Ballot Drop Day for Americans Abroad!

Bald eagle and American flag. Image source.

Hi all, if you are a US citizen living outside of the US, and you have registered to vote using the Federal Post Card Application, you should now have received your ballot by email for this year's election. (If you didn't receive it, start investigating what's going on- is it in your spam folder? did you not check the box to receive your ballot by email? are you somehow not registered for this year?) Vote vote vote! My advice is to do it as soon as possible, especially if you are from a state that requires you to mail it.

If you have not registered to vote yet: It's not too late! Go to https://www.votefromabroad.org/ - it will walk you through all the steps.

If you are in Shanghai, China- the US consulate here can mail ballots for us. Bring your US passport, and make sure your ballot is in the correct kind of envelope so it will be mailed for free. (Example envelope here, but you shouldn't need this one because at the download link in the email they should give you the envelope template you need.) You don't need to make an appointment. Probably other US consulates around the world also have this service. (Any questions, if they're about China then I can answer, if they're about somewhere else I can connect you to someone who can.)

Vote vote vote!

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.)

US Citizens Living Abroad: Register to Vote!

Image text: "Vote from Abroad .org" Image source.

Hi everyone, if you are a US citizen living outside the US, you still have the right to vote! You have to register to vote each year, and then your board of elections will email you your ballots for all the elections throughout that year.

There is a really nice website that guides you through all the steps to register to vote: VoteFromAbroad.org. Some states have primaries coming up in March 2026, so get on it!

The rules for each state are different- some require you to physically mail your voter registration, some allow faxing or emailing. The Vote From Abroad site has all the information about each state.

If you are from a state which requires you to mail it. Here's the information I have about the US consulates in China: They can mail these for us. Bring your completed FPCA form (ie, the form to register to vote), in an envelope, and drop it off at the US citizen services area of the consulate (bring your US passport). In my experience with the US consulate in Shanghai specifically, they are open 8:30-11:30 am, Monday to Friday. I've been told it will take 2-4 weeks to mail it to the US in this way. Do it early- I would NOT rely on the consulate to mail things if you're close to the deadline.

I only have information about the US consulates in China, but I expect that US consulates in other countries probably have this service too.

You can print an envelope here: https://www.fvap.gov/uploads/FVAP/Forms/fpca_envelope.pdf

Vote vote vote! If you know any Americans who are living abroad, send them the link: VoteFromAbroad.org

"The Case for Open Borders": Reparations

Political cartoon showing an American bald eagle dominating a large area of the globe. Image source.

Here's another quote from "The Case for Open Borders". From pages 210-211:

15. Open Borders As Reparations and Decolonization

The United States has what could be termed "an imperial debt" to a number of countries throughout the world. "US responsibility for helping create the conditions that drive much of the out-migration from Honduras," Joseph Nevins writes, "should negate any justification by the US government to deport and deny rights of residence to people of Honduran origin." Given that Honduras is less exception to and more exemplar of the destabilizing effects of US imperialistic intervention, the same argument could be made for dozens of other countries, including but not limited to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Congo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, and Cambodia.

Sri Lankan novelist and activist A. Sivanandan's famous and succinct line explains why migrants move to countries that had colonized their homes: "We are here because you were there."

"The Case for Open Borders": Exploiting workers on both sides

US-Mexico border. Image source: By User Larsinio on en.wikipedia - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here19:00, 11 April 2006 Larsinio 1152x862 (189,587 bytes) (from http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/print.asp?URL=/cross-border/nafta-rules/new-mexrule.htm), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=791553

Here's another quote from "The Case for Open Borders". From page 208:

Simultaneously, 50,000 midwestern auto workers, mostly in the midwest, lost their jobs. Many of those jobs went to Mexico, where, Akers Chacón reports, productivity rates increased over 66 percent between 1990 and 1999. During the same period, however, real wages fell by about 20 percent. Unionization rates also dropped over the same period. In other words, the open-borders-for-capital and closed-borders-for-people schema is a lose-lose for both American and Mexican workers. Closed borders is a win only for the corporations, which use the border as a wedge to lower wages, undercut worker protections, and keep the assembly line zipping.

Opening borders would immediately strip corporations of a key tool of exploitation, offering workers easier access to decent wages and facilitating collaboration and collective organization.

"The Case for Open Borders": Keeping only some people out

Photo from inside the library on the US-Canada border. Image source.

Here's another quote I want to share from "The Case for Open Borders". This is from pages 118-119:

Another popular defense of borders is that, as Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, "We don't have a country without a border." Similarly, Obama White House advisor Cecilia Muñoz said that "[t]here are policy decisions to be made about who should be an immigrant, and that includes removing folks who don't qualify under the law. That's, I think, just the reality of being a nation."

But how does a closed border legitimize a country? The US border is wide open to goods, money, the well connected, and the wealthy-- so why is keeping poor people out important for maintaining a nation state? Though there are no formal financial requirements for Mexicans obtaining nonimmigrant visas to enter the United States, consular officers consider a person's finances and employment before issuing a visa, and poor people almost never get the pass.

In other words, the border is supposed to keep only some people out. Compare the triple fencing, watch towers, paramilitary Border Patrol, ground sensors, drones, and billions of dollars spent keeping people out of Southern California to the Derby Line in Vermont at the northern US border, where an opera house is literally divided down the middle between United States and Canada, where the international divide is marked by a strip of black on the floor of the town library's reading room. You aren't legally permitted to enter and remain in the United States from there, but unless you're looking down, your book-browsing could take you back and forth across an international divide without any notice.

