Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Types of Tornado Alert (July 3) From xkcd.

2. Chip Off The Old Block (July 1) "I’m not claiming any of this is smart or interesting. I’m claiming he constantly says whatever he’s thinking about to anyone around him, no matter how irrelevant and repetitive, and that this is of course the first sign of a future great blogger."

His kids are about the same age as my daughter, and yeah this whole post is what it's like.

3. On Christianity and Aliens (cont’d.) (June 29) "Your faith can be shattered not just by visitors from Vulcan and Vega, but by visitors from Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. It is existentially threatened by the idea that God might also love anybody who isn’t you."

4. Platner formally withdraws from Maine Senate race and Democrats announce process to name new nominee (July 11) "The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied."

And: The Banality of Misogyny (July 7, via) "It’s just occurring to me, she says, because I’ve never told anyone he assaulted me, I don’t know how I would ever get anyone to believe me if I needed to down the line. So I wanted to tell you, just in case."

And also, about Graham Platner, there are some corners of the internet (for example) which are discussing the fact that the victim apparently had texted him to say she needed a "glute massage", and he said he was coming over, and she told him not to. Discussing whether this means that it's not really rape.

I'm kind of thinking about this from 3 different angles. First, there's the modesty/ purity culture angle, which says that if a girl/woman does anything that might inspire a man to think about her body in a sexual way, well, men just aren't able to control themselves. From that point, whatever he does is not his fault. She should know that.

There's also the "it was a misunderstanding" angle. Whenever there's a big news story where a victim comes forward to talk about being sexually assaulted, and we hear the details of the story, there are always things that people will point to and say "she was sending mixed messages" and how could the perpetrator have known that the victim didn't want it? If she doesn't want it, but she doesn't tell him that directly, and she just goes along with it, then from his perspective it's consensual, and he is utterly shocked to later find out that she feels it was not consensual. I don't think this applies to the Platner case because the victim says she directly said no (here's the link to the Politico article that broke the story), but I've seen it in other cases.

I think there's quite a difference between "mixed messages" and "literally how could he have known that she didn't want it, there were no signs." And I think it's very normal that there would be [what people call] "mixed messages" leading up to a sexual assault, because the reason the perpetrator was able to get that close is because the victim does like them / trust them / is attracted to them, to some extent. Calling it "mixed messages" assumes that the only 2 possibilities are "she wants to have sex with him, specifically in the way that he wants" or "she doesn't want anything to do with him at all", and when we categorize her actions into these 2 categories, wow it's so puzzling how some of them fit into one category and some of them fit into the other one. Mixed messages. 

Like, uh, maybe she actually wanted something else, and the problem is that we're trying to force it to be one of these 2 specific things.

And then there's the "playing social games" angle (not sure what to call it, but we'll call it that). Basically, there's sort of a set of rules for social interactions between people, and you can manipulate people to get what you want- as long as you stay within the rules, no one can blame you. For example, if someone says "no", then you have to stop, and you can't have sex with them. But if you ask them over and over, and you manage to catch them in a state of mind where they don't say "no" because they don't have energy or they're not thinking clearly- ha, they didn't say "no", that means you *can* have sex with them and you can't be blamed. You've played the game and won, that's how it works.

You see this same kind of thinking when kids annoy each other playing the "I'm not touching you" game. One kid is hovering in the other kid's personal space, but because they are not *actually* touching, they are still acting within the rules, and they claim that the other kid therefore can't complain about it. It's a line of thinking based on "see what I can get away with", where the standard way we interact with other people is that we try to get what we want, we try to do things to people that they don't like, and it's just a matter of being clever enough to do it within the rules that society has prescribed.

So then when people talk about rape and consent, and say things like "drunk people can't consent to sex," for people who are coming from that "playing social games" perspective, it comes across like a slight modification in the rules of the social games. Like, now instead of targeting drunk people, in your efforts to do things to people that they don't want, you can maybe try getting your victim to drink a little bit but not enough to "count" as drunk under the societally-recognized rules.

And for the people arguing "it was a misunderstanding"- maybe we shouldn't take that to mean "if you, as an objective observer, witnessed the entire sequence of events, you genuinely might not realize that this person didn't want it" but rather "this person said something flirty, therefore the rules of social obligation say that the other person is *right* to expect that they are going to have sex. Why are you feminists suddenly trying to change the rules? This is so unfair." The "misunderstanding" is about whether the victim said something which does or does not belong to the category of "flirty things that mean they want to have sex"- if it does fit in that category, then they *do* owe the other person sex- the "misunderstanding" is that the victim believed it did not fit in that category, but the perpetrator thought it did. Rather than the "misunderstanding" being about "I paid attention to all of your behavior and I actually had no idea that you didn't want it."

But the real solution is not about closing loopholes, defining the rules perfectly so that there's no opportunity for rapists to rape while still carefully following all the rules. What we actually want is consent culture. A cultural norm where people own their own bodies, and you cannot do something to someone that they don't want. Like, genuinely, it's not about keeping within society's rules; it's about not doing things to people that they don't want.

It was so mind-blowing to me to learn about boundaries- the idea that the bedrock truth is that I own myself, my body, my money, my feelings, etc, and the challenge of navigating the social games of what to say in a confusing situation is just a superficial external layer, rather than a game that I need to win in order to escape the prospect of people doing things to me that I don't want. 

Like if a pushy salesperson keeps telling me I should buy their product, and I tell them I don't want it, and they explain to me why my reasons for not wanting it are not valid, and we go back and forth, until I don't know what to say anymore- so, that means I have to buy it. Under the "playing social games" logic, that's what it means. The salesperson is better at the game of staying within the appearance of having a polite conversation while also pushing me into something I don't want. But, no, let's not look at it that way, let's look at it from the "boundaries" perspective. My money is mine, and nobody has the right to *make* me buy something- and that's true regardless of my ability to think of a polite/convincing response. "No" is a complete sentence. You don't *have* to explain your reasons. Sure, it's good to be polite about it- it's a little rude to just directly say "you can't make me do this, you have no right"- but that politeness is just a surface-level thing, that's just a layer you put on the top, while the bedrock truth of it is nobody has the right to make you do something you don't want. If you can't think of a polite response, that doesn't mean you lost the social game and now people have a right to do things to you- it means you are allowed to be a little rude, to say "no" even though people might think that level of directness is a bit outside of the rules of the social games.

