With the hbomberguy plagiarism video on fire right now I want to share my favorite example of egregious plagiarism.
I’m a marine biologist. Currently getting my PhD. I’ve done a lot of scholarly writing. Many classes I took as an undergraduate had big writing components. I took limnology at one point as an elective. This course had one such big writing assignment.
The professor told us a story. He said he once got a student paper that absolutely blew him away. It was way beyond what he’d expected from the class. This was before we had online tools to check for plagiarism. The paper impressed him so much that he brought it home to show it to his wife. She began reading it and then set it down, looked at him, and said, “Dan, you wrote this.”
This student was dumb enough to not only copy a published paper verbatim, but to copy a paper published by the professor of the class.
Throwback to all these Jesus comics I drew in 2012…
Good post OP
Good post, OP, and if you ever decide to do another may I please suggest “NOT IN HEBREW IT DOESN’T” as a punchline? So much of the Old Testament is HORRIFICALLY translated from the Tanakh, it drives me batty.
WAIT WAIT WHAT DOES IT SAY?????? I NEED TO LIKE,, DESTROY MI MUM FOR BEING REALLY HOMOPHOBIC
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.”Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.”
5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”.
(You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like … a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
Apparently tumblr mobile doesn’t want to show @prismatic-bell ’s long and in-depth essay, so here’s the screenshots, because it still shows up on mobile browsers:
Much appreciated.
I love when scholarship and history debunks bullshit
…I sadly have more bullshit to report.
“removed for violating guidelines”, EVERY screenshot.
…goddamnit
Let’s try this again
I am horrified that @prismatic-bell keeps getting censored + this info is gold.
Many thanks, @pulmonary-poultry. This isn’t the only Jewish post of mine that’s mysteriously stopped showing up in searches and/or vanished from my blog entirely, but it is the one I get the most requests to repost, so this saves me from having to rewrite the whole damned essay. @the-invisible-self, thanks for bringing it to my attention that someone was able to preserve the post!
If there was a way to run SUPER MEGA AD BLOCKER on this website I fucking would
“Please oh please open up your computer to a porn virus! If you don’t you’re evil!”
Freeloader Comin’ through!
We didn’t start this war internet users have with ads - We might have moaned about banner ads, but it was only when they started making noises when we might be listening to music or a podcast or whatever, causing two sound sorces at once, that we started trying to block ads universally rather than just a specific type of ad (pop ups).
And since then ads have gotten worse - Actual malware rather than merely breaking one of the fundamental sins of web design - though shalt not autoplay anything with sound. And the more aggressive a website is with ‘please turn off adblock’ the less I trust it to bother to vet ads and advertisers to make sure they’re not installing malware.
Not to mention that the idea that avoiding ads is “freeloading” is hilariously backward. Advertisement is a transaction between the platform and the advertiser, the user has no obligation to provide the views/clicks the platform has promised. Using an adblocker isn’t freeloading in the same way that leaving the room to get a snack during a commercial break isn’t cheating the tv network.
Ok y’all, I work as a web developer and I’m here to tell you that you are 100% right and that it’s shit. SO I’m going to tell you how to get around websites that block you from using their website if you’re using an adblocker.
Every website uses a language called JavaScript; long story short it’s a website language that allows developers to do the crazy shit you see on websites. Now the easiest thing to do is to disable JavaScript to stop them from knowing you have an adblocker:
Oh no! I’m blocked from viewing the website. It would be a terrible shame if I were able to right click and select the “inspect” feature
Click the three dots in the top right and open the “Settings” Menu
And then scrolled down to “Debugger” and checked the “Disable Javascript Option”
God they cut off all the internet and cellular networks in Gaza
We are isolated now’: Communications lost with many parts of Gaza (from Al Jazeera’s live update, by reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum, 16:25 GMT)
We don’t know about anything that is happening in other districts in the territory. Maybe there are new bombardments taking place in these areas. We don’t know how many victims. We can only hear bombardments everywhere, but we don’t know any anything about the casualties, about the situation on the ground.
We don’t know anything also about the medical conditions of doctors, medical workers, even at the Al-Shifa Hospital [the largest in Gaza]. The situation is catastrophic right now. We can no longer communicate with the international community to send our voice to the world to know what is happening on the ground. I hope that this message might reach and have an access to the world despite what we have experienced throughout the last hour.
We are now in a hospital and we are going to be live by satellite as much as we can and every single hour. So please, if you can hear us, send that message to the world that we are isolated now in Gaza. We don’t have any phone signals. We don’t have any internet connections. We found great difficulty even to communicate and contact with our relatives in different parts of the territory.
Journalists here, even the citizens inside the hospital, they don’t have any access to the networks. They don’t have any kind of communication even with their neighbors. There is a great problem in the network connections. We don’t know how it’s dropped. We don’t know if it was targeted.
