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queerasfact · 1 year

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Queer Calendar 2023

We put together a calendar of key (mostly queer) dates at the start of the year to help us with scheduling - so I thought I’d share it around! Including pride and visibility days, some queer birthdays and anniversaries, and a few other bits and bobs. Click the links for more info - I dream one day of having a queer story for every day of the year!

This is obviously not an exhaustive list - if I’ve overlooked something important to you, feel free to add it in the reblogs!

January

3 - Bisexual American jazz-age heiress Henrietta Bingham born 1901

8 - Queer Australian bushranger Captain Moonlite born 1845; gay American art collector Ned Warren born 1860

11 - Pennsylvania celebrates Rosetta Tharpe Day in honour of bisexual musician Rosetta Tharpe

12 - Japanese lesbian author Nobuko Yoshiya born 1896

22 - Lunar New Year (Year of the Rabbit)

24 - Roman emperor Hadrian, famous for his relationship with Antinous, born 76CE; gay Prussian King Frederick the Great born 1712

27 - International Holocaust Remembrance Day

February

LGBT+ History Month (UK, Hungary)

Black History Month (USA and Canada)

1 - Feast of St Brigid, a saint especially important to Irish queer women

5 - Operation Soap, a police raid on gay bathhouses in Toronto, Canada, spurs massive protests, 1981

7 - National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (USA)

18 - US Black lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde born 1934

12 - National Freedom to Marry Day (USA)

19-25 - Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week

March

Women’s History Month

1 - Black Women in Jazz and the Arts Day

8 - International Women’s Day

9 - Bi British writer David Garnett born 1892

12 - Bi Polish-Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky born 1889 or 1890

13 March-15 April - Deaf History Month

14 - American lesbian bookseller and publisher Sylvia Beach born 1887

16 - French lesbian artist Rosa Bonheur born 1822

20 - Bi US musician Rosetta Tharpe born 1915

21 - World Poetry Day

24 - The Wachowski sisters’ cyberpunk trans allegory The Matrix premiers 1999

April

Jazz Appreciation Month

Black Women’s History Month

National Poetry Month (USA)

3 - British lesbian diarist Anne Lister born 1791

8 - Trans British racing driver and fighter pilot Roberta Cowell born 1918

9 - Bi Australia poet Lesbia Harford born 1891; Easter Sunday

10 - National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (USA)

14 - Day of Silence

15 - Queer Norwegian photographer and suffragist Marie Høeg born 1866

17 - Costa-Rican-Mexican lesbian singer Chavela Vargas born 1919

21-22 - Eid al-Fitr

25 - Gay English King Edward II born 1284

26 - Lesbian Day of Visibility; bi American blues singer Ma Rainey born 1886

29 - International Dance Day

30 - International Jazz Day

May

1 - Trans British doctor and Buddhist monk Michael Dillon born 1915

7 - International Family Equality Day

7 - Gay Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky born 1840

15 - Australian drag road-trip comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert premiers in 1994

17 - IDAHOBIT (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia)

18 - International Museum Day

19 - Agender Pride Day

22 - US lesbian tailor and poet Charity Bryant born 1777

22 - Harvey Milk Day marks the birth of gay US politician Harvey Milk 1930

23 - Premier of Pride, telling the story of the 1980s British activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners

24 - Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day; Queer Chinese-Japanese spy Kawashima Yoshiko born 1907

26 - queer American astronaut Sally Ride born 1951

29 - Taiwanese lesbian writer Qiu Miaojin born 1969

June

Pride Month

Indigenous History Month (Canada)

3 - Bisexual American-French performer, activist and WWII spy Josephine Baker born 1906

5 - Queer Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca born 1898; bi English economic John Maynard Keynes born 1883

8 - Mechanic and founder of Australia’s first all-female garage, Alice Anderson, born 1897

10 - Bisexual Israeli poet Yona Wallach born 1944

12 - Pulse Night of Remembrance, commemorating the 2012 shooting at the Pulse nightclub, Orlando

14 - Australian activists found the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands in 2004

18 - Sally Ride becomes the first know queer woman in space

24 - The first Sydney Mardi Gras 1978

25 - The rainbow flag first flown as a queer symbol in 1978

28 - Stonewall Riots, 1969

28 June-2 July - Eid al-Adha

30 - Gay German-Israeli activist, WWII resistance member and Holocaust survivor Gad Beck born 1923

July

1 - Gay Dutch WWII resistance fighter Willem Arondeus killed - his last words were “Tell the people homosexuals are no cowards”

2-9 - NAIDOC Week (Australia) celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture

6 - Bi Mexican artist Frida Kahlo born 1907

12 or 13 - Roman emperor Julius Caesar born c.100BCE

14 - International Non-Binary People’s Day

23 - Shelly Bauman, owner of Seattle gay club Shelly’s Leg, born 1947; American lesbian cetenarian Ruth Ellis born 1899; gay American professor, tattooist and sex researcher Sam Steward born 1909

25 - Italian-Australian trans man Harry Crawford born 1875

August

8 - International Cat Day

9 - Queer Finnish artist, author and creator of Moomins Tove Jansson born 1914

9 - International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

11 - Russian lesbian poet Sofya Parnok born 1885

12 - Queer American blues musician Gladys Bentley born 1907

13 - International Left-Handers Day

22 - Gay WWII Dutch resistance fight Willem Arondeus born 1894

24 - Trans American drag queen and activist Marsha P Johnson born 1945

26 - National Dog Day

30 - Bi British author Mary Shelley 1797

31 - Wear it Purple Day (Australia - queer youth awareness)

September

5 - Frontman of Queen Freddie Mercury born 1946

6 - Trans Scottish doctor and farmer Ewan Forbes born 1912

13 - 1990 documentary on New York’s ball culture Paris is Burning premiers

15-17 - Rosh Hashanah

16-23 - Bisexual Awareness Week

17 - Gay Prussian-American Inspector General of the US Army Baron von Steuben born 1730

23 - Celebrate Bisexuality Day

24 - Gay Australian artist William Dobell born 1889

30 - International Podcast Day

October

Black History Month (Europe)

4 - World Animal Day

5 - National Poetry Day (UK)

5 - Queer French diplomat and spy the Chevalière d’Éon born 1728

8 - International Lesbian Day

9 - Indigenous Peoples’ Day (USA)

11 - National Coming Out Day

16 - Irish writer Oscar Wilde born 1854

18 - International Pronouns Day

22-28 - Asexual Awareness Week

26 - Intersex Awareness Day

31 - American lesbian tailor Sylvia Drake born 1784

November

8 - Intersex Day of Remembrance

12 - Diwali; Queer Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz born c.1648

13-19 - Transgender Awareness Week

20 - Trans American writer, lawyer, activist and priest Pauli Murray born 1910; Transgender Day of Remembrance

27 - Antinous, lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian, born c.111; German lesbian drama Mädchen in Uniform premiers, 1931

29 - Queer American writer Louisa May Alcott born 1832

December

AIDS Awareness Month

1 - World AIDS Day

2 - International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

3 - International Day of Persons with Disabilities

8 - Pansexual Pride Day; queer Swedish monarch Christina of Sweden born 1626

10 - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners host Pits and Perverts concern to raise mining for striking Welsh miners, 1984

14 - World Monkey Day

15 - Roman emperor Nero born 37CE

24 - American drag king and bouncer Stormé DeLarverie born 1920

25 - Christmas

29 - Trans American jazz musician Billy Tipton born 1914

#calendar #queer calendar #queer observances #pride days #queer history #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbt history #gay history #trans history #queer #gay #trans #lesbian #lesbian history

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good-old-gossip · 7 days

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More than two dozen Palestinian journalists working inside and outside of Gaza published a letter on Tuesday calling on American journalists to boycott the annual White House correspondents' dinner, citing the US military support for Israel's war in Gaza that has killed scores of Palestinian journalists.

