Cleaning out some old bookmarks and closing some old tabs.
• Sarah Bessey on “That Jezebel Spirit.”
Accusing anyone of a Jezebel spirit is usually meant to keep you small, obedient, and easily controlled. Deploying the accusation of a Jezebel spirit is meant to berate you for daring to lift your head. It admonishes you for asking questions or challenging authority. It’s meant to correct your behavior because you, you have stepped out of their line.
It’s a good critique. I’d add one more point: The weirdoes who talk about the “Jezebel Spirit” wholeheartedly believe it is an actual, divine entity — an evil goddess. These people are not monotheists.
• “It wasn’t ZOOZVE, it was 2002-VE, which is an actual object near Venus.”
And while that actual object is not a moon of Venus, it’s also not not a moon of Venus. This is a delightfully obsessive thread in which Latif Nasser does some serious journalistic leg-work — he tracks down everybody — and learns something weird about the solar system thanks to an illustrator’s odd choice in a children’s poster. (via)
Got a similar vibe from this lovely Sarah Kendzior essay on “The Great Unconformity” — another oddity that is both something and not something.
“Why are you so obsessed with finding nothing when there’s so many things to look at?!” our son demanded from the backseat. He was alone; our daughter was at camp. He was stuck on a road trip with Vladimir and Estragon for parents.
“Finding nothing is important,” I said, “because it’s not there, and we don’t know why! So we need to see it, and then we’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“Why there’s nothing instead of something. Or how. How nothing replaced something.”
• “Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out”
Yeah, sure, I’d rather read an interview with Teller, but this conversation with Cracked’s Tim Gierson covers a lot of ground. Here’s one of the more interesting bits:
For so long, you identified as Libertarian. What changed?
I completely have not used the word Libertarian in describing myself since I got an email during lockdown where a person from a Libertarian organization wrote to me and said, “We’re doing an anti-mask demonstration in Vegas, and obviously we’d like you to head it.” I looked at that email and I went, “The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change.” Now, you can make the argument that maybe you don’t need to mandate masks — you can make the argument that maybe that shouldn’t be the government’s job — but you cannot make the argument that you shouldn’t wear masks. It is the exact reciprocal of seatbelts because if I don’t wear a seatbelt, my chances of fucking myself up increase — if I don’t wear a mask, the chance of fucking someone else up increase.
Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, “It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,” and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate.
• “How Dominican women fight child marriage and teen pregnancy while facing total abortion bans”
Marcia González works heroically for a program that has had some success reducing the number of 14-year-olds forced to marry middle-aged men or to bear their children. Here’s what success looks like in a country with an absolute ban on abortion, where women are not trusted — or permitted — to make choices for themselves.
• “‘Independent’ Investigations Into Sexual Abuse Are Big Business. Can Survivors Really Trust Them?”
Madison Pauly’s long piece for Mother Jones is a kick in the gut. The stories here are horrifying. Pauly finds that some high-profile “independent investigations” seem to be designed mainly to limit the liability for institutions. Other such investigations, though, also seem to be designed mainly to limit the liability for institutions. This is an industry now.
• Also from MoJo, by Kiera Butler, this is a wild ride: “The Internet’s Favorite Supplement Titan Appears to Be Taking Cues From a Psychic.”
Joseph Mercola, an osteopath, made millions in the “supplements” business, then became infamous as a pandemic-denying whackjob and “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online.”
But he was just getting warmed up. Mercola has fired most of the top executives at his supplements company, including his own sister, and is now focused on writing a book that he says will “reach billions, literally billions, around the world with a new paradigm of how to increase joy in their life.” Because he’s just recently learned that he is the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. He knows this because the psychic he pays, Kai Clay, channels Bahlon, an “ancient and wise high-vibration entity from the causal plane,” and Bahlon wouldn’t lie.
If Kai Clay turns out to look like Timothy Hutton or Aldis Hodge, then I think I know what’s going on here. Meanwhile, I’m pondering what kind of christology you’d have to have to believe you’re the reincarnation of Jesus.
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