Blogaround

Movie poster for "Zootopia 2." Image source.

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. I saw "Zootopia 2" and I loved it! My favorite part was the whole dynamic between Nick and Judy. Also the animation is very good, and the action scenes were exciting. And the plot is about systemic injustice, like the first "Zootopia" movie.

2. It’s One of the Most Influential Social Psychology Studies Ever. Was It All a Lie? (November 25) "To the contrary, Kelly says, the Seekers were quick to disavow those beliefs. Even Martin herself rebranded, insisting to an interviewer that she had never believed she’d be taken away by an actual spaceship."

3. Inverted Catenaries (December 3) From xkcd.

4. Stuck in the Mud: Climate Chaos Deepens Divide on China’s Farmlands (December 4) "But this autumn, after weeks of rain turned Henan’s fields into mud, the usual wheeled harvesters bogged down at the field edges. In Jiaozuo, where the soil can trap water for days, Zhang’s treaded rig kept crawling through the muck, one of the few machines in the region that could move at all."

5. There’s a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was (December 2) "But beyond that narrow sense of “political,” of course, everything about this is political because it’s all about what is and isn’t “normal” or normative, and who decides that, and how it is or ought to be enforced."

6. Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era (November 19, via) "The stories had the characteristic weirdness of articles written by a large language model—invented anecdotes from regular people who didn’t appear to exist accompanied by expert commentary from public figures who do, with some biographical details mangled, who are made to voice “quotes” that sound, broadly, like something they might say."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. For the first time since 1988, the U.S. is not officially commemorating World AIDS Day (December 1) "'I think it's emblematic of an administration that doesn't seem to care,' said Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, a global HIV prevention organization based in the U.S."

2. They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity (November 23) "We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be." Hear, hear.

3. Ohio senator introduces measure to eliminate dual citizenship (December 2) !!! Not cool! This is just a bill so hopefully it doesn't get anywhere. But yikes.

4. The Summers-Epstein Emails’ ‘Yellow Peril’ Problem (December 3) "Harvard professor Larry Summers has been widely criticized for his extensive correspondence with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But the denigrating way he views Asian women hasn’t gotten enough attention."

5. Will Hegseth Face Consequences? (December 2) "Faced with a congressional inquiry, Trump, to protect himself, gave clear public orders to Hegseth not to murder survivors and commit war crimes. You may think this should go without saying. I may think this should go without saying. But obviously it does not go without saying—especially since the White House went on to maybe possibly contradict those orders."

And: 'Franklin' publisher slams Hegseth for his post of the turtle firing on drug boats (December 2) "'We strongly condemn any denigrating, violent or unauthorized use of Franklin's name or image, which directly contradicts these values,' it added."

Here’s what the Trump administration has said about the ‘double-tap’ strike on an alleged drug boat (December 3, via) A timeline.

Did Megyn Kelly say she wanted to see survivors of strike on alleged drug boat 'suffer'? (December 3) Oh my goodness.

6. As Trump's immigration raids hit New Orleans, a Chicago group shares resistance tips (December 3) "This, Gonzalez said, was always the goal of Protect RP: to make immigration enforcement operations in the neighborhood uncomfortable and inefficient. If they do that well enough, Gonzalez said, maybe enforcement agents would conclude that the cost of doing work in his neighborhood is simply too high."

7. She was deported after boarding a flight to Austin. Her attorney says that violates a judge's order. (December 2) "'At the end of the day, this is a college student who came here at 7 years old to seek asylum with her family,' Pomerleau said. 'She's not responsible under the law for any decisions her parents made about her. She was a child.'"

8. Doctors warn delaying hepatitis B shot for newborns could revive a deadly threat (December 3) [content note: child death] "'Liver cancer has disappeared in children,' McMahon said. 'We haven't seen a case since 1995. Nor do we have any children under 30 that have gotten infected that we know of.'"

9. 'Nobody wants to come': What if the U.S. can no longer attract immigrant physicians? (November 24) "Up until this year, it was a dream — a wish! — that you could get a job and you could come to the U.S. And now nobody wants to come."

