Patrick MarkusB
an hour ago
It is perfectly reasonable to be a non‑believer, (Judge not lest ye be judged) but making “hating religion” a core identity is usually foolish because it treats a vast, varied human phenomenon as one undifferentiated evil and blinds you to understanding why billions of people find meaning, solidarity, and ethical motivation there. It also risks turning into the same dogmatic, us‑versus‑them mindset you rightly criticize in religious and political institutions, just with different symbols and slogans.

But moving on. There are, however, entirely non‑biblical reasons to be skeptical of plural marriage, even in secular, consensual forms, and those reasons stand regardless of anyone’s view of God or scripture. A growing body of comparative research suggests that women in polygamous unions experience significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, and marital distress than women in monogamous marriages, and that children in such families show more emotional and behavioral problems on average, which points to structural stress in the arrangement itself rather than just “a few bad actors.”

At a structural level, most real‑world polygyny (one man, multiple wives) tends to entrench inequality rather than partnership. Wives usually marry younger, have less bargaining power, and are more exposed to jealousy, competition, and intra‑household conflict, which correlates with higher rates of abuse and lower life satisfaction. Critics working from secular moral and political theory argue that this turns spouses—especially women—into more replaceable, rank‑ordered positions, undermining the ideal of two partners as roughly equal and mutually irreplaceable.

Plural marriage also has population‑level effects that are hard to ignore if one cares about social stability. When high‑status men take multiple wives, lower‑status men are left single in larger numbers, and cross‑cultural work links large pools of “surplus men” with higher crime, violence, and political volatility. By spreading partnership opportunities more evenly, monogamy functions as a quiet stabilizer, something secular legal and economic arguments take seriously when considering what kinds of family forms the state should formally endorse.

Finally, the legal and administrative complications of recognizing plural marriage are enormous in modern states whose institutions assume a single spouse as default: one legal next‑of‑kin, one default heir, one primary beneficiary, one co‑parent for custody presumptions. With multiple spouses, everything from medical decision‑making to inheritance, pensions, immigration, and tax filing becomes a tangle: who has priority in an emergency, how survivor benefits are divided, which consents are needed to add a new spouse, and how exit and custody work if things go bad. Because real‑world polygamous systems also show recurring patterns of coercion, social pressure, and difficulty exiting, many secular legal theorists conclude that a liberal state can tolerate private multi‑partner relationships while still having good, non‑religious reasons not to recognize plural marriage as a legal status.

Political-Paige
2 hours ago
I'll jump in as the non-Christian in the room, having been raised Buddhist. Let's divorce (no pun intended) the theology from the legality here.

Frankly? It's none of the business of any government to define marriage. Marriage licenses were once handled by the churches marrying the couples, but they were usurped by state governments for the nefarious purpose of preventing miscegenation... interracial marriages. There were other excuses like blood tests for syphilis. Both rationales are long since abandoned.

There's nothing in the Constitution that lets governments decide whether you can marry, or whom. That's a religious and personal choice. We don't have to like it, but then again, we also don't have to like our in laws. It's not our choice, not our lives, not our circus and not our monkeys.

The only interest government could possibly have in that decision -- which should be between individuals and their church -- is in passing regulations that define tax and divorce rules in marriage and its dissolution. Protect those who lack the ability to consent, as we do in any situation. Then get out of it.

We have laws based on Judeo-Christian ethics, but there's a line between that moral base and codifying this or that rule from the Old Testament.

Patrick Political-Paige
33 minutes ago
It is understandable to want the state as far away as possible from intimate choices, but there are clear, non‑theological reasons why modern states both define and encourage marriage as a civil institution. That concern is not (at its best) about policing virtue; it is about managing predictable problems in property, care, and vulnerability that arise when adults form long‑term unions and have children.

First, children create obligations that someone must legally carry, and the state cannot ignore that. A liberal state does not care whether two people are in love or blessed by a church; it does care that any child has financially responsible adults, clear decision‑makers for medical and educational choices, and a default framework if those adults separate or die. Marriage as a legal status is basically a pre‑packaged set of rules: if you two take on a shared life, then you are presumptively each responsible for the children you bring into it, for their support, and for each other’s basic support. Without such a default scheme, every breakup or death becomes a bespoke legal nightmare, which is precisely when children are least able to protect themselves.

