Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Chess Grandmasters Do Not Burn 6000 Calories Per Day (June 28, via) "Robert Sapolsky then cited this thesis in his popular book, dropping the distinction between maximum and average to give a 3X breathing rate."

2. How a Nazi Helped the New York Times Smear Zohran Mamdani (July 29) "So the New York Times accepted hacked data that a 'scientific racist' got from a violently racist Nazi and chose to publish the data as an indictment of a Brown African-born South Asian Muslim man who wants all children to have access to pre-K education, instead of asking themselves, 'Hey, is the real story here something about how a self-described violently racist Nazi currently has the private data of millions of people, including their Social Security numbers, addresses, family members’ information, and citizenship status?'"

3. ChatGPT will apologize for anything (August 8, via) "I'm sorry for advising you to accept the trade of your cow for three beans."

And: Stop Pretending Chatbots Have Feelings: Media's Dangerous AI Anthropomorphism Problem (July 22) "Think about that. A product owned by the world’s richest man was spewing Nazi propaganda on his social media platform. That's a scandal that should have Musk answering tough questions about his company's engineering practices, safety protocols, and values. Instead, we get 'Grok issues apology.'"

4. The Scholars Helping to Keep WWII Sex Slavery From Being Forgotten (August 14) [content note: rape] "The history of 'comfort women' represents one of the most horrific, systematic violations of women’s rights in modern history."

In high school history class, I remember reading that the Japanese army had "comfort women"- I think there was 1 line about it in a textbook- but somehow I didn't get that it meant sex slavery. It meant rape.

5. New study: State medical examiners wrongly excused homicides committed by Maryland police officers (July 21) "And of course all of this has been really complicated by the emergence of bullshit medical theories about about deaths in police custody, and particularly this theory of excited or agitated delirium."

6. The Existential Horror of Thomas Riker (August 13, 18-minute video) "Then, he finally gets rescued off of that planet, which should have been the happiest day of his life, but the first face he sees is you. And then he finds out what happened, and he realizes that in the eyes of the rest of the world, he's not Will Riker- you are."

7. What is identity? (August 17) "However, sometimes when people talk about identity, they simply mean, 'this word describes what I am'. Under this definition, you could identify with a word even if you never actually heard of the word. Therefore, if a survey asks you whether you identify with a word you’ve never heard of, you have to look it up to discover the answer."

8. One neurosurgeon, 8 million patients (August 17) "'Before Dr. Kamara, there was no hope,' said Dr. Kehinde Oluwadiya, acting chief medical director of the University of Sierra Leone Teaching Hospital Complex. 'If you are lucky and rich, you will go to another country and be treated. But if you are not, it's either you die or you live with a lot of disability.'"

9. Amid growing 'scandal' of elder homelessness, health care groups aim to help (August 16) "'It's a national scandal, really, that the richest country in the world would have destitute elderly and disabled people,' Culhane said."

10. Al Jazeera reporter's death a 'significant escalation' of dangers media face, CPJ says (August 15) "Al-Sharif was among six journalists killed in a targeted Israeli strike on Aug. 10. The Israeli military said al-Sharif was the head of a Hamas 'rocket-firing brigade,' and published spreadsheets that it said showed he was on Hamas' payroll. Salah Negm, Al Jazeera's director of news, rejected those allegations calling them 'completely fabricated' in an interview with Morning Edition, adding al-Sharif was 'a journalist doing his job, nothing more.'"

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Understanding MAGA’s Obsession With Pedophilia and No Other Sex Crimes (July 24) "A friend asked me recently: how is it that MAGA is so over the top about finding out which rich and powerful men may have had sex with 16 or 17 year old girls when it’s apparently fine that the leader of their movement is a longtime sex abuser and serial predator? On the one hand, this person was saying, how is one thing so beyond the pale and the others are completely fine? On another level, this person was asking, is it really so hard to believe that a guy who appears to have routinely assaulting women just over 18 did the same with those just under?"

2. Hundreds march to White House to protest Trump's D.C. crackdown (August 16) 

3. Our leading papers failed to stand up to Trump's criminal justice authoritarianism (August 18) Wow, look at this completely wild sentence from the New York Times, in a paragraph supposedly giving background on the trends about crime, in relation to that felon's claims: "A close presidential election eventually led to a violent attack on Congress."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Snake-in-the-Box Problem (August 6) From xkcd.

2. There are now more than half a billion mobile money accounts in the world, mostly in Africa — here's why this matters (July 7, via) "As the chart below illustrates, the percentage of people in Sub-Saharan Africa with a mobile money account grew rapidly, from 12% in 2014 to 33% by 2021."

Also from Our World in Data: Two billion people don’t have safe drinking water: what does this really mean for them? (June 23) "The vast majority of the two billion — around three-quarters of them — do have access to a piped water source or protected well that is probably safe to drink. But it’s either not located in their home, is not always available, or there’s no guarantee it’s completely contamination-free. That usually means they must travel to get there; whether that round-trip takes less or more than 30 minutes determines whether they fall into the 'basic source' or 'limited source' category."

3. You Can Now Buy Eggs From In-Ovo Sexed Hens! (July 17, via) "Most people are surprised, and often disturbed, to learn the truth: in the United States alone, approximately 350 million male chicks are routinely culled each year, typically by methods such as maceration (being ground up alive)."

4. The Element Song by Tom Lehrer

Posting this because Tom Lehrer, influential musical satirist, dies at 97 (July 27)

5. More than 1,000 rabbis and Jewish leaders denounce starvation in Gaza (August 1) The letter says they agree with Israel fighting this war, but don't agree with using famine as a weapon.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action (July 1) "I think back to the phrase climate journalist David Roberts coined a decade ago, the 'doing it wrong brigade,' for those people on the sidelines who tell those who are doing the work that they should be doing it differently, criticizing their tactics, goals, alliances, or some other thing that falls short of perfection since as Hayes and Kaba point out, when you're not doing anything you can set impossible goals and then lounge about figuring out how those doing the work fall short."

2. Federal agents spread out across D.C. streets amid Trump's vow to crack down on crime (August 11) "He offered no explanation for where homeless people would be sent, but in a social media post last week Trump suggested he is considering a federal takeover of policing in Washington."

3. Asylum-seekers thought they were following the rules. Now some are told to start over (August 10) "'You're literally making documented people, again, undocumented, and they're already in here,' said Michelle Marty Rivera, an immigration attorney who has dozens of clients who have received these letters. 'You are canceling employment authorization. You're virtually converting people that are following the normal traditional asylum rules and leaving them without a status and without protection and asking them to show their faces to ICE.'"

