there, i did it
Just your friendly neighborhood Jewish Zionist neurodivergent lesbian bassist.
Слава Україні, עם ישראל חי
i dream of a future where Jewish and Arab children live in peace without fear of rockets
meganerd
Hello! This blog has existed for too long without an introduction. I figure one is probably not a terrible idea.
Name: just call me Bass
Pronouns: she/ella/היא/она
Languages: English, Spanish (C2?), Russian (A2), and Hebrew (definitely not better than A1).
Hobbies: playing bass (duh), reading, drawing, bothering my dog, praying, watching my shows, making lists.
Interests: Infectious disease, Judaism, Zionism, bugs (bees, wasps, ants, mosquitos, and spiders, mostly. I hate mosquitos, but vector-borne illnesses are fascinating), geography, languages.
Fandoms: The West Wing (Toby my beloved), Les Miserables (I actually enjoyed Russell Crowe's Javert), Pride and Prejudice (Lizzie Bennet my beloved), The Pitt (Melllllllll), House (Chase my beloved), hockey.
Fun facts: I know the capital of every country in the world (if given a piece of paper, I could list off every country and its capital from memory, ordered non-alphabetically by continent. I do this when I'm bored). I have at least four mandibular torii. People not using the Oxford comma sends me into a fit of blind rage (that's an exaggeration, but I am passionate about the virtues of the Oxford comma). I named this blog by looking around my room and attempting random objects until tumblr said the username was free.
one of the interesting pop culture phenomenons I’ve recognized is how little regard anyone gives to antisemitism from revered artists - and I know many other prejudices and abuses are responded to this way, so I’m not dismissing that at all, especially when it comes to famous men - but someone can be completely upheld, especially posthumously, as a nearly deified figure, as someone who was all about peace, love, and humanity, and if anyone brings up the fact that one of these idolized figures expressed deep seated hatred of Jews, utilized antisemitic language and stereotypes, or was openly hostile to Jewish people, it gets handwaved away. “nobody’s perfect!” well, I agree, I don’t think we should expect anyone to be perfect, humans are flawed and make mistakes, and can still be good and kind, and can make amends if they choose. I just think it’s curious that “nobody’s perfect” is a response towards antisemitic attitudes in a specific way. “he was all about peace, love, and humanity, despite the antisemitism” says to me that you think peace, love, and humanity inherently excludes Jews.
nowadays, it’s even worse, because where this used to be dismissed or excused, it’s now gleefully justified. “did you know he hated the zios?” “he did not like the 🧃.” “he was Noticing before anyyyy of us.” “so based of him to be against the J’s.” “he was trying to tell the world about them.” “he knew and that’s why they took him out.” (these are all actual comments I’ve seen. about more than one person.) where before, the antisemitism was unfortunate but not disqualifying, it is now seen as an attribute, an admirable character trait. in fact, even minimal anti-Jewish sentiment is used to further conspiracies that certain public figures understood “the truth” about Jews. even apologies that may have been issued about this by the artists themselves are wholly rejected by fans in favor of applauding the anti-Jewish bigotry instead.
the flip side of this is the demonizing of deceased Jewish artists or allies as “Zionists (slur),” which, first of all, doesn’t quite make sense, because it’s very weird to blame people who are not here, some of whom have been gone for decades, for the current situation in the Middle East. no consideration is given that many of the celebrities who were outspoken in favor of supporting the Jewish community, and even of Israel, were people who lived through WWII and witnessed the aftermath of the Holocaust personally. many of the Jewish artists of that time were from immigrant families who faced discrimination in the early 20th century US and then saw their people suffer industrialized murder in Europe. it’s rather obvious why their opinions would be what they were, and why they believed what they did. modern politics cannot be grafted onto the generations who lived before us. and yet, iconic Jews and allies are smeared as “zionazis” and “genocide enablers,” and the rest of their legacies cease to matter, even if they were devoted humanitarians and did positive work for the world. you will not see them defined as being about peace, love, and humanity. don’t be silly. Jews and those who stand with Jews are never representative of peace, love, and humanity. so it goes.
americans are a saudi oil baron's idea of classy. brits are an american's idea of classy. the french are a brit's idea of classy. unfortunately the chain ends here since the french's idea of classy is also the french
PBS and NPR were never beholden to the US government.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created so that the US government could fund public media without public media being influenced by the government. It was a private non-profit funded by the government, not a part of the government itself. This is by design. This was a good thing. It meant that even small local TV and radio stations, could afford to create media for the public good, without government influence.
