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

1. The Many Faces of Sun Wukong (September 23) "Some critics complained that Game Science, developers of the wildly popular game 'Black Myth: Wukong,' did the Monkey King dirty. But the mischievous simian has always defied easy categorization."

Also from Sixth Tone: Throwing Shapes: The Rave Experience for Deaf Clubbers (September 25) "The biggest difference between BassBath and other clubbing experiences is that mid- and low- frequency music is played all night, using deep sounds to create somatosensory vibrations."

2. FTC Sues Prescription Drug Middlemen for Artificially Inflating Insulin Drug Prices (September 20) Interesting... When I hear people talk about how certain things are too expensive, like prescription drugs, or housing, etc, and they say it's because big corporations are greedy, I'm kind of skeptical- it must be more complicated than that. For prescription drugs, there's the cost of the research, right? While they're doing the research, they're not making any money from that, and then after they develop a drug, the drug is super cheap to make, but they need to charge a higher amount than that, to make up for the money they spent on research. If uninformed people on the internet are saying "it's so cheap to make, they are being immoral by not selling it for that exact cost", well, if they were required to do that, then it disincentivizes the research. Why spend money on researching new medicines if there's no way for that investment to pay off? Also, factor in the money they spend on research that's not successful- there's an element of risk, and it only makes financial sense for companies to spend money on medical research if then they're able to sell the successful ones for a higher price than simply the manufacturing cost.

I heard that line of reasoning a long time ago, and it came from a Republican perspective so maybe I need to revisit it and ask "Is that *really* how this works, financially, or is this just something people say because they don't want to change anything about the system?"

Because, actually, maybe we should take a closer look at the idea "if they have to sell these medicines at a low cost, then there's no way to make money off them" and ask, wait, should medicine be an area where private companies should expect to make money? Maybe it should be government-funded instead? Maybe that's actually the entire problem, how this line of thinking is locked into the assumption that there needs to be a business model that makes a lot of profits by developing medicines. Rather than thinking "wow it's so great that this medical technology exists, it means we can have a society where everyone has access to the medical treatment they need."

I've seen a lot of social media posts, on twitter and elsewhere, confidently offering ideas for how systems should work differently, and I pretty much roll my eyes at this because people who make these posts don't seem to be thinking it through at all- they have a very very oversimplified idea about how the economy works. Here's an example I saw a while ago- "rent should be lower in February because it only has 28 days." I mean, okay, I guess we could have a system that worked that way, but it wouldn't make a difference in the total amount you're paying over the course of a year- it would mean you paid an amount *higher* than your current rent in a month with 31 days. Like, I recognize that this person is making this social media post because of an actual real problem they are having, about not having enough money to pay rent- and that is a problem which society should take seriously and do something about- but the problem has nothing to do with the fact that the specific dates when your rent is due are not spaced at *exactly* equal intervals. (Or maybe I'm taking it too seriously and it was a joke rather than an actual policy proposal?)

Anyway, when I see people criticizing drug companies for raising prices just because they're greedy, I also feel skeptical about that- is it "just because they're greedy" or is there more to it than that? Surely the company would argue that it's just the cost of doing business, and they could show you a budget breakdown structured accordingly. It's not like they just have a giant pot of money and it's so much they don't even know what to do with it. It's not like they have a budget where one line says "overcharge by thousands of dollars just because we're greedy."

Yes, I do recognize that the price of prescription drugs is way higher than it should be- because other countries don't have this problem. But locating exactly where the problem is, that's gotta be more tricky.

So, the reason I'm sharing this link about the FTC is that this is an actual legal case. This isn't just people on social media complaining about the price of medicine (a very real problem, but I don't think people on social media have a good understanding of the causes or what should be done about it!). The fact that the FTC is suing over it makes me think there *is* a specific problem that they can point to and say that companies broke the law and made prices higher just because they wanted higher profits.

3. A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban (September 21, via) "Beyond the immediate dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, there is growing evidence that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are far more likely to go without prenatal care and much less likely to find an appointment with an OB-GYN." This is horrifying. 

4. DNA test helps identify sailor from doomed Arctic expedition (September 25, via) "Fitzjames was one of the captains of British explorer Sir John Franklin's two ships that went missing in the summer of 1845."

5. Tips for respecting microlabels (September 25) "Perhaps you’ve seen label stacks provided as a rhetorical example of someone worthy of respect, as if to say, 'yes, we even tolerate those people'."

6. Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors and the victim’s family asking that he be spared (September 25)

7. Chase Bank says it is aware of viral 'glitch' inviting people to commit check fraud (September 4, via) "But in this case, people online seem to be simply committing check fraud against themselves — making it relatively easy for a bank to catch on and hold them accountable." Like I said, people on social media who don't understand how financial institutions work.

8. Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first (September 26, via) "They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand."

