rose by 47 percent. That is not just bad planning. It is stacking kindling.

Look at Hurricane Helene. Damages reached $250 billion. Not just because it was strong, but because there was more to destroy. Our choices, more than the climate, drove the cost.

California shows it too. In early 2025, the Palisades Fire tore through Los Angeles, destroying more than 16,000 structures and forcing 200,000 people to evacuate. Estimated losses hit $275 billion. That may be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Again, it was not just the fire. It was what we built in its path.

North Carolina tells the same story. When Helene stalled over the mountains in 2024, record rainfall overwhelmed rivers and flooded towns like Asheville, built in the floodplain.

Now the Midwest is getting hit. Over Easter weekend, a slow-moving storm dropped tornadoes, hail, and flooding rains across Oklahoma and Texas. It used to be trailer parks and shanties that took the worst of it. Now it is McMansions and standard suburbs built in places that probably should never have been neighborhoods.

Since 1980, the U.S. population has grown from 227 million to more than 344 million. That is a 50 percent jump. Much of that growth has been in high-risk zones: coastal counties, floodplains, and fire-prone hills.

Today, nearly 40 percent of Americans live near the coast. The number of people in high fire hazard zones grew from one million in 1990 to 2.6 million by 2010. In 2023, high-risk metro areas grew 35 percent faster than low-risk ones. As more people move into vulnerable places, the cost of storms keeps climbing.

Unless we rethink where and how we build, the financial toll will only rise.

It is easy to blame climate change for expensive storms. But the truth is more complicated. It is both nature and human choice. And if we are honest, the largest factor is not temperature. It is us.

Plates Weighing 130 Shekels

This morning I learned something. When I read “each silver plate weighing 130 shekels” in Numbers 7:85, it hit me that I had always thought a shekel was only a currency. Turns out it started as a unit of weight, and that sent me down a rabbit trail.

A shekel equaled about 11.4 grams of silver, or 0.025 pounds. A coin that weighed one shekel became worth one shekel. Value matched weight.

The shekel began in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC as a unit for trade. By the time it entered Israelite life around 1000 BC, it was standardized for religious use. “The shekel of the sanctuary” referred to the official temple weight, probably kept by priests to keep offerings fair. Later, during the Persian and Hellenistic periods, silver shekel coins were minted and circulated across the region. The shekel faded after the Roman era but came back in 1985 as the New Israeli Shekel (NIS), Israel’s current currency.

The British pound followed a similar path. It also began as a unit of weight. One pound of sterling silver equals 16 ounces, 7,000 grains, or 453.6 grams. That pound was divided into 240 pennies. So one ounce was valued at 20 pence. Why 20? There’s no clear law or decree. The Roman system divided a pound into 12 ounces, and over time each ounce came to be valued at 20 pence. It seems to have been a practical convention that stuck.

The old British system included shillings, crowns, and farthings. One pound was 20 shillings, one shilling was 12 pence. A crown was worth 5 shillings (60 pence). A farthing was one-fourth of a penny. It was layered, but people worked it out.

The official weight standard was literally stored in the Tower of London. All coins were compared against it to ensure they were honest. That was the physical “pound sterling.” In 1971, the UK switched to decimal: one pound = 100 new pence.

By contrast, today the metric system defines standards differently. The gram used to be defined by a platinum-iridium cylinder stored in France, but since 2019 it is tied to the Planck constant, a fixed value in physics, measured with a Kibble balance. No more chunks of metal in vaults. Now it is universal and grounded in nature itself. Honestly, I thought it was still physical until today.

So what about the pound today? In the US and UK, the pound is now officially defined by the metric system: exactly 0.45359237 kilograms. Ironically, the old imperial unit now depends on the very metric system it once resisted. No reference bar, no coin, just math.

Now you know what I know. Good morning.

Dolus specialis and Genocide

TIL: Dolus specialis.

Dolus specialis is a Latin legal term used in international criminal law. It refers to a special form of intent, one not satisfied by general criminal intent alone but requiring a heightened intent directed at achieving a particular prohibited outcome.

