Blogaround

1. Mandisa, Grammy-winning singer and 'American Idol' alum, has died at 47 (April 19) Oh my goodness, very shocked to hear this. Here's my favorite song from her:

2. Surprising No One, All 3,878 of Elon Musk’s Cybertrucks Are Being Recalled (April 20) "The brake pedal was still functioning and would override the accelerator if it became stuck. However, lifting one’s foot briefly off the pedal would result in the car instantly rising to dangerous speeds. That was particularly dangerous because the Cybertruck can go from 0 mph to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds." Holy crap.

3. The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat (April 16, via) "Fortunately, there is enough redundancy in the world’s cables to make it nearly impossible for a well-connected country to be cut off, but cable breaks do happen. On average, they happen every other day, about 200 times a year. The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks."

4. Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies (April 19) 

5. This SMBC comic [via]. "Come to think of it, why are we even having this specific conversation when we're never going to have this exact conversation again later!?"

6. The Cass Review: Hey, What Does UK NHS Trans Report Mean? (April 18) "The Cass Review is a wonky, sciencey, jargony document that gives every appearance of being a Tory project intended to justify cracking down on medical care for trans people in the name of non-trans people who feel icky when forced to think repeatedly for weeks on end about surgeons coming for their genitals — but it nonetheless contains a few good things."

7. NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth (April 22, via) "The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth."

8. The ‘Progressive Evangelical’ Two-Step (April 23) "So Slaves, Women & Homosexuals starts with slavery because that establishes the possibility that clobber-texts may not be quite so indisputably authoritative after all. And then, as perfectnumber notes, it ends with an abstract discussion of the 'issue of homosexuality' as a way saying yesbutofcourse some such clobber-texts are still authoritative so, fear not, we’re not just saying that anything goes." The Slacktivist responds to my post on the book "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" and connects it to the history of the organization Christians for Biblical Equality.

9. FTC bans contracts that keep workers from jumping to rival employers (April 23, via) "The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned noncompete agreements for most U.S. workers, a move that will affect an estimated 30 million employees bound by contracts that restrict workers from switching employers within their industry." Wow this sounds like a big deal! When I first read this, I thought, but isn't there an important business reason for non-compete agreements? Surely you can't just ban them- yeah they're a problem for workers, but solving it should be more complicated than that... right? But the article says, "Noncompete agreements have been prohibited in three states — California, North Dakota and Oklahoma — for more than a century. In recent years, 11 states and D.C. have passed laws that prohibit the agreements for hourly wage workers or those who fall below a salary threshold." 

Shanghai Auto Museum (photos)

I recently went to the Shanghai Auto Museum, and I have a few photos to share here :)

First of all, the way the museum is laid out is really cool. On the 1st to 3rd floor, each floor has a big exhibition area, and there are big ramps curved around the edge of the building, to get between the floors. These ramps have cars parked along them. Seeing these ramps, I imagined how they must have had to drive and/or drag all these cars up these ramps when setting up the museum.

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is still open- go take it if you haven't done it yet. (Survey will be open until June 19.)

2. Only ONE Person Has Solved This Puzzle... (May 12) 2-hours-13-minutes sudoku solve video. My favorite part was, at 1 hour and 30 minutes in, with only 2 digits placed in the puzzle, Simon says, "Maybe this is why people have found this difficult, because they get to this point and then get stuck."

3. Optimum tic-tac-toe (May 26) "[Chat GPT] very strongly prefers to place its marks in the corners, longwindedly explaining how its corner move is a superior strategy, all while I win game after game by placing my marks in the center rows and columns."

4. Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? (May 24) "The author criticizes the classification of absent/low desire as a mental disorder from three primary angles: first that it doesn’t make sense to have a different diagnostic setup depending on whether someone identifies as asexual; second, that this diagnosis is disproportionately assigned to women, reflecting sexist values; finally, the distress criterion is insufficient."

