#the forward

[jewish-kulindadromeus]

Don’t let the preview image fool you. RedNote is antisemitic in an absolute way, not just in an I/P way. It’s… something else

[hellochildrenoftheatom]

Queer Jews Project Day 8 - Berel-Beyle

We only know about Berel-Beyle through Yeshaye Katovski’s letter to the Forward in 1936 about “the girl who became a man.” To summarize: Berel-Beyle was AFAB, grew up in Krivozer, Ukraine, left home for Odessa, transitioned to a man, went back to his hometown, was accepted by his community, and married an old girlfriend, Black Rachel.

To quote the letter, “In our shtetl, Berel-Beyle always had a good name as a fine, upstanding Jew.”

I wish we knew more about this trans ancestor, but I’m glad we know about him.

Learn more about Berel-Beyle here.

Queer Jews Project

[let-them-fight]

If the president were serious about fighting antisemitism, he would have to break up with his antisemitic friends and fans, including Holocaust deniers like Nicholas Fuentes, Great Replacement conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson, and self-described Western Chauvinists like the Proud Boys. This is something he has shown no intention of doing. Instead, he has opted for an act of political theater. But given that his executive order, and the task force newly empowered to enforce it, have the force of law behind them, we can expect them to have pernicious real-world consequences, particularly for international students and workers with precarious legal statuses. We can expect to see instances of racial, religious and political profiling become increasingly commonplace, as the administration puts pressure on universities to identify non-citizen students involved in protests against Israel. Students and staff will be incentivized to report each other to administrators, and administrators pressured to report students and staff to the authorities. We can also expect to witness the repression of pro-Palestinian speech, the censorship of related topics in the classroom, and ever more violent crackdowns on campus protest — all with the administration’s official blessing. It is seriously unlikely that any of these measures will make Jewish students or staff any safer — on or off campus — aimed as they are at suppressing speech rather than combating hatred. If anything, they promise to undermine the intercommunal solidarity on which Jewish safety ultimately depends, creating the impression that prioritizing Jewish interests means adhering to a right-wing agenda with which a majority of Jews disagree. There is no future in which that agenda leads to happy results — for any of us.

[kneejerknuck]

ep40’s whimsy returned and now the team is better and i don’t think that’s a coincidence

[ciquery]

Perspectives in Israel, reported on December 22, 2023 by The Forward (independent Jewish news outlet since 1897)

A government official who was only able to speak on the condition of anonymity walked me through a thoughtful framework for the military operation’s legitimacy over breakfast one morning. He is a center-left type who has been involved in the peace process for 30 years and said “endgame” talk was, in a word, silly right now.

“We need to move from an argument of who the land belongs to, to a story about ‘we both belong to the land,’” he said, and “a statement that Islam is not at war with Jews and Judaism.”

…

I’d had coffee at Jerusalem’s Inbal Hotel with Mohammed Darawshe, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is director of strategy at Givat Haviva, which does coexistence work. This was in many ways the most depressing conversation of my tour.

Darawshe’s 23-year-old cousin Awad, a paramedic, was among the 36 Arab citizens killed on Oct. 7 — another nine were kidnapped — but he said Jewish Israelis “don’t allow us to have a proper role as victims” because “there’s a kind of delegitimization of the pain of Arab citizens in the sea of Jewish pain.”

Arab Israelis have generally condemned the Oct. 7 attacks, which Darawshe said “positioned us in a place that is closer to the Israeli perspective.”

Certainly closer than they were from, say, 1948 until Oct. 6, he noted. But this was short-lived. “Starting a week later, we do not understand,” Darawshe said. “There’s a feeling that this has gone too far. The Israeli response is excessive use of force.”

[hezigler]

At the core of ‘Oppenheimer,’ a debate about how to be Jewish – The Forward

Contrary to popular myth, Jews are far from being a very unified group. There are antipodes in think among Jews, especially in religion and politics. (This is even true within some individual Jews, hence the old Jewish saying, "ten Jews, twelve opinions.")

[verifiablebot]

'this property says it has nine acres but those neighbours look pretty clo-'

oh.

ohhhhhhhhh no

[darcyolsson]

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

[unsolicited-opinions]

Worth repeating:

F@#& Betar US.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[xmaveria]

HYPED HYPED THERE'S A SOUTH AMERICAN ANIME IN THE WORKS MADE AND FOR SOUTH AMERICANS Its so rare to see southam animation let alone one that has mythos!!!!!!! HYPED It looks like it is made from a studio based in Peru named Ninakami. The anime takes a lot of inspiration from the indigenous Quechua influences and other Andean and regional cultures. It even uses the indigenous language in its tittle! 🔥"APUKUNAPA KUTIMUYNIN- El Regreso de los Dioses/ Return of the Gods "🔥

You can watch the trailer here!

[ionomycin]

temple at the end of the road

[jessaerys]

look at my cat :-)

[thenewdemocratus]

James Carville On Bill Maher & Larry David

“James Carville: Who’s Right, Larry David Or Bill Maher. Politics War Room (with James Carville & Al Hunt)More Politicon videos and podcasts available on our YouTube channel: / @politicon” Source:Politicon with the mad political scientist, James Carville. From Politicon From The Forward: “Add Larry David to the list of celebrities who were put off by comedian Bill Maher’s friendly sitdown with…

[unpretty]

today was the day we finalized the migration of essential software at work from some old and busted shit that was ready to die at any time, to the new cloud version of the same software that we are no longer responsible for maintaining. which is good because no one was actually maintaining ours. it's just been slowly crufting into unusability for a decade. so anyway they set aside an hour for a teams meeting where they'd walk us through the different interface and how to go through normal processes.

"it's not that big a change," they said. "it's all the same stuff, it just looks a little different," they said.

they did not account for the fact that the primary user of this software is someone who doesn't actually know how it works or what it's doing. they learned how to do their job entirely through rote memorization. they know which buttons they are supposed to press in which order, and that is the full extent of what they know. they also did not account for the fact that this person's processes were learned thirdhand from other people who were not using this software normally to begin with.

it's like. imagine if someone had only ever used tumblr in the app. and you try to get them to use it in a desktop browser, but they cannot figure out how to post. and you go through explaining where the button is and how to format text and add tags, even though you could have sworn it was all the same in the app. but then they're like, "okay, but what's the phone number" and you're like "what" and they're like "the phone number to call to make a post?" and it turns out somehow they still had the ability to post by calling a phone number, and every time they posted on the app they called the post in first and then edited the audio post to transcribe it into text before screenshotting the text for a photo post. and nothing you can say to them will make them understand that none of that is necessary or correct. they shouldn't have even been able to do some of that. they can just type into the post box now, like a civilized person. "okay," they say, "but what is the phone number, though? because when i made my account my friend gave me this checklist and the first thing on it is to call the number."

so anyway we were on that teams call for almost three hours and they still don't have a handle on the new software