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

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Psychics in Silicon Valley (February 5) "While it’s incredibly easy to do this with a single believer and even more so with a crowd of believers like those in the audience at a show (because any “misses” might be “hits” for someone else in the crowd), I’ve actually managed to do this even for skeptics who KNEW I didn’t have magical powers, knew that there’s no such thing as magical powers, but were still choked up because suddenly they were envisioning their own dead father standing there saying that he’s proud of them. It’s really convincing."

2. This extremely useful chart about dinosaurs.

3. Chinese Scientists Save Patient Using Pig Liver Outside the Body (February 9)

Also from Sixth Tone: As Services Expand, More Foreigners Seek Treatment in China (February 13) "'This was his only chance but no hospital in Mongolia could perform the procedure on an infant,' his mother, Khurelbaatar Nasantogtokh, told Sixth Tone."

How Chinese Millennials Are Reimagining Weddings (February 13) "From mountaintop elopements to music festival photoshoots, young people in China are transforming weddings from family obligations into personal statements about values and autonomy."

4. A daughter reexamines her own family story in 'The Mixed Marriage Project' (February 10) "And so many of them would say, 'I found out that I had to live in a colored neighborhood. I had to leave my white neighbors. I had left my family in order to marry this Black man and move into the Black Belt. I now couldn't even tell my employer my address, because if they found out my address, they'd know I must be living with a Black man.' Why else would a white woman be living in the Black Belt?"

5. It's a dangerous complication of pregnancy — but a new drug holds promise (February 14) Hey this is really cool- a new drug that treats pre-eclampsia in pregnancy. I had pre-eclampsia during my 2nd pregnancy, and as I understood it, it's very dangerous and there's no cure except to not be pregnant- hopefully you are far enough along in the pregnancy that you can deliver the baby and the baby will survive. If this new drug is able to treat it, that would be great news! Still very early though, so we shouldn't get that excited yet.

6. Kansas City illustrator turns library checkout cards into tiny works of art. She only gets 'one shot' (February 13) "A few decades ago, checking out a library book meant writing your name on a lined, 3-by-5-inch card that a librarian then stamped the due date on."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Kidney transplant recipient in ICE custody is finally getting meds, wife and attorney say (February 9) "A kidney transplant recipient from Minnesota now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Texas is finally getting some of the his life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife and his attorney. But they say federal authorities still are not giving him the correct dosage and full regimen of the medications."

2. Hating the Game (February 8, via) "The Post's framing only makes sense if, as is often the case, the demand of white bigotry is being accommodated. You can be one of the most popular figures on the cultural landscape and it won't matter; if white racists don't like you, you're controversial and polarizing."

3. Former ICE Facility Worker 'saw people laying in feces' at Baltimore Detention Center (February 6, via)

4. 13 of the most questionable redactions from the Epstein files (February 10) "The draft indictment is particularly notable because it includes three co-conspirators that prosecutors apparently considered charging. The co-conspirators are described as being employed by Epstein, but their names are redacted."

5. DHS's investigation of a man who emailed a DHS lawyer is over — but not the concerns it raises (February 11) "This all began when Jon Doe, the pseudonym used to identify the man, wrote an email asking the DHS lawyer to “err on the side of caution” in addressing the asylum case described in The Washington Post article that Doe read."

6. The Children of Dilley (February 9) "Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl, named Susej Fernández, who had been living in Houston when she and her mother were detained. 'I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center,' she wrote. 'Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live.'"

7. 5 things to know about the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security (February 14) "During two congressional hearings this week, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection told lawmakers their agencies would likely not see significant impact on their enforcement operations since both agencies received more than $70 billion from Congress last summer as part of the GOP's massive tax and spending bill."

8. DHS says immigration agents appear to have lied about shooting in Minnesota (February 13)

9. Pride flag raised again at Stonewall National Monument in NYC after removal by Trump administration (February 13)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs" (good dinosaur book for babies)

Book cover for "Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs." Image source.

My kids have this book, Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs, and it's great.

