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akiva

@akiva-echo

Aggressively Jewish. Probably nonbinary? Figuring that out. Antisemites and their useful idiots will be blocked. (he/him, they/them) איך לערן ייִדיש. מיר וועלן זיי איבערלעבן. ים ישראל חי.

(apprentice walking down the halls of the Infinite Library, muttering): “go fetch me Merradia’s Tome jacob. don’t worry about it jacob. it’s just 15,000 miles that-a-way. no i can’t teach you the teleport spell, that’s what i need the tome for.” what a jackass

June 22 2019 - A fascist trying to pick a fight at Bologna Pride gets more reaction than he bargained for. [video]

Exit, pursued by bear.

The description of the original video:

Translation:

“A neo-fascist, in all his Italian virility, begins to insult some women participating in Bologna Pride. This until, frightened by other protesters covered with glitter and by a bear far more virile than he, to devote himself to what the Fascists do best: escape.”

EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR. I’M SOBBING

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La fuga, pursued by bear in glitter 🤣🤣🤣

“to devote himself to what the Fascists do best: escape.” ROAST HIS ASS

the Strength, the Solidarity, and the Shade here is examplary

i think people in the middle ages acutally did know how to make photorealistic drawings they just chose not to because it’s funnier to draw some fucked up creature

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they actually did make photorealistic drawings things just looked different back then

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criminal profiling is just astrology for cops

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taking a forensics class and watching the professor explain one by one how criminal profiling, hair microscopy, and bite mark analysis are all pseudoscience responsible for ruining innocent lives, and how on top of that, fingerprint analysis, despite being significantly more reliable, is subjective and prone to contextual bias. and also bullet striation analysis has the same issues. and also bullet lead analysis doesn’t work. and also handwriting analysis has an error rate high enough to render it useless

damn i'm almost starting to think the entire criminal justice system only exists to provide the illusion of protection while justifying state violence idk

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

fastest reblog in the west

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Yeppers. :)

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My annotated Dracula has informed me that when Harker said his robber steak was “in the style of the London cat’s-meat!” he was referring to “A tradition in London was the “cat’s-meat man,” a vendor who sold little bits of meat on skewers for consumption by cats”

I am overjoyed by this knowledge that there were Victorians just randomly getting lil kebabs for their CATS

I am so happy to learn this was a thing, looks like they were door to door pet food sellers.

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I didn’t see any new posts about it but it is VITAL that new readers know this.

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If this is the Leslie Klinger annotation, it’s my go-to edition of the book.

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Catgirl Jonathan Harker gnawing on his little kitty kebab confirmed.

An Introduction to Kashrut & Kosher Eating

i. "Kashrut" and "Kosher"? ii. Kashrut Specifics iii. Modified Ways to Keep Kosher iv. Resources

You may already be confused about what these words even mean, and that's totally okay, we're all here to learn. The following are some important terms to keep in mind:

Halakha : Jewish Law as outlined within the Talmud. It governs everything from punishment for crimes to sex to defining "what" Judaism is. It is more of a way of life than a set of laws. Kashrut : A subsection of Halakha, specifically referring to regulations surrounding food and everything to do with it. Kosher : An adjective used to refer to food or food-related products (like forks and spoons) that are deemed okay for Jews to eat/use by Kashrut. "Keeping Kosher" refers to eating according to Kashrut. Kashering : To cause something to become kosher. Treif : Everything that is non-Kosher. Pareve : Food that is "neutral", neither meat nor dairy. This includes fruits, vegetables, grains, eggs, and sometimes fish.

The secrets scientists don’t want you to know about:

  • Their caffeine consumption habits
  • How many showers were skipped
  • That they are actually fake scientists unlike their brilliant colleagues
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Never gonna know them, but shoutout to the healthcare workers who are breaking the law to help their patients get life-saving care. I'll never see an article about you because knowing you would risk everything including jail time. Nurses who lie on medical records so their patients can get abortions. Doctors making up shit so their patients can have HRT.

Wherever you are, you are keeping your promise to help your patient.

My mom is dead so she can’t get in trouble for this.

Many years ago when she was still healthy enough to work, she was the manager at one of those select-your-own-tests labs. They didn’t take insurance, which meant they had no insurance department, which meant it was actually cheaper sometimes than even getting the same test elsewhere WITH insurance, so her clientele often came in with doctor’s orders, and it is about one such patient I’m about to tell you. He was four years old and had leukemia.

At 3am the day my mom did his labs, she got a stat call. “Stat call” means “drop everything, contact the doctor, these numbers are outside the acceptable range and urgency is required.” She woke me to drive her to the lab so she could try to get in touch with the doctor on the way and say “I live five minutes from the lab I want you on the phone as soon as I get those numbers from my email.”

The doctor did not pick up.

Standard protocol at this point is to wait 20 minutes and call again, repeat until you get an answer.

My mom was not allowed to interpret lab numbers. She didn’t have the official credentials. But she was a medical assistant and had self-taught a lot of medicine to make herself a better MA (call it unofficial continuing education), and she took one look at this little boy’s numbers, and she had to make a judgement call. That call ended up being “Mrs. X, this is Catie from [lab name]. I received a stat call for your son and can’t reach the doctor. I’m not legally allowed to interpret these numbers for you. But pick an ER, I will call them and send the numbers and have them waiting for you. Go NOW. Don’t wait. I cannot stress enough how urgent it is that you GO RIGHT NOW.”

Had she chosen law over life, that little boy would have been dead by morning.

Instead she risked years in prison and being stripped of her license to practice. She got cupcakes and a thank-you card instead. As far as I know, the boy went on to make a full recovery.

When I think of my mom, this is what I want her to be remembered for. Nobody could ever know while she was alive. I want everyone to know now.

(And if you’re a 14-year-old on this website in 2023, and this sounds eerily corroborative to a story your mom has told you, and you grew up in Arizona, hi. My mom would love to meet you if she was still alive. But in her absence, will you tell me how you’re doing? I’ll tell her the next time I get up to her grave. She’d like to know.)