Acherim @seventyfaces - Tumblr Blog

On This Day In History

May 28th, 2016: The gorilla Harambe is shot to death at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden.

And for ten entire years, people have been lolmemeing that a gorilla's life was more important than a small child's life, because as we all know, animals you never heard about before today are more important than someone else's child.

And we have to make sure that kid and that family and every other family knows that, that the internet would prefer their child was injured or killed by that gorilla, rather than the gorilla die.

Because animals are more important than people. Even people who are small children in active danger from animals.

The thing about the Bund is that your neighbors also get a vote.

Which I feel some neo-Bundists have not fully considered also means the neighbors get a veto. You can Bund all you want, but if your neighbors don't agree, no you can't.

Being a queer liberal Jew is knowing that ACAB, but relying on them anyway, because I sure can't rely on the people who know that ACAB.

God, we loathe Mike Huckabee, with his stupid hipster beard and his stupid smug face and his thoroughly primitive belief that a book patched together from the oral traditions of a bunch of illiterate shepherds trapped in a desert is the literal Word of God, so shut up and love Jesus before the seals are broken and the Four Horsemen come galloping across the sky and the true believers — such as, not coincidentally, Mike Huckabee — start ascending to heaven like the world’s chattiest helium balloons.

-Mike Huckabee Creates International Crisis By Sticking Godly Foot In Pious Mouth by Gary Legum, published by Wonkette

I take the Days Since Someone Has Tried To Critique Christians And Decided To Talk Shit About Jews Along The Way counter and I reset it to zero.

"Primitive", take a sip of your beverage of choice. Also, it's not very liberal or cool to use that word in general.

"Illiterate", it's actually interesting the way that people these days consider literacy to be the basic standard, and if you're illiterate, you're stupid. This situation, it should be pretty damn obvious if you think about it, does not hold true in all places, in all situations, in all time periods. Literacy was once something for clerks. It was something for people who needed it for their job. Just because a society or people are illiterate does not make them mentally backward. File under: also this shit is why you don't say primitive anymore.

"Shepherds", I see we're being classist here today, too.

Back on "illiterate", I hate to say it, because no we don't actually know how literate the Jews were at that time, but very famously, something was written down. Engraved, you might even say. On some tablets. Which indicates that people were expected to be able to read them.

Jews also have really prioritized and prized literacy through the ages.

You cannot claim this is about Christianity. Jesus was notably a carpenter.

Can we please go a day without Wonkette making me regret my subscription. Can we please.

#wonkette #antisemitism #Gary Legum #jumblr

Advanced filters that Mood Fabrics felt were important to keep after their site redesign:

Skill level (of fabric)

Designer name (of fabric)

Country of origin (sure)

Special properties (bit of a catch-all)

Rub count (...okay?)

Advanced filters that Mood Fabrics felt were not important to keep after their site redesgin:

NATURAL FIBERS

#mood fabrics

seventyfaces

People who wave off specific invisible disabilities (allergies, severe phobias, etc) as not really existing because "wow if that were actually true you wouldn't be able to function in the world!" are so close to getting it. So so so close to getting it.

seventyfaces

Don't get me started on bodega cats or book store dogs.

Whole lotta folks who, when asked to choose between animals and people, pick the animals every time. And then expect the people not to be infuriated by this.

seventyfaces

It's a symptom of a larger mindset. For some, animals are more important than all people -- those are generally eco-fascists.

But for many more, animals are not more important than all people. Just some people (most people). The ones who don't matter. I mean, they're not really people, right? If animals are more important than them, aren't they just, ugh, sub-human? Vermin? Dirt? Servants happy to clean up after you?

Some of them even say it loudly. A lot of them don't. It's in their actions more than their words.

A lot of people say "animal welfare" and they mean "it gives me wonderful cover for my racism!" A lot of people say "animal welfare" and they mean some really disgusting ableism.

They'll take their dogs to the grocery stores and use the idea of service animals to give them cover, all the while making things actively worse for people who use service animals.

Because hey, dogs are psychic. If they don't like you, you're the problem.

