Jewish Self-Determination and Nerdiness

IMPORTANT NOTE:if you are rude or insulting to me in reblogs or comments on my posts (or are just boring) I will block you—I don’t owe you my attention 36 year old Oregonian Jewish Pantheist Progressive Nerd Librarian White Male who believes in the right of all peoples to self-determination. Not too old to care, not too young to count. I oppose the murder of Jews for political purposes, and I reblog stuff I like.

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

My instant block policy has officially evolved to include making arguments we’ve all heard a billion times that have counter arguments we’ve all heard a billion times. If you’re boring, you are not worth my time, and you’re getting blocked

[instantbees]

did anyone order Pokemon appraisal goofery without dick jokes

[pokemonheritageposts]

Pokemon Heritage Post

[the-punforgiven]

[squeakitties]

flingo

[radgepacket-deactivated20241030]

big day today

[buryymeinblack]

queued for the next wednesday the 12th

[buryymeinblack]

happy wednesday the 12th everyone

[daysleftofsecondterm]

happy Wednesday the 12th on 892 days left

[furryprovocateur]

i started reading this book and kept tilting my head at the comparisons the author was using so i started a running list of them

[furryprovocateur]

this author's use of imagery is so questionable

[furryprovocateur]

i actually went "what the fuck" and had to stop for like 5 minutes after this one

[furryprovocateur]

[letslipthehounds]

I feel like this is important information about this post.

[prokopetz]

Striking an appropriate balance between "accommodating individual reading styles" and "deploying the warranted level of snark against people who skip the section titled 'How To Roll Dice', then complain that it's unclear how to roll the dice" can be a tricky needle to thread.

[prokopetz]

Bluesky went offline the exact moment I attempted to crosspost this, which I am choosing to interpret as a positive sign.

[prokopetz]

I tried crossposting from Tumblr to Twitter years ago, figuring I could compose for the former, then deploy my technical editing skills to cut the text down to size for the latter, and I couldn't do it. Of all the editing challenges I've faced, squeezing my posts into 280 characters is the only one that's utterly defeated me.

Years later, I tried again with Bluesky and found it easy, which one might construe as a sign that I've become a better editor, but no – I've compared, and while I can reliably get my present Tumblr posts down to 300 characters (albeit often with pretty vicious cuts), I still can't do 280.

There's probably some fascinating structural reason why those twenty characters make such a tremendous difference, but I'm choosing to interpret this as evidence that Twitter is ontologically evil.

[prokopetz]

It's not a "kink meme". It's a meme about something wholly unrelated framed in the context of an excruciatingly specific kink because of who I am as a person.

[prokopetz]

My problem with the term "hubris" in literary analysis is that folks like to toss it around in contexts in which it just plain doesn't apply. The notion of hubris inherently presumes that humans have assigned stations beyond which it's morally – and, often, metaphysically – wrong to reach. Most modern fictional milieux simply lack such an implicit hierarchy. That character isn't guilty of hubris; they're guilty of negligent risk management.

[prokopetz]

Folks will analyse a fictional character who accidentally blew up half a city and act like the resulting seven-digit body count is purely ancillary to the real crime of aspiring to exceed one's God-given place in the Great Chain of Being.

[manorinthewoods]

The definition that I feel is being thrown around is:

Hubris is when a character has an expectation of their ability to perform a great feat that significantly exceeds their actual ability to do so and possibly the ability of anyone to do so; it causes a dramatic downfall because the character's failure is inevitable and its consequences are catastrophic.

This justifies the use in the context of "blew up a city trying to ascend to godhood" without presuming that the ascension itself was inherently wrong. Though, that belief might still be there anyway?

[prokopetz]

The problem is that, in my experience, even when folks think they're using that definition, in very short order it usually collapses back into talking like the desire to exceed one's grasp was itself the principal crime, rather than the subsequent lack of heed for the consequences.

[prokopetz]

Every time I post an example of play involving a d66 table I get people in the notes being weird about, like, the concept of d66 tables, which is very irritating. However, I have to remind myself that having the temerity to look at a centuries-old piece of tabletop gaming technology that you've somehow never heard of before, deciding that you can improve upon it after a whole thirty seconds of thought, proposing an alternative that's both more awkward to carry out and less functional in use, and going away satisfied that you've solved a real problem purely because you find the existing solution's conventions of notation unaesthetic does in fact speak to having the proper mindset of a tabletop game designer.

[prokopetz]

@a-random-stingray replied:

What if i make it worse on purpose, does that also speak to the mindset of a tabletop game designer? The answer's yes, isn't it? I don't know why I felt the need to ask.

I once bumped into a game with an honest-to-goodness d1212 table (yes, notated exactly like that), though for the life of me I can't bring the title to mind at the moment.

[homochadensistm]

Genuine question: How do I learn to be a cool baddie like you who doesn't take any nonsense from anyone?

You must embrace your inner צ'אחלה and accept her fully and im not even slightly joking

[homochadensistm]

Homochad-san, has your predictions for the war changed?

I want to visit Israel but would October or November be the better choice... kahajw ajs, will you try to kick Iran before or after the elections?

Idk im still doubtful ill get to japan in the coming weeks lmao I am PRAYING

[homochadensistm]

as a southern euro im going to chime in and say that i always support committing violence against the french. keep up the good work, queen <3

[teathattast]

[i-want-a-pomegranate]

COLLEGE PROFESSOR WHO TOLD ME ALL JEWS WERE LAZY FIRED 🎉🥳🎉🥳🎉🥳

3 years later on completely unrelated circumstances

But

FIRED

[irate-iguana]

I love it when a classicist has clearly gotten so lost in the BCE sauce that their perception of time has become deeply warped. Case in point: the article I’m currently reading just described the Byzantine era as “a period relatively modern.”

[mockiatoh]

Stop that’s too funny

[prof-grace-aspen]

When a geologist says "recently" they mean within the past 50 million years XD

[goingrampant]

I've been doing classicism writing and described something as extremely recent and meant the 1700s. Mostly talking about classical Athens puts modernity into perspective.