Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Real Talk: Why China’s Deaf Creators Feel Pressured to Sell Out (September 15) "In this context, the recasting of deaf people as “cute, submissive, and longing for love” trivializes Deaf culture as something to be consumed rather than taken seriously."

Also from Sixth Tone: Street Smart: Why China’s 5-Star Hotels Are Now Cooking Curbside (September 18) "At Kang’s hotel in Henan, a 398-yuan set meal was quickly undercut by rivals offering similar packages for 358 — then 298 yuan. 'Now everyone’s on the street,' he said, 'selling even cheaper takeaway.'"

2. A humanitarian expert says civilians in Gaza City are facing an 'impossible choice' (September 17) "Right now, people in Gaza City are facing an impossible choice: live under bombardment and famine or risk the dangerous journey to the south, where they know that there are no services that can accommodate them, that there's no aid to be distributed to help them in their displacement.What we are witnessing is mass forcible transfer of Palestinians from Gaza City, which is a war crime and must be stopped."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause (September 16) "Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself."

And: Why did alleged assassin target Kirk? Evidence paints complicated picture (September 18, via) Yeah, the "leftist" parts of the internet are all taking this "he was a groyper! he was far-right!" and running with it, but I don't think we really know that for sure. Let's not spread misinformation. I don't like the idea (which both sides are promoting) that once we find the killer's motive and ideology, we can use it to make big sweeping statements about "the left" or "the right."

Sen. Chris Murphy warns Trump is exploiting Kirk's death to squash dissent (September 16)

2. Who Can Get a COVID Vaccine? (September 17) "So! I know that it’s all very confusing, but please don’t just get overwhelmed and give up."

3. GOP lawmaker pulls measure to allow Marco Rubio to revoke US passports (September 16) "But the new measure would have significantly escalated these efforts by targeting US citizens."

4. ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel off air after comments made about the Charlie Kirk killing (September 18) In all the coverage I've seen of this, I haven't seen any actual comments from Kimmel saying anything bad about Charlie Kirk. He just said the right is politicizing it, that the killer is also far-right, and that the president doesn't seem to be mourning like a normal person.

WGA Statement on ABC’s Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! (September 17) "Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth."

5. Trump moves to scrub national parks sites of signs that cast America in a 'negative light' (September 17) "Park employees also flagged a panel that reads: 'As the new federal government embraced the lofty concept of liberty, slavery in the President's House ... mocked the nation's pretense to be a beacon of liberty.'"

6. Most American Jews say Trump is using antisemitism as an 'excuse' to silence free speech at universities (September 17)

7. RFK Jr. wants to end mental health screenings in schools. Experts say it's a bad idea (September 16) "U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and Education Secretary Linda McMahon want schools to do away with mental health screenings and therapy. Instead, they argue in a Washington Post opinion piece that schools 'must return to the natural sources of mental well-being: strong families, nutrition and fitness, and hope for the future.'" Oh, so just telling everyone to try harder to be normal, instead of recognizing that mental health is a real thing.

This article does a good job explaining what school mental health screening is and why it's just a common-sense way to identify kids who might possibly need help. Not about labels and stigmas.

8. Judge criticizes Trump admin, blocks effort to quickly deport children to Guatemala (September 19) "The administration’s initial argument that the effort was all about reunifying children with their parents, Kelly wrote, 'crumbled like a house of cards about a week later.'"

9. Judge orders Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria (September 18, via) "'It is no surprise that the Trump administration continues to retaliate against me for my exercise of free speech,' Khalil said in the statement. 'Their latest attempt, through a kangaroo immigration court, exposes their true colors once again.'"

His lawyers are still fighting this though. It's not over.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. First things first: Biblical priorities (September 4) "This is the first thing we hear God telling us — the first thing God has to say. Religion without justice is detestable." Preach.

2. Texas lawmakers approve letting private citizens sue abortion pill providers (September 4) "Opponents see it as not only another way to rein in abortion but intimidate providers outside Texas who are complying with the laws in their states. They also say it would encourage a form of vigilantism."

3. The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian (August 21, via) "Childress relied on Victorian reports about large bones that Powell’s team, led by Cyrus Thomas, had dismissed in 1894 as unevidenced. Hundreds of such reports littered the papers in the late 1800s, and claiming to find the bones of giants became a popular appeal to “prove” the Bible’s superiority to Darwin. The Smithsonian politely informed inquirers that these bones did not belong to the mythical Nephilim."

I never heard about this "we found the bones of biblical giants" when I was a young-earth creationist, but I gotta say I'm 0% surprised. Like, OF COURSE there's some young-earth creationist crackpot out there claiming they found the bones of biblical giants, and that scientists are trying to cover it up because they hate the bible or whatever. I've definitely heard of YECs claiming "we found Noah's ark!" and this is basically the same genre.

4. Israel is blasting through Gaza City neighborhoods, but people have nowhere to go (September 5) "The International Committee of the Red Cross says the evacuation of Gaza City cannot be done in a safe or dignified manner, calling it "unfeasible and incomprehensible." It noted that people are starving, wounded and unable to relocate, and that no area in Gaza can handle an influx of displaced people due to extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care across the territory."

5. Dimensional Lumber Tape Measure (September 5) From xkcd.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. President Trump plans to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War (September 4) Uh, wtf

2. Senators from both parties grilled RFK Jr. on vaccines and more (September 4) "Another Republican physician on the Senate Finance Committee, Dr. John Barrasso of Wyoming, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy for undermining vaccines."

3. How Trump's latest crypto launch enriches his family (September 3) Corruption.

4. 'Founders Museum' from White House and PragerU blurs history, AI-generated fiction (September 3) What on earth. What. They "used AI" to make videos of the founding fathers, and they're showing these at a museum? 

