Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. On ‘James Talarico and the [white] religious left’ (August 10) "Where the “religious right” is always presumed to be acting out of genuine religious conviction, the “religious left” is always presumed to be just a bunch of Democrats fumbling to close the “God gap” in electoral campaigning."

2. ‘Black Mirror’ and ‘Loki’ Directors Say They Rejected HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Due to J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia: ‘Absolutely F—ing Not’ (August 14, via) 

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. More Than 20,000 Unaccompanied Children at Risk of Losing Legal Representation in Immigration Court (August 5) "On Friday, July 31st, the Trump administration ended a critical federal contract with the Acacia Center for Justice providing legal services and representation to children who entered the United States without a parent or guardian. The decision dismantled a network of nearly 100 legal service providers, including Church World Service, and leaves over 20,000 unaccompanied children across the country, many of whom are victims of trafficking or other abuse, without legal representation."

2. El-Sayed blasts Trump over ‘Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s’ post (August 9, via) "'Yeah, he’s right,' El-Sayed said. 'One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you, or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family, and know that that family is going to have the good things.'"

3. ICE plans to outfit officers with electric shock gloves (August 12) "'My immediate reaction was, why would you give this kind of novel dangerous technology that's hard to train people on to agency personnel who have a track record of abuse and even cruelty?' Shah says."

4. 'What are we going to do?' The mom of a trans teen grapples with Trump's Medicaid move (August 16) "She says the narrative advanced by the Trump administration — that families are being tricked into gender-affirming care by doctors and hospitals driven by greed — is completely off base."

5. They fought for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Now they worry about losing their green cards (August 15) "'We are trying to work, study, raise our children and build a normal life in the U.S,' said M., who asked NPR to refer to him by his first initial because he's concerned that speaking to the media could affect his green card. 'But now we are also trying to find lawyers, contact congressional offices and understand what may happen to our green cards. It is very stressful because even immigration lawyers give different opinions.'"

6. Families of USS Lincoln crew say Trump should be 'ashamed' of conditions on board (August 15) "His comments come amid reports of food shortages, plumbing problems and declining mental health among crew members."

7. Suing Stephen Miller (July 20, via) "You shouldn’t be able to order the military to carry out extrajudicial executions of fishermen and/or low-level drug runners that violate both domestic and international law, and then simply return to your job as a weekend cable news host once the other party retakes the White House. You should not be able to lie to the courts about sending immigrants to an overseas torture prison with zero due process and then live out your days with the lifelong job security of a federal judge. You should not be able to write a bullshit, meritless, bad faith legal memo while working at the Office of Legal Counsel that authorizes immigration officers to ignore the Fourth Amendment and batter down the doors of private homes without a warrant, then go on to make millions as partner at a white shoe law firm."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal (April 28, via) "Don't call the number. Don't reply."

2. The hard problem of AI therapy (February 26, via) "Suppose you’re a high-functioning person with anxiety who discovers that the chatbot can always soothe you on the spot. You ask one question—Do you think I handled that email wrong?—and feel relief. Ten minutes later: But what if she’s actually mad? Then: Can you rewrite my follow-up? Then: List ten reasons I’m not a bad person for sending it."

3. How China’s Deaf Delivery Riders Find a New Life in Gig Work (April 20) "By contrast, most deaf interviewees described becoming delivery riders as turning a new page, one of less discrimination and greater autonomy. Delivery platforms offer features that make interacting with restaurants and customers easier, such as voice-to-text conversion, pre-written messages, and digital badges that will alert users that the rider is deaf."

Also from Sixth Tone: Nine Months After Cloning Its First Yak, China Has 10 More (April 30) "To date, the team has generated over 200 cloned Tibetan yak embryos. By the end of 2028, they aim to build a core herd of over 100 cloned yaks, develop a new high-altitude yak breed, and establish standard breeding protocols."

4. 1 Corinthians 13 in the news (April 27) "Read the Beatitudes from Luke’s Gospel you cowards!"

Also from the Slacktivist: The literary puzzle of Isaiah 1 (April 29) "The current form of our Bibles tricks us into reading Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 as critiques of the religious observance prescribed in the Books of Moses, but actually what we have is the Books of Moses configuring their religious commandments, in part, as a response to and a defense against those critiques in Isaiah and Amos."

5. Soniferous Aether (April 27) From xkcd.

6. Women Have Agency: You Don’t Have to Obey Churches or Husbands Who Want to Control You (April 29) Posting this here because it's important to get the word out about this: If you are a woman who has decided to divorce your abusive husband, and now your church leaders are requiring you to come to a meeting so they can decide if you're allowed to do that, you can just not go. !!! Yes, really! You can just not go! Say no! They can't do anything to you! Even if you signed a "church covenant"- those things are not legally binding. It will not hold up in court. You can say no!

A lot of us spend our whole lives with the mindset "I need to be a good girl" which means when some authority figure says "you have to" do something, then you have to do it. We might not even realize there's another option: NOT doing it.

