Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: An Ace Reading of Frodo (June 29) "Hobbit culture emphasizes the importance of family and lineage, but Bilbo and Frodo are both highlighted as strange for being perpetual bachelors. This puts a lot of distance between them and their home culture."

2. The Lexicon of Revolution: Tracing the Origins and Global Journey of China’s ‘Long March’ (June 30) "In 1976, 'Long March' was first added to the dictionary, merely as a subentry under 'long.' However, in June 2016 — coinciding with the 80th anniversary — the OED upgraded it to a standalone main entry with a comprehensive historical definition: 'The retreat of Chinese Communist forces ... in 1934–35 ... over a distance of 6,000 miles.'"

Also from Sixth Tone: Investigation Uncovers China’s Underground Height Surgery Market (July 1) Wow this looks horrifying.

3. Jurassic Park but with a Cat (2021, 1-minute video, via) and Jurassic Park with a Cat — Behind the Scenes (7-minute video)

4. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are married. What to know about the wedding (July 5)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Supreme Court upholds grace periods for mail-in ballots, siding against the GOP (June 29) I don't really *get* this case- so, the question is about how the deadline for mail-in ballots is defined: is it that your ballot has to be received by election day, or postmarked by election day? Both of those seem like reasonable policies to me; either one should be fine, as long as everyone is clear on which one it is. I'm confused about why this is always framed as "Democrats are in favor of counting the ones that arrive after election day, Republicans are not" and also why Democrats are talking about this like it's about the big questions of democracy and fairness to voters- it *doesn't* seem intuitively obvious to me that being on the side of fairness and democracy means that even the ballots received after election day should be counted.

(Okay, but from the Supreme Court's perspective, the question is about whether states are in charge of their own election policies.)

My initial thought was, maybe it's about "people who have enough money and resources that they're able to live their lives in an organized way and don't have trouble with meeting deadlines" skewing Republican, and "people who are poor and therefore never have enough time or money for all the things they need to deal with, so they often miss deadlines" skewing Democrat- so that's why Democrats want to count them and Republicans don't? Or maybe "people who aren't paying attention and didn't realize there was an election until the last minute" correlates more with voting for Democrats. Something like that?

*I* vote by mail- I wonder if any of my ballots have ever been received after election day. I try to get it done as early as possible, because I know there's uncertainty in how long it takes to mail stuff from China to the US (unless you pay like 50 bucks for a good shipping service like DHL or Shunfeng). But yeah, sometimes the time between when the ballot becomes available to download and print, and the election day, is not that long- maybe it makes sense that a lot of mail-in voters send in their ballots and they *don't* arrive by election day, even if these voters are being responsible and aware of what's going on. 

Maybe the partisan angle is about how Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. So I should think of it not as "this is about counting the ballots of people who are bad at meeting deadlines, apparently a key demographic for Democrats???" but more like "it *is* reasonable that some proportion of mail-in ballots arrive after election day- this is about protecting the right to vote, for people who vote by mail." (I would be interested in seeing the statistical distribution showing when mail-in ballots arrive, relative to election day.)

And then another way to think about it is, those ballots are already in the mail. People *want* to vote, they have the right to vote, and they did the work of filling in the ballot and mailing it. You *should* count them.

2. Immigration is about Race (June 29) "Both of Alito’s opinions are mockeries of legal reasoning. He had a conclusion to get to, and he got there. He can’t say it in so many words, but he wants to Make America White Again. And the other five conservative justices agreed with him."

3. Megyn Kelly faces backlash over ‘profoundly racist’ rant against Haitian immigrants after Supreme Court ruling (June 26) "'We don’t care if you’re offended. Get out! Go home! Go back to f***ing Haiti!' Kelly said on her podcast."

And also about Haitians: The U.S. healthcare system is in crisis. A Supreme Court ruling could make things worse (July 2) "Experts say deporting Haitian TPS recipients will have a catastrophic impact on the nationwide healthcare workforce crisis — a workforce that is hugely dependent on immigrant labor."

4. Israel Bombed a Turtle Sanctuary & Killed Mona Khalil (June 29) "In my opinion, Israel destroyed the Orange House, and Khalil, because they want to destroy what it and what she stood for: hope. A better life. A life where even poor refugees can care about helpless little turtles."

5. Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds (June 30) So the court ruled 6-3 that the 14th amendment says what it says. Uh. Jonathan Last writes, "The first time the Trump administration was able to find any judge, anywhere in America, to state that it had the ability to do away with birthright citizenship was when it got to the Supreme Court. And then it found three of them." (And Kavanaugh, even though he sided with the majority, it was for other reasons, not because he believes the 14th amendment says what it says.)

The six opinions in the birthright citizenship ruling have a lot to teach us about the U.S. today (July 2)

And apparently a bunch of MAGAs are really unhappy about this, and have a lot of racist things to say about it. My "favorite" is Steven Crowder, who is mad that "little Josue born to illegal Haitians in Springfield, Ohio is just as American as you and me." Um, yes? That's what America is about? So I guess they're not even going to pretend America is about equality for everyone. And for the MAGAs who make a big deal about being Christian, I guess they aren't even going to pretend that Christianity is about a God who loves everyone.

6. He sent a harsh email to ICE's top official. 5 months later, federal agents tracked him down (July 1) "'It's starting to look like a pattern of knocking on people's doors to ask them questions about clearly constitutionally protected speech. And that is very troubling,' said Nathan Freed Wessler, the deputy director of ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project."

7. House Democrats accuse Trump of 'hijacking' America's 250th birthday for his own gain (July 2) "'They had a chance to do this in a bipartisan way or a way that wouldn't enrich cronies, but they pretty clearly didn't do that,' said Zibel. 'I think that this is a follow-the-money situation that needs to be explored.'"

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.)

Blogaround

From link #1, AI-generated image of "studio photo of a playful black cat wearing a turtle costume". "It has also taken the libery of adding a pumpkin to the costume, I see."

1. AI imagines my cat in costumes (October 28) 

2. Rhett sings himself ‘Overboard’ and out of his faith (October 22) It's a country music album about leaving Christianity and becoming non-religious. This is so good.

3. The Ethics of Looking And The “Harmless” Peeping Tom (March 22) [content note: rape culture] It's about how SO MANY MOVIES have men spying on women who are taking their clothes off, and this is presented like it's no big deal and that's just how men are. Yeah, this trope is really NOT COOL, and it's good that Pop Culture Detective made a video to point out how messed-up this is.

4. What we know about the attack on Paul Pelosi (November 1)

5. Gunman kills 2 at a St. Louis high school, officials say (October 24)

6. John Oliver Roasts the U.K.'s "Very Weird" 10 Days of Mourning for Queen Elizabeth (September 20)

7. Atop a Lonely Sichuan Mountain, Grit, Hope, and Survival (October 30) I've posted links about this before- this is about Gan Yu, a power station worker who was stuck on a mountain alone after an earthquake, for 17 days, before he was rescued. This article gives a lot of details about what happened.

8. Do You Believe in Halloween Jesus? (October 31) "I was taught that Jesus was fully human and fully divine—a doctrine that has confounded and confused the greatest philosophical and theological minds for the past two millennia—but in reality, it was divine Jesus who got all the play."

9. WI State Senate candidate Jessica Katzenmeyer: ‘We could be headed to a dark reality’ (November 1) "I am openly transgender. There’s never been a transgender representative here elected to the state legislature in Wisconsin. I would truly be honored to be the first."

10. Why doesn’t the IRS care when churches endorse candidates from the pulpit? (October 31) 

11. What does it mean to be ‘open-minded’ about sex? (November 1) Wow, I am very impressed by this article- this might possibly be the first time I've ever seen an article about sex, written for a mainstream audience (ie not specifically for an asexual audience) which is genuinely inclusive of asexuals. Usually I see articles that are like, describing sex or giving advice about sex in a way that makes no sense to me as an asexual, and then somewhere near the end there's a little disclaimer about "oh also some people are asexual"- like if you know you're asexual, then the writer is saying you shouldn't take their advice, but everyone else should! This is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

But this article, "What does it mean to be ‘open-minded’ about sex?" talks about how the concept of "being open-minded" can be used to pressure people into sexual things they don't want to do. This is certainly a concern for asexuals, but hey, even if you're not asexual, there must be some sexual things you don't want to do, and it's NOT COOL if people are pressuring you to do them in order to be "open-minded" or "sex positive." The article mentions the word "asexual" just 1 time- but it's not as a disclaimer, like "none of this applies to you if you're asexual"; no, instead it's an example of a reason why someone might not want to try all the sex things. Just one example of many. There are many many valid reasons to not want to try all the sex things. ("I don't want to" is a good enough reason all by itself!)

