Antisemites really do just pull Talmud citations out of their asses and hope that gentiles don't know how to look it up. If some Nazi goon on twitter says "Sanhedrin 59a: It is not forbidden to murder a gentile because gentiles are like unto beasts," I can just go on Sefaria and look, and see that the Rabbis discuss nothing even close to that (never mind that any Rabbi who asserted such a thing would get his ass beat by later commentators). Nowhere in this debate is the notion that gentiles are like wild animals, or even whether it's permitted to murder gentiles at all, brought up? This conclusion that the Nazi comes to must be made out of whole cloth, or else repeated from someone else who made it out of whole cloth.

Hi I have a really easy answer for anyone who is worried about coming across this and not knowing how to look it up: the entire translated into English Talmud is available, for free, online, on Sefaria:

Here's the actual link that I didn't bother to put in!

But like, never trust people who talk about the Talmud, there's a historical precedent, and I mean a long one, of Christians putting the Talmud "on trial," declaring it slanders Jesus or advocates violence against Christians, and then not even letting Jews cite the book itself to prove that it says no such things.

The Talmud was declared illegal, heretical, and anti-Christian so many times throughout history, and often was subjected to mass burnings. None of these people ever read it, they couldn't read Hebrew or Aramaic, they didn't ask Jews to translate for them, they just decided it must say whatever they heard their cousin's friend's priest say it said that one time.

People are still doing this, but now the Talmud is widely available in English for free. But even then, they're not just weaponizing a missing historical context, or contemporary Halachic context. It's not just a matter of not knowing any Jews in real life and having null idea about Jewish values, and then brazenly deciding what an ambiguous argument must mean. They are still just making shit up out of thin air! They are citing random pages and random arguments and counting on nobody to check!

Unlike in Medieval Europe (and a lot later frankly yeesh), you have the power to correct them. But honestly just report these tweets and posts when you see them, these people are literal Nazis.

Not to "well aktsually 🤓" you @germiyahu, but there was at least one person who pathologically DID study Talmud for vile and dishonest purposes:

I do think this history is very important for understanding how twisted versions of Talmud get used even today to inspire antisemitic hate crimes.

Another important note about this: THIS is why it's not only important to verify whether the quotes are real or not, but to also research what the text is actually saying in context. This is a difficult enough task that you may want to ask a rabbi if there are particularly troubling passages without immediately helpful commentary.

Okay. So here's the thing. I scrolled past this and came back because I think a vital point needs to be made.

My general rule of "internet Talmud quotes" is that if a quote on the internet is attributed to "the Talmud", then 95% it's at best a mistaken citation of a commentary on the Talmud, and at worse an antisemitic fabrication.

But.

If you expect or demand to agree with everything in an ancient text, you are the one who is wrong.

There absolutely are things in the Talmud that you are not going to like. It was written down and finalized over a long period of time, but even the most recent stuff in there is still 1500 years old.

If you want to go through the Talmud and find quotes you don't like, I guarantee you that you will find them.

But expecting otherwise is fucked up. This is an ancient text. Why do you expect to agree with everything in it?

If you look at a page of the Talmud in the traditional printing, the vast majority of the page is not the text of the Talmud. The majority of the page are a small selection of important commentaries on it. The Talmud has never existed in a vacuum. Commentaries are still being written today on it. It is a living tradition.

If you don't like something in the Talmud? Get over it.

Some people act like the joke about the famous people who flip to the index a new tell all or memoir to see what's said about them. Congratulations, you have flipped to the index and looked up your name and not liked what you found.

But the Talmud wasn't written for goyim. It was written for Jews. It's been edited and censored by goyim over the years who don't like what's in it, and the reflects badly on the goyim who want someone else's texts to fit into their nice little boxes, and not on the Jews who painstakingly copied it over and over again, to preserve the oral tradition that must be written down because they're killing all the people who keep the oral tradition.

There's a lot of lies about the Talmud, all of it created for the purpose of destroying it and destroying Jews.

But even if it's a cherry-picked real quote you don't like: again, if you judge an ancient text and require it to fit precisely with your opinions today, right now, you are doing this wrong.

shen qingqiu and shang qinghua are paragons of internet safety. refusing to share their real names with people they met online even after getting transmigrated into another dimension

Lost track of time while slow-cooking a stew and it ended up simmering on low heat for like twelve hours, during which time every part of it lost all flavour save for a faint, flat bitterness, yet somehow the potatoes are still underdone. What the hell.

