Blogaround

1. The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants (posted October 2021) "Perfectly good stuff gets thrown away in these facilities all the time, simply because the financial math of doing anything else doesn’t work out; they’re too inexpensive to be worth the effort, or too much time has passed since they were sold."

I also wonder a lot about what happens to stuff in stores that doesn't get sold. I have friends who worry about "oh no, I bought lunch and they gave me a disposable plastic spoon with it," but really, businesses must be throwing away tons of stuff that doesn't sell... what's the point of you getting yourself all worried about throwing away plastic packaging or "wasting food" or whatever, when your choice not to buy it means the business will be the one throwing it away instead of you?

I haven't done any research into the actual facts of that, so don't take what I say too seriously I guess (although, if anyone has sources about what happens to unsold products and how that should inform our worry over using too many plastic bags, please do leave them in the comment section). But I just find it really really suspicious that every store has a huge huge selection of things, and I get to browse through them all and choose the one that fits my specific needs- so what happens to all the others? Sure, some things can sit on the shelf indefinitely and they'll eventually find a customer who happens to need that exact thing, but what about more time-sensitive things like food or seasonal clothes or new books, etc?

2. We Don't Talk About Bruno (From "Encanto") (posted December 29) Hendrix and I just saw the new Disney movie "Encanto" in the theater, and wow it has a lot of good songs!

I also love how the Madrigal family had such a fun mix of interracial relationships. :)

3. Joey I’m not angry anymore (posted February 2) This is one of the Slacktivist's frequent link roundups, and I'm posting it here because of this part: "You might be thinking that the beginning of February is way too late for any thought of New Year’s Resolutions, but don’t fall into that trap. This is a trap I’m well acquainted with thanks to having grown up in white evangelical purity culture, a framework that trains you to think of virtue as a kind of original innocence and purity you must struggle to preserve, gripping it tight with white-knuckled determination."

Yeah, as an ex-evangelical, I can relate to that.

4. Where is Noah’s Flood in the Geological Column? (posted 2021) "What is going on here? Are we to understand that lions, panthers and leopards existed as separate species prior to the flood, and yet just one single pair from the entire 'kind' walked on to the Ark, only to walk off less than a year later and hyper-evolve back into the very same species once again? This is quite a convenient occurrence."

5. Creation Science Exposed: When Ego and Creation Science Meet: A History of the Answers in Genesis Split (posted 2008 maybe?) Okay maybe this is not interesting to anyone except me, but... It's the whole long story of how the creationist organization Answers in Genesis split in 2006, with the part that split off becoming Creation Ministries International. Wow, I did not know any of this! I was a devoted follower of AiG back in, what, 2003, 2004, and then didn't really think about creationism for a few years, then I heard of CMI in, what, 2008? AiG and CMI seem to be pretty much doing and teaching the same things. I had no idea there was a history there.

But also, I gotta say I'm 0% surprised that Ken Ham- whose entire job is writing articles about how atheists are evil and how Christians who don't believe in young-earth creationism are bad Christians who don't really respect the bible or care about God- was mean and unfair to people. 

6. Eileen Gu's HUGE final run grabs big air gold from Tess Ledeux | Winter Olympics 2022 | NBC Sports (posted February 8) This is INCREDIBLE.

Like, suddenly seems like everyone in China is a fan of 谷爱凌  (Gu Ailing), Eileen Gu. The story is, she grew up in the US but is competing for China in the 2022 Olympics. My son has both Chinese and US citizenship, so it makes me wonder about Gu's situation and her reasons for choosing China. Because my son will eventually have to choose too.