9. Maggie Smith, beloved ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Harry Potter’ star, dead at 89 (September 25)

Blogaround

1. Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $1 billion over his Sandy Hook lies. Will he? (October 14) 

2. ‘God’s perfect timing’? Evangelists cancel Florida event after hurricane (October 11) "But instead of acknowledging the error on their end, and instead of admitting that God’s 'perfect plan' wasn’t so perfect after all, and instead of apologizing for saying the event would not be cancelled, the two evangelists are just moving forward as if they never made the earlier announcement."

I have feelings about this because I definitely was in situations, back when I was evangelical, where people made these big grandiose statements about how this or that was going to happen because God wanted it to, and it was going to be AMAZING, and then the thing didn't happen and nobody ever mentioned it again. There was no "when we said X would happen because God willed it, we were wrong, let's think about what that means- why were we wrong, and how should we change our behavior going forward so we don't make these big bold proclamations that turn out to be wrong?"

I guess looking at the situation honestly and realistically like that would be "lack of faith" or something.

3. Pastor who gave kids ‘I ❤️ hot youth pastors’ stickers placed on leave (October 9) "NOPE NOPE NOPE. What church is this? They must be publicly shamed to oblivion."

4. Reading Elementary as a Nonromantic Love Story (October 12) "Sherlock Holmes is characterized as someone who only very infrequently dates people, who is generally suspicious of romance, and who frequently has sex that’s got nothing to do with romance. Joan Watson is characterized as someone who makes an effort to go on dates but ultimately realizes that romantic scripts are distasteful to her. In contrast to their scattered, short-lived romantic entanglements, the show centers on the relationship between the two of them, which grows into a committed partnership while remaining nonromantic."

5. Micro-Dosing Nostalgia With China’s Miniature Modelers (October 13) "Hundreds of millions of people who grew up in traditional village homes left for cities, or moved into modern houses and high -rises in redeveloped villages. Often, their original homes have been demolished, victims of China’s relentless rural development."

6. Robbie Coltrane, Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ films, dead at 72 (October 14)

7. Top Dinner Suggestions According to a Three-Year-Old’s Eating Habits (2019) "Around the edges of a cheeseburger without ever actually biting into the meat"

8. Is it normal to think of money in different "contexts"? (2012) "Say I'm going on a date - depending on the place, I've got a rough idea of how much it's going to cost. Say $100 for the two of us. But if we get an extra glass of wine, or a different main course, or whatever, it could be $120 or even $150. This to me is kind of irrelevant. I wouldn't want to buy the most expensive bottle of wine and end up spending $500, but $100, $120, $130? - it's all the same. Now consider that I had to take a long subway ride to get there, and wanted to bring the magazine I was reading, but I didn't want to hold that or put it on the table during the meal. It cost about $5, and I could have just thrown it away and bought another copy later. That $5 should be inconsequential, right? Especially when I really don't care either way if I spend $100 or $140 on the date."

I think about this A LOT. It feels like, psychologically, the things that people focus on in terms of where it is or isn't a good idea to spend money aren't actually the things that, looking at the big picture logically, make an actual difference.

For example, maybe I'm excited because I got 1% cash back from my credit card company, oooh they are depositing $25 in my bank account, hooray! Wow, 25 dollars! Awesome! That's 25 dollars I didn't have before! Yes! But uh, I got this $25 because I spent $2500 with the credit card- perhaps I could look through those purchases and find ways to reduce them such that I spend $25 less. But somehow, that doesn't feel as exciting as getting $25 back from the credit card company. (And a big part of this is that that's how the credit card company wants you to feel- they benefit when you see it as a good thing to spend enough money to get a good-sized "cash back.")

Personally- and this is because I am from a really privileged background, and I always heard about how important it is to save money and not spend on things you don't need, like going out to dinner, but there was never any actual risk that we wouldn't have enough money for our basic needs- when I spend money on something that I feel is "too expensive", I kind of feel vaguely guilty about it, but then nothing bad actually happens. Or, I get in the habit of eating out at restaurants- which, over the course of 1 month, adds up to a lot, but since it's just a little bit every day I don't really pay attention to it- but then if I buy some little thing like for example cookie cutters, thinking that I'm totally going to bake cookies, and then I don't bake cookies, and see the cookie cutters sitting there, never used, I will feel bad about "wasting money" on them, even though every week I spend money here and there without being careful about it, that adds up to more than the cost of the cookie cutters.

A good way to view one's budget, I think, is: there are long term things where we need to set aside x amount of dollars each month, and the rest of our income we use for whatever normal daily expenses we have. I don't subdivide the "everyday" expenses into further categories, because then you start playing ridiculous games about "I shouldn't spend money on a taxi because we don't have enough money in the 'transportation' budget- even though getting a taxi would benefit me A LOT more than that snack I bought yesterday with the 'food' budget, which cost more than the taxi would cost" and just causing yourself a lot of anxiety over things that don't actually matter.

