Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. On ‘James Talarico and the [white] religious left’ (August 10) "Where the “religious right” is always presumed to be acting out of genuine religious conviction, the “religious left” is always presumed to be just a bunch of Democrats fumbling to close the “God gap” in electoral campaigning."

2. ‘Black Mirror’ and ‘Loki’ Directors Say They Rejected HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Due to J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia: ‘Absolutely F—ing Not’ (August 14, via) 

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. More Than 20,000 Unaccompanied Children at Risk of Losing Legal Representation in Immigration Court (August 5) "On Friday, July 31st, the Trump administration ended a critical federal contract with the Acacia Center for Justice providing legal services and representation to children who entered the United States without a parent or guardian. The decision dismantled a network of nearly 100 legal service providers, including Church World Service, and leaves over 20,000 unaccompanied children across the country, many of whom are victims of trafficking or other abuse, without legal representation."

2. El-Sayed blasts Trump over ‘Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s’ post (August 9, via) "'Yeah, he’s right,' El-Sayed said. 'One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you, or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family, and know that that family is going to have the good things.'"

3. ICE plans to outfit officers with electric shock gloves (August 12) "'My immediate reaction was, why would you give this kind of novel dangerous technology that's hard to train people on to agency personnel who have a track record of abuse and even cruelty?' Shah says."

4. 'What are we going to do?' The mom of a trans teen grapples with Trump's Medicaid move (August 16) "She says the narrative advanced by the Trump administration — that families are being tricked into gender-affirming care by doctors and hospitals driven by greed — is completely off base."

5. They fought for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Now they worry about losing their green cards (August 15) "'We are trying to work, study, raise our children and build a normal life in the U.S,' said M., who asked NPR to refer to him by his first initial because he's concerned that speaking to the media could affect his green card. 'But now we are also trying to find lawyers, contact congressional offices and understand what may happen to our green cards. It is very stressful because even immigration lawyers give different opinions.'"

6. Families of USS Lincoln crew say Trump should be 'ashamed' of conditions on board (August 15) "His comments come amid reports of food shortages, plumbing problems and declining mental health among crew members."

7. Suing Stephen Miller (July 20, via) "You shouldn’t be able to order the military to carry out extrajudicial executions of fishermen and/or low-level drug runners that violate both domestic and international law, and then simply return to your job as a weekend cable news host once the other party retakes the White House. You should not be able to lie to the courts about sending immigrants to an overseas torture prison with zero due process and then live out your days with the lifelong job security of a federal judge. You should not be able to write a bullshit, meritless, bad faith legal memo while working at the Office of Legal Counsel that authorizes immigration officers to ignore the Fourth Amendment and batter down the doors of private homes without a warrant, then go on to make millions as partner at a white shoe law firm."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cleft Lip: The Long Road to Repairing a Smile (March 5) "When I saw other children like me for the first time at the hospital, I began to feel less alone."

2. The Gender Politics of Abandoning Your Girlfriend on a Mountain (March 3) "For that reason, there’s a warning sign posted that tells climbers 'If it took you more than 3 hours to get here, turn back! Your life depends on it. Expect major difficulties from here on!' It took them nearly SEVEN hours to get there, but they decided to continue, as Plamberger stated they still felt fresh."

3.  The Mundane Misery of MAGA's Bluey Copycat (January 19, 1-hour-59-minute video) "No one in their right mind is going to be like, you know what I want my kids to watch? Something associated with political commentary. Conservative political commentary."

4. Why people fail at learning languages (January 3) "The goal in learning a language is to acquire so much of this tacit knowledge that the illusion becomes so strong that you can’t encounter these sounds or these symbols without associating them with a meaning."

I speak Mandarin Chinese as a second language, and I have some opinions about language learning and how American culture views language learning. Maybe I'll write about that some time. Basically the strategy I used was, talk to actual Chinese people, make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. If your goal is to be able to talk to people, you need to learn by talking to people. 

Contrast this with the French classes I took in high school, where I thought the point was to get everything correct and never make mistakes. Sure, you do well in class with that approach, but then the moment you encounter native speakers or a French movie or whatever, you feel like "they're talking too fast" and you understand nothing and have no confidence.

5. Here's a fun little game about how well you can remember colors (via)

6. We Know What’s Killing Loons and How to Stop It. So Why Are They Still Dying? (January 2, via) "In nearly every place—from the Maritimes to Minnesota to Washington State—lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for adult loons in freshwater habitat."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. How to Resist Like Minneapolis (February 6, via) "These will be the people in the encrypted chat."

2. Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Noem after mounting criticism (March 6)

3. She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. (March 3) "Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee."

4. Caught in the Middle East, Chinese Tourists Scramble for Way Out (March 6) 

5. A Courthouse Arrest, a Surprise Pregnancy, and One Family’s Shattered Dreams (January 7, via) "The other family members were determined to keep fighting for their asylum, but they’d already accepted that Daniela wasn’t coming back, and Andres’ little family would be separated before it could even begin."

6. Jan. 6 plaque honoring police officers is now displayed at the Capitol after a 3-year delay (March 7) "The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because that chamber voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had delayed putting it up."

7. U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows (March 8, via) "A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed."

8. Bodycam video contradicts ICE claims in fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas (March 7)

9. Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good (January 15, via) "Flipping through roughly 1,300 pages of pink-accented ancient Near Eastern religious literature reveals numerous quizzes, including one (image below) to help determine whether you’re a 'Diva, Doormat, or Dream Date.'"

This is so real- bible publishers make all these little niche bibles, targeted at different groups, usually gendered. It's the entire text of the actual bible, plus little text boxes inserted all throughout, to tell readers from that specific subgroup what the bible is supposed to mean for them. 

I've always interpreted the message of these bibles as, 'We don't read the actual text of the bible. That's boring. We have to print it all here, because Christians are supposed to own a bible, but we don't expect people to actually read it and notice how jarringly different it is from the cutesy little messages we've stuck in here.'

Like, take whatever message you want, and tack it onto the text of the bible. Nobody will notice it has nothing to do with the bible- Christians treat owning a bible as an identity marker, but it's not like they're actually going to spend time reading it.

Team Rocket Should Get Real Jobs

James, Jessie, and Meowth. Image source.

My son watches a lot of pokemon- the old cartoon from when I was growing up- and I have a hot take about it. I have mentioned this many times to my husband and son but they don't seem as worked up about it as I am, so let me post it on the blog. I need to get this out.

Okay here it is: Team Rocket should get real jobs.

Every single episode, Jessie and James are following Ash around, trying to make trouble, and they always fail. Don't they have anything better they could be doing with their time? They have a lot of skills- you see this in every single episode- surely they could get real jobs?

What's going on here? Is the economy of pokemon world in such bad shape that they really can't find any other job besides following a preteen around, like the world's most pathetic groupies? Have they been blacklisted by all normal employers for trying to start a union? Whyyyy don't they get real jobs?

You only have one life to live. Don't you want to spend it on something worthwhile, rather than following around some pokemon trainer all the time, and continually failing to kidnap pikachu? I'm just really concerned about them. They could do so much better.