It's like I said in this post, Welcome to Purity Culture, Today We are Overanalyzing Hugs, where I responded to an article that included a section on what to do "If his hug makes you feel uncomfortable" that gave some tips about how to avoid a hug while still staying within the rules of the social games- for example, "When he reaches out to hug you, turn and give him a side hug rather than a front-on hug." Sure, these can be useful suggestions, but I didn't like how it was framed like, here are some strategies for playing this social game, hope this helps you win. Rather than, like, you have an absolute right to refuse a hug, and here are some tips for how to spin your refusal in a socially-acceptable polite way, but at the end of the day, if someone doesn't get the hint and they're still trying to invade your space, they are the one in the wrong, and you are allowed to be rude.

Anyway, something I've seen on the internet, where people talk about consent and explain it as, literally you should only have sex with someone who wants to have sex with you. It's not about memorizing more and more detailed rules and staying within them while also manipulating people to get what you want. No, it's way simpler than that- it's about whether the other person *genuinely wants to have sex with you*. And then there are replies from people who finally got that that's what "consent" means, and they're incredulous. They reply and say 'this sounds totally unworkable. I can only have sex with someone who genuinely wants to have sex with me? That doesn't sound like something that would ever happen- you feminists are saying I can never have sex at all.' This really says something about them- maybe they haven't technically raped anyone (?), but their entire approach for all of their previous sexual experiences has been about manipulating people into things they may or may not want. Like, approaching dating/sex more as a game theory thing than as a "we both actually want this" thing.

Playing social games vs actually caring about what the other person wants. If someone says she wants a "glute massage", then by the rules of the social games, you can probably get away with claiming that she was asking for it. And, from the "playing social games" perspective, that's what matters- rather than genuinely caring about what the other person wants or doesn't want.

5. Sunday reading (July 5) "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him."

6. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, dies after a brief and unexpected illness, his office says (July 12) "Graham appeared to break with Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” But the senator returned to the fold and remained close with the president during his second term."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Two-hundred-and-fifty years in, Justice Jackson is doing the work that is needed from our leaders (July 5) "On this Fourth of July, I am thinking about how important it is for the United States that we have leaders willing to speak forthrightly about our past and ambitiously about our future in order to make it through the treacherous present."

2. The Wet And Wild Freedom Day Catastrophe (July 7) "The only place for these tens of thousands to go, realistically, was the streets outside the event, which is exactly what happened: a crush of bodies clustered at the entrance points and choking off traffic for blocks. Everyone is just as exposed to the elements out here as we were in there, except now we are angrily bunched together with nothing to do but endure the storm and stew about the stupidity of it all."

Donald Trump Throws Miserable Tribute To Himself On America's 250th Birthday (July 6) "The Trump team claims it had planned for the weather, but the slapdash look and feel of the tents, the free-for-all of water distribution from pallets, and the general lack of common sense and guidance in dealing with (increasingly) extreme weather suggests otherwise."

3. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo shot and killed by ICE agent in Houston, authorities confirm: Live updates (July 11) 

Men who witnessed deadly Houston shooting say ICE statement is false, attorney says (July 10) "But the three men who were riding in Salgado Araujo’s work van told attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra the version of events presented by ICE is false: 'At no point did they use the van to ram into the ICE agents and at no point were these ICE agents’ lives ever in any danger,' the lawyer said in a video posted to his Instagram."

4. GOP governor signs bill forcing trans inmates to detransition (July 6) "The bill does not allow those who have already begun treatment to continue and does not offer any plan to wean them off the medication. Experts say forcing them to stop at all, let alone cold turkey, will have disastrous mental and physical health consequences."

5. The Christian Past That Wasn't (June 30, via) "There are many stories like this that invent a grand narrative about the Christian past of our nation— a Christian past that, put simply, wasn’t. Some of these stories are false. Some contain a measure of truth, but they are exaggerated in such a way that they become mythical. Those who believe America was or is or should be a Christian nation use these fabrications to create myths about America from the days of the first European arrival to the present."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How Emojis Have Become a Language Within a Language in China (June 9) Ah, yes, many layers of memes in Chinese internet culture.

My husband knows all about this, and told me another example: In comment sections, people will say they are 盖楼 [gài lóu] (adding to a building), because a long thread of comments is like a tall building, and the OP is 楼主 [lóu zhǔ] (owner of the building). If people don't like OP, they will write 楼主傻逼 [lóu zhǔ shǎ bī], "OP is a dumbass", but a lot of internet platforms will censor 傻逼 [shǎ bī], so people will just write lzsb instead (write the first letters instead of the characters themselves). But then, some people have a keyboard which will autocorrect lzsb to 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], which sounds like the name of some kind of flatbread from the city of Lanzhou. My husband tells me that he has met people who think there really is a special traditional food in Lanzhou called 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], and he has to tell them it's not a real thing.

"But," he says, "this meme is from 20 years ago."

2. Meet Splash, a furry detective solving underwater mysteries (May 29) Wow, this otter is trained to search for human remains in the water.

3. Elephant Bananza || Donkey Kong Bananza (Original Soundtrack) (2025) My kids have been watching my husband play this Donkey Kong game, and they are all so into it. And now we also listen to the soundtrack all the time- apparently in the game, Donkey Kong can turn into different animals, like an elephant or a zebra, and there's a different song for each. My toddler is getting really good at hearing a song and identifying what animal Donkey Kong would turn into at that part of the game.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. All Americans Need Pride Now (June 8) "At the moment, the focus of MAGA’s sexual oppression is on trans people. But what happens after they have been suppressed, and America still has problems? If you draw the conclusion that we’re still not pure enough, who do we go after next? Gays and lesbians, I suppose, and then women who have gotten abortions. And promiscuous women. And then straight men and women who don’t act masculine or feminine enough."