Etymology:

• dolus = intent, deceit, intentional wrongdoing

• specialis = particular, distinguished from othe

Together, dolus specialis means “special intent.”

In law, this concept is crucial. Ordinary crimes may only require dolus generalis (general intent), such as intending to commit an act regardless of any larger purpose. But some crimes, like genocide, require dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. That extra layer of intent distinguishes genocide from the many other horrors of war.

This is very relevant to what’s happening in Israel right now.

Legal Accusation

Several UN bodies, human rights groups, and governments have argued that Israel’s military response in Gaza since October 7, 2023, meets the definition of genocide. They cite the enormous civilian death toll (over 40,000 according to Gaza authorities), widespread destruction of infrastructure, and mass displacement of more than 90% of Gaza’s population. They also highlight incendiary public statements by some Israeli officials, which appear to show an intent to destroy Palestinians “as such.”

South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023 crystallized these accusations. It alleged that Israel’s actions, including bombings, ground operations, and restrictions on food and medicine, constitute genocide under the 1948 Convention. The ICJ, while not ruling on the merits yet, has issued provisional measures three times, finding there is a “plausible risk” of genocide. These measures require Israel to allow humanitarian aid and prevent genocidal acts, though they stop short of declaring that genocide is actually occurring.

Intent Debate 

The heart of the debate lies in dolus specialis. Genocide requires more than death, destruction, or suffering. It requires proof of specific intent to eliminate a group. Historically, genocides like the Holocaust, Rwanda, or Cambodia revealed that intent unmistakably through death camps, organized massacres, written policies, and systematic targeting of a group’s very existence.

By contrast, the situation in Gaza is complex. 

Most Palestinian deaths have occurred through urban warfare, bombardments, and military strikes, not systematic roundups, executions, or extermination camps. Israel has made evacuation warnings, facilitated some humanitarian aid, and targeted its rhetoric toward defeating Hamas rather than Palestinians as a whole. These facts complicate the assertion of dolus specialis.

On the other hand, Israeli officials’ extreme statements, such as calls to “erase Gaza” or referring to Palestinians as “human animals,” are cited as evidence of genocidal incitement. Critics argue that even if Israel’s official war aim is the destruction of Hamas, the sheer scale of civilian harm combined with such rhetoric amounts to intent by conduct.

Comparisons

Genocide archetypes: The Holocaust used extermination camps. Rwanda saw systematic machete massacres. Cambodia carried out forced starvation and executions. In each, the intent to annihilate was unmistakable.

Gaza context: Civilian deaths are enormous, but largely as collateral damage from war against an entrenched militant group that embeds itself in civilian infrastructure. The devastation is real but different in method and arguably in intent.

Aid and survival: Israel’s allowance of some humanitarian aid, however limited, is sometimes viewed as contradicting genocidal intent, since genocide traditionally involves total deprivation of survival needs. Others argue this allowance is merely tactical and does not absolve intent if the broader conduct shows destruction.

Hamas and Dolus Specialis

It is also worth noting that many legal scholars point out Hamas’s intent toward Israelis reflects dolus specialis more clearly. The October 7, 2023, attacks deliberately targeted civilians, including systematic killings, kidnappings, and massacres. Hamas’s founding covenant and public statements call for the elimination of Israel and Jews, aligning directly with genocidal intent. Scholars from The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and security experts describe this as genocidal rhetoric and action, with antisemitic tropes echoing Nazi-like propaganda.

This contrast highlights the difficulty. 

Israel is accused of genocide largely by inference, while Hamas openly declares it.

Political Context

The debate is inflamed by the geopolitical stage. The U.S. continues to back Israel with military aid and diplomatic cover, citing security concerns and alliance commitments. Some states and international bodies use genocide language both as legal argument and political pressure. Meanwhile, accusations of genocide have historically been misapplied to Israel, such as in 1948 and 1967, making some observers cautious of political motives behind the charge.

Inside Israel, the accusation of genocide is largely rejected, viewed as unthinkable given Jewish history. For Jews worldwide, the charge resonates painfully, especially as antisemitic attacks increase in other countries.

