Geeking out preparing for my seminar on teaching with/in translation—part of Yiddish Book Center’s pedagogy series—in a couple of hours. Pens of 6 different colors to mark for myself 6 different kinds of issues we’ll try to get to discussing six different transactions of Isaac Babel.

Brilliant. Wallace Shawn’s voice on this #RejectAIPAC ad is a brilliant move.

Oh wow, did the IDF really take out Bibi Netanyahu?

That’s a good question.

In Washington Post Opinions, Peter Maass who covered the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, reflects on Gaza: “What’s a Jew to do now? Everyone makes their own choices, but my experience of war crimes taught me that being Jewish means standing against any nation that commits war crimes. Any.”

Russia must be defeated.

The first item in this booklet, which we did open upon receiving it today, was … to make falafel. At this point we’ll probably need to recycle PJ Library materials without looking.

No, it is not still October 7, 2023—despite what it says in one too many posts I’ve seen today—but April 7, 2024. Six months is a very long time, time doesn’t stand still, things evolve and change in a dramatic fashion in half a year.

Fuck Russia, give Ukraine weapons to protect itself and fight back already.

A century and a half ego, Kharkiv was perhaps the third-most important city of the core Russian Empire. Ten years ago, it was the largest city in which pro-Russian separatism, in the wake of the Russia's hybrid invasion, might have had a chance, but failed. The current bombing…

The top line here is that Nancy Pelosi’s Nancy Pelosi Nancy Pelosi signature is on this. Maybe finally the dam is breaking.

To quote Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין, “What’s happening now is evidence that aid has been used as a weapon of war.”

What a joy Third Place Books in Seattle last night for Jenny Croft's conversation about her magnificent (and hilarious) novel, 'The Extinction of Irena Rey,' with Spencer Ruchti. Great to be there with fellow translators raising our hands when asked to self-identify as such!

I mean: Tablet Magazine stood up for all manner of awfulness from fascists to transphobes, but this here takes the cake for the hogwashiest hogwash I’ve read in the past few years anywhere, hands down. The mag formerly known as “middle of the road” is finally openly its true 🤡 self.

Who is this crazy person?! I happened to have passed through Kansas City airport last week—this is the nicest airport bathroom I’ve even seen, all single stalls that are fully walled-off and with doors from floor to ceiling. The most privacy I’ve seen than in any public bathroom.

א שווארץ יאָר אויף אים!

“No Labels”? Nisht geshtoyn un nisht gefloygn — it didn’t climb up and it didn’t fly, the nonsense, Joe Lieberman’s final rotten idea, it died a week after him. 🤷‍♂️

So this took one phone call with Biden when Biden finally made the call — six months and many thousands of dead and starving later.

From many things in +972 Magazine article on the AI killing machine deployed by the IDF in Gaza, this detail is just 🤯. If Auschwitz as a well-functioning de-personalized killing factory was the apex of “Western civilization,” Lavender has a similar relationship to “startup” mythology

To quote Jeffrey Sachs, with slight modification for my passport identity: “Ironically, it is a triumph of Zionism that I, an American Jew, feel such deep personal shame knowing that Israel is governed by war criminals.”