BC SOCIETY
Saved by @ThomassRichards

Hi Twitter I can't sleep again. I need to ramble and rumble myself into passive aggressively sleeping.
The past 12 years haven't been easy for many but for those of us who are Jews of African descent in America it has been a trial by ordeal.

 When Obama was president I remember when 1 of my students expressed a sense of fear of him. Their parents compared him to Hitler, wary of his passionate speeches &ability to arouse the masses. I immediately balked but knew where there was this sentiment there were others.
I lost a friend in Eva when she called him a Muslim born in Kenya. She also splashed a kid in the face with water...a lot...and I was like that's not cool but I also realized that would be my ass if I did that.
A parent I did not know threw a Karen moment at me before I knew what they were for wearing an Obama kippa...I took it off after a mild talking to...and I put it right back on after he won.
Then Trump came on the waves of birtherism. People we thought we knew became more and more hostile, untrustworthy and mean. We saw our community struggle between 2/3 mostly ok with us and 1/3 not. Many of us stopped going to the shuls we always had.
We were constantly given loyalty tests. The outside world became woke. We ft empowered to say new things. We were also textbook intersectional. We were asked to fit into boxes we did not and live in bubbles we never wanted. We were liberated and enslaved simultaneously
My heart breaks when I consider the abuse we have incurred on this site.

Patrilineal descent, conversion, matrilineal descent...none of it mattered. Gatekeepers rose up demanding our papers. We now had to be checked in, approved, our microphones taken...we were called imposters.
Its shameful when I feel most Jewish when I'm called a pervert and told to go back to Africa or Israel by a Trumper with a pic of Andrew Jackson wearing a Maga hat as his image....
I would get constant DMs demanding I insert myself into the conversation over Israel and Israeli Arabs or Palestinians.

I got told I wanted to be anything but Black because I wore a kippa and tallit in a picture...

I couldn't win but I smiled just the same. Inside I was dying.
I tossed a few pages of the siddur around, prayed in the park, pretended I was on some island begging to be rescued.

Friends faced more racism in traditional shuls...I went to a seder in Brentwood in LA where politics came up. I didn't know how to feel when I left.
Seeing my new friends torn to pieces on here for four years...is something I have been loathe to talk about.

Recently Rav Ovadia Yosef's words were used against me as if to say, "Yeah but look what you're a part of..." classic antisemitism....being made to answer for all Jews
And at the same time a sparse minority of Black folks needling me for being Jewish as if it made me suspicious, a double agent...
Sandwiched with a so called brotha who harassed me for wearing my historical clothing at Colonial Williamsburg accusing me of being
A fantasy for "white suburban housewives in Charlotte."

Why Charlotte? I dunno. I had to remind myself that the block button is a necessary positive.

Plus, I'm not known for being a fantasy for women...
Jewishness is not solely grounded in faith. Blackness is not solely grounded in color. Both represent a peoplehood, a set of underlying understandings. Something more complicated than 240 characters.
We have been asked to brave an era between acts of violence committed towards Jews and Jews in authority in an administration that has acted in abominable ways. We are Warnock and Ossoff and we are Miller and Owens...we are never far from blessings and curses. We worry. We pray.
A so called Black Hebrew creates havoc in a store and people are shot. A schoolboard is taken over in New York, landlords confess they want to take advantage of the desire to self segregate, people call Farrakhan a leftist...nice try....a man brings a machete into a rabbis home
And yet we still do the work. We still represent. We still speak up. We ignore the voices that don't want us to have a voice.

We know why we are here. We know the news stories will keep coming&the flashpoints,we know we are more visible than ever before&it comes with risks
Ask me how I felt when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died or John Lewis or Larry Kramer....
The world I live in was shaped by people like me...who gave a damn.
Complex, sometimes problematic, but gave a damn. Lived for something. Had a path...a plan.
It's hard to make those contributions when people fuck with you and try to delegitimize you.

Some of my friends have experienced deep clinical depression and anguish because they had their identity challenged by people who thought they were soldiers but were really cowards.
This daily existence takes a lot from you.

I remember being called a Black faggot three blocks from Union Station the day before the Trump inauguration.

