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Just doing my part to help keep the NME’s modernized. (Props to the Young Wizards slack chat denizens for their help.)

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I’m gonna work these into everyday conversation.

What to say instead of "trivially"

This comes from a very long list of alternative phrases and words that was used to create “a program that will insert condescending adverbial phrases before any statement in a math proof”. But use it where you will - I’m sure other fields can benefit. Tag yourself, I’m “By abstract nonsense“.

By circular reasoning we see that 

There is a marvellous proof (which is too long to write here) that 

Figure 2 (not shown here) makes it clear that 

It is beyond the scope of this course to prove that

Only idealogues and sycophants would debate whether

The Math Gods demand that

For legal reasons I am required to disclose that

Remember the basic laws of common sense: 

Life is too short to prove that

All the cool kids know that

Wherefore said He unto them,

With God as my witness,

As a great man once told me,

Galois died in order to show us that

It pleases the symmetry of the world that

Mama always told me

By Euler

By Fermat 

I know it, you know it, everybody knows that

You of all people should realize that

The proof is left to the reader that 

We need not waste ink in proving that 

It would be an insult to my time and yours to prove that

I shudder to think of the poor soul who denies that 

We don’t want to deprive the reader of the joy of discovering for themselves why,  

Barring causality breakdown, clearly 

Through the careful use of common sense,

According to prophecy,

This won’t be on the test, but 

When one stares at the equations they immediately rearrange themselves to show that

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times,

Our forefathers built this country on the proposition that

By abstract nonsense,

My father told me, and his father before that, and his before that, that

The burden of proof is on my opponents to disprove that

The voices insist that 

Assuming an arbitrary alignment of planets, astrology tells us

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Sadie Doyle listing things is one of my favorite things. I hear that Paul F Tompkins eventually would just let Paget Brewster keep going for much longer than they all intended, just to see what she’s come up with.

Supercut of Sadie Doyle Listing Things

Looked around for this and couldn’t find it anywhere, so I slapped one together (with an assist from Spontaneanation's “cut to” sound).

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This is going to be so cool! I can’t wait to see what people come up with!

Announcing an Invitational!

Show us the stars!

Games Wizards Play gave us an example of what a wizardly science fair would look like, and we’d love to see what all of you can come up with! This Invitational will be a celebration of all things science, and everyone is invited to participate! What is your favorite science thing? Are you passionate about the life cycle of a forest? Can you talk for ages and ages about interstellar space travel? Or, if you have a way to recreate one of the projects we see in Games Wizards Play, that would be great too!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be strictly science based! It can be in the realm of wizardry, too! If you know what the spell diagram the young wizards used on the moon at the end of Wizards at War would look like, or a spell to repair the ozone layer, give it a go!

One example of a project is the classic papier-mâché volcano - maybe to demonstrate how a volcanic eruption can lead to new growth? All projects should be leaning towards a purpose or reducing entropy in some way.

You can make your project ahead of time and bring it to Montréal, or there will be preparation time and space at the Con! There will be a $25 limit on supplies (don’t worry about the exchange rate unless it lets you buy that last thing you need to demonstrate how Jupiter and Saturn resonate).

Our judges are TBD, but everyone is welcome to walk around and observe, leave comments or tokens, or ask questions of the presenter!

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with! If you have any questions or comments, please email events@crossingscon.org.

CrossingsCon will take place June 21-23, 2019, at Hyatt Regency Montreal, Montreal, Canada. Badges are on sale here.

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...what’s “Up Duck”?

Should I fight an urge to buy 6 ducks and call them Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange and Charm?

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Holy shit, a body positivity post that speaks to me.

Man, when I was like 16 I got so sick of being made fun of for being the fat kid that I took an axe down inna woods, chopped down a tree, and started doing log-lifts all the time. I got strong as fuck, but I didn’t lose no weight. I actually got bigger.

Same thing happened when I got into fighting. I got even stronger, and I got *fast*, man, and nimble, like a cat. Still chubby.

