Blogaround

1. Oklahoma sheriff, commissioner, accused of discussing killing a reporter and returning to Black hangings (April 16) [content note: violent racist language] WTF.

(That link and several others in this post I got via the Slacktivist's Postcards from the class & culture wars (4.17.23))

2. A Good Friday funeral in Texas. Baby Halo's parents had few choices in post-Roe Texas (April 6) [content note: child death/ pregnancy loss] "'Where is the state of Texas to provide the safety net for her, after forcing her to give birth to a child that didn't survive and never would?' she asks."

3. Doctors Warned Her Pregnancy Could Kill Her. Then Tennessee Outlawed Abortion. (March 14) [content note: explicit medical details about pregnancy complications] "ProPublica spoke with 20 Tennessee medical providers about life under the ban, on condition of anonymity because they feared professional and personal repercussions; some said that they had witnessed a new trepidation in their ranks. 'I’ve seen colleagues delay or sit on assessing the clinical data longer when they know the diagnosis is probably ectopic,' one said, referring to pregnancies that implant outside the uterine cavity, which are always life-threatening. 'People were like, 'I don’t want to be involved because I don’t want to go to prison,'' said another. 'It’s crazy — even assessing the patient or having a role in their care makes people scared.'"

4. City leases property to 'Safe Ground Sacramento' for a self-governing 'safe parking shelter' (March 31, via) "The cost of the lease is $0, and its length is 120 days, renewable in increments of 120 days until all the residents obtain permanent housing." An agreement between the city of Sacramento and a group advocating for the rights of homeless people.

5. Recovery of Black teen allegedly shot by White homeowner after ringing wrong doorbell is a miracle, attorney says (April 19) "A Black teenager who authorities say was shot in the head by an 84-year-old White homeowner after going to the wrong Kansas City address received a positive prognosis but still faces a long road to recovery, according to his attorneys."

6. Parler shuts down as new owner says conservative platform needs big revamp (April 15) "'No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more,' the acquisition announcement said, promising a revamp."

7. BMW’s Mini apologizes after meltdown over ice cream at Shanghai auto show (April 21) So, there was a car expo in Shanghai this week, and apparently the BMW booth was handing out ice cream, and there's a video of the BMW employees telling Chinese people that all the ice cream is gone, and then a white guy shows up and they give him ice cream. (The news articles say "foreign" or "western" or 外国人 but let's just call it what it is, whiteness.)

Umm. Okay. I'm white, I live in Shanghai, and the first thing I wanna say about this is it rings true. In this kind of business-event context, Chinese people definitely do give preferential treatment to white people. I've experienced that.

BMW issued an apology and said that actually the reason the white guy got ice cream is he's a BMW employee. Who knows if that's true. I don't think the Chinese internet masses are buying it.

8. UMC clergy reportedly face complaint, church trial after marrying nonbinary couple (April 19) When people get married, the correct response is "congratulations!" Rejoice with those who rejoice. But the church is butting in and making it into a problem instead.

9. This whole twitter thread about why abortion care is very important for people who are struggling with infertility and trying to have a baby. It's common for people to have miscarriages when they're having these problems, and they need to have access to health care that can handle miscarriage in a reasonable way, instead of "pro-life" health care which doesn't connect to reality.

I liberalized two college age girls last night.

Two students were told by their teacher to shadow a support group. I run an infertility support group.

They mostly observed with a few questions. They were visibly floored when I told them how abortion care was critical to us.

— Angel of the Ozarks (@AngelSSMO) April 21, 2023

10. Religious Authorities Are Not God (March 10) "In more cynical terms, I remember feeling suspicious that the ministry organization was trying to frame something as a call from God on Grace’s life that was really just their own best attempt at having enough staff at all the different schools."

11. P!nk - F**kin' Perfect (Lyric Video) I know I've posted this several times before, but I'm ex-evangelical so I need to post this song a lot.