“As Palestinian journalists, we urgently appeal to you, our colleagues globally, with a demand for immediate and unwavering action against the Biden administration's ongoing complicity in the systematic slaughter and persecution of journalists in Gaza," the letter said.

“For Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the blue press vest does not offer us protection, but rather functions as a red target,” the signatories write in their letter. Many of the letter's signatories chose to remain anonymous, out of fear their public signing of the letter could lead them to be targeted or killed by Israel's military. However, it includes several prominent journalists who have been covering Israel's assault on Gaza from inside the enclave.

Those names include Bisan Owda; Ali Jadallah; Hosam Salem; Mohammed Zaanoun; Ahmed El-Madhoun; and Mohamed Almasri. The letter also includes signatures from renowned journalists working outside of Gaza, such as Mariam Barghouti, Mohammed El Kurd, and Said Arikat, the Washington bureau chief for Al-Quds newspaper. Israel's war on Gaza began in October, after Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 people hostage.

Israel responded with a declaration of war and launched a devastating and indiscriminate bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion of Gaza that has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians. During this time, Israeli forces have also killed at least 125 journalists, which the letter says makes up 10 percent of Gaza's community of journalists. The letter points to the lack of coverage and attention paid to the killing of Gaza's journalists during Israel's war. CNN's Christine Amanpour recently stated that the problem with the coverage of the Gaza war was that "journalists are not on the ground in Gaza". The comment was met with outrage from Palestinian journalists who said the remark equated to an erasure of their work in Gaza. Amanpour quickly clarified that what she meant was there were no "independent, western journalists" in the enclave reporting on the war, but those comments were further criticised as asserting that Palestinian journalists are unable to accurately tell their stories.

“We cannot overlook the White House Correspondents' Dinner’s role in legitimizing and whitewashing the same deadly propaganda and policies coming out of the Biden administration during its daily press briefings by bringing journalists together to sit and laugh with the President, while ignoring his complicity in the assassinations and targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza,” Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said in a statement.

“For our members and colleagues in Gaza, we, the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, call upon our fellow journalists to boycott the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Let absence speak louder than any words we might utter at that table.”

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bodyalive · 2 months

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At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging.

The human body maintains the ability to adapt to exercise at any age, showing that it’s never too late to start a fitness program

By Gretchen Reynolds

For lessons on how to age well, we could do worse than turn to Richard Morgan.

At 93, the Irishman is a four-time world champion in indoor rowing, with the aerobic engine of a healthy 30- or 40-year-old and the body-fat percentage of a whippet. He’s also the subject of a new case study, published last month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, that looked at his training, diet and physiology.

Live well every day with tips and guidance on food, fitness and mental health, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

Its results suggest that, in many ways, he’s an exemplar of fit, healthy aging — a nonagenarian with the heart, muscles and lungs of someone less than half his age. But in other ways, he’s ordinary: a onetime baker and battery maker with creaky knees who didn’t take up regular exercise until he was in his 70s and who still trains mostly in his backyard shed.

Even though his fitness routine began later in life, he has now rowed the equivalent of almost 10 times around the globe and has won four world championships. So what, the researchers wondered, did his late-life exercise do for his aging body?

Lessons on aging from active older people

“We need to look at very active older people if we want to understand aging,” said Bas Van Hooren, a doctoral researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and one of the study’s authors.

Many questions remain unanswered about the biology of aging, and whether the physical slowing and declines in muscle mass that typically occur as we grow older are normal and inevitable or perhaps due, at least in part, to a lack of exercise.

Start the year fresh

If some people stay strong and fit deep into their golden years, the implication is that many of the rest of us might be able to as well, he said.

Helpfully, his colleague Lorcan Daly, an assistant lecturer in exercise science at the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland, was quite familiar with an example of successful aging. His grandfather is Morgan, the 2022 indoor-rowing world champion in the lightweight, 90-to-94 age group.

What made Morgan especially interesting to the researchers was that he hadn’t begun sports or exercise training until he was 73. Retired and somewhat at loose ends then, he’d attended a rowing practice with one of his other grandsons, a competitive collegiate rower. The coach invited him to use one of the machines.

“He never looked back,” Daly said.

Highest heart rate on record

They invited Morgan, who was 92 at the time, to the physiology lab at the University of Limerick in Ireland to learn more, measuring his height, weight and body composition and gathering details about his diet. They also checked his metabolism and heart and lung function.

They then asked him to get on a rowing machine and race a simulated 2,000-meter time trial while they monitored his heart, lungs and muscles.

“It was one of the most inspiring days I’ve ever spent in the lab,” said Philip Jakeman, a professor of healthy aging, physical performance and nutrition at the University of Limerick and the study’s senior author.

Morgan proved to be a nonagenarian powerhouse, his sinewy 165 pounds composed of about 80 percent muscle and barely 15 percent fat, a body composition that would be considered healthy for a man decades younger.

During the time trial, his heart rate peaked at 153 beats per minute, well above the expected maximum heart rate for his age and among the highest peaks ever recorded for someone in their 90s, the researchers believe, signaling a very strong heart.

His heart rate also headed toward this peak very quickly, meaning his heart was able to rapidly supply his working muscles with oxygen and fuel. These “oxygen uptake kinetics,” a key indicator of cardiovascular health, proved comparable to those of a typical, healthy 30- or 40-year-old, Daly said.

Exercising 40 minutes a day

Perhaps most impressive, he developed this fitness with a simple, relatively abbreviated exercise routine, the researchers noted.

Consistency: Every week, he rows about 30 kilometers (about 18.5 miles), averaging around 40 minutes a day.

A mix of easy, moderate and intense training: About 70 percent of these workouts are easy, with Morgan hardly laboring. Another 20 percent are at a difficult but tolerable pace, and the final 10 at an all-out, barely sustainable intensity.

Weight training: Two or three times a week, he also weight-trains, using adjustable dumbbells to complete about three sets of lunges and curls, repeating each move until his muscles are too tired to continue.

A high-protein diet: He eats plenty of protein, his daily consumption regularly exceeding the usual dietary recommendation of about 60 grams of protein for someone of his weight.

How exercise changes how we age

“This is an interesting case study that sheds light on our understanding of exercise adaptation across the life span,” said Scott Trappe, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Indiana. He has studied many older athletes but was not involved in the new study.

“We are still learning about starting a late-life exercise program,” he added, “but the evidence is pretty clear that the human body maintains the ability to adapt to exercise at any age.”

In fact, Morgan’s fitness and physical power at 93 suggest that “we don’t have to lose” large amounts of muscle and aerobic capacity as we grow older, Jakeman said. Exercise could help us build and maintain a strong, capable body, whatever our age, he said.

Of course, Morgan probably had some genetic advantages, the scientists point out. Rowing prowess seems to run in the family.

And his race performances in recent years have been slower than they were 15, 10 or even five years ago. Exercise won’t erase the effects of aging. But it may slow our bodies’ losses, Morgan’s example seems to tell us. It may flatten the decline.

It also offers other, less-corporeal rewards. “There is a certain pleasure in achieving a world championship,” Morgan told me through his grandson, with almost comic self-effacement.

“I started from nowhere,” he said, “and I suddenly realized there was a lot of pleasure in doing this.”

#Washington Post #exercise #ageing #cardiovascular exercise.#Body Alive

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nathanxbaker · 29 days

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( JACOB ELORDI, MALE, HE/HIM ) NATHAN BAKER the TWENTY-EIGHT year old is known as THE PRO within the group. they are known to be CHARMING and HOT HEADED which makes sense when you think about how HE PURPOSEFULLY INJURED HIS OWN TEAMMATE TO BE FIRST LINE but i guess we’ll find out for ourselves.

