Random phone security 101, unlocking methods, please boost:
Biometrics: prevents casual unlocking by someone just picking up your phone, but otherwise no real security. A cop (or other assailant) can force you to unlock your phone easily (often even without a warrant)
Pin Code: Slightly more secure, prevents anyone from accessing easily without knowing the code. But anyone with access to your phone, time, and skill can get in. Can be significantly improved by turning on Keypad Scrambling and Distress Codes (most devices do not offer either feature without a Custom ROM, see below) and Lockouts (available much more often).
Password: your security is proportional to how much a pain in the ass it is to unlock your phone.
Two-Factor (Custom ROMs Only): by combining Biometrics and Pin Code you get security that rivals a secure password while still being almost as convenient as a pin code.
Pattern Unlock: Just don't, it's honestly probably better to use just Biometric over this
Explanations:
Keypad Scrambling: This feature re-arranges the keypad on your lock screen. Downside is you can't unlock from muscle memory, but upside is that no one can unlock your phone from smudge patterns.
Distress Code: This is a second pin code that when entered will instead erase your phone instead of unlocking it. They can't tell which is which until your phone is being erased. Also increases security on brute forcing as there's a chance they accidentally erase your phone in the process.
Lockout: This is where your phone prevents access after a certain number of failed login attempts. It significantly slows down brute force attacks. Phones with this feature will usually either force you to enter a more secure password after this limit is hit, but some offer the option to automatically erase your phone.
Custom ROMs: these are alternate systems you can install on your phone, usually variants of Android. They often offer more features and security than your phone normally has, but there are unfortunately some tradeoffs due to Google's demand for control (example is you can't use tap-to-pay with a Custom ROM)
Captain Pedantic Pants saves the day! Thank you for your service.
Edit: I guess the down voters assumed i was being sarcastic? There's no sarcasm here. No bad, only nice. OP is my hero for being brave enough to correct someone's grammar in public.
Me and my brother and my sister in law are visiting Miami right now. He asked when the last time I was here was, I say 2012, when he and I came down. Hours later we were talking and we realize we all three came down after that.
None of us can remember when. It was some time after 2017 but before 2019. Only problem is, it almost definitely couldn't have happened during those dates, but that are the only date between which it could have happened.
I found that once an event has happened at least 2 years ago, I start to forget what year exactly it happened and have to stop and think. That seems to be the threshold for me.
Damn, I relate to this so hard. Like, even more than most memes on this community. I really struggle to explain how I handle time perception to people. It sometimes causes issues with my support workers, because I come across as hyper capable and smart, but I struggle so hard when time gets involved. I literally can't remember what happened last week unless I have some logs to look back on. Well, can't remember is probably inaccurate — I do remember, I just can't distinguish those memories from ones that happened two weeks ago, or two months ago (I can probably distinguish it from two years ago, but that's only because I've moved house and changed jobs since then)
President Trump has called for Democrats to be executed for sedition. The voters expect Democrats to come to the table with a real counter-proposal and negotiate a mutually acceptable compromise. That’s doing politics the right way. -Ezra Klein, New York TImes
Yet another example where "Buying Isn't Owning" from HP's Department of #Enshittification.
The business models of monopolies...
Some poor account rep. or customer service agent: "Yes, I know you bought an HP laptop with this functionality, but we're taking it away after you bought it, ... for reasons"
HP and Dell have been competing for the bottom of the consumer computing barrel for decades. Year after year it's a game of one-upmanship to see how much more crap they can be, and this is pretty damned bad.
Random bit of trans vocabulary as I've recently seen people rejecting a phrase because they were confused by it.
"Socialized male" and "socialized female" aren't synonyms for someone's sex, they are experiences and culturally relevant.
People are confused because the term "socialize" has multiple meanings.
One is something done by you: "I was socializing with my friends"
One is something done to you: "I was socialized as a man"
To summarize Webster respectively:
The first is "to participate actively in a social group"
The second is "to fit or train for a social environment'
We say someone is "Socialized Male" or "Socialized Female" not to indicate what their sex is, but to indicate that in their formative years they were saddled with the expectations and treatment associated with "male" or "female" in our society.
The trans women getting confused think it means something like "grew up as men" or that our social groups were men, and that's not at all it.
It means we were treated as men.
We usually grew up with more women in our social circles than men, even if we didn't know we were trans yet. We were often seen as an exception, which means even our acceptance was flavored by it.
What "socialized male" means to me is that I grew up being labeled a predator and a threat by default.
Even if I wasn't specifically raised such, I was still affected by the fact that so many men were raised to believe it was okay to lie, cheat, and manipulate to abuse women. And because of that there was literally nothing I could say or do to convey that I was being genuine because far too many were dishonest about it.
I had to build entire patterns and routines of behavior around how to behave around women to make them feel safer, almost always to my personal detriment.
I to this day am still anxious and hesitant in so many interactions because for decades of my life they were forbidden to me because they were far too likely to make someone I care about feel unsafe.
When I say I was "socialized male" it means that was something done to me. I had to figure out how to navigate life and survive while being forced into a traumatic box by society that didn't remotely fit me.
This is a good and useful reminder: the word "socialize" is context-dependent. Would it be productive to try and use "enculturate" instead for the second meaning (training somebody in acceptable social behaviour)?
@Charlie Stross enculturate might be more accurate in some ways, but it feels much less familiar which means it requires more explanation.
But I do think the lack of context is probably what's throwing people off, particularly in that they're so many steps removed from the definition.
"Socialized male" is basically shortened from "they socialized me male" (transitive verb form) vs people are confusing it with "I socialized with men" (intransitive verb form)
"Indoctrinate" is a pretty good word and pretty close, but I honestly think it's too dramatic and is way more active than what we're talking about.
"Socialization" in general is a process we all go through in which we're introduced to and steeped in our cultural norms and values. Not all of it is accepted, not all of it takes, but it all affects us. Like how as an american I was steeped in US propaganda far more intensely than someone in the UK.
The term is talking about how during socialization we were also immersed in the expectations of manhood and masculinity.
@cstross Off-topic, but this reminds me of the way you sometimes hear younger journalists confusing “this is in the public interest” with “the public will find this interesting”.
@Tattie That's why I pointed out that it's non synonymous with assigned sex and is a perfect example!
Most trans women unfortunately are, at least in western society. Many if not most of us don't even realize we're trans until adulthood, so we grow up being treated as men by society.
For those like yourself who were treated otherwise, I'm grateful knowing that not all of us did.
This is in response to people who were interpreting "socialized male" as them socializing as men or primarily socializing with men, neither of which being the meaning of the term. If it meant that, it would be accurate to push back against it as we were never men and we very often socialize primarily with other women.
In it's accurate meaning, it's an important term and important to understand especially for cases like yours to define what makes your experience different. But also so that between our two experiences we can highlight what parts of our experience is inherent to being a trans woman and what parts are specific to being socialized male.
ok but I'm confused why you're grateful I wasn't socialized male? Being treated as a girl is grim. Being talked over, expected to do emotional labour for your male peers and for adults, having to work harder for less recognition. Being sexualised by adults at a young age. Being denied agency.
there was like this pattern where I'd go somewhere new and for like half an hour people would treat me as a boy, and it would be weird and confusing for everyone, and then there would be this "click point" and they'd switch to the way that everyone always treated me, as a strange boygirl creature.
I think maybe I went thru a phase of "male socialisation" for a few years during university? And it didn't bring me any more happiness than my childhood had. But then slowly I started hanging out with more and more woman-dominated friendship groups and being treated as an "honourary" one of them. And then I transitioned.
@shiri, this looks very much like “$ITEM is releasing on $DATE” vs. “$ITEM will be released on $DATE” to me. I'm quite sure that people just don't see or possibly even understand the difference.
I'm never quite sure why, exactly, $ITEM is holding on to $DATE, and I'm never quite sure what happens if $ITEM doesn't release $DATE – do we just skip that day?
@shiri, … hmm. Rereading, I see that I didn't properly account for having put “on” in both. Too used to Americans (in particular) omitting it, I suppose… regardless, it's intended to show doing vs. being/having done to.
@shiri, ah. No subject (or object; I always get the two labels confused). “With others” doesn't half do a good impression of being one, though… IT'S A TRAP!!!1!!one
I don't think people reject that phrase because they misunderstand it. One big reason to reject it is because transphobes, especially the TERFy sort, use it as a way of saying that trans women act like men, particularly that they are entitled, violent, and dangerous. More broadly, socialization is not a simple unidirectional process. Not just how society treats you and what expectations it has, but also how you respond to that treatment, and how society reacts to your upholding or failing to uphold those expectations. Trans girls don't have the same socialization as cis boys. They don't have the same socialization as cis girls, either. You could say that we are "socialized trans female", I suppose. Of course, no two people have identical socialization, so we are talking about consistent patterns of similarity. Are there similarities between trans female and cis male socialization? Certainly, but I believe there are also consistent differences that make it worth drawing a distinction there. The end result, at least, is very different.
@Juniper 🏳️⚧️ In regards to the transphobes, any term or phrase about our experience will get used in that way. Not because the term in any way implies it, but because they will bend over backwards to make that claim about us any way they can.
