Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Elon Musk’s Grok AI Is Doxxing Home Addresses of Everyday People (December 4, via) "In response to prompts as simple as “[name] address,” we found Grok repeatedly offered up accurate, up-to-date home addresses of everyday people, while offering astonishingly scant pushback."

2. The Most Hated Children's Book (December 4) [content note: the Holocaust, also spoilers for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"] "And so we're left with this kind of hollow story. A boy who spends a year, a full year, talking to a victim of the Holocaust, who does not learn one single thing about it."

I haven't read "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" but the first time I heard about the plot, I assumed that it was meant to make these 2 points:

1. A lot of people in Nazi Germany really had no idea what was going on in the death camps, even military families who lived right next to them. Uh... is there historical evidence of this? If this is not true, then yikes it's extremely irresponsible to write it in a book as if this was a real phenomenon. Sort of saying that the Holocaust just kinda happened and it wasn't really anyone's fault except maybe the leaders at the highest levels.
2. I thought the point of the ending was a judgment on the father- the father is overseeing mass murder throughout the whole book and thinks it's fine, but then when it's his own son getting murdered, then it's a horrible tragedy which wasn't supposed to happen. I assumed- not reading the book but just a summary of it- that the point was to teach the father a lesson about how wrong he was- that the father was getting what he deserved. But I've read criticism of this book which says this is basically just played straight- like the book makes you feel like the tragedy is that the son of a Nazi leader was killed, that's terrible and wasn't supposed to happen, whereas the constant mass murder of Jewish people is fine. I thought the point of the book would be exposing this way of thinking and showing how immoral it is, but ... apparently it doesn't? Like I said I haven't read it, and maybe it's open to interpretation how much the book just kinda goes along with this "it only became a tragedy when this one German child died" and how much it calls out that way of thinking.

3. Chinese Backstreet Boys - That Way (2005) My husband told me this video went viral in China 20 years ago. It's 2 goofy students lip-syncing to "I want it that way." I love this.

4. Vibecession: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (December 5) "Are the youth succumbing to a “negativity bias” where they see the past through “rose-colored glasses”? Are the economists looking at some ivory tower High Modernist metric that fails to capture real life? Or is there something more complicated going on?"

5. UN humanitarian chief: world needs to 'wake up' and help stop violence in Sudan (December 7) "The United Nations estimates around 200,000 civilians were trapped in el-Fasher when the army withdrew, and there is evidence that many were systematically killed, with thousands still unaccounted for."

6. Reality Bites: Meituan’s ‘Rosy’ Delivery Ad Hits a Nerve in China (December 8) "'It’s clear from the video that not only has the director never been a food delivery driver, but also that he has never ordered take-out,' one user said in a video response on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, receiving more than 29,000 likes."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump to Disaster Victims: Drop Dead (December 3, via) "Whenever someone comes to him in need, whether its Volodomyr Zelensky, helpless African children dependent on USAID, or rural Michiganers, his cruelty is activated."

2. HHS changed the name of transgender health leader on her official portrait (December 5) "Levine told NPR that it was an honor to serve the American people as the assistant secretary for health 'and I'm not going to comment on this type of petty action.'"

3. CDC advisers vote to overturn decades-long policy on hepatitis B vaccine for infants (December 5) "'Our question is why? Why is there pressure today to change something that has been working, due to safety concerns that may be more theoretical than real?' asked Dr. Grant Paulsen during Thursday's meeting."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How Star Trek’s Federation Actually Abandons Its Ideals (July 30) 43-minute video from Steve Shives.

2. TobyMac - Made To Love (Live from Alive & Transported) (2009) Christian music from a decade or so ago. I've always liked this song.

3. France, U.K., others plan to recognize a Palestinian state. What does that change? (August 1)

4. Debating Fascists (July 25) "This was a major topic of conversation in the early 2000s amongst scientists, who worried over whether it was worthwhile to debate “the other side” on issues like climate change and evolution."

5. An Amazing Truth About ALL Sudokus That We DIDN'T Know (July 27) 1-hour-23-minute sudoku solve video.

6. An Ohio couple welcomes a baby boy from a nearly 31-year-old frozen embryo (August 2) Cool, I'm happy for them. It's interesting how people's feelings and beliefs about frozen embryos had such a big influence on this whole process, all the paperwork, transporting the embryos, etc. Would have gone completely differently if the people involved had different beliefs about frozen embryos. Anyway, congrats to them~

7. YouTube will identify and restrict minors’ accounts with AI (July 30, via) Uh what? This seems like a terrible idea, because the algorithm is going to get it wrong sometimes. Of course it will get it wrong sometimes. You're never going to get an accuracy rate close enough to 100%.

