Coming Out And Being Out As A Queer Person Is An Act Of Bravery No Matter Who You Are, And You Deserve

Hi! Gentile here, I've been reading your blog and find it very interesting + informative, thank you for being such a good source of information and explaining things so clearly and calmly despite all the nonsense you have to deal with.

I hope it's okay to ask this, since I understand it's a very solemn / sensitive subject. In a few of your posts that mention / discuss the Tetragrammaton, you mention that the knowledge of how to say or pronounce the name has been lost. As far as I understand, Hebrew has a phonemic orthography (ie each grapheme / letter corresponds to a phoneme / elementary sound unit). If that's the case, could one theoretically know how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton from combining the sounds those four letters make according to normal grammar / pronunciation rules, or is it the case that the knowledge of how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton exists independently of the knowledge of how to pronounce the constituent letters? Or is it something to do with how Hebrew orthography / phonology has changed over time, and modern Hebrew phonology wouldn't be accurate to the pronunciation as it would have existed before the fall of the second temple? Or is there a nuance in Hebrew orthography / phonology I'm missing?

I understand of course you wouldn't *want* to say it out loud anyway given how sacred and taboo it is, I suppose I'm just curious at the semantic properties of the knowledge of the pronunciation. (If this ask is inappropriate or offensive, I sincerely apologise and please do not feel obliged to post it / reply to it.)

Hi there, thanks so much for your kind words and happy Friday!

So there’s a few things at play here, because you are right, generally speaking, the Hebrew alphabet is a phonemic orthography which would generally lend itself to being pronounceable even in the absence of unbroken oral teaching (leaving aside theological and cultural boundaries on doing so, for the moment). But there are a few confounding factors:

1) Hebrew, both ancient and modern, doesn’t have vowels in its alphabet. To indicate vowels typically it uses nekudot, but that’s not done in texts meant to be read by fluent adult speakers/readers and Jewish holy texts don’t contain them. So we don’t have hard evidence of what vowels go with the Tetragrammaton’s consonants.

2) Some of the consonants in the Tetragrammaton can be used to indicate the presence of certain vowels, but they don’t always get used that way. So there’s no way to know of their presence specifically indicates those vowels or they’re being used purely as consonants and it’s coincidence.

3) Pronunciation of some vowels and consonants, although it does not seem to have been a substantial shift, has changed over time (and not in uniform ways, because of the diaspora).

So certainly scholars fluent in the various ancient forms of Hebrew can make educated hypotheses, but there are confounding factors. And, of course, because of the theological and cultural restrictions on the speaking/writing of the Tetragrammaton there is no unbroken tradition we can look at to confirm any of those educated guesses. And that’s before we even get to the limited number of Jewish scholars who are even willing to try to discern pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton for religious reasons.

“ The odds of guessing a four-digit passcode are 1 in 10,000, and tools have been used to crack iPhone codes in the past. Apple says the chances of someone having a similar enough fingerprint to unlock a person’s phone is 1 in 50,000, and a similar enough random face tricking Face ID is 1 in 1,000,000 “

that’s a really funny way of framing it, to make it look like passcodes are weak. you know what’s twice as good as the odds given for fingerprints? a 5 digit passcode! what’s equal to the odds given for Face ID? a 6 digit passcode! every time you add a digit, you multply those odds by 10.

and that’s assuming simple numeric passcodes. the odds of guessing a 4 digit, case-sensitive, alphanumeric passcode would be a 1 in 14.7 million. 5 digits is over 1 in 916 million, 6 digit is 1 in 56.8 billion. if you throw in 32 common symbols, we get 1 in 78 million, 1 in 7.3 billion, and 1 in 689 billion. those numbers climb pretty quickly the more digits you add.

i know these aren’t the only issues with passcodes (like 24% of americans using a variation of just 8 common passcodes), but if you’re trying to push people to biometrics i guess you wouldn’t really care for that nuance anyway

As the UN has released a statement on the UK and it’s hostility to LGBTQI+ rights, we just paid for a 2 billion pound funny hat ceremony, people are freezing and starving, our NHS is being pummeled into the ground, our third prime minister we didn’t vote for, and no one can afford to travel or rent, I have to ask: what is there to be proud of in the UK anymore?