So the strategy that the MAGAs are using is to find some minor thing where somebody's asylum-seeking process didn't go exactly according to the "rules" (even if this was the government's fault for not having availability to do interviews) and then saying that means the entire thing is invalid. It comes across as "the government is out to get you" rather than "there should be a system where people with genuine reasons are able to claim asylum."

(I have some thoughts about the similarities between this and conservative Christian ideology about sin and hell. Maybe if I have time I'll write a post on that. See also: ICE and Hell)

Update, I wrote the post: When You Believe God is Out to Get You

4. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposts video of pastors saying women shouldn't vote (August 9) Ah, the pastor in question is Doug Wilson. How will I explain Doug Wilson to my children?

5. A family's fishing trip ends with the dad at 'Alligator Alcatraz.' Here's their story (August 9) "Unable to show a driver's license, the couple were arrested and taken to a local jail where they were separated. M. says this was the last time she saw her husband, before he joined the hundreds of detainees at the controversial makeshift detention center, which has been dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." She told NPR their story on the condition of anonymity for the entire family, because she fears retaliation from immigration officials."

6. Texas Showdown (August 6) "When people ask, 'But what are Democrats actually doing to save our country from MAGA fascism?' point them to the brave men and women of the Texas state Democratic House caucus. They are risking their political careers and even their personal freedoms, not to preserve their seats and their power, but to preserve our right to a fair and representative system."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. ‘He stole a piece of our souls’: Christian music star Michael Tait accused of sexual assault by three men (June 13) [content note: sexual assault] I posted a different link about this before, but this article is good because it gives a whole overview of the context: the culture of CCM (contemporary Christian music), DC Talk, the way we made it part of our identity to be labelled "Jesus freaks", Newsboys, Christian nationalism. I'm so mad.

Hemant Mehta also reports on this: After assault allegations, Christian music icon Michael Tait admits preying on multiple men (June 16, via) "More than a decade after its release, God’s Not Dead is still finding new ways to disappoint everyone."

Mehta talks about the gay dimension of this... which is... yeah... I know there must be conservative Christians whose takeaway from this story is "Michael Tait is gay." Completely missing the point. 

2. How Muppets Break Free from their Puppeteers (June 13, 12-minute video) This is really cool! It's about the practical effects that the were used in the Muppets movies, basically to hide the puppeteers when the characters were in a big wide-shot scene.

3. I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial (June 13) "I’ve never seen anyone say 'actually, it’s a good idea to lie to police officers because it will make the jury think you’re too stupid to commit premeditated murder,' but it did work in this case. Maybe this is the new murder meta."

4. The Moderate Case Against Trans Youth Healthcare Bans (June 13) "Even for those uncertain about the evidence behind transgender healthcare, in cases where there is ambiguity but a clear potential for benefit, decisions should be left to parents, patients, and doctors—not politicians. This is a majority opinion found in many polls."

5. Exoplanet System (June 16) From xkcd.

6. Shell Game: In China, a $14K Reward for a Turtle That May Be Extinct (June 17) "Only one Yangtze giant softshell turtle is known to exist in China. Nicknamed Susu, the turtle is at Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Animal World, formerly known as Suzhou Zoo, in eastern China, and is believed to be over 100 years old."

7. Menstrual products and rural Indian women (2016) [content note: menstruation] A post about the various ways that rural Indian women deal with their periods. This is really surprising to me, because the narrative I always heard was "women in developing countries don't have menstrual products, oh that's so terrible, can you imagine, and sometimes girls even drop out of school because they just have no way to deal with their periods." Ohhhh turns out I always just assumed that since *I* have no idea what one would do if one didn't have disposable pads, that meant that there just *is* no way to manage without disposable pads. Well that is not true.

I think there probably is some truth to the idea that not having access to period products is an issue we should care about, related to women's rights, but we have to listen to the women (and/or people who have periods) who are actually there and know what the current situation is like.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Photos: See No Kings protests around the country (June 14)

And: No Kings San Francisco (June 14)

Trump ‘doesn’t care about any of our founding fathers’ principles’: Mark Ruffalo joins NYC protests (June 15, 6-minute video) "Trump is trying to take our freedoms away, so we have to [be] re-reminded of what those freedoms actually are."

Photos: ‘No Kings’ Day Protests (June 14, via)

(Oh also, my husband- a Chinese guy- was really unimpressed with the military parade because it was very much amateur hour compared to China's. For what that's worth.)

2. ICE directed to pause immigration arrests at farms, hotels and restaurants, sources tell CBS News (June 14) What? I mean, this is good news if true (though obviously you can't really trust anything the MAGA government says), but like... it's like it *just occurred to him* that arresting farm workers might have an effect on other things~ surprised pikachu.

Oh wait, nevermind. No need to spend time reading that link, because: ICE walks back limits on raids targeting farms, restaurants and hotels (June 18)

3. An AIDS orphan, a pastor and his frantic search for the meds that keep her alive (June 13) "'We've been so close to truly having an AIDS-free generation of kids,' says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, chair of the Department of Global Health and Health Systems Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. 'And that is completely at risk right now.'"

4. ‘How many people were arrested?’ is a lousy way to cover protests (June 12, via) "Don’t focus solely on what the police say."

5. Press group sues L.A., alleging police abuse of reporters at ICE rallies (June 16) "An Australian television correspondent was shot by a law enforcement officer with a rubber bullet during a live shot as she stood to the side of protests in downtown Los Angeles. The officer taking aim could be seen in the background as it happened."

6. How to ACTUALLY Deal with Tear Gas (June 13) "Do not panic. Move out of the area as safely as you can, ideally to higher ground because tear “gas” is actually a particulate and will fall to the ground. Do not rub your face."

7. Trump admin continues its destructive path, but groups, judges keep pushing back (June 17) "That attitude kept moving right into Monday, when the American Bar Association sued the Trump administration over Trump’s attacks on law firms and the legal profession."

Related to that: ‘My duty is to call it out’: Judge accuses Trump administration of discrimination against minorities (June 16) "'I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,' said U.S. District Judge William Young, a Massachusetts-based jurist who took the bench in 1985."

And: After court rules against NIH, researchers wonder if their canceled grants will be restored (June 17)

8. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander arrested by federal agents at immigration court (June 17) "'I will be fine, but Edgardo is not going to be fine,' he said. 'And the rule of law is not fine and our constitutional democracy is not fine.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. The Struggles and Strengths of China’s Bereaved Youths (April 24) "The death of a parent violently shakes a bereaved young adult’s understanding of life. To integrate this disruption into their life narratives, they are forced to revise their conception of what life means."

