Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Whiteout: Trapped Trekkers Discover Dangers of ‘Hidden Gems’ (October 22) "As hiking and other adventure sports grow in popularity across China, enthusiasts have begun seeking out undeveloped or little-known spots, often promoted among online communities as “hidden gems.” As a result, accidents and disappearances are increasingly common, with trekking-related emergencies reported nationwide during this year’s eight-day National Day break at the beginning of October."

(Note, this is an entirely different incident than the other link I posted recently about hikers who had to get rescued from a mountain in China because of heavy snow.)

2. Shielding Chart (October 22)

Also from xkcd: Emperor Palpatine (October 20)

3. Why TERFs Don't Like Asexuals Either: An Analysis (October 25) "This is very similar to TERF explanations for trans men and transmasculine people.  In fact, as seen above, TERFs believe the same process causes women to identify as both.  It’s not a legitimate identity; it’s a response to misogyny, an attempt to escape misogyny by identifying out of it."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s Gutting Sex Ed. Here’s Why That Matters (October 22) "More than 90% said that if they had had more education on those topics, their life would be better now: they thought they would have more sexual confidence, a better understanding of their own body, a better understanding of how to be a good partner, healthier relationships, a better understanding of their own sexual health, a better quality of life, or the resources to make more informed decisions."

2. Exclusive: Trump's demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete (October 22) Oh my goodness, he's actually destroying the White House.

3. ICE keeps detaining pregnant immigrants — against federal policy (October 20) [content note: miscarriage] "While the agency said in a statement in August that pregnant immigrants are receiving sufficient care in custody, medical professionals say the conditions in these facilities can heighten the risk for complications. Limited food can impact nutrition at a vulnerable time; access to medical appointments is spotty and often not aligned with standards of care; and pregnant, postpartum and nursing detainees also face the stress of arrest and separation from their families."

4. Taylor Swift, The White House Demolition, And Pathways Of Persuasion (October 24) "An astute commenter on BlueSky put it this way: Democratic outrage over the White House demolition was 'not as strong as the [Republican] pushback against the change in the Cracker Barrel corporate logo.'"

5. NYC Public Schools Becomes Latest To Defy Trump Trans Bathroom Ban Demands, Launches Lawsuit (October 18) 

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (October 2) An extremely long post overanalyzing a weird thing- this is the exact content I am interested in.

2. The phantom menace of biblical chronology (October 7) "No Star Wars fan will let you get away with suggesting that Episode IV: A New Hope was written as a sequel to Rogue One. They’ll be upset by the suggestion not just because it is incorrect, but because that error would change how we should understand and interpret both of those stories."

3. 30 Years Ex-evangelical (August 29, via) "In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. Lol."

4. Israel, Hamas reach a ceasefire, with hostages and prisoners to be freed within days (October 9)

Gazans stream towards wrecked homes as Israeli forces pull back under ceasefire (October 10)

And another thought related to this: That felon supposedly has a plan where the whole population of Gaza would "voluntarily" leave and then the land would be turned into a nice resort (?) and then the people of Gaza would come back (??). Uh, but, fact check, relocating a population is ethnic cleansing and can sometimes even count as genocide. I wish I had a good article that explained this. I think a lot of Americans may have this really naive idea that it's not a bad thing to just move people from one place to another. It would be nice to have a link which very clearly lays out what exactly the problem is and why this is a bad thing.

5. A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe (2024) "When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize."

6. Over 350 Rescued After Blizzard Hits Everest’s Eastern Slope (October 7) I saw some reports about this from other news sites, but since it's in China it's good to have an article about it from Sixth Tone.

7. How Birthday Party Lady Is Showing the World Boundaries in Marriage (October 8) "SIL sent a text at midnight the night before the party asking if it was still on. On the day of the party, no decorations had been bought, and husband got off work AFTER the party was supposed to start. But she held her ground."

8. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas (September 17) "He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself 'owning the libs.'"

The difference between debating to "win", vs actually wanting to communicate and listen to people and learn from each other... I think this is really important, and it took me way too long to even realize the difference. (I'm thinking about my own experiences with apologetics.) When someone makes a point and you don't know how to respond to it, or asks you a question you don't know the answer to, do you try to come up with whatever "your side's" official answer would be? Or do you genuinely ask yourself what you believe about it and what your actual reasons are? To say your actual reasons can be embarrassing- and don't do it if you're in a discussion with someone who can't be trusted with that kind of honesty- but is a very necessary step to coming to a belief that makes sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Action item: Submit a comment on this proposed change that would affect overseas voters (and other US citizens who vote by mail). This proposed change would require voters to show documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a passport, in order to register to vote. It sounds like this means people would actually have to go *in person*, which is impossible for US citizens like me who live overseas. (Comment period is open until October 20.)

