Moving Beyond the Final Frontier

Mean Girls (2004) House MD (2009)

Attention Christians - THIS is what Jesus would do. Put his body on the line, speak truth to power, and demand justice for the starving and oppressed. 🙌

Thank you, @christiansforafreepalestine, for being an example of true decency and faith in action.

“Our scriptures say ‘woe to you, who eat while others go hungry!” they called out to senate staff.

Saying “Congress won’t eat until Gaza eats,” over 60 Christians from across the U.S. are nonviolently blockading the Senate Cafeteria to pressure the Senate and their staffers to support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, restore aid to UNRWA, and end military funding to Israel. #CFPAction

Stop reading popular books by Zionist authors!

This includes Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, SJM, Rebecca Yarros, Chloe Walsh, Gabrielle Zevin, Pierce Brown, Carissa Broadbent, Rachel Lynn Solomon, Michelle Hodkin, Taylor Reid Jenkins, etc.

Boycott Zionists’ works!

neil gaiman is jewish and has explicitly stated he’s not a zionist, and his stance is that the violence should stop and people should be safe.

brandon sanderson visited israel in 2019 and one of his books is apparently influenced by multiple different conflicts, including israel/palestine.

sarah j maas has not posted at all abt israel or palestine, but she is jewish and has visited israel in the past.

rebecca yarros was harassed into making this statement:

chloe walsh planned to stop in israel on a book tour in collaboration with an israeli romance author, and people flooded her with harassment, including telling her that the baby she lost just a year ago deserved to die.

gabrielle zevin is jewish and has not made any statements about israel but one of the characters in one of her books is israeli.

pierce brown made a statement condemning the october 7 attack.

i found literally nothing on the internet about carissa broadbent and israel except a random tik tok accusing her of supporting israel.

rachel lynn solomon is jewish and i couldn’t find any statements from her at all about israel, and only found one tweet from months ago accusing her of being a zionist with no evidence.

michelle hodkin is jewish and i also couldn’t find any statements from her, only posts on social media accusing her of being a zionist.

taylor reid jenkins has called herself “half jewish” and has also not made any statements, the only “evidence” i could find was a tik tok claiming she “has only posted one video and it was from an israeli father.”

half the people on your list of “zionist authors” are jewish, and none of these authors have made explicit statements of support for israel. i need y’all to examine why you are more focused on targeting people who you think are “zionists” rather than people who have actually shown outspoken support for israel. i need you to think about what would compel you to focus on some shadowy unspoken force trying to manipulate you rather than the glaringly obvious problems that are right in front of your face.

a lot of y’all are unironically starting to sound a lot like germans in the 30’s who called for a boycott of jewish businesses and anyone who supported them. you are not being activists you are being bigots and hiding it behind a liberation movement — a movement you are an active detriment to. if you want to help, donate, call your representatives, support palestinian businesses, have difficult conversations with your community. stop wasting your time compiling lists of (((secret zionists))) to “boycott” and harass.

here’s the extensive and extremely eloquent statement he put out on his blog.

y’all literally just play telephone with people’s lives based on random social media accusations and call yourselves activists. all of these things were easily googleable, and yet you still continue to spread misinformation like your life depends on it. it’s fucking embarrassing.

as the child of a lawyer and someone who's studied law to a degree, the deposition with musk is so comical. spiro comes across totally belligerent and incompetent. musk looks like a fool and tried so hard to avoid definitive answers and look like he's saying something contributive while actually saying nothing.

it's amusing to read but also infuriating and honestly deeply concerning, because people still put musk and people like him on a pedestal. and these willfully ignorant, actively misinformed, bigoted billionaires get away with so much shit. including directly or indirectly inciting people who follow them like sycophants

spiro asking for relevance when bankston is bringing up previous employement of people who were tasked with enforcing platform integrity and authenticity, when bankston has been asking musk about how he researched and verified information before linking a brawl between neo-nazis fascists to a 22 year old Jewish college student. like--

would u still love me if i was a shai-hulud

Bless you, baby, and your water 🙌🏾

lol “HRT slightly increases the risk of certain cancers” HRT could have caused me to guaranteed drop dead at 30 and it still would have gotten me eight more years than I would otherwise have had

”testosterone raises ur chances of heart problems” i already have heart problems bucko. give me the juice

"HRT will raise your chances of breast cancer"

me: "oh my. how much more likely will i be to get breast cancer than a cis woman?"

