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capybara #130: pov he saw you holding a slice of watermelon

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Strawberry Hill House—a Gothic Revival villa that was built in Twickenham, London 1749

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As we read and rejoice about the federal raid on mar-a-lago I am seeing a lot of “Hooray for Archivists!” and “Don’t fuck with archivists!” As an archivist, and one that has worked at a federal level, now would be an AMAZING time to call your representatives and demand funding for the National Archives and Records Administration.

Archivists and Records Managers work very hard and are unbelievably underfunded. Most branches of the National Archives have a backlog that would take 70+ years to process and make available to the public at current staffing levels. And they get more records in all the time.

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leftist antisemites are really everywhere on this hellsite making & reblogging their posts like “the Jews have too much power and privilege and actually their very recent genocide was not that bad compared to what my group experiences and antisemitism doesn’t even exist in my country and especially not in liberal spaces”

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It’s always “why did you dig a hole to sleep in” and “you’re covered in dirt” and never How was the hole The hole looked fun was it fun

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This is really important! Please call your reps to support if you can

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one of my coworkers tried to advocate for me during her exit interview bc of the 20k pay disparity between me & another person in my year but it sounds like it went really badly & she called me to be like uhhhh so if management retaliates against you just fyi it’s mostly their fault but also kind of mine so i’ll write you a really nice reference letter for your next job

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The Oyneg Shabes Archives

This was the code name of a secret project Jewish Historian Emmanuel Ringelblum organized, managed, and carried out in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a historian of the Jewish experience, Ringelblum understood very early on in WW2 that Warsaw’s Jews were living through an exceptional historical moment which desperately required documentation. And so, he gather a covert team of writers, reporters, diarists, and researchers, and sent them out into the Ghetto to write, record, and take testimonies.

The Nazis began their first attempt to “liquidate” (that is, get all Jews onto a train out of a ghetto, which would them take them to the Treblinka extermination camp) the Warsaw Ghetto in July 1942; this “aktion” would last through September 1942. The Oyneg Shabes team understood that they were unlikely to survive to see the end of the summer, much less the war. 

Three of them set out to bury the 11 crates containing the Archives. With the burial, the three men included messages for the future generations they hoped would find and learn from the archives. One of these men, Israel Lichtenstein, wrote the following message to the future:

“I do not ask for any thanks, for any memorial, for any praise…I only wish to be remembered…I wish my wife to be remembered, Gele Sekstein. She has worked during the war years with children as an educator and teacher, has pre­pared stage sets, costumes for the children’s theater…both of us get ready to meet and receive death. I wish my little daughter to be remembered. Margalit is 20 months old today. She has fully mastered the Yiddish language and speaks it perfectly. At nine months she began to speak Yiddish clearly. In intelli­gence she equals children of 3 or 4 years. I don’t boast. People who wit­ness it and tell me so are the staff teaching at the school at 68 Nowolipki Street—Dr. Pola Foilman, Mrs. Blit Herzlich, Mrs. Zagan and others. I don’t lament my own life or that of my wife. I pity only this little nice and talented girl. She too deserves to be remembered.”

Israel, Gele, and Margalit were last seen alive trying to return to their hideout in the opening days of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April, 1943.

The archives were recovered and dug up by the few Oyneg Shabes survivors on September 18, 1946. One crate is still missing. There is much more to say about these archives and their collectors, guardians, and survivors. I’m still learning much of that material–indeed, my brief treatment of it above is incomplete–and a good chunk of the story will play a role in my book.

The content above is all from Who Will Write Our History? by Dr. Samuel Kassow. He’s a really lovely, generous man, an incredible scholar, and a kind colleague/mentor; he even shared some of his Yiddish translations with me.

