Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. They're Made Out of Weights (June 3, via) "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of weights."

2. Your Book Review: Breakdown In Pakistan (July 24) This is about the phenomenon of foreign NGOs coming in and transforming local community-led organizations, giving them money but making them no longer able to connect with and raise support from their community.

3. Antiques Roadshow (August 5) From xkcd. 

4. Furiosa’s Cat Feeder (2016, via) About a cat who keeps finding ways to get extra food out of the cat feeder, and the owner's continued attempts to prevent it. "Her next move was to lie on her back in the bowl, and stick her paw up the chute. She could paw the conveyor belt itself, getting it to move. This was very effective, netting an extra meal or more." 

5. Jonathan Haidt is wrong about age-gating the internet (July 13) "I wish everyone giving this parenting advice were first required to actually try, for an hour, to configure a computer such that it gives a user the ability to meaningfully interact with the web without bombarding them with content selected to make them hooked and miserable. It can’t be done. I have tried a wide range of parental control tools, and none of them even seem to comprehend it as an aspiration."

6. Sheep and Goats and ‘Hell’ (August 4) "So they need the Sheep and the Goats to support the claim of a 'literal' Heaven and Hell, but cannot acknowledge or accept what that parable has to say about who is going to 'Heaven' and who is going to 'Hell' and why. That parable, like the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, is explicit, emphatic, and categorical. 'Heaven' is for the poor and for those who feed the poor. 'Hell' is for rich people who neglect the poor. Full stop."

Also from the Slacktivist: No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah (August 7) "And then it struck me that I was sitting there earnestly asking myself one of the most pernicious, corrosive, damnable questions one can ever wind up asking oneself: Who does and does not count as 'our' people?"

7. Why Rachel Held Evans Still Reads Like a Prophet (August 10) There's a new book called "Braving the Truth" which is a collection of Rachel Held Evans's writings. Definitely worth reading. See also, this link roundup I posted in 2019: Link Roundup of Posts Honoring Rachel Held Evans

8. Niagara Falls and the Limits of the Design Inference (July 25) "In its cosmology, then, [intelligent design] finds design in the very law-structure of the universe. In its biology, it finds design in the failure of that law-structure to account for some feature. These are opposite arguments."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Justice department moves to dismiss its charges against Olympian over reflecting pool (July 31, via) "The documents 'indicated a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool,' the motion said."

2. The Assault On Science Funding Continues (July 23, via) "But I mean what I say and I am trying my best to say what I mean: The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands."

3. Truth Social’s Audacious Plan to Sell Banks Early Access to Trump’s Posts Goes Live (August 3, via) "This story has captured our attention because it compounds the corruption that has become endemic throughout the executive branch with a new, ridiculous feature of our economy — Trump manipulating the markets through his bespoke social media platform, prompting sell-offs and rallies with his statements about the status of such things as tariffs or the Iran war, regardless of those statements’ grounding in fact."

4. They lost their work permits and their legal status. Returning to Haiti is still 'unimaginable' (August 5) "Approximately 350,000 Haitians and Syrians who have remade their lives in the United States are now at a crossroads. Their work permits and legal status have expired, yet their home countries haven't recovered from the crises that drove them to seek Temporary Protected Status protections."

5. Trump signs new orders targeting birthright citizenship, weeks after Supreme Court ruling (August 7) The wording of this one is different than the previous one- I would be interested in reading an article explaining those differences and to what extent they matter.

6. Federal funds can't be used to give test strips to drug users, raising overdose fears (August 8)

"The Strangest Thing in the Sea" (kids' book review)

Book cover for "The Strangest Thing in the Sea."

Here's a book that my son loves, because it's about weird sea creatures: The Strangest Thing in the Sea by Rachel Poliquin, illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler.

On every page, it has a little hint on the left side, about what kind of creature it is, plus part of a picture of it. And then the right side page has an artistic representation of what kind of thing it might be. Like what you might imagine it is, just hearing a partial description. And then you flip open the right page and it shows the rest of the picture of what it really looks like, and it has all the information about what it is, what it eats, what kind of ocean environment it lives in, special abilities, etc.

Here's an example. On this page we see part of the creature, and we're told it's like a moon, so the right side page shows an artistic representation of a moon face:

And then you flip it open and you see it's actually an ocean sunfish!

This is really cool- every page is like this. It has an artistic image of what you might imagine it looks like, and then you flip open the page and see what it really is. (Apparently this is called a gatefold.) And there's a good variety of weird sea creatures. My son loves this because he loves weird animals.

---

Related

Reviews of Kids' Books

Blogaround

Photo of the earth, taken from the Artemis II space ship. Image source.

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The Touch - Stan Bush (HD Restoration) A song from some 1986 transformers movie.

I watched this video with my son standing next to me telling me the Chinese names of all the transformers. None of the pregnancy books prepared me for how much transformers lore I would be required to learn as a parent.

2. Artemis II astronauts swung by the moon, broke an Apollo record, and saw an eclipse (April 7) "Just minutes later, the crew reached the mission's maximum distance from Earth at 252,756 miles, beating the previous record set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970 by 4,111 more miles."

3. These blind students say their college blocked their education. A new rule could help (April 6) "For many assignments – say a PDF document from a professor – most students simply click "download," and read it. But that same assignment is more complicated for students who are blind."

4. In 1978, they stopped buses — and helped launch a disability rights movement (April 3) "The Gang of 19, as they'd be called, demanded that the city install wheelchair lifts on more than 200 newly-ordered buses, so they could ride public transit. The protest lasted some 24 hours. At night, some of the protesters got out of their wheelchairs and slept on the hard asphalt."

