are we not all, spiritually, full of walnut hulls?

The gift I got my roommate for Christmas.

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

THOU ART CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

*Gregorian chanting*

13.21

*leper bell ringing*

HIGH MEDIAEVAL FM

*recording of John Lackland sobbing as he signs the Magna Carta*

WHENCE COMETH NAUGHT BUT LITURGIES

LITURGIES

AND MORE LITURGIES

*Templar knights praying out loud*

THIS ISN’T THY GRANDMOTHERES STATION

I ventured out into the night to return you to me- But I left too late. I searched. And I searched. But you were always out of reach. And I was so scared, and so tired. I returned home, and hoped that soon you would too.

You didn't.

Instead, I heard the echo of your voice, over an impossible distance. The voice you're about to hear belongs to a dead man.

Do you enjoy my posts pointing and laughing at terrible attorneys?

Do you like news that is sourced from original legal filings?

Do you think the public should have not just the right, but the practical ability, to access public records?

Well, do I have an opportunity for you!

In the U.S. even though (most) federal court records are public documents, it costs money to actually access these documents - 10 cents a page!

This can add up fast when you are talking about legal filings. For example, if you followed along with my recent posts about Sir Clownshoes, his response to the Court's Show Cause order was 112 pages, including exhibits. The reason I was able to make those posts without paying the U.S. government $11 was because of a wonderful site called CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/). They have a browser extension that automatically adds court documents that the user purchases from PACER (the federal site that costs money) to their public site (https://free.law/recap). That way, only one person has to pay $11, instead of everyone single person who wants to point and laugh.

What does this have to do with you?

CourtListener recently launched a new project that allows users to indicate documents that they need/want access to, but cannot pay for themselves, their "Pray and Pay" Project (https://www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-and-pay/)

Anyone can register for a PACER account. (https://pacer.uscourts.gov/register-account/pacer-case-search-only) (You don't need to be an attorney, or even in the U.S.! You do need to give your name, DOB, address, and other contact information, however.) And every three months, you can download up to $30 worth of documents - that is, 300 pages, for free.

That means, you - yes you! - can register for a PACER account, download the RECAP extension, and then, four times a year, help provide researches, litigants, interested parties, and shitposters alike access to public records! All without having to pay a cent!

Alternatively, if you need or want access to a public court document, but don't have the funds/can't make a PACER account for some reason, you can request the document through CourtListener. (You do still need to register with CourtListener, but it requires far less information.)

As of the time of this post, there are 1,007 pending requests for documents. Just 17 people could fulfill all those requests, right now, for free.

Also, what prompted the Second Intifada (on paper), was that a Jewish politician went to visit the Temple Mount after the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf illegally excavated and dumped over 10 dump-trucks' worth of priceless artifacts within the Temple Mount.

And they slaughtered thousands of our civilians for it.

Fuck this article, but the headline spot on.

A Jewish man merely visiting the holiest place in the entire Jewish religion, that Jews aren't allowed to go near to "respect" the religion that built over it, and that alone prompted slaughtering thousands of our civilians.

And people try to, "Well... both sides" it.

"Wellllll, a Jewish politician visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque made Muslims scared that they'd make changes to it, so you can understand why--"

a) Like when they "made changes" to our holiest site in the world by destroying and dumping tens of tonnes of our holiest artifacts??

b) A Jew visiting a Mosque shouldn't prompt slaughtering thousands of Jews.

I shouldn't have to say that.

And don't, "Well, apartheid--" me:

This was just after the Camp David Summit.

Just after the Israeli government agreed to all of Yassir Araf's demands for Palestinian statehood and then some: All of Gaza, 96% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem as the capitol, plus full monetary reparations for those displaced in 1948 War that they started.

And Arafat responded by not just rejecting statehood, but his Waqf by vandalizing and destroying ten dump-trucks worth of the holiest Jewish artifacts from the holiest Jewish place in the world.

And Jews were (and are) expected to be completely fine with it.

"They destroyed literally tonnes of our holiest artifacts, but we visited their mosque, so it's really all the same."

