Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How to Make a Great Government Website (2024, via) "First is the required interview. Most of the time it’s a phone call. Often they’ll call from a blocked number. They’ll send you a notice of when your interview is scheduled for, but this notice will sometimes arrive after the actual date of the interview."

2. Beauty and the Beast - How bad was A.I.D.S.? (October 10, via) 56-minute video. It's a queer reading of "Beauty and the Beast," as is overlaps with what was going on with the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s.

3. AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet (October 7) 12-minute video from Kurzgesagt.

4. This post about Copilot in Excel getting a simple sum wrong. Apparently it's because the prompt didn't actually include any info about what cells the data was in. The AI doesn't give an error message or anything, so there's no way the user would have known that.

I haven't ever used Copilot in Excel so maybe I'm missing some key thing, but, uh... my reaction is, excel formulas update when you change the data, but if I'm using an AI for something that matters, I would need to carefully check the output. Having a human pay attention to the output every time it changes seems incompatible with having things update automatically (which is one of Excel's biggest strengths).

Doesn't seem great if every formula in every cell of your excel sheet has a mind of its own and you can't rely on them being right.

5. U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country (October 12) "Before widespread vaccination, pretty much everyone got measles in childhood. And 400-500 people in the U.S. used to die from it each year."

6. Hamas releases 20 remaining living Israeli hostages after two years in Gaza (October 13, via) "Parents were reunited with sons and children with fathers as those held were handed over to the Red Cross before finally rejoining their families with the help of the Israeli army."

7. Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia (Official Music Video) (October 6) I like this song~

8. Michigan Republican pushing pornography ban linked to porn site, records show (October 7, via) So it was discovered that Schriver, a politician who's been trying to ban porn, used to have an account on a site with sex webcams and the like.

I'm posting this because people are calling it out as obvious hypocrisy, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. In conservative Christian culture, porn is seen as this evil bad thing that all men are naturally drawn to. If they don't have good enough self-control and/or restrictions on their computer, all men would go and make an account on a porn site. A lot of talk about how so many men are "struggling" with porn use, "addicted" to porn, how it's such a bad thing but they're all tangled up in it because it's so tempting.

It makes perfect sense to me that a lot of these conservative lawmakers supporting "porn bans" are men who have been part of this "struggling with porn" subculture- partly interested in it and partly repressing themselves and feeling so much shame- they try to make laws to ban it as a way to fight against their own "porn addiction"- as a way to show God that even though they keep failing in their resolution to not use porn, on some level they really are trying to fight it.

9. The Supreme Court’s First Blockbuster Case This Term Looks Pretty Fake (October 6, via) "And I think, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with bringing a test case. If someone’s rights are really at stake and they haven’t faced punishment yet—but they fear that they will—it’s legitimate for that person to sue. But what ADF does is really finesse the facts, often to the point of fiction, to justify creating a test case that the Supreme Court can use to change the law."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. No Kings is on Saturday, October 18. Go out and protest if you can.

2. Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche (October 4) "Authorities seized people first, without probable cause, treating merely living in the same complex as suspected undocumented migrants as a crime."

Also from Jay Kuo: The Hunger Games (October 3) "After all, why should the Democrats agree to keep the government open for another seven weeks to negotiate a “budget” if the White House can later refuse to honor it? What’s to stop the OMB from doing exactly the same thing with New York City transit funds and blue state energy projects even after a budget is passed and signed into law?"

3. Van Nuys car wash owner files $50M claim over injuries sustained during immigration raid (September 26) "Shouhed says he was terrified as he tried to explain to the agents that his employees were authorized to be on the job, yet he says they took at least five of his employees away in handcuffs. He says he screamed that he is a United States citizen and had proof in his wallet, but he says they did not listen."

4. 'I'm done being afraid': How the shutdown has led federal workers to speak out (October 10) "They say the best organizer is a bad boss, and we all have the same bad boss."

5. ‘Bring her back’: Delaware abuse victim rescued from ICE deportation (October 13, via) "Before agents rummaged through her home, Isabela demanded they show her an arrest warrant. They refused and broke down her door anyway, injuring her son with the doorknob as they barged in."

6. “I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America (October 10, via) "ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. But after those dates came and went, these immigrants said they feel betrayed by what the president told them."

7. MIT Rejects Trump’s Bid to Institute Trans Bathroom, Athletics Ban (October 11)

8. Multiple airports refuse to play Kristi Noem video that blames Democrats for government shutdown (October 13)

9. This frog protester in Portland, from this link: Everyone Is Pointing Out This 1 Reason Why The Anti-ICE Inflatable Frogs In Portland May Be The Best Protesters (October 14)

Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Artwork showing Jesus healing a blind man. Image source.

This is a follow-up to my post Being Right vs Doing Good~

So, what did Jesus have to say to the question, "Which is more important: being right or doing good?"

Okay I'll just tell you the answer now: it's doing good. Jesus was not interested in telling everyone the "right answers" and making sure everyone had the "right beliefs." Jesus was interested in how people treat each other.

Here are the receipts.

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Who is my neighbor 

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

So this "expert" asks Jesus a question- "Who is my neighbor?" In response, Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan. In this parable, a man is beaten by robbers, who leave him laying on the side of the road. A priest walks by and doesn't help. A Levite walks by and doesn't help. Then a Samaritan walks by, and stops to help this guy, bandaging his wounds, bringing him to an inn to take care of him.

That's Jesus' response. This story. This guy asked "who is my neighbor" and Jesus told a story. And then Jesus asked, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" and tells him to "Go and do likewise."

Readers who are paying attention may notice that we still are not given a proper definition of "neighbor" here. We know the command is "love your neighbor as yourself," and surely we need to know what "neighbor" means, in order to understand this command, right? But Jesus doesn't give us that.

Jesus' purpose was not to make sure everyone knew all the exact nuances of "the rules", so we could rules-lawyer about them. It's not about that. The point of the story is not to teach you an exact definition of the command "love your neighbor as yourself." The point is that you should help people. That's what matters. What you do.

(As a person who over-analyzes things, I have to say, this annoys me.)

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The sheep and the goats

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. He says that people will be separated into 2 groups- sheep and goats- and the King will tell the sheep that they will be rewarded because "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" (and other scenarios where they helped him). The sheep then ask what he's talking about. He says, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." For the goats, it's the opposite- they will receive eternal punishment, because "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat" and so on.

