Food, Water, And Shelter

an explanation is not owed

Jewish Journal

Beverly Hills Persian Synagogue Vandalized Over Shabbat | Jewish Journal

UPDATE: Dec 14, 3 p.m. At around 2 p.m. the Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) held a press conference outside Nessah Synagogue and issu

(if youre jewish, the following four photos of the vandalism might be upsetting to see, just as a warning.)

it makes sense but i still feel attacked

took a quiz thing and it gave me my d&d stats. the question is now, is this good or bad

tag yourself i’m over it steve

we out here livin

ooh, yeah ive been in a similar area before. always fun times. i wish you luck in your search for an answer!

I am currently using my copy of Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyut/King Island Tales to study my ancestral language. The formatting of the stories (every sentence is its own line, the lines being numbered, the original Inupiaq on even pages with the English translation on odd pages so you can see both at the same time) seems to encourage this usage of it.

I'm also writing my notes in cursive to feel fancy ^-^ and I'm surprised the special characters are easier to write in cursive than print

went downstairs looking for thread so i could sew up the covering on the foam part of my headphoned and instead i found my cat playing floor hockey with a dead mouse. and then she saw me and stared as if to say, "u want in" i love her

thanks for being so chill! basically, it is great that she (im gonna use she for now because its convenient and thats most common for her) is so confident in her gender identity, but the first thing is that a lot of genderfluid people use the pronouns they/them some of the time (i do all the time because i am too tired to constantly be telling people what pronouns to use) and she talks about the they/them pronouns kinda disdainfully, like she says that if other people want to use they/them thats fine "but i change a lot. thats sort of the point." which completely ignores the possibility of people like me, who are tired of correcting people daily, or fluid people who move between boy, girl and agender, etc. and implies that no fluid ppl use they bc we "change a lot". if she had said "for me personally, i only use he and she, because i flip between girl and boy, so i will let you know when i want you to call me what." that leaves it open for people like me to still exist

also she talks as if rickald copied and pasted a wikipedia definition of genderfluid and then tried and failed to finesse it into being actual dialogue. and then she talks completely differently for the rest of her time when shes not talking abt fluidity. there was also definitely an easier way of mentioning her fluidity and slipping it in there, the way he did it was really awkward and stilted. she occasionally would announce to the room how fluidity works and what pronouns she was using, and obviously yes she has weapons and she fierce and blah blah blah but people dont do that. people get tired of explaining time after time after time, thats why people dont want to explain in the first place, because it takes so much energy and its so frustrating to be expected to educate everyone on your gender.

then there is how people are written as percieving her. halfborn, since he no comprendo her gender, calls her an "argr", and she reacts as if that is a comment on her gender but in norse it just means bad or angry. its not even a noun, its an adjective, wtf rick can u not google things? and when she reacts, she again turns into a teacher to everyone, which wouldnt be how someone reacts, especially if, as its implied she has, they have repeatedly said that a term is offensive or incorrect. they would react with way more annoyance, and they would not try to reiterate, unless theyre extremely patient, which, from how shes written, she isnt! shes all over the place for no fuckin reason. and mallory tried to protest calling alex she the first time they met, and alex becomes a teacher, which actually isnt that bad since they just met but shes still not really a teacher-type for the rest of her interactions.

and then we have magnus. fucking magnus. who can magically tell when alex is a he and when alex is a she. no. stop. stop it now rickald. stop please. yes, when i am a boi i walk a little different than when im a girl, but people do not notice because they dont notice, or they dont have enough information. we act a little differently based on our current pronouns but for fucks sake, you cant magically tell by looking at us, no matter how woke you want magnus to be. this is especially annoying because magnus literally says he doesnt get the genderfluidity, but can still magically tell when alex's gender changes, something that usually doesnt happen suddenly, at a snap of the fingers and something that the person themselves will sometimes not notice. so stop, rickald, because you are going to give kids the impression that they too will be magically able to tell what their nb friends' gender is, and that leads to conflict, and relearning everything.

tl:dr, alex is a caricature of a genderfluid person and obviously rank did a quick google search, didnt do any deeper research, definitely didnt talk to any genderfluid people or ask a genderfluid person to look over alex's scenes, but still thought he could write her correctly, but failed and refuses to admit it. as per usual.

