copperbadge:

athingofvikings:

lucario2012:

prismatic-bell:

terulakimban:

prismatic-bell:

correspondingnerd:

terulakimban:

ninjakittenarmy:

msaprildaniels:

momowho34:

Christians (specifically Protestants): we have little versions of our sacred text that we carry around in our pockets to pull out if we encounter something and want guidance. The version used during sermons and in church are the same ones that we carry with us

Jews: you can read the torah and Tanakh in a normal book if you want. But if you want a torah you can use as a congregation? *cracks knuckles* you must prepare paper made from the skin of a kosher animal and special ink and a quill made from a turkey feather and you must use no metal in the preparation process because metal is used in the creation of weapons for war and before you even think about actually started to write you must take The Holy Bath to purify yourself and ritually blot out the name of Amalek, the sworn enemy of the Jewish people and every time you write the name of god on the scroll you must say it out loud and recite a special prayer and if you mess up one letter you have to start over and when the scroll is finished you must wrap it in tapestries and pretty cloth and shit and then put little crowns on the end and then put it in a Super Special Box in the synagogue so every time it’s time to read it you can open the Super Special Box and everyone can gawk at the Ultra Big Boy Important Text and the words of god within the scroll. this entire process takes about a year to complete and is done by special sofer’s that devote their lives to making Torah’s specifically and when you read from the torah you must use a little tiny pointer in the shape of a hand so your hands don’t mess up the paper. Oh, you think I kid? You think I jest?

Think again.

(rb encouraged for everyone. Share the sacred baby hands with the goyim. Everyone deserves to know about the sacred baby hands)

Judaism gets so fucking hardcore about this shit, I love it.

Some further questions:

1. I need to know more about this Kosher Leather Paper. How does one make paper of animal hide? I understand it’s not quite the same as paper made from plant fibers, but what is it like? Is it like a really thin leather or is there a process in which it becomes more like conventional paper.
2. When Amalalek’s name is blotted, is it first written down by the one preparing the scroll, or by a separate person?
3. Since Turkeys are native to North America, I have questions as to the origins of the use of their feathers as quills for this ritual. Was a different bird used previously, or is Turkey referring to a different bird? I have heard that the name for the bird originates from the sale of similar birds from Guinea by Turkish merchants.
4. The box containing the Torah, is it the Arc? I’ve heard that it’s called that (symbolizing the arc of the covenant), but I want to confirm.

I’d appreciate any information and/or resources on the subject.

With the caveat that I am neither a sofer (trained religious scribe) or a rabbi:

1. It’s parchment (or sometimes vellum but that is a distinction for people who understand this subject way better than me). We call it a klaf for most littler things and a gevil for Torah scrolls (except for those people who use klaf for sifrei Torah which is a thing except when it’s not (sorry. Like I said, really not a scribe)). The skin is tanned, soaked, stretched, dried, ironed, and sanded. Texture-wise… it’s between cardstock and resume paper. It’s really smooth, thicker than normal printer paper, kinda stiff, and sturdier than it looks, but still pretty easy to tear. It’s definitely closer to paper than leather -at least, any leather I’ve encountered. It’s usually flexible enough to roll easily, although really old scrolls or ones that have been through stuff can be stiffer. 
2. By the person writing the scroll. The sofer writes the name once before starting the scroll and then blots it out. 
3. It’s referring to the bird you think it is. The quill is called a kulmus. Some communities use a reed pen, and there’s historical reference to no longer using metal pens, so that must have been a thing at some point. As for why the turkey -it’s not always a turkey. It’s from a large bird; it can also be a goose or a swan. There’s debate about whether the bird has to be kosher -turkeys are weird there because while most communities generally accept them as kosher, there was a bit of a debate about that centuries ago. 
4. Yes. There’s always a light in front of them, and the most common inscription overtop is “know before whom you stand.” It often has doors and curtains. 

Useful terms to google have been italicized.  

Why was there debate about whether turkeys are kosher?

(sorry this is off topic from the original post)

I see a well-meaning goy has entered the conversation.

