Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Oaths aren't about oaths, they're about performative speech acts (November 5) "How do we tell apart fancy official promises people are supposed to keep and fancy official promises people aren’t really supposed to keep?"

2. Playing Tag: Oversized Clothing Labels Aim to Curb Order Returns (November 7) "China’s online fashion retailers are implementing oversized, stiff, and brightly colored clothing tags in an effort to curb the industry’s notoriously high return rate."

Also from Sixth Tone: Minding Nemo: Vlogger Finds Fatal Flaws at China’s Aquariums (November 7) "Many exhibition spaces are still chaotic construction zones the day before the grand opening, with tanks filled with fresh saltwater just hours before the first batch of fish is introduced. These so-called “pioneer fish” — usually cheaper species — often die within a short time."

3. “I Won’t Change My Body to Fit Your Expectations”: Reflections From a Masculine Woman with PCOS (July 14, via) "It soon became very clear to me that my doctor at the time was hoping I’d “fix” what he thought was “wrong” with me. My masculine features were seen as a glaring issue to be solved. My doctor thought he had the solution and suggested I start estrogen to maintain my hormone levels."

4. OpenAI's new web browser has ChatGPT baked in. That's raising some privacy questions (November 7) 

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. “New York City has Fallen”: MAGA erupts after Mamdani’s victory (November 5, via) A roundup of quotes from right-wing people being really racist about Mamdani's victory. In particular I'd like to highlight what Matt Walsh said: "A third world communist just won in New York because New York is a third world city now." WTF? Remember this, in case anyone ever claims that these are people whose opinions should be respected.

2. Foreign aid from the United States saved millions of lives each year (September 29, via) "AIDS programs saved the largest number of lives: over 1.5 million per year. Between a quarter and half a million were saved by vaccines, tuberculosis, malaria, and humanitarian response each."

3. Supreme Court temporarily blocks full SNAP benefits even as they'd started to go out (November 7) "The Supreme Court's decision means states must, for now, revert back to the partial payments the Trump administration had earlier instructed them to distribute."

Trump admin order to 'immediately undo' full SNAP benefits leaves states scrambling (November 9) 

As millions of Americans struggle with SNAP lapses, food banks are swamped with demand (November 7) "'It's painful when someone comes in and we have to say, 'I just don't have anything for you today,' ' says the pantry's client advocate, Juliet Smith. 'We've never had to do that before. Never.'"

All this back-and-forth about SNAP during the government shutdown has made me realize something: I've always thought of SNAP as a "safety net," like just a temporary thing that people should use only a few times in their lifetime, when they happen to be going through a hard time. But now I'm finding out how *real* this is, how people really need it and rely on it- some states have something like 15-20% of their population on SNAP. 42 million Americans. This isn't just some "safety net" which a negligible amount of people will need to use every now and then- this is essential infrastructure. Is it supposed to be essential infrastructure? Well, yeah, we need to have it because that many people really do need it. 

People shouldn't be shamed or judged for getting SNAP benefits. It should be just as neutral a thing as going to the library, or expecting the government to maintain the roads. I grew up among Republicans, and the vibe I always got concerning people who get food stamps is "well, they shouldn't, they should take responsibility and get a job and then they wouldn't need government handouts"- and therefore it's justified to judge them and put all kinds of rules and requirements on them. But, wow, something is *wrong* with society if seriously 42 million Americans aren't able to get jobs that pay well enough that they can afford food. Food! Something is wrong with society, and the government has a responsibility to do something about that. Either by giving them the money for food, or transforming society (specifically the job market?) such that people who do a decent normal amount of work will have a good enough income that they can live on. Hard to say which option is "better." I mean, I know that people would say it's better if everyone can get a job and get a good enough income, and then the government doesn't have to give them SNAP- but I can also imagine a society where people view it like "yeah, the government gives food to people who need it, of course they do, of course our tax dollars go to that, that is a normal thing that a society should do, not something we would want to minimize."

(Caveat: The fact that 42 million people receive SNAP benefits is not the same thing as saying 42 million people are in the situation like the people you see interviewed in these news articles, where they really don't know where they're going to get food if they don't get SNAP this month. Perhaps some significant fraction of these 42 million people have their finances generally under control, and have emergency savings available, and it's very helpful that they get money from SNAP every month but it's not the end of the world if they didn't? ... I think regardless, they really are in need. "People who receive SNAP" and "people who literally can't feed their families without SNAP" might not be the *exact* same group of people, BUT still, they really are in need and I am seeing that this really should be viewed as essential infrastructure.)