Bigger Picture

Genocide is not simply a synonym for mass suffering. 

It is a precise legal term requiring proof of special intent to destroy a group as such. The ongoing case at the ICJ shows that proving this intent is far harder than recognizing devastation.

Applying the word genocide to Israel’s actions may be reductive. 

It risks collapsing the complexity of war, strategy, propaganda, and tragedy into a single trigger word. The result can be less about legal precision and more about political weaponization.

None of this diminishes the suffering in Gaza. 

The civilian toll, the displacement, the destruction of homes and hospitals, all are catastrophic and cry out for an end. But whether those realities constitute genocide is a distinct and difficult legal question.

We Must Hold

We can affirm two truths:

1. That applying “genocide” simplistically may be more about echo chambers, programming, and propaganda than about legal accuracy.

2. That the devastation in Gaza is intolerable, that Israeli sovereignty matters, and that Jewish communities face precarious dangers as antisemitism rises globally.

Word matters, but so does the reality. 

What matters most of all is the desire to see this end, for Palestinians, for Israelis, and for the stability of a region where peace feels impossible yet remains essential.

Just a thought on Senator Kennedy

I am trying to resist the tidal wave of programming pushed at me about Secretary Kennedy. I hear friends and family parroting anti-everything talking points that gloss over reality and try to dehumanize and derail every word he says. Instead, I pause and actually listen. I want context, not spin.

Please don’t get triggered. I’m just trying to explain what I feel when I hear the Secretary announce this and that. It’s not as black and white as the talking heads want you to believe.

We’ve never experienced someone in this kind of position with his level of passion combined with his level of carte blanche authority. I don’t think he’s trying to get rich, and people saying he is stupid are clearly pawns of backroom propaganda.

If anti-vax, anti-science, or undermining the medical establishment are the first things you hear when his name comes up, you may need to ask yourself whether you’ve absorbed programming you didn’t realize.

Honestly, I think he’s in the position of his life and seems imbued with a level of urgency that might actually result in change. He really seems to be on the side of the American public and unpartisan in that sense. It’s not something we’ve experienced much of, so I understand why people are suspicious to a degree.

These propaganda machines make no sense to me, and neither does the susceptibility of people drinking it all up. They push vapid claims, unredeemable vitriol, and out-of-context clips to insinuate manufactured nonsense for someone who hasn’t earned that treatment.

As for me, I’m cautiously optimistic that the status quo, which we can all agree is problematic in so many ways, might finally be at risk. If Kennedy is wrong, whatever he accomplishes can be undone. And frankly, once he is out of office, the powers against him will likely undo everything he manages to accomplish anyway. Sigh.

Ref: https://x.com/i/status/1973066020471341312 

The weariness of caring deeply

It’s been three days since Charlie Kirk was shot. I have to admit I never watched his show, listened to one of his speeches, or followed him online. My only exposure was the “change my mind” meme and the occasional short clip of a Q&A with a student. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have recognized him in a crowd. It was only this week that I learned Turning Point was his production company.

Still, I’ve been thinking about this event a lot. As I’ve learned more about his life, his faith in Christ, and his relationship with his wife, the weight of it has grown heavier. I feel disappointment. Disappointment in the behavior of the young shooter, disappointment in the loss of Charlie’s voice, and disappointment in the irreverent hostility of so many who clearly do not understand what he actually said or what this actually means.

Yet disappointment is not the strongest feeling. At first, I wondered if I was sad or even depressed. But watching how some gladly smear a lifetime of faithfulness for a moment of political gain, I realized it is not depression. It is exhaustion. Exhaustion from constantly pushing back, holding back, and keeping in the pressure not to react in some terrible way. Exhaustion from refusing to let go of integrity, even when everything around seems to encourage cynicism or cruelty.

I suspect many of my friends who say they feel depressed over recent events are really feeling the same thing: exhaustion. The broken part of us looks for a chance to rise up in moments like this, to take advantage of our weakness.

Well. It will not be today.

Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist, described this as ego depletion, the idea that self-control draws from a limited pool of mental resources. Using willpower in one area temporarily reduces our capacity in others. He compared willpower to a muscle: it can be fatigued when overused, but it can also be strengthened through practice.

