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

"A man carries a child through a flooded street in Beijing, Aug. 1, 2023. Thomas Peter/Reuters via IC" Image and caption source.

1. There has been really bad flooding in Beijing recently because of Typhoon Doksuri. Here are some links from Sixth Tone about it:

After the Rains, Beijing Residents Begin Counting Their Losses (August 2)
China Floods: What Is the Cause and Why Has Rescue Been So Difficult? (August 3)
Collage: Floods in Beijing and Hebei (August 2)
Tales of Survival From Submerged Beijing, Hebei (August 3) [video]

Also from Sixth Tone: 

In China’s Dance Schools, a Dangerous Obsession With Weight Loss (August 3) "Most children applying to art schools now need to have legs not 12 cm, but 17-19 cm longer than their torsos, said Xue Ping, one of the teachers at Feeling Dance. They’re also dieting harder than ever."

Hangzhou To Pay Parents 25,000 Yuan For Third Child From September (August 8) China is very concerned about the low birth rate, and is inventing all kinds of incentives to get people to have more kids. "A mother in Hangzhou with one child told Sixth Tone that the new policy does not change her mind about not having another child, citing the high cost of education." Well, yeah.

2. Introducing Jetpack AI Assistant in WordPress.com (June 6, via) Oh geez, Wordpress has some new feature that will use AI to write an entire blog post for you. :/

3. On Orientation as a Compatibility Gate (August 1) "This view of orientation as a compatibility gate is a part of why I do not identify with orientation types other than sexual orientation. It’s not that I’m endlessly compatible with all people on all other fronts — certainly not — but my compatibility constraints around socializing, partnership, and touch do not follow the kind of patterns that lend themselves to this kind of shorthand."

4. Breaking Down the Controversy Over Florida's New Slavery Curriculum (July 28) "In a statement to TIME, the College Board said: 'We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans. Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.'"

5. The Trans Good Doctor Episode (June 28) 54-minute video. This is about the trans episode of the show "The Good Doctor." ("The Good Doctor" is a show about an autistic doctor, and I've never watched an episode but I've seen a few clips and I am not really a fan of how it portrays autism...) I have seen people on Twitter mocking the show's assumption that an autistic person would be totally unable to understand anything that doesn't fit into the gender binary... like... umm, in reality there is a HUGE overlap between the autistic community and the trans community. Autistic people are all about pointing out when societal expectations simply make no sense- and indeed, it makes no sense that society expects people's interests/abilities/personality/clothing/appearance to be determined by what kind of genitals they have.

Anyway, though, in this video, Youtuber Lily Simpson goes through the entire plot of this episode, and actually it turns out to be pretty good in terms of how it handles trans issues. 

6. A Weird and WONDERFUL Ruleset (August 5) 1-hour-12-minute sudoku solve video.

7. Overworked and Underpaid, VFX Workers Vote to Unionize at Marvel (August 7, via) "While fellow below-the-line workers in such divisions as costumes and wardrobe; hair and makeup; lighting, props and paint; and script supervision have been historically championed by IATSE, underappreciated VFX professionals have been unable to claim benefits such as paid overtime and health care, and have been at the mercy of pronounced labor shortages and managers’ unrealistic deadlines — despite the workers’ increasing indispensability within popular culture."

Blogaround

A drawing that shows Jesus carrying a sheep which is the colors of the trans flag. Another sheep says, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold it right there! He wasn't lost. We kicked him out!" Jesus answers, "I know. And I found her." Image source.

1. In China’s Weight Loss Camps, a Dangerous Obsession With Numbers (June 13) [content note: disordered eating, fat shaming] "Boards displaying the daily weight of each participant were prominently displayed throughout the camp, emphasizing the significance placed on weight as the primary measure of success."

2. One True Ace Pairing: Wreck-It Ralph (June 16) "Ralph and Vanellope’s relationship, which is very much a friendship, is just as well developed and well explored and given as much attention (if not more) as any romantic relationship in similar movies (including the romantic pairing in the same movie, Felix and Calhoun, whose relationship was played for laughs anyways)."

