Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Machine-Generated Garbage Hall of Shame (via) Oh cool, a roundup of posts about LLMs being used to create garbage.

And: I'm a Spotless Giraffe. (2023) "It's not just that the training sets simply don't have examples of people who look like me. It's that the system is now explicitly engineered to resist imagining me. …Hey, is now a good a time to mention that in an effort to create a welcoming and inclusive community for all users, the Midjourney Community Guidelines consider deformed bodies a form of gore, and thus forbidden?"

2. ‘I was scared to even eat the vegetables in my fridge’: the eating disorder that focuses on food purity (May 2, via) "'I remember asking myself why everything was so hard,' she says. 'Why aren’t other people following the same food rules? Why don’t they care about their health as much as I do?'"

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Links related to that felon:

1. 'We Don't Do Kings': Mass Protests Planned to Counter Trump's Birthday Military Parade (May 6)

2. With ICE Out of Control, How Can the US Cohost the 2026 World Cup? (March 31) "Given that ICE is being used as a masked abduction force, and given “border czar” Tom Homan’s contempt for the courts, it is unconscionable to encourage people to visit this country."

3. USDA chief says agency is trying to fill key jobs after paying 15,000 to leave (May 7) 

4. Judge orders release of Columbia student protest leader Mohsen Mahdawi (April 30) "'I'm saying it clear and loud to President [Donald] Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you,' Mahdawi said after he was freed, local public radio station Vermont Public reported."

5. Many Afghans living in the U.S. fear being tortured or killed if they get deported (May 7) "'I have … a threatening letter,' Qattali said. 'If I go back, like, 100% they're going to kill me and my family as well.'"

I just... why? Why would these MAGAs want to deport Afghan people, who helped the US and are now just living their lives and not making any trouble? It reads like they just want to deport as big of a number of people as possible, so they're casting about for any way they can make the number bigger.

6. Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk freed from immigration detention (May 9) "And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here."

This is good news- but she is still in the process of fighting against the government revoking her visa- she is still at risk of being deported. But the good news is she doesn't have to be in jail during this process.

7. Trump & Deportations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (May 5)

8. Roundup: Experts Condemn Trump Pseudoscientific Anti-Trans "Report" (May 9) "'AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways,' she said."

Blogaround

1. James Dobson: Migrants “Will Soon Overwhelm the Culture” (posted July 8) "Dobson has been saying for ages that Christians have lost the culture. What “culture” is it that Central Americans will overwhelm?"

2. USA's formidable women's soccer team is no accident. It's a product of public policy (posted July 6) "In 1972, when title IX was passed, there were only 700 girls playing soccer at the high-school level in the whole United States. By 1991, the year of the first Women’s World Cup, there were 121,722 high school girl players – a 17,000% increase." Wow, this is astonishing to me- imagine if high schools just *didn't have* sports teams for girls.

3. Why I’m not a Bridge Builder within Evangelicalism (posted July 4) "In other admittedly harsh words, evangelicals only give a limited degree of freedom to one subset of human beings if they can surely throw other human beings under the bus."

Blogaround

1. My Son "Fixed" 'The Giving Tree' (posted June 22) "We want them to understand that kindness doesn’t mean giving yourself away to make someone else happy until you are nothing but a stump. ... We want them to know that when you love yourself, you set boundaries that allow for authentic relationships built on mutual respect and honor."

2. Is Toy Story 4 the Best Toy Story Movie? | Spoiler Review (posted June 25) I agree with the Super Carlin Brothers' thoughts on Toy Story 4.

3. Dr. Dobson's July Newsletter What the f***?! This is James Dobson's account of his visit to the border patrol facilities on the US southern border. Parts of it show concern for the refugees who are suffering, but overall it's about how we need to close the border, we need to support the orange antichrist building his damn wall, isn't it terrible that these poor and possibly-violent people are allowed to enter the US, etc.

I'm posting this here because I always saw Dobson as a good Christian role model, when I was growing up. My family bought books and magazines from Focus on the Family, and I read and accepted what they said, never doubting that Focus on the Family taught The Correct Things That Christians Should Believe.

And now he's writing this blatantly unbiblical anti-immigrant crap. The bible is clear: we need to welcome the immigrant, the refugee, the stranger. (And usually I don't use the term "unbiblical" and I don't say "the bible is clear" but I'm angry and it's ****in' clear on this.) Look at the last paragraph from Dobson's post:

What I've told you is only a glimpse of what is occurring on the nation's border. I don't know what it will take to change the circumstances. I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation. America has been a wonderfully generous and caring country since its founding. That is our Christian nature. But in this instance, we have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don't deal with it. And it won't take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.

Ewww, disgusting, how will I explain this to my children.

See also: Sarahbeth Caplin's post on this.
And Libby Anne's post.

And this tweet:

I don't have the stamina to go through this today, y'all. I just want to say, imagine being the Christian child expert that the administration knew they could safely give a tour of concentration camps to and expect nothing but support.https://t.co/HVWHblpL6U

— Ice Bear is Over It (@sparkle_heretic) 2019年6月30日

4. An Amazon employee made an AI-powered cat flap to stop his cat from bringing home dead animals (posted June 30) Cool!

5. Researchers eliminated HIV from the DNA of infected mice. It's the first step toward a cure for humans, they say (posted July 2)

6. So the President F*cking Hates My Girlfriend (posted July 2) "She’s going to do her thing, at her own damn speed, to her own damn rhythm, and she’s going to apologize to exactly NO ONE for it."