4. Judge orders White House to use American Sign Language interpreters at briefings (November 5)

5. SCOTUS Rules Against Trans People's Passport Gender Markers In Shadow Docket Ruling (November 7) "The Government seeks to enforce a questionably legal new policy immediately, but it offers no evidence that it will suffer any harm if it is temporarily enjoined from doing so, while the plaintiffs will be subject to imminent, concrete injury if the policy goes into effect."

6. Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced (November 8) "They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers."

7. Senators take first step toward reopening the government after historic shutdown (November 9) This just in, apparently some of the Senate Dems have caved and there's an agreement to end the government shutdown. Not sure what to make of this yet.

My Toddler's Experience With Baby Sign Language

A drawing showing a person signing "butterfly" in baby sign language. Image source.

I have 2 little kids. The younger one is a toddler and is learning all kinds of new things, including some baby sign language.

What is baby sign language? The way I heard it explained was, before babies are able to talk, learning some signs can help them communicate. The signs for baby sign language are pretty similar to American Sign Language, with some of them simplified to make it easier for babies. It's very easy to look these up on YouTube, just search "pig baby sign language" if you want to learn the sign for "pig", and so on.

American Sign Language is an actual language. With a grammar and everything. Baby sign language is not. Baby sign language is just some words.

A few years ago, when my first child was a baby, I learned a bunch of signs for foods and toys and various things, and tried to consistently make the signs while talking to him. I did that a lot but I don't remember him ever responding by signing back. So uh I guess that failed. (But now he speaks both English and Chinese fluently so I guess he turned out okay.)

(Well, also I have a full-time job, so I wasn't with him for most of the day, and the other adults in his life weren't doing baby sign language with him.)

For my second kid, I wasn't really showing her signs intentionally. But when she was around 18 months, we noticed that she was copying the hand motions from different songs that people would sing to her. We noticed that she's really good at associating a song with a hand gesture. She constantly demands that I sing specific songs to her, by gesturing. Oh my goodness, it's so adorable how she makes a little flower shape with her hands when she wants me to sing "Edelweiss." (Or, for some songs, she says a word, like if she says "ro ro" it means she wants to hear "Row Row Row Your Boat." Or she roars ferociously when she wants me to sing Katy Perry's "Roar." [Fact check: She is a small child and is not anywhere near as ferocious as she imagines.])

So after I realized that she's good at learning signs, I decided I should do more baby sign language with her.

I think my problem before was that I conceptualized this as a really all-or-nothing thing. I thought it was like, during their first phase of life, the baby can't talk or do signs. And then, the next phase- I read on the internet that babies might start doing signs at 8 months, if you're been consistently showing them the signs for a while- so during this phase they do baby sign language, and they don't talk. And then the next phase of development is when the baby talks, and there's no need for baby sign language any more. As if there's a clear line between when the baby "can't talk" and "can talk", and baby sign language is only useful during the "can't talk" phase.

For my little daughter, it's not like that at all. She's learning to talk- she can say a bunch of words, some of them English and some of them Chinese (and a few that she just made up herself)- and that's going great, and the baby sign language can supplement it. Some words are too hard for her to say when she's this little, but she can definitely learn a sign for them. And there are plenty of words she can already say, like "mama", so we're not doing baby sign language with those.

So it's like, a way to help her out while she's learning to talk. So she can communicate, even about things that she's not able to pronounce yet. And the more she can communicate, the better- she's getting to that age where she's starting to have her own opinions, and she often tries to tell us what she wants, and it's hard to understand sometimes.

This all sounds great, but in practice I haven't really done a lot yet. Like I said, I have a full-time job. She can definitely learn more signs, it's just a matter of me thinking of a word that might be of interest to her, and looking up the sign on the internet, and then signing it with her enough times that she'll understand what it means.

This could also be a good way to sort of bridge the gap between English and Chinese. She has some people in her life who speak English with her, and some who speak Chinese- maybe the baby sign language can be something that both sides will be able to understand. 

