Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Psychics in Silicon Valley (February 5) "While it’s incredibly easy to do this with a single believer and even more so with a crowd of believers like those in the audience at a show (because any “misses” might be “hits” for someone else in the crowd), I’ve actually managed to do this even for skeptics who KNEW I didn’t have magical powers, knew that there’s no such thing as magical powers, but were still choked up because suddenly they were envisioning their own dead father standing there saying that he’s proud of them. It’s really convincing."

2. This extremely useful chart about dinosaurs.

3. Chinese Scientists Save Patient Using Pig Liver Outside the Body (February 9)

Also from Sixth Tone: As Services Expand, More Foreigners Seek Treatment in China (February 13) "'This was his only chance but no hospital in Mongolia could perform the procedure on an infant,' his mother, Khurelbaatar Nasantogtokh, told Sixth Tone."

How Chinese Millennials Are Reimagining Weddings (February 13) "From mountaintop elopements to music festival photoshoots, young people in China are transforming weddings from family obligations into personal statements about values and autonomy."

4. A daughter reexamines her own family story in 'The Mixed Marriage Project' (February 10) "And so many of them would say, 'I found out that I had to live in a colored neighborhood. I had to leave my white neighbors. I had left my family in order to marry this Black man and move into the Black Belt. I now couldn't even tell my employer my address, because if they found out my address, they'd know I must be living with a Black man.' Why else would a white woman be living in the Black Belt?"

5. It's a dangerous complication of pregnancy — but a new drug holds promise (February 14) Hey this is really cool- a new drug that treats pre-eclampsia in pregnancy. I had pre-eclampsia during my 2nd pregnancy, and as I understood it, it's very dangerous and there's no cure except to not be pregnant- hopefully you are far enough along in the pregnancy that you can deliver the baby and the baby will survive. If this new drug is able to treat it, that would be great news! Still very early though, so we shouldn't get that excited yet.

6. Kansas City illustrator turns library checkout cards into tiny works of art. She only gets 'one shot' (February 13) "A few decades ago, checking out a library book meant writing your name on a lined, 3-by-5-inch card that a librarian then stamped the due date on."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Kidney transplant recipient in ICE custody is finally getting meds, wife and attorney say (February 9) "A kidney transplant recipient from Minnesota now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Texas is finally getting some of the his life-saving medications he needs to prevent his body from rejecting the donated kidney, according to the man’s wife and his attorney. But they say federal authorities still are not giving him the correct dosage and full regimen of the medications."

2. Hating the Game (February 8, via) "The Post's framing only makes sense if, as is often the case, the demand of white bigotry is being accommodated. You can be one of the most popular figures on the cultural landscape and it won't matter; if white racists don't like you, you're controversial and polarizing."

3. Former ICE Facility Worker 'saw people laying in feces' at Baltimore Detention Center (February 6, via)

4. 13 of the most questionable redactions from the Epstein files (February 10) "The draft indictment is particularly notable because it includes three co-conspirators that prosecutors apparently considered charging. The co-conspirators are described as being employed by Epstein, but their names are redacted."

5. DHS's investigation of a man who emailed a DHS lawyer is over — but not the concerns it raises (February 11) "This all began when Jon Doe, the pseudonym used to identify the man, wrote an email asking the DHS lawyer to “err on the side of caution” in addressing the asylum case described in The Washington Post article that Doe read."

6. The Children of Dilley (February 9) "Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl, named Susej Fernández, who had been living in Houston when she and her mother were detained. 'I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center,' she wrote. 'Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live.'"

7. 5 things to know about the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security (February 14) "During two congressional hearings this week, the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection told lawmakers their agencies would likely not see significant impact on their enforcement operations since both agencies received more than $70 billion from Congress last summer as part of the GOP's massive tax and spending bill."

8. DHS says immigration agents appear to have lied about shooting in Minnesota (February 13)

9. Pride flag raised again at Stonewall National Monument in NYC after removal by Trump administration (February 13)

"The Case for Open Borders": Racism

People holding a sign that says "Welcome asylum seekers and refugees." Image source.

Here's another quote from "The Case for Open Borders". From pages 214-215:

17. Closed Borders Are Racist

The nationality granted to you at birth determines whether you are free to move across international borders or are blocked by them. Not only border walls, but a web of multilateral visa agreements privilege certain passport holders and allow their free movement, while denying and immobilizing others. Such discrimination, while based in nationality, overlaps with both class and race. Citizens of Global North nations, made up of predominantly white citizens, are generally able to cross borders with ease. Citizens of the Global South, predominantly Black or Brown, are denied that same freedom.

The logic of apartheid and Jim Crow lives on when applied to migrants. "Looking at the data, it becomes apparent," writes sociologist Steffen Mau, that "most countries with either black or Islamic majorities are exempted from visa-free travel on a large scale." Even within Third World countries, whiter citizens have the wealth and connections to obtain passports and authorization for international travel. The pattern holds for nonauthorized migration as well: Black and Brown people are more readily denied, suspected, detained, and deported.

"The Case for Loving" (kids' book about Loving vs Virginia)

Book cover for "The Case for Loving"

I got this book for my kids: The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko. It is a picture book which tells the story of the US Supreme Court case Loving vs Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage.

I'm really into this because I'm white and my husband is Chinese. We got legally married in China so I guess the specifics of US marriage law didn't directly affect us- but still, this is important history that is relevant to my life and my kids' lives, and I want to teach them about it.

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Turns out I really didn't know much about the Loving vs Virginia case

So, in history class in high school, I learned that Loving vs Virginia was the big important Supreme Court case where interracial marriage was officially legalized. But as I read this book to my son, I realized I didn't know any of these other details. I didn't really know anything about it at all.

Some fun facts which I learned from this book:

• Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter lived in Virginia, where they could not get legally married- but interracial marriage *was* legal in Washington DC, so they went there to get legally married. I did not know that different states had different laws about this.
• After they returned to Virginia, they were caught "cohabitating" and put in jail. They ended up moving back to Washington DC because of this. I did not know people were really getting put in jail for this back then.
• Richard Loving's statement that his lawyers read to the Supreme Court: "Tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia." Love this.

But I guess the biggest thing I learned from this book is that the arguments for banning interracial marriage were about "preserving the purity of the white race." I don't remember learning in high school that that was the reasoning behind these laws. In high school, when we learned about the Civil Rights Movement, I kind of got the impression that the reason white people didn't want black people to have equal rights was just some vague "racism" and not liking black people. Just ... as if white people back then were just mean for no reason, and I can't relate to them at all, and they were so obviously wrong. I think we do a big disservice when we portray history in this way, as if we don't have any of those problems now. In reality, white people who opposed the Civil Rights Movement weren't one-dimensional caricatures saying "let's be mean to black people for no reason." No, they made arguments that many people back then felt were convincing- for example, this argument about "preserving the purity of the white race." 

