Every Bilingual Child is a Unique Flower

Toy monkey. Image source.

My second kid is 2 years old now, and she is learning language so fast! She mostly speaks Chinese, but I've been really surprised at how much English she uses- this is so different from her older brother when he was that age.

We live in China, and little Wavelength (this is what I'm gonna call her on the blog) is with her Chinese nanny or Chinese grandma while I'm at work all day. So it makes sense that she's mostly speaking Chinese. I'm really amazed at how fast she has been picking up Chinese. She can say whole sentences. Like the other day, at breakfast, her brother accidentally spit food on me while he was talking, and I didn't even realize that little Wavelength saw that, and then a few minutes later, she said "哥哥吐妈妈衣服" which means "brother spit mom's clothes" which is an accurate account of what happened.

Another time, she picked up a little dinosaur toy and said "恐龙尾巴掏牙" which means "dinosaur tail pick teeth" because she had been walking around with that dinosaur and using its tail to pick her teeth, and all of us told her to stop that. But now she's totally sure that's what the dinosaur toy is for, so that's what she said about it.

In English she can also say some sentences, which is great. Not as many as in Chinese though. She says "mama read brown bear" or "mama read monkey" to ask me to read her a book. She says "mama play legos." "Mama sing ABC." Etc.

She knows lots of animal names in English too! Cat, monkey, horse, dolphin, sheep, elephant (but she pronounces it "ofan"), giraffe (but she pronounces it "jwaff"), doggo (I guess I call dogs "doggo" and she has picked up on that), penguin, and probably more that I'm forgetting. She also knows all these, and even more, in Chinese.

And she can say "eat" in English. The funniest time was when she was trying to shove things into a toy T-rex's mouth, saying "Eat! Eat!" Also she knows "sit" - one time I saw her trying to sit on this stuffed parasaurolophus we have- she said her name and then "sit dinfour." ("Dinfour" is her attempt to say "dinosaur.")

The thing that really impresses me is that she doesn't just understand English, she also speaks it. Her brother (whom we call Square Root her on the blog) wasn't like that. He could understand English, but he always talked in Chinese. 

Why is that? Why is the little one speaking English so much more than her brother did at that age?

I thought the reason Square Root didn't speak in English at that age was that I was the only one in his life who talked to him in English. Kids in this kind of environment think to themselves "I have 1 oddball parent who speaks a completely different language that no one else speaks" and don't see any reason to bother speaking it themselves. (Maybe this is not totally true of our situation- because me and my husband talk to each other in English.)

Also, that was during the pandemic, when we got stuck in China for 3 years, lolsob. (Or, rather, it was possible to leave China, but almost impossible to get back in, so I didn't try to leave.) So during the time he was a toddler and was learning language, we didn't have a chance to visit any English-speaking relatives.

But then during the Shanghai lockdown, I was with him all day every day for 2 and a half months, lolsob, and he started speaking English. And now he doesn't have any problem speaking English or Chinese- though his Chinese is better than his English, and sometimes with my relatives he speaks Chinese and they have no idea what he's saying, and he claims he doesn't know how to say it in English, but upon further probing it turns out he can describe what he wants to say in English, even though maybe he didn't have an exact translation for how he would have said it in Chinese.

But his little sister is different! She says lots of things in English, without hesitation. She'll point at a horse and say "马" and then "horse." She taught her Chinese grandma the word "monkey." Why is she saying all these English words, unlike her brother?

(And here's another interesting question: Does she say English words to *me* at a higher frequency than she says them to the people in her life who don't understand English? Does she have an awareness of what language is for what person? I don't know.)

Is it because we have been able to travel outside of China, and visit relatives who speak English? Well, we only do that once or twice a year, and last time we did, she hadn't learned that many words yet, so I don't know if that made a difference. 

Is it because the existence of the bilingual older sibling has changed the language environment?

Is it because she learns languages faster than he did- and we see that in both Chinese and English?

Is it because the two of them are just different people and have different preferences about how much they want to speak English?

Probably it's all of these reasons. And I'm finding it fascinating how her language learning is so different from her brother's.

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Related:

My Toddler's Experience With Baby Sign Language 

I wonder what my toddler thinks about being bilingual

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How Emojis Have Become a Language Within a Language in China (June 9) Ah, yes, many layers of memes in Chinese internet culture.

My husband knows all about this, and told me another example: In comment sections, people will say they are 盖楼 [gài lóu] (adding to a building), because a long thread of comments is like a tall building, and the OP is 楼主 [lóu zhǔ] (owner of the building). If people don't like OP, they will write 楼主傻逼 [lóu zhǔ shǎ bī], "OP is a dumbass", but a lot of internet platforms will censor 傻逼 [shǎ bī], so people will just write lzsb instead (write the first letters instead of the characters themselves). But then, some people have a keyboard which will autocorrect lzsb to 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], which sounds like the name of some kind of flatbread from the city of Lanzhou. My husband tells me that he has met people who think there really is a special traditional food in Lanzhou called 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], and he has to tell them it's not a real thing.

"But," he says, "this meme is from 20 years ago."