9. Biden wants to let gig workers be employees. Here’s why it matters. (October 17)

Blogaround

1. The TRUTH About Polyjuice Potion | Harry Potter Theory (posted April 14) "Let's say you're an adult, and you have the hair of another adult from when they were a child. In that case, would you transform into the adult version of them, or the child version of them?"

2. Birth Control vs J&J Vaccine (posted April 15) A video from an actual gynecologist, here to tell us that all the people on twitter going on about "they stopped the J&J vaccine because of a 1 in a million chance of blood clots, but birth control has a higher risk and nobody cares about that" don't know what they're talking about.

It is so important to do the actual work of checking sources and understanding what specific things are being measured in each statistic. But usually people just retweet things that line up with stuff they already agree with, without doing any of that work, and it spreads misinformation. And I have definitely done this too, retweeting things without actually thinking "is that true?" :/

3. Sapphira is a model of "complementarian biblical womanhood" (posted April 15) "Peter gives her a chance to come clean - to do the right thing by not going along with her husband's plan, by refusing to uncritically obey his spiritual guidance - but instead she opts to be a good 'complementarian,' demonstrating her unwavering commitment to submissive 'biblical womanhood,' and the same young men who buried her husband carry her to her grave as well."

(The follow-up post, 'Biblical families,' an index, is very good too.)

4. The Universal Never-Nude Art Museum Tour Map. (posted 2016) Lololol!

5. The coronavirus is ravaging India. Here's how you can help (posted April 29)

Blogaround

1. Father, son arrested and charged in killing of Ahmaud Arbery, GBI says (posted May 8) GOOD. But NOT GOOD how they murdered Arbery in February and they're only being arrested now, and only because of public outrage because the video of the murder was released. #BlackLivesMatter

2. Dumbledore's BIG Plan - The Philosopher's Stone [Harry Potter Theory] (posted April 21) "I'm sure we're not the first to wonder why the obstacles guarding the stone are so easily defeatable by a first-year when they're supposed to be keeping out Voldemort." YES! Oh wow I love this theory.

Blogaround

A memorial for Dr. Li Wenliang. Image source.

1. A few links about Dr. Li Wenliang:
Li Wenliang, Chinese doctor who sounded alarm on coronavirus, has died
Chinese social media lights up at death of coronavirus whistleblower, Dr. Li Wenliang
Doctor’s Death Unleashes Mourning, Fury at Chinese Officials
Li Wenliang: Chinese academics call for justice for coronavirus whistle-blower
Li Wenliang, China's hero doctor, was punished for telling truth about coronavirus (opinion)
Death of coronavirus doctor Li Wenliang becomes catalyst for ‘freedom of speech’ demands in China

2. The Philosopher’s Stone Created Aurelius Dumbledore [Harry Potter Theory] (posted January 28) Oooh I like this fan theory.

3. Climate Change is Decimating the Chinstrap Penguins of Antarctica (posted February 11)

4. Officials say more than 300 Hmong, Lao in Wisconsin might face deportation under reported negotiations (posted February 11) Oh this is bad.

5. Well I'm sure Tim Challies didn't mean for this to be funny, but: 8 Sins You Commit Whenever You Look at Porn (posted 2017) As an asexual, I LOLed through the entire thing.

Blogaround

Nativity set figures of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, in 3 separate cages. (From link #2 in this list.)

1. Regulators: Healthcare Sharing Ministries Can Only Scam Christians (posted December 4) "In effect, federal and state regulators have struck a bizarre bargain in which they have decided to let healthcare sharing ministries sell a subpar, shitty product, without requiring them to meet the typical quality standards for this product … so long as they only sell it to Christian individuals and families."

2. Church's nativity scene depicts Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as a family separated at the border (posted December 9) Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.

3. What would happen if we randomly gave $1,000 to poor families? Now we know. (posted December 4) "Their findings are significant: Cash transfers benefited the entire local economy, not just direct recipients. As money made its way through the area, both families who did and did not receive cash ended up substantially better off."

4. Deaf Actor Makes Star Wars Debut In The Mandalorian (posted December 8)

5. Harry Potter Theory: Snape Killed Hedwig?! (posted December 5) [content note: spoilers for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"]

Blogaround

Five kittens. Image source.

1. John Crist Cancels 2019 Tour Dates After Reports of Sexting, Harassment, Manipulation (posted November 6) #churchtoo

2. ObGyn Reacts to Virginity Testing Daughters | Rapper T.I. & Deyjah Harris (posted November 7) "So what T.I. can't count on is any reliable information from this exam. But what he can count on is that his daughter is never coming to him with a problem. ... I know T.I. will never watch this, but if you're out there doing things like this to your child, shame on you. ... This is not an acceptable exam, and no physician should be participating in 'virginity testing' of any sort. The hymen has no purpose for sexual intercourse or any indication of whether a person has had sexual intercourse. The culture of owning somebody else's body or having control over a daughter or a son or a spouse is unacceptable. You are in control of your body, and you don't get to choose how other people use theirs." Mama Doctor Jones is preaching the gospel.