I'm so glad I learned about boundaries- I really had no idea about any of this before I learned about boundaries.

7. This week in "what Chinese songs is my toddler listening to": 蹦蹦跳跳 沒煩惱 李昕融 舞蹈完整版 簡單舞蹈 律動 廣場舞 洗腦歌 幼兒律動 幼兒舞蹈 兒童舞蹈 兒童律動 抖音舞蹈 動態歌詞 TIKTOK KidsDance【#波波星球泡泡哥哥bobopopo】

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s cruel plan for Afghan refugees, briefly explained (April 23, via) "Many of the 1,100 Afghans now stuck in limbo in Qatar aided the US over nearly two decades of war as interpreters working with US troops or served as members of the Afghan special forces. Some, the Times reports, are family members of American soldiers, and more than 400 are children."

2. Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics (April 24) "The implications are profound—and at times border on absurd. In core and lower-level courses, there are no exceptions at all. A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it."

3. White House posted photo of Trump, King Charles III with 'TWO KINGS' caption (April 29)

4. James Comey posted a picture of seashells by the seashore. Trump's DOJ indicted him for it. (April 29) "The most embarrassing 24 hours (yet) of the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second administration continued apace on Tuesday, when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced another indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director. This time, Comey — targeted by President Donald Trump as a political enemy — was indicted in North Carolina in connection with his since-deleted Instagram post showing a photo of seashells laid out in the shape of the numbers '8647.'"

Also from Law Dork: SCOTUS guts what remained of the Voting Rights Act before taking on TPS termination case (April 30) "The decision in Louisiana v. Callais upended the pivotal civil rights era voting law that Congress initially passed in 1965 and reauthorized several times since, leaving the section at issue “all but a dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan said with a somber voice, nearly stone faced, as she announced the dissent from the bench."

I don't really understand this Voting Rights Act case- all the articles I've read say it's so terrible that the Supreme Court has ruled this way, because it allows states to draw districts in a way that racial minority voters are always grouped together with a population of white voters which outnumbers them, and therefore the racial minority voters don't have any meaningful representation. This is confusing to me- it seems to rely on the assumptions that all people of color vote the same way, all white people vote the same way, and white people wouldn't vote for a candidate who would take minorities' needs seriously. Probably this is me being naive about how racism works, and missing some key facts about the history of racist voter suppression. If anyone has an article that explains this, post it in the comment section~

5. U.S. to issue commemorative passports with Trump's picture for America's 250th birthday (April 29) Fortunately it's only the Washington DC office that's doing this, and if you apply for a passport at any other location, you will just get a regular one without the mark of the beast.

6. The Trump team is quietly eliminating U.S. support for birth control abroad (April 29) This makes me so mad. Having penis-in-vagina sex is really common, and for women who are doing that, they *need* to have some kind of birth control, otherwise their lives will be completely dominated by the huge burdens of pregnancy and caring for babies. Those MAGAs claim they are "helping women" by being mean to trans people, while ending the programs that *actually* help women.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Love's Work in "Go, Dog, Go" (December 6) "I ask you, who has been changed by their first meeting? She has only become more of herself, while he has adopted a brand-new hat habit."

2. If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys (December 5) "In practice it’s a lot more complicated because the cover charge and the price of drinks is never the only variable being considered by the “ladies” that Ladies Night is trying to attract."

3. The Reality of AI Animal Content (December 5, via) "AI videos and heavily edited clips can show animals doing things they would never do in a healthy, ethical setting, such as jumping into a person’s arms at a zoo, endangered species at your doorstep, or dancing on cue. This can create unrealistic and even dangerous expectations."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Alina Habba Quits Job She Never Legally Held (December 8) "Habba has now pretended to resign the job she’s been pretending to have."

2. Jesse Watters says criticizing boat strikes makes people sound “effeminate” (December 8, via) Jesse Watters really went on tv and said that people *like* the videos of military strikes on defenseless boats, murdering people. "People love these videos. They hit your feed, they're like, yes, let's go." This actually says more about what kind of person Jesse Watters is, yikes.

3. Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide (December 5) "'As an immigrant takes the oath of citizenship, it’s a reflection and recognition of the tremendous sacrifice of time, energy, and financial resources they have made in the hopes of becoming a full member of our community and nation,' said Elizabeth Sweet, Executive Director of MIRA Coalition. 'To have that final step canceled is unnecessarily cruel and does nothing to make this country a safer place.'"

And: How Trump is remaking one agency to aid his deportation push (December 10) "'They're reaching deeper into the weeds of immigration policy, and they may be more successful in slowing legal immigration, which at least some members of the Trump administration have stated is their goal,' said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. 'That's a pretty different stance towards immigration than we've seen over recent decades.'"