10. GEOGRAPHY QUIZ: Can You Find 'Third' Countries Trump Bribing To Take Deportees On A Map? (December 4) "It’s corrupt, it’s wasteful, it’s inhumane, and also, if these deportees are truly the hardened criminals that Donald J. Trump claims they are, it is not justice to send them somewhere that will happily pocket the cash and then lose all track of them."

Blogaround

1. Sarah McBride Wasn’t Looking for a Fight on Trans Rights (December 1, via) "I always knew that there would be some members of the Republican caucus who would seek to use my service representing the greatest state in the Union in Congress as an opportunity for them to distract from the fact that they have absolutely no real policy solutions for the issues that actually plague this country. And, in some cases, to grab headlines themselves. I was not surprised that there was an effort to politicize an issue that no one truly cares about—what bathroom I use."

2. Why Queen Vashti Should Be Considered a Hero (December 11) "She was one of the first recorded instances of a woman saying, 'I refuse to be treated like a sex object, because that is not what I am.'"

3. Judge rejects sale of Alex Jones’ Infowars to The Onion in dispute over bankruptcy auction (December 11) I really don't understand any of this. 

Okay let's start with this: Alex Jones spread the conspiracy theory that kids were not really murdered at Sandy Hook and they were acting. Why? Why? Why would anyone say such a thing? It's hard to imagine a worse way to respond to a mass shooting, my god. What is the motive here? I guess I always assumed it's because this type of liar always says whatever wild thing will get their followers riled up, without any consideration of whether it's true- but this is unusual in that he's defaming very specific people rather than just, ya know, general scaremongering and racist urban legends that are typical of that genre. There are loads of liars out there spreading conspiracy theories along those lines, and you can't really hold them accountable because what they say is vague enough you can't actually point to any specific harm they are doing in a literal legal sense. Why on earth didn't Jones just stick to that kind of hateful nonsense? Why did he start conspiracy theories about very specific people, who really do exist and can easily prove that he's lying and directly harming them? Is he just so used to saying whatever ridiculous thing passes through his mind, without caring one bit about whether it's true, that he didn't realize this lie could actually get him in trouble? (And also how awful it is, just on a basic-human-decency level?)

Anyway, then a judge ordered that Jones owed the families of Sandy Hook victims $1.5 billion, and he will have to sell all his stuff to pay them. Good. He deserves to lose everything. Some people lost their children, and then Jones was cruel to them in the worst way, saying their children weren't even real, my god, I can't even imagine what would make someone say something like that.

And then Infowars was auctioned and the Onion came to buy it, and I also didn't really follow what was going on there, but it seems good because the Onion has the support of the Sandy Hook families, and plans to, ya know, not continue to run Infowars as a hateful conspiracy theory machine.

And then a judge said actually that auction was invalid and the Onion can't buy it- why not? What's the issue? I've seen people on the internet saying this judge is on Jones's side and that's why he ruled this way, but I can't get my head around that either- I truly can't fathom anyone being on Jones's side here. (I guess Infowars has a lot of followers- yeah I don't understand that either...) I can't believe that that's the reason this judge ruled this way, because why on earth would anyone want to support Alex Jones here? Surely there was some different reason? Some legal technicality? And then the lawyers will just get that cleared up and continue the process and yes Jones will lose everything, like he should, right?

I've been feeling this way about a lot of news stories I read lately, actually. I read what happened, and then I read some people on the internet talking about why it happened and what the motives are, and I mean, it's just speculation by random people on the internet- you can't rely on that. I have many questions and not really any good way to get to the bottom of what's going on. (This is something I hope to blog about more.)

4. Metal musicians perform "O Holy Night" (2023, via) Wow this is INCREDIBLE.

Usually in December I post a roundup of my favorite Christmas songs. I'm not doing that this year- please refer to this 2023 post because I still like the same songs: Christmas Music Round-up.

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.