3. HOGWARTS EXACT LOCATION REVEALED | Harry Potter Theory (posted November 12) Oooh what an interesting idea. The Super Carlin Brothers did a bunch of research- using the Harry Potter books and movies and real-life tools like Google Maps- to find an actual location in the real world and claim it's Hogwarts. Reminds me of the fan theories about what star or planet specifically the wise men followed to find baby Jesus.

4. Disney+ Has A New Version of ‘Star Wars’ Infamous Han Shot First Scene (posted November 12) What. Umm, okay.

5. Audio Adrenaline and White Jesus (posted November 14) "What does it mean that Big House can be interpreted to mean that heaven is a plantation? What does it say that the christian music industry can call that the song of the decade for the 90s and have it occur to no one white and empowered that there is an American historical meaning behind a building called the Big House?"

Blogaround

A frog. Image source.

1. ‘They love him like he is the second coming of God’ (posted August 21) "So you would quickly take steps to distance yourself from the statement, making it clear that you recognize it is not accurate or true, that you do not think of yourself in this way, that you do not approve of its sneering ignorance or of its idolatrously worshipful tone."

2. Is Hagrid Secretly A Millionaire!? | Harry Potter Theory (posted September 3) "Why is this allowed to happen? Because Hagrid must be such a high roller, his vault must be so full of gold, that he just gets this kind of insane special treatment."

3. Why isn’t the Space Force in the Bible? (posted September 5) "Their problem isn’t merely a howling anachronism, but a narcissism that won’t allow them to seek or to find anything but their own reflection."

4. Young-Earth Creationism Leads the Short-Necked Okapi to Identify as a Giraffe (posted August 19) "This barely qualifies as a hypothesis much less a theory. For what I have called young-earth evolutionism (YEE) to be true, much of what we know about genetics, ecology, evolutionary processes and even some principles of chemistry, must be completely wrong."

5. Famous Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Reveals (posted 2017) "Since the remains were found alongside swords, arrowheads, a spear, and two sacrificed horses, archaeologists had considered it a warrior’s grave—and, thus, a man’s."

6. High school students offer a silent ovation while a classmate with autism receives his diploma (posted July 9) Well I have *feelings* about this. It's presented as a heartwarming story, but... I'm autistic- not in the same way that the student in this article is, because in my case people don't know I'm autistic- but yes, like him, I have sensory issues about sound (he isn't okay with applause, but in my case it's other sounds; applause is fine for me). And everything surrounding that, the way people respond, the way people treat me, it's the biggest emotional trauma of my life. Imagining myself in a similar situation to what this article describes, it's ... it's not good enough that they all didn't clap. I would still experience all the fear and all the trauma. The article presents it as if because everyone didn't clap, it was a good experience for him. Is that really the case though? If it was me, it would still not be a good experience. You can't undo a lifetime of trauma with just a few minutes of everyone politely not clapping.

7. How To Be A Woke White Person Online (posted September 2) "People of color have to interact with your racist family member in all their oblivious and intentional racism."

8. A Nation That Isn't Crazy About Labor Celebrates Labor Day (posted September 2) "The thing about Labor Day is that while it was, at least for a few decades during the "Progressive Era," something that workers and unions actually marked with parades and demonstrations and stuff, it's been a long time since Labor Day has really been marked by anything but furniture sales and the mandatory newspaper piece on The American Worker and/or the Decline Of Unions."

9. ‘I Keep Getting Rejected for Jobs I’m Perfect For!’ (posted September 10) "It sounds like you’re thinking of getting hired as pass/fail: If you’re good enough, you’ll get the job. And if you don’t get the job, you’re not good enough … and possibly a horrible failure in general. But that’s not how hiring works."

Blogaround

1. Facebook’s Patreon competitor is a bad deal for creators (posted February 26)

2. What It's Like to Be an Abortion Clinic Escort (posted February 18) "They'll tell the patients they're murderers; they'll get up in their faces and hold up huge pictures of fake, bloody fetuses. One man screams so loud we can hear him even when we get inside the clinic."

3. The Things I am too Embarrassed to Tell my Therapist (posted 2018) "I did not have the luxury of an awkward and dry sex ed class like you heathen public schoolers. I never heard locker room half-truths from upperclassmen. I was not able to work like forensic scientists with my friends to piece together a working model of sex based on what little we saw from tv and the jokes we heard our dads say."

4. The Body Swap Scene Explained | Crimes of Grindelwald (posted February 28) As always, the Super Carlin Brothers are trailblazing pioneers in the field of over-analyzing movies.