Yes, this is how you should write about sex.

Blogaround

1. Trained a neural net on my cat and regret everything (posted April 17) "This is one of the most horrible things I have ever seen, and I saw CATS (2019) in the theater."

2. “Pro-Life” Lt. Gov: “There are more important things than living” (posted April 22) Like I said, shame on all these assholes who want us to sacrifice our grandparents to save "the economy." Shame.

3. Well the blogaround for this week is pretty sparse. I hope all of you readers are doing okay, wherever you are in the world, whatever day of quarantine you're on. <3 <3 <3

Blogaround

Five kittens. Image source.

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

1. My Son "Fixed" 'The Giving Tree' (posted June 22) "We want them to understand that kindness doesn’t mean giving yourself away to make someone else happy until you are nothing but a stump. ... We want them to know that when you love yourself, you set boundaries that allow for authentic relationships built on mutual respect and honor."

2. Is Toy Story 4 the Best Toy Story Movie? | Spoiler Review (posted June 25) I agree with the Super Carlin Brothers' thoughts on Toy Story 4.

3. Dr. Dobson's July Newsletter What the f***?! This is James Dobson's account of his visit to the border patrol facilities on the US southern border. Parts of it show concern for the refugees who are suffering, but overall it's about how we need to close the border, we need to support the orange antichrist building his damn wall, isn't it terrible that these poor and possibly-violent people are allowed to enter the US, etc.

I'm posting this here because I always saw Dobson as a good Christian role model, when I was growing up. My family bought books and magazines from Focus on the Family, and I read and accepted what they said, never doubting that Focus on the Family taught The Correct Things That Christians Should Believe.

And now he's writing this blatantly unbiblical anti-immigrant crap. The bible is clear: we need to welcome the immigrant, the refugee, the stranger. (And usually I don't use the term "unbiblical" and I don't say "the bible is clear" but I'm angry and it's ****in' clear on this.) Look at the last paragraph from Dobson's post:

What I've told you is only a glimpse of what is occurring on the nation's border. I don't know what it will take to change the circumstances. I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation. America has been a wonderfully generous and caring country since its founding. That is our Christian nature. But in this instance, we have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don't deal with it. And it won't take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.

Ewww, disgusting, how will I explain this to my children.

See also: Sarahbeth Caplin's post on this.
And Libby Anne's post.

And this tweet:

I don't have the stamina to go through this today, y'all. I just want to say, imagine being the Christian child expert that the administration knew they could safely give a tour of concentration camps to and expect nothing but support.https://t.co/HVWHblpL6U

— Ice Bear is Over It (@sparkle_heretic) 2019年6月30日

4. An Amazon employee made an AI-powered cat flap to stop his cat from bringing home dead animals (posted June 30) Cool!

5. Researchers eliminated HIV from the DNA of infected mice. It's the first step toward a cure for humans, they say (posted July 2)

6. So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend (posted July 2) "She’s going to do her thing, at her own damn speed, to her own damn rhythm, and she’s going to apologize to exactly NO ONE for it."

Blogaround

A sleeping cat wearing a Santa hat. Image source.

1. A 5-Month-Old Girl Has Been Hospitalized With Pneumonia After Being Detained By The Border Patrol (posted December 19) "Portillo told agents that her daughter was sick shortly after being detained, but they told Portillo it was normal and that everyone coming into the holding cells was ill. She wasn't allowed to get new medication or see a doctor."

2. The best $6,250 I ever spent: top surgery (posted December 18) "Last year, I publicly admitted to having a body for the first time, an act so embarrassing I have still not fully recovered."

3. Blogger Elizabeth Esther Regrets Her Participation in Josh Harris Documentary (posted December 20) "My takeaway is that nothing has changed for Josh Harris. He still believes the same things. He just doesn’t like how he said it in a book he wrote." (My post about Harris's documentary is here: So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary.)

4. The Amazonian tribe defending their land with technology (posted December 20) "Over four years, the Waorani used hi-tech GPS technology, camera traps, and drones to map out 180,000 hectares of their territory."

5. Advent Calendar Day 17: Fair and foul are near of kin (posted December 17) "A Christmas caganer is a figurine of someone — traditionally an anonymous peasant in traditional dress — squatting and pooping."

