Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. (March 14) "Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions."

2. The best cause will disappoint you: An intro to the optimisers curse (February 11, via) "This is a mathematical demonstration that, in our simple model, an approach of naively investing in the top apparent EV intervention is straight up wrong."

3. Yep, a mom's COVID shot during pregnancy protects her baby, a large study finds (March 25)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. There is a No Kings protest on March 28. Go protest~

2. Robert Mueller, ex-FBI director who led 2016 Russia inquiry, dies at 81 (March 21) 

3. How one Minnesota school is bouncing back after the ICE surge (March 22) "In St. Paul, nearly two months of virtual learning ended just this week, but at the Spanish immersion school, not every student came back: One family is now in El Salvador, others are in Mexico, and others moved to Nebraska and California, states that felt safer for them. Another family is heading back to Venezuela soon."

4. He's one reason why aid cuts weren't as dire for the HIV population as predicted (March 20) "'The entire treatment ecosystem was sort of shredded,' she says. 'And then it becomes a question of like: Are we happy with providing the absolute bare minimum?'"

5. Flowing Against Fascism (March 17, via) "Standing with my rabbi, my friend, I was struck by how calm this moment was, despite the utter chaos surrounding us. Officer No-Name and his ilk—some 60 strong—created a barricade, kettling us observers and creating space for officers to drag our community members from the house. Local, state, and federal officers pressed out, with the weight and threat of a fascist administration behind them. A man and two women (one who looked like a teen) being perp-walked through the middle of the crowd, for no purpose but to impress upon us all that the state is powerful and we are not. That none of us are safe. That the raids will continue until polling improves."

6. The Crime of Witness (February 26, via) "Watchfulness is the most dangerous form of resistance because it obstructs the Trump regime’s project of habituation. Fascism works by making the extreme normal. Habit, as Samuel Beckett has it, is a great deadener. It has been obvious since the start of Trump’s second term that he is trying to make the sight of armed and masked men with virtually unlimited powers one to which Americans are accustomed."

7. Democrats flip seat in Florida state house in district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago (March 24) Yesss.

Blogaround

Movie poster for "Zootopia 2." Image source.

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. I saw "Zootopia 2" and I loved it! My favorite part was the whole dynamic between Nick and Judy. Also the animation is very good, and the action scenes were exciting. And the plot is about systemic injustice, like the first "Zootopia" movie.

2. It’s One of the Most Influential Social Psychology Studies Ever. Was It All a Lie? (November 25) "To the contrary, Kelly says, the Seekers were quick to disavow those beliefs. Even Martin herself rebranded, insisting to an interviewer that she had never believed she’d be taken away by an actual spaceship."

3. Inverted Catenaries (December 3) From xkcd.

4. Stuck in the Mud: Climate Chaos Deepens Divide on China’s Farmlands (December 4) "But this autumn, after weeks of rain turned Henan’s fields into mud, the usual wheeled harvesters bogged down at the field edges. In Jiaozuo, where the soil can trap water for days, Zhang’s treaded rig kept crawling through the muck, one of the few machines in the region that could move at all."

5. There’s a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was (December 2) "But beyond that narrow sense of “political,” of course, everything about this is political because it’s all about what is and isn’t “normal” or normative, and who decides that, and how it is or ought to be enforced."

6. Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era (November 19, via) "The stories had the characteristic weirdness of articles written by a large language model—invented anecdotes from regular people who didn’t appear to exist accompanied by expert commentary from public figures who do, with some biographical details mangled, who are made to voice “quotes” that sound, broadly, like something they might say."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. For the first time since 1988, the U.S. is not officially commemorating World AIDS Day (December 1) "'I think it's emblematic of an administration that doesn't seem to care,' said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, a global HIV prevention organization based in the U.S."

2. They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity (November 23) "We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be." Hear, hear.

3. Ohio senator introduces measure to eliminate dual citizenship (December 2) !!! Not cool! This is just a bill so hopefully it doesn't get anywhere. But yikes.

4. The Summers-Epstein Emails’ ‘Yellow Peril’ Problem (December 3) "Harvard professor Larry Summers has been widely criticized for his extensive correspondence with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But the denigrating way he views Asian women hasn’t gotten enough attention."

5. Will Hegseth Face Consequences? (December 2) "Faced with a congressional inquiry, Trump, to protect himself, gave clear public orders to Hegseth not to murder survivors and commit war crimes. You may think this should go without saying. I may think this should go without saying. But obviously it does not go without saying—especially since the White House went on to maybe possibly contradict those orders."

And: 'Franklin' publisher slams Hegseth for his post of the turtle firing on drug boats (December 2) "'We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent or unauthorized use of Franklin's name or image, which directly contradicts these values,' it added."

Here’s what the Trump administration has said about the ‘double-tap’ strike on an alleged drug boat (December 3, via) A timeline.

Did Megyn Kelly say she wanted to see survivors of strike on alleged drug boat 'suffer'? (December 3) Oh my goodness.

6. As Trump's immigration raids hit New Orleans, a Chicago group shares resistance tips (December 3) "This, Gonzalez said, was always the goal of Protect RP: to make immigration enforcement operations in the neighborhood uncomfortable and inefficient. If they do that well enough, Gonzalez said, maybe enforcement agents would conclude that the cost of doing work in his neighborhood is simply too high."