5. Day Counter (April 3) From xkcd.

6. On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: "The Master's Tools" in Tech Discourse (March 28, via) "A decolonial critique of technology is not simply "the internet was always bad." It is rather: the conditions that made the internet harmful to specific communities were never peripheral to its design; they're an integral part of it. And any politics that aims to restore something like the pre-enshittification internet without reckoning with those conditions is doomed to reproduce them."

7. When Genomes Fail: Serial Cloning, Mutation Accumulation, and the Case Against Creationist’ Genetic Entropy (April 6) "By the 57th generation, the mice carried approximately 3,700 single-nucleotide variants, 80 insertions or deletions, and at least 16 large structural variants that had not been present in the original donor. The birth rate declined steadily after generation 27, and the 58th generation was the last. Every mouse born in that final generation died within a day."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. The president is posting on social media to threaten genocide. He must be removed from office.

Trump post on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to ​be brought back ​again. I don’t want that ‌to ⁠happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We ⁠will find out tonight, one of ​the most important ​moments ⁠in the long and complex history of ⁠the ​World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!"

We have the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Now is the time to use it. (April 8) "Any federal official who does not respond to Tuesday’s threat in a manner befitting their own constitutional obligations in light of Trump’s past actions will bear a part of the responsibility for what follows."

2. Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general (April 2)

Pam Bondi is out — and that is a good thing. She was Trump's lawyer, and DOJ paid the price. (April 3) "She has caused incalculable harm to the Department, the rule of law, and the nation. All in service of Trump. That is, and will always be, her legacy."

3. She paid into Medicare for years. Trump's immigration policy will end her coverage (April 6) "She's contributed tens of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security over 24 years, according to her Social Security Administration earnings record, reviewed by El Tímpano and KFF Health News. But Carranza and an estimated 100,000 other lawfully present immigrants will soon be cut out of Medicare."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Build a Tensegrity Structure (2020, via) 3-minute video. Oh this is very cool! It looks like it's floating.

2. The network of mutuality is not escapable (January 1) "So it’s jarring, here, to read an explicitly evangelical condemnation of racism that contends it refers only to disparate impact and does not at all include sinful personal animus — that contends, instead, that there is no such thing as sinful personal animus."

3. A single Chick-fil-A store congratulated a gay couple, and conservatives lost their damn minds (January 5) "The conservative Washington Stand (which is published by the Christian hate group Family Research Council) posted an article claiming this harmless post was 'controversial' and proof that Chick-fil-A hasn’t 'weeded out the LGBT extremism' within its ranks."

4. 'A Directive From Above': Former NYT Editor Lays Out How The Paper Pushes Anti-Trans Bigotry (January 2, via) 

5. Experience with AI coding (January 6) "The rest of y’all can confidently spout opinions about AI coding, because you’re not actually doing it, so you never risk the humility of learning that you were wrong."

6. Superstition (January 7) From xkcd.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. RFK Wants to Un-cure Cancer (December 24) "This will not shock you, but RFK, Jr. is not suggesting that we adopt any other part of Denmark’s public health policy–not the universal health care, not the guaranteed parental leave, not the guaranteed medical follow-ups after birth. None of the things that make Denmark’s vaccine schedule work for Denmark’s population."

Also from Skepchick: Somali Americans are Good, Actually (December 31) "And, gosh, I hate to be a broken record, here, but…GOOD. GET THOSE PEOPLE HEALTHCARE. Get them food stamps and stuff, too, but YES HEALTHCARE IS GOOD. Treating people for their illnesses benefits EVERYONE. I don’t even care that this is hyper-focused on the Somali community in Minnesota (where about a third of all Somali-Americans live). Get them all healthcare. Get them all food stamps. Helping each other is good, actually."

2. Four key lessons that we can and must take out of 2025 (January 1) "Pushing back is essential — and it works."

3. The Case For Hope: Transgender Rights Going Into 2026 (December 31) "And yet, we have not met our doom—at least not yet. Gender-affirming care for transgender adults remains available in all 50 states, with Florida imposing some restrictions, ones that transgender people have nevertheless found ways to work around."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding (January 8) "The bill comes as families scramble to locate alternatives to hospital systems that are abandoning them. With more than 20 hospitals closing their doors to transgender youth care out of fear and preemptive compliance with the Trump administration, many families have been forced to seek alternatives."

4. An Ode to Corruption: Announcing 2025’s Golden Duke Winners (December 29, via) "Trump’s $300 Million White House Ballroom takes the cake for, as one reader put it, the most visually 'on the nose' corruption of Trump’s second term and the 'raw indulgence of the gold plated ballroom funded by shady crypto guys.'"

5. The Venezuela attack is a constitutional crisis for the United States (January 5) "If Congress were taking seriously its constitutional obligation to preserve our system of checks and balances, it would immediately launch an impeachment."

6. 12 Senators Describe What It Was Like as Rioters Stormed the Capitol on January 6 (January 6) "At this point, there were so many breaches, and the doors that we have really weren’t going to—the outer doors weren’t holding. We knew the inner doors weren’t going to hold. So we needed to get the Senate out of there."

This Jan. 6 plaque was made to honor law enforcement. It's nowhere to be found at the Capitol (January 6) "This summer, two officers who fought the mob that day sued over the delay."

7. Sen. Mark Kelly fires back after Hegseth threatens his rank and retirement pay (January 5) "I will fight this with everything I've got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don't get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government."

