Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Film review: Cover-Up (2025) (December 29) [content note: descriptions of genocide] "It is must-see viewing for anyone who wishes to know more about the murder, war crimes, rape, torture, and other abuses committed by the US government and its military, many of which were revealed because of the dogged work of Hersh."

2. From xkcd: Anyone Else Here and High Altitude Cooking Instructions

3. The biggest downside of marrying someone from another country... (December 29, 28-minute video) This vlogger is a US citizen married to a Chinese man, and she is trying to help him get a US tourist visa so he can come visit her family. Spoilers, he doesn't get it. The interview process for a US tourist visa is about proving that you really do just want to take a short trip there, and you're not planning to overstay your visa and be an illegal immigrant- and the evidence they want to see is that you have a well-established life in your own country- being married to a US citizen is a strike against him, actually. Lots of couples are in this situation, where the foreign spouse comes from a poor background, such that it's almost impossible to convince the US visa interviewer that you genuinely like to live in your own country and you're not going to decide that being an illegal immigrant would be a step up.

This is the kind of thing that radicalized me. Seriously, there are Americans who are not allowed by the US government to bring their spouse home on a trip to meet their family- not because they've done anything wrong, but because the US judges the foreign spouse as not having sure enough ties to their home country. 

My husband and I are lucky that this didn't happen to him. He got a US tourist visa before we got married, and now has a good track record of going there for a vacation and then leaving, they like to see that.

4. Natasha Romanoff: My Unlikely Ace Icon (January 2) "Nat is perennially single and, unfortunately, incapable of having children of her own. But she has a good relationship with Clint and Laura, and the way their daughter greets her suggests that she has also provided at least some childcare. Though we don’t get a lot of details on the relationship, it seems that Nat is valued by the Bartons and perhaps even loved."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. In Parents' Own Words: Documenting the Stories of Separated Families in Honduras (December 18) "One mother, who had been deported without being given the opportunity to bring her two month-old child, a US citizen, back with her, could talk of little more than her frantic desperation to have her newborn baby back."

2. Trump calls Somali immigrants ‘garbage’ as US reportedly targets Minnesota community (December 2) I guess I didn't post anything about this when it happened a few weeks ago, because he always says all manner of horrible racist bigoted things, I can't possibly pay attention to all of them.

But, this one was pretty bad. Calling a whole group of people "garbage."

And part of me wants to be like "how does he get away with calling himself Christian- the bible says all people are made in the image of God- to call people 'garbage' goes against Christian teaching" but like, come on, that ship has sailed, the MAGAs are no longer even trying to pretend that being Christian has anything to do with, like, following the bible or the teachings of Jesus. Everybody knows that's not what it means.

3. Capitol riot 'does not happen' without Trump, Jack Smith told Congress (December 31) "Accounts from Republicans willing to stand up against the falsehood that the election had been stolen 'even though it could mean trouble for them' created what Smith described as the 'most powerful' evidence against Trump."

‘This is not a peaceful protest!’: A visual archive of Jan. 6, 2021, through the lenses of those who were there. (January 4)

4. The Artists Are Not Obeying In Advance (January 1) "The administration is threatening to sue these artists for millions, and no doubt they will try to find ways to intimidate and defund any organizations with whom they might be affiliated. But that won’t stop them. Artists, musicians, writers, film makers and performers of all kinds are rebelling, one of the most profound forms of resistance to a repressive regime."

5. 'We are going to run the country,' Trump says after strike on Venezuela (January 3)

Photos: Aftermath of strikes in Venezuela (January 3)

The Dems (January 3) "Too many people on social media are saying that the Democrats are all falling in line with Trump’s Venezuelan misadventure. That’s not true."

Miami mayor calls for Trump to 'immediately' reinstate TPS for Venezuelans (January 4) "'The instability unfolding in Venezuela today makes it even clearer that the country remains unsafe for people to return. No one should be forced back into chaos and uncertainty,' Higgins wrote in a statement. 'They have built lives here, contributed to our community, and deserve the security to remain while their homeland regains stability. This is not just a matter of policy — it is a matter of basic human dignity and safety.'"

6. DHS pauses immigration applications for an additional 20 countries (January 2) "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, in a memo released Thursday, said it would pause the review of all pending applications for visas, green cards, citizenship or asylum from immigrants from the additional countries."

Blogaround

1. What does it mean that AI is “remixing existing work”? (January 13) "What does that even mean?"

2. Zendaya and Tom Holland Are Engaged! (January 6) 

3. With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘RedNote’ (January 13) "As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name."

I wrote this comment about it on Pillowfort:

Lollll I'm in China so I have to weigh in on this. (I'm American, my husband is Chinese.) I haven't used xiaohongshu but my husband has it on his phone and has used it very occasionally.

So last night my husband hands me his phone and shows me how his whole xiaohongshu feed is all Americans- "tiktok refugees." And then I get to work this morning and my Chinese colleagues are talking about "why are there a bunch of foreigners on xiaohongshu all of a sudden?"

I find the whole thing extremely funny!

I've typically seen xiaohongshu described as a Chinese equivalent to Instagram. It's known for having mostly women users, and people use it to post about their lifestyle/ travel/ things like that. (The linked article does a good job describing it.) My husband says it's mainly used by the people who have enough money to travel and who live in the biggest cities in China, so it doesn't show what the "average" Chinese person's life is like.

When we wanted to take our daughter to get pictures taken, we searched for a local photographer on xiaohongshu. It's useful for that because businesses post there to advertise. And one time we took a cruise to Japan, and we were looking for information on what to do in the various Japanese cities we docked at- we searched on xiaohongshu and found posts by other Chinese tourists, showing interesting things you can do in the area near the dock. Really useful and practical, with maps and photos. Xiaohongshu is good for things like that.

And over the past few days that this has been going on, my husband has been showing me a lot of videos of Americans talking about the things they've learned about normal life for Chinese users of xiaohongshu. Americans are finding out that the cost of living is SO MUCH LOWER in China than in the US. Chinese people finding out about frankly dystopian aspects of US society, like school lunch debt, kids in school saying the pledge of allegiance every day, people in the midst of a medical emergency asking everyone to NOT call an ambulance because it would cost thousands of dollars... and so on.

I think this is great. Just normal people talking about their normal lives. To show you what is really going on, which isn't like what you see in the news or the way politicians talk about China. Seeing that the problems we have in the US aren't inevitable- there are other countries which simply don't have those problems. A better world is possible.

In some of the videos from American tiktok users talking about what they learned about China, though, I'm seeing them making statements which very much oversimplify the situation. (Which is not their fault I guess- it's their first time finding out about these things, so obviously they don't understand all the details.) For example, talking about how in China you can buy a home... uh... what... in reality, it's SO EXPENSIVE to buy a home in big cities in China. We're talking about a husband and wife getting their parents on both sides to contribute their life savings, that's how expensive it is, and that's seen as normal. (And there's nonsense gender roles involved in this too- people talk about how a man has to own an apartment or else no woman would agree to marry him, ugh. In practical terms though I think both partners are contributing to the cost- but people always *say* it's a requirement for the man.) 