8. Holocaust Memory in a Time of Genocide (July 31, via) "At this point, the fracture between the “universal” and the “particular-Jewish” components of Holocaust memory became an unbridgeable chasm: the “pro-Jewish” sentiment, which morphed into unconditional support for Israel and its murderous war following October 7, was completely severed from the universal sentiment of human rights."

9. Zootopia 2 | Trailer (July 30) Cool!

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert's Cancellation & Trump's "Bawdy" Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show (July 22) "And if you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king's radar, A, why will anyone watch you? And you are ****ing wrong."

2. Trump push to ban birthright citizenship unconstitutional, US court rules (July 23, via) "The three-judge ruling panel in the 9th US circuit court of appeals echoed a district court in New Hampshire that blocked the executive order earlier this month."

3. Innocence, identity, and blood libel (part 1) (July 28) and Innocence, identity, and blood libel (part 2) 

4. Federal judge delays expiration of TPS for Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Nepalese (July 31) "It affects about 60,000 immigrants whose temporary protected status was set to expire. The protections for the Nepalese were set to terminate on Aug. 5. The protections for Nicaraguans and Hondurans would have ended Sept. 8. Most of them have been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years." This is just wild to me, that the MAGAs are arguing that people who've been in the US for over 20 years should just leave- like why? Why should they leave? Just because the MAGAs hate immigrants, not any actual reality-based reason.

Blogaround

Links not related to the orange antichrist:

1. This Pixar-Inspired Robot Lamp Is the First Apple Intelligence Device I Really Want (February 7) Ah yes, I remember seeing this lamp in "Toy Story."

2. The Racist Cisgender Nonsense of Emilia Perez (February 1) 2-hour-19-minute video from Jessie Gender.

3. He’d Die for You. But Will He Do the Dishes? (February 10) "One of the most bizarre arguments defending men being in authority over women is the idea that one day, he may have to take a bullet for you."

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Links related to the orange antichrist:

1. This Is How Evangelicals Defended Hitler in 1935 (2016 ~ This link was posted in a comment by Matthew James Longstaff.) Many Christians back then supported Hitler- and Christians now need to know this and learn from this history.

When I learned about the Holocaust in middle school, I don't remember learning anything about how Christians in general responded to the Nazis. (I remember hearing about individual Christians who heroically helped Jews hide or escape.) There was one time, one of my classmates asked the teacher what Hitler's religion was, and she said "he was a Christian," and I thought to myself "he wasn't a real Christian," because obviously, look at all the terrible things he did, murdering 6 million people, it's so obvious that's not what a "real" Christian would do. And I didn't think any more of it.

But, no, it wasn't like German Christians supported Nazism because they just didn't care about their Christian identity at all and therefore didn't put any thought into the question "what does Christianity have to say about this?" It's so much worse than that- they really made arguments, based in their Christian beliefs, about why supporting Hitler was the right thing to do. We need to learn from this. We need to know what their arguments were, to make sure we're not making those same arguments now. We need to learn from the way they used Christianity to justify horrific atrocities, so that we don't do the same thing.

2. Trump And 'Don't Say Gay' Come For The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children (February 8) "But like everything else spending-related right now, the executive branch is saying it may not disburse whatever money NCMEC is by law supposed to receive, unless the organization throws gay and transgender children under the bus."

3. “People Will Die”: The Trump Administration Said It Lifted Its Ban on Lifesaving Humanitarian Aid. That’s Not True. (January 31)

4. "Comparison is the way we know the world" (2023, via) "We are not any smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived ninety years ago. We are just as likely to needlessly give up our political power and to remain willfully ignorant of darkness as it’s dawning. But we know something they didn’t know: we know that the Holocaust is possible."

5. Kanye West is selling $20 T-shirts with swastikas (February 10) WTF!

6. Trump's ban on gender-affirming care for young people puts hospitals in a bind (February 10) "After months waiting for an appointment at the gender-affirming care clinic at VCU Health in Richmond, Willow had one on the calendar on Jan. 29. President Trump's executive order limiting transgender health care for youth came out in the afternoon of Jan. 28."

