What to say instead of "trivially"

This comes from a very long list of alternative phrases and words that was used to create “a program that will insert condescending adverbial phrases before any statement in a math proof”. But use it where you will - I’m sure other fields can benefit. Tag yourself, I’m “By abstract nonsense“.

I’m gonna work these into everyday conversation.

Supercut of Sadie Doyle Listing Things

Looked around for this and couldn’t find it anywhere, so I slapped one together (with an assist from Spontaneanation's “cut to” sound).

PLEASE LISTEN BEYOND BELIEF, IT IS MY FAVORITE

Sadie Doyle listing things is one of my favorite things. I hear that Paul F Tompkins eventually would just let Paget Brewster keep going for much longer than they all intended, just to see what she’s come up with.

Announcing an Invitational!

Show us the stars!

Games Wizards Play gave us an example of what a wizardly science fair would look like, and we’d love to see what all of you can come up with! This Invitational will be a celebration of all things science, and everyone is invited to participate! What is your favorite science thing? Are you passionate about the life cycle of a forest? Can you talk for ages and ages about interstellar space travel? Or, if you have a way to recreate one of the projects we see in Games Wizards Play, that would be great too!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be strictly science based! It can be in the realm of wizardry, too! If you know what the spell diagram the young wizards used on the moon at the end of Wizards at War would look like, or a spell to repair the ozone layer, give it a go!

One example of a project is the classic papier-mâché volcano - maybe to demonstrate how a volcanic eruption can lead to new growth? All projects should be leaning towards a purpose or reducing entropy in some way.

You can make your project ahead of time and bring it to Montréal, or there will be preparation time and space at the Con! There will be a $25 limit on supplies (don’t worry about the exchange rate unless it lets you buy that last thing you need to demonstrate how Jupiter and Saturn resonate).

Our judges are TBD, but everyone is welcome to walk around and observe, leave comments or tokens, or ask questions of the presenter!

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with! If you have any questions or comments, please email events@crossingscon.org.

CrossingsCon will take place June 21-23, 2019, at Hyatt Regency Montreal, Montreal, Canada. Badges are on sale here.

This is going to be so cool! I can’t wait to see what people come up with!

Should I fight an urge to buy 6 ducks and call them Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange and Charm?

Because quarks

Only if you get them in the correct mass ratios

Okay so if our smallest duck, Up Duck, were to weight 1kg (a bag of sugar), then comparative weights are roughly:

Conclusion: I will need a large pond

#if it quarks like a duck (via @im-significant)

...what’s “Up Duck”?

Man, when I was like 16 I got so sick of being made fun of for being the fat kid that I took an axe down inna woods, chopped down a tree, and started doing log-lifts all the time. I got strong as fuck, but I didn’t lose no weight. I actually got bigger.

Same thing happened when I got into fighting. I got even stronger, and I got *fast*, man, and nimble, like a cat. Still chubby.

Body-building culture is a bunch of crap, my dude. Functional muscle is not necessarily toned or lean. You can be swole as hell and still be heavy. And that’s cool.

Embrace your inner barbarian. And when fatphobic little gym twinks try to body shame you, you should DESTROY THEM with your MIGHTY AXE

Can comfirm, i am Quite Fat ™ but i still hit my punching bag hard enough last week make it touch the ceiling and broke a finger in the process

You know, I train with (martial arts) a bunch of dudes, and a few bodybuilders have showed up over the years. 

And every damn one of those huge shredded motherfuckers has the endurance of a fucking newborn puppy. Fifteen minutes into warmups and they’re panting for air like like they’re about to die. I’ve sparred them and every one of them telegraphs their moves about two weeks in advance, and are slower than my dead grandpa because their huge useless muscles get in the damn way. 

Now. I also work with a couple of guys who are not weightlifters. They do, however, do very physical jobs and are Big Dudes. Picture this sort of build. 

No abs to speak of, a bit of a tummy, and those motherfuckers can pick up one of the weightlifters and throw them. 

And they’re fast. Like, unfair fast. 

Bodybuilding culture is bullshit. Embrace your status as a giant barbarian and if anyone gives you crap throw them off a mountain. 

i love and support all strong, fat people

hell yeah @down-with-terfscum

god bless

Holy shit, a body positivity post that speaks to me.