And there are right-wing people *now* saying things like "we have to preserve the purity of the white race." People talking about the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, talking about immigrants with "bad genes" coming into the US, etc. Banning abortion, to force white women to have more babies. We need to realize that the racism of the white people who opposed the Civil Rights Movement 60 years ago isn't really that different from racism we have today. We need to learn from this history, so we don't buy into the same racist arguments that they did 60 years ago.

(Okay, and one more cool thing about the book, on the last page it has a photo of the Loving family, which allowed me to tell my son "this is a true story from history.")

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I guess I talked to my son about race

So recently after I read this book to my son, we had this conversation:

me: I like this book because me and your dad are different races.

him: Why are you different races?

me: I'm white and your dad is Chinese. ... Did you notice that?

him: Yes

Oh good, he noticed that.

I always thought it was weird that parents feel awkward about talking to their kids about race, but now I get why it feels awkward: Because on one level, it's so obvious, everyone can see that I'm white and my husband is Chinese. But on another level, people's ideas about what it *means*, and the history of atrocities committed because of race- all of that is very complicated, how do you even begin to talk to kids about that? I think having books like this helps a lot, because you don't have to figure out what to say, you can just read the book.

But yeah, my son is living his life as a mixed-race person and I want him to be able to talk about it. I've noticed that when he's with me, and we're out and about in Shanghai, Chinese people always ask him, "Do you speak Chinese?" But when he's with my husband and I'm not there, they don't ask that, they just go ahead and talk to him in Chinese.

Oh, and also, the book mentioned slavery, and my son already knows what that is because he watches this Chinese cartoon from the 90's called 海尔兄弟 (Haier Brothers), which was sponsored by a real-life refrigerator company in China, it's about these 2 boys (who are the actual mascots of this fridge company) and they are brothers, but one of them is Chinese and the other one is German, and actually they are androids and not people, also they only wear underwear, and they travel around with 3 humans (who wear normal clothes)- an old man, a boy, and a girl, and the old man is not actually anyone's grandfather, I have no idea how he's related to any of the other characters, and they are all time travelers who travel to different places and times, to teach kids about science and history. This cartoon goes so hard, there are episodes about Africans being kidnapped and put on ships and sold into slavery. My husband has a lot of nostalgic feelings about this cartoon so that's why he wants our son to watch it. I don't quite get it and I wonder if the entire thing is an ad for a refrigerator somehow. It probably sounds bonkers from my description here, but it is a real thing, here is the theme song, enjoy.

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Conclusion

This is a good book for kids in an interracial family. Also good if you want your kids to learn more about US history and the Civil Rights Movement. 

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Related

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

"I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings) 

"America: A Patriotic Primer" (Kids' Book Review)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Doctors urged to treat pain for IUD insertion and other procedures (May 20) Hey, this is great. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now saying that doctors need to inform patients about the possible pain of procedures like IUD insertion, and give patients options about anesthesia/ pain management. I'm all for that. Informed consent in a medical setting.

2. The Chicago Sun-Times Published an AI-Generated Summer Reading List Full of Fake Books — And This is Just the Beginning (May 20) "Let's connect the dots here. Media company cuts 20% of its staff, including experienced editors. Two months later, AI-generated nonsense makes it into print without anyone catching it. Are we really surprised?"

3. Gatsby’s Secret (April 7, via) "The more Thompson read, the more convinced he became that Gatsby was about a man “passing” for white."

4. Supreme Court sidesteps religious charter school question for now on 4-4 deadlock (May 22) "No religious charter schools. For now."

5. No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them (May 22) "The Treasury Department has placed its last order for blank pennies and plans to stop minting the one-cent coins as soon as that's exhausted."

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Political cartoon that shows the White House (with a flag that says "King Donald") with a sign out front that says "Please wipe your feet!" pointing to the Constitution laying on the ground. Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

We've got a lot of links today. If it's too stressful, you don't have to read all of them, but here is an important action item: Contact your senators and tell them to vote no on the Republican budget bill.

1. Supreme Court says Trump can strip protected status for Venezuelans for now (May 19) "'From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status,' Ahilan Arulanantham, the co-director for Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, and one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelans, told reporters Monday."

2. DHS secretary misstates meaning of habeas corpus under Senate scrutiny (May 20) "Responding, Senator Hassan corrected the secretary, stating, 'Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.'"

3. Judge says Trump administration violated court order on third-country deportations (May 21) "'No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,' Ryan said."

And an update on that: White House agrees to keep migrants in Djibouti for now, blasts federal judge's ruling (May 22)

In this specific case, the immigrants being deported actually have committed serious crimes. I think people have a tendency to think "well why does it matter if they're sent to some random other country, since they are violent criminals?" No, not cool- if people commit crimes, you sentence them according to what the law says. We have laws for this! The government can't just make up whatever punishment they want.

4. Charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver spark backlash after incident with ICE agents (May 21) "'This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right. I am thankful for the outpouring of support I have received and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court,' she added."

5. U.S. sends 68 migrants back to Honduras and Colombia in first voluntary deportation (May 20) 

6. These students protested the Gaza war. Trump's deportation threat didn't silence them (May 21) "'All of us international students, we had this thought of, 'what if it was me?'' she said of her reaction to the first few students that ICE agents arrested. 'Students that were higher risk, they all started to talk to their lawyers and make arrangements for if that were to happen.'"

7. Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Minnesota To Mandate Trans Discrimination (May 22) "While the immediate impact would be limited to Minnesota, an appeal could escalate the case to higher courts—and if the Supreme Court takes it up, this fringe legal theory could become the basis for mandating anti-trans discrimination in schools nationwide, from bathroom bans to sports bans and more."

8. These Are Not My Thoughts On Banning GAC (May 22) [content note: violence against intersex children] "So when the GOP includes intersex exceptions to genital reconstruction laws that ban gender affirming care for trans kids, This is what they’re preserving. Not care. Not concern. Not empathy. They are preserving the right of parents to rip apart children’s bodies with pliers, and the right of doctors to support them in their demented, evil efforts."

9. Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students (May 22) Holy crap. 

10. Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply (May 22) "'If you're trying to design a public benefits program that supports the most vulnerable people and makes sure that nobody in our country goes hungry, this is obviously not the way to do it,' said Ami Fields-Meyer, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University specializing in the intersection between civil liberties and technology, and a former senior policy adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. 'But if you're trying to integrate critical assistance into a machinery for hunting immigrants and breaking up families and deporting people without due process — this is exactly how you do it.'"