Body-building culture is a bunch of crap, my dude. Functional muscle is not necessarily toned or lean. You can be swole as hell and still be heavy. And that’s cool.

Embrace your inner barbarian. And when fatphobic little gym twinks try to body shame you, you should DESTROY THEM with your MIGHTY AXE

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That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.

when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c

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Once again, it’s time to remind people about this. If your church is planning a seder, ask them to stop and do something instead that’s outreach, not appropriation.

dear Christian friends: PSA

therenegadegabbai:

dear Christian friends! since we’re now approaching Easter and Pesach…

if you’re a Christian in the US, you’ve probably seen a church advertise a seder. [a seder (lit: order) is a Jewish festive meal, often for the holiday of Pesach, or Passover]. churches will often put on seders for Easter in a misguided attempt to connect to the last supper, or will use it to celebrate Pesach in a Christian manner. this might have happened in your church. you might have attended it.

[psa: i don’t blame you for being taught that this was okay! but,] here are some reasons why that’s a problem:

seders are a specifically Jewish ritual. the same concerns about appropriation apply here–this is a sacred practice by us and for us, and if you’re not invited to participate (which often happens! talk to your Jewish friends!), it is harmful for you to take our ritual and use it to suit your own purposes.

Jesus was a Jew. cool! let’s talk about it! interfaith dialogue is my jam. but Christianity has been a separate tradition from Judaism for 2000 years. you have your own holy traditions and practices, as do we, and all of those have changed over the last two millenia. Jesus’ Judaism looked very different than today’s, not least because he lived in a time when there was still a Temple in Jerusalem. in his time, Pesach focused on a physical korban, or sacrifice at the Temple, and the rabbinic extrapolations that formed the modern seder had not been set down in writing. while the modern seder uses ritual foods and texts to recall or fulfill similar functions to the korbanot, it is not the same as a celebration of Pesach that would have occurred during the Second Temple Era. that the holy figure of your faith celebrated a ritual that shares ancient roots with our modern ones does not entitle you to the modern ritual.

the above applies whether or not the last supper was in fact a Pesach meal. biblical historians can debate this more completely than i can, but in either case, the modern Jewish seder is the result of 2000 years of Jewish development independent of Christianity. it is not yours.

also, given that one of the central tenets of our tradition is that Moshiach, or the messiah, has not yet come, it’s pretty squicky for us to see a messianic group appropriating a Jewish practice in service of their messiah.

also, you all have some pretty cool practices as far as i can see! you have a beautiful and vast tradition to draw from when celebrating Easter and other holidays. why appropriate when you could be celebrating something wholly your own?

the history of antisemitism is long and checkered, and unfortunately has quite a lot to do with Christianity. Christianity has been a major body in the oppression, disenfranchisement, and murder of Jews for centuries. whether accusing us of killing Jesus, relegating us to ghettoes, perpetuating damaging stereotypes, limiting our citizenship, encouraging and engaging in large-scale murders of Jewish communities, expelling us from cities and nations, forcing conversions, or many, many other acts of antisemitic violence over the years, the church has consistently given religious power to antisemitic positions. while this has improved in certain places in recent years, it’s a long history. and its effects are still felt today–even in Christian-majority places where physical violence has become less common (though by no means absent), Jews have to fight for our ability to celebrate real Pesach, often facing the possibility of retaliation when taking time off of work or school, while Christian holidays are made federal. elsewhere, Jews continue to hide in our homes during the Easter season to avoid those set on revenge for Jesus’ death. it rankles when anyone takes our traditions, but when the people in question are part of a legacy that has, through physical and institutional violence, prevented us from celebrating them ourselves, it is all the more harmful.