2. Air China A350 Safety Video (2022) You know how nowadays, every airline does their safety spiel in the form of a cutesy little video? Well last time I was on an Air China flight, I got such a kick out of this, it's so cute and so over-the-top Chinese, I simply must share it.

3. Lord Of The Dance Hymn (Contemporary Worship Song) (2020) One of my favorite songs about Jesus.

And this is also one of my favorite songs about Jesus: michael card--God's own fool 

While we're on this topic, here's this one too: Rich Mullins - Sometimes by Step 

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Links related to that felon:

As always, if you're too stressed out about everything going on, find 1 tangible thing to do. Protest, donate money, get connected with local groups that support immigrants. We need everyone to do at least 1 little thing that actually makes a difference. Being stressed out about the news all the time does *not* count.

1. World War T is exhausting (April 24) "Retailers in the first months of 2025 are trying to do now what they would have done in the first months of 2020 if they had known that a pandemic was coming ahead of time."

And: Has Trump cancelled Christmas? China's decorations makers report no US orders (April 10) "'So far this year, none of my American customers have placed any orders,' said Qun Ying, who runs an artificial Christmas tree factory in the eastern city of Jinhua."

2. Trump administration reverses abrupt terminations of foreign students’ US visa registrations (April 25) This is good news- but also, it sounds like ICE is still planning to go after international students.

3. Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer (April 26) "One of the children is a four-year-old suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported out of the country without medication or consultation with their treating physicians — despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s medical needs. The civil rights organization says that the mother of the two-year-old is pregnant, and was deported without ensuring any continuity of prenatal care or proper medical care."

4. U.S. judge says 2-year-old apparently deported to Honduras 'with no meaningful process' (April 26) "'The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,' Doughty wrote. 'But the Court doesn't know that.'"

5. PhD Timeline (April 25)

6. The difference between the police and the secret police (April 28) "You cannot watch that video without clearly and obviously understanding that Öztürk is a victim and that she is being victimized by … well, by the Bad Guys in this story."

7. Protesters chant after arrest of judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities (April 27) "'The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges,' Democratic state Rep. Ryan Clancy told the crowd before it marched around the area."

Blogaround

VOTE!

If you are a US citizen, then make a plan and vote!

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1. Trump's Recreating Actual Racist History Not Just Remaking 'The Purge' (October 1) "Aaron Rupar compared Trump’s call for extrajudicial police violence to the German Kristallnacht or the 'Night of Broken Glass' when Nazis led a violent riot against Jews as German authorities stood and watched. Nazi paramilitary forces ransacked Jewish homes, hospitals and schools. They destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps."

2. Canceling subscriptions has to be as easy as signing up, the FTC says in a new rule (October 16) Wow this is great. This is revolutionary.

3. We Need To Get Junk Science Out of Courtrooms (2023) "Isn’t it outrageous that we have lay jurors that are relied upon to distinguish nonsense from sense in criminal courts where life and liberty is at stake? There’s no federal oversight. There’s isn’t something like the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] where consumer products like toothpaste and aspirin are tested for their safety before they’re used by the general public, because we care about the reliability of those products. We care more about the reliability of mouthwash in this country than we do about forensic sciences that are used to sentence people to death and to life in prison."

4. The Weaver Bird Dilemma: Creationism’s Struggle with Diversity (October 7) "This striking bird, with its enormous tail, builds a very different type of nest compared to the Southern Masked Weaver. Yet according to most YEC classifications, these birds would be considered part of the same 'created kind.'"

5. Musk offers voters $1 million a day to sign PAC petition backing the Constitution. Is that legal? (October 21) 

6. Missouri AG in abortion pill lawsuit argues fewer teen pregnancies hurt state financially (October 22) Yes, really, they are really arguing this in a court case. I don't even know what to make of this, because it goes against the typical "pro-life" talking points about "if you didn't want a baby, you shouldn't have had sex"- presumably abstinence would also "hurt" the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho by reducing the teen pregnancy rate. It's like... instead of a "pregnancy is the punishment for having sex" "pro-life" argument, it's more along the lines of "women [and teenage girls] should be required to have sex and then required to have babies." ??? I haven't seen "pro-life" people making this argument before. (Though I suppose it's kind of implicitly there in all the "pro-life" hand-wringing over low birth rates.)

7. On Univision, ordinary citizens step in for cowardly journalists (October 18) "Why didn't Trump have a ready answer to this question? Why hasn't he been asked this before? Why haven't journalists asked him this every time he makes his terrifying calls for mass deportation? How can we be less than 20 days from the election, and Trump doesn't even have a pretense of an answer to the most fundamental effect of his most frequently stated policy?"

8. Targeted Advertising: Good or evil? (October 22) "So if failed advertisements are the worst kind, then you must prefer targeted advertising, right?"

Blogaround

1. The Convention That Ate Republicans’ Lunch (August 26) "Democrats were able to take these themes (and several others) away from Republicans because the GOP has spent years giving them little more than lip service. When Ron DeSantis began banning books and threatening teachers who taught inconvenient facts about American history, those actions raised no debate about freedom within the Republican Party. There has been no controversy about nominating a philandering, twice-divorced, pussy grabber to lead the party of family values. When one jury of ordinary Americans found Trump responsible for sexual assault, another ruled beyond a reasonable doubt that he had committed fraud, and he avoided his other felony indictments through delaying tactics rather than by challenging the evidence against him, members of the law-and-order party attacked the justice system rather than question their allegiance to a criminal."

2. Sending Unarmed Responders Instead of Police: What We’ve Learned (July 25, via) "In Washington, D.C., social service nonprofit Bread for the City has sued the city, claiming that sending police to mental health emergencies discriminates against people with mental health disabilities."

3. Black Myth: Wukong - Headless Guy Singing Scene (August 20) My husband and son, who are Chinese, won't stop singing this song.

4. Federal Judge Tells Undocumented Spouses Of US Citizens To GTFO (August 27) "But what about protecting the rule of law and stopping an invasion of people who have lived here without incident for over a decade, huh?"

5. Army says Arlington National Cemetery worker was 'pushed aside' by Trump aides (August 29)

Steve Shives's take is also good: Trump at Arlington: Because Rules (and Respect) Are for Other People (August 30) "Every time you think that this guy couldn't possibly be more insensitive and more disrespectful and more tacky than you've already seen him be, he somehow manages to top himself."

6. Small-town firefighters sawed through the Arizona border wall to rescue an injured man who waited 24 hours for help (August 30) "Tangye Beckham, fire chief of the Arivaca Fire District, said that after hours of delays in the remote area and no alternative method for giving the man the care he needed, she ordered the border wall to be cut so he could be pulled through and taken for medical care on the U.S. side."

7. NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose (September 4) 

Blogaround

1. The CIA Spread Anti-Vaxx COVID Disinformation (June 22) "In the Spring of 2020, when COVID-19 was killing tens of thousands of people every day, the US military launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia in order to undermine worldwide trust in China." I posted a link about this last time, but here is another article about it because it's just so bad.

2. That UK Report On Healthcare For Trans Kids Just Gets Eviler And Eviler (June 24) [content note: transmisia, suicide] "While the Cass Report would like you to believe that there are no risks associated with denying GIDS [Gender Identity Development Services] to teens and tweens, as wait times grew, suicides shot up dramatically."

3. Tzlofchad's Daughters and the Master's Tools (June 24, via) "Marginalized people working in oppressive systems do this all the time. It's a survival technique. A strategy."

4. How China Conquered the Dark Side of the Moon (June 25) "China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has made history by returning to Earth with the first samples collected from the far side of the Moon — a groundbreaking feat that marks a new step forward for the country’s space program."

5. A Sudoku Celebration For Pride Month! (June 26) 31-minute sudoku solve video. It's a sudoku colored like the rainbow flag. Love it~ happy Pride!

6. Former Uvalde school police chief, officer indicted in 1st-ever criminal charges over failed response to 2022 mass shooting (June 28) [content note: school shooting]

7. Supreme Court allows Idaho to offer emergency medical abortions (June 27) "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 6-3 opinion, temporarily allowed abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho."

8. Biden pardons potentially thousands of ex-service members convicted under now-repealed gay sex ban (June 27) "Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts."

Blogaround

1. 40-year ban on gay clergy struck down (May 1) "Without debate, General Conference has removed The United Methodist Church’s ban on the ordination of clergy who are 'self-avowed practicing homosexuals' — a prohibition that dates to 1984." Good news!

2. The Protest Derangement Class: A Response to John McWhorter (April 30) "We're back to just calling loud people violent. I truly don't understand how one person can milk a truly meaningless talking point for this long. I don't know how to keep responding to it, it's too dumb." (18-minute video)

3. How a beloved worship song became the theme song of Christian nationalism (May 1, via) The song is "How Great Is Our God" (youtube link) and I actually still really like this song, even though I'm ex-evangelical and I don't go to church. But yeah really gross to find out Christian nationalists are using this song.

4. China launches historic mission to retrieve samples from far side of the moon (May 4) Cool!

5. Alphabetical Cartogram (May 1) Very useful map from xkcd.

6. Man or Bear Discourse Might Feel Familiar to Atheists (May 4) "Being calm, rational people, the atheist community received this message thoughtfully, in its intended spirit, and took Rebecca's words into consideration during future interactions with-- I'M KIDDING, obviously that's not what happened at all." (12-minute video)

7. No, Paul Won’t Teach Seminaries of the Future through the Miracle of AI (April 29) "It’s Paul plus an imaginative recreations of what Paul might be like. If we take that part out, we just have the letters, and ChatGPT is not necessary for an encounter with Paul. If we add it in, we’re not engaging with Paul anymore."

8. The Supreme Court is breaking America’s faith in the law (April 29) "I truly believed that at least seven members of the court would take the potential failure of democracy as a proposition seriously enough that the partisan valence of this case went away. That didn’t happen."

9. Mr. Yuk (April 30) "He saw first-hand the impact of the lack of information on poisonings and decided to do something about it. He started collecting information on poisonous substances and filling it on these little index cards. He ended up accumulating information on roughly 9000 different substances, and by the 1950s he was the go-to poison expert."

10. All the time (May 6) "Holiness was distinct from goodness, distinct from love, or mercy, or justice, or patience, or presence. And it often seems to be — for my dad as for so many of his fellow Calvinist believers — something almost opposed to those other attributes."

11. Is China Ready for Hospice Care? (May 1) "Questions like how to broach the topic, with whom, and how to hold family meetings are all issues that require a soft touch. If family members are concealing a condition from the patient — a not uncommon practice in China — it is even more difficult to have these conversations."

12. 'Dance Your Ph.D.' winner on science, art, and embracing his identity (May 4, via) "'It means the time I did my kangaroo research,' says Menário Costa. 'But [it] also means the first time I lived as a gay man. It's the first time I lived as an immigrant, five years without going home. The time of reconnection to myself, of exploring my sexuality, of bridging these beautiful communit[ies].'"

13. Our Campus. Our Crisis. Inside the encampments and crackdowns that shook American politics. A report by the staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator. (May 4, via) "We had been briefed on what to do if we got swept by the police. The plan was to form two concentric circles: people of color on the inside, white people on the outside. We were informed that it’s harder for cops to arrest you if you’re sitting. So the plan was, once we knew cops were coming, to sit in your circle."

Blogaround

1. Psychology of a Hero: MOON KNIGHT and Dissociative Identity Disorder (2022) "And so many systems saw 'Moon Knight' and said I feel seen. This is what it's like." (29-minute video)

2. 2024 Total Eclipse: Where & When (via) 

And more on the eclipse:

Satellite views of solar eclipse 2024: See the moon's shadow race across North America (video, photos) (April 10) This photo is incredible!

Photo of the earth, with a huge dark spot on it where the eclipse is.

And from xkcd: Types of Eclipse Photo (April 8) Love this!

3. Bootlicking Calvinism Is The Unfunny Kind Of Calvin + Hobbes (April 8) "You might expect, then, that good Calvinists would agree with that latter sentiment. They might not appreciate the punks and anarchists who spray paint “ACAB” on subway walls but, logically, it is a statement that they must regard as true. If all people are sinful bastards, and police are a subset within “all people,” then all police, as people, must also be sinful bastards. If all people cannot be trusted to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, then it would be foolish to claim that police officers are somehow, inexplicably, an exception to this universal rule."

4. Censorship: How Does It Work? (January 27, via) "Every Chinese person I know seems to have a lot of skill in reading the news between the lines to figure out what’s actually happening through the bullshit."

5. O.J. Simpson dies of cancer at age 76, his family says (April 11)

6. What I’ve Learned as the First Out Trans Division 1 Men’s Athlete (2023, via) "'It saved my life,' he said after a few heavy breaths. 'You saved my life. And I needed you to know.'"

7. What LakePointe Church and Pastor Josh Howerton Think about Women (April 12) This will only be of interest if you know who Josh Howerton is. He's a pastor who recently got a lot of attention on social media for making a "joke" about how a wife should do whatever her husband wants sexually on "his" wedding night. Well I'm sure you will be *shocked* to find out that it's not the first time he's said disrespectful things about women. Sheila Gregoire has the receipts.