Anyway, I'll just finish this post by telling you about how cute it is when she does the sign for "butterfly." The sign for "butterfly" is you cross your hands and hook your thumbs together to make a butterfly, and flap your fingers a little bit. She doesn't quite get the sign right- she just crosses her arms in front of her chest, Wakanda-forever-style, and curls the fingers on one hand in and out. Oh my goodness it's so cute.

The other day I saw her flipping through the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," and when she got to the page with the surprise twist ending where the caterpillar turns into a butterfly [spoiler warning, I guess], she looked at the picture and then crossed her arms and did the sign for butterfly. She also knows the sign for "caterpillar," and when we read that book together, she does the caterpillar sign and then the butterfly sign at the end. It's just the most adorable thing. You can tell she knows many things. Many thoughts in her little head.

Anyway, my point is, baby sign language can be a useful tool! Don't stress about it if you feel like "oh, I haven't done enough, oh, we should have done more"- you can use it a little or a lot, it's no big deal.

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Related:

I wonder what my toddler thinks about being bilingual

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Sting in the Tail: Life’s No Fairy Tale for Mermaid Dancers (July 11) "To make matters worse, to save on costs, many aquariums refuse to assign professional safety personnel to guard performers, and lack proper emergency response protocols. 'In scuba diving, we follow the buddy system — no one goes in the water alone,' Lin says. 'Why is such a critical safety rule suddenly ignored when the dive is a performance?'"

Also from Sixth Tone: The Promise and Pitfalls of China’s AI Sign Language Interpreters (July 9) "Deaf people reported having difficulty accurately understanding the signing regardless of whether they watched the video directly or read the transcribed records. On closer inspection, the movements of the avatars differed considerably from everyday sign language in terms of hand shape, position, direction, and movement."

2. Scientists find Uranus is surprisingly warm, heating up the case for a new planetary mission (July 14, via) Cool!

3. The Best 4x4 Sudoku Ever Made. (June 9) 1-hour-11-minute sudoku solve video. This sudoku is based on that genre of logic puzzles where one person says "I don't know the answer" and then another person says "I don't know the answer" and then the first person says "well now I know the entire answer." Love this.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘Perversion of Justice’ revisited (July 14) For those of us (like me) who haven't been following all the details about this Epstein thing since 2018, the Slacktivist has a timeline with links.

And: Trump doesn’t realize why MAGA needs the Epstein files (July 15) "For Trump, this has to be bewildering. His supporters do not treat sexual violence like it’s a bad thing. So why do they care about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, or the identities of his alleged co-conspirators?"

2. Will the Government Ever Do Right by Mahmoud Khalil? (July 15) "In a just country, Khalil would be entitled to legal recourse and monetary recompense for his unlawful arrest and imprisonment."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Problems with the Asexuality Identification Scale (May 27) "The AIS is not bad research. But the potential uses are few, while the potential misuses are greater."

Also from Siggy: Why loans cost money (May  28) "If you’re keeping track, that means that not only is it expensive to be poor, it is nonlinearly expensive. Poor people have a greater need for loans, and they tend to pay higher interest rates on loans."

2. I Transferred a Pokemon from Gen 1 to Scarlet & Violet. Here's How... (March 12) [16-minute video] "Was this worth it? Umm, not really. Was it cool? Yes." Wowww this is fantastic. I have so much nostalgia- the pokemon games I played back in the day were Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Gold, and Pokemon Diamond. Of those, I spent the most time on Pokemon Gold. Pokemon Gold was my game.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. A certain man went down to Jericho and fell among leopards (May 28) "This clarifies how grossly misleading and stupid-making that language of “illegal aliens” turns out to be, creating a false impression of invaders and interlopers when the overwhelming reality is that most “illegal aliens” are people like Eriksen — good neighbors who work hard, follow the rules, care for their families, pay their taxes, and live responsibly, but who will also, inevitably, have some equivalent to a missing Form I-751 somewhere in their past."

2. Federal trade court blocks Trump's emergency tariffs, saying he overstepped authority (May 28) "In their ruling, the court's three-judge panel wrote that Trump's worldwide tariffs had exceeded his power under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, which the Trump administration cited in imposing those tariffs."

But apparently some of the tariffs are still in effect? I can't even keep up any more.

