Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. California considers allowing doctors to prescribe abortion drugs anonymously (September 10) "Now, as legal attacks against telehealth providers put shield laws to the test, some states have moved to strengthen the laws by allowing providers to prescribe anonymously, reducing their risk of legal or individual harassment."

2. This. Sudoku. Is. Insane. (September 11) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video. This is one of those puzzles where you have to think about number theory for a while before you can place one single digit in the grid- my favorite kind! Also it has one giant arrow that squiggles around to every square- I have never seen an arrow like this.

3. America’s "Nones" aren’t as godless as you think (September 4) "While a lot of this isn’t surprising to those of us who have followed these surveys over the years, it still shows how U.S. Nones are not a cohesive bloc of secular thinkers but rather a fragmented coalition, many of whom still cling to spiritual or supernatural ideas."

Also from Friendly Atheist: Oklahoma's meaningless "America First" teacher test is just a PragerU ad campaign (September 3) "Here’s the thing about this “test”: It doesn’t matter what you answer. You’re literally unable to fail it. If you’re wrong on a question, you’re forced to keep guessing until you pick the answer they want you to pick."

4. Edelweiss from The Sound of Music (Official HD Video) My little toddler loves this song. She makes a little flower shape with her hands when she wants me to sing it. It's the sweetest thing.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Senior Democrat says Pentagon didn’t present conclusive evidence alleged drug smugglers killed in strike were gang members (September 12) I've posted links about this before, but here's another one. This is really serious. So the US government can just claim that anybody is a "drug smuggler" without evidence, and murder them, that's what we're doing now?

2. SCOTUS conservatives OK Trump admin's racial profiling of Latinos in low-wage jobs (September 9) "Kavanaugh’s opinion, concurring with the order granting the stay, continues like that throughout its 10 pages. It was at varying points racist, ignorant, privileged, lawless, or some combination of the four."

3. RFK Jr.'s MAHA report on children's health leaves something out: nicotine (September 14)

4. DOJ Reportedly Uses Anti-Trans Slur In Call To Disarm Trans Americans (September 9) "A Department of Justice official said they were considering “banning guns for transgenders” and used an anti-trans slur."

Also from Erin in the Morning: We Must Not Posthumously Sanitize Charlie Kirk's Hateful Life (September 12) "Quickly, political figures and pundits rushed to denounce the killing, as they should. But some went further, valorizing and lionizing a man who built his career on contempt of people he viewed as lesser."

And: Boston Children’s Fights Back For Trans Kids: Judge Quashes Trump Subpoena (September 14) "In fact, Joun found, federal officials failed to provide 'any support' at all that the information sought pertained to allegations of fraud 'as opposed to the Government’s stated goal of ending GAC.'"

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. Tuna Sold at Trader Joe’s, Costco, Walmart, and More Recalled Over Botulism Risk (February 10, via)

2. The Hardest Sudoku I've EVER Solved (February 6) Exactly what it says on the tin. 3-hour-30-minute sudoku solve video.

3. Gov. Pritzker signs 'Karina's bill' to remove guns from domestic violence situations (February 11) Good news here.

4. This is Arousal (February 4, via) 20-minute video. This is a video about the supposed "fact" that the most exciting part of playing a new board game is opening the box, and then you have to read the rulebook and your excitement plummets. (And therefore, board game designers are always trying to make the rulebook shorter.) 

It's an interesting discussion of the phenomenon where people always repeat a supposed "fact" because there's a study that lends evidence to it, but the way that people understand the "fact" is SO FAR AWAY from what the actual study was about. The study discussed in this video was actually about families with children playing Hasbro board games- a completely different situation from the adult board game nerds who talk about this "fact." And what was measured was "arousal", not people's actual enjoyment of the games.

5. Risky heroics (February 16) "Our ethical assessment of any given action is determined by all possible outcomes, not just the actual outcome. After all, at the time that you make the decision, you do not know the actual outcome."

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A comic strip from @emilyscartoons. In the first panel, one person says, "Let's not talk about politics anymore, I can't bear it" and the second person says "same." In the second panel, they just sit there. In the third panel, they say, "THE THING IS THOUGH" and "THOSE FUCKING IDIOTS." Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. The ABA supports the rule of law (February 10) "There is much that Americans disagree on, but all of us expect our government to follow the rule of law, protect due process and treat individuals in a way that we would treat others in our homes and workplaces. The ABA does not oppose any administration. Instead, we remain steadfast in our support for the rule of law."

2. Theobro social Darwinism earns a papal smackdown (February 12) "I mean, jeez, that’s devastating. If Vance were an honest person, or if he were a person capable of shame, or if he were a person interested in what is true this would be an edifyingly humbling experience for him. Alas, he is immune to both humility and to edification because he is none of those things — not an honest person, nor a person capable of shame, nor a person interested in what is true."

Yeah you never want to be the person in a bible story asking, "But who is my neighbor?"