Here's something I don't quite understand- if you have an insight or a link that explains it, leave a comment. I've heard trans people and allies make the argument that the same medical care that is provided to trans kids for gender-affirming reasons is also sometimes provided to cis kids. To ban this care for trans children but not cis children is discrimination on the basis of gender or gender identity- which is not legal.

This strikes me as not a very good argument, but maybe there's something I'm missing? I feel like, if you're talking to someone who doesn't believe being trans is even a real thing, they could just say, "When puberty blockers, for example, are given to cis kids, that's because there's an actual good reason- this happens when a cis kid starts puberty way way too early. Obviously in that case, it makes sense to use puberty blockers to delay puberty to a more normal timeline. That's a good reason to use puberty blockers. But for trans kids, we're talking about completely normal and healthy kids, going through puberty on a normal schedule, and then you want to use puberty blockers to change that? There's no good reason for this- being trans isn't a real thing. All medical procedures and drugs come with risks- so, you should use them if you have a good reason, but if you don't have a good reason, then you shouldn't, because of the risks."

Like, I feel like the situation is not "under this ban, this medical care can be given to cis kids but not trans kids- this is clearly discrimination." It's not *about* being trans or cis- when a trans kid gets treatment, vs a cis kid getting the same treatment, it's a completely different situation. It would happen for completely different reasons. It's not about denying them care simply for being trans, it's about whether there's a good enough reason for them to get this care, and in the eyes of the Republicans making these laws, one's feelings about one's gender is not a good enough reason.

I mean, maybe the pro-trans argument here is that the government shouldn't be in the business of judging what is or isn't a "good enough reason" for receiving medical care? Maybe that's the key? (Oh hey, I also feel that way about abortion.)

It's just that I've seen this argument mentioned ("this is discrimination based on gender because they're not banning this health care for cis kids") but I don't think I've ever seen it clearly explained. Feel free to leave a comment if you know something I don't~

7. Three migrants win temporary block from potential transfer to Guantanamo (February 10) "'Sending immigrants from the U.S. to Guantánamo and holding them incommunicado without access to counsel or the outside world opens a new shameful chapter in the history of this notorious prison,' Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the Immigrants' Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement."

Blogaround

1. Egypt is certified malaria-free by WHO (October 20, via) This is great!

2. Lauren Stratford, The Survivor Who Never Was (October 15) "True change cannot be built on falsehoods, and people who try to do so create more victims, not fewer."

3. China’s Solution for Trash-Strewn Mountains: Robot Dog Porters (October 24) "The four-legged robots could be seen trotting up and down the steps of Mount Tai, or Taishan, in eastern China’s Shandong province last weekend, often laden with huge bags of garbage, sparking amusement among the hordes of tourists at the site."

Also from Sixth Tone: What’s Chinese for ‘Midwest Nice’? (October 24) LOLLL oh this is so real. You text with customer service on Taobao (Chinese shopping app) and they constantly call you "qin" [亲]. A dictionary will tell you this means "dear"- and I have seen plenty of Chinese people using "dear" in English the way they use "qin", which just sounds odd, like "Dear, can you bring in these documents next week?"- but I've always felt like it shouldn't be understood as "dear" but more like a polite title you use in administrative sorts of interactions. Loved reading this article about how Chinese people also find it weird to be called "qin" on Taobao all the time.

And also: Signs of Unity: Can China’s Deaf Community Find a Common Language? (October 28) "China’s large size, coupled with a history of sign language use dating back at least 1,500 years, have made China’s sign languages especially fragmented."

4. Former envoy says Americans in Canada ‘could determine’ next president (October 20) Love this! Americans living abroad, VOTE VOTE VOTE!

5. Nazi shit (intra ecclesiam nulla salus) (October 23) "'Round them up and put them in camps' is unadorned Nazi shit. It just is. There’s no way of qualifying or caviling or weaseling out of that. 'Round them up and put them in camps' is the essence of the thing itself."

6. What NOT To Say To People Trapped In The MAGA Cult (October 24) "One day he’ll be gone [hopefully very soon] and you’ll need to be there to help them process what happened and perhaps find a way back to sanity."

7. Police and poll workers train for possible election threats (October 24) 

8. American Airlines fined $50 million for its treatment of passengers with disabilities (October 23) "Duckworth said airlines routinely damage her own wheelchairs and others. In fact, Duckworth says they broke 892 wheelchairs in a single month last year. 'Imagine if the American public saw that the airlines broke 892 pairs of legs in a single month. There would be hue and cry, but there hasn't been.'"

