some dude on the internet i guess

Kiss me I'm jewish💋

“as Eleanor puts it, the system treats life not as "a test that you either pass or fail but instead a class you take." The test comes in the afterlife, when a Good Place architect and a Bad Place architect team up to design a customized scenario that forces you to confront your moral flaws. The test can be anything — from being sent to a fake Good Place "by mistake" to reliving a version of your life — and its difficulty depends on the number of points you earned before death. Regardless of points, if you don't pass the test you're rebooted to take it again and again, with the hope that one day you'll learn enough to ace it and get into the Good Place.

"But wait," interrupts the version of Timothy Olyphant Janet conjured in her void, "how do you learn and grow if you're rebooted?" Thanks for asking, Tim. The trick is that after every reboot, you retain a vague memory of what you learned in your evaluation — like, in Eleanor's words, "a little voice in your head, helping you become a better version of yourself."”

Compare that this description of how the soul is cleansed in the afterlife in Judaism: 

“Gehinom [is not] a place for eternity, but a temporary—albeit terrible—place for the soul to be cleansed. In fact, the vast majority of souls do not stay in Gehinom for more than eleven months. Because we do not presume most people are so sinful as to warrant a twelve month sentence (reserved only for the wicked), the recital of Kaddish for a departed soul, which brings elevation to the soul and relief from Gehinom, is only recited for eleven months and thereafter only on the anniversary (Yartzeit) of death. On Shabbat all souls have an elevation. Souls in Gehinom are given relief, while those in the world of Yetzirah are allowed through the “Amud,” the pillar that connects the two worlds of Yetzirah and Beriah. After the purification of Gehinom, the soul enters the World to Come—the Garden of Eden—where it receives the rewards it earned through work in this world.”

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

i’m literally pale like a vampire

The people who decide who is and isn't "really White", are the people who want to decide who is the ingroup, and who is the outgroup. ie white supremacists.

now, a Jew can -appear- White, that is to say, conform to the social expectations and stereotypes. lots of Jews are White passing. however, the privileges you gain are immediately reversed should your outsider nature be revealed. justifications will be found or invented after the fact (your nose is too big, your hair too curly, you're unhygeinic, etc etc).

When someone shouts “Free Palestine” at a Jew or draws it on a synagogue, or even on like a subway station wall, what are they saying? What are they accomplishing or intending? Do they expect someone walking by will wave a magic wand and withdraw Israeli troops from the West Bank? Do they expect the average person has been somehow unaware of the concept of a Palestine despite being screamed about for the last three years and beyond? No, of course not.

Like the word “good morning” it’s not a phrase that delivers meaning based in the words, it’s just a perfunctory phrase performing a function. In the case of good morning, it’s a greeting used in the morning. In the case of “Free Palestine” it is a solely antisemitic phrase designed to signal being with the new, popular thing (just like Sieg Heil used to be) and designed to attack Jewish people. It’s nothing to do with the phrase itself, it’s how it’s weaponized against Jewish communities and utilized as kind of rebuttal to a Jew wearing a kippah or speaking Hebrew in public. “You’re Jewish/Israeli? Oh yeah, well Free Palestine!” Again, what’s the intention there? There is none except to make the person feel unwanted and in danger.

"What made you change?"

Nothing. I still hold the same beliefs, the same values, the same morals. I'm still the same person I was when I attended Pride, when I volunteered, when I was loudly fighting racism, sexism, and inequality. 

But at some point you found a dusty old sign in your grandfather's attic. You gave it a lick of paint and proudly placed it on the front door.

"NO ZIONISTS ALLOWED"

it reads. "Don't worry" you told me. "We like you. We just mean the racists, the fascists, the evil ones. We don't mean you. You're one of the good ones."

But the thing is, I'm not stupid. And you didn't do a very good job. The paint has already begun to peel, and the original words are peeking through.

But its JUST antizionsim, right guys? It's JUST antizionism.

Yeah, no. This is an example of people in the comments on this post (and no, I won't blur their names or cut them out. They're down there saying this shit with their whole fucking chest). This is what EVERY SINGLE SO-CALLED 'ANTIZIONIST' TOLERATES.

You allowed this shit into your movement. Because, let's be real. The reason so many of you assholes are complaining about "But but but you're making this up!" is because you know the OP is right. You know that the functional result of "antizionism", whether you admit to yourself that it is antisemitic or you're still coping by denying it, is that Jews are not allowed. Because you vet us all. You treat us all like enemies trying to sneak into leftist spaces (gee, where the fuck have I heard that about Jews before?).

Antizionism is antisemitic. Antizionists demand that Jews turn out our pockets and present ourselves for your fucking judgment, so you can decide which of us are "good ones" and which of us deserve to be harassed, to be assaulted, to die for the crime of not assimilating to your bullshit colonizer mindset of "We know your history and desires and culture and people more than you do."

I'm like "Uh, Oma? The fuck?"

And in her sweet little old German lady voice, she shakes her finger and goes "Well, you never know."