6. When Teen Cas Innocently Suggested Testing a Miracle (LSP #73) (posted December 17) "And then, and then, and then we could sit back and wait for the world to wonder and marvel at how a little girl could possibly have known an ancient language so fluently at her age."

Blogaround

A white cat with a strawberry on its head. Image source.

1. The Problem With Rape Kits (posted March 8) [content note: rape] Oof, this is hard to read.

2. Battle lines form over social justice: Is it gospel or heresy? (posted September 6) "Statements that dismiss social justice send a message that the ongoing marginalization many minorities still experience and struggle against is of no concern to their fellow Christians. Or to God."

3. The New Hip Churches are Fooling Google. They Pop Up as “Gay-friendly” — it’s a Hoax. (posted September 17) "Ask the lead pastor “Do you perform weddings for gay couples?” If the answer isn’t, simply, “yes,” … if it begins with a lengthy prelude like “Now that’s complicated issue, let’s step back for minute to unpack it,” you have your answer: NO."

4. Pando, the Word’s Heaviest Organism, is an Ever-Growing Witness of an Ancient Earth (posted September 18) Cool!

5. Pixar Theory: How Dante being an Alebrije EXPLAINS everything! (posted September 6) "It resolves every single piece of plot convenience in the entire film."

6. Is it a Sin to Take Showers? (posted September 23) "[INITIATE YOUTH PASTOR VOICE] But teens lemme get real with you. Isn’t that how sin works, amen?"

7. Pastor: Christians Should Skip the Weddings of Couples That Had Premarital Sex (posted September 25) Well would you look at that. John Piper seems to think everyone's unmarried sex life is his business. This is my surprised face.

8. Somebody DIED, Pat Robertson (posted September 15) "The mind boggles at just how lacking in compassion someone must be to think that any god would rather spare some business buildings than a dozen lives and thousands of homes." And THIS is why I don't pray any more.

Blogaround

A fluffy little kitty. Image source.

1. What It's Like Growing Up with the Belief that Tampons Take Virginity (posted July 27)

2. Do Asexuals Have Sexual Fantasies, and Do They Masturbate? (posted 2017) "The majority of asexual women (65 percent) and men (80 percent) have sexual fantasies. However, this is a significantly lower proportion than sexuals. Asexuals’ fantasies are less exciting to them than those of sexuals are to them. Asexuals as a group are more likely than sexuals to endorse the response: 'My fantasies do not involve other people.'"

3. #TakeTheMaskOff Week 1: What Is Masking? (posted July 25) "Because 'I’m an adult,' and adults 'don’t bother people with their problems if they can help it.'"

4. Proposal to Revise a Word (or Two) of “Reckless Love” (posted July 26) "So why do we insist on repeating the lies of shame in our Sunday morning songs over and over, rehearsing the apology of the wayward son? ... There’s a common bit of theology floating around our churches that suggests God got the shit end of this redemption deal."

5. I got (theologically) CATFISHED! (posted July 27) "We go into these churches, we're told, 'You're welcome here, we want you to be here, your story's important, you're a unique and special beloved child of God.' And then, when it comes down to it, when we ask for something, when we ask to lead, when we ask to become a volunteer or something, when we ask to be baptized or take communion, if our partners and us can get married in those churches, we're told, 'ohhhh, actually, you know, no, not really, no.'"

6. Why Do So Many White Evangelicals Object to the Browning of America? (posted July 26) "After all, missions trips aren’t set up to place both parties on an equal footing."

7. My Vagina Is Terrific. Your Opinion About It Is Not. (posted 2017) "I have listened to women with completely normal exams weep that they have been told that they do not smell or taste correctly."

8. Missiology is a minefield (posted July 8) "Such conversations are a symptom of the deeper divide, which is that missionaries and the American Christians who support them have very different ideas — incompatibly different ideas — about what “the gospel” means."

9. How six Chinese men survived the Titanic disaster, and the racist US federal law that ensured their obscurity – a story told only now (posted April 15) "Six Chinese guys made it off the Titanic alive, and 24 hours later were written out of the story. That wasn’t an accident. That was deliberate. It’s something that the culture of the time made happen."

Blogaround

Two cats. Image source.