Perhaps today is a kind of spiritual leg day at the gym.

I believe this puts a fine point on the reason God so frequently brings up the idea of rest. Rest is not just idleness but a spiritual discipline that renews strength, clears perspective, and recharges the soul. Without it, exhaustion makes us vulnerable to despair and rash reaction. With it, we remember who we are, whose we are, and that the battle is not ours to win in our own strength.

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I have always felt encouragement when I consider that Jesus Christ was the man who literally had the weight of not only the entire world on his shoulders, but the weight of the entire world through all of time. How he could refer to the weight he had to bear as light and easy. In that moment he let slip not just how important he is, not just how serious he is, but how unimaginably powerful he is.

Why someone like that, the King of the universe, would condescend and take a knee just so he could look someone like me, his mortal enemy, in the eye and express his tireless love still strikes me. Why he would willingly proceed to the cross for my sake. Why he would willingly suffer on the cross for my sake. Perhaps I will never fully understand. But at the least, I will believe him.

Romans 12:14-21 "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

We often comment that Jesus’ economy is an upside-down economy. What we see in this world almost always works the opposite and stands in opposition to what Jesus actually teaches. But if he is anything, he is consistent. From Genesis to Revelation, God constantly expresses his love for us in the context of just how much he wants to handle our difficult moments.

God does not want his children chasing vengeance or waving the banner of bitterness. Though we were designed for great things, it is not just that we cannot carry this weight, it is that we were never supposed to carry it. He is the one offering us rest; he is not asking for rest from us. Some of the most difficult moments of obedience are the ones where we thoughtfully and intentionally do nothing at all. It is a new banner to fly, one that declares we trust and obey, that he will do what he says he will do. There is no other way.

Surrender on the battlefield is different than this kind of surrender. Our shallow, vapid, and almost silly version of justice cannot deliver; it is enthroned with failure and so often becomes the recipe for the deepest injustice. We do not even mean well, we simply want to be right. But when we surrender to God’s justice and abandon our own nonsense, we are surrendering to what may be the finest of all things, the most emblazoned jewel in the crown of the King.

What amazes me is how we are told to do this. The fundamental blueprint for the Christian life is simple: read the Bible, obey the Bible, and share the Bible. Yet as we read, the Scriptures practically shout another command that runs right alongside those three. That command is prayer.

Philippians 4:6-7 "6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I grew up in a home where prayer was more formal than familiar, but I have since learned it can be both without conflict. As I have grown older, I have come to see that many of the so-called paradoxes of the faith only appear that way because of my own narrow, single-minded perspective. I once fought hard to reduce competing and cacophonous ideas down to one, thinking simplicity meant truth. But the longer I walk with God, the more I see that true theological harmony comes when I accept the mystery and allow multiple notes to fill the room. 

Paradoxes reveal the glory of God and our own. The sparks of iron sharpening iron are not meant to push me to erase complexity simply because it confounds me, but to help me embrace the joy of knowing that God will never fit into a neat little box. 1 Corinthians 2:7 "7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began."

Oh Lord my God
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds
Thy hands have made
I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed

Prayer is speaking to God in a way that not only he hears, but we hear too. It is the spiritual communication that forms the foundation of our relationship with him. Just as Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb, even though he knew he would raise him in moments, God wants to hear from us even though he already knows our every thought and counts every hair on our heads.

Prayer also humbles us mentally, verbally, and physically, drawing us into a posture that moves us toward repentance. On the one hand, our personal engagement with him as we lean in and listen reminds us of his everlasting and inexplicable love for us. We experience his goodness. And as Romans 2:4 reminds us, God’s kindness leads us to repentance. And what is repentance other than the first step in reconciliation, the finest of all the good things we can ever experience in this short life.

Then again, think of it like baptism; it is a public commitment to Christ, just as a wedding is a public commitment to a spouse. In the same way, prayer reminds us and renews our commitment to put our full weight on God. Even the vaporous whisper under our breath in the dark, shrouded in tears, is a spoken declaration of our true circumstance, our actual need, and our reliance on Jesus to ransom and rescue us from this dark world of our own making.