antisemitism related to Pesach specifically has also had a massive and devastating impact on Jewish communities around the globe. the blood libel, one of the most pernicious antisemitic myths, accuses Jews of kidnapping and murdering Christian children in order to use their blood to make matzah, the unleavened bread used in Pesach seders. it has been used to call all Jews child-killers, bloodthirsty, predatory, and cruel. it was an impetus behind most of the major European-Christian acts of antisemitic violence, including the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and pogroms, and is still in use today, all around the world. the very observance of Pesach has been shaped by this violence–for example, many Ashkenazi Jewish communities still have a practice of using white or raisin wine instead of red for their seders, simply because the danger of being killed for having a cup of red liquid on a Pesach table was so great. for the right to celebrate this holiday in particular, millions (and no, i am not exaggerating) of Jews have been murdered. Pesach is a celebration of our freedom from bondage, but it has also been a time of fear. you can have a seder on a whim. we put our lives on the line. 

please respect our history. if you have questions, my inbox is always open, and if you’d like to learn what a real seder is like, so is my door!

further reading

SO, what can you do? if you see a local church advertising a seder and are in a position to speak out, do so. if you’re not, that’s okay. but start these conversations whenever you can. and you can always, of course, get in touch with your local Jewish community and learn about actual Jewish practices! appropriation is not the only way to connect to Jews or Judaism. let’s celebrate these springtime holidays in the spirit of interfaith understanding!

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I’m so glad I’m not the only one who did this.

So I saw Black Panther today and it was fantastic but real talk I’ve been reading “T'chaka�� and “T'challa” thinking the ‘ch’ was anglicizing a [x] sound like it does in like “Chanukah” or like. “Challah”. So to find out it’s just straight up a ch sound was a Discovery and now I’ve gotta change how I’ve been mentally pronouncing it.

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I haven’t seen the movie yet, but dang do I love this.

i haven’t yet seen black panther, but i have like so many questions in terms of Wakanda Jews.

Like at what point did the isolationism start in Wakanda so like up to where did we were last all on the same page in terms of various sefarim and interpretations of Halachot and Jewish history.

Cause like I can’t imagine if I found out for the first time about the Holocaust so like imagine Jews from Wakanda finding out for the first time.

But also imagine them finding out that for the we are also by the millions back in our homeland and able to freely live and visit there for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple.

Also imagine all the sefarim and minhagim that Wakanda Jews have written and come up with that the rest of the Jewish population don’t know about.

Like I would love to know Wakanda Jews traditions.

Like think of all the new Zemirot and tunes to be learnt.

And like just like there is Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Yiddish there must be must versions mixing the various languages spoken by the people of Wakanda with Hebrew.

Also like what do their decorations look like for their Sukkot, and like how to they design their kippot, ketubahs, menorahs, shuls, mikvahs, mezuzah covers, haggadahs, and more.

What do their wedding look like and what traditions do they do.

Like I’m just brimming with questions as to what Jewish life is like in Wakanda and what the Jews there have learnt.

Because think of all the Halacha questions that needed to be answered because they have such advanced technology and with new technology comes a million and one Halacha questions.

Like one of the really cool things about Jews is that no matter where in the world and when in time there are some things that just are always the same there is still just so much history and culture and traditions and philosophy and food to be shared 

I can’t help but think that in this universe where Wakanda exists for Jews it must be a really exciting time.

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We’re Hiring!

Come join our staff of awesome creative nerds! The open positions are: Head of Merchandise, Webmaster, and Assistant PR Director. 

Send your resume and cover letter to pr@crossingscon.org

We will be conducting rolling interviews, so apply ASAP!

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One of my favorite authors in the whole world has hit a financial snag and is in danger of losing her house: http://dianeduane.com/outofambit/a-difficult-appeal/ 

@dduane is a delightful human and a wonderful author.  Her books are full of life, and good people making the best choices they can.  They make me laugh and cry still on the 10000000th read.