Blogaround

A baby wearing a squirtle costume. Image source.

1. One type of diversity we don't talk about at work: Body size (posted January 3) "Studies show that discrimination increases the higher a person's body mass index."

2. Trump’s tweet about migrant kids' deaths caps a year that was horrible for children (posted December 31) [content note: mention of child death] "The rash of school shootings and the effects of immigration policies are glaring examples of direct harm to children, but there are a host of less visible issues that also are devastating to children."

Children are the most vulnerable members of society. Within any oppressed group that suffers discrimination, violence, poverty, etc, it's the children who suffer most. I believe that's why Jesus said the kingdom of heaven belongs to children. We need to do better. We need to prioritize children's needs.

3. Our Bail System Costs the Country $15 Billion Per Year (posted December 20)

4. The Women’s Resistance We Aren’t Hearing About is Happening Now In Kerala. (posted January 5) "On New Year’s Day, 5.5 million women formed a human chain across 385 miles spanning the state of Kerala, India. They demanded that the Hindu temple at Sabarimala should open its gates to women in accordance with a ruling by the Indian Supreme Court in September 2018."

5. ‘Sheer Joy’: Ireland Will Have Free Abortion Care on January 1 (posted December 17) "Abortion in Ireland will be free, safe, and legal up to 12 weeks into pregnancy starting January 1, a major blow to the Catholic Church and opponents of the country’s abortion rights law, who tried to drag out the legislative process with support from U.S. anti-choice advisers." Good news~

6. Film Theory: What is Disney's Body Count? (posted December 9) and part 2 and part 3. Wow. Matpat goes through every Disney movie (not including sequels) and overanalyzes everything in order to calculate death counts. I love it.

7. Every congressperson along southern border opposes border wall funding (posted January 8) "One thing they actually all do have in common is that they all agree with virtual wall protection but not physical wall protection."

8. James Dobson Wants You to Pray and Fast to Protect Trump from Impeachment (posted January 8) Grosssssssssss. How will I explain this to my children.

9. Why Was Dumbledore Teaching Defense Against The Dark Arts? | Harry Potter Theory (posted January 8) I LOOOOOVE videos like this because it's EXACTLY THE SAME THING as biblical apologetics. In this case, Jon Carlin noticed that the timeline implied by a comment by Dumbledore in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (set in the 1990s, published in 2005) seems to contradict what we see in the movie "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald" (set in the 1920s, released in 2018). Because of our firm belief that both of these sources are inerrant and set in the same universe, we need to go on a grand research quest to resolve this problem. It involves reconstructing timelines based on offhand mentions of durations and dates contained throughout the canon, quibbling about sentence structure and how something may or may not mean what it first seemed to mean, and completely missing the point of the story. Yep, that's apologetics.

10. Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth (posted January 9) Science!

Blogaround

A golden retriever wearing a Santa hat. Image source.

1. Blessed Be (posted December 6) "As a horny evangelical teen, I knew sex had to wait until marriage. So I wrote soft-core erotica about my wedding night." Yessss I relate to SO MUCH of this.

2. I Want to Have Sex Like… Steve Rogers (in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) (posted 2015) Oooh this is a post theorizing that Steve Rogers is demisexual. I never thought about that before, because his lack of interest in dating/sex in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" felt completely normal and reasonable to me, so I didn't think anything of it. This blogger points out that's not how movie characters typically feel though. Nice.

3. Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S. (posted December 9) [content note: sexual assault]

4. Who Did Leta Say "I Love You" To? | Fantastic Beasts Theory (posted December 11) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald"] "On top of all that, it would also give Dumbledore the opportunity to observe sacrificial protection some time in the past, so that in the future he can give Harry a really vague explanation of what happened that night."

5. Talking Back to Conservative Christians as They Attempt to Appropriate #ChurchToo. A Day of Action on Thursday, December 13 (posted December 10) "Is it any surprise, then, that many of us are skeptical that anything good can come from #ChurchToo being addressed by a group of conservative Christians who are deeply invested in holding on to demonstrably harmful evangelical teachings about sex, sexuality, and gender?"

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"]

Blogaround

Image text: "When trans lives are lost, Christ is crucified again. Trans Day of Remembrance. Remember the dead, fight like hell for the living. queertheology.com/tdor" Image source.

1. Mississippi Senator In Runoff Jokes About Sitting In ‘Front Row’ Of ‘Public Hanging’ (posted November 11)

2. Don't Ask Your Pastor These Questions (posted November 9) "If there is a “women’s retreat,” specifically ask if trans women can attend or if it’s only for cis women. Clarify if the policies differ for gay, celibate folks as opposed to non-celibate, gay folks."

3. Sex-Positive Christianity (posted November 15) "Though my ethic regarded these things as sin, I’d convinced myself they weren’t really that bad because they had to do with men–not women."