"slightly less likely. it's just you'll have breasts."

me: "you don't say. i'll take your whole stock"

--actual conversations with my endocrinologist

A lot of the problems hrt gives you are just problems that cis people with that hormone also have. You’re more likely to have heart problems on T because testosterone makes your blood thick sometimes. You’re more likely to have breast cancer on E because you get more breast tissue. Tbh if I’m gonna have health problems anyways I’d rather have man health problems.

A day without a night and an night without a day.

the weird thing is, when I view my job as some sort of background extra it becomes much more palatable. people go to a library and see me shelving a stack of books in my cardigan and glasses (now with glasses chain!) and they go "yeah, that's exactly right. that's how it's supposed to be in a library." and for some reason, that's comforting? the work is whatever, and the customers are customers, but sometimes it feels like I'm being paid just to make sure this places looks right, and I find that very fun.

stop being funnier than me on my own posts

listen. listen to me so carefully right now. (if you're in the eclipse path/planning on viewing). please don't stare directly at the sun tomorrow. i am begging you - do not stare at it. if you got eclipse glasses off of amazon/other, please put them on in your house and make sure you can't see anything; if you can still see like regular sun glasses, they are not safe for eclipse viewing, you will burn your retinas, and we cannot fix that. eclipse glasses should be iso/ce certified, and aas (american astronomical society) approved. please make smart choices and protect your eyes. please.

The Goyim are fucking wild, the way I would have dumped that casserole over that woman's head, also divorce that wife.

LegalEagle did a very interesting breakdown of "the battery episode" of Better Call Saul where he actually used this as an example of something you can legitimately sue someone over. Feeding a person food that they have not consented to eating is assault.

holy fuck i hate evangelicals so much

The wife is an antisemite and this guy needs to divorce her, holy crap.

I've been seeing posts about stuff like this lately and what I haven't seen enough of is clear statements about:

The point of kashrut is not that something will happen. That's a Christian framing. Christianity posits sin as something that has a direct effect. Judaism doesn't.

Kashrut is centered around the idea of intent. It is a practice. Feeding an uknowing person who holds by kashrut (at whatever level, in whatever way) food that violates their practice does not unleash some kind of wrath of God on them. It is, however, a violation of their trust, and of their practice. It has self-imposed consequences. The entire premise of "I will feed this person a thing they refuse to eat to show them that it's fine" is not only unethical, but it has nothing to do with the cause/effect of that person's choices and perspective religiously or culturally. (It also should be unnecessary to point out that the consequences of violating a dietary restriction are often not immediate, and feeding someone a food they aren't used to eating can cause problems many hours later.)

Judaism approaches the commandments and the mitzvot (or religious obligations) from the perspective of those that are between man and God, and those that are between man and man. Kashrut is between man and God, ie. each individual has to make decisions for themselves and those decisions are between them and God (or not, in the case of atheist Jews), and no one else. There is no place for another person to intercede, and if they do, the consequences will be in the affected person's conscience and emotional soul. (Which also means that from a Jewish perspective, these in-laws were positing themselves as God, which I'm pretty sure is also not something Evangelicals are fine with, let alone Jews.)

When it comes to kashrut, like I said, the framing is centered on intent. For example, kashrut requires leafy greens to be checked for bugs, because bugs are not kosher. If a person does their due diligence to check for bugs and finds none, and ends up eating one that they unintentionally missed, they have not violated kashrut. However, if a person does not check for bugs and eats a leafy green, even if it has no bugs on it they have violated kashrut because they didn't check.

The thing is, an example like the above AITA is not in violation of kashrut, but the person affected nevertheless felt violated themselves, and likely guilty and possibly tainted. And while they don't have to, a lot of people in this situation still do feel this way, and that's natural. Many rabbis will say that to resolve that guilt you can do teshuvah, whether it's through davening or tzeddakah or both. (I think Chabad.org has a page on this specific issue but tbh I don't feel like linking to them for a number of reasons so feel free to do your own research or talk to your friendly neighborhood rabbi.)

