Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

---

Links related to the antichrist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Doctors urged to treat pain for IUD insertion and other procedures (May 20) Hey, this is great. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now saying that doctors need to inform patients about the possible pain of procedures like IUD insertion, and give patients options about anesthesia/ pain management. I'm all for that. Informed consent in a medical setting.

2. The Chicago Sun-Times Published an AI-Generated Summer Reading List Full of Fake Books — And This is Just the Beginning (May 20) "Let's connect the dots here. Media company cuts 20% of its staff, including experienced editors. Two months later, AI-generated nonsense makes it into print without anyone catching it. Are we really surprised?"

3. Gatsby’s Secret (April 7, via) "The more Thompson read, the more convinced he became that Gatsby was about a man “passing” for white."

4. Supreme Court sidesteps religious charter school question for now on 4-4 deadlock (May 22) "No religious charter schools. For now."

5. No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them (May 22) "The Treasury Department has placed its last order for blank pennies and plans to stop minting the one-cent coins as soon as that's exhausted."

---

Political cartoon that shows the White House (with a flag that says "King Donald") with a sign out front that says "Please wipe your feet!" pointing to the Constitution laying on the ground. Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

We've got a lot of links today. If it's too stressful, you don't have to read all of them, but here is an important action item: Contact your senators and tell them to vote no on the Republican budget bill.

1. Supreme Court says Trump can strip protected status for Venezuelans for now (May 19) "'From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status,' Ahilan Arulanantham, the co-director for Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, and one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelans, told reporters Monday."

2. DHS secretary misstates meaning of habeas corpus under Senate scrutiny (May 20) "Responding, Senator Hassan corrected the secretary, stating, 'Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.'"

3. Judge says Trump administration violated court order on third-country deportations (May 21) "'No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,' Ryan said."

And an update on that: White House agrees to keep migrants in Djibouti for now, blasts federal judge's ruling (May 22)

In this specific case, the immigrants being deported actually have committed serious crimes. I think people have a tendency to think "well why does it matter if they're sent to some random other country, since they are violent criminals?" No, not cool- if people commit crimes, you sentence them according to what the law says. We have laws for this! The government can't just make up whatever punishment they want.

4. Charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver spark backlash after incident with ICE agents (May 21) "'This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our district and standing up for what is right. I am thankful for the outpouring of support I have received and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court,' she added."

5. U.S. sends 68 migrants back to Honduras and Colombia in first voluntary deportation (May 20) 

6. These students protested the Gaza war. Trump's deportation threat didn't silence them (May 21) "'All of us international students, we had this thought of, 'what if it was me?'' she said of her reaction to the first few students that ICE agents arrested. 'Students that were higher risk, they all started to talk to their lawyers and make arrangements for if that were to happen.'"

7. Alliance Defending Freedom Sues Minnesota To Mandate Trans Discrimination (May 22) "While the immediate impact would be limited to Minnesota, an appeal could escalate the case to higher courts—and if the Supreme Court takes it up, this fringe legal theory could become the basis for mandating anti-trans discrimination in schools nationwide, from bathroom bans to sports bans and more."

8. These Are Not My Thoughts On Banning GAC (May 22) [content note: violence against intersex children] "So when the GOP includes intersex exceptions to genital reconstruction laws that ban gender affirming care for trans kids, This is what they’re preserving. Not care. Not concern. Not empathy. They are preserving the right of parents to rip apart children’s bodies with pliers, and the right of doctors to support them in their demented, evil efforts."

9. Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students (May 22) Holy crap. 

10. Lawsuit challenges USDA demand for food stamp data as some states prepare to comply (May 22) "'If you're trying to design a public benefits program that supports the most vulnerable people and makes sure that nobody in our country goes hungry, this is obviously not the way to do it,' said Ami Fields-Meyer, a senior fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University specializing in the intersection between civil liberties and technology, and a former senior policy adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. 'But if you're trying to integrate critical assistance into a machinery for hunting immigrants and breaking up families and deporting people without due process — this is exactly how you do it.'"

11. Educators fear their homeless students could become a target for Trump cuts (May 22) "Amid all the moves, one thing has been constant for Dayana: her school. That's because a federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, allows students like her to stay in their school even when their housing takes them far from where they originally enrolled."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 9 different density layers (April 18) 44-second video. Wow this is really cool! It's a science experiment about liquids with different densities, settling in layers on top of each other, and then you drop objects into it to see how far they sink.

2. Failed Soviet Venus lander Kosmos 482 crashes to Earth after 53 years in orbit (May 10) "Kosmos 482 launched toward Earth's hellishly hot sister planet in 1972, but a problem with its rocket stranded the spacecraft in an elliptical orbit around Earth. For the next 53 years, atmospheric drag pulled the probe down slowly but surely, leading to today's dramatic denouement."