7. She was deported after boarding a flight to Austin. Her attorney says that violates a judge's order. (December 2) "'At the end of the day, this is a college student who came here at 7 years old to seek asylum with her family,' Pomerleau said. 'She's not responsible under the law for any decisions her parents made about her. She was a child.'"

8. Doctors warn delaying hepatitis B shot for newborns could revive a deadly threat (December 3) [content note: child death] "'Liver cancer has disappeared in children,' McMahon said. 'We haven't seen a case since 1995. Nor do we have any children under 30 that have gotten infected that we know of.'"

9. 'Nobody wants to come': What if the U.S. can no longer attract immigrant physicians? (November 24) "Up until this year, it was a dream — a wish! — that you could get a job and you could come to the U.S. And now nobody wants to come."

10. GEOGRAPHY QUIZ: Can You Find 'Third' Countries Trump Bribing To Take Deportees On A Map? (December 4) "It’s corrupt, it’s wasteful, it’s inhumane, and also, if these deportees are truly the hardened criminals that Donald J. Trump claims they are, it is not justice to send them somewhere that will happily pocket the cash and then lose all track of them."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Graham Platner is an Embarrassing Liar (November 13) "They don’t care. They don’t think they’ll ever face consequences–not for the imperialism, the violence, the racism, the misogyny, and no, not even the Nazi tattoo because they know there will always be another white man in those Reddit comments explaining that it’s not a big deal and we just don’t understand what it’s like to be in the military."

2. The developing world needs more roads (November 11) "This problem shows up most clearly in the differences in land allocated to road networks: 27 percent of Manhattan is dedicated to roads, as is 24 percent of London. These cities are typical for their income group. ... For the average city in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, only 16 percent is reserved for streets. Just 12 percent of Dhaka, 10 percent of Kolkata, 14 percent of Dakar, 13 percent of Addis Ababa, 12 percent of Nairobi, and 14 percent of Accra are dedicated to roads. Instead, lax building rules have allowed homes and workplaces to take over public spaces."

Also from Works in Progress: How market design can feed the poor (September 22) This is an article about a system that was set up to efficiently distribute food to food banks. Instead of just assigning them whatever, like the old system did, the food banks have a currency called "shares" and they can make their own choices and bid their shares on the available food, according to their own needs. 

3. Philosophical issues with transness are a symptom of dysphoria (November 15) "But in my experience, if your hormones are on point and you’re generally seen the way you want to be seen, then it’s not a big deal if you’re in some abstract philosophical sense your assigned sex at birth. You might prefer to be in some abstract philosophical sense the gender you identify as, but it doesn’t cause you persistent unhappiness."

4. The U.S. just produced its last penny after a more than 200-year run (November 12)

5. A 'breakthrough' drug to prevent HIV, an 'unprecedented' rollout (November 18) "Just two injections a year provide near-complete protection against an HIV infection."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Epstein survivors release MUST-WATCH new PSA as Congress prepares to vote on releasing the files (November 17)

2. Gregory Bovino is exactly who E.B. White — author of 'Charlotte's Web' — warned us about (November 17) "But, to use a book authored by E.B. White as your name is an offense to history. White was a leading voice for American democracy and freedom and against fascism and tyranny. Abusing his life’s work like this cannot stand without a response."

3. State Department Reverses Course, Says Trans Passports Will Be Valid Until They Expire (November 18) There has been a lot of back-and-forth about passports for trans people. The latest update is that, even though the Supreme Court says the government is allowed to stop trans people from getting passports with their correct gender marker, the good news is that passports which already have been issued will still be valid.

This whole thing is extremely stressful for trans people in the US (and it's still going on). Cis people should all be thinking about what we can do to support them.

4. Food stamps are back, but millions will soon lose benefits permanently (November 15) "The loss of SNAP 'was really stark during the shutdown,' said Dottie Rosenbaum, director of federal SNAP policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 'But [the One Big Beautiful Bill Act] is the largest cut in the program’s history. That is also going to be really deeply felt.'"

5. What Counts as Political Violence? (September 26, via) "Ezra Klein did not write a high profile essay about how Villegas Gonzalez was doing democracy the right way by working hard and taking care of his kids."

Also from Noah Berlatsky: First-of-its-kind LGBTQIA+ hotline in Illinois offers support amid sweeping attacks (November 3) "One caller to Illinois Pride Connect, according to the caller description, was “a parent of a trans adolescent seeking information on the risks and benefits of applying for a passport to reflect her child’s gender identity.” The family had updated birth certificates and state ID but had not changed their passport or Social Security record, and was worried about trying to get through customs with inconsistent gender information."

And: Republicans Want Poor People to Suffer (November 4) "This is the Newsmax logic; if anyone anywhere is misusing federal funds, that offsets the benefits of 3 million children a month being lifted out of poverty. Stopping one evil welfare queen is worth starving any number of children."

6. U.S. deports dozens of migrants to Ukraine amid war (November 18)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How to Make a Great Government Website (2024, via) "First is the required interview. Most of the time it’s a phone call. Often they’ll call from a blocked number. They’ll send you a notice of when your interview is scheduled for, but this notice will sometimes arrive after the actual date of the interview."

2. Beauty and the Beast - How bad was A.I.D.S.? (October 10, via) 56-minute video. It's a queer reading of "Beauty and the Beast," as is overlaps with what was going on with the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s.

3. AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet (October 7) 12-minute video from Kurzgesagt.

4. This post about Copilot in Excel getting a simple sum wrong. Apparently it's because the prompt didn't actually include any info about what cells the data was in. The AI doesn't give an error message or anything, so there's no way the user would have known that.

I haven't ever used Copilot in Excel so maybe I'm missing some key thing, but, uh... my reaction is, excel formulas update when you change the data, but if I'm using an AI for something that matters, I would need to carefully check the output. Having a human pay attention to the output every time it changes seems incompatible with having things update automatically (which is one of Excel's biggest strengths).

Doesn't seem great if every formula in every cell of your excel sheet has a mind of its own and you can't rely on them being right.

5. U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country (October 12) "Before widespread vaccination, pretty much everyone got measles in childhood. And 400-500 people in the U.S. used to die from it each year."

6. Hamas releases 20 remaining living Israeli hostages after two years in Gaza (October 13, via) "Parents were reunited with sons and children with fathers as those held were handed over to the Red Cross before finally rejoining their families with the help of the Israeli army."

7. Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia (Official Music Video) (October 6) I like this song~

8. Michigan Republican pushing pornography ban linked to porn site, records show (October 7, via) So it was discovered that Schriver, a politician who's been trying to ban porn, used to have an account on a site with sex webcams and the like.

I'm posting this because people are calling it out as obvious hypocrisy, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. In conservative Christian culture, porn is seen as this evil bad thing that all men are naturally drawn to. If they don't have good enough self-control and/or restrictions on their computer, all men would go and make an account on a porn site. A lot of talk about how so many men are "struggling" with porn use, "addicted" to porn, how it's such a bad thing but they're all tangled up in it because it's so tempting.

It makes perfect sense to me that a lot of these conservative lawmakers supporting "porn bans" are men who have been part of this "struggling with porn" subculture- partly interested in it and partly repressing themselves and feeling so much shame- they try to make laws to ban it as a way to fight against their own "porn addiction"- as a way to show God that even though they keep failing in their resolution to not use porn, on some level they really are trying to fight it.

9. The Supreme Court’s First Blockbuster Case This Term Looks Pretty Fake (October 6, via) "And I think, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with bringing a test case. If someone’s rights are really at stake and they haven’t faced punishment yet—but they fear that they will—it’s legitimate for that person to sue. But what ADF does is really finesse the facts, often to the point of fiction, to justify creating a test case that the Supreme Court can use to change the law."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. No Kings is on Saturday, October 18. Go out and protest if you can.

2. Chicago and the Horrors of Carte Blanche (October 4) "Authorities seized people first, without probable cause, treating merely living in the same complex as suspected undocumented migrants as a crime."

Also from Jay Kuo: The Hunger Games (October 3) "After all, why should the Democrats agree to keep the government open for another seven weeks to negotiate a “budget” if the White House can later refuse to honor it? What’s to stop the OMB from doing exactly the same thing with New York City transit funds and blue state energy projects even after a budget is passed and signed into law?"

3. Van Nuys car wash owner files $50M claim over injuries sustained during immigration raid (September 26) "Shouhed says he was terrified as he tried to explain to the agents that his employees were authorized to be on the job, yet he says they took at least five of his employees away in handcuffs. He says he screamed that he is a United States citizen and had proof in his wallet, but he says they did not listen."

4. 'I'm done being afraid': How the shutdown has led federal workers to speak out (October 10) "They say the best organizer is a bad boss, and we all have the same bad boss."

5. ‘Bring her back’: Delaware abuse victim rescued from ICE deportation (October 13, via) "Before agents rummaged through her home, Isabela demanded they show her an arrest warrant. They refused and broke down her door anyway, injuring her son with the doorknob as they barged in."

6. “I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America (October 10, via) "ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. But after those dates came and went, these immigrants said they feel betrayed by what the president told them."

7. MIT Rejects Trump’s Bid to Institute Trans Bathroom, Athletics Ban (October 11)

8. Multiple airports refuse to play Kristi Noem video that blames Democrats for government shutdown (October 13)

9. This frog protester in Portland, from this link: Everyone Is Pointing Out This 1 Reason Why The Anti-ICE Inflatable Frogs In Portland May Be The Best Protesters (October 14)

Blogaround

Hi all, I'm on vacation, but here are some links

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Does X cause Y? An in-depth evidence review (2021) "First, the good news: there are hundreds of studies on whether X causes Y. The bad news? We need to throw most of them out."

2. John MacArthur, dead fundamentalist (July 22)

3. OZZY OSBOURNE - "Crazy Train" (Official Video) I seem to remember I used to play this song in Guitar Hero. (Posting this because, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and icon of British heavy metal, dies aged 76 (July 22))

4. The NSFW game purge (July 24) "If a conservative group can apply pressure to remove certain NSFW games, what’s to stop them from removing, say, LGBT content? I am here to tell you that it has already happened."

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Demography of Asexuality and Aromanticism (July 24) "We’re happy to see that this article is far more willing than most scholarly articles to cite gray literature, including blog posts, tumblr posts, livestreams, and YouTube videos."

5. His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza (July 27)

6. Get ready, Brazil. The 'good mosquitoes' are coming (July 26) "Remarkably, this bacteria and the virus that causes dengue are unable to coexist inside the mosquito that transmits this disease."

7. Freakier Friday | Official Trailer | In Theaters August 8 (June 7) !!!! A "Freaky Friday" sequel that has Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan again! Very excited about this!