Independent reinvention of chulent.

i think we all need to be careful of concluding "the average teenager is more self-centered/mean/uninformed than ever before" rather than "the peaks of the self-centeredness/meanness/lack of awareness of teenagers is now digitally documented, usually with their faces attached + drives hundreds of thousands of outrage clicks per day".

imagine your fandom blog from age 15 included videos of you reading your posts out loud

There was a post a few days ago on Wonkette, which is normally a newsblog, about a group of teens doing something someone didn't like in Sephora, so that person recorded them without their consent and put it on tiktok.

None of the people involved in this were famous.

None of this was newsworthy.

It was covered in Wonkette anyway, who sided with the person recording the teens, because Wonkette doesn't like what they were doing either. It included stills from the video, which is why I'm not direct linking.

I have my issues with the Barney Frank Rule, but can we please get a version of it for recording people and using it for clicks? You need a base level of newsworthiness before treating other people's daily lives as ripe for reporting is ever okay.

KRISTEN STEWART Rolling Stone Magazine (Feb 14, 2024)

Wow.

YEARFRAC me

day_count_convention - [ OPTIONAL - 0 by default ] - An indicator of what day count method to use. 0 indicates US (NASD) 30/360 - This assumes 30 day months and 360 day years as per the National Association of Securities Dealers standard, and performs specific adjustments to entered dates which fall at the end of months.

1 indicates Actual/Actual - This calculates based upon the actual number of days between the specified dates, and the actual number of days in the intervening years. Used for US Treasury Bonds and Bills, but also the most relevant for non-financial use.

oh my GOD capitalism ruins everything!

so if you're playing along, this is how to ..... deal with this

YEARFRAC is the formula, it gives the "exact" fraction of years between two dates, in a spreadsheet

the equals makes it a formula. the commas are important. close all the parenthesis. put in a date orrrrrr if you have the dates elsewhere you're putting in the "address" of the cells, which is usually the top-left indicating where your cursor is. so at the very topmost cell (1) on the very leftmost column (A), you're parked in A1

=YEARFRAC(start_date,end_date,1)

end it with ONE because we're counting exact actual days! it's a formula that needs an unreality tag—i am frothing at the mouth why is it the default?

this will give the number of years (that's the #) and then the remainder. you can make space between them and in some cases even punctuation like _ so it's more readable. the fraction part usually* turns into a /365 automatically bc you just gave it enough digits to show ...the supposedly exact calculation

*if you want to force it to 365, then change that setting from ,1 into ,3 which does just that: assumes a year of 365 days

this might still be inaccurate, hahaa oh wow.

i'm looking at a 422 day test calculation. it's a 365 year, so 422 = 365 + 57 setting 1 gives 1 (year) and 43 / 276 setting 3 gives 1 (year) and 57 / 365

but at least it's not /360

edit: ok i think we got it (and if there's a leap year lookup formula it'd be bagged!) because our uses are for accuracy and not precision...

and we're only messing with the fraction bit to turn them into "days" ⮚ use setting 1 if the latest, last year is a leap year ⮚ use setting 3 if the latest, last year is a usual 365 day year

as much as we love timeanddate.com, now we don't have to navigate over there just to calculate character ages

(sorry its math, @copperbadge )

Oh, interesting! Reblogging this because I know my blog attracts Excel nerds who might find this fun and useful. I'm also saving it off for personal use if I need to hack this out someday -- I'm not sure I'm following everything you're laying down but I bet I would if I had to actually get into Excel and execute it. Usually with dates, I'm not necessarily trying to get a count between two dates, I'm just trying to find out "since X date have you done Y" which is both simpler and more complex, but looks VERY impressive when I show it off to my bosses.

Also the original post has "Poly agenda: more spreadsheets" on it and that gave me a hardcore laugh I wanted to share with the numerous polyfolk on here :D

So I'm sure there are real reasons to use this but got caught in the last line: if you're just trying to calculate character ages, there's an easier way!

Current age:

=IF([@Birthdate]="","No birthdate given",DATEDIF([@Birthdate],NOW(),"y") & " years, " & DATEDIF([@Birthdate],NOW(),"ym") & " months, " & DATEDIF([@Birthdate],NOW(),"md") & " days")

If you want age as of a specific date, replace NOW() with the date.

This is formatted as if it's in a table, since I grabbed it from a table I have. Replace [@[Birthdate] with your named cell or cell reference as you please. (also these days if I were creating that table, I would absolutely wrap that in a concat and not use operators; I definitely recommend concat instead.)

If anyone wants ages by cut off date cateory (such as older/younger than a certain age in a certain year), I can try to find my old figure skating age eligiblity calculator for what years people are eligible for senior or junior competitions.