Full Name: Nathan Phillip Baker

Nickname: Nate

Age: 28

DOB: April 28th

Parents: Jonas & Margaret Baker

Siblings: Sister

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Brown

Piercings and tattoos: none

Sexuality: Straight

LINKS

character playlist

connections

BIOGRAPHY

tw: n/a

Born with the silver spoon in his mouth, Nathan was given everything he wanted. His father a high end sports agent and his mother owning a publishing empire, they never even came close to lacking in the money department.

He started playing hockey at the age of 6 per request of his father and he was absolutely a natural at it. Something he'd make into his career in the future.

He never had a problem making friends as a kid, but he did have a problem keeping them. His bad attitude made a lot of his relationships suffer and it wasn't until high school that he learned to tone it down a little bit. Not enough to keep him from bullying other kids or being the rich jackass he is though.

He dated around a lot throughout his life, but only had one serious relationship with The Siren.

After two years of college, Nathan was drafted by the Red Wings. He didn't have to fight long to make it into first line, after his teammate suffered a terrible injury during practice. Nathan has him in his thoughts and prayers? From the first line, of course.

HEADCANONS

His jersey number is 5

Big Theo Von fan.

Spends the off season playing golf and video games.

His gamertag is BigBoyBaker5

Has a golden retriever named Bruin after Boston Bruins.

Thinks he's hot shit, is in fact hot shit.

Scored like one goal this season, so never mind about above.

#n #lake:intro

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er1chartmann · 2 months

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Julius Streicher

This is Julius Streicher, editor of the weekly Der Stürmer, timeline:

1885: He was born.

1904: He began his teaching career.

1913: He married Kunigunde Roth, a baker's daughter.

1914: The first world war began.

1914: He joined the German Army

1915: His first son, Lothar, was born.

1917: He was promoted to officer and fought on the Romanian and Italian fronts.

1918: The First World War ended.

1918: His second son, Elmar, was born.

1919: He became active in the anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund,

1919: He founded his local branch in Nuremberg.

1920: He turned to the Deutschsozialistische Partei (German-Socialist Party), a group whose platform was close to that of the young NSDAP

1922: He visited Munich in order to hear Adolf Hitler speak.

1922: He joined the Nazi Party.

1923: He founded the newspaper, Der Stürmer.

1923: He partecipated in the failed Munich Putsch.

1924: He was elected member of the Bavarian parliament.

1925: He was appointed Gauleiter of the Bavarian region of Franconia.

1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.

1933: He organised a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses which was used as a dress-rehearsal for other anti-Semitic commercial measures.

1938: He ordered the Great Synagogue of Nuremberg destroyed as part of his contribution to Kristallnacht.

1939: The Second World War Began.

1940: He was stripped of his party offices and withdrew from the public eye, although he was permitted to continue publishing Der Stürmer.

1943: His wife died.

1945: The Second World War ended.

1945: He was captured in the town of Waidring, Austria, by a group of American officers led by Major Henry Plitt.

1946: He was sentenced to death.

Sources:

Wikipedia: Julius Streicher

Military Wiki: Julius Streicher

I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM,FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST

#reichblr #ww2 germany #ww2 history #studyblr #austrian painter #julius streicher

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richincolor · 6 months

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Book Review: When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology edited by Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung

Summary: There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.

These tales from fifteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.

This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.

With stories by: Kelley Baker, Nicole Chung, Shannon Gibney, Mark Oshiro, MeMe Collier, Susan Harness, Meredith Ireland, Mariama J. Lockington, Lisa Nopachai, Stefany Valentine, Matthew Salesses, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Eric Smith, Jenny Heijun Wills, Sun Yung Shin, Foreword by Rebecca Carroll, Afterword by JaeRan Kim, MSW, PhD

My Thoughts: This is a much needed collection that provides an excellent collections of stories representing the adoptee experience. There are so few adopted characters in YA literature and of those few, rarely are those stories told by adoptees. I first heard about this book through Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, who is an adoption studies scholar and was happy to finally get to read it this week.

In some of these stories adoption is a huge focus, but in some, while the main character is an adoptee, that isn’t really a major part of the plot. It’s a strength that there are such a variety of ways that the adoptees are portrayed. There is a poet, a relative of a queen, a road tripper, a person learning indigenous ways, two people on farms, someone who speaks to ghosts, and many more characters. The majority of the tales are contemporary realistic fiction, but one is sci-fi, one happens in a mythical queendom and two might be described as speculative fiction. One also has a comic format.

Each story feels distinct and unique, but there are common threads of identity, belonging, questioning, loss, anger, love, pain, and healing. Who am I? Where and who do I come from? Am I enough? Where do I fit? and so many other questions are asked and sometimes answered in these narratives. Like anyone coming of age, these teens are wondering so much about themselves, but living as adoptees adds another layer as they navigate the world and their place in it.

Recommendation: Get it now! This is a fantastic collection that many readers will connect with in many ways. It’s an excellent way for adoptees to possibly see some of their experiences on the page of a book and for others, this will be a way to possible see things from that perspective. Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung have gathered together a talented group of authors and we’re fortunate to have this anthology in the world.

Publisher: HarperCollins Pages: 352 Availability: On shelves now Review Copy: Digital ARC

#book review #young adult books

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 9 days

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By David when he pretended to be insane in the presence of Abimelech; Abimelech threw him out, so David left.

1 I will thank Yahweh at all times. My mouth will always praise him. 2 My soul will boast about Yahweh. Those who are oppressed will hear it and rejoice. 3 Praise Yahweh’s greatness with me. Let us highly honor his name together. 4 I went to Yahweh for help. He answered me and rescued me from all my fears. 5 All who look to him will be radiant. Their faces will never be covered with shame. 6 Here is a poor man who called out. Yahweh heard him and saved him from all his troubles. 7 The Messenger of Yahweh camps around those who fear him, and he rescues them. 8 Taste and see that Yahweh is good. Blessed is the person who takes refuge in him. 9 Fear Yahweh, you holy people who belong to him. Those who fear him are never in need. 10 Young lions go hungry and may starve, but those who seek Yahweh’s help have all the good things they need. 11 Come, children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of Yahweh. 12 Which of you wants a full life? Who would like to live long enough to enjoy good things? 13 Keep your tongue from saying evil things and your lips from speaking deceitful things. 14 Turn away from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it! 15 Yahweh’s eyes are on righteous people. His ears hear their cry for help. 16 Yahweh confronts those who do evil in order to wipe out all memory of them from the earth. 17 Righteous people cry out. Yahweh hears and rescues them from all their troubles. 18 Yahweh is near to those whose hearts are humble. He saves those whose spirits are crushed. 19 The righteous person has many troubles, but Yahweh rescues him from all of them. 20 Yahweh guards all of his bones. Not one of them is broken. 21 Evil will kill wicked people, and those who hate righteous people will be condemned. 22 Yahweh protects the souls of his servants. All who take refuge in him will never be condemned. — Psalm 34 | Names of God Bible (NOG) The Names of God Bible (without notes) © 2011 by Baker Publishing Group. Cross References: Genesis 32:1; Genesis 49:2; Exodus 14:10; Deuteronomy 4:7; 1 Kings 1:29; Job 4:11; Psalm 7:9; Psalm 12:5; Psalm 18:46; Psalm 23:1; Psalm 25:3; Matthew 7:7; Luke 1:46; John 9:31; John 19:33; Romans 14:19; Ephesians 5:20; Hebrews 6:5; James 1:26; 2 Timothy 3:11; 1 Peter 3:10; 1 Peter 3:12

#Yahweh #angels #guardians #righteous #Psalm 34 #Book of Psalms #Old Testament #NOG #Names of God Bible #Baker Publishing Group

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torillatavataan · 9 months

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Hi, sorry if this is a wild question, but what are some good Finnish food recipe websites? I know about Valio since I've used that a couple of times now, but I was wondering if there were any (others) that Finnish people maybe liked to use?

Kiitos! 😊

Kinuskikissa is a pretty popular website for bakers.

Hellapoliisi is popular for all kinds or recipes.

