Thread by @JoshuaCypess

51.01/ Week fifty-one, July 3-9 2021, begins here.

#IsruChag sameach for #July4th

Week 50 below

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1409158095822012418

51.02/ This is exactly right. Thread.

https://twitter.com/DavidAstinWalsh/status/1407679850505179137?s=20

51.03/ Rabbi Regan is 100% right. I describe this as "banning straws" activism - something that doesn't solve a systemic or even immediate problem while actively hurting others. As a bonus, the straw-ban helped the company's bottom line.

https://twitter.com/RutiRegan/status/1412081140253564930

51.04/ My sister-in-law @LeahCypess's new book "Glass Slippers" is up for pre-order. The 2nd in her YA "Sisters Ever After" series about the sisters of fairy tale princesses (3 guesses which one here. Yup: Rumpelstiltskin). Buy a dozen for your friends!
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634522/g…

51.05/ Social scientists, represent!

https://twitter.com/nicolozarotti/status/1407421760249765892

51.06/ Follow-up on the rabbi attacked in Boston last Thursday. I lived in Boston (Newton, MA) for four years and this is blood-chilling. Thank God it sounds like the victim will survive and that the alleged assailant is in custody.

timesofisrael.com/injured-boston…

51.07/ We're nearing the end of Yoma in #DafYomi and 86a/b describes the parameters of the worst sin of them all: #ChillulHashem, desecration of God's honor. Key point? If your behavior makes onlookers think that the Torah teaches selfishness & folly.
sefaria.org/Yoma.86a.12?la…

51.08/ A good illustration of how to avoid "perfect is the enemy of good" i.e. that good can often just be a minimal effort. E.g. when people avoid visiting the sick or a mourner because they don't know what to say: just show up. That means the world.

https://twitter.com/ravenscimaven/status/1403189217036021766?s=20

51.09/ Couldn't have put it better myself.

https://twitter.com/hinz_tamara/status/1411069817973473288

51.10/ Prof. Stanley is pointing to an important litmus test here: how did [country] behave during the Shoah and/or historically how did they treat their Jewish minority?

That's why I whole-heartedly celebrate #July4th & being an American.

https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1412349659432079360?s=20

51.11/ Thanking for small blessings: JSTOR has kept stable URLs after all these years.

I'm adding articles from 2009 to a bibliography & b/c the PDFs download as numbers it's easy to just add it to jstor.org/stable/ and get the citation, e.g. jstor.org/stable/1453757

51.12/ These crisis years have shown time & again why Avraham Avinu's chief act of virtue was hospitality to strangers. And that's what we need to fix the world, right now and always.

Caring about the poor? Infirm? Refugees? Future generations? The environment? All hospitality.

51.13/ Exactly.

It worries me that the Far Left calls everything they hate "capitalism" with the same rhetorical monomania as the Right calling their enemies "socialist." Both use non-theistic eschatological code that IMO acts just like religious zealotry

https://twitter.com/ne0liberal/status/1411203295264260100

51.14/ All the hubbub about RCV reminds me of the now-alien manner the Constitution set up POTUS/VP: the two top vote getters share the WH like the original Odd Couple. (The Founders were goofily myopic about the inevitability of political parties.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_A…

51.15/ I'm going to join Fruhlinger on this hill.

BHO (b. 1961) is not a Boomer. That generation's cohesion comes from being born as part of the post-WW2 prosperity and focus on domestic life of the 50s. Same deal with VP Harris (b. 1964). C'mon people.

https://twitter.com/jfruh/status/1363958776370327553?s=20

51.16/ Racism is just so odd to me. Seriously. In my defense, I still don't understand antisemitism either & always surprised by who holds these gutter views, what they believe, and how they act on it. Am I naïve? Maybe. Or I just lack an evil imagination.

https://twitter.com/digitalsista/status/1411762780718391296

51.17/ Thinking more about this. It may be a tier-based system for bands, with 1 hit wonders (a well known category) on top, then 3-hit, 7-hit, 20-hit, and so on. Then the standard-deviation quality question: a band whose bad songs are actually OK.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1356240893263679490?s=20

51.18/ In my house we've come to agree that today feels like Thursday for some reason even though by rights it should feel like Tuesday which means it averages out to Wednesday. So all is good.

