We just passed the halfway point of our fundraising goal for Banned Books Back! Moms for Liberty, eat your hearts out! 😏
To recap, our collective received a serendipitous donation of children's books that had been removed from Florida schools as part of an ongoing effort to censor titles depicting queer joy, civil rights history, immigrant stories, and more. Right now, our collective is harboring dozens of boxes of these "dangerous" titles — but not for long. Later this month, we'll be calling on our local community to help package bundles and send these Banned Books... Back!
Thank you so much to the folks who have boosted this effort, including but not limited to Autostraddle, The Washington Post, LGBTQ Nation, so many rad bookseller buddies, and the 270+ folks who've donated. 💓
According to Jon Bakos on Bluesky, 🍉 (to show Palestinian solidarity) is the Political Word of the Year in the American Dialect Society voting. #Woty2023
Love is not supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be a raw, gritty struggle that forces you to face the most vulnerable parts of yourself, so that when the good times come, you can savor and enjoy them, fully appreciate what they’re worth. Otherwise, you take it all for granted. —Lana Myers
So, having played some #geometrydash 2.2 for a while, I'm starting to warm up to the swing. I'm still not a massive fan and way prefer the ship (which gives you more control), but the swing's long sweeps can help give sections with it a large, grand vibe (e.g., the swing section in Dastardly). Maybe my distaste is just a skill issue. Idk.
Zit er iemand op Goodreads, of weet er iemand een goed alternatief?
Achtergrond: ik heb me dus voorgenomen om wat meer te lezen. (Ben begonnen aan 'La Vieille' van Georges Simenon. Mijn tweede voornemen is om mijn verroest Frans wat WD40 te geven.)
Ben op zoek naar allerlei leestips, vandaar. ik lees uitsluitend fictie, en van het soort waar personen centraal staan. My all time favourite is El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha. (dat is trouwens mijn leestip aan jullie!)
Using #language to counter bias favoring masculine-specific representations:
• gender-unmarked forms (neutralization strategy, e.g., “l'enfant”) are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias.
• contracted double forms (re-feminization strategy, e.g., “un·e enfant”) are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms.
The Cairo Geniza is a collection of 400,000 documents found in a synagogue in Egypt that span the Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
@baruch and you can access over 18.000, 4.000 of which have keywords 🤩
"Thanks to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, over 4000 documentary Genizah manuscripts (e.g. letters and legal documents) have been associated with key terms - such as ‘cheese’, ‘pirates’, or ‘ gambling’ - as well as names, dates and places drawn from over 100 years of published scholarship on the Collection." https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/genizah/1 #JewishHistory@histodons
@Kay@bookstodon yes I love the #bookstodon tag, one of my favorite tags on Mastodon. I don't really have an issue finding books to read though, it's kind of the opposite actually. I have too many I want to read. 😅
📖 The Fragile Threads of Power, by @veschwab. What a promising start to this new trilogy! So much of what I loved from the Shades of Magic universe is still here, but also a lot of novelty and very strong characters building. ✨ https://kevinplattret.com/reads/the-fragile-threads-of-power
How would commercial translation and transcription models perform when faced with genuine news content, exacting journalists and the pressing demands of a newsroom? We devised a quality assessment to help BBC journalists decide.
Sorry, had to redraft. My app is not having fun with the edits.
A thought I've been chewing on after a particularly vivid dream: I wonder if the minotaur in the maze was a symbol of the internal human struggle between our needs in both a wild and a built world and how those structures, like cities, are overwhelming and oppressive while simultaneously being isolating and entrapping. Or perhaps a symbol of domesticates being trapped between two worlds...
Samantha Hill: "Für #Arendt war die politische Emanzipation der Bourgeoisie der Grundstein des modernen Nationalstaates, in dem die politischen Gesetze von den privaten Interessen der Geschäftsleute bestimmt wurden, die es für nötig befunden hatten, den Staatsapparat zu übernehmen, um das Militär für ihre kolonialen Unternehmungen einzusetzen. Diese Kooptation der Nation und ihre Umwandlung in einen Nationalstaat durch private Wirtschaftsinteressen war der Kern ihres Verständnisses. Und was sie betonte - und wofür sie kritisiert wurde - war das Argument, dass der Antisemitismus vom Nationalstaat politisch benutzt wurde, um seine politischen und wirtschaftlichen Interessen zu fördern.
"Arendt hat dieses Argument nie aufgegeben. Tatsächlich griff sie es in ihrem umstrittensten Werk, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), wieder auf, in dem sie Ben-Gurion vorwarf, einen "Schauprozess" zu veranstalten, um das Leiden des jüdischen Volkes auszunutzen, anstatt den wirklichen Verbrecher, Hitlers Cheflogistiker Adolf Eichmann, für seine Verbrechen zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen. Natürlich sei Eichmann antisemitisch gewesen, aber sein Hass auf das jüdische Volk sei nicht sein Hauptmotiv gewesen. Vielmehr sei es seine banale Hybris gewesen, die ihn dazu gebracht habe, in den Reihen des Dritten Reiches aufzusteigen. Das sei die Banalität des Bösen, und sie definierte die Banalität des Bösen als die Unfähigkeit, sich die Welt aus der Perspektive eines anderen vorzustellen."
In 1944, #Arendt "stressed that the return of the governments in exile corresponded to a restoration of national structures[:] collective security, sphere of interest, national alliances - which had played a decisive role in preparing for the war and bringing it about. "There is nothing to expect from restoration", Arendt concludes, since it is also the restoration of what led to the Second World War and the "German problem".
"Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh;
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky."
Now the Day Is Over
Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist Sabine Baring-Gould died #OTD in 1924.
He is remembered particularly as a writer of hymns, the best-known being "Onward, Christian Soldiers", and "Now the Day Is Over". He also translated the carols "Gabriel's Message", & "Sing Lullaby" from Basque to English.