Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Something Still Could: Courage for a Turbid Anniversary (June 9) "The Declaration’s words outran the intentions of the men who wrote them. “All men are created equal” meant, in 1776, free men of property, and everyone knew it. But the sentence did not say that. Lincoln saw what Jefferson had done, perhaps without fully meaning to: created a rebuke (even to himself) timed unintentionally to detonate in every coming day. The distance between what the sentence said and what its authors meant became a standing invitation to everyone it was never meant to include."

2. 134 Days, 68 Places, Zero Internet: One Man’s Journey Through Digital China (June 23) "One of the initial challenges was hotel reservations. At his first stop, a chain hotel in Linfen, another city in Shanxi, he couldn’t get a room in person because the hotel only accepted online bookings. The front desk staffer told Yang there was nothing he could do to help him check in, though kindly drew him a map to another location of the same chain that could accommodate walk-in guests."

Also from Sixth Tone: Through the Eyes of Shop Cats (June 23) "Shop cats originally existed to drive away rats and protect goods in old, simple stores. Now, many old shops are renovated or closed, and the new commercial spaces are cleaner and do not need cats to catch rats. Therefore, the number of shop cats is decreasing year by year, especially in Shanghai."

3. Where Did All the Dinosaurs Go? Answers in Genesis and the Problem of the Missing Evidence (June 12) "We have found, quite literally, billions of fossils in the layers that young-earth geology must assign to the post-Flood world. We have found the rhinos and the horses and the tapirs and the cave bears. Somehow every last one of two hundred kinds of the most charismatic animals that ever lived slipped through that net entirely, and left behind not a fragment."

4. On Christianity and aliens (part 2) (June 23) "But the fact of the matter is that the sin and/or salvation of other intelligent creatures on other planets or in other galaxies is their business and we have no idea. We do not have their Bible, only ours, and ours is about us, not about them."

Also from the Slacktivist: God’s wrath on the jerks (June 24) "God could send a tornado to destroy the house of such a preacher — and only their house, leaving the rest of the community unharmed. And God could have that tornado carve out the full text of Isaiah 1 in deep trench letters in the remnants of that house. But God knows that it wouldn’t help. That same preacher would be back on his cable TV station the next day, explaining that this extremely localized natural disaster was clearly evidence of God’s wrath over a Girl Scout troop welcoming a trans member three states away."

5. 'If you are alive, make any noise': Venezuela searches rubble on Day 4 (June 28) "On Saturday, the government said the death toll had reached 1,430, with nearly 3,500 injured."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s “Open-Border” Policy For Parasitic Worms (June 19) "So, what went wrong? Why is the average American now cursed to once again know what the [****] a screwworm is?"

2. The “Massive Human Consequences” of Ending Birthright Citizenship (March 31) "'The initial order gave the federal government a 30 day implementation window. This is the federal government that can’t even get TSA lines working at an airport. They’re going to figure out a new class of citizenship in 30 days?' He added: 'There would be really immediate and long term and probably irreversible harms to individuals, babies born here, their families, the services they they get, the quality of their lives, disrupted and impacted in ways that we can’t possibly even fathom right now. No one has ever really thought that the government could do this, and then for them to sort of cavalierly go and do it with no plan: massive human consequences.'"

From a Chinese perspective, this whole thing about "wow it would be an unimaginable bureaucratic nightmare if birthright citizenship ended" seems kind of... odd. China doesn't have birthright citizenship, and yet it's not a constant nightmare of citizens being unable to prove their citizenship. Chinese citizens all* have an ID card, that they have to show whenever they deal with bureaucracy stuff that requires real-name verification. As an immigrant, I have to show my passport instead. (This can be really annoying, though, when the systems are set up to require a Chinese ID card and they don't have an option to use other forms of ID instead.) Finding out that the US just doesn't have a way to easily verify who's a citizen sounds just unbelievable, from a Chinese perspective.

*I have heard of Chinese people who weren't able to get an ID card because of the one-child policy- ie, they were the 2nd child in their family, and so their parents just didn't report their birth anywhere official. (Apparently there are fines for violating the one-child policy. It's not in effect anymore though- it ended in 2016.) This sounds like an impossible situation to be in- you can't do much of anything if you don't have a Chinese ID card. 