11. Educators fear their homeless students could become a target for Trump cuts (May 22) "Amid all the moves, one thing has been constant for Dayana: her school. That's because a federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, allows students like her to stay in their school even when their housing takes them far from where they originally enrolled."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. UN Report: Israel’s Gender-Based Violence in Gaza Amounts to “Genocidal Acts” (March 14, via)

Also: Palestinian deaths in Gaza rise above 50,000 as Israel expands its military campaign (March 23)

2. Tesla Falls for 'Wile E. Coyote-Style' Fake Road Wall (March 17) Oh I am really interested in this test, because working with lidar and camera data used to be my actual job. (I recommend watching the whole video from that link- really cool stuff about sensor data!)

Here's the important thing about sensors for robotics (including self-driving cars): Every sensor has its weaknesses- some situations where it won't give you reliable data. Rain, darkness, objects of a certain color, too far away, etc. So you have to know what the weaknesses of your sensors are, and combine data from different sensors, to make up for those weaknesses. And probably calculate some kind of confidence value to indicate how much you should trust your data. You could see in the test with lidar and the jets of water, the lidar wasn't able to really make out whether there were any objects among the jets of water- so it stops the car there. You have to stop the car, because you can't have any confidence about whether there are any obstacles in there or not. But, the problem is false positives when you take that approach. 

Still, though, if you literally can't be sure there's not an object there, the car absolutely should not be driving there. If this gives you too many false positives, you need a different sensor setup- the sensors you're using aren't right for the application you're trying to use them for. Honestly I don't know that there are any sensors (including the human eye!) that can reliably identify whether there are any actual obstacles among sheets of heavy rain- maybe that's a sign you shouldn't be driving at all.

3. George Foreman dies at 76: Heavyweight boxing legend, famous entrepreneur leaves 'big' legacy (March 21)

4. Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest - Cam 1 (via) Wow this is great! It's a live webcam looking at a bald eagle nest with little baby chicks.

5. Skin bleaching is terribly popular — and takes a terrible toll (March 25) "Within a few years, she moved on to a stronger product called Dermovate — at the time, the in-vogue skin whitening body lotion, recommended by her friends at high school. They knew most boys in her school were more interested in lighter skinned girls."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Columbia University agrees to Trump demands in effort to restore federal funding (March 22) "On Thursday, 41 of the roughly 100 members of the university's history department warned the university against allowing the administration to interfere in its policy. They compared the administration's actions to attempts by "authoritarian regimes" to seek control over independent academic institutions."

2. Why trying to understand what the Trump admin did in response to the TRO matters (March 17) "It is essential that everyone in the structure of government is forced to be accountable for their role in supporting or allowing — or in seeking to stop — illegal and unconstitutional actions."

And also related to that: Judge won’t lift block on Trump use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans (March 24) It's scary that this is already happening. People are getting arrested and put in immigration detention- sometimes even deported- without any kind of due process.

3. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (March 24) Holy crap. This is WILD. These people are so incompetent.

Political cartoon showing two Greek soldiers looking at the Trojan horse. One of them says, "Then, after we unwittingly roll it in, they leap out & attack us, according to this groupchat I'm in with Pete Hegseth." Image source.

Image text: "'I Messed Up At Work Again,' Crestfallen Michael Waltz Texts Wife, National Geographic Editorial Staff" (from the Onion). Image source.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Facing up to the Price on Life (January 29) "I think it’s very important to appreciate that there is no such compulsion: you can acknowledge reality, do a bunch more good than almost anyone else, and still live an incredibly privileged—even self-indulgent—life."

Very excited to find this post- finally, someone is talking about something I've been worried about my entire life: If there are so many people in need in the world, and I have more money than I need, shouldn't I donate literally as much as I possibly can, causing huge hardship to myself? How can it be okay for me to have a savings account when there are people going through emergencies right now? And this writer comes to the same solution as I have: compartmentalize. Decide on a total amount to give- this should be pretty big, bigger than what the average person gives- and then use the rest of the money for myself and quit worrying about if I'm doing enough.

2. Two Americas, one bank branch, and $50,000 cash (March 5) "A style magazine published an account of a large cash withdrawal that didn't match my understanding of banking reality. I burned several thousand dollars and a year investigating. I now doubt that account less, because I understand the context better." Yessssssss this is the exact kind of fact-checking content I am interested in.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. D.C.'s Black Lives Matter mural will be erased. Look back at the iconic street painting (March 8)

2. Trump DOJ's limits on FACE Act enforcement fuel concern from abortion providers (March 9) "The law prohibits threat of force, obstruction and property damage meant to interfere with reproductive health care services, including abortion."

3. DOD Will No Longer Prohibit Contractors from Running Segregated Facilities (March 6) I don't know what to make of this- I've seen commenters on the internet talking about this like it means the government wants to allow racial segregation, but I don't think we should interpret it that way. I mean, yes these people are really racist and are undoing laws that were put in place during the civil rights movement, but I don't think *this specific example* is about that. Let's be careful we don't misrepresent what's going on. I think this- getting rid of the policies that banned segregation in the military- is because those policies included protections for trans people.

4. “Absurd, nonsensical, and unimplementable”: Students react as D.C. U.S. Attorney takes aim at DEI and Georgetown Law (March 9) "'Their definition of DEI is hopelessly vague,' David Super, a GULC professor, said. 'They’re talking about some things that are completely unobjectionable, some things that are controversial, and some things that probably don’t exist at all, all under that one heading, which is irresponsible.'"

5. Hundreds protest Trump administration arrest of Columbia student leader Mahmoud Khalil (March 11) "Khalil's attorneys said he is a green card holder married to an American citizen, and are challenging the validity of the arrest and detention."

6. Trump Makes Supporting Trans People Ineligible For Public Service Loan Forgiveness Via EO (March 11) "Clearly, many organizations could be swept up in this attempt to remove Public Service Loan Forgiveness for those supporting transgender people." This is alarming. The MAGAs aren't just being mean to trans people- they're trying to require everyone else to be mean to trans people too.

Also from Erin in the Morning: "Have You No Decency?": Republican Calls Sarah McBride "Mister," Dems Erupt And End Hearing (March 12) 

7. Love Knows No Borders: Walls, Deportations, & Tariffs (February 7) "During COVID, you may have seen on the news that some couples found ways around border restrictions. One way was to visit each other at the border. Meaning that we found a Canadian road that ran east-west, parallel to a US road. The ditch between these two roads was the actual border."

God, Soul Mates, and International Marriage

Clipart image of a person with a bunch of complicated paths to choose from. Image source.