So for any Evangelicals who want to feed Jewish (or Muslim) people food that violates their religious practice just to prove a point, maybe just cut out the middleman, don't mess with people's food, and donate to your local homeless shelter instead (but not the Salvation Army).

This is important.

I don’t believe I’m going to hell if I eat pork. I don’t believe G-d will punish me if I eat pork. I don’t need anyone to “prove” to me that it’s okay to eat pork.

(Although I’ll note that if you don’t eat pork for a long time, and then you do, it can have very unpleasant effects on your digestive system, so doing this to someone is harmful in a myriad of ways.)

I’m not afraid to eat pork: I choose not to eat it. I find the idea of eating it distasteful and a violation of my ethics and identity. It’s not about being afraid of divine wrath.

But I fear that’s too nuanced for the average Christian to understand.

Telling the son he can't go to the mother-in-law's house isn't a punishment; it's a reward.

🐝: remember thou art but mortal

Love how the kid accepts death but is so shocked to learn that everybody else also will die

- a host on the NASA total solar eclipse livestream

mithrun's whole deal is delightful bc he's basically that "i saw her at the devil's sacrament/girl, what were YOU doing at the devil's sacrament?" post, only his answer would be "i wasn't having a good fucking time, actually, which is why i think we should stop letting people just wander into the sacrament and also we should kill the devil"

My newest hobby is cranking out weird niche tumblr posts that frankly strain even tumblr's willingness to put up with intense nerd shit

I need a flower crown, stat

Here you go.

I think people who find the Jedi’s rule on attachment awful don’t consider that being a Jedi isn’t a regular job.

They’re not space cops, they don’t put their little Jedi outfit in the morning and take it off when they get home at night while leaving their responsibilities at the door.

You are a Jedi, always, because you can’t turn off the kind of powers that come with it and not adhering to a strict code of conduct is dangerous, and not only for yourself.

It’s saying ‘if I had the choice between saving my sibling/parent/spouse or 100 people, I need to make sure that I wouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way of making the logical decision.’ It’s Anakin saying that irrational attachment and possession are forbidden, but compassion is essential to a Jedi’s life. It’s having friends, family and lovers, and still acknowledging that if something happens to them, you wouldn’t burn down the galaxy to get your revenge.

It’s not a grand title that comes with a cool laser sword, it’s a way of life. A difficult one, which demands to make sacrifices and utter control of yourself.

It’s not for everyone, and that’s why Luke gives Grogu a chance to back out. To say ‘alright, maybe I can’t do that and would prefer to stay with Din’.

And it’s not the end of the world if Grogu doesn’t become a Jedi! It only means he’s not ready to adhere to the philosophy that comes with it. And it's not the end of the world if Grogu chooses to be a Jedi! It only means he will have to learn that some things must be more important than Din when you become so powerful.

#it's far away from the western philosophy we're constantly fed in pop culture#but it's not such an insane concept to grasp (via @obiwanobi​)

There is nothing extreme about it.

The Jedi were allowed to have a family, which is for a lot of them, the Order. Most of them think of their master or their padawan as the closest people to them, and even Dooku, even after everything he did, still compares the way he sees Obi-Wan to a grandson of sorts in the ROTS novelisation.

More recently and undoubtedly canon now, Obi-Wan refers to the Jedi as his family in Obi-Wan Kenobi. It cannot get more explicit than that.

But there is an interesting and painful dialogue in the Gambit books, where it's clear that even if Obi-Wan does see them as his family, Anakin doesn't, not really.

Which is important because the prequels are about Anakin and his feelings. We follow a large part of his story from his point of view. And Anakin is wrong a lot.

We don't see a lot of day-to-day life, but just with Obi-Wan, we know that Jedi can have friends outside of the Order and good relationships with senators or people they met during their missions.

And like I said, being a Jedi isn't a job. They don't 'work there', they live there. This is a way of life.

It's funny that people think the Jedi have 'no real connection' when being a Jedi is all about connections. To the Force, to people, to the galaxy. They learn, they teach, they explore, they play the roles of moderators and protectors for many different societies and cultures in the galaxy. They're known for their wisdom and praised for their negotiating skills more than once, but still, people think that they're brainwashed and can't make their own choices.