3. Sell All You Have and Give to the Poor (May 3) "When Jesus then tells them that, effectively, none of the other rich and powerful are going to be persuaded to join them either, what is perplexing the disciples is how the Jesus movement can now possibly succeed."

4. Should A Woman Be Forced To Carry A Dead Fetus For Weeks? South Carolina Says 'Yes!' (May 9) "In an update, Weber explained that she was told both by the doctors and by a lawyer that the way the South Carolina law works is that, if she were to have gone to an appointment where the doctor detected a “heartbeat” (not a heartbeat), and then gone to a second appointment where they didn’t detect one, she would have been able to get the D&C or abortion pills right away. However, if you go to your first appointment and they tell you there’s no heartbeat and the fetus has been dead for three weeks, as happened with her, you have to wait two weeks to get one. If you go to the emergency room and get a more comprehensive diagnosis, they’ll shorten the waiting period to 11 days. Does this make sense? No, of course not. But it’s what happens when you have people with no medical background, who don’t know what they’re talking about, writing laws based on their own personal feelings."

5. Why Hospital Policies Matter in States That Ban Abortion (May 7) "ProPublica has documented widespread differences in how hospitals across the country have translated abortion bans into policy. Some have supported doctors in treating active miscarriages and high-risk cases with procedures technically considered abortions; others have forbidden physicians from doing so, or left them on their own to decide, with no legal backing in case of arrest."

6. The FDA approves first U.S. at-home tool as a Pap-smear alternative (May 10) !!!!!! This is great news! Instead of going to a gynecologist to have a pap smear, you can use this tool to collect your own sample and send it off to get screened for cervical cancer. Very excited to hear this, as a person who used to have vaginismus and has had a lot of problems and trauma related to gynecological exams.

(But also, I had complicated feelings reading this article, when it describes pap smears as "a procedure generations of women have dreaded and often found painful." Really? Generations of women? Since when? Then why did everyone act like *I* was the one being unreasonable when I found it to be painful and traumatic? ... I guess this is sort of a #metoo thing- it turns out that a lot of us have experienced this trauma, and we were all pressured to downplay it, and treated like something was wrong with us if we weren't able to pretend everything was fine. But it turns out that this is actually a widespread problem, and it's time to speak up about it.)

7. Pascal's Law (May 9)

8. The Moderate Case Against Transgender Sports Bans (May 12) Good article. I think for a lot of people, when they hear about the debate over trans women playing in women's sports, they imagine that the pro-trans side is saying that any man can just decide "I identify as a woman" and then immediately compete in any women's sport- and that seems really wrong. Well, no, fortunately, it doesn't work that way. That is NOT what trans people are arguing for. 

The guidelines should be different for different sports, and different for different levels (professional sports, high school teams, little kids just running around on a soccer field, etc). The sports organizations should be making their own rules based on what's reasonable and fair for their specific sport. That's not what these political trans bans are doing at all- they're just about hating trans people.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Zero ships from China are bound for California’s top ports. Officials haven’t seen that since the pandemic (May 10)

But here's an update about that: US and China agree to slash tariffs for 90 days (May 12)

2. MAGA melts down over ‘WOKE MARXIST POPE’ who is a ‘Never Trumper liberal’ (May 8) A reminder that normal human decency will have MAGAs shrieking that you are a "WOKE MARXIST"- so like, don't try to contort yourself in an effort to present yourself in a way that will not lead to them saying that- it's not possible, they're going to say that anyway.

3. Rümeysa Öztürk, Tufts student held by Ice, vows to continue legal action after jail release (May 11)

4. First, do no harm—unless you're intersex or trans (May 6, via) "Lurie, however, kept its “pause” in place even then. New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell removed references to gender-affirming care from its website—even striking puberty-pausing medication from its list of services—but still promotes surgery to reduce “enlarged” clitorises on intersex six-month-olds."

5. Alliance Defending Freedom: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (May 12) !!!! Really glad to see John Oliver doing an episode on ADF. I grew up evangelical- my family got the newsletters from Focus on the Family and ADF (back when its name was Alliance Defense Fund). I read them all. They sent us the book "The Homosexual Agenda" and I read it. I really believed all their bullshit back then.

ADF wasn't just about opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage. They opposed any kind of legal protections for LGBT people at all. Seriously. It is not just about same-sex marriage. It's about queer people existing at all.

When I was in high school in the 2000's, there was this thing called "Day of Silence" when some students who were LGBT/allies would not talk for the entire day, as a way to call attention to the struggles that LGBT people face. ADF came up with a competing event called "Day of Truth," where students could go to their school and hand out literature about how gay people need to just repress themselves and follow God's law, and God will help free them from that "lifestyle" and become straight. That's the sort of thing ADF was into.