Or being harassed for ten minutes on the DC subway while saying tehillim by a fringe group of white nationalist Christians.
But I don't want to give up. Not because of American exceptionalism...not my theory of choice...but I do believe this is the only place I'm possible..by circumstance....and I want to...I have to make my existence work...while at the same time being awake bc I am tense and angry
My only hope is that I belong to a militia of the spirit, people called to a tradition of empathy and concern, compassion and moral suasion, self respect and cultural and spiritual confidence. Those willing to cede ego for healing, choosing caution over power
I want you to know that my struggle is not over who I am or why I am...it is over whether or not I want to engage with those for whom my who or what or why is a challenge to their definition of American. How many culture wars will it take to remind them they are wrong?
I see on here and other social media people who are grieving&struggling& trying to cope. I know these traumas are graying us, stressing us, killing us, sending us into nihilistic spirals of apathy and despair. I see you hurting. I see you shaking your heads.
And in this moment I am so proud to be part of a family of people that defines itself by gratitude for the struggle to obtain the blessings of this life and this world and a family of people who is defined by our consistent demand that America live up to its ideals.
Every trip I made to Africa I got to see part of what makes us an incredible Diaspora. I got part of the source code. I've been able to see and pray in Yerushalayim/Al-Quds. I've traveled the American South looking for reconnection and redemption. I've more work to do.
To all those who feel marginalized& abandoned...who have anguished over babies in cages and women who have been sterilized against their will or the label of shithole countries&transgender service members told their sacrifice wasn't= or those who weep over a ravaged environment
Lets welcome a new day together. Let's stop the dread as much as we can and pull out our blankets and drink warm and comforting cups of resistance and watch the sunrise together. We made it, we made this moment, with a million different pieces of human. We lived through
We lived through a cultural apocalypse but we made it to tomorrow. The aftermath of an apocalypse isn't picking up the pieces, it's seeing what was revealed about us. Apocalypse means to uncover or reveal. The soul searching is in what we've learned not just what we lived.
I am not here because of the weak, I am here because of the strong.

I am here because of tikkun olam...the repair of the world...and tzedek..justice..
I am here because of aşé, ìwa& itutu...creative fire, good character& the power of the cool.

I'm here bc life is with people.
I have to try to sleep. Good morning.

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2/ This phenomenon—I’m calling it a Sex Recession—really surprised me. It seemed improbable in the age of Tinder, digital porn, and attitudes that are generally permissive and sex-positive.

3/ What’s happening isn’t exclusively American: Similar trends are being observed in other countries, including Japan, Australia, the U.K., Finland, and the Netherlands.


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5/ But I also found other explanations, each with profound implications. The first, unsurprisingly, has to do with internet enticements. Netflix and other online entertainment may be substituting for sex.
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1/14 How do e-cigarettes (ECs) affect cigarette smoking among youth? My new paper with @FloeFoxon simulates each scenario and finds out which one best matches actual trends... https://t.co/dBB7kcnTls @jgitchell @mikepesko @SwitchFinder @jkelovuori @TobPolicy @Clive_Bates

2/14 First, let's talk about why this question is so difficult to answer: COUNTERFACTUALS. We can't know the alternate-reality answers, like which smokers would have never started in a world without ECs, and which nonsmokers would now be smoking without ECs as an option.

3/14 So, the best we can do is use fancy/sophisticated methodologies to estimate what would have happened to youth smoking rates in the absence of ECs. In our case, simulation modeling


4/14 First, we look at the declining smoking trends *that were already happening* before ECs came (~2010), and project them into the present. This is our BASE-CASE SCENARIO about what smoking trends would be if ECs were never invented. Actual trends were LOWER than this base-case


5/14 Side note about terminology: We use the term “catalyst” instead of “gateway,” because “catalyst” is more precise about the claim we are modeling (that ECs are used first, and then causally lead to smoking). Whereas "gateway" can include other mechanisms like renormalization.
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Did you realize there is a movement to normalize anti-white hatred? It works with white guilt and psych-op to dehumanize white people. They are working to dehumanize "whiteness". Do not make the mistake of thinking this is an isolated incident because it has been going on for ...

some time. I have collected nearly 100 articles in the last few yrs.
Today there was a whistleblower from Coca Cola, who revealed classes they were to take to learn how to "try to be less white". The classes are provided by Linked In on Linked In.


