Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cleft Lip: The Long Road to Repairing a Smile (March 5) "When I saw other children like me for the first time at the hospital, I began to feel less alone."

2. The Gender Politics of Abandoning Your Girlfriend on a Mountain (March 3) "For that reason, there’s a warning sign posted that tells climbers 'If it took you more than 3 hours to get here, turn back! Your life depends on it. Expect major difficulties from here on!' It took them nearly SEVEN hours to get there, but they decided to continue, as Plamberger stated they still felt fresh."

3.  The Mundane Misery of MAGA's Bluey Copycat (January 19, 1-hour-59-minute video) "No one in their right mind is going to be like, you know what I want my kids to watch? Something associated with political commentary. Conservative political commentary."

4. Why people fail at learning languages (January 3) "The goal in learning a language is to acquire so much of this tacit knowledge that the illusion becomes so strong that you can’t encounter these sounds or these symbols without associating them with a meaning."

I speak Mandarin Chinese as a second language, and I have some opinions about language learning and how American culture views language learning. Maybe I'll write about that some time. Basically the strategy I used was, talk to actual Chinese people, make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. If your goal is to be able to talk to people, you need to learn by talking to people. 

Contrast this with the French classes I took in high school, where I thought the point was to get everything correct and never make mistakes. Sure, you do well in class with that approach, but then the moment you encounter native speakers or a French movie or whatever, you feel like "they're talking too fast" and you understand nothing and have no confidence.

5. Here's a fun little game about how well you can remember colors (via)

6. We Know What’s Killing Loons and How to Stop It. So Why Are They Still Dying? (January 2, via) "In nearly every place—from the Maritimes to Minnesota to Washington State—lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for adult loons in freshwater habitat."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. How to Resist Like Minneapolis (February 6, via) "These will be the people in the encrypted chat."

2. Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Noem after mounting criticism (March 6)

3. She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. (March 3) "Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee."

4. Caught in the Middle East, Chinese Tourists Scramble for Way Out (March 6) 

5. A Courthouse Arrest, a Surprise Pregnancy, and One Family’s Shattered Dreams (January 7, via) "The other family members were determined to keep fighting for their asylum, but they’d already accepted that Daniela wasn’t coming back, and Andres’ little family would be separated before it could even begin."

6. Jan. 6 plaque honoring police officers is now displayed at the Capitol after a 3-year delay (March 7) "The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because that chamber voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had delayed putting it up."

7. U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows (March 8, via) "A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed."

8. Bodycam video contradicts ICE claims in fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas (March 7)

9. Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good (January 15, via) "Flipping through roughly 1,300 pages of pink-accented ancient Near Eastern religious literature reveals numerous quizzes, including one (image below) to help determine whether you’re a 'Diva, Doormat, or Dream Date.'"

This is so real- bible publishers make all these little niche bibles, targeted at different groups, usually gendered. It's the entire text of the actual bible, plus little text boxes inserted all throughout, to tell readers from that specific subgroup what the bible is supposed to mean for them. 

I've always interpreted the message of these bibles as, 'We don't read the actual text of the bible. That's boring. We have to print it all here, because Christians are supposed to own a bible, but we don't expect people to actually read it and notice how jarringly different it is from the cutesy little messages we've stuck in here.'

Like, take whatever message you want, and tack it onto the text of the bible. Nobody will notice it has nothing to do with the bible- Christians treat owning a bible as an identity marker, but it's not like they're actually going to spend time reading it.