8. ‘This is not normal’: Minneapolis on edge and angry after ICE killing of woman amid federal surge (January 8) "Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said succinctly Wednesday after the shooting: 'To ICE – get the fuck out of Minneapolis.'"

9. A once rare legislative tool is causing headaches for Mike Johnson (January 7) "'It is idiotic and shameful,' Lawler said on the House floor. 'This place is disgraceful. Everybody wants the political advantage. They don't actually want to do the damn work.'"

"The Book of Bok" (a book about a moon rock, by Neil Armstrong)

Book cover for "Bok's Giant Leap"

I got this book for my kids: "The Book of Bok: One Moon Rock's Journey Through Time and Space," by Neil Armstrong and Grahame Baker Smith. Looking for a link for this book online, it seems it has also been published under the title Bok's Giant Leap: One Moon Rock's Journey Through Time and Space. These appear to be the same book.

I think this book is great! It's the story of a moon rock, named Bok, which was picked up by Neil Armstrong and brought back to earth. It starts out 4.5 billion years ago, when a smaller planet collided with the earth and sent a lot of rock into space, which then came together and formed the moon. Then there was all kinds of volcanic activity on the moon, and then it cooled off, there was an asteroid strike, etc.

Meanwhile, life was developing on earth. In the oceans, and then amphibians came up on land, and then the dinosaurs- but Bok barely noticed them because the time of the dinosaurs was only 170 million years, just a blink compared to the billions of years Bok had already been sitting around on the moon. Then humans appeared on the earth- the book lists these specific people: Plato, Hypatia, Charles Darwin, Maria Mitchell, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Bessie Coleman.

And then Neil Armstrong came in a rocket and picked up Bok and brought him back to the earth. You can go see him in a museum! (Okay I googled this and I didn't find anything about a moon rock at a museum that is specifically named Bok. But it *is* true that you can go see moon rocks without cute names that Armstrong and the other astronauts brought back.)

I love this; I think this is such a cool idea, taking the perspective of the moon, where the rocks just sat there and not much happened for billions of years. Most of the universe is rocks just sitting there with nothing happening for billions of years. 

---

My son's opinion

Let's hear what my son, an actual child, has to say about this book.

Me: Do you like this book? I like this one.

Him: Nope

Me: Why not?

Him: [wanders off to look at a book about "Plants vs Zombies"]

Okay so I wasn't able to get an endorsement out of him.

---

In conclusion, I love this book, and I think it's a good one to give to a kid if you want to teach them about space or the moon landings.

---

Related:

"Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs" (good dinosaur book for babies)

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

"Good Night Sharks" (kids' book review)

Miracles and Exceptions

Snowflakes. Image source.

How rare does something have to be, to be a miracle?

This might seem like a strange question to ask. Why would miracles be defined in terms of the frequency at which they occur? Isn't a miracle defined more along the lines of, something that doesn't have a natural explanation, because God intervened supernaturally to do it?

Yeah, but if God "intervenes supernaturally" frequently enough, then these "miracles" start to become something we can measure and quantify scientifically. Scientists will say "this is a known phenomenon that happens, we know it happens, we've observed it many times" even though they don't have a full explanation of the reasons why. At that point, can you even say it's a miracle?

Miracles are, supposedly, events that break the laws of nature. But how do we even know what the laws of nature are? The universe didn't come with an instruction manual which listed out the laws of nature. Over thousands of years, generations of scientists have worked hard to come up with theories and test them, and all this hard work has led to our current understanding of what "the laws of nature" are.

In other words, our "laws of nature" are based on repeated observations of how the world works. If miracles are so rare that they've never shown up as any kind of observable pattern in our scientific data, then sure, okay, maybe it makes sense to define miracles as breaking the laws of nature. 

But there are Christians who believe miracles are happening all the time. I've heard plenty of anecdotes about "so-and-so had some serious illness but then suddenly got better and the doctors have no idea how" - yes, you go to church and everyone knows someone personally that had a "miraculous" recovery like this, and I just... if it's really happening so frequently, then is it really true that "the doctors have no idea"? This idea that miracles are things that science can't explain, and they're constantly happening, seems to rely on a misunderstanding of what science even is- as if science is about strong confidence in the explanations we already have, and denial that there can exist things that we don't currently understand. Wow, that's so backwards- in reality, pursuing science means being excited about things we don't understand- let's research them! Let's understand them!

Probably what's more likely is many illnesses have a known rate at which people just kinda mysteriously recovery, and it's not yet understood how it's happening (or maybe it *is* understood, but your doctor wasn't expecting it because it's rare), but it's a known observable thing, and the scientific types aren't calling it a miracle. (And maybe it's better if it's not a miracle, but something we could study and use for more patients' medical treatment.) 

You end up with this weird paradox where it only makes sense to believe in miracles if you also believe they're so rare that you're never going to see one.

Or, alternatively, you can believe that God is constantly intervening to make the laws of nature what they are. When we observe a chemical reaction happening, it's because God is actively causing it to happen- and They do it the same way every time, and scientists observe it and call it a law of nature. As Colossians 1:17 says, "in him all things hold together." (I actually like this idea and might believe it? ... Okay the more I think about it, the more I feel like, I like some aspects of it but not others.) Not sure if it really matters though- if physics always works the same way because that's how physics works, or if physics always works the same way because God is always there doing it, does that difference actually matter? (Hmm, but maybe if physics causes you to fall off a cliff and die, it's not great to believe God personally caused that to happen.)