So I want to ask you this question: Is the purpose of this story to teach us the process by which people get judged and sent to heaven or hell? Or is the purpose of this story to teach us that we should help people?

I think the point is we should help people. 

I don't think the point is to tell us the mechanisms of how people go to heaven or hell. Like Jesus really wanted us to know that someday he's gonna divide people into 2 groups, and if you helped hungry/thirsty/sick/etc people then you go to heaven... wait, how much do you have to help such people? What is the threshold exactly? How do you know if you've done enough to get into heaven?

It's not about that. It's not about those questions. Jesus is not telling us facts about how heaven and hell work. He is telling us that we should help people. That's the point.

Maybe it's *not* true that there's really a judgment and a heaven and hell. I don't know. Maybe it's just a story that serves as a guide to getting us into the right frame of mind, to have an attitude of being open and generous and compassionate towards people as we live our lives.

And I'll admit, as a person who overanalyzes things, I *do* worry about "how do I know if I've helped enough people to get into heaven?" But I think if we're worrying about that, we're missing the point of the parable. Worrying about if I've done enough- that puts the focus on myself. But the point of the parable is we should help others. The point is not "we should make sure we've helped others enough to meet whatever Jesus' standard is, and we should constantly worry about that."

Maybe it needs to not be literally true, or else you do end up with those implications. 

(And I love how the sheep clearly do *not* have the correct beliefs about Jesus/heaven/hell. Jesus says "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" and they initially disagree with him. Jesus doesn't care- what matters is what you do, not your beliefs behind it.)

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My point

When you read what the bible says about Jesus' life, well, it doesn't look like the sort of thing that one would do if one's goal was to teach everyone the correct facts about morality/God/etc. If that was his goal, he could have spent all his time giving clear explanations (and then Christians wouldn't have had anything to argue about amongst ourselves for the past 2000 years). He could have said, "okay, here's how it works. Here's how heaven and hell work. Here's the correct teaching about the nature of God." He could have told us the exact correct details about the Trinity, free will, how atonement works, souls, church hierarchy structures, baptism, etc etc etc.

Instead, he cared about people, helped people, healed people. His teaching was about what you should do- not how to have the correct beliefs about everything. And he often used parables, which introduces the risk that someone is going to understand the parables incorrectly. He was okay with that. (Contrast this with modern evangelical Christian media, which has to hit you over the head with the message, because wouldn't it be terrible if we used a bit of subtlety and then somebody didn't get the "correct" message from it?)

Yeah, Jesus didn't act like a person who thinks the highest priority is that everyone needs to have the correct beliefs about everything. Doing good is what actually matters. 

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Related:

Sheep and Goats

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via) 

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Being Right vs Doing Good

Sign that says "Right" with an arrow pointing in one direction, and "wrong" with an arrow pointing the other direction. Image source.

Which is more important, being right or doing good? Having the correct opinions on every issue, or taking actions which make a positive difference in the world?

In the ideology of conservative Christianity and conservative politics, being right is more important than being good. You can see this in so many different issues. I have examples.

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"Saved by faith, not by works"

I was taught that this is the main message of Christianity: We are not saved by something we did; we are saved by what Jesus did. We can never do enough good deeds to earn our way into heaven- we just need to believe in Jesus, that's how we get to heaven. We are saved by faith, not by works. 

Evangelical Christians say it's totally legit if someone does all kinds of immoral things, and then on their deathbed they repent and convert to Christianity- on that basis, they get into heaven. It doesn't matter what they did. It doesn't matter if they did good things or if they murdered a lot of people. What matters is that, in the end, they had the correct beliefs.

I've seen conservatives speak out against "the social gospel"- ie, the idea that Christianity is about helping people here and now, that Christianity can be good news for the poor (as Jesus said in Luke 4:18), that Christians should fight for justice. Speaking out against "the social gospel" because it would be bad if people were too focused on this idea of doing good and helping people, and that caused them to place less emphasis on making sure everyone believes the right things. Yeah, conservative Christians are very suspicious of anyone preaching that Christians should do good deeds. Doing good deeds should be a secondary concern- we can't ever lose sight of the fact that being right is the most important.

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Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family is a conservative Christian organization which teaches that there is only 1 correct way to have a family. You have to follow all these rules- that's the "correct" way to live. That's God's way. This image of a hetero couple, with children, the husband as the head of the family, and divorce is not allowed.

If anyone is not living according to this model, well, they deserve whatever happens to them. They should be living the right way. See, we need to teach everyone that if you don't live the right way, then the natural result is that bad things will happen to you. That's just the way it is. It's a kindness, to let everyone know about the risks of living the "wrong" way.

One might point out, hey, wouldn't it be better if we do some research on people's actual family situations, and what kind of ideas/policies would actually help them? Ha! Of course not. In conservative ideology, we already know that people will only get the best outcome if they follow our rules. If they're not following our rules, we shouldn't support them in that. 

(See these posts from the Slacktivist: "Pro-Family" means anti-families and To truly be ‘pro-family,’ you have to be pro-worker)

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Is homosexuality worse than other sins?

15ish years ago, when everyone was arguing about marriage equality, sometimes people would point out that it seems like conservative Christians are treating homosexuality like it's worse than any other sin. What's up with that?

Back then, I was evangelical, and my position was that it's *not* worse than other sins, and we should try to have consistent beliefs about sin, treating all sin as significant but also able to be forgiven by Jesus. (And also, I believed it wasn't a sin to have same-sex attraction, but it was a sin to "act on it.")

But also, at the same time, it sort of made sense to me why we always talked about it in a way that gave people the impression that we thought it was the worst sin. Because there was something about it that intersected with this "being right vs doing good" dichotomy, in a way that other sins didn't. The issue wasn't just that "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship"- it was "it's a sin to be in a same-sex relationship, but some people are claiming it's not a sin, and they are wrong, and we need to make it very clear that they are wrong on this factual matter." If a Christian leader does something really bad, like abuse kids, or embezzle money, or whatever, they can stand up and make a big speech about "oh I did this sinful thing, but now I have repented and God has forgiven me." Regardless of their actions, they can proclaim that they now have the "correct" beliefs. But if a Christian leader gets outed as gay, well... they're going to continue to be gay. 