2. Meet Splash, a furry detective solving underwater mysteries (May 29) Wow, this otter is trained to search for human remains in the water.

3. Elephant Bananza || Donkey Kong Bananza (Original Soundtrack) (2025) My kids have been watching my husband play this Donkey Kong game, and they are all so into it. And now we also listen to the soundtrack all the time- apparently in the game, Donkey Kong can turn into different animals, like an elephant or a zebra, and there's a different song for each. My toddler is getting really good at hearing a song and identifying what animal Donkey Kong would turn into at that part of the game.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. All Americans Need Pride Now (June 8) "At the moment, the focus of MAGA’s sexual oppression is on trans people. But what happens after they have been suppressed, and America still has problems? If you draw the conclusion that we’re still not pure enough, who do we go after next? Gays and lesbians, I suppose, and then women who have gotten abortions. And promiscuous women. And then straight men and women who don’t act masculine or feminine enough."

2. Jesus loves me, this I know, for Pete Hegseth tells me so (June 8) 

3. "Fascism"—New Federal Rule Would Require Federal Funding Recipients To Deny Trans People Exist (June 9) "If finalized, the rule would reach every hospital, university, school district, state government, nonprofit, and homeless shelter that receives federal funding, effectively requiring much of American institutional life to discriminate against transgender people as a condition of receiving federal money."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Mamdani's New Trans Direct Clinic Will Deny Care To Those Under 19 (June 9) "When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor, he promised to fight back—showing up to protests outside NYU Langone, pledging $65 million for gender-affirming care, and vowing to use every lever of city power to protect trans New Yorkers from federal intimidation. Since taking office, those promises have largely gone unfulfilled: no enforcement action against the hospitals that shuttered their programs, no fines from the Commission on Human Rights despite complaints open for over a year, and no public accounting of the promised funding."

Cleveland Clinic Establishes Second “Detransition” Center in the Country After DOJ Settlement (June 10) "'Detransition services were always a part of gender affirming care,' Adkison continued. 'There continues to be no increased need, and it is a bigoted, sad performative farce the Clinic is choosing to promote.'"

Yes, exactly. If people want to detransition, for whatever reason, they should have access to medical care related to that. But, wouldn't that just be a normal part of a hospital's gender-affirming care/ hormones/ gender-related therapy? Making it into a separate thing only makes sense in the political fiction where trans-affirming doctors are out to get you and want to make you trans against your wishes, and the MAGAs who have common sense are heroically coming to save those victims and establish the opposite kind of clinic, where we help them get back to their correct gender. That's not how it works at all.

4. Judge blocks Trump’s sweeping freeze on immigration benefits for 39 countries (June 5) "The 135-page ruling, from U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, opens the door for hundreds of thousands of people with pending immigration-related applications to have these benefits unpaused. These immigrants were following the rules, McConnell wrote, but were nonetheless unlawfully targeted by the government because of where they came from."

5. Federal judge blocks Trump admin's effort to move 14 trans women to men's prisons (June 9) "Ultimately, Lamberth found that the mandatory transfer to men’s prisons 'was not a reasonable response' because 'it is fundamentally unreasonable for prison officials to respond to serious risks such as mental health deterioration, self-harm, and suicidality by intentionally creating those risks and offering to treat them after they predictably occur.'"

6. Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’ (June 7, via) " So, we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer."

7. White House response to hantavirus and Ebola contrasts with COVID criticisms (June 11) "'The administration is trying to look tough,' Gostin says. 'And that's just no way to deal with an infectious disease that really doesn't know borders. We need to use science and public health rather than political theater and overkill.'"

8. Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade (June 14, 1-minute video) Hooray!

9. A plan to get lifesaving food to hungry kids was working well — until it wasn't (June 13) "'This place used to be full,' he says, able to store about 4,000 boxes — enough to feed over 4,000 kids for several weeks of treatment. 'But since USAID left, since the start of the problem with Trump, UNICEF has become weaker,' he says, gesturing at the empty space."

10. Ms. Rachel meets children with parents in ICE custody (June 10, 1-minute video)

Ms. Rachel brings children’s letters from ICE custody to Capitol Hill, including those from Colorado Springs family (June 11) "Mothers of some of the over 3,500 children cycled through the facility told investigative publication ProPublica that children were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide."

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. How a Buddha Got Its Sight Back (April 13) "The small circular cavities visible on their faces once held inlaid ceramic or glass pupils. These were fixed in place using a technique known as qianmu, in which the eyes were inserted into carved sockets. Over the centuries, as Yungang’s soft sandstone yielded to wind and rain, and later to war and theft, these fragile elements loosened, slipped free, and vanished."

2. Countdown Standard (April 13) From xkcd.

3. ‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon (April 12, via) "The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable."

4. “They Hopped” — Ken Ham’s Answer to Kangaroo Ark Migration Based on False Information (April 11) "The only placental mammals that appear to have reached Australia before human arrival are rats. And rats, as anyone who has studied dispersal biology knows, are perhaps the single most capable overwater dispersers among all mammals. The fact that only rats made it is actually powerful evidence for how difficult the crossing was, not evidence that a land bridge made it easy." (Similar to the video I wrote about here: Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories.)