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It's a board book

The main reason I like this book is the pages are strong enough that my toddler can't tear them. I guess it's not *exactly* a board book because the pages aren't as thick as a typical board book, but they *are* cardboard rather than paper. 

She hasn't managed to tear this book or bite parts off of it, like she does with other books. She has bent it up quite a bit though, but that's okay.

The content is too advanced for babies, but I'm just happy she hasn't managed to tear this book.

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Lots of good content about dinosaurs

Every page has cool illustrations and a lot of information scattered about in various boxes and sidebars. I don't read all of the words- usually with my little toddler, I read 1 sentence and then she is already turning the page. For my older kid, it's nice that this book has a lot of stuff he can learn too.

And for me, it's nice being able to read something to the kids that's more interesting than the average baby book. A few example sentences: "Dinosaurs were reptiles that first appeared many millions of years ago. There were at least 1,000 different species of dinosaurs that are now extinct, and there might be many more that we don't know about yet."

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Anyway if you're looking for a fun book about dinosaurs to give to a little kid, I recommend this one.

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Related: 

"Bizzy Bear" (these books are great for babies)

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

Reviews of Christian Children's Books

Blogaround

"Start a blog," they said. "It'll be fun," they said.

Now here I am 13 years later, staying up late every night to round up links about the fascist goings-on in my country.

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How the House’s requirement to prove US citizenship could affect the ability to register to vote (April 11) !!!! The SAVE Act has passed the House and will go to the Senate. Contact your senators and tell them to vote against this!!!!!!! This could take away my right to vote. I'm already registered from previous years, and supposedly these new requirements would just be for new registrations- but states sometimes remove people from the voting rolls, who would then have to re-register. *IN PERSON* Which I cannot do since I'm living in China.

2. AI-Generated Slop Is Already In Your Public Library (February 4, via) "The book, which consists mostly of recipes and includes a disclaimer that the author and publisher 'are not experts in the discussed topics,' didn’t include any dangerous information as far as I could tell, but appears to be AI-generated based on its stilted prose and formatting, consisting of summaries broken up with bolded subheadings common in outputs from LLMs like ChatGPT."

3. Congestion Pricing is a Policy Miracle (March 20, via) "First and foremost, congestion pricing has been stunningly effective at reducing traffic in Manhattan and the bridges/tunnels entering the city."

4. This wild new instrument brings a dinosaur back to life (March 10, via) "The instrument, which takes the form of an accurate, life-sized dinosaur skull, allows human musicians to recreate possible dinosaur vocalizations by blowing into a mouthpiece." This is so cool! But, we shouldn't understand this as "this *is* what dinosaurs sounded like"- instead, this is a plausible reconstruction of what this dinosaur sounded like. At many points in the process there's some guesswork.

5. 17 Montana Republicans Cross Party Lines, Defeat Anti-Trans Bill After Nonbinary Rep's Speech (April 9) "It makes no exception for care obtained legally out of state—simply bringing prescribed medication across state lines could render a Montana parent a felon. The bill also does not limit enforcement to Montana residents; even a parent visiting Glacier National Park or Yellowstone with their transgender child could face felony charges for carrying estrogen, testosterone, or puberty blockers."

6. Trans Athletes: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (April 7) "It is not just about denying trans women the right to play. It's about denying them the right to exist."

7. 23andMe Bankrupt! Should You Delete Your Genetic Data? (April 2)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Shakedown, breakdown, takedown (April 7) "This is, as numerous observers have said, no different than if you refused to buy anything at the supermarket until the supermarket agreed to buy an equal or greater number of things from you."

2. Deporting veterans betrays America’s promise (April 7, via) "Like many other deported veterans, I was stripped of my home, family, and the nation I swore an oath to defend. I spent over a decade south of the border, advocating for other deported veterans while enduring the pain of being cast aside by the country I once served."

3. ‘A Path of Perfect Lawlessness’ (April 7) "The Supreme Court is about to decide whether the Trump administration can exile Americans to a gulag overseas and then leave them there."