3. Rubio says U.S. will 'aggressively' revoke visas for many Chinese students (May 28) WTF?

And related to that: U.S. stops scheduling visa interviews for foreign students (May 28)

And also: An Own-Goal of Historic Proportions (May 29) "For decades, a degree from a U.S. university was the golden ticket, and not just for the prestige and the improved job prospects back home. It was often the start of a lifelong affinity for America, its values, and its people. Some of China’s best-known reformers and tech founders were educated in the U.S. They returned to China with not just skills and credentials, but admiration for an open society that welcomed them. Those days are ending. We are actively teaching the next generation of global talent that America is hostile, capricious, and unwelcoming. We are ceding the moral high ground — one that was, I’ll grant, already eroding fast — with alarming speed."

I just don't get this. Wasn't Marco Rubio friends with any international students when he was in college?

(Also, anyone remember during the campaign, a video surfaced where that felon floated the idea of giving international students US green cards on graduation? See this is why you shouldn't take anything he says seriously.)

4. Trump administration cancels plans to develop a bird flu vaccine (May 28) "Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University's Pandemic Center, said the decision was 'disappointing, but unsurprising given the politically-motivated, evidence-free rhetoric that tries to paint mRNA vaccines as being dangerous.'"

Remember when that felon was president the first time, and the actual greatest accomplishment of his term was the programs that produced the mRNA vaccines for covid? But I guess now the MAGAs think that's bad.

5. Marco Rubio said no one has died due to U.S. aid cuts. This mom disagrees (May 28) [content note: child death] "Babagana's doctor at the clinic — Edifre Jacob — says he'll never know exactly what happened to the youngster because he did not get medical help before dying, but Jacob feels confident his team could have prevented his death."

6. Judge says Rubio 'likely' violated Constitution in ordering Mahmoud Khalil deported (May 28) "In a statement issued by the ACLU, Khalil's lawyers vowed to keep fighting for his release."

(Marco Rubio has really done a lot to restore my belief in hell.)

7. The White House is sued over lack of sign language interpreters at press briefings (May 29) Good. 

8. Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody (May 22) "The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes." Children. Children.

9. Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’ (May 22) "Arrests near or in the immigration courts, which are part of the US Department of Justice, are typically rare – in part due to concerns that the fear of being detained by Ice officers could discourage people from appearing. 'It’s bad policy,' said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef). 'By putting immigration officers in the courtrooms, they’re discouraging people from following the processes, punishing people for following the rules.'"

And Wonkette explains how exactly this loophole is being used: ICE's One Weird Trick To Deport Asylum Seekers Who Come To Court! (May 30) "Isn’t that great, especially how the people being grabbed were dumb enough to think that following the law and attending their scheduled court hearings would do them any good? They couldn’t be 'following the law' anyway, because after all they’re illegals, dummy."

Blogaround

1. What does it mean that AI is “remixing existing work”? (January 13) "What does that even mean?"

2. Zendaya and Tom Holland Are Engaged! (January 6) 

3. With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘RedNote’ (January 13) "As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name."

I wrote this comment about it on Pillowfort:

Lollll I'm in China so I have to weigh in on this. (I'm American, my husband is Chinese.) I haven't used xiaohongshu but my husband has it on his phone and has used it very occasionally.

So last night my husband hands me his phone and shows me how his whole xiaohongshu feed is all Americans- "tiktok refugees." And then I get to work this morning and my Chinese colleagues are talking about "why are there a bunch of foreigners on xiaohongshu all of a sudden?"

I find the whole thing extremely funny!

I've typically seen xiaohongshu described as a Chinese equivalent to Instagram. It's known for having mostly women users, and people use it to post about their lifestyle/ travel/ things like that. (The linked article does a good job describing it.) My husband says it's mainly used by the people who have enough money to travel and who live in the biggest cities in China, so it doesn't show what the "average" Chinese person's life is like.

When we wanted to take our daughter to get pictures taken, we searched for a local photographer on xiaohongshu. It's useful for that because businesses post there to advertise. And one time we took a cruise to Japan, and we were looking for information on what to do in the various Japanese cities we docked at- we searched on xiaohongshu and found posts by other Chinese tourists, showing interesting things you can do in the area near the dock. Really useful and practical, with maps and photos. Xiaohongshu is good for things like that.

And over the past few days that this has been going on, my husband has been showing me a lot of videos of Americans talking about the things they've learned about normal life for Chinese users of xiaohongshu. Americans are finding out that the cost of living is SO MUCH LOWER in China than in the US. Chinese people finding out about frankly dystopian aspects of US society, like school lunch debt, kids in school saying the pledge of allegiance every day, people in the midst of a medical emergency asking everyone to NOT call an ambulance because it would cost thousands of dollars... and so on.

