Blogaround

1. Trip.com Offers Employees 50,000 Yuan Subsidy for Each Child Born (June 30) "China is grappling with a significant decline in its birth rate and the subsequent challenges posed by an aging population."

2. Don't use AI detectors for anything important (June 30) "All these AI versions are rated as more likely human-written than my original unaltered text."

3. Amos and Acts (June 30) "The fascinating thing about the passage Brueggemann highlights here is that the book of Amos was written a very long time before the book of Exodus was. Amos 9:7 presents one side in an argument about the meaning of the Exodus, showing us that both sides of this argument existed centuries before the book of Exodus itself was written. Amos is one of the oldest books in the Bible — possibly the oldest — so the tension between the two sides of this argument date back to the very beginning."

4. The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. (June 29) "Obviously, my parents were horrified. Obviously, they pulled me out of that school the next year and put me into a predominately Black public school. Obviously, I learned that not everything white people say is true. But Thomas is the guy who never learned: He never figured out how to disregard what white people say about us. Learning how to ignore white folks and their stupid racial theories while living your full life is pretty much the final test towards emancipation, and it’s one that Thomas seems to have flunked for his entire professional life."

5. Death of Coco Lee Triggers Public Discussion on Depression in China (July 7) [content note: suicide]

6. Rating Articles About Twitter Alternatives (July 8) "Rating: written for the kind of person who'd be shocked to learn about the concept of a fursona"

7. The universe is humming with gravitational waves. Here's why scientists are so excited about the discovery (July 3, via) Cool!

8. Let's Talk Emotional Labour of Birth Control (July 10) Wow, is this really a thing, a man claiming that he doesn't want to wear a condom, so he expects his partner to take birth control pills which cause a lot of problems for her? I guess this makes me glad I'm asexual- I do have sex, but if I had to take birth control pills in order to do it, I would NOT, it is NOT worth that trouble. (Though I'm guessing a lot of this is women being coerced by societal expectations- it's not about women feeling like "I really really want to have vaginal sex, I want it so much that it's worth taking birth control pills that change my body.")