The situation on the ground is really terrible. Everyone is afraid, everyone is terrified. Please ,guys, if you can hear us send this message to the world that we are becoming isolated.
Al Jazeera currently only has sporadic communication with correspondents in Gaza following the latest strikes on the besieged enclave.
[Image ID: Tweet from Gabriel Diani (he/him) on 09 Jan 23 reading: We went from “golden age of prestige tv” to “please stream my show the first weekend of I might not get a season 2” to “every season of this television show has been wiped from existence for all eternity for tax purposes.” /End ID]
Both the article and the tweet are disingenuous. Jenna Ortega never praised Hamas, but she also didn’t say “Palestinians deserve to live” either.
Her exact tweet was “decolonize Palestine” which holds very different connotations. Implying that Palestine has been colonized in turn suggests that Israel is a colony and not a sovereign nation state.
Are you seriously surprised that some Israelis are not happy with people telling them that their country doesn’t deserve to exist?
Their country doesn’t deserve to exist, hope that helps!! ♥️
“implying that Palestine has been colonized” yeah. That’s what happened.
“In turn suggests Israel is a colony and not a sovereign nation-state” hey quick question how come the Palestinian population in Palestine went from 1,300,000 to 156,000 in one year?
The Israeli-Palestine situation is not religious based, it’s land based. Religion came in the picture incidental decades after the conflict began.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Calling out “Israel” for it’s violence against the land currently known as Palestine is not blaming Jewish people and communities for said violence. There are Israeli Muslims, Palestinian Jews and Christians of both backgrounds.
There were already thousands of Jewish people in Palestine before British rule.
Calling out “Israel” means holding accountable the government/military actions oppressing the people of Palestine. Not blaming the innocent Jewish citizens of the land.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
It’s an opposition to this loss of life and land, not to any religious belief.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Freeing Palestine means giving its people self-determination on what is and is not their own ancestral land. The optimal way is to peacefully decide this.
The government/military of the state known as Israel have killed hundreds of innocent civilians of Palestine. They were met with peaceful protests. They responded with violence. Then they were met with violence in the name of self-defense. They responded with more violence.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Of course, Jewish people know far too well the cost of bloodshed and religious persecution that force innocents to become refugees, lose their families and have their homes ripped apart bloodily, inhumanely and unjustly.
That is the current state of innocents in Palestine.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
No, the issue is not black and white. Innocents in the land known as Israel have been hurt regardless of religious affiliation. Innocents in the land known as Palestine have been hurt regardless of religious affiliation.
The black and white of it is that there are the oppressed and the oppressors.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Freeing Palestine does not mean being diametrically opposed to the original definition of Zionism which is reparations for Jewish peoples in the form of a partial ethnic-state. 
The land currently known as Israel was not the only place considered for said goal; Madagascar, Ethiopia, Germany and several others were considered before outer Western oppressive powers mandated the state of Israel - a choice done with only temporary consent by those of the land then known as Palestine. 
Those same Western oppressive powers would have hurt whatever country they’d chosen and none of that would’ve been the fault of the Jewish people. 
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Jews have ALWAYS existed in Palestine.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
Free Palestine is simply a call to the end of illegal warfare, eviction, apartheid and religious persecution of innocent people in the land that is known as Palestine by the federal government of the state of Israel.
It is a call to prevent the exportation of refugees, the destruction of innocents, the airstrikes on public places and the bodies of innocent children lying dead and bloodied on the streets in the land of Israel-Palestine.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
It is a call to end the expansion of an oppressive state. Not to hurt Jews, nor kick them out individually nor to kill them. Just to free all involved from the warfare of an imposed and invading state.
Plenty of people with argue against this. I pity them for being uninformed and so adamant on their beliefs which may unintentionally or intentionally perpetuate violence on both communities - to paint either the Jewish or Arab peoples and/or their respective religions as violent or propagandistic.
Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.
“Free Palestine” is a call for peace and justice in the face of violent, unjust colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing.
Can we hold those responsible to account for the War Crimes in #Afganistan. .? In #Libya ..? In #Syria ..? In #Palestine ..? And given that there over 400.000 civilians dead in #Yemen and millions suffering from malnutrition, can we hold to account Western leaders responsible…?
they’re probably actually just a zionist trying to cosplay as anti zionist. As soon as you talk about a movement for Palestinians while trying to exclude us, you can go fuck yourself. There’s not Palestinian liberation without Palestinians.
Because this is what that looks like:
So yeah. How about you prioritize Palestinian voices for…. Palestinian advocacy? So you don’t end up listening to white supremacist talking points. That dipshit is literally parroting Israeli propaganda to justify the jailing, imprisonment, and torture of 200 children. It’s crazy to me some people reblog from both me and people like this.
Also don’t interact. Just block and avoid.