So here's a question: If "God has a plan for your life", is it possible that this plan involves marrying someone from a different country?

When I was evangelical, of course I believed "God has a plan for your life" and this plan includes 1 specific (opposite-sex) person you're supposed to marry. God has destined a soul-mate for you, supposedly. (This whole "God has a plan for your life" idea causes evangelicals an incredible amount of anxiety because they have to constantly worry about if they've made the wrong decision and accidentally gotten off track for the plan.)

But then, in college I dated a guy who was an international student from China. (I am American and went to college in the US.) Let's call him Xin. I was starting to rebel against purity culture, and I did something extremely naughty: I made the decision to start dating him even though God hadn't told me that I was supposed to. Yes, super naughty and rebellious, and I had a lot of guilt about it. Purity culture teaches that you can't date someone just because you want to- you should only date 1 person, ever, in your entire life, and it needs to be the person that God "planned" for you. You can't date someone just based on your own choices and feelings; no, you need to ask God. Because really, how are you going to know if it's the person you could marry, if you haven't even dated them yet? No way of gathering enough information to know that, without compromising your "purity"- therefore, the only way is to get God to tell you the answer. (Or, in some subcultures of purity ideology, your parents would do most of the work of deciding which potential partner is good enough to marry, before you date them.) And if you end up not marrying them- if you *gasp* break up- well that would be THE WORST THING EVER. You lose so much of your purity. Your God-picked spouse might not even want you anymore, after that.

So I was dating Xin, a guy from China, and one thing that worried me SO MUCH was that I felt this couldn't possibly be "God's plan." Imagine the incredible number of steps God would need to plan out in order to bring me and him together. First, Xin would need to decide he wanted to go abroad for college. Then he would need to choose where to go. After he chooses the US, just think about how many universities there are in the US. And all the factors that would go into picking 1 of them. And then, from my side, there were all the factors that went into me picking which college to go to. And then, once we're both there, God would have to arrange for us to meet. We met because I had suddenly taken an interest in studying Chinese, and I was going to meetups for international students.

It's just... A LOT of steps. Each step could have gone in SO MANY different ways, which would have led to us ending up THOUSANDS OF MILES apart, and never meeting each other.

So how could something like that really be planned?

It made more sense to me to imagine that "God's plan" would be something like, I marry a white guy with a pretty similar cultural background to me. Each step in that "plan" would be something that's fairly high probability- an American chooses to go to an American university, a white student has a friend group/ dating pool which is mostly white students, nobody suddenly develops an all-consuming desire to learn a foreign language, and so on.

Or rather, it depends how far you have to plan ahead. Is it like, God's making this "plan" when I'm already a college student, and the plan is that I should marry someone from China, and so God looks at the students from China who already exist at the same college as me, and then makes a plan from there? Or is it like... planned from birth?

At the church where I grew up, every year when students graduated from high school, the church had a ceremony where they would read all the graduates' names, and each one would tell what their plans were. And I always thought it was funny, roughly half of them would announce they were going to one local Christian college, and roughly half would announce they were going to the other local Christian college. I remember joking with my sister about it- every year we would tally up which college got more. (And then there would be the occasional 1 or 2 students who weren't going to either of those colleges- like me.) Like... being predictable. See, that's the kind of situation where God can easily plan way in advance, about who is supposed to marry whom. Or, say, 2 people both born to families who attend the same church- yeah, God can easily get them together.

But how can it really be "God's plan" to be with someone who was born on the other side of the world? Who for a significant fraction of their life wouldn't have even been able to talk to you, because you didn't speak any of the same languages?

The logistics of it are just a NIGHTMARE. The incredible number of tiny little decisions that need to go a certain way, in order to get these 2 people to meet each other. I just couldn't believe that anyone- not even God- could make a 20-ish-year-long plan that involved so many low-probability events, and have it actually go successfully.

Yeah if the plan is that I marry *a* Chinese person, that's one thing. That's doable. There are lots of Chinese people. But a *specific* one, picked years and years beforehand? No way, not even God could get that to work.

I remember talking to another Christian about this, back then, and she saw it totally opposite from how I did. She said, because all these little things needed to go exactly right in order for me to meet my boyfriend, doesn't that seem even MORE like it was God who had done it?

I didn't buy that, when she said it. We constantly have random encounters with people, caused by a long series of tiny decisions, each of which may have been high or low probability at the time that it happened. It's impossible to predict, but the overall statistics tell us that in general this is how it works. Probably every day I happen to meet people who are in this specific city partly because of some weird unusual event that affected the course of their life long ago. Low-probability events happen all the time, of course they do, but of course you don't know which ones they're going to be. Just like how you don't know what the winning lottery number will be, but you know it will be SOMETHING, likely something that looks like an unremarkable string of digits.

(And also, race is an aspect of this. I felt like... I'm specifically attracted to Chinese guys, is that like... bad? Is it bad to have a preference based on race? And what did God think about it? I had always imagined God to be like my white pastors and Sunday school teachers, viewing China as some faraway backwards place where they talk weird and eat weird food. My God was vaguely racist- I found it impossible to believe that this kind of God would make a plan for me to marry a Chinese guy.)

Way back then, it really had me questioning the whole idea of "God has a plan for your life." Dating a Chinese guy was so new and unexpected for me, and I just couldn't bring myself to believe that it could be something planned by God from the beginning of my life. I just couldn't.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years, and I moved to China, and started dating a different Chinese guy, and now we are married. When we got engaged, it was a very big deal to me that it was an actual choice I was making. It wasn't "God's plan" and I just passively go along with it- no, marriage is a big deal, and it was my decision to marry him. Marriage shouldn't be something that just kinda happens to you as you float through life on "God's plan"- it should be a real choice.

I don't believe in "God's plan" anymore- and I'm glad I don't. It raises way too many questions about how God could possibly make such an intricate plan work successfully, it means you have to constantly be stressed about whether any little decision you make is totally throwing you off track for "God's plan", and it means you're not allowed to make your own choices, but need to be constrained by whatever biases you imagine God has.

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Related:

In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage

Is There Choice in the Kingdom of God? 

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

On Marriage as an Immigrant in China

We're a lot better off if God has no plan

Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids)

Book cover for "Raising Mixed Race."

I read the book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World [affiliate link], by Sharon H. Chang. I read this because my 2 kids are mixed-race Asian kids (white/Chinese). I really liked this book. It had a lot of deep stuff to say. I recommend this to parents of mixed-race Asian kids.

This post will cover some of my thoughts about the book:

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Language

The book spends a lot of time in the beginning talking about the language used to discuss race. The language we commonly use has origins in racist ideologies throughout history- for example, in the 1700s, Europeans invented the "five-race construct" (ie, the five races are Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, American). Even now, you sometimes see the term "Mongolian" used to refer to something related to east Asians. That's kinda racist.