A long time ago, when I was a teenager, I heard a Christian speaker giving a talk about how apparently scientists don't know how bees fly. Because based on the bees' weight and the size of their wings, it shouldn't be physically possible. And this speaker said it's a great illustration of how God does miracles, and science doesn't know everything. I was so incredibly annoyed by this, this God-of-the-gaps thinking, this claim that "it shouldn't be possible for bees to fly" (??????). Are we really claiming that every time a bee buzzes around, God is personally doing a miracle, and scientists shouldn't even bother trying to understand it? A while later, I was very happy to come across an article about how bees fly (apparently there's something different about it compared to other flying things, so I guess that's where this Christian speaker got this idea from). It's not a "miracle"! It's not a mysterious thing that science can never understand! (Here, if you ever meet someone making this claim, send them this article to slap it down.)

Anyway. Some Christians would argue that God makes sure that miracles never coincide with situations where scientists are gathering data- the belief is that it's not possible to collect evidence or proof of miracles, because "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." This makes no sense because it imagines the world is clearly divided into situations which can/are being measured and having data collected, and situations which aren't. What? How on earth could there be a situation where, on some fundamental level, it's impossible to gather data for analysis??? And also, with modern technology we're collecting so much data, there are security cameras everywhere, people's phones are tracking their location all the time, people are wearing smart watches which monitor heart rate and other health indicators- if God does a miracle right now, surely some of it will be captured in data somewhere.

And if there was a miracle, and it was captured in data, would it no longer look like a miracle? What if you were collecting data when Moses led the people out of Egypt and God parted the Red Sea (which I don't think actually happened BUT THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE)- you would see high wind speeds in your data, and you could say "oh, the sea parted because of the wind"- would you then feel like it wasn't a miracle? But what caused the wind? Well, a difference in air pressure caused the wind. But what caused that? And you can go on forever, asking "why"- at what point does the science end and the miracle begin? 

If a miracle really did occur in our real physical world, there will be real physical effects that can be measured. But if we really did measure them, would we still *feel* like it was a miracle?

And you might say "well you can collect data when the miracle happens, but that won't tell you the real reason why, so you're not really 'capturing' the miracle in your data"- but all scientific study is like that. You collect data, and the data never tells you the reason why something happens- you have to come up with a hypothesis and test it.

Another anecdote: I once watched a tv show about supposed miracles, and one of the stories on the show was about a guy who got run over by a train, and his body was cut in two, but he survived. Wow, he survived! And the show interviewed different people who offered their opinions on whether it was a miracle. This annoyed me SO MUCH because they never actually gave a good definition of what a "miracle" was, and so people took the exact same pieces of information and said "therefore it's a miracle" or "therefore it's not a miracle." Like "oh, the path of the train didn't hit any of his vital organs, that's how he survived, it's possible to survive this kind of injury if it doesn't damage any vital organs, therefore it's not a miracle" and "oh, the path of the train didn't hit any of his vital organs, wow how amazing that it didn't hit any of his vital organs, what are the odds of that happening- must have been a miracle!" Aggggh that tv show annoyed me so much. 

(And people who think it's a miracle should then have to consider the question "why didn't God just stop this from happening in the first place, rather than doing a miracle to save his life after the fact?")

Probably a lot of Christians would tell me I'm overanalyzing this, and that the way we know miracles are real is more vibes-based. That has never made sense to me. If a thing is true, then you can analyze it as much as you want and it will still be true.

---

If you're in a situation where something good happened and you think it might be from God, how do you know if it's a miracle or not? If it's the sort of thing that could have happened through normal, natural means, then maybe it just happened naturally for no reason, or maybe God caused it to happen and it's a miracle. Or maybe God caused it to happen but it doesn't quite count as a miracle. 

Certainly there were many times, back when I was evangelical, that we believed "God made it not rain today so we would have good weather for [some important event]" (or some small everyday thing along those lines)- yes, I believed God had intentionally caused the good weather to happen, specifically for us. I wouldn't have called it a "miracle" though- that feels like such a big claim. I believed God caused the good weather to happen just in the normal way that good weather happens, and no matter how much data you collected on it, you would never find any anomalies to indicate God's meddling. Or, maybe God caused the good weather to happen through miraculous means. Who knows? Does it matter?

(But I don't believe in this any more- I don't believe God intervenes like that.)

I guess my point is, I've never really seen any use in distinguishing between "miracles" and situations where God intervenes through natural, undetectable means. I don't think it's possible to clearly distinguish between them. Perhaps when we read stories from the bible, the difference between "miracles" and "God intervened but it's not really a miracle" is more important? But in my actual life, it seems like you can never totally know which kind it was, and I don't know if it really matters.

---

There's another aspect of belief in God's intervention I want to talk about here. Also related to frequency. A lot of times, the dramatic stories that Christians tell go like this: "Normally, you wouldn't expect XYZ to happen. But, God is so powerful, God is always doing the unexpected, and XYZ happened, hooray!" I have concerns about how these kinds of stories are told so frequently, it kind of reverses Christians' expectations about what "normally" happens.

An example: I led bible study groups, back when I was in college. As the leader, you have to spend time beforehand preparing. You have to read the passage, do research about how it's interpreted, etc. You really should do this work to prepare, otherwise your bible study won't go well.

But occasionally, I didn't have time to prepare, and I just showed up at bible study and we read the bible passage and I had no idea what I was going to say about it. And sometimes, when that happened... well I described it as the Holy Spirit taking over, and the bible study went great, way better than expected, and clearly it was God, it wasn't me, obviously it wasn't because of me, because I hadn't even prepared anything.

Many of my friends who led bible studies have had similar experiences. I've also heard this from pastors- sometimes they don't have time to prepare a sermon, and they just go up there and the Holy Spirit gives them the words to say in the moment, and it goes great.