I googled this Vermont library because it sounds cool, and it turns out that now the felon is closing access from the Canadian side, because I guess we can't have nice things.

"The Case for Loving" (kids' book about Loving vs Virginia)

Book cover for "The Case for Loving"

I got this book for my kids: The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko. It is a picture book which tells the story of the US Supreme Court case Loving vs Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage.

I'm really into this because I'm white and my husband is Chinese. We got legally married in China so I guess the specifics of US marriage law didn't directly affect us- but still, this is important history that is relevant to my life and my kids' lives, and I want to teach them about it.

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Turns out I really didn't know much about the Loving vs Virginia case

So, in history class in high school, I learned that Loving vs Virginia was the big important Supreme Court case where interracial marriage was officially legalized. But as I read this book to my son, I realized I didn't know any of these other details. I didn't really know anything about it at all.

Some fun facts which I learned from this book:

• Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter lived in Virginia, where they could not get legally married- but interracial marriage *was* legal in Washington DC, so they went there to get legally married. I did not know that different states had different laws about this.
• After they returned to Virginia, they were caught "cohabitating" and put in jail. They ended up moving back to Washington DC because of this. I did not know people were really getting put in jail for this back then.
• Richard Loving's statement that his lawyers read to the Supreme Court: "Tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia." Love this.

But I guess the biggest thing I learned from this book is that the arguments for banning interracial marriage were about "preserving the purity of the white race." I don't remember learning in high school that that was the reasoning behind these laws. In high school, when we learned about the Civil Rights Movement, I kind of got the impression that the reason white people didn't want black people to have equal rights was just some vague "racism" and not liking black people. Just ... as if white people back then were just mean for no reason, and I can't relate to them at all, and they were so obviously wrong. I think we do a big disservice when we portray history in this way, as if we don't have any of those problems now. In reality, white people who opposed the Civil Rights Movement weren't one-dimensional caricatures saying "let's be mean to black people for no reason." No, they made arguments that many people back then felt were convincing- for example, this argument about "preserving the purity of the white race." 

And there are right-wing people *now* saying things like "we have to preserve the purity of the white race." People talking about the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, talking about immigrants with "bad genes" coming into the US, etc. Banning abortion, to force white women to have more babies. We need to realize that the racism of the white people who opposed the Civil Rights Movement 60 years ago isn't really that different from racism we have today. We need to learn from this history, so we don't buy into the same racist arguments that they did 60 years ago.

(Okay, and one more cool thing about the book, on the last page it has a photo of the Loving family, which allowed me to tell my son "this is a true story from history.")

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I guess I talked to my son about race

So recently after I read this book to my son, we had this conversation:

me: I like this book because me and your dad are different races.

him: Why are you different races?

me: I'm white and your dad is Chinese. ... Did you notice that?

him: Yes

Oh good, he noticed that.

I always thought it was weird that parents feel awkward about talking to their kids about race, but now I get why it feels awkward: Because on one level, it's so obvious, everyone can see that I'm white and my husband is Chinese. But on another level, people's ideas about what it *means*, and the history of atrocities committed because of race- all of that is very complicated, how do you even begin to talk to kids about that? I think having books like this helps a lot, because you don't have to figure out what to say, you can just read the book.

But yeah, my son is living his life as a mixed-race person and I want him to be able to talk about it. I've noticed that when he's with me, and we're out and about in Shanghai, Chinese people always ask him, "Do you speak Chinese?" But when he's with my husband and I'm not there, they don't ask that, they just go ahead and talk to him in Chinese.

Oh, and also, the book mentioned slavery, and my son already knows what that is because he watches this Chinese cartoon from the 90's called 海尔兄弟 (Haier Brothers), which was sponsored by a real-life refrigerator company in China, it's about these 2 boys (who are the actual mascots of this fridge company) and they are brothers, but one of them is Chinese and the other one is German, and actually they are androids and not people, also they only wear underwear, and they travel around with 3 humans (who wear normal clothes)- an old man, a boy, and a girl, and the old man is not actually anyone's grandfather, I have no idea how he's related to any of the other characters, and they are all time travelers who travel to different places and times, to teach kids about science and history. This cartoon goes so hard, there are episodes about Africans being kidnapped and put on ships and sold into slavery. My husband has a lot of nostalgic feelings about this cartoon so that's why he wants our son to watch it. I don't quite get it and I wonder if the entire thing is an ad for a refrigerator somehow. It probably sounds bonkers from my description here, but it is a real thing, here is the theme song, enjoy.

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Conclusion

This is a good book for kids in an interracial family. Also good if you want your kids to learn more about US history and the Civil Rights Movement. 

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Related

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

"I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings) 

"America: A Patriotic Primer" (Kids' Book Review)

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

Statue of Liberty. Image source.

The long and short of it is, I have always lived my life with the assumption that I can travel to any country I want. I visited Canada so many times growing up. I knew people who went on vacation to beautiful cities in Europe. And I grew up evangelical, so I heard all about missionaries going to live in various places all over the world. God calls you to go to some strange faraway country, and then you go. It's hard work, but no government will stand in your way. Yeah maybe it's a country that's not too keen on American missionaries- then you just get a bit creative on your visa application. If God wants you to go there, God will make it work out.