2. Treasury Department may issue $1 Trump coin for 250th anniversary of U.S. independence (October 6) Eww, what on earth?

3. Eventually You're Going to Have to Stand for Something (October 5) "When Klein scolds that "we have to live here with each other" he is making a statement about who it is he is getting ready to live with and who he is getting ready to live without, and most gallingly he is ignoring the fact that when it comes to supremacists all of us have been living with them already all along. Nobody is suggesting mass deportation of white supremacists, or the dissolution of straight marriages, or stripping away health care for conservatives."

4. Federal workers sue the Education Department over partisan shutdown emails (October 5) "'Without giving notice to their employees, let alone obtaining their consent, the Department of Education has replaced employees' out-of-office email messages with partisan language that blames 'Democrat Senators' for the shutdown,' the complaint said. 'Employees are now forced to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration's talking points with emails sent out in their names.'"

And also about the shutdown: IRS walks back guidance promising back pay for furloughed workers (October 10) Excuse me, what?

Schumer slams GOP health care policies: ‘No f‑‑‑ing way’ (October 8) 

5. Higher Education Leaders Reject Trump Administration's "Compact for Academic Excellence" (October 5, via) 

6. Standing up to ICE in the suburbs, the People’s Patrol puts its faith in resistance (September 29) "Racing toward the industrial park on an expressway, Cavazos says the People’s Patrol includes 180 people, all volunteers. The center holds trainings for the work every other Friday."

7. Judge William Young's ruling against Rubio and Noem is a lesson for all in the Trump era (October 2) "Throughout his opinion, Young focused in on several actions of this administration — allowing Rubio’s horrifying statements to speak for themselves, confronting America with a matter-of-fact description of what ICE is and how America’s immigration system operates, and damning the administration’s use of masks in its immigration enforcement."

And this quote (via) from lawyers who know what's what:

Plaintiffs of course understand the hardship the government shutdown places on everyone, including the government's attorneys and their clients. For that reason, Plaintiffs offered to agree to the stay Defendants seek if Defendants in turn would agree to refrain from enforcing the TPS terminations challenged in this case. But Defendants refused. They apparently have the resources to detain and deport thousands of immigrants with no criminal history to dangerous countries, but would prefer not to expend the resources needed to defend the legality of such actions in court. 

Also from Law Dork: Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S. (October 4) "Explaining the stay request before the Supreme Court over Chen’s September ruling, Jackson echoed that concern, 'What should happen to 300,000 human beings while our colleagues on the Ninth Circuit, and then perhaps we, do the job of judging?'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. New Fossil in China Pushes Bird Origins Back 20 Million Years (February 17) "The newly identified B. zhenghensis shares key features with modern birds, such as a short tail fused into a pygostyle, which typically supports the tail feathers." Cool!

2. Dua Lipa - Levitating Featuring DaBaby (Official Music Video) (2020) Just posting because I like the song.

I also like this song: Ed Sheeran - Shape of You (Official Music Video) (2017)

3. Sunday reading (February 16) "'All right, then, I’ll go to hell' — and tore it up."

4. Texas measles cases are up, and New Mexico now has an outbreak. Here’s what you need to know (February 19) 

5. Archive Request (February 17) From xkcd.

6. I don't know if y'all have seen this video from 2010: Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration. It's an American revolution parody of the song "Apologize" and it's AMAZING.

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Luke Skywalker says, "You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father." Obi-Wan says, "The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check." Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Protests Erupt At Stonewall After Trump Removes Trans People From Monument Website (February 15) 

Also from Erin in the Morning: More Hospitals Resume Trans Care After Trump's EO Temporarily Blocked In Court [AZ, VA] (February 20)

2. Thousands of people protest in Washington, D.C., and across the U.S. on Presidents Day (February 17) "In Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, thousands of people gathered at the Capitol Reflecting Pool chanting "Where is Congress?" and urging members of Congress to "do your job!" despite nearly 40-degree temperatures and 20-mile-per-hour wind gusts."

3. AP reporter and photographer barred from Air Force One over ‘Gulf of Mexico’ terminology dispute (February 16)

4. They Are a Minority (February 15) "Trump voters who are finding out in very tangible ways that Trump’s presidency is going to be materially bad for them."

5. Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? (February 10, via) "But what I hear in the repeated insistence that “no one is doing anything” is the underlying belief that there is nothing that can be done. And this troubles me deeply."

This post is a good roundup of ways that people *are* fighting back, with some success, and ways that *you* can help.