5. Rare all-white panda spotted in SW China's Sichuan Province (May 27)

6. China's first homegrown large passenger jet took its maiden flight after 16 years in the making — check it out (May 29) Great!

7. Shanghai Metro on the right track after 30 years (May 28) "Meanwhile, the overall length of the city's Metro network, has increased to 831 kilometers, becoming the largest metro system among all the cities in the world, according to Shanghai's Metro operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group." The Shanghai metro system has been operating for 30 years. I can confirm, yes, subways in China are very nice. (My photos here and here.)

Sixth Tone also has a series of articles on the 30th anniversary of the construction of the Shanghai subway system:
Shanghai, in Motion (May 28) "'Compared with walking on the street, we feel safer and more relieved after entering the metro station. There, everything is standardized and traceable,' he said, adding that the better tactile paving in stations and along the platform edges is a crucial accessibility feature, particularly for the visually impaired."
Beyond the Midnight Hour (May 29) "Maintenance crews take over to keep the Shanghai Metro running like clockwork for the 10 million passengers who ride it every day."
Building Shanghai’s Deepest Station (May 30) "With the deepest foundation piles reaching as far as 48 meters underground, Chen and his team had no choice but to build the new station at a record depth of 36 meters so that incoming trains could make it to the station after diving under the piles. For safety and energy consumption reasons, official regulations limit subway inclination to a maximum gradient of 3%."

8. Pentecost, Resurrection, and the Chasm of History (May 25) "In terms of early sources, the only vague candidate for such a mass appearance is the Pentecost scene in Acts 2, which as we know it today is not explicitly cited as a Resurrection appearance. But as I will suggest, that is what it was originally."

9. Return of the Jedi (1983) - Ace Mini-Review (May 25) "This leads to an ending that, in its own understated way, is remarkably ace-friendly.  Cinematic and storytelling conventions tell us that the hero’s happy ending should include heterosexual marriage.  And yet Luke, the quintessential hero, ends his story single and without a romantic prospect in sight."

10. China sends first civilian astronaut to space as Shenzhou-16 blasts off (May 29) "It is China’s fifth manned mission to the space station since 2021." Cool!

Blogaround

1. First female CPR dummy created to help save women suffering from cardiac arrest (posted June 5) "The product, which has been produced by New York-based creative agency JOAN, was designed following a recent study by Dr Audrey Blewer which found that women suffering from a cardiac arrest in public are 27 per cent less likely than men to receive CPR."

2. Penny in the Air: My Story of Becoming Affirming (posted June 5) "Sometimes we lean so hard on the divine that we forget Jesus was also a product of his time and his culture. This passage reminds us in no uncertain terms that Jesus was a Jewish man in the first-century, conditioned to believe that Gentiles were dogs and outsiders to the promise. His response to her seems…well, prejudiced at best."

3. Robert Downey Jr. Announces Footprint Coalition to Clean Up the World With Advanced Tech (posted June 4)

4. When Protestant Leaders Didn’t Take Abuse Victims Seriously, These Bloggers Did (posted June 4) "They stepped in when church leaders would not, and their articles forced some of those churches to take real action."

5. How I Became Radically Pro-Choice (posted June 2) "I get why people get abortions now."

6. India heatwave kills ‘dozens’ of people as temperatures hit 50C (posted June 4) 50C is 122F.

7. Call Me Chrissy (posted June 11) "Welcome to the Coming Out Post I’ve Been Putting Off for Years"

Blogaround

A very useful diagram which shows us that if a chocolate wafer, white filling, and chocolate wafer is an "oreo", then a wafer, filling, wafer, filling, wafer is "oreoreo", 5 layers of filling is "rerererere", a stack of 5 wafers is "ooooo", and so on. Image source.

1. Explaining in the Guise of Listening: A Review of Josh Harris’ New Documentary (posted December 27) "Harris appears to have done less actual analysis of his teachings than I have here on this blog—or a dozen other bloggers." AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH.

