Daphne Eftychia Arthur, guitarist+. Recent.
"Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: But they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man." -- Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588-04-05, d. 1679-12-04)
"Real talk. Republican parents aren't afraid LGBTQ teachers are 'grooming' their kids.
"They're afraid LGBTQ teachers are out there being totally normal, productive, loving people, no different, better, or worse than anyone else, because it destroys the lies they tell about them.
"They're afraid their kids will get to know Mr. Fletcher and his husband, or Ms. Michelle who used to be Mr. Michael, and see they're just ordinary people doing ordinary things. Because when they go home, or to church and hear all the bullshit their adults spew, they'll know."
-- Patrick S. Tomlinson (stealthygeek), 2022-04-09
"If kids know that safe, loving relationships are equal and affirming of all, the Repugs will have a harder time indoctrinating kids (especially girls) that they have to submit to men's authority at every turn. This is, of course, the main danger of acknowledging differences." -- Name cannot be blank (lastchanceroman), 2022-04-09
"They're not saying 'grooming' because they think that's what's going on. They're saying grooming to try to incite stochastic violence against people with whose views they disagree. They want those people dead. No different than the Taliban." -- Substandard Deviation (SubSDeviation), 2022-04-09
"From its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth. It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible. But within this impossibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning. Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy." -- Alexander Schmemann (b. 1921-09-13, d. 1983-12-13), For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (1970)
[I wouldn't say it's "the only possible joy on earth", as I've seen a lot of non-Christians I know experience & share very real, magnificent joy as well. But I do particularly like, "Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible." With that in mind, and knowing I've just quoted an Orthodox priest for Western Easter, I wish that joy upon all who celebrate Easter on the Western calendar today! Christos anesti -- He is risen!]
Hours after Michigan House Republicans (MI_Republicans) tweeted a Happy Passover! graphic that included two loaves of leavened bread in the image ...
"how is this post still up? must be from the yeast" -- keithlaw (keithlaw), 2022-04-15
"This is what you get when you combine Easter and Passover: The bread rises" -- James Harris (JamesHarrisNow), (link)
"But only after three days." -- Robert Woolley (robertwoolley), (link)
"Happy Yeaster" -- James Harris (JamesHarrisNow), (link)
"Why should this tweet be different from all other tweets?" -- Diana D., BA, MLS (LadyDianasVoice), (link)
"This graphic is as well thought out as your legislation." -- Andrew Elms (elmsandr), (link)
"The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
"The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
-- T.S. Eliot (b. 1888-09-26, d. 1965-01-04), from "East Coker" (1940)
[Chag Pesach Sameach to everyone starting Passover celebrations tonight, and belated Vaisakhi greetings to folks who celebrated that yesterday, and blessings to everyone observing Good Friday today. With Ramadan, Pesach, Vaisakhi, and Holy Week happening on top of each other, it's a lot going on all at once!]
"They like to say sunlight is the best disinfectant when passing records access laws, but the light that you can see isn't the thing that makes sunlight a disinfectant and being able to request records with no power to act is not sunlight, it is a little flashlight.
"Not to say that we shouldn't let in light. We also need to let in the usually invisible forces of UV radiation if you actually want to disinfect.
"My closest analogy for UV is tort law and administrative regulations, power you don't usually notice except in what doesn't happen.
"Like with the missing texts in Seattle, if you shine a light but don't have any unseen power moving with that light you instead just get to see deep infection and see how powerless you are to stop it."
-- Melissa Hall (CasualLaw), 2022-04-05
"Our world is not divided by race, color, gender, or religion. Our world is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, color, gender, or religion." -- mohamad safa (mhdksafa), 2020-08-06 (often misattributed to Nelson Mandela)
"Senate negotiators have agreed to a ten billion dollar Covid relief package, which will fund vaccines and treatments here in the US but won't include any funds for the global pandemic response. Here in the US we like our variants like our consumer electronics: created through needless suffering abroad." -- Jon Lovett, Lovett or Leave It, 2022-04-09 (~0:13:45)
"[...] I mean, what's the point in having strong belief if your theology harms people?
[...]