In the evangelical subculture I was in, we believed this happened sometimes, but we didn't think you should count on it. Normally, if you don't prepare anything, and you just wing it, it doesn't go very well. Yes, okay, sometimes God comes to your rescue, but you should do the work yourself, instead of assuming God will pick up the slack. It would be really lazy and arrogant, to intentionally not spend any time preparing, and expecting that God would make it all okay. Like you're gonna expect the Creator of the universe to personally come and save you from a problem that you caused. Yeah, we believed it was great when it happened, but don't count on it. Do the work yourself.

But the more "charismatic" Christians, who believe the Holy Spirit is constantly "moving" and doing amazing things in our lives all the time- I've noticed that they are a lot more casual about just winging it and expecting God to give them the words to say. You have pastors preaching their sermons, and they often say "I wasn't going to talk about this, but the Spirit had other plans" or "I was only going to preach for 20 minutes but the Spirit has given me more to say" and it goes on for an hour. This didn't happen in the church where I grew up, so when I first encountered it, I really thought it was an unusual situation, like normally the church service goes according to a nice reasonable schedule, but this one time the pastor has been struck with holy inspiration and wants to talk for longer- and is a bit nervous because it's so unusual and the congregation might not be happy about it, but the pastor just has to trust God and take that step of faith, to make them all continue to sit through whatever half-baked ideas might come to his mind. But no, it's not like that, in those churches, it's not unusual at all. At some churches, it's very common that the sermon goes on and on and the pastor says all sorts of things they weren't planning to say but just came to them "from the Spirit." It happens so frequently that you can make plans around it. Is that really from the Spirit, then? Do we expect God to reliably give us words to say when we put ourselves in that situation, or is it a rare, exciting thing?

Believing miracles happen so frequently that you can then predict them and rely on them. Is that what miracles are supposed to be, though?

(See 1 Kings 18 for a particularly gutsy version of this "expecting a miracle to happen." Elijah sets up a test to see whose god will make fire fall down and burn up the sacrifice. Elijah even dumps a bunch of water on the altar. Then when he prays, fire does indeed come down and burn up everything, including the water. Wow. I always interpreted this not as Elijah asking God to do the miracle, but as God telling Elijah to go set this up because God already was planning to do the miracle. Because yikes, you can't just be ordering God to do miracles.)

Here's another example: I read Phil Vischer's book "Me, Myself, and Bob," which is about the rise and fall of VeggieTales, including how they eventually went bankrupt. They spent so much money on marketing their movie "Jonah," and then it didn't do as well in the theaters as they had hoped. But Vischer wrote in his book that he thought to himself, maybe the DVD sales will be so incredibly successful, it will save the company. He thought, wouldn't that be just like God, to come through right at the last minute when it seems there is no hope? But then, no, the DVD sales were not that great, and there was no way to recover from that, and the company went bankrupt.

This belief that when it looks like everything is going bad, that means you're in a story where God comes in and demonstrates his power by dramatically saving you. Christians tell these stories so much, it becomes something we expect to happen, rather than an amazing exception that's worth talking about because it is so rare. Wouldn't that be just like God, to do something so dramatic and unexpected? I've been in situations like that too, feeling like "the reason our plans for this Christian event seem to not be working is that later God will show up and suddenly make everything into a huge success" (and then no, God did not make everything into a huge success).

All sorts of stories that Christians tell, about having faith and obeying God, and it seems like things aren't going well, it seems like a bad idea, but you just keep obeying what you believe God wants you to do, and then miraculously God comes through and makes everything great. I really did have a mindset where I expected that to happen, rather than believing that usually when it looks like you're failing, that's because you really are failing.

It's so weird, this tension where the story is dramatic and exciting because we know that's not what normally happens, but you tell those kinds of stories so often that then we expect that's what normally happens. Kind of like when you watch a movie, and the main characters are in danger, but you're not concerned at all because they're the main characters so obviously they'll be fine. Plot armor. We *expect* movie heroes to be successful despite the odds. We *expect* God has put us into an amazing, dramatic story where we obey Them even when it's hard and it looks like it's not working, and then in the end God will guarantee us great success.

---

The thing is, though, I can't totally reject this kind of "things that by definition need to be rare, but we believe they're happening all the time" thinking, because I believe in resurrection. I believe in the Resurrection, but also in resurrection as a general concept. The way the world normally works, it's about power, the strong taking advantage of the weak. The way the world normally works, death is the end, a terrifying enemy that we have to fear. But resurrection says this isn't the whole story about how the world works. That on some level, the truth is that love is stronger than power, that love is stronger than death. 

So which is it, then? Does power always win, except that one time when Jesus resurrected? Or does love win frequently enough that we can study it and rely on it, as if resurrection is a law of nature rather than an exception? (For example, we can study the tactics used by successful civil rights movements/ resistance movements throughout history. Did they work because some law of the universe and human nature says they will work, or because God made an exception and intervened to help them out? Hmm, that question has big implications in terms of whether the same tactics will work in new situations.) I really believe resurrection does describe a truth about how the world works. But in order to be such powerful good news, doesn't it need to be contrasted with how the world "normally" works, and therefore it can't be an aspect of that "normally"? There's something inconsistent in my beliefs here.

I'm very excited about the idea of resurrection, but what does that actually mean?

Or maybe resurrection does not describe the world as it is now, but only how it will be in heaven? But no, I can't get on board with that interpretation, because I believe we have to do the work here to bring heaven to the earth. To bring justice and freedom and love. Resurrection is not supposed to be some faraway otherworldly thing that we can't relate to. "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

---

Nobody seems to have a good definition of what a "miracle" is. Is it something that breaks the laws of nature as we know them? But then if miracles happen frequently enough, wouldn't they just become part of those "laws of nature"? 