And also, it's normal for a mortgage to be WAYYY HIGHER than the price of renting an equivalent apartment. I was super confused when I heard this is the case in Shanghai- isn't a mortgage supposed to be lower than renting, because when you rent you're also paying for the landlord to do maintenance if necessary? That's what the typical financial advice in the US says. But in China people view buying a home as an investment. People will buy an apartment and just leave it empty because the money you could make on rent is not really that much in comparison. Personally I feel like it's a bad idea to buy an apartment as an investment, because what if the market then goes down? 

(I mean, the housing market in Shanghai is absurd though- maybe this is not true of smaller cities.)

But I think the American tiktok users were excited about how China doesn't require homeowners to pay property tax every year. And Chinese users were super confused about the concept of property tax. And like, somehow that message mutated into "people in China can buy homes and everything is wonderful."

And the cost of living is much lower in China than in the US, and for someone like me who works as an engineer, that's great- my salary is lower than what I would get in the US, but it's much higher than the average salary for an average person in Shanghai. So because the average salary is so low, I'm not sure how much it really *helps* that the cost of living is low (in absolute terms compared to US dollars). 

But anyway, I think it would be great if these Americans stick around on xiaohongshu and keep learning more about the world.

4. Democrats Rail Against "GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act" (January 16) "What followed was a series of Democratic representatives hammering the same point home with fiery rhetoric. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the notion that the bill was about protecting women and girls, stating, 'Republicans, who have voted consistently against the Violence Against Women Act, who have taken the rights of all women to have control over their own body, who as women are bleeding out in parking lots, now want to pretend today that they care about women… And why? To open up genital inspection on little girls across this country in the name of attacking trans girls. We have two words. Not today.'"

See, THIS is what I want to see. Democrats actually taking a stand for trans people. Normally what I see in news stories in Republicans taking a strong stand that trans people are disgusting sexual predators, and Democrats kinda waffling around like "uh I don't know, maybe it's politically beneficial to throw trans people under the bus?" and "yeah I guess I'm not really supposed to say this but I do feel uncomfortable with my daughters playing sports with biological males." Come on! 

This is a clear moral issue, not something to be embarrassed about. Trans people are just normal people who just want to go to the bathroom like everybody else. For sports, let's be reasonable about it and base it on actual scientific evidence, not just ban trans people entirely. It is DISGUSTING that Republicans are spending so much energy attacking this tiny group of people.

5. 'Concerns About A Stronger-Than-Expected Economy' Is A Real CNN Thing We Just Read (January 12) 

6. Resentment vs. gratitude: from parking spaces to ASL (January 14) "I suppose they can shoehorn this into the generic category of a “my tax dollars are being spent on other people who aren’t me, personally” complaint."

So, some right-wing weirdos think there shouldn't be ASL interpreters on tv during the broadcasts about the fires. I mean... this is so absurd, but I feel like I kind of understand it, because I grew up around Republicans and they often made little comments about how exhausting it is that we constantly have to be "politically correct" about some new thing. (Yeah back then it was called "politically correct" instead of "woke.") The logic goes like this: The way things are now is fine for regular people. And now apparently we have to change it, we're not allowed to say certain things, we have to hear "press 2 for Spanish" on the phone, it's like there's always another group we have to "be inclusive" of, and it's just too much. All these things are meaningless- they're just things that we're told we have to do now, otherwise we're not "politically correct" but there's no actual reason for any of it. Just a bunch of inconveniences to regular people. Enough is enough.

And then I found out, those things that we labelled as "politically-correct nonsense"- those things actually matter for people who are affected by them. They are real people. This isn't just some pointless contest about who can be the most politically correct. 

The argument only makes sense if you think deaf people don't actually benefit from having ASL interpreters on tv. Or if you think that they matter so little compared to "regular people" that they should just have to rely on imperfect closed-captioning, in order to not potentially inconvenience any "regular people" by reminding us of their existence. Once you realize that they are real people and ASL helps them a lot, the whining from these MAGA types comes across as obviously ridiculous. 

And, I mean, when I was a child it was understandable that I bought into that, because my Republican role models were very negative about efforts to "be inclusive", and I had to believe that they had a good reason for that- but if you're an adult and you still can't grasp that people who are different from you are people... I don't know what to tell you. That's a YOU problem.

7. Radon (January 13) "When was the planet under this house built?"

I also liked the Chess Zoo.

8. Flags to be raised for Trump's inauguration, despite half-staff order for Carter's death (January 15) What is this nonsense

9. Immigrant workers are helping investigate labor abuses. Will Trump let them stay? (January 15) "'Employers look at you completely differently when you have a social security number,' he says. 'In every sense you feel safe. You feel comfortable. You are free to go anywhere.'"

This is really interesting! I had never heard about this before. The US government gives legal protections to undocumented immigrants who are helping give evidence about employers breaking the law. This is really clever, because it's a big problem that businesses can get away with mistreating undocumented workers, who feel like they can't report it because they'll be deported. 

And it shows that maybe it's easier to give them legal status than one might think. That's great. I support all immigrants.

10. Trump coverage needs to change and here’s how (December 31) "'You’ve got to stop covering him like he’s just another politician, with a different agenda,' Johnston told me recently. 'He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.'"

11. Lifeboat Capitalism (January 9) "If the term 'crime against humanity' has any meaning, it must apply to very wealthy people who—knowing that their actions are causing a climate change crisis that will devastate future generations and destroy hundreds of millions of lives—chose not to stop those actions, but instead to undertake a systematic campaign of lies and propaganda in order to continue making themselves money. Is there anything, really, more contemptible than this?"

Blogaround

1. The tragedy of the murdered missionaries (June 12) "So when the State Department tells you to stay the F out, maybe THAT is God speaking to you."

This is a blog post written by someone who grew up as a missionary kid. I relate to some of this because I was very influenced by evangelical missions ideology back in the day- it was a huge factor in my decision to move to China. The thing that strikes me, reading this now, is I'm realizing I've always had the assumption that the best way to help poor people in other countries is to go there yourself. And not as some shallow "poverty tourism" thing, but really give up your whole affluent lifestyle and dedicate yourself to living in their culture, submitting yourself to learning a foreign language, truly internalizing the idea that you're not better than anyone else. That would certainly be the biggest sacrifice on the part of the missionary- and therefore I had the unquestioned assumption that it would do the most good. But, wait, actually that's kinda self-centered, isn't it? The idea that "this is the most difficult thing that *I* can do, therefore it must give *them* the most benefit." Maybe that's completely wrong. Maybe giving up your American lifestyle doesn't necessarily help more than, say, staying in the US and raising money for local people there who know what's what better than you do.

Also in her blog post, the whole part about how the US government issued travel warnings telling US citizens NOT to go to Haiti. Reminds me of when the US government issued travel warnings about China, during the zero-covid times, but I stayed here anyway...

2. Kamala Harris Releases First Presidential Campaign Ad (July 26) Oh I like this.

3. China Makes More Films Accessible for Blind People (July 29) "Audio description — often referred to as 'barrier-free movies' in China — is a separate soundtrack that plays simultaneously during a movie, describing the action as it is happening for blind and visually impaired viewers."