"This isn't theoretical: Holy Week is about to start, and that has been a time of terror for Jewish communities for a long, long time. Most antisemitic violence is rooted in the stories Christians tell about Jews.
"In the past week alone I have seen almost every antisemitic trope or conspiracy theory from history tweeted on this app. By professing Christians.
"But the worst and most vicious is the lie that 'the Jews' killed Christ.
"They did not. Romans did.
"And the stories suggesting Jewish responsibility were ahistorical polemical additions written at a time when the early Jesus movement felt embattled & threatened.
"That does not make it right. And after 2000 years of a massive power imbalance, repeating the lie is inexcusable.
"Every single Christian preacher and teacher has a responsibility to oppose antisemitic theology.
"Because what is the point of God's solidarity with us in Christ if we can't have solidarity with our fellow human beings?
"What is the point of Christ's resurrection to new life if our theology kills?
"WHAT IS THE POINT.
[...]
"There is no doctrine or creed worth betraying Christ's command to love and serve each other.
"Antisemitic violence is endemic in the US and it is rising fast.
"So I want my fellow Christians to tell me: which is more important? Is it more important to be able to believe in the accuracy of your story, or to protect the lives of actual human beings?
"Hateful Christian theology is being used to hurt so many people right now. If you truly follow Jesus' actual teachings, you need to oppose it everywhere, even in your own communities.
"For the sake of God's creation, & especially God's image & likeness in every human being."
-- Kellyann (Green_Mt_Girl), 2022-04-09 [Do click through and read the parts I snipped for brevity; it's still not very long even with those. I started seeing a huge surge in antisemitism using that trope as an excuse back on Ash Wednesday, and I dread how this week is going to be. Bearing in mind the need to watch out for antisemitism and actively combat it, I to wish a good Palm Sunday to everyone celebrating it.]
"I refuse to defend my thesis. It's never going to make it in this world if it doesn't learn to fight for itself" -- lost grad student (Drawrof1), 2022-04-04
"Some billion dollar exec sitting at his desk, doing whatever execs do.
Suddenly he stops, his blood runs cold, his face goes pale as if he's seen a ghost.
He then says aloud, with mounting horror:
'Millennials aren't killing industry...'
'Industry is killing Millennials!'"
-- Kemiro Sentai Kevinger (kemiroart), 2019-01-12
"It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable." -- David Brin, The Postman (1985, Bantam Books)
From "The Man Behind the Texas Abortion Ban Now Has an Even More Radical Plan to Reshape American Law" (subhead: "Jonathan Mitchell argues that old laws never really die, even when they’re struck down by courts.") by Amy Littlfield, Mother Jones, 2022-04-05:
Mitchell then made another argument that struck at the foundations of American law. He contended that court rulings-even those issued by the U.S. Supreme Court-are far less sweeping than mainstream legal experts believe. According to his "Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy" theory, courts don't have the power to broadly "strike down" or "erase" laws they think are unconstitutional. Even more radical, he claimed that a law could be enforced retroactively against people who violated the statute during the time period when it had been blocked.
Stone took issue with the entire premise of Mitchell's theory during a recent Federalist Society event at the University of Chicago. The law professor-who was a Supreme Court clerk when Roe was handed down-said in an interview that his former student's strategy "simply fails to understand the critical legal concept of precedent" that "our whole legal system is based on."
Jennifer Ecklund, an attorney who represents the abortion funds targeted by Mitchell, found the retroactivity idea especially troubling. It "undermines the entirety of our system of constitutional justice. And that's not hyperbole," she said. "For this theory to take hold and become commonplace would be a complete undoing of constitutional jurisprudence in the 20th century."
"I am seeing a trend to make frontend Dev work a 'female' discipline while the 'serious programming' stuff like backend and embedded as 'masculine' and I would like to say fuck that very much
"The impulse to construe social categories out of arbitrary delineations and then to label the one you inhabit as superior is trivially perceptible as problematic, yes?"