Martat has some nice recipes, including traditional Finnish dishes.

Kotikokki is an interesting collection of recipes submitted by users.

K-Ruoka has K group's recipe collection online.

Yhteishyvä, S group's magazine, also has recipes.

Kotiliesi magazine also has a collection of recipes.

Meillä kotona by A-lehdet (magazine publisher) has recipes.

Soppa 365 has recipes from various Sanoma (name of a publisher) magazines.

These are probably the biggest ones along with Valio. Hope this helps!

Followers, please feel free to recommend others, shout at me for forgetting one, or comment on which of these is the best. :)

#yellow lemon lime #vastaus #ruoka

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homomenhommes · 3 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 31

1797 – Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born (d.1828). He wrote some six hundred Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music, operas and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. He is particularly noted for original melodic and harmonic writing.

While Schubert had a close circle of friends and associates who admired his work (including his teacher Antonio Salieri and the prominent singer Johann Michael Vogl), wider appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited at best. He was never able to secure adequate permanent employment, and for most of his career he relied on the support of friends and family. Interest in Schubert's work increased dramatically in the decades following his death.

Schubert was significantly influenced by his close-knit group of male friends, known as the Schubert Circle. His relationships with an older school friend Joseph von Spaun, the young poet Johann Mayrhofer, and the wealthy young sensualist Franz von Schober were the most important of his life. He and Schober often lived together for extended periods.

Citing the composer's dissipation, his lack of female love interests, his passionate male friendships and several oblique references in his surviving correspondence, Maynard Solomon has argued that Schubert's primary erotic orientation was homosexual. The immediate reaction on the part of many musicologists and music critics, who often simply refused to consider the evidence, revealed a deep-seated homophobia among many specialists in classical music. But in recent years the notion of a gay Schubert has become if not commonplace, at least much less controversial. Schubert's alleged homosexuality and its effect on his music are subjects of continuing debate among music historians and critics.

1727 – A Prussian baker is executed for fellating another man who later died, according to the court, of "exhaustion." 🤣🤣🤣

1914 – Edward Melcarth (d.1973) was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, lecturer and teacher, born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Edward Epstein Jr. Edward Melcarth who dared to live as an openly homosexual man and not hiding his support for communism did not earn a significant place in modern art’s canonical history for exactly those reasons.

He was active on New York’s burgeoning, post-World War II art scene; his work was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1940s and at Manhattan galleries over a decades-long timespan, and he knew just about everyone, including the multimillionaire art collector and Forbes magazine publisher, Malcolm Forbes; his circle also included many other artists as well as countless, now nameless hustlers, sailors, beach bums, and representatives of working-class “trade” who posed for his pictures and with whom he had sex.

Summer Morning

Melcarth was born Edward Epstein to Jewish parents in Louisville in 1914. After his father died, his mother, whose family discouraged her from becoming an opera singer, remarried a wealthy British aristocrat. Edward, who would reject religion and change his surname to that of an ancient Phoenician god, was educated in London and at Harvard University; later he studied art in Boston with the German-born painter Karl Zerbe.

The gay, Kentucky-born artist Henry Faulkner, the photographer Thomas Painter, and Melcarth lived together in New York for some time during the decades following WWII. They shared friends, artistic interests — and sexual partners, too.

Painter was one of the research subjects who provided testimonials about his own and his homosexual associates’ sexual activities to the pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey. His reports were detailed, and from them we learn that Melcarth's appetite for sex was rapacious.

In the late 1960s, Melcarth left New York and settled in Venice, where he focused on making sculpture and died in 1973. At some point during his New York years, he had met Malcolm Forbes, who became a regular collector-patron and, after Melcarth’s death, acquired a large quantity of his works, and has been the source of many expositions of Melcarth's art.

1948 – Paul Jabara (d.1992) was an American actor, singer, and songwriter of Lebanese ancestry.

Paul wrote Donna Summer's "Last Dance" from Thank God It's Friday (1978) and Barbra Streisand's song "The Main Event/Fight" from The Main Event (1979). He cowrote the Weather Girls hit, "It's Raining Men" with Paul Shaffer.

Jabara was in the original cast of the stage musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. He took over the role of Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles Production of The Rocky Horror Show when Tim Curry left the production to film the movie version in England. He appeared in John Schlesinger's 1975 film, "The Day of the Locust", where he sang the production number "Hot Voo-Doo"

In 1979, Jabara won both Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the song performed by Donna Summer, "Last Dance". Jabara's album Paul Jabara & Friends, released in 1983, features guest vocals by a then-20 year old Whitney Houston. It also includes the song "It's Raining Men". That song was later re-recorded several years later by drag supermodel RuPaul and Martha Wash. Wash sang on the original recording as part of the group the Weather Girls.

Jabara co-founded the Red Ribbon Project in 1991, and is credited with conceiving and distributing the first AIDS Red Ribbon.

Paul Jabara died of AIDS in Los Angeles at the age of 44 on September 29, 1992.

1952 – Brad Gooch is an American writer.

Born and raised in Kingston, Pennsylvania, he graduated from Columbia University with a bachelors in 1973 and a doctorate in 1986.

Gooch is currently a Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He has lived in New York City since 1971. His 2015 memoir Smash Cut recounts life in 1970s and 1980s New York City, including the time Gooch spent as a fashion model, life with his then-boyfriend filmmaker Howard Brookner, living in the famous Chelsea Hotel and the first decade of the AIDS crisis.

Gooch is married to writer and religious activist Paul Raushenbush; they have one child.

1962 – Patrick Gale is a British author, born on on the Isle of Wight, where his father was prison governor at Camp Hill, as his grandfather had been at nearby Parkhurst. The family moved to London, where his father ran Wandsworth Prison, then to Winchester. He finished his formal education with an English degree from New College, Oxford in 1983.

He has never had 'a grown-up job'. For three years he lived at a succession of addresses, from a Notting Hill bedsit to a crumbling French chateau. While working on his first novels he eked out his slender income with odd jobs: as a typist, a singing waiter, a designer's secretary, a ghost-writer for an encyclopedia of the musical and, increasingly, as a book reviewer for The Daily Telegraph.

His first two novels, The Aerodynamics of Pork and Ease were published on the same day in June 1986. The following year he moved to Camelford near the north coast of Cornwall and began a love affair with the county that has fed his work ever since.

He has written more than ten novels, a number of short stories and novellas in addition to a non-fiction book about the American novelist Armistead Maupin, with whom he has a close friendship.

He now lives in the far south-west, on a farm near Land's End with his lover, Aidan Hicks. They raise beef cattle for the open market and broccoli for Sainsbury's. His current ambition is to perfect the art of reversing a tractor and trailer around a corner.

1973 – Portia Lee James DeGeneres, known professionally as Portia de Rossi, is an Australian-American actress, model and philanthropist, known for her roles as lawyer Nelle Porter on the television series Ally McBeal and Lindsay Fünke on the sitcom Arrested Development. She also portrayed Veronica Palmer on the ABC sitcom Better Off Ted and Olivia Lord on Nip/Tuck. She is married to American stand-up comedian, television host and actress Ellen DeGeneres.

De Rossi, born Amanda Lee Rogers in Horsham, Victoria, Australia grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, and modelled for print and TV commercials as a child. In 1988, at the age of 15, Rogers adopted the name Portia de Rossi, by which she remains best known; in 2005, she explained that she had intended to reinvent herself, using the given name of Portia, a character from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and an Italian last name.

De Rossi was married to documentary film-maker Mel Metcalfe from 1996 to 1999, initially part of a plan to get a green card, but she did not go through with it. She said that "it just obviously wasn't right for me". In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America, she explained that as a young actress, she was fearful of being exposed as a lesbian.

From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated singer Francesca Gregorini, the daughter of Barbara Bach and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. She said that most of her family and Ally McBeal castmates did not know she was a lesbian until tabloid pictures of the couple were published. She declined to publicly discuss the relationship or her sexual orientation at the time.

