simpletailor [he/him]

A couple of things:

1. race is a social distinction, not genetic. This framework is referred to as “racialization”: humans create in-groups and out-groups, sometimes based on visible characteristics. Ardent racists attempted to use genetics to explain race, but we are all the same species. There are specific genes or traits that may be more common in people from certain regions or cultures, but there is enough variation (and people move around so much now) that this doesn’t mean anything. E.g., a White person with entirely European ancestry might have darker than average skin color, making them darker in comparison to a Black person with lighter than average skin color. The White person might experience anti-Black racism if someone sees them and categorizes them as Black based on skin tone. The racist might recant if told “my parents are Greek and Sicilian”, or they might double down.

2. Because “race” is a social category, this means different ethnicities have been classified as “White” or “non-White” depending on the social context. In the American context, Sicilian and Irish immigrants were racialized as “non-White”. This has nothing to do with skin tone; Sicilians were otherized by northern italians, and the Irish were otherized by the English. The stereotypes used to put down these ethnic groups were imported to the US, and the Northern Italians and English immigration waves happened before the Sicilian and Irish waves. This set the stage for a social hierarchy whereby Sicilians and Irish folk were bio-essentialized as untermensch–racialized as “non-White”.

3. “White” or “non-White” as terms should be seen not as categories of skin color, but as a binary method of classifying people as either “in-group” or “out-group”, used to systemically grant or revoke social privileges. If you layer this framework onto, e.g., Ancient Rome or Greece (the centers of these civilizations being firmly and broadly considered “White” today), you would note that the social classes with power would racialize different ethnic groups to justify slavery and tiered levels of citizenship. They had their own bioessentialist mythos, which they used to categorize people as either “equal to me” or “lesser than me”. For examples, look up ancient Greek ideas of autochthony.

To bring this back to Judaism: Jewish people are racialized as “others”, which is why “half-jewish” matters to people who believe in the dichotomy (even tacitly due to cultural momentum). “Half-jewish” implies, depending on the intent of the speaker, “still bad”, “not ALL bad”, or perhaps “part of an oppressed community”. To any racist who categorizes “Jewish” as “lesser”, any amount of Jewish ancestry = “bad” (see also Jean-Paul Sartre’s discussion about racists thinking that a bridge built by a Jewish architect is therefore a Jewish bridge and needs to be destroyed"). On the flip side, acknowledging that Jewish people have been racialized and systematically oppressed might lead one to recognize “half Jewish” as a category to describe someone whose family members faced systemic inequality because of their religion–something that many people see to be an immutable part of themselves, inherited from their parents.

Again, this is not a skin tone or genetic distinction, but a social one. “Half Christian” or “half Buddhist” are not terms that are used in this context, because Christians and Buddhists were not historically racialized. It’s not something that you can necessarily “see” just by looking at a person (that’s also why Nazis made Jewish people identify themselves visually).

George Carlin had a bit about how republicans want women to raise live babies to become dead soldiers. Now that warfare is all drones, they’re cutting out the “let them live to fighting age” step

Dook in Peace, Lupo. Ferrets are such lovely pets.

Take care of yourself.

Awesome, love this, thanks for the rec!

Endorsing this answer and adding some more info and examples.

Etymologically: blasphemy comes from ancient Greek, meaning “hurtful speech”. In the Christian context, this was extended to mean impious speech, or taking God’s name in vain. Euphemy, in contrast, “good speech”, includes ways religious people modified these invocations against God to avoid blasphemy. Damn > darn ; God > gosh; sacré dieu (fr) > sacré bleu. Of course this is not just limited to religious speech: shit > sheesh; fuck > fudge; putain (fr) > purée.

More etymology on the terms we use to discuss these categories of words: “vulgar” = of or relating to the common people (i.e., not "polite society’). “Profanity” = religiously impure (literally “before the temple”, i.e., before being consacrated).

In a state with laws which reflect this Christian tradition, blasphemy is considered impolite, antisocial, and absolutely a corruption of the youth to allow children to hear such words. This is how these words get tied in to legislation which also prohibit other vulgarities. This is why you can’t say “God damn” on American public radio or tv. These laws often blanket ban the words without any mind to context. Sometimes they loosen them, however, so you might hear “damn” on the radio, but they censor the entire phrase “god damn”.

Cross-culturally, common insults, vulgarities, or invectives involve invoking the taboo: what’s impolite or improper to talk about in the culture? Scat/urine (shit, piss, s/cum, pissintunicus(medieval Latin), sex or sexual organs (dick, douche bag, fucker, pendejo(sp), dirtbag/scumbag (referring to a used condom)), blasphemies (go to hell, God damn you, hostie de tabernak(fr-ca)). What animals have a negative reputation (ass, cow, ayı(tr), bitch)? In what ways did you or your family break social norms (bastard)? Bonus if any of these overlap (mother fucker, ppb).

