Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Chess Grandmasters Do Not Burn 6000 Calories Per Day (June 28, via) "Robert Sapolsky then cited this thesis in his popular book, dropping the distinction between maximum and average to give a 3X breathing rate."

2. How a Nazi Helped the New York Times Smear Zohran Mamdani (July 29) "So the New York Times accepted hacked data that a 'scientific racist' got from a violently racist Nazi and chose to publish the data as an indictment of a Brown African-born South Asian Muslim man who wants all children to have access to pre-K education, instead of asking themselves, 'Hey, is the real story here something about how a self-described violently racist Nazi currently has the private data of millions of people, including their Social Security numbers, addresses, family members’ information, and citizenship status?'"

3. ChatGPT will apologize for anything (August 8, via) "I'm sorry for advising you to accept the trade of your cow for three beans."

And: Stop Pretending Chatbots Have Feelings: Media's Dangerous AI Anthropomorphism Problem (July 22) "Think about that. A product owned by the world’s richest man was spewing Nazi propaganda on his social media platform. That's a scandal that should have Musk answering tough questions about his company's engineering practices, safety protocols, and values. Instead, we get 'Grok issues apology.'"

4. The Scholars Helping to Keep WWII Sex Slavery From Being Forgotten (August 14) [content note: rape] "The history of 'comfort women' represents one of the most horrific, systematic violations of women’s rights in modern history."

In high school history class, I remember reading that the Japanese army had "comfort women"- I think there was 1 line about it in a textbook- but somehow I didn't get that it meant sex slavery. It meant rape.

5. New study: State medical examiners wrongly excused homicides committed by Maryland police officers (July 21) "And of course all of this has been really complicated by the emergence of bullshit medical theories about about deaths in police custody, and particularly this theory of excited or agitated delirium."

6. The Existential Horror of Thomas Riker (August 13, 18-minute video) "Then, he finally gets rescued off of that planet, which should have been the happiest day of his life, but the first face he sees is you. And then he finds out what happened, and he realizes that in the eyes of the rest of the world, he's not Will Riker- you are."

7. What is identity? (August 17) "However, sometimes when people talk about identity, they simply mean, 'this word describes what I am'. Under this definition, you could identify with a word even if you never actually heard of the word. Therefore, if a survey asks you whether you identify with a word you’ve never heard of, you have to look it up to discover the answer."

8. One neurosurgeon, 8 million patients (August 17) "'Before Dr. Kamara, there was no hope,' said Dr. Kehinde Oluwadiya, acting chief medical director of the University of Sierra Leone Teaching Hospital Complex. 'If you are lucky and rich, you will go to another country and be treated. But if you are not, it's either you die or you live with a lot of disability.'"

9. Amid growing 'scandal' of elder homelessness, health care groups aim to help (August 16) "'It's a national scandal, really, that the richest country in the world would have destitute elderly and disabled people,' Culhane said."

10. Al Jazeera reporter's death a 'significant escalation' of dangers media face, CPJ says (August 15) "Al-Sharif was among six journalists killed in a targeted Israeli strike on Aug. 10. The Israeli military said al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas 'rocket-firing brigade,' and published spreadsheets that it said showed he was on Hamas' payroll. Salah Negm, Al Jazeera's director of news, rejected those allegations calling them 'completely fabricated' in an interview with Morning Edition, adding al-Sharif was 'a journalist doing his job, nothing more.'"

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Understanding MAGA’s Obsession With Pedophilia and No Other Sex Crimes (July 24) "A friend asked me recently: how is it that MAGA is so over the top about finding out which rich and powerful men may have had sex with 16 or 17 year old girls when it’s apparently fine that the leader of their movement is a longtime sex abuser and serial predator? On the one hand, this person was saying, how is one thing so beyond the pale and the others are completely fine? On another level, this person was asking, is it really so hard to believe that a guy who appears to have routinely assaulting women just over 18 did the same with those just under?"

2. Hundreds march to White House to protest Trump's D.C. crackdown (August 16) 

3. Our leading papers failed to stand up to Trump's criminal justice authoritarianism (August 18) Wow, look at this completely wild sentence from the New York Times, in a paragraph supposedly giving background on the trends about crime, in relation to that felon's claims: "A close presidential election eventually led to a violent attack on Congress."

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 antichrist:

1. How Classic Star Trek Actually Missed the Point About Racism (June 25, 43-minute video) "Captain Kirk never felt it was necessary to pull McCoy aside and say, 'Hey, man, next time you disagree with Spock, maybe try not to mention what color his blood is.'"

2. Israel kills over 300 Palestinians in 48 hours as Gaza runs out of graves (July 3, via)

Also from Gaza: Knives, bullets and thieves: the quest for food in Gaza (July 6) "At the distribution site, I pushed people aside and grabbed whatever food I found tossed on the ground under torn cardboard boxes: cooking oil, biscuits, a bag of rice that had been torn open and was mixed with sand from the ground. I didn't care. It's food. I can wash it."

The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world (July 6, via) "This collapse began with the liberal world’s lack of resolve to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel."

3. AI chatbots oversimplify scientific studies and gloss over critical details — the newest models are especially guilty (July 5, via) 

I've started using Deepseek at work, asking it for help with programming tasks. There are some things it's good at, but also, sometimes it just has no idea what it's talking about, and it's not immediately obvious when those times are. Its output reads as equally authoritative and confident regardless. One trick I've figured out is, if I read Deepseek's output and I feel like "I didn't quite understand this, let me read it again more carefully"- that's a red flag, it's likely that reading more carefully is just going to be a waste of time.

See, normally when you encounter text that sounds like it knows what it's talking about, but you can't quite understand it, it DOES help to spend more time reading it carefully. Because a person wrote it, and they had an idea of what they wanted to say, and they made decisions about what details to include. If it turns out their answer is not useful for you, that might be because they were working on a different thing than what you are doing, or they were wrong about it, or they made typos when writing. But for an AI-generated text, the concepts of having an idea it's trying to communicate, and being right or wrong about it- these concepts don't have any meaning when we're talking about AI-generated text. The LLM simply generates something that comes across as the sort of thing that would be an answer to your question. That's it. 

