Blogaround

Photo of the earth, taken from the Artemis II space ship. Image source.

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Touch - Stan Bush (HD Restoration) A song from some 1986 transformers movie.

I watched this video with my son standing next to me telling me the Chinese names of all the transformers. None of the pregnancy books prepared me for how much transformers lore I would be required to learn as a parent.

2. Artemis II astronauts swung by the moon, broke an Apollo record, and saw an eclipse (April 7) "Just minutes later, the crew reached the mission's maximum distance from Earth at 252,756 miles, beating the previous record set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970 by 4,111 more miles."

3. These blind students say their college blocked their education. A new rule could help (April 6) "For many assignments – say a PDF document from a professor – most students simply click "download," and read it. But that same assignment is more complicated for students who are blind."

4. In 1978, they stopped buses — and helped launch a disability rights movement (April 3) "The Gang of 19, as they'd be called, demanded that the city install wheelchair lifts on more than 200 newly-ordered buses, so they could ride public transit. The protest lasted some 24 hours. At night, some of the protesters got out of their wheelchairs and slept on the hard asphalt."

5. Day Counter (April 3) From xkcd.

6. On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: "The Master's Tools" in Tech Discourse (March 28, via) "A decolonial critique of technology is not simply "the internet was always bad." It is rather: the conditions that made the internet harmful to specific communities were never peripheral to its design; they're an integral part of it. And any politics that aims to restore something like the pre-enshittification internet without reckoning with those conditions is doomed to reproduce them."

7. When Genomes Fail: Serial Cloning, Mutation Accumulation, and the Case Against Creationist’ Genetic Entropy (April 6) "By the 57th generation, the mice carried approximately 3,700 single-nucleotide variants, 80 insertions or deletions, and at least 16 large structural variants that had not been present in the original donor. The birth rate declined steadily after generation 27, and the 58th generation was the last. Every mouse born in that final generation died within a day."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The president is posting on social media to threaten genocide. He must be removed from office.

Trump post on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to ​be brought back ​again. I don’t want that ‌to ⁠happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We ⁠will find out tonight, one of ​the most important ​moments ⁠in the long and complex history of ⁠the ​World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!"

We have the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Now is the time to use it. (April 8) "Any federal official who does not respond to Tuesday’s threat in a manner befitting their own constitutional obligations in light of Trump’s past actions will bear a part of the responsibility for what follows."

2. Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general (April 2)

Pam Bondi is out — and that is a good thing. She was Trump's lawyer, and DOJ paid the price. (April 3) "She has caused incalculable harm to the Department, the rule of law, and the nation. All in service of Trump. That is, and will always be, her legacy."

3. She paid into Medicare for years. Trump's immigration policy will end her coverage (April 6) "She's contributed tens of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security over 24 years, according to her Social Security Administration earnings record, reviewed by El Tímpano and KFF Health News. But Carranza and an estimated 100,000 other lawfully present immigrants will soon be cut out of Medicare."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. China’s Security Guards Live Lives on the Margin (November 25) "According to the current regulations concerning security services in China, security guards are required to meet three basic conditions: be in good health, have at least a junior high school diploma, and have no more than three administrative detentions on their record. Despite not meeting any of these criteria, Xiao Bing has always managed to find his way back into the industry. The reason is simple: companies often struggle to recruit enough guards for residential communities, given the low pay, lack of career prospects, and low social status."

2. Freebirth Influencers are Killing Babies (November 29) [content note: child death] "All of this hasn’t happened in a vacuum. It’s a story that I’ve been talking about for decades now: remove agency from women. Add in societal pressures. In place of agency, tell women some fantasy about magical powers that allow them to transcend those challenges. Then blame them for suffering and dying because they didn’t use their magic the right way."

This article is about the "free birth movement" and MY GOODNESS I had heard of "free birth" but had no idea it was this bad. I know that "home birth" sort of spans a spectrum from 'pregnant people who are well-informed about their own pregnancy's risks of complications, and who have a good backup plan in case they need to be rushed to the hospital, can give birth at home and it's basically just as safe as a hospital birth' to 'doctors are bad, all you need is your feminine energy and everything will be okay'- well it turns out that "free birth" means going off the deep end of the "doctors are bad" side of that. 

Moms and babies used to die quite often in childbirth. Yes, giving birth is natural, and your body *probably* can do it and you won't die- but "probably" is not good enough. Know the risks, and get the medical help that makes sense for you. In my second pregnancy I had pre-eclampsia which is life-threatening, but I didn't really think it was a big deal because I didn't have any symptoms- but the doctors caught it early and took it extremely seriously, and everything turned out fine.

I totally agree that the reason women are drawn to these "free birth" influencers is because the medical system has traumatized them. So many women have experienced doctors doing all kinds of invasive things to them without their consent, during childbirth, and are pressured to accept it because "all that matters is the baby is healthy." Not cool! We need to prioritize consent in health care.

3. These Zika mothers went to battle — and their cry was heard (November 29) "It's a story that plays itself out all over the world, Brito says — in big ways and small. A health or natural disaster befalls a community and they are all that anyone talks about. But quickly, people turn to the next tragedy elsewhere. For that original community, though, the challenge has only just begun."

4. Young Girls Were Sexually Abused by a Church Member. They Were Told to Forgive and Forget. (November 20, via) [content note: child sexual abuse] "'I went back to the same preacher, which is Daryl [Bruckelmyer], and said, ‘Why is he still able to hold kids and whatever?’' she recalled to Kleffman in a recorded interview. 'And he’s like: ‘I don’t know. Like, we’ve told him that he’s not supposed to, but he still does.’'"

5. Bridge Clearance (November 28) From xkcd.

6. Take up wickedness again (November 30) "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar."

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Links related to the antichrist:

(I don't really believe there's a specific prophesied "antichrist", but I just have to call him that because it's absurd how evangelicals, after spending so many years obsessing about which world leader might possibly be "the antichrist" and what traits such a person would have, are the ones selling their souls to him.)

1. MAGA’s Twin WTF Moments (November 25) "And that underscores a hard truth: MAGA is whatever Trump says it is at any given moment, even if that means abandoning everything it previously stood for."

2. Trump administration orders review of Biden-era refugees, memo shows (November 25) "The USCIS memo, dated November 21, said the agency will terminate the refugee status of people already in the U.S. if they are found to not meet refugee criteria."

Oh my god, they want to review 233,000 refugees and find whatever technicalities they can use as excuses to deport people. Refugees. My god. 