So I don't see any point in dancing around transphobes, all we get down that road is a semantic treadmill.
And yes, how we respond to it varies greatly. The term is unidirectional because it refers only to what was done to us, not how we responded to it.
We all have wildly different responses and experiences, same as anyone else.
The phrase is talking about how we were treated and what expectations were put on us by society.
And "Socialized Trans Female" is a step backwards because not all trans women dealt with male socialization, just the vast vast majority. (Example: a girl who transitions at a young age and is supported in her transition is socialized female)
This is an all too frustratingly common case of people complaining that a simplified phrase doesn't perfectly encompass a whole paragraph's of concept.
If we throw out this term we simply lose a tool to explain and describe our experiences, nothing gets improved.
If someone can come up with a better term to mean "Grew up with society/guardians treating you with the expectations it associates with <gender>" then we'll all hop on board.
you are writing as though this phrase is commonly used by trans people in this sense. That has not been my experience. I have known far more trans people who actively reject the idea that they are socialized as their AGAB. Your experience may be different, but that is where I am coming from. And I don't think that this is dancing around transphobes; in my experience it is primarily used in a transphobic way, so that is the first way I expect it to be understood. My objection is not that the phrase is insufficiently descriptive, but that it is actively inaccurate.
I was not socialized male. Coming to understand that has been a significant part of my transition. I spent a long time with the self-conception that I was "not like other guys". Realizing that I am actually a pretty standard trans woman has been a trip. And I've also come to realize that I was not treated or even seen on the same way as the cis boys around me. I remember my mom saying once (not to me), after she had babysat her nephews for an afternoon, that now she understood what it was really like to have boys. This fits a pattern that was present throughout my childhood: people did not quite see me as a boy, even though they thought they should. And consequently, they didn't quite treat me as a boy, though they certainly didn't treat me as a girl.
I don't entirely understand your objection to using " trans female socialization". Certainly it is true that trans girls who have their gender recognized young will have a different experience of socialization than those who do not. But trans girls also have a significantly different experience of socialization than cis boys, and putting them into that box is more harmful than having a concept of trans female socialization that is not 100% universal. (No such concept will ever be completely universal. It will certainly differ along other axes like race, region, and socioeconomic status.) 1/2
So overall, saying that trans women have male socialization is inaccurate and harmful. It ascribes a similarity to the experience of cis boys that does not exist, and it gives license to treat trans women as being really or essentially men. I think that what you are talking about fits better under what I understand as gender assignment rather than socialization. I think it is common to treat gender assignment as something that happens in the moment when an M or an F is recorded on our birth certificates and then is done. But really in just about every social interaction we have (there may be some spaces, particularly queer ones, where this happens less), the people around us will try to figure out what gender box we fit into. They assign us a gender. From that assignment, they will derive expectations of how we will act and how they should treat us. Because most people's gender boxes are a strict binary, many trans girls will have the experience of being assigned male across many interactions, same as cis boys. But they will often not react to this assignment in the way that cis boys do, so they will not receive the same socialization as cis boys. 2/2
@Juniper 🏳️⚧️ ugh... socialization has absolutely no reference to how we respond to it.
This is an actual academic sociology/psych term and is entirely about the environment we were raised and the expectations we were raised with.
For instance, someone who grows up in a conservative household and community is socialized conservative, this is regardless of whether they ever accepted any of it.
If you're assigned male across the majority of your interactions growing up, that's what this means. It doesn't mean you are a man, it means you had to deal with the traumas of being treated as one.
And yes, this is something that's shared with cis boys, because it's not about how we responded to it.
Like I've said elsewhere, if we transition early and are accepted then we don't deal with it because we get socialization that matches our real identity.
Saying trans female socialization literally means that we were raised with the expectations that we would act and behave as other trans femmes.
I'm American, I was socialized hyper-capitalist... does that make me a capitalist? No. It means I dealt with the expectations and trauma of hyper-capitalist expectations being put on me.
What about being socialized Christian (which basically means growing up in a Christian, even non-practicing, home), does that make me not Jewish? Nope. Do I get "Christian Privilege" for it? Hell no. Does that mean people can call me Christian? Still no.
And we do end up with many of the traumas of cis boys/men, the difference is for us is that it's in stark relief as we move away from those expectations and re-socialize ourselves.
Socialization is explicitly the expectations that were put on us and not how we responded to them.
If you want to talk about socialization specifically in how we responded to it? It's failed socialization, they wanted us to be men and we rejected it, they failed. But failure doesn't mean we didn't deal with them trying, it just means it didn't take.
Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update Update introduces two ways for the fridges to show ads. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/1…
Hey, the Python Software Foundation (the people who make the Python programming language and the standard interpreter for it) just took a big hit to support those of us being targeted by hate.
If you're in a position to do so, maybe consider giving them a donation for being apparently one of the few tech organizations that have our back: psfmember.org/civicrm/contribu… (if you want to verify the link it's the donate button on python.org/)
I almost cried given how many brands and organizations turn their back on us when they're not even standing to lose money.#FOSS #LGBTQIA #TransRights #Trans
Dear god my life is cursed with technology right now...
Brand new bullshit issue: my android phone refuses to accept that the wifi is connected to the internet, I can open up pingtools and confirm the dns and ping work fine, even check the URLs it uses to check access and those are fine...
But it won't accept that it's connected and as such tells all the apps there's no connection... despite it being confirmed as working.
This morning I had intermittent network issues on my phone, but my laptop has been fine all day... and now my laptop is still fine but I'm getting this nonsense with my phone...
I once had a router that did a horrible job of automatically managing 5ghz and 2.4ghz home Internet. The advice given was to have the router treat them as separate wifi connections.
@Arcanasphere (Andrew Arcana) it's openwrt, I've got a second SSID that's only 2.4ghz and it still does it on that one... no joke I can't even figure out why it's saying it's limited... I use ping tools and test everything and it's all working, but because Android throws up the flag saying there's no internet access then practically all the apps fail
Suggestion, seeing someone on youtube talk about adding an anti-ai logo on their product:
Someone needs to set up a non-profit org to just to have these logos be a reliable thing.
For those unaware, a lot of certification logos are not governmental, they're organizations licensing the logos (in many cases for free) and defending their usage via trademark law.
Basic gist of the process: * You design a logo * You establish the terms under which the logo can be used (ie. has a basic audit trail to prove that no AI was used) * You trademark the logo * You advertise the certification * You start suing people who misuse the logo
It's not a nothing process... but it just takes time (paperwork, court cases, but also just accepting and dealing with reports) and money (money primarily for registration and legal fees)
If someone does do this, I honestly suggest multiple marks for best effect: * No AI - everything is generated by them from scratch * Best Faith No AI - you may have used stock images or the like and as such can't guarantee they didn't use AI * AI assisted - as much as people complain, it helps to have because it increases adoption and recognition, basically they can prove that all important bits of the content are human created (ie. maybe they used AI for a texture or a background in images, or they wrote most of the text but used AI to fill in small portions) * AI edited - provably human generated content, but then it was fed through AI to modify it (ie. hand drawn art cleaned up and colored, or written text that used AI literally as an editor) * AI content, while there's all sorts of ethical debate, many who use AI do believe it should be labeled. And a recognizable label of such could help with recognition of the no AI label
And then a sort of secondary mark for those who pay this org to proactively verify the work (good way to generate funds for the lawsuits against those who falsely label)
Ugh... media server died again... at this point it's a money issue more than anything else, the hardware I have just isn't handling it. Pretty sure the drive arrays are failing, and the drives themselves aren't doing great as well...
Whelp, server is back online with only one tiny hitch... for some reason my router (OpenWRT) isn't sharing IPv6 addresses and I've literally changed nothing in the move...
Sharing this story from @Cory Doctorow because it's so much of what I've been saying.
Shipping a model that runs badly – that needs more data-centers and energy to run – is a way to convince investors that it's doing something really advanced (after all, look how much compute and energy it's consuming!).
I'm on the last leg of preparing, apartment is nearly finalized and booking travel arrangements.
Unfortunately that's pretty much everything that's been donated so far by itself.
I can't do a flight mostly because my cat can't safely fly, and to a lesser degree to keep at least some of my things.
My current car can't survive the trip and the option we settled on is I'm going to rent a car and my beloved sister Chelsie is going to drive me up, then take a flight back.
We've got a wonderful friend covering hotel stays, but even then a flight and a cross country car rental is over $1000 combined... that's before we even get to gas.
I also still need some more funds for gas and deposits (because of credit issues my current place took a bond instead of a deposit, so I get nothing back, I almost didn't get an apartment at all because of those issues), plus any setup fees for utilities that come up.
An update on my request for help. It looks like the move is set, just got to get some final numbers for budgeting. At this point every little bit helps drastically in making sure I don't run face first into another roadblock.
When I'm past my move and once I have enough headspace to handle the frustrating conversion period... I think it's time for me to switch my phone to a secure ROM.
Things are getting bad enough that my baseline trust is quickly disappearing (baseline in the sense of "it's not in their interests to do this... yet").