Many large companies are not only doing diversity training, but "What It Means to be White" seminars. Inside our government seminars are available. Recently we learned the Defense Secretary said he is going to root out extremism,

which we know means white supremacists aka Trump supporters. I do not think he was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, as he has been fine with them.


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Rob Ford
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Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.
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foone
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So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over
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Vibhu Vashisth
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@VIBHU_Tweet
ANCIENT BHARAT WAS CALLED VISHWAGURU, AND IT REALLY DESERVED IT.

India had a well developed education system centuries before the westerners arrived and called us uncivilized. Education was always given a great importance in Indian civilisation since times immemorial.


Ancient India had the Gurukulas and Ashramas as the epicentres of the knowledge and enlightenment. Bigger Gurukulas served as the centres of higher education called universities. Besides these universities, temples also emerged as the major learning centres.

Studying the Holy Scriptures, character building, personality development, responsibilities towards self,family and society,discipline and preservation of the ancient culture and heritage were the key embodiments of education.

This kind of education system made ancient India, a centre of knowledge all over the world. Many foreign students came to India for education and India was called the 'Vishwaguru'.
Takshshila and Nalanda were the two prominent universities of ancient India.


But were these only Universities of ancient India?The answer is 'No'.Let's learn about these gems of our education system that flourished across ancient India & be proud.

NALANDA UNIVERSITY
This was the oldest university of ancient India.Situated in Nalanda distt. of Bihar...
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Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
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THE MEANING, SIGNIFICANCE AND HISTORY OF SWASTIK

The Swastik is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon. Swastik has been Sanatan Dharma’s symbol of auspiciousness – mangalya since time immemorial.


The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक, pronounced: swastik) &denotes “conducive to wellbeing or auspicious”.
The word Swastik has a definite etymological origin in Sanskrit. It is derived from the roots su – meaning “well or auspicious” & as meaning “being”.


"सु अस्ति येन तत स्वस्तिकं"
Swastik is de symbol through which everything auspicios occurs

Scholars believe word’s origin in Vedas,known as Swasti mantra;

"🕉स्वस्ति ना इन्द्रो वृधश्रवाहा
स्वस्ति ना पूषा विश्ववेदाहा
स्वस्तिनास्तरक्ष्यो अरिश्तनेमिही
स्वस्तिनो बृहस्पतिर्दधातु"


It translates to," O famed Indra, redeem us. O Pusha, the beholder of all knowledge, redeem us. Redeem us O Garudji, of limitless speed and O Bruhaspati, redeem us".

SWASTIK’s COSMIC ORIGIN

The Swastika represents the living creation in the whole Cosmos.


Hindu astronomers divide the ecliptic circle of cosmos in 27 divisions called https://t.co/sLeuV1R2eQ this manner a cross forms in 4 directions in the celestial sky. At centre of this cross is Dhruva(Polestar). In a line from Dhruva, the stars known as Saptarishi can be observed.
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Anu Satheesh
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Thrikkangode Sree Randu Moorthy Temple
Ottappalam, Kerala. 🚩
#keralatemples

This is very unique temple as Shiva and Vishnu both are in the “linga” form in the same Garbhagriham. The Srikovil is in a circular pattern. Temple's Prathishta was done by Parasurama.


Mahadeva and Maha Vishnu in the same Srikovil is very rare Prathishta, but poojas are done separately Dhara is done to Maha Vishnu here. People suffering from “KAIVISHAM” and mental illness are fully cured on drinking a medicinal herb supplied by a nearby family here.


The root of the banyan tree around the Ayyappa Sannidhanam is said to have great powers for skin ailments.

Very ancient temple but was covered with forest for many years.
Later two persons Chakki and Chaathan, while cutting trees their axe hit on the nearby
@SriramKannan77


Vigrahams and it suddenly started bleeding. Later Devaprashnam was held and thus found out that these were murthy's of Shiva and Vishnu which was worshipped long back. And thus temple is constructed here.
Om Namah Sivaye
Om Namo Narayanaya
🕉🙏🕉
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