2. Jesus loves me, this I know, for Pete Hegseth tells me so (June 8) 

3. "Fascism"—New Federal Rule Would Require Federal Funding Recipients To Deny Trans People Exist (June 9) "If finalized, the rule would reach every hospital, university, school district, state government, nonprofit, and homeless shelter that receives federal funding, effectively requiring much of American institutional life to discriminate against transgender people as a condition of receiving federal money."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Mamdani's New Trans Direct Clinic Will Deny Care To Those Under 19 (June 9) "When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor, he promised to fight back—showing up to protests outside NYU Langone, pledging $65 million for gender-affirming care, and vowing to use every lever of city power to protect trans New Yorkers from federal intimidation. Since taking office, those promises have largely gone unfulfilled: no enforcement action against the hospitals that shuttered their programs, no fines from the Commission on Human Rights despite complaints open for over a year, and no public accounting of the promised funding."

Cleveland Clinic Establishes Second “Detransition” Center in the Country After DOJ Settlement (June 10) "'Detransition services were always a part of gender affirming care,' Adkison continued. 'There continues to be no increased need, and it is a bigoted, sad performative farce the Clinic is choosing to promote.'"

Yes, exactly. If people want to detransition, for whatever reason, they should have access to medical care related to that. But, wouldn't that just be a normal part of a hospital's gender-affirming care/ hormones/ gender-related therapy? Making it into a separate thing only makes sense in the political fiction where trans-affirming doctors are out to get you and want to make you trans against your wishes, and the MAGAs who have common sense are heroically coming to save those victims and establish the opposite kind of clinic, where we help them get back to their correct gender. That's not how it works at all.

4. Judge blocks Trump’s sweeping freeze on immigration benefits for 39 countries (June 5) "The 135-page ruling, from U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, opens the door for hundreds of thousands of people with pending immigration-related applications to have these benefits unpaused. These immigrants were following the rules, McConnell wrote, but were nonetheless unlawfully targeted by the government because of where they came from."

5. Federal judge blocks Trump admin's effort to move 14 trans women to men's prisons (June 9) "Ultimately, Lamberth found that the mandatory transfer to men’s prisons 'was not a reasonable response' because 'it is fundamentally unreasonable for prison officials to respond to serious risks such as mental health deterioration, self-harm, and suicidality by intentionally creating those risks and offering to treat them after they predictably occur.'"

6. Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’ (June 7, via) " So, we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer."

7. White House response to hantavirus and Ebola contrasts with COVID criticisms (June 11) "'The administration is trying to look tough,' Gostin says. 'And that's just no way to deal with an infectious disease that really doesn't know borders. We need to use science and public health rather than political theater and overkill.'"

8. Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade (June 14, 1-minute video) Hooray!

9. A plan to get lifesaving food to hungry kids was working well — until it wasn't (June 13) "'This place used to be full,' he says, able to store about 4,000 boxes — enough to feed over 4,000 kids for several weeks of treatment. 'But since USAID left, since the start of the problem with Trump, UNICEF has become weaker,' he says, gesturing at the empty space."

10. Ms. Rachel meets children with parents in ICE custody (June 10, 1-minute video)

Ms. Rachel brings children’s letters from ICE custody to Capitol Hill, including those from Colorado Springs family (June 11) "Mothers of some of the over 3,500 children cycled through the facility told investigative publication ProPublica that children were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Happily Never After: The Curious Case of Love and Respect (Deep Dive) (February 5, 1-hour-15-minute video) This is a deep dive into the book "Love and Respect," which is the best selling Christian marriage book. The overall thesis of the book is that women need love and men need respect. If your husband is not treating you right, you can solve all your marriage problems by respecting him more. By never disagreeing with him. By never bringing up any problems. As it turns out, this is extremely bad advice. (This is part 1 in a 3-part series.)

2. No ID, No Support, No Plan: Michigan's wrongfully convicted launch app to fill reentry gaps (March 5) "Unlike parolees, who often have months of notice before being released and access to reentry services, exonerees may be released with as little as a few hours' warning and no support at all."

3. New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work (March 11) "These 10 reviews are not science. They are the machinery of a government that has decided to eliminate transgender healthcare and is working backward from that conclusion."

4. Technical Debt Collectors: China’s Coders Count Cost of AI Errors (March 12) "When programmers point out an error, the AI will apologize and acknowledge the problem, Wei says. But the new code it produces often introduces new bugs somewhere else, and the process repeats."

5. What Do We Owe the Insufferable? (January 30, via) "Liberals and leftists, committed to deinstitutionalization and autonomy, respond by 'pretending that mental illness never results in antisocial behavior, much less violent crime.'"

6. Home Remedies (March 9) From xkcd.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Photos from Iran and across the Middle East as the war enters Week 2 (March 10)

2. Thousands in New York City must work to keep SNAP food benefits. ‘The pressure is on.’ (March 3, via) "But a measure pushed by Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration will require about 123,000 New Yorkers to prove that they are working, volunteering or in school beginning in March. This now includes veterans, homeless people, youth aging out of foster care, and parents with children older than 14. It also means that some seniors who had retired under the old rules will now have to go back to work to continue getting food benefits."

3. NYU Langone faces Wednesday deadline to resume gender-affirming care for minors (March 11) "But state officials said NYU Langone’s move violated New York’s sweeping human rights law, which bans discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity. Attorney General Letitia James’ office gave NYU Langone until March 11 to resume the procedures."

4. Statue depicting Trump, Epstein as Jack, Rose from 'Titanic' appears on National Mall (March 11)

5. The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. (March 10)

6. Is the US Military Trying to Bring Back Jesus? (March 14) "I absolutely 100% believe that some military leaders are using Evangelical Christian end times prophesy to generate excitement for troops to go into battle. That’s been happening for years, and they need it now more than ever considering that the past few wars in the Middle East were actually popular, while this one is not."

7. House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements (March 14)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Love's Work in "Go, Dog, Go" (December 6) "I ask you, who has been changed by their first meeting? She has only become more of herself, while he has adopted a brand-new hat habit."

2. If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys (December 5) "In practice it’s a lot more complicated because the cover charge and the price of drinks is never the only variable being considered by the “ladies” that Ladies Night is trying to attract."