And: Trump administration pausing all asylum decisions after National Guard shooting (November 28)

3. House and Senate committees launch inquiries into second strike on alleged drug boat (November 30) "Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said Sunday on CNN that if the reporting on the second strike is true, “it seems to” constitute a war crime."

4. FDA to raise hurdles for vaccines, faulting COVID shots for 10 kids' deaths (November 29) Oh this is a terrible idea. Also, why isn't the public discourse highlighting the risks of *not* vaccinating your kids? *Not* vaccinating your kids can lead to measles and all kinds of other diseases.

5. Why clergy should risk assault to protest ICE (November 13, via) "For people wanting to experience God, we are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview facility than we ever were in church. I say that as someone who leads a church for a living. God does not live in our houses of worship, but instead chooses to dwell with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment." Preach.

6. ‘Last Week Tonight With John Oliver’ Auction Raises More Than $1.5 Million for Public Broadcasting, Including New Record for a Bob Ross Painting (November 24, via) 

7. Crime in the Cabinet (December 1) "Even so, it was striking to hear two independent credible accusations of crimes by Trump cabinet officials in the same week."

Also: The Trump administration's lawlessness is front and center, on multiple fronts (November 30) "Despite the horrors and harm involved, all three stories show how important discussing lawlessness is to making accountability possible — now or in the future."

Blogaround

Hey, all the links today are news. You may be thinking to yourself, "Does Perfect Number just go read NPR and then copy all the links to here?" Well, that's a big chunk of it, yes.

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Guns are the leading cause of death of kids and teens, and state laws matter (June 11)

2. Unanimous Supreme Court makes it easier to sue schools in disability cases (June 12) "'This is bigger than our family,' Aaron Tharpe, Ava's father, told NPR. Tharpe said the most important thing about the ruling is that it gives other families who don't have the resources he does, the tools to fight back."

3. EXCLUSIVE: American Security Contractor Unloads On US-Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (June 12, via) "We all got in a line and began pushing these people out. We’re telling crying women trying to pick up food for their families that they had to go. They were looking at this food on the ground that they desperately needed, and they couldn’t take it. It was absolutely horrific."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Where are the people the Trump administration has deported? (June 12) This is a good summary of a bunch of the cases we've been hearing about, though it certainly doesn't include everyone who has been deported.

2. Rep. McIver is indicted on federal charges related to tussle at immigration facility (June 11) "'The facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job,' the representative said in a statement. She called the proceedings against her 'a brazen attempt at political intimidation.'"

3. Federal court orders resumption of legal services to separated families (June 11) "The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over “Zero Tolerance” in February of 2018, arguing that separating families was unnecessary under the law and that the policy deprived migrant families of their right to due process."

4. How a shoplifting arrest in upstate NY summoned ICE and separated a family (June 11) "The case is one of several recent incidents fueling an ongoing debate about immigration among lawmakers. Should New York become a sanctuary state, following some of its biggest cities in passing a law to limit all local cooperation with immigration agents? Or should local law enforcement be compelled to contact ICE every time they cross paths with an undocumented immigrant – even people suspected of the smallest of crimes?"

5. Senator Alex Padilla handcuffed and forcibly removed from Kristi Noem’s LA press conference (June 12) "'If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the DHS responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers, throughout the LA community and throughout California and throughout the country,' Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, told reporters. 'We will hold this administration accountable.'"

Also about LA: Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence (June 9) "All I've read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protestrs, while we've seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration's war on immigrants."

6. Despite ongoing Taliban threats, the U.S. is ending some protections for Afghans (June 12) "The administration's claim that Afghan security and its economy have improved is widely disputed. The State Department strongly advises against travel to Afghanistan, 'due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.'"

7. The GOP's massive bill would benefit the rich the most — while hitting the poor (June 12) 

8. ICE's novel strategy allows for more arrests from inside immigration courts (June 12) "Under the new approach, after their case is dismissed, immigrants are arrested again, at times before even leaving the building — as happened with Aliaksandr Bulaty. Then they're put in a process called expedited removal: a fast-track for deportation that does not guarantee the right to a day in court and comes with a five-year restriction on attempting to return to the U.S."

9. ‘Too Big a Risk’: Chinese Students Rethink the American Dream (June 13) "Lin, who was preparing to study law at the University of California, Berkeley, went straight to the U.S. visa site to try and book a visa appointment. For the next several hours, she cycled between browsers, devices, and VPN nodes, fighting her way through the overloaded visa portal. Each time she got close to booking an interview, the system crashed."

10. To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction (May 11) "Like other Palestinian fathers, I was separated from you by racist regimes and distant prisons. In Palestine, this pain is part of daily life. Babies are born every day without their fathers – not because their fathers chose to leave, but because they are taken by war, by bombs, by prison cells and by the cold machinery of occupation. The grief your mother and I feel is but one drop in a sea of sorrow that Palestinian families have drowned in for generations." By Mahmoud Khalil.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. “They’re Ruining People’s Lives” Bans on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youth in the US (June 3, via) "Parents reported traveling long distances, sometimes across multiple states, incurring costs for airfare, gas, hotels, and lost wages. Two families reported having to re-establish care twice as new bans forced them to relocate again. Families and advocates reported that insurance companies routinely deny coverage for out-of-state treatment, forcing families to bear significant financial burdens. Some families reported facing costs of up to US$4,500 every six months for medications alone. These challenges disproportionately impact low-income families and rural residents, who often lack the resources to afford regular interstate travel for care."

2. Vietnam ends its longstanding 2-child policy (June 4) Oh wow, I actually had no idea that other countries besides China had policies like that. (China's one-child policy ended in 2016.)

3. ‘I’m really scared’: Elderly and disabled Californians with more than $2,000 could lose Medi-Cal (May 29) "'It’s draconian — $2,000 is no safety net for people,' said Kim Selfon, an attorney with Bet Tzedek, a legal services organization in Los Angeles."

When I first heard that there are policies which kick disabled people off of government benefits if the amount of money in their bank account is above some threshold (not necessarily the California one, but policies like this existing in general), it sounded completely bonkers to me. I've always heard financial advice about how it's good to save your money, have an emergency fund, etc- isn't that what the "personal responsibility" Republicans are always saying?- but for disabled people, if they are able to save up their money, they get punished by losing government benefits.

4. Builder.ai collapses after revelation that its "AI" was hundreds of engineers (June 3, via) "'We were told to never mention our location or use Indian English phrases,' said a former Bangalore engineer."