4. Trump tells supporters they ‘won’t have to vote’ again if he wins (July 29) What on EARTH. 

5. Brad Pitt Distantly Related to Barack Obama? (July 24) "The president shares an 18th-century Virginia ancestor with the superstar actor-producer. Edwin Hickman, who died in 1769, connects Obama and Pitt as ninth cousins."

Also from Snopes: Las Vegas Sphere Showed 'Blue Screen of Death'? (July 19) I saw this picture on social media and thought it was real- turns out it is fake. So, don't believe everything you see on the internet.

6. OnlySky relaunches with a focus on the future (July 28) 

7. Stephen Nedoroscik COMES THROUGH on pommel horse in U.S. bronze medal effort | Paris Olympics (July 30) Holy crap this is incredible.

8. This post about "Iron Man 2." (July 30) "It was TENSE AS SHIT, and I get the impression that the people making the movie weren't entirely aware of that?"

9. A Halfhearted Critique of Flag Culture (July 31) "It's not just the attention to or investment in flags, but the centrality of flags as a basis of activity, to the point of putting flags first, community second. These priorities become clear once you've seen people autocratically announcing flag designs for demographics that the designer isn't part of or communities that don't even exist yet (or may never exist)—as if declaring 'the flag' on other people's behalf is some kind of friendly supportive behavior rather than something presumptuous, misleading, and rude."

Blogaround

1. Psychology of a Hero: MOON KNIGHT and Dissociative Identity Disorder (2022) "And so many systems saw 'Moon Knight' and said I feel seen. This is what it's like." (29-minute video)

2. 2024 Total Eclipse: Where & When (via) 

And more on the eclipse:

Satellite views of solar eclipse 2024: See the moon's shadow race across North America (video, photos) (April 10) This photo is incredible!

Photo of the earth, with a huge dark spot on it where the eclipse is.

And from xkcd: Types of Eclipse Photo (April 8) Love this!

3. Bootlicking Calvinism Is The Unfunny Kind Of Calvin + Hobbes (April 8) "You might expect, then, that good Calvinists would agree with that latter sentiment. They might not appreciate the punks and anarchists who spray paint “ACAB” on subway walls but, logically, it is a statement that they must regard as true. If all people are sinful bastards, and police are a subset within “all people,” then all police, as people, must also be sinful bastards. If all people cannot be trusted to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, then it would be foolish to claim that police officers are somehow, inexplicably, an exception to this universal rule."

4. Censorship: How Does It Work? (January 27, via) "Every Chinese person I know seems to have a lot of skill in reading the news between the lines to figure out what’s actually happening through the bullshit."

5. O.J. Simpson dies of cancer at age 76, his family says (April 11)

6. What I’ve Learned as the First Out Trans Division 1 Men’s Athlete (2023, via) "'It saved my life,' he said after a few heavy breaths. 'You saved my life. And I needed you to know.'"

7. What LakePointe Church and Pastor Josh Howerton Think about Women (April 12) This will only be of interest if you know who Josh Howerton is. He's a pastor who recently got a lot of attention on social media for making a "joke" about how a wife should do whatever her husband wants sexually on "his" wedding night. Well I'm sure you will be *shocked* to find out that it's not the first time he's said disrespectful things about women. Sheila Gregoire has the receipts.

Blogaround

1. First Amendment protects satanic display in Iowa, but GOP lawmaker took abuse for saying so (December 12, via) Yessss, Representative Dunwell is saying that he *personally* does not like the satanic display in the Iowa State Capitol, but by law we have freedom of religion and that means the government cannot and should not decide which religious displays are okay and which are not. This is my favorite part: "The display is an inanimate object that has no real power in and of itself. We have nothing to fear."

And then an update on that: If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine (December 15) 

2. Laudatory categories (December 13) "In politics, people are quite committed to the idea that their own political ideology is the good stuff, and the stuff that isn’t good doesn’t count."

3. Real vs Artificial Christmas Trees: Which is Killing Us Faster? (December 15) "Overall, those are the reasons why most sustainability experts say that a real tree is better for the environment than a plastic tree." Yes, really great to have actual numbers to attach to questions like this. I think people's tendency is to think "real trees are wasteful because you only use it a few weeks and then throw it away, artificial trees are sustainable" but that's not *automatically* true- you have to do the math. 

I saw a similar site recently which calculates whether your carbon footprint is bigger for using disposable or cloth diapers for your baby- it depends on a lot of factors! Reusable is not automatically "more sustainable."

And I've also seen discussion in some mom groups about "I bought a big sack with my child's name on it, to put her Christmas gifts in so we don't need wrapping paper. Wrapping paper is so wasteful." Well, I don't know if buying a bag that you use for many years is actually better or not- you have to do the math. Depends on how many years you use it, and how much wrapping paper (and what kind of wrapping paper) you would have used otherwise, etc.

4. Meghan Trainor gets candid about painful intercourse and vaginismus diagnosis (April 27) "I thought that every woman walking around was always in pain during and after sex. I was like, ‘Doc, are you telling me that I could have sex and not feel a single bit of pain?’" Oh my goodness that's so real. 

I missed this news when it happened back in April. Glad to see more people are talking about vaginismus.

Also this: Meghan Trainor’s comments about painful sex helped me realise I had vaginismus (May 10)

5. Greedflation: corporate profiteering ‘significantly’ boosted global prices, study shows (December 7, via) Recently I've heard people talking about "greedflation" which means companies are raising prices and causing inflation just because they want more profits and not because their costs are actually higher- and to me this explanation doesn't add up. Wouldn't the market correct for that? If that's really what's happening, wouldn't it create an opportunity for other companies to swoop in and set their own prices more reasonably, and attract all the customers away from these "greedflation" companies? So I didn't really believe that "greedflation" was a real thing.

(Also this seems to be a US thing. It's not happening in China. So I don't have direct experience about it.)

Well this article has some actual data to back it up. Specifically, the actual numbers show that profits have grown much faster than wages and other business costs. So, I guess there is something to this "greedflation" concept- though I still feel like there's a lot that doesn't add up. Why is this happening *now* specifically, when surely companies would always like to raise their prices and get higher profits? (Like this is talked about as if suddenly these companies had this amazing idea that they had totally never thought of before, "hey let's raise prices for no reason, just because we want to.") And why isn't the market fixing the problem on its own?

(Maybe in the long run, the market will fix this, but in the short term this happened because of the societal disruption caused by the pandemic?)

6. How Can This Sudoku Be Real? (December 11) 1-hour-19-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, very interesting ruleset. I like this one because you have to spend a lot of time thinking about what's even possible under the ruleset, before you can even start the sudoku.

7. More Chinese Fathers Helping, Yet ‘Widowed Parenting’ Persists (December 18) "The data shows a significant disparity in caregiving roles: About 80% of children are dropped off and picked up from school by their mothers or grandparents, while only 7% primarily receive this support from their fathers."

And these ones also from Sixth Tone:

Amid Rescue Efforts in Quake-Hit Gansu, a Race Against Time and Cold (December 19) 

Meet Rural China’s ‘Wonder Woman’ (December 19)

8. The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. (November 22, via) "Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of 'divisive concepts' about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers."