Honestly I’m far more suspicious of the person who feels the need to censor a country’s name like saying it makes it stronger like it’s Cthulhu than the person saying their country is like, not a cartoon villain.
it’s probably an attempt to avoid the muskrat descending upon the post like a hawk
Me navigating (sending a report to my boss) a minefield (my phone gallery) to make sure I don’t set one off and get myself killed. (Accidentally sending him a picture of two hot anime boys having the nastiest and most intense anal sex this side of Connecticut)
Throwback to all these Jesus comics I drew in 2012…
Good post OP
Good post, OP, and if you ever decide to do another may I please suggest “NOT IN HEBREW IT DOESN’T” as a punchline? So much of the Old Testament is HORRIFICALLY translated from the Tanakh, it drives me batty.
WAIT WAIT WHAT DOES IT SAY?????? I NEED TO LIKE,, DESTROY MI MUM FOR BEING REALLY HOMOPHOBIC
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.”Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.”
5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”.
(You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like … a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
Apparently tumblr mobile doesn’t want to show @prismatic-bell ’s long and in-depth essay, so here’s the screenshots, because it still shows up on mobile browsers:
Much appreciated.
I love when scholarship and history debunks bullshit
…I sadly have more bullshit to report.
“removed for violating guidelines”, EVERY screenshot.
…goddamnit
Let’s try this again
I am horrified that @prismatic-bell keeps getting censored + this info is gold.
Many thanks, @pulmonary-poultry. This isn’t the only Jewish post of mine that’s mysteriously stopped showing up in searches and/or vanished from my blog entirely, but it is the one I get the most requests to repost, so this saves me from having to rewrite the whole damned essay. @the-invisible-self, thanks for bringing it to my attention that someone was able to preserve the post!
If American libs had half a spine and really wanted to “push the Democrats left,” they could withhold their votes and suffer Trump for another four years just to show the democratic party that genocide is a line no one is allowed to cross, but no, they won’t, because they’re more than happy to show Biden that they’re okay with the murder of Palestinians and scare themselves about dictator Trump’s bogeyman to feel better about their spinelessness.
Because that won’t work, both parties answer to the same corporate donors. They’re both basically the same thing. The only way said American libs can actually do anything is to recognize this and protest, no matter who’s in office.
Genocide Joe, God Emperor Trump? Those are both horrible options that are basically the same. You need to choose the third one, which is to screw them both.
Pressure and protests put on the government and politicians themselves, no matter the party is the only hope.
the crazy thing about Musk’s Problematic Tweets is that they usually involve him blandly endorsing the most lame ass conspiracy shit imaginable, like a 12 year old boy posting “the globalist elites are poisoning the water supply to make us gay” and the richest man in the world replying “interesting; someone should look into this” to his hundred and fifty million followers.
its really cool that we discovered glass which is the material that doesnt have any chemical reactions with anything in the universe very useful for doing chemistry due to being able to put things in it to contain chemical reactions and never having it react with the things that are in it due to it being completely and entirely unreactive to every chemical
Posts from a 17th century chymist who’s about to have their bones dissolved by hydrofluoric acid.
It’s disheartening to hear that someone on a team was mistreated. Games are a beautiful medium, but the people who make those games come first. We’ve all got to work hard to ensure better environments for devs, and that starts with making sure they can get back on their feet!
it is continually inspiring to me that there is a nearly middle aged man who writes for a sports website who posts like us, truly the posters spirit can be found anywhere
Here’s what I’m thinking about on this fine evening: Ketterdam has a HUGE CANAL SYSTEM that runs pretty much through the entire city and I, somehow, completely missed that.
Here’s the Ketterdam map, right? We know her. We love her.
BUT, let’s zoom in a little:
You can see very clearly here that those thicker, darker colored lines connect distinctly into the harbor, which means that they are ALSO WATER.
So, if a person with a Six of Crows obsession and maybe a little too much time on their hands were to take that map and color it so that all of the water was blue, it would look something like this:
Now, I may just be stupid, but I’d like to believe there is at least one other person who will be as baffled upon seeing this post as I was when I made this realization. It’s water!! Canals are a major form of transportation in Ketterdam!! This not only is very interesting to me in regards to Ketterdam’s culture, but it also changed the way I pictured the city in my head. This is life-changing stuff, people.
my fav gif is still the one where the two dudes are at a sports game and one guy randomly shows up and aggressively starts to make out with one of the first two people and then the camera zooms in to the other guy, whose face shows complete confusion and terror at the gay that just went down
for all those who have no idea what he’s talking about
Here’s an activism you can do with your friends wherever you live. @ashluka on Instagram is featuring fliers you can print out featuring victims of Israel’s genocide on Gaza:
[Video description: A clip of Hbomberguy against a green screen. He looks at the camera and says: “I want to clarify right now that if anyone harasses Somerton on my behalf, they are worse than him and will not see the light of Heaven.” End ID]