4. Border Patrol left Charlotte. The damage stayed behind (December 10) "Many immigrants in hiding have relied on allies to help with basic services like delivering food and medicine. Volunteers have set up a support network. People deliver supplies, take reports of vehicles suspected of belonging to immigration agents and go check them out, and wear bright yellow vests while they watch over children walking to school."

5. Afghan CIA fighters, like National Guard attack suspect, face stark reality in U.S. (December 10) "After being evacuated to the U.S. in 2021, when the Taliban swept into Kabul, many Zero Unit soldiers came to feel they had been abandoned by CIA officials."

Sharing this because I will always be on the side of 'we should give immigrants the support they need, to deal with bureaucracy/cultural/language/etc barriers.' But also, I'm a little uncomfortable with the implication that 'the big lesson to be learned from the Washington DC shooting is [whatever my pet cause is]' which I've seen a lot of- from the felon, when he uses this as a reason to discriminate against all Afghan immigrants (and also other countries he doesn't like????), and from those of us on the left, saying this is the MAGAs' fault for sending the National Guard there in the first place, and perhaps I'm also participating in this by sharing this article, as if to imply that the actual problem wasn't the shooting itself, but the lack of support received by Afghans who worked for the CIA. Which is why I am writing this disclaimer. No, let's be clear about this, this is the shooter's fault, there is no excuse to go around shooting people.

6. The fight to beat neglected tropical diseases was going well. 2025 could change that (December 10) "'A group of scientists went to the Hill and made the point that there is a known strategy in treating communities that are infected,' says Wainwright. 'You go in, treat them once a year and if you do it for a set number of years, you can either eliminate or control the disease.'"

The devastation caused by the shutdown of USAID is terrible, but here's something we can do about it: Helen Keller Intl is working on this. Here's the link to donate to them. 

7. Democrats Must Reject The Premise Of Trans Healthcare Bans In Republican Healthcare Offer (December 10) "For these reasons, gender-affirming care has long been recognized as medically necessary for those who need it. Stripping an entire class of people of such care is unconscionable."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Federal Court Strikes Down Georgia’s Ban on GAC for Incarcerated Trans People (December 10) 

8. The Trump-Epstein Emergency Isn't in the Files (December 5) "Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Social justice and empiricism (June 27) "Social justice could be understood, derogatorily, as a series of rules.  You can’t use this word as a noun, only as an adjective.  You can’t use that word, unless you have a certain ethnic identity.  Here’s a long list of things that must be marked with trigger warnings.  You must include representation of minority groups within any work of fiction, but you’re also not allowed to do that without getting input from the represented group.  I think this must feel constraining to people, like they’re not allowed to think and form their own opinion, they’re only allowed to give in to an inconsistent set of demands."

2. Impossible for Men, Unremarkable for Women (2022) "The assumption that women generally don’t experience sexual attraction (and therefore ace women are unremarkable) coexists with the assumption that women should (selectively) provide sex (to men)."

3. Wingnuts Exactly As Calm As You'd Expect Over Mamdani's NYC Primary Win (June 28) I saw this a few days ago and didn't really pay much attention to it, it's just the typical unhinged hate we always see from extremely-online MAGAs. But then I realized, these people are saying that no Muslim should ever be in a leadership position ever, because that would be the same thing as 9/11. This is absolutely bonkers and inexcusable. If you ever see any of these people's names in the future, in some kind of context where they're being presented as serious people worth listening to, well, don't forget this.

4. Supreme Court's conservatives give "defund" Planned Parenthood efforts a win (June 27) "On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservatives blocked Medicaid recipients from suing South Carolina over its decision to reject Planned Parenthood as a covered Medicaid provider."

Now is a good time to donate to Planned Parenthood.

5. Hard to imagine a worse time to deport Afghan refugees, human rights advocates say (June 28) "But this year, Iran and Pakistan have stepped up the deportations."

6. 200,000 March In Budapest Pride, Refusing To Capitulate To Anti-LGBTQ+ Law (June 29) "In the face of mounting attacks, it’s easy for LGBTQ+ people in the United States to feel crushed beneath the weight of it all. But moments like Budapest remind us that even under the most repressive regimes, our communities still rise."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. SCOTUS conservatives end "universal injunctions" in birthright citizenship cases (June 28) "The majority, Jackson wrote authorized a 'zone of lawlessness' with its ruling. In one zone, she wrote, 'law reigns' through court rulings protecting 'named plaintiffs.' In the second zone, however, the executive can enforce unconstitutional actions against 'those who lack the wherewithal or ability to go to court' — a reality that 'will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular.'"

The Supreme Court did not actually rule on the question of birthright citizenship. They just ruled that the president can issue a blatantly unconstitutional order, which causes very real problems in people's lives, and federal courts can't block it, they can only say it doesn't apply to whoever brings a case to court about it.

We'll have to see how this goes. It seems untenable.

Also: What is birthright citizenship and what happens after the Supreme Court ruling? (June 27) "The strategic shift required three court filings: one to add class allegations to the initial complaint; a second to move for class certification; and a third asking a district court in Maryland to issue 'a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction asking for relief for that putative class,' Powell said."