Second, long‑term coupledom generates property, debts, and dependencies that private agreements cannot reliably handle on their own. Most couples do not and cannot afford to draft detailed contracts about every asset, liability, medical contingency, and inheritance scenario. A civil marriage statute gives third parties—hospitals, courts, insurers, employers, pension administrators—a simple, publicly knowable answer to questions like: who can consent to surgery; who gets survivor benefits; who inherits without a will; who is liable for household debts. Without a state‑defined status, those questions would have to be litigated or contracted every time, which would be vastly more intrusive and expensive than a standardized legal framework.

Third, the state has an interest in reducing free‑riding and externalized costs. If two adults share a household and one becomes disabled, society prefers that the other adult has a clear, enforceable duty of support before the costs are shifted to public welfare. If someone dies, it is better that there is a predictable heir to manage assets and obligations than that the estate sits in limbo or the state must step in as guardian of last resort. Marriage law assigns these duties by default, thereby lowering the administrative and financial burden on everyone else.

Fourth, state involvement in defining civil marriage is precisely what makes equal treatment enforceable. If marriage were purely private or ecclesiastical, then access to the associated protections—hospital visitation, inheritance, tax treatment, immigration sponsorship—would depend entirely on private gatekeepers who are not bound by constitutional norms of equality. By defining a civil status that is independent of any church and open (in principle) on neutral terms, the state both creates and can police a sphere where citizens must be treated alike, regardless of religion or lack of it.

Finally, recognizing a legitimate civil interest in marriage does not mean sacralizing any particular religious ethic or banning all alternative arrangements. Adults remain free to structure their intimate lives as they see fit; the question is which arrangements the state will treat as the default template for allocating rights and duties when things go wrong. There, it is neither arbitrary nor theocratic to say: stable, two‑adult unions that take on mutual responsibility and child‑rearing are given a special legal form, because they reliably solve problems the state would otherwise have to solve awkwardly and expensively. In that sense, defining and encouraging civil marriage is less about virtue policing than about risk management and the orderly protection of children, dependents, and property across generations.

For decades, marriage debates centered on who could marry. The next debate centers on what marriage is.

“Whether people like it or not, marriage is going to be reexamined,” Tidwell told Holloway.

“This is happening,” Kowalski said. “The question is who frames it.”

Anderson emphasized institutional stability. “The relationship the state cares about is the one that makes new citizens,” he said. //

If marriage law continues shifting toward individual autonomy and equal protection, plural marriage challenges will follow — whether from TikTok polycules, biblical polygynists, or both.

If the state retreats from marriage regulation, the question becomes which institutions — churches, communities, or new cultural movements — will fill the vacuum.

Either way, the next marriage battle isn’t coming.

It may be in its earliest stages — but it’s here. //

Patrick
3 hours ago edited
Let me start off by saying that a minister who cherry‑picks a few Old Testament narratives to justify taking multiple wives while ignoring Christ’s clear teaching that marriage is one man and one woman in “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4–6) is not being biblical, he is being self‑serving. By discarding passages that call leaders to be “the husband of one wife” and commanding believers to submit to lawful civil authority (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6; Romans 13:1–2), he twists Scripture to bless what remains both sinful and illegal, turning the gospel into a cover for his own appetites rather than a call to holiness and obedience.

Further, Marriage, in Christian ethics and in natural law, is not infinitely elastic; it has a God‑given form: one man and one woman, covenanted for life. Any other “configuration” – whether same‑sex unions, polyamory, or so‑called “biblical polygyny” – steps outside that form and is both morally disordered and, in our system, rightly unlawful.

Genesis presents the pattern not as one option among many, but as the creational norm: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Jesus does not broaden that; He doubles down on it. When asked about marriage, He goes back to Eden: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female… and the two shall become one flesh… What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
One man. One woman. “The two… one flesh” – not three, not a rotating cast, not a harem. Paul applies the same logic pastorally: “Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” The grammar is as tight as the ethics: each man, his own wife (singular); each woman, her own husband (singular).

Polygamy, in Scripture, is recorded, regulated, and relentlessly shown to be spiritually and socially destructive. Lamech is the first polygamist and is paired with violence and arrogance. Abraham’s union with Hagar produces jealousy and division rather than a new sacrament. Jacob’s household is a running case study in misery, rivalry, and pain. Solomon’s multiplied wives turn his heart away from the Lord. When God lays down rules for kings, He explicitly forbids “multiplying wives” lest their hearts be led astray.