Getting the Power Dynamics Backwards

A woman in a beautiful dress stands on the red carpet, while a huge group of photographers takes photos of her. Image source.

[content note: abusive dating relationships, "Fifty Shades of Grey"]

So for some reason, "Fifty Shades of Grey" has been on my mind. (Maybe because I watched some videos about why "Twilight" is about an extremely unhealthy relationship.) I never read the book, but I watched the movie a few years ago, and wrote a post about it: How would we even know 'Fifty Shades' isn't normal? Basically, I was so EXTREMELY CREEPED OUT by how much that guy (Christian Grey) used language about "choice" and "consent" as if it was a healthy relationship, while also stalking and manipulating her. It SCARED me, imagining a girl like me, with a purity-culture background and barely any sex-ed or teaching on what a healthy relationship looks like... if she walks away from purity culture and then immediately finds Christian Grey, she will see ZERO RED FLAGS. She has no ability to recognize that the way he treats her is shady as hell.

Thinking about being extremely naive, and how easy it would be to get caught up in a bad situation like that. And that's what I want to talk about in this post too.

The point I want to make is, I can easily imagine how a naive girl [like me] would see this situation and see a power dynamic in it, which is actually exactly backwards from the power dynamic that exists in reality.

He buys her all kinds of expensive gifts. He tells her he's so attracted to her that he can't control himself. He stalks her.

And she might interpret it this way: Wow, I'm such an attractive/beautiful/interesting person, that I've got this rich guy wrapped around my finger. He wants me so much, he's so desperate, that I could ask him for anything and he'd give it to me. I have so much power here.

But if you know a little more about how the real world works, you see it's actually like this: He has enough money that he's able to maintain a habit of impulsively buying whatever he wants. If some shiny toy catches his attention, he can buy it, it's no big deal. Currently, this girl is the "shiny toy" that he wants. He spends money on her because he always spends money on things; it's no big deal to him. But he never risks anything that he actually values. He has years of experience being a rich businessman, of course he knows how to calculate where the line is between "having fun doing whatever I want" and "throwing away things that are actually of value to me, which are going to affect me." He's not going to throw away everything on a whim, just because he's attracted to someone.

All that stuff about "not being able to control himself"? That's bullshit. He can certainly control himself enough to avoid, say, making a scene in front of his colleagues/ business partners. Because that's something that actually matters to him. But apparently he "can't control himself" when he's cornering a girl in an elevator, because it's a situation where there won't be any consequences for him.

So I can easily imagine that she thinks he's so infatuated with her, that he would do anything for her, and she's the one with power. But that's completely backwards. In reality, he manipulates her, while not allowing any risk to the things that actually matter to him.

(For example: Does he introduce her to his friends? Does he talk to her about what's important to him, and value her perspective on it? Does he want to share his life with her, as an equal? Idk, maybe in the sequel, the relationship develops a bit more. At the beginning, though, he sees her as an object rather than a person.)

And actually, her naivete may be one of the reasons that he is drawn to her. He doesn't do these romantic gestures for her because she's so beautiful and kind and intelligent and interesting, and he's just in awe of what a wonderful person she is- he does this because she's inexperienced and will be easy for him to manipulate.

I have another example of having the power dynamics backwards. It's about modesty culture.

So, in Christian purity culture, girls are taught that we have to dress "modestly" because boys just can't think straight when they're in the presence of an attractive girl, the poor dears. The boys are so weak, and need the girls to help them.

I used to imagine it like this: Wow, as a girl, I possess in me this amazingly potent feminine power to control boys, but I must never use it. Oh, but if I did use it- if I let a bra strap show- if I wore a tight shirt- I could get the boys to do whatever I wanted. I would have a line of boys following me around while I teased them. They would stand at a respectful distance and look at me with hearts in their eyes, awed at just being in my presence. They would beg- beg me for a date, a kiss, etc- and I would say no, and they would never violate that "no." All they could do would be continue to beg, or maybe bring me gifts, etc. I would have so much power.