Not something an individual country has done. What point is there in the UK anymore? 

you're only 21 so i feel terrible potentially giving you this responsibility but you have a platform so please help. tumblr user cunt/boy/supremacy reblogged a reblog wherein i (0 followers, only blocked and reported bots) discuss sexual abuse that i underwent that i shared knowing my following is 0 just to add context in case he misunderstood, specifically to mock it after i clarified the type of situation that was being discussed in an example of the kinds of abuse that transmascs can undergo in my initial post. the initial post has a lot of problems and i directly admit that; my biggest worry was people assuming that it means we should advocate for more control over hrt, which I further clarify we should not do in the tags; short bullet point paragraphs aren't enough for complexity and I get that now. but, i directly asked him to delete it bc I didn't want him to share that and I kind of expect better from other trans people but he's since started going off about transmasc rights activists and it's been over a day. idk how much attention and following he has but i directly asked him to not share that in case he does have an actual following, because i was actually intending on deleting it after finally getting his attention in dms - not new to tumblr but it's been a good decade, but he's just been reblogging and posting direct antitransmasculine takes since. i hate callouts and he's really just showing how much of a douche he is on his own blog by responding the way he has even just publicly without my "please remove this" statement which is in dms, but please help. please help

I'm genuinely sorry that you had to go through that. It's absolutely cruel - especially coming from another trans person. You have all my support, including if you ever want a safe place to discuss about your issues. You might have already done this, but I suggest to block the person who is harassing you (I'll block him too), and not continue to engage.

Good luck, I wish you the best.

Can people please fucking stop making "haha, Floridians are all poor stupid crackheads" jokes?

If we're poor, it's because our state government cares more about the rich tourists in the coastal high-rises than the average citizen, and the cost of living won't stop rising no matter how hard the people scream for relief.

If we're uneducated, it's because our state government is gutting education left and right, and turning it into a battleground in the white supremacist culture war.

If we're addicts, it's because we have no social safety net and self-medication is all we can turn to.

Every Florida Man headline is about a real human being, usually one under extreme duress and with absolutely no social resources to fall back on.

I hope none of you ever have to see a loved one--or yourself--represented as little more than a "Florida Man" joke, when the truth of the situation is that you were scared, starving, and vulnerable to state violence and asshole reporters who would rather pursue a viral headline than respect the dignity of a human being in crisis.

ALSO. on the concept of funky genders. "socially unacceptable" genders or "genderweird" people i love you. transmascs who are girls i love you. transfems who are men i love you. transmascs who feel transfem and transfems who feel transmasc i love you. everyone who feels like their gender is too "weird" or "complicated" or are an "oxymoron or self-contradictory" i love you and we are all trans and good and community and perfect ok.

Look, this is probably going to end up as an unpopular post, because God knows the level of brainrot capitalism and fast consumption caused in people's brains, but I'd rather not get TV shows for a while if it means writers get their rights defended and recognized.

Entertainment can't come at the cost of fair pay, healthy work environment and ethical practices.

Friendly reminder that when you only talk about high masking and low masking, you throw autistics who can't mask under the bus.

We're not low masking, we DON'T mask.

This makes us no masking. Not low masking.

when the times get rough and I lose sight of the goal i just. reread “the orange” by wendy cope again & remember. that’s where I’m going folks. sooner or later, whatever it takes.

erininthemorn.substack.com

Trans Adults Officially Being Detransitioned In Missouri: "I'm Scared And Don't Know What To Do"

Transgender adults are officially being pulled off of their medication in Missouri and forced to detransition. A new ban targeting trans car

Trans Missourians on HRT, call your doctor as soon as possible and get a 90-day supply or as much as they’ll give you.

Lots of us are going to have to relocate or go through costly and/or illegal channels to acquire HRT now.

I invite trans people in MO to add their payment links this post. We desperately need support. We need people to give a shit right now. This is life-or-death for many of us.

Here’s mine:

Venmo: @smkzq3

Ko-fi: falseparasol