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FUCKING SOBBING. i leave my group chat alone for like three hours to sing a choir concert and when i come back someone’s turned themself into anti-sasha for april fool’s

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hmm i gotta plan a time to watch rigoletto soon

mom sent me a pic tonight of apollo completely sprawled out taking up her entire lap on the couch. good to see he’s recovering well

a-sapphics-yearning:

Girls with round faces and girls with soft bellies and girls with curves and girls with broad shoulders and girls with wide hips and just. big girls in general <3

splicky:

txttletale:

i hate usamericans and their one billion different regional fast food chains that they insist are all vastly different. im sorry i just dont believe you that Chunks and Yakko’s and Slutty Dan’s all provide different experiences and im not in one million years going to rural northeast ohio to check if the Quirko’s Cumdump Meal really has better fries than the Burger Cossack Grease Box. all fucking ham burger the same

Weak Eurocucks aren’t capable of comprehending the depth of burger

also i successfully managed to get rid of the rest of my rhubarb strawberry crumble bars by bringing them to rehearsal tonight. disappeared before dinner. everybody loves me and my baking swag

spent an embarrassingly long time tonight trying to find space and then park in said space on my block tonight after rehearsal. incredibly stressful. but on the bright side i saw a fox on my drive home so that was neat

cerehling:

piosplayhouse:

Absolute favorite white Christian sect trope is when they want to go on conversion missions to latin countries like . Who is there even to convert to Christianity left in Brazil. If you go to Brazil they’ll convert You

#once i watched a christian movie where the main character was praying to go on a mission trip to the philippines #to convert people to catholicism . never laughed so hard in my LIFE #its insane how out of touch they are like. someone already did your job 300 years ago sorry

argumate:

radio is kind of wild really, the first thing we did after discovering an ethereal field that permeates the universe is infuse it with music.


Anonymous said:

I could just look this up but I think it's more interesting to ask actual people about these things, so apologies

As a person who knows nothing about Islam, I gotta ask - what's the deal with the giant black cube?

aliceavizandum:

Oh man I love talking about our cube! The cube is called the Kaaba, which means ‘the cube’. It is very holy (you are meant to be visualising it as a sort of aiming point every time you pray) but it isn’t secret, and a lot of people assume it is inherently mysterious.

So many pre-Islamic Arabian cities, including Mecca, had a cube. These served as public shrines and housed idols of the pagan gods of that city. A lot of them also housed or had embedded into them meteorites, because something falling from the sky is pretty easy to worship.

Our cube, the cube, is believed to be the site where way back in the day Ibrahim (Abraham, if you want) built a house of worship to God. Over time as monotheism lost out to pagan polytheism its original purpose was lost and people use it as a shrine and copy the form of that shrine elsewhere.

For any Muslim narrative, one of the things that Muhammad does as a prophet is to kick Arabia back onto the monotheism from which it had fallen away (into ignorance, jahiliyyah). So when Muhammad re-enters Mecca he goes to the Kaaba and smashes all the idols inside with a staff while saying that ‘truth has come and falsehood has vanished’ - in some tellings of this he preserves a statue of the infant Jesus and Mary but places it outside. What happens next is a kind of religious compromise where he Islamifies (well, God does, but he’s the one telling Muhammad what to do) bits of the Meccan pagan religion. So the cube stays, the meteorite in it, a black stone, stays, and the Meccan fertility rite of tawaf where people circled the cube naked gets changed so you have to wear clothes and it isn’t horny any more. A mosque is built up around it. Eventually the direction you face during prayer is changed from towards Jerusalem to towards the Kaaba. And from then until now Islamic practice in relation to the cube has not really changed.

FUN CUBE FACTS

It’s not the same building Ibrahim built or the same building Muhammad resanctified. It has fallen down in earthquakes or been destroyed with catapults an alarming number of times and then just rebuilt in a very practical way. The current incarnation dates back to 1626.

It’s not black - in high winds or when it’s being changed, which it is yearly, you can see under the black and gold cloth covering, the kiswah, and see the granite blocks underneath:

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The kiswah also doesn’t have to be black. It’s a pretty firmly established tradition now but it’s been red, green and white at various times.

It has an inside. There’s nothing secret about it like the Holy of Holies, every year a bunch of dignitaries get to go in and clean it. There’s nothing material important in there, that being sort of the point:

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The little cabinet has cleaning supplies, perfumes and the like. If you pray inside the Kaaba you can face in any direction, plus I like to imagine you unlock a fun little achievement.