4. The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything (February 26, via) "Behind these stories is the assumption that some people matter more than other people, and that we who matter less have to pander to those who matter more – conservatives when they are imagined as straight, as white, as male, as rural, as salt of the earth, as the real Americans, unlike us ethnic/ immigrant/ urban/ non-male/ non-straight people."

5. Attorney representing a student protester detained by federal immigration agents (April 9) "And it's setting a terrifying precedent if government agents can target a lawyer at the border. What's stopping them from doing it to anyone who dares to speak out?"

6. 'We love them': Small N.Y. town embraces a family freed from immigration detention (April 8) This is great news! But... what now? This family is still undocumented (as far as I know), and ICE knows where they live. I'm confused about how they've been released, if they're undocumented. It's great news, but I'm still worried about them, and about all the other immigrants in the US...

7. AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists (April 9) "'For anyone who thinks The Associated Press’ lawsuit against President Trump’s White House is about the name of a body of water, think bigger,' Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. 'It’s really about whether the government can control what you say.'"

8. Supreme Court says Trump officials should help return wrongly deported Maryland man (April 10) Good news! But also, I fully expect these MAGAs to come up with all kinds of excuses for why they "can't."

9. Homeland Security agents attempted to enter 2 LAUSD schools. Here's what families should know (April 10) "The principals of each school denied the agents entry and contacted the district’s legal department."

10. Utah colleges confirm dozens of international student visas terminated (April 9)

And: Visas revoked for students, graduates at multiple Texas universities amid deportation efforts (April 10)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

5. Archive Request (February 17) From xkcd.

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

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

Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

1. Epiphanies (January 6) "If the person and the life of Jesus Christ taught us humans everything we need to know about God, that life also taught God what it is like to be one of us."

Also from the Slacktivist: Lost in the flood (January 7) "It’s darkly ironic that the rejection of that fact — the refusal to accept that the Bible is often bigger, stranger, more complicated and polyvalent — is referred to as 'a high view of scripture.'"

And: But in Canada, they have waiting lists (January 9) "This whole time, again, my wife is dealing — every day — with a condition that’s painful and inconvenient and disabling and that risks her long-term health."

2. Meta says it will end fact checking as Silicon Valley prepares for Trump (January 7) "The move comes as Meta and other tech companies are working to smooth what has been a rocky relationship with Trump." Oh this sounds bad.

3. Shigatse Earthquake: Over 120 Dead as Rescuers Battle Cold and Rubble (January 8) "A day after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck southwestern China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, the toll has climbed to at least 126 dead, 188 injured, and over 3,600 homes reduced to rubble."

4. Stripe Tales of the Ace and Aro flags (January 8) "I think using colors to represent specific groups raises too many questions about what groups are included or not included, and who 'deserves' to be on the flag."

5. Melchizedek: How a Literary Phantom Became an Eternal Priest and Savior of Israel (September 21) "Jews who interpreted Psalm 110 as a historical poem about Abraham would have discovered that it contained four surplus details about Abraham that were not originally explained in Genesis 14. Granarød believes that the Melchizedek character was invented on the basis of Psalm 110:4 and added to Genesis 14 to fill in those gaps."

6. This New Immigration Bill That’s About to Pass Is a Horrifying Trojan Horse (January 10) "In short, under the guise of punishing a small number of lawbreaking undocumented immigrants, the act would curtail legal immigration and subject law-abiding immigrants to detention and deportation. It is baffling that so many Democrats would sign on to such a cruel and constitutionally dubious scheme."

7. Anita Bryant, a popular singer who became known for opposition to gay rights, dead at age 84 (January 11)

8. Mantracks: a True Story of Fake Fossils (January 11) 1-hour-25-minute video from Dan Olson about the young-earth-creationist claim that human and dinosaur footprints have been discovered together. 