To rip a handful of descriptive Old Testament episodes out of that context and sell them as a prescriptive model for Christians is not “rediscovering biblical marriage”; it is the very thing Scripture warns about when it speaks of people who “twist” the writings to their own destruction. Jesus calls such religious manipulators a “brood of vipers,” outwardly pious but inwardly predatory. Paul warns of “fierce wolves” who will arise “from among your own selves” to draw disciples after themselves, and of those who “by smooth talk and flattery” deceive the hearts of the naïve. A minister who uses the pulpit to sacralize his desire for multiple sexual partners is not bravely reforming the church; he is dressing lust up in Bible verses and leading the flock into a ditch.
Nor can “biblical polygyny” be rescued by pretending that the state has no say. Christian marriage has always had a public, legal face as well as a private, covenantal heart. Paul commands, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God… Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed.” Peter echoes him: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution… for this is the will of God.” When the civil law defines marriage as the union of two spouses and criminalizes bigamy and polygamy, the default Christian posture is obedience unless the state orders us to sin. Refusing lawful marriage regulations, or constructing shadow “marriages” to skirt bigamy statutes, is not a higher spirituality; it is rebellion dressed in religious rhetoric.
The GOP’s 19th‑century opposition to both slavery and Mormon polygamy was not accidental; both practices treated human beings – especially women – as property to be owned, traded, or accumulated, and the party’s founding moral vision rightly saw that as incompatible with ordered liberty and Christian‑inflected republicanism.

Once the definition of marriage is detached from male–female complementarity and the “two in one flesh” structure, the slide into any consenting configuration is not a scare tactic; it is a matter of simple logic, as even critics of polygamy admit. That is precisely why Christians cannot affirm same‑sex “marriage,” polyamorous “domestic partnerships,” or “plural covenants” of any kind: they all reject the creational givens Christ Himself ratified. The call in this moment is not to improvise new sexual arrangements in the name of strategy or demographics, but to hold the line where Scripture and sound law already drew it: one man, one woman, one flesh, under God and under just civil authority. Anything else is, in the end, a counterfeit sacrament – and faithful Christians are obligated to say so.

18" diameter, 2 tiers/24", 4 tiers/48" or 5 tiers/60" high models

Just insert a disk and the TV starts playing three-year-old’s favorite shows. //

The one thing Olesen said he'd do differently, were he to redesign the entire project, would be to eliminate the Chromecast due to excessive latency and connect a computer directly to the TV. That, and he wishes he would have programmed a different melody onto each disk that would play from the drive itself when a disk was inserted, which he told us "should be totally doable" if he ever gets around to it.

If you, too, long for the era when a satisfying ca-chunk preceded file transfers and want to find something useful to do with that old floppy disk drive rotting away in that box of old computer stuff, Olesen's entire codebase and other relevant project files are available on GitHub. ®
https://github.com/mchro/FloppyDiskCast

Download an entire website with wget, along with assets.

# One liner
wget --recursive --page-requisites --adjust-extension --span-hosts --convert-links --restrict-file-names=windows --domains yoursite.com --no-parent yoursite.com

# Explained
wget \
     --recursive \ # Download the whole site.
     --page-requisites \ # Get all assets/elements (CSS/JS/images).
     --adjust-extension \ # Save files with .html on the end.
     --span-hosts \ # Include necessary assets from offsite as well.
     --convert-links \ # Update links to still work in the static version.
     --restrict-file-names=windows \ # Modify filenames to work in Windows as well.
     --domains yoursite.com \ # Do not follow links outside this domain.
     --no-parent \ # Don't follow links outside the directory you pass in.
         yoursite.com/whatever/path # The URL to download

Domains that do not send emails can still be used in email spoofing or phishing attacks, but there are specific types of DNS text (TXT) records that can be used to stifle attackers. Each of these records sets rules for how unauthorized emails should be treated by mail servers, making it harder for attackers to exploit these domains.

Acacia Tree Silhouette Favicon

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low‐certainty evidence). //

Pooled data showed that hand hygiene may be beneficial with an 11% relative reduction of respiratory illness (RR 0.89, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.94; low‐certainty evidence), but with high heterogeneity. In absolute terms this benefit would result in a reduction from 200 events per 1000 people to 178 per 1000 people (95% CI 166 to 188). Few trials measured and reported harms (very low‐certainty evidence). //

The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; 5 trials, 8407 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Restricting pooling to healthcare workers made no difference to the overall findings. Harms were poorly measured and reported, but discomfort wearing medical/surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators was mentioned in several studies (very low‐certainty evidence).