"They stabbed, shot, and blew up thousands of our civilians across a bloody summer, but one of our guys visited their mosque, so tit-for-tat."

Fuck that.

-

If you disagree with me about any of this, that's fine.

I don't care.

See, the Waqf's illegal excavation of the Temple Mount has a part two: The Temple Mount Sifting Project. We know where all the rubble was dumped, and this organization, with the help of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, has spent decades sifting through it for all the priceless archeological treasures.

But one of the most important elements of an archeological find, perhaps the most important element, is the context. Not only where it was found, but how deep. What was above it? What was it above?

And all of that context was permanently, irrevocably destroyed. If a 3000 year old shard is found, we have to ask: has it been there for three thousand years? Or could it have spent two thousand years elsewhere before being moved?

If the Temple Mount hadn't been desecrated, we'd find that shard in a layer of debris that would prove how long it had been there. But as is, we can't be totally certain. We can't prove it.

I've volunteered with the sifting project twice. The first time, I found a piece of Herodian tile--that is, the specific type of tile that he used in all his major building projects, which we also see at Masada.

I held in my hands corroboration of the contemporary account of Herod renovating the Temple and adding the retaining walls and plaza that are still standing today, the structure the Dome of the Rock was built on.

But that evidence, and every other piece of evidence the project finds, has, and always will have, an asterisk.

A bit of room for doubt that will always be there, because the religious authority descended from the conquerors of the land deliberately destroyed the evidence of the cultural history that predated their presence.

And yet, somehow, we are the real imperialist colonizers, and our presence is the real desecration.

When you factor in the fact that Jews are so so few, the amount of material culture within the archaeological is infinitesimally more finite, especially when compared to say the Roman Empire or the Arab Conquest. The scale and depth of just this incident of Temple Mount looting (note the Jordanian government also did significant damage during their occupation of the West Bank, this is not an isolated incident) is unimaginable.

The school system I grew up in put an absolutely ungodly amount of pressure on kids to Show Up Every Day No Matter What. Many schools are like this, but looking back, my town’s was borderline fucking dystopian. They asked me why I didn’t just “postpone” a surgery at one point— when I was fifteen— to give you an idea of how monumentally obtuse these people were.

So, in elementary school, I started having chicken pox symptoms, right? They were mild because I was vaccinated (yay!) but my mom recognized them quickly and took me to the doctor, because my mom is a reasonable human being with standards. The doctor said “yup, you’ve got those pox, it may seem mild but please for the love of god DO NOT take her to school, she is very contagious even though she may FEEL okay.”

So I had to stay home from school until I got clearance from my doctor to go back. I was an angry little gremlin the whole time, because I wanted to go to the school library and read books about the human skull, but my mother said, “no, you cannot leave this house, and do not scratch the bumps please.” So I sat at home and tried not to scratch the bumps, like a good little gremlin.

A few days into my Chicken Pox Related House Arrest, we got a letter from the school. I was far from the only person with chicken pox, as it so happened. Like… a tenth of my second grade class had Confirmed Pox. We all fell ill within DAYS of each other.

So how did this happen, you ask? Well, a kid had chicken pox, and he came to school anyway. “Ah, well perhaps they didn’t know,” you may very well say. “Maybe his parents didn’t notice!” No. No, they noticed. In fact they KNEW it was CHICKEN POX. They sent him to school anyway.

The kid’s parents…….. were, in fact, teachers at the school. And they KNOWINGLY made him go to school sick, because they didn’t want to risk hurting his precious “perfect attendance” record. They figured that since he wasn’t, like, Literally Dying, it was better for him not to miss school. Never mind the fact that they were actively endangering hundreds of little kids.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. A kid came to class with mumps because he ‘couldn’t afford to miss’. Guess what happened? Mumps outbreak! Diseases are, as it turns out, good at being diseases! Vaccinations are phenomenal, but they can only do so much, and some people rely on herd immunity to not be killed by preventable illness.

This entire attitude needs to die. It’s dangerous. Food service workers are forced to show up sick, little kids are forced to show up sick, college students show up sick because they’re afraid of flunking out.