5. Greta Thunberg: Silence and Inaction Is More Deadly Than Me Sailing to Gaza (June 4, via) "We cannot just sit, sit around and do nothing and watch this like live-streamed genocide unfold in front of our very eyes. So we are doing this because we are human beings who care about justice. And when our complicit governments fail to step up, it falls on us, unfortunately, to do so."

6. CCM star Michael Tait accused of sexual misconduct by multiple men, drug use: report (June 5) Holy crap, I'm really shocked about this. Back in the 90's, Tait was a member of DC Talk, a Christian band, which was my favorite band. Later he became the lead singer of the Newsboys, also a Christian band, which was my second-favorite band, so I was excited to see where that was going. 

Unfortunately, after that, the Newsboys got involved with conservative culture-war stuff- their song "God's Not Dead" was a big part of the "God's Not Dead" movies. (The movie "God's Not Dead" literally has a scene where the Newsboys are performing a concert.) And one day I happened to stumble upon a song by the Newsboys (with Tait as the lead singer) called "Guilty," which is about how if society makes it a crime to be Christian, "I wanna be guilty"- like what is this persecution fantasy crap, what on earth?

Tait also has been part of the "faith leaders" meetings with president orange. Yeah, I've been really unhappy with Tait for a long time about this stuff. Dragging the good name of DC Talk through the mud. Did not expect the drug use and sexual assault allegations though.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. 'No Kings' protests planned against Trump military parade; see when, where (June 3) Yesssss get out there and protest. June 14.

2. Judge orders Trump admin to let those sent to CECOT challenge Alien Enemies Act removal (June 5) "The Trump administration, under Boasberg’s order, has a week to provide their proposed solution."

3. Trump issues new travel ban covering a dozen countries (June 4)

And: Trump's travel ban includes Afghanistan, where thousands await U.S. resettlement (June 5)

4. Judge blocks deportation of Boulder attacker's family (June 4) !!! Oh my goodness, ICE was going to deport the attacker's family? What is this????? If there's evidence they were involved in the attack, then bring the evidence to an actual court. There are actual laws for this! (So far I haven't heard of any such evidence.) This comes across like the MAGAs were super excited for any kind of reason to deport immigrants, whether or not it makes sense.

5. Debunking the South African “White Genocide” Nonsense (May 29) "This is going to shock you, but it turns out that that’s a lie, too!"

6. In recorded calls, reports of overcrowding and lack of food at ICE detention centers (June 6) "J. is one of the many family members of detainees who called NPR to report their loved ones not receiving meals or getting rotten food. Detainees who NPR spoke to over the phone confirmed this, and many said they'd had to sleep on the floor for weeks."

7. ICE agents detain at least 10 immigrants as elected officials try to block officers in the South Loop (June 5) "'Then, in a Gestapo fashion, 50 agents or so walked down the street, stood right here in front of the driveway, then aggressively came through, knocked me down, assaulted me and other community members here today, then pulled out weapons and also pulled out their sticks, pushing some of us, punching some of us to get through to this driveway,' Quezada said, adding that he was pushed three times by ICE agents."

Blocking them, trying to stand in their way- it does help. Keep doing this.

And: ICE raids grow tense as protesters confront immigration agents (June 6)

8. Months after detaining 47 people accused of being Tren de Aragua in Austin, authorities offer no evidence of gang ties (June 4) "'We all started shouting that there were babies — ‘Babies, there’s babies,’' recounted a 30-year-old Venezuelan man, who said he was at the house to celebrate the birthdays of his son, who turned 5, and his best friend, who turned 28."

9. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported to El Salvador, is back in the U.S. to face smuggling charges (June 6) Wow! This is good news, but I don't know what to make of these new criminal charges against him. Does the government have evidence for these charges? If there's actual evidence, why wasn't that mentioned before? Very strange. 

Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Machine-Generated Garbage Hall of Shame (via) Oh cool, a roundup of posts about LLMs being used to create garbage.

And: I'm a Spotless Giraffe. (2023) "It's not just that the training sets simply don't have examples of people who look like me. It's that the system is now explicitly engineered to resist imagining me. …Hey, is now a good a time to mention that in an effort to create a welcoming and inclusive community for all users, the Midjourney Community Guidelines consider deformed bodies a form of gore, and thus forbidden?"

2. ‘I was scared to even eat the vegetables in my fridge’: the eating disorder that focuses on food purity (May 2, via) "'I remember asking myself why everything was so hard,' she says. 'Why aren’t other people following the same food rules? Why don’t they care about their health as much as I do?'"

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Links related to that felon:

1. 'We Don't Do Kings': Mass Protests Planned to Counter Trump's Birthday Military Parade (May 6)

2. With ICE Out of Control, How Can the US Cohost the 2026 World Cup? (March 31) "Given that ICE is being used as a masked abduction force, and given “border czar” Tom Homan’s contempt for the courts, it is unconscionable to encourage people to visit this country."

3. USDA chief says agency is trying to fill key jobs after paying 15,000 to leave (May 7) 

4. Judge orders release of Columbia student protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi (April 30) "'I'm saying it clear and loud to President [Donald] Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,' Mahdawi said after he was freed, local public radio station Vermont Public reported."

5. Many Afghans living in the U.S. fear being tortured or killed if they get deported (May 7) "'I have … a threatening letter,' Qattali said. 'If I go back, like, 100% they're going to kill me and my family as well.'"

I just... why? Why would these MAGAs want to deport Afghan people, who helped the US and are now just living their lives and not making any trouble? It reads like they just want to deport as big of a number of people as possible, so they're casting about for any way they can make the number bigger.

6. Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk freed from immigration detention (May 9) "And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here."

This is good news- but she is still in the process of fighting against the government revoking her visa- she is still at risk of being deported. But the good news is she doesn't have to be in jail during this process.

7. Trump & Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (May 5)

8. Roundup: Experts Condemn Trump Pseudoscientific Anti-Trans "Report" (May 9) "'AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways,' she said."

On Being a Wimp

Fear, from the movie "Inside Out." Image source.

I blog about a lot of stuff related to my personal life. The thing that's hardest to write about, though, is being autistic. Sometimes I want to write, and sometimes I feel like I shouldn't, because... for me the main issue is sensory stuff, and if I write about that, aren't I just telling everyone that I'm a wimp?

So... yeah this post is about how, because of my sensory pain issues, because of my autism, which was undiagnosed until I was in my 20's, I've always had this worry that people are going to think I'm a wimp.

