Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Why people like your quick bullshit takes better than your high-effort posts (November 29, via) "but the attention of the internet is best modeled as a random swarm of locusts that will occasionally land on your ripe fields based on its inscrutable whims."

Oh yeah this has happened to me. The posts that get the most views aren't the ones I really really care about and spend a lot of time on. Hey if you really want to make my day, you can leave an appreciative comment on any of my very long blog posts about the bible.

2. Apples (December 12) From xkcd.

3. Journal Club: The Quoiromantic Manifesto (December 17) "'Quoiromantic' was especially a response to asexual discourses where romantic orientation is so common that people are expected to have it as a slot in their identity. Quoiromanticism expresses unwillingness to participate in this framework."

4. I usually do a "Christmas music roundup" post in December, but it turns out I just like all the same songs every year. So instead of doing a whole post, I'll just share them one by one here and there.

Emmanuel (Michael W Smith & Amy Grant- w/lyrics)

5. OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide (November 27, via) [content note: suicide]

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘Good will to all’ rejected as ‘political’ and ‘divisive’ (December 9) "'Peace on earth, good will to all' is the same thing Christians have been reciting every year at Christmastime for centuries, but those Christians can’t say it this year without being — correctly — perceived as 'political' and 'anti-Trump' and 'anti-ICE' and 'anti-MAGA,' because 'peace and good will to all' is the opposite of everything that Trump and ICE and MAGA stand for."

Also from the Slacktivist: The end of 20th-century white evangelicalism (December 15) "I remember what it feels like to identify as an evangelical because loving Jesus and loving the Bible was the most important thing to me only to be told, constantly, that this did not matter at all — to constantly have the gatekeepers of evangelicalism reminding me that loving Jesus and loving the Bible wasn’t nearly as important as voting Republican no matter what. And then seeing 'no matter what' ratcheted into something ever more extreme."

This is so real. I'm also one of those evangelicals who followed Jesus right out of the church.

2. Trump Finds Way To Be Bigger Piece Of Sh*t Than Ever, Re: Rob Reiner (December 16) This is really shocking and horrific, what he posted on social media.

3. Her Christmas lights were going up. Then Border Patrol showed up (December 13) "'It looks completely ridiculous,' she said. But she decided to leave it that way 'as a symbol of what happens when ICE and Border Patrol get involved in your world. Things don't go as planned. And a lot of work doesn't get done.'"

4. DOJ releases Epstein files and the first batch is short on new information (December 19) 

5. A radio station in Amsterdam is a lifeline for Sudan. After USAID cuts, it's faltering (December 21) "From Amsterdam, the journalists at Radio Dabanga try to shed some light on the dire situation. They report on where fighting has erupted, on disease outbreaks in refugee camps, and the aftermath of recent atrocities, such as those in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher."

6. Trump's push to end transgender care for young people opposed by pediatricians (December 19) "Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Reading Halloween (1978) Through the Lens of Labor (October 30, via) "Parents, historically, have been the most recurring threat to babysitters in their capacity to exploit and prey on them, and yet with Michael on set, the threat of the predatory employer-parent gets completely displaced."

2. Scientists thought this fossil was a teen T. rex. Turns out it's a new tyrannosaur (October 30) 

3. Hundreds killed in Darfur hospital massacre, 'hero' doctors abducted (October 30)

4. Israel still blocking most Gaza aid as military carries out more attacks (November 1, via) "This is an average of 145 aid trucks per day, or just 24 percent of the 600 trucks that are meant to be entering Gaza daily as part of the deal, it added."

5. Too many rats? Birth control is one city's answer (November 1) "For all these reasons, Somerville is trying something else — an anti-fertility chemical that targets the mature eggs in female rats."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. America's immigration crackdown is disrupting the global remittance market (October 28) "What leads Yang to argue this is that immigrants in the United States send a jaw-dropping amount of money back home to their families. These remittances, as they're known, have dwarfed the size of official foreign aid that the U.S. spends on things like economic development, health, and humanitarian assistance."

2. America’s Assault On Real History Comes For The Staff Of The Charles Lindbergh House And Museum (September 3, via) "As of the end of August, it’s all gone."

3. Trump administration sets lowest-ever cap on refugee admissions to U.S. (October 30) "'It is egregious to exclude refugees who completed years of rigorous security checks and are currently stuck in dangerous and precarious situations,' said Sharif Aly, president of the International Refugee Assistance Project. He said that the number of those with confirmed travel plans to the U.S. is greater than the new refugee cap."

4. Trump Admin Attempts To Ban Trans Youth Care Nationwide With New Federal Rules (October 30) "Now the administration is escalating with a blitz of three new rules that could effectively end most transgender youth care nationwide if enacted—pressuring many medical institutions to drop trans patients from receiving the care they need out of fear of federal reprisal, and punishing those who do not comply."

5.  The Myth of the Woke Right: A Response to the New York Times (October 24) 36-minute video from Big Joel about how that felon never actually understood "free speech" to mean "free speech"; how the New York Times wrote an article about "The Woke Right" but that's not really a thing, and the people who use the term use it to mean all sorts of different things; and the difference between cancel culture and government censorship.

6. Food Stamps are Good, Actually (Here Comes the Science) (October 30) "In the meanwhile, I urge you all to reach out to your local community to help out, or to find help if you need it."

And: Trump administration faces Monday deadline on use of contingency funds for SNAP (November 3) "The situation leaves millions with uncertainty about how they will feed themselves. Benefits will be delayed in November regardless of the outcome of the court cases because many beneficiaries have their cards recharged early in the month and the process of loading cards can take a week or more in many states."

7. US carries out new strike in Caribbean, killing 3 alleged drug smugglers (November 2) "The U.S. military has now killed at least 64 people in the strikes."

8. They were promised a lifeline to 'graduate' from poverty. Then it was taken away (November 2) "But just as you are about to receive that support, it gets canceled."