3. If you're not already giving monthly donations to a group that helps immigrants, please consider doing so. Many of them were receiving government funds but now those have been cut off. The reality is, they won't be able to do as much, with less funding. This is terrible- immigrants are under attack and we really need to do more to help immigrants, not less.

Find a local organization that helps immigrants. Or, donate to RAICES.

4. Microbiologists, hang your head in shame (or fight back!) (February 10) "The major scientific societies in Nazi Germany were quick to pander to Hitler, and they had the same kinds of arguments: they were patriots supporting their country, they had to fire all those Jewish professors to keep government support, etc., etc., all while they were looting conquered nations and doing secret work on nerve gasses and sieg heiling their way to bigger grants."

5. Pour one out for the CFPB (February 13) "So, if consumers can’t even see when an institution is being fair and honest, it’s a competitive disadvantage to even bother."

6. Park Service Goes Full Stalin, Literally Takes The 'T' Out Of sTonewall (February 14) "In an act of revisionist history Joseph Stalin might admire, the National Park Service disappeared all references to transgender and queer people from its main page for the Stonewall National Monument in New York City yesterday." 

How will I explain this to my children?

Blogaround

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, this is how you should write about sex.

Blogaround

The asexual flag. Happy Pride month! Image source.

1. How 4,000 Physicists Gave a Vegas Casino its Worst Week Ever (posted 2015) This is fantastic.

2. Uvalde and Police "Duty" (posted June 4) [content note: child abuse, child murder] This is a video from an actual lawyer, about how the police aren't legally obligated to protect people. I've seen lots of people saying that on Twitter, and I'm glad to have a source here from a real lawyer, with the facts and history backing it up. ("Backing it up" in the sense that, yes it is true that this is the way the law *is*. Not in the sense that it *should* be that way. Not trying to make it *make sense*- because it just doesn't.) You should always fact-check things you see on Twitter.

But man, this is bleak. "A lot of people disagree with this particular ruling, and it can be solved with legislation, but as it currently stands, there is no inherent cause of action based on the Constitution that would allow parents and teachers and victims to sue the police for inaction at Uvalde. And unfortunately that is the current state of the law."

3. Missed risk: Long COVID threat extends far beyond pandemic (posted June 5) "Teasdale had an emergency-room doctor friend who’d gone through hell in the last couple years dealing with hospital COVID cases. Yet last Christmas, that friend was telling Teasdale to relax — the threat had passed."

4. 3 Chinese astronauts settling in for 6-month stay on Tiangong space station (posted June 7) This is very cool!

5. Exploitation and Abuse at Hillsong Church (posted May 10) "I need a minute…it hurts to look back because I was so into it, I was so embedded in it, I wanted to believe it. Now that I look back, I’m like damn, they’re trying to manipulate you into receiving and accepting the abuse that they’re causing. It was traumatic and it could have taken my life if I had stayed a minute longer."

6. Pastor Jack Schaap, who groomed a teenage girl for sex, is out of prison (posted May 7) [content note: child sexual abuse] The thing that strikes me is, based on the victim's statement, the main problem was that Schaap manipulated her and got her to really fall in love with him, and it was all lies and he was just using her. I don't think that sex is really the bad part of child sexual abuse- I think it's the whole overall grooming pattern, the way the abuser plays with the victim's emotions and naivety and takes advantage of it, makes her believe that their relationship is really something unique and special, and leaves her devastated in the end.

If Schaap had done all those things but then didn't have sex with her, would that have been okay? I know the sex is what crosses the line into making it illegal, and that's the reason he went to jail. And yes, that absolutely should be illegal. But it feels like the focus is on the wrong thing.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm missing something. I'm asexual and there is so much I don't understand about what sex means to the average person, how it affects the average person.

If the focus is on "an adult had sex with a child"... yes, it is definitely wrong for an adult to have sex with a child, and the adult should go to jail for that- and maybe the focus is on that aspect because it's tangible, whereas the emotional manipulation part is more subjective... but if the whole focus is on the "sex" part, then we will feel we should protect kids by telling them "sex is bad, don't have sex"- but that wouldn't have protected the victim in this case. She was in a fundamentalist church, of course she had been told not to have sex. And also in the report we saw recently about sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches- of course those kids were taught that it is wrong to have unmarried sex, but that didn't protect them from the abuse.

It seems to me that the actual issue is the grooming, the manipulation, power. Sex was one of the tools that Schaap (and other abusers) used to hurt and control the victim- but I don't think it was the most evil part of it. And we can protect kids better by teaching them the reasons why it's abusive for an authority figure to have a relationship with someone under their authority, the reasons why a big age difference is a red flag, etc. They're exposed to messages from the church about "God says we should be together, let's not let silly worldly things stand in our way" and from mainstream movies about "our families forbid us to be together, but we are so heroic for loving each other anyway, they don't understand us!" and "we can overcome anything because our love is so real and strong." And abusers can easily use that to convince the victim that it's totally okay, what the abuser is doing. So when we educate kids about what's a healthy relationship and what's not, it needs to be thorough enough to offer a counterargument to that.

