#anne frank center

[mysharona1987]

[night-lie]

Bill POV here

[eretzyisrael]

by Gabe Friedman

A German daycare center named after Anne Frank is changing its name, alleging that children have a hard time understanding the message behind the story of the world famous Jewish diarist murdered in the Holocaust.

The daycare is located in Tangerhütte, a small town in northern Germany. Debate over the center’s name has drawn attention across the country, but Mayor Andreas Brohm defended the school’s move.

German media reports that parents wanted the center to push a message more focused on international diversity, hence the new name of World Explorers.

The International Auschwitz Committee, which was founded by Holocaust survivors, strongly condemned the renaming. The Jerusalem Post reported that the school had had the Anne Frank name since 1970.

“If you are willing to dismiss your own history so carelessly, especially in these times of new antisemitism and right-wing extremism, and if Anne Frank ‘s name is perceived as unsuitable in public space, you can only become fearful and anxious when it comes to the culture of remembrance in our country,” said Christoph Heubner, according to the German MDR broadcaster.

Miteinander e.V., a German organization that promotes “open society,” said the renaming “sends the wrong signal in a time of strengthening #Antisemitism.”

“There are good, tried-and-tested pedagogical concepts for conveying the topic of Anne Frank’s life to children and young people that work age-appropriately and appropriately with contemporary historical fate,” the organization wrote in a thread on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Antisemitic incidents have spiked across Western Europe since Oct. 7, when Hamas killed over 1,400 Israelis, sparking an Israeli counterattack has killed thousands in the Gaza Strip. On Oct. 18, two people threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Berlin.

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

theres discourse on twitter rn about whether Clone High ocs are problematic or not and i gotta say its kinda funny 2 be a fan of Historical Figure OCs: The Show and go "PEOPLE ARE MAKING OCS OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS??? THATS SO WEIRD THEYRE LITERALLY PROBLEMATIC" my brother in christ your favorite Clone High characters are John F. Kennedy and Ghandi.

[soyuria]

Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio will star in the Disney Plus series Daredevil: Born Again

Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio will star in the Disney Plus series Daredevil: Born Again

Marvel’s DaredevilPhoto: netflix Kevin Feige took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con for the first time in three years tonight, returning to Hall H to recreate the momentous Saturday of 2019 when he and his Marvel castmates rolled out an absolutely impressive number of television and movies that were supposed to fill the post-End of Game Phase four – almost all of which, with very few exceptions,…

[nasa]

Roman's primary structure hangs from cables as it moves into the big clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

What Makes the Clean Room So Clean?

When you picture NASA’s most important creations, you probably think of a satellite, telescope, or maybe a rover. But what about the room they’re made in? Believe it or not, the room itself where these instruments are put together—a clean room—is pretty special. 

A clean room is a space that protects technology from contamination. This is especially important when sending very sensitive items into space that even small particles could interfere with.

There are two main categories of contamination that we have to keep away from our instruments. The first is particulate contamination, like dust. The second is molecular contamination, which is more like oil or grease. Both types affect a telescope’s image quality, as well as the time it takes to capture imagery. Having too many particles on our instruments is like looking through a dirty window. A clean room makes for clean science!

Two technicians clean the floor of Goddard’s big clean room.

Our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has the largest clean room of its kind in the world. It’s as tall as an eight-story building and as wide as two basketball courts.

Goddard’s clean room has fewer than 3,000 micron-size particles per cubic meter of air. If you lined up all those tiny particles, they’d be no longer than a sesame seed. If those particles were the size of 16-inch (0.4-meter) inflatable beach balls, we’d find only 3,000 spread throughout the whole body of Mount Everest!

A clean room technician observes a sample under a microscope.

The clean room keeps out particles larger than five microns across, just seven percent of the width of an average human hair. It does this via special filters that remove around 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger from incoming air. Six fans the size of school buses spin to keep air flowing and pressurize the room. Since the pressure inside is higher, the clean air keeps unclean air out when doors open.