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Gloves Are Off | "I Absolutely Love That Colbert Got Fired" | Trump & Epstein's Wonderful Secret (July 22) 

And from npr: This was the week that comedy pushed back (July 27) 

2. From Joy To Justice (July 22) "Before I dive in, a special thanks to all of the lawyers, journalists, activists, Congress members and ordinary citizens who did not let this story go and never relented, applying constant pressure upon our government to undo its original illegal renditions. Whatever post-hoc reason the government gives today for its actions, we all know that the 252 men sent to CECOT would still be there were it not for the hard work of so many."

And from npr: 'Hell on Earth': Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse (July 27)

And: Ex-marine convicted of killing three people released to US in prisoner swap (July 23) What! So is he just free in the US or what? I haven't found any reporting on whether they're just letting him go free or what's going on.

3. We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory (July 22) I had some opinions about this article, maybe I will try to blog about it if I have time. I want to say, in Christian "sexual purity" ideology, I have *definitely* come across the idea that the ideal case would be girls who are around 15 years old, right at the point where they've started having their period and are therefore able to get pregnant, getting married to adult men who are well-established financially. It's a pretty fringe idea, and I haven't met anyone in real life who was seriously advocating this, but I have seen the idea floated and it's totally consistent with the logic of purity culture, which says that the MOST IMPORTANT THING about sex and marriage is that you need to not have sex outside of marriage (oh and also, the husband has to be the leader). Other concerns, like actually treating each other right, are nice to have, but the main thing is DON'T HAVE SEX till that ring is on your finger.

(See my posts All of the LOLs for this Sermon on "Marrying Young" and Why Marriage as a Private Contract is a Bad Idea and Roy Moore Dating Teenage Girls "For Their Purity" is 100% Logical in Purity Land)

I never thought of that as pedophilia, but wow, it totally is.

4. US-funded contraceptives for poor nations to be burned in France, sources say (July 25) "One of the sources with knowledge of the issue said that the Trump administration was acting in accordance with the Mexico City policy, an anti-abortion pact in which Trump reinstated U.S. participation in January. The pact forbids the U.S. government from contributing to or working with organisations providing funding or supplies that offer access to abortions."

5. Fearing coverage could change, some parents rush to vaccinate their kids (July 25) How will I explain RFK to my children

6. PEPFAR escaped the rescission ax. But where does it stand? (July 26) "Since its founding, PEPFAR has put more than $120 billion into combatting the virus in more than 50 countries. The result of all that money and effort, it says, is clear, citing accomplishments that are widely accepted: 26 million lives saved, a plummeting of HIV infection rates and a rebounding of life expectancy, especially in Africa."

7. Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients’ personal data, including addresses, to ICE (July 28) "Many people sign up for emergency Medicaid in their most desperate moments, said Hannah Katch, a previous adviser at CMS during the Biden administration. 'It’s unthinkable that CMS would violate the trust of Medicaid enrollees in this way,' Katch said."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. SCOTUS Allows For Trans Discrimination In Medical Care: A Full Analysis Of Today's Ruling (June 18) "The ruling effectively greenlights medical care bans across the country and may pave the way for broader restrictions, including for adults, while leaving lower court rulings on bathrooms, schools, sports, and employment remain intact—for now."

Really not good for trans kids. We have to keep doing what we can to support them.

And from Law Dork: Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? (June 20) "In its U.S. v. Skrmetti ruling, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees shaved off the edges — if not more central parts — of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in order to uphold laws that bar an exceptionally small number of teens from receiving a type of medical care that only one group of teens need."

The reasoning in this Supreme Court decision is about how the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment applies (or doesn't apply) to trans people. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor draws comparisons with the Loving vs Virginia case, where the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban interracial marriage. I guess in the Skrmetti case, the majority opinion said that both trans and cis children cannot get treatment for gender dysphoria, so it's not discrimination. And this is like how the argument to ban interracial marriage was that people of every race are equally not allowed to marry outside of their race, so it's not discrimination. And the Skrmetti decision is really opening the door to a skewed interpretation of the equal protection clause, which could lead to rights being eroded in so many other areas.

I'm literally in an interracial marriage, but I never thought about "hey my marriage is about the 14th amendment" or anything along those lines. Learning about Loving vs Virginia in high school, it felt like ancient history, like of course people can marry a partner of a different race, why would that be an issue, aren't we glad we don't have those racist laws like they did back then. When I got married, I didn't think about "some of my ancestors thought this shouldn't be legal" or anything like that- it never occurred to me that anyone would think there would be a legal issue. 

BUT ALSO I grew up evangelical and so back then I totally bought into all the anti-queer stuff, like we can't let gay people get married, we can't let trans people have rights, etc. We usually didn't talk about the details about how you turn that into an actual legal argument, but apparently one argument that was being used in court was "both straight and gay people aren't allowed to marry a same-sex partner, so it's not discrimination."

ANYWAY my point is, I should read more about the equal protection clause. It turns out to be related to a lot of things.

Also related to Skrmetti: After Getting The Ruling It Wanted, New York Times Publishes 6 Anti-Trans Articles (June 20) "In all, at least half a dozen articles have been published by the Times in the 24 hours following the ruling—ink still drying—spreading misinformation, shaming transgender people, and giving prominent space to voices that seek to strip us of our rights."