There are 2 sides to this:

First, there are the times when some sensory thing truly is overwhelming and painful for me, and people laugh at me. Feeling like I can't tell people that I'm having a problem, because then they'll think I'm a wimp. Feeling like I can't just communicate about what my needs are; I have to hide it and pretend everything's fine, otherwise people will think I'm a wimp. 

I always felt like... I wasn't allowed to have this problem. It's "childish", and I should be "mature" and "get over it." Thinking about it now, I'm like, "Being a mature adult means if you have a need/ disability/ food allergy/ other kind of restriction, you communicate about it and work together with other people to come up with a way that you can still participate. Or, if it doesn't work out, you politely tell them you're not able to participate, and you leave." But back then, before I figured out I'm autistic, I thought... "Being a mature adult means you 'get over it' and be a normal person." And so I tried to hide my problems and be a "normal person" as long as I could, all jumpy and nervous and on the edge of panic, until I "suddenly freak out." Can't tell anyone I'm having a problem until I'm absolutely forced to. I can't tell them, because they'll think I'm a wimp.

I remember one time, when I was in my 20's, and someone told me that if someone invites me somewhere and I have sensory problems there, they would want to know about it because they don't want it to be a bad experience for me. They would want to help me. And I was so shocked; that had never occurred to me before. I thought if someone invited me somewhere that had a bad sensory environment, that meant they wanted me to "be normal" and exist in that bad sensory environment, and they would judge me if I "freaked out" about it. And I shouldn't bother them by telling them about my problems; I should just hide it.

Second, there are times when there's not a painful sensory event going on, but people are concerned for me because they think something might be overwhelming for me. For example, someone says "maybe you want to leave the room, because I'm about to hammer something and it might be loud" and then it turns out to not be that loud, and I feel like... "you think I'm that much of a wimp, that I couldn't even handle that sound, which wasn't loud at all?" Feeling really offended, like people think I'm a wimp and that's why they want to help me avoid things that only a wimp would be scared of.

And, yeah in that situation, my reaction isn't right, because people are trying to help me. But it's because I have this fear that people will think I'm a wimp. This internalized belief that, if someone is "scared" of something which is not "actually" scary, that means they're a wimp and everyone is right to mock them. Wanting to avoid being judged by other people, and at the same time, judging hypothetical others who were more wimpy than me.

One example of this was when I was in middle school and I was going to a therapist, and for some reason I mentioned to her that I was kind of bothered by elevators. (I don't know why I told her this; it wasn't related to the reason I was going to therapy.) Like, the little moment of acceleration in an elevator kind of weirded me out and I didn't like it. But it wasn't really that big of a deal- I kind of didn't like it, but it wasn't bad enough that I would avoid using an elevator because of it.

But she treated it like it was more of a big deal than it was. I seem to remember she brought it up a few times, when talking about what I can do in a situation where I'm uncomfortable, or something like that, and it just made me feel like... "you think I'm that much of a wimp, that I can't even ride in an elevator?"

The whole thing depends on the idea that it would be bad to be unable to tolerate something that most people see as "not a big deal." It would be bad, you should be embarrassed, people will mock you. And I certainly felt that embarrassment, when I was in a situation with sensory pain, and everyone else was acting like everything was fine... feeling embarrassed at being a "wimp", while at the same time so confused at how everyone else could be okay with whatever bad sensory stimulation was going on. Is there something wrong with me, for having a reaction to this, or is there something wrong with everyone else, for not having a reaction to something which is obviously overwhelming and painful?

But now I've found out, actually there's nothing wrong with being unable to tolerate certain stimuli. What I mean is, it doesn't mean 'you're a wimp and you should be embarrassed and other people should judge you.' It's just reality, that some people are built like that. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us.

I was so offended at being likened to a hypothetical person who couldn't ride an elevator- but there's no need to be offended at that, because it doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. If a person exists who hates the feeling of vertical acceleration so much that they always avoid elevators, that's fine. It's fine, in the sense that it doesn't mean they're weak or something's wrong with them. It could be a problem for them for very practical reasons, depending on whether or not the area where they live has a lot of tall buildings. If this is inconveniencing them a lot, they might make a personal choice to work on it and get themselves to a point where it doesn't bother them that much, and they can take an elevator sometimes. That's their decision, not something they're obligated to do in order to avoid mockery for being a wimp.

(By the way, I now live in one of the biggest cities in the world, there are lots of tall buildings, I take elevators every day and it doesn't bother me at all any more.)

And what I eventually realized, when I found out I'm autistic, is... It doesn't mean you're a wimp. It's really the opposite- you have had to endure things that most people don't have to. You are not "overreacting" to sensory stimuli- for you, they truly are that painful. You've been subjected to sensory pain, over and over and over, that's much worse than what the average person experiences. 

I remember when I realized that most people basically never find themselves in a situation where they know there could be horrible pain at any moment, and they're all jumpy and nervous, and everyone around them acts like everything is fine. I was so shocked, because that was my whole life when I was a child. Very very frequently found myself in situations like that. I very much did not believe... that I should feel safe.

For example, let's say you're in high school chemistry class, and the teacher says something about doing an experiment with explosions. But you don't know if he means he's actually going to do it, here in this class today, or he's just talking about it but not really doing it. You look at the clock, 33 minutes left in this class. 33 minutes is plenty of time to do such an experiment. You watch the clock- just have to make it to the end of the class period and you'll be safe. You watch the teacher, scrutinizing every little thing he says or does, to find evidence for whether or not he'll be showing an experiment in class today. You can't pay attention to anything else, just how nervous you are, how much time is left in the class. 15 minutes now. Maybe you'll be safe, maybe 15 minutes isn't long enough for the experiment, so if he really was going to do it, he would have started by now. Let's try to calculate how much time... at what point will you know you're safe because there's not enough time left in the class? 5 minutes, maybe? 10 minutes? (Maybe you can make up an excuse to leave early?)

Or, if it really does happen. If he really does do the chemistry experiment with explosions. You know it's coming but you don't know when. You wonder how many explosions there will be. You look at the amount of material the teacher has available, and try to calculate how bad it's going to be. You're just stuck there, waiting, waiting for this huge awful explosion.

That kind of thing happened to me a lot. I would be aware of the possibility of some bad sensory thing happening, and I would be forced to stay in that environment, and I would be so nervous, and I would just constantly think about how soon I'll be allowed to leave. Me, super super aware of whatever the sensory thing was, nervous, unable to focus on anything else, and everyone else acting like everything's fine. That was my normal life, when I was a child.