#disability #ableism #fascism

seventyfaces

High schoolers deserve work/life balance and the current state of frum secondary education only functions (if it can be said to function) on the wink-wink-unspoken assumption that students do homework or mandatory community service on shabbos. This teaches them that that their family and school think it's perfectly fine to force them to be mechalel shabbos* for things they don't want to do. And then parents and teachers are shocked when "be mechalal shabbos for things you don't want to do" turns into "be mechalel shabbos so you can finally get a break" and the kids go OTD and have to find a therapist who understands what they spent four years enduring and the mental scars it leaves.

Every so often I fantasize about the frum high school I would create if I ever had unlimited money and resources...

*I am not going to dispute the definition of melacha. In communities that assur things simply for not being shabbosdik, yes, this certainly must count. If there are not enough chol hours to do work for school, high schoolers must bring their chol work onto shabbos. If you refer only to the 39, then you have to allow many many more things than you do.

seventyfaces

I have a foolproof plan to reduce mental health problems in frum teenagers. It's called "not giving more hours of homework than there are available hours in a day to do it in".

#frumblr

Every so often I fantasize about the frum high school I would create if I ever had unlimited money and resources...

#frumblr

Activism is actions taken to achieve a goal.

It's not more complicated than that.

You have a goal. You come up with ideas of how to achieve it. If those don't work, you try other actions. But always your eye is on the goal: I want X, so I need to do Y to achieve X.

If doing Y achieves Z instead, then either your goal was Z all along, or you need to change your actions.

But if you keep seeing that your actions are achieving a goal you're not trying for, and you don't change your actions, then only one of two things can be possible.

One: you're pretty bad at this, and should take up a different activity before you do a lot of unintended damage.

Two: your goal was Z all along, and you were either lying to me or to yourself. It's fine if you lie to me -- but lying to yourself is a much bigger problem, for you, in the long run. Self-delusion isn't praxis.

So hey. Stop murdering Jews.

#jumblr #antisemitism

xkcd How It Works, but applied to tumblr:

Hey, sometimes people from a group [neurotypical, cis, etc] are acting like a jerk to you.

There is nothing in their brain chemistry or gender identity that makes them be jerks to you.

I'm sorry you're surrounded by jerks, but they are not jerks because they are neurotypical, cis, etc. They're just jerks.

lannamichaels

the complete the work quote is about studying torah the complete the work quote is about studying torah the complete the work quote is about studying torah the complete the work quote is about studying torah this is the basic context of the quote it's right there in the surrounding text the complete the work quote is about studying torah

lannamichaels

okay but actually also:

There's another famous Pirkei Avos quote. It translates to "ben Bag Bag says: turn it and turn it because all is in it". This is, of course, also about learning Torah. However, it has not been lost on anyone the comedic potential of this quote, and there exists tote bags with this printed on it; mine personally is from Hadran. Sefaria also sells them. The joke is that we all know that this quote doesn't have anything to do with tote bags or purses or backpacks but HOWEVER the quote still applies to it as well. As a joke. Because you also have to turn it and turn it because all is in it and you need to find a specific thing.

It has always been a joke to say things like "it's not on you to finish it but you are not free to desist from it" about, say, doing the dishes. But this is a joke because everyone saying and hearing it know that this is not a saying about doing the dishes, but yet it also applies. So it's funny to say this about the dishes or the laundry. It's a joke.

This falls apart when it is taken away from the context of people who KNOW WHAT THE QUOTE IS ACTUALLY ABOUT.

Goyim showing up to industries created by Jews and going "isn't it Suspicious that there are so many Jews here". If I had a nickel, etc etc.

#jumblr #antisemitism

seventyfaces

Most of the world seems very eager to avoid joining the territory’s international stabilization force.

Foreign Policy Magazine, between the lines: yeah, everyone's gonna keep making Israel do it, so they can keep complaining that Israel's doing it. The other option is making a new Berlin Wall inside Gaza.

sweaterkittensahoy

Fun fact: My dad and many, many other people were willing to go into Iraq in 2004 and train police officers. My dad was nearly killed via terrorist bombings 2 or 3 times (I honestly can't remember; I remember the time he sent me the video of the group who tried to suicide bomb his hotel in a dump truck; all the windows got blown out, but most of the explosives did not go off. Dad decided the best way to get to the airport because he was supposed to be coming in for a visit was to hitchhike. Through Baghdad. In like 2006. He has always been like this.)