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Do you have any strong opinions about inconsequential details of children's media? Leave them in the comments section~

Blogaround + Happy Year of the Snake!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! January 28 was the big night, and it is now the year of the snake!

For Chinese New Year, there is a tv show called 春晚 [chūn wǎn] (which I like to call "Chinese New Year's Rockin' Eve"). Here are the performances I liked from this year's 春晚:

Magic tricks from Lu Chen (刘谦). The first one, about swapping around the cups and chopsticks and whatever, is boring and not even really a magic trick. The second trick is really clever if you can read Chinese- I loved it! (And there's a joke at the beginning where one of the hosts (小尼) says "please give me another chance"- this is because at last year's 春晚, that same guy was one of the hosts, and Lu Chen was doing a magic trick about instructing all the audience members to move cards around in a certain way, and this guy must have messed up a step and his turned out wrong- all the other hosts got the right result at the end, except him, and this was on live tv and he just kind of pretended it was fine, but we all noticed. Anyway this year he didn't mess up, so all is good.)

Anyway, highly recommend this video if you can understand Chinese! Actually, back when I was first studying Chinese, I watched a lot of Lu Chen videos- magic tricks are a good tool for language learning, I would say, because the magician is always talking about what they are physically doing, or describing the objects they are using.

And if you want to watch something in English, here's One Republic performing "Counting Stars". This is really cool! 春晚 has had international performers before, but I don't think any of them have been, like, big famous pop stars I've actually heard of.

These dancing robots:

This song, featuring athletes from China's Olympic team:

Also, Sixth Tone has a photo roundup of public snake structures for the new year: Collage: The Year of the Snake

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Okay now on to the blogaround links!

Here, I sorted the links. Here are the links not related to that felon:

1. New York becomes the first state to close schools for Lunar New Year (January 29)

2. AlphaMove (January 31)

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And I sorted all the links about the latest fascist nonsense down to here. If you are too burned out, you don't have to read them. Donate to a group that supports immigrants and then do something to make yourself happy.

1. Amazon removes 'equity for Black people' and 'LGBTQ+ rights' from company policies (January 13, via) So... big companies only care about diversity and equality when it's the politically popular thing to do.

2. The Chilling Line Trump Just Crossed On Transgender People (January 29) "The attacks on transgender people are no longer cloaked in the faux respectability of “evidence,” “science,” or “protecting kids.” They never truly were, but now even the pretense has been abandoned."

3. Quakers sue to keep US immigration agents out of houses of worship (January 28) "The lawsuit by five Quaker groups said the policy was infringing their right to practice their religion by sowing fear among congregations and leading to the cancellation of services."

4. Fearing encounters with ICE, tribal leaders offer guidance to their members (January 29)

Blogaround

1. A Special Monologue for the Republican in Your Life (October 30) Video from Jimmy Kimmel, making the argument that Trump is unfit to be president. This is meant to speak to the average Republican, and mainly shows clips of Trump, so you can see for yourself what he is really like.

2. A few xkcd comics that made me laugh: Wells (October 28) and Demons (November 1)

3. Say their names: Savita. Josseli. (October 30) [content note: it's about women who died because they were unable to get abortion care] "It took six years, but there was a direct line from Savita Halappanavar’s agonizing, preventable death to the amendment of Ireland’s Constitution in 2018."

4. UNICEF warns of 'deadly' effect on Palestinian children after Israel ban on UNRWA (October 31, via)

5. Fairness in Sports (October 13) "If all the ad money spent screaming about trans people in sports were instead spent on providing scholarships, you would have far more new scholarships than there are trans scholarship athletes in the entire country." An article from a trans person, which goes through different levels of sports competition and talks about what policies actually make sense.

Also from Crip Dyke: Pro Publica has it half right. (October 19) "What was remarkable about all this was that in each case [since the 1600s] the people seeking to block some marriages argued that such marriages were anti-god, anti-family, sexually perverted or debauched, prone to illness and encouraging of drug or alcohol abuse."

6. Star Trek Retro Review: "Yesterday's Enterprise" (TNG) | Alternate Timelines (November 1) "Picard's like, 'whattttt?' Tasha says, 'I talked to Guinan.' Picard's like, 'Oh Jesus, what did she say?'" (27-minute video)

7. Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort (October 30) "But by Sunday, the door knockers were loaded into a rented U-Haul moving van with no rear seating or seatbelts, in a photo and videos viewed by WIRED. 'We were all told our transportation would be handled and we’d be in rental cars. It turned out to be U-Haul vans, and I felt embarrassed and played,' the door knocker tells WIRED."

8. PBS KIDS shows that you totally forgot existed 📺📚🦁 (August 21, 52-minute video) Oh look, it's a video about my childhood. This makes me want to find episodes of "Liberty's Kids" for my son to watch.

Blogaround

1. Psychology of a Hero: MOON KNIGHT and Dissociative Identity Disorder (2022) "And so many systems saw 'Moon Knight' and said I feel seen. This is what it's like." (29-minute video)

2. 2024 Total Eclipse: Where & When (via) 

And more on the eclipse:

Satellite views of solar eclipse 2024: See the moon's shadow race across North America (video, photos) (April 10) This photo is incredible!

Photo of the earth, with a huge dark spot on it where the eclipse is.

And from xkcd: Types of Eclipse Photo (April 8) Love this!

3. Bootlicking Calvinism Is The Unfunny Kind Of Calvin + Hobbes (April 8) "You might expect, then, that good Calvinists would agree with that latter sentiment. They might not appreciate the punks and anarchists who spray paint “ACAB” on subway walls but, logically, it is a statement that they must regard as true. If all people are sinful bastards, and police are a subset within “all people,” then all police, as people, must also be sinful bastards. If all people cannot be trusted to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, then it would be foolish to claim that police officers are somehow, inexplicably, an exception to this universal rule."

4. Censorship: How Does It Work? (January 27, via) "Every Chinese person I know seems to have a lot of skill in reading the news between the lines to figure out what’s actually happening through the bullshit."

5. O.J. Simpson dies of cancer at age 76, his family says (April 11)

6. What I’ve Learned as the First Out Trans Division 1 Men’s Athlete (2023, via) "'It saved my life,' he said after a few heavy breaths. 'You saved my life. And I needed you to know.'"

7. What LakePointe Church and Pastor Josh Howerton Think about Women (April 12) This will only be of interest if you know who Josh Howerton is. He's a pastor who recently got a lot of attention on social media for making a "joke" about how a wife should do whatever her husband wants sexually on "his" wedding night. Well I'm sure you will be *shocked* to find out that it's not the first time he's said disrespectful things about women. Sheila Gregoire has the receipts.

Blogaround

1. Paleontologists discover a 240-million-year-old 'dragon' fossil in full (February 23, via) "It's a fitting discovery in the Year of the Dragon: A team of scientists has uncovered a complete fossil of an aquatic reptile that resembles a 'Chinese dragon' because of its snake-like appearance and elongated neck." Cool!

2. NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its last flight after suffering rotor damage (January 26, via) "The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper was tasked with demonstrating that powered flight is indeed possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere — it promptly did so during a five-flight campaign that spring."

3. I didn’t fancy men or women. Then I had a baby (February 13, via) Article about an asexual woman who decided to get pregnant using a sperm donor.

4. What TV Shows Get Wrong (and Right!) About Therapy (November 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

5. A ‘Reading Rainbow’ Documentary Is Coming Next Month (February 28) Cool!

6. When Star Trek Confronted Racism Head-On (February 28) 23-minute video about a "Deep Space Nine" episode

7. If Elisabeth Elliot's Marriage Advice was Supposed to Ruin Your Life, This is the First I've Heard It (February 12) "The book is a frankly overheated and occasionally goofy account of two people who, like all young people, have very intense and primarily interior problems that don’t make sense to anyone over twenty-five. Passion and Purity, though, is told through the perspective of a much older woman who actually does seem to agree that these problems are very serious, and that the tortured process of wondering if you’re touching your boyfriend too much or if he loves you too much is actually part of preparation for marriage. How do we make sense of this?"

Blogaround

Chandler and Joey from "Friends." "I got her machine." "Her answering machine?" "No, interestingly enough, her leaf blower picked up." Image souce.

1. Mr. Rogers and Child Liberation Theology (October 15) "When you view children as sinful or evil, you are more likely to misinterpret developmentally appropriate behavior as sinful or evil—and thus more likely to punish them for just being children." R. L. Stollar has just written a book called "The Kingdom of Children," about child liberation theology. I really want to read this!

2. China's youngest-ever crew of astronauts heads to space station (October 26) Cool!

3. Journal Club: Whitewashed (October 25) "This chapter discusses how whiteness is the default for ace representation, and how that affects the intersection between race, gender, and asexuality. In particular, the chapter focuses on how aces of color can violate or confirm stereotypes, and how it can be difficult either way."

4. Can church groups and Louisville be sued on old child sex abuse claims? Court to decide (October 24, this is an archive link because the original is paywalled) Umm, so, a victim of sexual abuse is challenging the laws about the statute of limitations in Kentucky. And, for some reason, the Southern Baptist Convention- which is not part of this case at all- has submitted a brief arguing that the statute of limitations should NOT be changed. Arguing against the victim. What on earth. Like, they are not involved in this case at all, but they just want to pop in and let everyone know they're on the side of the abusers.

5. Vikings DB Enlists Help From Senators to Acquire Visa for Wife in Philippines (October 26) Oh man, this is so real. As a US citizen married to a non-US citizen, let me tell you, this is SO REAL. We're lucky- someone advised my husband to get a 10-year US tourist visa *before* we got married, and he did that, so he's always been able to travel to the US on vacation with me. But a lot of couples run into problems with this- the US often refuses to issue someone a tourist visa if they are married to a US citizen, because the US thinks it's likely they actually intend to overstay their visa and live in the US long-term. And applying for a spousal visa (this is part of the process of getting a US green card) can take a long time. 

And yeah, asking your senators for help speeding up the process- also VERY REAL. Hope this guy is able to bring his wife to the US soon. 

6. Julie Roys and LGBTQ+ People (August 1) Julie Roys runs a blog dedicated to reporting on and calling out abuse in the church and in other Christian environments. That's great work that she's doing. Unfortunately, it seems she does not support LGBTQ people. I didn't know that- sad to hear about this.

7. Flamy Grant - What Did You Drag Me Into? [Official Video] (2022) Music video from a Christian drag queen called Flamy Grant. This is the exact content I am interested in.

8. Matthew Perry, Star of ‘Friends,’ Is Dead at 54 (October 29) and ‘An ironic, self-deprecating metrosexual’: how Matthew Perry captured the spirit of the age (October 29)

"Friends" is hugely popular in China as a way to learn American English. My husband loved it, and introduced me to it, and I also became a fan. Sad to hear this news about Matthew Perry- he was great.

9. The Hardest Puzzle Of The Year (2022) 1-hour-50-minute sudoku solve video. Simon is a genius.

10. Pence ends White House campaign after struggling to gain traction. ‘This is not my time,’ he says (October 29) Good. As an ex-evangelical, I am more creeped out by Mike Pence than by any other politician.

11. Virgin-shaming hurts everyone, including asexual people like me (October 24, via) "What I am proud of is that I didn’t have sex to appease everyone’s demands."

Also from Tyger Songbird: Purity culture made me feel trapped. Finding asexuality set me free. (October 26) "It turned out that when the church was saying 'True Love Waits,' what they really were saying was 'True Love Waits… but you better get the Ring By Spring!'" This article is SPOT-ON.

Blogaround

1. My Body, Their Baby: Grace Y. Kao on the Christian Ethics of Surrogacy (August 21) "So, in terms of the progressive Christian values that I hold, I want to say if you truly affirm marriage equality—and many mainline Protestant denominations do, as do progressive Catholics—and you also affirm the traditional idea that children are a good of marriage, not a requirement (because I also believe parenthood is a vocation to which not everyone is called), then there needs to be a pathway for two men to become parents. And unless you’re going to hold the position that their pathway is adoption and everyone else’s pathway is natural birth, then I think surrogacy is the next step, especially since a lot of these progressive or mainline Protestant denominations have also officially affirmed the conscientious use of IVF for infertile, married, heterosexual couples."

2. See moment India becomes 4th country to land on the moon (August 23) Cool! And it's the first spacecraft to land near the south pole of the moon.

3. The one-child policy is gone, but many of its old trappings remain (August 22) "In the end, the mother and her three kids had to buy five tickets, raising questions about the logic of the situation." 

China's one-child policy ended in 2016, and now the government is trying to create new policies to incentivize people to have more kids ("more" means like 2 or 3, Chinese people can barely imagine having more than 3), but it's not going that well. The one-child policy was in effect for 30ish years, so the entire society has adapted to this norm of families only having 1 kid. In particular, everything related to children's education/extracurriculars is SO EXPENSIVE, like the intention is you spend all your money on the one kid- so then how on earth can you have a second kid? 

And this article which I've linked is about a parent on a flight with 3 children, and the airline said she can't bring 3 children, so she needs to buy an "unaccompanied minor" ticket (???). A lot of things in Chinese society are set up with the expectation that families have 1 child, or maybe, in rare cases, 2. 

For example, when you take kids to fun places like parks, children's play areas, etc, usually the options for ticket pricing are like, 1 adult, 1 adult + 1 child, 2 adults + 1 child. Like they don't expect there would be a group that's 1 adult + 2 children.

(Also very funny how the header image on that article on "large families" seems to be 2 adults and 2 children.)

4. Responding to this bit of an AJC article on aces in fiction (August 23) The Ace Journal Club discussed an article on ace romance novels, which claimed that "Crafting a credible path to HEA [happily ever after] is less challenging for authors writing demisexual or gray-asexual characters since these orientations experience sexual attraction under certain circumstances." Coyote disagrees with this.