3. I Entered Mr Universe - With No Training (June 5) A video from Max Fosh, a youtuber who does all kinds of ridiculous things, bluffs his way into so many weird situations, seems to have way too much confidence for his own good. My husband and I are fans of his videos- they are also posted to his channel on the Chinese video site bilibili.

4. Direct-mail fundraiser Pat Robertson is dead (June 19) "The most successful 'radio evangelists' were/are — like 'televangelists' and like Pat Robertson — people who primarily used the platform as a tool for raising the funds needed to expand the outreach of the platform. Actual 'ministry' or 'evangelism' in this model is always, at best, a secondary concern."

And this tweet:

i don’t believe in hell but it will feel like hell for people like pat robertson when they encounter the love of god for the first time

— Mason Mennenga (@masonmennenga) June 8, 2023

5. Massachusetts town adds polyamory protections (April 6) Cool!

6. The Ones Who Walk Away from Ocabos: What #whySBC really means (June 20) "Others weep in confusion. They don’t understand that everyone knows the child is there. They think that if they can only raise awareness, force the people of Ocabos to understand, then everyone will reject whatever foul force allowed the imprisonment and abuse of that child."

7. A tale of two vessels lost at sea (June 20) "On a superficial level, these two events at sea speak to the vastly different worlds in which human beings live: some getting to pursue and even die for their dreams and passions; some driven by extreme life circumstances into cruel, anonymous deaths."

8. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is fighting a losing battle against the site's moderators (June 20) "Moderators of many of Reddit’s most popular subreddits, however, began revolting after it became clear that the company wouldn’t merely target the biggest artificial intelligence firms but also smaller developers like Apollo, which makes an alternative mobile app experience of Reddit, and third-party moderation tools they depend upon to monitor their communities."

9. First in the nation gender-affirming care ban struck down in Arkansas (June 20) "'Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the State undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,' the ruling reads. 'The testimony of well-credentialed experts, doctors who provide gender-affirming medical care in Arkansas, and families that rely on that care directly refutes any claim by the State that the Act advances an interest in protecting children.'"

And this quote from later in the article: "The court found three of the state's witnesses had been recruited at a meeting of the Christian advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom held specifically to gather witnesses trained in various fields that would be willing to testify in favor of laws passed that limit transgender care." Ewww gross, how will I explain ADF to my children? (I used to support ADF- they are an offshoot of Focus on the Family. And their entire schtick is bearing false witness against queer people made in the image of God. Eww.)

10. You may have grown up evangelical in the 90's if you saw a trailer for the new Marvel movie "Secret Invasion" and then you couldn't get this song out of your head:

[content note: video shows Jesus' crucifixion]

Michael W. Smith - Secret Ambition

Blogaround

Chinese movie poster for "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" [蜘蛛侠：纵横宇宙] Image source.

1. My 2023 Reader Survey will be open until June 19. Go take it if you haven't yet. :)

2. A week in the life of playing NEBULA in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 3 (May 25) This is a really cool behind-the-scenes video.

3. Glasses On, China’s First Civilian Astronaut Takes a Giant Leap (May 30) "As he introduced the three astronauts, Gui, sporting a pair of glasses, instantly garnered attention online, particularly since myopia had so far been regarded as a disqualifying factor for astronaut selection."

4. Is Kissing Before Marriage a Good Litmus Test? (May 31) The answer in this article is yes, because it can help you learn whether your partner respects your boundaries, etc, which can give you an idea of whether they are a safe person to have sex with.

5. Florida’s latest Gish Gallop of legislative cruelty (May 18) "Senate Bill 254 bans gender-affirming care to all under 18 years old, and allows Florida courts to grant temporary emergency jurisdiction to a parent of a child whose joint-custody provides them with access to gender-affirming care in another state."

6. Eating Disorder Helpline Disables Chatbot for 'Harmful' Responses After Firing Human Staff (May 31)

7. I love this so much:

Adding Love Liberty Disco by The Newsboys (Original Lineup) to my Pride playlist because I've claimed it as a queer anthem 🌈

— Ms. Charlotte (@charlotteirene8) June 1, 2023

And here's the song: NewsBoys - Love Liberty Disco from 1999.