Honey, there is Jewish debate about EVERYTHING. I could probably find you a pair of rabbis arguing over whether I’m allowed to tie my shoes on the sabbath, and if they said “tying and untying is forbidden by Torah” and I said “yes, but my house is in two parts with an open tiled hallway between and to leave my bedroom I must walk down the hallway, which has tiles that are dangerously hot due to the sun, so I need to know if I can tie my shoes so as to not get burned” IT BECOMES A TOTALLY DIFFERENT QUESTION. The answer to “why is there debate” 99% of the time is “two people read it differently and now there’s an argument.” And I guarantee you if I threw that hypothetical hot tile floor at a group of rabbis the argument would go on for DAYS, if not weeks.

In this particular case, it has to do with how the laws for kosher birds are written down. There has to be a determination made every time a new bird is discovered, because rather than a helpful set of determinants like we got for fish (must have fins and scales) and land animals (must have split hooves and chew cud), we got a list of birds we could eat. Which includes many, many birds whose names we no longer understand, and also groups whose names we may not classify in the same way as our ancient counterparts because we go on DNA and they went on observation.

But yeah.

It’s because we’re Jews.

For the goyim:

That isn’t a joke. Tying stuff is actually forbidden on Shabbat. This is not hypothetical. This is a literal discussion that the rabbis actually had. For the record, it was decided that the tying/untying of shoelaces is fine as long as it’s not done in a professional way because they’re not permanent knots, and that since it is permitted to tie them, it is also permitted to untie them -these are two separate categories of action that needed to be discussed separately. However, if @prismatic-bell​ were a cobbler or a shoemaker, as a professional adder-of-knots-and-straps-to-shoes -or knew the knotwork used in those professions, they would not be allowed to tie their own shoes on Shabbat because then the work becomes crafting instead of tying, which is where the hot floor and foot protection question becomes relevant because the rabbis were pretty big on safety and preventing harm. 

Here is the source (don’t worry, there’s translation), because I am aware that this sounds bizarre. 

*points up*

I know I have a lot of goyim who follow me and find this stuff interesting, and are also used to me using hyperbole for comedy, so:

I’M NOT JOKING ON THIS ONE AND HERE’S MY PROOF.

This is amazing to read, I get the feeling I could sit down with a bag of popcorn and a book of Jewish Arguments About The Torah’s Contents and get a few hours of enjoyment at least.

Here’s the compiled Talmud, with commentary, and accompanying English translation. While the English translation and commentary expands it out a bit, the core canonized Gemara text is 2,711 pages long. There is a daily regimen of study called Daf Yomi (lit. “Page of the Day”) that takes seven years to go through the whole thing from start to finish. :)

And those books are all about Jewish arguments on the Torah’s contents. Literally.

And this is just one of our core texts.

One of these pages a day, layers upon layers of commentary; the Mishnah (codified Oral Tradition, written down ~1800 years ago when the Romans were actively hunting Rabbis and trying to break the chain of transmission) is at the center top. Below it is the Gemara, which is the expanded analysis of the Mishnah as explained by rabbis debating on it. Next to it is Rashi, 11th century French rabbi and commentator/analyst. Opposite Rashi is Tosefot, who were other medieval commentators. And then still more comments around the margins.

Two thousand, seven hundred and eleven pages of this :)

And that’s even before we get to the modern commentators and English translations.

I’ve been reading Daf Yomi – we’re round about year one and a half, the new cycle started early in January 2020 – and it’s wild. Currently they are debating whether figs are larger than eggs, because fig-bulk and egg-bulk are two measurements used to determine whether how much food you ate means you violated certain dining laws.  

It’s an amazing mixture of law, philosophy, metacommentary, literature, legend, and the occasional poop joke. (Not kidding.) They discuss architecture, meal preparation, business practice, clothing, how to pray, how to travel, every aspect of life and faith. I’ve literally internalized the length of a cubit and the volume of a se’a because of how frequently they’re used. 

It can be really difficult and tedious at times, because a lot of this was meant to be something you consult if an issue arises rather than something you read like a novel, but it’s also super fascinating and an astounding glimpse into the lives of Jews 1700 years ago. 

awed-frog:

crypticarchivist:

a-book-of-creatures:

jolly-plaguefather-redux:

guerrillatech:

Badass, Bybon!