7. AI versus corporate logos (posted June 3) A neural net tried to generate some logos, and it's great.

8. Mourning and remembrance without an afterlife safety net (posted June 6) [content note: child death, suicide]

9. Ohio GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes through genital inspection (posted June 2) "'This is not a real problem,' state Rep. Rich Brown, a Democrat from Canal Winchester, said. 'This is a made-up, 'let's feed red meat to the base' issue.'"

Wow, NOT COOL. This is just being mean to trans kids.

10. What It Takes to Start a Family in COVID-Era China (posted June 7) "One factor that did not play a role in my choice was the country’s increasingly pro-natal family planning policy. After the 'two-child policy' failed to produce a lasting baby boom, Chinese policymakers and demographers have grown increasingly concerned about the country’s declining fertility."

11. Shanghai Lures Graduates From Top Global Schools With ‘Hukou’ (posted June 8) This is a big deal because having a Shanghai hukou makes a big difference in what rights you have related to your kids going to school, buying an apartment, etc- and they don't just give them out. (Except that now, apparently, in certain circumstances, they do.)

12. Montessori Sunday School Encourages Kids To Invent Their Own Gods (posted June 7) [From "The Onion", a satire site- so it's not real.] I actually love this.

13. Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him (posted April 7) [Also from "The Onion", so it's satire, not real.]

14. The 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30). Go take it if you haven't already. Thanks! :)

Blogaround

1. I guess I should say something about the shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 people were killed. Just kind of been... laying awake thinking about it... I have a kid, and his smile lights up the world. Don't really know what to say, I just hope that the US can pass better gun control laws. Go and protest about it if you can.

Mother who ran into Texas school during shooting discusses moments inside (posted June 2)

2. Christian predator Josh Duggar sentenced to over 12 years in federal prison (posted May 25) 

3. How can I explain bad grades in a PhD application due to bad lecturers? (posted May 29) I really like the Stack Exchange forums because they teach you how the real world works. The OP in this question is applying for a PhD, and is concerned because they had low grades in a few courses, and the reason [according to OP] is the lecturers for those courses were "bad"- so should they give that as the reason, in their application?

And the answer is NO. In a job interview (or in this case a PhD application) you should never blame your problems on someone else. Even if it's 100% true, it makes you look bad. If there's something on your transcript or resume that you worry doesn't look good, the interviewer doesn't want to hear "the reason I did bad at this was xyz which wasn't my fault" and leave it at that. NO. To look good in an interview, you have to say, "here's what I learned from that situation, here's what I would do differently in the future." (Or, just not mention it at all, if it's something pretty normal like having low grades in one or two classes.)

Job interviews are such a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING than a student being graded by a teacher in school. The teacher's objective is to give a fair grade that reflects the student's knowledge and abilities. It's centered on the student- here's the student, let's fairly evaluate whether they met the goals for this course. (And if you give an excuse for why you didn't do well, and the teacher thinks it's a reasonable excuse, they won't penalize you. Note: "your lectures are bad" is not a reasonable excuse.) A job interview is completely different. It's centered on the job position- we need someone in this role, so is this candidate the kind of person we'd like to have here?

If you did a bad job of something, but you can explain why it's not your fault, well, who cares? Bosses don't want employees who give excuses for why things can't be done- they want employees who get things done.

It's not just about you and whether or not it's fair to apply a certain standard to you because there were other factors beyond your control that affected your ability to meet that standard. No, that's not it at all. It's about the job. Can you get things done or not? If something's not working the way you've been promised it should work, do you say "well this is not my fault" and do nothing, or do you take on the extra task of finding a workaround even though it's not "fair" that you should do that? Yes, it's TRUE that it's not your fault. But you still need to keep trying to solve it.

And there are some tasks in one's job that will be easy and some that will be hard, and the reward and recognition you get for them doesn't at all match how hard they were. Your boss might have no idea which things were easy and which were a nightmare because the previous developer left you with spaghetti code. That's just the way it is.

And also, as an adult, your own academic and career development is your responsibility. If, for example, you're taking a class where the lectures are awful, it's on you to find other ways to learn the information you need to learn. At the end of the day, if you don't learn it, it affects you, even if the reason you didn't learn it was that the professor wasn't good enough.

I love Stack Exchange for the discussions like this.

4. Makeshift graves and notes on doors: the struggle to find and bury Mariupol’s dead (posted June 1) [content note: war, death]

5. The Masterpiece (posted May 20) A 1-hour-37-minute sudoku video. This is INCREDIBLE. Very hard puzzle. Wow.

6. And the 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30). Thank you to all the readers who have taken it already!

Blogaround

4 sea lions sitting on the sand. Image source.