Note that a lot of profanities and insults are misogynist in origin. There are some obvious ones that refer to female genitalia or to female promiscuity, but even “Son of a bitch”, “mother fucker”, and “bastard”, while all directed at a male referant, impugne his mother’s character within the patriarchal system.

I don’t remember recipes off the top of my head, so no measurements:

Parmigiano: Mince some cashews and Nutritional Yeast. Nutritional yeast by itself is often suggested, but the cashews add a new layer. This is more expensive than knock-off “parmesans” but not far off from an artisan Parmigiano.

Ricotta: silken tofu is the key here. Again, cashews and Nutritional yeast. Blitz everything in a food processor, takes like 2 minutes. Great in lasagne.

Mozzarella: heat up cashew milk in a saucepan, add a thickener (usually xanthan gum and tapioca starch). Tbh this was annoying and I never got it right, so I just buy vegan mozzarellas.

– When buying vegan cheeses, note that they don’t really melt like dairy cheese, especially the “shreds”. Look for a liquid vegan cheese, or introducing an oil can make it meltier. The shreds work pretty well for quesadillas

Holy hell!

Absolutely bizarre and inexplicable. Texas splits, Oklahoma gets subsumed into nearby states, West Virginia takes Pittsburgh, US invades Cuba and la Republica Dominicana but not Haïti, and part of Sicilia? Internationally and domestically incomprehensible.

Thank you!

Can you direct me to more information? I’d like to know more.

Allonormativity is what you’re talking about. Amatonormativity is the assumptions related to romantic attraction/relationships.

See Chen’s book Ace for a primer on asexuality https://www.angelachen.org/ace

If you haven’t already, start by communicating that you need more and different kinds of emotional support from your partner. They deserve a chance to develop this skill. If they’re not able or willing to meet your needs, you’re not a good fit. I learned this the hard way. But you deserve someone who can meet your emotional support needs.

As far as the other non-romantic relationships go, you don’t have to cut people off, but you should find other, more empathetic people to lean on. I have very close friends that I know will be there for me when I need emotional support. I also have other good friends who aren’t as good at it, and we get along just fine and bond over shared interests.

You are right insofar as rote memorization not being an ideal way to become a fluent language user, but “language acquisition model” is not a theoretical framework. Language Acquisition is a sub-field of linguistics.

“Comprehensible input” is an untestable hypothesis from the 1970s by a researcher named Krashen. Immersion methods are perfectly fine ways to acquire language–both grammar and vocabulary–but a massive benefit to already having a first language means that you can leverage your existing linguistic schemata (e.g., mappings for abstract concepts onto words, grammatical categories, etc.) to jumpstart your second language competencies.

With structured instruction and ample opportunities to practice speaking conversationally, a classroom learner can achieve the same level of conversational fluency as someone who learned the language immersively.

Further, a purely conversational course would not lead directly to improvement in the domains of reading and writing. There are some synergies, but these are separate skills that need to be targeted by specific pedagogic interventions. This is why children learning their first language still need to go to school to learn how to read, of course. And a major benefit of learning to read is then reading to learn.

The primary issue here is classroom time. Language instructors need to focus on a million different things. Here’s a no comprehensive list off the top of my head: the domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening; compositional modality (e.g. presentational speech, colloquial speech, presentational writing, genre-specific conventions for persuasiveness/humor/storytelling/etc.); general vocabulary and grammar; specific vocabulary and grammar (e.g. for home/academic/professional/etc domains); social norms (again by domain); cultural literacy (again by domain); etc.

And then divide the instructor’s time by the number of students.

A learner needs to integrate within a speech community and continue practicing these skills within the appropriate contexts, or they atrophy. The foreign language context (i.e., the target language is not commonly spoken in daily life near the learner) is terrible at this, because it means that the learner does not have easy access to others with whom to practice and from whom to learn.

Tldr; use your other languages to help you speed up the baseline memorization and pattern recognition skills that are fundamental to contextual application, find a community, and do language with them.

My bona fides are a PhD in the subject and a decade of language teaching in US public schools and universities

Language acquisition research on a “critical period” for language learning is inconclusive. Neuroplasticity may make it easier for a child to acquire/differentiate specific linguistic information (e.g. sounds that exist in one but not both of the languages) but being socialized into a second language discourse community /also/ means that they’re getting far more time practicing the language.

That stood out to me too. If I’m thinking of the same Star Trek context you are, it was a character in Discovery whom we’re not supposed to like because

For those going on to grad school, they would need to submit official transcripts indicating they have been awarded their degrees.

LLMs are okay if you already know the answer, because they don’t have a basis for truth or a bias for source; they prioritize frequency of co-occurrence of words in the training data. They can produce very convincing and completely made-up text, or propagate “common wisdom” that isn’t actually correct.

Using ChatGPT is pretty much the same as trusting one of the random AI-generated blogs poisoning the search results–which other people in this thread are complaining about the uselessness of.