3. The Reality of AI Animal Content (December 5, via) "AI videos and heavily edited clips can show animals doing things they would never do in a healthy, ethical setting, such as jumping into a person’s arms at a zoo, endangered species at your doorstep, or dancing on cue. This can create unrealistic and even dangerous expectations."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Alina Habba Quits Job She Never Legally Held (December 8) "Habba has now pretended to resign the job she’s been pretending to have."

2. Jesse Watters says criticizing boat strikes makes people sound “effeminate” (December 8, via) Jesse Watters really went on tv and said that people *like* the videos of military strikes on defenseless boats, murdering people. "People love these videos. They hit your feed, they're like, yes, let's go." This actually says more about what kind of person Jesse Watters is, yikes.

3. Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide (December 5) "'As an immigrant takes the oath of citizenship, it’s a reflection and recognition of the tremendous sacrifice of time, energy, and financial resources they have made in the hopes of becoming a full member of our community and nation,' said Elizabeth Sweet, Executive Director of MIRA Coalition. 'To have that final step canceled is unnecessarily cruel and does nothing to make this country a safer place.'"

And: How Trump is remaking one agency to aid his deportation push (December 10) "'They're reaching deeper into the weeds of immigration policy, and they may be more successful in slowing legal immigration, which at least some members of the Trump administration have stated is their goal,' said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. 'That's a pretty different stance towards immigration than we've seen over recent decades.'"

4. Border Patrol left Charlotte. The damage stayed behind (December 10) "Many immigrants in hiding have relied on allies to help with basic services like delivering food and medicine. Volunteers have set up a support network. People deliver supplies, take reports of vehicles suspected of belonging to immigration agents and go check them out, and wear bright yellow vests while they watch over children walking to school."

5. Afghan CIA fighters, like National Guard attack suspect, face stark reality in U.S. (December 10) "After being evacuated to the U.S. in 2021, when the Taliban swept into Kabul, many Zero Unit soldiers came to feel they had been abandoned by CIA officials."

Sharing this because I will always be on the side of 'we should give immigrants the support they need, to deal with bureaucracy/cultural/language/etc barriers.' But also, I'm a little uncomfortable with the implication that 'the big lesson to be learned from the Washington DC shooting is [whatever my pet cause is]' which I've seen a lot of- from the felon, when he uses this as a reason to discriminate against all Afghan immigrants (and also other countries he doesn't like????), and from those of us on the left, saying this is the MAGAs' fault for sending the National Guard there in the first place, and perhaps I'm also participating in this by sharing this article, as if to imply that the actual problem wasn't the shooting itself, but the lack of support received by Afghans who worked for the CIA. Which is why I am writing this disclaimer. No, let's be clear about this, this is the shooter's fault, there is no excuse to go around shooting people.

6. The fight to beat neglected tropical diseases was going well. 2025 could change that (December 10) "'A group of scientists went to the Hill and made the point that there is a known strategy in treating communities that are infected,' says Wainwright. 'You go in, treat them once a year and if you do it for a set number of years, you can either eliminate or control the disease.'"

The devastation caused by the shutdown of USAID is terrible, but here's something we can do about it: Helen Keller Intl is working on this. Here's the link to donate to them. 

7. Democrats Must Reject The Premise Of Trans Healthcare Bans In Republican Healthcare Offer (December 10) "For these reasons, gender-affirming care has long been recognized as medically necessary for those who need it. Stripping an entire class of people of such care is unconscionable."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Federal Court Strikes Down Georgia’s Ban on GAC for Incarcerated Trans People (December 10) 

8. The Trump-Epstein Emergency Isn't in the Files (December 5) "Trump’s treatment of Maxwell—a convicted sex trafficker— is by far the most glaring, brazen, and openly corrupt part of the current moment involving the president."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. New Texas law aims to save lives by clarifying the state abortion ban. Will it work? (July 19) This law is probably a good thing, but it's still based on the premise that we have to separate those evil murderous women who want abortions because they're so evil, from those good innocent mothers who want abortions for the right reasons.

2. Replication Crisis (July 18) From xkcd.

3. One Minute Park (via) This is a cool little site which shows you 60-second videos of random parks.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Court Orders 19-Year-Old Asylum Seeker Released After ICE Unlawfully Arrested Him at Immigration Hearing (July 17) "This happened despite Oliver’s legal entry into the United States, lack of a criminal history, and compliance with all government orders when applying for U.S. citizenship."

2. 10 Americans are freed by Venezuela in a prisoner swap for migrants in El Salvador (July 18) I'm confused about this- so apparently now all the Venezuelans that the US sent to CECOT have been sent to Venezuela? Is that good? Why were they originally deported to El Salvador if Venezuela wanted them back? And what about getting justice for those who were falsely accused of being "gang members" and mistreated by the US and El Salvador?

More on that: Andry Is Free. Trump’s Barbarous Immigration Regime Is Just Getting Started. (July 21) "For 125 days Andry and hundreds of other men were held in a torture prison where they got a “beating for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner.” They had been kidnapped by our government and left in that hellhole to rot with no due process, no access to legal counsel, no phone call home. They were completely stripped of their humanity. In many cases their only crime was existing in Stephen Miller’s America while being Venezuelan. For some, their sin was having the wrong tattoo."

“We Were Kidnapped” (July 18) "On Friday, more than 200 Venezuelans disappeared to a megaprison in El Salvador returned home. The horror stories are already emerging."

3. Stephen Colbert Announces The Cancellation Of “The Late Show” (July 18) He says the show will end in May 2026.

4. Evidence challenging the Trump admin's immigration moves is now out in the open (July 11) "The evidence is damning on all fronts, but especially as to the Trump administration’s actions on March 15, 2025, when it attempted to begin carrying out President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act without a war and without — as was later detailed — as much process as was given to suspected Nazis during World War II."

5. Congress rolls back $9 billion in public media funding and foreign aid (July 18) "The House has approved a Trump administration plan to rescind $9 billion in previously allocated funds, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) — a move that cuts all federal support for NPR, PBS and their member stations — and about $7 billion in foreign aid."