This is why I'm so angry, whenever I talk about what evangelicals think about queer issues- because I really did believe all their bullshit propaganda back then. Gay people are one-dimensional villains twirling their mustaches and plotting to destroy marriage because they hate God and they are into disgusting obscene sex stuff. Then eventually- because of the internet- I started reading what actual gay Christians had to say, and it turns out none of that was true.

I had believed ADF because... we were Christians, right? The leaders of ADF were good Christian role models, working so hard to follow God, to live the way God wanted us to live, to fight for what was right. Just like little teenage Perfect Number. And then to find out that all of it was bullshit, that their entire schtick is spreading hateful lies about a group of people. They know it's lies. They know. Is that what Jesus would want? This is why I'm so angry, as a queer Christian.

So yeah, nowadays, every lawsuit that Republicans are involved in, trying to ban abortion or be mean to queer people or generally force Christian symbols on all parts of government/schools/society- yeah, it's ADF lawyers doing it. Of course it is.

(One thing I will say about John Oliver's take, though- about the part where the conservative cake shop guy says he won't make a cake for a gay wedding, just like he won't make a pedophile cake- and John Oliver is astonished at how bizarre of a concept it is, a pedophile cake. Uh, that's one of the huge talking points from evangelical anti-gay groups- that homosexuality is adjacent to pedophilia. That gay people are more likely to be pedophiles and therefore shouldn't be allowed near kids. That if same-sex marriage is legal, there's no reason it shouldn't also be legal to sexually abuse children- there's no actual meaningful difference that would lead society to allow same-sex marriage but draw the line at child sexual abuse. This is an extremely common anti-gay talking point. I am 0% surprised this cake guy talks about being asked to make a pedophile cake as if that's the natural thing that would happen next if he made a cake for a gay wedding.)

Oh, and in case it's not obvious: They also believe trans people don't really exist.

6. “They’re Trying to Kidnap Someone” (May 10, via) "Surrounding them are a few dozen community members who were tipped off about the ICE raid and got to it before the police did. Before I arrived, they demanded to see a warrant. The ICE agents refused to provide one, so they created a human chain, which the ICE officers eventually broke through."

7. Episcopal Church leader says helping Afrikaners over other refugees is 'unfathomable' (May 13) "And the idea that we would be somehow resettling Afrikaners at this point over other refugees, who have been vetted and waiting in camps for months or even years, is unfathomable to us."

8. Rabbi and Cantor Alums of Brown Write To the University: (April 17) "President Trump’s attack on Brown and other universities has nothing whatsoever to do with combatting antisemitism. It weaponizes antisemitism and could, ironically, evoke classical sentiments of resentment toward the Jewish community, whose name is being scapegoated as a conduit for an ulterior motive."

9. Trump administration's universal flu vaccine project puzzles scientists (May 13) At first I was like, "a universal flu vaccine? Hey, if it works, that would be great!" But then I read the whole article and now I'm like, "this sounds like a bad idea."

"'We're going back to technology that was used 40, 50 years ago or more. So this is a little surprising to me why you would go backwards to this technology? It's a very old technology,' Poland says. 'This is what influenza vaccines in the 40s, 50s and 60s looked like.'"

10. A matchmaking service with a twist: Connecting big givers to programs cut by USAID (May 13) "'I think it's clear that private philanthropy is not going to be able to fill all the gaps,' says Weiss. 'But what we can do is staunch the bleeding, keep projects functioning so that it's possible for local organizations or local governments to take them over.'"

Blogaround

1. Michael Card - Chorus Of Faith - Here's a song from Michael Card, a Christian singer from the 80's. "He loves us with passion, without regrets, he cannot love more and will not love less."

2. Discarded toys are creating an e-waste disaster. Here’s how to stop it. (November 22) People are always giving my kid low-quality toys with pointless electronics in them. Turns out that these things shouldn't just be thrown out in the regular trash because they are "e-waste"- but wow I can't imagine, as a parent, actually having to do the task of figuring out how to throw them out "correctly" and doing it. That just sounds exhausting, and why should I have to do that, it's not my fault people keep giving my kid crappy toys. I would say the only actually workable solution is for the manufacturers to take the responsibility for how to recycle them.

3. A Mother’s Worst Nightmare (June 29, via) [content note: it's about the government taking babies away from their parents] "Federal law has put thousands of women on anti-addiction medications like Suboxone into an impossible bind: Give up your treatment or risk losing your child."

4. The Remarkable Biden Economy (November 27) "Biden has been an excellent president, particularly in his stewardship of the economy."