I'm American, and I've lived in China for over 10 years now. I'm an immigrant. Why did I move to China? Well, I felt like, the reality is that there's so much I don't know about the world. There are so many different cultures and languages out there. Billions of people, whose lives are completely different from mine, and God knows and lives in them to the exact same extent that They know and live in me. If I stay in the US, it's too easy to fall into the false belief that I basically understand the world. That I basically understand people. That I basically understand God.

I felt I needed to go somewhere where I had no idea what was going on, where I didn't understand the language or culture, because the truth about the world *in general* is I don't know what's going on, and I don't understand the language or culture.

And because I have a US passport, I could do that. 

And then...

And then I found out that for millions of people all over this world, it's not that simple. They are refugees looking for a safe place to live, and governments simply refuse to let them in. The US simply refuses to let them in.

That there are people in this world- ordinary people who just want to make a good life for themselves and their family, and they think "I want to go to [country xyz]" and they just can't. 

This is what radicalized me. I've never gotten over it. I can go live in whatever country I want, and other people just can't. Simply because I was born in the US.

This is unbelievable. I can't even describe how shocked I was when I found this out. Everyone should be able to live in whatever country they want. 

I firmly believe that. Everyone should be able to live in whatever country they want. 

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When you apply for a tourist visa, the main thing your destination country is looking for is whether you're likely to overstay the visa. Are you really coming as a tourist, or are you trying to be an immigrant? If they think you're likely to immigrate, they will deny the visa.

On the visa application, you have to show that you have ties to your home country. Do you have a job? Do you own property? Do you have family members who need you to be there to care for them? Have you traveled to other countries and not overstayed your visa? Write down all those things on the application.

Tourists spend lots of money. Countries want tourists to come. But bringing in immigrants is more complicated.

I've heard of Americans in China who have a Chinese spouse, and the Chinese spouse applied for a US tourist visa and was denied. The US thinks, "you are married to a US citizen- it's likely you are actually trying to immigrate to the US." Especially if the Chinese spouse is from a poor, rural, middle-of-nowhere part of China, the sort of place that makes US visa officers think "why would anyone want to live there?" 

It's outrageous that some people are in this situation where they can never go visit their spouse's family, just because of countries and borders and governments.

I think *most* American/Chinese couples don't have this problem. It's only the ones where, on paper, the Chinese spouse's life in China doesn't really look like it's worth coming back to.

For me and my husband- because my husband is a Chinese citizen- someone gave him the advice to apply for the US tourist visa before we got married, and to not mention in the interview "my girlfriend is American." So he followed that advice and got the 10-year US tourist visa, thanks Obama. Now he has a nice record of traveling to the US, staying for a couple weeks, and then going back to China- like an ideal tourist- so we won't have any issues in the future when he needs to apply for the US tourist visa again.

Here's the thing, though: If you are from a "poor" country, it's likely that you're just not going to be able to convince the US that you won't overstay your visa. If there's a decent argument to be made that you would be better off living as an illegal immigrant in the US, rather than in your home country, the US simply will not issue the visa. Regardless of your actual intentions.

I have read articles about African researchers applying for temporary US visas to attend academic conferences- and being denied. Maybe because they can't prove that their home countries are good enough to go back to, or maybe just because of racism.

No African citizens granted visas for African trade summit in California

Africans Not Welcome: The Punitive US Visa Application Process

And a similar one about Canada: Canada refuses visas to over a dozen African AI researchers 

And Europe: How visa rejections are stalling Africa's health research

That's what radicalized me.

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I can tell you all about the immigration process for China. First I had to find a job. While in the US, I applied online for English teaching jobs, did an interview over Skype, and got an offer. Was I qualified? Uh, no, not really. The main thing was that I am a native English speaker. You have that, and you can get a job teaching English in China.

(Fortunately, after a few years of being an English teacher, I switched to an engineering job, because that's what I'm actually good at.)

I don't mean it was "easy" for me- there were parts of the process that were very stressful and annoying. I didn't *want* to teach English, but it was the job I was able to get, as an immigrant. And you have to be aware of the risk that your employer will turn out to be shady- some people move to China and then find out the job is totally different than what they were told, or that their employer wants to hold on to their passport "for safekeeping" (WTF). But my point is, there was a process, very realistically doable for someone in my situation.

I had also been studying Chinese, and had gotten to the point where I could go about my life speaking and reading Chinese and not using English at all. This helped me a lot in that English-teaching job, but it was very much NOT a requirement for the job. Most of the other international teachers I worked with couldn't speak Chinese, and nobody saw that as a problem at all. 

Actually, the Chinese employees I worked with were all very impressed that I could speak Chinese. It was baffling to me, after a lifetime of hearing rhetoric about immigration that said "they came to this country, they should learn English" (which was often said about people who could speak English but preferred to use their native language when talking with their own family, and Americans who were within earshot were highly offended about it). I couldn't believe that some Americans were really coming to China knowing only enough Chinese to ask "how much does this cost" and "where is the bathroom", and they thought that was fine, and Chinese people thought that was fine, and Chinese people would talk to them in English and say, "I'm sorry for my poor English."

What is going on? Well... how should I put this... No one holds white people to that same standard.

So I could get a job in China with no real qualifications, just that I could speak English- but if we look at the opposite case, at Chinese people working as Chinese teachers in the US- they have actual academic degrees related to teaching. They all speak English fluently. Of course they do.

When I was going through the process of finding a job and applying for the work visa and moving to China, I didn't think about the whole scope of it and my place in the world. It was just, here are the steps to apply, and I did the steps. I wasn't aware of my own privilege and the fact that for the vast majority of people in the world, there are no such "steps" available to them.