9. Biden apologizes for forced Native American boarding school policy that caused abuse and deaths of children (October 26) "President Joe Biden delivered an apology Friday for a United States policy that forcibly separated generations of indigenous children from their families for more than 150 years and sent them to federally backed boarding schools for forced assimilation."

10. MAGA’s Closing Argument: Dad’s Coming Home (October 28) "The core MAGA message is that all these problems are really one problem: The world feels wrong now, because people don’t know how to behave."

11. Your Fave Is Problematic Politics (October 18) "This is an annoying approach to media analysis. It is a batshit approach to getting people to vote for a candidate."

12. Relatable: AOC Doesn't Want Four More Years Of Waking Up To Trump's Bullsh*t (October 29) "We should not have to live that way again. We shouldn’t have to wake up every morning and think “OK, what’s it gonna be today?” Our elected officials shouldn’t be spending their time crafting responses to everything he says or does, only for no one to even remember what they were the next day because the next day we’re onto another horrible thing."

13. Many state abortion bans include exceptions for rape. How often are they granted? (October 26, via) "Bertram Roberts says she’s never seen anyone in that state get an exemption — for any reason, let alone rape."

14. New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism (October 25) "Indeed, an unprecedented number of Donald Trump’s closest, handpicked aides and advisors have refused to endorse him, many warning publicly that Trump was a danger to democracy. It is rare for any advisor or official so close to the president to refuse to endorse them; nearly half of Trump’s have so refused."

15. 《目标是宝可梦大师》中文版MV 腾格尔 (October 26) For fun, here's a Chinese song about pokemon!

Blogaround

VOTE!

If you are a US citizen, then make a plan and vote!

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1. Trump's Recreating Actual Racist History Not Just Remaking 'The Purge' (October 1) "Aaron Rupar compared Trump’s call for extrajudicial police violence to the German Kristallnacht or the 'Night of Broken Glass' when Nazis led a violent riot against Jews as German authorities stood and watched. Nazi paramilitary forces ransacked Jewish homes, hospitals and schools. They destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps."

2. Canceling subscriptions has to be as easy as signing up, the FTC says in a new rule (October 16) Wow this is great. This is revolutionary.

3. We Need To Get Junk Science Out of Courtrooms (2023) "Isn’t it outrageous that we have lay jurors that are relied upon to distinguish nonsense from sense in criminal courts where life and liberty is at stake? There’s no federal oversight. There’s isn’t something like the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] where consumer products like toothpaste and aspirin are tested for their safety before they’re used by the general public, because we care about the reliability of those products. We care more about the reliability of mouthwash in this country than we do about forensic sciences that are used to sentence people to death and to life in prison."

4. The Weaver Bird Dilemma: Creationism’s Struggle with Diversity (October 7) "This striking bird, with its enormous tail, builds a very different type of nest compared to the Southern Masked Weaver. Yet according to most YEC classifications, these birds would be considered part of the same 'created kind.'"

5. Musk offers voters $1 million a day to sign PAC petition backing the Constitution. Is that legal? (October 21) 

6. Missouri AG in abortion pill lawsuit argues fewer teen pregnancies hurt state financially (October 22) Yes, really, they are really arguing this in a court case. I don't even know what to make of this, because it goes against the typical "pro-life" talking points about "if you didn't want a baby, you shouldn't have had sex"- presumably abstinence would also "hurt" the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho by reducing the teen pregnancy rate. It's like... instead of a "pregnancy is the punishment for having sex" "pro-life" argument, it's more along the lines of "women [and teenage girls] should be required to have sex and then required to have babies." ??? I haven't seen "pro-life" people making this argument before. (Though I suppose it's kind of implicitly there in all the "pro-life" hand-wringing over low birth rates.)

7. On Univision, ordinary citizens step in for cowardly journalists (October 18) "Why didn't Trump have a ready answer to this question? Why hasn't he been asked this before? Why haven't journalists asked him this every time he makes his terrifying calls for mass deportation? How can we be less than 20 days from the election, and Trump doesn't even have a pretense of an answer to the most fundamental effect of his most frequently stated policy?"

8. Targeted Advertising: Good or evil? (October 22) "So if failed advertisements are the worst kind, then you must prefer targeted advertising, right?"

