Blogaround

The last blog post of the year~ Happy new year everyone!

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. My favorite Christmas song: Casting Crowns - I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day Live 

2. The NIMBY Christmas cinematic universe (December 23) "Particularly frustrating is the argument that economic growth, development, and newcomers — the very things that ailing small towns desperately need — are actually the root of their problems."

3. Firewood Banks Aren’t Inspiring. They’re a Sign of Collapse. (December 9, via) "You don’t start a wood bank in a country with functioning institutions. You start one when heating assistance programs can’t keep up, when the grid flickers every time the wind shifts, when propane and heating oil costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out. You start a wood bank when seniors stop turning on their heat because they’re scared of the bill. You also start one when the country pretends energy insecurity doesn’t exist because acknowledging it would mean admitting that entire regions were left behind on purpose."

4. Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’ (January 3, 2025, via) "So a denarius or a drachma isn’t a unit so big that no normal person would ever use it, but it is a big enough unit that one is hardly going to use it casually"

5. Israel says it will bar aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders, from Gaza (December 30)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Is It Too Late? (December 9, via) "The full-on hijacking of the 14th Amendment has not been challenged with commensurate concerted outrage and political clarity. That is because far too many white Americans associate the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of birthright citizenship and equality, as provisions that only protect Black people, migrants, Latino people, and other marginalized groups, rather than as core democracy infrastructure of our Constitution."

2. What We Can Learn from the Right’s Attack On “Toxic Empathy” (December 11, via) "But by trying to get inside Chauvin’s head and heart, by insisting that he should be the focal point of identification, Stuckey can move away from what actually happened, and can instead present herself as the truly thoughtful and empathetic voice, feeling along with the right, white, and supposedly Godly person."

3. The return of the r-word (December 23) "But it turns out that banishing the slur from public discourse was, in fact, important. Because now it’s back and it turns out that it does matter when subtext becomes actual text, when terrible people enable open hatred and bigotry, encouraging others to emulate them, degrading us all."

4. Conservatives Want the Antebellum Constitution Back (December 21) "What this means in practice is that if you are not white, you cannot go certain places without the risk of being kidnapped by federal agents. That is not “common sense”; it is the nullification of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights under the law."