How often can you expect God to come through when you need help? Does this happen frequently enough that you can predict and rely on it? Evangelicals believe in having a "personal relationship with God", and in most personal relationships, you can rely on each other like that- but I never felt that you should do that with God. Sure, it can be tempting to want to get yourself into a badly-planned bible study just so you can feel God's power bailing you out, but I always felt that would be wrong, and God won't play along with it. "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

---

Follow-up post: Trusting God, Predicting God, Controlling God

Related:

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number? 

Runaway Radical: The Stories You Can't Tell In Church

Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories 

Does God Use Miracles To Take Sides?

Renee Bach, who had no medical training, opened a clinic in Africa. Just like missionaries are supposed to.

"Good Night Sharks" (kids' book review)

Book cover for "Good Night Sharks"

My daughter is really into books. She's making me read books to her all the time. So I want to write some blog posts about the ones I think are good. Here's my review of "Good Night Sharks" by Adam Gamble and Mark Jasper.

---

Overview

This is a board book for toddlers. Each page has some species of shark, and 1 fact about the shark. (Or, some pages have shark-adjacent things, like an aquarium.) For example: "Good evening, mighty bull shark. You can swim in salt water or fresh water."

I like this because it's scientifically accurate, and doesn't try to make it into a cutesy little story. We just learn facts about a bunch of species of sharks. I guess that's different from most board books, but my little toddler likes it, so it's great. Okay honestly most of the language goes over her head, but she is so here for the pictures.

Did you guys know the Greenland shark can live for 400 years? I learned that from this book.

---

My daughter's opinions

She likes to point at various things in the book and offer commentary on them. Okay, but it's toddler commentary, like pointing at a fish and saying "babum babum" because I told her that fish say "blub" and she is attempting to say "blub." Or she points at a crab and then makes little pinching motions with her fingers.

She is very smart and I love her.

---

There is a whole "Good Night" series

It turns out these authors have a whole entire series called "Good Night Our World", with books about saying good night to every thing or place that you can imagine. I haven't read any of the other books in this series, but if you have a little kid who is very interested in one specific thing, maybe you could find a book in this series about that. A lot of the books are about places, actually- "Good Night Florida", "Good Night California", "Good Night New York City"- which could be fun for a kid to read if they've traveled to these places.

---

Related:

"Bizzy Bear" (these books are great for babies)

"Priddy Explorers: Dinosaurs" (good dinosaur book for babies)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: Global Asexual Solidarity (September 30) "Chen says this argument goes too far. They criticize it for relying on an Orientalist fantasy of a pre-existing “authentic” sexuality, and ignoring the agency of local activists."

2. The War on Science (September 23, 4-hour-2-minute video from Shaun) "This book is a collection of tired, irrelevant, right-wing, culture-war nitpicks being released at the most ridiculous possible time. These complaints have never been less relevant to reality, which makes the entire book read like one big joke."

Wow, turns out a lot of the essays in this book are some professor writing "I got fired because of some little mundane thing that THE WOKE MOB got angry about" and then Shaun digs up what actually happened and it turns out the professor in question was sexually harassing students/ had a long-term pattern of extremely racist behavior/ etc.

3. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91 (October 2, via) "He said Goodall was among the first researchers to make close observations of chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and quirks, at a time when other scientists were not trained to observe such specific details."

4. People Mountain, People Sea: Golden Week in Pictures (October 3) This week is China's "Golden Week" (the week we have off work for the October 1 National Day 国庆节 holiday). Usually it's 7 days off work, but this year it's 8 days because Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 happens to fall during this week too. This article has a bunch of photos showing the crowds of vacationers all around China.

Also, the phrase "people mountain, people sea" is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom 人山人海. It means it's very crowded. Like you look at a crowd and it looks like a mountain of people or a sea of people.

5. Israeli forces board Gaza flotilla, detain Greta Thunberg, other activists (October 1, via) "At least three ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 44 vessels and some 500 activists, were intercepted approximately 70 nautical miles (130km) from the coast of Gaza, according to organisers."

And more updates on this:

Greta Thunberg ‘beaten and forced to kiss Israeli flag’, activists say (October 5, via) 

Greta Thunberg is among flotilla activists deported from Israel. Others remain in prison (October 7)

6. Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts (October 3, via) Cool!

7. This Is What Happens When Therapists Don’t Understand Asexuality (September/October issue, via) "As I scribbled darkly with a dark pen, my therapist talked with us about how I could move forward toward having penetrative sex a certain amount of times per month."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. There will be No Kings protests on October 18. Join if you can!

2. UN says Fox News host apologized after calling for world body to be bombed (September 27) "'What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,' Watters said. 'Maybe gas it ... we need to destroy it.'"

3. Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’ (October 2) "Among Mukherjee’s clients are a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. 'An Ice officer has threatened to separate each of these children from each other and from their mother and their father, detain them in separate facilities, and put them on four different deportation flights,' she said. 'This is unnecessarily cruel.'"

4. Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated' (October 2, via) "Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours."

5. ‘Could have been an email’: Officials balk at Hegseth's generals meeting (September 30) "'It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,' said a former senior defense official. 'It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.'"