In an ideology where your actions don't really matter, as long as you say the right thing, a refusal to accept the required beliefs about homosexuality is basically worse than any actual bad thing you can do.

People might ask "Why are Christians making such a big deal about this? Aren't they supposed to be, like, helping the poor or something?" But see, nobody is debating whether it's good and important to help poor people or not. See, we all already know the "correct" answer on that, so no need to really make a big deal out of it. But this LGBT issue, well, people have the wrong opinions on it- so we need to argue with them all the time.

(Anyway, I'm queer now, and glad to not be in evangelical world any more.)

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Policies that actually lower the abortion rate 

In the "pro-life" movement, the belief that abortion is bad, and that those women who want abortions are evil and must be stopped, is treated as more important than actually creating policies that lower the abortion rate.

Statistically, we know that banning abortion doesn't really lower the abortion rate. You know what does? Giving people good sex education, and access to contraception. Oh, but the "pro-life" movement can't be supporting those things- because, we know the correct lifestyle is to not have sex outside of marriage. If you're following the correct lifestyle, obviously you will never need an abortion. (Fact-check: this is not true.) It's very important to make sure everyone knows the correct way to live, and if they stray from that path, well, no we shouldn't give them any help or support. Just keep telling them what the correct thing to do would have been.

And another thing that lowers the abortion rate: Policies which help women have more control over their lives, enabling them to set up their lives in such a way that they're able to have the number of children they want to have. Policies which protect pregnant people's rights. Paid maternity leave. Ah, but the "pro-life" movement doesn't advocate for these things. Because it's about having the "right" opinion on abortion- not about actually doing things that will decrease the abortion rate.

(See this post from Libby Anne: How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement)

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And every issue is like this

Seriously, most conservative political positions I can think of, they're about how we already know the right way to live and/or structure society, and therefore the most effective thing we can do is to tell people that's what they're supposed to do, and reward people who are already doing it. We can't give any help to people who aren't living the right way, ugh, that would be terrible, that would send the message that it's *okay* to live like that.

Political policies related to economics, for example. People who are college-educated, people who don't have credit card debt or student loans, people who are rich, people who own businesses- they are the ones doing things the "right" way. If someone proposes a new government policy that would financially help people who are not doing things the "right" way, well, obviously it's a bad idea- we should be teaching people what the right way is, and encouraging them toward it. Not rewarding their bad behavior.

Or another example- universal health care. Wow, wouldn't it be great if the US had universal health care? But conservatives oppose it, because the government isn't *supposed* to be doing that. We already know the "right" way to have a society, and it's that people should be responsible for themselves, rather than being dependent on the government.

(Very interesting that this belief about the "right" way to run one's government doesn't seem to take into account all the other countries in the world, and their different government structures and policies and the results they produce. Very interesting.)

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Conservatives would argue that doing things the "right" way *is* what's most beneficial

Now, I'm kind of framing this like conservatives believe they must follow what is "right" at the expense of doing what actually helps people- but this isn't exactly accurate. They would argue that getting everyone to do things the "right" way *is* what's most helpful, in the long run.

They would argue that, if you really had perfect information about the results of polices that promote doing things the "right" way, vs policies which naively help people who appear to need help- if you analyze these results and calculate which way does the most good, you would find that doing things the "right" way *is* what's best, in terms of real-world results. Sure, they believe this on an abstract, theoretical level, but if you point to a specific study that found that sticking to the "right" way was harmful, this is not going to change their minds. Just speaking for myself back then, when I was growing up republican, I would have said the study wasn't measuring the full scope of the results. (Maybe something seems like a good idea now, but in the long run leads to the downfall of society, ever think of that? ... It's very hard to come up with actual evidence to prove or disprove this...)

It's not really about the evidence. We already know the right answers, so there's not really much of a need to actually go out and collect evidence about the real-world effects of these ideas. We already know what the right way is.

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Which is more important, being right or doing good? Conservative Christianity and conservative politics say it's more important to be right. And this explains so much.

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See also, this post from the Slacktivist: Rights for me but not for thee, which discusses the idea "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." 

I personally feel it fits better to say conservatism is about being right (and I said in this post). But you could make the case that this "in-groups and out-groups" thing is kind of saying the same thing. The in-groups are the people who are doing things the right way- of course the government should support them, not put restrictions on them! And the out-groups are people who are not living according to the "correct" rules- well obviously the law should try to push them to live the "right" way- and definitely should not give them any support in their wrongness.

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Follow-up post: Jesus Weighs in on "Being Right vs Doing Good"

Related:

On Washing Machines and Republicans 

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible?

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: Global Asexual Solidarity (September 30) "Chen says this argument goes too far. They criticize it for relying on an Orientalist fantasy of a pre-existing “authentic” sexuality, and ignoring the agency of local activists."

2. The War on Science (September 23, 4-hour-2-minute video from Shaun) "This book is a collection of tired, irrelevant, right-wing, culture-war nitpicks being released at the most ridiculous possible time. These complaints have never been less relevant to reality, which makes the entire book read like one big joke."

Wow, turns out a lot of the essays in this book are some professor writing "I got fired because of some little mundane thing that THE WOKE MOB got angry about" and then Shaun digs up what actually happened and it turns out the professor in question was sexually harassing students/ had a long-term pattern of extremely racist behavior/ etc.

3. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91 (October 2, via) "He said Goodall was among the first researchers to make close observations of chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and quirks, at a time when other scientists were not trained to observe such specific details."

4. People Mountain, People Sea: Golden Week in Pictures (October 3) This week is China's "Golden Week" (the week we have off work for the October 1 National Day 国庆节 holiday). Usually it's 7 days off work, but this year it's 8 days because Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 happens to fall during this week too. This article has a bunch of photos showing the crowds of vacationers all around China.

Also, the phrase "people mountain, people sea" is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom 人山人海. It means it's very crowded. Like you look at a crowd and it looks like a mountain of people or a sea of people.

5. Israeli forces board Gaza flotilla, detain Greta Thunberg, other activists (October 1, via) "At least three ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 44 vessels and some 500 activists, were intercepted approximately 70 nautical miles (130km) from the coast of Gaza, according to organisers."

