Formerly the-home-kvetch
December or Keshet. 28. Biologist. Bisexual. Bigender.
I mostly post about comics, human rights, memes, politics, and animals. Proud nerd and feminist. 🧿Jewish AF.🪬 Happily dating the prettiest lady ever, @junebug93. Unapologetic villain lover. Please ask if you'd like something tagged.
He/him, they/them, or ey/em.
Profile picture is Character Maker pt. 2 by Djarn. Header image by House of X on Facebook.
This is the-home-kvetch. I’m changing my username for the High Holy Days. I might keep it.
I know this is going to break all my links on desktop, but I currently don’t have my computer to fix it. It will be fixed as soon as possible, though. Please be patient.
There’s a group called Moms For Liberty that try to ban anything they don’t like.
If they can call themselves “for liberty” while being anything but, then it’s easy to understand how Nazis can call themselves “socialist” while being anything but.
I’m rewatching Steven Universe and I will never forgive Fandom for what it did to her
me when I remember how steven universe was ahead of its time and received the most undeserved and nasty backlash over the stupidest of things as it aired and rebecca sugars contribution to the normalization of lgbt themes and representation in children’s television
With love and patience, I need folks to please set aside some time to get better at recognizing antisemitic dogwhistles.
I’m using the following as an example, but intentionally not singling out the person who put this on my dash, cause I’m talking about a broader issue, and I want everybody to self examine.
Okay. this ended up on my dash, a comment in a thread.
ALT
“noticing” is a dogwhistle for an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
let’s look at the profile:
ALT
^ “queen of white.” gonna say that’s a pretty big red flag for white supremacy.
we haven’t even started looking through the blog yet, this is just the post & blog title.
if you go looking on the blog, pretty quickly you find this user is also reblogging from other white supremacists
if you scroll for about ~2 minutes you start seeing her use extremely loaded incendiary and derogatory language about trans women
finally, if you search “white” you see blatant nazi posting.
if you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with antisemitic dogwhistles, you will save time because you won’t need to look through blogs to check, you will see “noticing” in that context and you will already know this is a nazi.
antisemitism is often one of the easiest ways for fascists to get their messaging to spread widely because very few people take the time to learn these dogwhistles, and a lot of people respond to Jewish people patiently pointing them out over and over again with some level of disbelief/resentment/hostility.
it is to everyone’s benefit, for everyone’s collective safety, for you to familiarize yourself with antisemitic dogwhistles.
I am once again recommending the alt right glossary on rationalwiki. It doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a good place to start when it comes to familiarising yourself with dogwhistles like this.
Fair warning though, they show examples of incredibly bigoted language, memes, and caricatures, so if that’s something that might negatively affect you, tread carefully.
“let us not forget that Sudan has been at war for 26 weeks as of now. half a year in war. half a year with no media coverage and no voice.
pray for Sudan the way you would pray for your own countries. don’t forget Sudan.”
ID: A screenshot of a graphic with white text at the top reading: “let us not forget that Sudan has been at war for 26 weeks as of now. half a year in war. half a year with no media coverage and no voice. pray for Sudan the way you would pray for your own countries. don’t forget Sudan.”
Below this text is an image of a group of Black folks sitting in chairs, the image focusing on two in the front. One sits with their face in their hands, staring down, distressed. The other stares off to the side, holding a baby in their arms. White text in front of them reads: “Up to 9,000 killed in Sudan, 5 million displaced”
The Gimli Glider is one of those stories where every aspect sounds more fake than the last and yet it all actually happened.
-A passenger plane was underloaded with fuel because Canada had just converted to the metric system and everyone supposed to double check their numbers got it wrong. -When the plane ran out of fuel they were too far away to make it to an in-service airport and had to head towards the Gimli military base. Which was shuttered. -They were coming in to fast due to a lack of flaps control and had to perform a series of slips (as shown in the video above) to slow down, basically drifting a giant passenger plane. -As they come down they realized that just because Gimli’s been decommissioned doesn’t mean it’s abandoned because a bunch of people are having drag races on the runway they’re about to need. -Despite everything they managed to land safely and no one was killed or even hurt which is why it’s one of the best air disasters to meme on.