Like modern wizards, and YA, and talking trees, and arrogant but delightful alien princes, and little sisters becoming intergalactic badasses, and kindly whales, and sentient, feral helicopters?  Get all NINE young wizards books in DRM-free formats for $20: https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/our-inventory/products/young-wizards-new-millennium-editions-9-volume-box-set

Like cats, and wizards, and cats who are wizards?  https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/feline-wizards 

Want to try her writing out first before buying?  https://ebooksdirect.co/collections/freebies 

Pls consider being kind to both a lovely author and to yourself, and pick up some quality reading. (And once you’re in love with her books, come talk to me about’em.  And maybe consider joining the YW slack, which is also full of lovely people saying nice things.  And puns.)

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@shamrockjolnes I’m calling you out.

writing style: author from the 1800s with a severe love of commas whose sentences last half a page 

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The first short story I ever read – not for a school assignment, just for me – was Ursula K Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.  I read it in 1991, at the Zaul Memorial Library in Saginaw, Michigan.  I read it in a collection of short stories – or maybe a magazine?  I honestly don’t recall – and then I read it again, and I renewed it three times (which was the limit, back then), and then I had to have it so badly I painstakingly photocopied each page and stapled it together and brought it home.  The whole thing only cost me fifty cents to copy and take home with me forever*.  

It was so many firsts for me, all at once. It fucking blew my mind.

You could contain something that powerful, that many revelations, in that few words?  The story was TINY.  I could keep it in a folder in my trapper keeper and take it everywhere.  I could read it almost everywhere!

It was a story about an idea, more than about the plot or the characters, even.  You could… do that?  You could just write things, and stuff doesn’t have to Happen the way it does in novels, in some kind of concrete set of scenes in an order that makes sense?  You can talk about things that have happened and are happening and will happen again all at once, and you don’t have to make your story about Stan Manly, the Man who Things Happen To?  You can make it about a people, a city, a town?

And you could address the reader directly?  You could make the story about them, you could tell them things, you could send images right to their mind like that? You didn’t have to be coy, and you didn’t have to put it all out there?  You could just ask the reader and if you ask the right questions, it all comes together in like, a personal way?

And a woman could write this?  Not fluff, not genre, but literature?**  Girls wrote this stuff too???  Not just girls, not pretty twenty-somethings with ponytails and Appropriately Cute Skirts, but old ladies who looked like they had a secret, with white hair and the weight of wisdom staring out of their author photo.

And things like this could be literature?**  Like, proper award winning literature that makes it into Important Looking Collections and Best Ofs and stuff?  It doesn’t have to be 350 pages of Historical Truth.  Five pages of an idea.  Just.  Five pages, clean and pure, of something that never was, just a dream you had, just a thought, and it was Real Important Writing.

And Literature could make you feel like this?  It wasn’t just for fun, it was for learning and knowing and for your heart as much as your head?  I cried for the child in Omelas, because I was 11 and I didn’t know what else to do.  I cried.***  

And your heart breaking, did you know that can be a good thing?  It can mean that you feel and understand, that you’re not broken but a real, whole person who wants good things, that no matter how much you dissociate, you’re still a part of this world.  Reading that story would ground me, it would help me come back to the world.  I didn’t know why but it did.

And then you can request all this stuff by the same author, and it all comes flooding in to you from all the branches of the libraries all over your town, and you understand for the first time how some people can have a favorite author, and some authors can have a voice.  You can understand what it feels like to have someone reach out to you through time and give you words that feel like they were written just for you.

I wrote her a letter, once, and she never wrote me back, but I will forever hope that she read it at least, my shaky thirteen-year-old handwriting that said something to the tune of Thank you so much for writing what you did, because my life is better now that I’ve read it, and you’re my favorite forever, and thank you.

And now she’s gone, and though we never met I’m sitting here at my desk at work crying all over again, crying my heart out, because the loss of her is palpable and real, because there’s a hole in the universe that’ll never get filled, because the collective wisdom of the human race has slipped, ever so slightly, without her.

I miss you.  Thank you.  The end.

——– 

* Oh, that dime-a-page copy machine at the front of the library was my friend for like, most of the 90s.