Ok, this is a little niche, but I have a theory for all you Discworld fans. Why doesnt Carrot have a beard?

A few facts to start with:

1. All Dwarves have beards.

2. Carrot is, culturally, a dwarf. He sees himself as a dwarf and other dwarfs accept him as such. (He’s just a very tall dwarf.)

So why would Carrot NOT have a beard, if all Dwarves have beards and Carrot is a dwarf? Would he choose to shave? Why? He wouldnt, right? Is there some reason he CANT grow a beard?

Another fact to remember about Disc Dwarfs:

All Dwarves are raised as men. Regardless of their biological sex and whether they are XX or XY, they are men, they use he/him pronouns, etc. (The fact that some dwarves have begun to identify and present as women is very recent in Disc history after all, and not all XX dwarves identify or present as women)

So, follow me here- the Dwarves in the mountain find a human baby. Regardless of that baby’s biological sex, they would be raised as a dwarf boy/man, yeah?

So…. may I present the theory- the reason that Carrot, a dwarf man, has no beard is because, you following, he is biologically an XX human. The fact that he cant grow a beard doesnt make him less of a dwarf man than the fact that he is 6+ feet tall.

So what I’m hearing is Carrot should be played by Gwendoline Christie

Discworld Heritage Post

Occasionally I’ll see a post I previously liked and have no memory of but I see my past enjoyment and know I’m in for a treat.

I've had this pet theory for a long time that Carrot is a female dwarf (he's traditional), and one year for Yuletide, I got an amazing fic for it that everyone should read: On Being Female by Nomad (nomadicwriter)

spotted this sticker outside my apartment building and I think it illustrates an important point about the moment we’re in.

on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with. but take 10 seconds to google the url at the bottom and you’ll see that this is a sticker for a neo-Nazi group.

“We serve one nation” is a reference to the dual loyalty trope, the idea that Jews can never be loyal to America because they are first and foremost loyal to Israel.

There are a lot of hate groups taking advantage of the moment we’re in. It’s easy to replace “Jew” with “Zionist” and get a lot more people to agree with them. Do not fall for it.

good catch on the dual loyalty dogwhistle; i didn't recognize what that was alluding to at first glance.

also should be noted the "o" in "zionists" is a globe graphic, a reference to the "globalist" dogwhistle as well.

also seems like a pretty clear "america first" allusion

also the nationalism

also the fact that it's called patriot front

"on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with" Okay but why. Seriously. Not to poke a hornet's nest or anything, but WHY is this, on surface level, someone who is an antizionist would agree with.

Ignore all the other messages! Why is the at-a-glance reading something you agree with ?????????

I know the joke is "what is zionism" but honestly I ask you, if you agree with this, what is antizionism.

my best guess is, the antizionists who'd agree with this on the surface level are those who want the US to stop letting its foreign policy be driven even a little bit by conservagelical Christian batshit theology re the Book of Revelation, but only those who are sufficiently unfamiliar with the rest of the context to think "Zionists" here is supposed to refer to the batshit conservagelicals who have been ensuring the US supports the Israeli government because that'll help check off everything on the batshit conservagelical pre-Second-Coming checklist

I do not think anyone uses "Zionist" to mean "Christian", no matter what denomination.

the only people who (claim to be) antizionist who would look at this and go ''yeah sure''#are the ones who either 1) saw the word zionist and shut their brains off#2) are parroting the words without understanding the meaning and therefore are missing the unsubtle dogwhistles#or 3) are leaning hard into the excuse to be antisemitic full stop lol.#Words Mean Things. (voidsumbrella)

Over and over again since Simchas Torah, I have seen people profess be shocked, shocked that there are Nazis around them in their social spaces, but do not stop to consider that it's because they are sprouting Nazi bullshit themselves. It's like they opened a hot dog stand and want to warn everyone that people think they sell hot dogs now. Get out of the hot dog business and the Nazis still stop thinking you're one of them. But until then, stop being so surprised that there are Nazis in your movement. Obtain some self-awareness. There are not Nazis in your movement; you are a part of THEIR movement, and they know it. You're just quibbling on the labels.

Nothing in this is a dogwhistle! There is nothing subtle here! There is no plain reading of this that is innocent! If you need to have to follow a link to find out they're actually Nazis and not just "members of your in-group" please consider YOUR GROUP ARE NAZIS.

spotted this sticker outside my apartment building and I think it illustrates an important point about the moment we’re in.

on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with. but take 10 seconds to google the url at the bottom and you’ll see that this is a sticker for a neo-Nazi group.

