[prettyboychik]

I love cheetahs (and Big Cats, but cheetahs especially) and always appreciate being sent / tagged on posts about them 💛 🐆

I tend to not tag triggers when reblogging things, more likely (not guaranteed) to trigger tag original posts. Just a heads up.

עם ישראל חי

[unsolicited-opinions]

This is kinda a follow up to your previously answered anon. I also found your blog a couple months or so ago now and have read through several of your posts. While you (and others) have made me reconsider previous stances and have changed my mind on several key factors about the I/P conflict, admittedly there is a lot that i still wrestle with and somewhat disagree with. That being said, I do respect and appreciate your throughness and moral consistency which i find incredibly refreshing. So to continue with this wrestling of thoughts, I'd like to ask what resources you use in your own research. I have followed a few links of your more academic/historcal sources and have found them behind paywalls or to just be snippets of a larger text (as in the case with book previews). I know the most basic thing is to start with a history textbook but those tend to be vauge and lack nuance. Additionally, what online news sources do you use/trust since the MSM is untrustworthy. I find myself lost often in a maze of confusion and contradiction. Again, thanks for what you've done on this page, there are a lot of people out there who could stand to read through it and learn something.

While you (and others) have made me reconsider previous stances and have changed my mind on several key factors about the I/P conflict, admittedly there is a lot that i still wrestle with and somewhat disagree with.

Good!

You should be skeptical. You should wrestle with things that don't sit right with you. You should disagree - and you should do so with facts and reasoning! You're Doing It Right, Anon!

(Please consider sharing some of your disagreements, okay? There's nothing I like better than constructive disagreement.)

I'd like to ask what resources you use in your own research.

I was, decades ago, a librarian.

Librarians are trained to take what may seem like an odd position on information: it's all information.

It might be accurate, it might be sloppy, it might be biased, and it might be dishonest...

...but even dishonest propaganda can tell you important things about the time/place/person who produced it.

I don't rule out any source. Al Jazeera English, even while lying, tells you a great deal about what Qataar wants anglophonic people to think. Ha'aretz tells you a great deal about what the international left wants to hear.

All sources have some value - the work of understanding the context and intent of each is on you.

I have followed a few links of your more academic/historcal sources and have found them behind paywalls or to just be snippets of a larger text (as in the case with book previews).

When I wrote for academic publications, I'd produce the citation and move on - that's how academic publishing works. The reader can verify with or without a librarian's help, and the burden is on them to confirm the cited work actually supports the assertion - but most readers were in my field and were familiar with the works I cited.

Writing for non-academics on social media on topics most readers have barely studied is a different thing entirely.

I don't want to assert something and ask readers to trust that the citation supports it, or require them to go hunting for it if another option is available.

We've all seen the dishonest tactic (on Wikipedia and elsewhere) where the writer makes a claim the cited source doesn't actually support. So I try to find sources I can link to with the explicit supporting text visible.

Sometimes it'll be excerpted in a book review. Sometimes I manage to link a pirated copy. Sometimes I'll snag a screencap or snap a photo of a source. When I can, I post links that bypass paywalls. Sometimes a DOI link is the best I can do.

It's all imperfect, but it's better than "trust me, bro" ...which is appallingly the norm right now.

We all need to be more skeptical. Read the links. Check the citations. Require sources for factual assertions. Linking things that are immediately checkable helps builds trust - and if I want readers to see me as credible, nothing matters more than that.

That being said, I do respect and appreciate your throughness and moral consistency which i find incredibly refreshing.

That's more important to me than agreement - thank you. I'm not always right, but I'd like to always be trustworthy.

...what online news sources do you use/trust since the MSM is untrustworthy.

I use all of them. I trust none of them.

Bias is inescapable. I think humans learn from and are driven primarily by narrative - and narrative will always have a perspective. Bias isn't a bug, it's a feature - and it isn't your enemy.

From a previous post on Bias:

You don't need to trust a source completely to learn something from it. In fact, the most valuable sources are often obviously biased. 1. Identify the Bias Before even reading, know what kind of outlet you're dealing with. Look at its about page, ownership, funding/revenue model, recurring columnists, and core audience. Does it lean left? Right? Is it globalist? Nationalist? Religious? Secular? Knowing this lets you anticipate the angle and spot distortions more easily. The more you do it, the easier it gets. After a little practice, you'll see clearly (for example) the huge right wing bias of the Jerusalem Post, the huge left wing bias of Ha'aretz, and how The Times of Israel is mostly pretty disciplined (in their news gathering and framing) about minimizing left/right political biases. None of these three is perfect, but seeing their usual, institutional biases lets you read them against each other. 2. Use It for Contrast Biased outlets often highlight stories others avoid or ignore. Fox News may underplay climate change but overplay immigration crime. Al Jazeera will underplay Hamas human rights abuses but spotlight in depth the most embarrassing moments in Israeli politics. The Jerusalem Post will underplay corruption charges against Netanyahu and spotlight the most depraved behaviors committed in the name of Hamas. Use this to your advantage. Compare coverage across ideological lines. The contrast tells you volumes about outfit AND audience. 3. Look for Hard Facts Don't quote the adjectives. Quote the data. What happened? When? Where? Who said it? What did the video actually show? Stop taking an analyst's word as truth - see it as a lens to try on at look at the facts through. If the lens helps it make sense, put it in your back pocket for later use. Strip away the spin, extract the structure. 4. Cross-Reference Across Angles Treat each biased source as one side of a triangle. To understand the shape of a thing, you need multiple sides. Balance a left-wing story with a right-wing one. Add an international perspective. Compare them. Over time, you start seeing the shape of the event instead of the biases of each outfit.