Sometimes we don't know what to say and we use liturgies or prayer formulas to get us through the night. Sometimes we don't know what to say and the Spirit of God steps in and speak son our behalf. All of this reminds me of a favorite song, Better than a Hallelujah. It's haunting chorus sings: 

We pour out our miseries

God just hears a melody

Beautiful, the mess we are

The honest cries of breaking hearts

Are better than a Hallelujah. Sometimes.

Looking back, regrets, I’ve had a few. And if I am honest, far too many to mention. I have never subscribed to the sad notion that we should live with “no regrets.” Even God had regrets. The Lord told Samuel he regretted making Saul king, and in Genesis, just before the flood, he regretted making human beings on the earth. Where God regrets the choices we made, my regrets are the choices I made.

For me, though, a big one is the lack of faith I showed when I didn’t turn to prayer. Here’s what I mean: if I truly believed, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, I ran into this broken world with nothing but my bare hands, and I wasn’t ready. The truth is, I could never be ready to do it all on my own. The showcase of all my regrets is that I haven't believed enough in God’s faithfulness to make prayer an unceasing part of my life.

And so, we circle back to the beginning. How tired am I of trying to do it all on my own? With the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I feel pulled into the whiles of my own imagination, inventing remedies born out of logic and reason as if they could fix what is broken. But how foolish I have been, and how deeply exhausted it has made me.

What I need, what we all need, is not more striving but more surrender. Not more clever answers, but more prayer. Not more weight on my shoulders, but more trust in the one who already carried it all to the cross. If there is anything this moment teaches me, it is that my exhaustion is not meant to push me on over that cliff, but to pull me back to King Jesus. 

What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer

Oh what peace we often forfeit
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

The English Word: Secretary

With all the recent headlines about government secretaries, I found myself wondering how secret and secretary are related. As it turns out, they are very closely connected.

Both words trace back to the Latin root secretum, meaning something set apart, hidden, or private.

Originally, a secretary was not simply someone who typed letters or kept calendars. A secretary was a trusted person who managed confidential matters, literally someone entrusted with secrets. In Medieval Latin, the term secretarius referred to an official handling private affairs for a ruler or noble. By both title and function, secretaries were keepers of secrets.

Over time, the word shifted. Today, we no longer use secretary as a professional title in most contexts, except in government. In business, secretary has been replaced with roles like assistant or executive administrator. This kind of linguistic recategorization can be frustrating for English learners, much like when “stewardess” gave way to “flight attendant.”

Still, to be the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense carries no diminishment. The title signals authority and responsibility, not clerical support. Likewise, the UK’s Minister of Foreign Affairs is not assumed to be a religious figure. Both words are shaped by history and context.

Minister itself comes from the Latin minus, meaning lesser or subordinate. A minister, whether in government or religion, is one who serves a higher purpose, whether that is the state, the public, or God.

And what about secrete? It also comes from the same Latin root, with the sense of “to separate.” The word took on a biological meaning and has been stuck there ever since. It may be an etymological cousin, but one that lives in a very different neighborhood.

About $4.3 Trillion in New Investments?

 Last week I mentioned that major economic growth engines are being spun up in the U.S. with new investments on a massive scale. Here is a list of the biggest announcements so far. Together they add up to about $4.3 trillion in new investment beginning in 2025. The list keeps growing, but even now it gives a clear sense of the scale.

If you are trying to decide whether the next several years will lean bearish or bullish, this might help.

United Arab Emirates: $1.4 trillion, a 10-year investment framework targeting U.S. sectors such as AI infrastructure, semiconductors, energy, and manufacturing.

Hyundai Motor Group: $20 billion, including a $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana, designed to localize production and reduce the impact of future tariffs on foreign-made metals.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC): $100 billion to establish three new advanced semiconductor plants, greatly expanding domestic chip manufacturing capacity.

Saudi Arabia: $600 billion over four years, pledged by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to President Donald Trump, aimed at strengthening economic ties and diversifying Saudi investments.