6. The federal government is shut down. Here's what that means across the country (October 6)

Democrats united in effort to stop Trump's 'lawless activity,' says Sen. Van Hollen (October 6)

7. Trump Promotes Magical Conspiracy Beds (October 2) "In a serious country with democratic norms still in place, a circumstance like this would lead directly to journalists forcing Donald Trump to explain whether or not he posted the video, and as a follow-up they would force him to elaborate on whether or not he understands reality. Like, does he know he never said this? Does he know that magical beds don’t exist?"

8. A federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Oregon — again. Here’s what we know (October 6)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Just not right (September 2) "Why? Because “justice” and “righteousness” could not be allowed to remain similar in meaning by people seeking to regard themselves as righteous but desperate to avoid justice."

Hey here's a thought, what if Romans 3:10, "there is no one righteous, not even one," should be interpreted more along the lines of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" rather than "everyone deserves to go to hell for not being perfect."

2. Sea Level (August 29) From xkcd.

3. China military parade 2025 LIVE: Weapons on display as Putin and Kim Jong Un attend event (September 3) 1-hour-59-minute video. Oh look, a country that actually knows how to put on a military parade.

My husband is Chinese and he's so into this parade.

4. ‘Ketamine Queen’ pleads guilty to selling fatal dose to Matthew Perry (September 4) "A woman branded as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, becoming the fifth and final defendant charged in Perry’s overdose death to admit guilt."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. This weekend in Trump's effort to make fascism happen (September 2) "But, fighting back matters. And many are doing so. It works — both in fact, as to specific outcomes, and also to dismantle their propaganda of fear."

2. Judge rules against National Guard in LA, and Trump vows to send them to Chicago (September 2) "Today's ruling — even if it holds up on appeal — would not impact the use of the guard in other places because it was based on the specific circumstances of what kind of duties the guard has performed in Los Angeles and whether it was overstepping its powers over civilians."

3. Dozens of scientists find errors in a new Energy Department climate report (September 2) "The DOE's Climate Working Group consisted of four scientists and one economist who have all questioned the scientific consensus that climate change is a large threat to the world and sometimes frame global warming as beneficial."

4. Full text of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's speech at news conference on reported Trump military plan for Chicago (August 26, via) "Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names."

5. Lysenkoism Comes to America (September 1) "Also like Lysenko, Kennedy is a crank."

6. Denver Schools Defies Trump Trans Bathroom Ban: "We Will Protect All Of Our Students From This Hostile Admin" (September 3) "They also rejected the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, writing: 'The interpretation put forward by OCR would undercut our equity commitments, contradict our mission, harm the very students we are entrusted to support and would have a devastating impact on the East High School and the broader LGBTQ+ community.'"

Just reading an apologetics book and asking "why are we doing this?"

Book cover for "The Case for a Creator"

So I was at a used book sale and saw this: The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, and snatched it up. Because I used to be an apologetics nerd, and I used to be a creationist, and I read Strobel's books "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Faith" when I was in high school. But then, years later, I read atheist responses to them, and realized that those books came across like "we have such solid evidence for our faith, atheists don't even know what to say", but it's not true, atheists in fact have a lot of things to say. I got really turned off of apologetics after reading atheist responses. The atheists make some good points. Good for them.

Anyway I saw this book, "The Case for a Creator," (published in 2004) and I was like "ooh a creationist book, I wonder how it will come across to me now, since I'm in such a different place than when I read Strobel's other books."

So here's my review of the book, and also some opinions about apologetics in general.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. ChatGPT is the new appeal to authority for right-wing Christians (July 21) "Right-wing Christians perform an ecstatic devotion they call speaking in tongues, and then try to get ChatGPT to guess the language they used."

2. Did this Kid Use AI to Fake Research About How Great AI Is? (August 21) "But this is not another case of a few fudged numbers. This is a case of a guy who just straight made up an entire study and convinced the world that it was real."

3. Ministry of Violence (August 22) [content note: physical abuse of children] One of the biggest things James Dobson was known for was his teaching about how to "discipline" your kids, ie, kids are evil little tyrants, and if they are ever stubborn or disobedient about anything, that's a power struggle that the parent needs to win, by hitting the child until the child totally surrenders. He gave detailed advice on how exactly to go about hitting your children.

I didn't mention it in my post because that aspect of his teaching didn't have much effect on me personally. But yes, I'm glad people are writing about this. This was a huge part of what he was teaching.

---

Image text: "In The Lion King (1997), Scar makes false campaign promises by guaranteeing to eliminate hunger, but actively makes the problem worse instead. This is the most realistic part of the movie." Image source. (Fact check: It was 1994.)

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Living in the shadows: Why stateless people fear Trump's immigration crackdown (August 21) "An estimated 218,000 people in the U.S. are stateless or at risk of becoming so, according to the Center for Migration Studies."

2. Judge orders DOJ to give more info on subpoenas targeting trans minors' medical care (August 21) "The subpoena in question, issued to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia1 (referred to in court documents often as “CHOP”), is extremely invasive — not only as to the medical providers but, relevant here, as to their patients."

3. Special Report: U.S. Immigration Policy and the Mental Health of Children and Families (July 25) "Forced family separations, particularly those resulting from immigration enforcement (e.g., detention, deportation), introduce acute psychological risks. A national study of 547 U.S.-born adolescents ages 11 to 16 found that having a detained or deported family member was associated with elevated risk for suicidal ideation, externalizing behaviors, and alcohol use (Roche, et al., 2020). In young children, abrupt caregiver loss has been linked to sleep and appetite disturbances, emotional dysregulation, and developmental regression (MacLean, et al., 2019). Forcible separation from a caregiver is recognized as an adverse childhood experience (ACE) that contributes to toxic stress, ambiguous loss, and long-term risk for psychiatric disorders (Roberts, et al., 2014; Lu, et al., 2020)."

