Blogaround

1. China grows rice in space using new zero-gravity laboratory (September 1) Cool!

2. Marvel reveals Emil Blonsky's She-Hulk haikus – and they're weirdly emotional (August 30) "To the world I am / an abomination but / to me I'm Emil."

3. Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School (2019) A very long blog series about how Sparta was nothing like the modern pop-culture idea of what Sparta was. The actual Sparta was, uh, not a good place to live.

4. Mary Peltola set to make history as the first Alaska Native in Congress (August 31) 

5. Matt Chandler Steps Aside After Inappropriate Online Relationship (August 28) This baffles me because I can't figure out what he did wrong. He says he sent "inappropriate" Instagram messages to a woman, but the messages were not sexual or romantic, but they were overly "familiar"... so... what...?

I see several possibilities:

A. Maybe this church just really really really believes "men and women can never be friends" (which is a logical conclusion of evangelicals' teaching about sex and lust and temptation and the differences between genders) so any time a man and woman are sending friendly direct messages online, it's automatically seen as sinful. I don't think this is the right explanation though, because it doesn't seem realistic to me that a church would literally hold a leader to such a high standard, going so far as to hire a law firm, over something that everyone outside the church sees as no big deal. So there has to be more to it than this.

B. Maybe Chandler is telling us it wasn't "sexual or romantic", but that's a lie. Maybe in a few months we're going to hear a very very different version of this story, which this church is currently covering up.

C. Maybe there is some other very big issue here, something that's not sexual or romantic, but is still very bad (possibly abusive or illegal?). Chandler says the sin was that he was too "familiar" and there was "coarse and foolish joking" but perhaps that's a very misleading and inaccurate description of the actual situation. Perhaps there is some huge other problem that is not being mentioned.

So in other words, I'm not buying it.

6. 9/1 Flashback: A little creepy (September 1) The Slacktivist looks back on some blog posts he wrote in 2015 about how Christianity Today's articles on sex were "a little creepy" - now that we've found out about the culture of sexual harassment that existed at Christianity Today.

7. Yes, Texas is investigating parents of trans kids. We are two of them. (March 8) "We hired a lawyer. That night, we had a family meeting to prepare for the scheduled home interrogation by the CPS agent. We told the children that they have the right to not answer questions. We told them that the government is trying to spy on us even though we have done nothing wrong. We could see the pain, confusion, and hurt in their eyes. How do we square this situation with the civics lessons they are learning in school about our national ideals?"

8. The Cruellest Email Of All (August 31) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video. Simon actually was given this puzzle incorrectly- 1 clue is missing- so you could say he is solving it on hard mode. Wow.

9. I don't want to date anyone. My twin is there to fill the void a romantic partner would. (August 26) "Since I'm asexual, this is the kind of relationship I'd want with my significant other anyway, so I think it plays a part in my apathetic attitude toward dating."