Blogaround

1. The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza (March 14, via) [content note: genocide, the Holocaust] "The film follows Höss’s idyllic domestic life with his wife and children, which unfolds in a stately home and garden immediately adjacent to the concentration camp."

2. What Republicans Want (March 25) "But the report is 180 pages, and you can’t really appreciate the steady drumbeat of wrongheadedness until you read the whole thing (which I did)."

3. Pastor’s wife-turned-activist Beverly LaHaye dies at 94, helped defeat Equal Rights Amendment (April 16)

4. So uh there was a Christian men's conference, and there was some *drama* there. First of all, everything about this event screams toxic masculinity, there's a tank driving around, Mark Driscoll was one of the speakers (eww how will I explain Mark Driscoll to my children?). And the event opened with a sword swallowing performance, and Driscoll was mad because he felt it was kinda like a stripper pole dance, and Driscoll said some things about it on stage, and got kicked out.

You may be saying, "what." Yeah, same.

What happened when Mark Driscoll and Josh Howerton showed up at the Stronger Men’s Conference this weekend (April 15) My FAVORITE part of this is how the conference organizer brings up Matthew 18. 

(See also, the Slacktivist's 2014 post on Matthew 18 [via]. "The problem here is not with the passage itself, but with how it is used and abused. Christians who have treated others badly — who have, in fact, sinned against their brothers and sisters — treat this text like it’s their Miranda rights.")

Also love Hemant Mehta's post: Christian Men's Conference descends into chaos over sword-swallowing acrobat (April 15) Especially this bit, which is spot-on, about the things that Driscoll *should* have been criticizing the conference for: "He could have condemned the conference’s other poor decisions, like inviting a guy like him to speak there at all."

5. In Year Of Our Lord 2024, White-Sounding Names *Still* More Likely To Get Called Back For Job Interviews (April 12) "Remember that very famous study from 20 years ago, in which researchers submitted practically identical resumés to various want-ads — with the only difference being that the names attached were either especially Black-sounding names or especially white sounding names? Well, it was replicated again and once again researchers found that those with white-sounding names were more likely to be hired than those with Black-sounding names. An average of nine percent higher, across the board."

6. The Scholar Bringing Marco Polo Back to China (April 19) "Yet despite Marco Polo’s widespread recognition in China, there exists only one rigorous Chinese translation of 'The Travels of Marco Polo.'"

7. Hidden 3D Pictures (April 18) Wow this is fantastic. Telling an AI to generate magic eye pictures, and, well, "How do you end up with a result that sounds so confident and yet is so completely wrong?"

Jewish Refugees Museum (Shanghai, China)

Sign that says "上海犹太难民纪念馆 Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum". 

During World War II, about 20,000 Jewish refugees came from Europe to Shanghai to escape the Holocaust. There is a museum called the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, which commemorates this. Here are some of my photos from when I went there.

Statue of a Jewish refugee family.

Wall plaque with text in both English and Chinese. The English text says, "'No consulate or embassy in Vienna was prepared to grant us immigration visas until, by luck and by perseverance I went to the Chinese Consulate where, wonders of wonder, I was granted visas for me and my extended family. On the basis of these visas we were able to obtain shipping accomodation on the Bianco Mano from an Italian Shipping Line expected to leave in early December 1938 from Genoa, Italy to Shanghai, China - a journey of approximately thirty days.' Eric Goldstaub"

This wall has the names of about 13,000 of the refugees who came to Shanghai.

Plaque with text in English, Chinese, and a third language (German maybe?). English text says, "In memory of the Hungarian Paul Komor (1886-1973), former Shanghai resident. As Honorary Secretary of the International Committee for the Organization of European Immigrants in China, he and his colleagues issued identity cards and offered all possible help to European Jews who had fled to Shanghai from Nazism. May their memory live forever."

Plaque with text in English, Chinese, and Hebrew. English text says, "Ho Feng Shan 1901-1997 Born in Henan Province, he became a diplomat in the service of China. Between 1938 and 1940, while Consul General in Vienna, Austria, Dr. Ho rescued thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by issuing visas to Shanghai and other documents. Ignoring the orders of his superiors and at risk to his career and personal safety, he acted with steadfast courage when most would not. United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad"

Here's a bust of Ho Feng Shan 何凤山

White text on a black background, in Chinese and English. English text says, "The past is in the present, but the future is still in our hands. -- Ellie Wiesel, Writer & the Winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize"

There were exhibits about how they traveled from Europe to Shanghai, and how they lived in Shanghai.