6. Trump administration orders lawyers for vulnerable unaccompanied minors to stop their work (February 18, via) "'People like Thomas Homan state that they care about children and want to protect them from trafficking,' said Jonathan Ryan, an immigration attorney in San Antonio affected by the order, criticizing the Trump administration’s border czar. 'This lays bare the cynical lies he tells the American people. What he really wants to do is hurt children and separate families.'" This is horrifying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

1. Opinion: 6 Groups Fighting Human Trafficking Better Than Operation Underground Railroad (July 22) "And OUR’s highly publicized 'jump' raids may do little to help actual victims and may even harm them."

2. ‘White savior complex’: Malaysia’s LGBTQ community slams The 1975’s Matty Healy’s onstage kiss (July 25) "The 1975’s concert, which was the headline performance in Kuala Lumpur’s Good Vibes Festival, has sparked a wave of criticism and dismay from the community, who say Healy’s stunt may have done more harm than good to a vulnerable group already under threat in Malaysia’s repressive, conservative society."

3. A blog series from Laura Robinson about Operation Underground Railroad, the group behind the new movie "Sound of Freedom"- and the common misconceptions about what "human trafficking" is:

The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom Is Probably Our Fault, Part 1 (July 16)
The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom is Probably Our Fault, Part 2 (July 16)
Cabal Goggles: OUR and Sound of Freedom, Part 3 (July 19) 
Cabal Goggles Off: Sound of Freedom/OUR, Part 4 (July 23)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Trafficking: Sound of Freedom/OUR Part 5 (July 28)

4. How Hollywood Corrupts Trans Stories (July 15) 1-hour-23-minute video from Jessie Gender. This is about how the trans themes in movies like "Across the Spiderverse" and "Nimona" were very deep and complex and central to the entire plot of the movie, but most movie reviews talked about very shallow aspects, like "there's a trans flag!"

5. Main suspect in the 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders dies (July 11)

6. ‘The lowest I’ve ever been’: how playing Jar Jar Binks led to abuse, near death – and saving Baby Yoda (July 28, via) [content note: suicide attempt] "It tells the story of Ahmed Best, who played what was meant to be one of Star Wars’ most exciting new characters, only to end up being the first ever recipient of a torrent of online abuse that spilled over into worldwide press coverage."

Carnival of Aces May 2023 Roundup: Changing Labels

A rainbow of post-it notes. Image source.

Here are the posts for the May 2023 Carnival of Aces. (The call for submissions is here.) The topic was "Changing Labels." We have these 3 posts:

From sildarmillion: On Not Using Labels "I bet if I had told them I was asexual, they would have a knee-jerk reaction that asexuality is not a real thing. But when I tell them I don’t experience physical needs, they are intrigued, but they don’t think I’m making it up. Some of them even have had expressions on their face that seemed to say 'You finally make sense.'"

From Blue Ice-Tea: I'm Asexual Like Han is a Skywalker "Where exactly the line between 'Skywalker' and 'non-Skywalker' is is fuzzy."

From me (Perfect Number): Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality "Without vaginismus, I wouldn't have figured out I'm asexual. But if I hadn't figured it out, that would have been bad, because I really am asexual."

A common theme among these posts was the reasons to use or not use the label "asexual"- in what situations is it useful, what is the exact definition (and how much does that matter), etc. The reason I picked this theme for the carnival is I'm super-interested in the reasons that people choose what labels they want to use. It's more than just "do I fit this definition or not"- maybe there are multiple labels that have a definition that fits, or maybe there's some reason you want to use the label, not necessarily related to the official definition.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who participated in this month's carnival! And happy Pride Month!

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is still open- go take it if you haven't done it yet. (Survey will be open until June 19.)

2. Only ONE Person Has Solved This Puzzle... (May 12) 2-hours-13-minutes sudoku solve video. My favorite part was, at 1 hour and 30 minutes in, with only 2 digits placed in the puzzle, Simon says, "Maybe this is why people have found this difficult, because they get to this point and then get stuck."

3. Optimum tic-tac-toe (May 26) "[Chat GPT] very strongly prefers to place its marks in the corners, longwindedly explaining how its corner move is a superior strategy, all while I win game after game by placing my marks in the center rows and columns."

4. Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? (May 24) "The author criticizes the classification of absent/low desire as a mental disorder from three primary angles: first that it doesn’t make sense to have a different diagnostic setup depending on whether someone identifies as asexual; second, that this diagnosis is disproportionately assigned to women, reflecting sexist values; finally, the distress criterion is insufficient."

5. Rare all-white panda spotted in SW China's Sichuan Province (May 27)

6. China's first homegrown large passenger jet took its maiden flight after 16 years in the making — check it out (May 29) Great!