I've found that it's especially misleading when you're trying to write code to do something, which could be done in several different ways, with different groups of functions applying to each way (and some of them are deprecated, and some of them only work with certain versions of certain software packages, etc)- the LLM will sort of combine these seamlessly so you don't *at all* get the understanding that, if you use *this* function, you need to also be using *this other* function, but not *that other* one.

Like this one time Deepseek gave me some code to use that had 2 different functions in it, and then later as I continued to debug, Deepseek brought up the point that if I'm using this one approach, I shouldn't use this other approach, and I'm like "you literally gave me code that said to do it that way" and Deepseek is all like "you're right to point that out!" and then I got mad at it, but there's nothing to be gained from arguing with Deepseek, so don't do that. It's never going to actually understand what it did wrong and do better.

Anyway, sometimes it's really helpful. But when it's not helpful, it's very deceptive, because the output text is so friendly and easy to read and makes you feel like you're just 1 step away from solving your problem. This is the sort of thing that I think we as a society need to spend more time really thinking through what the use-case is, and what strategies we should use so it's actually effective and useful. Education about best practices.

Because right now, people are treating LLMs like the output they give you is the answer to your question, and oh yikes, no, that's not what it is. The output is the sort of thing that we might imagine someone might say in response to your question, but that has an tenuous connection to what's actually true and/or makes sense.

4. The ultra-selfish gene (2024) Really interesting article about how gene editing can be used to wipe out the subspecies of mosquito which carries malaria- which could potentially save hundreds of thousands of people's lives every year. But, releasing an edited gene into the wild, to wipe out a whole subspecies- uh, better think carefully about if you really want to do that. A lot of unexpected things could go wrong. This article takes those risks seriously and talks about strategies to reduce the risk. There is a lot of potential for this technology to be used for good.

5. A Rough Ride: ‘Dirty’ Workers Stand Up to Subway Stares (July 4) "This leaves manual workers who need to commute in dusty clothes in a bind: they can either take a seat and potentially face the ire of fellow passengers, sit on the floor and risk injury, or stay on their weary feet throughout the journey."

6. I released my game (July 5) This is a cool game if you like math~

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. 4 things to know about the vaccine ingredient thimerosal (July 6) "Fiscus, from the Association of Immunization Managers, says the committee's decision to only recommend single-dose flu shots without thimerosal shows that it is willing to make a decision without following protocol and considering the scientific evidence. 'Is this now going to be the standard?' she says. 'That's very concerning if that's where this is heading.'"

2. Arlington woman detained by ICE after her honeymoon speaks publicly for the first time (July 3) "'I did lose five months of my life because I was criminalized for being stateless,' she said. 'Something that I absolutely have no control over. I didn't choose to be stateless, I didn't do a crime that made me stateless. I had no choice.'"

3. Abrego Garcia says he was severely beaten in Salvadoran prison (July 3)

4. UPenn updates swimming records to settle with feds on transgender athletes case (July 2) "The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes "disadvantaged" by her participation on the women's swimming team, part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case." They're really going to a lot of effort just to be mean to Lia Thomas specifically. 

5. All the children of the world (July 7) "That committee also organized our annual Missions Conference, which began each year with young people from our church parading through the sanctuary carrying the flags of every nation our missionaries served. “World Missions” was an integral part of that church’s identity and the faith taught, learned, and lived there."

6. Projected Mortality Impacts of the Budget Reconciliation Bill (June 3, via) "Including that impact, the researchers project that these changes will result in over 51,000 preventable deaths."

7. Bombshell report alleges El Salvador disclaimed responsibility for those U.S. sent to CECOT (July 8) "El Salvador, per the U.N. working group’s report attached to the filing, acknowledged that it had 'facilitated the use of the Salvadoran prison infrastructure' by the U.S. — but also stated that, '[i]n this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the' U.S."

Blogaround + Happy New Year!

1. Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots (December 20) !!! Very concerned about this.

2. There Are Many Programs Trying to Reduce Recidivism. This One Works. (December 19, via) "In the United States, the likelihood that a released convict will return to prison within five years is 45.8 percent. For the 750 GRIP graduates since 2012 who have subsequently been released, the figure is 1.71 percent."

3. The Lasting Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Dead at 100 (December 29) "He had decades of possibility ahead of him when he left the White House in 1981, and he chose to devote the latter half of his life to continued public service. In 1982, in partnership with Emory University, he established the Carter Center, an organization dedicated to promoting peace and well-being around the globe. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who died in November 2023 at age 96, famously volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for decades, and he brought to action what most presidents only speak about, says Claire Jerry, curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History."

4. Nasa makes history with closest-ever approach to Sun (December 27, via) Cool!

5. More Chinese Couples Are Choosing to Live Apart. Is It Worth It? (December 30) "The study found that commuter marriages are often a rational choice driven by career ambitions, financial instability, and a desire for long-term family security. For many couples, living apart is not a passive compromise but an active decision made to maximize opportunities in an increasingly competitive urban job market."

6. Facebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For (December 30, via) "But the implications of a Facebook where the majority of the activity is bots bouncing off one another are hard to grasp, even at a moment when artificially gamed exchanges are common on the social network."

7. Star Trek: Tik Tok (2010, via) Wow this is fantastic. It's Kesha's son "Tik Tok" with clips from "Star Trek" (the original series).

8. I Watched Every Disney Channel Original Movie (December 24) Here's a 6-hour video from Big Joel reviewing over 100 Disney Channel original movies.

9. JK Rowling Falsely Claims "There Are No Trans Kids" (December 30) "There is no evidence that transgender identities are “caused” by any external factor. Rather, transgender people have always existed as a natural part of human diversity. Transgender individuals comprise an estimated 0.5–2% of the U.S. population, and many of them have understood their identity from a young age." 