2. Baby of brain-dead Georgia woman on life support delivered via C-section (June 17) Not sure what to say about this- if I died and was pregnant, I would want them to continue the life support to save the baby. But the key thing is, it should be the family's choice. This case is horrific because it was forced on this family by faraway politicians and heartless laws.

3. The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it (2016, via) "The result of a media — and education system — that fails to present quantitative information on long-run developments is that most people are very ignorant about global development and have little hope that progress against serious problems is even possible."

4. HIV prevention drug hailed as a 'breakthrough' gets FDA approval (June 18) 

5. The Meta AI App Lets You ‘Discover’ People’s Bizarrely Personal Chats (June 12, via) "It’s unclear whether the users of the app are aware that their conversations with Meta’s AI are public or which users are trolling the platform after news outlets began reporting on it. The conversations are not public by default; users have to choose to share them."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Federal Judge Grants Class Status To Trans People In Passport Case In Massive Win (June 18) "According to preliminary conversations with expert attorneys, whether transgender people should submit a passport update request immediately depends on their risk tolerance and individual circumstances. A motion to stay the ruling could come within days. Those most likely to benefit from applying immediately are individuals with incorrect gender markers, those seeking their first passport, or those with expired documents who need to travel soon. Expedited processing may increase the likelihood of receiving a passport before any potential appellate or Supreme Court intervention."

2. FULL SPEECH: Sen. Padilla speaks on Senate floor after removal from DHS press conference (June 18) 14-minute video. "If that is what the administration is willing to do to a United States senator for having the authority to simply ask a question, imagine what they'll do to any American who dares to speak up."

3. Trump administration cuts specialized suicide prevention service for LGBTQ+ youth (June 18) "'This is devastating, to say the least,' Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, said in a statement. The Trevor Project is one of several nonprofits administering the services. 'The administration's decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible.'"

So, now would be a good time to donate to The Trevor Project.

4. Trump administration actions contradict MAHA rhetoric on toxic chemicals (June 18) Oh, so it turns out, when RFK said we have to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in the environment that are harmful to children, he didn't mean it like 'let's actually fund the scientists who are doing good work studying which chemicals are harmful.' He meant it like 'here are some words that we will use as an excuse to be mean to autistic children.'

5. The ABA Declares War (June 18, via) "The American Bar Association (ABA) just dropped a massive federal lawsuit against the White House. And it’s not messing around. The lead counsel filing suit on behalf of the ABA is Susman Godfrey, one of the firms Trump targeted. The complaint names the Office of the President, but for good measure, it also names each and every high level government department along with every cabinet official."

6. Federal immigration agents asked to leave Dodger Stadium parking lot, team says (June 20) "Dozens of federal agents with their faces covered arrived in SUVs and cargo vans to a lot near the stadium’s Gate E entrance. A group of protesters carrying signs against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement started amassing shortly after, local media reported."

7. ‘Code Adam’ (June 19) "That video shows Villareal, wearing his blue Walmart vest, approaching the agents and asking them questions. That video shows the agents mobbing him, throwing him to the ground, and hauling him away."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. ‘He stole a piece of our souls’: Christian music star Michael Tait accused of sexual assault by three men (June 13) [content note: sexual assault] I posted a different link about this before, but this article is good because it gives a whole overview of the context: the culture of CCM (contemporary Christian music), DC Talk, the way we made it part of our identity to be labelled "Jesus freaks", Newsboys, Christian nationalism. I'm so mad.

Hemant Mehta also reports on this: After assault allegations, Christian music icon Michael Tait admits preying on multiple men (June 16, via) "More than a decade after its release, God’s Not Dead is still finding new ways to disappoint everyone."

Mehta talks about the gay dimension of this... which is... yeah... I know there must be conservative Christians whose takeaway from this story is "Michael Tait is gay." Completely missing the point. 

2. How Muppets Break Free from their Puppeteers (June 13, 12-minute video) This is really cool! It's about the practical effects that the were used in the Muppets movies, basically to hide the puppeteers when the characters were in a big wide-shot scene.

3. I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial (June 13) "I’ve never seen anyone say 'actually, it’s a good idea to lie to police officers because it will make the jury think you’re too stupid to commit premeditated murder,' but it did work in this case. Maybe this is the new murder meta."

4. The Moderate Case Against Trans Youth Healthcare Bans (June 13) "Even for those uncertain about the evidence behind transgender healthcare, in cases where there is ambiguity but a clear potential for benefit, decisions should be left to parents, patients, and doctors—not politicians. This is a majority opinion found in many polls."

5. Exoplanet System (June 16) From xkcd.

6. Shell Game: In China, a $14K Reward for a Turtle That May Be Extinct (June 17) "Only one Yangtze giant softshell turtle is known to exist in China. Nicknamed Susu, the turtle is at Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Animal World, formerly known as Suzhou Zoo, in eastern China, and is believed to be over 100 years old."

7. Menstrual products and rural Indian women (2016) [content note: menstruation] A post about the various ways that rural Indian women deal with their periods. This is really surprising to me, because the narrative I always heard was "women in developing countries don't have menstrual products, oh that's so terrible, can you imagine, and sometimes girls even drop out of school because they just have no way to deal with their periods." Ohhhh turns out I always just assumed that since *I* have no idea what one would do if one didn't have disposable pads, that meant that there just *is* no way to manage without disposable pads. Well that is not true.

