@celesteh@babka.social
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

celesteh

@celesteh@babka.social

You can find me at https://lgbt.io/@celesteh

The Bundists were right and the Zionists were wrong and the consequences are unspeakable.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

"It’s impossible to sell other people’s cars without stealing them, therefore we must be allowed the business model of stealing cars"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/08/ai-tools-chatgpt-copyrighted-material-openai

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

@thomasfuchs I mean they're right that the copyright system is in a crisis of overreach, but recent works by living authors are not part of that problem.

celesteh, to random
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

I was arguing in favour of being kosher at home and I still want to figure out what that would mean, but, like, after going through so very very very many sets of China my family just stored for 20-30 years, I never want to buy a new plate again.

I mean, obviously some plate patterns are currently unfashionable or were always ugly, but the sheer amount of plates both manufactured and binned every year is staggering to envision.

I think my goals might be irreconcilable.

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

The concept of sacrifice is pretty fundamental to both Judaism and the religion of my upbringing, but this has two very divergent strains.

One form of sacrifice is abnegation - wearing a hair shirt, fasting, physical punishment of oneself.

The other form is the basis for a temple-based luxury economy. Gifts of resource intensive items to be consumed by people attached to the temple or to be destroyed.

Burning challah is the clearest example of intentional waste, but its present also in some parts of the Kosher system. For example, heating an empty oven to a high heat for an hour to transition between meat and dairy. In most circumstances, this is an intentional carbon emission. It is waste in the same way that a burnt offering is waste.

Some parts of a butchered animal can't be eaten. Some plates are meant to be broken and replaced. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/kashering-dishes/

…

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

So do I want a kosher home life if I have to buy all new pates? (Will the China I've inherited survive boiling?)

How can this square with the carbon emergency?

I feel so weighted down by things like dishes right now…

flexghost, to random
@flexghost@mastodon.social avatar

We live in a country with people so narcissistic they are easily manipulated by propaganda that plays to their weakness

A Republican party once so opposed to Russia they had the slogan “better dead than red” now supports a Putin puppet

Smoothbrain non-voters and 3rd party voters believing Russian disinfo because it plays to whatever “moral objection” they hold this week

Fascist sympathizers always think they’ll be part of the power structure

…they’re always surprised when they’re not

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

@flexghost I'm constantly surprised by the number of Democrats who assert that Russia is still communist, a system that collapsed in 1991. Putin is as far from "red" - that is, communism - as Trump is. Trump and Putin are natural allies.

Is this just pretend ignorance?? I can't tell if people are being serious with this or are shitposting so they can feel smarter than Republicans? This does look like Karl Rov-ian levels of projection so I really can't tell what's going on here.

celesteh, to random
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

5784 is year of linux on desktop

celesteh, to random
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

Shavua tov.

My dog and spouse are at the emergency vet after one of those two helped themselves to a rather large amount of chocolate while the other one was at shul.

I'm glad the vets work on shabbat.

Anyway, I hope everyone else had a more relaxing preview of the world to come than I.

(Don't boost this. People pick weird targets for what to boost.)

celesteh, to random
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

There is no JSOC* at UEL**.

I have no idea how many Jewish students there are at the uni, but I'm guessing it's more than zero.

I also don't know how clubs work at British unis, as I studied in the US.

I looked up what uni was closest to my synagogue, with the idea that we could do outreach there, but I actually have no idea how that works. Would a student need to approach us first?

  • Jewish Students Club

  • University of East London

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

@sonyablanck

It's not listed on the student union's web pages under "cultural and religious" groups.

celesteh,
@celesteh@babka.social avatar

@kjr @sonyablanck thank you

blacklight, to threads

deleted_by_author

    •
    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    @blacklight @SallyStrange @santiago

    Yeah, but an instance that's fine with getting content from Libs of Tiktok has signalled that its own moderation is quite lax. Most admins not paranoid about their posts leaking through. They're concerned about the moderation of the intermediate instance and are being proactive.

    There's an assumption in this thread that people who use different heuristics for analysing information are ignorant or stupid. This is a conflict over values around safety. Its not an opportunity to show off how much better you understand tech.

    dukepaaron, to Israel
    @dukepaaron@babka.social avatar

    🧵 Calling for the of the is a hot topic these days. This is primarily for non-Jews.

    What are we really talking about when this gets said? We generally aren't covering some fascist saying literally that they want to kill all the Jews. That speech is not wildly popular at universities or during anti- protests which is where the controversy is coming up.

    So I think it's fair to say literal calling for the mass death of Jews is non-controversively frowned upon. I'm sure there's some free speech absolutist out there but that's a different issue entirely.

    What we're talking about in the current political moment is supporters using more populist expressions like "From the River to the Sea" and similar expressions.

    Let me tell you why I don't oppose the use of this call or chant.

    1/?

    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    @shekinahcancook @lukevanin @dukepaaron

    This is actually ace. Of course people should support this.

    (As you probably know, the land back movement doesn't mean forced migration of settler-descended people. This has really gained currency since I left the US, so I'm vague on the details.)

    I hope you intended this as a good example of recognising the rights of displaced people and working on a building a place that incorporates those rights.

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    Shavua tov chag semeach

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    Shabbat shalom, comrades

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    This is a very good post about Hanukkah https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/bravely-facing-truth

    agenderfox, to StarTrek
    @agenderfox@babka.social avatar

    the least believable is set on Earth ... there's future history that they've mentioned already (the Atomic Wars) and future history that's been mentioned in other shows (eugenics wars), and it's really hard to believe that all this stuff happened, but somehow all the nations' borders are basically the same and ppl are all still eating caviar and there's no new art

    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    @shekinahcancook @agenderfox

    So this professor in Wisconsin got really very into Bajoran music. https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/exo.html

    The people of ST would be essential alien to us. We'd have less in common with them than mediaeval people - and mediaeval people had ideas that are very very different than we have now. The utopianism of Nicer Americans in Space kind of requires a gloss over that and a pretence of universality of our current mental and moral structures. Avoiding this means avoiding doing a meaningful investigation into how future humans might be into the hyperpiano or suchlike.

    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    @agenderfox @shekinahcancook

    Biblical Hebrew was spoken in the British Isles before English was invented. So thats a thing we could have in common with the far future.

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    This song is fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbxyZAduGvY

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    Today on the mourner's minyan at My Jewish Learning, the leader shared teachings from the rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto. Some of his teachings centred on how to calm anxiety, which must have been desperately needed at the time.

    These teachings survive because he and others buried their archives in a milk can, so they would endure past the liquidation of the ghetto. There were eventually found by a construction worker.

    It feels . . . I'm not sure what it feels to benefit from teachings made for such a moment. My personal grief feels trivial in comparison. But he wanted these words to survive. He did not want them to remain only in that particular historical moment. He wanted to make something enduring for future generations.

    He said the greatest thing one could do in difficult times was to do a favour for others. He did a favour for us. I hope we can do the favour for others of building a world where the only griefs are the personal griefs for people who died of natural causes.

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    Every time Wikipedia has some super long and detailed article about a first person shooter, I think about how when I tried to make pages about influential and acclaimed lesbian poets of the 1979s, they always got deleted for not being notable.

    ProjectFearlessness, to random

    Elon Musk has landed in Israel, where he is due to meet Netanyahu. They will have to pretend to talk about a lot of things they have no real concept of, like human rights, morality, justice, free speech, and antisemitism.

    The real agenda is money, power, and mutual advantage. You know it.

    https://www.arabnews.com/node/2415771/middle-east

    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    @ProjectFearlessness I wish both of them a trip to Mars soon. Very very soon.

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    Look, the Netherlands is a ducked up little country, but if you are an online freelancer from the US, its relatively easy to move there. Musicians also have an in with this if your income is high enough.

    (Be aware that the path to citizenship almost always involves renouncing US citizenship.)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    I would like to extend love and strength to all the USians getting ready to have Thanksgiving dinner with family that they love but have serious political rifts with.

    celesteh, to random
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    I kind of liked Agatha Christie when I lived in the US. I mean, I do have a kind of a political objection to the notion of a cosy murder. The way those books talk about violence is deeply weird. But they're still kind of charming and I do like the BBC adaptations for telly.

    Anyway, it turns out that her American publisher asked to please remove the unrelenting antisemitism from her writings. She agreed and the US editions are enjoyable. The British editions are unreadable and awful.

    Some folks think we should preserve bigotry in texts as a form of evidence. I don't want to read texts that contain bigoty. I don't want them to be published. This is what archives are for, not fresh, newly printed books. Yeah, it changes the author's words and some of their intent. That's what editors and publishers and translators are meant to do. That's why a publishing industry still exists when otherwise high-quality self-publishing is extremely accessible.

    celesteh,
    @celesteh@babka.social avatar

    But also, finally, an otherwise good writer who uses bigotry in their writing is a propagandist and a recruiter. They will attract fans, who will learn to overlook, normalise or even copy those ideas.

    It's no good cancelling the dead - they're eternally cancelled already. Just fix the problems with their writing and include a note saying it used to be fucked up.

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