De Rossi and Gregorini broke up in late 2004 because de Rossi began dating Ellen DeGeneres, whom she met backstage at an awards show. In 2005, she opened up publicly about her sexual orientation in interviews with Details and The Advocate. She became engaged when DeGeneres proposed with a three-carat pink diamond ring. They were married at their Beverly Hills home on 16 August 2008, witnessed by their mothers and 17 other guests. On 6 August 2010, Portia filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres. The petition was granted on 23 September 2010. She became a US citizen in September 2011.

In 2010, de Rossi published the autobiography Unbearable Lightness which talks about the turmoil that she has experienced in her life, including suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and being misdiagnosed with lupus.

1979 – Daniel Tammet is an English essayist, novelist, poet, translator, and autistic savant. His memoir, Born on a Blue Day (2006), is about his early life with Asperger syndrome and savant syndrome, and was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services magazine. His second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best-selling books of 2009. His third book, Thinking in Numbers, was published in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom and in 2013 by Little, Brown and Company in the United States and Canada.

In 2016 he published his debut novel, Mishenka, in France and Quebec. His books have been published in over 20 languages. He was elected in 2012 to serve as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Tammet was born Daniel Paul Corney, the eldest of nine children, and raised in Barking and Dagenham, East London, England. As a young child, he suffered epileptic seizures, which remitted following medical treatment.

He participated twice in the World Memory Championships in London under his birth name, placing 11th in 1999 and 4th in 2000.

He changed his birth name by deed poll because "it didn't fit with the way he saw himself." He took the Estonian surname Tammet, which is related to "oak tree".

At age twenty-five, he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre. He is one of fewer than a hundred "prodigious savants" according to Darold Treffert, the world's leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome.

Tammet holds the European record for memorizing and recounting pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours. This sponsored charity challenge was held in aid of the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) on “Pi Day”, March 14, 2004, at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, UK.

He was the subject of a documentary film titled Extraordinary People: The Boy with the Incredible Brain, first broadcast on the British television station Channel 4 on 23 May 2005.

He met software engineer Neil Mitchell in 2000. They lived together as domestic partners in Kent, England, where they had a quiet life at home with their cats, preparing meals from their garden. He and Mitchell operated the online e-learning company Optimnem, where they created and published language courses.

Tammet now lives in Paris, France, with his husband Jérôme Tabet, a photographer whom he met while promoting his autobiography. Tammet is openly gay.

2017 – Thousands of gay and bisexual men who were convicted of now-abolished sexual offenses laws in Britain have been posthumously pardoned under a new policing law, the Justice Ministry announces. The law, which received Royal Assent on this day, is named after British WWII codebreaker Alan Turing, who committed suicide following his conviction for gross indecency and was posthumously pardoned by Her Majesty the Queen in 2013. It also makes it possible for living convicted gay men to seek pardons for offenses no longer on the statute book.

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doki-doki-lesbians-club · 7 months

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My headcanons for the girls’ careers are:

Sayori: I’m thinking she’d be a paediatrician or something. Her childhood sort of sucked ass, and she seems like the sort of person to take that as a reason to help others through stuff like that

Natsuki: something art related, but she can never really stick to one thing. She’d go into manga illustration, and realize she FAR prefers reading it over making it.

Yuri: probably a writer. That just seems like her thing.

Monika: psychologist. I don’t think I need to explain that one

I adore these ideas! Seriously, I love it!

I was thinking about this since I'm planning a slow burn fic that follows the girls thru high school and beyond, so here's what I got:

Sayori: I actually paint her as the most poetry-brained of the lot! She inspires them to start writing and sharing poetry in the first place, and after high school she tries to make it as a writer/poet! I think the fact that she's so in touch with her positive and negative emotions gives her some pretty great insight for poetry.

Monika: Computer Science! As a sort of reference to her role programming in the original game, I think it's just kinda funny to have her be a CompSci major. I also feel like I've seen this used elsewhere?

Natsuki: I've seen her shown as a baker a lot, like, working in a bakery, and I'm not one to break that streak! I think that's very fitting as a day job, at least. I think she'd also run some sort of blog or online group that makes fan translations of manga and fan subtitles for anime!

Yuri: A lot of people paint her as the writer type, but I think she'd be far too nervous to write to be published. She might write for fun, or for her friends, but I don't think she'd be willing to go public. She probably works in a library or some similar place. (can anyone spell "hot librarian"?)

Those are just my thoughts, obviously! Thanks for sharing yours! I love it a lot :D

#doki doki lesbians club #ddlc #doki doki literature club #ddlc headcanons #ddlc natsuki #ddlc yuri #ddlc sayori #ddlc monika #natsuki ddlc #sayori ddlc #yuri ddlc #monika ddlc

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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The case of an evangelical Christian designer from Colorado who refuses to build websites for same-sex couples lands in the U.S. Supreme Court Monday for oral arguments.

Why It Matters: For the second time in five years, a First Amendment case from Colorado pits religious freedom against the right of LGBTQ people to access services without discrimination, and puts the court in the middle of the nation's culture wars.

What To Know: Littleton's Lorie Smith, 38, objects to Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, saying it violates her free speech rights because it forces her to publish messages she opposes, in this case celebrating same-sex marriage on a wedding website. She preemptively sued the state in 2019.

• The law bans businesses open to the public from denying goods or services based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and other characteristics.

What She's Saying: "Colorado is compelling and censoring my speech and forcing me to design and create custom artwork that celebrates messages that go against my deeply held beliefs," Smith told Reuters in a recent interview. "My faith is at the core of who I am."

Between The Lines: The Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2021 issued a divided ruling against Smith, siding with Colorado in deciding the law doesn't violate the First Amendment.

• Smith — backed by the conservative religious group Alliance Defending Freedom — appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Other Side: Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says the nation's highest court has ruled in favor of state-level anti-discrimination laws and he will emphasize that precedent. The Biden administration and LGBTQ advocacy organizations are backing Colorado.

• “When a business says we're open to the public, that means they have to serve all members of the public," Weiser said in August, when he filed briefs with the court.

Flashback: In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who refused to make a cake for a gay couple. But the narrowly applied ruling avoided the broader question of whether businesses can discriminate and be protected by the First Amendment.

What's Next: A ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is expected by the end of June.

#us politics #news #axios #us supreme court #scotus #303 Creative LLC v. Elenis #homophobia #discrimination #white evangelicals #lgbtqia+ rights #lgbtqia+#Lorie Smith #Colorado #Anti-Discrimination Act #10th Circuit Court of Appeals #Phil Weiser #Jack Phillips #1st amendment

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hnnnnnnnm · 17 days

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tell me about this higgs fellow

Hello anon!!! :D

Higgs Monaghan (real name Peter Englert) is a character from the 2019 game Death Stranding, produced by Kojima Productions on the Decima engine and published by Sony. He’s portrayed by Troy Baker and serves as one of the major antagonists of the game.

I don't know if you know anything about DS nonnie but it's basically a game about rebuilding America via porters and the Chiral Network [which is basically the internet]. After the "Death Stranding" America and the whole world went to shit, with The Beach, BTs, Timefall, and Extinction Entities being massive threats to absolutely everyone. If you want a further explanation on what any of that means just shoot me another ask and I'll go in depth, but I'll explain what I need to in this ask :]

So in DS Higgs is a terrorist leader of a militant separatist group named the "Homo Demens", responsible for the nuking of Middle Knot City and the subsequent ruining of Fragile Express' reputation [a delivery company]. In the game he's introduced to the player somewhat early on, and he's portrayed as this kind of evil dickhead, who's obviously having fun causing chaos. He cracks a few jokes, breaks the fourth wall, is partially unnerving, but most importantly he actually summons a BT [a beached thing, souls stranded in the living world], which is insane because that just hasn't been done by a living human before in game. You can watch the cutscene here, it's so good.