Wow! This video is very well-done. When I was a young-earth creationist, I mostly followed Answers in Genesis, and their position is that these human footprints are fake. Dan Olson talks about this in his video- how some creationists are just shameless grifters, and some are trying to look like real scientists, but they all share this ideology which is incompatible with how science actually works. Real science is about realizing you were wrong, changing your ideas when new evidence comes out- but from a creationist perspective, this is seen as a fundamental weakness. We already know the right answers from the bible, supposedly. Scientists are wrong and you can see that because they have to keep making changes to their theories, whereas we don't have to do that because we're already right.

9. Atheist group faces backlash after publishing, then removing, anti-trans article (December 29, via) "The whole piece is nothing more than anti-trans bigotry wrapped up in a cloak of science."

Blogaround

1. From xkcd we have Storage Tanks and Classical Periodic Table, lollllllll

2. In Black Myth: Wukong, China Sees a Game That Could Change Everything (August 21)

3. Trump promotes family’s new crypto platform, ‘The Defiant Ones’ (August 22) Well this sounds like a scam.

4. JD Vance Jizz Cups & the Death of Fact Checking (August 22) "I expected technology to change, for fakes to get harder to detect but also for bullshit detection tools to get better, but I didn’t anticipate what actually seems to have happened: fakes are now harder to detect and the bullshit detection tools have simply disappeared."

Don't believe everything you see on social media! And, related to that, I often see people on social media talking about "Republicans are saying [some weird thing]" and people make jokes to mock the supposed Republicans who are saying this, and it keeps going and takes on a life of its own- but, uh, were there really Republicans saying that in the first place? Maybe it was just 1 weirdo on the internet, not a widespread idea shared by most Republicans. Be careful about believing things like that without fact-checking.

At the same time, though, voting for Trump *is* a widespread Republican thing, and that's shocking and extremist and deserving of mockery.

5. Answers in Genesis’ Misleading Claims (Lies) About Mammals and Dinosaurs (August 8) "In each case, they’re taking fossils of extinct animals that share some superficial similarities with modern creatures and presenting them as if they were identical to today’s species. This is not just a misunderstanding – it’s a misrepresentation of scientific findings."

6. DHS watchdog warns of 'urgent issue' after immigration officials allegedly lose track of unaccompanied children (August 20) "He urged ICE to 'take immediate action to ensure the safety of [unaccompanied children] residing in the United States.'"

7. Are You Caught in the FOG(C) of Coercive Control? (August 23) "The partner who is being controlled frequently becomes adept at rationalizing and justifying the harmful behaviour because they understand, often unconsciously, what it takes to minimize the risk of their partner lashing out at them."

8. World-first lung cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries (August 23, via) This is great!

9. ‘Exactly where you don’t want to look’ (August 26) "I shouldn’t know who Kate Cox is. I absolutely should not know the most intimate details of her family, her personal life, and the health of her uterus. But I do. We all do. We all know all about all of that because the state government of Texas insisted on making her personal life and health a very public matter of state policy, state decision-making, and state interference." 

Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories

Kangaroo, with a baby kangaroo in its pouch. Image source.

Here's a fun video from Joel Duff: New Solution to the Marsupial Migration Problem? Divine Action vs Natural Laws. (Also, Duff's blog post, and the Slacktivist's post about it, The Long March Of The Koalas Revisited.) The video is 1 hour and 24 minutes long, and is probably only of interest to people who are obsessed with the details of young-earth creationism. I LOVED it, that's why I'm blogging about it here.

Basically, it's about this question: During the Flood, all of the land animals died, except for the ones on Noah's ark. [According to young-earth creationist ideology.] The bible says the ark eventually came to rest on Mount Ararat, and then from there all the animals dispersed. Now we see that Australia is home to many species of marsupials, while the rest of the world has placental mammals. How did this happen? Marsupials got off the ark and walked to Australia, and didn't stop anywhere along the way to establish populations in other places? All of the marsupial species walked from the Middle East to Australia, and none of the placentals did that? How on earth could that happen?

(Adding the caveat here that there are marsupial fossils in Antarctica, and also there are marsupials native to South America- so it's not *just* Australia. But mainly Australia.)