2. The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system (June 29) The claim is that this can help states check their voter rolls for any non-citizens trying to vote. On the one hand I'm like "yeah there *should* be a way to easily check if someone is a citizen, for voting" but on the other hand I don't trust these clowns.

Also, what happened to the subculture of conservative Christians who always come out in droves to protest any kind of centralized system like this, because it's "the mark of the beast" that the "antichrist" is forcing on everybody?

3. USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say (June 30, via) "'The numbers are striking, but we are not the only group that did this kind of analysis,' said Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who coordinated the study. Other research groups, he said, 'came up with similar magnitudes — millions and millions of deaths that will be caused by the defunding of USAID.'"

4. DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship (June 30) The example in this article is someone who was convicted of distributing child sexual abuse material. Okay, I agree there is a case to be made for revoking citizenship for someone who committed a serious crime. But I don't trust these MAGAs at all. This plan to "prioritize" revoking citizenship, it's not about law or justice. It comes across like they're trying to come up with any reason they can to deport large numbers of people.

Blogaround

Hey, all the links today are news. You may be thinking to yourself, "Does Perfect Number just go read NPR and then copy all the links to here?" Well, that's a big chunk of it, yes.

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens, and state laws matter (June 11)

2. Unanimous Supreme Court makes it easier to sue schools in disability cases (June 12) "'This is bigger than our family,' Aaron Tharpe, Ava's father, told NPR. Tharpe said the most important thing about the ruling is that it gives other families who don't have the resources he does, the tools to fight back."

3. EXCLUSIVE: American Security Contractor Unloads On US-Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (June 12, via) "We all got in a line and began pushing these people out. We’re telling crying women trying to pick up food for their families that they had to go. They were looking at this food on the ground that they desperately needed, and they couldn’t take it. It was absolutely horrific."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Where are the people the Trump administration has deported? (June 12) This is a good summary of a bunch of the cases we've been hearing about, though it certainly doesn't include everyone who has been deported.

2. Rep. McIver is indicted on federal charges related to tussle at immigration facility (June 11) "'The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job,' the representative said in a statement. She called the proceedings against her 'a brazen attempt at political intimidation.'"

3. Federal court orders resumption of legal services to separated families (June 11) "The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over “Zero Tolerance” in February of 2018, arguing that separating families was unnecessary under the law and that the policy deprived migrant families of their right to due process."

4. How a shoplifting arrest in upstate NY summoned ICE and separated a family (June 11) "The case is one of several recent incidents fueling an ongoing debate about immigration among lawmakers. Should New York become a sanctuary state, following some of its biggest cities in passing a law to limit all local cooperation with immigration agents? Or should local law enforcement be compelled to contact ICE every time they cross paths with an undocumented immigrant – even people suspected of the smallest of crimes?"

5. Senator Alex Padilla handcuffed and forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s LA press conference (June 12) "'If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,' Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. 'We will hold this administration accountable.'"

Also about LA: Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence (June 9) "All I've read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protestrs, while we've seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration's war on immigrants."

6. Despite ongoing Taliban threats, the U.S. is ending some protections for Afghans (June 12) "The administration's claim that Afghan security and its economy have improved is widely disputed. The State Department strongly advises against travel to Afghanistan, 'due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.'"

7. The GOP's massive bill would benefit the rich the most — while hitting the poor (June 12) 

8. ICE's novel strategy allows for more arrests from inside immigration courts (June 12) "Under the new approach, after their case is dismissed, immigrants are arrested again, at times before even leaving the building — as happened with Aliaksandr Bulaty. Then they're put in a process called expedited removal: a fast-track for deportation that does not guarantee the right to a day in court and comes with a five-year restriction on attempting to return to the U.S."

9. ‘Too Big a Risk’: Chinese Students Rethink the American Dream (June 13) "Lin, who was preparing to study law at the University of California, Berkeley, went straight to the U.S. visa site to try and book a visa appointment. For the next several hours, she cycled between browsers, devices, and VPN nodes, fighting her way through the overloaded visa portal. Each time she got close to booking an interview, the system crashed."

10. To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction (May 11) "Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers – not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations." By Mahmoud Khalil.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. “They’re Ruining People’s Lives” Bans on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youth in the US (June 3, via) "Parents reported traveling long distances, sometimes across multiple states, incurring costs for airfare, gas, hotels, and lost wages. Two families reported having to re-establish care twice as new bans forced them to relocate again. Families and advocates reported that insurance companies routinely deny coverage for out-of-state treatment, forcing families to bear significant financial burdens. Some families reported facing costs of up to US$4,500 every six months for medications alone. These challenges disproportionately impact low-income families and rural residents, who often lack the resources to afford regular interstate travel for care."

2. Vietnam ends its longstanding 2-child policy (June 4) Oh wow, I actually had no idea that other countries besides China had policies like that. (China's one-child policy ended in 2016.)

