Post your asides here

[mahagonny]

I could, but then again, I think you need the eggs.

[FishProf]

I'm gonna need brain bleach after that image.

[FishProf]

Nope.  Too soon.  Wait one week.

[little bongo]

[unrelated]

Yeah, you deserve the pile-on this time. Really shameful behavior, requiring some serious self-examination.

I was told of this friend of a friend's child who liked to greet strangers by lifting up her dress and announcing, "I'm going to fart!" I'd now rate your credibility, logic, and impulse control slightly lower than hers.

[Langue_doc]

Our very own trifecta of higher ed, politics, and religion https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/nyregion/bling-bishop-arrested-fraud-lamor-whitehead.html

In higher ed news,

N.Y.U. embezzlement: A director of finance and research at New York University, above, diverted $3.3 million intended for minority- and woman-owned businesses, spending some of the money to renovate her Connecticut home and build a swimming pool.

She was subsequently hired by Yale, and has now been fired. I thought Yale and other institutions did background checks on potential hires, silly me!

In politics,

Representative-elect George Santos faced questions, as well as an uncertain future, after an article in The New York Times revealed that Santos, a Republican whose victory in a district in Nassau County and northeastern Queens helped his party claim a majority in the House, may have misrepresented parts of his résumé during his campaigns...

Santos's campaign biography said he had worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but both firms told The Times they had no records showing he had ever been an employee. Officials at Baruch College, which Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, found no record of anyone who received a diploma that year with a name and date of birth that matched his.

The bling bishop, who has had numerous encounters with the law has now been arrested.

The Brooklyn pastor Lamor Whitehead, who was robbed of a fortune in jewelry while he was preaching in July, was arrested on federal financial fraud charges.

The 44-year-old preacher, who is known as Bishop Whitehead and built a persona as the so-called bling bishop, "bullied a businessman for $5,000, then tried to defraud him of far more than that," said Damian Williams, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Prosecutors said Whitehead offered to help one of his parishioners buy a new house, talking her into withdrawing $90,000 from her retirement account. "I am a man of integrity, and you will not lose," Whitehead texted the woman, but the prosecutors said he spent the money on luxury goods. When she asked for the money back, Whitehead said it was too late.

His followers, however, believe

his expensive tastes are inspirational. "Rappers, singers, the way they attract people, that's what he's doing," one woman said last summer. "People want to know how you got all that. Once you get here, you see he is teaching God."

[FishProf]

Thanks for preventing my general opinion of people to climb unrealistically high.  I don't know what I was thinking.

[apl68]

Well, if bling is what attracts you to a spiritual leader, then I suppose you've effectively asked for what you end up getting.  I kind of suspected that once Bishop Whitehead got himself into the news the attention he was drawing to himself would lead to trouble for him.

[apl68]

Since I am both a professional librarian and a Christian, I have a perspective on that current debate that I really feel needs to be shared.  I also don't want to leave somebody to be dogpiled by a hostile board.  However, I have a lot of work to do today before we close for the Christmas holiday.

And it's also about to be Christmas, which is about something that is so very much more important than any of these debates.  So for the time being, I'm going to leave the debate bait unbitten.   Maybe I'll see everybody on the relevant thread in the next few days.  Meanwhile, here's what I really want to say today:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong.

And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song that they bring;
Oh hush the noise, you men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.


Wishing everybody here at The Fora a Merry Christmas!

[jimbogumbo]

I will aside a thank you to you apl. I wish you and your work well.

I do take exception to the dog pile remark. I vehemently disagree with kay and marsh, and so does Wahoo. It is absolutely not a dog pile. And if I may, if someone is free to essentially hate my sister and her son (not sure how else you'd characterize the lose my lunch remark) I am certainly free to consider them a bigot.

[Juvenal]

Not being much of a Christian myself, I do think well, however, of the "Beatitudes," and wish that Seussian wrangle would pay attention.

[AmLitHist]

Clearly, I'm not part of The Elect.

(And I'm good with that.)

[Istiblennius]

WTAF
It's no wonder LGBTQIA++ folks die by suicide at higher rates.

[marshwiggle]

WTAF
It's no wonder LGBTQIA++ folks die by suicide at higher rates.

Actually, (at least for the "T" part), when you correct for other mental health conditions, the suicide rate isn't higher than usual. People with gender dysphoria have higher than normal rates of autism and depression. Just by itself, gender dysphoria doesn't have a high suicide rate.

Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

[Istiblennius]

Outdated and offensive terminology in that study aside, as you already noted, its cherry-picked.

The Trevor project has some pretty extensive survey evidence on suicide awareness and prevention for LGBTQIA+ youth that is up-to-date.

I don't think I'm going to change minds, and this is the asides thread, so that's what I've got for today.

[FishProf]

Why was "female" a relevant qualifier?