Map that showed routes that the refugees took from Europe to China. Basically some of them took a train through Russia and some took ships down around Egypt.

A menorah, with handwritten text in Hebrew (I think?) and English on the wall behind it. English text says, "To the people of Shanghai for unique humanitarian act of saving thousands of Jews during the Second World War. Thanks in the name of the Government of Israel." A quote from Yitzhak Rabin, Premier of Israel, in 1993.

Next, there was an exhibit about what happened to the Jewish refugees during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. It wasn't good- the Japanese imposed restrictions on them, and they had to live in crowded, impoverished conditions.

Sign that says "Stateless Refugees are Prohibited to pass Here Without Permission." From when the Japanese occupied Shanghai.

Exhibit about the Jewish refugees basically all leaving Shanghai at the end of WWII. “从1946年到1951年，离沪犹太人总数约为22000-24000人 From 1946 to 1951, about 22,000 to 24,000 Jews left Shanghai.”

Here's the entrance to the Ohel Moishe Synagogue.

Exhibit which shows a photo of Anne Frank, along with her name in both English and Chinese (安妮 弗兰克).

There was also an exhibit about Anne Frank and her family, inside the synagogue.

Looking at everything in this museum (especially the Anne Frank exhibit, which described how Germany gradually became more and more horrible to Jews, leading up to the Holocaust), I was really overwhelmed, like "how could this happen?" It's hard to even believe that people could do that to people, but it's real. And there have always been refugees forced to leave their countries because of violence, and we need to help them like Shanghai did during WWII. It's so important that we learn about this history.

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If you want to see more posts like this, consider supporting me on patreon~ When I reach my goal of $20/month, I'll do a series of blog posts about various aspects of life in Shanghai. With lots of photos. ^_^

Blogaround

A yellow labrador attempting to eat the spot on the wall where refracted light has created a rainbow pattern. Image source.

1. ACLU Will No Longer Defend Hate Groups Protesting With Firearms (posted August 17) "For decades, the ACLU has defended white supremacists and other hate groups against government efforts to curb their speech, driven by the belief that carve-outs to the First Amendment weaken its protections for everyone."

2. Protesters in Durham “Turned Themselves In” to Show Solidarity with Takiyah Thompson (posted August 17)

3. The coolest checkerboard magic trick (posted 2015) Oooooh this is a really cool math question.

4. Sex Repulsed Aces in Fiction (posted August 17) "I glared at him. 'How is that what makes someone human?'"

5. Harry Potter Theory: Was Hagrid Dumbledore's Secret Weapon? (posted August 17) "...and it is the most, like, Dumbledore thing I can think of to fix Hagrid's wand."

6. An Atheist Reads The Case for Christ: Chapter 9 (posted 2012) "So Jesus kills an entire herd of animals that didn't belong to him. He devastates the livelihood of whichever farmer happened to own those pigs, when he could have just cast the demons out without letting them jump into the pigs. We don't see demons being cast out of people and having to jump into animals or other people any other time. You think Jesus can't be convicted of any sin? Ask the guy who owned the pigs." Wowwwww I have NEVER thought about it in that way before. I'm really glad I'm watching this video series. I'm not saying I 100% believe that Shives's interpretation of that passage is correct- it would require more research before I could form an opinion about it- but what I'm really astonished at is the way I was carefully trained to read the bible so that it would never even occur to me to think such things about Jesus' actions.

Back when I was a "good Christian," I attended many a bible study where we addressed the issue of "what God did in this passage sounds really bad- let's figure out how to convince ourselves that it wasn't actually bad." And it worked. I learned all sorts of clever arguments, ways to call good evil and evil good. And now it's been YEARS since I quit believing that everything God/Jesus did in the bible is by definition right, and I decided it's okay to just say "no, this was bad, and I'm not going to believe any twisted reason you invent about why it wasn't actually bad." (For example, when God commands genocide. In order to believe that everything God did in the bible is good, you have to be heartless.) It's been YEARS, and I watched this video today and this is the first time I've ever thought about "hey, those pigs belonged to someone, and Jesus just killed them all? WTF?"

I learned how to read the bible like a good evangelical. And I'm angry.

7. I'm a black Southerner. I had to go abroad to see a statue celebrating black liberation. (posted August 16) "But the fact that the national debate still centers on whether pro-slavery monuments should be taken down, not on how many anti-racist monuments should be built, speaks volumes."