The amazing thing about being an adult is, you can just leave. Now that I'm an adult, I'm never in situations like that, because if I see that there's something that might cause me sensory pain, I just leave. (I mean, it's more complicated than that, because I have trauma about this, and I've internalized the idea that everyone is judging me and thinks I'm a wimp... but anyway, I just leave.)

In summary: People laugh at me for experiencing sensory pain. Made me feel like I'm a wimp, and I didn't want to be, so I always felt that I needed to hide it, and I can't just communicate about the support I need. At the same time, I would sometimes get angry at people who were trying to help me, because I felt like they were saying I needed help because I was such a wimp. As an adult, I've realized that if someone can't handle a certain sensory stimulus, and they "freak out" about it, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them and they should be mocked- it's simply a facet of reality and doesn't mean anything bad. The only bad thing is if it causes practical problems for them- and it's their own choice what they want to do about that. And furthermore, people with sensory issues aren't wimps; we've had to endure much more extreme pain that most people do.

---

Related:

Globophobia 

The Sound 

Autistic at Disneyland

Tickling, Consent, and The Way It Works 

How NOT To Write About Phobias

Blogaround

1. Egypt is certified malaria-free by WHO (October 20, via) This is great!

2. Lauren Stratford, The Survivor Who Never Was (October 15) "True change cannot be built on falsehoods, and people who try to do so create more victims, not fewer."

3. China’s Solution for Trash-Strewn Mountains: Robot Dog Porters (October 24) "The four-legged robots could be seen trotting up and down the steps of Mount Tai, or Taishan, in eastern China’s Shandong province last weekend, often laden with huge bags of garbage, sparking amusement among the hordes of tourists at the site."

Also from Sixth Tone: What’s Chinese for ‘Midwest Nice’? (October 24) LOLLL oh this is so real. You text with customer service on Taobao (Chinese shopping app) and they constantly call you "qin" [亲]. A dictionary will tell you this means "dear"- and I have seen plenty of Chinese people using "dear" in English the way they use "qin", which just sounds odd, like "Dear, can you bring in these documents next week?"- but I've always felt like it shouldn't be understood as "dear" but more like a polite title you use in administrative sorts of interactions. Loved reading this article about how Chinese people also find it weird to be called "qin" on Taobao all the time.

And also: Signs of Unity: Can China’s Deaf Community Find a Common Language? (October 28) "China’s large size, coupled with a history of sign language use dating back at least 1,500 years, have made China’s sign languages especially fragmented."

4. Former envoy says Americans in Canada ‘could determine’ next president (October 20) Love this! Americans living abroad, VOTE VOTE VOTE!

5. Nazi shit (intra ecclesiam nulla salus) (October 23) "'Round them up and put them in camps' is unadorned Nazi shit. It just is. There’s no way of qualifying or caviling or weaseling out of that. 'Round them up and put them in camps' is the essence of the thing itself."

6. What NOT To Say To People Trapped In The MAGA Cult (October 24) "One day he’ll be gone [hopefully very soon] and you’ll need to be there to help them process what happened and perhaps find a way back to sanity."

7. Police and poll workers train for possible election threats (October 24) 

8. American Airlines fined $50 million for its treatment of passengers with disabilities (October 23) "Duckworth said airlines routinely damage her own wheelchairs and others. In fact, Duckworth says they broke 892 wheelchairs in a single month last year. 'Imagine if the American public saw that the airlines broke 892 pairs of legs in a single month. There would be hue and cry, but there hasn't been.'"

9. Biden apologizes for forced Native American boarding school policy that caused abuse and deaths of children (October 26) "President Joe Biden delivered an apology Friday for a United States policy that forcibly separated generations of indigenous children from their families for more than 150 years and sent them to federally backed boarding schools for forced assimilation."

10. MAGA’s Closing Argument: Dad’s Coming Home (October 28) "The core MAGA message is that all these problems are really one problem: The world feels wrong now, because people don’t know how to behave."

11. Your Fave Is Problematic Politics (October 18) "This is an annoying approach to media analysis. It is a batshit approach to getting people to vote for a candidate."

12. Relatable: AOC Doesn't Want Four More Years Of Waking Up To Trump's Bullsh*t (October 29) "We should not have to live that way again. We shouldn’t have to wake up every morning and think “OK, what’s it gonna be today?” Our elected officials shouldn’t be spending their time crafting responses to everything he says or does, only for no one to even remember what they were the next day because the next day we’re onto another horrible thing."

13. Many state abortion bans include exceptions for rape. How often are they granted? (October 26, via) "Bertram Roberts says she’s never seen anyone in that state get an exemption — for any reason, let alone rape."

14. New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism (October 25) "Indeed, an unprecedented number of Donald Trump’s closest, handpicked aides and advisors have refused to endorse him, many warning publicly that Trump was a danger to democracy. It is rare for any advisor or official so close to the president to refuse to endorse them; nearly half of Trump’s have so refused."

15. 《目标是宝可梦大师》中文版MV 腾格尔 (October 26) For fun, here's a Chinese song about pokemon!

Blogaround

1. British media report rape and emotional abuse allegations against Russell Brand (September 16) [content note: rape]

2. Lauren Boebert Caught Fondling Date’s Genitals During Family-Friendly Musical: Video (September 15) "The incident spawned various social media posts, including many wit the phrase "Not a drag queen," along with the video of Boebert involved in the handsy behavior."

3. On the scientificity of string theory (September 17) "Frankly, you probably shouldn’t have any opinion on string theory at all, and it was a mistake for science communicators to have ever encouraged you to have one."

4. A Sin to Eat: The Untold Story of Anorexia as Religion (2022) [content note: eating disorders]

5. Review of the Problems with For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn (with download) (September 20) Glad to see this Christian marriage book being called out as harmful. I read this book, "For Women Only," probably when I was in high school, and basically what I remember from it was, "no but seriously, you need to have sex with him." It was advice for wives on how to have a good marriage, and somehow it just kept coming back to how men need sex so much, if you don't have sex with your husband enough, you're destroying his manly self-esteem, he's going into work every day feeling like a broken shell of a man, women just can't possibly ever understand how important sex is for men, etc. 

I read it back when I didn't know anything about what sex actually was, so I totally bought into it.