4. There’s More Evidence That Welfare Work Requirements Don’t Lift People Out of Poverty (posted November 13)

5. Dear @BrianZahnd, Let's get clear about something |theKevinGarcia (posted November 17) "And that's when our queer spidey-senses started to tingle..."

6. The Husband Hunt: An Evangelical Horror Story (posted October 23) "In this case, Christians live in a culture full of people pretending that there’s some vast spiritual component to their spouse hunts." This post is so spot-on, about how Christian women buy into this mythology about God magically bringing them a husband. I'm sharing it even though I don't agree with Cassidy's claim that ACTUALLY Christian men marry women that are conventionally attractive and that's all there is to it.

7. Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk (posted November 7) "If the governor’s race had taken place in another country, the State Department would have questioned its legitimacy."

8. We try to control forgiveness because we know we need it (posted November 5) "The miracle of forgiveness is that it inverts — it corrects — the prior power dynamic. The process of forgiveness acknowledges that the wronged party, the victim of an injustice, now has a kind of power over those who wronged them — the power to grant or to withhold forgiveness. This inversion of power is intolerable for The Powers That Be." Wowwww I've never heard anyone connecting forgiveness to power in this way.

9. The Voluntary Damsel in Distress (posted November 15) HOLYYYY SHIT, World Magazine posted a vile, misogynistic, rage-inducing trashfire of an article, and Libby Anne has ALL THE RECEIPTS. Wow. World Magazine- my family subscribed to this when I was growing up. I saw it as a good Christian resource. I was about to say "I just lost all respect for World", but hey, does anyone remember this blog post I wrote back in 2015, in response to another disgusting hateful World article (from the same writer!!!)? Grosssssss gross gross gross, how will I explain this to my hypothetical children.

10. Is Crimes of Grindelwald Awesome Or Awful? | SPOILER REVIEW (posted November 20) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald"] "At this point, if you think about it, you're two movies into a spinoff series based on a fictional author of a fictional book inside of a fictional universe. You're pretty deep."

Blogaround

Stan Lee's cameo as a bus driver in "Avengers: Infinity War." Image text: "What's the matter with you kids, you've never seen a spaceship before?" Image source.

1. 'Respond to evil with good’: Muslim community raises money for victims of synagogue shooting (posted October 28) "A crowdfunding campaign organized by the Muslim American community has raised more than $150,000 for the victims of the mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh."

2. Have all our short-term mission trips to Latin America shaped our response to the migrant ‘caravan’? (posted November 6) "That leads me to wonder what this says about the role of STM trips in helping to change lives and produce disciples who care about the plight of those whom they served. And what it says about the state of the Church in America."

3. Christine Blasey Ford Is Still Being Put Through Hell (posted November 8) "As of last month, Ford has had to move four times due to harassment, NPR reports."

4. Pediatricians strengthen stance against spanking kids (posted November 5) "'In the 20 years since that policy was first published, there's been a great deal of additional research, and we're now much stronger in saying that parents should never hit their child and never use verbal insults that would humiliate or shame the child,' said Dr. Robert Sege, first author of the policy statement and a pediatrician at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston."

5. Plot to Smear Mueller Unravels as F.B.I. Is Asked to Investigate (posted October 30) and Why They Thought It Would Work. [content note: rape culture] "They thought that they could easily find women to come forward, accept money, and lie about sexual misconduct on the part of Mueller because THEY DON’T BELIEVE WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN VICTIMIZED. They think it is all made up."

6. Why Dumbledore Can't Move Against Grindelwald | Fantastic Beasts Theory (posted October 12) [posted before "Fantastic Beasts 2" comes out, so it has no spoilers] "Totally impossible, right? Welcome to Super Carlin Brothers."

7. This artist uses jigsaw puzzles, with the same die cut pattern, to make these terrific mashups (posted November 11) Cool!

8. Stan Lee, Marvel Comics visionary, dead at 95 (posted November 13)

And this video: Stan Lee Cameos in Marvel Movies & Live Action TV Shows. (R.I.P. 1922-2018)

Blogaround

Three little dogs dressed as Hogwarts students, in a wagon that says "Hogwarts Railways." Image source.

1. US proposal for defining gender has no basis in science (posted October 30) "Political attempts to pigeonhole people have nothing to do with science and everything to do with stripping away rights and recognition from those whose identity does not correspond with outdated ideas of sex and gender."

2. Nazi and KKK memorabilia were sold at a Kentucky gun show. Officials say it won’t happen again. (posted October 31)

3. Honoring Pittsburgh synagogue victims, Pence appears with ‘rabbi’ who preaches ‘Jesus is the Messiah’ (posted October 30) Ugh, yeah that seems like something he would do.

4. The inherent deception of Messianic Judaism (posted October 30) "This “add Hebrew and stir” approach to Christianity is the worst kind of anti-semitism, because it pretends to be a friend to Jewish people; pretends to have their best interests at heart."