-- Anya (_Iyalei), 2022-04-04
"In 2000s we had 'Helpdesk jobs are for women'
In 2010s we had 'QA and testing are for women'
Now in 2020s it's 'frontend is for women'
"In 10 years it'll probably be 'interpreted languages are for women' or some bullshit like that
"At some point the only truly masculine thing left in IT will be x86 assembly"
-- Wolfgang (notthebeeee), replying to Anya
"The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of non-violent resistance. Like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy, the principle of non-violent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites -- the acquiescence and violence -- while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The non-violent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the non-resistance of the former and the violent resistance of the latter." -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (b. 1929-01-15, d. 1968-04-04), Stride Toward Freedom, 1958 [but see other analysis of under what conditions nonviolent resistance works]
"Living in a predominantly Muslim country, I never understood the importance of this month until I came to America. To me it served a different function than the one it does now, perhaps because I'm a different person now. Then, Ramadan was about family and food and the advent of Eid, a festival which happens the day after Ramadan ends.
"Nowadays, Ramadan is a bit different. I long for the community back home, I long for the happy iftars and the grumpy sehris which forced us to wake up in the middle of the night, stuff our faces and go back to sleep, hoping this last bit of food at sunrise would be enough to get us through sunset.
"While I long for those things, I understand how they could have overshadowed other purposes of this holy month - one of which is a spiritual cleanse. For the last few years, I have noticed that Ramadan seems to fall at the most opportune time for me. It is when I'm the most down, most lost, most in need of prayer and reflection that Ramadan arrives as a saving grace."
-- Zubia Hasan, "Reflecting on what Ramadan means to me", 2021-04-17
[Ramadan mubarak to everyone celebrating (and fasting) this month! Also a good Passion Sunday to everyone preparing for Easter, and of course a joyous Cheese Weasel Day to everyone in tech, or who has techies they're grateful for in their lives!]
"Achieving the state of SABLE [Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy] is not, as many people who live with these knitters believe, a reason to stop buying yarn, but for the knitter it is an indication to write a will, bequeathing the stash to an appropriate heir." -- Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
From "The majestic jackalope and how it became a folklore legend", The Current, CBC Radio, 2022-03-29 (summary + audio, 25 minutes) (transcript):
| Matt Galloway: (host) | Is the jackalope a hoax? Is it an urban legend, is it something in between? How do you define what it is? |
| Michael Branch: (author) | Well, I mean, as a cultural phenomenon, it's much more expansive. But if we're speaking just of the Jackalope Mount, it is a hoax. But I take pains in the book to make distinctions between a hoax and, say, a con in a con, for example. We want to rip somebody off. We want to get their money or their stuff, and the ideal Khan is one in which it's never exposed. It's a crime, essentially, but a hoax exists to be exposed. It doesn't work unless it's exposed. So to use the jackalope as an example, you know, many, many people who I interviewed said, Oh yeah, I remember when my grandfather used to show me the hoax mount he had in his basement, but I didn't know it was a hoax. He told me all these fabulous stories about it, and it was only later that I got brought into the community of people who knew better. So I love the way a hoax exists to produce pleasure. It exists to create humour. But it also exists to build community because it distinguishes the line between insiders and outsiders. And when you learn the secret, you get to be part of the group that knows better and then you get to help fool the next person. So I think in an era where you know, hoaxes have been associated with a lot of stuff, that's quite terrible. It's important to remember that the hoax has existed for millennia and that it plays a role that has a cultural function. And often that function is to help define in a humorous way these boundaries between communities. |
| Matt Galloway: | I was going to say, I mean, we'll get back to the Jackalope, but you've hinted at this in sort of a sea of social media misinformation, disinformation, what people call fake news, what's the role of the hoax and what's the place of the hoax? |
| Michael Branch: | Yeah, I think the place of the hoax for me is to sort of reclaim the idea that fooling each other for fun and good humour is still something that can produce pleasure. It can still be healthy. I think that, you know, we've kind of almost decided that when we imagine things, we're imagining falsehoods and that those things necessarily hurt other people. But I think, you know, the jackalope reminds us that we often need to operate in the realm of the imagination. There's a reason why every world culture has hybrid and imagined animals in its folklore. It's universal to human culture, and I think one of the reasons it is universal is, you know, we need our monsters, we need our invented animals because we need to believe that there's a world beyond what we struggle with every day when we roll out of bed. |
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