"The New Jim Crow"

Book cover for "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander. Image source.

I very much recommend the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [affiliate link], by Michelle Alexander. This book was originally published in 2010; the version I read was the 10th anniversary edition, published in 2020. 

This book has had a big impact; it helped to start the Black Lives Matter movement. Personally, I think Americans- especially white Americans- should all read this. There's so much in here, so many very good points that Alexander makes, and I can't write about all of them in 1 book-review blog post. So go read the book.

In this blog post I'll mention some of the points that felt important to me- but seriously, there's SO MUCH to say. Go read the book.

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Systems of control - from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration

So, the idea is that American society has moved from one racialized system of control to another, several times throughout history. Each time one system falls, white people come up with another one to replace it.

The key thing here, I would say, is that just because one system of control becomes outlawed, doesn't mean that society believes in equality between white and black people. And this was something I totally never *got*, when I learned about this in school- and I wrote about it when I reviewed "The Cross and the Lynching Tree", in this post: Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem. Slavery ended, but a significant percentage of white people believed it would be just wrong for black people to have equal rights, so they came up with something else to control black people- Jim Crow. And then, similarly, when Jim Crow ended, well, you weren't allowed to say racist things directly, but you could talk about being "tough on crime" and "the war on drugs" and create a new racialized system of control in that way.

The United States has never really repented of slavery and Jim Crow. We just... pretend they don't matter any more. And that's why a new racialized system of control- mass incarceration- came to exist. In the book, Alexander says we can't solve this problem with little gradual steps. It requires a total overhaul of the whole system. The United States needs to really face the reality of this, and make it right.

So, what exactly do we mean by "mass incarceration" being a "racialized system of control"? In some urban areas in the US, the majority of black men are under state control- this includes prison or probation. And it's not just about spending time in prison- the real problem is that people who have a criminal record are then excluded from participating in society. They become part of an invisible underclass, and it's perfectly legal to discriminate against them. If you have a felony conviction, it's nearly impossible to get a job. Or have access to education, or public housing, etc. In some states, people who have a felony conviction can't vote, or need to pay a paperwork fee to get their voting rights reinstated- Alexander calls this a "poll tax," like the poll taxes that black people had to pay during Jim Crow.

Also, people with a felony conviction can't participate in jury duty. I was surprised to see jury duty being mentioned so many times in the book. In my experience, Americans don't like getting summoned for jury duty, because it means you have to miss a few days of work. I often hear about people trying to come up with some excuse so they don't have to do it. But here in this book, Alexander keeps saying that this is a right that's being taken away from many black people due to their criminal record. That "a jury of their peers" is very important- and it's wrong that people who actually have experience with the problems of the legal system are excluded from being on juries.

So this is the real issue- people are being separated into an "undercaste" based on race.

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Colorblind

Now, of course, people will ask, how is this a "racialized" system of control? The law is colorblind. Well, yes, but police have a lot of discretion in terms of how they enforce the law. Statistically, white and black Americans use illegal drugs at similar rates, but black people are arrested for it much more often, and receive harsher sentences than white people.

Also, Alexander says that, for the system to be perpetuated, it does need some black people to be successful. This racial system of control relies on the fact that people don't notice it's a racial system of control- therefore it requires that some black people are successful. (Similarly, some white people are also jailed and suffer in the same ways that black people do.) The system relies on the idea of "colorblindness."

And therefore, Alexander says we cannot achieve real justice by being "colorblind." Go read the book- she makes a lot of good points here.

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But they're criminals

I'm glad that this book addressed the "but they're criminals" argument. Yes, so... there are some innocent people who get arrested, and it's easy to get people to have sympathy for them- but the majority of black people in jail for drug-related crimes really did commit those crimes. Obviously there are arguments to be made about how it's not right to put people in jail for non-violent crimes, or how getting involved with drugs one time shouldn't mean you can never get a job ever again- but, yeah, at the end of the day, it's going to be hard to get the public to care about this, because "well they shouldn't have committed a crime."

So, yes, they shouldn't have committed a crime. But the whole system is set up to make people fail. (And it punishes black people for their failures more than white people.) That's the problem.

This is a difficult thing, and it makes it hard to get public opinion on your side. Makes me think about how the Black Lives Matter movement specifically choose the slogan "Black Lives Matter"- I remember seeing an article years ago that said we should NOT use arguments like "he was one of the good ones." Because the idea behind Black Lives Matter is, people don't deserve to get shot down on the street by police for some little minor crime. It's not about if the person is perfect/ has a criminal record/ whatever.

In our society now, people talk about "criminals" like they're a completely separate type of people, who don't deserve anything good. That's what Alexander means when she says this is an "underclass" and it is legal to discriminate against them.

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Some outrageous things

So, there are some things about the police system that are just so outrageous they should make everyone angry.

For example, the book talks about police and "consent"- ie, courts have ruled that "a reasonable person" would know that if a police officer asks them to do something, they have the right to say no, therefore it's fine if police stop you for no reason at all and search you- as long as they kinda phrase it as a question and you kinda are too scared to say no.

There have been court cases where police searched people and found drugs, and the people who had drugs try to argue in court that this evidence should not be allowed, because the police violated their rights when they stopped them for no reason and searched them. Yeah, like I said, it's hard to get public opinion on their side here, because they really were doing illegal things and they're arguing that they shouldn't get in trouble because... the way they got caught wasn't valid??? 

But as I see it, that's not the actual issue. The issue is that police are stopping and harassing black people for made-up reasons. Most of these people were not doing anything wrong, so they don't get arrested or anything- but still, very traumatic to get harassed by police like that. It's not okay- but it's not something that's going to become a high-profile legal case. The ones that become actual legal cases in the headlines are the people who really were guilty of something. So... so that's the difficult thing, in terms of getting society to see that this is a problem. 

The issue is, if a court rules that it's fine for police to stop and search whoever they're "suspicious" of, that will lead to more innocent black people being harassed by police.

Another outrageous thing: Because of mandatory minimum sentencing, innocent people plead guilty, to avoid going to court. Yeah, so... imagine you are innocent, and then you get charged with a crime that has a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years in prison, if it goes to court and you're found guilty. In this situation, people may decide to take a deal where, instead of going to court, they plead guilty and get a much lighter sentence, because they don't want to take the risk of going to court. (And then, because they have a criminal record, they won't be able to get a job, etc... They're permanently stuck in the "invisible undercaste.")

This is just ridiculous, and everyone should be angry that this is happening. 

Also, sometimes people plead guilty because they just don't have any resources to deal with going to court, can't take any time off work- their life circumstances force them to take the option that will get things done the fastest.