5. Take heart, it looks like China could send new pandas to the US (November 17, via)

6. ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis (November 22, via) "'It seems like it’s quite easy to create data sets that are at least superficially plausible. So, to an untrained eye, this certainly looks like a real data set,' says Jack Wilkinson, a biostatistician at the University of Manchester, UK."

7. I Came Out as Intersex in Front of the Texas Legislature (September 15, via) "Does that mean that, because of my genotypic XY chromosomes, I’ve been using the wrong bathroom my whole life? No. It means who cares what bathroom I use?"

Blogaround

1. Police detain 50 after Pride march in Istanbul (June 26)

2. Zhongkao, Not Gaokao, Now the Make-or-Break Exam, Parents Say (June 26) "Part of the reason for parents’ anxiety is the zhongkao’s 50% pass rate as dictated by the Ministry of Education. Roughly half of middle school students go on to regular high schools, with the chance to take the gaokao three years later and be admitted to regular undergraduate universities, while the lower-scoring half either study in a vocational secondary school or drop out completely"

3. Will evangelicals be fooled by the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign? (June 27) Captain Cassidy found a "Christianity Today" article which turned out to be just an ad for the "He Gets Us" campaign.

4. Teach your kids about propaganda, or someone else will (June 26) "Teaching them critical thinking early on is essential. It’s like an intellectual vaccination, giving them a defense against all the toxic memes in the wilderness of the world."

5. When Did Jesus Mention Transgender, Intersex, and Asexual Folks? (June 19) and The Ethiopian Eunuch and Transgender, Intersex, & Asexual Folks (June 22) Very cool to see these posts about the biblical passages talking about God's acceptance of "eunuchs", and how there are similarities between "eunuchs" and modern-day transgender/intersex/asexual people. Obviously there are important differences too- but the point is, in the bible, there was more than just the gender binary and compulsory heterosexual marriage.

6. God Made them Male and Female…and Eunuch: Why the Biblical Case for Binary Gender Isn’t So…Biblical (2020) "Matthew’s Jesus does, however, recognize nonbinary gender in the grand finale of his teaching on divorce in a verse that conservatives routinely omit."

7. Woman Sues Anti-Abortion 'Pregnancy Center' After Her Ectopic Pregnancy Ruptured (June 26) "'Our client was forced to undergo a traumatic, dangerous, and completely avoidable emergency surgery to save her life because she was deceived into going to an anti-abortion clinic instead of an appropriate healthcare provider,' Liss-Riordan said. 'At every step of the way, she was led to believe she was receiving appropriate medical care when in fact she was subject to a campaign of misinformation and unfair and deceptive practices.'"

8. Fall Out Boy - Ghostbusters (I'm Not Afraid) (Audio) ft. Missy Elliott. Okay I'm sure I've shared this before, but here it is again. I love this cover of the Ghostbusters song SO MUCH.

Blogaround

1. I find myself listening to "Into Jesus," a DC Talk song from 1998. DC Talk was my favorite band back then, and turns out I'm still into Jesus.

2. This post from Coyote (January 21) about how much ace discussion has developed since 2010. This is great.

Another one from Coyote: Dogmatic Positivity and the Terrible Neutrality of Hope (February 1) "Alternatively: dogmatic positivity is creepy as all get out, and here's why." I especially appreciate the mentions of Plugged In- a conservative Christian movie review site, which I used to read and really take seriously. (In the years since I've become ex-evangelical, I've occasionally visited Plugged In again, and I just find it so unintentionally hilarious, how extremely concerned the whole thing sounds as it describes small mundane things that happen in movies.)

3. This tweet:

It’s so weird to me when people say a couple sleeping in different rooms means their marriage is close to over. When I hear that a couple does this I think “that’s amazing! One partner was able to bring up a sensitive need they have and have it accommodated! So healthy!”

— sheologian (@sheologian) January 31, 2023

4. Holes, Through a Folkloric & Spiritual Lens (2019) "Every bit of fortune Stanley gets, he tells his family it is only fair that Zero gets half because Zero was there through it all and did half the labor, even if records and destroyed and no one remembers his name."

5. How our view of creation and incarnation shape our view of intersex people (January 18) "To frame the incarnation as God’s becoming human in overflowing love is to affirm the goodness of human bodies and sexuality and the fulness of God experienced in them. And thus, when we see intersex people in light of an incarnation of overflowing love, we no longer experience brokenness, but infinite wholeness."

6. Hippolytus: Asexuality and Ancient Greece (2018) "Regardless of whether we can use modern terms like 'asexual' to map ancient identities, here is a clear-as-day self-identification of ‘someone who has no urge for sexual activity’, which, whether we call it 'asexual' or not, is completely relatable, at least from my modern asexual perspective."