5. Federal District Court Refuses to Halt Florida’s Discriminatory Housing Law (August 17) "Under SB 264, people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and whose 'domicile,' or permanent home, is in China, are prohibited from purchasing property, including homes, in Florida." Wow not cool.

6. Let's Read A Paper: The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence From A Randomized Evaluation (August 18) "For many people, microcredit actually ends up functioning like a bank account. The global poor save too little money for it to be worthwhile for large banks to offer them interest-bearing savings accounts, so they typically save by paying someone in the neighborhood to keep an eye on the money. Most microcredit organizations allow participants to take out larger loans if they successfully pay off smaller loans. If you pay off your loan and then immediately take out another one, mathematically this is equivalent to a savings account you have to pay for: in the long run it doesn’t matter if you got the money at the beginning or the end of your first month. Microcredit organizations may charge lower fees than local money guards. They also have better security and are less likely to flee in the night with the money. The loan officer will show up at your door and complain if you miss your payment, so there’s an incentive to save."

7. Fukushima wastewater released into the ocean, China bans all Japanese seafood (August 25) and The science behind the Fukushima waste water release (August 27) So, Japan has started dumping wastewater from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster into the ocean. I don't know what to think about this... the levels of radioactivity are very low, scientists are saying it's probably safe, but it still seems like we don't really know what the effects could be. And China has now banned all seafood imported from Japan- that kind of feels more politically-motivated, in my opinion, rather than strictly based on science. 

8. Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99 (August 26)

9. i wish that i could wear hats (2022) lollll

"Shiny Happy People" is Worth Watching

Poster for the tv series "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets", produced by Amazon. It is a family photo of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and a huge number of their kids. All the people in the photos have their faces covered by smiley-face emojis, except for Jim Bob. Image source.

[content note: Duggar family, Bill Gothard, mentions of abuse, mentions of victim-blaming of rape victims]

I watched "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets", the 4-part documentary about the Duggar family, produced by Amazon. (Background information, in case you have no idea who the Duggars are: This is a family that had a reality show on TLC from 2008 to 2015, called "19 Kids and Counting" [actually originally the number was less than 19, they continued updating the name of the show as more kids were born] because there are in some weird conservative Christian subculture that doesn't allow birth control. The show was about how they live, how they manage such a large household. And also their weird quirky rules about how nobody is ever allowed to be alone with their boyfriend or girlfriend. [Actually, it's not weird and quirky, it's creepy and controlling.]) 

I'm ex-evangelical, so I was raised in an environment which has similarities with how the Duggars raised their kids- but they're fundamentalists, much more extreme than what I experienced. Still, a lot of ideas are very familiar to me- the emphasis on not having sex before marriage (or any physical contact at all, in the ideal case), treating obedience as more important than thinking for yourself, the idea that we already know all the right answers so there's no need to listen to anyone who believes differently from us, and how these kinds of environments are breeding grounds for abuse and coverups.

I like how the documentary included a lot of interviews with ex-fundies. These are people who were raised in that environment, and they really know what's what. (Just like I know what's what about evangelicalism.) They know that the reality is very different from the propaganda you hear from the movement's leaders. It wasn't about "let's gawk at these weirdos" like I've seen in some reality shows- it was about how this ideology has actual harmful effects on real people.

Here are a bunch of my thoughts about the documentary:

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Marrying a man who treats you better than you were taught was possible

Jill Duggar (one of the oldest daughters of the Duggar's 19 kids) is the main interview subject, spilling the beans about her family. Her husband Derick is there with her. She talks about how her father (Jim Bob Duggar) did not treat her like an adult, even when she was over the age of 18- he treated her like he controlled her life, and she couldn't make decisions on her own. He told all the kids to sign the contract with TLC for the tv show, without the kids understanding what it meant- and all the money for the show went to Jim Bob, not the kids- even though some of them were over the age of 18 when the show was being filmed.

In "Shiny Happy People", Jill and Derick talk about how they finally said no to Jim Bob. And how they got a lot of criticism for that, within their little subculture, because "not honoring your parents" is like the worst thing ever.

The way it reads to me is, as a child Jill was taught that her father controls her life, and then when she gets married, her husband will control her life in a similar way. She was taught that that's how it works for girls. That's God's design for the family. So then her father does all these things to control her life, and it feels normal to her.

And then she gets married, and her husband does NOT control her life like that. It turns out, her husband is a better person than that. He treats her like she is a person, and her feelings and desires matter. He treats her like she deserves better than the way her father pushed her around and expected her to participate in the tv show without being paid at all (!!!). 

As a disclaimer, I should say that I don't know details about Jill and Derick's marriage. I could be wrong about this. But this is how it reads to me. He treats her so much better than what she was taught about how a husband treats a wife. And that's how she got the strength to realize the way her father controlled her life was wrong, and to finally say no to him.

I know something about marrying a man who treats me better than Christians said was possible. I was taught to view sex in marriage in very transactional terms- it's something I owe to him, and if I don't want to or can't have sex, for whatever reason, my hypothetical good Christian husband would say to me "well, you better figure this out, because you're not holding up your end of the marriage vows." And also, I believed "the husband is the leader, the wife has to submit." And even though nobody at church ever gave an actual example for what that looked like, even though Christians taught me that *usually* a couple makes decisions together, as equals, and only very *rarely* would the husband need to pull rank and say "okay well this is my decision and that's that"... I believed that my hypothetical good Christian husband would have the right to pull rank like that, and he would use it sometimes, and if I was mad about it then he would tell me I'm not being a good wife, and he would be right. 

(It seems the Duggars were in a Christian subculture that was different in this regard- they didn't just pay lip service to the idea that "wives need to submit to their husbands", like evangelicals do; they really lived it out in horrifying, practical ways.)

And then I married Hendrix, who is not a Christian, and he doesn't believe any of that nonsense. It's like, he truly cares about me and loves me, rather than treating me like I owe him. The most striking example of this was when I was in the first trimester of pregnancy, throwing up every day, and feeling way too sick to even think about having sex, he was so compassionate. He brought me water, he cooked for me, he got up in the middle of the night with me when I was sick, etc. I couldn't believe it- Christians had always told me that if I'm not having sex frequently enough with my husband, then my husband simply isn't capable of loving me and being a decent human being. (Don't be surprised if he cheats on you, Christians said.) I couldn't believe it. It was like, Hendrix's love wasn't dependent on the sex that I "owe" him. Instead, he loves me as his wife, and he recognized that I was going through a really hard situation, and he wanted to help me.

I couldn't believe it.

Like, imagine a man actually having empathy when his wife is sick or in pain, rather than his only concern being about getting the sex he is "owed." Christians told me this was impossible.

(Conservatives are always claiming that "feminists hate men." I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which of these ideologies "hates men": "men were made by God to be fragile and sex-obsessed, not capable of respecting women who are dressed immodestly, not capable of loving their wives if their wives aren't giving them enough sex" or "men are better than that, men are fully capable of being decent human beings (regardless of what women are wearing) and we should hold them to that standard.")