I used to be a young-earth creationist, and I don't remember ever hearing about this question back then. But wow, it's a good question! Why on earth is Australia full of marsupials, and other places aren't, if all the animals started out in the ark and dispersed from there?

(The fossil record adds another complication- because young-earth creationists believe that the overwhelming majority of the layers of fossils were deposited during the Flood. So, before the Flood, you have marsupials living in Australia- we know that's where they lived before the Flood, because we find fossils there deposited during the Flood. And then 2 of each "kind" of marsupial ["kind" has a specific meaning in young-earth creationism, it's similar to a genus or family- NOT a species] traveled from Australia to wherever Noah was. Then, the Flood came, and all the marsupials in Australia died. Then, after the Flood, the ones on Noah's ark came all the way back to Australia. That's a bit, uh, odd, right? Why do we see such continuity between the fossils found in a certain place, and the animal species that currently live in that place, if the Flood basically reset everything? After the Flood, the whole landscape of the earth would be completely different than before. So many layers of mud covering everything. Why would animals end up going back to the same places where they lived before the Flood?)

Thinking about it now, it feels to me like a case of "the writer of the 'Noah's ark' story just kind of glossed over the part." If you're going to have a global flood, it makes sense to say "Oh but what about the animals? Oh, we can save a male and female of each kind of animal, there ya go"- that's a first attempt to address the problem of how to save the animals, and the "Noah's ark" story doesn't go any deeper than that on this issue. (Maybe because it wasn't the point of the story!) But if you start to think about it, you realize the problem is MUCH more complicated than "save a male and female of each kind of animal." How do you gather the animals and get them all onto the ark? How do you feed them all during the Flood? How do you make sure that *none* of them die, and *all* of them reproduce? And how do they spread out to the whole world after the Flood, to the locations where we see these species of animals living today?

In Duff's video, he discusses a creationist article written by Graeme Taylor, Marsupials in Australia—an act of God?. (Duff does not believe in young-earth creationism, but he takes it extremely seriously, and his entire blog is about going through the little details of things found in the fossil record, etc, and asking whether it's possible to explain them from a young-earth perspective.) Taylor's article presents the idea that maybe God supernaturally directed all the marsupials to travel to Australia.

The way I see it, there are 4 possible young-earth creationist explanations for marsupials living in Australia:

1. Some natural explanation that makes you go "oh, that makes sense" for how all the marsupials would travel to Australia, while none of the placentals would. No one has come up with such an explanation.
2. The marsupials all just decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, for no real reason, just a wild coincidence. This is what most of the young-earth creationist scientists have been saying, and Taylor's article is challenging this and pointing out that it is very unrealistic.
3. The marsupials all decided to cross mountain ranges and climb onto vegetation rafts that floated to Australia, because God supernaturally made them want to do that. God intervened constantly during their journey, in small ways, to make sure they survived and arrived in Australia. This is the theory that Taylor presents in his article.
4. Maybe God just teleported them straight to Australia. There aren't any creationist scientists actually advocating this explanation, but Duff brings it up in his video and asks "why not?" If God was going to do a bunch of small miracles to help the marsupials along, all throughout their trip to Australia, why not just do one big miracle instead? Wouldn't that be easier?

Watching Duff's video, the thing that really strikes me is how, in Taylor's theory, God really really wants marsupials to live in Australia. God intervened in so many little ways, to make sure Australia's animals were different than animals you find elsewhere. This must have been really important to God, or else why would They go to all that effort, doing all those small miracles, overriding animals' instincts to not get on vegetation rafts floating out into the open ocean?

In explanations 1 and 2 (which I listed above), you don't have to believe that God really really wanted marsupials to live in Australia. In explanations 3 and 4, you do. And, like, why? Why was it so important to God that marsupials live in Australia, and not establish any other populations anywhere else along the way?