7. St. ELIZA, pray for us (February 1) "I don’t care much whether or not someone programs a thousand AI bots to offer up perpetual vain repetitions as do the heathens, but the idea of replacing the human presence at the bedside of the sick or by the side of the lonely seems far more troublesome."

And another one also from the Slacktivist: The other way around (More on slavery and ‘how to interpret the Bible’) (February 3) "These white Christians were people who claimed to be guided by the Bible above all. It was, they said, the central authority shaping their belief, their behavior, and their choices. And so these white Christians sought out the best and clearest explanations of what the Bible — the Word of God — taught and required of them with regard to the practice of slavery. They listened closely to 'debates' over the meaning of biblical teaching on slavery and found the arguments offered by the pro-slavery side to be simpler, clearer, easier to follow, and therefore more compelling and persuasive. And thus, persuaded by such powerful biblical arguments, they subsequently came to believe that slavery as practiced in America was something acceptable, respectable, and blessed by God." The Slacktivist calls bullshit on this.

Blogaround

Patrick Stewart sitting among a bunch of pumpkins. Image source.

1. 7 Things You Need To Know To Be A Good Ally To An Intersex Person (posted October 23) "Despite numerous studies indicating infant genitoplasty does more harm than good, physicians in the U.S. and elsewhere still routinely perform medically unnecessary procedures on intersex babies."

2. On Bisexuality and Reformation Bingo (posted October 23) "For every one thing that I put out on the internet about bisexuality, I've got a couple of women at least emailing me, being like, 'That's also my story, I also came from purity culture, I'm married to a dude, I'm bisexual but like what's the point of coming out, etc etc.'"

3. This tweet in a Twitter thread of "biblical sexual ethics" (such as when Abraham set Sarah up to be sexually assaulted by Pharaoh). The whole thread is good, but that tweet in particular was shocking to me- it says "Leviticus 21:9. If the daughter of a priest has sex not in marriage, she is burned alive." It blew my mind to see that listed as an example of the bible being IMMORAL in terms of sexual ethics. Before, I always read that verse like it was about unmarried sex being a sin, which is a complicated topic we can debate- it's not something that's so clear that you would put it in a tweet to convince people the bible is wrong. But. No. The issue is not whether unmarried sex is a sin. The issue is the death penalty for having unmarried sex. And that is very obviously immoral- but I never noticed it before.

To me, sex was always this huge, scary, terrible thing that of course we shouldn't do. (Until you're married and it's suddenly the best thing ever, right?) It never occurred to me to think, "even if it is a sin, it doesn't deserve the death penalty."

4. Literally, Why Can’t I Say #MeToo? (posted October 16) [content note: descriptions of sexual assault] "I feel guilty using those words. I feel like I’m being dramatic."

5. Fooling Neural Networks in the Physical World with 3D Adversarial Objects (posted October 31) "Here is a 3D-printed turtle that is classified at every viewpoint as a “rifle” by Google’s InceptionV3 image classifier, whereas the unperturbed turtle is consistently classified as “turtle”." Cool!

Blogaround

A very shy little octopus. Image source.

1. Beijing bans new bikes as sharing schemes cause chaos (posted September 8) Yepppp I'm in Shanghai and within the past year-ish a bunch of these bike-sharing apps have appeared and it's getting out of control, there are tons and tons of these public bikes all over the sidewalks, rows and rows and rows of them in front of subway stations, etc.

2. Missouri Court to Hear Landmark Case on Satanic Temple Abortion (posted September 8) "On May 8, 2015 TST [The Satanic Temple] filed both state and federal lawsuits against the state of Missouri on behalf of Mary Doe, a pregnant woman seeking an abortion. Missouri law requires that all women seeking to lawfully terminate their pregnancy must be given reading material claiming that life begins at conception. They must also endure a 72-hour waiting period between their initial appointment and their actual abortion procedure. TST objects to these restrictions on religious grounds because they violate the organization’s belief in the inviolability of one’s body."

3. LGBT groups denounce 'dangerous' AI that uses your face to guess sexuality (posted September 8) All right I work in AI, specifically computer vision, so I have some opinions about this. First of all, the algorithm in the study correctly guessed "gay" or "straight" 81% of the time for men and 74% for women. That's a really significant result in a scientific sense, but it's not 100%, so it's not like we can use this for anything that really definitely needs to be reliable and has practical effects on actual people's lives. Often when scientific findings are reported in the media, the headline makes it sound like the result is way more absolute and definite than it really is (my favorite example of this was a headline I saw once that said "Facebook knows when you'll break up" which was about a study that showed people posted statuses with words/phrases like "break up" more often in certain months than in others).