But before the sea-going phase of the exercise commenced on January 13, the South African government requested that the Iranians withdraw their active participation from the exercise and become observers instead, a request to which the Iranian acceded.

The South African move was prompted by the realization at this late stage, that diplomatically it did not look good to be aligned with an Iranian regime which by some estimates has now killed 12,000 of its own citizens in anti-government riots. The South Africans also realized that its highly favorable trade position under the African Growth and Opportunity Act was in jeopardy, with the Act is coming before the U.S. House of Representatives this week for its scheduled three-year renewal.

These dangers were already apparent back in September, when The Maritime Executive noted that South African Chief of Staff General Rudzani Maphwanya had visited Tehran to issue an invitation to the exercise, a visit not apparently approved beforehand by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. President Ramaphosa objected to the visit, but did not fire the General for his freelancing in the political arena. Political opponents of the President said at the time that his response was weak, exceedingly so as events have turned out.

IntoDNS checks the health and configuration and provides DNS report and mail servers report.

And provides suggestions to fix and improve them, with references to protocols’ official documentation.

A couple of years ago, we learned that the Euro New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) organization, which crash tests cars for European consumers, decided that from 2026, it would start deducting points for basic controls that weren’t separate, physical controls that the driver can easily operate without taking their eyes off the road. And now ANCAP, which provides similar crash testing for Australia and New Zealand, has done the same. //

“From 2026, we’re asking car makers to either offer physical buttons for important driver controls like the horn, indicators, hazard lights, windscreen wipers and headlights, or dedicate a fixed portion of the cabin display screen to these primary driving functions,” it wrote in its guidance of what’s changed for 2026. Similarly, Europe is requiring turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features like the EU’s eCall function.

After repeatedly denying for weeks that his force used AI tools, the chief constable of the West Midlands police has finally admitted that a hugely controversial decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from the UK did involve hallucinated information from Microsoft Copilot. //

Making it worse was the fact that the West Midlands Police narrative rapidly fell apart. According to the BBC, police claimed that the Amsterdam football match featured “500-600 Maccabi fans [who] had targeted Muslim communities the night before the Amsterdam fixture, saying there had been ‘serious assaults including throwing random members of the public’ into a river. They also claimed that 5,000 officers were needed to deal with the unrest in Amsterdam, after previously saying that the figure was 1,200.”

Amsterdam police made clear that the West Midlands account of bad Maccabi fan behavior was highly exaggerated, and the BBC recently obtained a letter from the Dutch inspector general confirming that the claims were inaccurate.

But it was one flat-out error—a small one, really—that has made the West Midlands Police recommendation look particularly shoddy. In a list of recent games with Maccabi Tel Aviv fans present, the police included a match between West Ham (UK) and Maccabi Tel Aviv. The only problem? No such match occurred.

Introducing Confer, an end-to-end AI assistant that just works.

Moxie Marlinspike—the pseudonym of an engineer who set a new standard for private messaging with the creation of the Signal Messenger—is now aiming to revolutionize AI chatbots in a similar way.

His latest brainchild is Confer, an open source AI assistant that provides strong assurances that user data is unreadable to the platform operator, hackers, law enforcement, or any other party other than account holders. The service—including its large language models and back-end components—runs entirely on open source software that users can cryptographically verify is in place.

Data and conversations originating from users and the resulting responses from the LLMs are encrypted in a trusted execution environment (TEE) that prevents even server administrators from peeking at or tampering with them. Conversations are stored by Confer in the same encrypted form, which uses a key that remains securely on users’ devices. //

All major platforms are required to turn over user data to law enforcement or private parties in a lawsuit when either provides a valid subpoena. Even when users opt out of having their data stored long term, parties to a lawsuit can compel the platform to store it, as the world learned last May when a court ordered OpenAI to preserve all ChatGPT users’ logs—including deleted chats and sensitive chats logged through its API business offering. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has said such rulings mean even psychotherapy sessions on the platform may not stay private. Another carve out to opting out: AI platforms like Google Gemini may have humans read chats.

There are two major security problems with these photo frames and unofficial Android TV boxes. The first is that a considerable percentage of them come with malware pre-installed, or else require the user to download an unofficial Android App Store and malware in order to use the device for its stated purpose (video content piracy). The most typical of these uninvited guests are small programs that turn the device into a residential proxy node that is resold to others.