I think when I have the space to handle the setup I'm going to switch my Pixel 8 over to Graphene, especially since their Google Play sandbox will allow me to continue accessing things like my banking app without giving Google total control over my phone...
For anyone thinking the setup is not a big deal, I'm constantly on the verge of tears and/or meltdown right now with the stress of moving cross country away from the people I love for safety...
I don't think I can commit to the frustration of spending so much time re-setting up apps, little oopsies here and there where I lose and have to recreate data, adjusting workflows, etc etc...
Like TTRPGS? Like supporting people who are trying to get back on their feet? How about prestigious names who are also leftist?
Friend of mine just released the FREE quickstart for their new RPG.
Want more reason to dive in and give it a try? This is Malix Nystul... a name that might sound vaguely familiar to those who played 2nd and 3rd edition D&D as dozens of spells bore his name (before 4th genericized all of them). The Archwizard Nystul in Greyhawk is named after him.
So do my wonderful friend a solid and download this, every download helps him out even if you're not spending any money!
Basic gist: the NSA, FBI, etc are now actively targeting anyone expressing leftist sentiments or even just being pro-trans rights even if they haven't committed a crime.
It directs them to "investigate, prosecute, and disrupt", again regardless of whether we've committed a crime.
They can't jail everyone who believes in human decency. The worst thing anyone can do - for themself or for others - is to clam up now and stop talking so the pool of people brave enough to express their non-fascist views gets smaller.
@PedestrianError Jailing us isn't the only thing they can do, this is mostly going to target shutting down civil rights organizations, media organizations that share dissenting views, protest organizers.
For smaller individuals it'll be things like cutting government benefits, pressuring our employers to fire us, pressuring our landlords to evict us.
It's important that people be prepared for the outcomes of their speech so they can be strategic about it. Speak where it matters.
I'm willfully open because I'm a trans-woman, I'm high up on the list of targets to punish regardless so there's little I can do to make it worse.
And be careful with "they can't jail all of us"... the nazis already answered that problem and it's likely the US is going to do the same in the future...
To be honest, this is something I see constantly around the fediverse of people shooting themselves in the foot over high minded ideals, choosing the sacrifice the now for an ideal future that won't happen because they're sacrificing it.
Favorite example here is the people that complain about corporate networks but then get angry at and shutdown anyone trying to make it easier for people to leave those networks.
Someone was making the "rapture pet insurance" joke (which entertainingly enough such businesses do exist and aren't scams)...
But it randomly made me think of a business idea that I think would be incredible:
Death and Incapacitance Pet Insurance
Basic gist is it's a digital dead-man's switch service, you routinely check in to establish you're still there taking care of your pet. If you stop checking in, then someone reaches out, if they can't get ahold of you they come out and take care of your pet.
One thing I've been worried about for ages is what will happen to Lizzie if something happens to me... With how isolated I am most of the time, it could easily be days or weeks before someone came around to check on her... she could easily die of starvation or dehydration before anyone even knew I was dead.
... It honestly terrifies me.
So the idea of a service with someone in the area who has a copy of my key, and if I stop responding they'll come out, make sure she has adequate food and water for a while, notify family, and eventually take her to a foster or shelter if no family can take her (it'd be truly awful, but it'd be better than her just dying slowly as no-one cares for her).
It strikes me that it would be a pretty easy business to make profitable given that it would so rarely be used. Most customers would never use it given that we typically outlive our pets.
It would just need a retainer paid out to contractors in the area to handle check ins if the automatic check in fails, then if they have to go take care of a pet they get a reasonable payout for the work involved. (If someone just uses it as a sitter for a vacation then they get a significant bill)
american venting about undiagnosed chronic pain and zero pain management
Being disabled without any answers, tools to management, and watching it slowly degenerate is... truly awful...
I don't talk about it much because it does little good and usually it's best to just not think about it as much as possible...
I have no diagnosis, no real clue even what is going on... but over the course of two decades my muscles have gotten stiffer and stiffer. It takes more and more effort to move every muscle in my body as time passes, and the muscles move less and less... they even stretch less and less, my range of motion is drastically reduced...
And it hurts... literally constantly all the time... every muscle is constantly strained, and my legs are the worst of the bunch, but I don't know if I can say any muscle is really excluded...
It hurts when sitting, laying down, standing... just existing hurts because there is no position that puts my muscles at rest anymore...
And it's so damn exhausting... even typing this right now I feel it in my fingers...
And I have no idea how bad it's going to get, just that it's still getting worse... I have to wonder if it'll eventually end up in paralysis... (even worse, is it affecting muscular organs like my heart and lungs?)
I've got no idea what it is, and absolutely nothing to address the pain or exhaustion...
And worse yet, pain management isn't a lack of access right now... it's a lack of anything functioning because my body doesn't really respond properly to pain medication.
I have to turn up my apartment temperature as high as I can tolerate to just loosen up my muscles a little bit, and I still have to throw an electric blanket over my legs often, regardless of my sensory issues...
... and that's not even the only thing wrong with me...
just going to say I can't believe this book has fucked me up... a trans magical girl story should not have me processing so much self-worth and self-hate trauma... this was supposed to be lighthearted comfort read dammit...
content warnings: big big trauma feels, parental emotional abuse (low detail), internalized transphobia, very mild external transphobia (one character intentionally misgenders), some suicidal ideation, and abuse of power by a mental health professional
Add this to the pile of ideas I'm unlikely to ever make, not because it's super hard but just because I'm so constantly exhausted and out of spoons... steal away if you want to make it:
There's basically the "big server" problem on the fediverse, where a super large open registration server has so many people on it you don't want to block it and lose all those people... but it inherently is less effectively moderated. Or even on smaller instances there's so many cases of "this wouldn't be acceptable on my instance, but isn't bad enough to defederate a whole instance over".
It's manageable, but has limitations that get worse as the network grows. It's even one of the concerns people have with bridges and corporate platforms adding support (ie. bluesky and threads respectively).
But there's an idea in Bluesky I kinda like that feels like it could be tweaked and imported over here. Which is subscribable moderation.
I'm not proposing just subscribing to all sorts of block lists from strangers, but a way of having shared moderation that people can team up on.
Basic idea I had was an open source platform (so others can run it for both redundancy and cutting down on smaller censorship disputes). On that platform, someone can create and become the admin of a moderation group. Then they can invite other people to that group as moderators (or in the case of private groups, members).
Then basically have auditable moderation lists made by the groups (showing which moderator took which action and when... especially good for undoing things if problems arise, but also for checking the list before you import an update), then server admins and users can follow a list and subscribe/import it.
Was even thinking this could be improved with things like public reporting, where reporting it to the server would send the report to all lists that haven't already blocked them (servers could even share this between eachother easily enough). Additionally admins could piggyback their list off of others (basically lists that are less restrictive than yours, so you might pull from "We only block Nazis" because you know anyone they're blocking isn't going to be in question).
Yea I have a prototype of this built. The annoying thing is unsubscribing from blocklists means undoing blocks and those don't always federate cleanly.
Yea, part of the AP protocol is you have to tell the server of the user you are blocking. When you unblock you have to also tell the server as well. If those messages are not processed correctly the block isn't lifted.
Now normally, you'd just manually block and unblock again to send a fresh message. But when you are dealing with lists there are UX challenges there. How do you communicate to the user that a block/unblock didn't go through and they need to retry? Or do you just keep retrying with exponential backoff? None of this is insurmountable, but distributed networks are hard 😅
I’m now at the point where I’m satisfied with my main features and almost ready to make my first release. Though in order to be a feasible fediverse server, I need to implement some sort of user blocking. So here goes.
@ראַף 🟣 I honestly wasn't imagining integrating with the protocol itself at all, I was just picturing it exporting an importable block list and leaving it to the platforms to support importing it, or other tools to handle importing and applying it.
Well right now at least on GTS and Mastodon you can import block and mute lists. But it's a one-off. There isn't what I think we both want which is a subscription to a block list where we can periodically diff against and undo/redo blocks and mutes.
@ראַף 🟣 I definitely agree that there isn't an explicit subscription option, and that's entirely down to toolkits on the instance side imo.
I imagined manual imports, but with convenient links for those who might want to build tools to automate those imports. Maybe an option to also email updates as a way to notify, but that's kinda secondary imo.
Then others can build tools to handle much of it, (like on friendica it would take barely any effort to write such a tool for server admins).
And basically just take unix methodology for the tools that import into other instances, focus on providing the list and a separate tool can be used to automate it.
Long, Talking about the shooting, Lessons from Judaism not involving faith
Note: Also posted to Facebook, so some of this is worded carefully and using stories and references to avoid getting censored.
Something that comes to mind every time a high profile death like this happens...
And to be clear, this isn't a condemnation, but food for thought:
In Judaism there's a relevant lesson, that we're guided not to celebrate death but to celebrate the diminishment of evil.
It's such a tiny difference, but I think it does make worlds of difference in our lives and in how we behave down the line.
I'll spare the talks of faith or divine judgement, but I'll speak to the practical effects I think are in play.
The risk in celebrating the death itself is that you start finding joy in the death of those you see as wrong or evil... and that joy can turn into a lowering of standards, in finding excuses to celebrate death. Eventually you start saying "But that man was evil so it's a good thing he died".