(But also, I'm sure China has problems I'm not hearing about. Just because the system works fine for the people I know doesn't mean it's actually fine. What is the situation for undocumented immigrants/ stateless people in China?)

As for establishing babies' citizenship in China- well, when you apply for the baby's ID card or hukou, you have to show the parents' ID card or hukou. (I didn't even get into what a "hukou" is, basically Chinese citizens are all supposed to have a hukou, it's a document that says very officially what city you are a resident of- this may have little connection to what city you actually live in, which is fine but you have less rights when signing your kids up for public school and things like that. Having a hukou proves Chinese citizenship.)

My husband is Chinese, so our kids have Chinese citizenship through him. (Also US citizenship because of me.) *Not* birthright citizenship. If both parents are immigrants, then the kid will not have Chinese citizenship, even if they are born in China. This sounds annoying to deal with- you have to get your baby a Chinese visa, within some number of days (60 days? I'm not sure) after they're born, but they don't even have a passport yet- some countries don't issue passports to their citizens fast enough to meet China's deadline, but from what I've heard it's not really a big deal, China is okay with babies missing this deadline.

The thing is, though, the big thing that makes the overall situation in China completely different from the US: In China, no matter how long I live here, I can never *be* Chinese. And children who are born here, if both their parents are foreign, they can't *be* Chinese. It's like, no matter what, you're always *different*. The concept of being Chinese is very strongly associated with ethnicity and family heritage- if you don't have that, you aren't Chinese, no matter what you do. 

This is completely different than the concept of being American. And ending birthright citizenship would change that.

3. In reversal, Senate votes to block war powers resolution, delivering Trump a win (June 25)

4. The Supreme Court says the U.S. can turn away asylum seekers at the border (June 25) "The Obama administration was the first to try stemming the flow of asylum seekers that way. But the lower courts blocked the policy on grounds that it violated federal law by denying asylum to people who otherwise would have qualified for it, had they been permitted to literally put one foot over the border."

Because of an imaginary line.

5. 4 surprising things to know about abortion in America since Dobbs (June 25) "The number of abortions nationally has increased each year since the national right to abortion was overturned."

6. US Supreme Court rules against Haitian refugees who were given Temporary Protected Status (June 25) and Trump can begin deportations of Syrian, Haitian TPS holders, Supreme Court says (June 25) This is just so shocking and sad, why would you want to send people back to a place that's not safe for them?

7. A federal judge in Boston blocks key parts of Trump's order to limit voting by mail (June 25) "The judge also found USPS has no legal authority to control mail-in voting."

8. Does Trump Know How Passports Work? (June 27) Seems not!

(I did see a blog post that said it literally does say "Welcome, but be good" in this edition of the passport- but this has NOT been confirmed so don't believe everything you read on a blog.)

"The Case for Open Borders": The wall is not impermeable

Border wall between Turkey and Syria. Image source.

Here's another quote I want to share from the book "The Case for Open Borders." This is from a chapter about a man named Abu Yassin, whose 18-month-old daughter died in a refugee camp due to the cold and the lack of medical care.

From page 18:

The wall that day when Abu Yassin couldn't find warmth for his daughter, the wall that Turkey was defending with support of the European Union and the United States, was not impermeable. Others could pass. Turks could cross the wall in either direction. Foreign dignitaries, American citizens, Germans, reporters, anyone with enough luck to be gifted the proper passport could pass, flash their papers and cross, and cross again-- they could do a triumphantly slow two-step back and forth to the rhythm of their national anthem: Syria to Turkey, Turkey to Syria, back and again. But anybody born in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any African country would be blanketly barred, left to burn their front doors for warmth.

That discrepancy defines much of our contemporary world. Not only are some free to traipse the globe while others are immobilized by walls and visa controls, but the very difference is the fulcrum point that drives the worldwide inequality regime-- not only financial inequality but an inequality of rights, prospects, security, opportunity; an inequality of life.