1. The Sims banned in China and the Middle East ‘over same-sex relationships’ (posted June 25) "And while the developer did not specify what the regional standards were, online users said it was because the game allowed gay relationships and marriages."

2. Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone (posted June 27) "'The parent might be the only one who knows why they fled from the home country, and the child is in a disadvantageous position to defend themselves,' Toczylowski said."

3. How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement (posted 2012) "If the pro-life movement believes that even a very small chance of a zygote being flushed out is enough reason to oppose the use of the pill, then there should be an extreme amount of concern about the much, much higher number of fertilized eggs flushed out of the bodies of women not using the pill." This is an old article, but I'm sharing it again because it's one of the best articles out there about the "pro-life" movement.

4. That Ohio Bill Does More than Require Teachers to Report on Transgender Students (posted June 27) [content note: transmisia, mention of child death] "I feel obliged to point out that Ohio is where Leelah Alcorn died."

Blogaround

Two kitties laying on a giant snorlax pillow. Image source.

1. An Ohio Bill Would Charge Therapists With a Felony if They Don't Out Trans Kids to Their Parents (posted June 26) Whoa, not cool.

2. In honor of Justice Kennedy's retirement, here is information on abortion funds for each state that criminalized or extremely limited abortion prior to Roe v. Wade (posted June 28) Twitter thread. Donate to protect abortion access.

3. I Had a Giant Testicle for Two Years and Didn't Tell Anyone (posted 2015) Well this is quite gross. This is what purity culture does to people.

4. Hidden portraits: rare photos of African American life get a spotlight (posted June 21) "[Frederick Douglass's] spellbinding words are the inspiration for the exhibition African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s, which opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on 26 June."

5. Democrats’ Views on Immigration Have Changed—Dramatically (posted June 25) This is an article about how Democrats' support for immigrants is way higher now than it was in the past. Probably as a response to the orange antichrist's violent and dehumanizing words and policies. But, Libby Anne points out, Obama wasn't really that good for undocumented immigrants either, and where were we back then? Shame on us for only caring about immigrants when it becomes a huge partisan issue.

Blogaround

A fluffy kitten standing among broken pieces of a vase and making an incredibly innocent face. Image source.

1. Why “You are loved” & “please reach out” are crappy things to post after someone has died by suicide (posted June 8) [content note: discussion of suicide] "I was in therapy for years and didn’t report symptoms, too, because I honestly didn’t know that other people didn’t experience the world the way I did."

2. It’s Time to Abolish ICE (posted March 9) "ICE as it presently exists is an agency devoted almost solely to cruelly and wantonly breaking up families."

3. Heaven as Secret Sins Film Festival (posted June 4) "The logistics of this are difficult to imagine, since everyone is going to have to sit through all of everyone else’s Secret Sins documentaries. That’s such a long, boring prospect that this almost begins to look like a kind of evangelical doctrine of Purgatory."

Blogaround

Grey cat laying on a sweater, with a little red heart toy. Image source.

1. 'Pillar of the community' deported from US after 39 years to a land he barely knows (posted February 9) [content note: deportation]

2. Study: “Bad Girls” More Likely to Say “No” to Sex (posted February 1) "Women with sexual agency were much more likely to say “no” instead of going along with an undesired activity just to please their partner. Women who didn’t prioritize their own pleasure, and who didn’t see themselves as sexual beings, were more likely to just do what they were asked to do regardless of whether they really wanted to, leading to regret."

3. The Unintended Consequences of a Spiritual Discipline (posted 2017) "The easy examples of a Lenten fast as giving up chocolate or candy or sugar or carbs mirror the disordered rules of restrictive eating."

4. Escaping gay conversion therapy in Kenya (posted February 7)

Blogaround

A fat orange cat proudly stands in front of a painting of 2 fat orange cats hanging out at a picturesque stream. Image source.

1. On the Plausibility and Purpose of Paul’s Sea Voyage in Acts 27 (posted December 11) "If we consider it theologically, however, there are intriguing connections between shipwrecks and criminal guilt in Greek legal and religious thought — connections lost on a modern audience."

2. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Madame Blueberry" (posted January 27) "This VeggieTales story claimed that it's teaching 'being thankful is good' but instead it seems to be teaching 'wanting things is bad.'"