3. ‘I’m really scared’: Elderly and disabled Californians with more than $2,000 could lose Medi-Cal (May 29) "'It’s draconian — $2,000 is no safety net for people,' said Kim Selfon, an attorney with Bet Tzedek, a legal services organization in Los Angeles."

When I first heard that there are policies which kick disabled people off of government benefits if the amount of money in their bank account is above some threshold (not necessarily the California one, but policies like this existing in general), it sounded completely bonkers to me. I've always heard financial advice about how it's good to save your money, have an emergency fund, etc- isn't that what the "personal responsibility" Republicans are always saying?- but for disabled people, if they are able to save up their money, they get punished by losing government benefits.

4. Builder.ai collapses after revelation that its "AI" was hundreds of engineers (June 3, via) "'We were told to never mention our location or use Indian English phrases,' said a former Bangalore engineer."

5. Greta Thunberg: Silence and Inaction Is More Deadly Than Me Sailing to Gaza (June 4, via) "We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so."

6. CCM star Michael Tait accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men, drug use: report (June 5) Holy crap, I'm really shocked about this. Back in the 90's, Tait was a member of DC Talk, a Christian band, which was my favorite band. Later he became the lead singer of the Newsboys, also a Christian band, which was my second-favorite band, so I was excited to see where that was going. 

Unfortunately, after that, the Newsboys got involved with conservative culture-war stuff- their song "God's Not Dead" was a big part of the "God's Not Dead" movies. (The movie "God's Not Dead" literally has a scene where the Newsboys are performing a concert.) And one day I happened to stumble upon a song by the Newsboys (with Tait as the lead singer) called "Guilty," which is about how if society makes it a crime to be Christian, "I wanna be guilty"- like what is this persecution fantasy crap, what on earth?

Tait also has been part of the "faith leaders" meetings with president orange. Yeah, I've been really unhappy with Tait for a long time about this stuff. Dragging the good name of DC Talk through the mud. Did not expect the drug use and sexual assault allegations though.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. 'No Kings' protests planned against Trump military parade; see when, where (June 3) Yesssss get out there and protest. June 14.

2. Judge orders Trump admin to let those sent to CECOT challenge Alien Enemies Act removal (June 5) "The Trump administration, under Boasberg’s order, has a week to provide their proposed solution."

3. Trump issues new travel ban covering a dozen countries (June 4)

And: Trump's travel ban includes Afghanistan, where thousands await U.S. resettlement (June 5)

4. Judge blocks deportation of Boulder attacker's family (June 4) !!! Oh my goodness, ICE was going to deport the attacker's family? What is this????? If there's evidence they were involved in the attack, then bring the evidence to an actual court. There are actual laws for this! (So far I haven't heard of any such evidence.) This comes across like the MAGAs were super excited for any kind of reason to deport immigrants, whether or not it makes sense.

5. Debunking the South African “White Genocide” Nonsense (May 29) "This is going to shock you, but it turns out that that’s a lie, too!"

6. In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers (June 6) "J. is one of the many family members of detainees who called NPR to report their loved ones not receiving meals or getting rotten food. Detainees who NPR spoke to over the phone confirmed this, and many said they'd had to sleep on the floor for weeks."

7. ICE agents detain at least 10 immigrants as elected officials try to block officers in the South Loop (June 5) "'Then, in a Gestapo fashion, 50 agents or so walked down the street, stood right here in front of the driveway, then aggressively came through, knocked me down, assaulted me and other community members here today, then pulled out weapons and also pulled out their sticks, pushing some of us, punching some of us to get through to this driveway,' Quezada said, adding that he was pushed three times by ICE agents."

Blocking them, trying to stand in their way- it does help. Keep doing this.

And: ICE raids grow tense as protesters confront immigration agents (June 6)

8. Months after detaining 47 people accused of being Tren de Aragua in Austin, authorities offer no evidence of gang ties (June 4) "'We all started shouting that there were babies — ‘Babies, there’s babies,’' recounted a 30-year-old Venezuelan man, who said he was at the house to celebrate the birthdays of his son, who turned 5, and his best friend, who turned 28."

9. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported to El Salvador, is back in the U.S. to face smuggling charges (June 6) Wow! This is good news, but I don't know what to make of these new criminal charges against him. Does the government have evidence for these charges? If there's actual evidence, why wasn't that mentioned before? Very strange. 

Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Machine-Generated Garbage Hall of Shame (via) Oh cool, a roundup of posts about LLMs being used to create garbage.

And: I'm a Spotless Giraffe. (2023) "It's not just that the training sets simply don't have examples of people who look like me. It's that the system is now explicitly engineered to resist imagining me. …Hey, is now a good a time to mention that in an effort to create a welcoming and inclusive community for all users, the Midjourney Community Guidelines consider deformed bodies a form of gore, and thus forbidden?"

