Shakira and J Lo perform at the Superbowl LIV halftime show. Image source.
1.New York City votes to ban cashless businesses in step against discrimination (posted January 24) "Supporters of the ban argue that electronic-only payments discriminate against low-income people, undocumented immigrants and people of color, who are less likely to have a bank account or access to credit."
2.Here Are the Most Common Airbnb Scams Worldwide (posted February 1) "In a surprising number of stories, the new house was often full of a weird number of beds, laid out in bizarre configurations."
3.the homeschool reading gap (posted November 5) "Every book I read included a protagonist I was intended to emulate; every book was aspirational and morally correct."
5.Report: Outbreak of idiocy spreading 10,000 times faster than coronavirus (posted January 28) "Public health officials in Toronto have confirmed its first 50,000 cases of being a misinformed fuckwit as xenophobic conspiracy theories and tales of false cures continue to spread across social media."
6.Did Any Medieval Knight Ever Actually Rescue a Damsel in Distress? (posted January 29) [content note: rape] "Well to be completely honest, despite our best and extremely lengthy efforts of our quite experienced team researching this to try and find one single definitively-known instance of that supposed bastion of chivalry, the medieval knight, rescuing a woman in peril, we couldn't find one- with one possible exception we're going to get into in a bit."
OKAY this gives me FEELINGS about complementarianism. Complementarian Christians be like "oh remember the good old days when women knew their place and men valued them and treated them with the utmost respect, those idyllic days of traditional gender roles when women were safe and loved, oh if only we could get back to then, instead of now when women are exploited and sexualized because feminism says men no longer have to protect them." And the "knight rescuing a damsel in distress" is one of the most iconic symbols of that. (I seem to remember the purity-culture book "Captivating" made an EXTREMELY BIG DEAL of that.)
And now I happen upon this video that says, actually, we don't have any evidence that ever happened. And instead, that video contains one story after another after another of women being raped and forced into marriage, while men in power did NOTHING.
Complementarianism is a load of shit.
7.Shakira & J. Lo's FULL Pepsi Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show (posted February 3) Oh my god they are AMAZING.
It has come to my attention that some conservative Christians are criticizing them for being "sexualized" or something? Wow so glad I don't care about that any more.
8. The Super Bowl Is Over. The Discrimination Indigenous Peoples Face Is Not (posted February 3) "Like other teams that have mascots that they claim 'honor' Indigenous peoples, many Chiefs fans proudly sport their headdresses and tomahawk chops, perpetuating the stereotypes that we are primitive people who either no longer exist or only exist as savage warriors."
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?'"
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.
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]
1.7 Things ‘Fiscally Conservative, But Socially Liberal’ People Don’t Understand (posted August 30) "'Fiscally conservative' means slashing support systems that help the poor, lowering taxes for the rich, cutting corners for big business, and screwing labor – policies that both worsen poverty and make it even more of an inescapable trap."
2.Farewell to the Missionary Hero (posted August 24) "Gone are the days when missionaries could spiritualize a relationship for a prayer letter. Now, she says, they have to be honest, or people will find out. In the same way, the public nature of missionary lives encourages treating people as people, not as items on a conversion checklist. If the people you’re writing home about are also Facebook friends, there’s no room for self-glorifying embellishment."
3.xkcd Survey (posted September 2) YOU GUYS YOU GUYS YOU GUYS. Take this survey, full of bizarre questions.