1. Jubilee always makes some people angry (posted July 24) "Yet the loudest voices of religious moralism in America flip that around, insisting that it’s a sin not to pay all of your debts, with interest, and with interest on the interest. And they’ll fight and oppose anything that looks like Jubilee as a threat to this 'morality.'"

2. Beyond ‘Thoughts and Prayers’: How the Christian Right’s Politics of Providentialism Keeps America from Addressing Gun Violence (posted August 7) "Yes, this assertion that children are not allowed to pray in American public schools is patently untrue, an example of something that we could file under the hashtag #ChristianAltFacts. It is, however, patently untrue in a way that is highly familiar to me as an ex-evangelical, and in a way that very much feels true to Patrick’s target audience."

3. Why We Need the New York Times’ 1619 Project (posted August 21) "The way U.S. history is taught today, black history is often relegated to its own separate courses, or treated as something that can be added to general U.S. history classes at specific moments and otherwise left out."

Blogaround

A very useful diagram which shows us that if a chocolate wafer, white filling, and chocolate wafer is an "oreo", then a wafer, filling, wafer, filling, wafer is "oreoreo", 5 layers of filling is "rerererere", a stack of 5 wafers is "ooooo", and so on. Image source.

1. Explaining in the Guise of Listening: A Review of Josh Harris’ New Documentary (posted December 27) "Harris appears to have done less actual analysis of his teachings than I have here on this blog—or a dozen other bloggers." AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH.

2. ‘What if someone was shooting?’ (posted December 26) [content note: gun violence] An article about how school lockdowns are traumatizing for children.

3. Anonymous donor provides free lunches to Georgia district's families in need during holiday break (posted December 26)

4. Visionary Brain Genius Elon Musk Has Invented The World's Worst And Most Expensive Subway (posted December 19) "Literally the only innovation here is that it’s a worse version of both driving and riding the subway, and only available to people who’ve bought one brand of car."

5. Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees (posted December 12) Nooooo. Support all immigrants.

6. CCM Comes to a Presidential Funeral (posted December 8) Michael W. Smith performed "Friends" ("friends are friends forever") at Bush's funeral.

7. The Dangerous Rise of the IUD as Poverty Cure (posted January 2) "This sort of language should set off alarm bells because the idea that limiting women’s reproduction can cure society’s ills has a long, shameful history in the United States."

8. #MeToo law restricts use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases (posted December 31) "'Women don’t want to sell silence and lawyers shouldn’t be selling or buying silence,' Smith said."

Blogaround

A fuzzy puppy laying flat on the floor. Image source.

1. Why Joy DIDN'T send the Core Memories to HQ with a Recall Tube! - EXPLAINED! (posted March 26) An "Inside Out" theory~

2. Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students want the movement to include their voices too (posted March 29) "To him, extra cops around doesn’t mean more people to protect him; it means more chances to become a victim of police brutality."

3. Abortion and hospitality: we know what we feel (sometimes) (posted March 13) "You may have been taught that this is what you’re required and expected to feel."

4. That Is Not What ‘Lovesick’ Is (posted March 23) [content note: murder, toxic masculinity] "This is not the way things play out in real life — sometimes a woman is just not interested in you and there just is not a damn thing you can do about it, and we need to start doing more to raise boys who understand this."

5. The Difference Between a Welcoming Church and an Affirming One Is Huge (posted April 3) [content note: queermisic "hate the sin, love the sinner" ideology] Yep this rings true. And I am so done with Christians carefully trying to parse the nuanced meanings of various buzzwords- we are "accepting" and "loving" but not "affirming"- ugh, so done with it.

6. Austen Hartke Loves His Body (posted April 3) An episode of the Queerology podcast where Austen talks about being trans and Christian.

7. The Nazi History Behind ‘Asperger’ (posted March 31) [content note: Nazis, killing children, eugenics]

8. Teenage Activism and Conservative Hypocrisy (posted April 3) [content note: school shootings] "In 1999, evangelicals used the Columbine teens and their tragedy to bolster their calls for revival."

9. Spectrum (posted April 1) An art piece related to asexuality.

Blogaround

Big manatee and baby manatee. Image source.

1. I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends. (posted March 27) [content note: guns, murder]

2. I've been listening to Pink's "F***ing Perfect" as a spiritual practice.



3. In Age of School Shootings, Lockdown Is the New Fire Drill (posted 2014) [content note: guns, murder]

4. Boys Often Don’t Recognize When They’ve Been Sexually Assaulted (posted March 8) [content note: descriptions of sexual assault]

5. Inclusive language for worship and preaching (posted March 28) "Avoid associating Christianity or discipleship with things such as: Being soldiers / Being in an 'army' / War"

6. Power grab by China's Xi Jinping: President for life? (posted March 5) So Xi Jinping is trying to be president of China forever. I haven't really been following this so I don't know the details, but some of my friends here are very concerned. And they said it's a really sensitive topic, we shouldn't talk about it in public, and it's not safe to post anything about it on Chinese social media- your posts will get *mysteriously* deleted.