But what does it mean to celebrate the diminishment of evil? It means seeing what harm they would have done, and celebrating the end of that harm.
It's not enough to just say "there's one less bigot and evil person in the world", it's to ask how many lives do you think will be spared from harm?
The reason my celebration at this will be muted is because I honestly don't know if his voice was unique enough, or that it will take any time at all for him to be replaced and echoed.
It's not as simple as the United Healthcare death, where there was an immediate (but unfortunately temporary) change, that for a while after people got healthcare that would have otherwise been denied... without a doubt, many lives were saved.
In cases like this I especially think back to the story in my faith of the drowning of the Pharaoh's army in the Sea of Reeds. To the fact that a single soldier's death would have done little to diminish evil on it's own... but that single soldier's death is a necessary part of the greater whole that greatly diminishes evil.
Everything is just too much, every minute feels like an incredible struggle both physically and mentally...
To start, I'm disabled, not that the government cares. My ADHD is really bad, especially when I'm exhausted and/or stressed (which is all the time), it's beyond incredibly difficult to start tasks let alone focus on them...
After that is my physical issues, of which there's little even figured out because the healthcare system is hell... I'm in constant pain, especially in my legs, moving or not. But when I move, every muscle has more and more over the years started to feel less and less flexible. My range of motion is shot, and every single movement takes more and more effort. (last suggestion from a doctor right before she left the practice, and I have no idea if it's at all accurate is she was thinking it might be fibromyalgia).
I'm not even sure if it's just an extension of that or something else, but I'm also constantly exhausted no matter how much rest I've had.
... and that's my fucking baseline...
I'm trans, not only in the US but in fucking Texas... so I'm dealing with all this government bigotry increasingly bearing down on me... and the knowledge that it's only a matter of time before they start arresting us just for existing.
I'm barely afloat financially, just short of a living wage... but after so long in poverty and so many instances of getting financially screwed I'm pretty much drowning in debt... Worst of all is the $5k a previous apartment complex wants because I was living with a sibling who had an emotional crisis, to the point of being institutionalized, and I have to leave because I couldn't remotely maintain the place by myself.
Thanks to the support of kind strangers and the people who love me I've got plans to get out of Texas to Washington state to be someplace safer... but the prospect is still incredibly difficult and painful because it means leaving behind the people I love and my support network...
The raw stress of all of this has me to the point where it's a major accomplishment to just do the fucking laundry...
Oh, and get this... the apartment complex I was looking at rejected my application because of that aforementioned landlord demanding $5k from me... because of course our lovely society thinks someone who has to leave a place because of poverty just miraculously has many times the rent to just hand over while they still try and find a place to live...
I've been crying and sobbing for weeks... even before this rejection...
And before anyone mentions: roommates just don't work out... I have only ever had one house where things have been remotely comfortable and stable with other people. Most of all because my mix of disabilities and autism causing conflicts with people... I can only really live alone it seems. (Those same problems that have made me struggle with employment my entire life)
... I'm just so tired of clinging on to life by my fingernails... I don't want riches and luxury... I just want to fucking exist...
I honestly wish giving up was an option on days like this...
I could probably use some words of encouragement right now... I don't even know if I'm able to process them... but I need something...
With the nonsense about gup.pe getting hijacked, honestly has me thinking again about secondary tools for the network...
Bright spot is that they probably can't imitate the server, as far as I understand it AP has keys for the servers to prevent that (which is also part of why you can't readily swap platforms, want to run something different you need to use a different domain).
Still, it has me thinking about maybe some secondary registry to track instance information. Maybe make these sort of events less disruptive.
This is entirely off the cuff idea, so think of this as spaghetti at the wall:
I was just imagining a signed file on servers that gave extended, non-platform specific, meta for the server, kinda like robots.txt.
I was just thinking information like: * My IP is static, so if the IP changes without an updated signed file, then it's not safe (or it's dynamic, so don't worry if it changes) * Remember my nameservers and do the same if the nameservers change * Here's a moderator email for reporting posts (because the system mastodon has for sending reports to other servers is non-standard and not universal... I have to find moderator emails on about pages when I need to report something...) * Maybe some tags if someone wants to make non-platform specific server directories * Some flags like robots for nicer more compliant services, like bridges allowed/denied
And then maybe a dns middle-man service to toss on your server that checks these things periodically. So if something happens like with gup.pe there's a notice to admins and maybe it doesn't get cut off immediately, maybe letting admins give some final notices in more permanent situations.
The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into ways to limit transgender people's right to possess firearms, @CNN reports. This would be predicated on the idea that trans people are mentally ill. The idea has gained currency in conservative media since last week's school shooting, which police say was carried out by a trans woman, but the vast majority of mass attacks have no connection to transgender people.
Resharing this again, because I need the help and it's what it takes to get it.
Current update on things is that I've just gotten over nearly a solid week of sobbing... I'm struggling hard physically and mentally just to function at a base level right now.
The state I live in is just about to pass a bathroom bill, and it's a minor miracle that the drastically worse bills didn't move forward this session, but they're coming.
Until I have enough funds to feel remotely confident that I can afford the costs of the move all I can really do is just keep putting one foot in front of another.
They're trying to spin a version of things that suddenly claims that most or all mass shooters are trans, despite zero evidence of that fact. And why are they doing that? Because it gives them an excuse for platforms like this...
This asshole is literally calling for me to not only be arrested, but experimented on!
Note: this is a copy/paste because I am so incredibly worn out emotionally I've been sobbing since Sunday over the whole situation. But what use is having a gofundme if I don't get it in front of people.
I hate spamming this out, but it's the only way this works, especially on AP-Fedi.
Gist is I need to get out of the state for my safety, and that's easier said than done with my disabilities, debts, and other limits.
My lease is up in mid-October, I really want to be able to just go straight from here to Washington State and even 2/3rds of this goal will make that happen... but the clock's ticking.
I've got to move to someplace safer, but it means leaving behind most of my chosen family.
I know we'll stay in touch... but with everyone being poor that means the vast majority of them I'll never see again.
I don't want to fucking go... but I see the writing on the wall, and I remember all those stories from Jewish history of people who thought "It's not going to get that bad" right up until the gestapo kicked down their doors.
A part of me just wants to say "fuck it all" and stay, let them strip me down to nothing and kill me slowly and painfully... but for just a few more days with the people I love... but I also know they worry about me and it'll break them if I don't try to keep myself safe, so I've got to push through this.
I rely on them to push me to take care of myself often, I trust them and I know the urge to give up is partially rooted in my own fatalism toward my life... but dear god if this doesn't feel like preparing to amputate a limb...
If anyone wants to help make it a little easier... can't change the pain but can change how difficult the task is that I'm dealing with alongside this pain...
@cstross I was a student network tech at university and was helping a new student name T. Este get networking setup. Once successful, they asked if I could also do anything about their unfortunate email prefix, teste2 (they weren't the first teste!). I told them that I could not, but they were welcome to take it up with the university president, David Hardesty. Or... dhardest.
@justindz @cstross our student logins at my middle school were the first letter of your first name plus the first three letters of your last name, which was very unfortunate for C. Unterberger
@potpie @cstross @justindz In undergrad the default was first initial, last name, and you couldn’t change it. Poor T. Watkins went a couple weeks before someone told her. She ran into the IT office just bawling (I knew people there). They made an exception and changed it.
@justindz @cstross we did first initial last name, falling back to first two if there was a collision. There was already a cjones, so Ca... Jones got the fallback.
She did manage to convince them to use another username, though.
in the UK civil service, documents were changed/approved with the initials of the first two Christian names and surname. So my Dad (Henry William Preedy) signed HWP. His friend, Peter Ian Gowans, wasn't so lucky...
One of the things that pisses me off the most is the people always saying "violence is not the answer".
Do you know why Nazi punching is a thing? Why it goes beyond just "fuck nazis"?
Let me break it down a little:
Is violence in self defense okay when someone is attacking you? Obviously, because they're attacking you and "please stop killing me" isn't going to make much difference to someone in the process of killing you.
How about when they're just pointing a gun at you but haven't fired? Yes, because if they pull that trigger you're going to die.
What about when they're just threatening you? Like if someone says "I have a knife and the moment no-one is looking I'm going to stab you"... do you just ask them nicely not to? Do you wait for them to start stabbing before you think it's okay to fight back? You probably recognize that words can be violence then.
Let's go a bit further... let's say someone is stealing and destroying a diabetic's insulin? This is a life saving drug, do you think it's valid to use violence to stop them even though it's not directly killing them? Then you probably recognize that violence isn't just physical attacks on a person.
How about someone rallying people to get together and kill someone? Do you just debate them or do you stop them?
So if someone says they believe trans people shouldn't be allowed to exist? That we shouldn't have access to basic rights like being ourselves in public, or access to our medications? These are people rallying others to attack us, to destroy the things that keep us alive. They may not be actively stabbing us in the moment, but it's still violence against us.
Nazi speech, Terf speech, etc. IS violence. And violence is the appropriate response to violence.
