Spoilers: shy cat is shy

Can supernatural/sci-fi critters being kosher? We have debated this since at least the second century CE (TL;DR usually yes, if they meet the other criteria, Leviathan lox, anyone?)

what about lab grown or synthetic meats? What about food that's not really anything? How would you do a schmita year with sci-fi fields?

If your community is tied to time and space in a physical sense that drives from Earth (or another planet, for that matter, if we're dealing w/aliens w/religions), how do you deal with that away from Earth? How do you know when holidays start? What direction do you pray? There are Jewish discussions about halacha in space already, many of which extend from older roots around geographic and weather extremes on planet earth. How do I know when rosh Hashanah starts on Mars? Is there a separate Martian one or do I use the earth date? Whose time zone??? Jewish astronauts rotating Earth have done holidays and Shabbat in space, but used a set time zone because sun rise isn't helpful if you're circling the earth several times a day.

Can sufficiently intelligent non-human convert? Does it matter if they are basically human, star trek style or can plant people convert? What if they communicate in a way that is fundamentally different from how a beit din ask questions? What if they can't touch the water in the mikvah?

how does religion work with sci-fi clothing? Do helmet designs interfere with kippt, space suits with tzitzit?

Where does a mezuzah go on a rocket?

What does a bar/bat/bnai mitzvah look like in this sci-fi setting?

On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi!

The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV

Do we have Space Quakers? Space Mormons? Space Catholics? Space Anglicans? What does a "mission to the Martians" look like? How do repentant, formerly-colonial churches react to the opening of a whole new frontier, considering the knowledge they have of real-life colonialism? Are there "Christians against space colonialism" coalitions? Are there a bunch of weird new space evangelists and militant orders? Are there interspecies choirs? Interfaith dialogues with alien religions? What are military chaplains like in the Europan ice war (or whatever)?

and frankly, I have also seen this attitude in fantasy books! historical fantasy that just glosses right over the presence of real world religions or conflates older christian culture with modern christian culture. second world fantasy that alludes to fictional religious lore but actively refuses to engage with it! protagonists that inexplicably have a very modern american atheist attitude about religion in general.

why in fantasy are we refusing to explore the lore of the cultures by waving off the religions *created for the setting* and treating them as pointless and fake without even exploring anything about them? especially when the story has no trouble at all exploring things like magic, true prophecies, demons and spirits, and the literal existence of an afterlife. but it still won't do anything with the religious worldbuilding.

come on! there are so many ways to explore religion in scifi and fantasy, to make them an important part of the worldbuilding, real religions or fictional ones! I love it when authors explore religion in their scifi and fantasy.

Being supportive of trans people and involving us in research about our medical care legitimately has the ability to revolutionize our ability to study human biology, specifically in terms of hormones, cell biology, genetics, neuroscience, and nature vs. nurture - all of which are fields we are just only barely beginning to understand!!!

But nooooooo, that would be too easy and useful and potentially medically revolutionary

Not to mention, you know. Letting us revolutionize medical care for trans and nonbinary people in the process

"We have an incredibly shallow understanding of how hormones interact with the brain and body, in large part because it's so impossible to isolate them from every other possible factor"

GEE, SUCH A SHAME there aren't literally thousands of people would leap at the chance to help you start researching that-- oh, wait--

I feel a bit like that "Climate scientists remind world clean energy tech ready to go whenever" comic

"Trans people remind scientists about a ton of cool, revolutionary medical research ready to start literally whenever"

link: https://bsky.app/profile/brainvsbook.bsky.social/post/3llc72lyhu22j

google translate defaulting to chinese at first

okay but for those of us with interests in both the murderbot and the daomu biji fandoms this is kinda hilarious

(english-side-only really, i get that the kanji and hanzi are completely different)

I've only ever seen 弊 used to refer to one's company: 弊社, as the article says.

I've been told 弊 is used to refer to one's own something, and it has a very humble nuance.

So 弊機 translates to something like "I, your humble machine" or "I, who am but a mere machine".

Look inside

75% dropoff rate

Your study inherently selected for people willing to participate in this unpleasant experience, and then you didn't report on what the people who tapped out early had to say, either.

We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.

It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.

An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.

You, as a person on the internet watching things happen, have limited resources to materially affect these things. You can donate to some fundraisers, you can share some educational resources, you can consider involving yourself in organizations that work with this stuff more meaningfully. That's about it.

If you do obtain special skills that can help with a horrible situation, what you will get hammered in there is that when you leave work, you leave work. You take breaks, because if you don't stop dealing with whatever shit you're dealing with to reset and recharge, you will get worse at your job until your mistakes start becoming a liability.

That's for people whose actions actually do something meaningful. If they are obligated to stop and rest, then you, who are just burning yourself out by looking at things without doing anything, absolutely have to.