I think there probably is some truth to the idea that not having access to period products is an issue we should care about, related to women's rights, but we have to listen to the women (and/or people who have periods) who are actually there and know what the current situation is like.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Photos: See No Kings protests around the country (June 14)

And: No Kings San Francisco (June 14)

Trump ‘doesn’t care about any of our founding fathers’ principles’: Mark Ruffalo joins NYC protests (June 15, 6-minute video) "Trump is trying to take our freedoms away, so we have to [be] re-reminded of what those freedoms actually are."

Photos: ‘No Kings’ Day Protests (June 14, via)

(Oh also, my husband- a Chinese guy- was really unimpressed with the military parade because it was very much amateur hour compared to China's. For what that's worth.)

2. ICE directed to pause immigration arrests at farms, hotels and restaurants, sources tell CBS News (June 14) What? I mean, this is good news if true (though obviously you can't really trust anything the MAGA government says), but like... it's like it *just occurred to him* that arresting farm workers might have an effect on other things~ surprised pikachu.

Oh wait, nevermind. No need to spend time reading that link, because: ICE walks back limits on raids targeting farms, restaurants and hotels (June 18)

3. An AIDS orphan, a pastor and his frantic search for the meds that keep her alive (June 13) "'We've been so close to truly having an AIDS-free generation of kids,' says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, chair of the Department of Global Health and Health Systems Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. 'And that is completely at risk right now.'"

4. ‘How many people were arrested?’ is a lousy way to cover protests (June 12, via) "Don’t focus solely on what the police say."

5. Press group sues L.A., alleging police abuse of reporters at ICE rallies (June 16) "An Australian television correspondent was shot by a law enforcement officer with a rubber bullet during a live shot as she stood to the side of protests in downtown Los Angeles. The officer taking aim could be seen in the background as it happened."

6. How to ACTUALLY Deal with Tear Gas (June 13) "Do not panic. Move out of the area as safely as you can, ideally to higher ground because tear “gas” is actually a particulate and will fall to the ground. Do not rub your face."

7. Trump admin continues its destructive path, but groups, judges keep pushing back (June 17) "That attitude kept moving right into Monday, when the American Bar Association sued the Trump administration over Trump’s attacks on law firms and the legal profession."

Related to that: ‘My duty is to call it out’: Judge accuses Trump administration of discrimination against minorities (June 16) "'I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,' said U.S. District Judge William Young, a Massachusetts-based jurist who took the bench in 1985."

And: After court rules against NIH, researchers wonder if their canceled grants will be restored (June 17)

8. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander arrested by federal agents at immigration court (June 17) "'I will be fine, but Edgardo is not going to be fine,' he said. 'And the rule of law is not fine and our constitutional democracy is not fine.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Walter Brueggemann, influential biblical scholar, dies at 92 (June 5, via) 

2. The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism (new book available August 19) "What do we learn about white evangelicalism from those raised by its heroes? From historian Holly Berkley Fletcher, herself a missionary kid, comes this first-of-its-kind examination of how the experiences of missionary kids illuminate broader currents in American Christianity."

!!! I really want to read this.

3. Greta Thunberg deported from Israel after its military intercepts Gaza-bound aid boat (June 10)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The No Kings protests are this Saturday, June 14.

And another action item: If you haven't contacted your senators yet to tell them to vote against the Republican budget bill, do that.

2. Trump administration returns migrant hastily deported to Mexico back to the US (June 4) "He has claimed that he had not been given the opportunity before his deportation to communicate his fear of being sent to Mexico and that his pleas before his removal to speak to an attorney were rejected."

3. Protesters clash with law enforcement in downtown LA. Hundreds march against Trump's immigration sweeps (June 9) "'We have to stand united against the attacks on the immigrant community because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,' she said."

Also: Photos: Protests continue for third day in Los Angeles (June 8) 

And: Why Trump's deployment of the National Guard to LA is unprecedented, according to a general (June 9) 

California Sues Trump for Sending National Guard Troops Into LA After ICE Protests (June 9)

After ICE raids in LA, families of those detained are desperate for answers (June 10) "Gonzalez said he tried shouting to tell his brother he was there but the chaos around them made it impossible to communicate. So he stood there, watching as his brother and several other people he knows, were handcuffed and loaded into white nondescript vans."

4. Immigration is a Good Thing (June 9) "And so, in the spirit of Pentecost, let me just point out again that immigration is good, actually."

5. Joni Ernst's "we're all going to die" pushes MAGA's toxic Christian compassion on us all (June 4, via) "These Christians claim that true compassion comes from rejecting empathy, arguing that empathy gets in the way of speaking what they believe are "hard truths" they need to browbeat alleged sinners with. This is how the conservative Christian convinces himself it's love to deny LGBTQ people their freedom, because compelling heterosexuality will get them into heaven."

Yes, I'm really glad to see someone making the connection between conservative policies that don't care if people die, and the evangelical view of Jesus.

By the way, when Ernst said in her "apology video" that people should trust in her Lord and Savior Jesus, that is called taking the Lord's name in vain. Get His name out of your mouth.

6. RFK Jr. boots all members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee (June 9) WTF?

And: A promising new HIV vaccine was set to start trials. Then came Trump's latest cuts (June 10)

7. Kilmar Abrego Garcia's Homecoming (June 9) "The administration’s actions here are a complete inversion of the narrative they’ve been selling. Trump claims that he’s deporting criminals, but Abrego Garcia was deported when the administration had no knowledge of a crime. Now that they’ve ostensibly found one, they’re bringing him back to the United States. This is very literally the opposite of what they say they’re doing."