7. Shanghai Metro on the right track after 30 years (May 28) "Meanwhile, the overall length of the city's Metro network, has increased to 831 kilometers, becoming the largest metro system among all the cities in the world, according to Shanghai's Metro operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group." The Shanghai metro system has been operating for 30 years. I can confirm, yes, subways in China are very nice. (My photos here and here.)

Sixth Tone also has a series of articles on the 30th anniversary of the construction of the Shanghai subway system:
Shanghai, in Motion (May 28) "'Compared with walking on the street, we feel safer and more relieved after entering the metro station. There, everything is standardized and traceable,' he said, adding that the better tactile paving in stations and along the platform edges is a crucial accessibility feature, particularly for the visually impaired."
Beyond the Midnight Hour (May 29) "Maintenance crews take over to keep the Shanghai Metro running like clockwork for the 10 million passengers who ride it every day."
Building Shanghai’s Deepest Station (May 30) "With the deepest foundation piles reaching as far as 48 meters underground, Chen and his team had no choice but to build the new station at a record depth of 36 meters so that incoming trains could make it to the station after diving under the piles. For safety and energy consumption reasons, official regulations limit subway inclination to a maximum gradient of 3%."

8. Pentecost, Resurrection, and the Chasm of History (May 25) "In terms of early sources, the only vague candidate for such a mass appearance is the Pentecost scene in Acts 2, which as we know it today is not explicitly cited as a Resurrection appearance. But as I will suggest, that is what it was originally."

9. Return of the Jedi (1983) - Ace Mini-Review (May 25) "This leads to an ending that, in its own understated way, is remarkably ace-friendly.  Cinematic and storytelling conventions tell us that the hero’s happy ending should include heterosexual marriage.  And yet Luke, the quintessential hero, ends his story single and without a romantic prospect in sight."

10. China sends first civilian astronaut to space as Shenzhou-16 blasts off (May 29) "It is China’s fifth manned mission to the space station since 2021." Cool!

Blogaround

1. Was Jesus Homeless? Yes, No, and Kind Of (December 2) "When I worked as a housing case manager, part of my job was to determine if clients were literally homeless, according to the HUD definition."

Also from the same blog: “I Think I Might Not Die Now” (December 22) "I am blessed to work for an organization that believes in Housing First.  What that means is, once a person’s housing is taken care of, suddenly their medical needs and expenses go down."

2. Can the Star of Bethlehem be scientifically verified? (November 28) Part 1 of a blog series critiquing the video "The Star of Bethlehem," a documentary providing a scientific explanation for the star from the Christmas story in the bible. I actually have seen this video before (a long time ago, when I was evangelical). Perhaps some Christians would, after seeing the video, sum it up as "they found the star." [I just rolled my eyes so hard.] I now view it more like "here's a fan theory about what the star could have been." It's just somebody's idea, and there's nowhere near enough "evidence" to be making claims that this really is what the star actually was. (Honestly, for any date in history, you could probably look at the constellations and make up a story about how it totally means something.) Fun to make fan theories though!

Part 2: The Star of Bethlehem, a real event?
Part 3: Critique of ‘The Star of Bethlehem’ video
Part 4: Jupiter, Venus, Regulus, and Revelation: the fireworks of a real Star of Bethlehem?
Part 5: How did the Star of Bethlehem move like Tinker Bell?

3. A Few Math Problems for Mothers (July 13) "Felix had an accident during nap time and doesn’t have a spare pair of pants at school. If Felix’s father is listed as the primary point of contact on all documents, how many times does the school call his mother?"

4. Star Wars Christmas Parodies - "Padme Did You Know" and "I'm Dreaming of a New Death Star" (2015) This is AMAZING.

5. One Of The Most Astonishing Sudokus Ever (December 15) 1-hour-37-minute sudoku solve video. I love it.

6. Mary and Jesus in the Eyes of Chinese Painters (December 24) "He reinterpreted Da Vinci’s famous 'Last Supper' in traditional Chinese style, featuring a table, stools, tableware, windows, lanterns, and clothing unique to China."

7. Noncon Porn Taught Me About Rape (2016) "When I was a young fan, I remember reading a bunch of posts that said something like this: 'When you write fanfic, warn for rape if you’re treating the subject seriously as something that traumatizes the victim. Warn for noncon if it’s treated as sexy or if the victim starts consenting part of the way through. Warn for dubcon if the characters’ ability to give consent is dubious– for instance, fuck-or-die, sex pollen, one character being another character’s boss, emotional coercion, or sex where one character is extremely drunk. Of course, in the real world, all of those are rape!'"

Also from the same blog: The Thrill of the Chaste, or Why Dawn Eden Should Not Have Casual Sex (2015) I love this, because it takes an argument like "you shouldn't have casual sex because xyz" and changes it to "if you are the sort of person that would have xyz result if you had casual sex, then you shouldn't have casual sex." It's about knowing yourself. Know what you want or don't want. Not about making rules about "this is how EVERYBODY feels."