Note how we're not talking about punching someone for just being capitalist, for shouting about free market bullshit. We're talking about punching people calling for our eradication.
Again: violence is the appropriate response to violence.
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.
@Rabbit Cohen @just adrienne Hey Rabbit, thanks again for the wonderful source post... sorry if this has resulted in spam upon you waking up, hope I'm representing well as I tackle these endless comments lol
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.
@a13cui my understanding is that it was a replacement for "Christian values" after 1945. The older term having come to mean plain fascism. And that the new term was promoted by people trying to whitewash their long standing Jew-hatred.
when is abortion permitted? Pikuach Nefesh sounds like it wouldn't be ok to kill an unborn baby (not trying to start an argument, but a genuine question)
@foo (A) when it's a person is a philosophical/religious argument, Judaism says at birth (B) Pikuach Nefesh is specifically what permits it, abortion is permitted when it would cause harm to carry to term. It explicitly includes mental and economic health in that (if it would cause mental distress, if it would interfere with your ability to care for yourself or your family) @A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
@𐪅𐪀𐪈 𐪑𐪁𐪉 Not remotely a counter argument. For one equating Israel with Judaism is an anti-semitic (blood and soil, or just thinking a regional government is authoritative of a worldwide culture) or Zionist take (despised by non-zionists like myself as they are colonizers who think Israel can do no wrong).
Also, it's in the blog section talking about America. It's also precisely the wrong usage (it's calling America Judeo-Christian... it's just christian if anything). On top of that, internalized bigotry is a thing in minority groups.
@scottmatter Sidenote: I understand why the combination would be complete trash in the topic of abortion. Anyone trying that might deserve a kick to the shin.
@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Judaism is both a religion and a cultural/"ethnic" group, "Judeo-Christian" is almost always used to refer to the religion of which my statements are representative of the vast vast majority of Judaism.
Also one of the distinct differences is that Atheism and the faith of Judaism are not incompatible. There are many atheist-jews because God actually isn't the center point of Judaism, the main point is the time tested rules (see the argue with everything/everyone) about becoming a better person.
We will always be used by minority groups referring to themselves, mostly because "the vast vast vast majority of us" is clumsy to say and people get the point that exceptions exist. Also, because it doesn't change the fact of the statement being made.
It's also why I mad the example points I did because they're central points that are agreed upon by all major sects as opposed to the many many points which are argued over (once again see the argue with everything/everyone... arguments are a past-time in Jewish culture)
@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter I think it's problematic because all of that is almost always presented from the filter of Christianity looking backwards. Jesus was absolutely a Jew and the vast vast majority of what he preached was in line with Jewish beliefs (if they hadn't shed Judaism as part of their faith and hadn't been co-assimilated with the entirety of Rome, it would be a very very different relationship).
The problem mostly comes from the fact that saying Judeo-Christian about those elements and times really should only be applied when you are intimately familiar with both faiths and are doing the hard work of removing the Christian filter from it.
Highlights on the Jewish view of Jesus: * He fulfilled no significant prophecies regarding the Messiah (the whole point is the thousand years of peace), the vast vast majority of prophecies he's claimed to have fulfilled are mistranslations and/or completely out of context (ie. "virgin birth" came from "young woman of marriageable age" and a prophecy that had nothing to do with the messiah but was fulfilled in the following chapter) * Trinitarianism isn't even universal among Christians, among Jews it's deeply deeply heretical as one of our long defining statements has been "God is One" * Human sacrifice is abhorrent in Judaism, so the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice is abhorrent * In Judaism we already have forgiveness, the biggest distinction is that God will only forgive how you've wronged God. For forgiveness over how you wronged another person you have to ask them. Imagine how you'd feel if I forgave my friend for stealing from you and then they looked you dead in the eye and said they were forgiven for stealing from you... I'd be an asshole, right?
They often use it as a stand-in for Abrahamic (which is often problematic, but has far far more legitimate uses) and I mention in my elaboration comment, though I go more narrow a mention the most obscure Abrahamic faith I know of (Baháʼí) to highlight both facts just because their obscurity I feel makes the point better (though I feel a little guilty for using them as a token, it is also in the effort of getting them and other groups recognition).
@ScepticalScot1 Correct on Judaism, it's an explicit thing.
To be clear, our faith doesn't blanket allow it either... but it's a tiny distinction with how broad our allowance is:
We don't consider it a person until it's birth, until then it's just a potential person (Jewish law only treats it as a person in cases of forced abortion or similar, ie. if you murder a pregnant person who wanted their child, then it's a double-homicide).
Judaism specifically says that abortion is permitted when the well-being of the person carrying it is threatened. But that sounds far more restrictive than it is because we have a broad view of well-being laid out, which includes mental health (being forced to carry a pregnancy you do not want and birth a child against your will is traumatic, therefore abortion is permitted because your mental health would be threatened by denying an abortion... which basically means abortion is permitted in the vast vast vast majority of cases)
(An example of times when it might not be permitted would be things like if they were in the middle of a psychotic episode)
I will forewarn against the usage there because many anti-theists (atheists with a grudge against all faiths) have picked up Judeo-Christian as well and would interpret that as accusing Judaism of also committing similar atrocities (though the government of Israel continually makes that a challenging topic...)
"Major Sects" - the large divisions of Judaism representing the vast vast majority of us "Agreed upon" - Explicitly in our agreed mutual holy texts, considered major defining elements of our faith, or in the case of the afterlife not mentioned anywhere in our texts
Keep in mind that we have more religious texts than are included in the Christian "Old Testament", most significantly the Talmud which is accepted by all Jewish sects I know of and is where many of these elements are established.
How about this follow up: do you have more familiarity with Jewish cultures than a Jew? Do you know what I'm leaving off of the lists that differs between Jewish groups?
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.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I have no ability to delete your post without you being on my server, though I'm not seeing it anymore either. I'd check with your admins to see if they maybe flagged it and didn't understand?
And the exact kinds of people I mentioned in my comment are the people who'd not understand because they're indoctrinated by christo-fascism and rejecting it without rejecting what they've learned from it.
Karaite Jews do not accept the Mishnah or Talmud! In modern times they are a small sect with <50k adherents but historically had more followers and trace a long line of ancestors :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_…
@HollyGoDarkly Solid agree, *and also* such claims are generally not even “Christian”, but a particular subset’s views. Plenty of Christians — including lots of large organized denominations — are pro-choice, for example.
@Anthony Sorace @Erika Ensign that falls under "No True Scotsman", they are Christian regardless of being a subset much the same as I won't claim that Zionists aren't jews despite holding objectionable views.
It's a logical fallacy used very often to avoid looking at issues in one's own social groups.
@HollyGoDarkly Oh, I agree, and I’m sorry if it came across that way. I just meant that they claim to represent Christianity in general, which is BS. You’re entirely right that we don’t get to disclaim them so easily.
@a13cui Hi friend... let me just hit this follow button here and see if people will read this simply because I commented on it because this info needs to get out... 👋
@a13cui in my experience, people saying “Abrahamic religions” are using that as a direct substitution for “Judeo-Christian” and using the same christofascist cudgel to also include Islam in their shit.
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: most jews in my experience condemn the actions of the israeli government. Those that don't are usually zionists and they are contemptable for it.
@morecowbell It's not really a tribute if it mostly gets used to mean Christian. It often implies the speaker doesn't understand or value the important differences between Jewish and Christian values. Also low-key islamaphobic
@Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: as far as the grounds for rejecting 3 times, it's one of the cases where the tradition stretches drastically farther than the origin of it. I wish I had citations, but my rabbi did once find the super obscure origin of it and for the life of me I can't remember where.
@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: That's one of those Christian centric things right there, most faiths don't care much about forcing people to join, just the largest (direct causation there)
@Robrab That's really a combination of anti-semitism and "No True Scotsman"
Most of the "old testament angry bits" are Christian interpretations or mistranslations.
Prime example is the verse they translate as "A man should not lie with another man as he would a woman" (anti-homosexuality) which is far more accurately translated as "A man should not lie with a boy as he would a woman" (anti-pedophilia). One of those two makes a hell of a lot more sense for stoning...
yes i know abortion has no place in Judaism and is an antisemetic trope, wasn't referring to that at all, there is a lot of overlap in the moral base of Christianity and Judaism, it's not 99% disjointed at all.
most people assume "Abrahamic Religions" and "JudeoChristian" are interchangable terms and thus often spout shit they don't realize are just not true, gotta give everyone a fair interpretation given such common misconceptions.
I'm not the original questioner, I dropped them from the thread. I don't think anything I wrote here contradicts your main argument. Just sharing some diversity you may not have been aware of—I think the Karaites pose really interesting theological questions for rabbinic Judaism.
@a13cui this is fascinating but the position on misogyny is untenable. The entirety of the Torah literally defines the patriarchy created to suppress women and classify them as property. You either reject the entire written text of the old testament or reject the notion that women are entitled to the same rights men are. You can’t really accept Judaism as a religion and at the same time reject the patriarchal doctrine that is integrated into the text of the old testament.