WITNESSED

An ancient brag post.

People act like internet culture is new but if we suddenly lost the internet this reassures me that we’ll all just start writing memes on random walls everywhere.

This is actually a temple offering. Bybon was an Olympic athlete, and he probably had the stone carved and gifted to Zeus as a reminder of his victory and an act of piety. The museum in Olympia has several other similar objects. The fact he wrote his full name may sound like a brag to us, and there was probably an element of pride in it, but as a reminder if you prayed to a god in ancient Greece you had to start with your full name and be as precise as possible because the gods were easily distracted and could very well end up rewarding the wrong person.

(via anthroaddict)

vaqvero:

(via anthroaddict)

fuckinprototype:

terrestrial-flotsam:

msburgundy:

mythbusters was so good because it wasn’t a killjoy show. they didn’t just say “see, it doesn’t work” and leave it there

whenever they find that the stunt doesn’t work as portrayed in the movie, they immediately ask “what would it take to make this happen?”

“we know it takes this amount of explosives to work, but what if we doubled it anyway?”

Some myths I’ll always remember:

* Are elephants scared of mice? (They only did that because they were in Africa and had access to elephants.)

* Will a bull run amok in a china shop?

* Is it better to run zig-zag or straight when chased by an alligator?

I love these because NONE of them turned out the way they expected. They went into all three with pre-conceived ideas of how it would go, and each time they “failed.” Elephants WILL cower from mice. A bull moves very gingerly through a china shop. It doesn’t matter how you run because ALLIGATORS WON’T CHASE YOU.

And each time, they reacted with just… pure glee. “Holy shit, we were wrong! Oh my god! This is great! We were so wrong!”

And that, to me, is what science is. Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information.

(via chaotic-archaeologist)

toastweasel:

syqitten:

auroralynches:

you know what i really want? a modern dudebro vampire. just a typical obnoxious straight boy in a neon tank top and cargo shorts who also happens to be a creature of the night.

“okay, dude, i’m only feeding on you ‘cause i’m starving and there aren’t any hot girls around. no homo.” “wait, you’re gonna suck my blood?” “no, i’m gonna drink your blood. i don’t suck, that’s gay. don’t make this weird, bro”

“ah, i see you’re staring pensively out the window, chad. ruminating on the curse of your newfound immortality?” “nah man, it’s just… i got, like, some flecks of blood on my adidas while i was feeding and they haven’t come out…”

“we do not drink… wine.” “okay but is beer cool? and can we still smoke weed?”

he joins a 24-hour gym because being undead and allergic to sunlight is no excuse for skipping leg day. tragic music swells as he looks over his “sun’s out guns out” tanks (he has seven of them). his coven is a fraternity. someone make this happen

ask and ye shall recieve

@thebibliosphere

(via thebibliosphere)

derryderrydown:

crystalmaster333:

On the off-chance that people don’t know this…

This style of bridge dates from the days when barges were towed by horses. When the towpath switched to the opposite side of the canal, the horse would, obviously, clippy-clop over a bridge and happily plod off again. Now, the automatic way to do this would be like this:

However, note that rope (black line) between the horse (brown blob) and the barge (red blob). If you cross the bridge the automatic way, it all goes a bit….

However, if you cross the bridge like THIS

it all works out fine!

Now, sure, you could trust people to remember how to cross a bridge. But there are a lot of numpties out there, and people were working extremely long days and were extremely tired. Also, the canals were BUSY. One boat getting snarled up was the equivalent of the Ever Given.

So, instead, the canal companies built Numpty-Proof Bridges.

They also had the benefit that the horse could be left to plod along on its own, rather than needing human guidance. (I have no idea how this worked. My horse would have her nose buried in the grass and wouldn’t go anywhere, if I left her to it.)

(via chaotic-archaeologist)

h-isforhome:

h-isforhome:

bro not to start again on names but u ever think abt how some names have been used for centuries, millenniums even…like how many times has the earth heard a mother calling, ‘alexander!’…how many times have the stars caught a lover whispering, ‘freyja’…how many times has the ground we’ve walked on and continue to walk on felt vibrations of a friend excitedly yelling, ‘mary!’