It's time consuming and it's hard work - but it's worth doing.

If you like, you can check out the Signal > Noise tag for bite-size lessons in media literacy.

...since the MSM is untrustworthy.

"Mainstream Media," is too broad a term to be meaningful.

There are charlatans and truth-tellers everywhere. We should trust people based on their records of intellectual honesty and responsible journalistic behavior.

I think the NYT has become a sloppy, lazy, ideologically bent advocacy operation instead of a source of journalism, but there are still things to learn from the NYT and there are still people working there whose voices are worth hearing.

I'm not going to assume everything in its pages is shit.

The world just isn't that simple.

Embrace complexity. Read and listen to smart, honest people with whom you disagree. It's time consuming, challenging, and often annoying - but it'll let you see the world far more clearly than splitting all information sources into a false binary of "trustworthy" and "deceptive."

Read everything - skeptically and critically.

There really aren't any shortcuts.

[wowbright]

I often have people asking me about reliable sources for factual information. This post captures why I have such a difficult time answering that question. Because the skill that people need to learn is not, "who / what is always trustworthy?" but rather "how can I learn to separate factual information from non-factual information regardless of a sources general trustworthiness?" Because, let's face it, no one is trustworthy 100% of the time, if by trustworthy you mean "factual and unbiased." I'm not, you are not, and our most hated and beloved media sources are not. That's part of being human. Even when we're well intentioned, we have limited perspectives. The key is learning to identify limitations in our own perspectives and limitations in the perspectives of others. That tells us what information we might be missing and can guide us in finding it.

[unsolicited-opinions]

YES.

@wowbright makes me realize how prolix my writing is

[housederiva]

My housemate's cat came into my room while my dictation was on...

[unamusedsloth]

“Vicious” Leopard seal tries to keep national geographic photographer alive by feeding him penguins.

[bendablebananas]

@maculategiraffe tags

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

insane that we aren't taught about sleep in school. like 75% of people in my country report poor sleep and we don't spend one biology class learning about it? here's what I've learnt from a variety of sleep courses:

your body does pretty much all it's physical rest and repair processes ('stage 4') in the first 4 hours of sleep, so if you've slept for four hours, congratulations the essentials of your physical health are taken care of

the part of the sleep cycle that takes care of your brain and mental health (REM) happens later in the night, hence why waking up too early makes you brain foggy, and why it's so helpful to train yourself to wake up about the same time every morning

we are evolved to wake up several times in the night; we don't usually remember it, but worry and fixation can make us more likely to remember these

sleep under the influence of alcohol is chemically altered and not effective no matter if it helps you sleep - it's fine to have a drunken night of course but don't use alcohol as a sleep aid to 'knock yourself out', being drunk unconscious is not sleep

the best thing you can do for your sleep is follow a routine; go to bed and wake up at the same time most days, and have a 'wind down' routine, preferably including writing down whatever's on your mind to clear it before sleep

for long-term sleep improvement, it's better to wake up at your planned time regardless of sleep quality than to get a full nights' sleep

missing a night of sleep is NOT the disaster certain scaremonger-y sleep 'experts' will tell you - 'slept debt' does NOT exist and you will recover from a missed night of sleep within a few days of normal sleep

meditation is the best alternative to sleep if you're either unable to sleep or feeling the urge to nap (napping is bad for sleep!) - guided ones can help you not to fall asleep, but literally just lying there with your eyes closed and thinking about something neutral is good

acceptance is the best way to alleviate insomnia; do something else, use meditation to supplement that rest, and accept that you aren't sleeping (often, ironically, this will cause you to fall asleep)

TL;DR: DON'T LISTEN TO THE FEARMONGERS! poor sleep isn't killing you it's okay to miss some sleep! just make sure you're resting when tired and trying to stick to a routine of night time rest

[jewish-rock]

...can I admit something controversial?