8. The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (January 23) "Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."

9. I saw the movie "Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse" and it is so good, I 100% recommend it. The artwork, oh my god, every single part was a work of art. The story! The characters! There's a pregnant superhero! I've never seen a pregnant superhero before- this is great! There's a baby-wearing dad superhero! The humor- we watched the movie in English with Chinese subtitles, and man I must have been laughing the loudest in the entire theatre, maybe some of the jokes didn't translate to Chinese. The Easter eggs! !!!! I loved it.

Blogaround

Arthur and Francine. Image source.

Got A LOT of links for you all today:

1. Animation: Encanto and Gifts of Trauma (posted January 19) [content note: spoilers for "Encanto"] "I have a soft spot for Bruno in particular because my own trauma means I can often predict all the bad ways a situation will go, and it's vexing to be disbelieved as a cynic or as someone who 'wants' things to fail just because I've seen some shit."

2. An Arizona priest used one wrong word in baptisms for decades. They're all invalid (posted February 15) "During baptisms in both English and Spanish, Arango used the phrase 'we baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' He should have said 'I baptize,' the diocese explained." Omg, imagine believing that *some man* has the right to judge if your baptism is "valid" or not, LOLOLOL.

(I also like Hemant Mehta's take on it.)

In all seriousness though, it's extremely easy to make fun of this story, but I am actually curious about if there are articles written on this from a Catholic perspective, that don't make it sound COMPLETELY BONKERS. Like, when we make fun of this, are we misrepresenting their position, or is it truly and literally as bonkers as it sounds? Might be good to hear a different perspective before we go all in on the mocking?

I did some quick googling and didn't see anything that looked much different from the npr article I linked, but if anyone does have a source that explains this in a non-bonkers way, I would be interested to read it.

3. How ‘Arthur’ grew up: Inside the beloved TV show’s emotional finale (posted February 21) "After 25 seasons, 253 episodes and seven specials, the PBS mainstay 'Arthur' aired its final episode, 'All Grown Up,' on Monday." Awww, "Arthur" was my favorite show when I was a kid.

"And I say hey, what a wonderful kind of day..."

4. Oh remember how in December/January the city of Xi'an, China, had a really bad covid outbreak and there were all these news articles about how Xi'an is doing such a bad job of making sure all residents' basic needs are met while they're in lockdown? (That's true- Xi'an did a bad job of that.) Well here's a follow-up to that: On January 24, China's Xi'an clears high, medium-risk areas for COVID-19. This means there are no longer any "high risk" or "medium risk" areas in Xi'an- the entire city is now classified as "low risk." "Low risk" means as far as we know (and this is after A LOT of testing), 0 people have covid. (Or, technically, anyone who has tested positive for covid is in a hospital where they're not able to spread it to anyone else, and there has been A LOT of testing on all their known contacts.)

Just want to point this out to make it clear to all of you who are not in China. This is how it works here- there are occasional "covid outbreaks" (which are a few dozen or a few hundred cases- Xi'an's was the biggest since Wuhan, I think, with 2000ish cases over the course of 1-2 months). The pandemic workers come in and test thousands or millions of people, put thousands or millions of people in lockdown, and then a couple weeks later, it's done, now there are 0 covid cases, the lockdowns end, and it's back to normal life.

It works. 

5. ‘Inerrancy’ and the 1611 Project (posted February 15) "You’d think such articles — there are many others like it in CT’s archives — would require some introductory disclaimer or explanation to contextualize them for contemporary readers. But then it’s hard to imagine what such disclaimers might say, given that no part of Ellis’ argument from 1957 can’t be found repeated in 2022 Christianity Today articles fretting about the supposed dangers that 'wokeness' or 'critical race theory' pose to the real, true gospel of biblical inerrancy."

This is really important. Back when I was in middle school and we learned about the civil rights movement, it was like, the white people who didn't want their kids to go to school with black kids were just one-dimensional racists who were clearly evil and wrong. But, the reality is, back then, white people were making these philosophical and nuanced arguments in favor of segregation- arguments that sound scarily similar to things you hear today. Arguments that even cited the bible, because they viewed the bible in the same way that I was taught to. 