Blogaround

1. A Special Monologue for the Republican in Your Life (October 30) Video from Jimmy Kimmel, making the argument that Trump is unfit to be president. This is meant to speak to the average Republican, and mainly shows clips of Trump, so you can see for yourself what he is really like.

2. A few xkcd comics that made me laugh: Wells (October 28) and Demons (November 1)

3. Say their names: Savita. Josseli. (October 30) [content note: it's about women who died because they were unable to get abortion care] "It took six years, but there was a direct line from Savita Halappanavar’s agonizing, preventable death to the amendment of Ireland’s Constitution in 2018."

4. UNICEF warns of 'deadly' effect on Palestinian children after Israel ban on UNRWA (October 31, via)

5. Fairness in Sports (October 13) "If all the ad money spent screaming about trans people in sports were instead spent on providing scholarships, you would have far more new scholarships than there are trans scholarship athletes in the entire country." An article from a trans person, which goes through different levels of sports competition and talks about what policies actually make sense.

Also from Crip Dyke: Pro Publica has it half right. (October 19) "What was remarkable about all this was that in each case [since the 1600s] the people seeking to block some marriages argued that such marriages were anti-god, anti-family, sexually perverted or debauched, prone to illness and encouraging of drug or alcohol abuse."

6. Star Trek Retro Review: "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) | Alternate Timelines (November 1) "Picard's like, 'whattttt?' Tasha says, 'I talked to Guinan.' Picard's like, 'Oh Jesus, what did she say?'" (27-minute video)

7. Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort (October 30) "But by Sunday, the door knockers were loaded into a rented U-Haul moving van with no rear seating or seatbelts, in a photo and videos viewed by WIRED. 'We were all told our transportation would be handled and we’d be in rental cars. It turned out to be U-Haul vans, and I felt embarrassed and played,' the door knocker tells WIRED."

8. PBS KIDS shows that you totally forgot existed 📺📚🦁 (August 21, 52-minute video) Oh look, it's a video about my childhood. This makes me want to find episodes of "Liberty's Kids" for my son to watch.

Blogaround

1. Taobao Plans to (Finally) Allow Users to Pay Via WeChat Pay (September 5) Well I guess this is only relevant to people who do a lot of online shopping in China, but it's going to make *my* life more convenient so I'm posting it here.

2. A Defense of Delilah (March 4) "The only difference between Delilah's actions and those of the women we laud is that she wasn't playing for the team the Bible roots for."

3. "criticizing AI is racism," says AI-backed writers group 😐 (September 5, via) 24-minute video from D'Angelo about the drama with NaNoWriMo and AI.

4. The Chosen Doubles Down (August 18) Laura Robinson continues to write about this bible-related urban legend about anointing the Passover lamb, and I am so here for it.

Also from Laura Robinson: The Ethical Problems with the Something Was Wrong Podcast (September 3) This is a really good analysis of the ideas "don't blame the victim" and "believe victims" which you always hear feminists saying. What does it actually mean to "believe victims" and how should that look different depending on what your role is? Particularly interesting is how the statistics about "false rape allegations are extremely rare" are specifically about rapes that are reported to the police. In that context, false allegations are extremely rare because there is little incentive for people to lie. But in other situations, it might not be so unlikely that someone claims to be a victim of rape when they are actually not.

5. This Sudoku Is Astonishing [MUST WATCH] (September 7) 22 minutes in, not one single digit placed, "This is the sort of thing that should be, just, taught in schools as an example of what human beings are capable of." (59-minute sudoku solve video.)

6. The Bell Riots: What Should Happen When History Catches Up to Star Trek? (September 2) 16-minute video. "Some of you might say, but wait, doesn’t Star Trek need to resolve these inconsistencies between its fictional history and our real history in some explicit, in-story way, so that creators of future Star Trek projects can refer to those fictional historical events without contradicting real history? Good question. No."

7. Dick Cheney says he will vote for Harris (September 7)

8. James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, dies aged 93 (September 10) I was a huge fan of "The Lion King" when I was little. (Okay who am I kidding, I am still a huge fan of "The Lion King.") I remember one time, my parents were watching "Star Wars", and they explained it to me by saying "that guy is the same voice as Mufasa."

9. The Word of the Week: Sanewashing (September 9) "Why isn’t Trump being covered the same way? When Trump says something insane or incoherent that should be the news. It’s not just smoke that a reporter needs to blow away to reveal some underlying policy point that may or may not actually exist."

10. cohost is shutting down (September 10) Cohost is a social media site. The link I'm sharing here is a Pillowfort post discussing it, because I've only heard about Cohost through Pillowfort. Sad to hear they're shutting down.

Blogaround

1. Paleontologists discover a 240-million-year-old 'dragon' fossil in full (February 23, via) "It's a fitting discovery in the Year of the Dragon: A team of scientists has uncovered a complete fossil of an aquatic reptile that resembles a 'Chinese dragon' because of its snake-like appearance and elongated neck." Cool!

2. NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its last flight after suffering rotor damage (January 26, via) "The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper was tasked with demonstrating that powered flight is indeed possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere — it promptly did so during a five-flight campaign that spring."

3. I didn’t fancy men or women. Then I had a baby (February 13, via) Article about an asexual woman who decided to get pregnant using a sperm donor.

4. What TV Shows Get Wrong (and Right!) About Therapy (November 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

5. A ‘Reading Rainbow’ Documentary Is Coming Next Month (February 28) Cool!

6. When Star Trek Confronted Racism Head-On (February 28) 23-minute video about a "Deep Space Nine" episode

7. If Elisabeth Elliot's Marriage Advice was Supposed to Ruin Your Life, This is the First I've Heard It (February 12) "The book is a frankly overheated and occasionally goofy account of two people who, like all young people, have very intense and primarily interior problems that don’t make sense to anyone over twenty-five. Passion and Purity, though, is told through the perspective of a much older woman who actually does seem to agree that these problems are very serious, and that the tortured process of wondering if you’re touching your boyfriend too much or if he loves you too much is actually part of preparation for marriage. How do we make sense of this?"