8. So, at the beginning of December I posted Square Root's Advent Calendar, and said I would give an update on Square Root's opinions on it. Here's the update: He was very interested in the puzzle, and could do parts of it by himself. He seemed to totally ignore me when I read the bible verses to him. But hey, little kids do pick up on things, so maybe he listened even though he didn't act like it. *shrug*

Blogaround

1. A North Carolina trial could change jury selection in death penalty trials (September 18) "For decades, courts have automatically disqualified opponents of capital punishment from serving on juries in death penalty trials. This has been accepted law and practice."

2. What Cracker Barrel can tell us about culture war (August 10) "Nowhere in that piece does Paul cite a single example of the word 'woman' being abandoned by any single person or organization."

3. I’m a Fertility Doctor in Texas. It’s Getting Bad Here. (September 23) "Methotrexate is used for many other conditions such as cancers and arthritis. A man with arthritis or lymphoma would not have an issue filling this medication. But how much does a woman have to suffer or be close to death so that we can properly care for them?"

4. Which Is More Dangerous–Moral Certainty or Moral Relativism? (September 25) "I believe in the existence of moral absolutes, but also believe that they are far more difficult to identify than most of us imagine. The lifelong search for moral clarity and certainty will often look and feel like relativism."

5. Man Jailed for 24 Years After Brutal Tangshan Restaurant Attack (September 23) [content note: misogynist violence] "In June, four women at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan were brutally assaulted by a group of seven men and two women after one of the female diners objected to unwanted sexual advances. Surveillance footage from the restaurant showing a group of men beating, slapping, and kicking the diners soon went viral, raising concerns over women’s safety."

6. “I Just Wanted to Live”: Man Missing for 17 Days After Earthquake Leaves ICU (September 29) and Earthquake hero missing for 17 days found by rescuers (September 22)

7. Dr. Oz Mad John Fetterman Hired Wrongfully Convicted Men Instead Of Imprisoning Them Forever (September 2) "The super fun thing about our American 'justice' system is that you are in a better position to get out of prison if you actually committed a crime than if you didn't."

8. Analysis: What I unlearned about Roe v. Wade (May 18) [content note: miscarriage] "When I was 14 or 15 years old, I’d been among a small faction of evangelical Christians and Catholics who’d picketed outside this doctor’s suburban office and on the sidewalk outside the hospital entrance with signs that said 'Abortion is Murder' and 'Don’t Kill Your Baby,' or which simply featured poster-sized pictures of aborted fetuses."

9. The Great White Heist (2020) "Naturally, Black parents were outraged when they discovered the white children didn’t have to make the same daily trek as their children because the district had purchased 33 buses to chauffeur them to school. Incensed, a group of parents begged Clarendon County School Superintendent R.W. Elliot for just one bus, to serve the county’s Black students. He said no."

10. James Earl Jones Retires From Voicing Darth Vader (September 27)

11. Unboxing, bad baby and evil Santa: how YouTube got swamped with creepy content for kids (September 13)

12. Two Christian ranches, meant to help troubled teens, were hotbeds of abuse (September 10)

13. Are AI art programs ripping off human artists? (September 26) "One possibility is legislation to create a robot dividend. Artists whose work was included in the training corpus of an AI engine would be paid a small royalty whenever that engine’s art is used for commercial purposes."

14. Trust us: The problem with crypto-billionaires and effective altruism (July 10) "The logic is certainly compelling: make as much money as you can to do as much good as you can in this life. But a fundamental flaw of effective altruism is that it says nothing about the way that money is earned in the first place."

Blogaround

Movie poster for "Turning Red." Image source.

1. Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton Are Engaged (posted March 17)

2. Former Christianity Today editor Mark Galli accused of sexual harassment (posted March 15) and Sexual Harassment Went Unchecked at Christianity Today (posted March 15)

3. Why don't Jigsaw Puzzles have the correct number of pieces? (posted March 4) YES, THANK YOU, "Stand-up Maths" is asking the REAL QUESTIONS. This guy wrote a python script to predict the actual number of pieces, based on the claimed number of pieces, the dimensions of the puzzle, factors, ratios, and some subjective opinion stuff about quantifying how wrong it would be to have weird long pieces and/or a number way off from the claimed amount. I LOVE IT.

(Yeah I remember I was SO MAD when I was a teenager and liked to do 1000-piece puzzles and I discovered that actually it's not *EXACTLY* a thousand pieces! Probably about as mad as when I found out about "unabridged dictionaries"- WHAT, you mean all the words aren't in the REGULAR DICTIONARY???!!!)

