Painted Things and Giant's Rings

The time that shabbat happens is not a subjective judgement -- the reason, e.g., we say "m'kadesh haShabbat v'Yisrael v'haZmanim" during kiddush on shabbos-yuntif is that the Chagim are mekadesh THROUGH Bnei Yisrael -- we are the ones who determine and have authority over their time, and the cycle of chagim is set by Jews as a community. Whereas in contrast Shabbat is mekadesh in its own right -- its cycle is part of the universe and is independent of any actions of subjective experience of people.

So e.g., if you did a SINGLE time-loop, you would not keep shabbos a day earlier than everyone else after coming out of it -- existing in the regular flow of time and the world as it is, it would be shabbos for you on the same day it is shabbos for the rest of the world.

Having said that, I would say that being STUCK in a time-loop would be a similar situation to traveling deep above the Arctic Circle, or some other place where the cycle of days no longer functions. In those cases -- well, there's a machloket as to whether you should hold by Jerusalem time or hold by the time of the place you left, for when to make shabbos. But in this case Jerusalem time is inaccessible, so "hold by the place where you left" is the only option. This would be, therefore, "track the hours passing for you and at the time when it would have been shabbos in the place and timeline where you left, you should make shabbos at that time/on that cycle.

Is what I would think the halacha would probably hold.

(And interesting consequence of this argument is that if, while in this time-loop, you traveled to a different timezone, I think the argument would still imply that you should do shabbos by your original timezone, which might be when it is still daylight in the place you are at.)

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

Caper in the Castro is a legendary video game, not because legions of die-hard fans continue to play it, but because it was thought to be lost forever. Now, what is largely considered to be the first LGBTQ-focused video game (it was released in 1989) is on the Internet Archive for anybody to play.

The game is a noir point-and-click that puts the player in the (gum)shoes of a private detective named Tracker McDyke who is, in case you couldn’t guess by the name, a lesbian. McDyke must unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Tessy LaFemme, a transgender woman, in San Francisco’s Castro district, an historically gay neighbourhood.

OOOOOHhh!

The game was released as charityware – freely, with a strong request to give a donation an AIDS Charity of their choice. I’d like to push towards still following that and donating, if you’re able.

Reform Jews who use electricity on Shabbat are just as observant. Because Reform rabbis did the same work of Torah law interpretation, and came up with a different answer than orthodox Jews, but using the same process and approach to reading the text. They didn't go, "this is inconvenient so we're just not gonna do it." They said, "where orthodoxy sees electricity as something that may create a spark and therefore violates the melachot around making fire, we see it as a current, like water flowing, and just as it is permitted to use a faucet on Shabbat, so is flipping an electric switch."

If you choose to not be observant because it's not for you, that's fine. But orthodoxy is not the only way to be observant of Jewish practice. There's no line of what makes you observant and what doesn't, and that doesn't just go for Shabbat but it's the easiest example to illustrate my point. The Torah just says, "observe the Shabbat." That's it. If you look around on Friday night and go, "oh hey it's Shabbat, huh?" then tell me how that isn't observing the Shabbat? If you light candles and make kiddush and then go out to a movie, haven't you observed it? The Rabbis in the Babylonian era interpreted what Jewish practice looks like in a diaspora without the cultural/religious structure around a central temple, but that has been re-interpreted in every generation since and continues to be.

The real question is, are you making informed choices about your practice or are you just doing what works for you? Which is also fine, by the way. The thing that bothers me is when people think that only orthodox Jewish practices are "real" or legitimate. An orthodox friend of mine once started shit talking Reform Jews to me (why???) and how they aren't observant like she is. So I asked her if she tears her toilet paper on Shabbat and she said yes, of course. I pointed out that there are a lot of charedi Jews who would consider that a blatant violation of Shabbat and that, in their eyes, she wouldn't be considered shomer Shabbat. It's all a spectrum, there's no ONE right way.

Which! like! still doesn't make them any "less Jewish", any "worse Jews", any "less religious" or "less observant" of their Judaism (an an objective sense -- colloquially I might use phrasing like that, from a subjective perspective, because it's harder to phrase around it).

What I meant was that Reform Judaism has a considered approach to its perspective on halacha that is equally as methodical and valid as that of other denominations. The implication wasn't meant to be that its approach is the same with different outcomes (I don't think Abraham Geiger and Maimonides would agree on a lot of things but I also don't think they would throw hands the way some charedi rabbis would today. Also I'd pay good money to see Geiger and Maimonides debate halacha). The point was that the Reform approach is just as valid, because at the outset of the Reform movement rabbis (like Geiger) also put in the work, read and interpreted halachic texts, and even if that work reached the conclusion of, "it's up to the individual," their work was just as valid and considered as that of any other denomination, even if how they did it was different. To me that's halachic interpretation, because it's an informed approach to Jewish law that reaches a conclusion which determines pathways to halachic practice - even that practice is, "these laws are not binding, therefore it is up to the individual to decide what to take on." Basically, in the same vein as the idea that ultimately, the Torah is vague about a lot of aspects of halacha in terms of practical applications or observances, so that "observe the shabbat" can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, so too can the idea of how to interpret anything be diverse, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