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Related:

That's What Radicalized Me (a post about immigration)

Blogaround

1. Carnival of Aces Round-Up: Sexual Healthcare (December 18) "As an adolescent and young adult, the messaging I heard was that these tests are very important, but that messaging seemed to take it for granted that all women are sexually active.  The messaging also claimed that the tests might be uncomfortable but wouldn’t be painful.  However, lots of women, especially in the asexual community, have never had sex.  And (as can be seen from the various posts about vaginismus), many women do find pelvic exams very painful."

2. Our Wedding, From The Woman Who Loves Zooey Zephyr (December 18) Congrats to Erin Reed and Zooey Zephyr!

3. Even if Voters ‘Get What They Asked For’ it’s More Likely to Cause a Fascist Death Spiral Than a Lesson Learned (November 18, via) Yeah... there's this narrative in response to the election, that in some sense it's right that people who voted for such a bad president will now have to live under such a bad president. And, some forms of this narrative go so far as to say they'll see how bad it is, and they'll see how wrong they were. 

I personally found this a little bit comforting at first, but I shouldn't have, because if you think about it for a few seconds, it totally falls apart. The ones who will suffer the most from the orange antichrist's presidency are NOT the people who voted for him. And yeah many of his voters will be worse off too, because he doesn't actually have any good plans for how to decrease the price of groceries, but they're not going to suddenly realize "oh we were so wrong to vote for him." 

January 6 happened, you guys. I really thought that would be the end of his popularity. I really thought that when he took a stand against the peaceful transfer of power- which, I learned in school, was one of the key things that makes America great- when he tried to overthrow the US government, for no real reason, just that he wanted to be president... I really thought he would be done after that. I really thought everyone would realize how bad he was right then. But no, here we are 4 years later. Did everybody forget about January 6? "They got what they wanted" isn't going to show these people how wrong they were, if January 6 couldn't do it.

4. Donald Trump and His Allies Don’t Really Care What Kind of Leftist You Are (December 11, via) "Being 'the right kind' of progressive or feminist or socialist can easily become its own goal, rather than winning concrete victories that match the values and goals behind these labels."

Yeah... after the election, I received so many emails from every liberal/social-justice organization I've ever donated to, and overall it made me really uncomfortable. The emails were all like "We're going to do everything we can to FIGHT against Trump" and yeah if that's true, then it's great, I want to support that- but is it really true? Are they just using this moment to get more donations and collect more names for their email lists? *I* don't know how to fight him, but suddenly every single organization is confidently assuring me that they're going to do a stellar job of it, if I just send them money? 

I'm really unhappy with this situation because we need to all work together to fight against the orange antichrist, but I can't trust that all these organizations "on our side" are really doing that- they might see it as an opportunity for themselves to profit off their donors who are scared and therefore more willing to give money.

And, I mean, if they're "just using this moment to get more donations" that's not necessarily a bad thing. If they are truly committed to fighting him, then they will need money, and now is a good opportunity to fundraise. That's not a bad thing.

I guess the issue is, different people have different opinions on what strategy to use to fight him, and just because some organization emails me to say "we're going to do everything we can to fight him" doesn't necessarily mean that their strategies are ones that I think will be effective and I would want to support.

Personally, the kinds of strategies I want to support are: 

• Directly working with people "on the ground" who are in danger because of conservative policies- ie, helping trans people in red states get health care, providing resources for immigrants to help them get housing and jobs, etc. I like this because it's local organizations who really understand people's needs and how to help them in practical ways.
• Lawyers challenging those policies in court. I like this because during the orange antichrist's first term, we did have a lot of success in the courts delaying or blocking his anti-human policies.

That's my thinking right now, but I am interested in learning about other strategies that might be effective- leave a comment if you have an opinion on this.

5. Protecting the Rights of Syrian Refugees (December 19) "Within twenty-four hours of the regime’s overthrow, nine European countries suspended asylum applications from Syrians."

6. Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam (December 22) [23-minute video] I remember seeing some youtube videos where Honey was advertised, a while ago- apparently a LOT of youtubers have done ads for this. They described it as a browser extension which finds coupon codes for you when you shop online- and it's free, there's no catch, you get free money. I remember thinking it sounded suspicious that it just gives you free money and there's no catch, but I couldn't figure out what was actually going on.