Anyway, imagine how fucking awful and terrifying it has to be in Gaza that even people like my fucking dad don't wanna do it.

seventyfaces

#gaza#it's kind of like hamas is an entrenched and trained terrorist organization#who doesn't care about killing hostages live on camera#or in general

Yeah. They don't want to deal with Hamas. But they'll be up on their high horses about how Israel does it, while not standing up to do it themselves. They know how bad Hamas is, but they figure, it's not their problem. And it's so much better when Israel does it, because then someone else does it and also gives them a convenient target to sound superior to. It's always easy to be better at dealing with Hamas when you're not the one actually dealing with Hamas.

Most of the world seems very eager to avoid joining the territory’s international stabilization force.

seventyfaces

Don't get me started on bodega cats or book store dogs.

Whole lotta folks who, when asked to choose between animals and people, pick the animals every time. And then expect the people not to be infuriated by this.

#disability #ableism #allergies

seventyfaces

Help build Solu's Kosher Community Fridge!

Hey, jumblr, if you have some extra money, please kick it towards building a kosher community fridge, named in honor of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The goal is $50,000 and is 63% there already.

seventyfaces

Great news, jumblr! It's open!

Meet Hersh's Fridge: the first kosher community fridge in the country! Community fridges have sprouted up all over the U.S., but never before (as far as we know) has there been a kosher community fridge – providing kosher leftovers and storebought staples for those in need, accessible at all times.

Hersh’s Fridge, located in the heart of Skokie, is stocked by volunteers with fresh, perishable food.

Many families are ashamed to access food pantries or soup kitchens, due to stigma. Our fridge is outdoors and accessible 24/7 to kosher-keeping Jews – and anyone in need – ensuring they can secure food in an anonymous, dignified way.

The Fridge embodies our highest values: giving and receiving anonymously (Rambam, Hilchot Matonot Aniyim 10:7) and helping our neighbors, Jewish and not (Talmud Bavli, Gittin 61a) – a true kiddush Hashem.

Hersh’s Fridge is named for Hersh Goldberg-Polin z’’l, who was taken captive on October 7, and heroically endured 328 days of captivity before he was murdered by Hamas terrorists. Hersh changed the world through his compassion, humor, and desire to bring people together. Through this Fridge, Hersh’s values of chesed, community, and bridge-building are continuing to serve as a blessing – and a revolution – for the Chicagoland area, where his family’s roots run deep.

Picking up food?

Starting October 30, 2025, the Fridge "pavilion" is open and will be stocked regularly with food!

The "Partner Fridge," at left (in photo), contains food kosher-certified groceries & food from kosher establishments.

The "Neighbor Fridge," at center, contains kosher-certified groceries & food from kosher homes.

The Pantry (at right), contains certified-kosher shelf-stable goods bearing a reliable hechsher. Volunteers are checking daily to ensure our kashrut and hygiene standards are followed, but please always use your own judgement when picking up food.

Want to donate food?

Kashrut and hygiene guidelines will be posted here for donors in the coming days, with information about how to donate actual food.

In the meantime, you can always make a donation to support Hersh's Fridge and supply our Food Fund.

#jumblr #fundraising #tzedaka

seventyfaces

Oooh, oooh, I can be a #finfluencer!

*clears throat*

Buy shares in an index fund or two or three or four. Cover the market as best you can. Automate your investments, whether it be yearly, quarterly, monthly, fortnightly, weekly, or daily. Re-invest your dividends and capital gains. Do not take money out until it is needed. Only move money around if, over the course of a year or more, the index fund underperforms your other index funds. Automating deposits + "buy low, sell high" = it will even out over time.

USA: Remember that investment income is income and must be reported on your taxes; your investment site will provide you with the forms.

If you cannot afford the minimum buy-in to an index fund (Vanguard's tend to be ~$3,000), then you do not have enough spare cash on hand to be investing in anything. Remember that you will keep your shares in the index fund, but the price can crash, leaving you with the same number of shares but less money. Do not take money out until it is needed; the more shares you have when it's low means the more money you have when it's high.

Do not pick stocks. Ever. Even that one. I mean it. If you must pick stocks, have a small child or an animal pick them for you; random chance is better than your educated guess.

Anyone who tells you they can outperform the market and have major successes every quarter is incorrect at best and committing a crime at worst.

seventyfaces

Do not buy cryptocurrency or NFTs. If you buy them, buy them only as a joke, knowing that money is gone forever.