I kinda hate the trend of new buildings having gender neutral single stall bathrooms.

hear me out on this for a sec bc i promise this argument is better than it sounds. i love gender neutral bathrooms. I love single stall bathrooms. they both have their use cases and every single building should have at least one (bonus points if it has adult changing table and the like!!)

the problem is, these new buildings only offer single stall bathrooms. this is great for privacy, disabled people, or families, but it also means the space that could hold like 6 normal stalls and an accessible stall is restricted to 2-3 full-size single-toilet bathrooms.

secondly, however much of a problem it is for abled people to turn the wheelchair accessible stalls into "watch tiktoks on my phone" or wtvr, it is just as bad with the single-toilet bathrooms, in addition to adding the type of abled people who think the bathroom exists to "have sex here bc it's completely private and locked".

the additional problem being, since all the sinks and stuff are in the bathroom too, the turnover rate is generally slower. and for some reason, being in a private bathroom turns even the most respectful abled pisser into a 10 minute toilet user.

in effect, unless a bathroom is already available when I arrive, my disabled incontinent nonbinary ass has to wait at least 5 minutes to use the fucking bathroom. far more if there's a line. im trying not to shit my pants while you're scrolling instagram. fuck off.

and, i can use the larger stall of a multi-stall bathroom - I need a place for my mobility aids, and the grab bars for balance - but very few places have gender neutral multi stall bathrooms, and im too obviously genderqueer looking to feel comfortable in a gendered bathroom. so i have to use the single stalls, but when there are no gendered bathrooms either, every single person ever also has to use the single stalls, and they have no respect for the other people in line for the bathroom.

anyway my ideal public restroom setup is a large gender-neutral multi-stall bathroom with several normal size and larger accessible stalls, as well as 1-2 single stall bathrooms, with adult-rated changing tables and other accessibility features.

and every single stall door should have fucking hooks. because fuck you, I need some place to hang my stuff.

[1000-life-hacks]

[archeologist-prophet]

Lovely to see we have spaces where you can gain access to so much literature!

[gaelic-symphony]

You’re not being a good ally to Jews if all you ever do is defend us from accusations of being Zionists without ever pushing back on the idea that Zionist is inherently a bad thing to be. Sure, a very small percentage of Jews identify as antizionist and hold anti-Israel views, but the vast majority of us who don’t also don’t deserve to be vilified for supporting our people’s right to self-determination in our indigenous ancestral homeland. You don’t have to be a Zionist or support Zionism or Israel yourself, but believing that all forms of Zionism are inherently evil or inherently racist/imperialist IS in fact a form of antisemitism.

[hidingoutbackstage]

women in stem (synagogue, torah, education, and minyan)

[embrace-of-the-cold]

[hidingoutbackstage]

women in stem (synagogue, torah, education, and minyan)

[illegitimatetenenbaum]

Reblogging Zionistically. ✌🏻

[prettyboychik]

in prince of egypt they should’ve had g-d be voiced by all the hebrews speaking at the same time, with yocheved’s voice the loudest and i will die on this hill

[jewreallythinkthat]

I've read this year's JVP anti-zionist hagaddah and once again, it's a treasure trove of utter shite.

Highlights include:

1. NOT TELLING THE STORY OF THE EXODUS

2. Re-writing the four questions, dayenu and Let My People Go

3. Promoting someone who glorified October 7th

4. A couple of pages about BDS (as expected)

5. The complete and utter separation of the seder from the Passover story. Their Seder is as Jewish as a Christian Seder.

[theres-a-hole-in-my-wall]

For 5? They LITERALLY QOUTED THE CHRISTIAN BIBILE ???

[edensmidian]

In 2004, a journalist named Asieh Amini came across a story from a small town in northern Iran.

A 16-year-old girl named Atefeh Sahaaleh had been publicly hanged.

The official charge: "acts incompatible with chastity."

The reality, which Amini uncovered through careful, dangerous investigation: Atefeh had been repeatedly raped by a neighbor and other men beginning when she was nine years old. She had been neglected by her family and paid to keep silent — money she used simply to survive. At 13, Iran's morality police arrested her. A judge sentenced her to one hundred lashes. Under Iranian law, a woman could be sentenced to lashings three times — the fourth offense carried the death penalty.

She was 16 when they hanged her.

Amini wrote the story. Her newspaper refused to publish it. Another paper refused as well. A women's publication finally agreed to run an edited version.

She kept going.

Born in 1973 in the Mazandaran province of northern Iran — one of four sisters who spent their childhood painting, reading, and playing outdoors — Amini had built her career as a journalist through the brief flowering of press freedom following President Khatami's election in 1997, editing a women's affairs newspaper called Zan until hardline clerics shut it down in 1999. She had known the Iranian state's capacity for silencing voices. She had not yet known the full depth of what it was capable of doing to girls.

After Atefeh, she knew.