4. We saw the new Pixar movie, "Turning Red," and I loved it. It's about a Chinese-Canadian 13-year-old girl, and I am happy to tell you that it has my Chinese husband's stamp of approval.

5. No Digits. No Clues. No Hope?! (posted 2021) A 1-hour sudoku video. I love it so much.

6. At the Bottom of an Icy Sea, One of History’s Great Wrecks Is Found (posted March 9) "The wreck of Endurance has been found in the Antarctic, 106 years after the historic ship was crushed in pack ice and sank during an expedition by the explorer Ernest Shackleton." This is INCREDIBLE.

7. Star Wars is Really a Cautionary Tale About Devoting All Technological Advancements to Death (posted 2018) "This means that these trash disposers, which have entrance points to permit living beings in and out of them, have no software for the purpose of detecting certain types of life and powering down on detecting that presence. It would seem the most obvious type of software to have in area so casually dangerous…and yet there’s nothing whatsoever."

8. Deconstructing Jealousy (posted 2016) "I don’t think that 'jealousy' is a useful concept. It’s used as an umbrella term for a variety of negative interpersonally-triggered feelings that are actually quite different from each other. Unfortunately, people don’t always realize this and may communicate about 'jealousy' without noticing that they’re talking about different things. ... I’ve identified six different feelings that are often called 'jealousy.'"

9. China's zero-Covid policy is showing signs of strain. But ditching it now could be a disaster (posted March 21) "'The problem is that if you continue to highlight the danger of the disease and demonize the pandemic response efforts of other countries, it means that the fear in the public won't fade away, and that makes moving away from a zero-Covid strategy difficult,' said CFR's Huang."

Blogaround

1. Religion is not spell-casting (posted September 25) "This is the kind of goofy nonsense you find yourself defending when you start imagining it’s your job, your right, or your prerogative to decide for somebody else whether or not they are or can be baptized." And I'm glad this post isn't just about 'look how ridiculous Catholics are'- it goes on to talk about how evangelicals do THE EXACT SAME THING, with salvation anxiety and praying the sinner's prayer over and over just in case they did it wrong.

2. I Grew Up Evangelical. Converting to Catholicism Got Me Disowned. (posted September 28) "We learn that Catholics are idolaters who worship saints, and who think their works can get them to heaven. People who think their works will get them to heaven go to hell automatically. Or so evangelicals believe, at least." YES THANK YOU for this post. I 100% was taught that the majority of Catholics weren't real Christians, that they thought it was all about following rules and praying to saints and not eating meat on Fridays, and they didn't have a "personal relationship with God."

3. ALL ABOUT THAT BASE (Star Wars Parody - Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass) (posted 2014) "Yeah, it's pretty clear, this ain't no small moon, but it can shatter, shatter, and bring your planet doom."

4. FROZEN 2 - Show Yourself (FULL Movie Scene) HD 1080p (posted March 2) So, you know how I have a baby and therefore no time to watch movies? Well I finally got around to watching "Frozen 2" and I LOVED IT. Especially this song, "Show Yourself", oh I get all kinds of religious vibes from this, maybe because the only context I've heard the phrase "show yourself" was in talking to God. And also just the style of the song feels very megachurch-with-fog-machines. But (spoiler?) the song is not about God, it's about discovering your own self. Love that.

Oh, and on top of that, Elsa's in yoga pants, which the Christian modesty police hate.

Blogaround

Baby Yoda cookie, from link #2.

1. Treating Food And Exercise Like A Zero-Sum Game Is Peak Eating Disorder Culture (posted December 12) "Putting the number of minutes required to ‘work off’ a food is peak eating disorder culture because food and movement are two different aspects of life that should not be presented as prerequisites for one another. You deserve to eat whether or not you exercise. You deserve to enjoy exercise without verging on the brink of collapse."

YES. 100% agree with this blogger. This whole "putting the amount of exercise to work off the food" on food labels is a TERRIBLE idea. Because what's the objective? Do you want people to literally go out and exercise for that exact amount of time after they eat the food? That's called having an eating disorder. Or do you expect people will go ahead and eat stuff just like they normally do, but feel a little more shame about it, like there's this mountain of exercise debt they're never going to work off?

None of this is a healthy way to view food.

2. Baking hack: Chop off angel head for a homemade Baby Yoda cookie cutter.<**> (posted December 14) This is the way.

3. A Bethel Leader Is Asking the Church to Pray for Her Daughter’s Resurrection (posted December 17) [content note: child death] I have many many feelings and opinions about this. Not going to post them right now though.

4. sometimes I wonder / if Mary breastfed Jesus. / if she cried out when he bit her / or if she sobbed when he would not latch. (posted December 16)

Blogaround

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

A cat tree that's green and shaped like a Christmas tree, with 3 cats enjoying it. Image source.