5. 【可一儿歌】050 小燕子丨KeYi Children's Song丨【三淼儿童官方频道】 For those of you who are interested in what kind of Chinese songs my toddler is listening to.

6. Newcomb’s Paradox occurs in real life (April 17) "I’ve never heard anyone say, 'I’m a one-boxer if the second box contains $1M, but a two-boxer if the second box contains $1,001.'"

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘One of the good ones’ obscures a dangerous lie (April 9) "So this man who had fled a country where he had been beaten and imprisoned by military police for no reason encountered America’s militarized police who beat and imprisoned him for no reason."

2. And this take from the Onion (parody site, not actually true): Melania Trump Slams Baseless Reports Linking Her To Wrong Wealthy Pedophile (April 10, via) 

3. The American Gulag (April 6, via) "Damas and Lunas Campos were among the roughly 73,000 people whom ICE currently holds in a tangle of detention camps sprawled across the country. And more centers are under construction. Many of them are former warehouses designed to function, as ICE acting director Todd Lyons put it last year, 'like Amazon Prime for human beings.'"

4. Trump's 'Praise Be to Allah' Easter Taunt Should Be Immediately Recognizable to U.S. Christians (April 7, via) "When the Roman state executed Jesus, according to John 19:19, it placed above his head a sign that read Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

5. Conversion therapy is soul-crushing — and it doesn't work (April 2, via) "I know this because I lived it for eight years. The guidance I was given ranged from the practical — “Don’t watch gay porn” — to the outlandish — “By developing platonic relationships with other men, my sexual desires for them would disappear.” But what it truly does is try to disintegrate a person’s body, mind and spirit."

6. Hegseth leads Pentagon prayer service with faux Bible verse made famous by ‘Pulp Fiction’ (April 16)

7. ICE detains 86-year-old in US to marry long-lost love, family says (April 15)

Update on that: 85-year-old French widow detained by ICE returns to France (April 17)

8. Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids (April 15) "'It’s incredibly psychologically harmful to be moved,' sometimes as stressful as serious illness or a death in the family, Latham said. 'For little kids, moving repeatedly creates bonding issues and destroys the sense of both self and community. They don’t know who they are and where they will be' from day to day."

9. Minnesota has charged an ICE officer with assault for alleged actions during immigration surge (April 16) "One victim told state law enforcement the encounter led them to believe there was a "crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people," the complaint says."

10. She Helped the Authorities Deport Her Abuser. Then They Deported Her Back to Him. (April 6) "Carmen’s lawsuit, ICWC v. Noem, accuses the Trump administration of ignoring deferred action status and removing survivors from the country anyway; the administration is also deporting people like Carmen who don’t yet have the status but may be eligible once USCIS reviews her application. The case was filed against ICE and USCIS and seeks to represent a wide class of survivors who applied for U visas, T visas, and other protections under the Violence Against Women Act."

Really rich that these MAGAs are claiming they're "protecting women" by being mean to trans people. Here's something that would actually protect women: Don't deport immigrants who are survivors of domestic abuse.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Draco Malfoy becomes unlikely Lunar New Year mascot in China (February 4) Lol, this is very funny. So the Chinese translation of Malfoy's name is 马尔福 [mǎ ěr fú], where the 马 [mǎ] is the Chinese word for "horse" and the 福 [fú] means happiness and good fortune and is used all the time at Chinese New Year. So now, because it's about to be the Year of the Horse, apparently Malfoy is a Chinese New Year mascot.

Chinese culture is weirdly into puns, so I am not surprised that suddenly Malfoy is a thing for Chinese New Year. I haven't seen any of these decorations myself in the wild, but if I do I will definitely let you all know.

2. This xkcd about Groundhog Day. Also this one about proofs.

3. Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture (September 8, 2025, via Why It Matters that Jeffrey Epstein Recommended James Dobson) [content note: child sexual abuse] This is a blog series about how most child sexual abuse is committed by a father, step-father, relative, or family friend- this is true, we have statistics on this, and James Dobson knows this- but instead of doing something to help protect children from father/daughter incest, Dobson and other purity culture leaders teach an ideology where parents have total control over their children's bodies, where a daughter's virginity belongs to her father until marriage, where the father-daughter relationship is described in borderline-creepy romantic terms. Yikes.

4. How to be less awkward (January 7, via) "I learned an important lesson that day: when it comes to being awkward, the coverup is always worse than the crime."

5. How to Teach Textual Criticism To Fifth-Graders (July 23, 2025, via) "If Billy wrote his primary copy in pencil, though, and you feel like messing with them even further, get an eraser and do a fairly sloppy job of erasing everything he wrote."

6. Bad Bunny's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show (February 9) I don't speak any Spanish, so I'm not really able to tell you if this is good or not. But I liked it.

7. They're cured of leprosy. Why do they still live in leprosy colonies? (February 7) "In fact, leprosy — also known as Hansen's disease — is one of the least contagious diseases there is. Ninety-five percent of humans are naturally immune and it's not easily contracted by the other 5%. Today, leprosy is easily cured with antibiotics, especially if detected early."