In general Higgs is sadistic, violent, kind of creepy [both normally and sexually [?]], maybe even a tad boyish during a lot of the scenes with him. It's not until his journals, notes, late game, and the DS 2 trailer that we really see anything else. A sort of vulnerability, a past altruism [whether or not genuine is hard to say], a fucking nerd ass personality [he is obsessed with Ancient Egypt]. He's also incredibly jealous and prone to stalker like behaviour [that of which is born from jealousy, a desire to be special], which is a lot more interesting than the kind of otherwise cardboard personality we are given. I do say that affectionately, because Troys' performance is an absolute joy to watch and the writing for him is good, but compared to what we learn through otherwise missable items it's definitely kind of lackluster.

One thing we do learn early on though is that Higgs suffers a condition called DOOMs, which comes from Amelie and results in a greater connection to "the other side" It's characterised by a chiral allergy + greater resistance to chiralium, nightmares of world-wide extinction and destruction, and the ability to sense, see, or control BTs [dependent on the DOOMs level]. It is worth noting that those with DOOMs may also show suicidal, erratic, or homicidal tendencies, a trait also shared with those suffering Chiral Contamination - Higgs shows violent tendencies and - somewhat - poor impulse control. Higgs also fucking hates himself and is heavily nihilistic, so suicidal tendencies is likely LMAO

We also lean that the catalyst for his DOOMs was his uncles death, who had necrotised and popped a BT before he could be incinerated. We know that Higgs, then Peter, became a porter before joining a terrorist organisation, that the group died andthat he ended up becoming a porter AGAIN [a famed one too], before then joining ANOTHER terrorist group and betraying Fragile/joining Amelie. This man is up to no good and so easily susceptible to manipulation it's insane.

So I don't go full analysis TL;DR: Higgs is fucking insane mate

#I wrote so much but said absolutely nothing I Am So Sorry #if you have any further questions do ask! I am happy to talk #I also think it's worth mentioning that he has. a math equation #TATTOOED.#on his forehead #I feel like that kind of sums up his character better than I ever could

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 27 days

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By: Theo Baker

Published: Mar 26, 2024

One of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year-old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated in the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).” El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

I switched to a different computer-science section.

Israel is 7,500 miles away from Stanford’s campus, where I am a sophomore. But the Hamas invasion and the Israeli counterinvasion have fractured my university, a place typically less focused on geopolitics than on venture-capital funding for the latest dorm-based tech start-up. Few students would call for Biden’s head—I think—but many of the same young people who say they want peace in Gaza don’t seem to realize that they are in fact advocating for violence. Extremism has swept through classrooms and dorms, and it is becoming normal for students to be harassed and intimidated for their faith, heritage, or appearance—they have been called perpetrators of genocide for wearing kippahs, and accused of supporting terrorism for wearing keffiyehs. The extremism and anti-Semitism at Ivy League universities on the East Coast have attracted so much media and congressional attention that two Ivy presidents have lost their jobs. But few people seem to have noticed the culture war that has taken over our California campus.

For four months, two rival groups of protesters, separated by a narrow bike path, faced off on Stanford’s palm-covered grounds. The “Sit-In to Stop Genocide” encampment was erected by students in mid-October, even before Israeli troops had crossed into Gaza, to demand that the university divest from Israel and condemn its behavior. Posters were hung equating Hamas with Ukraine and Nelson Mandela. Across from the sit-in, a rival group of pro-Israel students eventually set up the “Blue and White Tent” to provide, as one activist put it, a “safe space” to “be a proud Jew on campus.” Soon it became the center of its own cluster of tents, with photos of Hamas’s victims sitting opposite the rubble-ridden images of Gaza and a long (and incomplete) list of the names of slain Palestinians displayed by the students at the sit-in.

Some days the dueling encampments would host only a few people each, but on a sunny weekday afternoon, there could be dozens. Most of the time, the groups tolerated each other. But not always. Students on both sides were reportedly spit on and yelled at, and had their belongings destroyed. (The perpetrators in many cases seemed to be adults who weren’t affiliated with Stanford, a security guard told me.) The university put in place round-the-clock security, but when something actually happened, no one quite knew what to do.

Stanford has a policy barring overnight camping, but for months didn’t enforce it, “out of a desire to support the peaceful expression of free speech in the ways that students choose to exercise that expression”—and, the administration told alumni, because the university feared that confronting the students would only make the conflict worse. When the school finally said the tents had to go last month, enormous protests against the university administration, and against Israel, followed.

“We don’t want no two states! We want all of ’48!” students chanted, a slogan advocating that Israel be dismantled and replaced by a single Arab nation. Palestinian flags flew alongside bright “Welcome!” banners left over from new-student orientation. A young woman gave a speech that seemed to capture the sense of urgency and power that so many students here feel. “We are Stanford University!” she shouted. “We control things!”

“We’ve had protests in the past,” Richard Saller, the university’s interim president, told me in November—about the environment, and apartheid, and Vietnam. But they didn’t pit “students against each other” the way that this conflict has.

I’ve spoken with Saller, a scholar of Roman history, a few times over the past six months in my capacity as a student journalist. We first met in September, a few weeks into his tenure. His predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had resigned as president after my reporting for The Stanford Daily exposed misconduct in his academic research. (Tessier-Lavigne had failed to retract papers with faked data over the course of 20 years. In his resignation statement, he denied allegations of fraud and misconduct; a Stanford investigation determined that he had not personally manipulated data or ordered any manipulation but that he had repeatedly “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” from his lab.)

In that first conversation, Saller told me that everyone was “eager to move on” from the Tessier-Lavigne scandal. He was cheerful and upbeat. He knew he wasn’t staying in the job long; he hadn’t even bothered to move into the recently vacated presidential manor. In any case, campus, at that time, was serene. Then, a week later, came October 7.

The attack was as clear a litmus test as one could imagine for the Middle East conflict. Hamas insurgents raided homes and a music festival with the goal of slaughtering as many civilians as possible. Some victims were raped and mutilated, several independent investigations found. Hundreds of hostages were taken into Gaza and many have been tortured.

This, of course, was bad. Saying this was bad does not negate or marginalize the abuses and suffering Palestinians have experienced in Gaza and elsewhere. Everyone, of every ideology, should be able to say that this was bad. But much of this campus failed that simple test.

Two days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Stanford released milquetoast statements marking the “moment of intense emotion” and declaring “deep concern” over “the crisis in Israel and Palestine.” The official statements did not use the words Hamas or violence.

The absence of a clear institutional response led some teachers to take matters into their own hands. During a mandatory freshman seminar on October 10, a lecturer named Ameer Loggins tossed out his lesson plan to tell students that the actions of the Palestinian “military force” had been justified, that Israelis were colonizers, and that the Holocaust had been overemphasized, according to interviews I conducted with students in the class. Loggins then asked the Jewish students to identify themselves. He instructed one of them to “stand up, face the window, and he kind of kicked away his chair,” a witness told me. Loggins described this as an effort to demonstrate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. (Loggins did not reply to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Stanford said that there were “different recollections of the details regarding what happened” in the class.)

“We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here,” three students in the class wrote in an email that night to administrators. “This isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be.” The class Loggins taught is called COLLEGE, short for “Civic, Liberal, and Global Education,” and it is billed as an effort to develop “the skills that empower and enable us to live together.”

Loggins was suspended from teaching duties and an investigation was opened; this angered pro-Palestine activists, who organized a petition that garnered more than 1,700 signatures contesting the suspension. A pamphlet from the petitioners argued that Loggins’s behavior had not been out of bounds.

The day after the class, Stanford put out a statement written by Saller and Jenny Martinez, the university provost, more forcefully condemning the Hamas attack. Immediately, this new statement generated backlash.