5. Eugene Peterson, author of ‘The Message’ and pastor to other pastors, dies at age 85 (posted October 22)

6. On Not Seeing Christ in the Stranger (posted October 11) "In short, the vision in Matthew 25 is one where people are welcomed for themselves and not as a proxy for receiving Christ. That revelation comes later, as a shock."

7. Power and pow’r (posted October 23) "In Isaiah 1, it is God who finds all this blood and bloody imagery 'problematic.'"

8. Why I’m Not Scared of Migrants Who Are “Gang-Aged Males” (posted October 31) "By this metric, I have four brothers who are 'gang-aged males.'"

9. Autism & Late Diagnosis: I Wish I'd Known - Sensory Processing (posted November 7)

10. Pennsylvania Mural Highlights Migrants Who Were Traumatized in ‘Family Prison’ (posted November 3) [content note: mention of attempted suicide] 

11. Women put 'I voted' stickers on Susan B. Anthony's grave (posted November 6)

Blogaround

A little fluffy puppy. Image source.

1. Hundreds dead, no one charged: the uphill battle against Los Angeles police killings (posted August 24) [content note: police brutality, murder] "'It really greenlights this type of behavior,' said Melina Abdullah, a BLM organizer in LA. 'Police don’t have to care about anybody’s life, especially if they’re black or brown or poor.'"

2. For A Lady I Know. A poem.

3. I didn’t read Harry Potter when I was growing up. And I wasn’t alone. (posted September 1) Oooh, Alissa Wilkinson has ALL the receipts here.

4. 23: Sensory Series (2) “Picky Eater” (posted September 12) "Recently I’ve been examining why I struggle with certain foods and have come to the same conclusion as I have with much of my post-diagnosis self-exploration: I’m actually incredibly strong and my experiences are real and valid." YES.

5. Pat Robertson Thanks God For Aiming Hurricane At Other States: People Living There Should Pray Like I Did (posted September 12) Hahahaha well usually when Christians pray "God, please let bad things happen to other people instead of to me" they are way less obvious about it. This is one of the biggest reasons I don't pray anymore, actually. Because I realized the majority of my prayer requests could basically be rephrased as "God, please let bad things happen to other people instead of to me."

6. Baltimore Cops Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, Trial Reveals (posted February 1) Whattttttt

7. The Gospel According to the Rumble Ponies (posted September 5) "Kaepernick, like Tebow, was an outspoken evangelical Christian who was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And while the NFL forbade Tebow from writing Bible verses in his eye black, it couldn’t do anything to prevent Kaepernick from wearing Bible verses on the field because he had those verses tattooed on both arms."

Blogaround

Lena Waithe at the Met Gala, wearing a giant rainbow flag cape as part of her Catholic-themed outfit. Image source.

1. What does the life of a mother mean to you Governor Bryant? (posted March 29) [content note: anti-choice politics that literally threatens women's lives] "I ask the politicians of Mississippi how sick must a pregnant woman be after 15 weeks to have an abortion in your state because I read your law and I don’t know?"

2. Which House Was Hagrid In? | Harry Potter Theory (posted May 1)

3. James H. Cone, Founder Of Black Liberation Theology, Dies At 79 (posted April 28)

And this post from 2015: Why James H. Cone's Liberation Theology Matters More Than Ever

I recently wrote a blog series reviewing Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree." American Christians should all read this book.

4. Carnival Of Aces: My Story Of Failing At Doing The Straight Thing (posted April 30) "I spend weeks dodging questions from straight relatives about how the day compared to my dream wedding. I don’t tell them the only dream wedding I ever had was my wedding. I don’t tell them the only dream wedding night I was allowed to have according to the things they taught me as a child was a nightmare."

5. Disability in Animation: Finding Nemo (posted 2014) [content note: spoilers for "Finding Nemo"] "At the same time though, it becomes clear that he does think there’s a lot of stuff that Nemo can’t do, and he’s not really letting Nemo figure out for himself what he can and can’t do. Now, that’s not a great attitude, and it’s not necessarily how you should handle a kid’s disability, but it is good that the movie shows it. Because while it may not be the right attitude, it’s a very common one, and the entire rest of the movie is basically spent deconstructing it."

6. Ace Survivors as Rhetorical Devices (part three): The One True Narrative of Sexual Violence Against Aces (posted 2015) [content note: sexual assault] "Other narratives are less politically useful, and so aces who don’t know if their (a)sexuality was influenced by trauma, asexuals who were assaulted as children, aces who were assaulted for reasons entirely unrelated to their asexuality, aces who were assaulted by other aces, aces who have been assaulted multiple times or who have experienced multiple forms of sexual violence, etc. are shoved out of the way."

