Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Time for your annual reminder that, according to A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit makes 15 shillings a week. Adjusted for inflation, that's $530.27/wk, $27,574/yr, or $13.50/hr.

"Most Americans on minimum wage earn less than a Dickensian allegory for destitution."

-- Chris Thompson (DrChrisThompson), 2021-12-17

[Note folks in the replies arguing for using different conversions that significantly increase or decrease Cratchit's salary in modern-equivalent money -- as well as questioning the 40 hours/week assumption built into that hourly rate calculation.]

"The stakes for LGBTQ+ Americans are still high. Jonathan Mitchell, one of the architects of SB 8, Texas' draconian six-week abortion ban, filed an amicus brief in Dobbs on behalf of Texas Right to Life, inviting the court to overrule not only Roe v. Wade but also Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe in 1992. Notably, however, the brief also invites the court to reverse Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2003 and 2015 decisions that decriminalized sodomy and granted marriage equality, respectively.

[...]

"The connection between abortion rights and access and LGBTQ+ rights was clear back when I was defending patients in front of clinics, and it should be clear to us now.

"It's about who gets autonomy over their body. Who is granted access to the health care they need. Which citizens and denizens get rights. Whose safety matters. Who gets agency. Who has power. Who is in control. Who decides what freedom is. Who gets dignity. Who gets wholeness. Whose life counts. Who is disposable. Who decides. Who is decided for."

-- Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (TheRaDR), "Why Mississippi’s anti-abortion law is also an assault on LGBTQ+ rights", 2021-12-01, Religion News Service (RNS)

[Today is the first day of Yule, which runs through 1 January. It is also Frank Zappa's birthday, and the winter solstice.]

Today is Gregorian: 2021 December 21 -- winter solstice, first day of Yule, fifth day of Saturnalia, birthday of Frank Zappa
Julian: 2021 December 08
Hebrew: 5782 Teveth 17
Islamic: 1443 Jumada al-awwal 16
Persian: 1400 Azae 30
Mayan: 0.0.0.13.0.9.2.7
Indian: 1943 Agrahayana 30
Coptic: 1738 Koiak 12

"Vivek Sankaran, the director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic at the University of Michigan, said jury trials can sometimes work in favor of parents in CPS cases because it takes the decision away from solely the judge. 'In some ways, it makes a lot of sense to me because the definitions of neglect and abuse are so broad that community norms and standards are important to interject,' Sankaran said.

"But there are drastic differences in the way CPS operates in big cities, which see a much higher volume of cases, and rural towns, where there can be greater scrutiny of minor infractions. Tiny Clare County reports confirmed abuse and neglect at nearly double the rate of the state's most populous county, Wayne, which encompasses Detroit. And in cases involving a child with gender variance, community bias - particularly in communities that are just beginning to navigate these issues - can affect the outcome. Katee's second trial took place four months after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016; he received 64 percent of the vote in Clare. 'One of the most significant effects of the Trump election is the boldness with which people are willing to express their anti-transgender beliefs,' said Orr, Katee's attorney. 'And we saw that, I think most starkly, initially in the increase in custody disputes involving trans kids.'"

-- from "She Supported Her Child Being Trans. So the State Separated Them. Is the case of Katee Churchill just the beginning?" by Roxanna Asgarian, New York Magazine, 2021-12-15 [bold emphasis added]

"December has often been marked by the flurry of getting more baking done, rushing to the mall before the sales end, and the looming Dec. 25 deadline-that's what Christmas can feel like: a shopping deadline. What if I don't have an equal number of presents? What if they sell out of that must-have toy? What if I run out of money before I finish buying for everyone on my list?

"For all our 'Jesus is the Reason for the Season' sentiments, we tend to do what we most value. Some years I think I must have most valued being busy. Doing the most. Social media only adds to that pressure to perform, and perform in picture-worthy ways. But suddenly that expectation has vanished. No one will expect proof of large, stylish gatherings this year. Quite the opposite.

[...]

"How we feel about canceled parties and limited travel will reveal a lot about what we value most. Some sorrow over not being able to carry out all of our traditions is natural. But rather than mourning your way through a disappointing December, why not use the opportunity it offers to take measure of what's most important to you?"

-- Candice Watters, 2020-11-27

[I imagine many more people planned Christmas gatherings this year than last, with vaccinations and all, but I also imagine it's fewer than in pre-pandemic years, and that some of the planned gatherings will get cancelled or scaled down in the face of recent surges in delta and the threat of omicron -- we're still mid-pandemic, we have not yet established a new normal nor gotten a really clear picture of what the new normal after this will be.]

'Tis the fourth Sunday of Advent; the first of the twelve days of Christmas draws near!

