🧗🏻Taipei 101; 🤖 will save lives; 🙏🏻 forIran
Braving, fearing, praying on this week's link round up
Thanks for spending some time this weekend with Things I Wrote Down.
Here are three things that stood out this week and a long poem about one of the world's greatest, most tragic kings.
Man scales Taipei tower, I bravely watch
I finally built up the courage and watched Alex Honnold free climb the Taipei 101 skyscraper. We can all do hard things.
What an insane, incredible feat!
I’m so glad I didn’t know about the world-first attempt until after it was done and all the funny video recreations (grown men climbing their bannisters at home), recaps, and time lapses were released.
Many things stood out. One being that people gathered to watch it live. What a strange compulsion, this vicarious thrill seeking we have as humans. Everything about the event was risky. The wind, the pollution grease, the heights from which Honnold could fall. There was a ten-second delay in case the live event needed to be cut and Alex plunged to his death in front of the live crowd in-person and online.
Probably the best moment was when he stood on the edge of the building with his wife Sanni, also a climber, for a selfie after he’d summited the building. “Say hi to the kids,” she says as they wave to the camera.
If you haven’t yet, give it a watch. Here’s the trailer, which gives chills:
Also: Doesn’t Taipei look like an absolutely beautiful city? The wide shots made really miss Asia. Anyone else want to visit the city some day?
If I get a robot, will you let me live a little longer?
Maybe a little non-human help is the fix we need in Canadian healthcare.
Recently we’ve heard terrible stories of euthanasia out of control, claiming more victims that didn’t need to die—a young man who suffered from depression, an elderly woman who was euthanized against her will due to her husband’s “caregiver burnout”, an obese woman who no longer “had the will to live.”
Canada’s MAiD death toll continues to rise.
Maybe the Canadian health system should start ordering Optimus robots. This post went viral on X this week after Elon Musk weighed in on an AI-animation about his forthcoming bots that promise to change economies from the household up:
Doctors and others weighed in with outrage, noting that care should be community- and human-centred.
I don’t disagree. But I’d take a robot programmed to care over a doctor with a cocktail of propofol and rocuronium any day.
Pray for Iran
There's not much being reported about Iran. There’s an internet blackout as what seems like a revolution is taking place. And the crackdown on the people hitting the streets has been brutal.
The Guardian reports disappeared bodies, mass graves and 30,000 deaths.
Open Doors, which helps the persecuted church globally, reports:
Amidst the turbulence, violence and crackdowns have increased. The internet has been blacked out across the country, and thousands have been killed for their part in speaking up.
Information is difficult to verify, but we have confirmation of several Christians who have been killed or arrested at this point. Many Iranian Christians who have fled their homeland are having a hard time hearing from their family because of the communications disruptions and are worried for their safety.
Christians in Iran are often seen as enemies of the state because they do not follow the national religion; and so while the violence enacted against civilians is not direct persecution of Christians, their standing in the eyes of the government makes them extra vulnerable.
Pray for Iran.
A poem
This week I shared a long poem for my Thursday article. Sometimes you gotta just break out into verse. January’s a long month, and it seemed fitting to cap it off with a long poem.
Solomon’s reign went to the highest heights. And then he fell. He climbed to the sky, but didn’t stay there, exalted. All the wisdom and riches in the world couldn’t help him keep the covenant. He breached a promise he was meant to keep.
We watch his life like we watch the free climb, holding our breath.
We all are tempted to cross boundaries. Set off trip wires. This poem explores the tragic, human pull away from the promise. I hope you enjoy it and that it makes you think.
You can read the full poem here: