For all the US-based folks, here's Celiac.com's annual GF candy list for 2023! Please remember (as always) to double check your ingredients, and contact the manufacturer with questions or concerns.
“…the sight of Elon Musk charging towards Wikipedia with his trademark guile and delicacy was so predictable that it was almost relaxing. He saw a collective resource that people prized and he wanted to hurt it.”
Thoth knows Wikipedia’s not perfect, but I’d sooner have it handy than not have it.
Hey, you know how we spent 7.99 at Tumblr for useless blue checkmarks mainly to spite Musk? Maybe we should go donate the same amount to Wikipedia out of spite. And also because Wikipedia is far more useful than the accurately-named useless blue checks.
I mean, same spite, but actually getting something in return? Sounds like a deal to me...
Throwback to all these Jesus comics I drew in 2012…
Good post OP
Good post, OP, and if you ever decide to do another may I please suggest “NOT IN HEBREW IT DOESN’T” as a punchline? So much of the Old Testament is HORRIFICALLY translated from the Tanakh, it drives me batty.
WAIT WAIT WHAT DOES IT SAY?????? I NEED TO LIKE,, DESTROY MI MUM FOR BEING REALLY HOMOPHOBIC
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.”
5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”.
(You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like … a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
Apparently tumblr mobile doesn’t want to show @prismatic-bell ’s long and in-depth essay, so here’s the screenshots, because it still shows up on mobile browsers:
Much appreciated.
I love when scholarship and history debunks bullshit
…I sadly have more bullshit to report.
“removed for violating guidelines”, EVERY screenshot.
…goddamnit
Let’s try this again
I am horrified that @prismatic-bell keeps getting censored + this info is gold.
Many thanks, @pulmonary-poultry. This isn’t the only Jewish post of mine that’s mysteriously stopped showing up in searches and/or vanished from my blog entirely, but it is the one I get the most requests to repost, so this saves me from having to rewrite the whole damned essay. @the-invisible-self, thanks for bringing it to my attention that someone was able to preserve the post!
what the FUCK??? WHICH community guidelines would an analysis of the Old Testament violate??
unless tumblr staff is just removing images that get reported a bunch of times
Never not gonna reblog
@prismatic-bell RESPECT 💜
I want the kind of love my parents have
My dad bought my mom the most beautiful dagger bc build a bear was closed
op are you in any way related to the Addams family?
No, we just like weapons
Your family has good taste
Ok but show us the blade.
are they looking for a third
So! This is a perfect case study in situations where you should be wary of misinformation.
Take a moment and ask yourself, a project like this requires a lot of time, money and dedication of resources, why would scientists dedicate that time to something that could just be done by a tree?
The answer is they wouldn't. So that means this claim requires further investigation!
This project is called LIQUID 3, and it's not meant for cities with wide open spaces, it's meant for cities like Belgrade in Serbia. These cities are densely populated and heavily polluted, to the point where pollution actually chokes out current trees and makes creating green spaces difficult.
Liquid 3 was a PhD scientists answer to these problems. The microalgae tank is intended for spaces where you either:
The tank is extremely efficient when you consider the amount of space needed compared to the amount of CO2 turned into oxygen. The tank can operate throughout the winter. And most importantly, it can be quickly set up in areas that desperately need relief from air pollution NOW not in 10 years when trees are done growing. Children currently suffocating on polluted air can't wait for trees to grow, they need to be taken care of now, and Liquid 3 is one of the ways to take care of them. Depending on the species of microalgea used, a number have shown a pretty amazing capacity to pull heavy metals out of the air which is something trees can get choked up by.
The tanks aren't just tanks either! Liquid 3 have solar panels placed on top, they have lighting and mobile phone charging, and they work as public benches. The designers of it want to encourage green spaces where there's room, but where there isn't room or time, Liquid 3 can step in. Realistically, this isn't a replacement for trees. It's replacing boring metal city benches with new, cooler benches that also clean the air (and have at least some heating during the winter).
Not only that, but the microalgea that grows is native to Serbia and all that microalgea has a ton of great uses! It makes for great fertilizer, compost, wastewater treatment, cleaner biofuels and even for helping create new tanks for further air purification. They only require a quick algae divide once a month, and the produced algae can be carted off to where ever it's needed. This makes them effective solutions for areas that can't sustain complex installations.
So yeah, there's actually quite a lot of places that would like these. Lots of people currently breathing in terrible quality air would much rather have their boring city benches replaced with really fucking cool algae tanks that clean the air and can be used to help create + sustain future green spaces in cities. I dunno about you, but I'd take that over a dumb metal bench any day. Put these at every bus stop and I'd be delighted.