7. Shorter John Piper: Women Can Be Possessions, or They Can Be Prey (posted March 27) [content note: sexual assault, domestic violence] "Individuals like Piper have created an imaginary past where men chivalrously “took care of” women, and women in turn smiled sweetly, with nothing more to worry about than caring for their children and decorating their homes. That time did not exist."

Blogaround

Maia and Alex Shibutani performing ice dancing at the 2018 Olympics. Image source.

1. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Larry Boy and the Rumor Weed" (posted February 17)

2. Full List: Evangelical Advisers on Trump’s Affair with Playboy Model (posted February 17)

3. Progressive Proof-Texting (posted February 12) "A progressive evangelical is what you get when a white evangelical starts treating the “biblical data” on money the same way they treat the “biblical data” on sex."

4. A ‘Mass Shooting Generation’ Cries Out for Change (posted February 16) "They were born into a world reshaped by the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in Colorado, and grew up practicing active shooter drills and huddling through lockdowns."

5. No, there haven’t been 18 school shootings in 2018. That number is flat wrong. (posted February 16) [content note: mention of suicide, descriptions of gun violence and accidents] "[Only] Five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury."

6. In Australia, Staying Loyal to Taiwan Can Mean Losing a Job (posted February 18) "During her second week waitressing at a barbecue restaurant in Sydney, a customer asked Yating Yang if she was Chinese. “No, I’m Taiwanese,” she said."

7. Lack of Citations: The YEC Peer-Review System Goes Awry Again (posted 2017) "At times they appear to intentionally refuse to cite other YEC [young-earth creationist] authors. More than likely, it’s a combination of causes along with a general desire to present a unified voice to an audience that just wants a simple answer. But this isn’t they way that science proceeds."

8. Gus Kenworthy makes history at Winter Olympics with gay kiss on live TV (posted February 18) Hooray!

9. I Still Think There Is a “Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” and Here It Is: You’re Not Allowed to Use It "Knock yourself out with scholarship on the Pentateuch, but make sure at the end of it all you affirm that Moses basically wrote it."

10. Late-night hosts turn serious when talking about Florida teen activists (posted February 21)

11. Lambda Legal Sues HHS after Lesbian Couple Blocked from Serving as Foster Parents (posted February 20)

12. Pixar Theory: Why does the Guitar take Miguel to the Land of the Dead? (posted February 14) [content note: spoilers for "Coco"]

13. Voldemort's Failed Horcrux | Harry Potter Theory (posted February 13) [content note: spoilers for Harry Potter] 

14. Anti-gay evangelical preacher Billy Graham dies, aged 99 (posted February 21) I liked Billy Graham, but let's not forget his anti-queer ideology.

Blogaround

Four kittens laying around. Image source.

1. Roy Moore: Last Time America Was 'Great' Was During 'Slavery' (posted December 7) HOLY SHIT.

2. For many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics (posted December 8) "As I watched Donald Trump announce that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move our embassy to that city, I could only think of one thing: my high school youth group Bible study."

3. Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 62. Actual Deaths May Be 1,052. (posted December 8) "The analysis compared the number of deaths for each day in 2017 with the average of the number of deaths for the same days in 2015 and 2016."

4. Pilots stop 222 asylum seekers being deported from Germany by refusing to fly (posted December 5)

5. 'Grieving in a Fishbowl' (posted November 13) [content note: gun violence] "Survivors of mass shootings recount their experiences coping with trauma in the public eye."

6. Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco (posted December 12)

7. Why I Believe 'To Siri With Love' By Judith Newman Is A Book That Does Incredible Damage To The Autistic Community (posted December 8)

8. How Coco Fits Into The Pixar Theory (posted December 12) [content note: spoilers for "Coco"] "Basically, as long as a single memory orb of you exists in any living person's mind, anywhere, you get to continue on living as a skeleton."

And also that video contains THE MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF BIBLICAL APOLOGETICS I HAVE EVER HEARD: "Because how everything fits into the Pixar Theory is endlessly entertaining and we love talking about it here. But to continue calling it a 'theory' at this point almost feels like the wrong word. It seems more like a game or a challenge. People are constantly telling me that they have 'broken' or 'disproved' the Pixar Theory, and my response to every single one of those people is: You don't get it. Because the goal is to make it work. If you've 'broken' it or 'disproven' it, you haven't done that at all, you've just uncovered a plot hole that the theory needs to be adjusted to explain so we can better understand this universe that Pixar has built."

9. Evangelical Blogger: Christian Leaders Need Extra Protection against Allegations of Sin (posted December 11) [content note: silencing victims] Libby Anne's response to a post by Tim Challies, and WOWWW Challies's post is BAD.

10. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Larry Boy And the Fib From Outer Space" (posted December 14)

Blogaround

Fiona the baby hippo. Image source.

1. Aladdin Makes No Sense (posted September 28) "Also if the cave says 'only one can enter' but then clearly allows two, maybe it just means that the rules don't apply to Abu. But then how come they all of a sudden apply to Abu when he touches the giant ruby?"