And I wonder if this happens to a lot of girls who grow up in conservative Christian environments. We're taught that when we get married, our husbands will have these powers over us, and we're obligated to follow these rules for him. And then, if we marry a man who abuses us, we feel like it's totally normal. And if we marry a man who is a decent human being, we're shocked, because we really believed men weren't capable of being that good.

Contrast this with Anna Duggar, the wife of Josh Duggar. Josh is the oldest child of the Duggar's 19 kids. Several scandals about Josh have made the news- he sexually abused several of his sisters when he was a teenager, he had an account on "Ashley Madison", a website for married people who want to have affairs, he [allegedly] had an affair with a sex worker (Danica Dillon), who says he was so rough and violent it felt like she was being raped, and also he was arrested for possession of child porn, and is now in jail.

And "Shiny Happy People" discusses how women in that subculture are taught that you can't divorce. You just can't. It's just not an option. People wonder why Anna Duggar doesn't divorce Josh- well how can she? She's been taught her whole life that this is just how men are, and that a wife is obligated to stay with her husband, no matter what he does. Let me emphasize this again: All these things that Josh did, the cheating, the crimes, all of it, this is the behavior that women are taught to expect from their husbands, in that culture. This is just how it works. This is normal. Your husband fails you and mistreats you, in so many ways, and you have to continue to stick with him, love him, submit to him. That's what marriage is. That's what girls are taught in that culture.

Josh Duggar is kind of an extreme example, and I think most evangelical Christians I've met would say divorce is allowed if your spouse cheats on you, but my point is, women are taught to expect this kind of bad behavior from men. Like this is normal. Like every man could potentially do things as bad as what Josh Duggar did (perhaps the wife is to blame for not having sex with him frequently enough?), and that's just how men are.

If I married an abuser- if I married a man who said to me "I don't care if you're in pain, I have needs, so you have to find a way to have sex anyway or else you're a bad wife"- I would have thought that was completely normal. Somehow I got lucky, and I have a non-Christian husband who is a better person than that.

---

Bill Gothard

I'm glad the documentary went into a lot of detail about Bill Gothard and his teachings and the cult built around him. (Yeah, it really is a cult.) The Duggars are not just one weird family, they're part of this larger subculture, influenced by Gothard's teachings.

I grew up evangelical, and I was not in Gothard's subculture at all. I had never heard of Bill Gothard, in my 20-some years of being evangelical. I had never seen his ridiculous umbrella diagram, clearly drawn by someone who doesn't understand how umbrellas work. And some little cultural markers, like the way Michelle Duggar (the mother of the 19 kids) uses the term "defrauding" to talk about women who are dressed "immodestly." As an evangelical, I had never heard that referred to as "defrauding" (ie, a woman is defrauding a man by causing him to have sexual desires that can't be fulfilled, what on earth). We called it "causing him to stumble." A lot of small cultural markers like that weren't the same as what I experienced.

So, fortunately, I wasn't in that specific weird Christian subculture at all.

But, there were things about it that felt familiar to me. The idea that everyone just needs to follow the rules that God gave, and then everything will be perfect- nobody should be questioning or thinking for themselves. Having very different rules for girls than for boys, which teach girls that they can't expect boys or men to have any self-control- if a boy does sexual things to you without your consent, it's not rape, it's your fault because you should have known boys are just like that.

If someone would have shown up at my church, when I was growing up, and tried to teach that ridiculous umbrella diagram, would people have stood up and said "this isn't right" or would we have gone along with it because it's similar enough to the sorts of things we believed?

We clearly weren't as "extreme" as what Gothard was teaching, but was there any explicit line between us? Was there anything that fundies were teaching, and evangelicals would take a stand against, and say "no, we do NOT believe that, we strongly believe THIS other thing, which contradicts that"? Like... we would have felt like it was really weird that they required all the girls to wear long skirts all the time, we would have gotten a really weird vibe because of little things like that, and we would have viewed them with suspicion or mockery as a result, but... but what was the real difference? 

I've mostly heard evangelicals say they disagree with fundies because "that's too extreme", which doesn't feel like an actual reason to me. If you really believe something, then shouldn't you believe it to the most extreme point you can? If you don't take it to the most extreme point, it must be because you have another belief which pushes back in the other direction, and you come to a sort of common-sense balance between the two. Well, what's the other belief? For evangelicals, it felt like there wasn't a competing belief, it was just, like... fundies were too weird. We didn't want to be that weird.

(Or perhaps evangelicals would make the argument that fundamentalists are "legalistic"? For example, we both believe women have to dress "modestly", but fundies make it into explicit rules about the exact length of girls' skirts, and that's wrong because it's "legalistic." And evangelicals would say we should follow the general idea of modesty but not make it into specific rules like that. Letter of the law vs spirit of the law, that kind of thing. This argument does not convince me either.)

---

Blanket training

Well, I had read about blanket training before, on ex-fundie blogs, but that was years ago, before I had a child. And now, hearing about it now, oh it's so much worse. 

Blanket training means you take your baby, who is just old enough to crawl (maybe 6-12 months old) and you put them on a blanket on the floor. And when the baby crawls off the blanket, you hit them. !!!! OH MY GOD! WTF! You hit your baby. OH MY GOD. And in this way, you teach the baby to just stay on the blanket, and then you can get things done without worrying about the baby getting into trouble.

WTFFFFFFF

I'm a mom now. I have a little kid. And when he was learning to crawl, I was so happy to see it. He was learning, he was active, he was exploring the world, developing new skills. I wanted to encourage and teach him. I wanted him to grow and learn and accomplish all of his goals. (Except when they were like, unsafe things like falling off the bed or something.)

The idea that a baby would be trying to learn and explore, following their natural curiosity, and then somebody hits them to make them stop- oh, that's awful. I just... that's so wrong. That's so terrible.

And it's more than that- the Duggars follow Michael and Debi Pearl's teaching about "training" your child- which is basically hitting the child any time they're not 100% immediately obedient. And if the child shows any kind of negative emotion about something the parent is doing (for example, hitting the child), that's also disobedience, and you should hit the child for that. 

I've heard ex-fundie bloggers say if you ever see a family with a huge number of kids in public, and the kids are so extremely well-behaved, and everyone is like "wow your kids are so good!" it's because the parents are hitting the kids at home SO MUCH. Like, the amount of violence required to completely crush a child so that the child wouldn't dare to be anything other than "perfectly well-behaved", that's how much they're hitting the kids at home. It's horrifying.

There was a line in "Shiny Happy People" (episode 2) that said, "The audacity of Jim Bob Duggar to say, 'I've got my family under so much control'- they were that secure they could keep their secrets, with a camera crew, and that their kids were not gonna betray the truth. I cannot believe that he got away with that."

---

TLC

Jill and Derick talk about how the contract with TLC (to produce the tv show) was extremely exploitative towards her. The kids did not get paid at all; all the money went to Jim Bob. Even though some of the kids were legal adults at the time the show was filmed.