3. We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does. (posted January 8) "But they also found causal evidence that this integration causes "white flight" out of public schools." I remember learning the term "white flight" from high school history class. Like it was this big bad thing that unbelievably racist people did a very long time ago. Well, turns out it's still a thing NOW, and it's something that "nice" white people are doing, while they claim they're just trying to put their kids in better schools.

4. The Elephants in the Room: Rapid Migration and Recolonization of the Earth Following a Global Flood (posted January 16) "Why should the remains of giant sloths—and all other sloths for that matter—be found only in the New World if they migrated from Noah’s Ark in the Middle East? How did they manage to leave no fossils in the Old World while leaving thousands of fossils in the New World? What was their migratory path to the New World and how could these slow-moving, large animals have made their way into the Colorado Mountains in such a short period of time? Why, if they were so widely distributed and abundant just 4000 years ago or less in the YEC chronology, did they then all disappear?"

5. The Two Stories of Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem (posted December 24) and Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem Again: Possible Harmonizing Interpretations versus Probable Contextual Interpretations (posted December 27)

These 2 posts are a MUST-READ for anybody who is or used to be an apologetics nerd. The first is about how the geography of the Christmas story in Matthew is totally different from the one in Luke. The second is about how playing the game of coming up with not-quite-impossible explanations to "harmonize" the 2 passages totally misses the point.

6. The Fall of the Veils (posted 2014) A Harry Potter fanfic featuring a relationship between Harry and Draco. And Draco is asexual.

7. Kesha - "Praying"

8. World Magazine on Andy Savage: “Each Christian must acknowledge, ‘I am the abused and the abuser.'” (posted January 29) [content note: minimizing sexual assault with "we are all sinners" ideology] "But evangelicals do not typically define sin as harm-based. They define sin as going against the commands of God—whether or not harm is caused to another person is irrelevant—and talk of sin as being against God." Yes, what Libby Anne's describing here is EXACTLY what I was taught about sin.

9. Concordance-ism is not your friend (posted January 24) "But it didn’t challenge the overall construct of concordance-ism itself — the idea that we choose what terms to “look up” and thereby exclude every other passage and every other perspective and every other thought, reassuring ourselves that we already knew everything there was to know about something before we even got started manipulating the index to “prove” our prior assumptions."

Blogaround

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

A bunny sitting on a stack of pancakes, with another small pancake on its head. A cat stares at it with a very disturbed expression. Image source.

1. 'Monopoly man' crashes former Equifax CEO's Senate hearing (posted October 4)

2. Hallowed Be Thy Name (posted September 27) "These words are actually a petition, a prayer for God to act in hallowing God's own name."

3. 5 Reasons for Writing about Polyamorous Families (posted October 5) "It is a vile and, to me, incomprehensible thing that so many people view the destruction of families as a lesser sin than the living out of fruitful, covenantal love between more than two people."

4. Here Are The Cities That Celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day Instead of Columbus Day (posted October 8)

5. Voices in Your Head: Evangelicals and the Voice of God (posted October 10) [content note: murder of children] "But when I met someone who was hearing voices in her head, as a young evangelical adult, I thought it was normal because that was the template my religion had provided me." Yep, Libby Anne's experiences are pretty much the same as mine.

Blogaround

A cat in a box. Image source.

1. What Does It Mean to Say ‘Racism is Sin’? (posted August 21) "This sincere, emphatic insistence on the universality of sinfulness is interesting in light of the claim we’re discussing here. Say, “You’re a sinner, too” to even the most piously devout evangelical and they will wholeheartedly agree. They will almost happily agree — without any trace of offense or indignation."

What does it mean to say ‘racism is sin’? (cont’d.) "We imagine we’re adding a new rule to our ever-growing list of sinful, forbidden deeds — something like “Thou shalt not racism.” OK, then, we think, we’ll try not to do that. And we prepare ourselves for the possibility that at some point we’ll be confronted with a stark, conscious, volitional choice between sin and not-sin, complete with a little devil on one shoulder whispering “Go ahead, commit racism” and a little angel on the other shoulder saying, “No, don’t, just keep on not committing racism.”"

2. How Free Eyeglasses Are Boosting Test Scores in Baltimore (posted August 17)

3. #HoustonFlood Relief Donations Thread (posted August 27) A twitter thread of local Houston charities you can donate to, to help people affected by hurricane Harvey. Please donate if you can! I did~ (For me, I tend to get overwhelmed and feel like the problem is so big I can't do anything, and then I feel like I have to read all the information about all the charities ever and pick the BEST one before I can donate- yeah if you have that tendency too, just do a little bit of reading about charities and then just pick one, don't spend tons and tons of time and then not even make a decision, that doesn't help anybody.)