1. How Blind People See With Sound… feat. Molly Burke! (posted August 10) Wow this is amazing! People can learn to use echolocation to map their environment. I thought only bats could do that.

2. Do Kids Really Learn Languages Faster Than Adults? (posted November 29) "This all adds up to not just the perception but the reality that adults who attempt to learn new languages often fail while their kids succeed, despite studies showing conclusively that adults are actually better at learning new languages when they actually put the effort in."

Highly recommend this video. I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese, which I started studying when I was about 20. At the beginning I genuinely believed that perhaps no matter how hard I worked, I might never be able to speak Chinese, because I had always heard white Americans talking about "I tried to learn a new language, but I guess my brain just can't" or "if you're not exposed to it as a baby, you can never ever learn to understand it." That's total nonsense.

Yes, learning a language is hard. It requires a lot of time and effort. You need to practice speaking, and that means you need to accept that you're going to make mistakes, and just learn to laugh at yourself rather than be too scared to try.

Because it's so hard, I completely understand if you choose not to do it. That's totally fine. People who speak multiple languages aren't superior; people who speak 1 language shouldn't feel ashamed. But I want people to accept the reality that the reason they only speak 1 language is because they have other, higher-priority things going on in their lives, and therefore they don't spend time on studying, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Don't go around spreading myths like "my brain just can't" and discourage those of us who really want to learn a second language.

3. ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan (posted November 27) What on earth? The Department of Homeland Security made a fake university and then arrested the international students who came? For real?

4. 'Star Wars' Billy Dee Williams Uses Both Male and Female Pronouns (posted November 30) Cool~

Blogaround

Five kittens. Image source.

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

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

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

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

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

Feminism 101: The Bechdel Test

The 6 Avengers at the Battle of New York. One (Black Widow) is a woman and five are men. This movie doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Image source.

Feminism 101 is a series where I define words related to feminism~

Today's entry: The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a test we can use when we talk about women in movies. It originally appeared in the comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For", by Alison Bechdel. To pass the test, a movie must meet these 3 requirements:

1. There are 2 named female characters
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man.

Seems like this is a pretty low bar to meet, right? But a surprisingly high proportion of popular movies don't pass. The site bechdeltest.com has a database of 7760 movies, 57.8% of which pass. 7 of 9 2018 Best Picture Oscar nominees pass, and 5 of 9 2017 nominees pass. 4 of 8 Star Wars episodes pass (the original 3 all fail). 9 of 11 Disney princess movies pass (according to this 2013 post).

Not passing the test means that every single line of dialogue (between named characters) is related to men. Wow. And yet that's the case, for maybe half of our movies. And actually, a lot of the ones that pass did so just barely. When applying the Bechdel Test to a movie, it's common to get into little hair-splitting details like "does this character count as a 'named character'", "if their conversation was mostly about a man but there was a little part that wasn't, does that count", "their 'conversation' consisted of only 1 word, are we counting that or not", and so on. (Like look at all this hair-splitting over "Avengers: Infinity War.")

I want to be clear that the Bechdel Test isn't about whether a movie is feminist or not, whether it portrays women in a good way or a sexist way, or anything like that. It's not about that at all. Passing does NOT mean the movie is a good movie or a feminist movie, and failing does not mean the movie is bad. There are lots of movies that have great female characters but fail the Bechdel Test. And it's possible that a movie can pass on a technicality even though it doesn't treat its female characters well. (Listen, if you ignore the "named character" requirement, the song "Baby Got Back" passes the Bechdel Test.) Like, seriously, passing means that there exists at least 1 line of dialogue that's not about men at all. Let's not go around giving congratulations for this. How on earth could a standard so incredibly low be used to reassure us that the movie is not sexist?

The Bechdel Test should not be used as a way to make judgments about individual movies. Instead, it tells us about our culture's entertainment system as a whole. How is it possible that such a huge proportion of movies can fail such a simple test? Why is a movie with 1 "strong female character" such a big deal, people love it and talk about how great it is, how she's a role model for girls- while no one seems to think it's odd that all the other main characters in her movie are men? Why are movies where the whole cast is male seen as normal and popular for all genders, while movies with all women characters are "chick flicks" rather than serious movies, and men aren't supposed to like them?

It's not about whether "Star Wars: A New Hope" is good or bad; it's about the number of female characters overall, in all movies. There are far too few, and often they are just there to support a story about a man. The Bechdel Test is a simple way to quantify this phenomenon on a society-wide scale, but it doesn't tell us anything about if one specific movie is "feminist" or not. 

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You asked and I answered~ In my 2018 Reader Survey, one of the top 5 topics you voted for was "feminism." Hence this post. :)

Blogaround

A cat being so warm in front of a heater. Image source.

