The uncomfortable truth:
Your internet provider does not have an incentive to give you the speeds you're paying for.
They have an incentive to:
1. Push you to upgrade to higher tiers
2. Rent you equipment instead of letting you buy it
3. Use your bandwidth for their own products (public hotspots, telemetry, advertising)
4. Make their own speed tests look good while real-world performance degrades
Every default setting on an ISP-issued router is calibrated for the ISP's benefit.
Almost none of them are calibrated for yours.
When the customer asked his neighbor how he knew all this, the answer was simple:
"I work in IT. I see this exact pattern in every customer I help. The slowness isn't an accident. It's the design."
He paused.
"You don't have an internet problem. You have a router problem the company that sold you the internet refuses to fix."
RT this so more people stop paying for the next tier up and start fixing the router that's been throttling them for years.
That's 12 settings. 15 minutes.
Your Android phone just got more private, uses less battery, and feels faster.
None of this required root access. No apps to install. Just settings Google buried.
Source:
https://t.co/uhMojtUK84
My prayer is that we would leave the cruelty of the white man’s religion behind.
Repent and believe the gospel.
The white man’s religion is the sort that crucifies God’s begotten.
But following Jesus will lead you into a resurrected life.
There is life after death. 15/15
This one's legit got everything—Biblical literary analysis; Hebrew linguistics; Mesopotamian human trafficking lexicography. Typical stuff from possibly the most learned living Semiticist.
Google the author and title, you'll find the PDF!
Highly recommended.
@J_ro_77 Some people are saying that Kendrick’s “the revolution WILL be televised. Right time, wrong guy” line was about Trump? If you know that famous line, it’s actually said “the revolution WON’T be televised.” So I wonder why he changed it and said it WILL be. Who is the “wrong guy”?
@gfaitheffort P.P.S. I'm eternally grateful to the immensely awesome @zenahitz and the @CatherineProj for giving me the space to start thinking about these threads. Teaching for the Catherine Project was one of the joys of my life!
Why Read the Book of Leviticus?
On a recent episode of @misha_saul's podcast, @tylercowen expressed his disinterest in Leviticus. Now, Tyler has a deep appreciation for the Bible. We should take his views seriously. So here's my case to Tyler for Leviticus!
1. Leviticus is at the literal center of the Mosaic books. The Bible makes frequent use of chiastic structure (an A-B-C-B-A literary pattern) to impart meaning, with the center of the chiasm representing its culmination. So just purely on literary grounds the Bible is telling us Leviticus is of central importance. The other four books—Genesis, Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—are first-rate (certainly by Tyler's estimation!), so when the Bible signals "this is the key" through positioning...we should update our priors! What if moderns' difficulty with Leviticus says more about us than the text?
Another way to think about this: Leviticus is meant as the direct continuation of Exodus. Hence the book's very jarring first sentence. It begins with a pronoun that has no antecedent: "And he called to Moses". Who called? All the English translations, in fact, try to smooth out the dissonance by rendering "And THE LORD called to Moses..." But that's definitely not what it says! It's weird, right? Well, that's because you're supposed to read it as the second half of Exodus's final words: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle...and He called to Moses, and the Lord spoke to Moses from the tent of meeting." It's one long sentence! So even if you simply trust Exodus's instincts...you should be curious about Leviticus!
Or perhaps, to quote a well-known economist, "In the Fanciest Restaurants, Order What Sounds Least Appetizing"!
2. You can think of the Biblical narrative beginning with Genesis as comprising cycles of creation, sin, destruction, and re-creation—with each new cycle clearing the way for an essential covenantal improvement. Very helpful to read alongside Schumpeter! So how does Genesis begin? God creates the world; humankind sins; God destroys His first creation in a flood; and then God recreates the world—intentionally mimicking the Hebrew vocabulary of Genesis 1-2—and introduces a covenant with Noah and his descendants (Gen 9). Immediately after we enter another cycle: the people of Babel sin; God destroys that society; and then God envisions a new society through a covenant with Abraham—once again mimicking the Hebrew vocabulary of Genesis 1-2, and now also Gen 9. The cycle repeats several more times throughout Genesis and Exodus. And how does Exodus conclude? With yet another instance of the cycle: the Israelites sin by building the Golden Calf; Moses destroys the perpetrators. Then what happens? The Israelites create the Tabernacle. And sure enough, when Exodus describes this, it uses key vocabulary found only in Gen 1. Why? Because the Tabernacle is meant to represent a new cycle of re-creation.
Leviticus, then, is the payoff for the cycle of creative destruction with which Exodus concludes.
3. So what should we expect to find in Leviticus? Well, in Genesis God creates a space for man to dwell in. But in Leviticus MAN creates a space for GOD to dwell in, as it were. This explains the many chapters (in the last third of Exodus and first third of Leviticus) devoted to how to build and operate the Tabernacle. In Leviticus—unlike in Genesis—HUMANS are the creators and so must understand and preserve the physics and mathematics that govern their new creation.
So the best way to understand the first several chapters of Leviticus is as the Bible's STEM curriculum. Many students will look at the blackboard and see a bunch of gobbledygook, or random details, but in fact what we're looking at is a well-ordered system built on precise equations. Does it matter if you offer a flock animal or a herd animal? Is there a difference between "throwing" blood and "placing" blood? Why do we sometimes use the "incense altar" or the "bronze altar"? These aren't arbitrary. Once you understand the system, you realize all of these actually have regularized and predictable answers.