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new: i made a FREE TEMPLATE if you're interested in this habit tracker notion setup🌱💗💞

i've received a few questions about how i track habits, which honestly changes often, but i thought i'd share how i do it right now.

other posts that may interest you: making a dashboard in notion (with template) | my notion tag

this is a pretty low-maintenance and simple way of tracking habits, while still using the wonderful database feature. i hope it helps you ✨😋

post text in alt text and also under the cut:

title: how i track my habits on notion (an illustrated guide + free template)

habit breakdown: every year i take some time to define exactly what my habits are first (i like to use icons for simplicity). this way, i know what i have to do to check off a habit on a day

how i use it: every day, my dashboard has a habits section that updates daily. when i practice the habit, i just check it off. this refreshes automatically so it’s convenient.

how i use it: at the end of each month, i can see how consistent i was with specific habits. i do this by looking at my monthly percentages and looking for patterns: did i burn out on a particular habit? why? and i think about how i should adjust these to my current reality every month, because life happens!

how i use it: then i jot down these numbers so i have a general idea of whether or not i’m being consistent with the intentions i set at the beginning of the month. i ask myself, why or why not? and then i make adjustments to my new interests and priorities.

benefits

benefits — an easy habit tracker helps you see what you’re doing each day so you have an idea of what you want to practice more, practice less, and gives you a better idea of how your habits are affecting your wellbeing, instead of just relying on vibes, which can make you hard on yourself.

encouragement — checking it off gives me a sense of accomplishment. i had a tendency of thinking i wasn’t ‘doing enough’ each month, but when i write things down, i have concrete proof that i did things that were important to me. you also get to look back on your month and be like, look at all these things i did for myself! and have a little celebration :)

how it works: calendar view: of course i’ve created a template for you to use (yay!), but it’s worth learning how i set up the template so you can adjust it to your needs. basically, each habit is a property, and each page corresponds to a day, which has all the habits on it like a checklist. every month i duplicate the page each day for a month (it sounds cumbersome, but actually only takes about a minute total). this allows me to review every month if i want to keep my habits the same, set habit intentions each month so i can reflect and consider, what habits should i continue? what should i stop? it keeps it flexible. also, if you’re going on vacation, need a break, or anything comes up, you can take days off and that way your statistics won’t be skewed by stretches of time where you aren’t planning to practice your habits.

tip: hold alt + drag your mouse to duplicate pages super quickly for this step

how it works: count page: all you have to do here is filter the date to the interval you’d like to see your habits summarized in. i keep mine as calculated per month, but you can set your interval for a week or year or something more specific.

how it works: daily view: i create a linked database and set the view to gallery, filter to “Today” and make sure that all the properties for habits are enabled so they appear in a little task list. then i just check them off each day. it updates automatically.

closing: and that’s it! for me, simple is best. i change how i track stuff all the time, but for now, this works just fine. i hope it can help you too.

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Mini aerial embroidery in earthy tone. New color scheme by DitiBaruah

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Suggested Alternatives to the One China Policy

Currently, the policy of the United States on the Taiwan question is that the US recognizes that polities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait hold that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. In the current tense international climate, it may be useful to considers alternatives to that policy.

Two Chinas Policy: The United States recognizes the independence of Taiwan as a sovereign state, separate from the People's Republic of China.

Three Chinas Policy: The US recognizes Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland as independent states.

Four Chinas Policy: The US recognizes Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland as independent states.

One China Policy (Retro 1978): The US switches its diplomatic recognition back from the PRC to the ROC.

One China Policy (Retro 1911): The US recognizes the Qing Dynasty as the legitimate government of China and finds some schmuck to play Emperor-in-Exile.

Many Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every Chinese province.

Too Many Chinas Policy: Hong Kong makes a perfectly fine city-state, so why not let everyone do that? The US recognizes every Chinese municipality as its own independent state.

1436506450 Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every Chinese person.

2^1436506450 Chinas Policy: The US recognizes the sovereign independence of every subset of of the set of all Chinese persons.

2^1436506450-1 Chinas Policy: Same as above, but not including the empty set, because that doesn't even make sense because it's already claimed by Germany.

Infinite Chinas Policy (Countable): The US recognizes that (1) The PRC is a China and (2) for every China c, the successor S(c) is also a China, and (3) for every China c, c != S(c).

Infinite Chinas Policy (Uncountable): The US recognizes that the set C of all Chinas is an ordered field, and that every non-empty subset of C with an upper bound in C has a least upper bound in C.

No Chinas Policy: The United States embraces mereological nihilism and recognizes only atoms and the void.

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Titsayy

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it shouldn’t surprise people that respecting a cat’s boundaries (i.e. ceasing to pet them after they paw at you) helps them trust you more

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new kind of guy who just really likes the first 30 minutes to an hour of horror movies thats just people doing regular things and turns it off as soon as the horror part starts to kick in

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america land of the free huh. why dont u go and FREE ur colonies already then.

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