8. 'People are scared': ICE agents raid facility in Omaha (June 10) "He also said he had heard that a couple of large employers with significant Latino workforces had shut down and let workers go home for the day, 'just out of abundance of caution.'"

Blogaround

1. ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader (November 22)

2. How Trump’s “Mass Deportation” Plan Would Ruin America (Sep/Oct issue, via) This article has statistics about how a huge percentage of farm workers (and workers in other essential industries) are undocumented, and if they were all deported, it would devastate the US economy.

So... the thing I'm confused about is, if the country needs them, then why is it illegal? The US immigration policies don't make sense, then- the economy is dependent on people breaking immigration law. ????? What's going on here? We need to change the immigration law to reflect the fact that we really need immigrants. Right?

3. Star Power: China’s Businesses Count Cost of Fake Reviews (November 27) "Allegations from former Chagee employees also surfaced online, claiming the chain imposed strict limits on negative reviews, allowing just three per 10,000 orders — any more and the employees’ salaries would be docked."

Also from Sixth Tone: Copy Right: The Painstaking Method and Magic of Mastering a Replica (November 29) "Across China, a growing number of national museums are embracing 'craft restoration' — a method that emphasizes recreating artifacts not just for their appearance, but as faithful embodiments of the techniques that originally shaped them."

4. Big Pharma Is the Only Reason Anyone Still Dies From HIV (November 29) "The second problem is that the pharma industry spends millions a year lobbying Congress to keep its R&D costs a secret. It’s one thing to tell Congress you need to charge high prices to recover your costs, but it’s a little disingenuous if you spend $379 million a year to make sure nobody knows what those costs are."

5. Hal Lindsey is gone (the Late, Great Planet Earth is not) (November 30) "They taught their followers that the only thing that mattered was being 'Rapture ready,' but away from the microphones they had all made sure they were ready for life — long life — without a Rapture. I wish we’d all been ready."

Also from the Slacktivist: Take back the web (what’s in your RSS feed?) (December 2) "But if making more money for Google — and Meta, and X — is not the primary goal of your time on the internet, then you may find that using an RSS is a wonderful, glorious, liberating thing."

Blogaround

1. Voyager 1 Is Back! NASA Spacecraft Safely Resumes All Science Observations (June 14, via) "After more than six months of long-distance troubleshooting—Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and any signal takes more than 22.5 hours to travel from our planet to the spacecraft—mission personnel have finally coaxed Voyager 1 to gather and send home data with all its remaining science instruments, according to a NASA statement." This is so cool!

2. Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic (June 14, via) What the actual ****?! 

If you followed my blog during zero-covid, you know I was really unhappy with how western news organizations were covering the situation in China. (See: WTF, CNN? and Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media.) This article is about a disinformation campaign that the US created in the Philippines, because China exported vaccines to the Philippines and other Asian countries. So, a different thing than what I was mad about, but it makes me wonder if the biased news reporting on China was more deliberate than I thought.

3. Environmental impact of LLMs (June 16) "This comparison is unimpressive on its face, because a bottle of water is very obviously not that much?"

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Mental health bias on asexuality, non-monogamy, and BDSM (June 20) "This article summarizes prior research on mental health provider bias for three groups–aces, consensual non-monogamy (CNM) practitioners, and BDSM practitioners–and suggests avenues for future research."

4. US sues Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions (June 17, via) "The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the 'annual paid monthly' subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars."

5. Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality (June 18) Awesome!

6. China to include Australia in visa waiver programme, Premier Li Qiang says (June 18) Good news if you're Australian and want to visit China.

7. Gilead’s twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV succeeds in late-stage trial (June 20, via) "None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the lenacapavir shot contracted HIV." Great!

8. Maybe They Should Post The 10 Commandments In Mega-Churches? (June 20) [content note: child sexual abuse] "I’m not sure what even the slickest or sleaziest 'crisis management' firm can accomplish here."

9. Hey What If We Let People's Undocumented Husbands And Wives Stay In America? — Joe Biden (June 18) Support all immigrants!

10. Hundreds of Muslim pilgrims died in heat-stricken Hajj (June 21)

11. Pascal's Wager Triangle (June 17) "In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case."

Blogaround

1. I’m an ER Doctor. If the Supreme Court Upends EMTALA, Patients Will Die. (April 24, via) "I have treated these cases, and that moment hangs on a knife’s edge. Women can go from stable and bleeding to unstable or dead within minutes. Uninformed anti-choice lawmakers with no medical knowledge are creating these laws. They have not seen what I have seen."

2. DOJ requests judge order Steve Bannon to begin prison sentence (May 14)

3. What is the infected blood scandal and will victims get compensation? (May 22) "More than 30,000 people in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s."

Also this video: Rishi Sunak apologises to infected blood scandal victims: ‘Day of shame for British state’ (May 21) Really well-said.

4. I like this song - God's Own Fool (Christian music from the 1980s)

"So come lose your life for a carpenter's son, for a madman who died for a dream. You'll have the faith his first followers had, and you'll feel the weight of the beam."

5. Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza (May 24, via) "The feature, while not triggered for every query, scans the web and drums up an AI-generated response."