Apple Inc.: More than $500 billion over the next four years to expand U.S. manufacturing and research, including a new AI server facility in Texas.

Eli Lilly and Company: $27 billion in additional investment to increase domestic drug production, bringing its total U.S. manufacturing commitments since 2020 to more than $50 billion.

GE Aerospace: Nearly $1 billion to reinforce U.S. manufacturing and supply chains, along with hiring 5,000 American workers.

Stellantis: $5 billion into its U.S. manufacturing network to expand vehicle production.

India: Companies such as ReNew are expanding exports to the U.S. to help fill the gap created by China’s exclusion from the U.S. solar market.

Japan: $1 trillion pledged to U.S. industries, including defense and AI, in a move to reinforce U.S. military partnerships in the region.

Australia: $798 million payment to the U.S. under the AUKUS deal, strengthening the defense industrial partnership and supporting nuclear-powered submarines.

Nippon Steel Corporation: $14.9 billion proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel, aimed at bolstering American steel production.

OpenAI: $500 billion Stargate project in partnership with SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX to build U.S. AI infrastructure by 2029. SoftBank is also investing up to $25 billion in a Japan-focused joint venture.

Microsoft: $110.3 billion to build an AI hub and data center campus in Wisconsin, along with partnerships with BlackRock, Nvidia, and MGX to expand U.S. AI infrastructure.

Maersk Line: $2 billion redirected to expand East Coast port capacity, spurred by lower shipping costs and fewer delays compared to Panama Canal routes.

Boeing: $4 billion in new assembly and logistics facilities, capitalizing on rerouted shipping that avoids Panama Canal bottlenecks.

Delta Air Lines: $1.2 billion fleet upgrade to more fuel-efficient aircraft, supported by stabilized U.S. supply chains and increased air cargo activity.

Hanwha Aerospace (South Korea): $2.5 billion share sale to fund international expansion, including new U.S. manufacturing bases, to meet rising defense demand.

These announcements also ride on short-term policy factors. Reduced regulations and a lighter corporate tax environment have combined with global instability to redirect capital into the U.S. The bet is that American manufacturing and innovation will accelerate.

The next few years could see job growth, stronger infrastructure, and a new wave of technological leadership.

With plenty of caveats, of course.

The Battlefield of Language

I am writing this with my teeth clenched, my eyes squinted, and my fingers striking the keys harder than they should. I know only the choir will hear this sermon, yet I write it anyway. If nothing else, it is a vent.

The English language today has been weaponized. Ordinary words have become dog whistles, ideological tests, or verbal traps that make honest conversation nearly impossible. In trying to control the narrative, we have stripped words of their utility.

Talking about discrimination is risky. Words like racism, sexism, colorism, sizeism, ageism, ableism, marginalized, disadvantaged, and oppression now signal ideology more than reality. Terms like underrepresented, bias, orientation, identity, race, gender, intersectionality, POC, descent, and minority shift meaning depending on the speaker. Discourse becomes a minefield.

Other words demand ideological conformity. Microaggressions, allyship, diversity, inclusion, equity, systemic, white supremacy, colonialism, decolonization, and land acknowledgment are wielded as litmus tests. Even merit, fair play, and quota are reinterpreted as either oppressive tools or necessary correctives.

Critiques of social structures such as heteronormativity, cisnormativity, patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism serve to sort people into categories of enlightened or irredeemable. Activist language like neurodiversity, environmental justice, restorative justice, trigger warning, safe space, cultural appropriation, and performative activism mark tribal boundaries more than they solve problems.

The same is true in psychology and gender. Gaslighting, implicit bias, intersectional feminism, non-binary, genderqueer, misogyny, misogynoir, anti-racism, critical race theory, whiteness, Latinx, BIPOC, QTPOC, deadnaming, misgendering, and gender dysphoria have been weaponized to demand allegiance. Disagreement is treated as bigotry.