And then people lose their job, and then get evicted from their home because they have a criminal record, then lose custody of their kids because they don't have a home- and they might not even be able to stay at a relative's home because the relative could be evicted for associating with someone who has a drug conviction. It's just outrageous how something like this can totally spiral out of control and mess up everything in a person's life.

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If you've ever applied for a job, you should know this is real

Even though this system of control is "invisible", well... Have you ever applied for a job, and the application asks if you've ever been convicted of a felony? Have you ever needed to get a "no criminal record" when you applied for a job? Then there's no excuse for not knowing that this "invisible undercaste" exists. 

In my experience, this stuff about getting a background check or getting proof of "no criminal record" is just an annoying bit of bureaucracy. It's sort of taken for granted that you don't have a criminal record, and it's just kind of tedious getting the actual document that proves it. 

But... does the average job applicant ever stop to think "but what if you do have a criminal record?" and realize that this underclass of people exists? If you do have a criminal record/ felony, then most companies (almost all companies?) would reject you just based on that.

There's a weird mismatch here... People need jobs in order to get money to live, and to feel like they are doing something important in life. But companies don't hire people for those reasons; companies hire people who fit the requirements of the specific roles that the company needs. It's weird that, in order to have enough money to live, you need to be chosen by an employer as the best candidate to do whatever task they need done. Yes, from a company's point of view, maybe it makes sense that they prefer not to hire people with a criminal record, because maybe those people will get in trouble again, and the company doesn't want to deal with that. (That's the intuition, but you'd need to find some actual statistics to find out if it's really true or not.) But then, how will those people get money so they can live? How is this supposed to work?

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Conclusion

Like I said, this book makes a lot of very good points, and I can't cover all of them here, so you should go read the book. 

The entire system needs to change.

And, black lives matter.

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Follow-up post: Donate to Formerly Incarcerated People

Related:

Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem 

Reading US History Inerrantly

Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)

Blogaround

1. TANF: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (March 13) "The wild thing here is, our current system was created under the assumption that poor families simply couldn't be trusted to collect welfare honestly. But the past couple of decades have proven that it's actually politicians and government officials who've been relentlessly abusing this system."

2. Asexual Advocacy in India: An Interview with Dr. Pragati Singh (March 27) [content note: mention of rape] "And there were so many such things being shared by people that I realized in my country, for my people, asexuality is not just about a flag, right? Or microidentities, or a label, it's not about that. It's about people literally making life and death decisions. People going through severe depression because they're being raped, or because they're being forced into a marriage. And you know in my country, unfortunately, marital rape is not even recognized as rape. It's legally not recognized as rape."

3. What If All the Men Around You Have Lust Problems? (March 24) "I have never, ever heard any of these pastors or authors talk about how women are whole people and we shouldn't objectify them." Wow, very good post. Sheila Gregoire says that it's NOT true that all men "struggle" with "lust", and if a man has lust problems, that man should not be allowed near young girls, until he gets himself under control. This is completely different than what I've always heard in Christian culture, which is that it's normal for men to "struggle with lust" and so women have to dress modestly to help them out.

She says if you're in a church like that, LEAVE THAT CHURCH. Wow. I'm really surprised to see her saying that, since as far as I know, she is evangelical.

Also this was a good line from her post: "It’s terrible to say, but non-Christian families have far less problems with lust than Christian ones. Even if porn use is just as high, objectification of women is more often seen as anathema, rather than as normal."

But, also, I think we need a better definition of lust, otherwise people will think that simply being attracted to people is a serious issue that means that church should bar you from interacting with people, etc... Gregoire is aware of this problem, and does provide a better definition- she says noticing is not lust; it's when someone dwells on those thoughts, that's lust. Or when you see someone as a sex object rather than as a person. I personally don't want to define it in terms of policing thoughts, because I'm ex-evangelical (lol there is a lot more that could be said about that). How about this: What if we say "lust" means you're being a creep/ aren't treating someone with respect/ aren't viewing them as a whole person. And so, to not lust, it's not about "don't think about sex, don't think about sex!" because we all know that if you say "don't think about [something]" then everyone will naturally think about it- what if we define "not lusting" in a more positive way, where you make sure to respect them and treat them as a whole human being, not a sex object, regardless of what sexy thoughts you may or may not have about them.

But what do I know, I'm asexual.

4. Cops Sue Afroman For Sharing Video Of Their Unfounded Raid Of His House (March 24) "Above and beyond that, alleging a privacy right over the conduct of a raid ostensibly on behalf of the public amounts to a face-melting level of stupidity. This is basic constitutional law. There’s no undercover work here, these are cops taking actions that they would have gladly blasted to the whole world if they had found any evidence."

5. Kansas City Cop Blows Whistle On Department's Jim Crow Policing (March 28) "Williams's suit further claims that officers were told to meet their ticket quotas in minority neighborhoods because it would be 'easier to write multiple citations on every stop.' Noting that minority residents might feel cranky about all the over-policing, the command staff allegedly advised to 'approach every car with the mindset to be ready to kill everybody in the car.'"

And another one from Wonkette: Sixty-Three Years Later, White Mom Finally Gets 'Ruby Bridges' Banned From Elementary School (March 27) "Every teacher but Barbara Henry, who had been hired specifically for her previous experience teaching in integrated schools, refused to teach her. But she went back and sat alone in that classroom as Henry's only student. Every day. For a year. At the age of six."

6. Tamping alone (March 29) "I try not to use phrases like 'America’s declining social capital' when talking to customers who are buying things like tampers, but I do ask whether they might just want to  borrow one from a neighbor or from their brother-in-law or somebody. That’s usually a better solution for them, for their budget, for neighborliness and social capital, for America, and for democracy in general."

7. It’s Time to Change My Pseudonym (March 15) This is a post from "Jackson Wu", a blogger at the Patheos Evangelical channel, about why he's not going to use the pseudonym "Jackson Wu" any more. Long story short, he's a white guy (but he worked as a missionary in China for 15 years, and he speaks Mandarin Chinese), and he's gotten a lot of backlash recently for using a Chinese-sounding name on his blog. (Especially after he published a post that strongly criticized a book by an African writer about the problems in Western missions.) And then, someone posted his real name on Twitter, so he has decided to use his real name (Brad Vaughn) on his blog now.

I live in China, so I have some thoughts on this.

First of all, I've followed his blog for a while. I like it. (If I had to guess, I would have guessed that he's a Chinese American who moved to China and lived there over 10 years.) He's evangelical, so I don't agree with a lot of his beliefs, but I appreciate him discussing Christian concepts from a more Chinese perspective. And, giving up your own culture to go live as an immigrant on the other side of the world, well, I admire that. To have that lived experience is a very significant thing. 