This meant TV and radio stations for poor communities. For non-english speaking communities. For rural communities. For minorities. It meant that free and accessible media could be created for everyone, even if the government didn't like it.
That's why conservatives defunded it.
Because if they couldn't control it, and if it helped the people they hated, then they would have to destroy it. Do you really think that a fascist government would defund their own propaganda machine?
Not only is the idea that PBS before being defunded was propaganda wrong, but ignores the fact that defunding it is going to have long-term negative effects on vulnerable communities.
OP of the post in the screenshot called me an idiot and blocked me for pointing this out. So I'm setting the record straight. The CPB was never our enemy.
Regular reminder in light of the popularity of that article about entryism subverting the DSA and now the democratic party that that is not the only front:
The new threat to Judaism from political missionaries
final mental illness musing of the night but as you all know, i’ve suffered from an extremely severe case of depression since i was a toddler. and one of the most infuriating things about growing up this way was how many adults seem to just not understand that children can be depressed. sure, you may associate depression with teen years, but there are plenty of kids 12 and under who are deeply, deeply depressed and it’s just completely overlooked. When I talk about how early my suicidal behaviors started, people go ‘wow! i had no idea that it could start so young?’ but i have several friends who were also depressed as kids and i don’t think it’s that uncommon. i mean, bullying is frequent in children’s lives and yet you don’t think an 8 year old can get suicidal? It all goes back to people not seeing children as people, of course. Considering them not capable of complex emotions. I just feel for all the kids who go untreated because their parents haven’t stopped to think if theres a reason why their kid spends all their time in their room.
#very sure some of us know each other in real life#but cannot reveal#because ummm#hey are you so and so on Tumblr#is not a normal thing to say#Lowkey if I realised anyone on tumblr was someone I knew#I'd have to block them forever
I can think of 3 people from jumblr who I ran into in the wild without trying. And I did confirm it was them but only online, afterwards. Not in person in the moment lol.
the other day my coworker said something with a strong tumblr accent and i realized something horrible
there's a sizable chance we follow each other, or we've interacted with each other's posts. and we're both jews involved in the jewish community. and jumblr isn't that big.
-XYZ’s grandparents escaped Auschwitz and immigrated to America and became Chabad shlichim. They were born at 770. Their parents are a rabbi and rebbetzin in a large Jewish community in Lakewood……….they’re of Jewish descent.
On one hand, Wikipedia current policy with regard to Jews acknowledges Jewish ethnicity. They would never say that someone is of Methodist descent or had Southern Baptist parents.
On the other hand the policy simultaneously treats Judaism as strictly a religion that no one can be said to hold unless there is a source that meets citation standards in which they speak about being a Jew, as if it is something requiring personal profession the way that Christianity does.
And with the ongoing antisemitic edit wars happening, where every Jewish person and topic is being changed on purpose in the worst faith manner, there is no way that even a large and very well organized group of Jews can fix this problem.
Wikipedia is inherently untrustworthy on any topic related to Jews or Judaism.
What makes me really, really angry is how people on the left completely dismissed Lyndsey Fifield (Republican ex, was physically abused and held against her will) but are taking Jenny Racicot seriously (Democrat ex, was raped). Because there are two implications here: 1. Domestic violence is not a big deal as long as there's no sexual abuse, and 2. Domestic violence is not a big deal if it happens to The Enemy. And both are equally horrific.