9. Jonathan Majors Guilty of Harassment and Assault (December 18) [content note: domestic violence] He's the actor that plays the villain Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe- but, not anymore.

10. Thailand to legalize same-sex marriage (December 13, via) Great!

11. They just won a $148M verdict against Giuliani. Now they’re suing him again. (December 18) "Three days after a jury delivered the massive decision over Giuliani’s false claims that the pair engaged in fraud in the 2020 election, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss filed a new lawsuit Monday seeking to block Giuliani from repeating those allegations — as he repeatedly did during and after last week’s trial."

12. A nation where there is no refuge to seek (December 19) "The sick and cynical strategy that opponents of reproductive freedom will use is definitely going to be to blame doctors for failing to perform medically necessary abortions, while refusing to at any point withdraw the threat of prosecution."

Also from Lawyers, Guns, Money: Exceptions to abortion bans are a fraud (December 12) "'I think it’s the clearest message you could have possibly received from an anti-abortion state that they never meant the medical exemption to mean anything at all,' said Duane."

Blogaround

Loki and Mobius. Image from season 2 episode 2 of "Loki." Image source.

1. Therapist Reacts to WRECK-IT RALPH (September 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

2. Our Testers Have Requested This Video! (October 3) "There is more jiggory pokery we can perform here." 1-hour-0-minute sudoku solve video.

And this one: Who Is The REAL "Top G"? (September 30) 1-hour-16-minute sudoku solve video.

3. Second malaria vaccine to win global approval is cheaper and easier to make (October 3, via) [content note: big photo of a mosquito] This is great news!

4. Why mRNA Vaccine Researchers Won the Nobel Prize & Why We Can’t Forget Novavax (October 5) "The takeaway is that mRNA vaccines are incredible technology that not only saved millions of lives but may go on to save millions, or billions more as that technology is applied to other therapies."

5. Eminem - The Monster ft. Rihanna (Audio) (2013) I like this song for ex-evangelical reasons. "You're trying to save me, stop holding your breath."

6. Why some people prefer chestfeeding to breastfeeding – and no, they’re not trying to erase women (September 2) Really cool article that features a trans man who got pregnant, gave birth, and chestfed his child.

7. Homeschooling: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 9) 24-minute video from John Oliver.

Blogaround

1. The kingdom of heaven is like: “We Keep People Alive”: As Summers Get Deadlier, a Tiny Church Is Fighting Back (September 21, via) "On June 1, they set up a 'Cooling Center' sandwich board sign out front on Southern Avenue, and soon, 15 to 25 unsheltered, exhausted, and often addicted visitors were showing up each day, frequently with dogs."

2. Genetically Modified Pig’s Heart Is Transplanted Into a Second Patient (September 22) "The heart transplanted into Mr. Faucette came from a pig that had received 10 genetic modifications. Scientists removed three pig genes that cause rapid rejection of pig organs by the human immune system, while inserting six human genes that allow the immune system to accept the organ."

3. Penguins, Postcards & Preservation: Antarctica's Hidden Postal Gem! (September 25, via) The southernmost post office in the world, surrounded by penguins.

4. An Attempt At One Of The All Time Greats (September 27) 1-hour-22-minute meidjuluk/fillomino solve video. If you don't know what that is, don't worry, Simon will explain it.

5. Texas’ ban on certain drag shows is unconstitutional, federal judge says (September 26, via) "'The Court sees no way to read the provisions of SB 12 without concluding that a large amount of constitutionally-protected conduct can and will be wrapped up in the enforcement of SB 12,' the ruling reads. 'It is not unreasonable to read SB 12 and conclude that activities such as cheerleading, dancing, live theater, and other common public occurrences could possibly become a civil or criminal violation.'"

6. MEGAMIND and Nice Guy™ Syndrome (2022) 34-minute video from Cinema Therapy. I love the movie "Megamind" so much.

And also this one: Villain Therapy: LOKI (2021)

7. The Hollywood Writers Strike Proved That Collective Action Works (September 27, via) "They thought the general public wouldn’t support the writers. They were wrong. They thought they could starve the writers out. Once again, they were wrong."

8. What’s the worst job? (September 22) "Human beings are not adapted to microgravity and high radiation. We’ve got enough data now on the consequences of long-term living in space (where long-term is a matter of months — no one is going to be able to live their lives in space)."

9. I hate this article from "Christianity Today": Shannon Harris Wasn’t Content with Being a Purity Culture Stagehand (September 28) It's a review of Shannon Harris (ex-wife of Joshua Harris)'s new book, "The Woman They Wanted," which is about how she was required to give up her own dreams in order to fit the church's idea of what a good pastor's wife is supposed to be. The review starts out well, talking about how it was wrong that the church forced Harris to fit this role. 

But then it starts getting into how Harris has now come to an incorrect view of Christianity. When I say "incorrect," I mean incorrect by Christianity Today's standards. Like, oh now Shannon Harris is advising people to connect "to our own wisdom, to nature and our bodies, to our own fulfillment in work and pleasure, and to our own ways of being and doing." This is, apparently, according to Christianity Today, wrong.

So... basically, what Christianity Today wants to say is, it was wrong that the church forced Harris into a very narrow view of how she was supposed to live. It was wrong not because it was narrow, but because it wasn't the right narrow view. Instead, she is supposed to believe whatever narrow view Christianity Today has about what "the gospel" means.

Ugh, why can't you just let people live their lives? Why can't you just let people tell their own stories, and find meaning in the things that feel meaningful to them? 

Why is it that good Christians can only support survivors up to a certain point- yes, we can listen to them talk about the bad things that happened to them, yes we can agree that those things were wrong, but then when the survivor starts to talk about how their beliefs have changed as a result, oh no, stop, we have to write articles to warn people away from listening to this heresy! Come on.

It's like I said in my post When Christians Say "We're Sorry":

If Christians really are sorry, they know that people need to heal on their own terms.

But of course, like I said earlier, believing in hell screws this all up. Because how sorry can you really be, and how much freedom can you really allow a victim to have, when you believe in a God who won't care about that on judgment day? When you believe in a God who doesn't care that church people hurt this person, and for their own mental and emotional health, they never went to church again... when you believe in a God who says you're out if you don't believe these specific doctrines about Jesus- no excuses.

How sorry can you really be when you worship a God who puts "the gospel" above caring for victims?

How sorry can you really be if you still believe you have all the right answers and everybody better listen to you?

Anyway, I'm definitely interested in reading Shannon Harris's book.

Blogaround

1. Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta] (2020) "More broadly, this also positions Camp Green Lake's mission as deliberately individualistic, in opposition to collaboration and teamwork. The hard work of hole digging needs to be undertaken alone in order for prisoners to supposedly 'learn their lesson.' This means that the 'lesson' they're supposed to be learning is explicitly not anything to do with cooperation, coordination, or learning how to get along and work well with others. Otherwise, if these skills/values were compatible with 'building character' as the authorities understand it, then there should have been no reason to object to prisoners working together to dig the same amount of holes." (An analysis of the movie "Holes.")