In particular, Jill talks about when she was pregnant, and TLC was asking her about arrangements for a camera crew to come to the hospital with her when she gave birth, and she and Derick said "no, we don't want you guys there at all." (Previously, Anna Duggar had had a bad experience with the camera crew being there when she was giving birth.) But apparently the contract said they had to. Eventually they agreed that Jill and Derick would set up their own cameras to record the birth, with no camera crew.

TLC used that footage, and the episode about Jill giving birth was one of the most popular ones. But Jill says she did not get paid at all for that. Jim Bob got paid.

And, the documentary says, the wedding episodes and birth episodes were the most popular ones. In other words, the women of the family were the ones bringing in the viewers and the money. But Jim Bob is the one who got paid.

It's really outrageous, what TLC did during the filming of this show. You have this extremely patriarchal subculture, where of course the money goes to the dad, of course it doesn't go to the mom or the kids, of course not, that would never even occur to anyone. And the kids (even the ones over the age of 18) aren't allowed to make their own choices about if they want to sign a contract, if they want to be in the show or not- no, of course not, of course your dad is the one who makes those decisions for you, no one in that subculture would even think that it could be any other way. 

And TLC just kinda goes along with it. Did they not realize that these kids didn't have a real choice? Did they not realize that even though Jill signed the contract, that doesn't mean she had an actual choice? Or did they just not care?

---

I'm glad to see some of the kids getting out

I'm glad to see Jill speaking out about the way her parents treated her. I'm glad to see she's wearing pants and she has a nose ring, and a husband who believes she matters as a human being.

Jinger (another one of the daughters) has also gotten out. She is also married- it seems to me that for women in these kinds of patriarchal subcultures, marriage can go two ways: Either you marry a man who treats you better than you thought possible, and with his help, you're able to break out of that ideology, or you marry a man who buys into all of that abusive teaching, and you immediately start having babies, by the time you figure out your husband is awful and you need to leave him, you have 5 kids, and you have no education, what can you even do? You're trapped.

Anyway, glad to see Jinger got out. And she has written a book called Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear [affiliate link]. I'm kind of interested in this book (lol I have such a huge pile of unread books already though). But, as far as I know, Jill and Jinger have moved from "super conservative Christian fundamentalist cult" to "average conservative evangelical Christianity." Like, don't misinterpret this and assume they don't have terrible opinions about queer people, for example. (I could be wrong about that- I would love to be wrong.) As far as I know, they are still conservative Christians, but closer to the evangelicalism I'm familiar with, rather than the "extreme" version they were raised in.

But anyway, good for them, I'm happy for them. I hope more of the kids are getting out of that abusive ideology.

And I hope Anna can get out too. 

---

Conclusion

"Shiny Happy People" is a documentary series about the Duggar family. It is very well-done. It shows how the Duggars aren't just one weird family; they are part of a whole subculture, influenced by Bill Gothard's teachings. The documentary includes interviews with many people who grew up in that environment and are now speaking out about how harmful and abusive it is. This needs to be exposed, and I hope people trapped in that ideology can break free from it.

---

"... there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs."

Matthew 10:26-27

---

Related:

He Just Loves Me (a post about Sex, Pregnancy, and My "Wifely Duty") (Google put this behind a "Sensitive content warning", I guess because I included the words "vagina" and "penis" in this post, but it's not like it's more explicit than anything else that's been written about one's "wifely duty." This "wifely duty" thing is literally rape culture, literally marital rape, and I see it promoted by Christians everywhere, but somehow they don't get slapped with a "sensitive content warning.")

My posts from 2015 about Josh Duggar sexually abusing his sisters:
Josh Duggar's "Sin" Doesn't Matter Because Being Pure is Really Hard 
Josh Duggar and His Victims are "Damaged Goods" 
Josh Duggar's Real Victim Was God (So It's Okay) 
Also this blogaround from May 2015 and this one and this one from June 2015 have a bunch of links.

Also, Libby Anne's posts about the Duggars. (These cover A LOT more than just the 2015 scandal.)
Libby Anne knows what's what. She knew what was what all the way back in 2012: Carefully scripted lives: My concerns about the Duggars
(And the link roundup I posted here has a bunch of Libby Anne's posts about the 2015 scandal with Josh Duggar.)

The Slacktivist also has a 2015 link roundup on Josh Duggar: The Duggar Family Scandal: A reader

Blogaround

"A man carries a child through a flooded street in Beijing, Aug. 1, 2023. Thomas Peter/Reuters via IC" Image and caption source.

1. There has been really bad flooding in Beijing recently because of Typhoon Doksuri. Here are some links from Sixth Tone about it:

After the Rains, Beijing Residents Begin Counting Their Losses (August 2)
China Floods: What Is the Cause and Why Has Rescue Been So Difficult? (August 3)
Collage: Floods in Beijing and Hebei (August 2)
Tales of Survival From Submerged Beijing, Hebei (August 3) [video]

Also from Sixth Tone: 

In China’s Dance Schools, a Dangerous Obsession With Weight Loss (August 3) "Most children applying to art schools now need to have legs not 12 cm, but 17-19 cm longer than their torsos, said Xue Ping, one of the teachers at Feeling Dance. They’re also dieting harder than ever."

Hangzhou To Pay Parents 25,000 Yuan For Third Child From September (August 8) China is very concerned about the low birth rate, and is inventing all kinds of incentives to get people to have more kids. "A mother in Hangzhou with one child told Sixth Tone that the new policy does not change her mind about not having another child, citing the high cost of education." Well, yeah.

2. Introducing Jetpack AI Assistant in WordPress.com (June 6, via) Oh geez, Wordpress has some new feature that will use AI to write an entire blog post for you. :/

3. On Orientation as a Compatibility Gate (August 1) "This view of orientation as a compatibility gate is a part of why I do not identify with orientation types other than sexual orientation. It’s not that I’m endlessly compatible with all people on all other fronts — certainly not — but my compatibility constraints around socializing, partnership, and touch do not follow the kind of patterns that lend themselves to this kind of shorthand."

4. Breaking Down the Controversy Over Florida's New Slavery Curriculum (July 28) "In a statement to TIME, the College Board said: 'We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans. Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.'"

5. The Trans Good Doctor Episode (June 28) 54-minute video. This is about the trans episode of the show "The Good Doctor." ("The Good Doctor" is a show about an autistic doctor, and I've never watched an episode but I've seen a few clips and I am not really a fan of how it portrays autism...) I have seen people on Twitter mocking the show's assumption that an autistic person would be totally unable to understand anything that doesn't fit into the gender binary... like... umm, in reality there is a HUGE overlap between the autistic community and the trans community. Autistic people are all about pointing out when societal expectations simply make no sense- and indeed, it makes no sense that society expects people's interests/abilities/personality/clothing/appearance to be determined by what kind of genitals they have.

Anyway, though, in this video, Youtuber Lily Simpson goes through the entire plot of this episode, and actually it turns out to be pretty good in terms of how it handles trans issues. 