Also the study only looked at white people, and only people who identified as gay or straight (not bi, ace, or any other possible orientation). And it used photos from a dating site as its data set- perhaps what it's actually telling us is gay and straight people present themselves differently when specifically looking for a partner on a dating website. Maybe if the study used ID photos or photos from some other context, there would have been a different result. (Seriously, I think it's EXTREMELY SIGNIFICANT that these were photos posted with the SPECIFIC INTENTION of finding a romantic partner. Not just any old photos.) More research is needed.

So the result is extremely limited and not anywhere near 100% reliable (but still very interesting and cool to anyone working in AI or computer vision!) so of course it shouldn't be used to actually do actual things to actual people. Of course it wouldn't be scientifically sound to decide someone must be gay, on the basis of this algorithm alone, and then treat them badly because of it. (Or, if you want a laugh, I read another article on this study which mentioned maybe it could be useful for teenagers who are questioning whether they could be gay. LOLOLOLOL as if a computer with 70-80% accuracy knows you better than you know yourself.)

But. Historically, people in power have used "science" as an excuse to oppress certain demographics. It doesn't matter that those of us who actually understand the science can see that it in no way justifies discrimination- all that matters is that someone is claiming that "science" is on their side, and getting away with it. (Exhibit A for "getting away with it": headlines completely misrepresenting the results of the study to make it sound much more absolute and immediately practical than it actually is.) So it's good to be extremely wary of how results like this could be used as an excuse to hurt people who are perceived as gay.

4. Chapters 21-23 - An Atheist Reads Evidence That Demands a Verdict (posted 2013) In this video, Shives discusses a BUNCH of differences between the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2. And I'm angry in the way only an ex-evangelical can be: This stuff is so damn interesting and this is the FIRST time I'm hearing about it. I studied and memorized the bible my whole life and I was carefully trained not to notice that Genesis 1 and 2 are so different that probably they have different authors. I knew that the correct apologetics answer is "Genesis 1 and 2 don't contradict each other- chapter 2 is just giving more details about the part in chapter 1 where God created people." I was taught that answer before I even had a chance to think for myself "hey why are there two different creation accounts?"

On that note, does anyone have any recommendations for books about the documentary hypothesis? (The documentary hypothesis is the idea that the Pentateuch is compiled from sources from 4 different authors, which we call J, E, D, and P. Yeah real biblical scholars don't think it was all written by Moses.)

5. The First White President (October 2017 issue) "Indeed, the panic of white slavery lives on in our politics today. Black workers suffer because it was and is our lot. But when white workers suffer, something in nature has gone awry. And so an opioid epidemic among mostly white people is greeted with calls for compassion and treatment, as all epidemics should be, while a crack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory minimums. Sympathetic op‑ed columns and articles are devoted to the plight of working-class whites when their life expectancy plummets to levels that, for blacks, society has simply accepted as normal. White slavery is sin. [N-----] slavery is natural."

6. Hurricane Irma Is So Powerful it Sucked Ocean Water Away in the Bahamas (posted September 10)

7. Coping with Suicidal Thoughts (pdf) [content note: suicide] Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a resource like this before, with extremely practical steps that one can take to stay safe.

8. Were You On This Delta Plane That Flew Into Hurricane Irma? (Updated) (posted September 6) Wowwww.

9. B4NP Podcast Episode 19: “The Bible and Intersex Believers” with Megan DeFranza (posted September 11) Also check out her website: Intersex And Faith.

Have a good week everyone~

Blogaround

Cat sitting on a couch, with its back toward you. Image source.

1. I'm Tired Of My Queer Identity Being Ignored & Erased On TV (posted June 28) "The TV shows I watched certainly never suggested that someone like me could exist."

2. The virginity fraud (posted May 18) "The absurdity of virgin-testing is illustrated in a study done on 36 pregnant teenagers. When doctors examined their hymens, they could only find clear signs of penetration in 2 out of the 36 girls."

3. All the Ways Christian Education and the Church Have Failed Me (posted May 4) "If God could see me, hear me and read my thoughts, I would give Him fake things to read. If anyone asked me a question, I would give them answers I thought God wanted to hear. I was extra nice to people because I thought God would want me to be nice. He would never know what I actually thought of everyone, what I actually wanted to say or anything else."

4. I Can't Be Your Gay Friend (posted June 27) "And I’ll be honest, you almost won me over with the promise of paying for coffee when we sit down so you can “hear my story.” However, I have some concerns."

5. I Don’t Accommodate Uncontrolled Men (posted June 26) "So I’m going to be that woman. I’m going to stand up and look that man in the eye and tell him that his inability to control himself is not normal, healthy, or God-given, and I have no sympathy for his struggles." Well amen to all of this.

6. I'm Intersex, And It's WAY More Common Than You Think (posted July 2) "If you had surgeries that... you've never felt completely believed that the reasons they gave you were the real reasons. Those are some of the things you can look back at and help you discover if you might be intersex or not."