Case after case began reaching her. Leyla — a 19-year-old with diminished mental capacity, herself a victim of child rape, facing execution. The judge in her case told Amini plainly that Leyla was a threat to family life because of her "sexual availability." Amini enlisted human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr, published Leyla's story, drew international attention, and helped get her out of prison and into the care of a women's organization in Tehran.

One life at a time. One story at a time. Against a legal system that had no interest in being exposed.

In 2006, Amini discovered that despite a government moratorium on stoning — a directive issued in 2002 that carried no binding legal force — a man and woman had been stoned to death in Mashhad for adultery. The judge claimed he answered only to Sharia law. The Ministry of Justice denied the stoning had happened. State media attacked Amini's credibility.

That October, Amini and Sadr co-founded the Stop Stoning Forever (SSF) campaign — systematically documenting stonings occurring across Iran and sharing their findings through colleagues abroad who could publish without fear of arrest.

The state took notice.

In March 2007, Amini was among 33 women arrested during a silent sit-in at a Tehran courthouse. During interrogation she realized — with the specific clarity of someone who had been investigating surveillance — that the police had been investigating her for some time. She was released after five days. Her phones, she was certain, were tapped. Her movements tracked.

She kept reporting.

The sustained pressure of the work eventually took its physical toll — stress-induced symptoms that included headaches, vision problems, and muscle paralysis forced her to step back briefly while her partners reorganized the campaign from outside Iran.

She recovered. She continued.

In 2009, following the disputed reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Amini was among the demonstrators beaten in the protests that swept Iran. She continued reporting — under pseudonyms, in the chaos. Then came the warning: police were questioning prisoners about her. She needed to leave.

She had been invited to a poetry festival in Sweden.

She took her daughter Ava and she went.

They did not come back.

Amini settled eventually in Norway, supported by the International Cities of Refuge Network — a program that protects writers facing state persecution. From exile, she continued her advocacy, published two books of Norwegian-language poetry, and kept doing what she had always done: making sure that the stories of girls and women the Iranian state wanted silenced were heard by the world instead.

She was awarded the Human Rights Watch Hellmann/Hammett Award in 2009 — the same year she fled. The Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in 2012. The Ord i Grenseland prize in 2014.

Asieh Amini picked up a pen in a country that punished women for existing outside the law's narrow definitions — and she used it, at enormous personal cost, to push against every wall that pen could reach.

The girl from Mazandaran who dreamed of becoming a painter and writer became something rarer and harder:

A witness who refused to look away.

And a voice that — no matter how many times the state tried to silence it — kept finding new ways to be heard.

[gavilarkholin-deactivated116710]

So my brother and I were best friends growing up. He was hilarious and we got into all kinds of trouble. I still can’t believe some of the shit we got away with. Anyway I guess he had a nervous breakdown one day and accidentally killed a guy. I saw what happened and it totally wasn’t his fault. But he ran away, ranting about how his entire life was a lie or something. Turns out, he was adopted and our parents never told us. I didn’t hear from him for a few years after that. Then he just shows up at this party I’m having. He’s totally grown out his beard like some kind of mountain man. But whatever, my brother is back! So I welcome him home and he pulls this snake out of nowhere. Like, an actual snake. So I try to play it cool. Knowing my brother, this has got to be some kind of practical joke. But my buddies flip out and next thing I know, they pull out some snakes too. I’m thinking, I have to get this under control before this turns into a goddamn reptile show. But before I can say anything, my brother’s snake eats their snakes, which, okay, I guess that improves the situation? So I take my brother aside and ask him what prank he’s trying to pull. That’s when he gets all serious. He reminds me that our dad did some pretty shady stuff, which wasn’t really that big of a deal to me but I guess it was to him. He tells me to check my privilege or some shit and that I should let his people go and anyway that’s how I lost my brother to social justice.

[inbabylontheywept]

i am banned from eating my herring inside. they make me eat it on the smoking area by the loading dock, under the theory that it already smells bad there. but it was raining today which was preventing my breakfast, so i was feeling sad and hungry and then i realized that there was a large cardboard box in the dumpster from a previous delivery. like a fridge sized box. so i fished it out of the dumpster, then tipped it on its side and had a nice little cardboard cave to watch the rain and eat my fish in. which was a great experience. very soothing. very zen. at least until the security guard from the day before stepped outside to smoke. then i tried hiding from him by crawling deeper in the box, which unfortunately did not work. instead he saw a sort of damp sniveling pale hairless creature eating fish in a box, and delivered the verbal killshot of "good morning, mr. smeagol." which is how my day was ruined before 8 am.

[knight-of-skyloft]

Temple Israel, West Bloomfield, MI

We have chosen thus far not to make public photos of the devastation of our building. This week, several videos and photos have made their w

[mariacallous]