6. “Even God Cannot Hear Us Here”: What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison (July 17) "No one deserves to live in cramped, unsanitary, inhumane conditions and have their medical needs ignored. No one deserves to have their religious needs ignored. And no one deserves to lack access to nutritious food. I am free, but my true freedom is interlinked with the freedom of many women I lived alongside in ICE prison." Written by Rümeysa Öztürk.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Find out why your health insurer denied your claim. (via) "ProPublica’s Claim File Helper lets you customize a letter requesting the notes and documents your insurer used when deciding to deny you coverage. Get your claim file before submitting an appeal."

2. Israel kills 32 Palestinians waiting for food at US-backed Gaza aid sites (June 2, via) "Condemning the attacks, the Government Media Office described the GHF distribution sites as 'mass death traps, not humanitarian relief points'."

3. Ultramarathon runner breastfeeds her baby 3 times on her way to a surprise win (May 30) Wow! Good for her!

4. MIT class president barred from graduation after speaking out on Gaza (June 2)

The speech is very good! Watch it here: MIT Class President Megha Vemuri’s Viral Graduation Speech on Israel’s Genocide in Gaza (May 30) 

5. Penn & Teller’s Entropy: ‘The Weirdest Trick We’ve Ever Done’ | Penn & Teller: Fool Us | The CW (February 22) This is fun, I like this.

6. How six months in the West Bank undid a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination (May 30, via) "Through All That’s Left, I began traveling regularly to the West Bank with a perspective wholly different from my 18-year-old self. I joined Palestinian farmers in their fields, accompanied shepherds grazing their flocks, attended protests against Israeli state violence, and eventually spent nights — then weeks, then months — in Palestinian villages. As part of protective presence activism, my fellow activists and I documented settler attacks and military incursions, hoping our privileged status in the eyes of the state might deter violence."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. This:

Image shows 2 photos: Kermit the Frog and Trump. Image text: "Here we have a photo of a commencement address being given by a puppet controlled by someone else... and a photo of Kermit the Frog giving a commencement address." Image source.

Wait, Kermit the Frog gave a commencement speech? Apparently yes! Kermit the Frog delivers commencement speech to University of Maryland graduates (May 23)

2. The Compassion of Strangers (June 1) "Witness what happened in San Diego outside the popular Buona Forchetta restaurant in South Park. When I.C.E. showed up in its vans to detain workers—not criminals, but workers—the community did not stand idly by. They began to fill the streets, block vehicles, and were eventually dispersed with flash bangs."

3. Trump Administration Knew Vast Majority of Venezuelans Sent to Salvadoran Prison Had Not Been Convicted of U.S. Crimes (May 30) "President Donald Trump and his aides have branded the Venezuelans as 'rapists,' 'savages,' 'monsters' and 'the worst of the worst.' When multiple news organizations disputed those assertions with reporting that showed many of the deportees did not have criminal records, the administration doubled down."

4. Make America ChatGPT again: Experts say AI was used to create RFK Jr health report that cited false studies (May 30) "Analysis conducted by The Post found that at least 21 links in the original version of the report to scientific studies or articles were dead."

5. SCOTUS allows the Trump admin to end legal status for another half-million people (May 31) "'[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined … that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims,' [Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson] wrote."

6. The Trump administration is making the country less safe for domestic violence victims (May 30) "Funding pauses, cuts, firings and information purges have destabilized the infrastructure that helps victims of abuse. At the same time, federal teams dedicated to preventing sexual violence are being decimated. Departments in charge of administering grants that fund shelters for those fleeing assault have been deemed 'duplicative, DEI or simply unnecessary.'"

You know how MAGAs are saying all these things about how we need to stop trans people from using the bathroom, because we care oh so much about preventing violence against women? Well, no, the MAGA government does NOT care about protecting women. (I don't make any claims about the average Republican voter, perhaps on some level the average voter *does* want to protect women from domestic violence. I'm just talking about what we can see the government is doing.) They are making cuts to the programs that actually help. Their talk about "protecting women" is actually just about scoring points in a culture war.

7. US judge rules prisons must provide gender-affirming care for trans people (June 3) "Even if it had extensively studied the issue before deciding to stop gender-affirming care, the decision might still violate the US constitution’s eighth amendment’s protections against “cruel and unusual” punishment, Lamberth wrote."

8. Impact Metrics Dashboard (via) A website that estimates the number of deaths due to USAID cuts. Current estimate is that over 300.000 people have died. (Some background information about where this page came from: Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts)

Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Fan.tasia (2016, via) Wow, this is incredible. It's a mashup of scenes from Disney cartoons, mostly Disney Renaissance, and the way they're all cut together is extremely well-done. Amazing.

2. Will Market Shake Up Smooth the Road for Takeout Couriers? (April 30) "At the same time, JD announced plans to recruit 100,000 full-time couriers and provide them with social insurance, a potentially major shift in an industry that currently relies on a freelance, uninsured workforce."

Also from Sixth Tone: Starting Today, Rules Against Prepaid Rip-Offs Take Effect in China (May 1) I hear about this kind of thing all the time in China. People join a gym and pay for a yearlong membership, and then suddenly the gym closes, and it's impossible to get in contact with anyone to get a refund. Or people buy a package of 50 classes for their kid to do some kind of sport or extracurricular activity, and suddenly, without any notice at all, the place closes and there's no way to get your money back. So what you have to do is, first of all, DON'T prepay for things like that, and second, try to only buy classes/memberships from companies that have existed for a long time and are unlikely to suddenly disappear.

So I'm glad to see that China is making laws to protect customers in these kinds of cases.

3. Debate and Switch - The Trope That Ruins Stories (March 28, via) 33-minute video. It's about stories which set up a really interesting moral conflict, where the villain points out some problem, or presents some idea which could potentially be a good idea, and it could be a really cool story if that conflict was explored. But nope, it doesn't get explored, it gets totally ignored because then the villain randomly kills a bunch of people, or something, and so we all see that the villain is bad and must be defeated, and nobody ever comes back to the insightful points the villain had brought up in the beginning.

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Links related to that felon:

As always, you don't have to read all the news if it's too stressful. Instead, DO SOMETHING. Protest. Contact your congress people. Donate money. Check on the immigrants in your life and see if they need help.

