Afghan Pastors Ask for Prayer, and other links

The posting of links does not constitute an endorsement of the sites linked, and not necessarily even agreement with the specific posts linked.

• Afghan Pastors Ask for Prayer -- “As Taliban forces have swallowed up Afghanistan and even now the capital city of Kabul, pastors in the country have been emailing and messaging me over the last few days, even hours, anxious for prayer.”
• Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised? -- “Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated. But the politics of vaccination has relegated their concerns to the outskirts of scientific thinking—for now.”
• Fact-checking site Snopes’ co-founder BUSTED plagiarizing 54 articles -- “In addition to being under investigation for plagiarism, Mikkelson is getting heat for using a pseudonym, a practice that is highly frowned upon and deemed unethical.”
• Former Google Employee Reveals Company Changed News Algorithm To Target President Trump -- “In his new book, “Google Leaks: A Whistleblower’s Expose,” the former Google and YouTube employee details how the Big Tech conglomerate celebrated their attempts to redirect the truth during the 2016 election and how they did it.”
• How Glendale Chapel Was Saved -- “Glendale’s restoration is a story of respect for the people who fashioned our Georgia agrarian roots, and of their reverence for the role of religion in forming their community life.”
• Male Pastor Comes Out as Transgender; Church's Reaction Has Him Filing a Lawsuit -- “In the end, the congregation voted to terminate her [his] employment as lead pastor of the church, with the majority of the votes to terminate made for theological reasons.”
• Quiz: can you guess the world city from its cold war Soviet spy map? -- “From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet army created incredibly detailed maps of much of the world.”
• Refuting Challenges to the Accepted Chronology of Achaemenid Empire -- “The purpose of this paper is to examine the accepted chronology of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Empires and consider Martin Anstey’s claim that certain Greeks fabricated 82 years of Persian history in order to fit an artificial chronology.”
• Snopes co-founder and owner caught plagiarizing dozens of articles and Snopes went ahead and fact-checked it for us -- “So, in case you didn’t realize it before, the so-called fact-checkers — our arbiters of truth — are not trustworthy.” (Remember, Not the Bee is not satire)
• Snopes Publishes Fact-Check On Whether Snopes Plagiarized But Oh No! The Whole Article Seems To Have Been Stolen From PolitiFact -- “Snopes has withdrawn the stolen article and is issuing a new fact-check on whether the previous fact-check on Snopes plagiarizing fact-checks was, in fact, plagiarized, though the new fact-check appears to have been stolen entirely from The Washington Post.” (Remember, the Bee is satire)
• The family knows the family’s secrets -- “Acts 1:8 didn’t happen till Acts 8:1 happened. Write that down, because it’s important in what it teaches us. Acts 1:8 didn’t happen, go into all the world, didn’t happen until Acts 8:1 happened.”
• The Retreat Churches of Coastal Georgia -- “Because malaria was prevalent in the low swamplands in the Midway Section, the plantation owners began establishing summer homes in what they termed the pine-lands. In these areas, they built their retreat churches, Flemington, Walthourville Presbyterian, and then Dorchester Presbyterian.”
• TikToker reveals life hack for keeping bananas fresh for longer -- “A TikTok user is drawing praise after revealing a trick for how to keep bananas fresh for a long, long time. Ugarte’s life hack tackles an age-old grocery shopping dilemma: It always feels like bananas go bad way too fast.”
• Why we petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year -- “We are part of a group of clinicians, scientists, and patient advocates who have lodged a formal “Citizen Petition” with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to delay any consideration of a “full approval” of a covid-19 vaccine.”