**I’ve learned a lot about literature since then, and about the bullshit of the genre ghetto, and exactly what women could write, but back then I had only the opinion of a few banal elementary teachers and some old english textbooks in my head.

*** And when I got older I cried for the ones who walked away.  And when I got older still I cried for the ones who stayed.  And then for the thought that I might stay, if I were there, and what that meant about me.  And then for how hard it was going to be for me to change.

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I feel all of this so hard. I grew up with a Sega Genesis but I was never really a video game kid. I literally dropped Skyrim after an hour because I couldn’t understand the interface, and that’s baffled my friends, except for maybe a “well, it was designed for console” — but I don’t think I’ve had understood it on console either.

There’s an argument for some games to be able to assume literacy, but there should also be an entry point for people who aren’t so well-versed.

one thing i think is interesting, as someone who basically grew up playing video games non-stop, is how some types of video game just don’t gel with people 

like, it’s easy to forget that, even though i’m pretty bad at most games, that my skill at handling video games is definitely “above average.” as much as i hate to put it like this, i’d say my experience level is at “expert” solely because I can pick up any game controller and understand how to use it with no additional training. 

a friend of mine on twitter posted a video of him stuck on a part of samus returns. the tutorial area where it teaches you how to ledge-grab. the video is of him jumping against the wall, doing everything but grabbing the ledge, and him getting frustrated 

i’ve been playing games all my life, so i’d naturally intuit that i should jump towards the ledge to see what happens 

but he doesn’t do that.

it’s kinda making me realize that as games are becoming more complex and controllers are getting more buttons, games are being designed more and more for people who already know how to play them and not people with little to no base understanding of the types of games they’re playing 

so that’s got me thinking: should video games assume that you have zero base knowledge of video games and try to teach you from there? should Metroid: Samus Returns assume that you already know how to play a Metroid game and base its tutorial around that, or should it assume that you’ve never even played Mario before? 

it’s got me thinking about that Cuphead video again. you know the one. to anyone with a lot of experience with video games, especially 2D ones, we would naturally intuit that one part of the tutorial to require a jump and a dash at the same time.

but most people lack that experience and that learned intuition and might struggle with that, and that’s something a lot of people forget to consider. 

it reminds me a bit of the “land of Punt” that I read about in this Tumblr post. Egypt had this big trading partner back in the day called Punt and they wrote down everything about it except where it was, because who doesn’t know where Punt is? and now, we have no idea where it was, because everyone in Egypt assumed everyone else knew.

take that same line of thinking with games: “who doesn’t know how to play a 2D platform game?” nobody takes in to consideration the fact that somebody might not know how to play a 2D game on a base level, because that style of gameplay is thoroughly ingrained in to the minds of the majority of gamers. and then the Cuphead situation happens.

the point of this post isn’t to make fun of anybody, but to ask everyone to step back for a second and consider that things that they might not normally consider. as weird as it is to think about for people that grew up playing video games, anyone who can pick up a controller with thirty buttons on it and not get intimidated is actually operating at an expert level. if you pick up a playstation or an Xbox controller and your thumbs naturally land on the face buttons and the analog stick and your index fingers naturally land on the trigger buttons, that is because you are an expert at operating a complex piece of machinery. you have a lifetime of experience using this piece of equipment, and assuming that your skill level is the base line is a problem.

that assumption is rapidly becoming a problem as games become more complex. it’s something that should be considered when talking about games going forward. games should be accessible, but it’s reaching a point where even Nintendo games are assuming certain levels of skill without teaching the player the absolute basics. basics like “what is an analog stick” and “where should my fingers even be on this controller right now.” 

basically what i’m saying is that games are becoming too complex for new players to reasonably get in to and are starting to assume skill levels higher than what should be considered the base line. it’s becoming a legitimate problem that shouldn’t be laughed at and disregarded. it’s very easy to forget that thing things YOU know aren’t known by everyone and that idea should be taken in to consideration when talking about video games. 

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This is my winter jam.

Sunny Winter aesthetic