The second big security nightmare with these photo frames and unsanctioned Android TV boxes is that they rely on a handful of Internet-connected microcomputer boards that have no discernible security or authentication requirements built-in. In other words, if you are on the same network as one or more of these devices, you can likely compromise them simultaneously by issuing a single command across the network. //

Many wireless routers these days make it relatively easy to deploy a “Guest” wireless network on-the-fly. Doing so allows your guests to browse the Internet just fine but it blocks their device from being able to talk to other devices on the local network — such as shared folders, printers and drives. If someone — a friend, family member, or contractor — requests access to your network, give them the guest Wi-Fi network credentials if you have that option. //

It is somewhat remarkable that we haven’t yet seen the entertainment industry applying more visible pressure on the major e-commerce vendors to stop peddling this insecure and actively malicious hardware that is largely made and marketed for video piracy. These TV boxes are a public nuisance for bundling malicious software while having no apparent security or authentication built-in, and these two qualities make them an attractive nuisance for cybercriminals.

As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm, and the following week. I remember trying in vain to find out info about the storm damage and road closures—watching loaders spin and spin on blank pages until they timed out trying to load. Once in a while, pages would finally load or partially load, and I could actually click a second or third link. We had a tiny bit of service but not much. At one point we drove down our main street to find service; eventually finding cars congregating in a closed fast-food parking lot, where there were a few bars of service!

When I was able to load some government and emergency sites, problems with loading speed and website content became very apparent. We tried to find out the situation with the highways on the government site that tracks road closures. I wasn’t able to view the big slow loading interactive map and got a pop-up with an API failure message. I wish the main closures had been listed more simply, so I could have seen that the highway was completely closed by a landslide. //

During the outages, many people got information from the local radio station’s ongoing broadcasts. The best information I received came from an unlikely place: a simple bulleted list in a daily email newsletter from our local state representative. Every day that newsletter listed food and water, power and gas, shelter locations, road and cell service updates, etc.

I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact.

In having the best information provided in a simple newsletter list, I found myself wishing for faster loading and more direct websites. Especially ones with this sort of info. At that time, even a plain text site with barely any styles or images would have been better.

Looking back, I wish I could shake my 20-something self by the shoulders and sternly say: “You are a financial fool. Your future will be here before you know it. Have you saved for it?” I wish I had practiced the discipline of living on only 70 percent of my income, leaving margin for 10 percent of my money for tithes, 10 percent for routine saving, and 10 percent for the unexpected — which could be good opportunities or bad experiences. But I would also say to my 20-something self: “The God you do not yet know or serve is fully trustworthy. One day soon you will learn that and begin worshiping Him. From that moment on, keep your eyes open for the needs He puts before you, for you will find there is immense joy in giving. The provision you will receive is not just for your consumption; it is for your investment in what carries into eternity.”

This is the story of how Billy Graham—a man used by God to reach millions of people for Jesus Christ—was himself born again. Quotes are taken from his autobiography, Just As I Am.

New nuclear capacity won’t show up until around 2030

Meta is writing more checks for nuclear investment, even though the new capacity tied to those deals is unlikely to come online until around 2030. The company says it will need the new power to run its hyperscale datacenters.

Facebook's parent company says it has inked agreements with three outfits - TerraPower and Oklo are developing new reactor technology or building fresh sites, while Vistra is supporting existing nuclear plants. All three will deliver electricity into the grid rather than straight to Meta's own facilities.

NASA has never before cut short a human spaceflight mission for medical reasons. “It’s the first time we’ve done a controlled medical evacuation from the vehicle, so that is unusual,” Kshatriya said.

The Soviet Union called an early end for an expedition to the Salyut 7 space station in 1985 after the mission’s commander fell ill in orbit.

In a sense, it is surprising that it took this long. Polk said predictive models suggested the ISS would have a medical evacuation about once every three years. It ended up taking 25 years. In that time, NASA has improved astronauts’ abilities to treat aches and pains, minor injuries, and routine illnesses.

Crews in orbit can now self-treat ailments that might have prompted a crew to return to Earth in the past. One astronaut was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot, in 2018 without requiring an early departure from the space station. Another astronaut suffered a pinched nerve in 2021 and remained in orbit for another seven months.

One of the more compelling reasons for the space station’s existence is its ability to act as a testbed for learning how to live and work off the planet. The station has served as a laboratory for studying how spaceflight affects the human body, and as a platform to test life support systems necessary for long-duration voyages to deep space.