Blogaround

A candy heart that says "Remember U R Dust" with caption "Ash Wednesday is on Valentine's Day. You can't spell Valentine without Lent. United Methodist Churches of Indiana." Image source.

1. Differing Weights And Differing Measures (January 31) "So if, for example, you’re trying to show that 'evangelical Christians' are a fearsome voting bloc that politicians are compelled to show deference to, then you want the largest, most expansive definition of 'evangelical Christians' that you can find. That’s going to include everybody you can plausibly toss into the category, including both Pentecostals and anti-Pentecostal fundamentalists, including every faith-healer and magician, snake-handler and tent-revival charlatan you can find. It’s even going to include evangelical Christians who aren’t even white." This is SPOT-ON.

2. ‘Rage’ abortion donations dry up, leaving funds struggling to meet demand (January 28, via) "But now, the fund needs to spend between $1000 to $1500 just for people who need an abortion before 12 weeks’ gestation. If they are further along, the costs are significantly higher."

There's a time and place for one-off donations because you see something in the news and have feelings about it. Yes, that should be part of one's donation budget. But more important is to give recurring donations- make a rational decision about which organizations you feel it's important to support, and then set up automatic monthly payments to them. This helps the charities plan their budgets much better.

Also from The Hill: The dangers of spotlighting the ‘perfect’ abortion patient (January 31, via) "Unfortunately, all too often only the most extreme stories with 'good' reasons for abortion — the horrific cases of sexual violence, life endangerment or fetal abnormalities — enter public discourse to highlight the 'perfect patient' whose story is easiest to sympathize with."

3. Florida barring gender changes on driver's license puts trans residents at risk, critics say (January 30) This is really bad.

4. Study: Abortion Bans Creating OBGYN Crisis (February 2) [content note: it's about the trauma that obgyn doctors are experiencing when they're not legally allowed to give patients the healthcare they need. This is hard to read.] "You have somebody hemorrhaging with an intrauterine pregnancy with a heartbeat…I [didn’t yet] have legal coverage for that, but there’s only so many times you can transfuse somebody and they’re begging for their life before you say, ‘This is unconscionable.’"

5. “It Was the Most Violent Thing I’ve Ever Seen” (February 1) [content note: death penalty] An interview with the Rev. Jeff Hood, spiritual advisor to Kenny Smith and other death row inmates.

6. Who is Alistair Begg, and why are American fundamentalists so upset with him? (February 1) A detailed article about why evangelicals want to "cancel" pastor Alistair Begg for not being mean enough to queer people.

7. Religious trauma still haunts millions of LGBTQ Americans (January 29)

8. Outdated Jackets Get a Second Life (February 5) 1-minute-37-second video. Making old down jackets into comforters in China.

Also from Sixth Tone: AI Game Mimicking Nosy Relatives Takes China by Storm (February 5)

9. An Ohio pastor was punished for opening his church to the homeless. He deserves it. (January 23) Okay so maybe this story is more nuanced than what I initially thought. "Imagine if there was an actual emergency in the building. A place like this would jeopardize the lives of the people inside because of these kinds of deficiencies. The Fire Chief gave Avell well over a month to fix the most serious of these problems, but follow-up checks on January 9 and 16 found '5 violations that had not been properly corrected.'"

10. Breaking bread: Houston tries to punish feeding the homeless—and fails (February 2, via) "So far, no matter how many tickets the city writes, they can’t find a jury willing to convict anyone over it."

11. Leonard Nimoy The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins FULL VERSION best quality (via) Wow, I can't believe I never knew this existed.

12. Relationship Advice (February 5) xkcd comic. !!!!! Oh my goodness, this is so real! I side-eye anyone who makes a big deal about "marriage is hard."

13. VeggieTales' cucumber star LarryBoy to get his own faith-based feature film in 2026 (February 6)

Here's what Phil Vischer has to say on it:

Apparently there's a new LarryBoy movie in development? Somewhere? By... someone? No idea who, where or how. https://t.co/62SRaYSoaL

— Phil Vischer (@philvischer) February 6, 2024

Not sure what to think of this- is it even real VeggieTales if Phil Vischer is not involved?

14. Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Perform Fast Car at the Grammys (February 6) 

UPDATE: Here's the full video: Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs Deliver Gripping Performance Of "Fast Car" | 2024 GRAMMYs

Blogaround

1. Eid Trees, Gingerbread Mosques, and the Multiplicity of Asian American Religious Life (November 27) "As the two reports reveal, Asian Americans embrace a religious and spiritual life characterized by multiple belonging, hybridity, and fluidity, as well as a skepticism and uncertainty about applying the label of 'religion' to their beliefs, practices, and identities."

Wow, love this article because of the way it talks about religion/spirituality in Chinese culture. It puts into words something that I always kind of wondered about but couldn't quite understand, having lived in China for 10 years. See, there are statistics that will tell you "most Chinese people are atheists", and there's the idea that the communist party is "officially" atheistic- and so, coming from an American background, I'm imagining "atheism" as in, skeptical, only believe things that have scientific evidence, totally not believing in anything spiritual at all, claiming that spiritual beliefs are just completely ridiculous and nonsensical- but then I came to China and I saw A LOT of things which looked very "religious" to me. Burning paper money during Chinese New Year, to send to relatives who are in heaven. Traditions about things you should or shouldn't do for "good luck"- there are a million of these- like which holidays you should or shouldn't get a haircut, paying a baby-name expert to find out what name to give your baby to give them a good life, don't take out the trash during Chinese New Year because that means you'll also be throwing away your success in the next year, don't cut up a pear to be shared by multiple people because 分梨 [fēn lí, split a pear] sounds like 分离 [fēn lí, separate]. And so on.

The linked article talks about how, in East Asian culture, it's very common for people to have these kind of spiritual beliefs, but they don't feel the need to be a member of an organized religion, so then they say they aren't religious. And they don't view it as an "identity" thing. Wow, this explains a lot.