Blogaround

1. 'How Am I Supposed To Explain This To My Kids?!' (Explained) (posted March 30) "Going a step further, there are likely many kids in your school who are openly, flamboyantly bigoted, themselves. It is imperative that you stay away from these people. Their hatred is not contagious like a disease, but if you surround yourself with enough of these people for a long enough time, you could be influenced into sharing their views. No child of mine is going to indulge in that immoral, sinful behavior. Not under my roof."

2. Sunday favorites (posted April 2) "Yes, you say, he is cheating and he is only pretending to be weak and trembling. What! Do you not fear that lightning from Heaven will fall on you for this word?"

3. Who is my neighbor? (posted April 4) "Two general rules about Jesus stories. No. 1: You don’t want to be the guy asking 'Who is my neighbor?'"

4. Being Intersex  —  More Than a Diagnosis (posted 2016) "I felt alone in my experiences, and almost never discussed what I had been through with anyone."

5. Dear Microsoft: absolutely not. (posted April 5) "Microsoft, where’s your ad campaign telling adult male scientists not to rape their colleagues in the field?"

6. I Abused Children For A Living (posted April 3) [content note: abusive therapy for autism] "Would you comply with demands if tortured enough? Probably. Does that make it effective?"

7. Every story I have read about Trump supporters in the past week (posted April 4) "Their waiter is David Mattress, a sentient robot who will be shut down if Trump’s budget is put into practice. He loves Trump, insofar as love is possible for him. When asked “Don’t you realize the contradiction of this position?” the other regulars leap up and shout at me because the last time this question was posed to him, David short-circuited and emitted large quantities of smoke."

8. America’s first female mayor was elected 130 years ago. Men nominated her as a cruel joke. (posted April 7)

9. Shame on You for Thinking Prayer Does Anything (posted April 7) "I’ve noticed that the more “mature” a person’s faith becomes, the more it evolves to fit the way life actually works (as opposed to the way the Bible claims it will)."

Blogaround

Lieutenant Uhura, from Star Trek: The Original Series. Image source.
I have recently realized my life is incomplete without one of these little red Starfleet uniforms like Uhura wears. Where can I buy one? I looked on Amazon but the ones there seem to be more along the lines of "cheap sexy costume" rather than "authentic Starfleet uniform."

1. This guy hilariously recreates celebrity fashion moments with household items (posted May 4) LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

2. Harry Potter Theory: Dumbledore's Horcrux (posted May 3) Wow. I love this fan theory.

3. I'm Intersex and My Body Works Just Fine, Thank You (posted 2014)

4. 15 United Methodist clergy, candidates come out as gay (posted May 2) "Lamb said he thinks about 'children in our churches that hear this harmful rhetoric that they are incompatible with Christian teaching and how this does violence to our souls.'" Indeed. Think of the children!

5. 6 Tips on How Married Christians Can Embrace Single Adults (posted April 25) "Many single people feel that they are often automatically stereotyped as spiritually immature, morally dangerous, and unsuitable for leadership simply because they’re single. I’ve even heard pastors unapologetically and explicitly discriminate against single people: 'I don’t want to hire a single woman to direct the worship arts ministry because she’ll probably end up sleeping with all of the guys in the band.'"

6. What Pundits Keep Getting Wrong About Donald Trump and the Working Class (posted May 5) "This year, non-Hispanic whites are 58 percent of the working class, a historic low."

7. Who Did God Save When the Zamzam Sank? (posted April 12) "And hadn’t that same God also saved the Muslim Egyptians who worked on the boat? Was I the only person who wanted to know the Egyptian experience?"

8. How Birth Control Could Save Lives (posted April 11) "In fact, providing contraception to 90 percent of those in need around the world would ultimately save the lives of 67,000 women and 440,000 infants over the next year, according to an analysis published last week in the journal Lancet."

9. feminism and American exceptionalism (posted May 6) "I was taught that women can’t be trusted to supervise, manage, or govern anything– we barely even run our own households, and we certainly shouldn’t be given control over our finances. We didn’t have to wear burkas or hijab (although the definition I was taught for “modesty” was based on a Hebrew word that means “long and flowing” and a lot of us wore head coverings), but we were prevented from basically ever leaving our houses or existing in the public sphere."

10. Yes, Virtual Reality Has a Sexual Harassment Problem. What Can We Do to Stop It? (posted May 6) "When women join virtual spaces, he said, they're often the only female bodies in the room — and male users respond by swarming around them."