But it's not like that, it's actually opposite. Sexual harassment... women getting catcalled by men on the street... A creepy guy notices a girl, and it can be a scary thing for her, because she doesn't know what he'll do if she rejects him. Maybe he'll call her names, maybe he'll attack her or rape her.

There are people who think that sexual harassment is "a compliment" and don't understand why women complain about it. I think the reason for this misconception is that they imagine a power dynamic completely different than what's actually going on. They imagine a more equal power dynamic, where one person says "you're sexy/beautiful/whatever" and the other person says "thank you" and then they part ways and nothing else happens. In reality, though, it's not "a compliment." In reality, the person who's being "complimented" may fear- "what does this guy want from me? if I say no, is he going to become dangerous? would I be able to get away from him?"

"Modesty" was supposedly about how women are so powerful and men are so weak, but the reality is that powerful men who rape women often get away with it, and people defend rapists by asking about the victim's modesty. "What was she wearing?" Modesty is a way to control women. As a naive teenage girl, I had the power dynamics totally backwards.

(I specifically mentioned "men who rape women" there, because it relates to my point about "modesty", but obviously rapists can be any gender, and victims can be any gender, and it's a PROBLEM that society doesn't take it seriously when a man is raped.)

And, actually, in my fantasy about boys following me around and respecting my boundaries, well, that kind of sounds like celebrities with their fans and paparazzi. But here's the key thing: Celebrities hire bodyguards for exactly that reason. If you have obsessive fans stalking you, they don't stop just because you say "no", they stop if someone (your bodyguard) has the power to stop them. They stop if they are going to face consequences that actually matter to them.

Naively, one might think that it's about attraction. It's about if Person A is so incredibly attracted to Person B, that Person B therefore has the power to make Person A do anything they want. But no, in reality it's not about that at all. It's about who has power, in the real world, not in a sexy/romantic way. Who has the power to do whatever they want and get away with it. Who has the power to stop the other person.

Now, the exception to this is extreme romantic infatuation which drives a person to make unwise decisions as they pursue the person they're infatuated with. A person falls in love and then wants to make sacrifices and give up things they've worked hard for, just for the chance of being with the person they're infatuated with. And perhaps this is what Ana thinks Christian's situation is, in "Fifty Shades of Grey." She thinks he's so in love with her, that it drives him to act reckless. No. He's not actually being "reckless"- he's identifying situations where he won't face any consequences for his behavior, and specifically when he's in those situations, he takes whatever he wants.

In my own experiences being young and naive, I can understand how a very naive person would think that attraction necessarily means romantic infatuation. But... after the second time you fall in love, you understand that just because you feel something, doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. People who actually have practical experience in the real world know that there's more to life than romantic feelings. After experiencing crushes a few times, we learn to keep them in perspective. So just because someone is attracted to you, and they're performing romantic gestures for you, doesn't mean that they're overtaken with obsession for you, and you hold all the power over them. Maybe that's how it works for a teenager having their first crush, but that's not how it works as an adult in the real world.

When I was young and naive, I wish I had been taught how to take a step back and see the actual power dynamics at work. It's not about the strength of one's attraction, it's about how far you can go before someone's able to put meaningful consequences on you.

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Another excellent example of getting the power dynamics backwards is the idea that "women make men do things" which Dr. Laura Robinson describes here:

Do Women Make Men Do Things? Part 1

Do Women Make Men Do Things? 1A, "Feminizing the Church"

Do Women Make Men Do Things? Part 2

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Related:

How would we even know 'Fifty Shades' isn't normal?

"Boys Can't Stop" 

8th item in this May 25, 2022 Blogaround

The Story of Me and Modesty

Blogaround

1. Journal Club: Trauma and Femininity in the DSM (June 21) "It doesn’t really matter what the women patients want. They’re trying to change their desires because that’s what their male partners want."