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line

it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired

THAT IS EXACTLY WHY

I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

um woah

I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??

In Yiddish

In Hebrew

In Ladino

Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.

You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.

None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.

Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.

Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.

(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)

holy shit. woah.

This.

That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.

dear Christian friends: PSA

therenegadegabbai:

Once again, it’s time to remind people about this. If your church is planning a seder, ask them to stop and do something instead that’s outreach, not appropriation.

So I saw Black Panther today and it was fantastic but real talk I’ve been reading “T'chaka” and “T'challa” thinking the ‘ch’ was anglicizing a [x] sound like it does in like “Chanukah” or like. “Challah”. So to find out it’s just straight up a ch sound was a Discovery and now I’ve gotta change how I’ve been mentally pronouncing it.

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who did this.

i haven’t yet seen black panther, but i have like so many questions in terms of Wakanda Jews.

Like at what point did the isolationism start in Wakanda so like up to where did we were last all on the same page in terms of various sefarim and interpretations of Halachot and Jewish history.

Cause like I can’t imagine if I found out for the first time about the Holocaust so like imagine Jews from Wakanda finding out for the first time.

But also imagine them finding out that for the we are also by the millions back in our homeland and able to freely live and visit there for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple.

Also imagine all the sefarim and minhagim that Wakanda Jews have written and come up with that the rest of the Jewish population don’t know about.

Like I would love to know Wakanda Jews traditions.

Like think of all the new Zemirot and tunes to be learnt.

And like just like there is Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish there must be must versions mixing the various languages spoken by the people of Wakanda with Hebrew.

Also like what do their decorations look like for their Sukkot, and like how to they design their kippot, ketubahs, menorahs, shuls, mikvahs, mezuzah covers, haggadahs, and more.

What do their wedding look like and what traditions do they do.

Like I’m just brimming with questions as to what Jewish life is like in Wakanda and what the Jews there have learnt.

Because think of all the Halacha questions that needed to be answered because they have such advanced technology and with new technology comes a million and one Halacha questions.

Like one of the really cool things about Jews is that no matter where in the world and when in time there are some things that just are always the same there is still just so much history and culture and traditions and philosophy and food to be shared 

I can’t help but think that in this universe where Wakanda exists for Jews it must be a really exciting time.

I imagine that the Wakandan Jewish community would be very old, especially considering that Wakanda was untouched by Arabic and European expansion into Africa.

Well, in the comics, Wakanda did know about the Holocaust, and King T’Chaka (although this is from the 60′s version where T’challa becomes BP about when Tony gets his ass blasted in Vietnam, so in MCU it’d be T’Chaka’s dad) gave Howard Stark the vibranium to make Steve’s shield.

Like, they were still isolationists who protected themselves by giving an ignorant goat-herder impression to outsiders.  They NEEDED to be underestimated if they were going to keep the war off their doorstep.

But T’Chaka flies himself, in the dead of night, to Howard Stark, a man who would know exactly what kind of high-tech rig would be needed to mine, refine, and use this metal, and says “That guy who punches Hitler in the face.  He needs a better shield.”

T’Chaka risked exposure, risked his country going into a terrible war, JUST to give Steve a shield.

A shield with a star in the center.

Fuck, man, Wakanda’s Jews were already on that ball.

—–

But also, VIBRANIUM MEZUZAH,  I’m here for that!

Considering that M’Baku’s tribe has Hindu elements, with Hanuman, I wouldn’t be surprised by there being Jewish Wakandans. I wonder when they may have arrived though, the Roman diasporia? Wakanda seems like they closed themselves off before then, though.

Given that: 1) Bast the panther goddess sounds like it’s linked to the Egyptian deity Bastet, 2) Wakanda is (currently) located near South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, and 3) there are established Jewish communities in at least two of those four countries, a connection between Wakanda and the Jewish people could potentially go as far back as King Solomon or the Exodus.

but isn’t hiduism only 500 years old so how would that work if Wakanda closed off before then

Hinduism is much older than that.

Hinduism is older than Judaism.

