Good Morning!
Even Elon Musk acknowledges the potential dangers of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
“I think there should be regulations on social media to the degree that it negatively affects the public good,” he has said.
Family scholars agree:
1. Pro-Family Think Tanks Offer Smart Policy Ideas Protecting Children from Big Tech
From the Daily Citizen:
The good folks at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), an academic think-tank focusing on research to help strengthen family values and parental authority, and DC-based Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) have just released a very important new report – a legislative brief – offering five intelligent policy ideas (and a bonus idea!) that states can enact to help parents protect their children from harmful online influences.
These recommendations are:
- Establish age-verification laws for social media and other platforms.: Under current U.S. law, requiring age verification for minors visiting pornographic sites are unconstitutional. This must change and this report calls for that.
- Require parental consent for contractual offerings over the Internet for minors under the age of 18: States should prohibit a social media company or website from offering any account, subscription service, or contractual agreement to a minor under 18 years old in their state, absent parental consent.
- Mandate Full Parental Access to Minors’ Social Media Accounts: States could also pass laws requiring social media platforms to give parents or guardians full access and control of all social media accounts created by minors between the ages of 13 and 17.
- Mandate a complete shutdown of social media platforms at night for minors: This would mean requiring social media companies to completely shut down access to their platforms for all users aged 13-to 17-years old from 10:30PM to 6:30AM.
- Create Causes of Action for Parents to Seek Legal Remedies with Presumed Damages: Essentially, this would allow parents to sue social media platforms for damages to their children due to their exposure to dangerous material featured on their sites. The report states,
Bonus: Enact a complete Band on Social Media for All Under Age 18.
2. Judge rules in favor of Texas pro-life law
From World Magazine:
Texas Judge James Wesley Hendrix ruled doctors are not required to perform an abortion as a part of emergency care. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that hospitals in the Medicare program provide emergency services even if individuals cannot pay. In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services interpreted that law to include abortion—meaning a doctor could not be prosecuted for performing an abortion if the mother’s health was at risk. Hendrix ruled that since the law did not mention abortion, it could not override Texas laws or the doctor’s duty to the child.
What about other states? Idaho Judge B. Lynn Winmill heard arguments on Monday about whether EMTALA overrides state legislation that only gives medical exemptions for abortion when a mother’s life is at risk. The agency’s interpretation of EMTALA would broaden Idaho’s law to protect doctors who performed an abortion when a woman’s health—not her life—was at risk. Both cases will likely be appealed and possibly brought to the Supreme Court.
RELATED “LIFE” STORIES:
California gives children rights to undergo abortion, medical gender transition—but not to see ads for guns
From the Post Millennial:
As California continues to weigh legislation that would make the state a refuge for children seeking gender changing treatments for their gender dysphoria, the state has suggested that minors are old enough to weigh life changing decisions regarding their bodies like surgery and vaccinations, but not old enough to see depictions of firearms.
A bill prohibiting gun manufacturers from marketing their products in a way that is appealing to children reads that minors are “more impulsive,” and “less likely to consider future consequences of their actions,” but the state allows minors to get abortions and undergo medicalized gender transition without parental consent.
In June, AB 2571, which pertains to the prohibition of marketing firearms to minors and allows lawsuits of this nature, was signed into the state’s laws. California legislator Scott Wiener backs both the bills to give minors full medical agency, and to prohibit them from seeing potentially appealing images of guns.
Exclusive: Yelp to flag listings for crisis pregnancy centers
From Axios:
Yelp is adding a prominent consumer notice to crisis pregnancy center listings to more clearly distinguish them from clinics that provide abortion services, in a policy change shared first with Axios.
The big picture: Yelp’s move is the latest tech-company response to a post-Roe world in which abortion information has become a significant online battleground, with both sides of the debate applying intense pressure.
Driving the news: Starting today, Yelp will add a consumer notice to both faith-based and non-faith-based crisis pregnancy centers noting that they “provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.
“It’s the latest in a series of moved Yelp has made since 2018, when CEO Jeremy Stoppelman directed the company to make sure crisis pregnancy centers were differentiated from abortion clinics in the company’s listings.