You don't have to be up-to-date on everything! Better to find 1 issue you care about a lot, and fight for that. Better to do that than just be paralyzed and overwhelmed.

1. Mohsen Mahdawi — the Columbia student arrested at his citizenship appointment — speaks (April 29) "I see the risk, I see the opportunity, and I want the American people to see this, too. To see this level of injustice. That I am doing everything legally, that I have prepared and studied for the Constitution and that I went willingly and respected the law, did everything the way how it's supposed to be done."

2. Trump is jailing immigrant families again. A mother, father and teen tell of ‘anguish on a daily basis’ (April 24) "Gabriela and Jason struggled to find the words to help their daughter. 'Imagine seeing your child sad because they can’t go to school. And you can’t even say, ‘Let’s go to the corner. Let’s go get ice cream. Or some chips,’' Gabriela said. 'How do you explain any of this to a child? Your mom can’t do anything for you, your dad can’t do anything.'"

3. RFK Jr. to require placebo-controlled studies for new vaccines (May 1) Well this is a bad idea.

4. Education Department stops $1 billion in funding for school mental health (May 1) "To be able to provide those [mental health] services and then have it ripped away for something that is completely out of our control, it's horrible,' Fialkiewicz says. 'I feel for our students more than anything because they're not gonna get the services that they need.'"

5. Trump-appointed federal judge blocks use of Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelans in South Texas (May 1) "Other courts have sought to block the Trump administration from deporting anyone under the act. But this is the first time a judge has ruled that the act cannot be used against people who are alleged gang members invading the United States."

6. DOJ Proposes Giving Legal Advice to Immigrants in Cases It Oversees (May 1) "'[Families are] being asked to trust the government that harmed them to tell them how to move forward in the best way for them,' said Sara Van Hofwegen, managing director of legal access programs at Acacia Center for Justice, which has provided the services for the past year. 'The government hasn’t shown them that they have their interests in mind.'" Yeah this is extremely suspicious.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The great global redistributor we never hear about: money sent or brought back by migrants (January 13, via) "According to the UN, migrant workers send back about 15% of their earnings on average. But even a little money from rich countries can make a big difference in poorer ones. For example, 15% of the average annual income in the United States is nearly twice the average annual income in Colombia."

2. The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing (January, via) "But I think a second, larger reason is that misophonia is weird. It’s hard to explain and difficult to understand and doesn’t make any intuitive sense. After all, everyone hates the sound of chewing."

3. Democrats unveil legislation raising federal minimum wage to $17 an hour (April 8) It's a good idea. I'm skeptical about its chances of passing though.

4. Pulling Out The Big Guns For Needle Phobia In An Insane World Where Nobody Seems To Take It Seriously (February 20) I'm linking this because, I don't have needle phobia but I have similar things... This post takes it seriously and gives extremely practical suggestions, which is really rare to see. Usually people just treat you like you're being silly and making a big deal for no reason, and everything would be fine if you would just "relax."

5. Tidy Profit: Camera Captures the Cleaners Changing Lives (April 16) An article about women in China working as domestic workers (they are called "ayis" in China). We have an ayi who works for us, to take care of our baby while we're at work. (This is common in China because there aren't really daycares for infants.) She also does housework. In China if you can afford it, it really helps a lot to have an ayi.

6. Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers (April 17) "Instead, it continued cajoling lawmakers and the White House into forcing millions of Americans to shell out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to file with expensive and confusing tax prep software."

7. Holy Saturday (April 17) "And now it’s Saturday and Jesus is dead and we’re all going to die and everything I’ve told you about him turns out to be in vain and everything I’ve staked my life on turns out to be in vain. Our faith is futile and we’re still hopeless in our sins. Jesus is dead and we are of all people most to be pitied."

8. Life and Living Not Death and Dying (April 17) "Christian theologians from multiple marginalized communities have spent years critiquing a theology that centers the good news on Jesus’ suffering rather than how life triumphed over suffering by undoing, overturning, and reversing that death."

Related to that: Good Friday Without Divine Violence (April 17) 

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Trump Administration Threat To Transgender Adult Care Is Growing At Lightning Speed (April 16) 

Also from Erin in the Morning: Washington State Passes Bill To Cover Some 12-Month Hormone Therapy Stockpiles (April 17) This is good news for trans people in Washington state. The thing that really surprised me was, it says actually hormone replacement therapy is usually for other health issues (menopause, etc)- trans people are only a small fraction of the people who need this kind of medical care.

2. THE GOOD TROUBLE CHECKLIST (April 3) "Figure out what your lane is. Then figure out who is local to you and already doing some of that work. How can you be useful? How can you extend existing efforts? How can you show up and raise hell? Do something."

3. 'Homegrowns are next': Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad (April 16) WTF. And remember, he sent immigrants there without showing any proof that they were "gang members." He also wants to send US citizens there without showing any such evidence.

4. Trump exploiting antisemitism fears to undermine rule of law, warns Jewish coalition (April 16) "'Our safety as Jews has always been tied to the rule of law, to the safety of others, to the strength of civil society, and to the protection of rights and liberties for all,' reads the statement."

5. In the middle of a hepatitis outbreak, U.S. shutters the one CDC lab that could help (April 16)

6. Confusion reigns as asylum seekers who used CBP One receive notices to leave U.S. within 7 days (April 16) "'We have families who said ‘well, I’m just going to hide, because I can’t go back to my home country, I will be killed, so I prefer to hide,’' she said."

7. U.S.-born American citizen under ICE hold in Florida is released (April 18)

8. Exclusive: Senator Chris Van Hollen talks with Rachel Maddow live from El Salvador (April 17)

And: A Maryland senator visits his wrongfully deported constituent in El Salvador (April 17) "'I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar,' Van Hollen wrote on X. 'Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love.'"

Blogaround + Happy New Year!

1. Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots (December 20) !!! Very concerned about this.

2. There Are Many Programs Trying to Reduce Recidivism. This One Works. (December 19, via) "In the United States, the likelihood that a released convict will return to prison within five years is 45.8 percent. For the 750 GRIP graduates since 2012 who have subsequently been released, the figure is 1.71 percent."