2. ‘I was scared to even eat the vegetables in my fridge’: the eating disorder that focuses on food purity (May 2, via) "'I remember asking myself why everything was so hard,' she says. 'Why aren’t other people following the same food rules? Why don’t they care about their health as much as I do?'"

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Links related to that felon:

1. 'We Don't Do Kings': Mass Protests Planned to Counter Trump's Birthday Military Parade (May 6)

2. With ICE Out of Control, How Can the US Cohost the 2026 World Cup? (March 31) "Given that ICE is being used as a masked abduction force, and given “border czar” Tom Homan’s contempt for the courts, it is unconscionable to encourage people to visit this country."

3. USDA chief says agency is trying to fill key jobs after paying 15,000 to leave (May 7) 

4. Judge orders release of Columbia student protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi (April 30) "'I'm saying it clear and loud to President [Donald] Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,' Mahdawi said after he was freed, local public radio station Vermont Public reported."

5. Many Afghans living in the U.S. fear being tortured or killed if they get deported (May 7) "'I have … a threatening letter,' Qattali said. 'If I go back, like, 100% they're going to kill me and my family as well.'"

I just... why? Why would these MAGAs want to deport Afghan people, who helped the US and are now just living their lives and not making any trouble? It reads like they just want to deport as big of a number of people as possible, so they're casting about for any way they can make the number bigger.

6. Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk freed from immigration detention (May 9) "And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here."

This is good news- but she is still in the process of fighting against the government revoking her visa- she is still at risk of being deported. But the good news is she doesn't have to be in jail during this process.

7. Trump & Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (May 5)

8. Roundup: Experts Condemn Trump Pseudoscientific Anti-Trans "Report" (May 9) "'AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways,' she said."

Blogaround

1. Why Christians Should Be (the Best) Landlords (January 4) This is a post discussing the idea that a Christian landlord should never evict anyone. I think this is a really interesting and complicated moral question- and this writer is correct in saying the unique thing about the landlord-tenant relationship is it's so personal.

My opinion is (and I'm not an expert on any of this, so I'm probably missing some parts...), as a landlord, you should have some amount of compassion and understanding, and give people a little extra time even though legally you're within your rights to evict them. But if we really believe landlords need to do that, then that means landlords should take that into account from the very beginning when they're deciding whether to become a landlord. Like do a calculation "odds are, once every X years, I'll have someone who stops paying the rent, and I'll be a little nice to them and let them not pay for Y months" - you need to figure out the math of how "nice" you are going to be, and determine the price you should charge for rent based on that. (And also this depends on the laws where you are- I think most places have laws that you have to wait some number of months before evicting people.) And, yikes, if people are really arguing that a landlord should "never" evict anyone, then that means the landlord needs to be okay with getting paid 0 rent, indefinitely? (I don't know if anyone is literally saying this or not- maybe I'm misrepresenting them.) If that's the case, you should just not become a landlord in the first place. That risk is too great. 

Unless you decided to become a landlord as, like, a charity project. Instead of as a way to make money. Honestly this is not a good idea. I can easily imagine someone going into this very naive, like "I'm going to be a landlord who charges less rent, so I actually lose money, in order to help people" and then you discover that your renters are complex imperfect people, not the simplistic "people in need" stereotype that you had in your mind, and you begin to get mad at your renters for not acting grateful enough, or whatever. Or, maybe what I'm saying is, it's likely that someone who decides to become a landlord not for money but to "help the world" has some subconscious assumptions about how they want the recipients of their "charity" to act. They think they're okay with losing money and getting nothing in return, but actually they're not- they expect to get an "I really made a difference in someone's life" feeling in return.

And, I think some people are unhappy about the idea that landlords feel they need to make money. This baffles me... Well, actually, I think it's because there are people whose financial status is "I need to have enough money to survive" and people whose financial status is "I already have enough money, I want to make it into more money." It's very easy for people in the "need to survive" group to view the "I want to make more money" desire as completely invalid. I feel like... yeah the difficult thing is we are weighing "I want to survive" against "I want more money." You should rule in favor of the "survive" side- but then you have to know that the "make money" group will factor that in when they do the math on how to invest their money.

2. Why Is a Christian Book Trying to Coerce Wives into Sending Nude Photos? (January 6) Wow, yes, this is a very important post. I have heard ex-purity-culture women saying they were given "marriage advice" to do a boudoir photo shoot so their husband could have the photos, and that would prevent him from watching porn. (I personally never heard this advice myself when I believed in "purity," but yeah, it fits.) I'm really glad to see Sheila Wray Gregoire writing about this- and telling married women that *you* being uncomfortable with doing some sex thing is a GOOD ENOUGH REASON to say no- even if it's not "a sin."