And, like... I can't blame all this on "For Women Only" because I've read a lot of other Christian resources that say the same things, but... when I started having sex, and it was painful (because of undiagnosed vaginismus) I felt like I couldn't tell my partner that it was painful, because oh it would be so terrible if a man feels "rejected", his self-esteem is so dependent on having a woman give him 100% positive experiences during sex and never suggesting that anything is wrong... I spent so much time trying to think of the most polite, positive way to say "this hurts, let's not do it."

Another anecdote- there was this one guy I was dating, who used to rub the ends of my fingers when we were holding hands, and I hated that so much, it just didn't feel good at all. But I felt like I couldn't just tell him "stop that," I had to come up with a very polite way to say it, so that he didn't "feel rejected" or whatever... It was just touching my fingers, it wasn't anything sexual, it wasn't a sin, it wasn't damaging my "purity", so I felt like I didn't have the right to say no. See, that's what purity culture teaches: instead of teaching consent, instead of teaching that it matters what I want, and if I don't want someone to do something to my body, I have the right to say no, regardless of whether I have a "good reason"... instead of that, purity culture teaches that you must ABSOLUTELY NOT do anything sexual before marriage, but if a guy wants to do something that's not off-limits (like having sex if you are married to him, or doing non-sexual things that don't affect "purity") then you have to say yes because it would be just terrible if a guy "feels rejected."

6. On Stage and in a Wheelchair (September 21) "There are 85 million people with disabilities in China, but the population is easy to overlook. In interviews and press engagements, Zhao has repeated the same message over and over: This isolation cannot continue. People with disabilities want to feel integrated, to be a part of normal life, and to feel seen."

7. Refusing to Censor Myself (September 11, via) "Because I suspected I wasn’t the first marginalized author who’d been asked to make this kind of edit, who’d been limited this way, who’d been forced to choose between opportunity and their own morals."

8. Life in a Glass House: Diatoms Shatter Young Earth Flood Geology (2015) "The YEC [young-earth creationist] flood geology hypothesis utterly fails to explain the observed distribution of diatom fossils."

9. Lost the Plot (Newsboys) | Lyric Video A song from 1996.

10. What Does Star Trek Actually Say About Euthanasia? (September 20) [content note: euthanasia, death] 42-minute video from Steve Shives.

Blogaround

1. This xkcd comic about credit card rewards. Because this is exactly how I think...

2. Chinese eagerly await return of panda from US zoo (April 11) "But in recent times, Memphis Zoo has been grilled by Chinese netizens over accusations that Ya Ya and Le Le had been mistreated during their stay."

3. World Book Day: A Bookstore for the Blind (April 23) "China is home to 17 million visually impaired people, who often face barriers entering the workforce and even colleges due to a lack of braille exam papers. China only has one braille press, and there were 959 braille libraries nationwide as of 2017, but many people aren’t aware of them."

Also from Sixth Tone: Holiday Hustle: In China, Most Resent Trading Weekends for Time Off (April 25) "Since 1999, the government has created longer vacations by swapping working days with weekends preceding and following the holiday." Yeah, we get 1 day off for May 1 (Labor Day), but they moved the weekends around to make it 5 days in a row.

One criticism I have for Sixth Tone's article- it says "China’s public holiday system, which allows employees to trade weekends for longer holidays" which makes it sound like we have a choice. Lol, no, we don't have a choice. This is the work schedule set by the government. Sunday, April 23 and Saturday, May 6 are work days. If you don't want to work on those weekend days, you have to use your own vacation days for that.

4. Community Memory and the Search for Unassailable Abuse (April 23) "This pressure to turn our worst and most painful experiences into argument fodder is part of what I aimed to highlight in The Glossary & The Gristmill — a post about how our own community is contributing, in part, to why it feels like certain stories can’t be told. When community dynamics dictate that argument fodder is the top priority, that creates inhibitions against sharing our stories."

5. Preston Sprinkle’s strange interview with Sheila Gregoire and Rebecca Lindenbach (April 13) "In one of the creepiest moments of the podcast, Sprinkle told of an experience he had at a local coffee shop." 

Also, Preston Sprinkle hasn't heard of Brio magazine. It was a magazine for teen girls, published by Focus on the Family, which promoted a lot of "purity" teaching. I read it all the time in high school. To be fair, though, Sprinkle's work is more along the lines of "how to pretend to be an ally to LGBTQ people", rather than "here are the reasons women and girls in the church have internalized sexual shame."

6. Mattel unveils a Barbie with Down syndrome (April 25) "'Our goal is to enable all children to see themselves in Barbie, while also encouraging children to play with dolls who do not look like themselves. Doll play outside of a child's own lived experience can teach understanding and build a greater sense of empathy, leading to a more accepting world,' McKnight said."

7. Ex-officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor hired as a deputy (April 25)

8. The kingdom of heaven is like: Lizzo brings drag queens on stage at her Knoxville show to protest law (April 23)

9. Dragon catches on fire during Disneyland’s ‘Fantasmic’ show (April 23) Wow!

10. Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch (April 24)

11. Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Spicy’ to ‘Shockingly Electric’ (April 24, via) [content note: article has a few images of bugs] This is about Justin Schmidt, a scientist who went around getting stung by various insects (over 1000 times) so he could compare them all objectively. 

Blogaround

1. 12/27 Flashback: ‘Rash’ (December 27) "And that’s monstrous — almost as horrifying as the original story. Those well-meaning Sunday school teachers all assumed, as Jephthah did, that he was absolutely bound by his vow, no matter what. And thus they all repeated Jephthah’s error — assuming that such vows and rules might somehow matter more than the life of Jephthah’s daughter."

2. 14 Nights [content note: sexually-explicit drawings, NSFW] A webcomic about an asexual man who agrees to try sex things with his boyfriend, for 14 nights.

3. Two romantic songs about being in a long-term relationship. I love both of these. They make me think about my husband.

Taylor Swift - Lover 

Justin Timberlake - Mirrors (Official Video)

4. NY Gov. Kathy Hochul’s veto of a secular addiction treatment bill makes no sense (January 4) "As things stand, that option already exists, but most people are oblivious to it. They just assume AA is secular (it’s not) or that any treatment program would inherently be non-religious (nope). This bill would put the decision of seeking religious or non-religious addiction treatment in the hands of the person going through it, not a judge who doesn’t know any better."

5. How Thailand Honors the Disabled (January 3) "It signifies that the royal family holds him or her in high favor because she has granted this wheelchair to the individual."