2. From Hot Pot to Milk Tea, Chinese Influencer Praised For Exposing False Advertising (June 21) "Some of his most popular videos see him and his friends using weighing scales to check whether hot pot restaurants are serving the same amount of meat as is advertised. More often than not, they find that the meat is not the advertised amount, despite promises from waiters that the meat has been weighed beforehand."

3. The Problems with Power of a Praying Wife: With Download (June 21) "Frames prayer as the key to changing a marriage, even a destructive one with alcoholism or abuse, placing the responsibility for ending a husband’s destructive behaviors on the wife."

4. We need to talk about Jessa Duggar and this "abortion" controversy… (March 4) 16-minute video from Mama Doctor Jones. Jessa Duggar had a miscarriage, and was treated with a D&C, and then people on twitter posted a lot of angry tweets about how Jessa had an abortion and this is so hypocritical because the Duggar family is very politically active in trying to deny people the right to have an abortion. Mama Doctor Jones talks about the words used- miscarriage, abortion, D&C- and how they have different definitions depending on if they're used socially, medically, or politically. And, she says, we need to have compassion for people who lose a wanted pregnancy, as well as compassion for people with an unwanted pregnancy.

5. I think it's always important to consider context and priorities when talking about strategies for advancing political goals. (June 21) "Because we really don't have to and definitely shouldn't be choosing between 'let me explain oh so politely why I deserve dignity and autonomy, or even just survival, but I'll stop if you think it's too annoying' and 'stop making me do emotional labor and Google it--everything I say is infallibly true and you should interrogate yourself if you disagree'."

6. Could You Not Stay Woke? (April 2) [content note: anti-black violence] "But folk did not stay awake. If you woke up when Tyre Nichols was chased down and hunted for sport in the street like an animal, you woke up because you were sleeping on police violence against black and brown folk when it wasn’t in the news every day. Could you not stay awake one hour? Could you not stay woke one hour?"

7. Misogyny, the SBC, and Beth Moore (June 16, via) [content note: mentions of Trump and sexual harassment] "I honestly think Beth’s fate was sealed from the moment that she disclosed she was a survivor of sexual abuse, and that women had been telling her their own stories of survivorship for decades – often for the first time. Beth did not say this to highlight the dangers of secularism, or to encourage women to stay home, or to advance any cause that patriarchy might have accepted. She said to advocate for women. To say that more care needs to be diverted towards women, that women are beings with needs and rights and things they deserve, was always an offense that Beth was going to pay for."

8. On the 11,000 virgin martyrs, iconography, and beauty standards (June 20) "This makes for some pretty incredible pictures where dozens upon dozens of completely identical women set out with St Ursula, who also looks exactly like them but has a crown."

9. Pastor walks out after Christian Reformed Church synod passes anti-LGBTQ+ resolution (June 20) "The next day, the elder Struyk walked to the podium and said, 'Because of the message we sent to many LGBTQ+ people—including my son—I will be leaving synod in protest' and, with that, he walked out the door."

Blogaround

1. Powerful Sichuan Quake Leaves a Trail of Deaths and Destruction (September 6)

2. Top 6 Mistakes in the Academic Field of Asexuality Studies (September 6) "The 1% number is how many of those British residents reported no sexual attraction, not how much of the world’s population identifies as asexual."

3. On the Condemnation of Gray Areas (2014) "Even if we presume that gray zones are invalid as a basis for a label, think about the effect these adamant proclamations could have on nervous, uncertain newbies who’ve just learned about asexuality and aren’t sure how well it describes them: if there’s no buffer zone, no midway space, no gray area, then they could (and do) feel pressured to be on high alert for any brief glimmer of sexual attraction in their lives as if it’s a game changer, and to stress over which of their physical attractions could be construed as somewhat almost sexual, and then they feel obligated to treat a few dubious outliers as grounds for another full-blown identity crisis as they once again question and fret over and wrestle with how best to label themselves."