Also, she treats the possibility of divorcing- and then being in the horrible situation where your ex still has your photos- as a REAL THING. Normally, Christian marriage advice treats divorce like some faraway threat that would never really happen if you follow the rules correctly. I've NEVER seen Christian marriage advice along the lines of "maybe DON'T make yourself vulnerable to each other in this way, because it could turn really bad if you divorce." The Christian marriage advice I always heard was, finally you can stop holding back, finally you can fully give yourself to your partner, be completely vulnerable in every way, you accept and love each other unconditionally, there's nothing to fear now, because you're committed for life.

And the way she "fixes" the story by changing it to "he realized he was replacing porn with his wife and decided to go to therapy"- that just totally blew my mind. The Christian marriage advice I've always heard was, basically, yes, men should replace porn with their wives (though they didn't say it in these words exactly). They said that was good and normal in marriage. They said men are like that.

Also this bit at the end: "I’ve been focusing on the coercive aspect of that passage, but there are so many other weird bits. Is it good for a man to be sexually aroused all day at work? How does that affect his colleagues? His work performance? How would you feel knowing a colleague was in a state of semi-arousal all day?" GOOD POINT. I, too, have read Christian marriage books which talked about how cool it is for a husband to be aroused at work all day, looking forward to coming home to his wife, and now I'm like... this seems more like a fanfiction trope rather than something that's actually a good idea in reality.

I really want to read Gregoire's book The Great Sex Rescue and write a review of it. :)

Also from the same blog: 2 Kinds of Marital Rape that Evangelicalism (Inadvertently) Enables (November 14) [content note: rape] Oh wow, this is a very good post. It connects real personal stories of women who have been raped by their husbands, with the Christian marriage teachings that say this is how normal marriages work. The comment section is full of women in this exact situation.

These teachings are VERY REAL. I VERY MUCH believed that as a wife, I have a "duty" to have sex with my husband, because he "needs" it. I remember hearing a lot of Christian marriage advice about why this reason or that reason are not good enough reasons to say no to your husband. (This is rape culture.)

Luckily, my husband is not a Christian.

3. Not Dead Yet [UPDATE: Meachen Responds] (January 6) I heard some people on Twitter mention something about "an author faked her own death"- well here's the story.

4. Cycles of extremism: NGOs suspend services after Taliban bans female staff (December 26) "In a series of moves surprising no one, the Taliban government in Afghanistan this past week banned women from universities, and also locked girls out of primary school (essentially ending education to female persons across the board), before also banning women from work in any local non-government organizations (NGOs)."

5. Youth-led climate change lawsuits are increasing across the country (April 2022) "In Montana, youth claim that state lawmakers have consistently prioritized fossil fuel infrastructure and profits to the detriment of their future. They argue that the state's actions have violated their constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment."

6. The Desire for Twins Is Putting China’s Mothers in Danger (January 9) [content note: pregnancy loss]

Blogaround

1. Millions on brink of starvation under Taliban rule (December 2)

2. Why are Lyft and Uber letting Christian drivers preach at passengers? (December 3) This is really interesting to me because I used to be on the other side of it, so to say. I was really into evangelism and always looking for opportunities to manipulate people into having conversations about "the gospel." (Yeah, not cool.) It's interesting to me that the things I was worried about when doing evangelism (I won't be able to convince this person to change religions, this will damage our friendship) are different than the concerns in this post (religious harassment, feeling uncomfortable in the conversation but with no way to end it without risking the evangelist getting angry at you).

But yes, if someone (probably most people!) is uncomfortable talking about religion with a random stranger, their right to not talk about religion with a random stranger should be protected.

3. Not Only is the Right Unapologetic For Violent Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric-- It's Doubling Down (November 28) "The functional lack of concern over the mass shooting—that his son murdered five people—and the relief that his son isn’t gay is the attitude that begets this kind of violence. This is dehumanization: killing gay people is not a cause for concern, being gay is."

4. Perspective (December 6) "Luther was neither a New Testament scholar nor a historian. He was an Augustinian monk dealing with a European church that was calcified and, in many ways, corrupt. And thus Luther read Paul as though Paul were also an Augustinian monk struggling against corrupt medieval Catholic bishops."

5. A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more! (December 5) 

6. Without giving details, disgraced pastor Matt Chandler returns to pulpit (December 6) This whole thing is so confusing. Matt Chandler apparently sent "inappropriate" instagram DMs to a woman, but they weren't "sexual or romantic", but that was bad apparently and he had to step down. And now, 3 months later, he's back, and his church is so happy. Like............... what? 

I like Mehta's take here:

If this was innocent banter that crossed a line, then it’s a matter that could’ve been handled privately. There was no need for public shaming or temporary banishment.

If it was something more serious—and it clearly seemed to be—then the church had an obligation to tell the congregation what the hell he did. Why are these people so damn secretive about everything? When has that approach ever worked for them?!

Also I stand by what I said back in September:

A. Maybe this church just really really really believes "men and women can never be friends" (which is a logical conclusion of evangelicals' teaching about sex and lust and temptation and the differences between genders) so any time a man and woman are sending friendly direct messages online, it's automatically seen as sinful. I don't think this is the right explanation though, because it doesn't seem realistic to me that a church would literally hold a leader to such a high standard, going so far as to hire a law firm, over something that everyone outside the church sees as no big deal. So there has to be more to it than this.