And more updates on this:

Greta Thunberg ‘beaten and forced to kiss Israeli flag’, activists say (October 5, via) 

Greta Thunberg is among flotilla activists deported from Israel. Others remain in prison (October 7)

6. Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts (October 3, via) Cool!

7. This Is What Happens When Therapists Don’t Understand Asexuality (September/October issue, via) "As I scribbled darkly with a dark pen, my therapist talked with us about how I could move forward toward having penetrative sex a certain amount of times per month."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. There will be No Kings protests on October 18. Join if you can!

2. UN says Fox News host apologized after calling for world body to be bombed (September 27) "'What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,' Watters said. 'Maybe gas it ... we need to destroy it.'"

3. Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’ (October 2) "Among Mukherjee’s clients are a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. 'An Ice officer has threatened to separate each of these children from each other and from their mother and their father, detain them in separate facilities, and put them on four different deportation flights,' she said. 'This is unnecessarily cruel.'"

4. Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated' (October 2, via) "Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours."

5. ‘Could have been an email’: Officials balk at Hegseth's generals meeting (September 30) "'It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,' said a former senior defense official. 'It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.'"

6. The federal government is shut down. Here's what that means across the country (October 6)

Democrats united in effort to stop Trump's 'lawless activity,' says Sen. Van Hollen (October 6)

7. Trump Promotes Magical Conspiracy Beds (October 2) "In a serious country with democratic norms still in place, a circumstance like this would lead directly to journalists forcing Donald Trump to explain whether or not he posted the video, and as a follow-up they would force him to elaborate on whether or not he understands reality. Like, does he know he never said this? Does he know that magical beds don’t exist?"

8. A federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Oregon — again. Here’s what we know (October 6)

"Girls & Sex" (book review)

Book cover for "Girls & Sex" by Peggy Orenstein

[content note: discussion of porn, discussion of oral sex]

Here's my review of the book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I feel like it helped me understand some things about the way people talk about sex.

---

Overview

This book is about the culture ("hookup culture") surrounding high school and college girls, in regards to sexual relationships. It's about what's expected, what's seen as normal, what they want, how they feel about it, what kinds of expectations they are facing from boys, how girls' knowledge of feminism doesn't necessarily stop their behavior from being dictated by these societal pressures, etc.

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Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Why Frozen Food Gets an Icy Reception in China (September 26) "Chinese consumers are wary of, and even resistant toward, pre-made food. Western consumers don’t mind the convenience of a frozen pizza, and Japanese convenience stores sell countless pre-made meals. So why China’s reticence?"

Yeah, this is definitely a thing. Chinese people going to the market every morning to get fresh vegetables. I mean, not everyone- if you have a full-time job, obviously you're not doing that. I didn't know that some people took it to the extremes that this article says... in contrast, it's also normal in China to have a bunch of meat in your freezer... frozen dumplings, etc... but maybe the point is that people expect restaurant food to be higher quality than what you would make at home, and frozen food is NOT seen as good enough for that.

This was a real issue during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. People didn't have, like, a stash of canned/frozen food. The government was, on the fly, coming up with systems to distribute food to everyone locked down in their homes- and it was fresh food, so there were some cases where delays in the delivery meant all the food went bad.

2. Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time (September 24, via) "An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients."

3. Voddie Baucham, Jr., Preacher and Educator Who Courted Controversy, Dies at 56 (September 26)

4. Wyoming town erects new monument to violent, anti-immigrant history (September 28) I think the wording of this headline is very strange; it should say something more like "monument for the victims of its violent, anti-immigrant history." Anyway, it's about this: "After burning several blocks once made up of homes and shops, the mob killed 28 Chinese people and injured another 14, in what is one of the deadliest incidents of anti-Chinese violence in U.S. history."

5. “War Criminal”: Thousands Call to Arrest Netanyahu, March at U.N. Against Gaza Genocide (September 29) "Despite the fact that Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes he has presided over in Gaza, he was able to travel to the U.N. without incident, as the United States says it does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. We spoke to protesters demanding Netanyahu’s arrest and an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Jimmy Kimmel’s reinstatement shows the power of noncooperation (September 23, via) "No business can handle a large-scale consumer withdrawal, and no government agency can handle widespread worker withdrawal. So even though the Trump administration has been moving methodically to consolidate power, the people of this country have the power to make it an exercise in futility."

2. Trump Posts an Absolutely Bonkers AI Video in Which He Promotes a Magic ‘Med Bed’ That Can Cure Any Disease (September 28)

And more on that from CNN: Trump shares apparent AI video promoting ‘medbed’ conspiracy theory (September 29)

3. Hegseth says Wounded Knee massacre soldiers will keep Medals of Honor (September 26) "'Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a ‘battle’ rather than what it truly was,' Columbia University history professor Karl Jacoby posted on Bluesky."

I saw a comment about this, where someone said they just couldn't understand why on earth Hegseth would do this. Here's why: It's because acknowledging the atrocities that the US committed against Native Americans is "woke." Everything was fine with the history that Hegseth learned in school, and now these Native American activists are saying something is wrong and the US should apologize, ugh how annoying, can they just stop? Hegseth's decision here has nothing to do with "did US soldiers massacre innocent people" and everything to do with "why would we bother talking about things that don't affect us regular [white] people?"

4. Lower Than Cowards (September 25) "Now we know most titans of industry won’t be fighting right-wing authoritarianism as fiercely as they would a tax hike on private equity."

5. 'I want his name to be known': Wife of immigrant injured at ICE facility shooting speaks out (September 27) "He's on life support after being critically injured on Wednesday in the shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas. He was being detained there after being arrested on Aug. 8 for driving under the influence. He is in the U.S. without legal status."

6. Hundreds protest at ICE building after Trump’s announcement of troop deployment to Portland (September 29) 

7. YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24 million to settle lawsuit over Jan. 6 suspension (September 29) "Law professor Goldman said but for 'an attempt to curry favor with the president,' there is 'absolutely no reason to believe Trump would have gotten anywhere with these suits.'"

8. Trump's new $100,000 visa fee sets off panic and confusion (September 21) "Tech companies and banks sent urgent memos advising employees not to leave the country. Bags were packed, tickets bought and families left behind as visa holders scrambled to beat what they believed was a looming deadline."