And even if you're fine with claiming "God just really really wanted Australia to be *different* and have marsupials," there's another problem, which Duff points out: What about the dinosaurs? Young-earth creationists believe that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, but they all died out very soon afterward. Why? Wasn't the point of Noah's ark to save every kind of animal? Why would God do the work to ensure that 2 of every kind of dinosaur got on the ark, and then just let them die out anyway right after? If God is so invested in marsupials living in Australia, willing to do all these tiny little miracles to guide them on their journey and make sure they survive, then it must also be true that dinosaurs went extinct because God just really really wanted them to go extinct. What? What was the point of bringing them on the ark then? Is God just really bad at planning?

Actually, this question isn't just about obscure creationist fan theories. It's also about how God intervenes in the world now. Plenty of people claim that God healed them from this or that sickness- and what they mean is, God guided them to find doctors who were able to help them, etc. We don't have evidence of God doing *obvious* miracles (like my "explanation 4" above), like growing back amputated limbs.

When people pray and ask God for help, they expect that God will answer that prayer by doing a series of little, subtle "miracles", each of which is unremarkable by itself, but they add up to the result that God wanted. God causes you to be late for work because of traffic one day, and that causes you to meet someone who has some important effect on your life, and so on. People don't expect that they pray and then God answers with some glowing magic like in a Disney princess movie. But, why not? Wouldn't it be easier for God to just do 1 big miracle instead of a bunch of complicated small miracles?

And Duff brings this up in his video too. He says it's not just about Noah's ark, but it's about the nature of how God intervenes in the world, and all theists (including himself) have to think about this question. Yeah... I'm a Christian, so I have to think about this too.

Personally, my answer is that God does NOT intervene in the world. And the biggest reason that I believe this, is the existence of systemic racism and other systemic injustice. If I believe that God is doing all these little tiny things to help me because They have this elaborate plan and They really want me to get this or that job and meet this or that person, then I also have to believe that God really really wants black people to get denied mortgages, and not believed by their doctors, and pulled over by cops for no real reason, and sent to jail for drug use at higher rates than white people who are doing the same things. WTF? Why would God want that??? Not cool! So I just can't believe God intervenes at all. How could it be the case that "God has a plan" and God is always doing these intricate little actions to influence people and carry out the plan, and it adds up to a world with systemic injustice? WTF? 

(Which is basically the problem of evil.)

It's the same as the situation with the marsupials and the dinosaurs. If you believe God really wanted the marsupials to live in Australia, and did miracles to make sure this would happen, then you also have to believe God really wanted the dinosaurs to die.

In conclusion: I loved the video, and it's so delightful to imagine creationists doing the math about how far a kangaroo can hop in a day, and all of the other weird implications of this fan theory. But it goes deeper than that; it's about our beliefs about how God acts in the world now. Does God do big or small miracles? Does God avoid big obvious miracles because They want to allow people to not believe in Them? (This is the reasoning I have ALWAYS heard from Christians, but I don't buy it.) Does God have a specific "plan for your life"?

---

Related:

I used to be a young-earth creationist 

I Didn't Like the Ocean in "Moana" Because it was Too Much Like God

I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches 

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

Blogaround

1. Paleontologists discover a 240-million-year-old 'dragon' fossil in full (February 23, via) "It's a fitting discovery in the Year of the Dragon: A team of scientists has uncovered a complete fossil of an aquatic reptile that resembles a 'Chinese dragon' because of its snake-like appearance and elongated neck." Cool!

2. NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its last flight after suffering rotor damage (January 26, via) "The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper was tasked with demonstrating that powered flight is indeed possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere — it promptly did so during a five-flight campaign that spring."

3. I didn’t fancy men or women. Then I had a baby (February 13, via) Article about an asexual woman who decided to get pregnant using a sperm donor.

4. What TV Shows Get Wrong (and Right!) About Therapy (November 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

5. A ‘Reading Rainbow’ Documentary Is Coming Next Month (February 28) Cool!

6. When Star Trek Confronted Racism Head-On (February 28) 23-minute video about a "Deep Space Nine" episode

7. If Elisabeth Elliot's Marriage Advice was Supposed to Ruin Your Life, This is the First I've Heard It (February 12) "The book is a frankly overheated and occasionally goofy account of two people who, like all young people, have very intense and primarily interior problems that don’t make sense to anyone over twenty-five. Passion and Purity, though, is told through the perspective of a much older woman who actually does seem to agree that these problems are very serious, and that the tortured process of wondering if you’re touching your boyfriend too much or if he loves you too much is actually part of preparation for marriage. How do we make sense of this?"