A technician analyzes a sample under ultraviolet light.

In addition, anyone who enters must wear a “bunny suit” to keep their body particles away from the machinery. A bunny suit covers most of the person inside. Sometimes scientists have trouble recognizing each other while in the suits, but they do get to know each other’s mannerisms very well.

This illustration depicts the anatomy of a bunny suit, which covers clean room technicians from head to toe to protect sensitive technology.

The bunny suit is only the beginning: before putting it on, team members undergo a preparation routine involving a hairnet and an air shower. Fun fact – you’re not allowed to wear products like perfume, lotion, or deodorant. Even odors can transfer easily!

Six of Goddard’s clean room technicians (left to right: Daniel DaCosta, Jill Bender, Anne Martino, Leon Bailey, Frank D’Annunzio, and Josh Thomas).

It takes a lot of specialists to run Goddard’s clean room. There are 10 people on the Contamination Control Technician Team, 30 people on the Clean Room Engineering Team to cover all Goddard missions, and another 10 people on the Facilities Team to monitor the clean room itself. They check on its temperature, humidity, and particle counts.

A technician rinses critical hardware with isopropyl alcohol and separates the particulate and isopropyl alcohol to leave the particles on a membrane for microscopic analysis.

Besides the standard mopping and vacuuming, the team uses tools such as isopropyl alcohol, acetone, wipes, swabs, white light, and ultraviolet light. Plus, they have a particle monitor that uses a laser to measure air particle count and size.

The team keeping the clean room spotless plays an integral role in the success of NASA’s missions. So, the next time you have to clean your bedroom, consider yourself lucky that the stakes aren’t so high!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[matan4il]

I think one of the worst things I've heard from the head of Yad Vashem's International Education Department (YV is the Holocaust research and education center dedicated to the Jewish POV during that time, the IED is in charge of seminars for teachers and educators on the subject of the Holocaust from all over the world), is that some teachers and educators are no longer teaching the Holocaust since Oct 7. A part of them decided on this of their own accord, others because they say the students / principals at their schools refuse to have it taught.

It reminded me of that time when in YV's IED survey of UK teachers and educators, many chose to answer the question, "Who was Anne Frank?" with "A girl hiding for her life from the Nazis." When asked about the omission of the specific reason why Anne had to hide (meaning, why did they leave out that she was a Jew and was in danger because of it), their replies indicated that if students hear that Anne Frank was Jewish, then they're no longer interested in learning about her. I'll admit, I was shocked by this. If you leave out that Anne was a victim of specifically antisemitism, because of the students' antisemitism, what are you even teaching them anyway?

Similarly, in YV's IED international surveys of teachers and educators, when asked to choose a definition for what the Holocaust was, the most popular answer is the one that doesn't mention Jews.

Basically, the anti-Israel crowd isn't the start of the All Lives Matter'ing of the Holocaust, erasing Jews out of the story of our own persecution and genocide (which you can see even in the fact that too many don't realize 'The Holocaust' is a term coined to specifically talk about the Nazis' crimes against the Jews, and that there are other terms for the Nazis' crimes against other populations). But the anti-Israel crowd isn't just hijacking the Holocaust, it's also actively weaponizing it to be used against Jews, and it is even actively preventing Holocaust education altogether.

This should infuriate everyone.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Today is the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In honor of this event, and Monday’s observance of Yom HaShoah, I’m posting a roundup of all of my writings, spanning 2011-Yesterday, on the topic of Jewish women, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto, and resistance.

A profile of Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian Jewish paratrooper who worked behind Nazi lines in services of the SOE (Special Operations Executive, same as Noor Inayat Khan).

Why Gender History is Important, Asshole. The post that started it all, that made me realize how many of you are passionately curious about the topic of women and the Holocaust, and how many of you share my righteous indignation over the fact that this knowledge is so uncommon.

We need to talk about Anne Frank: a thinkpiece about how we use and misuse the memory of Anne Frank. NOT a John Green hitpiece; if that’s your takeaway you’re reading it wrong.

