Ms Mahler's Playtime

and filled with lgiht humor, legit cooking, and charming life stories

Well. This time I had to give up immediately because I got like ten followers down the list and was having immense trouble figuring out who's a bot and who's real. Never ever used to see this but like 5/10 of the first few followers I checked on had just totally empty blogs. It wasn't until I'd already blocked 2 - assuming bots bc empty blogs - that I thought to check if they had any likes. And bam! There it was. All of their user activity.

We have people on this website now who have never reblogged a single post.

Y'all, I'm sure you're sick of seeing "you have to reblog thing" but you literally have to reblog things. That is how this website works. You understand that, right? How do you think the post you hit "like" on got in front of you? It wasn't because you liked enough things and Tumblrs algorithm figured out what you like enough to hand it to you. It's because you followed someone, a human person, who reblogged that post. And it came from another person who also reblogged it.

You are killing this website by refusing to interact with it in the way that makes it better than the other websites you ran from to come here.

That said, lurkers on here need to be aware that Tumblr's basic design is not lurk-friendly. And some folks (like OP) will not want to have you following them if you are lurking, because it really is hard to tell the difference between a lurker and a bot.

There's a Jewish folk tale about a prince who is convinced he is a rooster. He refuses to wear clothes, and won't sit on chairs and crows instead of talking.

And his father calls all the doctors and wisemen to cure him of thinking he's a rooster.

And they all fail.

So finally a wise rabbi comes and instead of trying to convince the prince he isn't a rooster, he convinces the prince that he can be a rooster, and still do human things.

The story ends with the prince living life just like a prince is supposed to. But sometimes, when he's alone, he'll take off his clothes and crow a time or two -- just to check.

The Supreme Court case involves Anthony Novak, who was arrested after he spoofed the Parma, Ohio, police force in Facebook posts.

The posts were published over 12 hours and included an announcement of new police hiring “strongly encouraging minorities to not apply.” Another post promoted a fake event in which child sex offenders could be “removed from the sex offender registry and accepted as an honorary police officer.”

After being acquitted of criminal charges, the man sued the police for violating his constitutional rights. But a federal appeals court ruled the officers have “qualified immunity” and threw out the lawsuit.

1. God, I hate qualified immunity. How would that even APPLY in this case?

Here's the Onion's SCOTUS brief. It is just as hilarious as you'd expect from The Onion, and deadly serious. Solid rundown of the history of parody in speaking truth to power and the legal traditions that protect parody and satire and their importance. It also gives details on Novak's case and why Novak is a satirist/parodist who deserves protection as such.

But I have a fediverse account on Mastodon, where ‘viral’ posts really aren’t a thing.

And once or twice I’ve made a short post about whatever thing, and it’s ended up shared, liked, etc over a hundred times. And for a week I would open up Fedi and go ‘okay, it was a good post, but I posted it a while ago and can we move on now?!?!’

Months later, someone will notice one of those posts (how?!?!) and suddenly I’ll get inundated with noticifications.

So... I want more Tumblr engagement. Give me the notes!

Would like to add, from the more secular side of Jewish Spirituality, that it's ok if your religious and cultural practices never reach other people's goals. If you don't adopt everything, because you don't get around to it or don't really want to or straight up don't believe/ don't find religious meaning in a specific part. Like my mom says, there are as many Correct ways to be jewish as there are jewish people, and while preserving traditions and culture is an admirable goals, what practices you finally adopt, and how much are they like the Mainstream in whatever circle you consider the collective that matters - is business between you and your personal spiritual guidance (I would say god but. Not everybody even does that.)

Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. It is not a religion that happens to be practiced by people called Jews.

Judaism is rooted in peoplehood, a specific culture from a specific time that has developed over the centuries but nevertheless share a common history and language. (Edit: In this way, Judaism has a lot more in common with indigenous religions than with Christianity or Islam.)

Wait says the yellow light, twinkling in between. 

Yes, the amount of words coming out of me can be overpowering, overwhelming, in massive excess, etc.

word-flood

word-squall

The new girl: what's film?

Me: ... film. Like... film that goes in a film camera.

New girl: what's that mean?

Me: ... before cameras were digital.

New girl: how did you do it before digital?

Me: format?

New girl: yeah what do I do?

Me: you... put the usb in. Then you make a new folder on it and rename it with (name, date, location)

New girl: but how do I do that?

There's a lot of assumed technical literacy because we had a whole generation brought up on desktop computers, but now it's one that was brought up on phones, tablets, and chromebooks. Phones are easier to use, but that means the users have never had to work around the daily problems presented by most desktop environments.