I think this is great. Just normal people talking about their normal lives. To show you what is really going on, which isn't like what you see in the news or the way politicians talk about China. Seeing that the problems we have in the US aren't inevitable- there are other countries which simply don't have those problems. A better world is possible.

In some of the videos from American tiktok users talking about what they learned about China, though, I'm seeing them making statements which very much oversimplify the situation. (Which is not their fault I guess- it's their first time finding out about these things, so obviously they don't understand all the details.) For example, talking about how in China you can buy a home... uh... what... in reality, it's SO EXPENSIVE to buy a home in big cities in China. We're talking about a husband and wife getting their parents on both sides to contribute their life savings, that's how expensive it is, and that's seen as normal. (And there's nonsense gender roles involved in this too- people talk about how a man has to own an apartment or else no woman would agree to marry him, ugh. In practical terms though I think both partners are contributing to the cost- but people always *say* it's a requirement for the man.) 

And also, it's normal for a mortgage to be WAYYY HIGHER than the price of renting an equivalent apartment. I was super confused when I heard this is the case in Shanghai- isn't a mortgage supposed to be lower than renting, because when you rent you're also paying for the landlord to do maintenance if necessary? That's what the typical financial advice in the US says. But in China people view buying a home as an investment. People will buy an apartment and just leave it empty because the money you could make on rent is not really that much in comparison. Personally I feel like it's a bad idea to buy an apartment as an investment, because what if the market then goes down? 

(I mean, the housing market in Shanghai is absurd though- maybe this is not true of smaller cities.)

But I think the American tiktok users were excited about how China doesn't require homeowners to pay property tax every year. And Chinese users were super confused about the concept of property tax. And like, somehow that message mutated into "people in China can buy homes and everything is wonderful."

And the cost of living is much lower in China than in the US, and for someone like me who works as an engineer, that's great- my salary is lower than what I would get in the US, but it's much higher than the average salary for an average person in Shanghai. So because the average salary is so low, I'm not sure how much it really *helps* that the cost of living is low (in absolute terms compared to US dollars). 

But anyway, I think it would be great if these Americans stick around on xiaohongshu and keep learning more about the world.

4. Democrats Rail Against "GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act" (January 16) "What followed was a series of Democratic representatives hammering the same point home with fiery rhetoric. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez railed against the notion that the bill was about protecting women and girls, stating, 'Republicans, who have voted consistently against the Violence Against Women Act, who have taken the rights of all women to have control over their own body, who as women are bleeding out in parking lots, now want to pretend today that they care about women… And why? To open up genital inspection on little girls across this country in the name of attacking trans girls. We have two words. Not today.'"

See, THIS is what I want to see. Democrats actually taking a stand for trans people. Normally what I see in news stories in Republicans taking a strong stand that trans people are disgusting sexual predators, and Democrats kinda waffling around like "uh I don't know, maybe it's politically beneficial to throw trans people under the bus?" and "yeah I guess I'm not really supposed to say this but I do feel uncomfortable with my daughters playing sports with biological males." Come on! 

This is a clear moral issue, not something to be embarrassed about. Trans people are just normal people who just want to go to the bathroom like everybody else. For sports, let's be reasonable about it and base it on actual scientific evidence, not just ban trans people entirely. It is DISGUSTING that Republicans are spending so much energy attacking this tiny group of people.

5. 'Concerns About A Stronger-Than-Expected Economy' Is A Real CNN Thing We Just Read (January 12) 

6. Resentment vs. gratitude: from parking spaces to ASL (January 14) "I suppose they can shoehorn this into the generic category of a “my tax dollars are being spent on other people who aren’t me, personally” complaint."

So, some right-wing weirdos think there shouldn't be ASL interpreters on tv during the broadcasts about the fires. I mean... this is so absurd, but I feel like I kind of understand it, because I grew up around Republicans and they often made little comments about how exhausting it is that we constantly have to be "politically correct" about some new thing. (Yeah back then it was called "politically correct" instead of "woke.") The logic goes like this: The way things are now is fine for regular people. And now apparently we have to change it, we're not allowed to say certain things, we have to hear "press 2 for Spanish" on the phone, it's like there's always another group we have to "be inclusive" of, and it's just too much. All these things are meaningless- they're just things that we're told we have to do now, otherwise we're not "politically correct" but there's no actual reason for any of it. Just a bunch of inconveniences to regular people. Enough is enough.