2. ‘What if someone was shooting?’ (posted December 26) [content note: gun violence] An article about how school lockdowns are traumatizing for children.

3. Anonymous donor provides free lunches to Georgia district's families in need during holiday break (posted December 26)

4. Visionary Brain Genius Elon Musk Has Invented The World's Worst And Most Expensive Subway (posted December 19) "Literally the only innovation here is that it’s a worse version of both driving and riding the subway, and only available to people who’ve bought one brand of car."

5. Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees (posted December 12) Nooooo. Support all immigrants.

6. CCM Comes to a Presidential Funeral (posted December 8) Michael W. Smith performed "Friends" ("friends are friends forever") at Bush's funeral.

7. The Dangerous Rise of the IUD as Poverty Cure (posted January 2) "This sort of language should set off alarm bells because the idea that limiting women’s reproduction can cure society’s ills has a long, shameful history in the United States."

8. #MeToo law restricts use of nondisclosure agreements in sexual misconduct cases (posted December 31) "'Women don’t want to sell silence and lawyers shouldn’t be selling or buying silence,' Smith said."

Blogaround

A sleeping cat wearing a Santa hat. Image source.

1. A 5-Month-Old Girl Has Been Hospitalized With Pneumonia After Being Detained By The Border Patrol (posted December 19) "Portillo told agents that her daughter was sick shortly after being detained, but they told Portillo it was normal and that everyone coming into the holding cells was ill. She wasn't allowed to get new medication or see a doctor."

2. The best $6,250 I ever spent: top surgery (posted December 18) "Last year, I publicly admitted to having a body for the first time, an act so embarrassing I have still not fully recovered."

3. Blogger Elizabeth Esther Regrets Her Participation in Josh Harris Documentary (posted December 20) "My takeaway is that nothing has changed for Josh Harris. He still believes the same things. He just doesn’t like how he said it in a book he wrote." (My post about Harris's documentary is here: So I Watched Josh Harris's Documentary.)

4. The Amazonian tribe defending their land with technology (posted December 20) "Over four years, the Waorani used hi-tech GPS technology, camera traps, and drones to map out 180,000 hectares of their territory."

5. Advent Calendar Day 17: Fair and foul are near of kin (posted December 17) "A Christmas caganer is a figurine of someone — traditionally an anonymous peasant in traditional dress — squatting and pooping."

6. When Teen Cas Innocently Suggested Testing a Miracle (LSP #73) (posted December 17) "And then, and then, and then we could sit back and wait for the world to wonder and marvel at how a little girl could possibly have known an ancient language so fluently at her age."

Blogaround

1. Church Stories: "Forgive them, Father" (posted September 10) This is such a powerful story. Go read it. Seriously.

2. On Homosexuality: It's OK to Fight (posted August 31) "I am a testimony that homosexuality can be a choice." Wow... did not expect this. I thought, no, it's not supposed to work this way. But remember what I said about listening to other people's experiences, and believing them, instead of thinking I'm an expert on their life? Yeah, go read this.

3. Detroit Lions, Ford Field part of history as first female NFL referee Shannon Eastin draws positive reviews after first game (posted September 10) Shannon Eastin became the first woman to referee an NFL regular season game. Awesome! I wonder what her story is- did people tell her she was crazy to go through ref training, because obviously girls couldn't do that?

4. Ask a transgender Christian (Response) (posted September 11) Wow, this week's blogaround is full of really personal, eye-opening stories. Go read this.

flightradar24.com

5. Flightradar24 For the science nerds out there. A real-time map of planes in the sky all over the world. (Though there are some regions with no data.)

6. I am not a Puzzle Box (posted September 10) "Sex is not an item." Also her observation about "ideas that women don't actually want sex and just have to regulate men's access to it" is dead-on.

7. The List Of What You Must Do To Remain Saved (posted September 14)