@caesarsaladinn I had a whole discussion with a history major who was extremely confident that smallpox is a “common childhood illness” with a very low death rate. Therefore, she believed that historical smallpox outbreaks were either massively exaggerated or used as a cover-up for something else (since “smallpox isn’t that bad.”) I eventually asked if she was possibly confusing smallpox with chickenpox, at which point she said, “aren’t they the same thing?”
One of the less deadly variants of smallpox was called cowpox, and the fact that dairy maids who contracted it tended to avoid the worst affects of smallpox is part of the development of vaccination
Cowpox is actually a separate (but very similar!) virus!
There's a lot of confusion about different "poxes" in this post (which wasn't my intention, and now I feel bad), so here's a general overview (also, obligatory apology for messiness, this was written at like 1 AM):
Smallpox:
Smallpox, caused by variola virus, was a massive problem historically. It existed in the Western hemisphere for thousands of years (genetic evidence of smallpox has been found in Egyptian mummies from ≈1500 BCE, but it was probably around long before then), and it was introduced to the New World during the Columbian exchange, which had devastating consequences for indigenous populations (which were already suffering from colonialist violence, which made epidemics much worse than they already would've been). Historically, smallpox had a case fatality rate between 30-50%, and survivors were often left disfigured or permanently disabled (you've probably seen pictures of smallpox scars, but smallpox can also cause blindness and other complications). Importantly, smallpox only affects humans—it has no animal hosts—which is why it's one of the few infectious diseases to have been completely eradicated. As of May 8, 1980, it officially no longer exists outside of certain designated American and Russian laboratories. (There are, however, concerns that it could be used as a bioweapon, which is why the government still stockpiles smallpox vaccines and antivirals. I wrote my bioethics term paper on this exact issue, and incidentally, it's one of the major reasons why I believe that STEM majors should take ethics courses!)
There were two strains of variola virus: variola major and variola minor. Variola major was much more dangerous, with a much higher mortality rate; variola minor typically didn't cause severe disease. Fortunately, infection with one strain conferred immunity against the other. Both strains are now eradicated. (People sometimes confuse variola minor with other viruses like cowpox and horsepox, but they're different things.)
There were four clinical forms of smallpox: ordinary (classic smallpox, associated with the rash you usually see in pictures), modified (less severe, often occurred in vaccinated people who got infected anyway), malignant (caused a flat rash instead of the usual pustules, associated with immune dysfunction, almost always fatal), and hemorrhagic (caused severe bleeding, and also near-universally fatal.) All of the non-ordinary forms could be difficult to diagnose because they looked so different from typical smallpox. The less serious "modified" form was often confused with chickenpox, and the hemorrhagic form was sometimes assumed to be a completely different disease. Occasionally, historical sources will refer to hemorrhagic smallpox as "black pox," with or without an understanding that it's caused by the same virus as ordinary smallpox.
Other relevant viruses:
Cowpox, caused by cowpox virus (an orthopoxvirus similar to smallpox) causes mild disease in cows, humans, and several other animals. Infection with cowpox virus confers immunity to variola—Edward Jenner noticed this relationship and used material from cowpox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox.
Vaccinia virus, another orthopoxvirus, is the source of the modern smallpox vaccine. It's closely related to both cowpox and horsepox (weirdly, it's actually closer to horsepox), but it's distinct enough to be its own species. Infection usually causes mild symptoms, and, of course, confers immunity to smallpox.
Chickenpox is an entirely different thing. It's caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is a herpesvirus, not a poxvirus at all! Infection with varicella-zoster does not confer immunity to smallpox or any other poxvirus—chickenpox is from a totally different family.
So why are the names so weird and confusing? Why is everything about all of this so weird and confusing?
There are multiple reasons for this, so bear with me.
Historically, a "pox" was any disease that caused a bumpy rash of pustles/blisters. Chickenpox, smallpox, and the other "poxes" all cause superficially similar rashes—thus the similar names. (Even though we know now that chickenpox comes from a completely different family, this wouldn't have been apparent before the dawn of modern medicine.)