#names are so amazing because everyone’s name is *theirs* but that name has been used thousands of times by so many people but right then and #there it is *their* name #and theirs alone [@flower-borne​]

+

#how beautiful is it that we did our best to find the loveliest sounds the human voice can make #and assigned those sounds to one another #so that our whole identity is inexplicably linked to something made with love in mind [@honeytuesday​]

+

#how ppl are named after family members; or after the things we love and that inspire us (hope; faith; not to mention all the non-english #names with meanings of beauty and kindness and intelligence; also how a lot of names have biblical or otherwise religious origin); how names #translate over countries and languages (mary/marie/maria/etc); how some don’t translate as well bc of linguistic differences (julia/yulia) [@maryolive​]

+

#how names hold stories and history and how one name is enough to bring back memories! #how parents fondly choose a name because of the meaning and wish their child carries the legacy of the name forward #how we have silly nicknames for each other and it’s like here’s a part of you given to you from my side and now it’s ours #the name of your enemy is the name of my lover and both have spurned us so here we are grieving different people of same names [@ijaazat]

(via two-am-art)

fuckingconversations:

gallusrostromegalus:

jumpingjacktrash:

curlicuecal:

amaraqwolf:

Good news: if you’re currently laying around and not producing anything, you are a credit to your species.

I’m an ant biologist and I’d like to point out that ants also spend a significant percentage of the time doing nothing.

Turns out sometimes the most evolutionary useful thing you can do is chill and not wear yourself to shreds, whether mammal or insect. It helps you deal with emergencies and adapt to change. Plus, you can act as living food storage!

That last part is probably more an ant thing than a human thing, but hey, live your dreams.

it’s also a bear thing, which absolutely explains me

Doing absolutely fuck-all is how antarctic sea sponges live to be over 10,000 years old, so live your best, longest, laziest life.

Remember lions? Fellow apex predators?

Yeah, they spend 16-20 hours of the day laying around, socializing, raising Cubs and napping.

The last 4-8 hours are spent hunting.

Wait wait, they’re not a primate so they don’t count.

How about Orangutans?

Well, they spend 90% of their time awake just hanging out in food-rich areas, eating fruit and leaves, socializing, raising children, and chilling.

Well, they’re not people so it doesn’t-

How about Stone Age people in Europe?

They probably worked 3-5 hours per day, every day. (Though seasonal changes in food scarcity could change that)

Laborers in ancient Egypt worked 8 hours, with an hour break at lunch. They did this for 8 days, then rested 2 days. That sounds familiar. Except… they also had regular time off for festivals and holidays, and only worked for about 18 out of every 50 days.

Artisans in imperial Rome generally worked from 6am to Noon, and then had the rest of the day off… and only worked for half the year, due to all the holidays and festivals they got off.

But that’s too easy, what about a Peasant in medieval England?

6-8 hours per day, with Sundays off, Farm workers put in longer hours at harvest time but worked shorter days in winter when there are fewer hours of daylight. Economist Juliet Schor estimates that in the period following the Plague they worked no more than 150 days a year, due to the long holidays and many festivals.

Ugh, let’s go poorer. 17th century France. Starvation was afoot for the working poor!

During the reign of King Louis XIV, the workers of France had it tough, and hunger for the poorest was a fact of life. The typical working day was as much as 12 hours long, but two hours were set aside midday for lunch and perhaps an afternoon nap. Nevertheless, the Ancient Régime is said to have also guaranteed peasants, labourers and other workers a total of 52 Sundays, 90 rest days and 38 religious holidays off per year, meaning they worked just 185 out of 365 days.

So what changed?

The industrial revolution, baybe~~

New factory owners could work their employees to the bone due to a lack of regulation and abundance of cheap labour.

The typical factory worker in mid 19th-century England toiled away for a soul-destroying 16 hours a day, six days a week, 311 days per year!

THAT nightmare became the standard by which western society began to judge “work-life balance” and anything gentler than the industrial factory’s unfettered brutality is considered “softness”

(So many people died being mangled in those machines. Hair handkerchiefs went into style during American industrialization because working women would otherwise get their hair caught in the machines, and be either scalped or be bodily pulled inside to die…. But that’s a horror for another time)

Americans in 2020 worked an average of 8.5 hours per day on weekdays, plus another 5 hours on weekends.