9. U.S. Revokes Visa for Colombian President Petro After He Joined Palestine Protest at U.N. (September 29, via) "After the U.S. revoked his visa, Petro wrote online, 'Revoking it for denouncing genocide shows the U.S. no longer respects international law.'"

"One Coin Found" (I love this queer Christian book)

Book cover for "One Coin Found"

I read the book One Coin Found: How God's Love Stretches to the Margins by Emmy Kegler (published in 2019), and it was great!

Kegler grew up in a mainline Christian tradition, and she didn't see any reason why her faith would have any kind of problem with the fact that she is a lesbian. But in the Christian circles she moved in- especially the ones which were more evangelical, and especially as she worked to become a pastor- well, it's more complicated than that. The overall structure of the book is about her life, but with plenty of asides where she preaches about the nature of God, the bible, etc, from a progressive/queer Christian perspective. It's so good.

I want to quote a section of the book, about communion. ("Communion" is also called "Eucharist" in some Christian traditions.) She was at a church service for college students, and was dragged into volunteering because they needed extra help. This is from pages 89-96:

Suddenly someone pushed a ceramic plate into my hands. It was heavy and cool, the polished rim pressing into my palms, the molasses bread upon it fresh from baking that morning. I looked down at the dark cross pressed into the loaf and immediately looked back up at the stranger who had handed me the plate. "I can't," I said, apologetic but clear.

...

"I can't serve," I repeated. "I'm not trained." I tried to hand off the plate to the closest possible person-- one of the campus pastors. ...

He took a moment, observing the situation as I held the plate out, my eyes declaring my unwillingness to be complicit in the unrighteousness being forced upon me. He half-took the plate back, and then peered at me again and asked: "Do you know what to say?"

I swallowed, and carefully answered, "T-the body of Christ, given for you."

He let go of the plate, and the full weight of it fell back into my hands. "There you go. You've been trained."

It could be that Pastor Benson simply needed to get one more set of hands ready. Perhaps his comment was not meant to be a theological assessment of the nature of the Eucharist. But in every moment since, in all that I have understood of Lutheran proclamation and practice, I have not yet found a sentence to better summarize what communion is. 

...

... But in the act of communion, in the promise from priest to believer that "this is the body of Christ, given for you," something grander than memory or symbol was taking place. Christ was fully present, impossibly so, in that moment of sacramental promise.

The transformation of the elements or the memory of the Last Supper became background for the work not of the priests or the believer but of Jesus: to be powerfully present in the moment of the Eucharist. An unworthy priest could still consecrate; an unworthy believer could still receive. It was not about the virtue, the knowledge, even the faith of the people involved; Luther saw humanity as far too fallible to bear that burden. It was Jesus's promise, Jesus's power in which the beauty of communion rested.

From the day that plate first rested in my hands, the promise of sacramental union rang true for me. The training that the church of my childhood had required was worthwhile, no question; if we were truly handling the body and blood of Christ, it was better to do it with reverence. But it was not required. I was a baptized and beloved child of God; the rest was the work of Christ. The promise of Christ's real presence expanded the bread and wine beyond what I could hold. In the crumbs there was a proclamation of an impossibly expansive God.

The God present in the bread was the God who had freed the Israelites from slavery, who had broken the bonds of oppression and wealth and power to lead them across the sea on dry land. The God in my hands was the God who had sent quails to cover the camp at night and frost to cover it at dawn, the God who had left thin wafers of bread across the sand of the camp, the God who chuckled when the Israelites picked up the fine flaky substance and said to each other, "What is this? What is this?" This was the bread of impossibility, the bread of the promise that God could provide, that work and work and work and work was not the path to salvation or protection. Manna, the bread of the wilderness. This was the bread that made no sense and yet was there six days of each week for over two thousand weeks, skipping each Sabbath with a terrifying regularity, reminding the people again and again to rest. Each stale wafer that stuck to the roof of my mouth held the God who had fed the chosen people both with food and with freedom.

The God who found me in the communion chalice was the God who inaugurated his ministry with ridiculous abundance, with rich red wine at a wedding where everyone was already drunk. The God now held in my shaking, sweaty hands was the God who drank and ate with sinners. This was the God who had smiled with quiet pleasure at the religious expert who failed to understand the offensive nature of mercy, a God whose human feet had been washed by a woman with wet eyes and trembling hands. As Simon the Pharisee glared at the offense of a sinful woman at the feet of Jesus, this God had interrupted his internal rant. This God who I now held in my hands had proclaimed the nature of salvation: "She has anointed my feet with oil. Therefore her many sins have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love." What came first, I wondered, the forgiveness or the love? The mercy or the response to mercy? The bread or the body?

Yes, communion answered me. There was no before and after. There was no twelve-step process to my betterment before the table of the Lord. There was no demand for perfect faith, for full comprehension, for my ultimate sanctification before I could be found worthy. Christ was there, waiting for me, the timeless Divine choosing to be bound in this moment. It was all there, element and substance together, the twinkling bright eyes of Pastor Benson as his fingers gripped the bread: The body of Christ, given for you.

On the first Easter, the day of impossibility, the first day the women and disciples could do anything besides sit and grieve, there was broken bread. The women had come and told their truth: an open tomb, a body missing, a flash of light, and two messengers with a proclamation: "He is not here, but has risen." The women had run to find the disciples, their words tumbling over each other, gasping with the exertion and elation and shock. But the men had shaken their heads, disillusioned or even disgusted with another set of women's foolish talk and idle tales. And so two had set off to Emmaus, a seven-mile journey, mournfully chewing over the morning's events, throwing questions and disappointments back and forth as they walked. "We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel," they told a stranger who met them on the way, and the stranger laughed and called them mindless and slow-hearted. Moses and all the prophets had confessed to this coming prophet, his life and death and resurrection, and the stranger walked alongside them on the journey.

And in a flash, over a simple dinner, the truth was known: the women's witness was no old wives' tale. Christ was alive, risen from the dead, freed from the tomb; he was known to them in the breaking of bread.

God was there, big enough to fit into a sip of wine, close enough to hold. 

God was here. My job was to get out of the way.

