Blogaround

1. Pennsylvania school boards up window openings that allowed views into its gender-neutral bathrooms (October 5) "Such openings weren’t installed in any of the school’s non-gender-neutral bathrooms." What on EARTH.

2. Where the moral obligation ends (October 7) "Daily Wire influencer and abuse-victim doxxer Megan Basham begrudgingly allows that Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, but then says, 'Ah, but who is my neighbor?'" This whole post is SPOT ON.

Also from the Slacktivist: Do you want plagues? Because that’s how you get plagues (October 10) "The Pharaoh in the biblical story of Exodus — the Pharaoh whose disobedient oppression of immigrants echoes throughout the entire canon of scripture — chose to “get tough on immigration” because he became obsessed with something very much like the racist “Great Replacement Theory” that has been actively supported by anti-immigrant white evangelicals for the past decade. “‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous'” (Exodus 1:9-10, and also the Republican Party Platform and Project 2025)."

And: ‘Where you don’t want to look’ (October 15) "In anti-abortion politics, decisions are taken away from those closest and most affected by them. Those decisions, instead, are mandated by those farthest removed from the facts and the impacts, by people unaffected and unrelated to them, for whom such decisions are abstractions based on false witness and hostile, vicious false assumptions about those directly involved."

3. Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter: Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country Too (September 30, via) "But if you zoom out, Trump being the president was the worst thing that ever happened to my dad, to my family, and to our nation’s modern history. The consequences will only be more severe—and irreversible— a second time around."

4. Fast Crimes at Lambda School (June 18, via) "Austen thought he could fake it 'till he made it. He lied about students getting jobs, the success of the company, and he even lied about being homeless."

5. Duracell PowerCheck: A genius idea which didn't last that long (October 9. 16-minute video) Wow, I remember when batteries had these little white dots that you could press really hard to see if the battery was good or not.

6. Republican lawsuits target rules for overseas voters, but those ballots are already sent (October 14) BOOOOOO. "'It’s not the case that anyone in the world can apply for a ballot. They still have to demonstrate they are an eligible American citizen,' she said." Yes, OBVIOUSLY.

7. Remember When Russian Pop Duo t.A.T.u Pretended To Be Lesbians? (October 10) Well I don't think I ever heard their music, but I do remember Focus on the Family clutching their pearls about it.

8. CIDABM (October 9) From xkcd.

9. Is the food in the fridge still good? California wants to end the guessing game (October 2, via) "It will require the use of 'Best if Used By' label to signal peak quality and 'Use By' label for product safety, an approach recommended by federal agencies." This sounds like a great idea. My personal philosophy toward expiration dates is, food doesn't suddenly go bad right on that date, there must be some sort of range. And the expiration date is picked such that assuming a normal distribution, you can say with a high probability that the food is okay. So, not a big deal if you're past the expiration date and the food looks fine.

(My husband is totally the opposite!)

Interestingly, in China, packaged food is stamped with the production date, and then it will also say how long it is good for (12 months, 18 months, etc) and then you have to add them yourself. And for fresh things like bread or meat, usually they will have a sticker that says the production date and use-by date.

10. Buoyed by his party and the press, a raging Trump goes full Hitler (October 13) I'm really worried about this.

11. Europa Clipper - Cool! That was launched by NASA on October 14.

12. Nature Study Reveals the Deadly Danger of Anti-Trans Laws (October 15) "They found that in the first year after a state introduced anti-trans laws, the number of teens between 13 and 17 attempting suicide jumped significantly compared to other states."