Do the Tabernacle's "physics" have societal implications? Yes! Remember, the Tabernacle is the central node around which Biblical Israel's society is organized. So in laying out the way in which the citizenry interacts with and in the Tabernacle, Leviticus is actually articulating key components of a new moral and political order. I wrote about just one such example here—the case of Leviticus 6: https://t.co/tnAegxZ09R
Understood properly, Leviticus 6 presents not merely a laundry list of random acts to take in the wake of sin, but rather a comprehensive, revolutionary understanding of the civic relationship between individuals, institutions and leaders. Much more in the post...and that's just one example!
4. Leviticus has a very high estimation of human ability to bring order to chaos—modeled, in fact, on God's own actions in Genesis 1. Just as God brings order to chaos in Genesis through the act of setting boundaries—between light and dark; sea and land; fish and fowl—so does God expect the Israelites to do within their Creation-in-Miniature, the Tabernacle. Leviticus 11, for instance, is about imposing dietary order upon the animal kingdom—animals with a clearly defined place (on land, sea, or air) are "clean"; animals without one (amphibians; air-tolerant aquatics) are not. Leviticus 13-14 empowers humans to patrol the boundary between inside and outside—whether physical (skin), material (clothing), or structural (the home)—and monitor it for decay. Leviticus 15 is a profound exploration of what it means for human bodies to contain within them both the potential for life and death—both of which can be represented by the same substance (blood). Leviticus 18, meanwhile, looks for order within the chaotic world of love, imposing boundaries between sexual and familial relationship.
Leviticus truly believes in humankind's capacity to subdue creation. Taking Leviticus seriously should, in turn, inspire greater confidence in humanity's potential to achieve technological progress and innovation!
5. Leviticus 10 contains one of the Bible's most profound meditations on grief and loss—the story of the deaths of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu. We see the relationship between Moses and Aaron at its rawest. And what to make of the contrast between Moses who has sons with whom he never interacts, and Aaron who invests everything in educating his sons only to lose his two oldest? A close reading of the text raises other questions. Like, how do Nadab and Abihu's public roles at Mount Sinai (Exodus 24) and the Tabernacle's inauguration (Leviticus 9) shed light on their deaths (Leviticus 10)? What role does "incense" play in the story? What to make of the immediately following rules about alcohol? And looking to the rest of the Bible, it's important to note that the narrative of Leviticus 10 exerts a formative literary influence upon other crucial episodes—like the fall of the House of Eli in 1 Samuel.
6. "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Vintage Leviticus! Or how about "love the stranger as thyself"? Also Leviticus!
7. How about Leviticus and American history? The Liberty Bell, for instance, is so named for the inscription it bears, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof"...which is a verse from Leviticus! It's from he critically important institution of the sabbatical year in Leviticus 25.
8. Leviticus 26 offers a fascinating model of national-level incentives, basically saying, “If you adhere to God's covenant, collective prosperity follows; if you stray, expect a range of curses, from famine to invasion.” Think of it as an ancient macro policy framework with a feedback loop: virtuous action yields material gains, while selfish or chaotic behavior leads to social and economic collapse. The logic isn’t meant to be subtle—reap blessings when aligned, suffer curses when out of sync—but it’s strikingly modern in its emphasis on structuring community-wide incentives, not just personal ones. And what sets Leviticus apart is that it’s not the classic ancient model where the gods covenant with a king or ruler. Here, God addresses the entire nation— a collective republic under divine guidance. In that sense, Leviticus 26 is all about how societies might foster cooperation, hold themselves accountable, and ward off collapse.
9. Leviticus 16 is an excellent example of the Bible's literary use of the twice-told-tale (in a ritual context to boot!). The point of this device is to highlight that two seemingly contradictory ideas can both hold deep truth. Think Rashomon, but rather than suggesting we doubt reality itself, it invites us to embrace the validity of both dueling perspectives. In Leviticus 16, that duality centers on whether the public should atone for its sins BEFORE fixing civic infrastructure, or whether functioning institutions must come first to foster genuine repentance. And the answer is: both are true simultaneously! Public virtue and institutional health are in dynamic equilibrium. More people interested in understanding the current American political moment should read and ponder Leviticus 16!
Ultimately, if you’re looking for insights into human creative capacity, social order, and institutional design, Leviticus is an excellent use of your time!
Uriah was a man with unshakeable frame. Here's the first chapter of my book for young Christian men on holding frame, and how to engage well with women.
https://t.co/KtmdwlOH5Y
P.P.S. I was trying to track down this amazing piece by @IlanBlock for the thread. I couldn’t in time and ended up using a different work of his (which is also incredible). But now that I got it I wanted you all to see it!
I'm looking for a few more people who are ready to unleash their full athletic potential without any limitations holding them back.
You'll test all of the content of my new beta program at 60% of the final price.
Reply 'code' if you're interested and like to know more🤝
P.S. if you liked this thread, I bet you'll like my new podcast with the one and only @natebuzz -- it's called "Gen 12"! In each episode we reflect on our favorite moments from the Book of Genesis!
You can watch it on YT, or listen to it in the @gfaitheffort podcast feed!
@evernote Associate the parent note name with the file as well.
Files created by scanners (or even photos, etc.) typically have a generic date-time file naming convention that isn't particularly helpful on its own without the context of the parent note name.
@zenahitz@CatherineProj And finally P.P.S. if you liked this thread, definitely check out my weekly podcast on the Bible called Good Faith Effort! @gfaitheffort
Talk about cool stuff like this all the time, like on our latest episode featuring @zugzwanged!
https://t.co/lrbtOIyn6U ❤️🔥❤️🔥
Just got word that there’s a Luna controller loot crate inbounds 🎮📦who wants it?
Follow and reply with 🎮to win 👇
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