I served the bread that day. My hands were so sweaty that I vacillated wildly between the fear I'd be struck dead by lightning for serving without proper training and the fear that I'd drop the plate. Neither happened, and I have barely let go of serving the bread ever since. I will freely confess that I may have been excessively captured by the revelation of the real presence of Christ.

I have been finding new and complicated layers to the communion experience since that day. Years later, when I was serving communion in a Lutheran church off-campus, a parent pulled me aside before church to explain that her children would be receiving communion today, thank you very much. I blinked at her. "I know the teaching of the church is that you have to understand before you can receive," she went on, "but do any of us really understand what's happening at communion?"

This mother's proclamation baffled me. None of this was about understanding, I thought. Who could understand what was happening here? Who has said we need to try? The promise isn't of understanding but of presence, not ours but God's. That was the entire launch-point of Luther-- that it was the work of Jesus, and nothing of our own righteousness, that saved us.

The conclusion was singular and obvious. "Of course they'll receive," I answered.

Yes, what Kegler describes in this book is the Christianity I believe in. And reading this passage about communion, it gives me all kinds of feelings, about how I miss communion and other embodied/physical/sensory religious experiences.

Growing up evangelical, we always said the important thing was your beliefs, and whether you "really meant it"- that this was what really mattered, not rituals and traditions. In fact, we regarded Catholics and other "liturgical" Christian groups very suspiciously- we thought they were just "going through the motions" of doing all these traditions, but it didn't mean anything. We said what really mattered was your own personal faith and relationship with God. Your feelings and beliefs, not the religious rituals.

And back then, taking communion (ie, eating the little wafer and drinking the grape juice) was about making myself feel really bad about my sin and Jesus' death. Getting myself into the right emotional state- manufacturing the emotions- regret and guilt and how bad and unworthy I am.

But now I see it completely differently. I don't go to church, so I don't really ever get to have communion, and on the rare occasions that I happen to go to church (like when I'm visiting my parents), if it's the week that we do communion, I really look forward to it. Because it's an actual embodied action. Something I do, concrete, the action is right there in the tangible real world, regardless of what anyone thinks or believes or feels or "really means" about it. Maybe I *don't* have the right feelings or faith or understanding, but regardless, I eat the little wafer and experience God. God comes down to us. Who can say if you had the "right" attitude or the "right" feelings or "really meant it"- what does that even mean? But you did eat the wafer and drink the juice- you can know that for sure. Experiencing God through real actions rather than constantly psychoanalyzing yourself.

I've heard that it's common for ex-evangelical Christians to end up joining more "liturgical" churches, ie, churches that have more structured traditions and rituals. (Perhaps the most well-known example of this is Rachel Held Evans.) During the time we were evangelical, we spent so much emotional energy agonizing over if our feelings were the right feelings, if we "really meant it"- our worship and our faith didn't "count" if on some level we didn't "really mean it." But in liturgical churches it's not like that. Regardless of what you feel or what you "really mean," you go through the actions of the church service. You are there and you are doing it, and that is good enough. You can stop worrying.

I miss having these embodied religious experiences. Now, I mostly just think about Jesus all the time and write about Christianity on the internet. And I feel I experience God in a lot of things, in the beauty of the world, in human connection, things like that. But I really miss the kinds of sensory experiences you have in a church-y environment. Communion, singing worship songs, kneeling to pray. I guess I could do some of that on my own, but also it feels silly, like 'oh if I kneel down and think about God, then God will give me some kind of meaningful feeling,' it feels really silly and gimmicky. Feels like I just made it up, so why am I acting like it means something? I suppose in church it's also like that- the organizers of the church service set up the environment to be a certain way and give people the feeling of connecting with God. Maybe that's also gimmicky.

But there really is something to the idea of feeling with your body, rather than just thinking and talking and believing. 

I really miss that, and it feels really personal to say so. I'm queer. I'm ex-evangelical. I know that evangelicals would say I'm not a real Christian, if they knew. And to attempt to feel God in physical, sensory ways, to openly show my desire for Them... I don't feel safe doing that in a church. Why would I show people how I really feel about God, if they don't even believe I'm a Christian? (See: Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival")

Anyway. I liked this book, "One Coin Found," and this section about communion was my favorite part. Religion as something you do with your body. God comes down to us and we can experience God, even if our feelings/beliefs are not "right."

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Related:

"You Weren't There, the Night Jesus Found Me"

No One Can Take The Bible From Me 

Why I Don't Want to be at a "Revival"

Maybe I had more faith when I was complementarian, and that's a bad thing

A rock with the word "Faith" on it. Image source.

Faith. What is faith? Way back when, I understood faith in this way: God tells us to do something, and we can't understand it and it doesn't make any sense to us, but we trust that God must have a reason, and it must be right somehow, even though we have no idea how, and so we obey.

And also, I believed in complementarianism: the belief that God made men and women with different talents and roles that "complement" each other, which in practice means that women are restricted from certain leadership roles in the church, and a man must be the "spiritual leader" of his wife and children. This is something that doesn't make sense. Never really did make any sense to me, as a women. But supposedly the bible says it, so surely God has a good reason, and so we have to obey.

And then I started reading Christian feminist blogs, which pointed out all the ways that complementarianism does actual harm to real people in the real world. These blogs also looked more closely at the bible verses that are used to restrict women from leadership, and showed that, no, it doesn't make sense to interpret them that way, and that actually the bible supports equality.

The Christian feminist blogs made a good case! But here's what I was stuck on: what about faith?

You can make the case that complementarianism makes no sense and is actually harmful, and that the alternative, egalitarianism, does make sense. Okay, sure. But doesn't "faith" mean "God commanded us to do something that doesn't make sense- something that seems to us to be a really bad idea- and we cannot possibly understand the reasons why, but God does have good reasons on some level, and so we have to do it"? Sure, it's always been obvious to me that complementarianism doesn't make sense, but that's what we should expect, right? We should expect that God commands us to do things that make no sense, like banning qualified women from church leadership. Otherwise, what is the role of faith?

I remember discussing this with other bloggers on the internet back then- how mystified I was at the idea that we can and should use our own brains to look at the real-world effects of our religion's rules, and not follow the rules which were obviously bad. What even is faith, then? Aren't we expecting that God will give us rules that don't make sense to us, with our fallible human thinking, but make sense to God?