Blogaround

1. How do you live in one of the world's busiest cities, but you cannot see? (August 11) It's about Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou, blind twins living in Shanghai. One interesting thing I want to point out- the article mentioned "tactile paving" (and you can see it in the video too). Every sidewalk in China (okay probably not "every", but seems that way in my experience) has this- it's a path of tiles about 1 foot wide, with long bumps/grooves you can feel with your feet, and the intention is for blind people to be able to follow this path. It helps them figure out where the sidewalk turns and things like that. 

But I have seen this badly designed A LOT. Like, the path runs right into a tree or something. And the article mentions that the tactile paving is often not useful for them because the sidewalks are blocked with bicycles and things like that.

But anyway, I think the tactile paving, if it's done well, is a great example of a small thing that society can do that can help disabled people a lot. I remember being so curious about it when I first came to China and I had no idea why all the sidewalks were like that.

You can see the tactile paving on the ground in this photo in a subway station. At the base of the stairs, the pattern of the tactile paving is different.

2. Single women's reproductive rights remain frozen in regulations (August 11) So in China, unmarried women don't legally have the right to freeze their eggs. Like, WTF?????? And there are various other things in China that bizarrely require a marriage license as part of the process to get them. NOT COOL.

(Being pro-choice should be about a lot more than just abortion. Being pro-choice means unmarried women should have the same rights to freeze their eggs as married women do.)

3. Christians, Stop Using ‘Pharisee’ as an Insult. (August 11) "Our modern associations of Pharisees with hypocrisy owes far more to millennia of anti-Jewish rhetoric than it does to Jesus."

4. ‘It’s hard to hear them celebrating’—church musicians after Roe’s demise (August 6) "Is anyone else having a really hard time justifying working at a church right now? I work at one part time as a choir director for some additional income and it was really hard to sit there today and hear them celebrating my rights being taken away with the most recent Supreme Court ruling."

5. A Texas church illegally performed ‘Hamilton’ to spread anti-gay bigotry (August 6) Wow this is WILD. A church put on a whole production of "Hamilton"- like, wow, they must have put a lot of work into this- but with some parts slightly edited so it's about Hamilton finding Jesus or whatever. And then when the internet found out about it and people were mad, they made up some confusing lies about how oh we cancelled it, oh no actually we didn't, oh actually we have permission from the Hamilton team to put this show on, etc etc etc.

But I believe that the headline of this article- which says the church did it "to spread anti-gay bigotry" really misrepresents the situation. It seems that the only anti-gay part of it was, after the show was over, a pastor came on stage to talk to the audience and said "maybe you're struggling with homosexuality" along with a list of other things that one might be "struggling with." As far as I can tell, that was the only anti-gay part of it. And that's certainly bad, don't get me wrong, it's bad to view being gay as a problem that one struggles with- but that's just a completely normal thing that you always hear in evangelical churches. It's like, you barely even notice it, because it's so normal in that churchy culture. This church did NOT put on the Hamilton play "to spread anti-gay bigotry." They certainly are anti-gay bigots, and you see that in this pastor's words after the show, but it's because that's just who they are all the time, not because they specifically intended that that's what their performance would be *about*.

So yeah, feels very weird to me that the article focuses on that one little part, when there's so much other wrongness that this church is also doing.

6. How I Pray {Part One} (August 10) "In my view, when we pray, we are joining our energy with this flow." I don't personally believe this, but I'm sharing it here because it's nice to see different ways that Christians conceptualize prayer. I wasn't familiar with this idea before.

7. Take the Earth as your lover: Exploring ecosexuality (August 8) [content note: this is about a sexual kink] Yeah so, this is not for me, my eyebrows climbed higher and higher as I read it (as I told myself "your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay"). But I'm sharing it here because it actually gives very concrete examples of what it means by "ecosexuality." I feel like I have seen articles about things sort of like this and they are all very vague, talking about having "feeling sexy" or whatever, and I have no idea what that means. But this one, this actually says what it means. It's not for me, but I am glad to say I can at least understand what they're talking about.

Blogaround

Anakin and Padme meme. First panel: Anakin says "I'm going to prove 3 * sum from 1 to infinity of 1/(2^2n) = 1". Second panel: Padme says, "Algebraically, right?" Third panel: Anakin looks at her skeptically. Fourth panel: Where the fourth panel would be, it's just the entire image but shrunk down to 1/4 size, and in the 4th panel of the 4th panel, there's the whole image again shrunk down to that size, and so on forever. Image source: Facebook.

1. Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials (2003) "The relevance to parachute use is that individuals jumping from aircraft without the help of a parachute are likely to have a high prevalence of pre-existing psychiatric morbidity. Individuals who use parachutes are likely to have less psychiatric morbidity and may also differ in key demographic factors, such as income and cigarette use. It follows, therefore, that the apparent protective effect of parachutes may be merely an example of the 'healthy cohort' effect."

2. ‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’ (2021) [content note: child sexual abuse and coverup] "Nobody resigned as a result of the failure to stop a decade of abuse. There was no disciplinary action against any of Newman’s supervisors, and Joe White is still the head of the camp today."

3. ‘An Evangelical Childhood is a Total Mindfuck’ New Memoir Recounts the Anxiety and Thrills of Growing Up a Conservative Christian (June 18) "I mean, the white evangelical project is wracked by inner anxieties, but [for many] it feels that it would be somehow unholy or unseemly, if not even sinful, to interrogate those inner anxieties."

4. Care Tactics (July) "While Amazon and insurance companies report billions of dollars in revenue, and innovators fantasize about the augmented reality glasses that will 'fix' deafness, caregivers and disabled people are left to crowdsource improvised hacks to navigate a world indifferent—if not outright hostile—to their actual needs and desires."

5. Mary the Tower (July 22) "She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, 'Mary.'" Wow. If this is true, it's huge.

6. Waste Expert Answers Garbage Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED (April 13) Wow this is really cool and informative! I always feel suspicious about how it's so easy to buy new things- won't all those new things end up being thrown out eventually? Shouldn't society be taking that into consideration and treating it as the responsibility of the manufacturers? Everyone is focused on the new things, but nobody is talking about the old things being thrown away- but in the long run, those two things will be equal, so it seems like something is wrong here...?

7. My Journey From Concerned Parent to LGBT Ally (August 3) Good article about a Chinese mom of a gay son. There are ways that queerness intersects with Chinese culture differently than how it intersects with western culture. For example, in every culture it's hard to come out to one's parents, but in China it's harder because of how much one's behavior/success/failures is seen as representative of the entire family. And because of the one-child policy, there's so much pressure for the kid to be everything that the parents want them to be, because the parents just have the 1 kid.

8. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lands in Taiwan amid threats of Chinese retaliation (August 2) Yeah this is worrisome.

9. World Breastfeeding Week. The theme for World Breastfeeding Week 2022 is "Step Up," meaning that society (governments, companies, etc) have to step up in support of breastfeeding. I love this, because usually when people talk about breastfeeding, it's seen as just an individual choice and then people argue about whether or not it indicates if you're a "good enough" mom or whatever. This is all kinds of wrong, because the systems aren't in place to provide new moms with the resources and education they need to actually be successful at breastfeeding. (And what's even more ridiculous is people who say "breastfeeding is free!" like omg, it is very much NOT free- you either have to quit your job, or buy a bunch of pumping equipment and hope you're lucky enough to have a job that provides break time and a a good private space with a table, chair, and outlet so you can pump, and also a fridge. Like what on earth is this nonsense about "breastfeeding is free"?) 

Society does NOT give moms the support they need, and then says "oh it's okay if you use formula, it doesn't mean you're a bad mom." That's not good enough.

(Btw I exclusively breastfed my son and I have Some Opinions about it.)

10. Stunning Kansas vote shows just how badly the Right has overplayed its hand (August 5) "It’s middle America Kansas, reliably red Kansas, that delivered a breathtaking rebuke to a ballot effort that would have allowed legislators to ban abortion in the state."

11. Carbon12 – The new reserve currency for Christians (August 4) Oh this is 100% a scam.

Blogaround

A cat tree that's green and shaped like a Christmas tree, with 3 cats enjoying it. Image source.

1. How Blind People See With Sound… feat. Molly Burke! (posted August 10) Wow this is amazing! People can learn to use echolocation to map their environment. I thought only bats could do that.

2. Do Kids Really Learn Languages Faster Than Adults? (posted November 29) "This all adds up to not just the perception but the reality that adults who attempt to learn new languages often fail while their kids succeed, despite studies showing conclusively that adults are actually better at learning new languages when they actually put the effort in."

Highly recommend this video. I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese, which I started studying when I was about 20. At the beginning I genuinely believed that perhaps no matter how hard I worked, I might never be able to speak Chinese, because I had always heard white Americans talking about "I tried to learn a new language, but I guess my brain just can't" or "if you're not exposed to it as a baby, you can never ever learn to understand it." That's total nonsense.

Yes, learning a language is hard. It requires a lot of time and effort. You need to practice speaking, and that means you need to accept that you're going to make mistakes, and just learn to laugh at yourself rather than be too scared to try.

Because it's so hard, I completely understand if you choose not to do it. That's totally fine. People who speak multiple languages aren't superior; people who speak 1 language shouldn't feel ashamed. But I want people to accept the reality that the reason they only speak 1 language is because they have other, higher-priority things going on in their lives, and therefore they don't spend time on studying, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Don't go around spreading myths like "my brain just can't" and discourage those of us who really want to learn a second language.

3. ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan (posted November 27) What on earth? The Department of Homeland Security made a fake university and then arrested the international students who came? For real?

4. 'Star Wars' Billy Dee Williams Uses Both Male and Female Pronouns (posted November 30) Cool~

Blogaround

A pigeon. Image source.

1. The weirdly innocent part of the Jerry Falwell Jr. scandal (posted September 19) "The pictures don’t show them doing anything wrong or immoral or unethical — not to a normal human."

2. Disabled People Cannot Be “Expected Losses” in the Climate Crisis (posted September 23) "The structural barriers that disability communities face every day — inaccessible infrastructure, subpar public transportation systems, refusals to provide communication access, endemic poverty and a limited voice in civic governance — become a matter of life or death during disaster."

3. A Pastor Used the Death of an Atheist Mom’s Baby as a Sermon Illustration (posted October 12) [content note: child death] Heartless.

4. Real Rent Duwamish "Real Rent calls on people who live and work in Seattle to make rent payments to the Duwamish Tribe. Though the city named for the Duwamish leader Chief Seattle thrives, the Tribe has yet to be justly compensated for their land, resources, and livelihood." Ooooh this is a very interesting concept. I like it.

Blogaround

Tony Stark testing the Iron Man hand blasters in the 2008 Iron Man movie. Image source.

1. Elizabeth Warren rolls out plan to reward hospitals that make childbirth safer for African-American women (posted April 24) "Both Warren and the questioner pointed to the fact that those disproportionately high mortality rates transcended the economic status of the women in danger. The issue recently made headlines outside of medical and political spheres after tennis great Serena Williams went public with her own near-deadly experience in childbirth, saying both a doctor and nurse dismissed her concerns over potentially life-threatening blood clotting -- conditions that were subsequently confirmed with a CT scan."

2. How Thanos Fits Into Real-World Myths of Overpopulation and Scarcity (posted April 24) [content note: does not have spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame", but has spoilers for "Avengers: Infinity War"]

3. Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’ (posted April 26) "This is not about educated women opting out of work (they are the least likely to stop working after having children, even if they move to less demanding jobs). It’s about how the nature of work has changed in ways that push couples who have equal career potential to take on unequal roles."

4. Epic Christian Fails: The Cross and the Clitoris (posted April 23) LOL!

5. The disabled Christians reinterpreting the Bible (posted April 28) "When I was about 12 years old, I felt God didn't love me as much as other people because I am in a wheelchair and because I can't do lots of the things that other people can do. I felt this way because I did not see anyone with a wheelchair in the Bible, and nearly all the disabled people in the Bible get healed by Jesus - so they are not like me."

6. The Absent School Board Prayer I Never Noticed (posted April 29) "As a teen ensconced in the Christian Right, I had thought leaving prayer out of local government meetings of this sort was akin to making a statement—in other words, I had thought that it was something that would be noticed."

7. Avengers Endgame Spoiler Review (posted April 26) From the Super Carlin Brothers.

8. ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Had a Fat Joke Problem (posted April 29) [content note: spoilers for "Avengers: Endgame"] "All these jokes underline an idea that fat people are told again and again: fat people cannot be heroes."

9. Joseph's Fabulous Technicolor Dreamcoat (posted 2006) "I mean, he’s got this fabulous rainbow-colored coat, everyone comments on how cute he is, and he refuses to sleep with that Egyptian hottie. He’s totally gay."

10. The 2019 Reader Survey is currently open! If you haven't taken it yet, go do it ~ it's open until June 1.