I think the real important question here is how long do Wakandan Jews wait between meat and milk

The answer to this question will determine which Wakandan synagogues I’ll enter and which I’ll never set foot in.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but dang do I love this.

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Come join our staff of awesome creative nerds! The open positions are: Head of Merchandise, Webmaster, and Assistant PR Director. 

Send your resume and cover letter to pr@crossingscon.org

We will be conducting rolling interviews, so apply ASAP!

One of my favorite authors in the whole world has hit a financial snag and is in danger of losing her house: http://dianeduane.com/outofambit/a-difficult-appeal/ 

@dduane is a delightful human and a wonderful author.  Her books are full of life, and good people making the best choices they can.  They make me laugh and cry still on the 10000000th read.

Like modern wizards, and YA, and talking trees, and arrogant but delightful alien princes, and little sisters becoming intergalactic badasses, and kindly whales, and sentient, feral helicopters?  Get all NINE young wizards books in DRM-free formats for $20: https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/our-inventory/products/young-wizards-new-millennium-editions-9-volume-box-set

Like cats, and wizards, and cats who are wizards?  https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/feline-wizards 

Want to try her writing out first before buying?  https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/freebies 

Pls consider being kind to both a lovely author and to yourself, and pick up some quality reading. (And once you’re in love with her books, come talk to me about’em.  And maybe consider joining the YW slack, which is also full of lovely people saying nice things.  And puns.)

writing style: author from the 1800s with a severe love of commas whose sentences last half a page 

I came out here, to this point, to this place, hoping against all hope and despite signs and portends suggesting otherwise that I might, somehow, find myself having a pleasant experience, and yet here I stand, alone against the world, feeling assaulted, attacked on all fronts, knowing not my enemy’s name nor his face nor whether our battle is done.

@shamrockjolnes I’m calling you out.

The first short story I ever read – not for a school assignment, just for me – was Ursula K Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.  I read it in 1991, at the Zaul Memorial Library in Saginaw, Michigan.  I read it in a collection of short stories – or maybe a magazine?  I honestly don’t recall – and then I read it again, and I renewed it three times (which was the limit, back then), and then I had to have it so badly I painstakingly photocopied each page and stapled it together and brought it home.  The whole thing only cost me fifty cents to copy and take home with me forever*.  

It was so many firsts for me, all at once. It fucking blew my mind.

You could contain something that powerful, that many revelations, in that few words?  The story was TINY.  I could keep it in a folder in my trapper keeper and take it everywhere.  I could read it almost everywhere!

It was a story about an idea, more than about the plot or the characters, even.  You could… do that?  You could just write things, and stuff doesn’t have to Happen the way it does in novels, in some kind of concrete set of scenes in an order that makes sense?  You can talk about things that have happened and are happening and will happen again all at once, and you don’t have to make your story about Stan Manly, the Man who Things Happen To?  You can make it about a people, a city, a town?

And you could address the reader directly?  You could make the story about them, you could tell them things, you could send images right to their mind like that? You didn’t have to be coy, and you didn’t have to put it all out there?  You could just ask the reader and if you ask the right questions, it all comes together in like, a personal way?

And a woman could write this?  Not fluff, not genre, but literature?**  Girls wrote this stuff too???  Not just girls, not pretty twenty-somethings with ponytails and Appropriately Cute Skirts, but old ladies who looked like they had a secret, with white hair and the weight of wisdom staring out of their author photo.

And things like this could be literature?**  Like, proper award winning literature that makes it into Important Looking Collections and Best Ofs and stuff?  It doesn’t have to be 350 pages of Historical Truth.  Five pages of an idea.  Just.  Five pages, clean and pure, of something that never was, just a dream you had, just a thought, and it was Real Important Writing.

And Literature could make you feel like this?  It wasn’t just for fun, it was for learning and knowing and for your heart as much as your head?  I cried for the child in Omelas, because I was 11 and I didn’t know what else to do.  I cried.***  

And your heart breaking, did you know that can be a good thing?  It can mean that you feel and understand, that you’re not broken but a real, whole person who wants good things, that no matter how much you dissociate, you’re still a part of this world.  Reading that story would ground me, it would help me come back to the world.  I didn’t know why but it did.