But when I found out, that's what radicalized me.

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China allowed me to immigrate because they determined that I would earn money and benefit the economy. 

Rich tourists are allowed to come because they benefit the economy.

So basically, the people who are allowed to cross the border are the people who don't really need to. They just want to have a fun vacation. They just want to see the world. They could get a job in their own country but they have a sense of adventure and want to live in a different country instead.

But the people who are truly in need, who can't stay in their own country, who are fleeing violence or climate disasters, they're the ones that governments/ people/ political movements don't want to allow in.

You're never going to convince me this is okay. You're never going to convince me that it's right that I can live in any country I want, just because I was born in the United States, and other people can't, because they were born elsewhere.

Everyone should be allowed to live in whichever country they want.

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I have nothing but admiration for immigrants. The amount of courage and hard work it takes to go to somewhere completely unfamiliar and adapt to it and make a life for yourself there. Wow.

I know what it's like, not understanding what everyone around you is saying. I know what it's like, feeling confused and awkward and vulnerable because you don't know what's going on and everything is so weird, but for everyone around you it's normal. I know what it's like, being stared at because I stand out. 

I know what it's like, trying to just buy a normal loaf of bread to make sandwiches, and I can't really find that in China. First of all, bakeries sell bread in packages that have 4-6 slices. You can't buy a "normal" sized loaf, probably because Chinese people can't even imagine eating that much bread. And there's always something a bit off about it. Either it's butter-flavored, or the difference in firmness between the crust and the bread part is just a bit weird, or it's too thick, or or or...

I think all immigrants have had experiences like this.

Leaving behind your home and your culture and learning to live in a whole new place- that's an incredible thing, and we should be amazed by the immigrants we meet. 

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So I don't care if they are legal or illegal immigrants. Everyone should be allowed to live in whatever country they want. 

Some legal immigrants will say things like "we did everything the right way, we had to deal with all this paperwork and fees and waiting, and those illegal immigrants didn't have to do any of that and they're getting all the benefits." You won't find any of that here. (Seriously- the system was unfair to you by making you wait or denying your visa, and you're mad at illegal immigrants? Be mad at the system!)

What's the actual difference between legal and illegal immigrants? I have a US passport, and they don't? A US passport is a social construct. It's just something we made up. Visas, borders, countries, all made up. I don't think any of these are good enough reasons to put someone in jail and deport them.

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Ah, but what about the practical parts? A country can't just simply let everyone in. 

Okay, I don't know the details about the practical parts. Probably there is some limit for how many immigrants a country can reasonably accept. But I know the United States is not anywhere near that limit. We can and should be doing so much more.

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Why can I live in any country I want, but other people can't? I'm never going to be able to accept this. I support all immigrants. Everyone should be able to live in whichever country they want.

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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

- "The New Colossus," Emma Lazarus

---

Related:

On Immigration and Double Standards

Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China

Blogaround

Posts not related to that felon/ fascist nonsense:

1. China’s new and cheaper magic beans shock America’s unprepared magic bean salesmen (January 29, via) "'DeepBean’s new beans only require a third of the water that American beans need to not grow into anything of value,' an analyst said."

2. Home and whole and ‘back to normal’ (February 2) Those of you who follow the Slacktivist's blog may know that his wife has spent 3 years trying to get a surgery she needs because of constant pain, and it keeps being delayed. Well, she finally had the surgery. This is great news! Very happy for her!

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And the posts about that felon/ fascist nonsense:

1. Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral (January 29, via) "Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible."

2. As Part of 'Authoritarian Takeover,' Trump Signs Order to Deport Pro-Palestine Students (January 29, via)

3. A Line By Line Analysis Of Trump's Youth Care Ban Executive Order (January 30) 

Also from Erin Reed: School Systems Across US Declare They Will Not Comply With Trump's Anti-Trans Executive Order (February 1) "The claims in their statement are false. We do not have a policy that violates anyone’s rights or indoctrinates children. What we do have is a culture of respect—one that honors the dignity and diversity of all students, families, and educators."

4. How They Lie: Trump's Executive Orders (January 30) "The executive order relies on cis normativity to communicate body horror that simply does not exist when trans care is provided to the right people at their own request in a patient-centered, patient-empowered context."

5. Mass Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (February 3)

6. US Postal Service flip-flops on Hong Kong-China packages, lifting a ban imposed a day earlier (February 6) This is all a bit ridiculous. I'm an American in China, and I saw a lot of confusion in the WeChat groups for Americans the other day, people trying to figure out what to do about the package they need to mail back to their mom. These sudden policy changes are really not cool.

7. Are abortion bans across America causing deaths? The states that passed them are doing little to find out. (December 23, via) "'I can’t imagine the states that passed restrictions saying, ‘Now we want to know if that caused any deaths,’' said Eugene Declercq, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health who serves on Massachusetts’ maternal mortality review committee. 'The clinicians and the public health people might want to know, but the political leaders would be aghast.'"

8. Donald Trump’s Second Term Begins With a Crash (January 30, via) "Also on January 20, Trump imposed a hiring freeze across the entire federal government, and air traffic controllers (ATCs) are federal employees. The FAA has been struggling for years to make up for an ATC shortage caused by the pandemic; though it finally met its hiring goal in 2024, controllers are still reportedly stretched thin. As Reps. Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Steve Cohen (D-TN) pointed out in a joint press release, Trump’s move was both illegal, as the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 requires maximum staffing of ATCs, and dangerous. 'Hiring air traffic controllers is the number one safety issue according to the entire aviation industry,' they wrote."