4. Kilmar Abrego Garcia detained by ICE during Baltimore check-in (August 25) "'God is with us. God will never leave us. God will bring justice to all of the injustice we are suffering,' Abrego Garcia said, fighting through tears."

5. ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ may be shut down before Halloween. Florida already has a backup plan (August 24) "The Miccosukee Tribe, a Native American tribe whose reservation lies within miles of the facility, raised serious concerns about the impact the facility will have on their land and the environmentally sensitive area, including the plants and animals that inhabit the Everglades."

6. Concentration camps are not just part of our past, but our present and future (August 22, via) "...the most important aspect of recognizing this history is not so those of us descended from settlers or who have otherwise benefited from the legacy of colonialism feel shame, but rather 'to recognize that these tactics, [a division into] savage vs. civilized, continues to inhabit our society. At any moment, these sentiments are still there and this way of thinking emerges.'"

7. Trump Admin Bans Coverage For Trans Govt Employees, Mandates Conversion Therapy Coverage (August 21) "On Friday, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a memo announcing that, beginning in 2026, all federal employee health plans will be barred from covering gender-affirming care—including hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries—for both transgender youth and adults."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

4. The Element Song by Tom Lehrer

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

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

---

Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

Hi all, I'm on vacation, but here are some links

---

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Does X cause Y? An in-depth evidence review (2021) "First, the good news: there are hundreds of studies on whether X causes Y. The bad news? We need to throw most of them out."

2. John MacArthur, dead fundamentalist (July 22)

3. OZZY OSBOURNE - "Crazy Train" (Official Video) I seem to remember I used to play this song in Guitar Hero. (Posting this because, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath frontman and icon of British heavy metal, dies aged 76 (July 22))

4. The NSFW game purge (July 24) "If a conservative group can apply pressure to remove certain NSFW games, what’s to stop them from removing, say, LGBT content? I am here to tell you that it has already happened."

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Demography of Asexuality and Aromanticism (July 24) "We’re happy to see that this article is far more willing than most scholarly articles to cite gray literature, including blog posts, tumblr posts, livestreams, and YouTube videos."

5. His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza (July 27)

6. Get ready, Brazil. The 'good mosquitoes' are coming (July 26) "Remarkably, this bacteria and the virus that causes dengue are unable to coexist inside the mosquito that transmits this disease."

7. Freakier Friday | Official Trailer | In Theaters August 8 (June 7) !!!! A "Freaky Friday" sequel that has Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan again! Very excited about this!

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Gloves Are Off | "I Absolutely Love That Colbert Got Fired" | Trump & Epstein's Wonderful Secret (July 22) 

And from npr: This was the week that comedy pushed back (July 27) 

2. From Joy To Justice (July 22) "Before I dive in, a special thanks to all of the lawyers, journalists, activists, Congress members and ordinary citizens who did not let this story go and never relented, applying constant pressure upon our government to undo its original illegal renditions. Whatever post-hoc reason the government gives today for its actions, we all know that the 252 men sent to CECOT would still be there were it not for the hard work of so many."

And from npr: 'Hell on Earth': Venezuelans deported to El Salvador mega-prison tell of brutal abuse (July 27)

And: Ex-marine convicted of killing three people released to US in prisoner swap (July 23) What! So is he just free in the US or what? I haven't found any reporting on whether they're just letting him go free or what's going on.

3. We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory (July 22) I had some opinions about this article, maybe I will try to blog about it if I have time. I want to say, in Christian "sexual purity" ideology, I have *definitely* come across the idea that the ideal case would be girls who are around 15 years old, right at the point where they've started having their period and are therefore able to get pregnant, getting married to adult men who are well-established financially. It's a pretty fringe idea, and I haven't met anyone in real life who was seriously advocating this, but I have seen the idea floated and it's totally consistent with the logic of purity culture, which says that the MOST IMPORTANT THING about sex and marriage is that you need to not have sex outside of marriage (oh and also, the husband has to be the leader). Other concerns, like actually treating each other right, are nice to have, but the main thing is DON'T HAVE SEX till that ring is on your finger.

(See my posts All of the LOLs for this Sermon on "Marrying Young" and Why Marriage as a Private Contract is a Bad Idea and Roy Moore Dating Teenage Girls "For Their Purity" is 100% Logical in Purity Land)

I never thought of that as pedophilia, but wow, it totally is.

4. US-funded contraceptives for poor nations to be burned in France, sources say (July 25) "One of the sources with knowledge of the issue said that the Trump administration was acting in accordance with the Mexico City policy, an anti-abortion pact in which Trump reinstated U.S. participation in January. The pact forbids the U.S. government from contributing to or working with organisations providing funding or supplies that offer access to abortions."

5. Fearing coverage could change, some parents rush to vaccinate their kids (July 25) How will I explain RFK to my children

6. PEPFAR escaped the rescission ax. But where does it stand? (July 26) "Since its founding, PEPFAR has put more than $120 billion into combatting the virus in more than 50 countries. The result of all that money and effort, it says, is clear, citing accomplishments that are widely accepted: 26 million lives saved, a plummeting of HIV infection rates and a rebounding of life expectancy, especially in Africa."

7. Trump administration hands over Medicaid recipients’ personal data, including addresses, to ICE (July 28) "Many people sign up for emergency Medicaid in their most desperate moments, said Hannah Katch, a previous adviser at CMS during the Biden administration. 'It’s unthinkable that CMS would violate the trust of Medicaid enrollees in this way,' Katch said."

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.

---

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.