An 11-part post series about Vladka Meed, a Jewish resistance worker who smuggled explosives into the Warsaw Ghetto in preparation for the Uprising, and set up covert aid networks in slave labor camps, among other things.

Girls with Guns, Woman Commanders, and Unheeded Warnings: Women and the Holocaust: an assessment of how Holocaust memory is shaped by male experiences, and an analysis of what we miss through this centering of the male experience.

Filip Muller’s testimony regarding young women’s defiant behavior in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. [comes with big trigger/content warning]

Tema Schneiderman and Tossia Altman: Voices from Beyond the Grave; paper presented at the Heroines of the Holocaust: New Frameworks of Resistance International Symposium at Wagner College.

A meditation/polemic on Jewish women, abortion, and the Holocaust, and the American Christian far-right’s misuse of Holocaust memory in anti-choice rhetoric. [comes with big trigger/content warning]

Women and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; talk presented at the National World War II Museum’s 15th International Conference on World War II. Women of the Warsaw Ghetto; keynote speech delivered at the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County’s Yom HaShoah Program in Honor of the 80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Phyllis Chesler

The young women who demonstrate for Hamas are surprisingly vulgar, physically aggressive and self-satisfied. Their body language is, dare I say it, rather male. They curse. They enjoy the discomfort they cause in Jewish onlookers. Some wear hijab and niqab (face masks). Others wear Queers for Palestine t-shirts or sport black-and-white checked keffiyehs as scarves.

These girls and women are super-sonic “mean girls.” They smirk as they triumphantly tear down posters that feature the faces of kidnapped Israeli civilians. They look quite happy with themselves when a Jewish student appears visibly distressed.

Leftist women of all ages, many of whom are Jews, and some of whom are rabbis, lead chants against Israel. They wield megaphones, blow whistles and bang drums. They are seasoned, “in your face” performers and feel utterly righteous about drowning out everything and everyone else.

Of course, the young pro-Hamas men are even louder and more menacing. They are taller and wider. They scream, mullah-style, in hoarse voices of rage and are sometimes armed with knives, sticks and guns. They use their feet and their fists to kick, hit, beat or sucker-punch anyone who dares to carry an Israeli flag, wears a Jewish star or is in any way visibly Jewish. I’ve seen this in videos and heard about it from people who were there.

This hot Jew-hatred has been brewing for a long, long time. Yet it is being experienced as sudden and unexpected. The sight of Jewish blood on Oct. 7 has activated what we may metaphorically think of as “sleeper cells” that have been well-trained in mob violence against the Jews. These mobs are now on the move around the world and on American campuses.

Young American Jewish students, both women and men, are shocked, reeling, in free fall. They are traumatized. Frightened. Students did not suspect that such Jew-hatred existed so close to home. Like Anne Frank, they truly believed that all people were basically good. (Frank never exactly believed that, however.)

Such Jewish students are not prepared for a pogrom; or for the fact that Israel is now fighting an existential battle for its survival.

From a psychological and practical point of view, here’s what the students must learn. I am now addressing them directly:

First, you must understand that you have suddenly been drafted into a war. You must think like soldiers. In particular, you must accept that it does not matter if your enemies do not like or love you. A soldier’s only duty is to fight to win.

Second, you have to learn not to take anything personally. If you are cursed as “colonialists, racists, Islamophobes, capitalists,” it has nothing to do with you, who you are or anything that you’ve done. Jew hatred/antisemitism/anti-Zionism is a sickness, a virus, a plague that has afflicted Jew-haters. The shame is theirs, not yours.

Third, you must accept the fact that, despite exceptions, most people, both young and old, tend to be cowards and conformists. If you stand up to evil, if you stand up for Israel, you will lose friends, teachers, employers, even family members who may strongly disagree with you. This is the price that telling this particular truth exacts.