And then you can request all this stuff by the same author, and it all comes flooding in to you from all the branches of the libraries all over your town, and you understand for the first time how some people can have a favorite author, and some authors can have a voice.  You can understand what it feels like to have someone reach out to you through time and give you words that feel like they were written just for you.

I wrote her a letter, once, and she never wrote me back, but I will forever hope that she read it at least, my shaky thirteen-year-old handwriting that said something to the tune of Thank you so much for writing what you did, because my life is better now that I’ve read it, and you’re my favorite forever, and thank you.

And now she’s gone, and though we never met I’m sitting here at my desk at work crying all over again, crying my heart out, because the loss of her is palpable and real, because there’s a hole in the universe that’ll never get filled, because the collective wisdom of the human race has slipped, ever so slightly, without her.

I miss you.  Thank you.  The end.

——– 

* Oh, that dime-a-page copy machine at the front of the library was my friend for like, most of the 90s.

**I’ve learned a lot about literature since then, and about the bullshit of the genre ghetto, and exactly what women could write, but back then I had only the opinion of a few banal elementary teachers and some old english textbooks in my head.

*** And when I got older I cried for the ones who walked away.  And when I got older still I cried for the ones who stayed.  And then for the thought that I might stay, if I were there, and what that meant about me.  And then for how hard it was going to be for me to change.

one thing i think is interesting, as someone who basically grew up playing video games non-stop, is how some types of video game just don’t gel with people 

like, it’s easy to forget that, even though i’m pretty bad at most games, that my skill at handling video games is definitely “above average.” as much as i hate to put it like this, i’d say my experience level is at “expert” solely because I can pick up any game controller and understand how to use it with no additional training. 

a friend of mine on twitter posted a video of him stuck on a part of samus returns. the tutorial area where it teaches you how to ledge-grab. the video is of him jumping against the wall, doing everything but grabbing the ledge, and him getting frustrated 

i’ve been playing games all my life, so i’d naturally intuit that i should jump towards the ledge to see what happens 

but he doesn’t do that.

it’s kinda making me realize that as games are becoming more complex and controllers are getting more buttons, games are being designed more and more for people who already know how to play them and not people with little to no base understanding of the types of games they’re playing 

so that’s got me thinking: should video games assume that you have zero base knowledge of video games and try to teach you from there? should Metroid: Samus Returns assume that you already know how to play a Metroid game and base its tutorial around that, or should it assume that you’ve never even played Mario before? 

it’s got me thinking about that Cuphead video again. you know the one. to anyone with a lot of experience with video games, especially 2D ones, we would naturally intuit that one part of the tutorial to require a jump and a dash at the same time.

but most people lack that experience and that learned intuition and might struggle with that, and that’s something a lot of people forget to consider. 

it reminds me a bit of the “land of Punt” that I read about in this Tumblr post. Egypt had this big trading partner back in the day called Punt and they wrote down everything about it except where it was, because who doesn’t know where Punt is? and now, we have no idea where it was, because everyone in Egypt assumed everyone else knew.

take that same line of thinking with games: “who doesn’t know how to play a 2D platform game?” nobody takes in to consideration the fact that somebody might not know how to play a 2D game on a base level, because that style of gameplay is thoroughly ingrained in to the minds of the majority of gamers. and then the Cuphead situation happens.

the point of this post isn’t to make fun of anybody, but to ask everyone to step back for a second and consider that things that they might not normally consider. as weird as it is to think about for people that grew up playing video games, anyone who can pick up a controller with thirty buttons on it and not get intimidated is actually operating at an expert level. if you pick up a playstation or an Xbox controller and your thumbs naturally land on the face buttons and the analog stick and your index fingers naturally land on the trigger buttons, that is because you are an expert at operating a complex piece of machinery. you have a lifetime of experience using this piece of equipment, and assuming that your skill level is the base line is a problem.

that assumption is rapidly becoming a problem as games become more complex. it’s something that should be considered when talking about games going forward. games should be accessible, but it’s reaching a point where even Nintendo games are assuming certain levels of skill without teaching the player the absolute basics. basics like “what is an analog stick” and “where should my fingers even be on this controller right now.” 

basically what i’m saying is that games are becoming too complex for new players to reasonably get in to and are starting to assume skill levels higher than what should be considered the base line. it’s becoming a legitimate problem that shouldn’t be laughed at and disregarded. it’s very easy to forget that thing things YOU know aren’t known by everyone and that idea should be taken in to consideration when talking about video games. 