2. omg are you following Fiona the baby hippo (from the Cincinnati Zoo)? She is the cutest thing ever! Here watch this video and see how cute she is. She was born premature and it's really amazing how hard people worked to help her survive.

3. Honest Trailers - Star Trek: The Next Generation (posted September 26) lololol

4. Every Member of Congress Who Took Money From the NRA and Tweeted 'Thoughts and Prayers' to Las Vegas (posted October 2) Vote them all out.

5. A Few Remarks on the Problem of Psalm 22:16 (posted 2015) "There is widespread agreement among critical scholars (including all those surveyed here) that Psalm 22 is not a depiction of crucifixion, and that the Septuagint’s translation of “dig” is incorrect."

Blogaround

A very happy dog wearing a huge (toy) donut around its neck. Image source.

1. Trump Tax Records Obtained by The Times Reveal He Could Have Avoided Paying Taxes for Nearly Two Decades (posted October 1)

2. Scandals: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted September 25) "No! That is not a blind trust! It's the opposite of one. Almost anything else [Trump] could have said would have been closer to a blind trust. 'Oh I'm gonna put my assets in an upside-down doghouse filled with pudding. Is that a blind trust?'"

3. The Idea That Women Use Guns For Self-Defense Against Men Is A Big Lie (posted September 20) [content note: domestic violence]

4. Why Trump Answered the Wrong Question on Race (posted September 29) "Many black communities are both over-policed and under-policed."

5. Twitter Reveals How God Created Animals "Give it a butt rope."

6. ‘To keep oneself unstained by the world’ (posted September 21) "Look, we’re called to be holy as God is holy. And how does God maintain God’s divine holiness? By avoiding the world — staying apart from it up there in Heaven and not rushing down here to risk getting stained and defiled by us filthy humans." Damn this is good.

7. Report: 50% Of Heaven’s Population Just Assholes Who Begged For Forgiveness At Last Second (posted October 3)

8. My homeschooled friend killed himself, and his family wouldn’t talk about it. (posted October 2) [content note: suicide] "Homeschool kids aren’t supposed to have problems. We were an experiment, a departure from the rest of society. We were meant to be child prodigies, a new species. Our parents raised us in a utopia to be better than everyone else."

9. Did Mark Invent the Sea of Galilee? (posted August 29) "The other canonical Gospels (including John, in my opinion) were based on Mark and had a tendency to correct perceived errors of geography and history in the material they used. How did they deal with Mark’s references to the Sea of Galilee?"

10. Unfounded. (posted September 8) [content note: rape, rapists getting away with it]

11. Making images accessible for people on Twitter. This is important. Let's all do this.

Blogaround

A pillow with a pattern consisting of rows of big-eyed cat faces, along with a real live cat making the exact same face. Image source.

1. Flood Destroys Home Of Hate Group Leader Who Claims God Sends Natural Disasters To Punish Gays (posted August 17) But I'm sure for him it's not punishment, it's a trial that God sent to strengthen his faith.

2. Why do we still not know what causes PMS? (posted August 12) "To put how little research has been done into PMS into context, a search of titles and abstracts on ResearchGate found there are over five times more studies into erectile dysfunction than into premenstrual syndrome. That’s despite the fact that approximately 19 percent of men experience erectile dysfunction over the course of their lifetime, while over 90 percent of women report some symptoms of PMS."

3. Voldemort's Horcruxes Ranked (posted August 18)

4. Did you hear about some beaches in France that are banning the burkini? Or even forcing Muslim women to remove clothes? This is SO not okay. This is policing women's clothing, and I'm literally unable to believe that anyone thinks banning burkinis helps women be liberated in any way at all- the hypocrisy is too glaringly obvious. Libby Anne has this to say: "What I’m trying to get at is this—banning burkinis won’t change what burkini-inclined women wear to the beach, it will just prevent them from going to the beach. It will shut them out of a public space they could otherwise have access to and deprive them of opportunities they might otherwise have had. And for what? To make the local government feel like they’ve struck a blow against repression and “the enslavement of women”? They haven’t."

5. Gothard Explains Why God Allows Child Molestation: Part I (posted August 9) HOLY CRAP. It's literally what the title says. Like, as if we're going to read it and be like "oh that answers all my questions, I totally see why it's a good thing for God to allow child molestation." ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS.

6. A Conversation On Affirming Theology #FaithfullyLGBT (posted August 20) "Never in church history until the past 50 years has celibacy been mandated for any group regardless of calling."

Also, Eliel Cruz gives us the biblical definition of sodomy. Hint: politicians who want to bar refugees from entering the US are guilty of it.