About having a Chinese name: Well, yes, I think if you come live in China, you should choose a Chinese name. I have a Chinese name. Mostly I use it for things like signing up for food delivery apps. It's not "cultural appropriation," it's "making life easier for the delivery drivers who don't know how to read English." And Vaughn says that Chinese people in China think it's great that he uses a Chinese name- and yes, I can confirm that. It communicates that he really wants to learn their culture and be like them.

It's, uh, a bit weird that he's responding to his critics by talking about how useful/good/etc it is to have a Chinese name in China. I don't think anyone was criticizing him for using a Chinese name in China. The issue was that he writes a blog, in English, so that means it's for a mostly-western audience, where he uses a Chinese-sounding pseudonym, and one of the main topics he blogs about is discussing evangelical Christian beliefs from a Chinese perspective. (And then he criticized a book by an African writer talking about her experiences as an immigrant in the US- to make that criticism as a white person is a different thing than making that criticism as an Asian person.) I mean, it's fine that he wants to discuss Christianity from a Chinese perspective- but to do so as an ethnically Chinese person is a different thing than to do it as a white person who has a lot of experience in China. So yes, I do think it was a problem that he was misrepresenting himself.

As for the part about the Chinese government persecuting Christians- yes, I believe him there, but I think American readers will get a skewed picture of the actual situation. Vaughn is specifically talking about house churches in China. There are also churches in church buildings in China. You can search on any map app and find a church near you. You can walk up to the building and there will be a sign posted that says what time the service is on Sunday. I've done that. American Christians have this impression that Christianity isn't allowed at all in China, but that's just not true. The thing is, these churches in church buildings are monitored by the government, and there are restrictions on what they can say. (Though I've been to services at Chinese government-approved churches and they seemed like pretty normal Christian churches to me- whatever restrictions there are, they are not obvious to the average churchgoer.) The house churches are a totally different story. House churches do what they want, but then they have to worry about persecution.

8. Getting to ‘No’: How I Negotiated My Bride Price Away (March 24) "But she remained unconvinced. 'If a man doesn’t pay a financial price to marry you, he won’t value you as much in the marriage,' she replied."

Like I said before, I married a Chinese man and nobody gave me any money. (We got some cash as a wedding gift, but nothing like this asymmetrical "bride price" thing.) This is more of a tradition in the countryside rather than in big cities.

9. Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud (March 31) "Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges."

Blogaround

1. The kingdom of heaven is like: Legal quirk allows gay couples in China to get married online in conservative Utah (October 6). I love this!

2. You CANNOT and MUST NOT Solve This Sudoku (October 3) 1-hour-35-minute sudoku solve video, with a very advanced ruleset. (This puzzle illustrates the concept of a "deadly pattern" very well.) I love this. Here are my favorite quotes:

• 55 minutes, with not one single digit in the grid yet: "And if this doesn't work, I'm turning the camera off, because my brain, my brain is already shot to pieces."
• 1 hr 03 min: "Have we been doing sudoku? That is a philosophical question."
• 1 hr 19 min: "What an extraordinary puzzle this is. Imagine if I don't manage to solve it now. I will probably cry, actually. I will probably cry, because this is, it's amazing. It's amazing."

3. Biblical Womanhood T-Shirt. I love this!

T-shirt that has a drawing of a tent peg through a skull, and says "Biblical Womanhood, Judges 4-5"

4. Sign o’ the times, mess with your mind, hurry before it’s 2 late (October 4) "We were 16 years old and our pastor, youth pastor, and the Bible teacher at our Christian school were all assuring us that we’d never be 26."

5. Forced Birth is Torture. (September 22) [content note: medical/pregnancy trauma. Mother and baby survive, fortunately] "What happened next was several hours of careful cutting and suction and burning and stitching while I lay with my arms strapped down and the baby wailed."

6. If the Media Are Reluctant To Properly Label the GOP’s Racist, Christian Nationalist Ideologies, We’ll Have Trouble Hanging on to Democracy (May 20) "Every time a Republican who has voiced “Great Replacement” views in the past is interviewed, he or she needs to be explicitly asked about it—and if they don’t actively disavow their past claims, it needs to be stated that they subscribe to white nationalist ideology—an ideology that has killed hundreds in the US in the last years alone, and millions in the last century worldwide."

7. The New York Times Has Badly Lost Its Bearings (May 13) 

8. I Opposed Abortion Until I Fought To Defeat Personhood In Mississippi. Here’s Why. (May 25) "'We’re just trying to get the amendment on the ballot. That’ll all get figured out later.' The brush-off chilled me. I had an ectopic pregnancy in 2004 and, unfortunately, that is not a pregnancy that will survive. It must be terminated, or the mother will die."

9. What Jesus Said to the Homeless Man (October 2) "In my experience, one hundred percent of people experiencing homelessness battle demons every day."

10. ‘Graduation Day’ for Guide Dogs Highlights Their Rarity in China (October 10) "However, the number of guide dogs in the country is grossly inadequate — a 2019 report by the China Association of the Blind said there were fewer than 200 guide dogs for a country with about 17 million people with visual impairments."

11. Rochester to pay $12M to settle lawsuit filed by Daniel Prude family, largest civil rights settlement in city's history (October 6) [content note: police brutality] "The settlement is not an admission of liability, the court documents show."

12. Angela Lansbury, 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'Beauty and the Beast' star, dies at 96 (October 12) 

13. How SEO Is Gentrifying the Internet (2020) "'Can Cats Eat Blueberries?' was a masterpiece by SEO writing standards and an absolute turd by regular writing standards. A reader might spend five minutes reading the article and still have no idea if it’s OK to roll one (1) blueberry across the floor for their floofy pouncemonster to chase. However, as long as the reader spends those five minutes looking at the page—and more importantly, the ads that are placed on it—then mission accomplished. This is where the SEOification of the internet has brought us, and it [****]ing sucks."

14. Sex Work and the Power of Choice (2011) "When you think about this for ten seconds, you should realize that it makes no sense. People in any other service profession can, and do, turn down customers they don’t want to work with."

15. Sex-Positivity, Compulsory Sexuality and Intersecting Identities (2012) "There are too many issues of power and privilege at play which are not adequately challenged and criticised. The institution of compulsory sexuality still underpins sex-positivism."

16. that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough (August 18) "Girls looking insufficiently feminine is now a complaint that the government takes 'seriously', and that the government then investigates."

17. The City of Philadelphia Apologizes for Decades of Medical Experiments Performed on Black Inmates (October 11) "From 1951 through 1974, Dr. Albert Kligman, a dermatologist from the University of Pennsylvania, conducted 'the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin—a component of Agent Orange.'" And the article goes on to describe experiments even more disturbing than that. WTF????