3. President Announces $10,000 Student Loan Forgiveness Plan as Constitutionality is Questioned
From the Daily Citizen:
President Biden announced on Wednesday that the Federal government will be forgiving $10,000 in student loans for borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually – or for couples making up to $250,000. The plan will also continue the pause on repaying student loan debt through December 31, 2022, for “one final time.”
The administration also announced that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) would provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients.
The White House asserted on Wednesday that under the plan, “No high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action,” which is defined as a household bringing in $250,000 annually.
Harvard University has a shockingly large $53.2 billion endowment. Yale University’s endowment is $42.9 billion, while Stanford University’s is $37.8 billion, and Princeton University’s is $37.7 billion.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the value of all the endowment funds of colleges and universities combined was $691 billion at the end of fiscal year 2020 – roughly double what would be needed to cover the entire cost of the administration’s student loan cancellation plan.
4. The advice smart marriage therapists always share with couples
From ABC News:
We skipped the hours of couples therapy and jumped straight to the heart of the matter: What’s your absolute best piece of relationship advice? We spoke with therapists, relationship experts, and marriage counselors to get each of their favorite instructions for having an amazing relationship.
Share all the responsibilities
Too often, men leave the thinking, planning and organizing — aka emotional labor — to the women, says Elliott Katz, author of Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants. “Men will wait for the woman to tell him what to do and then do whatever she asks, and think he’s being a good husband and father,” Katz says. “A man may think women know more about these things, or he may think he’s being noncontrolling.” Katz tells me that they need to be aware of what’s going on in their homes and in their families, and they need to do their share of stepping forward with situations. Women should encourage their partners to do their share of helping at home and with the family.
Compromise
Partners who primarily think of their own needs, instead of the needs of their partner — and always argue to win — create a relationship that is tense, fragile and likely to fail, says Larry Waldman, a psychologist and author of How Come I Love Him But Can’t Live with Him? “I like to say, ‘We must move from me to we,’ ” Waldman says. “A union where each partner first considers the needs and wants of their spouse will last forever.”
5. ‘Worst Clampdown Since the Cultural Revolution’: Watchdog Says 3 Churches Raided in China, Leaders Arrested
From CBN:
At least three house churches in China were raided by Chinese authorities recently with their leaders being arrested and detained on trumped-up charges.
International Christian Concern (ICC), a U.S.-based persecution watchdog, reports authorities raided the Xi’an Abundant Church, the Linfen Holy Covenant Church, and Changchun city’s House of Light Church.
The latest series of crackdowns come a week after Chengdu-based Early Rain Covenant Church and Beijing Zion Church saw their members arrested during a Sunday service. It is unclear why Beijing has launched this new wave of crackdowns on house churches, the ICC reports.
“Just like what the newly elected president of the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics, Beijing Archbishop Joseph Li Shan, said, ‘The church authority needs to submit to the Chinese Communist Party regime; one must listen to the party.’ This latest round of persecution seeks to strictly control people’s thoughts,” Father Francis Liu from the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness told the watchdog.
6. Anger as Dad Leaves 6-Year-Old Son To Walk Back From Beach Alone: ‘Livid’
From Newsweek:
A woman who was “livid” that her husband sent their six-year-old son to walk back to their vacation apartment on his own has received a wave of support on parenting forum Mumsnet.
In a post on the U.K. platform’s Am I Being Unreasonable (AIBU) thread, the mother (who used the handle “throwauay”) said her husband was down at the beach when her son arrived at the apartment and told her: “Daddy told me to come back on my own” and he was “proud of himself” for making it back.
The user asked: “Could you get worked up about this or am I being precious?” She explained that the family was staying at the top of an apartment block. “When you get outside the block, the beach is down three steep sets of stairs, through a narrow, very uneven and twisty alley, across a road and down some wooden steps.”
She wrote: “I’m livid because he’s six and there are any number of strangers and hazards between there and here.” More than half an hour after their son arrived, she added, her husband had not called to check he had “made it back safely.”
Most Mumsnet commenters felt this mother’s concerns were reasonable, but academic studies have pointed out that an overprotective parenting style can lead to children being unprepared for life.
7. What Winston Churchill and the Apostle Paul Can Teach Us About the Ongoing Battle for Hearts and Minds
From the Daily Citizen:
The story is told of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill convening a meeting of his highest military and political leaders during the last week of May in 1940 as the Battle of Dunkirk unfolded.
