Blogaround

1. First Amendment protects satanic display in Iowa, but GOP lawmaker took abuse for saying so (December 12, via) Yessss, Representative Dunwell is saying that he *personally* does not like the satanic display in the Iowa State Capitol, but by law we have freedom of religion and that means the government cannot and should not decide which religious displays are okay and which are not. This is my favorite part: "The display is an inanimate object that has no real power in and of itself. We have nothing to fear."

And then an update on that: If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine (December 15) 

2. Laudatory categories (December 13) "In politics, people are quite committed to the idea that their own political ideology is the good stuff, and the stuff that isn’t good doesn’t count."

3. Real vs Artificial Christmas Trees: Which is Killing Us Faster? (December 15) "Overall, those are the reasons why most sustainability experts say that a real tree is better for the environment than a plastic tree." Yes, really great to have actual numbers to attach to questions like this. I think people's tendency is to think "real trees are wasteful because you only use it a few weeks and then throw it away, artificial trees are sustainable" but that's not *automatically* true- you have to do the math. 

I saw a similar site recently which calculates whether your carbon footprint is bigger for using disposable or cloth diapers for your baby- it depends on a lot of factors! Reusable is not automatically "more sustainable."

And I've also seen discussion in some mom groups about "I bought a big sack with my child's name on it, to put her Christmas gifts in so we don't need wrapping paper. Wrapping paper is so wasteful." Well, I don't know if buying a bag that you use for many years is actually better or not- you have to do the math. Depends on how many years you use it, and how much wrapping paper (and what kind of wrapping paper) you would have used otherwise, etc.

4. Meghan Trainor gets candid about painful intercourse and vaginismus diagnosis (April 27) "I thought that every woman walking around was always in pain during and after sex. I was like, ‘Doc, are you telling me that I could have sex and not feel a single bit of pain?’" Oh my goodness that's so real. 

I missed this news when it happened back in April. Glad to see more people are talking about vaginismus.

Also this: Meghan Trainor’s comments about painful sex helped me realise I had vaginismus (May 10)

5. Greedflation: corporate profiteering ‘significantly’ boosted global prices, study shows (December 7, via) Recently I've heard people talking about "greedflation" which means companies are raising prices and causing inflation just because they want more profits and not because their costs are actually higher- and to me this explanation doesn't add up. Wouldn't the market correct for that? If that's really what's happening, wouldn't it create an opportunity for other companies to swoop in and set their own prices more reasonably, and attract all the customers away from these "greedflation" companies? So I didn't really believe that "greedflation" was a real thing.

(Also this seems to be a US thing. It's not happening in China. So I don't have direct experience about it.)

Well this article has some actual data to back it up. Specifically, the actual numbers show that profits have grown much faster than wages and other business costs. So, I guess there is something to this "greedflation" concept- though I still feel like there's a lot that doesn't add up. Why is this happening *now* specifically, when surely companies would always like to raise their prices and get higher profits? (Like this is talked about as if suddenly these companies had this amazing idea that they had totally never thought of before, "hey let's raise prices for no reason, just because we want to.") And why isn't the market fixing the problem on its own?

(Maybe in the long run, the market will fix this, but in the short term this happened because of the societal disruption caused by the pandemic?)

6. How Can This Sudoku Be Real? (December 11) 1-hour-19-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, very interesting ruleset. I like this one because you have to spend a lot of time thinking about what's even possible under the ruleset, before you can even start the sudoku.

7. More Chinese Fathers Helping, Yet ‘Widowed Parenting’ Persists (December 18) "The data shows a significant disparity in caregiving roles: About 80% of children are dropped off and picked up from school by their mothers or grandparents, while only 7% primarily receive this support from their fathers."

And these ones also from Sixth Tone:

Amid Rescue Efforts in Quake-Hit Gansu, a Race Against Time and Cold (December 19) 

Meet Rural China’s ‘Wonder Woman’ (December 19)

8. The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. (November 22, via) "Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of 'divisive concepts' about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers."

9. Jonathan Majors Guilty of Harassment and Assault (December 18) [content note: domestic violence] He's the actor that plays the villain Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- but, not anymore.

10. Thailand to legalize same-sex marriage (December 13, via) Great!

11. They just won a $148M verdict against Giuliani. Now they’re suing him again. (December 18) "Three days after a jury delivered the massive decision over Giuliani’s false claims that the pair engaged in fraud in the 2020 election, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss filed a new lawsuit Monday seeking to block Giuliani from repeating those allegations — as he repeatedly did during and after last week’s trial."

12. A nation where there is no refuge to seek (December 19) "The sick and cynical strategy that opponents of reproductive freedom will use is definitely going to be to blame doctors for failing to perform medically necessary abortions, while refusing to at any point withdraw the threat of prosecution."

Also from Lawyers, Guns, Money: Exceptions to abortion bans are a fraud (December 12) "'I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all,' said Duane."