Blogaround

1. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and Self Love vs. Narcissism (November 8) "The Emperor's New Groove" is such a good movie!

2. Some good news on climate change (November 18) "The best message, practically speaking, would combine sounding a very loud and continuous alarm with various facts about how real progress is being made on the technological side toward ameliorating the trajectory of climate change, on both a long term and shorter term basis."

3. At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk’s rush to Mars (November 10) [content note: injury and death] "'Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,' said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was among a group of employees fired after raising workplace complaints. 'The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.'"

4. Has the ‘Double Eleven’ Shopping Festival Lost its Luster? (November 21) In China, "double eleven" (双11, November 11) is a big online shopping day, kinda the same idea as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But this article says in recent years, the excitement for double eleven deals has kind of worn off.

Also from Sixth Tone: A Food Courier’s Pursuit of Equal Treatment (November 25) "He shares that a large state-owned enterprise that he often visits doesn’t allow couriers inside, nor will it put a table at the entrance for riders to leave takeout deliveries, meaning they need to wait downstairs and hold the food until the customer comes to collect it." 

Yeah, I order food to get delivered almost every day- it's very convenient in China, and I always see tons of delivery drivers on their electric scooters, rushing around to deliver food. From what I've heard, they're under a lot of pressure to deliver the food as fast as possible, or else they get fined- and this means they often rush through red lights and do other unsafe things, to shave off a few seconds. Sounds like a really hard job. At the office building where I work, there's a locker outside the back door of the building, and the delivery drivers put the deliveries in the locker and then you get a notification on the app- this seems to work out well for the drivers because they just stick it in the locker, give you a phone call to let you know, and then they can leave, they don't have to wait for you to come down in the elevator and pick it up.

I've had situations where the driver was at the wrong building, and calling me to ask me how to get to my address, and he asked me if he can mark in the app that the order has been delivered- ie, he marks it as complete so the app doesn't get him in trouble for being late, and then he finds his way to the right address and gives me the food. 

5. Plain white Cru not white enough for Florida evangelicals (November 22) "As a result, those Republican Christians no longer respond to Cru the way that any normal person would. A normal person would be, like, 'Oh, you mean that campus ministry group that’s so fundie they make Young Life seem cool by comparison?'"

6. I Don’t Think That Parable Means What You Think It Means (November 22) "As I encountered these parables growing up in my faith tradition, I was taught that the most powerful person in a given parable—the vineyard owner, the rich man, the king—is supposed to be God. Bolz-Weber addresses this directly: 'Why in the world do we always assume that the ruler, the slave owner, the property owner, the tyrant in the story always represents God?'"

7. In wake of state bans, abortions overall rise, reproductive care falls (October 25) "Where abortion is banned around the world, there is usually more death, not less, on account of maternal mortality rates (MMRs)."

8. Will Anti-abortion Laws Drive Women to Colleges in Blue States? (November 4?) Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because when I was in college/ in high school deciding where to go to college, never in a million years would it have occurred to me "what if I need an abortion? I should go to college in a state with abortion access." I was "pro-life" back then, because everyone I knew seemed to be "pro-life"- I had never even heard any pro-choice arguments, and I hadn't the faintest idea about what kind of reasoning could possibly lead people to be pro-choice. The idea of me having sex was unimaginable to me, the idea of me ever having sex before marriage was unimaginable to me, the idea of being one of those "bad" women who wants to have an abortion was unimaginable to me. I very much did not see it as a "women's issue" that affects everyone with a uterus- I saw it as only something that bad women would ever try to access, and of course we should make laws to stop those bad women, right?

So, really mind-blowing to me to think about high school girls putting serious thought into how these laws affect them. (I mean, also apparently a lot of high school kids are having sex, and I find that hard to fathom too...)

Also from Skepchick: The Hamas Hostage with “Stockholm Syndrome” (November 11?) "Instead of it being an actual psychological phenomenon, it’s just a story the media likes to tell when explaining victim behavior that people might not immediately understand."

9. Ah, in my post about young-earth creationism, I can't believe I forgot to include a link to Joel Duff's blog, Naturalis Historia. (I have now edited the post to include a link.) If you want to know all the specific details about how young-earth creationism can't account for the scientific evidence we find in the fossil record, etc, you definitely want to read his blog.

10. [trigger warning for transmisia] I don't recommend reading this one, but I want to at least mention it here so nobody ever forgets what kind of hateful trash The Gospel Coalition is publishing about trans people. On November 22, they published a post called "I Love My Transgender Child. I Love Jesus More." (archive link) 

I'm not gonna respond to this, I will just say this: God is nonbinary. And Jesus said, "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me"- if you're mean to trans people, you're being mean to Jesus. (Observant readers may notice that this is THE OPPOSITE of what that article headline says- like you have to choose between loving Jesus and loving your trans child. WTF.) And if you cause a trans child to hate themself, well, Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

And just as God is the Creator, people are made in God's image, and people reflect God's image by creating too. Trans people create their own identity, their own gender expression, and that's an amazing and godly thing.

And if you worship a god who requires you to be cruel to trans people, that's on you. You could worship a different god. You could worship no gods at all. What does it say about you, that you choose to worship that kind of god?

11. China trials visa-free travel for six countries (November 24) The six countries are: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia- travelers from these countries will be allowed to stay in China for up to 15 days, without a visa. Interesting! I wonder why they're doing this- I'm guessing it's to encourage tourism, to have good relationships with those countries, and because they aren't worried that people from those countries will want to illegally overstay. Anyway, cool, good news if you're from one of those countries.