I will be 70 years old and I still will never have gotten over the time the Mythbusters used a rocket powered steel wall to - and I use this word as literally as possible - vaporize an entire car into red mist
If you haven’t seen this episode of Mythbusters I feel so bad for you because “What car?” remains to this day as a defining moment of my adolescence and my entire life
That was a near-religious experience
I made a gif of it for those of you who cant watch the video in your country. Or if you know you just want to stare at it mesmerized like me
Oh wow they sure did vaporise that car into red mist
1994-1996 Ford Aspire
(formerly)
I’m partial to the “Can a Snowplow Split a Car in Two” one. The answer was “No”, so they naturally ramped it up. Which led to this
A rocket powered, sharpened steel wedge slicing a car (with its engine!) in two, right down the middle
@identifying-cars-in-posts what’s this one?
1988-1989 Honda Civic
(formerly)
Ghada Karmi and Ellen Siegel, in 1973, 1992 and 2011. Photos by Francis Khoo (1, 2) and Jean-Pascal Deillon (3).
also, a friendly reminder, the world we live in now consists of an active genocide.
of warcrimes being posted on twitter by the official account of israeli government.
of people looking at children, women and men being bombed, killed, starved and butchered and saying it is okay because of a single terrorist group, THAT ISRAEL CREATED.
of westerners saying to look away from the slaughter happening in gaza because your mental health is more important than thousands of lives.
of israeli politicians straight up using propaganda from nazi handbooks to dehumanise palestinians, calling them less than human, less than the rest of us, animals.
and what one palestinian man posted on his social media hit me more than anything: “if we actually were animals, people would care.”
This deep into his disaster of a time running Twitter and people are still reporting "Elon Musk said he'd give Wikipedia a billion dollars to change their name to DICKipedia xDDDDD" as a wacky story, Which first of all implies the sad possibility that there are people who still find his "let that sink in" shtick funny, but his questioning of Wikipedia is uh. Actually p. sinister
Like, it's easy to go "haha, he doesn't know about hosting costs!" But he. Clearly does know that hosting one of the world's top ten most visited websites costs a lot of money. He wants to sow doubt and conspiracies, and it's working, judging by his replies
Also, he's a rich guy who loves spreading misinformation, mad that Wikipedia doesn't allow it. He also is baffled by the idea he can't buy it, that it's not trying to make money
He doesn't even have any specific criticisms of Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales called him out for removing verification with very specific criticisms, and he just responded "please fix Wokipedia". Ladies and gentlemen...got 'em!!!!!1!
I think it's time for me to donate to Wikipedia for the first time.
Hundreds of Jewish Americans calling for a ceasefire Gaza have been arrested at grand central station
Yup, no antisemitism here- just criminalizing and besmirching Jews as disloyal for expressing their conscience.
The nerve of them, they claim to be all about Judaism until actual Jews call them out on their bullshit.
The way minorities are treated for their contrarianism really is the litmus test for what wider society can expect next.
I'll always remember the Afghan proverb that "what a king does first to his enemies he will soon do to his friends."
IT'S FUCKING SATURDAY.
WORDS OF WISDOM OF THE FUCKING DAY:
BEWARE LEST YOU LOSE THE SUBSTANCE BY GRASPING AT THE SHADOW.
EDUCATE YOUR IGNORANT ASS:
17 LIFE LEARNINGS FROM 17 FUCKING YEARS. more>>
FUCKING MIND-BLOWING BOOK OF THE DAY:
LEARN ALL OF THE DAMN MATH YOU MISSED. more>>
USEFUL SHIT OF THE GODDAMN DAY:
DON'T LET YOUR TOOTHBRUSH GET ICKY. more>>
WEBSITE OF THE FUCKING DAY:
PAINT HELLA BETTER WITH EASE. more>>
AWESOME-AS-SHIT VIDEO OF THE DAY:
CRASH TEST SCIENCE. more>>
ok so. I've been thinking. what if leia's "thing" is that she's imperceptible in the force. like, she's so innately powerful at shielding, she's just not there. Anakin didn't know padme was having twins because he literally couldn't sense leia's presence. yoda and obi-wan were fine with bail taking leia because they couldn't perceive her thoughts, even as an infant. neither reva nor vader could penetrate her mind. she spent years in the senate alongside palpatine and he had no idea she was force sensitive. the only person who can see leia for who she really is is the one who has been there from the beginning — luke.