2. Add to Heart: Single Seniors Looking for Love at IKEA (November 30) "She shares that someone once introduced her to a man who was financially secure and suggested they live together, with the caveat that if one of them were to fall ill, that person would go back to their own children to receive care. 'It’s laughable when I think about it,' Nannan says. 'In other words, while I’m still mobile, I’ll be your free housekeeper, do your laundry, and cook for you. But when I get sick, you want me to go back to my own kids. Are you out of your mind?'"

3. Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies (November 29) I've seen a lot of people on the internet celebrating his death, and I didn't really know much about him, so I didn't understand why. This article goes into a lot of detail explaining it- basically he helped to start wars in Cambodia, Vietnam, and other places, which led to millions of people dying.

In China, though, he's remembered positively for the work he did to improve the relationship between China and the US: Chinese people will remember Kissinger's important contribution to China-US ties (November 30)

4. Metal singer performs "Amazing Grace" (April 7) Oh my goodness, this is incredible, I love this so much.

5. That's My King Dr. S.M. Lockridge - [OFFICIAL] (2008) [content note: images of Jesus' crucifixion] I know I've shared this before, but I love it, so here it is again.

6. China's new visa-free policy sees over 2,000 visitors from 6 countries on inaugural day (December 2) Cool!

7. How the kink community taught me that sex doesn't exist (November 12, via) "Nobody looks at me strange for having limits around certain kinds of sexual contact, and I have in fact met many asexual people in the community."

8. Healthcare is harming asexual people: In conversation with Yasmin Benoit (November 22, via) [content note: medical trauma] "Following a similar pattern, other respondents spoke about having to go through smear tests, despite being uncomfortable doing so, since the tests can be especially painful and traumatic for people that have never had penetrative sex. One respondent described facing 'excruciating pain' during the test – even though she hadn’t had sex before, she was put through it anyway by her doctors, who didn’t believe her."

9. I laughed way too hard at this (source):

10. ‘Nothing to do with it’ (December 2) "The interview gets jumbled at this point as it becomes clearer that Ron DeSantis does not know what 'empathy' means"

Blogaround

1. I feel like I should say something about what's going on in Palestine? I don't know what to say though, it's just horrifying, and posting on the internet "I stand with Palestine" doesn't actually help anything... I just wish people would stop bombing people.

2. Idaho hospital closes its maternity ward, citing the state’s ‘political climate’ (March 22)

3. The Trouble With Circular Reasoning Is.... (!) (October 15) 1-hour-21-minute sudoku solve video.

4. China joins Apostille Convention - no legalization for public documents (March 14) Well this will (hopefully) decrease the amount of bureaucracy that immigrants in China (like me) have to deal with. See, the way it is now, if you're applying for a visa or something in China, you have to bring a bunch of documents, and if the documents were issued in other countries, they need to be "legalized" by some Chinese authority to prove they are real. I'm not sure exactly what documents this change will apply to- off the top of my head, I'm thinking about things like diplomas and marriage licenses. (But also, don't get too excited- I would be 0% surprised if China invents some new bureaucracy steps to replace the old ones.) The change goes into effect on November 7, 2023. 

5. Sex and the end of the world (October 16) "The future they’re being told they’re never going to have was already a life of futility and meaninglessness. So when they’re told that future won’t be there for them, they’re not going to think about all the things they’re never going to get to learn or to teach, to create, to build, to share, to discover, or to enjoy. They’re not going to think about how they’ll never get to break every chain, or to let justice roll down like waters. The main thing they’ll think about missing out on will be the main thing they’ve heard about in youth group from day one: sex."

Damn. Preach.

6. Ending Junk Fees, the Most Annoying Thing in American Commerce (October 15, via) "We’ve all experienced these in one form or another. You go to a hotel, and instead of being given the price quoted to you online, they add a $25 'amenity' fee, or 'resort' fee, or something like that." Wow, reading this article, I'm like... astonished at the idea that the government could really stop businesses from charging hidden fees. Like, I always thought that's just the way it is, and as a consumer you need to know that the price it says isn't really the price it is, and be prepared for that. But, man, no, it DOESN'T have to be that way.

I remember the first time I came to China, buying things at a mall or restaurant, and the price that it said on the price tag was the price it ACTUALLY WAS, and that BLEW MY MIND. No extra is charged for tax or tip- that's all already included in the price on the price tag. And now that I think about it, even for bigger things in China (hotel rooms, etc), the price that it says is, quite often, LITERALLY the price that IT IS, even though I've always been prepared to pay more because that's what I expect as an American.

7. Solving Fractal Mazes (October 18) "With all that explanation, I hope you’re half as excited about fractal mazes as I am." Yesssss.

8. Making It So: A Memoir [affiliate link] I just found out that Patrick Stewart has published a memoir. Oh I am so excited about this!

9. Trump Gets the Corporate Death Penalty (And It's Getting Worse) (October 7) 22-minute video from Legal Eagle, explaining what's going on with the orange antichrist's businesses in the state of New York. Basically the court ruled that he loses all of his business licenses in New York. Wow. As one of the comments says, "You know it's bad when the lawyers stop saying allegedly."

10. Biden urges striking auto workers to ‘stick with it’ in picket line visit unparalleled in history (September 27) "The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 ... you made a lot of sacrifices. You gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. Now they’re doing incredibly well and guess what? You should be doing incredibly well."

11. Once Upon a Studio | Official Trailer | Disney+ (September 22) There's a new short film to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, and it's SO GOOD. It's cartoon characters from almost all of their movies, coming together to take a photo. The link I'm posting here is just a short trailer- I didn't find the entire video available on youtube. (I watched it on bilibili, a Chinese video site.)

Blogaround

1. British media report rape and emotional abuse allegations against Russell Brand (September 16) [content note: rape]

2. Lauren Boebert Caught Fondling Date’s Genitals During Family-Friendly Musical: Video (September 15) "The incident spawned various social media posts, including many wit the phrase "Not a drag queen," along with the video of Boebert involved in the handsy behavior."