4. #RainbowManifesto (posted August 30) A response to the Nashville Statement. This is really good.

Blogaround

Cat sitting on a couch, with its back toward you. Image source.

1. I'm Tired Of My Queer Identity Being Ignored & Erased On TV (posted June 28) "The TV shows I watched certainly never suggested that someone like me could exist."

2. The virginity fraud (posted May 18) "The absurdity of virgin-testing is illustrated in a study done on 36 pregnant teenagers. When doctors examined their hymens, they could only find clear signs of penetration in 2 out of the 36 girls."

3. All the Ways Christian Education and the Church Have Failed Me (posted May 4) "If God could see me, hear me and read my thoughts, I would give Him fake things to read. If anyone asked me a question, I would give them answers I thought God wanted to hear. I was extra nice to people because I thought God would want me to be nice. He would never know what I actually thought of everyone, what I actually wanted to say or anything else."

4. I Can't Be Your Gay Friend (posted June 27) "And I’ll be honest, you almost won me over with the promise of paying for coffee when we sit down so you can “hear my story.” However, I have some concerns."

5. I Don’t Accommodate Uncontrolled Men (posted June 26) "So I’m going to be that woman. I’m going to stand up and look that man in the eye and tell him that his inability to control himself is not normal, healthy, or God-given, and I have no sympathy for his struggles." Well amen to all of this.

6. I'm Intersex, And It's WAY More Common Than You Think (posted July 2) "If you had surgeries that... you've never felt completely believed that the reasons they gave you were the real reasons. Those are some of the things you can look back at and help you discover if you might be intersex or not."

Blogaround

A cat laying on a rainbow flag on the street at a Pride parade. Image source.

1. Ancient wisdom from the neural network (posted June 22) "Death when it comes will have no sheep."

2. Toy Story Zero: The True Story Of Andy’s Dad & Woody’s Origin (ft. Mike Mozart) (posted June 22) "Woody doesn't even realize that ... the Andy playing with him now isn't the Andy who wrote his name on his boot."

3. Soap, soup, and support for Supreme Court nominees who will overturn Roe v. Wade (posted June 6) "Every medical missionary commissioned by any white evangelical mission board has had to contend with this Great Commission objection. Every mission agency that built hospitals or schools had to have an answer to it — an explanation for why they were doing that rather than building churches."

4. A groovy relic of the forbidden evangelical past (posted June 8) "In 1975 — two years after Roe — Zondervan Press published a book for white evangelicals in which Norman Geisler wrote: “Abortion is not murder, because the embryo is not fully human — it is an undeveloped person.” And nobody freaked out."

5. Behind Wonder Woman Is a Great Man (posted June 6) [spoilers for "Wonder Woman"] "But if it’s important for girls and women to see a female superhero, it’s also important for boys and men to see a man who becomes heroic by following a woman’s lead."

6. If we confess our sins (posted June 22) "It reinforces the idea that “sin” is a matter of transgression against some capricious and inscrutable list of rules — an idea that the Bible repeatedly rejects, rebuts and mocks".

7. Uber sued over lack of wheelchair-accessible cars in D.C. (posted June 28) "The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, alleges that Uber is violating both the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires transportation companies to offer equal access to all riders, and D.C.'s Human Rights Act."

Blogaround

An adorable fat kitty sleeping. A sprial based on the golden ratio has been superimposed on the photo, because that's the shape the cat is here. Image source.

1. The original Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith ending had Padme founding the Rebel Alliance and almost killing Anakin (posted May 15) "While in the final film, Padme flies to Mustafar and just kind of cries at Anakin, the original version had her pull a knife on the fallen Jedi."

2. 11 Years Old, a Mom, and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist in Florida (posted May 26) [content note: rape] This is terrible.

3. Evangelicals Are the Ones Obsessed with Sex (posted May 30) "Evangelicals often decry the “sex obsessed” world, but frankly, they’re the most sex obsessed group I’ve ever come in contact with." AMEN TO THIS.

4. writing bilingual characters. Lolololol yes! I live my life in both Chinese and English and stuff like this happens all the time.