6. A Weird and WONDERFUL Ruleset (August 5) 1-hour-12-minute sudoku solve video.

7. Overworked and Underpaid, VFX Workers Vote to Unionize at Marvel (August 7, via) "While fellow below-the-line workers in such divisions as costumes and wardrobe; hair and makeup; lighting, props and paint; and script supervision have been historically championed by IATSE, underappreciated VFX professionals have been unable to claim benefits such as paid overtime and health care, and have been at the mercy of pronounced labor shortages and managers’ unrealistic deadlines — despite the workers’ increasing indispensability within popular culture."

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is open until June 19~

2. How Mae Martin Is Reshaping the Way Trans/Non-Binary Individuals Are Viewed in Comedy (April 21) Cool!

3. The Politics of Nothing: Visualizing Wasteland and Restoration in Terra Nil (June 4) "As I wrote about in Who Gets To See The Future, arid lands have long been viewed by colonizers as 'wasteland,' and this is a view with devastating ecological implications. To see land as 'wasteland' is to see it as worthless and disposable. In practice, this means viewing it as an always-appropriate site for everything from uranium mining to nuclear detonation."

4. How Scooters Caught China’s Urban Planners Off Guard (June 6) "In 2022, there were 350 million scooters in use in China, compared to approximately 230 million private cars. Some industry insiders believe that the true number of scooters may be much higher, as smaller cities rarely bother to register the vehicles even though they are one of the main forms of local transportation in the country’s vast interior."

5. Stack Overflow Moderators Are Striking to Stop Garbage AI Content From Flooding the Site (June 5)

And also these posts, on the Stack Exchange site itself:
Moderation strike
Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers "Content posted without innate domain understanding, but written in a 'smart' way, is dangerous to the integrity of the Stack Exchange network’s goal: To be a repository of high-quality question-and-answer content."

6. Pat Robertson, broadcaster who helped make religion central to GOP politics, dies at 93 (June 8)

7. “Love is love” (June 8) "In my experience, some of the most passionate haters of 'love is love' are aromantics. After all, all the stereotypes of loveless people are laid directly on their doorstep. 'Love is love' is used to legitimize queer love, but at the cost of tying legitimacy to love."

Blogaround

1. After 3 Years of Lockdowns, a Chinese Border City Struggles to Rebuild (March 14) "After COVID hit, however, the city’s frontier location became a liability. With China wary of infections spreading across the border, Ruili faced a string of weekslong lockdowns. From early 2021, the border was sealed entirely, and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated. Undocumented migrants from Myanmar were rounded up and forced to return home."

2. The Story of Lazarus and the Making of the New Testament (January 19) "It is possible that Jesus on one occasion told a story about a poor man called Lazarus, and on another day, by remarkable coincidence, he actually raised a man of the same name from the dead. But other interpretations offer themselves."

And another from the same blog: How the Churches Forgot the Amalekites (2022) "The last Christian who will seek to exterminate another nation on the pretense of killing Amalekites has not yet been born." This is a really important point. There are passages in the bible where God commands his people to commit genocide. In western culture in modern times, churches tend to just awkwardly skip over those passages. But throughout history, Christians have literally used those passages to justify genocide- and this continues to happen in some parts of the world. If we just don't talk about those passages, that's not good enough. We have to engage with them and answer them.

3. Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth (Official Music Video) I'm sure I've posted this before, but here it is again. This is actually my religion. Just like Jesus taught us to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

4. The Biblical Case for Affirmation (w/ Matthew Vines) (March 13) A 1-hour-45-minute podcast. I am and will always be a bible nerd, so I loved this. My position is different from Vines's, though, because I don't think we need to carefully study ancient Roman history in order to find out if we're allowed to treat queer people with basic human decency. (Or, in evangelical language, I reject the authority of Scripture.) But wow, I am so impressed by how much of a bible nerd he is. Like, chapter and verse.

5. A distinction without any meaning (March 19) "Biologists have managed to reprogram stem cells taken from a male mouse into female oocytes, then fertilized them with sperm from another male mouse, and produced healthy offspring — that is, they’ve made mice with two fathers. ... The creationists at Answers in Genesis are made somewhat uncomfortable about this, since it violates their fantasies about the rigidity of sex determination, and recruited their tame in-house crank with a Ph.D., Nathaniel Jeanson to write a rationalization for them."

Also from the same blog: Why would Tim White and UC Berkeley hoard old bones? (March 14) "It’s just the weirdest defense: our bookkeeping is so bad and ignorance is so great that we have no idea whose remains these are, therefore we ought to be allowed to keep them."

6. And here's another worship song I like: My Deliverer - Rich Mullins

7. Everyone’s asking if Joel made the right choice. But Joel didn’t make one choice. He made many. (March 15) [content note: spoilers for "The Last Of Us"]

8. Idaho hospital to stop labor and delivery services citing "political climate" and doctor shortages (March 18) "'The Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho Physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines,' Bonner General said in its news statement."

9. Minnesota Republican Unable To Stop Communist Governor From Giving Kids Food (March 15) "'I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,' Drazkowski said, in front of other people who could see and hear him."

10. HPV and Purity Culture (March 17) "To these individuals I say, 'I am sorry. Your virginity is not and will never be more important than your physical health.'" AMEN TO THAT.

I also did not get the HPV vaccine... it was very new and controversial when I was a teenager... Thinking about it now, it strikes me as odd that the response wasn't "wow great news, a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer" but instead more like "this is a vaccine for sluts? eww how could a good parent let their daughter get that?"

11. There is a God, But I Do Not Believe In Him (March 14) "God would have us know that we must live as people who manage our lives without God. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us." Yeah this... this is very close to what I believe.

Blogaround

1. This video from Andy Stanley:

“A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way they’ve been treated… I’m telling you, they have more faith than I do.” —Andy Stanley

I’m not endorsing Andy or his church, but it seems like he’s headed in the right direction.pic.twitter.com/x6A2c5Iht5

— Derek Myers (he/him) (@derektheheretic) January 24, 2023

Preach! This is so real! 

Huge disclaimer, I don't know anything about Andy Stanley except that he is a famous pastor. Don't take this as evidence that he is LGBTQ-affirming. Lots of Christians say nice things about LGBTQ people, and at the same time hold very bigoted views and want to deny LGBTQ people their rights. But, at least, I am happy to see Stanley has observed how courageous gay Christians are. This is very true.

Also, here's another important perspective- this Twitter thread from Kevin Garcia, who is very unimpressed.

2. Digging Into the Shang Dynasty’s Empire of Bones (January 23) [content note: human sacrifice, photos of ancient skeletons] 

3. The Poor Can’t Afford Not to Wear Nice Clothes (2019) "How do you put a price on the double take of a clerk at the welfare office who decides you might not be like those other trifling women in the waiting room and provides an extra bit of information about completing a form that you would not have known to ask about? What is the retail value of a school principal who defers a bit more to you because your mother’s presentation of self signals that she might unleash the bureaucratic savvy of middle-class parents to advocate for her child? I didn’t know the price of these critical engagements with organizations and gatekeepers relative to our poverty when I was growing up, but I am living proof of its investment yield."