The example given in the book is a nurse discussing Chang's son's "Mongolian spots." A Mongolian spot is a dark birthmark, kind of looks like a bruise, that some east Asian children have. The nurse, aware that the name sounded kinda racist, said, "I don't know why they call it that, they just do." Chang was unhappy about this; in the book she says this nurse was perpetuating this racism by using the term "Mongolian spots."

I don't really know what to think about this- my first reaction is that it seems fine to me to use the term "Mongolian spots" but to say it with air quotes or something that makes it obvious you're aware it sounds kinda racist. The book seems to be saying that even using it at all is racist and bad. What's the alternative, though? Does she want this nurse to start a movement to call it something different, right then and there? (A quick google tells me that "Mongolian spots" do have a non-racist name: slate gray nevus. Okay, so, now that we know, we should use that term instead.) My second reaction was, I'm white so maybe I shouldn't tell people of color "oh this thing you think is racist, actually it's not racist."

A lot of this book was about how it's problematic for people to say certain things about mixed-race Asian kids. And I definitely agree that the language we use for race has a really bad history, and it's important to learn about that history, and in an ideal world we wouldn't use that language, but I'm not sure what to do in the world we actually have. It doesn't seem helpful to me to create a really long list of things you're not allowed to say when talking about race (which is sort of what I felt the book was doing, in some places).

For example, the book says you shouldn't talk about what specific fraction people are of each race (ie, my kids are half Chinese and half white). Instead, the book always uses the term "mixed race" or lists the specific ethnic groups (for example, "Chinese/white"). Yes, this makes sense to me, because historically there have been government policies that quantified what fraction your ancestry would need to be to "count" as a certain race (like the "one-drop rule"), and those policies have always been harmful. And even now, if a mixed-race person ever meets someone who really wants to know the specific fractions of their ancestry (ie, it's really important to this random stranger to find out that you're 1/2 white, 1/4 Chinese, and 1/4 Vietnamese), that can really only come from racist assumptions. This person is trying to figure out what stereotypes to apply to you, and that's why they want to know the numbers. Or they're trying to say that you're not "really" Chinese (it could be other Chinese people telling a mixed-race Chinese person that).

So yeah, I agree that it's problematic to talk about mixed-race people in terms of specific fractions. And it's problematic to discuss which of their physical features look like which race. And it's problematic to say that one sibling looks "more white" than the other sibling. Etc. I feel like this book spends a lot of time telling us things we shouldn't say.

Is that useful? I guess? But if people still have the same framework for thinking about race, but they just know they're not allowed to say their conclusions out loud, does that actually help? I guess then maybe the next generation will grow up not hearing people say those problematic things, so they won't internalize the ideology that goes with it.

Anyway, I agree that we should be aware of the language we use, and the history of it. Chang does a very good job of explaining the history of these racist ideas and why it's problematic when people use certain terminology to discuss race or mixed-race people. But in a practical sense, I sometimes felt like this book was telling me a lot of things we are not allowed to say. And I don't really know what I should say instead? I guess that's not a problem with the book, but with the racism embedded in our society.

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The history of laws surrounding interracial marriage

When I learned about the civil rights movement in school, I remember learning about laws which made it illegal for a white and black person to marry. And then the famous Supreme Court case, Loving vs Virginia, struck down all those laws. What I did NOT know was that this wasn't just about white/black interracial marriage- there were also laws saying white people couldn't marry Asian people. Wow! I had no idea! And I am a white American married to an Asian guy. Kind of ridiculous that I had never heard about this history at all.

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White dads who "don't see race"

This book had many examples of white dads being problematic toward their Asian wives and mixed-race kids. For example, there was a white man who was dating a Chinese woman, and wasn't willing to travel to China to meet her family, what on EARTH. There are white men who don't think it's important for their mixed-race Asian kids to learn about their Asian culture, eat the food, celebrate holidays, and so on.

It's common for white people in the US to not really be very aware of race. To assume that since it doesn't affect them, it won't affect their kids either. You look at your own kid, and all you think about is how you love your kid. Of course you don't see them as a simple Asian stereotype, and therefore it never occurs to you that other people will see them that way.

(Also my situation is different because I'm in China; I'm a minority here. This book is written from a US perspective. Obviously very different from what my son is experiencing as he grows up in China.)

I feel that this is something unique that mixed-race kids have to deal with. If you live in the US and have a white parent, that parent hasn't had the experience of people treating them as a racial stereotype, and so they don't know what their child is experiencing. If both parents are monoracial, well that's a different thing than being mixed-race, and so the parents aren't really able to relate to much of what the kids are experiencing.

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Kids know more about race than their parents expect

Many of the parents interviewed for this book (parents of all races) said they hadn't really talked to their kids about race because they felt like their kids were young enough that it didn't affect them yet. But, the book says, kids do have ideas about race, from a very young age. There are examples of babies who have an Asian mother, and the babies are happy to be held by other Asian women, even total strangers, but cry if someone of a different race holds them. There are examples of toddlers being afraid of black people.

I also haven't talked to my son about race very much. He is in preschool. (My daughter is still an infant. She hasn't even discovered her feet yet. I don't think she knows about race.) I guess I don't really know what I'm supposed to tell him.

My son goes to a public school here in China. All the other kids are (monoracial) Chinese. I wonder if he has thoughts on that. I just assumed that little kids didn't really have any awareness of it, but, uh, why did I assume that? And to me, my son looks Chinese (but I guess I'm not supposed to say that?) but then when I see him next to the other kids, who are Chinese and not mixed-race, well then you can really tell that he's mixed-race white. Sometimes when I pick him up from school, the other kids see me and point out that I'm not Chinese.

(And he always gets Chinese people commenting on how his skin is white, like it's a compliment, which I also find problematic. My FAVORITE one was when we were at a restaurant, and then after we finished eating, I left to go to the bathroom, and then the people at the next table started talking to my husband and son, and they were like "he looks like an international baby"... like... they did not realize he *actually is* an international baby. Apparently they totally missed me being there.)

I guess my son does have thoughts about race. But doesn't have the language to communicate them with me. 

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Practical suggestions

I'm glad I read this book because it had some practical ideas which I find useful. 