Yes, they were bad and wrong and racist- but also not so terribly different from things I have thought and believed and said. And if white people don't know that- if we are not teaching our kids- if we are saying "oh those people from history were all hateful and racist and not anything like us"- then how are we going to do better?

6. The grift goes all the way to the top (posted February 10) "In public, [Jerry Falwell Jr.] pretended that he was the fire-and-brimstone Bible-thumper his father’s audience believed him to be—even as, in private, he and his wife Becki jetted off to Miami to drink and dance the nights away, far from the prying eyes of his fellow Christians."

7. The Winter Olympics don't really represent the world: Costs, climate and quotas keep the majority off the podium (posted February 22) "No African nation has ever won a medal in the Winter Olympics."

8. Rogers Musical (Full Version) (posted December 24) This is the "Rogers" musical from the Marvel show "Hawkeye," and if you are a Marvel fan, it is INCREDIBLE.

9. Ahmad Arbery's 3 killers found guilty of federal hate crimes (posted February 22)

10. True crime (part 1) (posted February 20) [content note: domestic violence, murder] "The politics of crime never seems to include criminals like Scott Peterson or Barry Morphew (allegedly). Their stories aren’t part of the narrative of crime. They’re just presented as entertainment. (Even Fox News reports these cases this way, as sordid entertainment wholly unrelated to the propaganda network’s otherwise relentless efforts to use 'crime' to foster rabid white resentment.)"

And also True crime (part 2). "He notes Barry’s comment to a local TV reporter — 'Suzanne trusted the Lord, and if one person got saved from this, she would think it was worth it' — and sees it as a chilling indicator of the faith-based calculus his cousin may have used to rationalize murder[.]"

11. [content note: eating disorder] Well, um, this is horrifying: HealthyWage: Weight Loss Challenges + Cash Prizes. It's a website where you can set a weight loss goal for yourself, pick a deadline, and place a bet with ACTUAL MONEY, and then if you reach your goal before the deadline, you get money. (And of course, if you don't reach your goal, you lose money.)

My first thought is, holy shit, this looks like a way to make money off having an eating disorder.

To test it, I followed the steps on their website, where it guides you through putting in numbers and it will tell you how much money you will earn. I pretended I weighed 90 lbs and want to lose 30 lbs. At no point during the process did a red flag come up and say "holy crap, if you weigh 90 lbs you should NOT be trying to lose weight." Instead, the algorithm very helpfully guided me along, doing the math with the numbers I had put in.

Screenshot from "Healthy Wage." HOLY CRAP, it is very NOT COOL to suggest to AN ADULT that 60 lbs could be their "ideal weight."

At one point, it even told me that I could totally lose 1-2 lbs per week, instead of 0.8 lbs (which was the result based on the numbers I had entered). Like, I saw this little warning symbol pop up, and I thought that's where the algorithm had flagged my hypothetical example as having a dangerous eating disorder, but NOPE, it was THE OPPOSITE:

Screenshot from "Healthy Wage"

One, um, at-least-not-as-bad-as-it-could-be thing I noted was, in the FAQs, it says if you get pregnant after starting your "challenge", then you should notify them and they will "pause" your challenge until your doctor says you can start up the "challenge" again (um, instead of refunding your money...).

I didn't actually create an account- maybe if I created an account to do this for real, an actual human would have looked at my numbers and said "HOLY SHIT this person should NOT be doing a weight-loss challenge." But, um, seriously, they should have taught their website algorithm to do that anyway.

Still, the whole thing is very "get paid to have an eating disorder", even if you aren't as extreme as my "90 lbs" example. I'm not sure they can realistically set a threshold and say "oh, if your weight is above this number, then we are totally confident that you are using this 'challenge' thing in a healthy way, no worries." I just think... when you start getting money involved, you introduce the possibility that someone is forced to keep going with it even if they end up realizing that it's actually not healthy for them to be on a weight-loss plan. Like what if the money becomes more important than doing what's best for your physical and mental health.