So what's stopping them from leaving the Order if they're not happy about their life? Absolutely nothing.

We even have an example with Anakin himself, as a young padawan, wondering if he should leave the Order in the Obi-Wan & Anakin (2016) comic, and Obi-Wan and Yoda let him make his own decision. Obi-Wan even tells Yoda that he might leave with him if it comes to that.

Let's not forget the masters who decided to leave the Order and were remembered by having busts in the Jedi's archives anyway. Leaving doesn't even mean cutting all ties with the Order: at the beginning of AOTC, Mace Windu and Ki-Adi Mundi still defend Dooku when Padmé accuses him.

And of course you don't have to turn to the dark side to leave the Order. Dooku and Anakin did, but that's because there would be no epic story to tell if they only became nice and quiet civilians.

So no, the whole 'it was better back then' doesn't work, especially when we follow the story of Anakin, who is far from an objective point of view and refuses to be one from beginning to end.

I think one of the big reasons “the Jedi are baby thieves” doesn’t hold water for me is because that attitude is just not present in the movies or TCW at all, there’s nothing to indicate that they’re greedy for more people to join their ranks, and, just as importantly, our earliest introduction to the Jedi Order as a community is them going, no, we don’t think we should take on this extremely powerful child. Our first introduction to them is them turning down a child being brought to them, like that’s not the way a group of people behaves if they’re a bunch of baby thieves! You don’t make a major point of characters saying no to being offered a kid as pretty much your only example of the Jedi adoption process that makes it into the movies, if they’re meant to be baby thieves!  That’s not how you introduce characters if they’re meant to be baby thieves! It’s the only time it comes up in the movies, it’s the only time we’re given an explicit scene about Jedi taking on kids, and it’s one where they say no.

Not only that, but Qui-Gon, who really does want Anakin to join the Jedi, makes a point of telling Anakin that it’s a hard life. He puts the choice in Anakin’s hands.

And while you can argue “Well you can’t ask an infant what they want”, the pretty natural assumption is that they usually ask the parents. It’s a larger leap to think that they don’t, one that’s inconsistent with how they’re presented.

Making the Jedi into child abductors adds nothing to the story. I’d say it detracts from it, significantly, introducing inconsistent characterization using a trope that is only ever used to demonize and condemn as the worst of the worst. It’s a very jarring, incongruous thing to apply to the good guys.

The movie made a very big point that this was Shmi’s choice, where she is the one asking Qui-Gon to take Anakin to the Jedi, she is the one asking for his help, she is the one telling Anakin to go while Qui-Gon waits off to the side and lets the two of them have their conversation about it when they’re about to leave. This is the foundation of what the movies presents and anything else added on by speculation or by other authors isn’t part of that foundation.  “This obscure story from another author shows the Jedi kidnapping kids, look it up on Wookiepedia!” (in addition to usually not being accurate to the actual story, no, the Jedi didn’t kidnap baby Ludi, that’s not what happened) is never going to be on par with the very first movie of the prequels introducing us to the Jedi as the opposite of baby thieves. Speculation on how, well, the Jedi could be putting pressure on parents to give them their children is never going to be on par with what we’re shown in the movie (and TCW), where the Jedi’s attitude is consistently shown to respect parents’ permission and respect when they say no and no pressure is applied to them.

Honestly where I see this the most is people writing Mandalorians calling the Jedi baby snatchers (usually framed as the Mandalorians being morally in the right).

Which is hilarious when you think about which of those groups is canonically known for historically taking the children of their enemy/conquered worlds and putting them through integration/indoctrination programs. And I’m not talking about Death Watch. Im talking about the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders.

The only good thing reddit has ever produced https://www.reddit.com/r/casualiama/comments/65788g/im_3_i_know_everything_ama/?st=1Z141Z3&sh=f48ba715

wholesome

This post missed the best one

This makes so much sense

May I add:

Too many I know, give more than asked and run themselves ragged.

I know you want to be good and kind to others and show your skills. But please don't. It just leads to more work because people think you can handle it, or uses you. If you can perform 100% of what is asked with 70% of your energy, do that and save the 30% for yourself.

*this includes if you've gone back and forth. so if you went from straight to bi to gay to bi to gay, that's 5 times