They are assets, not investments, and they are also bad assets. You shouldn't buy gold, either, but if you have a strong urge to buy either bitcoin or gold, go with gold. Because the gold actually exists.

seventyfaces

A word about assets: they are not investments.

The rise of the collectables market is underpinned by one single idea: someone will pay you for this stuff.

The problem with this is that this is an entire market, and collectables are being made specifically to be rare and collectable.

The logic is, you buy this collectible asset now. You hold it for an unspecified, unknowable period of time. And then when you want to sell it, someone will buy it from you at a large mark-up, in order to complete their collection.

You are not going to make any real money doing this. You may be able to make a little bit of cash if you get lucky, but this is money to buy pizza, this is not money to pay rent. This is not an investment.

"But the art market–" the art market is also underpinned by a specific idea. The idea is called money laundering. No one can say how much a work of art should cost, therefore massively overpaying for it is totally fine and acceptable. Also, unless you are making and collecting art at a specific high level, none of this applies to you. (If you are making this art, buy index funds with the proceeds.)

seventyfaces

Your house is not an investment.

I'm sorry. A lot of people tell you it is. And those people are wrong.

The reason "your house is an investment" is an idea that exists is because that is often the only real asset/"investment" someone has. And so it has to be an investment! You buy a house, you live in it, and then you sell it, and because it's an investment, obviously you make money on this deal!!!

Except that's not how that works, and the need for it to be the way that works (because, again, this is often the only source of last-ditch income someone has) causes many many many problems.

Your house is a place to live. Your house is not an investment. Treat it as the depreciating asset that it is. Treat it as the home that it provides for you. But it's not an investment.

(If you are a house flipper, that's a job. That's still not an investment.)

seventyfaces

Never get a checking account that comes with monthly/annual fees. The bank already gets a benefit from you having a checking account with them. Do not add to their benefit by getting an account with a $25 fee.

If you are in a situation where that is the only one available to you, take it but get rid of it as soon as you can switch to a fee-free account.

Pro-tip: you also don't need to settle for a bank account with ATM charges! Don't pay to get your own money!

seventyfaces

Credit cards are better than debit cards in basically all cases except one: when you truly cannot manage how to budget unless the money is directly coming out of your account. And even that, you'd do better to just use cash in all cases where cash is accepted (and if you have that situation, try out various budgeting options like envelope budgeting where you physically put money into various accounts, or have two accounts: one for bills and one for everything else, and only use the debit card with the everything else). With a debit card, once the money is gone, it is a headache to get it back, and until you do, that money is not available for you to use. Credit cards have much better fraud protection.

Many people misunderstand credit cards. If you pay off the card every single month, the interest charges do not apply to you, because you are never charged interest. Automate your credit card payment, track your transactions over time, and dispute any fraudulent charges. I've had my credit card number stolen many times and never been on the hook for any of the charges and never had to endure the pain that is required when someone steals your debit card number and then the money is gone from your account at a moment when you need to use it yourself.

seventyfaces

Unlike the rest of the above, this one is slightly controversial, but it's something I believe is a better financial plan than otherwise:

If your job gives you stock as part of your compensation, sell it immediately.

If you aren't allowed to sell the stock, then pretend it doesn't exist. But if you can sell it, then sell it. Because this is part of your compensation, and you should turn it into money as quickly as you can. Stock options do not pay the rent or buy groceries, money pays the rent and buys groceries.

You're already "investing" in the company in that your current pay check depends on the company still existing. Don't assume that at some uncertain point in the future, when you want to sell the stock, that the stock price will be high enough to make you a millionnaire.

Because, yes, a few people managed to time this dance exactly right and made out with enough money to never have to work again. The rest of them didn't.

Don't gamble on the price of a specific stock. Sell it and invest in something you can control.

seventyfaces

Rollover your IRA from old jobs into an IRA that isn't associated with any employer.

It's annoying. It can be confusing. Still, it's worth it.

I had an IRA from a job I wasn't at for very long, and as you can expect, not having been there for very long, there wasn't a lot of money in the IRA. So I let it sit. And sit. And sit.

Ten years later, I forced myself to do it. I ended up having to call the financial institution and have them call the destination institution for the rollover and have them all do the paperwork and send it to me and sign it. And then when it came time for taxes, the financial institution messed it up and I had to call them again to get it fixed and corrected paperwork sent out.

Still.