Taking out federal holidays and weekends, we work 262 days per year. Most of us get 5-9 sick days to take per year. (Yes, a fixed number, no matter how sick you really are), and usually either no paid vacation, or 7-15 days paid vacation, depending on seniority and the company. Unpaid vacation doesn’t have a max, but taking it often risks you getting fired.

Even comparing against the poorest laborers in ancient history the current working structure for humans is, frankly, inhumane.

We are mammals. Let us rest. Let us celebrate holidays and attend festivals. Let us attend to our homes and families.

Even the ultra wealthy folks who got their heads chopped off gave us more time off than this!!!

Someone in the comments said something like “humans are instinctively industrious and productive, as social creatures!”

Buddy, that’s a lie fed to you by capitalism.

In our default state, we attend to our families yes, but we also party like hell, lounge around, and make fantastic works of art just to be proud of ourselves. We made beautiful things for the joy of creating them.

Stone Age humans may have spent a couple hours hunting and gathering, but DEFINITELY spent loads of time painting every available surface. Time and weather washed most of it away, but some places like Arizona and Colorado still preserve a few of the endless murals made by ancient hands.

Evidence shows that the ancient world was COVERED in paintings and etchings - just saturated with images of birds and beasts and humans, sunsets and cool weather. We invented mythologies and painted about them. We did something impressive, and painted about it. We taught our children how to paint and lifted them into our shoulders so they could mark the ceiling.

In our most base state, humans will work enough to survive, but our instincts demand we use all other time to create art. We want to communicate. To make connections.

“Working” or “being productive” is not on that list.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

(via undernewmanagenent)

fridakahloblvd:

fandomsandfeminism:

renniequeer:

renniequeer:

A lot of people have a super, super skewed idea of what rural towns in America are like.

I grew up on a farm two miles outside a town with less than 200 people. For a short while, there was a queer-owned coffee shop/art gallery on the main highway. It’s where I spent the better part of an entire summer, just hanging out with my laptop. The owner would start experimenting with new drink ideas on slow days, and give me free ones in exchange for feedback.

“And he didn’t get run out of town?!” Nah, because his mom owned a hair salon and did the hair of all the old ladies in town, and if they were jerks to her son, she would have stopped doing up their hair and they’d have had to drive half an hour into the city to find a new hairdresser.

My hometown isn’t some bastion of progressive politics or anything, but like…it’s not a two-dimensional caricature, either. I still live in the area. There are queer people. There are a lot of people of color, especially Black elders and Latinx immigrants. There are disabled folks. There’s an entire group of found-family queer leftists who bought a farm together. I know of at least two pagan families, and multiple Jewish folks.

If you read “town of 200 people” and immediately assumed that all of them are white, Christian, cis, straight, able-bodied, republican landowners? You’re extremely mistaken.

Rural America is more diverse than you think.

#*farquad pointing* NORTHERNER

I’m from Florida, actually, which you’ll recognize as being pretty notably in the South.

The American South has the highest population of Black people in the entire country. The three states with the highest population of Black citizens are Texas, Georgia, and Florida. [x]

Texas and Florida are both listed in the top three US states with the highest populations of Hispanic/Latinx people. [x]

Texas is listed as the overall second-most ethnically diverse state in America. Out of the five least ethnically diverse states, three of them are Northern states–Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. [x]

Six–SIX–of the world’s top 50 largest Pride events happen in the American South–Houston, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, New Orleans, Charlotte, and Miami [x].

Florida and Texas are both listed in the top five US states with the highest percentage of queer & LGBT people [x].

Of the top five American states with the highest percentage of disabled people, four of them are in the South [x].

I could keep going.

The South is more diverse than you think.

There are bigots EVERYWHERE, not just down here.

The South is deeply gerrymandered and has deeply ingrained voter suppression. The South is also vibrant and beautiful and full of incredible people.

It’s a real place, as messy and complex as any other.

it’s like…plantations were predominantly in the south. indigenous folk were forced into oklahoma and other southern states. texas used to belong to Mexico, the louisiana purchase just drew state lines around existing communities.

(via thatbanjobusiness)