9. Second judge blocks Trump's birthright citizenship order in back-to-back rulings (February 6) "'All I have wanted is to focus on my baby being born healthy and safe, but instead, even though my baby will be born in the U.S., I have been worried that they will be denied a right is that guaranteed under the constitution — the right to be a U.S. citizen,' Garcia said in a statement after the decision. 'This ruling will give mothers like me a bit of temporary relief as we navigate pregnancy and the uncertain future for our babies.'"

10. NSA museum covered plaques honoring women and people of color, provoking an uproar (February 5)

11. This meme:

12. Is Somebody Doing Something?! (February 4) "It’s helpful to think of the response as falling into four distinct yet sometimes overlapping categories, each with increasing urgency. These responses include the personal, the political, the legal and the popular."

The Kleenex Box Guitar is Part of My Culture

The tissue box guitar- with rubber bands and an old paper towel tube. Image source.

When I was a little kid, I remember making this craft: you stretch some rubber bands over an empty kleenex box, and it makes a guitar because the rubber bands are right over the hole. Very cool when you're 8 years old!

I'm American, and I made this kind of kleenex box guitar in the US. Now I live in China, and here's something fascinating: You can't really do this craft in China. Because kleenexes don't come in cardboard packaging. In China, they're in plastic.

Like this:

Package of tissues in plastic. Image source.

So when you use up all the kleenexes, you're just left with a plastic wrapper. You can't make a guitar out of that.

I'm writing about this because it's about culture. The best definition I've heard for "culture" is this: "Culture" is the things that you think of as normal, but they might not be normal for someone else. This little tiny mundane detail- that in the US, tissues are typically sold in cardboard boxes, but in China they're in plastic- and because of that, this kids' craft project has arisen where you make a guitar out of the empty box, but you can't do that in China. 

(And yes, I'm aware that my use of the word "kleenex" also says something about the culture I come from. The "correct" word is "tissue" but I grew up calling them kleenexes. Good luck having anyone in China understand what you're saying if you use the word "kleenex" though. When they learn English, they learn "tissue"- or they just translate from Chinese directly and call it "paper.")

Of course, Chinese culture has other things instead. Off the top of my head, here's one: I started learning to crochet, and I saw this cool crochet project in a WeChat post. (WeChat is the social media app we all use in China.) Here are some photos:

A toy chicken, crocheted out of different colors of yarn. The whole chicken is very triangle-shaped and the side of the body has a really colorful large flower pattern.

Cute! I need to learn how to make these!

I showed them to my husband, and he immediately said, "That looks like a zongzi."

What is a zongzi, you ask?

3 zongzi in a steaming basket. Image source.

These are 粽子 [zòng zi], a food made by taking sticky rice and some kind of filling like meat or red beans, wrapping it all up in leaves in a tetrahedron shape, tying it up with string, and then steaming it. They are the traditional food for Dragon Boat Festival, a holiday in June.

So I scrolled up on the crochet chicken post, and sure enough, the page title says this is a guide to crocheting "粽子鸡", zongzi chickens. 

I know what zongzi are, but I hadn't noticed that these chickens look like zongzi. My husband noticed right away because he's Chinese.

This is culture. The little everyday objects, which people can creatively reimagine as something else- but it shakes out different depending on what "everyday objects" you have.

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Related:

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

Tipping, Fruit, and Jesus 

Chinese Jokes Make Me Think About God

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

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

Book cover for "Raising Mixed Race."

I read the book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World [affiliate link], by Sharon H. Chang. I read this because my 2 kids are mixed-race Asian kids (white/Chinese). I really liked this book. It had a lot of deep stuff to say. I recommend this to parents of mixed-race Asian kids.

This post will cover some of my thoughts about the book:

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Language

The book spends a lot of time in the beginning talking about the language used to discuss race. The language we commonly use has origins in racist ideologies throughout history- for example, in the 1700s, Europeans invented the "five-race construct" (ie, the five races are Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, American). Even now, you sometimes see the term "Mongolian" used to refer to something related to east Asians. That's kinda racist.

The example given in the book is a nurse discussing Chang's son's "Mongolian spots." A Mongolian spot is a dark birthmark, kind of looks like a bruise, that some east Asian children have. The nurse, aware that the name sounded kinda racist, said, "I don't know why they call it that, they just do." Chang was unhappy about this; in the book she says this nurse was perpetuating this racism by using the term "Mongolian spots."

I don't really know what to think about this- my first reaction is that it seems fine to me to use the term "Mongolian spots" but to say it with air quotes or something that makes it obvious you're aware it sounds kinda racist. The book seems to be saying that even using it at all is racist and bad. What's the alternative, though? Does she want this nurse to start a movement to call it something different, right then and there? (A quick google tells me that "Mongolian spots" do have a non-racist name: slate gray nevus. Okay, so, now that we know, we should use that term instead.) My second reaction was, I'm white so maybe I shouldn't tell people of color "oh this thing you think is racist, actually it's not racist."

A lot of this book was about how it's problematic for people to say certain things about mixed-race Asian kids. And I definitely agree that the language we use for race has a really bad history, and it's important to learn about that history, and in an ideal world we wouldn't use that language, but I'm not sure what to do in the world we actually have. It doesn't seem helpful to me to create a really long list of things you're not allowed to say when talking about race (which is sort of what I felt the book was doing, in some places).