OMG this is SO REAL! When I was first trying to figure out if I was asexual, it helped me A LOT to know that "gray-asexual" was also a thing, also part of the ace community, also queer. That even if I'm not 100% sure that I've never ever ever ever experienced sexual attraction (and how could I be sure, if I can't even figure out what it is?) I can still "count" as part of the ace community. To be honest, that's still kind of how I view gray-asexuality- it's for asexuals who worry that they're not "allowed" to id as asexual because they can't prove with 100% certainty that they've really never experienced sexual attraction. (This is just my opinion- I am sure that there are gray-asexuals who view it differently- so don't necessarily take my word for it...)

4. Polyamory: Never a One-sided Deal, even in Mixed Relationships (Guest Post) (2013) "I don’t deny there must be some mixed couples like this as well, where the ace partner is completely comfortable with the sexual partner’s other relationships but doesn’t need multiple partners themself. If it works for them, that’s great. However, my point is this (or any other) arrangement should be discussed and agreed on by both parties, not decided or assumed by one of them."

5. 9/7 Flashback: Steve Strang, genocidaire (September 7) "It’s important that this horrific, indefensible garbage — published in God’s name — not be forgotten or memory-holed. Charisma did this. Steve Strang did this."

6. Some links about Kiwi Farms- I had heard it mentioned here and there on the internet but didn't know what was going on, so I was glad to find a few articles that gave an overview:
The takedown of Kiwi Farms is basically another 9/11, Gender critical transphobes explain (September 5)
As Kiwi Farms struggles to stay online, transphobes hail it as “one of the last free places on the internet” (August 25)
Campaign pushes Cloudflare to drop trans hate site (August 25)

Wow yeah, glad that site was taken down.

7. Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers! (2020) This is a VERY LONG blog post about the agricultural work of common farmers in ancient societies. I'm sharing it here because of the part where it explains that their first priority was minimizing risk, rather than running their farm in the most efficient way possible- to modern readers, it may look like these ancient subsistence farmers made bad decisions, but really in their situation, those were good decisions because their first priority had to be reducing the risk of starving to death.

"So what do our farmers do during a good harvest to prepare for a bad one? They banquet their neighbors, contribute to village festivals, marry off their sons and daughters with the best dowry they can manage, and try to pay back any favors they called in from friends recently. I stress these not merely because they are survival strategies (though they are) but because these sorts of activities end up (along with market days and the seasonal cycles) defining a great deal of life in these villages. But these events also built that social capital which can be ‘cashed out’ in an emergency. And they are a good survival strategy. Grain rots and money can be stolen, but your neighbor is far likelier to still be your neighbor in a year, especially because these relationships are (if maintained) almost always heritable and apply to entire households rather than individuals, making them able to endure deaths and the cycles of generations."

I wonder if some of this is also true for people now who live paycheck-to-paycheck. Like the idea that there's a network of people- your family, friends, neighbors- who all need financial help from time to time, and even though it's not great to be in need and have to rely on other people (because sometimes you won't end up getting the help you need), "investing" your money in the social relationships in this network is a better strategy than squirreling away 5 dollars here and there into your own savings account like the financial advice people say.

I am probably oversimplifying here- if anyone has more insight or links to other articles along those lines, go ahead and leave a comment about it. :)

8. Collections: The Practical Case on Why We Need the Humanities (2020) "And it should come thus as little surprise that these skills – a sense of empathy, of epistemic humility, sound reasoning and effective communication – are the skills we generally look for in effective leaders. Because, fundamentally, the purpose of formal education in the humanities, since the classical period, was as training in leadership."

YES! Agree with all of this! When I was in school, I was only interested in math and science, and didn't think history/literature/etc mattered at all. Now here I am spending hours and hours every week writing this blog about religion and feminism and life as an immigrant in China- what changed? 

Back in school, I thought history was about memorizing names and dates and places- I remember sometimes the students would ask "What's the point of learning this? When will we ever need this? What kind of job can you get from studying history?" (And I remember some adult said "you can become a history teacher" which struck high-school-Perfect-Number as a very nonsensical "turtles all the way down" thing to say- and I now see that it was a pretty bad answer. There are much much better answers.)