7. Why Is the NRA Ignoring This 14-Year-Old Girl Jailed for Shooting Her Abusive Father? (posted August 16) [content note: domestic violence, guns]

8. Women Athletes Gave Up Gonads And More To Continue Olympic Competition (posted August 15) "Would the IAAF ask a man to give up his gonads and remove half of his penis to be allowed to compete, simply because that man naturally produces more testosterone than the average male? The IAAF doesn’t even appear to have pursued the question of relative natural testosterone levels among male athletes."

9. Three things that need to happen before I defend men from Olympic sexism (posted August 16) "1. When sexualised analysis of men’s bodies begins to obscure men’s achievements and negatively affect their careers."

10. 9 Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women (posted August 23) "Type using only one finger." lolololololol

11. Why America Needs a National Lynching Memorial (posted August 23) "In South Africa, important places and landmarks are recognized; there is an apartheid museum. There is a similar effort happening in Rwanda. Most Germans want you to go to Auschwitz and reflect soberly on the legacy of the Holocaust. In this country, we do the opposite. You wouldn't know whether you're in a slave trading space, you wouldn't know whether you're in a place where lynchings took place."

12. That time when a terrorist attack struck the Olympic Games (posted August 18) "As the party’s nominee in the general election, Trump has broadened that proposal, now calling for a ban on immigration 'from areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies.' No word yet on whether that ban would include places like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina."

13. Why Is Colored Person Hurtful and Person of Color OK? A Theory of Racial Euphemisms. (posted August 24) "The lesson is that when there are negative associations with something or someone, periodic renewal of terminology is not a feint, but something to be expected. Until the thoughts or opinions in question change, we can expect the rust to settle in, the gnats to swarm back on—and the only solution, albeit eternally temporary, is to fashion a new term."

14. Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks (posted June 15) "It was already so difficult to try and become a parent; you tried so hard, and it didn’t happen, and there are a lot of factors that framed this experience as pure punishment for you when the actual biological fact of it is punishment enough."

Blogaround

Two adorable baby huskies are hugged by people. Image source.

1. Love and solidarity on tap for Pulse workers in Orlando (posted June 17)

2. Yes, the Bible Does Say to Kill Infidels (posted 2015) Apparently somebody at the American Family Association said Christianity is way better than Islam because "There’s nothing like that in the Bible, that tells the Christian to go out and decapitate the infidel." At which point everyone who has ever read the Old Testament was like LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL and fell out of their chair.

3. Almost 170 Members Of Congress Participated In The House Sit-In For Gun Control (posted June 22)

4. The Toast Looks Back: The Best Of Two Monks (posted June 15) Oh my goodness all of these are so funny! "MONK #1: how best to depict the suffering of the Crucifixion
MONK #2: Jesus with one shoe off, one shoe on"

5. The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife (July 2016 issue) Journalism is like detective work. This is a really cool story.

6. Killing Us Slowly (posted June 15) "To the denominations, the pastors, the churches, the Christian magazines who remain silent when men like Kevin Swanson call for our deaths—I’m looking at you OPC, and you, WORLD Magazine—who treat it as a mere theological disagreement, you’re killing us."

7. The Terrifying Effect Brexit Could Have for Mixed-Nationality Couples (posted June 24) "According to the British Office for National Statistics, there are more than 100,000 couples in London where a British national is dating someone of another EU nationality."

8. The GOP’s War on Abortion May Have Cleared the Way for a Zika Disaster (posted June 14) A virus that specifically poses a risk to fetuses- wow, the pro-life side is going to do everything they possibly can to fight Zika, right? Because they really really just want to "save babies", right?

9. Can Toys DIE?! (posted June 23) Ooooh. Massively over-analyzing "Toy Story." I love it.

10. Hillary Clinton's Planned Parenthood Address (posted June 10) Wow. This is an amazing speech.

11. An Open Letter to the Female Hat-Wearing Dog From “Go Dog, Go” (posted June 15) "Forget this dude who isn’t into your hats! It shouldn’t be hard—he is so completely and totally forgettable because P.D. Eastman draws all dogs more or less identically. And yet like so many cartoon female dogs, you only have eyes for some generic nobody who can’t see how freaking fantastic you are. You confront this guy a third time, desperately searching for the hat validation that since childhood you’ve been told you need."

12. Jesse Williams’ BET Awards Speech Is Everything You Need Right Now (posted June 26) Yes. Watch this.

13. #IfTrumpWereEvangelical makes Twitter great again (posted June 27) "#ifTrumpwereevangelical he'd "have a heart for" the United States" LOLOLOLOLOLOL

14. James Dobson is reliably untrustworthy (posted June 27) "So the idea of a “secret” born-again Christian is weird and the idea of Donald Trump keeping a secret is even weirder."

15. Can queer pride save the American church? (posted June 28) "The most powerful spiritual transformation occurs when I hear God say to me: you don’t need to do that anymore because who you really are is beautiful."

16. Istanbul Terror Attack (posted June 28) Noooooooo

17. Trump Evangelical Advisory Board Stacked with Anti-LGBT Activists (posted June 22) This is my shocked face. Oh, nope, it's not.