Nevertheless, Reform Judaism has a set, considered approach to interpreting halacha that sets it apart from other denominations, and also a system of leadership that is involved in determining or upholding practice, despite the emphasis on individualism. This is why the URJ exists in the U.S. and Canada, the MRJ and Liberal Judaism in the UK, etc. I felt it important to point this out because there's a lot of bias among Jews with stricter practices (especially orthodoxim and charedim), who think that Reform Jews are just lapsed Jews who don't engage with Jewish practice, are basically assimilated, and don't do much in the way of observance beyond getting a Chanukah bush. It felt wrong to go off on my little rant without addressing this, especially because when I wrote it there was a conversation echoing in my head that I had with a friend years ago, which was a different one - with a different ortho friend - than what I referred to in the post. This friend was making fun of how Reform Jews don't have any kind of Jewish practice and have to ask their rabbi for advice if they want to do anything. So I asked him, "isn't that what you also do?" And he got very quiet. Struggled to come up with a reply. And then changed the subject. So it felt important to me to acknowledge that more modern branches of Judaism (and I didn't even address Reconstructionist or Renewal or Masorti) have just as valid an approach to how they view and interpret halacha, and to be honest even though it's not the same as Conservative and Orthodox, there's a lot more commonality there than people realize. It's what the practical application of the outcome of these approaches looks like that's so different.

And while Reform Judaism does have a much more individualistic approach to observance, there are certain halachot that are relevant to Jewish practice that Reform rabbis have influentially interpreted - such as the idea that electricity flows like water, and is thus a current that can be turned on and off. However individualistic a branch of Judaism might be, it's nevertheless a community based religion, so there will be overarching ideas that connect people through shared practice. Reform Judaism doesn't consider halacha binding, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an organized system of religious leadership and thought leadership that forms perspective on halacha to determine communal practices. There's just more openness in certain Jewish denominations/communities about whether or not people uphold that practice. Ie. most people in a Reform shul won't really care whether or not you share their practice, whereas it creates much more tension if you deviate in an Orthodox or even Modern Orthodox shul - but even then it's often more an issue of "it's not polite to bring this up" as opposed to, say, deviating in practice in a charedi shul, in which case you've committed an egregious offence that will incur people's judgment and potentially cost you in real-life consequences. Conversely, when I've gone into Reform communities, whether a shul or just a Seder table, it's made people uncomfortable when it came up that my practice is stricter and more along Conservadox lines, though that's likely because of the associations people have with those communities and the politics of many participants, or how they're perceived. (Shoutout to that one guy at a house party after college who assumed that because I didn't use my phone on Shabbat I was homophobic which... was a leap, shall we say.)

Reform Jews who use electricity on Shabbat are just as observant. Because Reform rabbis did the same work of Torah law interpretation, and came up with a different answer than orthodox Jews, but using the same process and approach to reading the text. They didn't go, "this is inconvenient so we're just not gonna do it." They said, "where orthodoxy sees electricity as something that may create a spark and therefore violates the melachot around making fire, we see it as a current, like water flowing, and just as it is permitted to use a faucet on Shabbat, so is flipping an electric switch."

If you choose to not be observant because it's not for you, that's fine. But orthodoxy is not the only way to be observant of Jewish practice. There's no line of what makes you observant and what doesn't, and that doesn't just go for Shabbat but it's the easiest example to illustrate my point. The Torah just says, "observe the Shabbat." That's it. If you look around on Friday night and go, "oh hey it's Shabbat, huh?" then tell me how that isn't observing the Shabbat? If you light candles and make kiddush and then go out to a movie, haven't you observed it? The Rabbis in the Babylonian era interpreted what Jewish practice looks like in a diaspora without the cultural/religious structure around a central temple, but that has been re-interpreted in every generation since and continues to be.

The real question is, are you making informed choices about your practice or are you just doing what works for you? Which is also fine, by the way. The thing that bothers me is when people think that only orthodox Jewish practices are "real" or legitimate. An orthodox friend of mine once started shit talking Reform Jews to me (why???) and how they aren't observant like she is. So I asked her if she tears her toilet paper on Shabbat and she said yes, of course. I pointed out that there are a lot of charedi Jews who would consider that a blatant violation of Shabbat and that, in their eyes, she wouldn't be considered shomer Shabbat. It's all a spectrum, there's no ONE right way.

Which! like! still doesn't make them any "less Jewish", any "worse Jews", any "less religious" or "less observant" of their Judaism (an an objective sense -- colloquially I might use phrasing like that, from a subjective perspective, because it's harder to phrase around it).

being advertised cocaine, on Tumblr dot com ?

no you're being advertised a think tank report that's scaremongering about drugs I think

Look if UK think tanks or Florida Lavender-Scare witch-hunt committees want to actually effectively scaremonger about drugs or homosexuality then they should simply do that in a way that doesn't sound and function like an ad campaign

ill be honest i put way less thought into these. most of them are so so bad

A more serious response is: are those flags up there legible at a distance? I mean, sure, some of them are, but I'm pretty sure many of them aren't. (Most of them are in the "Baaaaaaaaad" category, sure.)

Thanks! I thrive on attention.

I want things to get better here instead of having to leave it behind to be safe!! I literally live in North Carolina i KNOW about the bathroom bills, i KNOW i PROMISE YOU.

Queer people who look down on the south and refuse to acknowledge that there are queer people here infuriate me. The south is not just Bigotry World tm! There are poc here!! There are trans people here! There are queer people and disabled people and tons of other people who deserve your love and support!