8. The vegetables on VeggieTales are not Christian (December 10, 2025, via) "Mike Asparagus is not a Christian; he is an actor who occasionally portrays Christian characters. You might compare Mike Asparagus to Mark Williams, who is not a practicing Christian, but still portrays the fictional character of Father Brown on TV[.]" I am so here for this.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Pardon the Corruption (December 2, 2025, via) "DOJ lawyers normally apply standard criteria for pardons, these include: post-conviction conduct, character and reputation; seriousness and relative recentness of the offense; acceptance of responsibility, remorse, and atonement; and need for relief. The ideal case was someone who had served significant time, especially for more serious crimes, expressed remorse, and faced real hardship because of their conviction. Now, the ideal case is a wealthy supporter of the President who would prefer never to see the inside of a jail cell for their crimes."

2. Lawyers allege Dept. of Homeland Security is denying legal counsel to Minnesota detainees (January 19, via) "'One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos,' said another attorney who asked not to be named. 'And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did.'"

3. Epstein Files Reveal How Pathetic Richard Dawkins & Other Men Are (February 6, transcript here) The Epstein files give an inside look at some drama that was going on with sexual harassment in the atheist community.

4. Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting (February 1) So... this is strange and I don't know what to make of it. I saw this news a few days ago but decided not to share the link yet, because it was only ProPublica reporting it, so I wanted to wait and see if it would be verified by other big news sites, before I shared the link. In the article here, ProPublica says they found the 2 names by looking at "government records"- but I don't understand what these "government records" are and how they got them.

So I guess let's still be skeptical about this? I'm sharing the link now because this was published a week ago and there still seems to be nothing mentioned on the other mainstream news sites (except The Guardian), and I find that very strange.

5. The unfathomable Minnesota transcript that must be read, as it tells the reality of America today (February 5) "What -- what can the Court expect going forward, because this is obviously not workable, and it's certainly not an example of complying with the Court's order, unless you feel it is?"

6. Trump refuses to apologize after posting racist meme of the Obamas (February 7) "'It's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,' said Scott, who is Black."

7. Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked (February 7) "He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend's car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton."

Blogaround

 Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 一隻哈巴狗 (2022) In case you are interested in what songs Chinese toddlers are listening to. This is a cute little song about a pug.

2. PHOTOS: Laundry is a chore but there's a beauty and serenity in the way it hangs out (January 10) "Castañeda Lee photographed locals in hopes of appreciating the invisible workers on the other side of Cambodian tourism, who spend hours each day doing the laundry of tourists."

3. Inside a Gaza medical clinic at risk of shutting down after an Israeli ban (January 11) "'I am trying to provide the best care to patients because I know they don't have any access to this kind of care elsewhere,' Harb says, adding there's a waitlist of people trying to get in."

4. Author Philip Yancey Confesses Affair, Withdraws from Ministry (January 6)

The Terrible Takes on Philip Yancey’s 8-Year Affair (January 12) "I don’t want to be married to someone whose only reason for not falling into bed with another woman is that Jesus performed a miracle."

Something I was thinking about this: So, the conservative Christian response to these kinds of scandals is 'don't judge, we are all sinners, we are all equally guilty, it could have been any of us falling to the temptation to cheat on our spouse [or sexually abuse children, or whatever the scandal is this time].' And then the progressive Christian response is like, 'hey, this sin-levelling is not cool, presenting it like the victims and the perpetrators are equally sinful, so we can't judge or hold people accountable. No, in reality we are NOT all just 1 bad decision away from having an affair, okay? That's not normal! You can say we're all sinners, but not like that, gosh. Some sins are way worse than others.'

So it's like... the conservative Christian point of view is that we're all horrible sinners, and the progressive Christian point of view is there are 2 types of people: 

1. Normal people who just sin in normal ways, like, you yelled at someone about something that wasn't their fault because you were in a bad mood. That's wrong, you should apologize for that. But we don't judge people as a Bad Person Forever if they do these kinds of little normal sins. We've all done things like that before.
2. People who do something really bad, that's totally beyond-the-pale. They are a completely different type of person from us normal people; we are very much NOT "all" susceptible to the temptation to do something so terrible. We shouldn't have empathy for these people, or think we can relate to them. They should be shunned from public life and we can never say any good things about them again.

This "2 types of people" perspective also seems bad. (To be clear, I haven't really seen it presented so explicitly like this- this is my own summary.) So I'm wondering what a better perspective would be. 

Maybe something like this: There's a spectrum of bad things that people might do, and at different points along the spectrum, we should respond with different levels of concern for the victims and for the perpetrators. Towards the lower end of the spectrum, it's like, well, that was wrong, but your victims are also imperfect people who have done similar things, so like, you have to apologize, and then all of us work together to become better people. Towards the higher end, our primary response should be to help and support the victims, and we shouldn't spend our efforts on caring about the perpetrator. But hopefully the perpetrator has somebody in their life who cares about them and will try to get them to be a better person. But that's not something that most people should care about- mostly we should care about helping the victims.

So rather than a clear line dividing the "2 types of people", it's a spectrum where the proportions of "how much we want to help the victims" vs "how much we want to help the perpetrator" gradually change.