51.19/ Agree with this point about Bush v. Gore (and was furious at the time):

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1412214838584041474?s=20

& this comment well illustrates the depravity of the decision and historical omen it portends

https://twitter.com/adamfromphilly/status/1412216079393427460?s=20

51.20/ I do hope that not only Jan 6th will be observed with a solemnity it deserves, but possibly we can use the
day to mourn the losses from COVID and the other horrors of the #TrumpCrisis. It's only fitting.

https://twitter.com/frankthorp/status/1412548930030743552?s=20

51.21/ Excellent point. But in some ways it's still too small-bore. Colleges introduce people to diversity, critical thinking & smash the idols of a sheltered upbringing. Fascism demands myth. That's why the college educated are fleeing the GOP.

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1341802106433404929

51.22/ This is top-notch praxis.

https://twitter.com/Kate_Kelly_Esq/status/1413123108299489281?s=20

51.23/ "What is your biggest weakness?"

Probably trusting the discretion and motives of people who ask invasive questions.

51.24/ Join me and over one million others in supporting a different model for open, independent journalism. Together we can help safeguard The Guardian’s future – so more people, across the world, can keep accessing factual information for free support.theguardian.com/contribute?INT…

51.25/ Fun fact: just because my hair color doesn't look like the bright ginger of my youth, I still have all the genetic advantages (read: ridiculous & rare disadvantages) of being a #redhead.

Lamarck was wrong. Genetics don't change with appearance.
nih.gov/news-events/ni…

51.26/ My teens asked me how #TFG could sue Twitter et. al. I said it's purposefully inflammatory & DOA so he can raise, & profit from, donation money from his cult of rubes.

That said, if you want to read trained lawyers dunk on it for a while see here:

https://twitter.com/Katerationopia/status/1412795372494282754

51.27/ I've seen what NHJ describes in action many times. E.g. it's why the Black community knew the TFG had a real shot in '16 & also why SC went for Biden.

It's like how children in abusive homes learn early how to identify & defend vs. psychopathology.

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1412792267392290826?s=20

51.28/ This is such a maladroit excuse from *ucker about why he was secretly communicating with the Kremlin. It fools the FoxNews watching rubes but that's fish-in-the-barrel easy. Reminds me of this great Simpson's excuse:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1412927700847579136?s=20

51.29/ Excellent comment about how traffic-fatalities are problem solved: instead of roundabouts they're choosing robot drivers, because:

https://twitter.com/jonrog1/status/1412948151791611905?s=20

51.30/ In the same vein of "Not the Onion," this happened at the Univ. of Maryland when my mother @CypessSM was on the Spanish faculty. sllc.umd.edu

It's what happens when civilization supporting systems are treated as faceless commodities.

https://twitter.com/ass_deans/status/1412932997683326985?s=20

51.31/ There's an inchoate essay in my head about "Twitter Bot Semiotics" and its concomitant art form.

Why do 200K people (me included) like this color bot? Fewer follow it's verbal counterpart that devises a name for the color.

https://twitter.com/everycolorbot/status/1412977562133929985?s=20

https://twitter.com/colornamebot/status/1412977750776840195?s=20

51.32/ This is a very powerful way to describe the dynamic within an abusive home. Esp. this line: "How devastating for that child to reach out for a champion and find nothing but a witness." IMO "witness" can include "accomplice"

https://twitter.com/KaylaAncrum/status/1412837562788597760?s=20

&

https://twitter.com/KaylaAncrum/status/1412839285020057604?s=20

51.33/ This is really true.

I'd add that in general, our brains need to summarize rather than dwell on the complexity, which is why real scholars go to the original sources.

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1412980475338051584

51.34/ It's an odd experience, given my flummoxed youth, to have a child who's a gifted athlete. My wife's genetics clearly overpowered mine to his benefit (as in most things, thank goodness).

Mazal tov to the whole championship winning team!
jewishlink.news/sports/44730-h…

51.35/ We're going to try to take in Shabbos early, so I'll sign off for now. Stay safe everyone. #ShabbatShalom

@threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.