@a13cui PS same goes for all modern religions which are based on the old testament ( including Islam and Christianity). They don’t get a pass on the misogyny either. If you love women you must respect them
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: They're a blatant antisemite using limited visibility on their posts to hide their posts from moderators. I've reported them to their server admins and instituted a contact block on my server (to be clear, only of their individual account and server wide block is not because of personal disagreement but because blatant bigotry that I don't want my users to be exposed to)
@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter They're a blatant antisemite using limited visibility on their posts to hide their posts from moderators. I've reported them to their server admins and instituted a contact block on my server (to be clear, only of their individual account and server wide block is not because of personal disagreement but because blatant bigotry that I don't want my users to be exposed to)
@a13cui yeah the last time I saw someone using the term “abrahamic religions” in an “inclusive” manner it was regarding something that was literally about honoring Christ, so
@CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: This is a very flawed take and discounts the many interpretations and approaches different groups have to addressing these things.
I will openly say that what you're saying absolutely applies to Orthodox Judaism and can somewhat apply to Conservative Judaism... there's a reason I'm a Reform Jew and not Orthodox lol
Also of note the "Old Testament" is not synonymous with all our texts or the Torah (the Torah is only the first five books). We have many texts that are not included in the Christian Bible.
@fluffy 💜 @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: most of the time I see "abrahamic religions" I barely make note of it because it's academic usage (ie. looking at the Wikipedia page for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í, etc and seeing "Classification: Abrahamic"), but my experience is definitely not universal, I just suspect the perception of it is possibly warped by proper usage not drawing attention like improper usage does.
@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Also noting that a lot of the "have things figured out" comes from the outlook of arguing as a pastime. Since nothing is above debate, everything gets challenged constantly.
These days, it's not as visible because the vast majority of topics have been challenged to the point that there's little to argue... but there are absolutely topics being fought over (like for instance circumcision which is a very very touchy ongoing argument, mostly due to it's adjacency to the history of antisemitism)
So I forget where I heard this (probably "We need to build" by Eboo Patel?), but IIRC the term Judeo-Christian was invented mid-20th century by a coalition of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants as a way to fight against anti-Semitic and anti-catholic sentiment in the US. These days we definitely need a broader term to encompass an even larger cohort, and it's a shame Judeo-Christian has been misappropriated for evil 😞
@Jared Forsyth wouldn't surprise me, a lot of terms get formed in a positive place and corrupted over time.
The broader term is Abrahamic Faith. It has more valid use cases, but does suffer from the same problem of people using it to talk just about Christianity.
As beloved author Charles Stross (The Laundry Files) commented above, it's the Embrace Extend Eradicate practice, applied to religion.
@zachnfine @a13cui Which sums up pretty succinctly why Christianity is the way it is: It could really have done with some of that, instead of being so open and welcoming to all, that it is now very obviously the product of 2000 years of infiltration, appropriation, and bastardization, by every example of exactly the worst kind of self-serving people with power and privilege, Jesus warned about.
Thanks to that difference, try as they might to appropriate and bastardize Judaism - like they have so many other cultures - Christians have time and again, failed.
Where Christians go out of their way to eradicate basic critical thinking in those they indoctrinate, Judaism encourages it, and that provides a basic defense against the kind of corruption, that Christianity has utterly succumbed to.
'Those who have eyes shall see', and Jews see Christianity's leaders very clearly, for the wolves in sheep's clothing they always have been.
It starts with the Apostles and namely with Luke arguing that Christians did not have to first be Jews. It's obvious why that argument won out (lower standards and dropping circumcision).
And then it was kicked into high-gear with Emperor Constantine who converted the whole Roman Empire to Christianity.
As an important bit of context, the Roman empire/faith was essentially the borg of religions. As it conquered cultures it declared that their faiths were all subsets of their own, assimilating them into their faith.
The issue between the Jews of Israel and Rome was rooted in the fact that Rome wanted to call our God just another manifestation of Zeus and we wholeheartedly rejected that (the story of Hannukah starts with the Romans trying to put up a statue of Zeus in front of the Temple).
So, when the emperor declared that Rome was now Christian, they immediately assimilated their own faith into Christianity. This is why the popular Christian afterlife mirrors the afterlife of the roman faith (seriously compare Heaven/Hell depictions with the Elysian Fields and Pits of Tartarus; and then contrast to the fact that Judaism has no established afterlife).
This is worth reading in full, but one point to take away is that in Judaism abortion is not merely permitted (in certain circumstances). It is obligatory/required (in certain, more limited, circumstances). If continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, abortion is obligatory.
This is complicated by another halachic principle, which is the obligation to abide by the (secular) laws of the place where one lives.
@a13cui This is great. I went to a catholic high school, and I remember contesting anything religious was a huge no-no. The word was the word, and arguing about it wasn't allowed.
Allowing even long-standing ideas to be challenged is one of the most important requirements for a society to progress.
I will however always note that they're Zionists and that non-Zionists don't approve of Zionists.
For a Christian example, it's the difference between saying WBC isn't Christian vs saying WBC is condemned by most other Christians.
Making the Palestine argument applies specifically to the Zionist take that Israel (the political entity) and Judaism are inseparable, and it implies from that that all Jews support the actions of Israel as opposed to the majority (at least as I've seen) condemning it.
He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
We persist and have great impact because knowledge and understanding are cherished, and all things old and new are challenged constantly. We don't claim perfection, being Jewish is all about the act of continually striving to do and be better.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 also of note, I'm American, the Holocaust is pretty much only ever talked about here as a story of the "Allies victory over evil" and little is really talked about with detail about the Jewish experience of it or what really was going on across various stages of it.
@zachnfine @a13cui And this is why I'd much rather listen to Jews than Christians. You keep the parts of history that Christians have gone out of their way to bury, so your explanations actually make sense of the glaring disparities between what Jesus (a Jew) said, and what Christians, from the apostles onwards (Paul in particular), /say/ he said.
I mean, I can't even google anything related to the Bible, without getting endless pages of 'Good Christian Bible study' takes, twisting every word he said into its opposite.
Questioning that is why I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was still an infant, and it wasn't much longer before I realized Christianity was a very Roman creation, even with the poor, Christian education I was given.
Yeah the term judeo christian doesn't really make sense 99.9% of the time. Like most things Judaism and Christianity share in common are also shared by Islam so "major Abrahamic religions" would be more appropriate way of describing whatever that may be.
And that's when they do share things in common. Like for example abortion is only a hot button issue in Christianity its consider a completely acceptable thing for women (or anyone else with a uterus) to do in Judaism and Islam has some limitations but is also largely fine with it from what I've read.
@Eugene Yeah, I can't speak to Islam but in Judaism it's "disallowed" with exceptions so broad that it basically just means you need to be in your right mind, and the only time limit being birth.
@a13cui So if I’m not blocked and understand you correctly the people killing Palestinian children (about 80 in the last couple of years) are Jews but bad Jews that most Jewish people don’t approve of. Good.
I won't say "bad Jews" because that's far too close to "No True Scotsman", they are Zionists and Zionism is Jewish Colonialism, which is a very bad take imo.
And no, you're not blocked. It wasn't a great take to start with, but it was understandable given the propensity for Christians to take the "No True Scotsman" fallacy against arguments such as that.
I believe in giving someone a chance first when there's any grey area on potential hate, plus it was a good excuse to outline the differences on a very common and hot topic that gentiles often know little about. And I think you learned something about Jewish society from it.
For more background, part of the problem with Zionists is that they're supported by White Supremacists and Nazis.
It sounds weird on the surface that Nazis would support Zionists, but it comes from a common White Supremacist principle of "Blood and Soil" in which they believe that different "races" have dominion over different lands (ie. white people over europe, Jews over Israel, Asians over Asia, etc). It's why you'll occasionally see someone spouting antisemitic bullshit, but then pivot to supporting Israel.
(Also "fun" trivia: this is why so many white people claim some vague distant "Cherokee Princess" in their background, it came from an effort to expand their blood and soil claim to the Americas)
@a13cui For your information I am not a Christian but I am a true Scot! Thanks for an interesting discussion and I have genuinely learned a bit more about Jewishness and Zionism. If your prayers might work please pray for peace in this troubled world.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I saw in your about you're from Germany and yeah, it's bad everywhere (the honeymoon post-holocaust period is ending and anti-semitism is returning to the "norm"), just from what I understand there's still drastically more taught about the Holocaust and Naziism in Germany than in the US.
Here, we get little more than "Nazis hate Jews", "Nazis bad", and "Bad things happened at Auschwitz". If anything else is covered, it's merely glossed over.
Of course, we're also the country that throws hissy fits at the idea of taking down monuments to people who actively fought to keep slavery (not that it's over with in the US, we just made it state slavery)
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: praying for peace is a constant for us, but we also believe in Tikkun Olam, it's our responsibility to continually work toward it as well.
I figured you were not Christian, when mentioning Palestine you were calm about it and responded reasonably... Christians tend to only really go that route if they're going to be frothing antisemites, so it'd be really surprising to me if you were. (Not impossible, just unlikely)
Part of the trouble is that in the west Christianity overshadows all other religions to the point that many atheists only known and understand Christianity when they're rejecting religion as a whole. And that's something I'm deeply conscious of.
... I also love getting into arguments with anti-theists because they get so incredibly confused at (a) rational arguments and (b) the fact that I'll context switch right along them when they're not even paying attention to their context. (I jokingly call these people theo-phobes after the idea of homophobes being self-hating homosexuals and I believe many of them have an indoctrinated belief in god and are repulsed by the thought that the things they were taught would be true)
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 btw, 7 hours later I decide to finally hit translate on Täter-Opfer-Umkehr and learn that it's the german for DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)
I just want to say, thank you for this and especially thank you for your _astonishing_ patience in dealing with the replies. There is clearly a goodly amount of bad faith or even just whataboutism floating around and you have handled it with grace, kindness and aplomb.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 oof, for some reason I thought Germany was notable in taking them all down... but I really shouldn't be surprised.
I think it's both (a) and (b), after the war anti-semitism became shameful so it moved out of the public view... but also being out of the public limited it's spread.
But every year the holocaust gets more distant and the reaction to it becomes more and more muted as people try to claim that it's done and gone and not worth talking about anymore and with that Naziism becomes more and more a cartoon instead of a real threat... so of course it starts spreading again.
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: peace is supposed to come with the Messiah, until then we just work toward that goal because even if we can never achieve it it's always a blessing to work toward.
@Emily K 🪬 @Jared Forsyth Agreed, I cite it as better only because it's actually used in broader valid cases (as an accurate classification of the faiths), but whenever they talk about individual beliefs... it turns to total crap real fast.
Majority of the time they're talking about Christianity, every once in a while they hit a valid chord between the big three... but it's a miracle if it's actually accurate to all Abrahamic Faiths.
@Shaterri (he/him) Honestly I think this has been mostly good faith arguments given how people have responded to my replies. There's one where I drew the line feeling it was making it's way to bad faith pedantry... and the one worse than that you'll note their posts have disappeared or will soon because their server banned them (credit to Venera.social for responding quickly and decisively)
But I can see what people think of as bad faith. There's a lot of common anti-theist counter arguments that I'm familiar with, but I don't think any of them have gone beyond one post and in most cases took my reply graciously and learned something.
For instance calling out Palestine that one time, which while tiresome is understandable since Christians typically pull a "No True Scotsman" fallacy in response to things like that, which clearly marks them as not worth talking to. As tiresome as it is, it's a good barometer question for Jews imo.
@CaptMorgan @a13cui a hot take, perhaps, but I think Christianity does the mysogyny for sport; not because they care much for what’s in the first half of their scripture. The Old Testament is little more than “that’s all the stuff Jesus did away with” to a lot of folks.
@assertchris @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's established well after that, that's prior to the Torah even being written and I believe it was established somewhere in the commentaries (like a millennia later) I think, but as I said no idea where.
It's not as hard to maintain your culture prior to being conquered by Rome and prior to Diaspora, but after it becomes vitally important to preserve your practices if you don't want them to dissolve into assimilation.
@assertchris @CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: * Except when they want to take something out of context to condemn a group that makes them uncomfortable in some way, then they're all about it
Hi from Germany, a country with a 'very long judao-christian tradition', as a leading politician said some years ago. Not only did he use the term to promote anti-islamism by claiming they are NOT part of our tradition and shouldn't be, but he also seems to have 'forgotten' the nasty details of that 'judao-christian tradition'... He definitely belongs in that 99%-bracket.
@More Cowbell @raf I had to sit on this one for a while, but... you know that arguing with Jews over what is antisemitic is itself antisemitic?
And do you really think bigots are saying "Oh yeah, I'm absolutely a proud bigot!"? And that if they actually believe their bigotry that somehow frees them of being a bigot?
Thank you so much to everyone who's shared this and asked questions!
From the comment section it seems to me a lot of people have learned some things about Judaism and how it differs from Christianity. We even exposed one raging antisemite troll who's been banned from their server (shoutout venera.social for having over a thousand users and taking care of it in around an hour).
There certainly was a lot of mild antisemitism throughout the comments, but as far as I can tell in most cases it was ignorance that has been relieved by this!
(Remember kids, pulling a "what about israel?" is rude to do out of nowhere, but if someone supports the occupation they're bad for being a Zionist and that still doesn't permit you to denigrate their faith because it's the same faith as those who reject the occupation)
Ich verstehe es nicht. können wir Dinge wie eine Abtreibung auch ohne Religionsbezug betrachten? Es ist ein Eingriff, welcher von Ärzten vorgenommern wird mit Zustimmung des Patienten. Meiner Meinung nach hat Religion in dieser Entscheidung nichts zu suchen, egal welcher man angehört.
I do not get it. can we look at things like abortion without reference to religion? It is an intervention performed by doctors with the patient's consent. In my opinion, religion has no place in this decision, no matter which one you belong to.
Agreed, but unfortunately it's often centered around Christianity and fascism, and both for and against throw around Judeo-Christian when talking about how it's being forced by religious groups.
@Shiri Bailem If people were more human and less religious, the problem would probably not exist. I'm not religious and I don't have much to contribute to this discussion, except my opinion, unfortunately :)
@Raroun Critiques of religion and it's impact on people not of their faith (and sometimes of their faith) are valid!
A lot of the time I see the problem being that people's only experience is imperialistic religions (Christianity) and little experience with the variety of experiences and lessons.
Like for instance, in Judaism we couldn't care less if you worshiped our god, let alone any other god. Our primary focus is on the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities (which includes the non-jews). (We don't even care that much if other Jews worship our god, atheistic religious jews are an actual accepted thing!)
Where many Christians take the stance of "let Jesus into your heart and you will become a good person!", Judaism takes the stance of "You must do the right thing whether you like it or not, and if you keep doing it maybe you'll become a better person for it" (do the right thing being things like being charitable and kind as well as not tolerating bigotry even if it's not directed at you).
And most importantly in Judaism: if it can't stand up to scrutiny than it shouldn't be respected (ie. nothing is off limits to argue, and if it falters under argument then it has no right to be respected)
Feel free to ask me questions if you like about my experiences, I just ask that you content warning for others any questions that are potentially sensitive. I won't try to convert you (we have a tradition of rejecting potential converts), we just emphasize sharing knowledge and understanding as one of our primary goals.
I sincerely didn't know how drastically different Judaism was until years out from leaving fundamentalist Christianity, I was in a 4 year relationship with a Jewish woman.
There is so much outright bullshit about Judaism taught in those circles.
I still only know enough to know that there is a vast ocean of information I need to learn.
I love how much Judaism is about learning, from what I have heard, and find it fascinating that debating more minor details is practically a friendly sport.
My life would have been so much better had I grew up in that kind of environment instead.
thanks for this! That phrase has bothered me for a long time and this is helpful to keep in mind so I can push back on it with something more concrete than my bad vibes/general suspicion
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this or Judaism in general! (I just ask you content warning for others any potentially sensitive topics)
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH fun fact, atheist observant Jews are a thing because Judaism is not dependent on belief in God.
Feel free to fire your arguments away, I enjoy debating antitheists. I'll even give you a courtesy and forewarning you: I will match the context of your arguments (ie. if your argument is from the assumption of my god existing, my response will follow that assumption; but if your argument is from the assumption that my god doesn't exist, I will respond likewise... a lot of people get confused because they don't pay attention to context switches)
good to know about the Atheism among Jewish-peeps, thanks! As for debating the rest, you’d be wasting your time & mine. There is no God, period, done & done. But hey, u b u.
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH then why spend your time coming to the post of a minority culture posting hostile memes if you're not going to discuss? Sounds like all you're doing then is shitting on people trying to feel superior but backing down immediately when challenged?
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH Also, for arguing in favor of reason there seems to be an absence of it here? And a lot of assumption.
Your response is nonsense if your response to "atheist jews" is "there is no god"? So what?
Are you just trolling persecuted minorities because you think none of us will ever debate you? You think a handful of memes shitting on a post about antisemitism will make you appear enlightened?
it’s called opinion & free speech, nothing to feel threatened by; conversely why do you go to such great lengths to proselytize in a social media space? Why would you characterize someone’s decision not to waste time debating as “backing down” as though some contest had been declared & everyone ‘required’ to participate? Your logic seems skewed. Nice try, & thanks for playing Skippy, but I have better things to do. Don’t you have some doors to go knock on?
why do you go to such great lengths to proselytize in a social media space?
Judaism does not proselytize, and the fact that you make that claim shows an ignorance of both the conversation and our faith. Our tradition is to reject converts by default, and when accepted we have an extensive vetting process. Accusing me of proselytization just exposes your ignorance of religion in general and makes you look like a tool who's only here to shit on people to make yourself feel better.