Fourth, you—or your parents or Jewish and Christian organizations—must fund armed guards to keep each one of you safe, just as synagogues and Jewish centers require armed guards. More importantly, you must spend at least a year or more learning Krav Maga or some other form of self-defense.

Believe it or not, if civilian haters, even in mobs, know they you know how to fight, they may decide to leave you alone. It’s happened many times before in Jewish history.

Fifth, it is important that you find like-minded students and meet regularly both in person and on the internet.

You have no choice. Please realize that the sight of Jewish blood excites and thrills the Jew-haters. The sight of Jews fighting back brilliantly and methodically, as the IDF is currently doing, enrages the Jew-haters.

We are not going to win any popularity contests no matter what we do. Like Golda Mair, I say: Let’s survive. Let’s win. We are in that kind of battle.

I must thank trauma psychiatrist Dr. Larry Amsel, with whom I discussed these ideas. You will hear more from both of us soon.

[mybeingthere]

CHERYL ANN THOMAS, Hand-coiled porcelain ceramic.

Coiling together thin, serpentine ropes of porcelain, American artist Cheryl Ann Thomas begins her sculptures with one of the most traditional techniques of pottery. Used by Pre-Columbian, Native American and West African peoples to hand-build large storage jars, coiling has a rich history in the ceramic world. Traditionally the coils were smoothed together and integrated, but Thomas leaves the twists of clay exposed, and imprinted with the mark of her hand. Speaking about her work, Thomas asserts that “relics or artifacts are the remains of a human intervention. These sculptures form a permanent record of my interaction with the material.”

Once she has constructed tall, thin vessels of coiled porcelain, Thomas fires them, and the weight of the clay causes the works to collapse and fold in on themselves unpredictably. Her early works were the outcomes of this process, while more recently the artist has begun combining these forms and firing them for a second time, creating assembled sculptures of greater scale and power. After firing her pieces and leaving the results to chance, “the resulting forms are exquisite and very delicate, richly open-ended in their associations,” according to Constance Mallinson for Art in America.

Thomas’s work is frequently noted for its allusions to the transience and delicacy of existence. Although the heat of the kiln is what causes the collapse of her forms, it also gives the porcelain she uses its durability and strength. In this way, the artist notes that her work “is not a metaphor, but a real and distinct experience of creation and loss.” Thomas has recently expanded her output to include works in bronze and stainless steel, which continue her meditations on fragility.

Cheryl Ann Thomas graduated from the Art Center College of Design in 1982, and has emerged as a ceramic sculptor within the past 13 years. She has been featured in solo and group shows in New York and Los Angeles and her work is included in the collections of the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Gardiner Museum in Toronto.

[mysharona1987]

[batboyblog]

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[mariacallous]

As AI-powered image generators have become more accessible, so have websites that digitally remove the clothes of people in photos. One of these sites has an unsettling feature that provides a glimpse of how these apps are used: two feeds of what appear to be photos uploaded by users who want to “nudify” the subjects.

The feeds of images are a shocking display of intended victims. WIRED saw some images of girls who were clearly children. Other photos showed adults and had captions indicating that they were female friends or female strangers. The site’s homepage does not display any fake nude images that may have been produced to visitors who aren’t logged in.

People who want to create and save deepfake nude images are asked to log in to the site using a cryptocurrency wallet. Pricing isn’t currently listed, but in a 2022 video posted by an affiliated YouTube page, the website let users buy credits to create deepfake nude images, starting at 5 credits for $5. WIRED learned about the site from a post on a subreddit about NFT marketplace OpenSea, which linked to the YouTube page. After WIRED contacted YouTube, the platform said it terminated the channel; Reddit told WIRED that the user had been banned.

WIRED is not identifying the website, which is still online, to protect the women and girls who remain on its feeds. The site’s IP address, which went live in February 2022, belongs to internet security and infrastructure provider Cloudflare. When asked about its involvement, company spokesperson Jackie Dutton noted the difference between providing a site’s IP address, as Cloudflare does, and hosting its contents, which it does not.