And then I found out, those things that we labelled as "politically-correct nonsense"- those things actually matter for people who are affected by them. They are real people. This isn't just some pointless contest about who can be the most politically correct. 

The argument only makes sense if you think deaf people don't actually benefit from having ASL interpreters on tv. Or if you think that they matter so little compared to "regular people" that they should just have to rely on imperfect closed-captioning, in order to not potentially inconvenience any "regular people" by reminding us of their existence. Once you realize that they are real people and ASL helps them a lot, the whining from these MAGA types comes across as obviously ridiculous. 

And, I mean, when I was a child it was understandable that I bought into that, because my Republican role models were very negative about efforts to "be inclusive", and I had to believe that they had a good reason for that- but if you're an adult and you still can't grasp that people who are different from you are people... I don't know what to tell you. That's a YOU problem.

7. Radon (January 13) "When was the planet under this house built?"

I also liked the Chess Zoo.

8. Flags to be raised for Trump's inauguration, despite half-staff order for Carter's death (January 15) What is this nonsense

9. Immigrant workers are helping investigate labor abuses. Will Trump let them stay? (January 15) "'Employers look at you completely differently when you have a social security number,' he says. 'In every sense you feel safe. You feel comfortable. You are free to go anywhere.'"

This is really interesting! I had never heard about this before. The US government gives legal protections to undocumented immigrants who are helping give evidence about employers breaking the law. This is really clever, because it's a big problem that businesses can get away with mistreating undocumented workers, who feel like they can't report it because they'll be deported. 

And it shows that maybe it's easier to give them legal status than one might think. That's great. I support all immigrants.

10. Trump coverage needs to change and here’s how (December 31) "'You’ve got to stop covering him like he’s just another politician, with a different agenda,' Johnston told me recently. 'He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.'"

11. Lifeboat Capitalism (January 9) "If the term 'crime against humanity' has any meaning, it must apply to very wealthy people who—knowing that their actions are causing a climate change crisis that will devastate future generations and destroy hundreds of millions of lives—chose not to stop those actions, but instead to undertake a systematic campaign of lies and propaganda in order to continue making themselves money. Is there anything, really, more contemptible than this?"

Blogaround

1. Egypt is certified malaria-free by WHO (October 20, via) This is great!

2. Lauren Stratford, The Survivor Who Never Was (October 15) "True change cannot be built on falsehoods, and people who try to do so create more victims, not fewer."

3. China’s Solution for Trash-Strewn Mountains: Robot Dog Porters (October 24) "The four-legged robots could be seen trotting up and down the steps of Mount Tai, or Taishan, in eastern China’s Shandong province last weekend, often laden with huge bags of garbage, sparking amusement among the hordes of tourists at the site."

Also from Sixth Tone: What’s Chinese for ‘Midwest Nice’? (October 24) LOLLL oh this is so real. You text with customer service on Taobao (Chinese shopping app) and they constantly call you "qin" [亲]. A dictionary will tell you this means "dear"- and I have seen plenty of Chinese people using "dear" in English the way they use "qin", which just sounds odd, like "Dear, can you bring in these documents next week?"- but I've always felt like it shouldn't be understood as "dear" but more like a polite title you use in administrative sorts of interactions. Loved reading this article about how Chinese people also find it weird to be called "qin" on Taobao all the time.

And also: Signs of Unity: Can China’s Deaf Community Find a Common Language? (October 28) "China’s large size, coupled with a history of sign language use dating back at least 1,500 years, have made China’s sign languages especially fragmented."

4. Former envoy says Americans in Canada ‘could determine’ next president (October 20) Love this! Americans living abroad, VOTE VOTE VOTE!

5. Nazi shit (intra ecclesiam nulla salus) (October 23) "'Round them up and put them in camps' is unadorned Nazi shit. It just is. There’s no way of qualifying or caviling or weaseling out of that. 'Round them up and put them in camps' is the essence of the thing itself."

6. What NOT To Say To People Trapped In The MAGA Cult (October 24) "One day he’ll be gone [hopefully very soon] and you’ll need to be there to help them process what happened and perhaps find a way back to sanity."