5. Trump keeps moving the U.S. closer to being the fascist war machine he wants (September 5) "Earlier this week, in one of the more alarming actions of this administration, Trump ordered the murder of 11 people that the Trump administration claims were drug traffickers on international waters."

Also from Law Dork: Holding vigil in "a post-USA America" as Trump orders the vigil gone (September 6) "As The Washington Post reported last month, 'The demonstration is widely considered to be the longest continuous act of political protest in U.S. history. It has survived seven presidents, countless global conflicts, hurricanes and blizzards, heat waves and floods. It has outlasted several U.S. wars, including the Cold War, the Persian Gulf War, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.'"

6. Trump walks back Chicago 'war' threat, but vows to 'clean up' cities (September 7) "In response to the post, Illinois' Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, wrote on X that Trump was 'threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal.'"

7. In April NPR profiled people who couldn't get their HIV drugs. How are they faring now? (September 6)

8. Judge steps up to block ICE's kidnapping of Guatemalan kids (September 4) "It was a remarkable display of judicial tenacity. It was also a testament to how thoroughly the Justice Department has shredded its credibility with the courts in just eight months." I posted a link about this before, but this gives a lot more detail. It is just shocking to me how ICE got children out of their beds in the middle of the night, with only a few hours' notice, and was going to send them to Guatemala. How can people do that, to children? But I guess this kind of cruel, inhumane behavior is what ICE does every single day.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cracker Barrel, Anglican Converts, and Tradition’s Aesthetic (August 25, via) "That draw into nostalgia—even or especially nostalgia for something we never experienced like the rural South of the 1930s or the high medieval English cathedral—can drive us to over-inflate continuities between ourselves and the past and to idealize rituals, expressions and—in the case of church and Cracker Barrel—aesthetics we think capture our imagined communities in their purest form."

Related to this is the idea that white people have a culture. I didn't get that when I was growing up- I thought the way I lived was just the regular way, and other people who ate weird food and celebrated weird holidays did so because it was their culture. The link talks about the misconception that the liturgical rituals in the Anglican church are the same as those from the very beginning of the church- the idea that these rituals are just neutral and normal and the way it always was- no, this is not true.

2. More Drowning Children (March 21) "God notices there is one extra spot in Heaven, and plans to give it to either you or your neighbor. He knows that you jump in the water and save one child per day, and your neighbor (if he were in the same situation) would save zero. He also knows that you are willing to pay 80% of the cost of a lifeguard, and your neighbor (who makes exactly the same amount of money as you) would pay 0%. However, in reality, the river and the drowning children are going by your house, not your neighbor’s house. Which of you should get the spot in Heaven?"

3. AI Companies’ Race for Engagement Has a Body Count (August 28, via) "Instead of providing meaningful safety measures, transparency, age assurance, and data privacy protections, Meta and others have chosen to build platforms that deliberately blur the line between human and machine."

The thing that really gets me about this is, I know that some people will respond by saying, well, that's just how an LLM is, you don't really know how it works internally or what it's going to do in every situation, so this is not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is. But I think this is the wrong way of looking at it- companies should be held accountable for making a product that will respond in unpredictable (and possibly dangerous) ways. There's no guarantee that this is safe, and yet they're selling it.

4. BREAKING: Eurgh, oh God, there’s a texture (August 29, via) "Even when you successfully manage to scrub away the last of the peanut butter, its memory will stain your hands, causing you to experience a level of anguish previously only felt by Lady Macbeth."

This is so real. This is exactly what it's like.

5. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Make Their First Public Appearance as an Engaged Couple—Just a Few Miles From NFL Star’s $6 Million Mansion (August 29) Aww that's great! (I am a Taylor Swift fan.)

6. Un-Reformed history (August 28) "Bai imagines that he’s positioning himself as a reasonable centrist and Serious Person because he’s rejecting “critical race theory,” but what he’s actually rejecting is total depravity and original sin."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility to be empty 'within a few days' (August 28) 

2. 2 firefighters arrested by Border Patrol at Washington’s Bear Gulch Fire (August 28) "In a statement Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray slammed the arrests as unnecessary, and demanded “immediate answers” as to why the men were arrested on the job, and what the immigration enforcement policy is during active wildfires."

3. Hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children can stay in the U.S. for now, judge says (August 31) "'In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,' said Efrén Olivares, a lead attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. 'We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm.'"

Also: A high schooler stays back as his family, separated by deportation, returns to Guatemala (April 26) "Two weeks after federal officials arrested his father, Alex drove his mom and siblings to the airport for their flight to Guatemala. He's faced with finishing his senior year of high school without his mom or dad and finding a way to make it on his own with his older brother. Alex just turned 18."

4. Michigan AG Warns UM Hospitals Not To Capitulate Over Trump's Trans Ban, Calls Decision Likely "Illegal" (August 27) "'This administration draws most of its power from the willingness of its targets to capitulate without a fight, abandoning their own principles and interests, and throwing disfavored populations under the bus,' Nessel continued. 'Despite repeated successful legal challenges to actions by this administration, UM has chosen instead to sacrifice the health, well-being, and likely the very lives of Michigan children, to protect itself from the ire of an administration who, oftentimes, engages in unlawful actions itself.'"

5. Another major medical association breaks from CDC as ob/gyn group recommends Covid-19  vaccines during pregnancy (August 23) "'While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently removed its recommendation that pregnant and lactating individuals receive updated COVID-19 vaccines, ACOG’s recommendations have not changed,' according to the updated practice advisory. 'The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists continues to recommend the use of updated COVID-19 vaccines in individuals contemplating pregnancy and in pregnant, recently pregnant, and lactating individuals.'"