crap archive

I made one comment, and it was this:

are we the baddies: SFF subgenre focused on agents of an imperial power realizing that and grappling with what to do next, in contrast to stories focusing on the scrappy rebels resisting said imperial power

I could fix him (the empire): SFF subgenre where the colonized subject being nice and/or sexy enough Ends Colonialism, frequently tied to the John President of Racism problem

librarian bait: books centered on the transformative life-changing power of books and libraries, cousin to books focused on the transformative life-changing power of storytelling and narrative in general

college brochure fiction: stories where the protagonist has an artfully arranged group of diverse friends who are as flat as paper and whose cultural backgrounds never come up meaningfully

It hails from an immortal tumblr post by penultimate-step, except not immortal apparently because I get 'not found' when I try to go back to the original. (Edit: Link found) So here's the text:

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

The place Israel occupies in these people's imagination is ridiculous. Israel as the linchpin of colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, ecological devastation - whatever bugs you most, Israel does it worst. Get rid of Israel, save the entire world. It is much bigger than Rooney. Over the last few years, artists, activists, and academics have repeatedly advanced versions of the same claim: Israel as humanity’s arch-nemesis, the disappearance would somehow solve everything. Example: Jason Hickel, visiting professor at the London School of Economics, claimed that “A liberated Palestine means a liberated Middle East. A liberated Middle East means capitalism in the core really faces a crisis.” Because why not. Israel has become a western totem, personifying the cumulative sins of the West’s entire history. In an incredible historical irony, the Jews are now not an oriental, semitic pariah nation nor a degenerate sub-human race, but the purest representatives of the West and the most atrocious white supremacists. As the West’s original essence Israel naturally carries the West’s original sins: colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, etc. Because the Jews are now considered the very essence of the West, Israel's sins are understood as the carrying the collective blame of all westerners. Making Israel pay is thus not only a step on the long arch towards justice, but serves as a purgative practice for all westerners. As the effigy of the West, burning Israel will cleanse the West from its past transgressions. The wish to eradicate Israel is therapeutic, salvific: the sins of all western forefathers, those imperialist, colonialist, slave-holding Europeans, will finally be atoned. Capitalism will fall, the environment will be saved. Redemption is nigh, we just have to eradicate that wart of a nation. As the eternal alter-ego of the West, Jews will always function as its scapegoats. When the West loved itself, we were the alien element supposedly defiling it. Now that the West despises itself, we have become its distilled essence: the figure through whose destruction it fantasizes about purification.

More of Dr. Persico:

Read theory. Read the commentaries on the theory. If you don't understand, that proves you haven't read enough. If you disagree with any of it, that proves you're a bad person.

Follow the right influencers. Support the right politicians. Follow the leaders of our movement. Until we decide they're bad people, anyway.

March in our protests. Commit to our boycotts. Donate to our causes. Don't ask what we hope to achieve or how we think we're going to get that effect from what we're doing. Only a bad person would ask those questions.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

The problem with claiming the label "ally" is that it subtly shifts the center of gravity from the cause to the self. It turns a verb (supporting) into a noun (an identity).

Once you've adopted the label, the point of the exercise often stops being about the marginalized group and starts being about your own membership in the Good People Club.

What if ally has just become another identity category - a performative merit badge we display to stay in the good graces of our social circles?

I'm not suggesting we should care less. I'm asking if we could care for better reasons. Could we support our moral positions without the expectation of a social reward?

A few years ago, I caught myself carefully drafting a social media post. I realized I wasn't trying to communicate something true, I was trying to communicate something acceptable. I was triangulating. I was checking the direction of the wind in my feed before committing to a stance.

That's...not moral conviction.

That's reputation management with a trompe l’oeil conscience painted on top. It looks like a window into the soul, but it's actually just a flat wall.

I don't think I’m alone in this.

When social reward is the primary driver, you will inevitably bend your principles toward whatever earns the most social approval (likes) from your specific tribe. Consistency goes out the window, because consistency doesn't care about your audience.

I oppose violence against civilians because targeting civilians is wrong - full stop.

Not because of which flag those civilians live under.

Not because of which conflict is currently trending on TikTok.

Not because taking that position will earn me a "yikes" or a "yas" from the people I respect (or the people I'm afraid of).

The principle holds universally, or it doesn't hold at all. If I only apply it when it's socially safe, I'm not operating from ethics, I'm operating from social conditioning.

The (valid) counterargument is that declared allyship has real utility. Public declarations normalize solidarity. They signal safety to vulnerable people. An LGBTQ+ teenager in a hostile town needs to know who the safe adults in the room actually are. Movements need visible bodies, not just private thoughts.

The problem isn't visibility. It's the direction the camera is pointing.

Are you showing up so that the vulnerable community knows you're there...or so your followers know you're one of the good ones?

The former is solidarity, the latter is branding.

I'm suggesting we support vulnerable communities for reasons that would hold even if no one was watching or following.

Moral consistency means opposing attacks on a community not to influence how we are perceived, but because our core principles (human dignity, rejection of collective punishment, the refusal to dehumanize) demand it.

It means the test isn't whether I like the victims or if my social circle thinks the victims are worthy.

If your commitment to a principle relies on a cheering section, a pat on the back or likes, you weren't driven by the principle - you were driven by the behavioral reinforcement - like a rat in Skinner's maze, waiting for the dopamine pellet of a notification.

I've realized I don't actually need anyone else to see me as an ally.

What even is orthodox? Lots of different groups get included in orthodox so what core beliefs unite Hassidic, Yeshivish, Modox, etc. as distinct from for example Conservative? I know some people also use terms like ultra orthodox and modern orthodox but are those different beliefs or just different customs?

Reform Judaism is only a few centuries old, originating as part of the Haskalah, the Jewish adoption of Enlightenment ideas. Other movements are newer, either breaking away from Reform like the Conservative movement did or being modeled on it.

When the Reform movement first began adopting changes to traditional Judaism, "Orthodox" became the catch all term for those who rejected said changes.

Which is not to say that Orthodox Jews are living as they would have if there were never a Reform movement; in many cases, Orthodox Rabbis and communities made decisions specifically to counter Reform rulings.

The difficulty is that, ultimately, there is no Orthodox movement. Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist are all distinct movements with official rabbinical counsels who can make rulings about what the movement officially believes (though of course that doesn't mean every Jew who is part of those movements holds those beliefs) there is no comparable Orthodox counsel. "Chief Rabbi," of Israel or elsewhere, is a government position. In Israel, the Chief Rabbi can make rulings such as who counts as a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return. In other countries, the Chief Rabbi tends to act as a representative of the local Jewish community to the government.

But while they are (usually) highly respected and influential Rabbis, that doesn't mean they have the authority to make official rulings for all Orthodox Jews, or even all Orthodox Jews in their country.

Now, there are Orthodox movements based on the teachings of specific Rabbis and their heirs, so those movements will have official beliefs, but then you get something like Modern Orthodoxy, which is really more of a philosophy than a movement, and the borders of who is and is not Modern Orthodox can get really fuzzy.

And, crucially, all of this only applies to Ashkenazi Jews.

Reform was a European movement. All of the political implications of Reform and later movements (and yeah, a lot of this is political) are within Ashkenazi Judaism.

Other minhagim aren't Orthodox, because Orthodox just means "not Reform, Conservative, ect," and they don't have a Reform movement to be "not".

This doesn't mean that other minhagim are more or less traditional that Ashkenazi Judiasm, just that the terms don't apply.

I hope that this cleared some things up!