7. Police and poll workers train for possible election threats (October 24) 

8. American Airlines fined $50 million for its treatment of passengers with disabilities (October 23) "Duckworth said airlines routinely damage her own wheelchairs and others. In fact, Duckworth says they broke 892 wheelchairs in a single month last year. 'Imagine if the American public saw that the airlines broke 892 pairs of legs in a single month. There would be hue and cry, but there hasn't been.'"

9. Biden apologizes for forced Native American boarding school policy that caused abuse and deaths of children (October 26) "President Joe Biden delivered an apology Friday for a United States policy that forcibly separated generations of indigenous children from their families for more than 150 years and sent them to federally backed boarding schools for forced assimilation."

10. MAGA’s Closing Argument: Dad’s Coming Home (October 28) "The core MAGA message is that all these problems are really one problem: The world feels wrong now, because people don’t know how to behave."

11. Your Fave Is Problematic Politics (October 18) "This is an annoying approach to media analysis. It is a batshit approach to getting people to vote for a candidate."

12. Relatable: AOC Doesn't Want Four More Years Of Waking Up To Trump's Bullsh*t (October 29) "We should not have to live that way again. We shouldn’t have to wake up every morning and think “OK, what’s it gonna be today?” Our elected officials shouldn’t be spending their time crafting responses to everything he says or does, only for no one to even remember what they were the next day because the next day we’re onto another horrible thing."

13. Many state abortion bans include exceptions for rape. How often are they granted? (October 26, via) "Bertram Roberts says she’s never seen anyone in that state get an exemption — for any reason, let alone rape."

14. New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism (October 25) "Indeed, an unprecedented number of Donald Trump’s closest, handpicked aides and advisors have refused to endorse him, many warning publicly that Trump was a danger to democracy. It is rare for any advisor or official so close to the president to refuse to endorse them; nearly half of Trump’s have so refused."

15. 《目标是宝可梦大师》中文版MV 腾格尔 (October 26) For fun, here's a Chinese song about pokemon!

Blogaround

1. The shredder of history and the oldest song in the world (May 2) "To reach the present day, it must be the case that no person or thing destroyed the document—not just in its own time, but also in every year, every decade, every century that followed."

2. This post is about the pruning process I associate with trying to manage the risk of escalation in a conflict. (May 8) "If I'm concerned about escalation in a tense conversation online, sometimes I'll go back over my message draft and try to prune down the number of provocations."

3. Daddy’s Little Interpreter (May 10) Video about a girl in China who helps her deaf father by acting as a sign language interpreter at his nail salon.

And this article, also from Sixth Tone: A Tale of Two Giants: How India’s and China’s Demographics Differ (May 9) "Additionally, India has a much younger population than China. While the median age in China in 2023 is around 39, India’s is just above 28."

Also from Sixth Tone: US Returns Two Stolen Relics Worth $3.5 Million to China (May 11) "According to the district attorney’s office, thieves used saws to cut the antiquities from a tomb in China in the 1990s then smuggled them out of the country. They were then loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than two decades by private collector Shelby White, with one of the two never exhibited, 'never cleaned and … caked with dirt.'"

4. LinkedIn to cut 716 jobs and shut its China app amid ‘challenging’ economic climate (May 9) 

5. Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows (January 18, via) "The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be 'phantom credits' and do not represent genuine carbon reductions."

6. The Meltdown of a Gay Bank (March 31, via) "Curtis said there was a big new funding round to toast — but first there were team-building exercises, and they quickly got uncomfortable. For a 'speed-dating' session, managers handed out white labels and instructed employees to fill in their identity, which led to workers wearing stickers that read 'formerly homeless' and 'sexual assault survivor.'"

7. Brief interludes with hideous men (part 1) (May 11) [content note: John Piper] "A man like that is not going to see her as a stranger in need of simple assistance but as a bit player in his own personal dirty joke, or porno, or horror movie, or treatise on divinely ordained gender roles — or even some combination of all of those."

8. Deliver Us (Opening Song) | The Prince of Egypt | TUNE. I've been listening to the soundtrack from "The Prince of Egypt", as one does.

And here's the same song in Mandarin Chinese.

9. Girlhood, Purity and Religious Trauma: A Taylor Swift Study (May 2) 42-minute video which analyzes Taylor's Swift's song "Would've, Could've, Should've", which is (apparently) about her relationship with John Mayer when she was 19 and he was 32.