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99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.

Credit: @Rabbit Cohen

Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:

It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.

The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:

1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)

Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.

Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@Shannon (she/her) @Pedestriansfirst I suppose you're technically correct, I guess I usually never think about it because there's always more apt descriptions (ie. Nazis are often Zionists because "Blood And Soil").

And yes on the antisemitism of it, I just chose not to say anything about that in favor of a chance at education. (Also a love for getting into arguments with aggressive militant atheists because it's so fun to see their talking points shatter and the confusion that comes from it)

And I didn't bring it up later because I felt from the conversation that it wasn't going to be a problem again from them because they learned some things about Judaism, Jewish Culture, and that religions people can in fact own and acknowledge bad behaviors in their own communities.

Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@Shannon (she/her) I don't think believing all zionists are jews isn't that messy of a idea because it impacts so little, especially since the zionist behavior of non-jews is already easily discernible on it's own as awful anyways.

And keep in mind that the comparison is that this started from assuming that all Jews condoned the atrocities committed by the Israeli government and has walked away knowing that it's not uniform.



This is a long article, but the theory hits *hard* with me and connects really well.

The basic gist is that autistics almost always define our identities by what we do and our personal traits, while non-autistics almost always define their identities by their relationships (in particular to social groups)

If you don't have it in you to read all of it, definitely read the section: "How does having an experientially-constructed identity impact relationships?".

https://neuroclastic.com/the-identity-theory-of-autism-how-autistic-identity-is-experienced-differently/

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Shiri Bailem

@bike I suspect it isn't that much different. Collectivist societies can be awful in their own ways.

They're still better imo, but they have a tendency to focus too hard on traditions and conformity on top of the ideals of communal responsibility.

But in all cases it's a mesh of peer pressure and group identity vs our value identity.

@bike
Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem
@bike I get that, I mostly mention that so I don't come across as bashing collectivist societies incidentally. My point was more that I doubt there's that much difference for us, just swap out one set of rules that don't make sense for another set that don't make sense for a different reason.
@bike


Why You Must Keep The Monsters Human


*(Reposting because my node crashed and lost all my posts and I want to keep this one pinned)*

I've been mulling over making this post for a little bit, but I think it's really **really** important.

It's critically important that you remember and acknowledge the humanity of monsters. Not for their benefit, but for *everyone else's* benefit.

When someone commits a monstrous act or shares a monstrous belief, we want to think of them as an inherently vile and non-human thing.

But doing so shields and protects other monsters.

When you make a Nazi, or any kind of abuser, into a one-dimensional monster. When you make their whole existence *center* on this monstrous act or belief... you make it hard to see their humanity. And that's the point, you don't *want* to see their humanity.

*** You Don't Want To Believe That Someone You Know And Trust (Maybe Even Love) Is Capable Of Such Atrocity. ***

And that's the problem. Because when you reject their humanity, that humanity becomes their shield. Your friend Bob can't possibly be a Nazi or a child-abuser, he's such a loving father and he helped you move!

Because you see their humanity, you can't possibly imagine them as monsters because the monsters have no humanity in your eyes.

There's a reason that when serial killers get caught their neighbors say they couldn't imagine them doing such things.

So don't ignore their humanity, keep it in your mind... so the next one can't use it as a shield.




Content warning: re: Cute girl

in reply to Antonia jones

Content warning: re: Cute girl


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Fedi is legit filled with so many cute girls :3

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Content warning: re: Selfie - Eye Contact


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Content warning: Nsfw Lewd Cursed - Shitpost

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This hits hard tbh

#lbgt #lgbtqia #lgbt #trans #meme

in reply to Shiri Bailem

wait a minute. Trans people are the real Americans!

/j /j idek what I’d be starting with this omfg /j



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Due to regrettably unfortunate circumstances, I would like to inform you that I am awake.

This seems suboptimal.

Sorry.



Random weekend note: I never thought I'd be proud of myself for assuming the fetal position before...

#volunteering #charity #ScareForACure

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Context: there's a local haunted house called Scare For A Cure that raises money for charity and is fully volunteer run. (Last year raised $50k for the Breast Cancer Research Center and also distributed thousands in scholarships and other donations). Additionally this isn't your typical "here's a series of themed rooms and spooks and nothing more", Scare runs a full plotline with interactivity, you do stuff and have a story you're participating in... in addition to getting shot with about a half dozen gore cannons within one hour...