It's a good thing to do. This way, you aren't leaving money around in accounts that you might forget about, and you also get to fully control what the money is being invested in after you roll it over into your non-employer IRA account. (You should have, in general, an IRA, and invest the maximum allowed every year into it. If you can't afford to do the maximum, you should do as much of the maximum as you can afford.)

Important: this is a rollover. You are not removing the money to use in general, it's staying in the IRA (traditional/Roth). You're just moving it between institutions and getting full control over it.

Do it. It's annoying, but it's worth it.

seventyfaces

Many scams rely on an artificial sense of urgency. Develop an automatic "no" response.

"Act fast, there's this--" No.

"Hurry hurry, you gotta get in on the ground floor--" No.

"Reply to this email within 30 minutes to be considered for this job--" No.

High pressure sales tactics are never on your side. You must buy it now. It will go away soon. You must make a decision now or regret it forever!

Develop a "shrug, okay I'll regret it" reaction and walk away.

seventyfaces

Other major warning signs of financial scams:

-No downsides. You will always make money! Guaranteed!

-No transparency on fees, how much commission the seller makes, etc.

-You can't figure out how it makes money. They rely on you thinking "oh they're smarter than me, obviously this makes sense to them, it's just that I'm too stupid to figure it out." But that's not the case. If they can't explain it in a way that is clear to you, Just Say No.

seventyfaces

USA:

You may have heard about 529 plans. These are commonly known as being for college, but they can be used for more educational purposes than that, including elementary and high school. Because they're state-based, the options, rules, and regs will vary by state.

I'm gonna be upfront here. I don't have one of these and don't plan on using this method of investment. They are too restrictive.

However. The 529 option is ideal when there is a lack of trust. Because the heavy restrictions of the 529 plans are also its great strength.

If you're concerned that someone with access to the money will lose it all on sports betting, or buy beanie babies, or lose it in some get-rich-quick/reddit meme scheme, then 529 plans are for you.

If you're not, there's honestly better ways.

seventyfaces

In 2024, award-winning picture book author Mo Willems came out with two books for the preschool set: Are You Big? and Are You Small? These books are great at teaching toddlers that the words "big" and "small" are relative. There is no set answer to the question of what is big and what is small, it's all in what it's talking about and what it's referencing as comparison.

Being able to grasp this about amounts of money is vital. If something is "a lot" or "a little" money is entirely in what you are talking about, where you are, and who "you" are. Is a million dollars a lot of money? Not to a government. Not if you're talking about your life savings in a location where a million dollars will not buy you a one-bedroom apartment.

Numbers mean nothing without context. Remember how your math teacher would mark you down if you didn't put the units? The units are important. Is a number big or small? That depends on what it's describing.

Let's say you've been carefully saving and investing and you have $10,000. Is that a lot of money? Is that enough money? The answer to that depends entirely on what it's for. If your purpose is to have a couple months rent and expenses saved up, so you have a cushion, then depending on where you live, this could be enough! This could be achieving your goal! Yay!

If this is meant to be a down payment or retirement, then no, it's not.

Now let's start adding zeros. $100,000? Could be a down payment, depending on where you live. Could be college tuition. Could cover medical bills (USA). $1,000,000, maybe you're just buying that house outright. (But not in the most expensive areas, remember that one bedroom apartment that costs more than a million dollars). Retirement? Well, it'll help.

$10,000,000? Now we're getting to the level of organization level money, but not much if you're running a medium sized business, though. If this is your personal savings, depending on your investments and depending on your expenses, you may be generating enough income to live on comfortably. With this much money in hand, you can pay college tuition without debt, buy new cars whenever you like, go on nice vacations, have great houses. And as long as you're not trying to keep up with the Joneses who have 100x your net worth, yeah, that sounds like a good number for a person not to have to worry about money -- but keep an eye out, still, for context! If this money is entirely created through wages, then it is subject to a massive downshift in networth when the high wage earner no longer is getting that wage.

Now let's take off some zeros.

Saving $1? It's better than saving nothing. Saving $10? Good start! Saving $100, now you have some padding. Saving $1,000, now you have even more.

There's no amount of money that is bad to have in savings. But understanding orders of magnitude and context is a vital part of living your life and understanding, not only your own savings, but things like organizational and government budgets, because an amount of money that's big for one person, is a rounding error for a government.

#finance #adulting #investment #finfluence

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