So, it turns out, here's what's shady about Honey:

• The way they make money is by getting the affiliate commission from the sale. (If you don't know what "affiliate commission" is: If you're a blogger or youtuber or whatever, and you share a link where someone can buy something, it could be an affiliate link, which means that if people click it and buy the thing, *you* get a cut of the money. [I do this here on the blog.] So what Honey is doing is replacing a cookie with its own cookie, so it will get the commission- possibly taking the affiliate commission away from whoever posted the affiliate link in the first place.)
• Also, Honey claims that it will always find the BEST coupon code for the buyer, but this is NOT true. Turns out, Honey makes deals with online stores about which coupon codes Honey will give to customers. In this way, it discourages the customers from searching for better coupon codes- Honey assures them that they're already getting the best price. Extremely shady!

(And I haven't used Honey, but my browser has a built-in tool that finds coupon codes, so now I'm wondering if that one that I use is equally shady.)

6. Biden commutes most federal death row sentences to life in prison before Trump takes office (December 23) 

Blogaround

1. China’s Facebook Goes Dark, Taking a Generation’s Memories With It (December 4) Wow! Renren, China's version of Facebook, has shut down. I had a Renren account, long long ago. But it's been years since I thought about Renren. Totally forgot it existed.

But one important takeaway from this is to not trust websites like this to store your photos/ whatever other data forever for you. I keep all my photos on my computer or external hard drive- with a cloud service (that I pay money for) as a backup. I don't trust any clouds- maybe someday those big companies will suddenly change their policies and make it massively inconvenient or impossible to access your photos, and when you complain about it and try to tell them how irreplaceable those photos were, they will be like *shrug*.

If a family member posts a good photo on Facebook, I save it to my computer. I don't trust that Facebook will always exist and will always have a way to easily find old photos. Everyone should do this! It boggles my mind that some people look at photos of themselves that their friends posted on Facebook- for example, your friends who attended your wedding posted photos- and then don't download them, and just believe that those photos will always be there on Facebook and they can look at them any time. !!!!! I don't trust any clouds.

2. How South Korea’s Robust Protest Culture Shut Down Martial Law—For Now (December 7) 

3. Why RFK Wants to Ban Fluoride (December 2) 

4. Liveblog! Trans Lawyer Chase Strangio Badgers SCOTUS For 'Health Care,' 'Equal Protection' (December 4) "Strangio represents the families and is the first out trans lawyer ever to argue before SCOTUS. This very minute is fucking historic, y’all."

5. Advent Calendar Advent Calendar (December 2) lolllllllll

6. TikTok Ban: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (November 21) "And again, I am not giving TikTok a pass here. I'm just pointing out that its behavior is pretty consistent with Silicon Valley's own very shitty standards."

7. President Bashar Al-Assad Has Fled Syria and His Brutal Regime Is Finally Over (December 8, via) "Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Assad has gone to brutal lengths to cling to power—including by deploying devastating chemical attacks on civilians, including children. All told, by 2022, more than 306,000 civilians had been killed in the war, according to the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner."

8. If you're interested in obscure features of the fossil record which can't be adequately explained by young-earth creationism, here are 2 blog posts for you:

Millions of Moroccan Mosasaur Teeth Create Dental Crisis for Flood Geology (November 29) "If all these teeth were deposited in a single year during the Flood, why are they concentrated in specific layers and not scattered throughout the geological column?"

Flood Geology Can’t Explain Dino Droppings (November 30) 

And a third one also from Joel Duff: Building Truth on Sand: The Hidden Cost of Sharing False ‘Evidence’ for Creation (December 4) "I found no evidence that this behavior exists at all in any ant species"

9. Peaceful Solutions (December 8) "The tens of millions of people who have been financially ruined and who have died suffering needlessly from engineered systemic neglect also were human beings, just as Brian Thompson was, and they also had families that loved them, just as Brian Thompson did. By the tens of millions, the survivors also mourn the killing of their loved ones—whose deaths, while enacted by deliberate choice and with clear motive, are not deemed murders, because the decisions that caused their anguish and death were legal, and, more to the point, were extremely profitable."