“also”, I couldn’t care less what others might think. This appears in my profile:
“Better to write for yourself & have no public, than to write for the public & have no self." --Cyril Connolly
Well, if you're posting it publicly then you're on some level writing for the public, and even if you're writing for yourself you're getting something out of it and I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what you get out of shitting on an oppressed minority talking about their oppression? My best guess is a sense of smug superiority in which you claim enlightenment, but what's so enlightened about attacking an oppressed minority asking to not be oppressed? Or misrepresenting an oppressed minority on a post asking people to stop misrepresenting us?
you seem triggered by one, short response; maybe social media isn’t for you. 😎
Ah yes, the "I'm being an asshole, but obviously better than you because I can throw around psych terms completely out of context to claim your inferiority and dismiss your responses". Triggered is referring to PTSD, do you think it's amusing to mock people with PTSD? Quite an enlightened take. I'm engaging a bigot because it's fun and presents a complete picture of their bigotry to others (especially to moderators). If I refuse to engage I get nothing, but by engaging I stand to protect vulnerable people from you and the likes of you.
@Odradek @BathysphereHat I feel there's a special evil in talking about germanies "judeo-christian" history (often done!), as uf that history wasnt mostly pogroms, exclusion, antisemitism, the shoa.
@More Cowbell @raf To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone is a little bit racist sometimes"
The defining question is whether it's rooted in ignorance or willful, which is part of this whole conversation with you.
You can be antisemitic without being willful about it, the question of character is how you respond when called on it. Telling us you know better than us about what is or isn't bigotry that we deal with is itself a form of bigotry.
The judgement of you as a person comes now, in how you respond to this?
If you learn and grow, addressing what we called out, then all the praise for you because that's hard to do. If you back away, well at least you were polite. If you become hostile, then we just write you off as a bigot.
And of course, further polite inquiries in good faith are valid too and fall under learning and growing.
@More Cowbell @raf There isn't a shared culture between Judaism and Christianity, they are very very distinctly different cultures and one has spent a very long time trying to kill the other.
Christianity is a member of the Abrahamic family of faiths and probably has more cultural similarity to Islam than it does Judaism, despite being an offshoot of Judaism. (And Abrahamic can be equally problematic if you're not well familiar with the cultural differences between Christianity and say Rastafarianism, but at least it's an accurate name for the relationship)
Much of the usage of "Judeo-Christian" comes from the belief that there's far more similarity than there is.
It's much like talking about the "Western Culture in which healthcare is a privilege, not a right" despite the fact that that's an american cultural element that's not shared by the vast majority of western nations.
@Ulrich_the_Elder 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 😷 Realized that my tone may not have come across in context, I genuinely want to know because that's a fascinating bit of trivia to have!
I otherwise agree, especially since in the Jewish Bible (parts not included in the Christian Bible) it is talked about, and explicitly permitted.
@wboucek @Scott Matter nondenominational usually refers to "generic Christian", and mixed faith is... well, mixed if it's just those two specific faiths (it implies there are more than 2 faiths present in the case of the potluck, and in the case of a home it's just less specific)
Sects do have a cultural element because they are groupings based on shared beliefs and values.
Ethnic distinctions are a mess in general, especially when talking about ethno-religious groups like Judaism as someone can be of the ethnicity and not the faith, or of the faith group and not the ethnicity. In those cases though we'd typically differentiate by their specific groupings.
Most I know are Ashkenazi Jews, being the most represented group of Judaism in the west (for comparison, you also find Sephardic Jews as prominent in the west, but with drastically less representation).
Because of intersectionality, one can be a member of many many cultures at the same time and the definitions are going to depend on which topics and elements are being referenced. When talking about religious beliefs, a sect/denomination is more meaningful than a region. And there are some elements that are derived from those beliefs that make it applicable as well.
I won't pretend that a New York Jew is the same as a Florida Jew, as a Texas Jew, let alone a Polish Jew, Indian Jew, or Japanese Jew. Just that we're going to share a lot of the same cultural elements where they're rooted specifically in our faith, especially when in the same sects.
Also, fyi, "IQ" is mostly rooted in classism and racism. here's an entertaining video from the show Adam Ruins Everything talking about it: youtu.be/W3oUqKUx2o0
@wboucek @Scott Matter well, neither of those cases would be something I'd call antisemitic, just less precise. They're absolutely valid to use, and are absolutely used more often.
@M_U "smart" and "intelligent" are all vague, undefined terms that are pretty much always problematic.
We have a multitude of different cognitive abilities, and they're basically trying to say someone who's "smart" is cognitively superior... when they're often just well versed on a topic.
It also causes a lot of trauma for people like myself who go through life oscillating between being called "smart" or "stupid" depending on which cognitive abilities are factored into a task. (For instance, I have Executive Dysfunction, but also have pattern thinking and great pattern recognition)
@M_U to elaborate further, saying a particular group has "higher intelligence" in any fashion is still racist and falls under the "Model Minority" bigotry (used to pigeonhole people in those groups and leveraging one group against another).
Jews aren't "smarter", we just have a culture that encourages education, and very importantly critical thinking (our pastime of arguing everything, and nothing being above challenge means that we are encouraged to actually analyze topics rather than just memorize)
@DemocritusDiscoBall Yeah, it's basically the backfire effect and whether or not the person takes effort to combat it. It has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with pure psychology.
The backfire effect is rooted in the fact that when we take a stance on an issue it incorporates into our identity, the stronger the stance the more it incorporates.
When faced with evidence that the position may be wrong, we experience cognitive dissonance and our brain reacts to that information as a threat. Our natural default response is to double down on whatever it is, both increasing the strength of your connection to it and even less critical of the details you're relying on to support your argument.
It's basically the reason you "can't win arguments on the internet", because if someone is to the point of arguing about it, then they're invested enough that they'll be highly susceptible to the backfire effect. (Instead it's better to make your arguments for the sake of unconvinced bystanders)
It takes effort and mindfulness to push back against the backfire effect, and a conscious effort to allow yourself to be wrong.
@M_U ... okay, that's just straight up eugenics bullshit and will not be tolerated.
It's proven blatantly untrue, and is deeply disrespectful of our cultures. On top of that it's a purely racist talking point.
We have long established that we do not have significant mental or physical differences between "races", especially given that no one is "pure blooded", and especially going back thousands of years.
@M_U tendency towards sickle-cell anemia, tendency for cancer, tendency for blue eyes, tendency for baldness... sure.
No tendency for traits that don't exist (ie. "IQ"), no genetic tendency for education, or open-mindedness.
I've already reported you for racism and eugenics talk.
Maybe step back and look at your arguments vs the counter: that a culture that encourages challenging and arguing everything might be more conducive to understanding and challenging ideas in the world than a culture that emphasizes rote memorization and penalizes asking questions?
Do you assume that magically all groups of Judaism preserved genes for "superior intelligence" (despite being a non-sense idea rooted entirely in racism to begin with) despite varying every other genetic trait throughout? Or are you making assumptions about the genetic makeup of Jews worldwide, just assuming that all Jews are descended from Ashkenazi? Perhaps divine intervention? (I may be religious, but I'll take "easily provable" over "God did it")
@heather gold Zionism, in it's current form is Jewish colonialism of the area of Israel/Palestine. It wasn't so bad initially when it was just a push for a Jewish state, but became awful between that state enacting colonialist policies against Palestine. Topped off by the fact that modern Zionists believe that the Israeli government represents the Jewish faith and not just the people of Israel. (ie. Zionists generally believe criticism of Israel to be antisemitic)
The occupation of Palestine is the fact that Israel has forced them out of more and more land, and keeps encroaching on their territory. There's a constant expansion effort by Israel that constantly disregards the impact on Palestine, and is more than happy to push Palestinians out of their homes then declare them the "bad guys" for fighting to keep their land and homes. (They often paint it as antisemitic attacks rather than attacking a nation that keeps trying to steal your home)
💯 I dont get how Christians can claim these bans are "Judeo-Christian", Nearly all of the terrible logic Christians use for being against abortion are mostly based on Christian Scripture(mainly in the New Testament and its vagueness) and one psalm which im not sure is even related
Like, they think our beliefs are that you behave perfectly or go to hell because they see "judged by our acts" under their belief of "any sin = hell". (FYI, we do believe in being judged by our acts, but judged means judgement, it's not some automatic punishment thing but an actual decision... and on top of that, we don't believe in hell)
Non-Christians use it because many of them are convinced that all religions are basically Christianity with slight differences.
@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.
@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?".
Terra Vance posits that Autistic people experience empathy and emotions differently because the way autistic identity is structured differs from non-autistic people’s identity constructs.
@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.
*(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.
TheFlopster
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •like this
determinist likes this.
not_woody_shaw
in reply to TheFlopster • • •Captain Pedantic Pants saves the day! Thank you for your service.
Edit: I guess the down voters assumed i was being sarcastic? There's no sarcasm here. No bad, only nice. OP is my hero for being brave enough to correct someone's grammar in public.
greygore
in reply to not_woody_shaw • • •not_woody_shaw
in reply to greygore • • •Dharma Curious (he/him)
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •Me and my brother and my sister in law are visiting Miami right now. He asked when the last time I was here was, I say 2012, when he and I came down. Hours later we were talking and we realize we all three came down after that.
None of us can remember when. It was some time after 2017 but before 2019. Only problem is, it almost definitely couldn't have happened during those dates, but that are the only date between which it could have happened.
Pirky
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •ComradeSharkfucker
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •AnarchistArtificer
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •rockSlayer
in reply to LadyButterfly she/her • • •auraithx
in reply to rockSlayer • • •