sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2019-06-13 03:15 pm

You never hear them sing, you never hear them scream

It is greyly pouring. My afternoon was just disrupted by the unannounced arrival of several handymen to disconnect our stove. (We have a new stove coming tomorrow. This is great in the sense that we haven't had a working broiler since December or a working oven since April and I have been in frequent communication with the property manager about it, but not so great in the sense that we were given no warning about the disconnection, it was dumb luck that I hadn't left the house for the day, we can't cook until the new stove arrives, and the property manager's husband has no idea when that will happen except tomorrow, when [personal profile] spatch is working and I had prior commitments.) I have plans to meet [personal profile] rushthatspeaks in the evening, but until then have some links.

1. I started this article with great trepidation; its title and its opening lines made it look as though it was going to be one of those sheepish appreciations where you have to spend as much time acknowledging that the thing you love really wasn't any good as defending why you love it anyway. It is not that kind of appreciation. I don't agree with every word of it, but I don't need to. It's a loving and thoughtful look at a show that was so important to me, I've almost never written about it: Jennifer Giesbrecht, "Babylon 5 Is the Greatest, Most Terrible SF Series."

2. I love the siren dynamics of Nibedita Sen's "We Sang You as Ours." (Shout-out to the Lovecraft Reread for pointing me its way.) Then I sort of accidentally chased it with Christopher Caldwell's "Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan." Now I really I miss the sea.

3. I was glad to read this reflection by Carly Pildis on carrying a Jewish pride flag at the D.C. Dyke March. "The final lesson is that we that we need to reject a paradigm where Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and those who seek to support them cannot be in a movement together without rejecting core parts of their identities."

4. On that note: "But for Seth Farber, the problem with a DNA test for Jewishness runs deeper than politics; it contravenes what he believes to be the essence of Jewish identity. There is a specific principle in Jewish law, he told me, that instructs rabbis not to undermine someone's self-declared religious identity if that person has been accepted by a Jewish community. The central principle is that when it comes to Jewish identity, the most important determinants are social – trust, kinship, commitment – not biological." What the absolute hell, Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

5. I can't tell if this is fanart for the Southern Reach Trilogy or the film derived from the first book, but I can't see what else it generally would be: Simon Clarke, "Annihilation."
conuly: (Default)

[personal profile] conuly 2019-06-14 06:38 am (UTC)(link)
A number of years ago Carmel consulted genetic experts who informed him that if someone bears this specific mitochondrial DNA marker, there is a 90 to 99% chance that this person is of Ashkenazi ancestry. This was enough to convince him to pass a religious ruling in 2017 that states that this specific DNA test can be used to confirm Jewishness if all other avenues have been exhausted, which now constitutes the theological justification for the genetic testing.

Putting aside the batshittery of all this, and the implicit racism in looking for a marker that only is present in Ashkenazi Jews, the grasp of statistics is utterly backwards. This marker may mean there's a 99% chance that you have Ashkenazi ancestry, but the question to ask is "What percentage of Ashkenazi Jews have this marker?" It is unlikely to also be 99%.

Bad math upsets me more than anything.

Also, I don't want to have an opinion on this, not being Jewish, but omg bad math.
Edited 2019-06-14 06:39 (UTC)
conuly: (Default)

[personal profile] conuly 2019-06-14 08:37 am (UTC)(link)
Now we know why they want you all to take genetic tests rather than math tests, they're sure they'll pass at least one of those....