Anonymous said:

What do you think of Reform Jews? I don’t have a problem with it necessarily, but I have noticed it has been the movement of choice for many anti-Zionists to convert into and it’s been making me feel iffy about reform Jews I meet lately bc I don’t know if they’re just a Jew who have been burned by Orthodoxy for their sexuality for example and just want a safe(r) space for them to be both Jewish and Gay, or if they’re a Jew who just converted to legitimize their antiZionism and antisemitism shdjdk which I know is my problem bc I shouldn’t make assumptions about ppl just bc they’re reform

hero-israel:

You shouldn’t make assumptions about Reform Jews. Or about converts either.

Converts are Jews - full stop - and must always be welcomed, as their souls were welcomed at Sinai. I find it next to impossible to believe that there is any significant trend of people converting to Judaism in order to be anti-Zionist troublemakers. Given how long and involved conversion is (and Reform conversions are just as valid), “haters coming in to attack us” probably happens about as much as razorblades in Halloween candy.

When it comes to anti-Zionist Jews, the call is coming from inside the house. To an overwhelming extent they were born Jewish along one of two paths:

  • Ultra-Orthodox haredi Judaism (Neturei Karta, Satmar, “True Torah Judaism,” etc), who hate Israel both because it was formed by mortal men with smelly armpits instead of by Moshiach with a red heifer, and because Israel is much too tolerant and liberal with too many rights for minorities instead of being a theocratic kingdom where all non-Jewish faiths have been totally eliminated. They “support Palestine” only because it isn’t time to wipe out the Palestinians yet, and are every bit as cynical and apocalyptic as the Christian Zionists who want Israel to persist until it is destroyed in the Rapture
  • Raised lapsed and unobservant, with Jewish identity totally irrelevant to their lives, to the point that even antisemitism meant nothing to them, so from either the “push” or the “pull” aspects a Jewish state was senseless to them. Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Eli Valley, Norman Finkelstein, Alan Rickman, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

It is very hard to convert to Judaism, and we should want more people to persevere through that. It is very easy to throw away a culture and history that seems totally irrelevant to oneself, and we should want those conditions to stop entirely. The latter is a much more real cause of anti-Zionism. It is totally backwards to presume converts must be bringing weakness and subversion with them. I always expect they have joined us out of love and I have never met a case otherwise. The way we slow down the growth of anti-Zionism within the Jewish community is by helping to build dialogue and warmth among people who were born Jewish but for whatever reason feel disconnected and apathetic about Judaism. Show them the community they can still have with us; when we don’t, they enter college with a gnawing void of meaning inside them and are easy prey for “Jews for Jesus in Palestine” groups (i.e. If Not Now, formed and led by evangelical Christians).

And since I am Reform, my family is Reform, my children are Reform, “what I think of Reform Jews” is that we’re just fine, thanks. The basic “point” of Reform Judaism is to attempt to realize equal treatment for women, LGBT Jews (with gender-neutral ceremonies if requested), and children of interfaith parents, with clergy roles available for all of the above (rabbis, cantors, mohels, etc.), and girls reading from the Torah at their bat mitzvahs; this used to be really distinctive but with overall social trends it no longer is. I was a member of a Conservative shul in 2021 and it was basically the same as my Reform shul had been in 1991 in terms of social politics, inclusion, and Hebrew-to-English ratio during services. Where Reform congregations do still stand out is in their full embrace of patrilineal Jews, and in my opinion other congregations should follow that lead as well. I expect they will.

I deliberately left out Jews of color from that list as I think all denominations have been poor at welcoming them. Anyone who wants to give it a go first, please feel free.

star-deatt:

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Shrimps in front of a brazilian aquarium

slayerbf:

bisexual people will literally be in situations

sinetheta:
“Ken Lum, Midway Shopping Plaza. 2014. Powder-coated aluminum and enameled plexiglass.
“Inspired by a shopping center near his home in south Philadelphia, Ken Lum designs a board for an imaginary strip mall, calling on the viewer to...

Ken Lum, Midway Shopping Plaza. 2014. Powder-coated aluminum and enameled plexiglass. 

Inspired by a shopping center near his home in south Philadelphia, Ken Lum designs a board for an imaginary strip mall, calling on the viewer to imagine the people behind each of the shops. The signs themselves are simply and crudely designed with garish colors and loud text, together forming a cacophonous collage of identities and survival. Lum explains that the imaginary shop names are taken from people and battles of the Vietnam War, such as Phan Thi Kim Phuc and Le Nguyen Khang

byjessicaelena:

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Flowers!! Loved drawing these!