Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"An ideology of hate and rage cannot build a better society, cannot create a better world, even for itself. It can only destroy." -- Jim Wright (Stonekettle), 2022-01-06

"If conservatives cannot win in a democracy anymore they will not abandon conservativism they will abandon democracy" -- TwinCitiesSocialism, 2020-11-03

"The other day I searched up a couple random threads I did in early 2020 and clicked through the avis of some random people who replied I was being a doomer, and wrong, and exaggerating.

"Most of them are dead now.

"I was like 'heh I should remind him of when he assured me the death toll would peak at 100,000' and nope, dead. Click another, oops."

-- Anosognosiogenesis (pookleblinky), 2022-01-08

"So Einstein was wrong when he said, 'God does not play dice.' Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -- Stephen Hawking (b. 1942-01-08, d. 2018-03-14), during a debate with Roger Penrose in 1994

Protactile took root only when a group of DeafBlind leaders in Seattle decided to conduct meetings and workshops without any interpreters. DeafBlind community members were shocked by how well those events went, with participants communicating directly and rotating from cluster to cluster. This success emboldened us to break many taboos related to touch, including touching one another's bodies instead of just moving our hands in the air. A grammar soon developed to coordinate all that contact. A new language was born. It's no accident that this explosion occurred when we took a break from the most prevalent manifestation of access in our midst: ASL interpreters." -- John Lee Clark, "Against Access", McSweeney's, September 2021 [expect to see more quotes from this article later -- there's a lot in it.]

Today is:
Gregorian: 2022 January 07 -- Distaff Day
Julian: 2021 December 25 -- first day of Christmas
Hebrew: 5782 Shevat 05
Islamic: 1443 Jumada al-Thani 03
Persian: 1400 Dey 17
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.9.3.4
Indian (civil): 1943 Pausa 17
Coptic: 1738 Koiak 29 -- first day of Christmas
Today is also the 110th birthday of cartoonist Charles Addams.

"The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." -- Eden Phillpotts (b. 1862-11-04, d. 1960-12-29), A Shadow Passes (1918) -- link directly to the page the line is on [Note that this quotation is frequently misattributed to either W.B. Yeats or Bertrand Russell. See the Quote Investigator page discussing it.]

A blessed Epiphany / Three Kings Day or Theophany to folks celebrating either of those today! And a happy Christmas Eve to old-calendar Orthodox Christians! (I'm sure several of my friends will also want to note thaat it is the 956th anniversary of the coronation of Harold Godwinson, King Harold II of England.)

Mx Jen Durbent (JenDurbent), 2022-01-03:

"The world is cruel, so we must be cruel," is a weird way to say you just want to be cruel instead of making the world better.

[Today is the last day of Christmas for Western Christians and new-calendar Orthodox. I hope everybody who celebrates has had a good Christmastide.]

"I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot of land that's good for nothing but grazing." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

[Earth was at perihelion at 1:55 EST (6:55 UT) this morning, the closest it'll be to the sun all year.]

"I'll no say, men are villains a':
 The real, harden'd wicked,
 Wha hae nae check but human law,
 Are to a few restricked;
 But, och! Mankind are unco weak
 An' little to be trusted;
 If Self the wavering balance shake,
 It's rarely right adjusted!
 
 Yet they wha fa' in Fortune's strife,
 Their fate we should na censure;
 For still, th' important end of life
 They equally may answer:
 A man may hae an honest heart,
 Tho' poortith hourly stare him;
 A man may tak a neebor's part,
 Yet hae nae cash to spare him."
  -- Robert Burns (b. 2759-01-26, d. 1796-07-21), from Epistle To A Young Friend

Today is: Gregorian: 2022 January 03 -- the tenth day of Christmas, 130th birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien
Julian: 2021 December 21
Hebrew: 5782 Shevat 01
Islamic: 1443 Jumada I-Ula 29
Persian: 1400 Dey 13
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.9.3.0
Indian (civil): 1943 Pausa 13
Coptic: 1738 Koiak 26

Ruth Pearce (NotRightRuth), 2021-11-19:

Quite offended that Times are blaming Stonewall for numerous trans and feminist adjustments that make staff and students' life easier at Warwick uni.

That was not Stonewall, it was the work of students and staff over many many years.

Elaine Scattermoon (scattermoon), quote-tweeting Ruth Pearce:

It's really quite sad seeing the media try and make Stonewall responsible for all trans progress in this country in their attempt to paint them as the sinister villains behind trans rights, especially given Stonewall themselves were an obstacle towards that until the mid 2010s.

Ultimately they want to make transness seem a top-down conspiracy rather than a grassroots community because if they acknowledged the latter they'd realise both that they're attacking vulnerable people not powerful organisations, and that they're trying to fight the tide.

Halcyon Ember (HalcyonEmber), replying to Elaine Scattermoon:

Good job there's no historical precedent for minority communities presented as a secretly powerful organisation

"You can lie to anyone in the world and even get away with it, perhaps, but when you are alone and look into your own eyes in the mirror, you can't sidestep the truth. Always be sure you can meet those eyes directly." -- Betty White (b. 1922-01-17, d. 2021-12-31), If You Ask Me (2011)

[Wishing everyone a happy Gregorian New Year despite yesterday's sad news. May 2022 suck a lot less!]

"Sic loquendum esse cum hominibus, tanquam dii audiant; sic loquendum cum hominibus, tanquam homines audiant." -- Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (5th century, CE), Saturnalia

"We should so speak with men as though the Gods were listening, and so speak with the Gods as though men were listening."