no research, no conversations with real people, just rick assuming hes perfectly correct, as always. (sorry this was so long i really went off oh boi)

im actually not a big fan of alex fierro, or at least how dear old rickald wrote her. im genderfluid, and i have some other nb and genderfluid friends, and shes such a caricature of how an actual genderfluid person acts. i like her as a concept, but as with everything rickald does, the execution was absolutely terrible. just thought i would put that out there (not trying to be rude, if im being rude im sorry)

oh! no you’re not being rude don’t worry!!! i’m not trans myself, and i don’t know the extent of how badly trans folks are treated, but i do know that y’all face a lot of hardships and discrimination. i was so happy when rick introduced a genderfluid character, it actually helped me learn a little more about trans issues and identities and stuff cuz i did some research after reading. i didn’t know she was written like a caricature, likely because of my own ignorance as to what it’s like to be genderfluid. thank you for telling me this. i do think that rick did a good thing in introducing a genderfluid character, but if the way he did it is offensive to trans folks, i won’t talk over y’all. would you mind telling me specifically what’s wrong with alex’s character portrayal? not trying to sound like an idiot, but i don’t particularly understand your stance. but i want to!! you don’t have to explain but it’d be cool if you did, i’d like to know more so i can identify stuff like this in the future !! (also thank you so much for this ask, i really appreciate it!!!)

being queer and seeing historical queer love is like a punch to the gut in a good way every time

There's a specific genre of shitty antisemitic joke that I have seen fly under the radar (as it was designed to) a LOT more often lately - especially since Kanye started going full mask-off nazi - so I feel the need to issue a warning about it. Namely, the genre is jokes that get spread around by people who aren't willfully antisemitic because outside of conspiracy brain rot land, it appears that the point of the joke is absurdism.

As an example, let's examine the 23-and-me lizard DNA test that I've sadly seen floating around unquestioned.

Because, see, to the average person who isn't willfully antisemitic, this genre of joke comes off as nonsequiturs, or hilarious mistakes - you, as a person with some level of basic observational and critical thinking skills, living on Earth and not in whatever batshit mirror dimension conspiracy theorists think we live in, might very well end up getting a giggle out of it because, HAH, we KNEW those DNA ancestry kits were a scam! If you're not a deliberate antisemite but not really up on the dogwhistles, it doesn't scan as anything awful because you're put in mind of things like feeding a photo of something decidedly not human into that one selfie-to-anime neural net, which sometimes works and produces interesting results because the thing is looking for specific patterns and trying to make anything fit - not things like blatantly lying about doing something like that in the hopes that normies who see the absurdity and want to have a laugh at a scummy company's expense will pass it along to people who unironically believe that Jewish people are actual literal lizard aliens and the test proves it.

This is the same strategy that guy at the game awards pulled. You, a person living in reality where the main source of political corruption is just the basic consequence of an economic system that makes power pool in the hands of anyone willing to exploit enough people, a world of banal mundane evil, know damned well that QAnon-pizzagate-satanic ritual abuse cult conspiracy bullshit is, well, bullshit, if you're even familiar with the details of what they believe at all. When someone crashes the stage and thanks Rabbi Bill Clinton, you may very well laugh because to YOU it is a blatant absurd nonsequitur.

Problem is that to someone else, someone who's deep into that shit, it's either someone letting the truth slip, or someone backing the deep state into a corner - whichever is more convenient to believe.

This is one form of how the far right uses memeification (CW: the example discussed in the link is a rape "joke") - it means something totally different to the in-group than it does to the out-group. To you, it's funny because it's nonsensical; to them, it's fun because they think they're onto something huge and they're about to blow this shit wide open and it's going to be their great moment of triumph.

I cannot stress enough that no matter how absurd an antisemitic conspiracy theory sounds to you, there are people who believe it, unironically. There are people who unironically believe that Jewish people are very literally not human and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever change their minds. There are people who believe that we're born with horns and tails and pointed ears and have them surgically altered to fit in with good Christian humans like some kind of extremely high-stakes game of Among Us. There are people who believe that we steal, ritualistically abuse, and kill Christian babies. These beliefs, while fringe enough that, yeah, most of you who this post is aimed at have never heard them in the wild before very recently, are not nearly as fringe as you probably think they are. Just look at fucking Kanye. This asshole has more fans than there are Jewish people in the world.

So I'm begging you to please, bare minimum, be careful of "absurdist" jokes about Jewish people, especially if they reference lizards, money, banking, or government power. Also, you may see Jewish people debating how religious laws may apply to fictional creatures, but outside of that context you should also be wary of any time Jewish people are mentioned in the same sentence as vampires, dragons, goblins, zombies, fantasy demons, or any number of other fantasy creatures known for greed, feeding on humans, or both.

If the reason it seems funny to you is because you'd have to be really stupid to believe it's true or makes any kind of sense - it's probably looking for you to spread it to people who are, in fact, that stupid.