you walk into a cave

The serpent in the garden being Satan

Cain killing Abel with a stone

Jesus being a carpenter

Pestilence being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse

Baby Moses being put in the river

Moses is placed on the bank of the river. It's up to you if that counts as in the river, but the image of his basket being swept down the stream (such as seen in the movie Prince of Egypt) isn't in the bible.

Most translations do call Jesus a carpenter, but the original Greek uses the word 'tekton' which means craftsman. It can mean a carpenter, but I'm personally partial to Jesus being a stone mason.

Some more things that aren't in the bible:

The fruit of the tree of knowledge being an apple

The golden calf being a false god (it's specifically stated to be a representation of the God, using God's name)

The Exodus Pharaoh being called Ramses

Original Sin

The Immaculate Conception (note that this is not the same thing as the Virgin Birth, although people often confuse them)

Jonah getting swallowed by a whale (it was a fish, or possibly two fish)

Three wise men (there were three gifts and an unspecified number of wise men)

Anything indicating that Satan rules hell, that hell has multiple layers, or that there are specific punishments for specific sins

Any mention of leprosy aka Hansen's disease (the condition the Septuagint translates as λεπρός has completely different symptoms from the condition that came to be known as leprosy in English)

Isaac being a child during his near-sacrifice

And some Jewish specific ones for the Tanakh, because we can’t let Christians have all the fun:

Yitro converting to Judaism

Avraham smashing his father’s idols

Moshe having a stutter due to burning his mouth on hot coals

Miriam’s Well

Any mention of the lulav and etrog being shaken on Sukkot (Vayikra says to collect the Four Species, but nowhere in the written Tanakh are we actually told what to do with them)

This headline is missing some important nuance -- it's a headline, there's only so much they can do -- in that the Vatican said "this action you have taken excommunicates you." That is, 'we're not actively doing this to you, you are doing this to yourself, because we told you this was beyond the acceptable boundaries.'

The Vatican went way beyond what most of my Catholic friends expected -- they expected the bishops and maybe some priests to get excommunicated, but the laity and the nuns and... the Vatican has basically said 'bet, try it. See what happens.' (Excommunication, that's what happens.)

If you are on BlueSky and you are not following Claire Willett, you are truly missing out on some good fucking tea. Claire is a lesbian lifelong Catholic from Portland who knows her shit & has been sitting watching all of this with a giant bucket of popcorn and translating for the rest of us:

I honestly did not expect an open declaration of schism like this from either side. Frankly I don't think the Lefebvrists did either -- they thought they could get away with a slap on the wrist like they did in 1988, when they consecrated their previous batch of auto-excommunicated bishops. Pope Leo XIV is not here to play.

[ID: a photo of the back of a metal street sign. drawn on the sign in black marker is an illustration of wired earbuds. this drawing is labeled "hedphon." End ID]

Like Etsy used to be except artists keep their money and the site is run off of a yearly fee for hosting stuff and some non invasive ads. There's other stuff, but the point is that the artists don't have to share a percentage on what they sell with the site.

Disclaimer: Almost all of my materials are thrifted, donated to me, or sourced from Buy Nothing groups where people are giving away art supplies.

The problem with the Buy Nothing groups is that a lot of the stuff people have to offer is from Shein or AliExpress.

People think a decent workaround to this is, "Oh, you can buy the SAME EXACT MATERIALS from this mom and pop Etsy shop or your local craft store," but the thing is, Etsy shops that supply beads and charms are often just curated Shein/AliExpress products that they dropship, and the stuff that the craft stores sell comes from the same manufacturers and is just more expensive. It's not like there's an Evil Factory where Shein an AliExpress get craft supplies, and then a Nice Factory where Michaels and Etsy resellers get craft supplies.

I'm NOT saying this to pull the, "There's no ethical consumption under capitalism," card in a completely misunderstanding way where I think you might as well just buy from Shein because everything sucks; I'm saying that it's just almost impossible to find anything, even if you can afford to pay more, that doesn't come from exploitation.

I personally feel like getting donations of unused stuff or picking things up from craft trades is an okay compromise. I think it's better for me to USE the things someone who totallyyyy thought they were gonna start a jewelry business in quarantine manic spent $500 on than it is for them to be thrown away. But it's not a perfect solution! There isn't one! When people say there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, they mean that no matter how hard we try, we're backed into corners like this every time we need or decide to make a purchase, and the only way to get around it is to not purchase anything. I think it's still important to do what you can when you can when it comes to making educated choices about the companies you support, but it's just that. You can often only make educated choices, not ethical ones.

A lot of people argue that if there's no way to make art that's 100% free of sin, then you just shouldn't be doing it because it's not necessary, but I don't know that I agree with that. A life without art isn't a life I want to live! But then that makes it seem like I think my right to have fun supercedes other people's right to fair working conditions and basic necessities, which obviously isn't what I believe either.

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

pros: yay! i finally look like a guy! people think im a man!