Also from Coyote (osteophage): The Violence of Fate (or, How To Tell the True Kind of Lie) [Meta] (2022) "Reflecting on this helps to articulate my understanding of the concept of 'fate.' Becoming legible in terms of 'fate' requires highlighting that an outcome is unresponsive to any attempt to change it. It is something that happens to matter what you do, what you choose, or what you want. It is a way of conceptualizing events to say that your will—desire, permission, consent—fundamentally does not matter. In this way, it requires the capacity for violence."

2. ‘Too much to bear.’ The incalculable emotional toll of the Maui wildfires (August 19) "At least 114 people have died in the western Maui wildfires and more than 1,000 people remain missing."

3. This tweet: 

I was talking to my dad about those 1-10 pain scales they use at doctors' offices and how they don't really work and my dad, an engineer, said they should have a standardized needle they stab you with as a benchmark and tell you, "This is 5."

— Abby Denton's favorite Digimon is Koemon (@mizabitha) August 18, 2023

Wow I love the way this guy thinks. Remember when I blogged about the 1-10 pain scale and what it actually means?

4. The Queer Vibes of Guardians of the Galaxy (August 19) 2-hour-15-minute video from Jessie Gender. "I relate to [Nebula] so hard as a trans person, because both of us have had our bodies literally forced to be something that we didn't want them to be."

Also, I love this song from "Guardians of the Galaxy 3": Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - Dog Days Are Over 

5. A Brand New Puzzle Type - This Is LOVELY (August 12) 31-minute video. Wow this is a cool little puzzle. I didn't understand the rules at first- I thought you were supposed to put a number in every box, like a fillomino (and that wouldn't be possible). No, you don't put any numbers in at all, it's just about dividing the grid up into regions such that the given numbers are in valid places.

6. Meet ‘creation care,’ the evangelical substitute for environmental activism (July 13) "As part of their self-declared role as ambassadors, evangelicals pretend that Jesus is very nicely allowing his most beloved and trusted followers to manage things for him in his absence, like parents allowing small children to help with light housework so they feel involved."

The Slacktivist has also written about how "creation care" is seen as "controversial" in evangelical culture, because it's "liberal" or something:
The Late Great Planet Earth (2017)
Climate change (2005)

When I was an evangelical... typically nobody discussed the question "should we protect the environment?" in a serious way, but there was a lot of mocking of environmentalists- which taught me that Christians aren't supposed to care about the environment, but never gave any reasons why. There was 1 time though, I was at an InterVarsity conference, and we did a bible study about why "creation care" is important. And a lot of us kind of responded like "I always thought Christians shouldn't care about this, but... but yeah, of course we should protect the environment." Like if you actually think about it, there aren't any good arguments to support "let's trash the planet, it doesn't matter" even though we all had been implicitly taught that's what Christians are supposed to believe. (Possible arguments given are: Jesus is going to come back any minute now, so no need to care about the future; the bible says the world was perfect when God created it, and just getting worse and worse since then, and there's nothing we can do to change that; climate change isn't real. None of these arguments really work, though.)

7. Customers wing it, as fried chicken store drums up crowd (August 20) A Popeye's restaurant opened in Shanghai.

8. What put Hurricane Hilary on a collision course with California? (August 20, via) "For at least the last 165 years, these conditions have kept California hurricane-free, experts say."

Blogaround

"A man carries a child through a flooded street in Beijing, Aug. 1, 2023. Thomas Peter/Reuters via IC" Image and caption source.

1. There has been really bad flooding in Beijing recently because of Typhoon Doksuri. Here are some links from Sixth Tone about it:

After the Rains, Beijing Residents Begin Counting Their Losses (August 2)
China Floods: What Is the Cause and Why Has Rescue Been So Difficult? (August 3)
Collage: Floods in Beijing and Hebei (August 2)
Tales of Survival From Submerged Beijing, Hebei (August 3) [video]

Also from Sixth Tone: 

In China’s Dance Schools, a Dangerous Obsession With Weight Loss (August 3) "Most children applying to art schools now need to have legs not 12 cm, but 17-19 cm longer than their torsos, said Xue Ping, one of the teachers at Feeling Dance. They’re also dieting harder than ever."

Hangzhou To Pay Parents 25,000 Yuan For Third Child From September (August 8) China is very concerned about the low birth rate, and is inventing all kinds of incentives to get people to have more kids. "A mother in Hangzhou with one child told Sixth Tone that the new policy does not change her mind about not having another child, citing the high cost of education." Well, yeah.

2. Introducing Jetpack AI Assistant in WordPress.com (June 6, via) Oh geez, Wordpress has some new feature that will use AI to write an entire blog post for you. :/

3. On Orientation as a Compatibility Gate (August 1) "This view of orientation as a compatibility gate is a part of why I do not identify with orientation types other than sexual orientation. It’s not that I’m endlessly compatible with all people on all other fronts — certainly not — but my compatibility constraints around socializing, partnership, and touch do not follow the kind of patterns that lend themselves to this kind of shorthand."

4. Breaking Down the Controversy Over Florida's New Slavery Curriculum (July 28) "In a statement to TIME, the College Board said: 'We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans. Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.'"

5. The Trans Good Doctor Episode (June 28) 54-minute video. This is about the trans episode of the show "The Good Doctor." ("The Good Doctor" is a show about an autistic doctor, and I've never watched an episode but I've seen a few clips and I am not really a fan of how it portrays autism...) I have seen people on Twitter mocking the show's assumption that an autistic person would be totally unable to understand anything that doesn't fit into the gender binary... like... umm, in reality there is a HUGE overlap between the autistic community and the trans community. Autistic people are all about pointing out when societal expectations simply make no sense- and indeed, it makes no sense that society expects people's interests/abilities/personality/clothing/appearance to be determined by what kind of genitals they have.

Anyway, though, in this video, Youtuber Lily Simpson goes through the entire plot of this episode, and actually it turns out to be pretty good in terms of how it handles trans issues. 

6. A Weird and WONDERFUL Ruleset (August 5) 1-hour-12-minute sudoku solve video.

7. Overworked and Underpaid, VFX Workers Vote to Unionize at Marvel (August 7, via) "While fellow below-the-line workers in such divisions as costumes and wardrobe; hair and makeup; lighting, props and paint; and script supervision have been historically championed by IATSE, underappreciated VFX professionals have been unable to claim benefits such as paid overtime and health care, and have been at the mercy of pronounced labor shortages and managers’ unrealistic deadlines — despite the workers’ increasing indispensability within popular culture."

Blogaround

Chinese movie poster for "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" [蜘蛛侠：纵横宇宙] Image source.

1. My 2023 Reader Survey will be open until June 19. Go take it if you haven't yet. :)

2. A week in the life of playing NEBULA in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (May 25) This is a really cool behind-the-scenes video.

3. Glasses On, China’s First Civilian Astronaut Takes a Giant Leap (May 30) "As he introduced the three astronauts, Gui, sporting a pair of glasses, instantly garnered attention online, particularly since myopia had so far been regarded as a disqualifying factor for astronaut selection."