3. The Lasting Legacy of Jimmy Carter, Dead at 100 (December 29) "He had decades of possibility ahead of him when he left the White House in 1981, and he chose to devote the latter half of his life to continued public service. In 1982, in partnership with Emory University, he established the Carter Center, an organization dedicated to promoting peace and well-being around the globe. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who died in November 2023 at age 96, famously volunteered with Habitat for Humanity for decades, and he brought to action what most presidents only speak about, says Claire Jerry, curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History."

4. Nasa makes history with closest-ever approach to Sun (December 27, via) Cool!

5. More Chinese Couples Are Choosing to Live Apart. Is It Worth It? (December 30) "The study found that commuter marriages are often a rational choice driven by career ambitions, financial instability, and a desire for long-term family security. For many couples, living apart is not a passive compromise but an active decision made to maximize opportunities in an increasingly competitive urban job market."

6. Facebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For (December 30, via) "But the implications of a Facebook where the majority of the activity is bots bouncing off one another are hard to grasp, even at a moment when artificially gamed exchanges are common on the social network."

7. Star Trek: Tik Tok (2010, via) Wow this is fantastic. It's Kesha's son "Tik Tok" with clips from "Star Trek" (the original series).

8. I Watched Every Disney Channel Original Movie (December 24) Here's a 6-hour video from Big Joel reviewing over 100 Disney Channel original movies.

9. JK Rowling Falsely Claims "There Are No Trans Kids" (December 30) "There is no evidence that transgender identities are “caused” by any external factor. Rather, transgender people have always existed as a natural part of human diversity. Transgender individuals comprise an estimated 0.5–2% of the U.S. population, and many of them have understood their identity from a young age." 

Blogaround

1. Confederate monument melted down to create new, more inclusive public art (October 26, via) "The project is called Swords into Plowshares, taken from a Bible verse in the book of Isaiah." Yessss.

2. With Funeral Portraits, a Photographer Gives Dignity to Rural Elderly (October 31) "But during her work trips to the countryside, Yang would hear villagers discussing their friends’ funerals and lamenting the absence of a portrait or the quality of the photo. 'In their eyes, it is a symbol of dying with dignity,' she said."

3. Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 30) This is about child labor on cocoa farms. I don't really know what to make of this... back when I was in college, I read a lot about fair trade chocolate, and I felt like I was morally obligated to only buy chocolate labelled "fair trade" rather than just regular chocolate. But... fair trade chocolate was so expensive, and seemed to only have dark chocolate available, and so many snack foods have chocolate in them, so it's impossible to avoid non-fair-trade chocolate... and the idea that there's slavery in the chocolate supply chain but somehow most people seem to be okay with it, except for a few activist groups here and there... it was all too big and impossible for me to reconcile with my understanding of reality. So eventually I just gave up, just kind of put it out of my mind and didn't think about fair trade chocolate any more.

In other words, it seems like if it's really true that most of the chocolate we buy is made by slave labor (or other exploitative working conditions), then ... shouldn't we all be more upset about that? How could this really be real?

But, maybe that's just how the world always works: Those of us who have more money get to pretend that everything's fine, and we set up our lives such that we don't have to see the damage that is being done to the poorest people in the world. And every now and then we spend a little extra money buying fair trade chocolate, and feel like we did a good thing.

4. Alabama Mayor Kills Self After Right-Wing Blog Outs His Cross-Dressing (November 4) [content note: suicide, queermisia/ transmisia/ anti-queer bigotry] This is really tragic.

5. Sam Bankman-Fried Faces 110-Year Max Sentence After FTX Trial—Here’s How Long Experts Think He’ll Be Behind Bars (November 3) "Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven counts Thursday after a massive fraud and money laundering trial involving now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, charges that can lead to a maximum of 110 years in prison—and lawyers told Forbes he may face a decades-long sentence, unlike other white-collar defendants."

6. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Decides To Keep Obviously Innocent Man In Prison At Least Six More Years On Top Of 30 He's Already Served (November 4) 

Also from Wonkette: House Speaker Mike Johnson Pushing Christian Extremist 'Ex-Gay' Torture? LORDY THERE ARE TAPES. (November 3) Oh. So Mike Johnson used to work for ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom). Oh. 

When I was in high school, my parents were on the mailing list for ADF, so I read all their newsletters and propaganda- and I totally believed it. It was all about how "homosexuals" have a nefarious "agenda" to destroy marriage and all of society, or something. Years later, I found out all of that was bullshit, and actually LGBTQ people are just regular people, going about their lives, who want to have the same rights that everyone should have. 

Let me be clear: Every single thing that ADF does is built on a foundation of lying about queer people, and demonizing queer people. The bible says "do not bear false witness against your neighbor"- well, ADF bears false witness day in and day out. Their whole entire thing is bearing false witness against their neighbors. Also, the bible says "do not take the Lord's name in vain, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name"- well, ADF claims to be doing all these things in the name of God. They claim they are on God's side. They ask their supporters to pray that God will help them in their court cases against queer people having rights. I hope that the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses Their name.

The Wonkette article also mentions ADF's "Day of Truth" as a response to the "Day of Silence" (I remember a few kids in my high school participated in the "Day of Silence"- the idea is, you don't talk for the whole day, to show support for queer kids who are bullied and silenced). Well ADF invented the "Day of Truth" where high school kids should hand out propaganda to other students, about "the truth about homosexuality" (ie, it's bad, everyone who lives a "homosexual lifestyle" is unhappy, God can help you change, etc). Just disgusting. How will I explain ADF to my children?

7. Amazon Execs Intentionally Made Site Shittier to Rake in More Profit, New Quotes from FTC Lawsuit Show (November 3, via) "'Amazon’s online storefront once prioritized relevant, organic search results,' the complaint states. 'Following directions from its founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon shifted gears so that it now litters its storefront with pay-to-play advertisements. Amazon executives internally acknowledge this creates ‘harm to consumers’ by making it ‘almost impossible for high quality, helpful organic content to win over barely relevant sponsored content.’' "

Blogaround

1. Air China flight lands safely in Singapore’s Changi airport after engine catches fire (September 10)

2. Is This the End of Prison Phone Fees? (September) "The telecom providers charge prisoners’ families directly, and then hand over a cut of their spoils to the state. Securus’ contract gave Connecticut up to 68 percent of the fees it took from people like Diane Lewis. Prison calls, in other words, are not a state service partially funded by loved ones, but rather a profit source for states and private companies. Higher state commissions contribute to higher costs for families."