Blogaround

An adorable black and white dog standing up on two legs, possibly begging for food. Image source.

1. InterVarsity backs #BlackLivesMatters at Urbana 15 (posted December 29) YES. #BlackLivesMatter is doing God's work.

2. Carrie Fisher Responds to Body Shamers: ‘Blow Us’ (posted December 29) "Fisher also retweeted one of her followers who said, “Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.”"

3. Wisconsin Legislator Asks Non-Christians to Convert for the Holidays (posted December 25) Wow, this kind of language ("For those who may watch this who are not Christians, I invite you to consider the hope offered by the Prince of Peace.") is so incredibly normal for church people- it's pretty shocking to me to see atheists point out how not-okay this is.

4. The Stages of What Happens When There’s Injustice Against Black People (posted 2014) "Stage 3.75: The “None of us were there” people"

5. Here are my thoughts on the new year:

Shoutout to all my overseas ppl who go home for Christmas and then ring in the new year on a Boeing 777 somewhere over the north pole.

— Perfect Number (@pnumber628) 2016年1月1日

6. White Knuckling Can Only Get You So Far (posted 2014) "I’ve encouraged hundreds of people to reconsider their beliefs that fear is the most appropriate emotional response to their sexualities."

7. A Mathematician’s New Year’s Resolutions (posted December 30) "Each week I shall say something nice to a physicist, such as 'I admire your casual contempt for logic' or 'Wow, you sure have written those symbols.'"

8. Obama considers unilateral action on US gun violence (posted January 2) "He has admitted that his inability to win Congressional backing for what he called "common sense gun laws" was the greatest frustration of his presidency."

9. The Guardian view on killings by US police: why we must keep counting (posted December 31) "The Guardian will begin a new count of people killed by US police for 2016, tracking the lethal use of force every day with the help of the community. We will not stop until we are satisfied that the federal government is doing its job, and that we no longer have to do it for them."

10. What No One Said about Rey (Star Wars Spoilers!) (posted December 30)

11. Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up. Self-care is important, you guys.

12. ‘Ed Dobson loved homosexuals’ (posted December 29)

13. Apparently, I Won’t Be Going To Heaven (posted December 30) "We don’t have to be loving or kind like Jesus to be saved from God’s wrath. In fact we don’t have to do a single thing Jesus commanded us to do. All that matters is that we admit that we are worthless trash, but that Jesus likes us anyway."

14. Large Group Of Armed Militia Members Take Over Federal Building (posted January 2) In Oregon. Oh my.

15. Refocusing My Family: How the Daughter of a Focus on the Family Executive Came Out as Gay (posted December 26) "Over time, because of their unwavering belief in Focus on the Family's teaching and interpretation of the Scriptures on this issue, I was quietly pushed aside and shunned from the family."

Blogaround

Merry Christmas! Image source.

1. Top 5 Snubbed Disney Princesses Totally agree. Also Esmeralda should be on this list.

2. Why Do We Humanize White Guys Who Kill People? (posted December 2) "To be sure, white men may be charged, tried and convicted; they may be regarded as brutish criminals. But they can be simultaneously understood as human beings, driven by conflicting emotions, able — even in their criminality — to have experienced loss and confusion and anger and love, emotions we do not imaginatively afford America’s poor and black, the men and women who often find their way into our news cycles simply by having the audacity to live in a world that was not built for and around them."

3. Physicians Demand End To 20-Year-Old Ban On Gun Violence Research (posted December 2) Wait, what? What? A ban on research? WTF?

4. Museum Statement on Syrian Refugees (posted November 19) From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Which reminds me, have y'all donated to help the refugees yet? Have you contacted your local politicians? (You can do those things on the Church World Service website.)

5. Christian Terrorist Robert Dear and the Army of God (posted December 2) and also this: Planned Parenthood Worker Tweets Every Act of Terrorism She Faced Working at a Clinic

6. Can Faith-Based Organizing for Gun Control Work? (posted December 1) "The foot soldiers in this pro-life movement would stage regular protests outside gun shops and gun shows. They’d make trips to the art supply store, and come equipped with sidewalk chalk, which they’d use to draw a big heart on the pavement at the parking lot entrance, emblazoned with the words, “God loves you.” These words are designed to stop you from doing something you’ll regret."

7. #BodiesMatter: Gunpowder (posted December 4) "I could tell you what it felt like to have someone else standing to my defense with yet another gun — it did not, in any way, feel safer."

8. LifeWay Research gets it backwards on abortion (posted December 2) "Anyone who says, 'How could a third of evangelicals be pro-choice? I’ve never met such a person' is really saying, 'I’m the kind of person who has made it clear that I don’t want to hear from or to listen to anyone else, especially women.'"

9. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Prisoner Re-entry (posted November 8)

10. So I'm in the process of watching all 6 Star Wars movies, and, you guys, Hayden Christensen is ... causing me to stumble.

Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Image source.

Have a good week, everyone!