I've been volunteering in different roles throughout the month, with some interruptions here and there. On Saturday, the final night of the event, I was resetting "Jekyll and Hyde's secret storeroom". This involved sneaking in behind groups to replace the mcguffin (a vial of serum) and reset the exit portal. Normally this involves sneaking down the hallway as soon as they're in the storeroom, waiting for the moment they exit the store room to slip in, reset it, then slip back out into the hallway and out a side door... but if groups run close together, I might have to wait in the store room as one group enters the hallway and the next group lingers in the next space, the moment they leave I slip out the door behind them and slip between the buildings to get back to my starting position.

One group however... they were moving so slow and had zero consideration for the fact that there's a production that cares about timing... they caused 2 groups to pile up right behind them. So resetting after them I had to duck into the next room instead of returning back... but then the group right after them was stuck waiting a really long time in that space before they could move forward while another group was in the hall... I literally had nowhere to go and by the sound cues there was only seconds before they came in the room and the group ahead wasn't even starting to leave...

I dropped into the fetal position, started sobbing about how Jekyll killed everyone and just played the victim who was completely broken and hiding, and when they left i cried about how it wasn't safe out there (the portals all led to "in between" spaces where "The Hunter" was).

Funnily enough the guide for that group was the casting director and the actor playing Jekyll/Hyde was one of the main co-directors of the show watching through a crack in the wall going "oh shit" at seeing me still in there.

The actual official plan for that happening was to just suck it up and let it happen... nobody counted on me coming up with split second improvisation to maintain immersion...

#improv #acting #volunteering #charity #panic



Just highlighting that I'm right there in Texas, right in the "Do Not Travel". I am definitively not safe.

#lgbtq #trans #uspol #lgbt #lgbtqia

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I have a new pet theory: writers could use writing image captions as a writing exercise for describing scènes visually in their work. Could that be anything?

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fedi is pretty nice but anyone find it weird that you have to send regular proof of gayness to the council of fedi admins?

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Sometimes Matt calls me when he can’t remember a database password, but lately, it seems that every time we talk, it’s about another challenge against one of the books in my high school library.
https://buff.ly/48mZYtK

#LGBTQ #Education #Libraries #Books #USPolitics #BookBans

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Incumbents won't tolerate meaningful (="an incumbent loses power") change.

Real change makes someone powerful mad. It doesn't happen until everyone powerful is more scared than mad AND stops trying to prevent the change. (Fear makes you stupid. Powerful fear ≠ constructive response.)

"Women are people with agency" (~"no slaves"), "people need to eat" and "you can't keep the loot" (~"climate") are real change.

Reality will get to the incumbents eventually. It's better if we get there first.

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Content warning: US pol, venting

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i love how windows powerusers are in what can only be explained as a toxic relationship with the os

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The sweetest message (by u/Holyrollerfliper12)
(AI Alt-Text)

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Today I learned that GNU tar does network connections if you say "foo:bar", it tries to resolve "foo". FFS, wasn't the Unix philosophy to do one thing and do it well? Luckily there's a "--force-local" option to GNU tar to avoid it doing remote connections.

Sorry if you're in trouble now, either reviewing your tar calls in your application and whether they can take user input as filename -- or if this was part of your exfiltration or attack on a system.

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in reply to hannes

@hannes wtf... that's so incredibly unnecessary as a function as well... (given that you can pipe into network connections)

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Content warning: kink, petplay

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in reply to Hazelnoot

Content warning: RE: kink, petplay

in reply to luna after dark

Content warning: RE: kink, petplay


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tbh i don't think bsky got more users/"won" for any technical reasons (ATProto vs ActivityPub)

but just because it's marketed as twitter and has a centralized server, it is familiar for twitter-folk

and if we want to keep fedi decentralized, i don't think changing the underlying protocol does anything for getting new users

any platform where you have to "pick a home server" will have the issues with attracting non-techy users that fedi has

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what a pro move

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Google is absolutely cooked as a web search engine, thanks to the current crop of LLM chatbot AI.

The scope of the harm it will do while slowly sinking into irrelevance is immeasurable, though.

#AI #Google #StochasticParrots #LLM #ChatBot

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Trans girlfriend who's mental illnesses are in high enough quantity that you can list them off with the Pokemon rap
in reply to Julia :v_trans: :v_bi:

oh you can have a nice time watching this as a way to get into BDGs weirdness c:

https://youtu.be/2cT6ULpScZA



Content warning: anxiety attack regarding us pol, transphobia, antisemitism, health


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As someone who doesn’t see ads (no TV, no Facebook & such, ad blocker firmly in place) and is not in a swing state, I had no idea the ads elsewhere were so transphobic:

Wisconsin: https://social.treehouse.systems/@wwahammy/113309175241402699

Texas: https://mastodon.social/@RVLara23/113309275534480519

I can only begin to imagine how scary this must be for all the trans folks out there. And all of us who care about them are horrified, too. I sure hope our votes show that we support the trans community wholeheartedly.

