Yiddish Praxis (Rokhl K)

My evil eye class starts October 19 - sessions in the afternoon or evening. Email me to sign up: cjcrokhl @ gmail 🧿

Salute to my friend Areta, who has been writing the excellent blog Forgotten Galicia for many years now, and is finally publishing a book of it.

Come the season of the dead, come the commodification of the most tepid and tawdry stereotypes of the witch. We are not your plastic masks. Not your nylon conical hats. Not your acrylic green nails. We are the power to nudge the world. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

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A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

Jesse Ventura to Piker: "Here's what pisses me off -- I did 2 tours, 17 months. So did my brother. Southeast Asia. That was at the same time Donald Trump was running and hiding like the coward he is. Why didn't he join us in the Vietnam War? I've heard him talk. He said he should be a general!"

LOL, sucker: "Bob Woodward Thought Jeff Bezos Had His Back. Now He Feels Disillusioned."

USPS workers’ greatest concern about Trump’s mail voting plan was a requirement that they reject ballots for an array of reasons. “That’s not what we do. We deliver mail. We don’t decide what goes and what doesn’t.”

corporate media routinely describes Tim Scott as a moderate and celebrates his "relentless optimism"

Men Gurta, ‘the stone of waiting’. Cornwall’s bulkiest megalith, veined with feldspar. What a fantastic stone! Happy day today stone hunting on St Breock Downs and environs 💚🪨 #StandingStoneSunday

NEW: A Florida cybersecurity company promised to help clients recover data from ransomware attackers. In a 2019 story, we found the company was making secret payments to hackers and pocketing hefty fees from clients. The CEO was just indicted for fraud.

תְּפִלַּת יַעֲקֹב אָבִינוּ | Təfilat Ya’aqov Avinu — a Hekhalot magical text from the Cairo Geniza, T-S K 21.95T, based on the text of the pseudepigraphal Ladder of Jacob 2:6–22 opensiddur.org?p=69605 (transcribed and translated by @isaacgantwerkmayer.bsky.social)

interesting

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Too many American Jewish organizations will not call out the blatant antisemitism of a non-Jewish president saying that Jews are being "disloyal" if they vote for Abdul El-Sayed. I am so grateful we have this organization that will.

Here is the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, spreading the antisemitic conspiracy theory that the Soros family are the puppet masters behind the election in Brazil yesterday. The Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs seems to see it as his job to make the Diaspora less safe.

Lula Goes HARD

Non-Jews telling Jews that they are doing their Jewish identities inauthentically if they have the "wrong" politics is in fact textbook antisemitism. But somehow I'm not holding my breath for the ADL to weigh in on this one, because it would require them to acknowledge many Jews support El-Sayed.

Me at my performance review

I think using genAI to make images, even little insignificant ones, is hobbyless loser behavior. It completely sours my opinion on people forever, even if they have done good stuff in the past. If you think that is an overreaction or "crashing out", you can take your cringe comp screenshot and go.

Sherrod Brown's up by five points in Ohio.

It’s never been more clear that racism is a scam perpetrated by wealthy elites to convince working people to blame someone other than the wealthy elite.

“C.D.C. has lost about 30% of its staff since last year, including many members of the rabies team, which no longer has the capacity to advise state officials after hours…The agency also temporarily suspended rabies testing this spring, a pause that lasted for months.”

Ah. Ben Yoho was behind the Vivek attack ad against Amy Acton. Before that, as head of the Strategy Group, he was profiting off his close connection with Kristi Noem at DHS. www.propublica.org/article/kris...

"In total, since taking office again, Mr. Trump exempted 202 facilities in 39 states & Puerto Rico from clean-air regulations that were going into effect. Some were among the country’s worst industrial polluters, including chemical manufacturers, copper smelters & coal-burning power plants." MAHA!

A wild story: the CEO of a US energy company whose plans were discussed during the Witkoff-Kushner-Putin negotiations resigns. Why? He learned that his company's main investor is a sanctioned Russian company, not the UAE www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

A lot of dictatorships try to make these kind of arrangements when things go south. Important to remember there are other kinds of criminal, civil and reputational accountability pardons can’t touch. And if you’re pardoned you have no 5th amendment rights.

Democrats need to state that if this is done, they will have no choice but to turn Trump and his subordinates over to international tribunals for war crimes prosecutions, if Trump makes it impossible to prosecute them domestically. Make subordinates accepting pardons understand the consequences.

This is literally the end of the rule of law. If a President can pardon people committing crimes on his behalf - and the Supreme Court says he himself can't be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his job - then the government becomes a lawless entity able to violate our rights without limit.

The pardon power is turning out to be as bad as some members of the Constitutional Convention worried it might be. If you read the Virginia ratifying convention debates— This *!* is why George Mason (a member of the CC) refused to sign the Constitution.

“Several conservative organizations …— including the Heritage Foundation and American Moment — have pressed White House counsel to either prepare pardons or put in place funding for the legal fees necessary to defend junior staffers from criminal and congressional probes or potential lawsuits.”

no matter how sure you are that these guys have broken a whole bunch of laws, you aren't nearly as certain as they are

More than 200 complaints regarding sexual violence at schools have been filed with the Education Department since the start of Trump’s second term. The department has investigated only 29 of these, finding fault with a school district only once.

To bring a smile to your face, here’s a c. 4,500 year-old clay vase in the shape of a little hedgehog holding a bowl! 🦔 ❤️ From Chalandriani, Syros, Greece. Early Cycladic II period. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 📷 ArchaiOptix #Archaeology

“Toxic Empathy” author Allie Beth Stuckey is now asking for folks to understand that ICE has separated a good man from his family over a paperwork issue.

The Chicago Police Department is probing whether members misused their access to a system owned by an outside law-enforcement agency that automatically reads drivers’ license plates, officials announced late Friday afternoon. @wttw.bsky.social

scott galloway and jessica tarlov held an event here in town yesterday where “don’t impeach or waste time on investigations because ‘28” was the consensus position of the panel. so yeah, this is something to anticipate.

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This isn't terrifying at all

In the year 2026 we're still making pencils with a lead to eraser ratio of 80-20???? WTF? Here's a million dollar idea: the half lead half eraser pencil. Because when have you ever run out of lead before you ran out of eraser????✏️

The Executive Branch has no authority to regulate states’ election decisions as to candidate qualifications, and the choice to file a lawsuit like this just days before an election speaks volumes about the political corruption festering at the top levels of the DOJ.

So witkoff/kushner toadie sell out negotiations involves cutting Russian companies in on US energy deals? Are we giving Alaska back to Russia?

TikTok investor Jeff Yass avoided paying $1 billion in taxes while largely escaping public scrutiny. He then poured that money into campaigns to cut taxes and support election deniers. From the ProPublica archives:

We need to crush these people to restore a basic sense that moral behavior actually means anything at all. That is what is at stake here.