Activism itself is saturated with loaded terms. Body positivity, slacktivism, virtue signaling, call-out culture, cancel culture, emotional labor, food justice, health equity, indigenous rights—all of these words are used as shields or swords, depending on who wields them. Even resistance and protest, once celebrated as pillars of democracy, now mean entirely different things depending on who is marching and why.

Health and medicine are not exempt. Political labels such as democracy, fascism, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and insurrection are deployed to create fear, not dialogue. Nations themselves have become triggers: Russia, Ukraine, Israel, China, even Canada. Mention Trump, Biden, Putin, Congress, or Elon Musk, and discussion collapses. The figure becomes either idol or villain, with nothing in between.

Even moral language has been tainted. Virtue, tradition, submission, family, homemaking, happiness, good and evil, right and wrong were once pillars of meaning but are now recast as political signals.

So how do we move toward understanding and compromise when the vocabulary itself is a battlefield? Words once meant for clarity and connection are now weapons. The wrong word at the wrong moment is no longer a slip; it is a declaration.

We need to start rejecting the machinery of triggers, not as private sensitivities but as deliberate schemes to fracture society. If we must be intolerant of anything, let it be the forces that back us into corners where division and hostility are the only possible outcomes.

Reject justice that requires a victim. Reject hatred and disparagement as solutions.

If our words cannot heal, they will continue to wound. And if we allow language to remain a battlefield, we will keep losing, not to our enemies, but to ourselves.

AI Will Not Replace Human Engineers

 AI will not replace human engineers unless it can do a better job than they can. Simply being faster is not enough, because engineering is not just about producing code. It is about solving problems, anticipating failure, designing for scale, and making trade-offs that affect real people and businesses.

In expansive systems, human engineers bring something AI cannot replicate: the ability to anticipate problems before they occur. That ability is not magic. It comes from years of experience across many contexts, seeing where things have broken in the past, and recognizing subtle signals of risk. A human can zoom out to see the full system and zoom in to identify a single faulty assumption. That combination of depth and breadth is what turns programming into engineering.

From my own experience using AI as a coding partner, I have found it helpful for small, isolated tasks. It can produce snippets, boilerplate, or quick scaffolding. But as models grow larger and supposedly more advanced, their practical coding skills do not show the same trajectory. It feels like we have hit a plateau.

Too often, I find myself correcting the model. I end up teaching it about syntax, approach, or even the very concepts it is meant to apply. Without my intervention, the task would stall. In other words, if I were not in the loop, the work would not get done. The AI is only useful because I am present to steer, guide, and validate.

This is why the casual claim that “AI will replace engineers, it’s just a matter of time” falls flat. Such statements reduce engineering to code generation, as if software were nothing more than lines of syntax strung together. They also reveal that the speaker probably is not using AI to write real, production-quality code. Anyone working with it daily sees both its promise and its limits.

Engineering is not simply about writing correct code. It is about weighing competing requirements, designing for maintainability, balancing performance with cost, and coordinating teams that bring a project to life. It is about debugging ambiguous failures and making judgment calls where no amount of pattern matching can substitute for lived experience.

AI will not replace human engineers unless it can perform across this full spectrum. That means more than passing coding tests or solving toy problems. It means the ability to reason through systems, handle ambiguity, and carry responsibility for outcomes. Until AI can do that better than humans, engineers will remain not only relevant but indispensable.

TIL: Pareidolia vs Apophenia

Pareidolia and apophenia are two big words that both describe our brain’s habit of seeing patterns where none exist. They sound alike, and they overlap, but they are not the same.

Pareidolia is sensory. It is when you see or hear something familiar in random noise. A face in the clouds. A figure in tree bark. A voice hidden in static. Our brains are wired to recognize shapes, especially faces, so they over-apply that skill even when there is nothing there.

Apophenia is broader. It is when we connect unrelated dots and decide they form a picture. A lucky shirt “causing” a team to win. A string of coincidences that feel like fate. Stock market moves treated like signs of destiny. It is not just about what we see or hear, but how we interpret events and weave them into a story.

In short: pareidolia is faces in clouds. Apophenia is meaning in chance. One is about perception, the other about interpretation. Both remind us that our minds are pattern-making machines, sometimes too eager for their own good.