#uspol #LGBTQ #TransRightsAreHumanRights


If you're not from a swing state, I don't think you can fully appreciate how much the GOP is focusing on transphobia for this campaign. It's like 50% of the ads in Wisconsin.

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in reply to Jeri Dansky

@Jeri Dansky for the record if you've missed it, they've made a policy in which they're refusing to accept court orders that involve changing gender markers (they won't even process the name change portion) and send all such documentation to a central list for "review", notably our attorney general has in the past attempt to get lists of all transgender people in Texas from the DMV but couldn't because the system didn't track reason for the correction. Even worse, they're currently discussing investigation previous changes and reversing them.

So I can't get my ID updated, and because the whole system of putting people on a list isn't a clean cut thing, it's entirely possible for just one transphobe at a DMV office to put me on said list regardless of my actually trying to update my ID. And that's before getting to the fact that my federal ID now no longer matches my state ID. (Which also means I risk messy consequences if I try to vote)

After so many expenses and so much struggle even managing expenses, on top of this, I'm considering just giving up my car altogether.

At the very least, I have the ability to pursue a passport so I have a federal id going forward and I'll just stop interacting with Texas specific systems.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri Yeah, I'd heard this news from Texas, and worried about all the people this will harm. I'm really sorry for all the problems this has caused for you.

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I've been looking for this dumb sign for years and it finally reappeared on my Facebook feed. Behold, the Tingly Bridge Warning.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to vxo

my "electric field is within state limits, alternative crossing at fernbrook lake" t-shirt is prompting a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt
in reply to vxo Cory Doctorow reshared this.

@pluralistic I try to avoid crossing the Whitnall Highway power lines in North Hollywood in winter, otherwise my bike will very helpfully try to ground me every few seconds

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I gotta get off this instance. Where should I go. Who wants to adopt me. #changeinstance

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in reply to BudsofStone

@BudsofStone If you want to stick with Mastodon I strongly recommend lgbtqia.space great admin ( @🌸🇪🇺 Dreamy Mia 🏳️‍⚧️🌸 ), plus (last time I checked) a raised character limit.

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At ER with a POTS flare - heart rate is 180 at triage.

Nurse: “Are you fighting with your boyfriend sweetie?”

Me (somewhat indignant) “I don’t have a boyfriend. I have POTS.”

Doctor: “Single? At your age? How come? You don’t want to be married?”

This is misogyny in medicine. I had a cardiac issue which is clearly documented in my chart/medical history.

I showed up alone - having been brought in by paramedics after fainting from low blood pressure and high heart rate.

There was absolutely no reason to make it about my marital status, boyfriend or lack thereof.

Can you imagine if a man showed up at the ER after passing out and his heart rate was 180? Do you think for a second they would ask if he was fighting with his girlfriend?

It’s a rhetorical question - since studies have shown that men are treated faster and more seriously in healthcare settings.

POTS is particularly challenging because it can make a patient appear anxious. It causes high heart rate, shortness of breath, sweating and dizziness. It’s all too easy for healthcare workers to see those symptoms and psychologize the patient.

That was my reality for YEARS. Going to the ER because I had passed out somewhere - and being treated as though I was simply hysterical. Given IV fluids to placate me but never referred to cardiology and properly worked up.

Even once I finally received a diagnosis (more than a decade later) I would continue to encounter hurdles like the one described above.

We must do better. Patients deserve to have their issues taken seriously and their health protected. If you don’t know what’s wrong - admit it. Refer them to someone else. Don’t slap an “anxiety” label on them and send them on their way.

The amount of times I was either gaslit, misdiagnosed or mistreated in healthcare settings is a huge part of why I decided to start advocating. I want to raise awareness about the conditions I have so that patients might better recognize the symptoms within themselves.

I also want to try and change the culture of medicine. The default should be to believe patients. To protect them. To wear a mask around them during an airborne pandemic. It should NOT be to pry into their personal life, psychologize and dismiss them.

Now that I know and understand what’s wrong - I live my life upside down! Almost all my writing is done horizontally and/or with my legs up the wall - because it’s the only way I get enough blood flow to my brain.

POTS can be incredibly debilitating - but there is hope. Treatments and lifestyle modifications CAN help.