• I should help my kids find friends who are mixed-race. If they grow up being the only one, they will feel like they're weird and different and no one understands them. I don't know why I didn't think of this before- *I* am in some social media groups for international women married to Chinese men, and that's really helpful for me- why didn't I realize that kind of thing would also be really helpful for my son?
• Toys and books which depict mixed-race people and interracial marriage. The book talks about how it's really difficult to find stuff like this! It's hard to find a doll which is Asian, let alone mixed-race Asian. After reading "Raising Mixed Race," I got these books for my son: All About Families and All About Diversity [affiliate links]. To show him that there are all different kinds of families and people. These are really good! I guess I should also find a book for him with a main character who is mixed-race white/Asian.

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It's not just about white + east Asian people

Typically when people think about "mixed race Asian", they think about white + east Asian (ya know, like my kids). But this book makes sure to include a much greater range than that. It includes families from many different Asian countries (including India). And it talks a lot about anti-black racism in the US, and how that is connected to Asian people's experiences in the US, and there's a whole chapter about the unique situation that mixed-race black/Asian people are in.

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Conclusion

I liked this book, and I recommend it if you have kids who are mixed-race Asian. It helped me realize that I do need to think about how race affects my kids' lives, and how to talk to them about it.

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Related:

On Marriage as an Immigrant in China 

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus

Moses, from the movie "The Ten Commandments." Image source.

[content note: slavery, rape]

So I've been reading the book Womanist Midrash [affiliate link], and I got to the part where Gafney talks about Exodus 21:7, "When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the men go out." (This is Gafney's translation; the NIV translates it as "servant.")

Gafney points out that this section, the rules for how it works when you have slaves, is in the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus, you guys. You know, Exodus, which starts out with the epic story of God bringing Their people out of slavery in Egypt. The ten plagues, parting the Red Sea, Passover, all that. The book of Exodus. After God brings Their people out of Egypt, God gives laws to Moses (like the Ten Commandments) and some of those laws are about how to treat your slaves.

The juxtaposition of this is WILD, and is something I never noticed before. Gafney asks readers to imagine the young Israelite women who were enslaved in Egypt, and then God freed them, and then they were again sold into slavery by their fathers, and there was no one to come and free them then. 

Reading this, I'm extremely aware that I'm a white Christian, and Gafney is black, and that's why I never really thought slavery in the bible was a big deal. Gafney, on the other hand, says this:

For me as a black feminist and womanist descended from enslaved Africans in the Americas, biblical slavery is a particularly pernicious and personal issue. Slavery in the Bible represents more than the ubiquity of slavery in the ancient world; it represents the theological bulwark on which the Atlantic slave trade rested.

Well, yeah. And the fact that white American Christians try to just ignore all the slavery in the bible is A SIN.

In my experience growing up in the white evangelical church, first of all we didn't talk about the slavery in the bible. A lot of times the bible translations use the word "servant" instead of "slave." But to the extent that we did talk about slavery in the bible, it was in the context of apologetics. Some atheist comes and says to you that the bible is bad because it condones slavery, and you have to give an argument to defend the bible. The arguments we gave were along these lines:

• Slavery in the bible was totally different than American-style race-based chattel slavery. So even though slavery is bad, it wasn't, like, that bad. (And if anyone defends US slavery using the bible, well they're wrong, so just ignore them.)
• In ancient times, slavery was seen as normal. So even though God doesn't agree with it, he allowed it back then, because it would have been such a huge societal change to abolish slavery. But in the long run God didn't want people to enslave each other.

It was only about giving excuses so that atheists would stop pointing out the slavery in the bible. It was never about me, a Christian, being disturbed by biblical slavery, and asking why my God would allow that. It was never about recognizing the horror of how the bible has been used to support atrocities like slavery. It was never about caring about the enslaved characters in the bible stories.

For black American Christians, though, it can't just be an exercise in apologetics. The biblical passages condoning slavery have done real damage.

So Gafney points out this passage in the book of Exodus, the commands that God gave Moses regarding how slavery works. Right after God dramatically freed Their people from slavery in Egypt. Why is one of these things a well-known bible story, that Cecil B. DeMille made a 3-hour epic movie about, and one of them is "oh just ignore that, that's just how their society was back then"? We should be talking about these two things in connection with each other. God and Moses freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and then turned around and said "so anyway, if you want to sell your daughter as a slave, here's how." Doesn't the story of the Exodus hit different, once you realize that?

If you read the story of the Exodus in the bible, you may notice that Moses did not say to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, because slavery is wrong." Instead it was more like, "Let my people go, because my god can beat up your god." Turns out it was never about "slavery is wrong." The bible *does* record God saying, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." But did They really mean that? Did They later hear the cry of Israelites who were sold into slavery by other Israelites?

And in this section of "Womanist Midrash," Gafney emphasizes that when the bible talks about "selling your daughter into slavery," this is sex slavery we're talking about. And any time the bible talks about female slaves, this is sex slavery. (The book says it was common for male slaves to be sexually abused too.) Gafney says that the slaves may have done many other non-sexual tasks, but she uses the term "sex slavery" to make it clear that this was a class of people seen as sexually available to their masters.

I did not know that. Probably the reason is... slavery is so much worse than you imagine. American slavery was so much worse than you imagine. (Honestly, American slavery was also sex slavery.) And biblical slavery was so much worse than you imagine.

The picture I get, from reading "Womanist Midrash," is that back then, in the culture where the bible was written, they believed there was a class of people that it was okay to rape. The way they viewed sex was not in terms of "guarding your heart" like I was taught in purity culture. 

I was taught that it's a bad idea to have sex outside of a monogamous marriage because then you'll be heartbroken, you'll be heartbroken about it for your entire life because sex necessarily creates a permanent emotional connection, and later when you're in a relationship with someone else, you'll still be hung up on your ex and unable to fully love your current partner. And these rules were created by God for our own good, God gave us sex as a good gift and this is how he wants us to enjoy it. And the rules are the same for both men and women (even though in practice for some reason people judge women much more harshly for breaking the rules). They said this is the "biblical" view of sex.

But this stuff about sex slavery in the bible... no, it's not that at all. It's like, men are in charge, and it's okay for men to rape women who are slaves. If someone rapes a married woman, well that would be bad because she belongs to her husband. It's about possessiveness, about who has power over whom. Nobody really cares about consent. That's the biblical view of sex. 

(Suddenly it makes a lot more sense, in a horrifying way, why the bible specifies a punishment for a woman who is not a virgin when she gets married, but there's no equivalent punishment for a man. I always thought "well of course they had the same rules for men and women, but they just didn't happen to mention the part about men" but NOPE.)

I remember as a kid, reading the bible, there were some passages where I wasn't sure if it was talking about slavery or marriage. Take a look at Exodus 21:7-11:

“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

I remember reading things like this in the bible, starting out with the assumption that it's about someone who works as a servant, ya know, doing farming or whatever, and then partway through the passage being so confused and deciding it's actually about if you marry your servant, apparently? Uh. It's about sex slavery. Also isn't it a little ****ed-up to have a passage in the bible where you can't tell if it's about marriage or slavery?

