Blogaround

1. Chicago’s “Race-Neutral” Traffic Cameras Ticket Black and Latino Drivers the Most (January) This is really interesting, because a very superficial view of the situation might say "it's actually true that Black and Latino drivers in these areas are running red lights/ breaking the speed limit at higher rates than white drivers, so yes they should get ticketed more; there is no problem here." But actually, the real issue is that the layout of the roads in Black and Latino areas of the city encourages drivers to break traffic laws (which can cause fatal accidents) while the layout of the roads in mostly-white areas naturally causes drivers to slow down/ drive carefully. So it's not just about "you, an individual, shouldn't be speeding"- though yes that's true- but there's more to it than that.

2. Feminism with YIMBY Characteristics (July 7) "But there is another picture here, one visible in the negative space of the above statistics: the people who don’t leave, or who can’t. The ones for whom the threat of homelessness functions as a chain, tying them to their abusers. This is queer kids, but it’s not just queer kids. It’s everyone stuck with a partner they can’t leave because they need to make the mortgage, or because they can’t afford rent alone. It’s everyone stuck in the closet because their partner would show them the door the minute they came out. It’s everyone who settles for patriarchy because we have made freedom unaffordable."

3. The Incarnation or the Resurrection? (December 13) I love this!

4. No, The Bible Does Not Say “Fear Not” 365 Times (December 13) Fact checking. Very important.

Also: The Great Laminin Hoax (2017) "Uhm…Err…uh…yeah. Well, that’s not very cross-like is it?"

5. Gov. Kate Brown commutes sentences of all 17 people on Oregon’s death row (December 13) [content note: the descriptions of the murders that these people on death row committed are pretty horrifying]

6. 12/14 Flashback: Thrice-told tales (December 14) "Now Moses is again being confronted, but not by clan leaders and respected well-known men. He’s being challenged by five sisters. The law, these sisters tell Moses, is not fair. God’s law is not fair."

7. The Repugnant Conclusion (April 18) This is a short story about a character who has vaginismus. (Also I read her as asexual.) Linking it here because I was so surprised to happen upon a story about vaginismus. Those parts of the story feel really spot-on.

8. Why Infinite Coin-Flipping is Bad (December 2) "But that’s very far from true if you’re donating millions or billions. When donating at large scale, you’re structurally changing the organizations you donate to. There aren’t plausibly organizations that will literally sop up a billion dollars just doing more of the exact same thing they were doing earlier."

9. Leopards, faces, etc. (December 17) "I only wanted to stop the indefensible forms of abortion that exist in my head. I didn’t intend for that to have anything to do with ectopic pregnancies, or with forcing responsible married women to carry dead fetuses to term, or with requiring an 11-year-old rape victim to bear a child her body is incapable of bearing safely!"