Smallpox was given that name to differentiate it from syphilis, which was known as the "great pox" when it first appeared in Europe. (Fun[?] microbiology fact: There are debates about the origins of syphilis, but the most common theory holds that it originated in the New World, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Spain. In that way, it's kind of the inverse of smallpox.) Historically, smallpox was also known by a variety of other names in different European, Asian, and African cultures. Again, this gets murky, because historical physicians sometimes struggled to distinguish between similar-looking-but-different diseases.
Other poxviruses are often named after the animals in which they were first identified. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, though, and it can sometimes be misleading (for example, monkeypox virus was first discovered in laboratory monkeys, but it more often affects rodents and other small mammals. The disease formerly known as "monkeypox" was recently renamed "mpox" because the name wasn't accurate.) Also, some poxviruses aren't named after animals at all! It's a weird and inconsistent system (but a lot of virus names are kinda weird and inconsistent).
Related to the above: We don't even know where the name "chickenpox" comes from. I mean, we know it was called a "pox" because it causes a pox-y rash, but we don't know where the "chicken" part originated. There are multiple theories about this, none of which are definitive. The disease itself has nothing to do with chickens.
Basically, a lot of the weirdness is a result of historical naming practices—people identified and named these diseases before modern virology existed, and those names stuck, so now we have similar names for superficially-similar-but-ultimately-different viruses, and names whose origins have been completely lost to time. Later, virologists muddied the waters further by naming newly-discovered poxviruses after the animals in which they were first seen, even when these animals aren't natural hosts or reservoirs of those viruses. It's a mess! And, again, all of this is complicated by the fact that some of these diseases were very hard to diagnose (or distinguish from one another) before modern medicine existed. Now, we can sequence viral DNA and figure out what's actually going on—which viruses caused which symptoms, whether those viruses were closely related, and whether being infected with one disease conferred immunity to another—but historical doctors and scientists didn't have those tools, so they were doing they best they could with very limited information, and that led to a lot of weirdness in terms of how these viruses were named and classified. Our current system inherited some of that weirdness, so here we are.
TL;DR: Poxvirus names are messy. Smallpox is caused by variola virus, which has two strains: variola major (the more severe one) and variola minor (less severe). Cowpox and vaccinia are different viruses in the same family, and being infected with one of them confers immunity to smallpox. Chickenpox isn't a poxvirus at all, but a herpesvirus—it just happens to cause a pockmark-y rash that looks superficially similar to smallpox pustules (and mild forms of smallpox were historically confused with chickenpox).
(P.S. none of this is super relevant to the average person, so don't feel bad if you didn't know any of it. Unless you are a history major inventing new conspiracies about smallpox, in which case you definitely should feel bad.)
Sources & further reading under the cut!
Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination
The History of Smallpox (CDC)
The Triumph of Science: The Incredible Story of Smallpox Eradication
Scientific Background on Smallpox and Smallpox Vaccination (from Scientific and Policy Considerations in Developing Smallpox Vaccination Options: A Workshop Report) <- this article is like 20 years old, but it has some interesting information about the clinical forms of smallpox and how difficult they would be to diagnose accurately
Phasing out monkeypox: mpox is the new name for an old disease <- discusses the renaming of monkeypox to mpox, also mentions issues with other poxvirus names and virus names in general
Poxes great and small: The stories behind their names
progressives be like “okay NOW antisemitism IS actually an acceptable response to the actions of the apartheid colonial-settler blood drinking christ killer hook nosed criminal genocidal zionists”
At this point I consider the claim that Jews (or a subset thereof, like Ashkenazi Jews) are white to be a form of Holocaust denial. It is blatantly obvious that both in the past and present the white supremacist societies that have defined whiteness did not consider Jews to be such, and the claim that we are white requires either denying the history of antisemitism directly (hence viewing the Holocaust as some kind of aberration where white people turned on their white neighbors rather than the culmination of centuries of antisemitism) or treating whiteness/race as an ontological category that exists in nature independently of white supremacy (as otherwise it makes no sense to both claim Jews are white and also acknowledge that white supremacists invariably hate Jews).
My ancestors didn’t get murdered for not being white Europeans so that you could claim we’re white Europeans.