Pro-Palestine activists complained about it during an event held the same day, the first of several “teach-ins” about the conflict. Students gathered in one of Stanford’s dorms to “bear witness to the struggles of decolonization.” The grievances and pain shared by Palestinian students were real. They told of discrimination and violence, of frightened family members subjected to harsh conditions. But the most raucous reaction from the crowd was in response to a young woman who said, “You ask us, do we condemn Hamas? Fuck you!” She added that she was “so proud of my resistance.”

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature with a focus on postcolonial studies, also spoke at the teach-in, explaining to the crowd that “European settlers” had come to “replace” Palestine’s “native population.”

Palumbo-Liu is known as an intelligent and supportive professor, and is popular among students, who call him by his initials, DPL. I wanted to ask him about his involvement in the teach-in, so we met one day in a café a few hundred feet away from the tents. I asked if he could elaborate on what he’d said at the event about Palestine’s native population. He was happy to expand: This was “one of those discussions that could go on forever. Like, who is actually native? At what point does nativism lapse, right? Well, you haven’t been native for X number of years, so …” In the end, he said, “you have two people who both feel they have a claim to the land,” and “they have to live together. Both sides have to cede something.”

The struggle at Stanford, he told me, “is to find a way in which open discussions can be had that allow people to disagree.” It’s true that Stanford has utterly failed in its efforts to encourage productive dialogue. But I still found it hard to reconcile DPL’s words with his public statements on Israel, which he’d recently said on Facebook should be “the most hated nation in the world.” He also wrote: “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.”

Zionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

Saller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

When the university finally said the protest tents had to be removed, students responded by accusing Saller of suppressing their right to free speech. This is probably the last charge he expected to face. Saller once served as provost at the University of Chicago, which is known for holding itself to a position of strict institutional neutrality so that its students can freely explore ideas for themselves. Saller has a lifelong belief in First Amendment rights. But that conviction in impartial college governance does not align with Stanford’s behavior in recent years. Despite the fact that many students seemed largely uninterested in the headlines before this year, Stanford’s administrative leadership has often taken positions on political issues and events, such as the Paris climate conference and the murder of George Floyd. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Stanford’s Hoover Tower was lit up in blue and yellow, and the school released a statement in solidarity.

When we first met, a week before October 7, I asked Saller about this. Did Stanford have a moral duty to denounce the war in Ukraine, for example, or the ethnic cleansing of Uyghur Muslims in China? “On international political issues, no,” he said. “That’s not a responsibility for the university as a whole, as an institution.”

But when Saller tried to apply his convictions on neutrality for the first time as president, dozens of faculty members condemned the response, many pro-Israel alumni were outraged, donors had private discussions about pulling funding, and an Israeli university sent an open letter to Saller and Martinez saying, “Stanford’s administration has failed us.” The initial statement had tried to make clear that the school’s policy was not Israel-specific: It noted that the university would not take a position on the turmoil in Nagorno-Karabakh (where Armenians are undergoing ethnic cleansing) either. But the message didn’t get through.

Saller had to beat an awkward retreat or risk the exact sort of public humiliation that he, as caretaker president, had presumably been hired to avoid. He came up with a compromise that landed somewhere in the middle: an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s “intolerable atrocities” paired with a statement making clear that Stanford would commit to institutional neutrality going forward.

“The events in Israel and Gaza this week have affected and engaged large numbers of students on our campus in ways that many other events have not,” the statement read. “This is why we feel compelled to both address the impact of these events on our campus and to explain why our general policy of not issuing statements about news events not directly connected to campus has limited the breadth of our comments thus far, and why you should not expect frequent commentary from us in the future.”

I asked Saller why he had changed tack on Israel and not on Nagorno-Karabakh. “We don’t feel as if we should be making statements on every war crime and atrocity,” he told me. This felt like a statement in and of itself.

In making such decisions, Saller works closely with Martinez, Stanford’s provost. I happened to interview her, too, a few days before October 7, not long after she’d been appointed. When I asked about her hopes for the job, she said that a “priority is ensuring an environment in which free speech and academic freedom are preserved.”

We talked about the so-called Leonard Law—a provision unique to California that requires private universities to be governed by the same First Amendment protections as public ones. This restricts what Stanford can do in terms of penalizing speech, putting it in a stricter bind than Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, or any of the other elite private institutions that have more latitude to set the standards for their campus (whether or not they have done so).

So I was surprised when, in December, the university announced that abstract calls for genocide “clearly violate Stanford’s Fundamental Standard, the code of conduct for all students at the university.” The statement was a response to the outrage following the congressional testimony of three university presidents—outrage that eventually led to the resignation of two of them, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill. Gay and Magill, who had both previously held positions at Stanford, did not commit to punishing calls for the genocide of Jews.

Experts told me that Stanford’s policy is impossible to enforce—and Saller himself acknowledged as much in our March interview.

“Liz Magill is a good friend,” Saller told me, adding, “Having watched what happened at Harvard and Penn, it seemed prudent” to publicly state that Stanford rejected calls for genocide. But saying that those calls violate the code of conduct “is not the same thing as to say that we could actually punish it.”

Stanford’s leaders seem to be trying their best while adapting to the situation in real time. But the muddled messaging has created a policy of neutrality that does not feel neutral at all.

When we met back in November, I tried to get Saller to open up about his experience running an institution in turmoil. What’s it like to know that so many students seem to believe that he—a mild-mannered 71-year-old classicist who swing-dances with his anthropologist wife—is a warmonger? Saller was more candid than I expected—perhaps more candid than any prominent university president has been yet. We sat in the same conference room as we had in September. The weather hadn’t really changed. Yet I felt like I was sitting in front of a different person. He was hunched over and looked exhausted, and his voice broke when he talked about the loss of life in Gaza and Israel and “the fact that we’re caught up in it.” A capable administrator with decades of experience, Saller seemed almost at a loss. “It’s been a kind of roller coaster, to be honest.”

He said he hadn’t anticipated the deluge of the emails “blaming me for lack of moral courage.” Anything the university says seems bound to be wrong: “If I say that our position is that we grieve over the loss of innocent lives, that in itself will draw some hostile reactions.”

“I find that really difficult to navigate,” he said with a sigh.

By March, it seemed that his views had solidified. He said he knew he was “a target,” but he was not going to be pushed into issuing any more statements. The continuing crisis seems to have granted him new insight. “I am certain that whatever I say will not have any material effect on the war in Gaza.” It’s hard to argue with that.

People tend to blame the campus wars on two villains: dithering administrators and radical student activists. But colleges have always had dithering administrators and radical student activists. To my mind, it’s the average students who have changed.

Elite universities attract a certain kind of student: the overachieving striver who has won all the right accolades for all the right activities. Is it such a surprise that the kids who are trained in the constant pursuit of perfect scores think they have to look at the world like a series of multiple-choice questions, with clearly right or wrong answers? Or that they think they can gamify a political cause in the same way they ace a standardized test?

Everyone knows that the only reliable way to get into a school like Stanford is to be really good at looking really good. Now that they’re here, students know that one easy way to keep looking good is to side with the majority of protesters, and condemn Israel.

It’s not that there isn’t real anger and anxiety over what is happening in Gaza—there is, and justifiably so. I know that among the protesters are many people who are deeply connected to this issue. But they are not the majority. What really activates the crowds now seems less a principled devotion to Palestine or to pacifism than a desire for collective action, to fit in by embracing the fashionable cause of the moment—as if a centuries-old conflict in which both sides have stolen and killed could ever be a simple matter of right and wrong. In their haste to exhibit moral righteousness, many of the least informed protesters end up being the loudest and most uncompromising.

Today’s students grew up in the Trump era, in which violent rhetoric has become a normal part of political discourse and activism is as easy as reposting an infographic. Many young people have come to feel that being angry is enough to foment change. Furious at the world’s injustices and desperate for a simple way to express that fury, they don’t seem interested in any form of engagement more nuanced than backing a pure protagonist and denouncing an evil enemy. They don’t, always, seem that concerned with the truth.

