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Hello, welcome to the famed Weekend Gene Pool, which has just won the coveted Weekend Gene Pool Award, awarded yearly to the newsletter with the most awards. As always, we promise to entertain you, in response to your filling us up with personal anecdotes. Today, we seek examples of things you have seen or experienced, but never expected to see or experience. We came up with this idea after reading the story, a couple of weeks ago, about orthodox Jews in New York City who apparently dug a tunnel under the city, apparently between a synagogue and a place where Jewish ladies get naked and bathe in a ritual, and I swear I am not making this up.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci. For the first time in a long time, there has been a spark of excitement in the air—and it’s not just the first burst of spring weather. It’s thanks to Hate Read, the pop-up newsletter from Deez Links writer .I’ve mentioned Delia in some recent newsletters, but that’s how good Hate Read has been.

Amyraldianism is so named after the French Protestant theologian Moyses Amyraut (1596-1664) who proposed a specific view of election, covenants, and atonement that married a view of individual predestination with universal atonement. There is a wonderful tradition of Amyraldian Anglicans who imbibed Calvinism with a Catholic spirit such as  J.C. Ryle and Charles Simeon, as well as more recently D.B. Knox. D.B. Knox (1916-94), former theology professor at Moore College in Sydney, advocated a view of universal atonement in conjunction with a deeply rooted Calvinism.

Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. is Hawaii’s largest utility. The New York Times reports that, in the aftermath of the recent wildfires in Maui, Wall Street is beginning to speculate about the company’s potential liability: It could take months for officials to identify what caused the fire in Maui last week. But some plaintiffs’ lawyers and investors have already begun to blame Hawaiian Electric, the state’s largest utility. The utility’s power lines and equipment are one potential source of the fire that has claimed the lives of more than 100 people — a death toll that is expected to rise once the more than 1,000 missing people are accounted for.

Welcome back to the Animation Obsessive newsletter! Glad you could make it. Here’s what we’re doing today: One — a look at Hayao Miyazaki’s labor activism during the 1960s. Two — animation news from around the world Three — a trove of restored Czech cartoons. Four — the last word. If you’re new to our newsletter, signing up is quick and no-effort. Get our Sunday issues in your inbox for free, every week:

After writing last week’s newsletter on Skunk Cabbage, I realized that many of my favourite spring wildflowers are some of the most unrecognizable, the most demure. I think it’s because often these are the first subtle signs of spring, kicking off the dusky leaf duff, bursting from twig tip, slinking mysteriously out of swollen buds, just a brief snap of colour against brown and grey and there’s something truly exciting in that.

     I was a newbie at Ohio University, standing naked in the basement of the Beta Theta Pi house, eyeballed and mocked by two dozen older “brothers” hazing me and my pledge class. Why were we doing this? Why let them throw condiments at us, everything they could find in the kitchen fridge? Why were they making us run up and down the stairs of the building for hours, without water or food or even a breather?

Hi, I’m Gabrielle Blair and this is my newsletter. It’s completely free to access and read, but if you feel so moved to support my work, please consider a paid newsletter subscription: just $5/month or save money with the $50/annual sub. You can also go way above and beyond by becoming a Founding Member at $75. Or, some of you have let me know you’d rather send money directly via Paypal and Venmo (@gabrielle-blair).

On November 30, NBC News’ Washington, D.C. affiliate reported on the arrest of Michael Everts, owner of FIT Personal Training and commissioner for the D.C. Mayor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Nutrition. He was confronted outside of the Apple store on Dupont Circle after police were given evidence of his activity on the hookup app Sniffies in which he’d sought out underage males for sex. An FBI member known as a Online Covert Employee (OCE) active on the encrypted app Telegram also had contact with Everts in which he talked about 9-12 year-olds being “the hottest age ever,” and that there were “a lot of hot kids in the Northwest area of D.