3. On the scientificity of string theory (September 17) "Frankly, you probably shouldn’t have any opinion on string theory at all, and it was a mistake for science communicators to have ever encouraged you to have one."

4. A Sin to Eat: The Untold Story of Anorexia as Religion (2022) [content note: eating disorders]

5. Review of the Problems with For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn (with download) (September 20) Glad to see this Christian marriage book being called out as harmful. I read this book, "For Women Only," probably when I was in high school, and basically what I remember from it was, "no but seriously, you need to have sex with him." It was advice for wives on how to have a good marriage, and somehow it just kept coming back to how men need sex so much, if you don't have sex with your husband enough, you're destroying his manly self-esteem, he's going into work every day feeling like a broken shell of a man, women just can't possibly ever understand how important sex is for men, etc. 

I read it back when I didn't know anything about what sex actually was, so I totally bought into it.

And, like... I can't blame all this on "For Women Only" because I've read a lot of other Christian resources that say the same things, but... when I started having sex, and it was painful (because of undiagnosed vaginismus) I felt like I couldn't tell my partner that it was painful, because oh it would be so terrible if a man feels "rejected", his self-esteem is so dependent on having a woman give him 100% positive experiences during sex and never suggesting that anything is wrong... I spent so much time trying to think of the most polite, positive way to say "this hurts, let's not do it."

Another anecdote- there was this one guy I was dating, who used to rub the ends of my fingers when we were holding hands, and I hated that so much, it just didn't feel good at all. But I felt like I couldn't just tell him "stop that," I had to come up with a very polite way to say it, so that he didn't "feel rejected" or whatever... It was just touching my fingers, it wasn't anything sexual, it wasn't a sin, it wasn't damaging my "purity", so I felt like I didn't have the right to say no. See, that's what purity culture teaches: instead of teaching consent, instead of teaching that it matters what I want, and if I don't want someone to do something to my body, I have the right to say no, regardless of whether I have a "good reason"... instead of that, purity culture teaches that you must ABSOLUTELY NOT do anything sexual before marriage, but if a guy wants to do something that's not off-limits (like having sex if you are married to him, or doing non-sexual things that don't affect "purity") then you have to say yes because it would be just terrible if a guy "feels rejected."

6. On Stage and in a Wheelchair (September 21) "There are 85 million people with disabilities in China, but the population is easy to overlook. In interviews and press engagements, Zhao has repeated the same message over and over: This isolation cannot continue. People with disabilities want to feel integrated, to be a part of normal life, and to feel seen."

7. Refusing to Censor Myself (September 11, via) "Because I suspected I wasn’t the first marginalized author who’d been asked to make this kind of edit, who’d been limited this way, who’d been forced to choose between opportunity and their own morals."

8. Life in a Glass House: Diatoms Shatter Young Earth Flood Geology (2015) "The YEC [young-earth creationist] flood geology hypothesis utterly fails to explain the observed distribution of diatom fossils."

9. Lost the Plot (Newsboys) | Lyric Video A song from 1996.

10. What Does Star Trek Actually Say About Euthanasia? (September 20) [content note: euthanasia, death] 42-minute video from Steve Shives.

Blogaround

Lt. Uhura, from "Star Trek." Image source.

1. Nichelle Nichols, trailblazing 'Star Trek' actress, dies at 89 (July 31)

2. The profit surcharge (July 5) "The reason, of course, is ideological: they only add in the tax later so that you feel that the tax is an extra imposition." 

Hmm, my first reaction to this is "yeah when I came to China it BLEW MY MIND how the price that it says is the price that IT ACTUALLY IS. You don't have to budget a few extra dollars in your head for tax and tip. It's WILD." And then my second reaction is, I am not sure this writer has an accurate view of what it means that "profit" is built into the prices of things. As I understand it, it's not just a like a silly extra thing added on because rich people are greedy; it's about compensating investors for taking the risk, and it's an important part of our economy.

I like his post though; it's an interesting thing to think about. It's worth reading. :)

So I think he is oversimplifying it, but probably I am also oversimplifying it because I am not an expert in economics. But it seems to me like there are 2 different mindsets about how to handle one's money- there are people who have less money, who are just trying to meet their basic needs for survival (food, housing, health care), and then there are people with plenty of money, who are thinking "okay, how can I grow my money to be bigger? what are my investment options, and what are the risks for each one?" (Perhaps there is also some in-between category- people who would be struggling, except that they followed some really good advice about investing, so now they are doing fine- is that a thing?) And then if you make some change in policy to make life easier for those who are struggling, then the rich people are like "okay I made this whole long-term plan about how to grow my money, and now you're changing the rules and it screws up my plan, now I'll end up losing money instead" and those in power who are making the policies treat that like it's just as important as lower-income people's need to have enough money to stay alive. (Because those in power are members of the "how do I grow my money bigger?" group.)

I see this sort of dynamic in online discussions about landlords- you have the forums where landlords talk to each other, where they advise each other about the realistic costs and how to set the price of rent to make sure you make a profit- it's not just "rent > mortgage", and you have to consider a lot of risks like what if you don't have renters for a period of time, what if someone doesn't pay their rent, etc. And then you have online threads where renters complain about how evil their landlords are. (And yes, some of them really are evil.) To me, it looks like the landlords became landlords to make money off of a basic human need, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that in and of itself (though many people on twitter certainly do, and say that all landlords are evil or whatever)- but if you do that, then you have to consider carefully what your policies are if you end up with a renter who is dependent on you for this basic human need, but doesn't have enough money to pay rent. Like you need to set your profit margin high enough so that if a situation comes up where you need to show some compassion and not charge them/ evict them (even though it's within your rights legally), you still make money overall. Right? Am I right? Otherwise, that means that those of us who care about justice are expecting landlords to just be fine with losing money if they end up with a renter with a very sad story who can't pay rent. And then, if that's the way it is, then before becoming a landlord, one should take that risk into account and then probably decide it's not a good idea at all, and they'd be better off "growing their money" in a different way. And then all the landlords end up being people who don't care about humanity and just want to make money off people. Maybe to some extent that's true anyway- the nice ones aren't as competitive as the ones who cut corners and treat their renters like crap, so the nice ones don't end up doing as well in the market.

