Blogaround

The asexual flag. Happy Pride month! Image source.

1. How 4,000 Physicists Gave a Vegas Casino its Worst Week Ever (posted 2015) This is fantastic.

2. Uvalde and Police "Duty" (posted June 4) [content note: child abuse, child murder] This is a video from an actual lawyer, about how the police aren't legally obligated to protect people. I've seen lots of people saying that on Twitter, and I'm glad to have a source here from a real lawyer, with the facts and history backing it up. ("Backing it up" in the sense that, yes it is true that this is the way the law *is*. Not in the sense that it *should* be that way. Not trying to make it *make sense*- because it just doesn't.) You should always fact-check things you see on Twitter.

But man, this is bleak. "A lot of people disagree with this particular ruling, and it can be solved with legislation, but as it currently stands, there is no inherent cause of action based on the Constitution that would allow parents and teachers and victims to sue the police for inaction at Uvalde. And unfortunately that is the current state of the law."

3. Missed risk: Long COVID threat extends far beyond pandemic (posted June 5) "Teasdale had an emergency-room doctor friend who’d gone through hell in the last couple years dealing with hospital COVID cases. Yet last Christmas, that friend was telling Teasdale to relax — the threat had passed."

4. 3 Chinese astronauts settling in for 6-month stay on Tiangong space station (posted June 7) This is very cool!

5. Exploitation and Abuse at Hillsong Church (posted May 10) "I need a minute…it hurts to look back because I was so into it, I was so embedded in it, I wanted to believe it. Now that I look back, I’m like damn, they’re trying to manipulate you into receiving and accepting the abuse that they’re causing. It was traumatic and it could have taken my life if I had stayed a minute longer."

6. Pastor Jack Schaap, who groomed a teenage girl for sex, is out of prison (posted May 7) [content note: child sexual abuse] The thing that strikes me is, based on the victim's statement, the main problem was that Schaap manipulated her and got her to really fall in love with him, and it was all lies and he was just using her. I don't think that sex is really the bad part of child sexual abuse- I think it's the whole overall grooming pattern, the way the abuser plays with the victim's emotions and naivety and takes advantage of it, makes her believe that their relationship is really something unique and special, and leaves her devastated in the end.

If Schaap had done all those things but then didn't have sex with her, would that have been okay? I know the sex is what crosses the line into making it illegal, and that's the reason he went to jail. And yes, that absolutely should be illegal. But it feels like the focus is on the wrong thing.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm missing something. I'm asexual and there is so much I don't understand about what sex means to the average person, how it affects the average person.

If the focus is on "an adult had sex with a child"... yes, it is definitely wrong for an adult to have sex with a child, and the adult should go to jail for that- and maybe the focus is on that aspect because it's tangible, whereas the emotional manipulation part is more subjective... but if the whole focus is on the "sex" part, then we will feel we should protect kids by telling them "sex is bad, don't have sex"- but that wouldn't have protected the victim in this case. She was in a fundamentalist church, of course she had been told not to have sex. And also in the report we saw recently about sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches- of course those kids were taught that it is wrong to have unmarried sex, but that didn't protect them from the abuse.

It seems to me that the actual issue is the grooming, the manipulation, power. Sex was one of the tools that Schaap (and other abusers) used to hurt and control the victim- but I don't think it was the most evil part of it. And we can protect kids better by teaching them the reasons why it's abusive for an authority figure to have a relationship with someone under their authority, the reasons why a big age difference is a red flag, etc. They're exposed to messages from the church about "God says we should be together, let's not let silly worldly things stand in our way" and from mainstream movies about "our families forbid us to be together, but we are so heroic for loving each other anyway, they don't understand us!" and "we can overcome anything because our love is so real and strong." And abusers can easily use that to convince the victim that it's totally okay, what the abuser is doing. So when we educate kids about what's a healthy relationship and what's not, it needs to be thorough enough to offer a counterargument to that.

7. AI versus corporate logos (posted June 3) A neural net tried to generate some logos, and it's great.

8. Mourning and remembrance without an afterlife safety net (posted June 6) [content note: child death, suicide]

9. Ohio GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes through genital inspection (posted June 2) "'This is not a real problem,' state Rep. Rich Brown, a Democrat from Canal Winchester, said. 'This is a made-up, 'let's feed red meat to the base' issue.'"

Wow, NOT COOL. This is just being mean to trans kids.

10. What It Takes to Start a Family in COVID-Era China (posted June 7) "One factor that did not play a role in my choice was the country’s increasingly pro-natal family planning policy. After the 'two-child policy' failed to produce a lasting baby boom, Chinese policymakers and demographers have grown increasingly concerned about the country’s declining fertility."

11. Shanghai Lures Graduates From Top Global Schools With ‘Hukou’ (posted June 8) This is a big deal because having a Shanghai hukou makes a big difference in what rights you have related to your kids going to school, buying an apartment, etc- and they don't just give them out. (Except that now, apparently, in certain circumstances, they do.)

12. Montessori Sunday School Encourages Kids To Invent Their Own Gods (posted June 7) [From "The Onion", a satire site- so it's not real.] I actually love this.

13. Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him (posted April 7) [Also from "The Onion", so it's satire, not real.]

14. The 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30). Go take it if you haven't already. Thanks! :)