First, my predictions for Thanksgiving's NFL games...
Chicago at Detroit Chicago. The Lions will try like crazy for their first win, but the Bears are slightly the better team.
Las Vegas at Dallas Dallas. The Cowboys will be snorting mad after getting completely manhandled by the Chiefs.
Buffalo at New Orleans Buffalo. No Alvin Kamara for the Saints. If the Bills keep playing like they have recently, the Saints will still have a good chance. Buffalo has to snap out of it soon. Don't they?
Here is a article written by Peter Rex who builds and invests in tech companies...
The venture capitalist had never seen anything like it. In hundreds if not thousands of pitch meetings he’d run, no one seems to have ever crossed themselves. When I did just that – moving my hand from forehead to chest to both shoulders before digging into lunch – the questions came flying. What was that, what does it mean, why do you do it? This incident, in a 2018 pitch, was far from an outlier. I’ve found that Silicon Valley has little knowledge of faith, yet faith is exactly what it needs. Before I began building and investing in tech companies in the mid-2010s, I knew that religious belief was rare in the industry. Surveys show that at least half of tech workers are atheists or agnostic, compared to just 7% of Americans, and a 2018 episode of Silicon Valley half-joked that it’s easier to come out of the closet than it is to come out as Christian. But I wasn’t prepared for what that meant in practice. In my experience, there’s a hostility to faith that stifles tech workers and shapes tech itself for the worse. I’ve seen a specific kind of discrimination toward people of faith, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or members of any other religion. It’s a soft discrimination – a quiet hostility that leads to hesitation on the part of believers. The industry’s pervading ethos is that faith is for the unenlightened and unintelligent, which is likely a product of the elite education institutions where tech leaders and workers are often trained. Wherever it comes from, such subtle contempt causes people of faith to disguise who they really are. I’ve seen it in hiring. Candidates who went to religious schools try to downplay it on their resumes. Those who worked at religious organizations often omit it from their
list of prior experience. My company interviewed one promising person who used to work at a pro-life group, yet deliberately misspelled it on her LinkedIn profile. She didn’t want anyone to click it and learn about the group. I’ve seen it in the day-to-day work environment, as well. My company’s vice president of communications used to work for a major tech CEO who admitted not knowing any Christians personally. Many of our employees have left tech companies where they felt compelled to hide the most important facet of their lives, often because they’ve seen the pressure and opposition others faced for being overtly religious. I feel the same pressure. My personal motto is 'serving Jesus in business,' which often elicits a combination of eye rolls, ended conversations, and online vitriol something a lot of people would rather avoid. It matters that people are afraid to admit their religious beliefs. When people can’t bring their beliefs to bear, it affects the risks they take, the ideas they offer, and the innovations they pursue. Silicon Valley is holding back untold opportunities for human progress. But closed doors aren’t the only or even the biggest problem. What’s worse are the doors that tech leaders, in their lack of belief, are choosing to open. The tech industry may think faith is for rubes, but that only leaves Silicon Valley with a God-shaped hole that’s being filled with lesser substitutes. In particular, I’ve found that tech leaders think they are gods. You see glimpses in Silicon Valley’s elitism and disdain for morality, such as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s explicit desire to invest in companies built around the seven deadly sins, like lust, laziness, and anger. You also see it in the industry’s embrace of 'transhumanism' and pursuit of immortality through tech-enabled enhancements. I find it telling that in an industry where the afterlife is often an afterthought, leaders like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page are trying to end aging and death itself. Equally dangerous, and prevalent, is the view that technology itself is a god. Look no further than the fascination with the 'metaverse,' an all-encompassing alternate reality. The hope is that this fake existence will save us from the mess we’ve made in real life. This misplaced faith has also led to a belief that tech can ignore the old constraints of right and wrong. Is it any wonder tech is increasingly used to censor and suppress? Is it any surprise that violations of privacy are common, as in Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, and addiction is prized over individual empowerment, especially on social media? In the eyes of many who wield it, tech is beyond the stain of sin, and the means of its use matter less than the end to which it can deliver us – namely, paradise.
Unlike many in Big Tech, may God always be your number 1 draft pick!
Draftman Rick