Full disclosure, I am in the "I have enough money, how do I make it into more money?" group. And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that- though it does mean that I have a responsibility to give away money to people in need. The bible is clear about that. (I read the parable of the rich fool and sweat.) And I don't think there's one "right answer" to the question of how much should I give away vs how much should I save for myself- though there are certainly some answers to that question that are going to get you in big trouble with the God of the bible someday. "The wages you have failed to pay your workers are crying out against you." 

Anyway... I don't have a wonderful conclusion here or anything, but here's an idea: I think investment advice for people in the "how do I grow my money bigger" group should talk A LOT more about the risks, so much so that the idea of losing money feels as normal to them as "oh the rent suddenly increased and there's just no way to make ends meet" feels to the "barely enough money to live" group. Or, maybe I'm not saying this in the right way... what I mean is... if rich people oppose some new policy (that helps poor people get healthcare, for example) because it messes up their calculations about what percentage growth they would be able to get on their wealth every year or whatever, society should respond to that with the same disdainful "well you should have set aside money for an emergency fund instead of buying avocado toast" attitude that society has towards poor people. Well you should have known all investments are risky, it's not our fault you're so irresponsible. That kind of thing.

Gif from "The Emperor's New Groove," where Yzma says, "Ha! You really should have thought of that before you became peasants!" Image source.

3. The Puzzle They Said We Should Never Do... (March 9) A 1-hour-13-minute sudoku solve video, with a complicated ruleset. I love it.

4. I’m a trans woman exhausted by the broken conversation around sports (July 25) "If the people having this debate took care to avoid it impacting normal trans people’s lives, to distinguish between elite sports and school sports, and to prevent this debate from becoming culture war ammunition, that would be fine. But they don’t, because it is a culture war issue." Very much agree with this article. The question of how to categorize trans people in sports seems like it should be a fascinating discussion about biological differences between men and women (averages and standard deviations), the purpose of having separate categories for men and women in sports (and the history behind it), statistics about the athletic abilities of trans people as a demographic, and then breaking those stats down further based on when and how they transitioned, ethical considerations about trans people's need to be affirmed as their gender, and so on. Seems like that's what it should be- but in reality, this discussion is very much NOT that. Instead, it's a culture war, and some of the loudest voices are actually saying that trans people shouldn't even exist- like not even trying to hide it, that's what they're saying. Not cool.

5. A Satanist got a Kansas school to rethink its anti-‘Satanism’ dress code (July 22)

6. Speaking of suicide: How institutions help people and save lives (July 26) [content note: discussion of suicide] "I disagree strenuously with Herrold’s statement that suicide treatment is 'by no means safe and caring.'"

Blogaround

1. Thank you to all the readers who have taken my 2022 Reader Survey! It is still open (until June 30) so go ahead and take it if you haven't. I really appreciate all the feedback.

2. “Acing” Sexual Purity (posted 2015) Very cool to find people writing about being asexual in purity culture even before I was. A lot of their experiences are totally the same as mine.

3. This Twitter thread (go read the whole thread)

There are things I so wish people understood about what sexual abuse can do to an individual. Please know that I am not speaking for all or even most survivors here. I speak only for myself and some others who have shared their journeys with me through years of women’s ministry.

— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) June 13, 2022

As I said in my previous blogaround, I don't feel like the "sex" part is the most evil part of sexual abuse. This thread from Beth Moore is sort of along similar lines.

4. Star Trek: Discovery’s latest episode makes a rare point about male rape survivors (posted 2017) [content note: rape] "What makes this scene all the more significant is how it deviates from historical depictions of rape survivors; Tyler is not only a man, but a highly trained soldier, capable of killing multiple Klingon warriors in hand-to-hand combat. In a battle training simulation with Lorca, he takes out 36 foes with tactical precision. He’s unquestionably strong, brave, and trained to defend himself at an elite level. And yet none of this saved him from sexual assault. Faced with a situation where someone had enormous power over him and decided to prey on him, he did what he needed to do in order to get out alive."

5. NHTSA Finds Teslas Deactivated Autopilot Seconds Before Crashes (posted June 15) Yeah this is suspicious. As this article says, let's not jump to conclusions and say there's some nefarious plot and that's the reason for the autopilot turning off just before a crash- but clearly *something* is wrong.

6. MTG Oddly Familiar With Satan's Conversations With Prospective Abortion-Havers (posted April 30)

Blogaround

1. William Shatner, TV’s Capt. Kirk, blasts into space (posted October 13)

2. LinkedIn is shutting down its China platform because of a 'challenging operating environment' (posted October 15)

3. James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther on 'Friends,' has died (posted October 25)

4. My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash (posted July 13) "Yet, over the past eight years, that most critical law has been gutted by the Supreme Court. Our one unelected branch of government has taken away the key thing put in place to keep the elected branches from sliding back into the whites’-only rule that plagued the first 150 years of the American experiment. There’s no white American equivalent to the Voting Rights Act. There’s no thing we can weaken or take away from white people that would threaten their ability to participate in self-government."

5. This tweet with an infographic about "Where we donate vs Diseases that kill us" (posted October 22), and in the replies there's another infographic "What Americans die from, what they search on Google, and what the media reports on." This is FASCINATING to me because in 2016 I wrote Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk. As a math person, I have spent a very long time fascinated by the fact that the things Christians spend the most time praying against aren't the things that really pose the most danger; instead, they pray most about the things they are most worried about. And if it is really true that prayer actually affects real things (outside of one's internal psychological state) then we need to get everyone organized to pray against the things that really do represent the biggest danger- so probably heart disease.