See also, this post I wrote in 2015: "Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Nationwide anti-ICE protests call for accountability after Renee Good's death (January 11) "At least 1,000 events across the U.S. were planned for Saturday and Sunday, according to Indivisible, a progressive grassroots coalition of activists helping coordinate the movement it calls 'ICE Out For Good Weekend of Action.'"

Photos: Protests grow over the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis (January 8) 

January 10, 2026 (via) "In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble they cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying: 'That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,' only to have him shoot her in the face and then spit out 'F*cking b*tch' after he killed her."

2. National Park Service will void passes with stickers over Trump's face (January 9) "The use of an image of Trump on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual picture of nature — has sparked a backlash, sticker protests, and a lawsuit from a conservation group."

3. The CDC just sidelined these childhood vaccines. Here's what they prevent (January 9) "Before routine administration of the current rotavirus vaccines began in 2006, about 70,000 young children were hospitalized and 50 died every year from the virus."

4. Tomorrow never knows (January 7) "And then — because their lives are governed by the need for everyone, everywhere to always line up behind every mandatory Proper Christian Stance on everything — they probably would have guessed that you were testing them about their adherence to the PCS on something like melting glaciers and climate change."

Rep. Lieu Says Illegal for Military to Use Force Against Greenland Without Congress Authorization (January 8) "If any military member, including the generals on down...participate in the use of military force against Greenland without congressional authorization, they are following illegal orders."

5. Over 400,000 Transgender People Have Moved States Since Trump's Election (January 9)

Christmas Stockings in Chinese

Christmas stocking for sale on a Chinese site. Image source.

How do we say "Christmas stocking" in Chinese?

Well, it's 圣诞袜子 [shèng dàn wà zǐ]. 圣诞 [shèng dàn] means "Christmas", like when you're using "Christmas" as an adjective to talk about Christmas cookies, Christmas trees, etc- but when you're talking about Christmas the holiday, as in "Today is Christmas", it would be 圣诞节 [shèng dàn jié], because 节 [jié] means "holiday." And 袜子 [wà zǐ] means sock.

Wait, 袜子 [wà zǐ] means sock? Like any normal sock is 袜子 [wà zǐ]? Yes, any normal sock is 袜子 [wà zǐ]. Every day when you wear socks, they are 袜子 [wà zǐ]. The Chinese word for Christmas stocking is Christmas sock.

Something about this feels a little wrong, to me. When we talk about "stockings" in English, the feel of it is like... an old-fashioned sock. An old-timey word for "sock." Like the origins of this tradition are that long ago, people really did hang up actual socks for Christmas, but now we use a dedicated product specifically made to be a Christmas stocking, which would not work as an actual sock you can wear on your actual foot. 

All of that is wrapped up in the English word "stocking," and the Chinese 圣诞袜子 [shèng dàn wà zǐ] doesn't have any of the same feel.

There's no tradition about Christmas stockings in China. I think a lot of Chinese people have seen them used in Christmas decorations, so they vaguely know that Christmas stockings are a thing that exists, but they don't know any details beyond that.

This is how translation always is. You take a word in one language and you want to translate it to a second language, but the second language doesn't have a word with the exact same feel. And I just asked me husband (who is Chinese) about this, and he said "we don't care" about the fact that "stocking" sounds more old-fashioned and not like an actual sock, because in China they don't have this tradition. (And perhaps there *is* a Chinese word that feels more old-fashioned and is related to socks- though I don't know one myself- and one might argue that it is a better translation for "stocking", except that you won't get anywhere making that argument, because Chinese people are already using the translation 圣诞袜子 [shèng dàn wà zǐ].)

Translation is like that.

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Related:

Chinese Jokes Make Me Think About God

"Ayi" vs "Aunt"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 17-year-old trans girl’s suicide over NHS wait times was preventable, coroner rules (October 9, via) "Wait times for each clinic vary massively, from just three months in Nottingham, to 41 years in Belfast, and a staggering 224 years in Glasgow."

2. What Would Billy Say? (October 10) and also Slacktivist's comments about it. Franklin Graham has withdrawn two large evangelical organizations (Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an organization which keeps an eye on the leaders of evangelical groups to make sure they're not stealing money or abusing people. Uh... why is Franklin Graham withdrawing from this oversight group? Seems very suspicious. As the Slacktivist put it, "Or maybe you’ve got to ask if there could be any possible explanation for this other than the simplest, most obvious one."

3. 男高音艺术歌曲《我会自己上厕所》转自抖音 (2023) This is extremely funny if you understand Chinese.

Okay I'll explain it: So there's a song for Chinese toddlers called “我会自己上厕所” (I can use the bathroom by myself) featuring such profound content as “上厕所时不能吃东西” (you can't eat while using the bathroom), and apparently it became something of a meme on the Chinese internet because everyone found it hilarious, and people were making their own covers of this song. This video is an opera-style cover of it.

See this is what happens if you have kids. You have to listen to songs about potty training, and find humor in them or else you will just lose your mind.

4. Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 13, 34-minute video) Video about Bari Weiss and her media outlet "The Free Press"- apparently she is one of those people who claims to be too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals. Whenever I've come across writing from people like that, it's confusing to me because they might have some "liberal" opinions on specific issues, but they don't seem to really understand the overall big-picture of why liberals would have those opinions, and how they would connect to other issues too.

5. A ‘Hardcore’ theological crisis (October 15) "She is his child and he is going to try to save her even if Almighty God has already decreed since eternity past that she is predestined for damnation."

6. Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” (October 15, via) "This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg."

7. Photos: Ceasefire in Gaza brings reunions amid devastation (October 15)

8. Doctors Without Borders permanently closes its emergency center in Haiti's capital (October 16) "'The building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,' said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF head of mission in Haiti."

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Links related to the antichrist:

(I hope someday some historian finds my blog and says "wow, people back then believed Trump was the antichrist.")

1. There will be No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18~

2. Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass (October 14) "Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for "soliciting" even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable."

Also related: Pentagon reporters have now turned in their badges – but plan to keep reporting (October 15) "Current and former Pentagon correspondents who spoke with the Guardian said that coverage would undoubtedly suffer from a lack of proximity to administration decision-makers – though many are intent on proving that the restrictions won’t stop the work, with some even saying they plan to take a more aggressive tack."

3. Protesters and Members of the Press Challenge First Amendment Violations by Federal Forces at ICE Facility in Broadview, Illinois (October 6) "A new lawsuit filed this morning argues that this wanton violence by the federal government is a blatant attempt to interfere with the most cherished and fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the government."

4. Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver (October 12, via) 

5. Gavin Newsom Vetoes Important HRT Stockpiling Bill For Trans Californians, Signs Other Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills (October 14) "Among all of the legislation passed this year, few bills would have offered such tangible protection for transgender people as SB 418—and yet, it’s the one that won’t become law."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Fenway Health Restricts Treatment for Patients Under 19 In Capitulation To Trump (October 15) "This is a fundamental betrayal to the core mission of Fenway and the patients they serve. Trans patients cannot trust this organization has their best interests at heart."

6. ‘We’re saving God’ (October 16) "The creeds would have to be completely rewritten to be compatible with the Trumpian theology of 'We’re saving God.' Think of all the arguments among different branches of Christianity, every doctrinal dispute about the nature of God, the relationship between God and humanity, eschatology, sin, salvation, sacrament, whatever. Every Christian in every era on every side of every one of those disputes would recoil at the blasphemous nonsense of 'We are saving God.'"

"Ayi" vs "Aunt"

This has been bothering me for years. Dictionaries and Chinese teachers should not be going around telling people that 阿姨 [ā yí] means "aunt" in English. It does sometimes- but usually not!

I have made this venn diagram which explains the meanings of "ayi" and "aunt" and the small overlap they have:

Venn diagram with one circle labelled "ayi" and one circle labelled "aunt." The "ayi" circle contains "friendly term of address for any woman you meet who is your parents' age" and "woman who works as a cleaner/ nanny/ domestic worker." The "aunt" circle contains "dad's sister" and "mom or dad's sister-in-law." The overlap area contains "mom's sister."

Hope this clears it up!

There were LOTS of things people told me early on, when I was learning Chinese, that *this* word translates to *this* other word, and I believed them, and then later found out that was not true, in ways which seemed very huge and important to me. I don't think it's their fault though- I think in many cases they didn't speak English at a deep enough level to understand that the English word they were using did not mean exactly what they thought it meant. (Oh man, don't get me started on the differences between 已经 and "already.") They had a lot of awareness of the important things to consider when one is coming from a totally-Chinese background and learning English, but going in the other direction has a whole different set of important considerations. (And there were times when I was listening to another native English speaker speaking Chinese, and their mistakes made perfect sense to me and I totally knew what they were trying to say, but our Chinese friends whose second language was English couldn't follow at all.)

Or, a dictionary might say some word is the translation of some other word, because if you *had* to choose 1 word, that's the one you would choose, but there actually aren't any English words that truly are the translation of that Chinese word- the way to translate it totally depends on the situation.

Translation is hard! But anyway, the important thing is, "ayi" usually does not mean "aunt."

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.

I wonder what my toddler thinks about being bilingual

A cute little cartoon beaver, with the text 英文儿歌 (English kids' songs). Image source.

I talk to my little daughter in English. Other people in her life talk to her in Chinese. (For the purposes of the blog, we will refer to her as Baby Wavelength.) She has a nanny who takes care of her all day because my husband and I have full-time jobs- in China it's common to have a nanny because there are very few daycares that take kids less than 3ish years old. In China, we call the nanny "ayi." The ayi talks to her in Chinese all day.

My husband (who is Chinese) sometimes talks to our kids in Chinese and sometimes in English. He and I talk to each other in English. Oh, and the ayi doesn't speak English, so I talk to her in Chinese. 

Huh, when I spell it all out like this, I guess it sounds really confusing? It doesn't feel confusing to me as I live my life. I guess this is just normal to me now. 

(I mean, if you research the strategies that people use to teach their children multiple languages, One Parent One Language (OPOL) is common, but we're not quite doing that, it's more like, an assortment of people with all different levels of English/Chinese ability.)