6. The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (May 19) 4-hour-5-minute video. Wow this is really good! Jenny Nicholson talks about her experience at Disney World's Star Wars hotel- which she paid $6000 for, and which has now closed. She has a lot of very good insights about what it could have been, what Disney could have done differently to make it a better experience. Also I love her dry humor.

7. Mysteries do not need to be solvable (May 16) "Usually, Sherlock Holmes would pull some clue out of thin air, that hadn’t been mentioned before; or else there would be an event that led to the mystery being solved. It was unambiguous that most stories were not even trying to be solvable."

8. Journal Club: Emma and Queer Austen (May 22) "We discussed how an ace reading doesn’t necessarily just mean interpreting a character as ace, it could also mean seeing a celibate character, and understanding that celibacy is not a bad thing."

Blogaround

1. Ukraine war: Shock and joy in newly liberated villages (September 11)

2. How to tell if you’re allosexual, if you’re a journalist (September 8) "It reads like it comes from a parallel universe where asexuality is the default, and questioning people wonder if just maybe they’re not asexual after all."

3. The tangled web of evangelical opposition to abortion while believing in original sin, eternal conscious torment and the mysterious age of accountability (May 10) "Would a blastocyst soul that dies three days after conception with no consciousness suddenly wake up with a fully developed human body burning in eternal conscious torment?"

4. Collections: War Elephants, Part I: Battle Pachyderms (2019) A blog series about war elephants, which were a real thing in history!

5. Zhengzhou Becomes First Big City to Scrap ‘Hukou’ Restrictions (September 15) "China’s hukou system has been in place since the 1950s and is tied to certain social welfare benefits, including access to health care, education, and the right to purchase properties. Recently, a Chinese province and cities with fewer than 3 million people have either scrapped or readjusted their hukou policies, with Shanghai becoming one major city offering the hukou to master’s students graduating from the city’s universities."

6. ‘Ask how the Americans did it’: How racial bias in US medicine inspired Hitler and persists today (September 10) [content note: descriptions of evil racist medical experiments] "My medical training had taught me that diseases common in Black people, like diabetes and high blood pressure, were the result of race itself—that Black people had a biological tendency toward certain conditions. There was no mention of the structural racism that creates the conditions for ill health to thrive."

7. Judge: HIV drug mandate violates religious freedom of anti-gay Christians (September 7) "If all of this holds up, and PrEP drugs become harder to access, it would have disastrous consequences"

8. Mainland China reports first imported monkeypox case (September 17)

Blogaround

1. My Son "Fixed" 'The Giving Tree' (posted June 22) "We want them to understand that kindness doesn’t mean giving yourself away to make someone else happy until you are nothing but a stump. ... We want them to know that when you love yourself, you set boundaries that allow for authentic relationships built on mutual respect and honor."

2. Is Toy Story 4 the Best Toy Story Movie? | Spoiler Review (posted June 25) I agree with the Super Carlin Brothers' thoughts on Toy Story 4.

3. Dr. Dobson's July Newsletter What the f***?! This is James Dobson's account of his visit to the border patrol facilities on the US southern border. Parts of it show concern for the refugees who are suffering, but overall it's about how we need to close the border, we need to support the orange antichrist building his damn wall, isn't it terrible that these poor and possibly-violent people are allowed to enter the US, etc.

I'm posting this here because I always saw Dobson as a good Christian role model, when I was growing up. My family bought books and magazines from Focus on the Family, and I read and accepted what they said, never doubting that Focus on the Family taught The Correct Things That Christians Should Believe.

And now he's writing this blatantly unbiblical anti-immigrant crap. The bible is clear: we need to welcome the immigrant, the refugee, the stranger. (And usually I don't use the term "unbiblical" and I don't say "the bible is clear" but I'm angry and it's ****in' clear on this.) Look at the last paragraph from Dobson's post:

What I've told you is only a glimpse of what is occurring on the nation's border. I don't know what it will take to change the circumstances. I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation. America has been a wonderfully generous and caring country since its founding. That is our Christian nature. But in this instance, we have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don't deal with it. And it won't take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.

Ewww, disgusting, how will I explain this to my children.

See also: Sarahbeth Caplin's post on this.
And Libby Anne's post.

And this tweet:

I don't have the stamina to go through this today, y'all. I just want to say, imagine being the Christian child expert that the administration knew they could safely give a tour of concentration camps to and expect nothing but support.https://t.co/HVWHblpL6U

— Ice Bear is Over It (@sparkle_heretic) 2019年6月30日

4. An Amazon employee made an AI-powered cat flap to stop his cat from bringing home dead animals (posted June 30) Cool!

5. Researchers eliminated HIV from the DNA of infected mice. It's the first step toward a cure for humans, they say (posted July 2)

6. So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend (posted July 2) "She’s going to do her thing, at her own damn speed, to her own damn rhythm, and she’s going to apologize to exactly NO ONE for it."

Blogaround

Doge and a wreath of Advent candles. Image has a bunch of text phrases like "very anticipate", "much candles", and "such Advent." Image source.

1. TMI: Vaginismus, Me, and Why We Need to Talk Abut Female Sexual Dysfunction (posted 2015)

2. Three decades later, men who survived the 'gay plague' speak out (posted 2017)

3. Dutch church holds 800-hour service to save family from deportation (posted November 29) I posted a link about this last week. As of this November 29 article, it's still going.

4. Dumbledore's Dark Twin: Aurelius Explained | Fantastic Beasts Theory (posted November 29) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald"]