18. Epidural-Induced Births ‘Far Behind’ in China, Says Top Expert (October 12) "Mi Weidong, an anesthesiologist at the country’s top health authority leading the taskforce in promoting epidural anesthesia, said that only 30% of female respondents in a nationwide survey were offered anesthetic services during childbirth, despite a large majority of them opting for a more painfree delivery method."

19. (Chill) Ex-Ace Narrative 1: Validation (August 14) "Amidst this chorus of voices, ace communities were the only ones to consistently say 'The subjective experiences you're having are real and okay-- even if they're non-normative and statistically uncommon. You can articulate your own relationship to sex and sexuality on your own terms. You don't need to change your behaviors/desires/attitudes to more normative ones for the sake of fitting a relationship or an ideological ideal. You don't have to organize your life around the expectation that you're someday have a more normative relationship to sexuality.'"

Blogaround

A cat sleeping with a little pillow. Image source.

1. 20th-Blogiversary Fundraising Extravaganza (posted July 6) The Slacktivist has been blogging for 20 years, which is pretty awesome. His blog is one of my favorites.

2. Is your activism getting in activism’s way? (posted July 5) "One of the worst offenders in recent weeks is the 'camping' meme."

3. Franklin Graham and Naghmeh Panahi: An all-too-common betrayal (posted June 28) [content note: abuse] "As I got up to leave, the chaplain gazed earnestly at me. He asked, Was I absolutely certain that the marriage was dead? Was there no chance at all for reconciliation?"

4. 'An ingrained fear for your life.' Black men say they understand why Jayland Walker fled police (posted July 10) [content note: murder, police brutality, racism] "Webb said he advises the young Black men he mentors to comply with police when stopped, put their hands on the steering wheel where they can be seen, and answer, 'Yes, Sir' or 'No, Sir.' Still, Webb said, that doesn't guarantee a Black person will walk away from the encounter."

5. Everything Everywhere All At Once (posted July?) [content note: spoilers for the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once"] "And there were things in Everything Everywhere All At Once that I’d never seen before on the big screen. I’m not talking about the dildo fights, though those were indeed new to me. I’m talking more about seeing an immigrant Chinese mother allowed to fail, and fail repeatedly; seeing a dorky Chinese dad be a badass and a love interest; seeing a Chinese family openly having emotionally vulnerable reconciliations with each other; seeing an entire cast of people from multiple Chinese diasporas coming together to create a movie in which the greatest villain to defeat is the bureaucracy excluding Chinese people from being part of the United States."

6. Brett Kavanaugh Doesn't Even Get To Enjoy His Tiramisu At Morton's, Whaa Whaa Whaa (posted July 8) "Actually if yr Wonkette understands the Dobbs decision, if the all-seeing Founders did not specifically write into the Constitution that every American has the right to eat dinner, then no, Brett Kavanaugh does not have the right to eat dinner without protesters reminding him of his life choices. It’s a bummer, but we respect the Court’s authority." 

7. Relationship Therapist Ranks Disney Romances (posted June 7) Love this! Some really good insights here about what makes a healthy relationship.

Blogaround

1. Why we don’t want cops at Pride celebrations (June 7)

2. Christ in the Trailer: A Lesson about Migration and Greed from a Literal Hell (June 29) [content note: graphic descriptions of dying]

3. For China’s Same-Sex Couples, Even Guardianship Is Often Out of Reach (June 30) "One well-known case occurred in 2020 in the northeastern city of Shenyang, involving a lesbian couple in their late 80s who had lived together for more than 50 years. After one of the women became mentally impaired, her partner found herself cut out of the medical and financial decision-making process in favor of the woman’s biological relatives. In flagrant disregard of the decades the two spent together, the relatives sold the couple’s house, which was under the impaired woman’s name."

4. 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana for abortion (July 3)

5. For Rural Chinese Women, a Plot of Land Is Too Much to Ask (July 2) "When Ren went to the village committee to register as a separate household and apply for a residential plot, she remembers being told that 'only men were eligible, and women can forget about it.' On her way home, she passed a wall-painted slogan from the one-child policy era urging people not to abort girls: 'Sons and daughters are equally valuable — daughters also carry on the family line!' She felt it was deeply ironic."

6. 7/4 Flashback: Douglass (July 4) "The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem 'the Fugitive Slave Law' as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man." PREACH!

7. Report Backs Abuse Allegations Against Chris Rice (June 23) This is the guy with the song about what if Scooby Doo got saved. It turns out he abused boys in a church youth group.

Blogaround

Photo from a drag show at HUNT bar. Image source.

1. Help support LGBTQ bar in Shanghai, China! (posted June 16) This is a GoFundMe for HUNT, a bar here in Shanghai which has been a huge supporter of the LGBTQ community, and is now having a bad time because of the Shanghai lockdown. It had to close in early March because of the lockdown, and now even though the lockdown is over, there are still restrictions on businesses in the food and beverage industry.

If you want to help the queer community during Pride Month, this is a good way to do it. We need HUNT. It's difficult for people who are openly queer in China; they need to have safe spaces like this to be themselves.

2. My 2022 Reader Survey is still open (until June 30). Thanks so much to everyone who has already taken it!

3. How to support abortion access in a post-Roe America (posted June 25) This article covers a bunch of different areas. Lots of suggestions here.

4. Rent: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (posted June 20) "That is the core issue with rental housing in this country though: people who think that investments deserve more respect than basic human needs." PREACH!

(Also, John Oliver shows a clip of Dave Ramsey being ... being ... how shall I put this ... when Jesus comes to separate the sheep and the goats, and he says "I was a stranger and you did not invite me in", Dave Ramsey is going to be in big trouble.)

5. Tom Cruise and Scientology: A lesson in cognitive dissonance (posted June 17) "Former Scientologist Chris Shelton paints Tom Cruise as a complete narcissist, adding, 'I won’t diagnose Tom Cruise [as being a psychopath] but I will say that he is not a good person…. It’s just people have no idea. The guy has such good looks and a winning smile that everybody just falls to pieces over him. He’s a monster. And we really need to be clear about that: Tom Cruise is a monster.'"

6. Why Are Police So Bad at Their Jobs? (posted June 2) "Not for nothing, clearance rates have dropped to all-time lows at the same time that police budgets have swollen to all-time highs, suggesting that more funding has actually resulted in police being less effective. 'It is a great public mismatch in understanding, training, and expectations,' Baughman told me. 'Increases in police officers or police budgets have not been shown to reduce crime or make us safer.'"