The answer I got from Christian feminists on the internet back then was, when we say faith means "God tells us to do things that don't make sense", it means things like, being kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it. They gave some examples like that- all of which felt really weak to me. These weren't actually examples of God telling us to do things that made no sense. They were examples of actions which you could understand the reasons behind them, but you personally didn't want to do them because of your own feelings. That didn't feel like "faith" as I had always understood it.

(And also, please note that they meant "be kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it" only in a common-sense way. If you take this idea too far, and say that abuse victims should stay with their abusers in the name of being kind of them, well, these same Christian feminists would take a stand and say this is wrong. As they should. So yeah, my point stands. They were not *actually* advocating doing things that *actually* don't make sense.)

I finally came to the conclusion that no, this idea that "faith means doing something that makes no sense" is just not a thing. I just straight-up do not believe in that any more. Every command that God supposedly gives you can be analyzed and fact-checked.

If the church continues to believe that there are some roles that women just can't have, if we continue to discriminate even when we see how women in the church are suffering because of it, even when we see that it enables abuse, that it makes it harder for abuse victims because someone is going to say "well you still need to submit to your husband", even when everyone outside the church is shocked and horrified by the sexism- if the church continues to have these sexist policies, doesn't that show their faith is very strong? They believe God said this, so they just plow ahead, not caring what the consequences are. Isn't that what faith is? And the stronger your faith, the more you will ignore the real-world effects that you can see with your own eyes. The real-world effects that you literally are experiencing, if you are a woman.

That kind of faith is indeed very strong. And that's a bad thing. We shouldn't have faith like that.

When I changed my beliefs from complementarian to feminist, it wasn't simply a matter of "well these bible verses make more sense under a framework where God wants equality between men and women." I had to completely change what I thought "faith" was. I now believe in a Christianity which doesn't leave any room for this "faith" of forging ahead with something that clearly seems like a bad idea. Like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. Use your own mind and fact-check your God.

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Related:

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches 

"Women shouldn't preach" MUST mean "women can't preach"

This 93% Stat About Dads is Totally Made-Up 

"Faith" means "doing something that is a bad idea"

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible? 

Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Josh and the Big Wall" (1997)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Mark Zuckerberg Demos New Facebook AI And It Couldn’t Have Gone Worse (September 18, via) "You’ve already combined the base ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce."

And here's another one about AI: California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications (September 22) "The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up."

2. Giving people money helped less than I thought it would (August 19) "Many of the studies are still ongoing, but, at this point, the results aren’t “uncertain.” They’re pretty consistent and very weird."

3. Your Review: Participation in Phase I Clinical Pharmaceutical Research (September 5) "This phrase, 'better safe than sorry,' overwhelmingly characterizes the protocols of research clinics at every level, except the level where they start to ask whether participants might become more likely to pass through their filters by lying than meeting all their criteria."

4. Groundbreaking Analysis Upends Our Understanding of Psychiatric Holds (July 23) "Why would an intervention intended to help end up doing harm? The researchers offer and investigate several plausible explanations. Involuntary hospitalization can be a deeply disruptive experience. Patients are often forcibly taken by police, held for days, and sometimes medicated without consent. Such experiences might isolate individuals from their support networks, including family and existing mental health providers. Furthermore, hospitalizations can disrupt employment and increase homelessness, causing a spiral of instability that exacerbates rather than alleviates mental distress."

5. Did Amazon trick people into paying for Prime? Federal case goes to trial (September 23) "One example regulators offered showed a large yellow button 'Get FREE Two-Day Shipping' as a swift way to sign up without much detail about recurring membership costs, while a small blue hyperlink 'No thanks, I do not want fast, free shipping' would avoid signing up for Prime."

Yeah, that aspect of the Amazon checkout process is one of the best examples of a company being dishonest and trying to trick you into signing up for something. You literally have to click "I do not want fast, free shipping" to get past that page.

And an update on that: Amazon to pay $2.5 billion to settle U.S. lawsuit that it 'tricked' people into Prime (September 25)

6. Beastly Christianity (September 24) "It was a powerful, compelling argument and it prevailed in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. This was theology from “the global south” contributing to and reforming the dominant theology from Europe and America. It changed the way white Reformed Christians around the world understood a key passage from the book of Romans, an epistle that is one of the most-studied texts in all of the Bible for Reformed Christians."

7. China’s ‘Worst Handwriting Group in History’ Rewrites Grief (September 25) "The turning point came in October, when one user shared her father’s nearly illegible scrawl from an ICU bed."

Oh man, I am so bad at reading Chinese handwriting. Yes, I can read Chinese- by which I mean, on a computer screen. In a book. On a sign. Printed on a label. You know, Chinese in a standard font. But people's handwriting, that's totally different. You see, each Chinese character, if written correctly, has certain strokes that go in certain places- but when people are writing by hand, they often collapse a bunch of strokes into some kind of scribble, in order to write faster. I very much do not have the skill of figuring out what strokes a scribble was originally supposed to be.

8. On Thought Experiments (September 24) "Everywhere I go people are proposing thought experiments that involve people-seeds landing on the carpet or filling the observable universe with tightly packed shrimps or something wacky about pills and then getting very angry at each other about the results."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Jimmy Kimmel's show is returning to ABC on Tuesday, but not all stations will air it (September 23, via) 

Jimmy Kimmel is Back! (September 24) 

"Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke."

2. 3 thoughts from an autism researcher on Trump's acetaminophen and vaccine claims (September 23) That felon is out here saying that pregnant people shouldn't take Tylenol, or their baby will end up autistic. (And no, this is very much NOT what the scientific evidence says.)

This annoys me so much, because even though it's not true, it's going to get added to "the pregnancy rules." Yeah, when you're pregnant, random people feel entitled to judge you for what you're eating/doing/etc, and tell you that you are harming your baby. And there are SO MANY pregnancy rules. Don't eat deli meat. Don't eat pre-cut fruit. Don't eat sushi. Don't eat fish that are high in mercury. Everyone is so paranoid- including the pregnant people themselves- and there's this huge burden placed on pregnant people, all these things you're not allowed to do. And you have to follow these rules because you'd do anything for your baby, right? You wouldn't want to be selfish and put your baby at risk, right?

