Came across an unsettling number of Santas on my afternoon walk

Thought I’d come across a fun new term for Jewish Studies but it turns out I just misread “herbology”

Night 8: The Final Honkening

this is astonishingly beautiful

I love the various French spellings of חנוכה with a “ou” for the middle vowel: Hanoucca Hanoukka Hannouccah Chanouka They just feel very satisfyingly round.

Disgruntled about the fact that I avoided reading Knausgaard for years because I was certain I wouldn’t like his books and now I’ve read three in a row, with more lined up. Is there a support group?

Never have small acts of human creativity mattered so much. Paint, draw, put on a play, write a song, learn an instrument, write a story (or a book!). The worst thing you ever make will be better than all this slop.

Is there a word for the dawning realization that the reason none of the books you’re reading are scratching that particular itch is because you actually just want a new Elif Batuman novel that doesn’t exist yet? Because there should be.

I ordered 1 cookie from the coffee shop and planned to eat 1 cookie, leaving me with 0 cookies. When I looked in the bag I saw that they’d given me 2 cookies, which is 2x as many cookies as I’d planned on having, but now after eating, I still find myself with 0 cookies somehow. Cookie math is hard.

Another close call today, so once more, with feeling:

Review sites are amazing: “I loved this book. I couldn’t put it down. Such a beautiful story.” Half a star, out of five.

Last reskeet: I feel like my reading life is much richer now that I’ve given myself the freedom to read Middlemarch half a dozen times and counting than it was when I was always chasing the pot of gold at the end of the TBR pile

The day you realize that you will never—NEVER—read everything there is to read, or even everything you want to read, is, for some, profoundly sad and, for some, a great relief. I was team great relief. Plus it frees you up to happily read the same things repeatedly.

Oh hey, Portland, refusing to use the C-word (no, not that one) when describing your giant fir tree with decorations and lights and a star on top doesn’t actually make it not a Christmas tree. “Holiday tree” is hot nonsense.

You: Hanukkah is early this year Me, insufferable: Hanukkah starts on the same date every year

You: Hanukkah is early this year Me, insufferable: Hanukkah starts on the same date every year

Hmm, I’m getting reports that for some families, gift giving isn’t a fraught and grueling test to prove that you’ve given exactly the right amount of thought to someone? Holidays aren’t a competition that’s won by being so inscrutable that nobody knows what to get you? Sounds unlikely.

Moral of the story: Never show weakness. Never tell a loved one that you like something. Don’t have a thing. Don’t have a gimmick. Don’t have a hobby. Never give them an easy out, “oh, they like X, I’ll get them an X”

Saw a place selling hats that say “alta cocker” and sorry but I hate almost every part of that transliteration #yiddish

It’s never someone asking the LLM to automate some pointless drudgery—“format these notes into meeting minutes”—it’s always like, “help me convince my grandma that I love her, I’m too lazy to fake it.”

I was trying to do the “show a movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif” thing but it is impossible because I cannot find any gifs of Howards End (1992) and I think that tells you everything that’s wrong with modern culture

Little known fact but according to the Law of the Sea, if I never get out of the bath, my workday never has to start

Moral of the story: Never show weakness. Never tell a loved one that you like something. Don’t have a thing. Don’t have a gimmick. Don’t have a hobby. Never give them an easy out, “oh, they like X, I’ll get them an X”

Re: 12 Days of Christmas—Hey, if someone says they like birds, then they’re getting birds. Every gift, every holiday: birds. That’s how families work, right?

I know I’m late to this—I don’t watch many things with commercials—but wow, the tv ads for AI are bleak. Imagine how much richer our lives could be once we’ve offloaded to the machine every opportunity for expression or communication, every task by which we might show attention or care toward others

Also the fact that autocorrect absolutely insists there should be an apostrophe in Howards End is a sure sign of how far we’ve fallen as a civilization

I was trying to do the “show a movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif” thing but it is impossible because I cannot find any gifs of Howards End (1992) and I think that tells you everything that’s wrong with modern culture

This is the plot of Blade Runner

Also dreamt I was sha”tz for a shul I’d never been to and I went up to the bima prepared to start Mah Tovu but when I opened the siddur it was all Mary Oliver poems and instructions for yoga poses, and then I looked out at the congregation and they were all eating brunch

I dreamt that I was in one of those logic puzzles where one door guard always tells the truth and one always lies except that it was Shakira and a set of disembodied hips. Shakira said “hips don’t lie” and the hips said “but what if Shakira is lying?” Anyway, I chose the wrong door and was eaten

I dreamt that I was in one of those logic puzzles where one door guard always tells the truth and one always lies except that it was Shakira and a set of disembodied hips. Shakira said “hips don’t lie” and the hips said “but what if Shakira is lying?” Anyway, I chose the wrong door and was eaten

My post numbers are relatively low, though, so I could pretty easily skew the results (and grow my follower count) by just spending the last weeks of the year skeeting about generic topics of universal interest like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or ergativity in Caucasian languages or something

Surprising exactly nobody, my most-used words on bluesky this year were “library”, “books”/“book”, “Jewish” and “Portland”

People keep trying to convince me that it’s December but I’m not falling for it. Can you imagine? What a ridiculous idea.

Portland residents in possession of a goose or duck should be aware that it is an infraction not to dress them in plaid with a little cap in the winter months. Penalty for noncompliance is in-person viewing of an entire city council meeting.

The clerk at Trader Joe’s, in response to being asked how his day was going said, “well, it’s Friday so at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel” and I spent at least an hour being fully like, oh, yeah, it’s Friday, better get ready for Shabbat. So that’s how my week is going

Also, my husband took me for a foggy walk in the woods this morning, which apparently I needed

It’s been a rough couple weeks but I got my @museum.of.emilyk.art frog framed and hung, so that’s making me happy today.

Please, I just want a Forward button in the Sefaria app to take me back to where I was before I accidentally hit the Back button when I was just trying to close the Resource panel and end up having to scroll through a giant list of sources to get back to where I was

“…sometime in the 13th, late 14th or early 15th centuries” First, Rabbanit Miriam seems like a remarkable person, and second, doesn’t this range of years for her birth seem remarkably vague? And why the jump from 13th to late 14th? Talk about a problematic age gap.

As someone whose academic background is linguistics, it’s always a little strange to see people arrive at hating Chomsky by routes that are totally different from the way I got here. But welcome!

Interesthing edithorial choices were made

Interesthing edithorial choices were made

Hmm, that’s an interesting suggestion google translate but I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what I meant

Hmm, that’s an interesting suggestion google translate but I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what I meant

Is this a mitzvah d’oraisa or d’rabbanan?

Is this a mitzvah d’oraisa or d’rabbanan?

Holy shit, just learned about the typewriter art of Montserrat Alberich Escardívol, a Catalan typist. Using an extra wide typewriter and 180 color ribbons, she built up elaborate images from simple characters like 'm' and '.' and ';'. Here is her typewritten painting of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

Helping a library patron work on a dvar, I had a google search lead me to a page with the title “How to share the Good News of Jesus with your Jewish friends” and a) I have a hard time believing that anyone who wants to know how to do this has any Jewish friends and b) please don’t

Describe your cat’s personality with one photo