4. Jinger Duggar Vuolo on Growing Up Under 'Cult-Like' Religious Beliefs: 'I Was Terrified of the Outside World' (January 18) "Even when her family went to play a sport called broomball, Vuolo says she felt 'terrified' she might be defying God's will. 'I thought I could be killed in a car accident on the way, because I didn't know if God wanted me to stay home and read my Bible instead.'" This is SO REAL. The idea that we should be suspicious of anything we desire or anything fun, because it might be a sin to pursue those things instead of doing something more "spiritual." The idea that there may be some little thing that God wants you to do, and God is totally in the right to kill you if you don't do it, and really it's your own fault because on some level you "know" that's what God really wanted you to do. And the incredible amount of anxiety that inevitably comes when you take these beliefs seriously and try to live that way.

I'm really glad to see that Jinger got away from her family's cult.

5. When will their churches condemn the Christian nationalism of MAGA politicians? (August 19) "In my context, both of my United States Senators (Marsha Blackburn of Christ Presbyterian Church and Bill Hagerty of St. George’s Episcopal) have used their government Twitter accounts to suggest that Attorney General Merrick Garland and our FBI are corrupt. When efforts to reach them and ask them to delete, retract and apologize for these incitements to violence fail, is it appropriate to request that their churches offer a public statement condemning, or at least distancing themselves from, these abusive behaviors? I think so."

6. Journal Club: The Labour of Love (January 25) This is really interesting because it's about a 2007 paper which talks about the "work" that women with sexual problems in hetero relationships do to figure out how to have sex/ how to deal with their male partner's sexual expectations. I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe this as "work" before, besides me. But yeah it is work. It really annoys me how everyone talks about sex like it's something "natural."

7. I Found The Worst Christian Show (2021) "But at the same time, I had to appreciate this episode if only for its novelty. In a crowded room of pro-life people saying abortion is murder, 'Dream Motel' bravely goes against the grain and says, wait, maybe you shouldn't get an abortion because you might be dead in 10 years. And I think that's beautiful in its own way."

Blogaround

1. Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $1 billion over his Sandy Hook lies. Will he? (October 14) 

2. ‘God’s perfect timing’? Evangelists cancel Florida event after hurricane (October 11) "But instead of acknowledging the error on their end, and instead of admitting that God’s 'perfect plan' wasn’t so perfect after all, and instead of apologizing for saying the event would not be cancelled, the two evangelists are just moving forward as if they never made the earlier announcement."

I have feelings about this because I definitely was in situations, back when I was evangelical, where people made these big grandiose statements about how this or that was going to happen because God wanted it to, and it was going to be AMAZING, and then the thing didn't happen and nobody ever mentioned it again. There was no "when we said X would happen because God willed it, we were wrong, let's think about what that means- why were we wrong, and how should we change our behavior going forward so we don't make these big bold proclamations that turn out to be wrong?"

I guess looking at the situation honestly and realistically like that would be "lack of faith" or something.

3. Pastor who gave kids ‘I ❤️ hot youth pastors’ stickers placed on leave (October 9) "NOPE NOPE NOPE. What church is this? They must be publicly shamed to oblivion."

4. Reading Elementary as a Nonromantic Love Story (October 12) "Sherlock Holmes is characterized as someone who only very infrequently dates people, who is generally suspicious of romance, and who frequently has sex that’s got nothing to do with romance. Joan Watson is characterized as someone who makes an effort to go on dates but ultimately realizes that romantic scripts are distasteful to her. In contrast to their scattered, short-lived romantic entanglements, the show centers on the relationship between the two of them, which grows into a committed partnership while remaining nonromantic."

5. Micro-Dosing Nostalgia With China’s Miniature Modelers (October 13) "Hundreds of millions of people who grew up in traditional village homes left for cities, or moved into modern houses and high -rises in redeveloped villages. Often, their original homes have been demolished, victims of China’s relentless rural development."

6. Robbie Coltrane, Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ films, dead at 72 (October 14)

7. Top Dinner Suggestions According to a Three-Year-Old’s Eating Habits (2019) "Around the edges of a cheeseburger without ever actually biting into the meat"

8. Is it normal to think of money in different "contexts"? (2012) "Say I'm going on a date - depending on the place, I've got a rough idea of how much it's going to cost. Say $100 for the two of us. But if we get an extra glass of wine, or a different main course, or whatever, it could be $120 or even $150. This to me is kind of irrelevant. I wouldn't want to buy the most expensive bottle of wine and end up spending $500, but $100, $120, $130? - it's all the same. Now consider that I had to take a long subway ride to get there, and wanted to bring the magazine I was reading, but I didn't want to hold that or put it on the table during the meal. It cost about $5, and I could have just thrown it away and bought another copy later. That $5 should be inconsequential, right? Especially when I really don't care either way if I spend $100 or $140 on the date."

I think about this A LOT. It feels like, psychologically, the things that people focus on in terms of where it is or isn't a good idea to spend money aren't actually the things that, looking at the big picture logically, make an actual difference.

For example, maybe I'm excited because I got 1% cash back from my credit card company, oooh they are depositing $25 in my bank account, hooray! Wow, 25 dollars! Awesome! That's 25 dollars I didn't have before! Yes! But uh, I got this $25 because I spent $2500 with the credit card- perhaps I could look through those purchases and find ways to reduce them such that I spend $25 less. But somehow, that doesn't feel as exciting as getting $25 back from the credit card company. (And a big part of this is that that's how the credit card company wants you to feel- they benefit when you see it as a good thing to spend enough money to get a good-sized "cash back.")

Personally- and this is because I am from a really privileged background, and I always heard about how important it is to save money and not spend on things you don't need, like going out to dinner, but there was never any actual risk that we wouldn't have enough money for our basic needs- when I spend money on something that I feel is "too expensive", I kind of feel vaguely guilty about it, but then nothing bad actually happens. Or, I get in the habit of eating out at restaurants- which, over the course of 1 month, adds up to a lot, but since it's just a little bit every day I don't really pay attention to it- but then if I buy some little thing like for example cookie cutters, thinking that I'm totally going to bake cookies, and then I don't bake cookies, and see the cookie cutters sitting there, never used, I will feel bad about "wasting money" on them, even though every week I spend money here and there without being careful about it, that adds up to more than the cost of the cookie cutters.

A good way to view one's budget, I think, is: there are long term things where we need to set aside x amount of dollars each month, and the rest of our income we use for whatever normal daily expenses we have. I don't subdivide the "everyday" expenses into further categories, because then you start playing ridiculous games about "I shouldn't spend money on a taxi because we don't have enough money in the 'transportation' budget- even though getting a taxi would benefit me A LOT more than that snack I bought yesterday with the 'food' budget, which cost more than the taxi would cost" and just causing yourself a lot of anxiety over things that don't actually matter.

9. Biden wants to let gig workers be employees. Here’s why it matters. (October 17)