3. From Streets to Pages: Inside the Life of a Beijing Courier (September 13) "Some customers order clothes, and upon receiving them, they make you wait around while they try them on. If the clothes don’t fit, they reject them and expect you to fold them and put them back in the box. Naturally, we’re not paid for any of this."

Also from Sixth Tone: China’s Last Esperanto Students (September 15)

4. Movie Family Therapy: MRS. DOUBTFIRE (September 5) 26-minute video, analyzing the movie "Mrs. Doubtfire" and how it portrays divorce and co-parenting, from a therapist perspective.

5. Developers respond to Unity’s new pricing scheme (September 15) "Once the news broke, the video game developer community reacted strongly and negatively to the news, citing Unity’s poor communication, lack of clarity, loss of trust, and what they saw as a naked attempt to squeeze money out of small developer teams."

6. Here’s Why Scientists Think That Planet K2-18 b Spotted by the James Webb Has Water, and Possibly Even Life (September 14) "As far as we know, DMS is only produced by living sources — at least on Earth."

7. ‘Help me’: fans watching bear camera help save Alaska hiker’s life (September 9) Wow!

8. Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism (September 14) "A new president, J. Oliver Buswell, stopped admitting Black students altogether in 1926. Privately, Buswell said he didn’t think integration was immoral, but he was concerned about too much 'social contact' between races."

9. Taylor’s truckers and the sweating of the 1% (August 10, via) "These bonuses have a lot of people doing this math for the first time ever, seeing the ludicrous gap between those on top and the rest of us."

10. Workers in the Vineyard and the Economy of Exploitation: Matthew 20:1-16 (September 17) "Jesus’s parable of the workers in the vineyard holds a mirror up to the harsh realities of our exploitative economic and agricultural systems so that we might imagine a world that nurtures both land and people." (See also my post on this passage: The Parable of the Living Wage)

Blogaround

1. Dig All Day in the Hot Sun: Prison Labor & the Ethos of Productive Suffering at Camp Green Lake [Meta] (2020) "More broadly, this also positions Camp Green Lake's mission as deliberately individualistic, in opposition to collaboration and teamwork. The hard work of hole digging needs to be undertaken alone in order for prisoners to supposedly 'learn their lesson.' This means that the 'lesson' they're supposed to be learning is explicitly not anything to do with cooperation, coordination, or learning how to get along and work well with others. Otherwise, if these skills/values were compatible with 'building character' as the authorities understand it, then there should have been no reason to object to prisoners working together to dig the same amount of holes." (An analysis of the movie "Holes.")

Also from Coyote (osteophage): The Violence of Fate (or, How To Tell the True Kind of Lie) [Meta] (2022) "Reflecting on this helps to articulate my understanding of the concept of 'fate.' Becoming legible in terms of 'fate' requires highlighting that an outcome is unresponsive to any attempt to change it. It is something that happens to matter what you do, what you choose, or what you want. It is a way of conceptualizing events to say that your will—desire, permission, consent—fundamentally does not matter. In this way, it requires the capacity for violence."

2. ‘Too much to bear.’ The incalculable emotional toll of the Maui wildfires (August 19) "At least 114 people have died in the western Maui wildfires and more than 1,000 people remain missing."

3. This tweet: 

I was talking to my dad about those 1-10 pain scales they use at doctors' offices and how they don't really work and my dad, an engineer, said they should have a standardized needle they stab you with as a benchmark and tell you, "This is 5."

— Abby Denton's favorite Digimon is Koemon (@mizabitha) August 18, 2023

Wow I love the way this guy thinks. Remember when I blogged about the 1-10 pain scale and what it actually means?

4. The Queer Vibes of Guardians of the Galaxy (August 19) 2-hour-15-minute video from Jessie Gender. "I relate to [Nebula] so hard as a trans person, because both of us have had our bodies literally forced to be something that we didn't want them to be."

Also, I love this song from "Guardians of the Galaxy 3": Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 - Dog Days Are Over 

5. A Brand New Puzzle Type - This Is LOVELY (August 12) 31-minute video. Wow this is a cool little puzzle. I didn't understand the rules at first- I thought you were supposed to put a number in every box, like a fillomino (and that wouldn't be possible). No, you don't put any numbers in at all, it's just about dividing the grid up into regions such that the given numbers are in valid places.

6. Meet ‘creation care,’ the evangelical substitute for environmental activism (July 13) "As part of their self-declared role as ambassadors, evangelicals pretend that Jesus is very nicely allowing his most beloved and trusted followers to manage things for him in his absence, like parents allowing small children to help with light housework so they feel involved."

The Slacktivist has also written about how "creation care" is seen as "controversial" in evangelical culture, because it's "liberal" or something:
The Late Great Planet Earth (2017)
Climate change (2005)

When I was an evangelical... typically nobody discussed the question "should we protect the environment?" in a serious way, but there was a lot of mocking of environmentalists- which taught me that Christians aren't supposed to care about the environment, but never gave any reasons why. There was 1 time though, I was at an InterVarsity conference, and we did a bible study about why "creation care" is important. And a lot of us kind of responded like "I always thought Christians shouldn't care about this, but... but yeah, of course we should protect the environment." Like if you actually think about it, there aren't any good arguments to support "let's trash the planet, it doesn't matter" even though we all had been implicitly taught that's what Christians are supposed to believe. (Possible arguments given are: Jesus is going to come back any minute now, so no need to care about the future; the bible says the world was perfect when God created it, and just getting worse and worse since then, and there's nothing we can do to change that; climate change isn't real. None of these arguments really work, though.)

7. Customers wing it, as fried chicken store drums up crowd (August 20) A Popeye's restaurant opened in Shanghai.

8. What put Hurricane Hilary on a collision course with California? (August 20, via) "For at least the last 165 years, these conditions have kept California hurricane-free, experts say."