And another thing: Can we talk about Numbers 31?

In Numbers 31, Moses sends the Israelite army to fight the Midianites. The Israelites win, and bring back a lot of livestock and prisoners. Moses then says, and I quote, 

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

I remember reading this, as a kid, and I was like, "what?"

And I've read apologetics books that explain it away like this: "Well, they had to kill the boys, because they would have grown up to become soldiers who would want vengeance. And they had to kill the non-virgin women, because [I don't even remember, some apologetics bullshit]." (The point of apologetics is to sear your conscience with a goddamn hot iron. Become the kind of person who says "here's why genocide is okay sometimes.")

And oh it gets worse:

The Lord said to Moses, “You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community are to count all the people and animals that were captured. Divide the spoils equally between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community. From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the Lord one out of every five hundred, whether people, cattle, donkeys or sheep. Take this tribute from their half share and give it to Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part. From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the Lord’s tabernacle.” So Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.

The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.

So *God* is in on this. God wants the Israelites to treat virgin women like livestock to divide up among all the soldiers. WTF.

When I was in college, I remember having a conversation with one of my non-Christian friends (let's call him Bob) about this bible story. Bob was saying that Moses was telling the soldiers they could take these women prisoners and rape them, and I was like, no way. That would be so outlandish, no one would do that! How can you think that about Moses?! I did feel that it was creepy the way the bible kept specifying that these women had never slept with a man, but I assumed it must just be a translation thing, surely the biblical writer didn't mean it to sound that creepy. These were little girls and they were being adopted into Israelite families, right? That would actually make sense, right? That would be a reasonable thing to do for a child who just lost her family in a war, right? Not rape her, what on earth, who would do that?

Yeah turns out Moses did mean they could rape them. Moses. "Let my people go" Moses. That Moses.

"My god can beat up your god" Moses.

And one more thing from "Womanist Midrash" I want to talk about:

In 2 Chronicles 28:8ff, the prophet Oded demands that the Judeans free the Israelite women and men that they have taken captive as spoils of war as shiphchah-slaves and 'avadiym, "male-slaves." The people do so, and the text notes that they clothe those among the slaves who were naked (v. 15) as they heed the prophet. The public nudity of the slaves in that context calls up images of slave markets and the public stripping of slaves intended for sex-work, so that their potential buyers may more easily assess their value.

This is also really surprising to me. I've read this passage before, and when it said they clothed the slaves who were naked, I thought, "well these are prisoners of war, obviously they're all having a really bad day, maybe they lost their clothes somewhere along the way too" and also not thinking it meant literally naked, but just not really having the right clothes that one would want to have in that situation. I never thought of it as a sexual thing.

But, yes, it's good that someone came along and asked, "Wait, why are some of the slaves naked?" Apparently that was how it worked. Apparently it was understood back then that slaves were sex slaves.

White American Christians need to talk about this stuff. The bible condones slavery, and that's bad- we need to be able to admit that the bible is sometimes bad. And our ancestors used the bible as a justification for enslaving black people. We can't just say "well they obviously interpreted the bible wrong" and act like it doesn't matter, because they are like us. We need to learn from that history so that we don't commit the same sins. We need to listen to black theologians and learn about the bible from them.

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"

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Related:

I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible

Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves 

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?)

Reading US History Inerrantly 

Blogaround

1. Reach, Throw, Row, Go (January 18) "A lesson in 'How to Save a Drowning Person' that started with an argument for Why You Should Want To Do That would meet with a kind of puzzled anger." It's about this: Feds demand Texas stop blocking Border Patrol agents access to border 

Also from The Slacktivist: We Don’t Live In ‘Bubbles’ (January 25) "Heck, if Chester A. Arthur had even said something so completely stupid in such an arrogant tone, then that’s all he’d be remembered for today. Historians would refer to President Arthur as 'the magnets guy' instead of just as, um, one of those guys who came between Grant and Teddy and probably won’t be on the final."

2. The Lives of China’s Hidden Workers, Through Their Own Camera Lens (January 25) "Instead, it is narrated by the people Sun calls the documentary’s 'co-directors,' from truck drivers and construction workers to fishermen and rice farmers — typical users of Kuaishou, which is more popular in China’s smaller cities and countryside than rival platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok."

(One quibble there: Tiktok is the international version of Douyin. Not the other way around.)

Also from Sixth Tone: Endangered Xizang Cattle Cloned For the First Time (January 30) "The latest national survey of livestock found only 19 Zhangmu cattle and 39 Apeijiaza cattle left in the country, with just one breeding bull remaining. According to Xinhua, the breeds are considered strategic resources for the country due to their ability to live on the snowy plateau at altitudes of more than 3,500 meters."

3. China, Singapore agree visa-free deal for travel stays of up to 30 days (January 25) China keeps adding more countries to the list! Great news for people from Singapore who want to travel to China.

4. American Family Radio Drops Alistair Begg Following Controversial Remarks About LGBTQ+ Weddings (January 24) "After confirming that the woman’s grandson understood that she doesn’t affirm his choice to marry a trans person, Begg said, 'Well then, okay. As long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony. And I suggest that you buy them a gift.'" Oh look, pastor Alistair Begg, who very much believes being trans is wrong, advises a grandma to go to her grandson's wedding to a trans person. Apparently this is not good enough for American Family Radio- what if someone thinks that attending the wedding means Grandma thinks being trans is okay? We can't have that!

Remember when I said that being evangelical means you have to throw queer people under the bus? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

5. Alabama man shook violently on gurney during first-ever nitrogen gas execution (January 27) [content note: death penalty]

6. From Scrooge McDuck to Zacchaeus to 21st century wealth inequality (January 29) "For far too long we’ve sequestered Zacchaeus inside a children’s song."

7. Brittany Watts, Ohio woman charged with felony after miscarriage at home, describes shock of her arrest (January 26) [content note: miscarriage] New details about how the hospital did not give her the medical care that she needed.

8. Uranus and Neptune are actually similar blues, 'true' color images reveal (January 5) Cool!

9. Red Lake considers a future without blood quantum (2023, via) "It's really not our traditional way. And in fact, it's a tool that was meant to divide our people to eliminate our people."

Blogaround

Chandler and Joey from "Friends." "I got her machine." "Her answering machine?" "No, interestingly enough, her leaf blower picked up." Image souce.

1. Mr. Rogers and Child Liberation Theology (October 15) "When you view children as sinful or evil, you are more likely to misinterpret developmentally appropriate behavior as sinful or evil—and thus more likely to punish them for just being children." R. L. Stollar has just written a book called "The Kingdom of Children," about child liberation theology. I really want to read this!