11. Christian Homeschool Leader Announces Conference for Arranging Child Marriages (posted May 5) Oh my god this is disgusting- this is human trafficking dressed up with bible verses. It's about a conference where good Christian parents arrange marriages for their teenage kids, who then have to go along with it or else they're ungrateful and disobedient. Apparently the event has been cancelled, since the internet found out about it and was shocked by how unimaginably terrible it was.

But seriously, back when I was a good purity-culture girl, I occasionally read articles encouraging Chiristians to marry young, and I read books which talked about how the parents should really be the ones making the decision. This kind of thing isn't unheard-of. I'm shocked at the idea of "let's actually hold a conference and set them up right now", but yeah... not unheard-of.

12. I Used THINX Underwear With No Backup For 3 Periods & Here's What I Discovered (posted March 11) Wow cool!

13. John MacArthur: The People of the Hispanic World “Don’t Know Christ.” (posted May 9) "Thus, when MacArthur says Hispanics don’t know Christ, that they don’t know the Gospel, and that they don’t know Scripture, what he’s really saying is that they don’t know Calvin."

14. Christianity Today Just Gave a Mouthpiece to an Alleged Abuser [trigger warning: all the tactics an abuser uses to make themself look like a victim] "I’m flummoxed that Christianity Today didn’t include any refutation of any of Saeed’s statements whatsoever, that they didn’t bother bringing up the content of the 2007 incident report, that they never bothered to conform any of Saeed’s claims with Naghmeh, and that they instead ran what is in effect a PR piece for a man accused of years of emotional and physical abuse."

15. Off Brand (posted May 4) "I always thought that I would be one sort of person: but now I’m someone else."

Blogaround

"Remember, there's no 'i' in 'team.'"
"No, but there's a 'u' in 'people who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning.'"
Image source.

1. No, NY Times, enslaved African women could not be the mistresses of those who claimed to own them (posted August 17) "...using words to describe any sexual contact between slaveholders and slaves—words that imply it was either romantic, consensual, or optional—is not just wrong, it's sick and offensive."

2. Sexual Preference Cakes We Are Willing To Bake (posted August 7) "We will obviously bake a cake for your heterosexual wedding, but only if you prove that you’re straight by performing a sexually explicit act in the back room of the bakery."

3. How Are Televangelists Still Able To Scam People Out Of Their Hard Earned Money? (posted August 17) "Therefore, as long as people are getting saved, we tend to give a free pass to the people doing the saving (and their methods) by saying things like 'God works in spite of...' or 'Well, at least some people are getting saved.'"

4. Christians taught me I can't trust my deceitful heart (posted August 12) "This indoctrination hasn’t just affected my ability to make decisions– the most drastic way it’s affected me is that I still can’t trust my opinion of myself."

5. This baby seal:

Image source.

6. [trigger warning: rape] Bill Gothard Explains Road Safety (aka How Not to Get Raped) (posted August 17) and Are Women Biblically Required to “Cry Out” During Rape?


7. What It's Like To Be Intersex (posted March 28)

8. Donald Trump’s First Policy Plan Is Even More Racist Than You Think It Is (posted August 17) "[In 1866] some members of Congress expressed concerns that this provision would extend citizenship to immigrant populations they viewed as undesirable, including 'the Chinese population in California and the West, and the Gypsy or Roma communities in eastern states such as Pennsylvania.'"

9. Disrupters, witnesses, and bridge-builders: three different tactics in the struggle for justice (posted August 18) "A disrupter‘s role is to create pressure when a group of people are dragging their heels in having uncomfortable conversations and taking a public stand for justice."

10. These Hilarious Harry Potter Comics Show How Irresponsible Dumbledore Was (posted August 18) "Are we just going to watch an empty lake for an hour"

11. Why Grown-Ups Need Sex Ed Too: Exposing the Long-Term Harm of Abstinence-Only Teachings (posted August 13) "Abstinence-only teachings result in a perpetual cycle of scared, unprepared girls who think they have no choice but to bear the “consequences of their sin.”"

12. 16 Trans People (That We Know Of) Have Been Murdered this Year (posted August 17)

13. Campaign Zero. About ending police violence.

14. Josh Duggar Spent Nearly $1000 to Cheat on His Wife and Josh Duggar Blames Porn and Satan in Public Statement. Pray for Anna.

15. Would Mike Huckabee send the FBI to protect the personhood of this 40-year-old unborn twin? (posted August 20) "That unborn twin was not viable, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from critics of Roe v. Wade and the rest of the anti-abortion movement, it’s that viability means nothing. Life begins at conception, they insist — at the moment of fertilization."

16. Fertility clinics destroy embryos all the time. Why aren’t conservatives after them? (posted August 14) "This distinction cannot be based on principle — if life begins at conception, then anti-choice groups have every reason to put the estimated 400,000 to 1 million frozen embryos in the United States at the forefront of their efforts."