All of this. Basic game literacy is remarkably complicated. I grew up on the earliest ones and had high fluency up to around the Super Mario 64 era. I fell out of regular gameplay at that point and even from that baseline, I experience a really bewildering disconnect from what’s required to approach most games today.

I wonder if this is partly a gatekeeping thing, keeping games for G A M E R S by assuming the player already has an ‘expert’ level of literacy re: the game’s mechanics and lore, which provides both a way to keep out Others (read: non-gamers) from their game space & a way for players to rank themselves by how well they do/how much they know, setting up a hierarchy they constantly struggle to rise up in so they can look down on those who can do/know less.

I.e., a manifestation of the Curator Fandom vs. Creative/Transformative Fandom split.

Man, this so much. There’s also a strong disparity between what people think will be fun for someone and what is actually fun for them? The amount of women I’ve met who were “not into video games even though their boyfriends tried to get them into it” I’ve met is staggering. But the thing is, said boyfriends kept pushing FPS zombie games onto their girlfriends, which are games that a) require a lot of coordination and previous knowledge and b) are not that interesting. I understand the appeal of a FPS game, but you also have to understand that someone’s who’s never played one before will not enjoy being dumped into a world where they die constantly and only get to splatter brains onto concrete.

But I once got a friend whos bf had been trying to push video games onto unsuccessfully for years to spend three hours gleefully laughing and cursing at a screen with a controller in hand. You know what game I picked?

Journey.

Because Journey has a fairly low entry-level, you can’t actually die or loose progress, there is no time pressure, and the controls are relatively easy to learn. She still needed help getting through the tutorial, but the game is very forgiving and getting lost is enjoyable rather than frustrating, so it was a good experience for her. She didn’t know video games could be that fun.

I also got my father to play this game, someone who has never had a controller in his hands in his whole damn life.

But here again, something I’ve noticed a lot from people who try to get other people into video games, is that they lack the patience necessary to teach a complete, bloody noob how to play the game. Even easy, forgiving games like Journey, when people first start, they suck at controlling the camera, they cannot walk in a straight line, they don’t follow the obvious path because the cues are not obvious to them. And a lot of gamers (lots of them male) get really irritated and angry at people if they don’t intuitively use the controls correctly and end up angling the camera at their feet all the time, and a lot of newbies get very self-conscious, very fast when they can’t quickly get a hang of how the game works.

So I guess my piece of advice here is, if you want to get someone into games, there’s two main things to remember:

a) don’t pick your favorite FPS as their first game to try out. Pick something simple and forgiving, with few buttons and a straightforward game mechanic and something that won’t kill you and make you restart for every mistake.

b) be patient. The same kind of patient you have to be to teach your grandmother how to write an email. They’re not going to do it “right”, they will do weird things and roundabout things and maybe surprise you with weird, novel solutions because they won’t follow the patterns laid out for them. You’re gonna have to watch them spend fifteen minutes trying to nail a double jump. You’re gonna watch them poke everything except the really obvious glowing button to open the door to the next level. They are going to leave key items lying around because they didn’t realize it’s a key item. Be. Patient.

Video games are an amazing and novel experience and can be a lot of fun and escapism and hobby, they can be beautiful art or compelling stories or just fun puzzles, but we stop a lot of people from getting into them by setting the entry bar really high and then mocking people for not getting it right the first time. The first time you played Super Mario you ran straight into the first Goomba you saw and died. Your first Pokemon team was made entirely out of cool looking Pokemon with high power moves and zero strategy. Give people a chance to learn.

I feel all of this so hard. I grew up with a Sega Genesis but I was never really a video game kid. I literally dropped Skyrim after an hour because I couldn’t understand the interface, and that’s baffled my friends, except for maybe a “well, it was designed for console” — but I don’t think I’ve had understood it on console either.

There’s an argument for some games to be able to assume literacy, but there should also be an entry point for people who aren’t so well-versed.

Sunny Winter aesthetic

This is my winter jam.