2. China's youngest-ever crew of astronauts heads to space station (October 26) Cool!

3. Journal Club: Whitewashed (October 25) "This chapter discusses how whiteness is the default for ace representation, and how that affects the intersection between race, gender, and asexuality. In particular, the chapter focuses on how aces of color can violate or confirm stereotypes, and how it can be difficult either way."

4. Can church groups and Louisville be sued on old child sex abuse claims? Court to decide (October 24, this is an archive link because the original is paywalled) Umm, so, a victim of sexual abuse is challenging the laws about the statute of limitations in Kentucky. And, for some reason, the Southern Baptist Convention- which is not part of this case at all- has submitted a brief arguing that the statute of limitations should NOT be changed. Arguing against the victim. What on earth. Like, they are not involved in this case at all, but they just want to pop in and let everyone know they're on the side of the abusers.

5. Vikings DB Enlists Help From Senators to Acquire Visa for Wife in Philippines (October 26) Oh man, this is so real. As a US citizen married to a non-US citizen, let me tell you, this is SO REAL. We're lucky- someone advised my husband to get a 10-year US tourist visa *before* we got married, and he did that, so he's always been able to travel to the US on vacation with me. But a lot of couples run into problems with this- the US often refuses to issue someone a tourist visa if they are married to a US citizen, because the US thinks it's likely they actually intend to overstay their visa and live in the US long-term. And applying for a spousal visa (this is part of the process of getting a US green card) can take a long time. 

And yeah, asking your senators for help speeding up the process- also VERY REAL. Hope this guy is able to bring his wife to the US soon. 

6. Julie Roys and LGBTQ+ People (August 1) Julie Roys runs a blog dedicated to reporting on and calling out abuse in the church and in other Christian environments. That's great work that she's doing. Unfortunately, it seems she does not support LGBTQ people. I didn't know that- sad to hear about this.

7. Flamy Grant - What Did You Drag Me Into? [Official Video] (2022) Music video from a Christian drag queen called Flamy Grant. This is the exact content I am interested in.

8. Matthew Perry, Star of ‘Friends,’ Is Dead at 54 (October 29) and ‘An ironic, self-deprecating metrosexual’: how Matthew Perry captured the spirit of the age (October 29)

"Friends" is hugely popular in China as a way to learn American English. My husband loved it, and introduced me to it, and I also became a fan. Sad to hear this news about Matthew Perry- he was great.

9. The Hardest Puzzle Of The Year (2022) 1-hour-50-minute sudoku solve video. Simon is a genius.

10. Pence ends White House campaign after struggling to gain traction. ‘This is not my time,’ he says (October 29) Good. As an ex-evangelical, I am more creeped out by Mike Pence than by any other politician.

11. Virgin-shaming hurts everyone, including asexual people like me (October 24, via) "What I am proud of is that I didn’t have sex to appease everyone’s demands."

Also from Tyger Songbird: Purity culture made me feel trapped. Finding asexuality set me free. (October 26) "It turned out that when the church was saying 'True Love Waits,' what they really were saying was 'True Love Waits… but you better get the Ring By Spring!'" This article is SPOT-ON.

Blogaround

1. Workplaces Without Borders And Sexual Harassment (August 8, via) "You might say 'well, if Harvey Weinstein asks out of nowhere whether your breasts are real, when you aren’t working on a Miramax film, he’s boorish and misogynist and a creep, but he’s not engaged in workplace sexual harassment—there’s no employment relationship between you and him.' But in a very real way that’s wrong, because even if Weinstein isn’t your employer right now, he might well have been your employer last year and be about to be your employer next year. Because the workplace is borderless, Weinstein’s behavior still creates a hostile work environment."

2. Phistomefel's Sequel (August 11) 1-hour-55-minute video. Normally Simon solves sudokus, but in this video it's a weird variation called "chequered arromino." "I think the big game in town here is to know whether yellow is orange or blue, and whether purple is orange or blue."

Wow, this one is also very good: Is There ANYTHING Cleverer On YouTube? (July 30) 1-hour-26-minute sudoku solve video.

3. Google will start deleting inactive accounts in December under new security policy (August 10) I find this very concerning, because they don't say how it will affect blogspot blogs. (Blogspot is a google product. My blog is hosted by google.) So, doesn't affect me because they're only going to delete stuff after 2 years of inactivity, but will people's blogspot blogs be deleted just because the blogger hasn't logged in to their blog or used their google account for a long time? The policy says that accounts with youtube channels won't be deleted, but what about blogs?

Also, another very concerning thing is what if you have a gmail account that you never log into because you've set it up to forward the emails to a different account? So you still use it, you still read the emails from it, but you don't log in. Would google see that as "inactivity"? (This answer on reddit says yes...) 

Google posted their policy here, Inactive Google Account Policy, and here About Inactive Account Manager. And also you can see what the recent activity was on your account here: My Google Activity.

4. Ooooh look at this, there's a new book called Color Taste Texture: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food. A cookbook for autistic people! (And anyone else who has food aversions.) I am very interested in this.

5. US, China agree to double weekly flights between countries (August 12) Yessssss. "The 24 weekly flights are still a fraction of the more than 150 round-trip flights allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-pandemic." Also, a complicating factor is that US airlines aren't flying over Russia now.

6. 'Blind Side' subject Oher alleges Tuohys made millions off lie (August 14) "Oher eventually hired a lawyer who helped him uncover the details surrounding the movie deal and his legal connection to the people he believed were his adoptive parents. His lawyer unearthed the conservatorship document in February, and Oher came to the painful realization that the Tuohys had not adopted him."

7. Christlike or Pornlike? A Christian Woman’s Role in Marriage (2021) [content note: abuse] This is what happens when everyone takes it for granted that a husband is simply not capable of being a decent human being if his wife's not regularly having sex with him. He is mistreating her in so many ways, and everyone (husband, pastor, church culture) tells her that the first step to fix the relationship is she needs to have sex with him whenever he demands it, otherwise nothing will change.

8. We can't stop thinking about Barbie's deliciously cutting Matchbox Twenty moment (August 1) "First, it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being made to listen to a man sing, unsolicited, when he clearly thinks he’s being so dreamy right now."

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Edit: Well I published this post, and I went to schedule it to tweet on tweetdeck, like I always do with my new blog posts, and now I have to add another link:

9. Twitter finally figured out how to kill TweetDeck, by putting it behind a paywall (August 17) Ah, well, I guess it's just a matter of time till I'd end up leaving twitter, it's just one thing after another. We'll see.