4. Is Kissing Before Marriage a Good Litmus Test? (May 31) The answer in this article is yes, because it can help you learn whether your partner respects your boundaries, etc, which can give you an idea of whether they are a safe person to have sex with.

5. Florida’s latest Gish Gallop of legislative cruelty (May 18) "Senate Bill 254 bans gender-affirming care to all under 18 years old, and allows Florida courts to grant temporary emergency jurisdiction to a parent of a child whose joint-custody provides them with access to gender-affirming care in another state."

6. Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for 'Harmful' Responses After Firing Human Staff (May 31)

7. I love this so much:

Adding Love Liberty Disco by The Newsboys (Original Lineup) to my Pride playlist because I've claimed it as a queer anthem 🌈

— Ms. Charlotte (@charlotteirene8) June 1, 2023

And here's the song: NewsBoys - Love Liberty Disco from 1999.

8. The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (January 23) "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."

9. I saw the movie "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" and it is so good, I 100% recommend it. The artwork, oh my god, every single part was a work of art. The story! The characters! There's a pregnant superhero! I've never seen a pregnant superhero before- this is great! There's a baby-wearing dad superhero! The humor- we watched the movie in English with Chinese subtitles, and man I must have been laughing the loudest in the entire theatre, maybe some of the jokes didn't translate to Chinese. The Easter eggs! !!!! I loved it.

Rocket Raccoon, Trauma, and Identity

Rocket Raccoon. Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"]

In the movie "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," we find out where Rocket came from. Rocket appears to be a raccoon- though he keeps telling everyone "I'm not a raccoon"- and he was modified by the High Evolutionist, a powerful scientist character who creates new societies in space. The High Evolutionist was performing experiments on animals to try to develop perfect beings who could live in the perfect society he wanted to create. We find out about this in flashbacks- this happened way before the events of this movie. In this movie, Rocket gets injured, and Rocket's friends- the Guardians of the Galaxy- need to break in to the High Evolutionist's spaceship to get information to treat Rocket's injuries and save his life.

As we see more and more flashbacks throughout the movie, we realize how traumatic Rocket's backstory was. Nebula even says "this is worse than what Thanos did to me" when she sees the videos of the experiments that the High Evolutionist performed on Rocket. (Thanos had Nebula's body parts removed one by one and replaced with machine parts.) 

We see that Rocket was originally called 89P13 because he was from batch 89 of the animal experiments. We see that he became friends with several of the other animals. Together, they looked forward to when they could live in the perfect society. They even chose names for themselves- before this, they only had experiment codes like "89P13." 

We see how impressed the High Evolutionist was when Rocket was able to solve a problem that he'd had with the experiments. But, it turns out, that means the High Evolutionist plans to kill Rocket so he can study his brain and use the information to improve his future experiments. The High Evolutionist never intended to let Rocket or his animal friends live in the perfect society- they were just one step in the experimental process. Just a means to an end- to make improvements so the next batch of the experiment could be one step closer to perfection.

This trauma shapes the way Rocket sees his identity. He sees himself as just a failed experiment, created by a supervillain. He can't believe there's anything good in him, because he was created for a bad purpose- and after serving that purpose, he was supposed to just be thrown away.

But, during the events of this movie, Rocket realizes that he is more than what the High Evolutionist did to him. He can still choose who he wants to be. Yes, that trauma will always affect him, it will always be a part of him- but he can choose what to do with his life moving forward. 

He chooses to rescue the other animals on the High Evolutionist's spaceship. And when he finds a crate full of baby raccoons and frees them, he sees the word "raccoon" on the crate. I don't know how the movie made this into such a dramatic moment, just reading a word on a sign, but wow. Rocket finds out, for the first time, that he actually was a raccoon, before all of this happened. (It's interesting that, throughout the MCU movies that feature Rocket, there are many alien characters who call Rocket all kinds of things, like "rabbit" or "rat", and only Star-Lord calls him "raccoon", because Star-Lord is originally from North America and knows what a raccoon is. But every time, Rocket snaps at him and says, "I'm not a racoon." Well, it turns out he is a raccoon.)

And when the High Evolutionist discovers him there, freeing the animals, he tries to tell Rocket that he's worthless, and calls him "89P13", and Rocket stands up and faces him and says, "The name's Rocket. Rocket Raccoon." (And then there's a big fight scene.)

Rocket. The name he gave himself, because no matter what anyone else did to him, his life and his identity belong to him.

Raccoon. Where he came from, and who he was before all this happened to him.

The trauma will always be a part of him. It will always affect his identity. I'm not going to say "it doesn't define him" because it probably always will define him, to some extent. He'll never be able to 100% escape from its effects. But he can reclaim it, and make it his own, and he can choose how he wants to move forward with his life.

---

And here's a hilarious fun fact: I live in China, and here in China, raccoons are zoo animals. It's just the funniest thing ever, going to a zoo and seeing an exhibit with a bunch of raccoons. Trying to explain to Chinese people why it's so funny to me, like "in America raccoons are trouble because they get into people's trash cans" and then they ask me "Oh it's so cute, do people have raccoons as pets in America?"

---

The Super Carlin Brothers' review of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is worth watching:

I also felt like there are some similarities between the God of the bible and the High Evolutionist- they both believe there's nothing wrong with destroying a world full of flawed people, in order to create a perfect world. But I won't blog about that now, because it's similar to these other posts I've already written:

If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No

It Was Beautiful When Star-Lord Rejected the Gospel

Related:

"The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" is About Being an Immigrant 

Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways

"The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" is About Being an Immigrant

Mantis, wearing a Christmas sweater and Christmas tree headband. Image source.

[content note: spoilers for Marvel's "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special"]

I got a bunch of immigrant feelings from watching "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special." It's about Mantis and Drax (2 members of the Guardians of the Galaxy) trying to put on a Christmas celebration for Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord, also one of the Guardians of the Galaxy). Peter is from Earth, and he misses Christmas. All of his friends are aliens, with no real understanding of Christmas traditions, but they want to do something to make it special for Peter, because it's important to him.

Mantis and Drax go to Earth and kidnap Kevin Bacon, and also buy/steal a ton of Christmas decorations. Peter is amazed when he sees all the Christmas decorations they've brought back to their planet. Fake snow, strings of Christmas lights everywhere, Christmas sweaters, and more. (He is horrified when he finds out they've kidnapped Kevin Bacon.)

And, I mean, wow, I'm an immigrant in China, and I know how this feels.

Christmas in China is basically just a commercialized thing, not something that actually has meaning to Chinese people. So they know what Christmas trees and Santa look like, but it doesn't go any deeper than that. There are Christmas decorations set up in all the malls right now, but that's just because the stores want to sell you stuff, not because Chinese people actually care about Christmas.

So it's hard for me, being here, and missing out on the real Christmas traditions. Because of the pandemic, the last time I was in the US with my family for Christmas was 2019.

I think it's nice, when Chinese people ask me about Christmas because they know it's important to me. At the same time, though, it's kind of hard to talk to them about it... I tell them "here's how this or that tradition works" but I can't really make them understand the feeling of being so far away from my culture and missing out on these things. How it's a part of me that is just missing, because I'm in China for Christmas.