Blogaround

1. AI-generated Valentine's Cards (posted February 4) "You're the snail's poise!"

2. Reliable sources and blogger ethics panels (posted February 2) "I know a lot of you have been asking yourselves, 'Why doesn’t LGM have more Fred Bonine content? Is one 2000-word post every 18 years really enough?'"

3. Washington selects Commanders as new NFL team name after two-season process (posted February 2) Awesome!

4. Former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores sues NFL, three teams alleging racist hiring practices (posted February 1) "The lawsuit alleges that one team, the New York Giants, engaged in a 'sham interview' process with Flores for their vacancy. The suit alleges that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick 'mistakenly disclosed' to Flores in a text message exchange on Jan. 24 -- three days before Flores was set to interview with the Giants -- that the organization intended to hire Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who is white."

5. Discovery of what ailed Dolly the dinosaur is a first, researchers say (posted February 10) "About 150 million years ago, a young long-necked dinosaur fell ill, likely coughing and suffering from a fever as it wandered what is now southwest Montana."

6. What happened to the nonbelief channel at Patheos? (posted January 4) "Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview."

"Jurassic World" Exhibition (Shanghai, China)

A "Jurassic World" exhibition recently opened here in Shanghai. I went to see it, and OH MY GOODNESS IT WAS INCREDIBLE. Wow. Like, amazing. It was so awesome.

It's robot dinosaurs. So of course I loved it, because I am a dinosaur nerd and I work in robotics. It was AMAZING, oh my goodness it was AMAZING.

(Oh this is great, I just did some googling and found that Smart Shanghai reviewed the "Jurassic World" exhibition. I love the tone of their article, totally agree.)

My photos:

Sign in the parting lot. 侏罗纪世界 (Jurassic World)

Blogaround

1. World’s first 100% complete T-rex skeleton found locked in battle with a Triceratops (posted November 20) Wow this is incredible.

2. Wow I feel this (though yeah, I'm extremely privileged compared to other immigrants):

one thing i have been continually struck by this year is how many people don’t realize that this situation of being unable to see your family for unfair reasons beyond your control is simply regular life for so many immigrants and people in diaspora

— bettina makalintal (@bettinamak) November 22, 2020

3. Watch penguins take over an NFL field (posted November 24) Adorable!

Blogaround

A drawing of George Floyd with the text "Justice for George Floyd #SayHisName". Image source.

1. Shockingly lifelike dinosaur fossil makes public debut (posted 2017) Holy crap, this is amazing. This was published in 2017 and I'm only hearing about it now???!!! It's a dinosaur that's so well-preserved they're using the word "mummified." Wow.

2. Our Nation Has Lost Its Witness (posted June 3) "What set us apart from China was that we were not like that. We did not put tanks on the street. We did not crack down on peaceful protests calling for freedom or the redress of grievances."

3. Ah, I guess I should let you all know the new blogging schedule:

Now that I have a baby, my new blog publishing schedule is as follows:
It gets posted whenever it gets posted.

— Perfect Number (@pnumber628) May 4, 2020

4. Black Lives Matter. Keep protesting. And register to vote.

5. The kingdom of heaven is like Rahul Dubey sheltering 70 protesters in his home. (Found that link via Slactivist's post, Redeeming the Nasty 19s, which is also very good.)

6. The Police Are Rioting. We Need to Talk About It. (posted June 5) 

Blogaround

1. Not every pandemic is the Black Death (posted April 2) "Even if you were pretty sure you had it nailed on miasma theory causing plague though, that doesn’t necessarily explain where said miasma came from."

2. #ShareMyCheck This is a great idea!