"The premise behind the spectacle is that candidates win by competing for those not sure of whether they are for or against civil rights, tax cuts for the rich, and so on. Yet much evidence suggests that political organizations benefit most from motivating those who already agree with them, and that the Democrats in particular find the most success by pursuing people who don't know whether they'll vote, rather than how they'll vote. This means reaching constituents who, historically, have been less likely to go to the polling booth: the poor, the young, the non-white. Republicans know this, which is why they've worked hard to perfect voter suppression tactics that target those populations.

"Nevertheless, centrist Democrats often go wooing those who don't support them, thereby betraying those who do. It's as though you ditched not only your congregation but your credo in the hope of making inroads among believers of some other faith. You think you're recruiting; really, you're losing your religion. This has been true with welfare 'reform,' with the war on terror, with economic policy, with the fantasy of winning over 'the white working class': time and again, misguided attempts to bring in new voters have offended existing constituencies."

-- Rebecca Solnit, "Preaching to The Choir", Harper's Magazine, November 2017

"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." -- Elizabeth Zimmerman

"I've droned on endlessly about how you can't expect normal people to use the command line. That's what Alexa is. If you don't say the precise invocation correctly, you get an error.

"And because there's no display, you have to remember dozens of different commands. It's too hard"

-- Terence Eden (edent), 2021-12-24

"you want the computer from Star Trek, but you get Zork instead" -- mincemeat pizza commissions: open! (frostyplum), replying to Terence Eden

"This family has no outsiders. Everyone is an insider. When Jesus said, 'I, if I am lifted up, will draw...' Did he say, 'I will draw some'? 'I will draw some, and tough luck for the others'? He said, 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all.' All! All! All! - Black, white, yellow; rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful. All! All! It is radical. All! Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Bush - all! All! All are to be held in this incredible embrace. Gay, lesbian, so-called 'straight;' all! All! All are to be held in the incredible embrace of the love that won't let us go." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu (b. 1931-10-07, d. 2021-12-26), "And God Smiles" (sermon), 2005-11-06

"Christians often focus on marriage as the most important relationship in a person's life. But here's the thing: Jesus never got married. The primary mode of relationship that the perfect human being lived in was friendship. We should probably take friendship more seriously.

"This is not to denigrate marriage. Marriage is profoundly important, the primary picture of God's faithfulness to the church, an antidote to the unrooted and fruitless nature of modern society. But friendship is at the root of even that relationship. It deserves more thought.

"We certainly shouldn't treat marriage less seriously, but we should treat friendship more seriously."

-- Joy Marie Clarkson (joynessthebrave), 2019-01-08 [and yes, I realize not all marriages are as friendly as they ought to be, alas]

Today is Wren Day, the sixth day of Yule, the second day of Christmas (Boxing Day¹, St. Stephen's Day, Synaxis of the Theotokos for new-calendar Orthodox), the first day of Kwanzaa, the 230th birthday of Charles Babbage, the 150th anniversary of the debut of the debut of the first Gilbert & Sullivan collaboration, and the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

¹Wikipedia notes "In recent years, the day after Christmas Day, 26 December, is termed 'Boxing Day' even when this falls on Sunday, though traditionally Monday 27 December would be Boxing Day" [when the 26th is a Sunday], and a quick check of news articles about Boxing Day this year all said it was today. Google Calendar shows today, tomorrow and the 28th as being Boxing Day for different places.

From "Meditations On A Telephone Girlhood" by Emmeryn Cariglino (mutabletuple), New Session, issue 2, Winter 2021:

In our own moment, we have become accustomed to a level of immediacy in our communications - almost saturated by means of immediate contact - in ways that our Illinois Bell salesman could hardly imagine. One can pick up a glass rectangle and see someone else's face, hear their voice, or, if one desires, engage in a kind of light-speed hypertext telegraphy unbound from the plodding delay of the courier or the constraint of the Baudot character set.

["Somehow, you say more with that goddamn heart emoji than I do with a whole monograph of affections," I write, to my lover, much more capable of brevity than I, which is one hell of a thing to admit in a manuscript. From the moment they read it in an early draft of this, they haven't stopped using it, and it hasn't stopped meaning.]

New Session is a retro-tech magazine meant to be read via telnet to http://issue2.anewsession.com, but there is, helpfully, also a web interface (an in-browser telnet client for issue 2, that plus also a set of web pages for issue 1. (HTML version of issue 2 probably in January.)

Happy first day of Christmas, to everyone who celebrates it today! (I.e. folks in Western and New Calendar Orthodox churches and most of the folks who celebrate the holy day in a non-religious way.) Gaudete! Christos est natus! May the Christmas season bring you joy!

And a happy Newtonmas to folks who celebrate the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, instead of or alongside the first day of Christmas!

"This Christmas, allow the sacred dark to nurture a seed of hope. Allow the reflective silence to give your heart the space to open. Allow the great stories to draw you into communities where healing in personal ways and societal ways can be learned. May the Eternal continue to surprise us, and may we find in the rituals and songs of this season the inspiration to do something different." -- Rev. Lyn Cox, 2017-12-24

"We often say that God is on the side of the oppressed and marginalized. It's important to parse that out a bit.

"When we say God is with the oppressed, that God is in suffering, it's not that suffering makes your more holy, it's that God is still there with you, on your side

"God wants you to get free. There is divine power in getting free.

"The goal isn't for us to suffer more to be holier or feel closer to God... the goal is to get more of us free!"

-- Brian (ThisIsBGM) of Brian & Shay | QueerTheology.com (QTheology), 2021-12-16 [This is about half the thread, so if you want to click through for the rest it won't take long at all.]