At the protest last month to prevent the removal of the sit-in, an activist in a pink Women’s March “pussy hat” shouted that no rape was committed by Hamas on October 7. “There hasn’t been proof of these rape accusations,” a student told me in a separate conversation, criticizing the Blue and White Tent for spreading what he considered to be misinformation about sexual violence. (In March, a United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence,” including “rape and gang rape,” occurred in multiple locations on October 7, as well as “clear and convincing information” on the “rape and sexualized torture” of hostages.) “The level of propaganda” surrounding Hamas, he told me, “is just unbelievable.”

The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong. You don’t have to understand what you’re arguing for in order to argue for it. You don’t have to be able to name the river or the sea under discussion to chant “From the river to the sea.” This kind of obliviousness explains how one of my friends, a gay activist, can justify Hamas’s actions, even though it would have the two of us—an outspoken queer person and a Jewish reporter—killed in a heartbeat. A similar mentality can exist on the other side: I have heard students insist on the absolute righteousness of Israel yet seem uninterested in learning anything about what life is like in Gaza.

I’m familiar with the pull of achievement culture—after all, I’m a product of the same system. I fell in love with Stanford as a 7-year-old, lying on the floor of an East Coast library and picturing all the cool technology those West Coast geniuses were dreaming up. I cried when I was accepted; I spent the next few months scrolling through the course catalog, giddy with anticipation. I wanted to learn everything.

I learned more than I expected. Within my first week here, someone asked me: “Why are all Jews so rich?” In 2016, when Stanford’s undergraduate senate had debated a resolution against anti-Semitism, one of its members argued that the idea of “Jews controlling the media, economy, government, and other societal institutions” represented “a very valid discussion.” (He apologized, and the resolution passed.) In my dorm last year, a student discussed being Jewish and awoke the next day to swastikas and a portrait of Hitler affixed to his door.

I grew up secularly, with no strong affiliation to Jewish culture. When I found out as a teenager that some of my ancestors had hidden their identity from their children and that dozens of my relatives had died in the Holocaust (something no living member of my family had known), I felt the barest tremor of identity. After I saw so many people I know cheering after October 7, I felt something stronger stir. I know others have experienced something similar. Even a professor texted me to say that she felt Jewish in a way she never had before.

But my frustration with the conflict on campus has little to do with my own identity. Across the many conversations and hours of formal interviews I conducted for this article, I’ve encountered a persistent anti-intellectual streak. I’ve watched many of my classmates treat death so cavalierly that they can protest as a pregame to a party. Indeed, two parties at Stanford were reported to the university this fall for allegedly making people say “Fuck Israel” or “Free Palestine” to get in the door. A spokesperson for the university said it was “unable to confirm the facts of what occurred,” but that it had “met with students involved in both parties to make clear that Stanford’s nondiscrimination policy applies to parties.” As a friend emailed me not long ago: “A place that was supposed to be a sanctuary from such unreason has become a factory for it.”

Readers may be tempted to discount the conduct displayed at Stanford. After all, the thinking goes, these are privileged kids doing what they always do: embracing faux-radicalism in college before taking jobs in fintech or consulting. These students, some might say, aren’t representative of America.

And yet they are representative of something: of the conduct many of the most accomplished students in my generation have accepted as tolerable, and what that means for the future of our country. I admire activism. We need people willing to protest what they see as wrong and take on entrenched systems of repression. But we also need to read, learn, discuss, accept the existence of nuance, embrace diversity of thought, and hold our own allies to high standards. More than ever, we need universities to teach young people how to do all of this.

For so long, Stanford’s physical standoff seemed intractable. Then, in early February, a storm swept in, and the natural world dictated its own conclusion.

Heavy rains flooded campus. For hours, the students battled to save their tents. The sit-in activists used sandbags and anything else they could find to hold back the water—at one point, David Palumbo-Liu, the professor, told me he stood in the lashing downpour to anchor one of the sit-in’s tents with his own body. When the storm hit, many of the Jewish activists had been attending a discussion on anti-Semitism. They raced back and struggled to salvage the Blue and White Tent, but it was too late—the wind had ripped it out of the ground.

The next day, the weary Jewish protesters returned to discover that their space had been taken.

A new collection of tents had been set up by El Boudali, the pro-Palestine activist, and a dozen friends. He said they were there to protest Islamophobia and to teach about Islam and jihad, and that they were a separate entity from the Sit-In to Stop Genocide, though I observed students cycling between the tents. Palestinian flags now flew from the bookstore to the quad.

Administrators told me they’d quickly informed El Boudali and his allies that the space had been reserved by the Jewish advocates, and offered to help move them to a different location. But the protesters told me they had no intention of going. (El Boudali later said that they did not take over the entire space, and would have been “happy to exist side by side, but they wanted to kick us off entirely from that lawn.”)

When it was clear that the area where they’d set up their tents would not be ceded back to the pro-Israel group willingly, Stanford changed course and decided to clear everyone out in one fell swoop. On February 8, school officials ordered all students to vacate the plaza overnight. The university was finally going to enforce its rule prohibiting people from sleeping outside on campus and requiring the removal of belongings from the plaza between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. The order cited the danger posed by the storm as a justification for changing course and, probably hoping to avoid allegations of bias, described the decision as “viewpoint-neutral.”

That didn’t work.

About a week of protests, led by the sit-in organizers, followed. Chants were chanted. More demands for a “river to the sea” solution to the Israel problem were made. A friend boasted to me about her willingness to be arrested. Stanford sent a handful of staff members, who stood near balloons left over from an event earlier in the day. They were there, one of them told me, to “make students feel supported and safe.”

In the end, Saller and Martinez agreed to talk with the leaders of the sit-in about their demands to divest the university and condemn Israel, under the proviso that the activists comply with Stanford’s anti-camping guidelines “regardless of the outcome of discussions.” Eight days after they were first instructed to leave, 120 days after setting up camp, the sit-in protesters slept in their own beds. In defiance of the university’s instructions, they left behind their tents. But sometime in the very early hours of the morning, law-enforcement officers confiscated the structures. The area was cordoned off without any violence and the plaza filled once more with electric skateboards and farmers’ markets.

The conflict continues in its own way. Saller was just shouted down by protesters chanting “No peace on stolen land” at a Family Weekend event, and protesters later displayed an effigy of him covered in blood. Students still feel tense; Saller still seems worried. He told me that the university is planning to change all manner of things—residential-assistant training, new-student orientation, even the acceptance letters that students receive—in hopes of fostering a culture of greater tolerance. But no campus edict or panel discussion can address a problem that is so much bigger than our university.

At one rally last fall, a speaker expressed disillusionment about the power of “peaceful resistance” on college campuses. “What is there left to do but to take up arms?” The crowd cheered as he said Israel must be destroyed. But what would happen to its citizens? I’d prefer to believe that most protesters chanting “Palestine is Arab” and shouting that we must “smash the Zionist settler state” don’t actually think Jews should be killed en masse. But can one truly be so ignorant as to advocate widespread violence in the name of peace?

When the world is rendered in black-and-white—portrayed as a simple fight between colonizer and colonized—the answer is yes. Solutions, by this logic, are absolute: Israel or Palestine, nothing in between. Either you support liberation of the oppressed or you support genocide. Either Stanford is all good or all bad; all in favor of free speech or all authoritarian; all anti-Semitic or all Islamophobic.

At January’s anti-anti-Semitism event, I watched an exchange between a Jewish attendee and a protester from a few feet away. “Are you pro-Palestine?” the protester asked.

“Yes,” the attendee responded, and he went on to describe his disgust with the human-rights abuses Palestinians have faced for years.

“But are you a Zionist?”

“Yes.”

“Then we are enemies.”

#Theo Baker #Hamas supporters #Hamas #hamas terrorism #hamas terrorists #antisemitism

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