My husband is Chinese, and it's great how he cares about what I want and what would make Christmas meaningful to me. Christmas doesn't matter to him- he says before we met, he had never gotten a Christmas gift- but he cares about me so he does Christmas stuff.

So I know how Star-Lord felt, seeing those Christmas lights, seeing his friends dressed in red and green sweaters, seeing the pile of gifts wrapped up. Having friends who don't really have any idea about your holidays, but they want to do this for you. And they get it wrong, in some ways, inevitably, but you can't get stuck on that; you should just enjoy it.

"The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" is about culture, and being an immigrant, and being so far away from your home, and being with friends who love you and are trying their best.

---

Also, here's a good review from The Mary Sue: ‘The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special’ Finally Gives Mantis the Respect She Deserves

---

Related:

I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It

On Telling My Chinese Husband What I Want For Christmas

It Was Beautiful When Star-Lord Rejected the Gospel

If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No

October 2022 Carnival of Aces Roundup ("Tell a Story")

Asexual flag. Image source.

Hi everyone! Here's the roundup of submissions for the October 2022 Carnival of Aces, an asexual blog carnival. The topic this month was "Tell a Story."

From sildarmillion:

• Romance is Confusing: She-Hulk "The impression I get from media is that if you feel strong sexual desire for someone, the good outcome is if that is satisfied, but only if you are single. If you are not single, and if you feel this desire for someone other than your partner, then that is a bad outcome. If you are single and suppress this desire, then that’s bad. But if you are not single, then you’re supposed to suppress that desire. In fact, after a breakup, people on TV sometimes say 'Well at least now you can have random hookups.' It’s like the rest of the world thinks its the most natural thing in the world to want lots and lots of random sex, but only if you’re single."
• How Understanding My Asexuality Made Me a Less Self-Righteous Person "Asexuality can be dangerous in conservative societies in which no one talks about sex, and where everyone makes a public display of behaviors and attitudes that are natural to an asexual, and hides the behaviors and attitudes that are unnatural to them."

From Blue Ice-Tea: Growing Up Platoniromantic: That One Time I Had a Boyfriend "I wanted to know him better.  I wanted to spend more time with him.  And dating seemed like the perfect excuse to do that.  After all, isn’t that what people who are dating do?  They go off together and spend time alone, talking, getting to know each other?  All that sounded great to me.  And 'dating' was the only script I had for doing it."

From Sukii: Friendship drama (Or, the one in which I indulge in self-delusion and make the same mistakes over again) "While I was going home I realised that he was totally asking me if he could kiss me in the mouth and that this very probably meant that he actually liked me. Anyway, I didn't really want to accept it, so I sort of pretended that he didn't really like me in that way."

From me (Perfect Number): Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus "And then suddenly the ultrasound technician is asking me why her ultrasound wand won't go into my vagina, as if I'm supposed to know? How would I know anything about that? I'm a good kid!"

Thank you to everyone who sent in their posts for this carnival! I love this topic~

I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." But, be ready.

Portal scene at the battle in "Avengers: Endgame." Image source.

[content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War", "Avengers: Endgame", and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier"]

So I decided to get back to my blog series blogging through the gospel of Matthew. Let's take a look at Matthew 25:1-13, "The Parable of the Ten Virgins." 

Go click the link and read it :)

Okay, so, my first reaction to this is that I don't really know what to do with it, because it's about Jesus coming back ("the bridegroom" arriving in the parable). And, even when I was evangelical, I could never understand why we were supposed to care about Jesus coming back. I reasoned that the church has been around for 2000 years, and all throughout that time, anyone who said Jesus was coming back "soon" turned out to be wrong. Odds are, it's not going to happen in my lifetime, little-Perfect-Number said to herself, so the most logical response is to just not care about it at all.

I read in the bible "be ready" and I was like, no, don't think I will.

Or, sometimes I thought, okay, if Christians say I'm supposed to "be ready" because Jesus could come back at any moment, what does that actually mean? What specifically do I need to do? And people gave me answers like "get saved" and "obey God" and "don't get caught in the middle of a sin." And I thought, aren't these things we should all be doing anyway? So I still don't see any reason to be interested in whether or not Jesus is coming back "soon."

Back then I believed in something sort of along the lines of "the rapture." (I believed in the general idea, though my mom always said that it was not cool how Christians think a "Left Behind"-style rapture is from the bible- all the "real Christians" disappear at the same time and leave piles of clothes behind- yeah, indeed, not cool how people think that's from the bible. It's not.) But now, as an ex-evangelical reading this, I ask myself what I believe about Jesus coming back. Sometimes on this blog I mention that I believe the kingdom of heaven will come to the earth, and that I believe there will be resurrection. But is it going to be Jesus suddenly appearing and righting all the wrongs of the world at the same time, magically? No, that doesn't make sense.

See, here's the thing about the rapture, as portrayed in the "Left Behind" books: The suddenness of it, on such a huge global scale, causes all kinds of disasters. Car accidents because drivers suddenly disappeared. Plane crashes because pilots suddenly disappeared. Imagine the effects on the economy/ supply chain, when a significant proportion of the population suddenly disappears. It would be a disaster.

And, well, maybe "Left Behind" isn't a good example, because perhaps the point was that it should be a disaster for those non-Christians who are left behind, but we don't need to care about them because we'll be raptured.

(Though I will say, it's common for evangelical teenagers to worry that Jesus is going to return before they get a chance to have sex. So, there's an example of how, even though being "raptured" is a positive thing, the timing of it will inevitably be bad for some Christians. Just because of the massive scale of it, it's statistically inevitable that Jesus is going to interrupt some good pure virgin couple's wedding night.)

Here's a better example: "Avengers: Endgame." Or, rather, we'll get to "Endgame" in a minute, but first I'll mention the Snap in "Avengers: Infinity War", because it's basically the same as the rapture in "Left Behind"- half the population of the universe suddenly disappears, and there's chaos because those disappeared people were in the middle of doing things which become dangerous if suddenly left unattended. And then in the aftermath of it, the world has to learn how to cope with such a huge change.

But anyway, the Snap in "Infinity War" was performed by Thanos, the villain, so it's not a good comparison to Jesus coming back. Let's talk about how the heroes set things right in "Endgame." In "Endgame", 5 years have passed since all those people disappeared in the Snap. The Avengers are on a mission to collect the infinity stones so they can undo the Snap- but there is a discussion to be had about how exactly to undo it. Do they just erase the past 5 years, go back in time to right before the Snap, and then live in a universe where none of it ever happened? Tony Stark can't accept this idea, because he has a daughter who was born in those 5 years. He insists that they can't change anything about those 5 years. So, in the end, once they gather the infinity stones, they fix the universe by bringing back all the people who had disappeared, but not changing anything else. (I'll point out that this means that people who died in all the car accidents/ other chaos caused by the Snap don't come back.)

So, hooray it's a happy ending, but there are A LOT of problems caused by all these people suddenly appearing. I like the Marvel movies and shows that explore these problems, rather than acting like the Blip (that's what they call the Snap + everyone reappearing 5 years later) is just an isolated thing that doesn't matter anymore after the "Endgame" credits roll. 