For example, the book says you shouldn't talk about what specific fraction people are of each race (ie, my kids are half Chinese and half white). Instead, the book always uses the term "mixed race" or lists the specific ethnic groups (for example, "Chinese/white"). Yes, this makes sense to me, because historically there have been government policies that quantified what fraction your ancestry would need to be to "count" as a certain race (like the "one-drop rule"), and those policies have always been harmful. And even now, if a mixed-race person ever meets someone who really wants to know the specific fractions of their ancestry (ie, it's really important to this random stranger to find out that you're 1/2 white, 1/4 Chinese, and 1/4 Vietnamese), that can really only come from racist assumptions. This person is trying to figure out what stereotypes to apply to you, and that's why they want to know the numbers. Or they're trying to say that you're not "really" Chinese (it could be other Chinese people telling a mixed-race Chinese person that).

So yeah, I agree that it's problematic to talk about mixed-race people in terms of specific fractions. And it's problematic to discuss which of their physical features look like which race. And it's problematic to say that one sibling looks "more white" than the other sibling. Etc. I feel like this book spends a lot of time telling us things we shouldn't say.

Is that useful? I guess? But if people still have the same framework for thinking about race, but they just know they're not allowed to say their conclusions out loud, does that actually help? I guess then maybe the next generation will grow up not hearing people say those problematic things, so they won't internalize the ideology that goes with it.

Anyway, I agree that we should be aware of the language we use, and the history of it. Chang does a very good job of explaining the history of these racist ideas and why it's problematic when people use certain terminology to discuss race or mixed-race people. But in a practical sense, I sometimes felt like this book was telling me a lot of things we are not allowed to say. And I don't really know what I should say instead? I guess that's not a problem with the book, but with the racism embedded in our society.

---

The history of laws surrounding interracial marriage

When I learned about the civil rights movement in school, I remember learning about laws which made it illegal for a white and black person to marry. And then the famous Supreme Court case, Loving vs Virginia, struck down all those laws. What I did NOT know was that this wasn't just about white/black interracial marriage- there were also laws saying white people couldn't marry Asian people. Wow! I had no idea! And I am a white American married to an Asian guy. Kind of ridiculous that I had never heard about this history at all.

---

White dads who "don't see race"

This book had many examples of white dads being problematic toward their Asian wives and mixed-race kids. For example, there was a white man who was dating a Chinese woman, and wasn't willing to travel to China to meet her family, what on EARTH. There are white men who don't think it's important for their mixed-race Asian kids to learn about their Asian culture, eat the food, celebrate holidays, and so on.

It's common for white people in the US to not really be very aware of race. To assume that since it doesn't affect them, it won't affect their kids either. You look at your own kid, and all you think about is how you love your kid. Of course you don't see them as a simple Asian stereotype, and therefore it never occurs to you that other people will see them that way.

(Also my situation is different because I'm in China; I'm a minority here. This book is written from a US perspective. Obviously very different from what my son is experiencing as he grows up in China.)

I feel that this is something unique that mixed-race kids have to deal with. If you live in the US and have a white parent, that parent hasn't had the experience of people treating them as a racial stereotype, and so they don't know what their child is experiencing. If both parents are monoracial, well that's a different thing than being mixed-race, and so the parents aren't really able to relate to much of what the kids are experiencing.

---

Kids know more about race than their parents expect

Many of the parents interviewed for this book (parents of all races) said they hadn't really talked to their kids about race because they felt like their kids were young enough that it didn't affect them yet. But, the book says, kids do have ideas about race, from a very young age. There are examples of babies who have an Asian mother, and the babies are happy to be held by other Asian women, even total strangers, but cry if someone of a different race holds them. There are examples of toddlers being afraid of black people.

I also haven't talked to my son about race very much. He is in preschool. (My daughter is still an infant. She hasn't even discovered her feet yet. I don't think she knows about race.) I guess I don't really know what I'm supposed to tell him.

My son goes to a public school here in China. All the other kids are (monoracial) Chinese. I wonder if he has thoughts on that. I just assumed that little kids didn't really have any awareness of it, but, uh, why did I assume that? And to me, my son looks Chinese (but I guess I'm not supposed to say that?) but then when I see him next to the other kids, who are Chinese and not mixed-race, well then you can really tell that he's mixed-race white. Sometimes when I pick him up from school, the other kids see me and point out that I'm not Chinese.

(And he always gets Chinese people commenting on how his skin is white, like it's a compliment, which I also find problematic. My FAVORITE one was when we were at a restaurant, and then after we finished eating, I left to go to the bathroom, and then the people at the next table started talking to my husband and son, and they were like "he looks like an international baby"... like... they did not realize he *actually is* an international baby. Apparently they totally missed me being there.)

I guess my son does have thoughts about race. But doesn't have the language to communicate them with me. 

---

Practical suggestions

I'm glad I read this book because it had some practical ideas which I find useful. 

• I should help my kids find friends who are mixed-race. If they grow up being the only one, they will feel like they're weird and different and no one understands them. I don't know why I didn't think of this before- *I* am in some social media groups for international women married to Chinese men, and that's really helpful for me- why didn't I realize that kind of thing would also be really helpful for my son?
• Toys and books which depict mixed-race people and interracial marriage. The book talks about how it's really difficult to find stuff like this! It's hard to find a doll which is Asian, let alone mixed-race Asian. After reading "Raising Mixed Race," I got these books for my son: All About Families and All About Diversity [affiliate links]. To show him that there are all different kinds of families and people. These are really good! I guess I should also find a book for him with a main character who is mixed-race white/Asian.

