Marriage & Divorce

Divorce is not God's will.

God's will in marriage is for mutual grace-filled submission to each other and love&forgiveness. Even where there is adultery, although divorce is permitted, God's will is to see genuine contrition & behavior change, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Why? Because marriage is meant to reflect God's unfailing love for his people. In the same way that God's love  never fails, our love for our spouse in marriage should not fail - and love is not a feeling, but an action.

Hosea's marriage to a prostitute was intended to show God's faithfulness to his people during the worst of their unfaithfulness.

In the same vein, however, separation is God's will (I.e. in an abusive relationship). The ideal would be for separation to lead to heart change and reconciliation, but sometimes it does not.

Remarriage is a difficult topic. "Desertion" in 1cor7 could be given a broad application "if they depart you are under no obligation. God has called us to peace". "Desertion" and "peace" extend some liberty to the believer, but all of that must be grounded in texts like "I the Lord hate divorce" (Malachi 2:16) and this one.

Ultimately, it is God's will that our relationships be full of love, grace and mercy - grounded in the understanding that the same is the basis of God's personal relationship with us. How we love our spouses should be a reflection of how God loves us.

Macy's Ad Retargeting

1. Purchased 2 winter coats from @Macys (end of season) about a week ago.

2. Macy's retargeting (you know when you see ads for websites you visit after you leave the site? that's retargeting) followed me around the internet even though I had already purchased.

3. One of the ads showed the coat I purchased, but at a lower price

4. I clicked. Submitted a price adjustment request. Macy's approved it (image attached)

5. Summary - Macy's paid ~$3 to show me an ad that cost them about $15 in price adjustments.

6. Summary 2 - Ad networks need a better way to know when people transact*. There's probably a decent amount of money wasted on showing ads to ppl who shouldn't be seeing them.


*The solution would probably require one or two of the following:

a) for ad networks to agree on a common ad targeting methodology
b) broad industry consolidation
c) data sharing between ad networks

Post Tax Plan Raise Okey-Doke?

I just saw a press release from JP Morgan Chase announcing pay raises and bonuses for their rank and file employees that attributed the move to the Trump Tax Plan.

Seeing lots of companies advertise bonuses/pay increases in response to the Trump Tax plan made me think:

1. Publicizing it in this way feels like it is being done to gain Trump's favor.

Everyone knows that Donald Trump operates on the "You say something nice about me, i'll say something nice about/do something nice for you" principle. Companies are about their bottom (and top) lines - from a money perspective, it only makes sense to say nice things about the man who is cutting your taxes and cutting regulations that used to make it more expensive for your company to operate.

2. How much of this is rebranding of already planned behavior?

What were these companies planning to do before the tax cut was signed into law? I know WalMart was planning to give raises in response to Target raising wages for their employees. Once the tax plan passed, they made it seems as though their wage increase came as a result of Trump's beneficence, not competitive pressure.

3. How much are these raises *actually* costing these companies?

How does the cost of these raises compare with the overall benefit to the companies from the tax cut? Are the raises funded by 1% or 51%? How are companies generally investing this money?

Addendum - I just stumbled across an article from the NYT that says these bonuses and raises represent a very small percentage of the windfall the companies will receive from the tax bill (we're talking 5% for bank of america, Less than 1% for Apple)

In closing

I want to believe that this is all being done for the right reasons, but press release after press release from these companies (especially wal mart announcing raises one day and huge layoffs and store closures the next) leads me to believe that this is a big distraction/marketing ploy.

I mean...everyone is saying that "wall street wins, main street loses" etc etc - but it is difficult to reliably know when subjectivity ends and objectivity begins