🖖 Leonard Nimoy discusses the Jewish connection to the Vulcan salute he used on Star Trek.
Video: Yiddish Book Center
Wexler Oral History Project
that’s so fascinating about the letter ש (shin) - i’ve been noticing its prevalence in words about time: hour (שעה), second (שניה), year (שנה), and clock (שעון) all begin with ש, as well as the words for change (שינוי) and the sun (שמש). this is unusual, since the letter’s frequency in Hebrew is only 4.77% - and even stranger, it also begins the word shalom (שלומ) meaning peace, and occurs twice in sigsug (שגשוג), meaning “prosperity.”
in conclusion: the letter shin perfectly represents the blessing “live long and prosper.” 🖖
The Boston museum of science, which is right near where Leonard Nimoy grew up in East Boston*, is currently collecting funding to build a memorial to Leonard in the shape of a stylized live long and prosper hand. To anyone complaining that the statue is of this and not of Leonard himself. Watch this video. Understand why it was chosen by his family. It was chosen because it means more than his legacy. It means everything he stood for.
*the actual neighborhood, which was a poor working class neighborhood, was razed in the 50’s to build high rises.
our friend’s daughter is at the age where she is extremely chatty and speaking in full sentences, and i love kids’ use of language.
apparently all strangers used to be “ladies,” but now they are “neighbors.” since they speak english exclusively at home, “neighbors” speak german; it was very distressing to hear her mom speak german once, because, in her words, “you’re not a doctor or a neighbor!”
When learning how to talk, each one of my 3 sons went through a phase where I was the only person they said “She” for. Obviously, SHE was Mom, and HE was the rest of the world
Three sons, and I was the only female in the household (dog was male too).
i love the idea of a mode of language where the human noun classification system is “one’s own mother” and “everyone else”
Extremely funny that in good omens the apocalypse is stopped by three eleven years old looking at their friend and being like “ending the world is fucking cringe”
I’ve been watching the 90′s Superman animated series and one of the things I’ve noticed about it is that Superman really doesn’t have what you would call a martial technique. Like a lot of how Superman moves and behaves in a fight is framed more around causing as little damage as possible than actually packing a punch. And that’s how you end up with him doing wacky things like… spinning around really fast to throw enemies off of himself. Like, yeah he’s a powerhouse, obviously, but in terms of mastering his powers, it’s kind of clear that like… his control of his powers is less “how strong do I need to be” and more “Okay if someone is falling, and I’m using super speed to fly toward them and catch them, how do I catch them without shattering every bone in their body?”
Which like… kind of makes it really funny in the context of the Justice League because Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Hawkgirl all have martial training and are all probably cringing because Superman is coming into a fight with his primary martial training being “My dad and Lois taught me how to square up but actually 90% of my fighting is rolling with punches so my opponents don’t destroy every bone in their hand and just pulling weapons out of people’s hands and going ‘Hey don’t do that.’”
What’s funny to me is that nobody cares about copyright outside the US and maybe, I dunno, Canada and Europe? For the entire third world, it’s something we politely pretend is real so we don’t hurt their feelings, but it’s probably the fakest and less upheld concept here, absolutely nobody cares.
Some yanqui says something deranged like “um, uh, yeah, you should pay for every time you play a song otherwise you’re stealing” and we just pat their head and say “claro que sí tesoro” while we download 15 GBs of movies and the local pizzeria has a mural of like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny to promote it.
You best start believing in a post-copyright world, fella. You already live in one.
As a leftist Jew who believes strongly in the cause of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people, and that Israel has abused them, I am begging fellow leftists to understand that real life is not a comic book. A government being “the bad guy” in a situation does not automatically make anyone who opposes it “the good guy”.
Hamas denies the Holocaust. Hamas disseminates the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the conspiracy theory it paints is what they mean by “Zionist”. Hamas forbids foreign aid educators from teaching human rights to Palestinians, and claims that even teaching that the Holocaust happened is a war crime. Hamas has written the aim of annihilating Israel (the country and its people) into its charter—the mass slaughter and violent expulsion of 7 million Jews from the land is written into its laws.
There is no crime any state could ever do that would justify any of that; there is no act of state repression that could ever make it acceptable to side with the organization spreading Nazi pamphlets and Holocaust denial.
Oppose Bibi Netanyahu. Oppose Israel’s far-right, authoritarian government. Oppose its apartheid policies. Oppose its violent abuse of the Palestinian people. That isn’t antisemitic. But Hamas is—verifiably, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to its core—antisemitic. Its portrayal of Israeli Jews as blood-thirsty, child-killing master manipulators that control international media and finance is antisemitic. Its insistence that Palestinian freedom necessitates the death & expulsion of Jews from the land is antisemitic. Its redefinition of “Zionism” as a pejorative to mean genocidal Jewish/Israeli Supremacy is antisemitic.
Supporting the Palestinian people in their plight is a noble and loving goal; please never stop that. But do not let Hamas co-opt that into excusing or denying their rampant antisemitism and war crimes.
אני כשהם מאחלים לכל הציונים למות ואז אני רואה בעיני רוחי יקום מקביל שבו הפסדנו במלחמת העצמאות ופתאום ציונות היא בסך הכל קבוצה מדוכאת שנזרקה מכל מקום שהם היו בו שרוצה זכות להגדרה עצמית ויהודים הם פליטים שהתמקמו בישראל וסובלים מיחס מזעזע מתושבי המקום וחשוב מאוד לתמוך בהם כי פלסטין היא סתם עוד מדינה שבה לנשים אין זכות הצבעה ולהטבים מוצאים להורג
the words of a man called Zvi Ben-Dor Benit (slightly paraphrased):
We must recognize that part of the “left” is simply engaged in performance, without any moral compass. Murdering children tied to their beds is not “decolonization”. And the kindest thing I can say about anyone who says such a thing is that they’re idiots who haven’t experienced the horrors of war, the sights of those horros, in their life.