The Wikipedia page on this is fantastic and my favorite line from it is “Flying with all engines out was never expected to occur, so it had never been covered in training.”
Nice
I love the sound editing on this. How the Deja Vu quietly builds up, goes silent, and then hits at full volume.
Maybe if you start a sentence with “I’m not antisemitic, BUT…” you need to take a long hard look at yourself and why you felt the need to clarify that you don’t see yourself as antisemitic after saying that statement.
More often than not, you just said something incredibly antisemitic and are totally aware of that, but wanted to say it anyway. Even if you’re talking to someone you believe disagree with, nothing changes. You must treat Jews (and people converting) with basic respect.
To head off any well-intentioned geopolitical questions:
I support and will fight for the safety, security, and civil rights of civilians always, and without regard for nationality. I reject the nation-state induced view that citizens of a polity are inherently guilty for the actions of said polity’s government/military by virtue of citizenship, race, ethnicity, or religion; and I reject the concept that people of a certain national or ethnic determination are inherently responsible for the actions of any government/military, including ones which purports to speak/exist for them.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”
Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”
Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”
Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”
Client: “Open what?”
Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”
Client: “My…my…?”
Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”
Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”
Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”
Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”
Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”
Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”
Me: “No, ma'am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”
Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”
Me: “We…okay, ma'am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”
Client: “My what?”
Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now - it’s most likely near your computer?”
Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.
Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”
Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”
Me: “An error message?”
Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”
Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”
Client: “Yes.”
Me: “Move it for me.”
Client: “Move it?”
Me: “Yes. Move it.”
Client: “My e-mail!”
This post gave me a fucking ulcer.
You meet people like this at the library. People who have been coming in every day for YEARS to use the computers and monopolize your time with conversations like this, that seem to go out of their way to avoid listening to anything you try to teach them because they’d rather you just do it for them.
So one day, this tiny, frail little woman comes to the desk with a huge folder of papers under her arm. She says “I need to use one of the computers,” and I’m like “alright, I’ll set you up with a guest account.”
And then she says “I’ll also need you to show me how to use a computer. I’m 97 years old and I’ve never even touched one before, but I need to file my health information and they told me I needed to do it using this,” and she holds out a little scrap of paper with a url scrawled on it in a shaky hand.
And I’m just mentally like ‘oh no,’ but I say of course I can help her. So I sit her down and sign her in, and she stops me to ask basically what the mouse is, and I explain it, but I’m just thinking that this is going to take a million years. But I start doing a quick and dirty run down of the parts of the computer, the programs, the desktop, what a url is and what the Internet is, what a search engine is, what websites are, and so on.
She doesn’t interrupt or ask any questions or anything, and then I’m like ‘okay let’s go to this url’ and it’s an interactive, multi-page form that she needs to put all that info in her folder into and submit, and I’m just terrified as I’m explaining it that I’m going to spend all day with this woman.
But she’s just like “alright. I think I’ve got it.” And she must have had a secretary job back in the typewriter days, because she just *whips* through the first page of the form and submits and goes on to the next, and tells me she’ll find me if she needs me.
She came over once to tell me she needed an email address and wanted to know how to set one up - I told her about her options and she picked Gmail and went back to the computer and set it up all by herself, and got her information all filed properly in about an hour and a half – and she’d NEVER used a computer before in her LIFE.
When she was done, she came over to ask me how to turn it off and I showed her and she thanked me for being so patient, and I told her quite honestly that I’d NEVER seen a novice adult pick up using a computer so fast.
And she said “oh, but it’s so simple! And so useful! My grandkids made it sound so difficult, but I’m going to pick up my own computer tomorrow!”
And I think she must have, because I never saw her in the library again.
Anyway I hope I’m that quick when I’m 97.
^ thank you for sharing this very positive experience because the experience from OP really gave me a headache. it was nice to end on a positive note.. gives hope
My grandma adores technology, and she used to work as a typist/secretary, too!
We were also climbing up really high a few years ago, and as soon as we got to the top of the tower, she stopped, surveyed our surroundings, and declared “this reminds me of a level in Assassin’s Creed” and then we walked all the way back down again.
ALT
ALT
