Blogaround

1. It’s Year-end Party Season For Chinese Companies — Do Workers Like Them? (January 15) Ha. Yeah, so this is a thing in China. Every company has a big party for Chinese New Year. Lots of fancy food, dance performances, "lucky draw" prizes, managers giving speeches about how great the company is, going around to everyone else's table to drink with them, it drags on and on for hours...

I remember at my first job in China, another international employee astutely asked, "Why do parties always need to have performances?" Why indeed.

At my current job, we have annual parties which are a lot more casual than that, and I really like that. Just rent a party room and hang out and eat, some people can play mah jong or do karaoke if they want, and maybe win "lucky draw" prizes, and that's it.

Also from Sixth Tone: For China’s Plus-Size Women, Going Out Is a Daily Struggle (January 19)

2. There’s A Version of A Christmas Carol Where Scrooge is an Attempted Rapist (December 27) "The tremendous irony is that this adaptation adds so much darkness and evil to the Scrooge story but does not add more meaning. A worse Scrooge does not produce greater redemption – it produces less."

Also from Dr. Laura Robinson: How Much Exodus is Too Much Exodus? The Prince of Egypt and The Ten Commandments (December 31) It's an analysis which compares the movies "The Prince of Egypt" and "The Ten Commandments." Oh I am so here for this.

3. Wheaton College restricts employees’ ability to state preferred pronouns (January 10, via) This is just ridiculous. What if your name is Alex or Sam or something? Also, using a trans person's correct name and pronouns is BARE MINIMUM level of human decency.

4. Michigan’s new anti-poverty effort: $7,500 for Flint moms, no strings attached (August 1) "Beginning in January, Flint moms will receive up to $7,500 to help boost their infant’s footing in the first year of life — a one-time $1,500 payment in mid-pregnancy, followed by $500 per month for the first year of a child’s life." Great news!

5. China to grant Ireland unilateral visa-free treatment (January 17) and Swiss travellers to be allowed to enter China visa-free (January 16)

I tried to find a source from a more well-known western news outlet, but I only found this one from Bloomberg and it's paywalled: China Has Scrapped Visa Requirements for 11 Nations in Past Year (January 18)

Very interesting! China is very intentionally trying to improve relations with other countries, and encourage tourism. This is good news, from my perspective as an immigrant in China, but also I'm American so none of these new policies actually apply to me directly.

6. A few articles on Biden not taking a stand against genocide in Gaza:

Why is Biden engaging in disinformation on Gaza? (January 10) [content note: infant death]

Joe Biden Wants You To Believe He Is Opposed To Genocide In Gaza (January 17) "But his statement, which emphasized the Israeli deaths on October 7 and the hostages who remain in Hamas’s custody, made no mention of the 10,000 dead Palestinian children and what they never should have gone through."

US Democrats push Biden administration over civilian toll in Israel's Gaza campaign (January 20)

7. Enforcing the Law to Disqualify a Violent Insurrectionist Is Good, Actually (January 16) "Even if you wish really hard, Clarence Thomas is not going to recuse himself from this case; Donald Trump is not going to stop claiming everything is rigged because the liberal justices joined an unanimous opinion; and Senate Democrats are not going to betray every single warning they’ve raised about Trump being a threat to democracy for the past eight years to give him a special exemption from the Constitution’s insurrection ban. Donald Trump exists in the real world, not a law school exam hypothetical, and strategies for opposing him need to be rooted in reality."

Also on that topic: Catching up on Donald Trump (January 8) "But whether or not the Constitution bans him from holding office again is a question of law, not politics. The whole point of including things in the Constitution is to take them out of politics. If constitutional provisions are subject to politics, then all the rights the Constitution supposedly gives us are up for grabs. Your right to do any particular thing will depend not on the Constitution, but on whether your action is politically popular."

8. In Juneau, Alaska, a carbon offset project that’s actually working (January 4) "In an effort to mitigate a portion of that CO2, some of those going whale watching or visiting the glacier are asked to pay a few dollars to counter their emissions. The money goes to the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund, but instead of buying credits from some distant (and questionable) offset project, the nonprofit spends that cash installing heat pumps, targeting residents like Roberts who rely upon oil heating systems."