Between May 26th and June 4th of that year, over 338,000 troops were evacuated from the small coastal town of Dunkirk, France. It was called “Operation Dynamo,” and it would prove to be a pivotal point in World War II as Allied troops survived to fight another day. Some suggest the evacuation was nothing short of a miracle, especially since the whole war could have been lost had Great Britain succumbed.
So, the scene at 10 Downing Street this particular day was dark, sober and solemn. Remember the United States was still not in the war, and Hitler’s Nazi henchman were rolling across Europe. France would fall by mid-June.
“Gentlemen, we stand alone,” Churchill told those assembled. “And may I say, I find that very inspiring.”
I’ve been thinking about Churchill’s observation and tenacity lately, especially in light of our ongoing cultural revolution.
As Christians, it often feels like we stand alone, at least in terms of standards and tactics. We’re mocked for our morality and dismissed by many in culture as being out of touch. We’re even accused of being hateful, bigoted and unloving – even though the most loving thing we can often do is share God’s truth with grace.
Yet this cultural mismatch isn’t new. It’s good we feel out of place. It was the apostle Paul who wrote to the believers at Ephesus, reminding them they were to be different.
“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking,” he declared. “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed” (Ephesians 4:17-19).
8. How to Find Joy in College and Life
From Public Discourse:
If nothing else, college is four years of your life when you can carve out time—perhaps more time in your life than you will ever have—for silence, time to steep yourself in and rejoice over as much created beauty as possible. In The Power of Silence, the Guinean cardinal Robert Sarah reminds us that “The real questions of life are posed in silence.” During the next four years of your life, you should begin to answer those questions as they are posed to you—a task that will continue for the rest of your life.
If silence is the first thing you will need to live joyfully in college, the second thing is love. Your time in college will be much more joyful if your intellectual work is a means of pursuing the one who is the Truth itself. As Fr. Sertillanges puts it,
The intellectual is not self-begotten; he is the son of the Idea, of the Truth, of the creative Word, the Life-giver immanent in His creation. When the thinker thinks rightly, he follows God step by step; he does not follow his own vain fancy. When he gropes and struggles in the effort of research, he is Jacob wrestling with the angel and “strong against God.”
Intellectual work is also much richer if you do it as a kind of service to those who read, see, or hear your work, and as a means of preparing you for greater service later in life. We can sometimes wonder how it is that we do good or love our neighbor by doing intellectual work. “For you, an intellectual,” Fr. Sertillanges writes, “your neighbor is the person who needs the truth, as the neighbor of the good Samaritan was the wounded man by the wayside.” During your time in college and for the rest of your life, you will encounter many people who have been wounded by lies and sin and are desperate for the truth, even if they don’t know it. Study well so that you can tend to them like the Good Samaritan did to the man by the side of the road.
9. Obsessively watching the news can make you mentally and physically sick
From Study Finds:
Keeping up with the latest news can be very bad for your health, according to a new study. Researchers at Texas Tech University found that Americans who obsessively follow the news are more likely to suffer from both physical and mental health problems, including anxiety and stress.
Those who constantly check the latest headlines end up with “significantly greater physical ill-being” than those who tune in less often, according to the findings. The team adds that constantly keeping on top of the latest developments can lead to a vicious cycle where people always check for more updates, rather than tuning out after a quick read. This can start interfering with people’s personal lives, leaving them feeling powerless and distressed about global events including the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and climate change.
“Witnessing these events unfold in the news can bring about a constant state of high alert in some people, kicking their surveillance motives into overdrive and making the world seem like a dark and dangerous place,” says Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising at the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University, in a media release.
10. Identical Twins who married identical twins say sons are genetically brothers and cousins
From MSN:
Identical twins Briana and Brittany 35, from Virginia, and twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers are parents to Jax and Jett.
Briana and Brittany met their husbands identical twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers, 37 at the same time and had whirlwind romances.
After meeting at a festival for twins in 2017, the Salyers proposed just six months later at the same time with identical engagement rings.
The couples had a joint wedding in 2018 in Twinsburg (of course!) in Ohio.
The wedding is not the only thing the foursome share, the couples who are well-known on Instagram, also share a home and even a bank account.