Anyway, what I wonder is, what does little Wavelength think about this? Is it incredibly strange to her, that the entire way that ayi talks is completely different from the entire way that Mommy talks?

One day I was quizzing her on her body parts- "where are your ears?" and she touches her ears, etc. And I said "Where's your neck?" and she didn't know that one. Then I said, "Where's your neck? 脖子 [bó zǐ]" and she touched her neck. I guess she learned a bunch of Chinese words for body parts from ayi. Does she think it's strange that I refer to these body parts by a completely different set of words from what the ayi taught her? How do you make sense of that, if you're a baby?

Another example- my daughter learned to say "up" (in English), and that became her favorite thing to say, because she always wants us to pick her up. Our ayi told me that all day long, Wavelength was saying "up." Not sure if ayi knew the English word "up" before this, but I guess the meaning becomes obvious when a baby is following you around all day with her arms raised.

Maybe little Wavelength doesn't find this weird, because as a baby, everything is new and you have no frame of reference for what's "normal" or "weird."

Or maybe this isn't that different from a more universal toddler experience- they play some game or sing some song with one caregiver, and then the toddler tries to get another caregiver to do the same game/song, but the other caregiver can't figure out what the toddler wants them to do. 

And then I thought, hey, you know who would have some insight into whether it's confusing to be a baby in a bilingual household? Her older brother. His situation when he was a baby was pretty much exactly the same. So I went and asked her brother- my son- on the blog we can call him Square Root- "When you were little, did you think it was weird that some people talked to you in English and some people talked to you in Chinese?" 

He said, "I don't remember" and then wandered off to play with his toys. Okay.

Square Root was born just before the pandemic, and we got stuck in China for 3 years. During that time, he learned to speak- and he basically spoke Chinese only. I always talked to him in English, and he could understand all of it, but he didn't say things in English himself. I guess since nobody else in his life talked to him in English, he thought it was just some niche interest that Mom is into. Then when China's zero-covid policy ended, and we finally got to travel to the US and interact with my relatives, then he started speaking English.

And now, basically whenever we travel to the US, for the first day he talks to people in Chinese, and they have no idea what he's saying, but then he adapts to speaking English and it's not an issue.

I'm a white person in China, and generally nobody expects white people in China to be any good at speaking Chinese. Yeah, there's very much a double standard, where Chinese people apologize for not being able to speak English well, but don't have any sort of expectations that a white person who chose to move to China should be able to speak Chinese. And if the white person says 1 word in Chinese, Chinese people will say "wow! Your Chinese is so good!" (But don't take it that seriously, they are just being polite.)

So yeah, I can speak Chinese, but nobody really holds me to any kind of standard about it. Except 1 person. My son. Oh man, sometimes I catch him telling people I can't speak Chinese, like, what the heck, dude. He tells me I don't speak Chinese well, because sometimes I can't follow what he's saying, like if he had a bizarre dream about Optimus Prime and he's describing it in Chinese. Can you believe I couldn't quite follow that.

Or he says to me "How can you not know this word? This is an easy word!"

And there was one time he was telling me all about this Chinese word that refers to a kind of fruit, but also means jumping on the couch, and I was working very hard to try to follow what he was saying, and then I said, "Is this a real thing, or did you make it up?" and he said "I made it up."

Always fact-check your children!

Anyway, this is what life is like for my kids. I'm so fascinated by the way language interacts with the way that people think. I'm so curious about what it's like to learn to speak in this kind of bilingual environment. I wonder what my daughter thinks about it all. I tried asking my son but he seems to have no interest in communicating it to me.

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Related:

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

On Immigration and Double Standards 

"The Case for Loving" (kids' book about Loving vs Virginia)

"I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The "ministerial exception" is rapidly becoming a civil rights nightmare (August 12) "The precedent here is devastating. Civil rights protections can now be dissolved, not by an act of Congress, but by the stroke of an HR pen in the name of religion."

Ah, it's about World Vision discriminating against a woman in a same-sex marriage, who applied for a job. Well that brings me back to The World Vision Debacle of 2014, where the Christian blogosphere found out that World Vision's policies allowed employees to be in same-sex marriages, and oh my goodness it was a huge scandal. So much outrage on the internet. World Vision is a Christian organization that helps impoverished children around the world, but oh my goodness, the evangelical Christians were just beside themselves, ready to cancel World Vision (I guess this was before it was called "cancelling" though). We absolutely cannot help poor children if a gay person might also be helping them, absolutely not. That was the sentiment that Christians were posting all over social media. And as a result of the backlash, World Vision changed their policy- employees are *not* allowed to be in a same-sex marriage.

That was the point where I officially quit being evangelical. The evangelical Christians were all over the internet, loudly proclaiming that we will throw poor children under the bus in order to reject gay people to the fullest extent possible, and I just... this is unredeemable. I can't be a part of this any more. I can't "change it from the inside." I'm done.

At the time, I wrote about it here: Go ahead and say I'm not a Christian. I don't care anymore.

