Blogaround

Chewbacca and a porg. Image source.

1. Contract Buying Robbed Black Families In Chicago Of Billions (posted May 30) "African Americans who bought on contract paid, on average, an additional $587 (in current dollars) more a month than if they had a conventional mortgage."

2. Texas Church: We’ll Pay for Your Wedding To Stop You from Co-Habitating (posted May 25) I rolled my eyes so hard.

3. Alabama just unloosed an army of Raskolnikovs. This will not end well. (posted May 15) [content note: anti-choice murder] "What Paul Kagame and Paul Rusesabagina and Zura Karuhimbi should have done in response to the Rwandan genocide (which was, after all, only 2 percent as serious as abortion) was to support their local Republican Party, just as Dith Pran should have done in Cambodia."

4. Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing (posted May 22)

5. I Can Buy Cereal and Cookie Butter With My Harriet Tubman–Stamped $20 Bills (posted May 15) "You might have read about the TubmanStamp — a pocket-size rubber stamp that perfectly superimposes the face of Harriet Tubman over that of President Andrew Jackson on $20 bills."

6. Back When the SBC Issued a Million-Baptism Challenge (posted June 1) I used to do all kinds of evangelism events, and this "let's set a wild unbelievable goal because God is telling us to, and we'll talk and talk about how oh it seems impossible but GOD IS WITH US and we are going to SEE GOD'S POWER and be successful, and then when it fails we just kind of move on quietly and never say anything about it again" is very familiar.

7. LEGO Fan Pushed Out of Convention for Graphic (but Accurate) Bible Displays (posted June 2) "It’s ironic that depictions of Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Abraham and Isaac, and others would be standard fare for kids’ classes at church but too sexual or violent for a LEGO convention."

8. On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles (posted June 3) Holy shit.

9. The rules about responding to call outs aren’t working (posted 2017) "One opinion gets lifted up as “the position of marginalized people”[.] Agreeing with that opinion is called “listen to marginalized people”[.] Disagreeing with that opinion is called “talking over marginalized people”[.]"

10. Could Onward BREAK The Pixar Theory?! (posted June 4) I don't believe in the Pixar theory, but I love these videos SO MUCH because the Pixar theory is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as biblical apologetics.

"But no matter what they've thrown at us, from monsters to skeletons to rats, there's always been a logical explanation for how it all fits together and where and when everything would exist on the timeline." BAHAHAHAHAHAHA yes clearly. An obvious logical explanation. Just like how the Left Behind books are a "literal" reading of the bible. And how "the biblical definition of marriage" is totally a real thing that exists. Sure. Yes. Clearly. Yes, that's exactly what the text says. BAHAHAHAHA.

And when he says "Could it be after 'The Good Dinosaur' but before 'Brave'?" the only thing I could think of was the creationist gap theory. (Which, by the way, I never believed in because I believed in Answers in Genesis's young-earth creationism. Gap theorists were our rivals.)

But Jon Carlin totally gets that the Pixar theory isn't really a theory- it's a game. "Let me let you in on a little secret: There is no disproving the Pixar theory. If you found a plot hole, good for you! That just means we all need to come up with a new way to explain it." It's unfalsifiable.

(See also: The Bible and the Pixar Theory)