It's so interesting to see this same idea explored but not related to prayer; rather, related to the money that people donate towards these causes. And yes you could argue that the ideal distribution is not as straightforward as "this one has the most deaths, so it should have the most funding"- you should also take into account how promising the research is (ie, where is your donation actually going to make the most difference), and also maybe it could be true that the number of deaths from some certain disease has decreased precisely because there has been so much money spent on research.

Overall, though, yeah it does seem there is a mismatch.

Blogaround

A poster for the tv show "Loki", with gator!Loki. Image source.

1. Preach.

america: telling children that they’re individually responsible for the crucifixion of Christ on the cross but nobody is responsible for Black bodies on the lynching tree

— Tori Williams Douglass (@ToriGlass) June 13, 2021

2. What’s the Difference Between a ‘Borb’ and a ‘Floof’? (posted 2020) Extremely important article from Audubon. 

3. ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Explained By a First-Time Marvel Viewer (posted 2019) I LAUGHED SO MUCH. "He encounters a man named Howard Stark. It’s not clear who that is, but from the movie theater audience’s murmur, he must be a person of significance."

4. Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift (posted 2017) "Kirk, as received through mass culture memory and reflected in its productive imaginary (and subsequent franchise output, including the reboot movies), has little or no basis in Shatner’s performance and the television show as aired. Macho, brash Kirk is a mass hallucination."

5. This blog series from the Slacktivist is very good: 'For you were [redacted] in Egypt': Concordance-ism and the ESV (part 1), part 2, part 3, and part 4. "After centuries of insisting that the best way to understand 'what the bible says' about slavery is to look up every occurrence of the literal word 'slavery,' they cannot imagine any way of avoiding a pro-slavery interpretation of the Bible that does not also involve looking up every occurrence of that same literal word and then replacing it with the different word."

6. Gather round and laugh at Owen Strachan, everyone:

Tell me you don't understand how translation works without telling me you don't know how translation works. pic.twitter.com/bHXENSBq1Z

— Jeremy, Pelagian Reconstructionist (@jeremymcnabb) July 18, 2021

It reminds me of how I always heard evangelicals making such a big huge deal about how the bible is so perfect and valuable and life-changing and we need to read it every day, but the vast majority do NOT read it every day, and if they did, they would see that all this fluff about how perfect the bible is doesn't really make any sense. Like, seriously, changing one comma is going to "drastically demote it"? That sounds like something you say when you love the idea of the bible and its perfection, but you're not actually engaging with it as a "living and active" account of how people have struggled to connect with God over thousands of years.

Blogaround

1. Aces in Space: An Asexual Reading of Star Trek (posted June 26) 

2. Grant Imahara, Host of 'MythBusters' and 'White Rabbit Project,' Dies at 49 (posted July 13) Oh my god.

3. U.S. Rescinds Plan to Strip Visas From International Students in Online Classes (posted July 14) Good news.

4. John Lewis, congressman and civil rights icon, dies at 80 (posted July 18)

---------------

And 2 reminders about things I've posted before:

1. Vote From Abroad: If you are an American living abroad, request your ballot for the November elections.

2. My 2020 Reader Survey will be open until July 20. (Or, probably actually a few days longer...? I don't even know when I'll have time to write a wrap-up post about it...) Thank you to everyone who has already taken it!

Blogaround

A baby elephant standing with an adult elephant. Image source.

1. Why It’s Easier to Accept David as a Murderer than a Rapist (posted October 14) "If David was merely a weak man who fell prey to a tempting woman on a lonely night, then we don’t have to grapple with the far more insidious reality: David was one of many (mostly men) throughout history who used their power for sexual exploitation."

2. ‘Meth. We’re on it,’ South Dakota says in ridiculed ad campaign that cost $449,000 (posted November 19) LOLOLOLOLOL

3. Here’s What’s Actually Going on With the Chick-Fil-a Charitable Giving ‘Controversy’ (posted November 18) It's sort of good news, but not as much of a big deal as people are making it out to be- and as a queer Christian, I am still not supporting Chick-Fil-a.

4. This tweet from @AspieHuman:

Exposure therapy IS NOT A THING FOR SENSORY SENSITIVITIES. This makes me so angry. Our brains literally don't habituate to sensory stimuli, which is why we have sensory sensitivities in the first place. You're just forcing the autistic person to be in pain. #TheGoodDoctor

— AutisticScienceLady (@AspieHuman) November 20, 2019

Wow. This is EXACTLY my experience. Really really valuable to see someone put it into words like this.

5. Star Trek Doesn't Actually Understand Evolution (posted November 20) Yep.

Blogaround

Charizard. Image source.

1. Black Christians Deserve Better Than Companies (And Churches) Like Relevant Media Group (posted September 19) "I shared that I was unaware that a request for permission was needed to commemorate Black History Month with the rest of the country."

And then this post and this one from Relevant Magazine, apologizing for the issues raised by former Relevant employees Andre Henry [linked above] and Rebecca Marie Jo. It's good to see they are apologizing. I hope they follow through with the changes they say they will make.

2. Walking Whales On Board Noah’s Ark: The Inevitable End-point of Creationists’ Post-Flood Hyper-Speciation Belief? (posted 2017) "Similarly, how did a massive chaotic flood killed all the sea reptiles but no sea mammals? This makes no sense."

3. Is Star Trek Actually Less Progressive Than You Think? (posted September 25) "Did he 'some of our best friends are black' an entire planet?"

Take the 2018 Reader Survey~

Scene with Spock and Kirk from "Star Trek." Spock is sitting at a computer. Caption: "Go away, I'm blogging." Image source.

Wow this blog is now 6 years old! Can you believe it?

I'd like to thank you all for reading, commenting, and sharing~ So glad I get to meet interesting people through blogging ^_^

I have a survey here where you can tell me what topics you want to see me write about more: 2018 Reader Survey. Please go over there and take the survey! (The survey will be open until June 9.)

Also if you are interested in sending me money on Patreon, the link is here~ $1 patrons get to see pictures of my cat. Highly recommend.

Thanks everyone!