---

It's not just about white + east Asian people

Typically when people think about "mixed race Asian", they think about white + east Asian (ya know, like my kids). But this book makes sure to include a much greater range than that. It includes families from many different Asian countries (including India). And it talks a lot about anti-black racism in the US, and how that is connected to Asian people's experiences in the US, and there's a whole chapter about the unique situation that mixed-race black/Asian people are in.

---

Conclusion

I liked this book, and I recommend it if you have kids who are mixed-race Asian. It helped me realize that I do need to think about how race affects my kids' lives, and how to talk to them about it.

---

Related:

On Marriage as an Immigrant in China 

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

Blogaround

1. The CIA Spread Anti-Vaxx COVID Disinformation (June 22) "In the Spring of 2020, when COVID-19 was killing tens of thousands of people every day, the US military launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia in order to undermine worldwide trust in China." I posted a link about this last time, but here is another article about it because it's just so bad.

2. That UK Report On Healthcare For Trans Kids Just Gets Eviler And Eviler (June 24) [content note: transmisia, suicide] "While the Cass Report would like you to believe that there are no risks associated with denying GIDS [Gender Identity Development Services] to teens and tweens, as wait times grew, suicides shot up dramatically."

3. Tzlofchad's Daughters and the Master's Tools (June 24, via) "Marginalized people working in oppressive systems do this all the time. It's a survival technique. A strategy."

4. How China Conquered the Dark Side of the Moon (June 25) "China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has made history by returning to Earth with the first samples collected from the far side of the Moon — a groundbreaking feat that marks a new step forward for the country’s space program."

5. A Sudoku Celebration For Pride Month! (June 26) 31-minute sudoku solve video. It's a sudoku colored like the rainbow flag. Love it~ happy Pride!

6. Former Uvalde school police chief, officer indicted in 1st-ever criminal charges over failed response to 2022 mass shooting (June 28) [content note: school shooting]

7. Supreme Court allows Idaho to offer emergency medical abortions (June 27) "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 6-3 opinion, temporarily allowed abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho."

8. Biden pardons potentially thousands of ex-service members convicted under now-repealed gay sex ban (June 27) "Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts."

Blogaround

1. Voyager 1 Is Back! NASA Spacecraft Safely Resumes All Science Observations (June 14, via) "After more than six months of long-distance troubleshooting—Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and any signal takes more than 22.5 hours to travel from our planet to the spacecraft—mission personnel have finally coaxed Voyager 1 to gather and send home data with all its remaining science instruments, according to a NASA statement." This is so cool!

2. Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic (June 14, via) What the actual ****?! 

If you followed my blog during zero-covid, you know I was really unhappy with how western news organizations were covering the situation in China. (See: WTF, CNN? and Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media.) This article is about a disinformation campaign that the US created in the Philippines, because China exported vaccines to the Philippines and other Asian countries. So, a different thing than what I was mad about, but it makes me wonder if the biased news reporting on China was more deliberate than I thought.

3. Environmental impact of LLMs (June 16) "This comparison is unimpressive on its face, because a bottle of water is very obviously not that much?"

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Mental health bias on asexuality, non-monogamy, and BDSM (June 20) "This article summarizes prior research on mental health provider bias for three groups–aces, consensual non-monogamy (CNM) practitioners, and BDSM practitioners–and suggests avenues for future research."

4. US sues Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions (June 17, via) "The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the 'annual paid monthly' subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars."

5. Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality (June 18) Awesome!

6. China to include Australia in visa waiver programme, Premier Li Qiang says (June 18) Good news if you're Australian and want to visit China.

7. Gilead’s twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV succeeds in late-stage trial (June 20, via) "None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the lenacapavir shot contracted HIV." Great!

8. Maybe They Should Post The 10 Commandments In Mega-Churches? (June 20) [content note: child sexual abuse] "I’m not sure what even the slickest or sleaziest 'crisis management' firm can accomplish here."

9. Hey What If We Let People's Undocumented Husbands And Wives Stay In America? — Joe Biden (June 18) Support all immigrants!

10. Hundreds of Muslim pilgrims died in heat-stricken Hajj (June 21)

11. Pascal's Wager Triangle (June 17) "In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case."

"America: A Patriotic Primer" (Kids' Book Review)

Book cover for "America: A Patriotic Primer." Illustration shows kids raising the US flag like they're at Iwo Jima. 

I bought this book for my son, America : A Patriotic Primer [affiliate link] by Lynne Cheney (wife of Dick Cheney). I was at an English-language used-book sale in Shanghai and I saw it and snatched it up. We live in China; where else am I going to find a book for him about what it means to be American?

This is structured as an alphabet book- each page has a letter, like "A is for America." I like that- my kid is in preschool and I'm really working hard on getting him to recognize the letters of the alphabet. ("What letter is this?" "I don't want to say it." "Oh, you don't know it?" "I know it but I don't want to say it. I just want you to read the book!")

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It's not a preschool-level book but actually I like that

Each page has a very detailed illustration- you could spend a lot of time looking at all the things in these drawings. Also, the amount of text on each page is a bit much for my preschool-level kid. He doesn't have the attention span for that. Usually I just read the first line- like "B is for the Birthday of this nation of ours" and not the rest- "On America's birthday there ought to be 'pomp and parade,' John Adams, our second president, wrote to his wife, Abagail, and 'illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.'" My kid doesn't have any interest in sitting and listening to that. But I like how for now I can just read the first line of each page, and then maybe when he's older, or if he's particularly interested in a certain page, I can read more to him.