No, here is the real reason why people need to study history: It's not about memorizing which army general was in which war 100 years ago. It's about having a big-picture awareness of how a society functions, because we make decisions in the present about what kind of society we want to live in. We need to learn from history, or else we will make the same bad decisions that societies made in the past.

An example from science: Sometimes I see news articles about how an AI was developed to classify this or that, to make decisions on this or that, and people treat it like this AI is somehow intrinsically correct and objective, and sees a deeper truth that humans wouldn't be able to see, just because it's "scientific." Umm, no. Science is not "objective"- it is shaped by the biases of the scientists who set up the experiment, who chose what dataset to feed into the neural net, etc. Back in the day, they were doing science to "prove" that black people weren't as intelligent as white people. (I say "back in the day", but actually the NFL was still trying this bullshit in the year 2021.) We have to know that history, to make sure we are not doing the same things. (I was going to say "make sure we're not making the same mistakes" but calling scientific racism a "mistake" is letting them off too easy.)

An example from religion: I was an apologetics nerd, back in the day. Knew all the steps to logically reason from one belief to another. I had a whole logically-consistent evangelical Christian ideology. But I never asked the questions, "Where did this ideology come from? How did it develop historically?" I never knew that white Christians who supported slavery and segregation, back in the day, also had a whole logically-consistent Christian ideology about that- which looked scarily similar to my own. I mean, YIKES. We need to know that history. 

And, more broadly, I only recently realized that the United States has never really repented of our sin of slavery and racism. Yes, slavery was made illegal in 1865, yes, the law says it's illegal to discriminate by race- but that progress was made mainly because black activists kept pushing for it, little by little- it was NOT because the white majority recognized that we had committed a terrible, monstrous sin, and repented of it. So if you ever hear someone say "slavery was such a long time ago, why can't they just get over it", well, that's why. We need to know that history, because it shapes the decisions we need to make for justice and equality today.

9. Ocean Park animals have their cake and eat it (September 10) Love this! Zoo animals in Shanghai were given "moon cakes" for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) which was on September 10 this year.

10. The middle school boys thought their teacher was a ‘creep.’ So they tracked how he treated the girls. (September 9) "They had tried talking to adults about what they heard and saw. None of the adults listened or took them seriously, the student told the Globe." These boys did the right thing. Teach your sons this.

Blogaround

Five kittens. Image source.

1. John Crist Cancels 2019 Tour Dates After Reports of Sexting, Harassment, Manipulation (posted November 6) #churchtoo

2. ObGyn Reacts to Virginity Testing Daughters | Rapper T.I. & Deyjah Harris (posted November 7) "So what T.I. can't count on is any reliable information from this exam. But what he can count on is that his daughter is never coming to him with a problem. ... I know T.I. will never watch this, but if you're out there doing things like this to your child, shame on you. ... This is not an acceptable exam, and no physician should be participating in 'virginity testing' of any sort. The hymen has no purpose for sexual intercourse or any indication of whether a person has had sexual intercourse. The culture of owning somebody else's body or having control over a daughter or a son or a spouse is unacceptable. You are in control of your body, and you don't get to choose how other people use theirs." Mama Doctor Jones is preaching the gospel.

3. HOGWARTS EXACT LOCATION REVEALED | Harry Potter Theory (posted November 12) Oooh what an interesting idea. The Super Carlin Brothers did a bunch of research- using the Harry Potter books and movies and real-life tools like Google Maps- to find an actual location in the real world and claim it's Hogwarts. Reminds me of the fan theories about what star or planet specifically the wise men followed to find baby Jesus.

4. Disney+ Has A New Version of ‘Star Wars’ Infamous Han Shot First Scene (posted November 12) What. Umm, okay.

5. Audio Adrenaline and White Jesus (posted November 14) "What does it mean that Big House can be interpreted to mean that heaven is a plantation? What does it say that the christian music industry can call that the song of the decade for the 90s and have it occur to no one white and empowered that there is an American historical meaning behind a building called the Big House?"