WIRED notified the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which helps report cases of child exploitation to law enforcement, about the site’s existence.

AI developers like OpenAI and Stability AI say their image generators are for commercial and artistic uses and have guardrails to prevent harmful content. But open source AI image-making technology is now relatively powerful and creating pornography is one of the most popular use cases. As image generation has become more readily available, the problem of nonconsensual nude deepfake images, most often targeting women, has grown more widespread and severe. Earlier this month, WIRED reported that two Florida teenagers were arrested for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of their middle school classmates without consent, in what appears to be the first case of its kind.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law who has studied the problem of nonconsensual explicit imagery, says that the deepnude website highlights a grim reality: There are far more incidents involving AI-generated nude images of women without consent and minors than the public currently knows about. The few public cases were only exposed because the images were shared within a community, and someone heard about it and raised the alarm.

“There's gonna be all kinds of sites like this that are impossible to chase down, and most victims have no idea that this has happened to them until someone happens to flag it for them,” Franks says.

Nonconsensual Images

The website reviewed by WIRED has feeds with apparently user-submitted photos on two separate pages. One is labeled "Home" and the other "Explore." Several of the photos clearly showed girls under the age of 18.

One image showed a young girl with a flower in her hair standing against a tree. Another a girl in what appears to be a middle or high school classroom. The photo, seemingly taken discreetly by a classmate, is captioned “PORN.”

Another image on the site showed a group of young teens who appear to be in middle school: a boy taking a selfie in what appears to be a school gymnasium with two girls, who smile and pose for the picture. The boy’s features were obscured by a Snapchat lens that enlarged his eyes so much that they covered his face.

Captions on the apparently uploaded images indicated they include images of friends, classmates, and romantic partners. “My gf” one caption says, showing a young woman taking a selfie in a mirror.

Many of the photos showed influencers who are popular on TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms. Other photos appeared to be Instagram screenshots of people sharing images from their everyday lives. One image showed a young woman smiling with a dessert topped with a celebratory candle.

Several images appeared to show people who were complete strangers to the person who took the photo. One image taken from behind depicted a woman or girl who is not posing for a photo, but simply standing near what appears to be a tourist attraction.

Some of the images in the feeds reviewed by WIRED were cropped to remove the faces of women and girls, showing only their chest or crotch.

Huge Audience

Over an eight-day period of monitoring the site, WIRED saw five new images of women appear on the Home feed, and three on the Explore page. Stats listed on the site showed that most of these images accumulated hundreds of “views.” It’s unclear if all images submitted to the site make it to the Home or Explore feed, or how views are tabulated. Every post on the Home feed has at least a few dozen views.

Photos of celebrities and people with large Instagram followings top the list of “Most Viewed” images listed on the site. The most-viewed people of all time on the site are actor Jenna Ortega with more than 66,000 views, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift with more than 27,000 views, and an influencer and DJ from Malaysia with more than 26,000 views.

Swift and Ortega have been targeted with deepfake nudes before. The circulation of fake nude images of Swift on X in January triggered a moment of renewed discussion about the impacts of deepfakes and the need for greater legal protections for victims. This month, NBC reported that, for seven months, Meta had hosted ads for a deepnude app. The app boasted about its ability to “undress” people, using a picture of Jenna Ortega from when she was 16 years old.

In the US, no federal law targets the distribution of fake, nonconsensual nude images. A handful of states have enacted their own laws. But AI-generated nude images of minors come under the same category as other child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, says Jennifer Newman, executive director of the NCMEC’s Exploited Children’s Division.

“If it is indistinguishable from an image of a live victim, of a real child, then that is child sexual abuse material to us,” Newman says. “And we will treat it as such as we're processing our reports, as we're getting these reports out to law enforcement.”

In 2023, Newman says, NCMEC received about 4,700 reports that “somehow connect to generative AI technology.”