Blogaround

1. This important thread:

Thread incoming.
🧵
We're all familiar w/this famous meme.
But, did you know there are more?
LOTS, LOTS, MORE? pic.twitter.com/vFcMCW1qku

— Christian Janeway 🖖🥂🔍🏴‍☠️ (@XianJaneway) February 14, 2023

2. This whole thread:

I am nearly 43 yrs old. I have had 2 children, probably 10+ gyns, and so many pelvic exams.

Only last week did I encounter a doctor who first asked, "so many women have experienced sexual assault, will you be comfortable with this exam? Or can we talk about what you need?" 🤯

— Liz Sepper (@lsepper) February 14, 2023

3. This School Has the Worst Fire Safety Policy You've Ever Seen (2013) Okay I know this is from 2013, but I just saw it shared on Twitter and I am gobsmacked. (Also he links to a related post that he wrote but his link is broken, here is the correct link for that one.) Hemant Mehta literally emailed Pensacola Christian College to ask for clarification, and they replied twice, but somehow they aren't able to say the words "getting out of a burning building is MORE IMPORTANT then dressing modestly."

(I've heard a lot of horror stories about PCC from Samantha Field's blog...)

4. The recent kerfluffle on twitter is that some pastor told a story about how he was minding his own business at a restaurant and then the SEXIEST WOMAN EVER came and hit on him- the consensus on twitter is that this never happened, and now we are analyzing the cultural environment that these stories come from/ the reasons that a male pastor would make up a story like this (and this is a whole genre- it's not like this is the only example).

This thread is good:

Okay, I figured it out.
These kinds of stories are the only kinds of stories men can tell about how they heroically prevented adultery that also leave them totally in the clear.
The reason why they sound so ridiculous is because that’s not how men and women have sex with each https://t.co/h0A3hPdWRR

— Laura Robinson (@LauraRbnsn) February 17, 2023

5. The Princess Bride (1987) -- Ace Mini-Review (February 17) "Unlike many rom coms, which treat True Love as a universal goal everyone should be searching for, The Princess Bride presents it as practically unattainable.  And, as an ace-spectrum person, I actually find that comforting."

6. Extremely Hardcore (January 17) About Twitter employees' experiences after Musk took over. Yikes.

7. Microsoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happy (February 18)

8. Far From Home: Meet the Migrants Returning to Shanghai (February 16) "On Sunday, Sixth Tone visited an underground parking lot at the Shanghai Railway Station, where a temporary shelter has been set up for returning workers. Since public transportation closes at midnight, many migrant workers find it too expensive to stay at hotels or book taxis. Instead, they stay overnight to catch the earliest metro to their next job."

And 2 more articles, also from Sixth Tone:

How the Pandemic Left China’s Migrant Kids Behind (February 16) "Less encouraging is the data from the last three years. Although reliable statistics are hard to come by, education figures suggest that the pandemic has reversed some of the progress of the past decade and separated large numbers of children from their migrant parents."

Chinese Teams in Turkey: Rescue Over but Relief Will Take Years (February 17) "As the world pledged to help, China was among the first, offering aid, equipment, and personnel. While the government announced 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) in aid, official estimates suggest that nearly 300 personnel, both sent by the government and from independent organizations such as Blue Sky Rescue and Ramunion, have joined the rescue effort."

9. Christian Leaders Are Sharing Their Experiences at the Asbury Revival (February 15) 

10. There is no sleeping giant (February 17) "That all-or-nothing view of revival will only ever produce the latter result. It will never bring 'revival.' I’m not sure it will even allow it."

11. After the ‘miracles’: Turkey, Syria, and long-term recovery (February 10) 

Blogaround

A cute little doggy, looking slightly guilty because it stole a CD. Image source.

1. We Had Abortions, and Here’s What That ‘Jane the Virgin’ Story Line Meant to Us (posted November 7) "According to the Guttmacher Institute, Latinxs make up about 25 percent of people having abortions, and roughly two-thirds of people having abortions are already parents. And yet, very few story lines show either."

