Dan Currell

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

Ugh! Perfect Daughter has to take the SAT. (Why? Let's discuss.)

https://t.co/MQ4qDzTCkF

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

Sunday Charticle: What Do Students Major In? https://t.co/lVukPg6Hah

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

Ten Things We Get Wrong About College #10: “Getting into college is harder than ever!” https://t.co/e1xzZoEK7S

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

https://t.co/93BlGwTx9p

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

I'm launching The College Question because almost everything we're told about college is wrong . I want to fix that, in plain English, with data. First up: ten things we get wrong, one a day, starting tomorrow.
Link below.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@CheyCab @Chey - a mutual friend (Kirstin) said I should say Hi - we live in St Paul. Great to get your perspective on this - driving people to the airport would’ve been a much more efficient way for me to run the interviews on this project!

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@StevenJDuffield Investigate Anne Murray!

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@AjitPai Love it. Grades were so real.

Preparation of Sermon - A. Something to be learned there, too.

Term III - Public Speaking - C. He got worse! Then I think it’s fair to say that he got better!

[New York Times Opinion @nytopinion]

“The 2023-2024 admissions season was not just an incremental increase in the frantic posturing and high-pressure guesswork that make this annual ritual seem like academic Hunger Games. This year was different,” Daniel Currell writes.

Read: https://t.co/2YvWXx1P5h

[Society for the Rule of Law @chkbal]

The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s rule attempting to cancel student debt using the national emergency provisions of the HEROES Act. The Administration had a Plan B. via @thedispatch @dancurrell

https://t.co/rhO0xTfIuE

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@StevenJDuffield Declining biblical literacy. Steven has the best speech in the Bible - so good they immediately stoned him! - but he didn’t get a book named after him. John got a few.

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

Check out my latest article: The Invisible American Founding https://t.co/fY6LIPKtsA via @LinkedIn

[The National Security Institute @MasonNatSec]

"Putting export controls on gallium and germanium will only highlight China’s weakness in the semiconductor supply chain, since new suppliers are expected to quickly pop up outside China."

NSI Fellow @dancurrell in The SCIF's PRCorner.

#China #CriticalMinerals #SupplyChain

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@StevenJDuffield I have arrived at this tweet very late. It seems applicable.

[The National Security Institute @MasonNatSec]

Meet the Authors of PRCorner!

Are you concerned about China's ever-growing reach across the globe?

NSI Senior Fellow @AndyKeiser and NSI Fellow @dancurrell will update you on the PRC's latest moves.

Read the first piece by @dancurrell here: https://t.co/tL8c0gSia1

[The National Security Institute @MasonNatSec]

*SCIF ANNOUNCEMENT*

Are you concerned about China's ever-growing reach across the globe?

The SCIF has launched PRCorner, a new column dedicated to tracking the PRC and its repressive efforts abroad!

Read the first piece by NSI Fellow @dancurrell here: https://t.co/tL8c0gSia1

[Dave @harvilicz]

Must read “Montana is writing the playbook on how to deal with China” by @dancurrell https://t.co/Vdd3NKPAPR

[The National Security Institute @MasonNatSec]

"For the CCP, Western universities are diamond mines of intellectual property and, at the same time, convenient venues for suppressing criticism of Beijing."

NSI Fellow @dancurrell in @Newsweek.

https://t.co/XFDNu9PjG6

[Dan Currell @dancurrell]

@NathanLeamerDC @StevenJDuffield This firm name is fine enough to wake me from my Twitter slumber. Is there a preference between 1/8” and 3/32” chains? Are brakes allowed? In any event, you are sure to be light, efficient, and fast. Just watch your fingers around the chainring!