“Pathetic Bros”

People who want to create and save deepfake nude images on the site are asked to log in using either a Coinbase, Metamask, or WalletConnect cryptocurrency wallet. Coinbase spokesperson McKenna Otterstedt said that the company is launching an internal investigation into the site’s integration with the company’s wallet. Metamask is owned by Consensys, and while the tech company was unaware of the site prior to WIRED's reporting, it has now launched an investigation: “We will need to determine how our Terms of Use are implicated and what steps would be appropriate to ensure the safety of our users and the broader web3 ecosystem."

WalletConnect did not respond to a request for comment.

In November 2022, the deepnude site’s YouTube channel posted a video claiming users could “buy credit” with Visa or Mastercard. Neither of the two payment processors returned WIRED’s requests for comment.

On OpenSea, a marketplace for NFTs, the site listed 30 NFTs in 2022 with unedited, not deepfaked, pictures of different Instagram and TikTok influencers, all women. After buying an NFT with the ether cryptocurrency—$280 worth at today’s exchange rate—owners would get access to the website, which according to a web archive, was in its early stages at the time. “Privacy is the ultimate priority” for its users, the NFT listings said.

The NFTs were categorized with tags referring to the women’s perceived features. The categories included Boob Size, Country (with most of the women listed as from Malaysia or Taiwan), and Traits, with tags including “cute,” “innocent,” and “motherly.”

None of the NFTs listed by the account ever sold. OpenSea deleted the listings and the account within 90 minutes of WIRED contacting the company. None of the women shown in the NFTs responded for comment.

It’s unclear who, or how many people, created or own the deepnude website. The now deleted OpenSea account had a profile image identical to the third Google Image result for “nerd.” The account bio said that the creator’s mantra is to “reveal the shitty thing in this world” and then share it with “all douche and pathetic bros.”

An X account linked from the OpenSea account used the same bio and also linked to a now inactive blog about “Whitehat, Blackhat Hacking” and “Scamming and Money Making.” The account’s owner appears to have been one of three contributors to the blog, where he went by the moniker 69 Fucker.

The website was promoted on Reddit by just one user, who had a profile picture of a man of East Asian descent who appeared to be under 50. However, an archive of the website from March 2022 claims that the site “was created by 9 horny skill-full people.” The majority of the profile images appeared to be stock photos, and the job titles were all facetious. Three of them were Horny Director, Scary Stalker, and Booty Director.

An email address associated with the website did not respond for comment.

[toscanoirriverente]

The day care center manager said they wanted something without a ‘political background.’

(...) According to television outlet n-tv, the city council said that some parents and employees requested to the change the name. The daycare center manager Linda Schichor said that children struggle to understand the name, while parents with a migration background often don’t relate to Anne Frank, German media Volksstimme first reported over the weekend. “We wanted something without a political background,” Schichor said.

Andreas Brohm, the mayor of Tangerhütte in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said the name change was in discussion but there was no concrete decision yet. “That wasn’t even up for debate, that’s the crazy thing. It wasn’t up for decision before Saturday, it’s a discussion process that’s ongoing” Brohm told POLITICO on Monday.

The plan was to find something “that has a more positive connotation, not because Anne Frank has a negative connotation, but because people associate what they associate with it and with the day-care center concept,” Brohm said. (...)

[catboyrichardkarinsky]

the old friends trio from every major US production of Merrily we roll along

1981- original Broadway cast: Jim Walton as Frank, Lonny Price as Charley and Ann Morrison as Mary

1985- San Diego cast: John Rubinstein as Frank, Chip Zien as Charley and Heather MacRae as Mary

1994- Off-Broadway cast: Malcolm Gets as Frank, Adam Heller as Charley and Amy Ryder as Mary

2002- Kennedy center cast: Michael Hayden as Frank, Raúl Esparza as Charley and Miriam Shor as Mary

2012- Encores! cast: Colin Donell as Frank, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Charley and Celia Keenan-Bogler

2022- off-Broadway/2023 Broadway cast: Jonathan Groff as Frank, Daniel Radcliffe as Charley and Lindsay Mendez as Mary