Yikes.

12. Can’t Believe We Have To Say This But Yeah, Dr. King Got Arrested A Lot (posted February 17) "By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights Movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King."

Blogaround

Baby Yoda cookie, from link #2.

1. Treating Food And Exercise Like A Zero-Sum Game Is Peak Eating Disorder Culture (posted December 12) "Putting the number of minutes required to ‘work off’ a food is peak eating disorder culture because food and movement are two different aspects of life that should not be presented as prerequisites for one another. You deserve to eat whether or not you exercise. You deserve to enjoy exercise without verging on the brink of collapse."

YES. 100% agree with this blogger. This whole "putting the amount of exercise to work off the food" on food labels is a TERRIBLE idea. Because what's the objective? Do you want people to literally go out and exercise for that exact amount of time after they eat the food? That's called having an eating disorder. Or do you expect people will go ahead and eat stuff just like they normally do, but feel a little more shame about it, like there's this mountain of exercise debt they're never going to work off?

None of this is a healthy way to view food.

2. Baking hack: Chop off angel head for a homemade Baby Yoda cookie cutter.<**> (posted December 14) This is the way.

3. A Bethel Leader Is Asking the Church to Pray for Her Daughter’s Resurrection (posted December 17) [content note: child death] I have many many feelings and opinions about this. Not going to post them right now though.

4. sometimes I wonder / if Mary breastfed Jesus. / if she cried out when he bit her / or if she sobbed when he would not latch. (posted December 16)

Blogaround

A child petting a rabbit. Image source.

1. Everyone gather 'round and laugh at Al Mohler, who claims "to be human is to be a parent." (posted August 27) Wow, what on earth? That's so nonsensical it's not even worth responding to.

Hey, anyone remember Mohler's 2016 sermon about how God wants people to marry young, and it's unbiblical to be a single adult? That was so bizarre! In my blog post responding to it, I said, "I'm not even angry about this, it's just so FUNNY how he's totally making shit up and claiming it's what the bible says."

2. This life-threatening pregnancy complication is the next frontier in the abortion debate (posted September 11) "And yet some abortion opponents have started making the argument that terminating an ectopic pregnancy by medication or surgery is not medically necessary. ... In general, though, doctors, including those who identify as pro-life, say the science is clear: ectopic pregnancies are not viable, there’s currently no way to transplant them, and if left alone, they can and do result in a pregnant person’s death. "

3. The Lion King - Circle of Life acapella arrangement! (posted 2015)


4. Legal Immigration: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted September 16) Yes, this is very important. I especially appreciate how Oliver, who is an immigrant, talks about his own experience and how stressful it is worrying about bureaucracy and paperwork and the possibility of being kicked out of the country. I am an immigrant in China and a lot of that is true for me too.

5. Christopher Eccleston Reveals He Was ‘Very Ill’ With Anorexia While Filming ‘Doctor Who’ (posted September 16) It's good that he's talking about it.

6. Evangelicals and the Gay Gene (posted September 17) "Telling evangelicals that there is a 'gay gene' is tantamount to telling them that we have discovered genetic proof of our sin nature."

Blogaround

The four religions. (Google search box, someone has typed "how do i convert to" and Google offers 4 autocomplete options: judaism, islam, catholicism, and pdf.) Image source.

1. The Confederate flag largely disappeared after the Civil War. The fight against civil rights brought it back. (posted June 12)

2. Philando Castile Was a Role Model to Hundreds of Kids, Colleagues Say (posted 2016)

3. "Are you sure you should eat that?" (posted June 15) "Last time I had some, I scraped all the frosting off because I think it tastes bad. But you know what I was worried about? Having someone think I was scraping it off to try to make the cake 'healthier.' That’s a thing I’ve been complimented for doing in the past because I’m assumed to be 'counting my calories.'"

4. John Piper’s Best Tweets (posted June 15) This is a masterpiece.

5. Wonder Woman: When Gods Come of Age (posted June 5) "Among other things what this film is saying is that gods, like the people who create them, evolve over time."