Also from Hemant Mehta: "Shiny Happy People" sequel highlights Christian boot camp that traumatized a generation (July 30) Oh I really want to watch this and blog about it.

2. Researchers discover a secret weapon that saves babies' lives. And it's not medical (August 18) "Cash cut mortality in children under 5 by about 45%, the study researchers found, on par with interventions like vaccines and anti-malarials."

This is great news! A few questions that are worth exploring: Does giving cash to some people have any negative effects on other people who didn't get cash? Also, in what kinds of situations does it help to give cash, and in what kinds of situations does it not help? For example, if you're in a big city with very high rent prices, and you say "let's give everyone money, then their rent will be affordable"- well if a big proportion of renters get money, the landlords will just increase the rents, and it won't help the renters. So the issue is that there just isn't enough housing supply- it's not clear that adding money to the situation will help.

In this article, though, it's mostly about families being able to more easily access food and medical care, which aren't going to be limited in that way- so that's good.

3. 小鸭子嘎嘎嘎 - In case you would like to know what kind of music Chinese toddlers are into. My daughter's nanny ("ayi" in Chinese) has been playing this song for her. It's about ducklings. "Ga ga ga" is Chinese for "quack quack quack."

4. Exhausted and Alone, China’s Single Moms Are Moving in Together (August 20) "Posts advertising 'roommate moms' circulate widely, drawing responses from strangers across cities. Some end up splitting rent, others share school pickups and grocery runs, piecing together a version of family that is less solitary, less precarious, and a little more possible."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Four More Virginia School Districts Defy Trump, Reject Trans Bathroom Ban Demand (August 18) "As a school board member, I cannot sit idly by while adults who should know better try to pit one group of students against another. Our responsibility is to ensure that every child — including those who are transgender or gender nonconforming — has an opportunity to achieve their full, unique, and limitless potential."

2. After the CDC shooting, federal workers demand more protections from RFK Jr. (August 20) "A letter signed by hundreds of current and former HHS employees, addressed to Kennedy and members of Congress, says Kennedy is 'complicit in dismantling America's public health infrastructure and endangering the nation's health' by questioning the integrity of the CDC's workforce, making false claims that COVID vaccines are not safe or effective, changing vaccine policy based on ideology rather than science, and contributing to 'harassment and violence experienced by the CDC staff.'"

3. Trump vows to end use of mail-in ballots ahead of 2026 midterm election (August 19) EXCUSE ME, WHAT? (I am outside the US and I always vote by mail.)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. These evangelical men saved sex for marriage – they weren’t well prepared (June 17) "The experience has shaped how the couple are raising their six-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son. 'I want my daughter to have full information about her body – I don’t want her to go through what I did,' said Katy. As for their son, 'I just want him to understand that women are people,' said Nate."

2. This abortion method doesn't involve doctors — and many of them consider it safe (June 22) "Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the hotline has only grown. It now has dozens of volunteers, including clinicians as well as people who provide logistical support. The hotline gets thousands of calls and texts every month."

3. A cancer center in Jordan treats kids from Gaza, but only a few dozen have arrived (June 20) "All of Gaza's hospitals have been either damaged or destroyed in Israeli airstrikes."

4. Do You Want to Build a Snowman - 10 YEARS, SAME ANNA! (2024) OH MY GOODNESS this is amazing.

5. What’s the Right Way to Translate Chinese Dish Names? (June 20) "Semantic translation, on the other hand, conveys meaning rather than form. Traditionally, it prioritizes fluency and naturalness in the target language, even if that means departing from the original wording — rendering the Chinese shizitou as 'meatball,' for example. However, semantic translation can also mean literal translation, even if the result seems foreign or puzzling — such as translating shizitou as 'lion’s head.'"

Hmm. Yeah I would describe shizitou [狮子头] as a meatball, but 丸子 are also meatballs, but they are different. I guess then you have no choice but to translate 狮子头 as a lion head meatball? It's pork, though, okay.

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Protest sign that says "No kings / Yas queens!" Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Relief and a raised fist as Mahmoud Khalil goes free – but release ‘very long overdue’ (June 20, via) I'm glad to hear this. But it's not over- his immigration case is still ongoing.

Mahmoud Khalil emerges from airport security with his wife Noor and newborn, legal team and Rep. AOC.

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— Gwynne Hogan (@gwynnefitz.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 1:37 AM

'They wanted to separate me from my family': Mahmoud Khalil speaks after ICE release (June 23) "They absolutely showed me nothing. They had over 100 days to do that, and I dare Trump, [Marco] Rubio, and their administration to substantiate these claims with anything, because they did not refer to anything."

2. One daughter's search for a father detained by ICE (June 21) "Urizar had no idea where her father was being held or how to reach him."

3. The Antisemites In and Around the Trump Administration (June 17) "I mean the kind who proudly performs a Roman salute or two on a national stage, like Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, sure, but you already knew about those. There are many, many more."

4. U.S. Supreme Court allows — for now — third-country deportations (June 23) "In a searing dissent, the court's three liberals accused the conservative majority of 'rewarding lawlessness.' Writing for the three, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said 'The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone, anywhere without notice or an opportunity be heard.'"