(I wrote about "the pregnancy rules" here: "Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy)

Any kind of medicine at all, pregnant people are already paranoid about taking it, and feel like they should just tough it out and take no medicine because it might put their baby at risk. Any kind of medicine, regardless of what evidence there is about its safety. This is not logical- there's also a risk to the unborn baby if the pregnant person has an actual medical problem and it goes untreated. Why isn't anybody talking about that? Anyway, now Tylenol is gonna be one of those things that brings random busybodies into pregnant people's lives. One of those things which feels so emotionally high-stakes when you're pregnant because "how could you put your baby at risk????" but the evidence doesn't say that at all.

And another link: Trump admin 'seems to care very little about autistic people,' says advocate (September 24) "But it also just continues to ratchet up the stigma. They talk about autistic people, like our existence is some sort of plague."

3. Georgia senators demand answers on more than a dozen deaths in immigration detention (September 23)

4. Trans Patients File Groundbreaking Legal Complaint Against UPMC For Capitulation To Trump (September 24) "Now, plaintiffs are seeking reimbursement for medical expenses associated with the termination of care, emotional distress, and attorneys’ fees and costs; urging the Human Relations Commission to investigate UPMC for discriminatory practices; and pursuing immediate injunctive relief, so that all trans people and families devastated by the care stoppage can once again access evidence-based, life-saving treatment for gender dysphoria."

5. Deadly shooting at Dallas ICE detention facility may have been politically motivated (September 24)

Despite fear, migrants show up for ICE appointments in Dallas and are turned away (September 25) "Marcos, who asked to use his first name because he has a pending immigration case, says he is worried that ICE will not excuse his missed appointment, even though the building is closed and still an active crime scene."

6. A statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands in D.C. is removed as fast as it appeared (September 24) You guys have to see this statue, it's amazing.

Who Gives Permission to Autistic Adults?

Stamp that says "Approved." Image source.

If you don't like something, can you just not do it?

Some things, yes, I can avoid without needing to think about it, and without anyone thinking I'm weird for it. I don't wear skinny jeans, because they're so tight, the fabric is touching me, I can't have fabric touching me like that, I just can't. But nobody cares whether or not I wear skinny jeans. Nobody tries to make me wear them. I avoid skinny jeans because of autistic reasons, but this behavior is invisible to everyone. And for myself, it wasn't like I agonized over it, like "am I allowed to not buy skinny jeans?" For clothes, I just buy whatever I want, obviously.

For a lot of other things, though, I want to know "am I allowed to not do this?"

Am I allowed to go to an amusement park and not ride roller coasters? Am I allowed to not watch a fireworks show?

Am I allowed to choose to work in a job where I don't have to interact with tons of people? Am I allowed to take sensory issues into consideration when choosing a job? For these questions, I literally had never even thought about that, until I read the book "Asperger's on the Job" which I reviewed on the blog in 2017. It was so shocking to me, how the book asked readers to think through their specific autistic needs- about social interaction, need for structured routines, sensory stuff, etc- and take that into account when choosing a job. Really? Take that into account? Is that allowed? I had always thought... if you just can't work in some certain kind of environment, well that is just a silly thing you have to get over. Just get over it and be a normal person about it. Don't treat it as an actual real need that should be treated seriously and accommodated.

When you're an undiagnosed autistic child, you get forced into lots of stuff that you're not comfortable with. The adults say you have to learn to get used to it, you can't avoid it forever. The adults look into the future and imagine how limiting, how embarrassing it would be, if you lived your whole life, into adulthood, so immature that you can't tolerate some normal thing that everyone else is fine with. No no no, they won't let you grow into someone so pathetic. You have to get used to these things, as a child. Get used to them, and become a normal person, seeing your future of normalcy and non-wimpiness laid out before you. See, that's the future you want, right?

Am I allowed? Am I allowed to treat my sensory pain as a real thing, and take real steps to avoid stimuli that cause it? No, you're not allowed- if you do that, you're going down the path to being the wimp. No, get on the path to being a normal person instead.

At some point, as an adult, I had this wild idea that maybe I *could* just avoid things that cause me sensory pain. Could I? Who would give me permission? This is something I have discussed with 2 different therapists before, maybe because I was working off a model of therapy that says the therapist is the person who can give this kind of permission. (But now I no longer think this is a correct view of what therapy is.) 

When I told them about it, I was coming from a framework of "Common thinking is that I should try as hard as I can to be normal, and it's not okay that I have these sensory issues. But I just thought of this groundbreaking new idea, it sounds totally wild but hear me out, what if I avoid these things, and (if necessary) politely explain to people that I just can't- I know this idea is so strange and unheard-of, but I've really thought through it and here are my reasons, do you think it's okay?" I didn't say all that, obviously- those were background assumptions that I had, that I didn't even realize it was possible to have different beliefs on.

And they didn't really give me the response I wanted- they treated it as pretty unremarkable that I could take care of myself in this way. They didn't take it like some huge controversial thing that I would need permission for. Okay...

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Sometimes on the internet, I happen across articles that people have written which explain the habits they use to help them get things done/ think more clearly/ be healthy/ etc. Sometimes this is in the context of ADHD (or similar), like "I've always had trouble focusing and getting things done- but here is the system I came up with that works for me." And sometimes they don't mention any kind of neurodiverse reason that they needed to come up with such a complicated system- but umm honestly, the kind of person who develops a whole quirky system to manage their daily life, and then writes a long article about it... I mean, I have my suspicions about whether that's a neurotypical thing to do.

I think it's great that people find their own unique system that works for them, and great that they write about it, to show readers an example. I don't think I've seen any such articles that had suggestions that were directly useful to me personally, but I love the idea of structuring your life in a way that's extremely weird, just because that's what's helpful for you. A lifetime of experience living as yourself will teach you what common "productivity tips" don't work for you, and will make you the most qualified person to find the ones that *will* work for you.

I love the idea of finding what works for you, and doing it, without needing permission.

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Is it okay to not try to be "normal"? Is it okay to know myself and my own needs, and take deliberate action that doesn't fit with society's opinion about how people "should" act? How do I know if it's okay? Who can give this permission?

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Related:

Is Therapy About Becoming "Normal"?

“Easy” Jobs and “Hard” Jobs 

"Color Taste Texture" (a cookbook for autistics/ anyone with food aversions)