2. The Syrians Next Door (posted November 3) "The twins do not remember a time before the war. They recall the whooshing sound a bomb makes when it drops from a plane. They know that when the bomb lands nearby, the whole building shudders and solid walls can ripple like water. When the shelling started, the family often squeezed themselves into the cabinets under the kitchen counter. At night, all five of the kids would climb into their parents’ bed and hide under the blankets. 'You want to find a safe place to hide the children,' Abdul Fattah says. 'But there is no safe place.'"

3. Harry Potter Theory: The True Path Of The Elder Wand (posted November 8) Wow this is complicated.

4. Enough with the fear of fat (May 2016) "Throughout my career, I have learned that fat bodies are inherently political. And unapologetic fat bodies can blow people's minds."

5. 7 Ways To (Re) Come Out As Bisexual (posted November 12) "Bring some 16th century realness to your coming out by hiring a court announcer to introduce you before entering every room."

[content note: links below are about the election]

1. How Trump Conned America (posted November 11)

2. Over 200 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since Election Day (posted November 11) HOLY SHIT.

3. Empathy for the Devil (posted November 4) "Christianity carries with it a mandate for universal empathy that can often prove utterly inconsistent with African-American survival, let alone advancement. Too many times, we're asked to understand those who have opposed or even terrorized us, while expecting no such consideration in return."

4. If Donald Trump wins, I will blame toxic Christianity and here’s why (posted November 3) "'Make America Great Again' is a slogan for people who believe that humanity is fallen; 'Better Together' is a slogan for people who believe that humanity is good."

5. Alarmism saved my family from Hitler: Why I won’t tell anyone to calm down about Trump (posted November 10) Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace.

6. Trump alone cannot overturn marriage equality, but that is not the point (posted November 12) "Ask yourself this – how many Kim Davises are there out there who will be emboldened to break the law when your gay, bisexual, lesbian or transgender neighbors apply for their marriage license with a partner of the same gender? How quickly do you think a Trump administration will be to force them to obey the law?"

7. White evangelicalism is white nationalism. (posted November 9) "Yesterday, white evangelicals again voted for white nationalism. They supported a candidate who explicitly and unambiguously made white nationalism the centerpiece and driving passion of his campaign. The fig-leaf for this support was abortion."

8. The Cinemax Theory of Racism (posted November 10) "And others say to you, that’s fine, but you knew that to get the other parts, you had to sign on for the racism, too. And evidently you were okay with that."

9. I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America (posted November 10)

10. Are Progressives Crying Wolf? Not So Fast. (posted November 14) "During the primary, Trump banned news agencies from his press corps if they wrote too critically about him. He said that libel laws need to be opened up so that he can sue the press for reporting he feels isn’t accurate. This is unprecedented."

11. ‘N****rs’ slur defaces MLK Center in Spokane: ‘Do not pretend that these are isolated incidents’ (posted November 15) Holy shit.

12. On the Abortion Trump Card (posted November 12) "And to support Trump on pro-life grounds is effectively to say that her life, which is actually unfolding, which she is currently experiencing, which she had planned and dreamed and hoped for, is worth less than the purely biological life of someone who hasn’t even been born yet. Is this the moral high ground, or a sick parody of moral deliberation?"

Blogaround

Image source.

1. The dangers of apologetics (posted September 1) "The opposite side of this coin is avoiding the questions that people actually are asking about the faith (e.g., why do you treat gay people badly? Why has Christianity inspired so much violence in its history?), perhaps because they are harder to answer in such a way that Christians come out looking good."

2. Jesus Is Not At All Like That (my video for the NALT Christians Project) (posted September 4) "I’m an evangelical Christian because Jesus loves me and declares me to be a beloved child of God. Not because I agreed to hate some other group of God’s beloved children, or to deny them their full equality in society and in the church."

3. When it’s too big (a reflection on Syria) (posted September 4) "All that’s left is to sit in quiet with the world and beg for peace and wisdom and clear paths."

4. Toys R Us to drop 'boys' and 'girls' labelling (posted September 4) Good!

Image source.

5. Hello, Heritage. Goodbye, War. (posted September 2) "Go stand in the most divided places."