1. Luke Skywalker Isn’t Supposed to Be “Nice” (posted January 4) [content note: spoilers for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"] "It’s not merely that heroes can make mistakes or occasionally do the wrong thing; the film is examining heroism as a concept, as a systematic construct that binds the very people it should comfort. “Heroes” come with rules and standards, expectations and meaning. “Legends” are not history, they are the stories we tell to elevate history into doctrine."

2. Of all the posts I've written on this blog, the 2 posts on globophobia have been the hardest to write and hardest to publish. I hope maybe they'll help someone else who's in a similar situation. <3 Globophobia and Globophobia part 2.

3. When Deportation Is a Death Sentence (posted January 15) [content note: murder]

4. not that bad (posted January 15) [content note: sexual assault] "But Grace's story re-zeroes that scale, and suddenly everything in my past that's already beyond fixing is +10 worse."

Blogaround

Baby sea lion. Image source.

1. Creationist: We’ll Only Be Impressed If You Find Transitional Fossils in the Precambrian (posted January 9) "If you have to read that a few times to make sense of it, go ahead."

2. Florida Court Permanently Blocks Abortion Restriction (posted January 8) "The forced delay law was an insult to women and imposed medically unnecessary and harmful burdens, particularly on low-income patients. This law’s intention was to stop women from getting abortion care, plain and simple." Good news~

3. If You Can See The Invisible Elephant, Please Describe It (posted 2011) "You end up having to construct your understanding of the elephant from tiny snippets, little bits of information you can coax out of normal people before they get aggravated and change the subject." (a post about asexuality)

4. So here's the YMCA song, sung by minions:



5. The Case Against The Jedi (posted December 31) "Just so we're clear on what that means, according to the Jedi, it's loving relationships with another person that leads men down the path to evil." About toxic masculinity in Star Wars.

Related: Internalized Sexism and Star Wars: My Long-Overdue Apology to Luke Skywalker (posted January 9) "And I know that I’m not the only person to have ever referred to Luke as 'whiny'"

6. White evangelicalism vs. missionaries (posted January 12) "Missionaries have, in a very real sense, converted to a different religion from that of the churches supporting their work."

7. Voice in the Wind: An Anti-Semitic Gospel (posted January 12) Presenting the story of the crucifixion as "the Jews killed Jesus" is anti-Semitic. I remember occasionally hearing about that back when I was an evangelical, but of course I totally dismissed it because, well, the bible says it happened that way, so that's that. I didn't know about the whole history of Christians persecuting and killing Jews because "they killed Jesus." Presenting the bible story as "the Jews killed Jesus" is anti-Semitic because of that history. If it were just a detail in a story, isolated from any real-world effects, then it would be fine- but that's not the world we live in. We need to learn history.

8. The 1969 Easter Mass Incident (posted January 14) [content note: crucifixion] "Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring 'THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!'"

Blogaround

Chinese movie poster for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (星际大战：最后的绝地武士). Sorry about the glare on Luke's face. I took this photo in the subway station.

1. Film Theory: Disney LIED to You! (High School Musical) (posted December 30) A video about how the "High School Musical" movies want you to hate Sharpay, like she is the villain, but really she's not.

2. Why So Many Men Hate the Last Jedi But Can't Agree on Why (posted January 4) [content note: spoilers for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"]

3. Memphis mega-church pastor admits he molested a minor days before his ‘True Love Waits’ workshop (posted January 6) [content note: description of sexual assault, and a church covering it up]

And this: Memphis Pastor Admits ‘Sexual Incident’ With High School Student 20 Years Ago (posted January 9) "A Memphis megachurch pastor received a standing ovation during a church service on Sunday after he admitted that he had engaged in a “sexual incident” with a high school student 20 years ago in Texas." That's disgusting.

On the other hand, the kingdom of heaven is like:

Bethany House and Baker Publishing Group have cancelled publication of the Andy Savage book The Ridiculously Good Marriage.

It may remain on various retail web sites for a short time until those sites update.

— Bethany House (@bethany_house) 2018年1月8日

4. How The Last Jedi Explains The Power of the Dark Side of the Force (posted December 28) [content note: spoilers for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"]

5. Why Sex Education for Disabled People Is So Important (posted October 5) "'Many of us often grow up believing we may not even be able to have sexual relationships. We often grow up believing our bodies are disgusting and there is something wrong with them,' he said. 'So, when someone, especially someone with some type of power over us like a teacher or caregiver, shows us sexual attention and we believe we don't deserve anything better or will never have the opportunity for sex again, it is easy to see why some disabled people are able to be manipulated or harmed in sexual situations.'"