7. Visiting Disney World is the Modern Version of Making a Medieval Pilgrimage (posted 2016)

8. And the 2018 Reader Survey will be open until June 9~ go ahead and take the survey if you haven't already~ Thanks!

Blogaround

Two pandas. Image source.

1. the complicated misery of #metoo (posted February 5) [content note: description of sexual assault] "It was her job to stop it, and not his job to care."

2. How John Piper’s Church Handles Domestic Violence Will Make You Cringe (posted March 1) "Until evangelical churches like Bethlehem Baptist can rethinking their priorities and start valuing people over marriage, this cycle will repeat, and the hemming and hawing over whether an abuse victim can divorce, or (God forbid) remarry will continue."

3. From Original Sin to Flattering Mirror: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (posted January 14) "A movement that had challenged the very fabric of US politics and society was turned into one that demonstrated how great and expansive the country was—a story of individual bravery, natural evolution, and the long march to 'a more perfect union.'"

4. A frightened child in Chicago and an immigration policy unbecoming of America (posted February 28) "I don’t know what kind of country handcuffs a mother who fears for her life and hauls her young daughter more than 2,000 miles away."

5. Love-struck hero or creepy harasser? Suddenly we’re seeing our favorite rom-coms in a new light. (posted February 27) "This film is rated #MeToo, for a man making three sexual innuendos on a sales conference call, and for a woman laughing them off because she didn’t want to lose the account."

6. Fawkes' Original Owner | Harry Potter Theory (posted March 1)

7. Billy Graham is dead (posted February 22) "So did Billy Graham “reach” his own son? Is Franklin Graham a convert of his father’s gospel?"

And also: I will be your father figure, put your tiny hand in mine "But — and here’s where the paradox comes in — at the same time as all of these pieces rightly assert that Billy Graham personally defined and embodied the meaning and substance of evangelicalism, they also all take pains to explain that white evangelicalism in 21st-century America has very little in common with Billy Graham."

And: It's always the other way around "I’ve read and studied several dozen books by earnest Christian writers earnestly arguing that our political views must derive from our religious or “biblical” convictions, and not the other way around. That is what all of those authors and all of those books purport to do themselves (even as they all “arrive” at different political conclusions, all of which seem suspiciously like the political preferences of the authors)."

8. Concerned Women for America’s Bizarre “Esther Moment” Rhetoric (posted March 6) "If evangelicals are anyone in that story, they’re Haman." Oooooh burn.

9. Stalking for Love (posted February 28) [content note: stalking portrayed as romantic] "There's an undercurrent of coercion running through these scenes, because they set up situations where the woman in question will appear callous or heartless if she rejects the guy again after he's gone through all the trouble of pulling off his elaborate stunt."

Blogaround

Maia and Alex Shibutani performing ice dancing at the 2018 Olympics. Image source.

1. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed" (posted February 17)

2. Full List: Evangelical Advisers on Trump’s Affair with Playboy Model (posted February 17)

3. Progressive Proof-Texting (posted February 12) "A progressive evangelical is what you get when a white evangelical starts treating the “biblical data” on money the same way they treat the “biblical data” on sex."

4. A ‘Mass Shooting Generation’ Cries Out for Change (posted February 16) "They were born into a world reshaped by the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, and grew up practicing active shooter drills and huddling through lockdowns."

5. No, there haven’t been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong. (posted February 16) [content note: mention of suicide, descriptions of gun violence and accidents] "[Only] Five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury."

6. In Australia, Staying Loyal to Taiwan Can Mean Losing a Job (posted February 18) "During her second week waitressing at a barbecue restaurant in Sydney, a customer asked Yating Yang if she was Chinese. “No, I’m Taiwanese,” she said."

7. Lack of Citations: The YEC Peer-Review System Goes Awry Again (posted 2017) "At times they appear to intentionally refuse to cite other YEC [young-earth creationist] authors. More than likely, it’s a combination of causes along with a general desire to present a unified voice to an audience that just wants a simple answer. But this isn’t they way that science proceeds."

8. Gus Kenworthy makes history at Winter Olympics with gay kiss on live TV (posted February 18) Hooray!

9. I Still Think There Is a “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” and Here It Is: You’re Not Allowed to Use It "Knock yourself out with scholarship on the Pentateuch, but make sure at the end of it all you affirm that Moses basically wrote it."

10. Late-night hosts turn serious when talking about Florida teen activists (posted February 21)

11. Lambda Legal Sues HHS after Lesbian Couple Blocked from Serving as Foster Parents (posted February 20)

12. Pixar Theory: Why does the Guitar take Miguel to the Land of the Dead? (posted February 14) [content note: spoilers for "Coco"]

13. Voldemort's Failed Horcrux | Harry Potter Theory (posted February 13) [content note: spoilers for Harry Potter] 

14. Anti-gay evangelical preacher Billy Graham dies, aged 99 (posted February 21) I liked Billy Graham, but let's not forget his anti-queer ideology.