Blogaround

1. 2024 Arrives With A Sudoku Miracle (January 1) 1-hour-54-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, this ruleset is very complicated. I'm super impressed by Simon solving it.

2. If Trump Is Not an Insurrectionist, What Is He? (January 5) "The unspoken assumption behind the idea that Trump should be allowed on the ballot and that the public should have the chance to choose for or against him yet again is that he will respect the voice of the electorate. But we know this isn’t true. It wasn’t true after the 2016 presidential election — when, after winning the Electoral College, he sought to delegitimize the popular vote victory of his opponent as fraud — and it was put into stark relief after the 2020 presidential election."

3. 'Jane Roe' is anonymous no more. The very public fight against abortion bans in 2023 (December 31) "Now, it's different. 'Women and pregnant people in this country are so angry and so shocked at the treatment that they are receiving at the hands of the state that they have been compelled to tell their stories,' she says."

4. UN experts alarmed by Alabama plan to kill prisoner using untried gas method (January 3) [content note: death penalty] "In a joint statement released on Wednesday in Geneva, the four independent UN monitors call on the US government and Alabama to halt the execution scheduled for 25 January. They accuse the state of rushing ahead with an experimental execution technique that could inflict grave suffering on Smith in violation of the international ban on torture."

5. Epiphany: One Of Us (January 7) "And then God Almighty — God who laid the foundation of the earth, who determined its measurements when the morning stars sang together, God who commands the morning and causes the dawn to know its place, God who bound the chains of the Pleiades and loosed the cords of Orion — wept."

6. WHO Guideline for complementary feeding of infants and young children 6-23 months of age (October 16) New guidelines released by the World Health Organization, about how to feed babies, and WOW there are big changes here! This link has the very long report documents, I will try to see if I can find a shorter summary. But just to give you an idea of how big the changes are: They are now saying that babies can start having cow milk rather than formula at 6 months old (used to be 12 months!). Still saying breastfeeding is best, and recommending that you continue to breastfeed until the baby is 2 years old, and beyond, but wow big changes in the guidelines around formula.

7. Changing Course: Why More Chinese Students Are Eyeing Southeast Asia (January 9) "For instance, in Thailand, Chinese students comprised the majority of international students in 2022, with 21,419 enrollments, a 130% increase from 9,329 in 2012."

8. Who Gets to Be a Person? (January 4) [content note: miscarriage] "In pursuing the case, prosecutors deny Watts the full expression of her grief. They deny her the right to feel pain and shock at her miscarriage, to act like a traumatized human being. Even if the grand jury does not indict her, she has experienced hell."

And an update on that: Ohio woman who miscarried at home won’t be charged with corpse abuse, grand jury decides (January 12)

The main thing here is... a miscarriage at 22 weeks, that's horrible. That's devastating, to lose the baby when you're already 22 weeks into the pregnancy. Watts needs compassion and support; she needs to be allowed to grieve, because that's a terrible thing to go through. But instead she was treated like she had done something bad to her baby.

9. More delays for NASA’s astronaut moonshots, with crew landing off until 2026 (January 10)

10. Do pregnant women have a right to urgent medical care? No, according to a US court (January 10) This is just BONKERS. Doesn't the Texas abortion ban supposedly have an exception for "life of the mother"? So why is Texas now arguing that ERs shouldn't be required to do abortions which are necessary to save pregnant people's lives? So that whole "exception for life of the mother" thing was totally fake, then?

11. In Hottest Year On Record, US Cut Carbon Emissions. Good Start! (January 11)

12. China rolls out new measures to facilitate foreigners’ visit to country (January 11) I saw this in the news, but I don't understand what it actually means in practical terms (like, I'm an immigrant in China, is this gonna benefit me?). We'll see.