8. The U.S. Capitol has at least three times as many statues of Confederate figures as it does of black people (posted August 16)

9. On the Vandalism at the Boston Holocaust Memorial (posted August 16)

10. Cover Story: Facing Our Legacy of Lynching (posted August 18) [content note: description of lynching] "But in America, he says, 'We don’t talk about lynching. Worse, we’ve created the counter-narrative that says we have nothing about which we should be ashamed. Our past is romantic and glorious.'"

Blogaround

An adorable fluffy white kitten stares at you. Image source.

1. Praying Through The Saints (posted July 1) "For a long time I thought this was true; that Catholics prayed to the saints, but it’s not true."

2. Conservatives Suddenly Discover a Right to Privacy (posted July 1) "For more than 50 years now, the right wing has raged against the idea that there is any such thing as a right to privacy in the Constitution."

3. A note on The Toast (posted July 1) Hillary Clinton wrote a post for The Toast. Cool!

4. Who Blames the Victim? (posted June 24) "Proponents of individualizing values tend to see a dyad of victim and perpetrator (a victim is hurt, a perpetrator does the hurting). Proponents of binding values, however, may see behaviors as immoral even when there is no obvious victim — for example, the “impure” act of premarital sex or the “disloyal” act of flag burning — and may even feel that doing the right thing sometimes requires hurting others (as with honor killings, to pick an extreme example)."

5. This tweet:

Calvinism and Prosperity Gospel are the pessimistic and optimistic sides of the same theological coin.

— Samantha Field (@samanthapfield) 2016年6月20日

6. The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Fetal Imaginings (posted June 30) "But we’re all clear that people don’t just go out and have third trimester abortions, right?"

7. This is why we have women-only spaces, and why I don't want to hear your complaints (posted May 24) "Despite being force-fed the narrative of danger that, for example, warns us against speaking to strange men lest we somehow give them the 'wrong impression', women are also demonised whenever we express concern or caution about being alone with men we don't know. To do so is to express the most violent of misandries against the innocent, unassuming gentlemen who would never, not in a million years, how dare you even suggest it you vile she-beast, ever do anything to harm a woman."

8. Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Dies at 87 (posted July 2)

9. Why Everyone In Aladdin Is Awful - Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder (posted June 27) "When Aladdin shows up at the palace in disguise, unannounced, uninvited, from a country that no one has ever heard of, the sultan, unlike just about any other dad on the planet, opens his home in the hopes that this stranger will hook up with his daughter."

10. After Settlement, Gay Users Will Finally Be Able to Use ChristianMingle.com (posted July 2)

11. Do Progressives Hate American History? (posted July 4) "Now yes, I’d known about slavery, and I’d known it was evil, but I hadn’t realized how deeply it was defended, or how little the Union soldiers and Northern whites I’d been taught to revere as liberators and heroes actually cared about slaves’ wellbeing. I hadn’t realized that our country was literally built on slavery, that the prosperity I’d been taught to admire in our early nation came fundamentally at the price of slaves’ sweat and tears."

12. WATCH: Sir Ian McKellen delivers an inspiring message to ShanghaiPRIDE (posted June 20) Hooray!

13. Everything Wrong With Fox’s ‘X-Men’ Billboard And The Media’s Response To It (posted June 6) "Those unfamiliar with the comics (read: most viewers driving or walking by the posters) didn’t see the culmination of a hard-fought battle between formidable Marvel mutants. They’d be unlikely to wonder if Mystique might give Apocalypse a run for his money before this image, or if she kicks his ass in some subsequent scene. Instead, they just saw a hulking, powerful male figure easily dominating a smaller, strangled female figure—with the reinforcing tagline, “Only the strong will survive.” And in a country where every day three or more women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends, such copy strongly implies that she’s a goner."

14. 105 Trans Women On American TV: A History and Analysis (posted April 28)

15. The worst ISIS attack in days is the one the world probably cares least about (posted July 4) "For years now, we have become almost numb to the violence in Baghdad: Deadly car bombings there conjure up no hashtags, no Facebook profile pictures with the Iraqi flag, and no Western newspaper front pages of the victims' names and life stories, and they attract only muted global sympathy."

16. Video Shows Grisly Aftermath of Fatal Shooting of Black Man in Minnesota (posted July 7) Oh my god. #BlackLivesMatter