I’ve just finished part one of a three part guide into all things POTS/Dysautonomia. It’s my hope these articles will help patients lean into their condition, adapt and accommodate it so that they will suffer less than I did.

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/living-life-upside-down-an-intro

#CovidIsAirborne #CovidCautious #CovidIsNotOver #CleanAir #WearaMask #Disability #LongCovid #Ableism #Denial #CleanAir #Pandemic #PublicHealth #InfectionControl #Eugenics #SafeHealthcare #N95 #Respirators #MasksWork #MaskUp #Spoonie #Discrimination #Dysautonomia #mecfs #pots #mcas #communitycare #wearamask #chronicillness #keepmasksinhealthcare #mastcells #DysautonomiaAwarenessMonth

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"i wonder why my game always takes so long to load!" says the little kitty thats playing the game on an hdd instead of its ssd

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one sentence horror:

Download oracle java in order to run this program

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☭ ☭ ☭ ATTENTION COMRADES ☭ ☭ ☭
wokeness will be EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED
please form an orderly queueb to receive your government-mandated CRITICAL RACE THEORY
violators will be sent to PRONOUN GULAG

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B3

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are we having our weekly "don’t treat other people like sex objects especially if you don’t fucking know them" thread again
in reply to Pumpkin Amber Shiri Bailem reshared this.

i don't care if the doll uses it/its pronouns, or says it's a traumaqueer. you gotta ask it for its boundaries before just assuming it's another one of your playthings. this applies to everyone not just dolls, like genuinely don't just go up to someone you don't know on fedi and just assume they're going to want to interact with you in that way. i don't even fucking do that and i have people i tease on fedi here and there (mostly on my lewd accounts) we consented, we respect each other's boundaries.
in reply to Pumpkin Amber Hazelnoot reshared this.

people should not be having to explicitly state "do not interact with me lewdly" it should be implied that unless stated otherwise you don't just run up to someone and make lewd jokes towards them, you don't flirt with them, you don't send unsolicited pictures of yourself etc. cmon.

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Judge dismissed lawsuit filed by Disability Rights New York on behalf of two disabled individuals opposing Nassau County mask ban.

Reason? “There’s a medical exemption - you’ll be fine.”

If they thought they would be “fine” we wouldn’t need lawsuits!

This belies logic. We all know that not everyone will be considered “legit enough” to be masking. It’s not right to allow law enforcement to determine who can and can’t wear a mask.

This will also give police yet another reason to stop and harass people of colour.

For more on mask bans and why medical exemptions are NOT the answer: https://www.disabledginger.com/p/nassau-county-ny-makes-masking-illegal

Original news article on the lawsuit https://apnews.com/article/mask-ban-long-island-new-york-78dc727b3fe212014ef4371f3ad07417

#CovidIsAirborne #CovidCautious #CovidIsNotOver #CleanAir #WearaMask #Disability #LongCovid #Ableism #Denial #CleanAir #Pandemic #PublicHealth #InfectionControl #Eugenics #SafeHealthcare #N95 #Respirators #MasksWork #MaskUp #Spoonie #Discrimination #Dysautonomia #mecfs #pots #mcas #communitycare #wearamask #chronicillness #keepmasksinhealthcare #MaskBans #NoMaskBans #bullying #CleanAirClassrooms #UglyLaws

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NYT BREAKING: kamala harris saves drowning child, but did she consider how this affects the lucrative child-sized coffin industry? our op-ed board weighs in

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in reply to Joan Westenberg

Content warning: cw: uspol

in reply to Mason Loring Bliss

Content warning: cw: uspol


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I was recently accused of posting "engagement bait" on here. I'm hurt. I'm offended. I wouldn't do that. I would never stoop so low.

Repost if you believe me.
If you don't believe me, tell me why in the comments.
If you're indifferent, send this post to your friends, family, and coworkers. Maybe they have an opinion to share.

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in reply to Low Quality Facts

Super, thanks a lot!

Finally, I'm blocked by my friends, family, and coworkers 😁

in reply to Low Quality Facts

I refuse to respond to clickbait like this.

You'd have to get up early in the morning to trick me.


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BREAKING: Water-drinkers will all die, according to new scientific research.

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If you’re chronically online like me or you just keep up with the constantly evolving meme culture, you’ll be familiar with the “demure” meme that was all over Tiktok & Instagram this summer.
https://buff.ly/4erlcZC

#LGBTQ #Transgender #Memes #SocialMedia #VeryMindfulVeryDemure

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