The Marvel tv series "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is all about this. In this series, we learn that people who had been poor and/or refugees (before the Snap happened) benefitted from the Snap because countries opened their borders and it became easier to find jobs, due to half the population disappearing. But when all the disappeared people suddenly reappeared, countries started to kick out those people who had come in during those 5 years. A group called "the Flag Smashers" formed to fight back; the Flag Smashers are the main villains that Sam (the Falcon) and Bucky (the Winter Soldier) are fighting. At the end of the show, when they defeat the Flag Smashers, Sam gives a whole speech about how he actually agrees with their cause, and everyone should stop calling them "terrorists."

In other words, all around the world, there is tension between people who just popped back into existence after 5 years, and need help integrating into society, and people whose lives improved during those 5 years, and now are seeing those lifelines taken away. What happens if someone reappears in the house they owned 5 years ago, but now a different family is living in it?

I say all of this to make the point that it's not possible for Jesus to come back and just suddenly fix all the problems. Bruce Banner couldn't do it with all 6 infinity stones. Anything you do at that kind of scale is going to cause a whole bunch of other problems. 

I mean, the only way it could work is if you magically mind-control everyone to agree "ah, when you look at the big picture and weigh everyone's needs in a fair way, XYZ is the best course of action." But I don't think Jesus does that mind-control stuff.

During the Shanghai lockdown, we saw the same idea at work. All the normal supply chains were cut off, and the government had to scramble to come up with systems to deliver food to people. And because it was thrown together with little time to plan, and on the scale of 25 million people, we saw a lot of things go wrong. There were videos on WeChat about meat that was supposed to be delivered to residents in lockdown, but the meat sat outside in the heat for too long and went bad. Or trucks full of donated food, arriving from other provinces, but delays on the roads entering Shanghai meant that the vegetables rotted, and lots and lots had to be thrown away. We all received free bags of a random assortment of vegetables- inevitably some of these vegetables ended up being wasted if people didn't know how to cook them, or didn't have enough space in their fridge, or just didn't want to eat so much cabbage all the time.

I think that happens in every kind of disaster-relief situation (and yes, I do think we should view the Shanghai lockdown as a disaster-relief situation... I would say the initial disaster was covid, but then the lockdown itself was a bigger disaster). Some of the efforts that are sent in to help actually don't help.

My point is, if you're like "oh no, 25 million people need help" and then you try to help them, well, you can't just solve all their problems all at once. 

I'm not saying you shouldn't help- certainly there are society-wide policies that can be implemented to address society-wide problems, and there will be a benefit in the long-term. I'm not saying "well don't even try to make the world better, because you'll cause other problems no matter what you do." I'm saying it's complicated and there is no way to magically make the world perfect all at once, without destroying people's capacity to have an emotional reaction to change- which is an essential part of human nature, I would say.

All this is to say, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back." I don't believe that at some specific day and hour, Jesus is going to appear in the sky all over the world and right all the wrongs at the same time, Endgame-style. It just doesn't make sense.

The world can't be fixed so fast. It has to be gradual.

As I think about this "sudden change vs gradual change" idea, I'm reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

He was pushing back against the idea that black people should "wait" and accept that changes will be gradual. 

Just a moment ago, I said change had to be "gradual" because it's not *literally* possible to fix every single problem in the world at the same time. But King is talking about "wait" and "justice too long delayed" in a different sense- prioritizing the comfort of those already in power, rather than taking the steps that will truly make society more equal and just.

In other words, King was fighting to bring justice and the kingdom of heaven to this earth, and "white moderates" told him they didn't agree with his methods because they weren't ready.

They weren't ready.

And now we've come back around to the parable of the ten virgins- 5 were ready, 5 were not ready. What if we read it like this: It's not about a specific day and a specific hour when a literal Jesus will literally appear and literally make the whole literal world literally perfect- it's about being ready when you see the kingdom of heaven coming to earth in whatever little ways it comes in your local area in your time in history.

What if "keep watch" isn't about a "newspaper clippings thumbtacked to the wall and criss-crossed with red thread"-style of obsessive theorizing about when "the rapture" will be, but about looking for Jesus in your own life when you see people in need, and looking for the kingdom of heaven in your own society when you see large-scale trends or policy changes?

For example: Student loan forgiveness. This was in the news recently. People who have student loan debt can get $10,000 of that debt cancelled (or $20,000 in some cases). So many people are struggling with huge student loans with predatory interest rates, and now the kingdom of heaven is coming, in a small way. This can't solve everything (I think it's much more important to do something about the cost of college tuition, and teenagers being pressured to take out loans when they have no understanding of how money works in reality) but it's a start.

But some people are mad about it. At its worst, this anger is an ugly us-vs-them "these people are inferior to me because [reasons] but now the government is giving them $10,000 and not giving me anything!" But some of that anger may come from a more legitimate place, perhaps from someone struggling financially for reasons unrelated to student loans, and they want to know why they didn't get money for their financial needs. And yes, like I said, it's not possible to fix all the problems on such a massive scale, in just 1 move. So we should keep going, listen to people's concerns, and figure out what other policies should be put in place to help more people.

I'm also thinking of the immigrants who were sent on buses or planes from Florida and Texas and dropped off in blue states without any communication beforehand. Residents of Martha's Vineyard (and other places where immigrants were randomly dropped off) came together to help. When Jesus comes, will you be ready? When Jesus comes, will you help him find a place to sleep, give him food, give him new clothes?

Not that we literally have to be ready- ie, you don't have to literally have an emergency shelter set up and waiting at all times, as if you actually expect to use it immediately. That's just silly. (You can see in the parable that all 10 of the "virgins" [honestly we should read this as "young women" but I won't get into that] fell asleep while waiting, which was fine- it's not saying you have to literally be about to spring into action at any little sign of anything. It's more about the overall attitude.) But you should have a mindset where you can see that something is an overall good for society, even if it inconveniences you in the short-term, and accept it. Keep watch and be ready for the kingdom of heaven, not just focused on your own little life and what benefits you.

So in summary, I don't believe in a literal "Jesus coming back" because we can see how that worked in "Endgame" and in any situation where there's a sudden massive policy change- even though it's a good change, it causes other problems that society has to deal with. But keep watch, and when you see the kingdom of heaven coming in some small way in your life, be there to support it.

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One more thing I want to say about this parable: It has always bothered me how the 5 "foolish" women asked the 5 "wise" women to give them some oil, and they said no. Weren't we taught to share in Sunday School class? I asked this question as a child in church, and the answer was "It's a parable- that means it's a metaphor, and in a metaphor, it's not like every single part means something- there are places where the metaphor breaks down. For the purposes of this parable, it's not possible for the wise virgins to give oil to the foolish ones- just leave it at that. In reality we are supposed to share, but that wasn't what this parable is about."

I basically agree with this answer, but I feel like it's important to point that out, whenever we talk about this parable. There's a "don't share with those in need" message here, glaring at us as we read this parable, and I feel I have to point it out and address it.

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Related:

"On earth as it is in heaven" 

Why Does the Kingdom of Heaven Belong to Children? 

Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem

If Thanos Tells You To Build An Ark, You Say No

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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

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