3. This Missionary Adventure Board Game Has Dinosaurs (posted April 13) "This isn’t a game about being a missionary; it’s a glorified safari hyped up on an extra dose of self centered whiteness."

4. Franklin Graham: When I Said Anti-Gay, I Meant Clean Living (posted April 15) "Guys. Guys. The ministry is named “Samaritan’s Purse.” Stop and think about that for a moment." WELL THAT IS AN EXCELLENT POINT.

Blogaround

A baby wearing a dinosaur costume. Image source.

1. A 70% Marginal Rate on Top Incomes Is A Good Start, But It Doesn’t Go Far Enough (posted January 5) "In truth, not only is Ocasio-Cortez’ proposal not radical at all, it would have been boring and normative policy for most of the 20th century in western democracies. It would have been seen as moderate and unremarkable–even conservative!–during the 1960s in America before the civil rights era."

2. A man named Paul would like to tell you the difference between a vulva and vagina. (posted February 12) lololol

3. Raped, Abused, and Ignored: Disabled Women Are Invisible Victims (posted January 31) [content note: rape]

-------------------------

This week's blogaround is a little sparse ~ you can also check out last week's blogaround, which for some reason had a whopping 13 links.

Have a good week everyone!

Blogaround

A group of labrador puppies, sleeping in a row. Alternating between yellow and black puppies. Image source.

1. Do you remember your first time? (posted 2014) [content note: descriptions of assault by medical staff] "I remember the first time I was treated by force."

2. The Obamacare provision that saved thousands from bankruptcy (posted March 2) "This Obamacare provision took effect September 23, 2010. Timmy was born September 29. On December 17, he surpassed $1 million worth of bills in the neonatal intensive care unit. He didn’t leave the NICU until he was 6 months old."

3. Feeding the hungry is a Good Thing (posted March 16) "The disagreement is about something far simpler, far more basic and fundamental. Some people think that preserving the health, nutrition, and dignity of older Americans is an important Good Thing. And other people do not."

4. A Janitor Preserves the Seized Belongings of Migrants (posted March 12) "He’d always known, technically, about the C.B.P.’s strict confiscation policies, which were posted on bilingual signs and applied to all items classified as either “non-essential” or “potentially lethal.” But he hadn’t spent much time thinking about these policies, and he hadn’t realized how broadly they were applied, or just how many of the confiscated items—including cell phones and wallets, many still containing I.D.s, prepaid debit cards, and cash—were ending up in the trash, never to be returned."

5. The audacious claim that we are not shaped by history (posted March 21) "That claim is this: Hundreds of years of slavery and a century of Jim Crow oppression had no effect on the shape of American Christianity."

6. How University Professors React to Requests for Disability Accommodations (posted 2015) "Universities tend to work on a reporting system so if something goes wrong, students are put in the position of reporting the bad behaviour of people who have power over their academic success."

7. Why I’m Done Being A ‘Good’ Mentally Ill Person (posted March 27) "We see this kind of ableism most distinctly when we categorically divide up disabled people into “higher” and “lower” functioning — which can be a coded way of saying, 'These are the people that can conform to society’s expectations of what a ‘typical’ person should be, and these are the people who fail to do that.'"

8. 'Sightings' of extinct Tasmanian tiger prompt search in Queensland (posted March 27) Cool!

9. Science, reality and ‘persecuted Christians’ (posted March 27) "Dinosaurs are cool, but these poor folks aren’t able to fully enjoy the latest cool news about cool dinosaurs because they’ve convinced themselves that they’re obliged to hear every such bit of news as a kind of attack on their faith."

10. can you explain why "straight passing privilege" isnt a thing? (posted 2014) "regardless of your sexual orientation, the vast majority of people are going to assume you’re straight all the time unless you are doing something specifically coded as being romantic or sexual with someone of the same gender (or someone who is assumed to be the same gender) at that exact moment. still in the closet? straight. went out to grab dinner with someone of a different gender than you? straight. hanging out with your friends? straight. stepped out of the house to get milk? straight."