Some of the letters are big abstract concepts, like "E is for Equality" and "V is for the Valor shown by those who've kept us free." I don't think my son understands those. 

And some are about historical figures- "J is for Jefferson", "M is for Madison." Important for Americans to learn about, but really boring for a preschool kid.

So basically, *I* like the content of this book, and I want my kid to learn these things, but he's not interested.

The part he was most interested in was a page that shows a map of the US, with various icons all over it, to show what different regions are known for, and there were several cow or buffalo icons in various places. He was SO HERE for those cows. He likes cows.

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The content

I like the content of this book! It's a good mix of important American concepts, historical figures, and depictions of the diversity of modern Americans. From a feminist/ social-justice/ woke perspective, let me tell you that this book has "K is for King [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]", "N is for Native Americans, who came here first", and "S is for Suffrage." I'm glad to see that this book includes the idea that being American is about fighting for rights for groups that have been discriminated against. Taking those abstract concepts about freedom and pushing this country to actually live up to them.

I had strong disagreements with 2 letters in the book:

• "G is for God in whom we trust." Oh COME ON. I told my son, this is ridiculous, the book shouldn't say that. I told him, Americans don't have to believe in God. Ugh. The text on that page continues with, "Freedom to worship as they chose brought people to America. Freedom to worship as we choose sustains our country today." So I can see that maybe they're trying to spin it as "freedom of religion is an important concept for Americans" but if that's the goal, it's been worded very badly.
• "Y is for You and all you will be in this greatest of countries, the land of the free." I told my son, LOLLL, the US is NOT the "greatest country." I told him, there isn't really a "greatest country"; everyone has different criteria they use to determine whether one country is better than another. (And honestly, for most people, "this is where I grew up, and all my friends and family live here" is the most important criteria. Which is fine!) I really don't like when people say "The US is the greatest country in the world," because it's always stated like it's just tautologically true. If people said it like "I thought through which criteria are most important to me, and I did research on many different countries, and my conclusion is that the US is the best one," and showed their work, I would be fine with that. But typically when I hear people say "The US is the greatest country in the world" they mean it like "We already know our country is the best, so we're not going to learn from other countries. We're not able to comprehend the reality that there are some problems that we have which other countries don't have. We're not even able to consider the idea that we could make our country better if we followed policies that other countries have."

But maybe this is good for him- it's good for him to see that just because a book says something, doesn't mean it's right. I don't want to carefully censor all his books and only let him read ones that I 100% agree with- that's just a bad strategy. Kids have to learn how to think critically and recognize that sometimes, something is not true.

---

Don't know where to put this in the review, but this book doesn't fit on my son's bookshelf

I need to warn you that this book is unusually wide, it's a big square 10.75 x 10.75 inches. It sticks out if I try to put it on my son's bookshelf. So I keep it on my big bookshelf instead.

---

Conclusion

I'm glad I bought this book; I really like it. My son is a US citizen who doesn't live in the US- how do I teach him what it means to be American? (If you have any book recommendations, let me know! Ah, I just realized that the keyword I should search is "third culture kids.") 

I'm sure my son thinks it's super-boring, though. A lot of the content has no connection to his life- it's really abstract ideas, or historical figures he doesn't care about. Basically, it's the things *I* want him to learn about being American, but he doesn't really care right now. So I'm also looking for books about being American which are more interesting from a preschool-kid perspective.

34 Counts (tweet roundup)

Image text: "Trump is a convicted felon" stylized like it's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Image source.

Heyyyy big news, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts!

I saw a few fun tweets about it so I want to post them here:

‘Home Alone 2: Lost In New York’ star Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 felony counts. pic.twitter.com/9PuYnLAaNb

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) May 30, 2024

Let’s do this. As I’ve said in the past, nothing makes a statement on important news close to the newspaper front page. Across America, almost every editor went with the simple fact, “Guilty.”
Let’s start with the biggest circulation. /1 pic.twitter.com/7i2Ab6daW4

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) May 31, 2024

pic.twitter.com/KnytbeLFlY

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) May 30, 2024

New Yorkers 🌊 pic.twitter.com/WiZfEsf6hY

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) May 31, 2024

you just can't falsify multiple business documents anymore due to woke

— hannah gais (@hannahgais) May 30, 2024

COUNT WITH ME!
AH 1
AH 2
AH 3
AH4
AH 5
6
7
8
9
10 YES 10
11
AH AH AH AHHHH
12
13
14
15
AH 16
AH 17
COUNT 18 YES 18
19
20
21
22
23 AH AH AH AHHHHH
24
25
26
27 COUNT 27 ALMOST THERE
28
29
30 *thunder rumble*
31
32
33
34 THAT'S RIGHT 34 AH AH AH AHHHHHHH https://t.co/t8wq39c0kz pic.twitter.com/RjsYOEMFtn

— Sassington, M.C. (@MissSassbox) May 30, 2024

Outside of Donald Trump’s building in NYC right now pic.twitter.com/L7HKeRCMDD

— Global Press (@GlobalPressCorp) May 30, 2024

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Related:

Dance, Those Who Dance Upon Injustice (dancing in the streets after the 2020 election)