B. Maybe Chandler is telling us it wasn't "sexual or romantic", but that's a lie. Maybe in a few months we're going to hear a very very different version of this story, which this church is currently covering up.

C. Maybe there is some other very big issue here, something that's not sexual or romantic, but is still very bad (possibly abusive or illegal?). Chandler says the sin was that he was too "familiar" and there was "coarse and foolish joking" but perhaps that's a very misleading and inaccurate description of the actual situation. Perhaps there is some huge other problem that is not being mentioned.

So in other words, I'm not buying it. 

Links 7, 8, and 9 are all from the same blog- I just discovered this blog and read a lot of posts:

7.  If Professional Investors Missed This... (November 16) "Normally a crypto exchange going bust isn't something I'd pay that much attention to, aside from sympathy for its customers, but its Future Fund was one of the largest funders in effective altruism (EA)."

8. Bets, Bonds, and Kindergarteners (2021) "I wanted to go to a park, but Lily (6y) didn't want to go to that park because the last time we had been there there'd been lots of bees. I remembered that had been a summer with unusually many bees, and it no longer being that summer or, in fact, summer at all, I was not worried. Since I was so confident, I offered my $1 to her $0.10 that we would not run into bees at the park. This seemed fair to her, and when there were no bees she was happy to pay up."

9. Counterfactual Trust (2014) This is really interesting as it related to organizations that "match" donations to charity. I guess it can be explained like this: If an organization says "any amount of donations to charity X up to $Y we will match" then the "trust" aspect is you believe that they really will donate- for example if you donate $10 then the organization will also donate $10 to the charity. But the "counterfactual trust" aspect is that you believe that if you do not donate, then the organization will not donate. But! Often the way this works in reality is if the donations don't reach the whole amount ($Y in this case), the organization donates $Y anyway- which people may find deceptive.

Blogaround

1. Tom Holland Is In the Center of the Web (posted November 17) These pictures caused me to stumble.

2. Sex Ed For Self-Advocates. This is a sex-ed resource for autistic people. And WOW it's extremely good.

3. A Piece of Ace History that Deserves to Not Be Forgotten (posted 2020) "For the unaware: Shortland Street is a long-running soap opera from New Zealand (although it does air in the evenings) about Shortland Street hospital and its surrounding community in the fictional town of Ferndale, which from 2007-2010 (and a special anniversary storyline in 2012) had the first out asexual character on TV."

4. Shang-Chi: What’s Katy Doing in This Movie? (posted November 20) "First, yes, I do think it was fantastic representation to feature a cross-gender friendship in a prominent role and not turn it into a romance that would have detracted from the plot."

5. May the circles be unbroken (posted November 28) "The administration is expected to unveil a new plan that would allow any group of at least five private citizens to come together as a 'sponsor circle' and help Afghan refugees resettle in US cities across the country, as reported by CBS News and CNN."

Blogaround

 

640 Afghan civilians in a cargo plane leaving Afghanistan.

1. Creationist Kent Hovind Arrested on Charge of Domestic Violence (posted August 5) 

Related to that, Captain Cassidy gives us an overview of who Kent Hovind is, including a timeline about his ministry and legal troubles. And I was astonished, because, yes, I remember hearing a while ago that he was in jail for tax evasion. And yes, I remember when I was in college and I was a follower of Answers in Genesis and then somebody sent me hours and hours of Kent Hovind's creationist videos and I watched them all, and I basically believed most of it but he came off as a little more wacky than Answers in Genesis. Like he was all hung up on the King James being the best English bible, and he mentioned that God instructed us to eat fruit "with seed in it" and everyone's medical problems are caused by eating fruit without seed- all those years ago, watching his videos, I thought of my grandparents' medical problems and felt it was really not cool for him to downplay that as if there was this magical easy answer, eating fruits with seeds. And I remember in his videos he mentioned "I don't pay taxes" and I felt that was a little bit, uh, crazytown. Well. Reading Captain Cassidy's timeline now, I see that AT THE VERY SAME TIME I was watching Kent Hovind's videos and thinking it was pretty shady for him to be boasting about how he doesn't pay taxes, he was LITERALLY IN JAIL FOR NOT PAYING TAXES.

2. The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark (originally published in 1983) "The animals, many of them so sensitive that they have never yet been kept in zoos, had to make it through in good enough condition to reproduce and to spread over the earth."

3. After Backlash, Joshua Harris Cancels Class for Those Feeling "Shame Around Sex" (posted August 15)

4. Let's donate to help Afghan people. I donated to Women for Women. 

We should also donate to organizations that help refugees. Look at what's going on: More than 600 Afghans cram into one U.S. transport flight, as thousands flee Taliban (posted August 17)