This Blog No Longer Intentionally Left Blank

This is a nice sign to look at. 10/10 for composition.

I think I should write a guidebook to go along with it.

No guidebook yet, but hopefully I'll get around to it.

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

[Images description: A Twitter thread by Rabbi Mike Rothbaum (@ Rav_Mike) that says the following:

1) “Our local schools are plagued by antisemitism. There’s a speaker engaged by a local shul ostensibly to discuss antisemitism. ¾ of the talk is about defending Israel. My students aren’t targeted for Zionism. They’re targeted for being Jews. They need safety, not talking points.

2) There’s nothing here for my students who see swastikas in school. There’s nothing here for the kid who was told by a classmate that he’d buy him an “Easy bake oven” for Chanukah. There’s nothing here for the kid who had money thrown at them and told “pick it up you f***ing Jew.

3) You’re entitled to defend the actions of the Israeli government. You’re not entitled to hijack the topic of antisemitism to do so. It’s an abdication of our responsibility to support and defend our kids who deal with Jew-hatred every day. It’s a shonde.

4) The state of Israel has an army and a professional staff of PR professionals to defend it. All my students have are fellow Jews and our allies. Don’t abandon them.

5) After a desultory reference to Charlottesville, the speaker decried “Black Lives Matter,” Stephen Jackson, and Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy didn’t tell his Instagram followers to “like and subscribe to kill one Jew.” That was a white kid my students go to school with. [This tweet has a screenshot of an Instagram live with chat messages. The last message is from michael_13_0 and it’s pinned. It says “Like and subscribe to kill one jew”.]

6) Thing is, I KNOW this stuff is heavily funded by Jewish legacy orgs. And it really is the last thing we need to spend our Jewish dollars on. There’s so much we could be doing to support Jewish learning, students, families, elders, queer folks, Jews of Color. Israel PR ain’t it.

7) The last straw was when the speaker said we should be protecting Israel-advocating students on campus, not “counting swastikas in Idaho.“ Counting swastikas is EXACTLY what we should be doing. Jews live in Idaho – and Middlesex county – and we need to love and protect them.”

Costco CEO Ron Vachris did the “CEO eats his own product” challenge by destroying a hot dog (and confirms the Costco hot dog combo is staying at $1.50 forever). LEGEND.

Show your unwavering support for Costco’s iconic $1.50 hot dog combo

This exchange Sinegal has with the Seattle Times is better:

With a heavy heart, I come to you all with the news announced by close friends of Cat Frazier that she had passed away on Monday, June 29.

She had been running @animatedtext since 2012, with her impact on the internet SHAPING tumblr. If you have a years long history on this site, you’ve seen her art.

She ran a venue in Oakland called Oakland Secret, a punk venue where I’d vend at regularly as an artist. She made a safe space for queer artists, artists of color, and local furs too. I am forever grateful for her work both in the Bay Area creative scene and online, and am forever changed by the totality of her impact.

I’ll be linking some articles from the 2010’s about her impact online: The Fader | Action | Jezebel | ObviouslySocial

I invite you to take a visit through her archive, and if you have a long history with this site like I do, it’s like walking down memory lane. (open link in browser)