“We serve one nation” is a reference to the dual loyalty trope, the idea that Jews can never be loyal to America because they are first and foremost loyal to Israel.

There are a lot of hate groups taking advantage of the moment we’re in. It’s easy to replace “Jew” with “Zionist” and get a lot more people to agree with them. Do not fall for it.

good catch on the dual loyalty dogwhistle; i didn't recognize what that was alluding to at first glance.

also should be noted the "o" in "zionists" is a globe graphic, a reference to the "globalist" dogwhistle as well.

also seems like a pretty clear "america first" allusion

also the nationalism

also the fact that it's called patriot front

"on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with" Okay but why. Seriously. Not to poke a hornet's nest or anything, but WHY is this, on surface level, someone who is an antizionist would agree with.

Ignore all the other messages! Why is the at-a-glance reading something you agree with ?????????

I know the joke is "what is zionism" but honestly I ask you, if you agree with this, what is antizionism.

my best guess is, the antizionists who'd agree with this on the surface level are those who want the US to stop letting its foreign policy be driven even a little bit by conservagelical Christian batshit theology re the Book of Revelation, but only those who are sufficiently unfamiliar with the rest of the context to think "Zionists" here is supposed to refer to the batshit conservagelicals who have been ensuring the US supports the Israeli government because that'll help check off everything on the batshit conservagelical pre-Second-Coming checklist

I do not think anyone uses "Zionist" to mean "Christian", no matter what denomination.

spotted this sticker outside my apartment building and I think it illustrates an important point about the moment we’re in.

on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with. but take 10 seconds to google the url at the bottom and you’ll see that this is a sticker for a neo-Nazi group.

“We serve one nation” is a reference to the dual loyalty trope, the idea that Jews can never be loyal to America because they are first and foremost loyal to Israel.

There are a lot of hate groups taking advantage of the moment we’re in. It’s easy to replace “Jew” with “Zionist” and get a lot more people to agree with them. Do not fall for it.

good catch on the dual loyalty dogwhistle; i didn't recognize what that was alluding to at first glance.

also should be noted the "o" in "zionists" is a globe graphic, a reference to the "globalist" dogwhistle as well.

also seems like a pretty clear "america first" allusion

also the nationalism

also the fact that it's called patriot front

"on a surface level this is something that a lot of people who consider themselves antizionist would agree with" Okay but why. Seriously. Not to poke a hornet's nest or anything, but WHY is this, on surface level, someone who is an antizionist would agree with.

Ignore all the other messages! Why is the at-a-glance reading something you agree with ?????????

I know the joke is "what is zionism" but honestly I ask you, if you agree with this, what is antizionism.

i have rule i semi-adhere to for media criticism which is to ideologically meet shit where it's at (or where it's presented to me). i like to call it the "i didn't make you market it that way" rule--like, if lancer's union was just presented as a sci-fi setting, that would be fine. i don't expect all sci-fi settings to be communist utopias! but when the creators of lancer use the word utopia like 20 times & bandy around words like 'mutual aid' and 'post-scarcity' and 'anticapitalist' when describing it, then to me that becomes absolutely fair game. similarly if someone says 'stardew valley is fun i like farming :)' then i'm not gonna reply with a long post about how it's ideologically petty-bourgeois--but if they say 'stardew valley is anticapitalist', then they've opened up that can of worms and it's fair for me to point out that the worms exist.

it's the same phenomenon where a fantasy novel that says 'for the duration of this fantasy novel you need to just believe in the divine right of kings for the emotional stakes to make sense' is infinitely less objectionable than a fantasy novel that's also about restoring a king but takes painstaking time to point out how this king is A Good King who is Progressive and Nice and is going to do Nice Monarchy. when you try to sanitize something you end up turning any otherwise neutral or at least palatable depiction or framework you've included into a normative statement!

Yeah, I feel like if you do monarchy, you have to commit to doing monarchy.

No, your 14 year old queen isn't popularly elected. Stop it.

(And to throw stones at a fandom I am in: if your character is a member of the secret police, he's a member of the secret police. Extra ditto to the informer.)

saw north posting about batman: creature of the night, found out it takes place in boston, and was promptly blindsided by the hilarity of an au where batman takes place in boston (which creature of the night isn't, exactly, so i need to imagine)

here i have more

do you see?? do you see my vision?????

Official Post of Massachusetts

[Image ID: silhouette of Batman in front of the giant citgo sign with lightning in the background /end ID]

thinking "haha what if i jokingly shipped them" is your last chance to get out btw

Honestly no, if you think that it's already too late

Never ask yourself any question that begins with "but how would..." You have already lost.