"jewwhohasitall I saw some cookies today advertised as 'assorted holiday cookies.' It's so early to put out Purim items, isn't it?" -- (((Amanda Pompili))) (amanda_pompili), 2021-12-15

"It's so weird when we move straight from Hanukkah to Purim (um, hello?! Tu B'Shvat is right around the corner!!) but I can't complain about holiday cookies!

"Did they have poppy seed, lekvar, and apricot? (My top three favorite fillings.)"

-- Jew Who Has It All (JewWhoHasItAll), responding to Amanda Pompili

[Jew Who Has It All inhabits a universe in which Judaism is the dominant religion and Christianity is the "we want to be/seem inclusive but we get a lot wrong about it (and too often forget to take its holidays into account when planning)" minority religion. So the point is mocking-by-inverting the kinds of oversights and misunderstandings and confident-but-wrong explanations Christians (and atheists and apathists with Christian backgrounds) often have regarding Judaism. Alas, a few Christians have interpreted this, especially the Christmas-themed tweets, as attacking our faith instead of merely parodying our too-frequent cluelessness about theirs. See also, this thread: "Your First Christmas Party Invitation: A Guide for the Perplexed". Meanwhile, another Twitter account, Jewsplainer (JWhoKnowsItAll), provides footnotes and explanations for some of Jew Who Has It All's tweets. I get 98% of it on my own, but I'm really glad Jewsplainer is there for the rest.]

Not related but still related, a cool Judaism Quiz by Shammai (ShammaiIntl): "This is just for fun. My goal is to stump people who think they know about Judaism, but don't." (I scored 26/32.)

"The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life." -- Robert Morrison MacIver

[Today is the start of Saturnalia, which runs through 23 December.]

"As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song 'American Pie.' I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. I dedicated the album American Pie to Buddy Holly as well in order to connect the entire statement to Holly in hopes of bringing about an interest in him, which subsequently did occur.

"This brings me to my point. Casey Kasem never spoke to me and none of the references he confirms my making were made by me. You will find many 'interpretations' of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn't this fun?

"Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence."

-- Don McLean (b. 1945-10-02), writing to Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope May 1993

["American Pie" was released fifty years ago, in 1971. The 'calendar' program says it was released 16 December but Wikipedia says it was in October, so I'm not sure where the December date comes from. Note that contrary to his 1993 message, McLean did reveal more about the song's meaning in 2015]

"The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision." -- David Boies

[US Bill of Rights ratified 1791-12-15]

"Please be gentle with elder goths and elder former goths/goth-adjacent folks today as we deal with a confusion of feelings including sadness at the loss of an icon of our youth and relief that she won't be embarrassing us anymore." -- Shepherd (NeolithicSheep), 2021-12-12, regarding the death of Anne Rice (b. 1941-10-04, d. 2021-12-11)

[To everyone observing Asara B'Tevet, may you have an easy fast.]

Over on Twitter, Jew Who Has It All (@JewWhoHasItAll) Posted a brilliant thread explaining Christmas the way Christians sometimes try to explain Jewish holidays to each other, which a lot of people have replied to staying in the context of the satire, and I think a lot o people will find it funny, a useful exercise in seeing dominant culture through a different lens (de-centering it), or both. And a few people will find it uncomfortable and get mad at, because there's always a few.

(Fortunately there's also a Twitter account, @JWhoKnowsItAll, that explains things @JewWhoHasItAll says that might need explaining -- I failed to catch that the reason for "yellow and white— the colors of Christianity" was a reference to the Vatican flag.)

The last tweet of the original thread directs to a fake website (which I do hope actually gets built) to look up when Christian holidays fall on the Hebrew calendar:

Check http://GregCal.com if you need to know the exact number. It is also a good resource for other Christian holiday dates since they move around so much from year to year, and it doesn't even coincide with a new moon.

And that reminded me of a conversation with a Jewish friend a few years ago, who remarked on a conversation she'd recently had with another friend, who asked what date Christmas was on, that year.

"The 25th, just like every year."

"It's the same every year?! How do they do that?"

And of course, it's exactly the same as Purim always being on the 14th of Adar, or Hanukkah being on the 25th of Kislev.

It's just that the Civil calendar, the "secular" calendar ... is actually the Christian calendar, not some neutral thing separate from religion.

It's so entrenched that even people w/ different religious calendars can forget it isn't neutral, but Christian privilege (largely resulting from historical violence) that everybody else is stuck using ours for so many things.

Others' holidays don't 'jump around on the calendar'; the calendars themselves shift around relative to each other. And once in a while it's probably good to be reminded of that.

I'll close with another line from @JewWhoHasItAll's thread that I enjoyed:

The traditional greeting is "Merry Christmas" or sometimes "Seasons Greetings." If you forget, a simple "Chag Sameach" is never wrong.

"But make no mistake: In voting to submit the report to the president neither of us cast a vote of confidence in the Supreme Court itself. Sadly, we no longer have that confidence, given three things: first, the dubious legitimacy of the way some justices were appointed; second, what Justice Sonia Sotomayor rightly called the 'stench' of politics hovering over this court's deliberations about the most contentious issues; and third, the anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian direction of this court's decisions about matters such as voting rights, gerrymandering and the corrupting effects of dark money.

"Those judicial decisions haven't been just wrong; they put the court - and, more important, our entire system of government - on a one-way trip from a defective but still hopeful democracy toward a system in which the few corruptly govern the many, something between autocracy and oligarchy. Instead of serving as a guardrail against going over that cliff, our Supreme Court has become an all-too-willing accomplice in that disaster."

-- Nancy Gertner (ngertner) and Laurence H. Tribe (tribelaw), "Opinion: The Supreme Court isn’t well. The only hope for a cure is more justices", Washington Post, 2021-12-09

"the variety in God's creation emphasizes God's creativity as an artist. Genesis gives us several examples of this.

"God made 'day and night.' this sounds like a binary, similar to 'male and female,' right?

"that isn't quite all we experience in 24 hours. sunrises and sunsets do not fit into the binary of day or night. yet God paints the skies with these too.

[...]

"God also said 'Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.'

"that isn't the full story, either. consider marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. not fully land, not fully waters. there is such glorious variety in God's creation.

[...]

"does all this variety invalidate God as creator? of course not!

[...] "we see the author in Genesis give examples of the extremes that God creates. It doesn't exclude the possibility of more.

"and so we worship the God of more. The God of the marsh, the penguin, the God of the sunrise, the cloud, the supernovae. The God of the nonbinary."

-- Michaela Nicole (michaelaatencio), on how nonbinary people fit into Creation, 2021-06-01 [Read the whole thread. It's pretty. And perspective-ful.]

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, for Western churches.

RevDaniel (RevDaniel), 2021-12-03:

Walking Chester. 2 teenage boys walking to school ahead of us.

Boy 1: You haven't been jabbed yet?
Boy 2: Well, some people say it's bad for you.
Boy 1: Oh fuck. They used to say you'd go blind if you whacked off. ARE YOU BLIND JAROD?

I haven't stopped laughing all morning.

I so needed that.
Thank you Jarod and very blunt friend.

"The culture war literature from the '90s and '00s involved lot of predictions that feminism and gay rights would usher in an era of uniform, genderless androgyny. Now, in 2021, the same writers are mad about the sheer variety of gender expressions they see around them." -- Becca Lewis (beccalew), 2021-12-02

"At present, we're putting on paper a lot of stuff that never needed to be on paper. We do need to keep the records. But there isn't any reason for printing them. The next generation growing up with the computers will change that." -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (b. 1906-12-09, d. 1992-01-01)

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war-for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." -- John Lennon (b. 1940-10-09, d. 1980-12-08)

"Boss makes a dollar
 I make a dime
 That's why my algorithms
 Run in exponential time.

"Realising I could've made it better by saying factorial time, but this works too"

-- 100 rats (TheRatttGang), 2021-11-08 [Some good followup verses in the replies, too.]

"They err who think Santa Claus enters through the chimney. He enters through the heart." -- Charles W. Howard

[It's interesting that I see a couple of quotes being attributed to Saint Nicholas himself, considering that Wikipedia says, "Any writings Nicholas himself may have produced have been lost," which ... well, might be a shame, or might be for the best, depending on whether what he did write would measure up to the myth created around him over the nearly 1700 years since -- who we want/need him to be/have been. In any case, a happy St. Nicholas' Day to everyone who celebrates it on the Gregorian calendar! (Or a couple weeks hence for old-calendar Orthodox folks.)]

I was going to look for an Advent quote or a Hanukkah quote for today, but I decided this was just to perfect to save for later.

"You can have an adventure whenever you want. It's all around you. You just need to follow it." -- Allison Robicelli (robicellis), 2021-12-04 (and yes, you'll enjoy the thread that led to this statement.)

[Anyhow, tonight is the eighth candle of Hanukkah and today is the second Sunday of Advent, so cheers to everyone celebrating either!]

From Micro SF/F stories (MicroSFF), 2021-12-03:

"How did you find us? Radio?"
"Radio dissipates," the alien ambassador said, "telepathy doesn't."
"You heard our thoughts?"
"When enough of you focus on the same words, with passion, we sense it."
"So a prayer or anthem?"
"We don't know. It begins with: 'Is this the real life?'."