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chayalauer.bsky.social

@chayalauer.bsky.social
206 followers 137 following 4.6K posts

Canadian.

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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 4h
Reading to a child in the evening after work is fun. It creates a bond and makes guys feel like good dads. Suddenly leaving work in the middle of the day is a hassle, and affects their work. Dealing with a sick child isn’t fun. That’s the kind of task that gets assigned to mom without recognition.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 4h
I noticed that this guy and Sam Altman were getting pushback from other men on this, in a way that they wouldn’t for other tasks. More men today will see reading to their child as a high value task. But they won’t put the same value on getting called first by the school for a sick child. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 5h
Yes, and also ”I believe rapists should be shot“ tends to be said by people who are in denial that anyone they know could be a rapist, and who will stay in denial even after they find out.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 7h
Apparently one 2nd cousin is a member of Queers for Palestine who has protested in my neighbourhood, while another is a religious West Bank settler. Discovered the existence of both by accident.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 7h
Ditto: Between my and my husband’s family and our in-law, we’ve got Iraqi, Moroccan, former Soviet, assorted Eastern European, Canadian, Israeli, Cuban, American, a religious spectrum from Haredi to atheist to Catholic, and crazy political spectrum.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 7h
Yes, and the only things they know are that they face racism, and whatever they picked up from a TikTok with a clip of Avi Shlaim. Based on that knowledge, they will confidently “educate” actual Mizrahi or Ethiopian Jews.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 10h
I didn’t fully appreciate this until Oct 7, when I realized that the footage I was watching and the stuff I was reading was causing physical symptoms. I needed to be informed about our family and friends, but didn’t need to expose myself to so much that I literally had trouble breathing.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I was trying to avoid labels. Something is going on with these guys, who seem really good with getting robots to imitate humans but really bad at actually interacting with other real humans. My dad is likely on the spectrum but loved reading us bedtime stories, so it’s not just autism.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Found it! Seems like tech bros feel they need tools to help them simulate normal human interaction. Every single response is “dude, why can’t you be normal and have a conversation with your own children?”
Tweet from Sam Altman on July 31, 2026 “cool use of Chat GPT work I heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids’ interests. Every morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid’s soccer game, one kid’s upcoming birthday….

The replies are all variations of “why don’t you just talk to your kids??”
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Did Sam Altman say something similar about having AI make a podcast to talk to his kid? Instead of, you know, actually talking to his kid?
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
In this particular example, I wonder if it’s generic “men” but specifically the type that tend to be highly tech oriented, who maybe don’t have social skills? Undervaluing thankless unseen tasks is pretty common, but lots of folks actually like bedtime stories. Even my dad in the 1970s did.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Just learned a new meme, thanks! Ok, when I tell students they can tap out at any time because there’s messy traumatic stuff in the files, that’s a dead dove warning. When allegations are made in my cases, they need to be triple checked. It’s been quite a week and it’s only Wednesday.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I know you don’t tend to exaggerate these things and she has quite the history. I just have a lot of experience with people online and in real life getting outraged and selectively reporting stuff, so I often look up stuff myself for a fuller picture. With her, it’s actually worse.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I wondered if there was a larger context to explain this, so I took a peek. Yup, she’s doubling down and quite enthusiastic about death for blasphemy. It’s fine because insulting Jesus would also get the death penalty
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Nationalism and independence movements that seek to separate/partition territory are messy, no question, but they are hardly unprecedented. Are they all that ignorant? What do they think happened with India and Pakistan? Or between Greece and Turkey? Or Cyprus? Or former Yugoslavia?
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It might be able to shift: - how victims see what happened to them - how perpetrators see themselves and whether their actions are permissible I see this with things like family violence and marital rape - some people can realize it isn’t legal here even if it was acceptable elsewhere.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Yes, and more than that, a racist conspiracy theory that claimed that Jews and Germans were different races and that Jews could never assimilate and would always pose a threat. There was never any “science” behind it, but it acted like “race realism” does for mediocre white men today.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Marr was an atheist and wanted a non-religious reason to hate Jews, and at the time, racism was becoming more popular and was seen as “scientific”. It never had anything to do with actual people speaking Semitic languages.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
“Antisemitism” was a term popularized by Wilhelm Marr in 1879 when he published a pamphlet with his conspiracy theory that Jews were a threat to Germans because of their race. Just 8 years prior, Germany had opened citizenship to people of any religion. 1/ www.facinghistory.org/resource-lib...
facinghistory.org
From Religious Prejudice to Antisemitism
Learn about the restricted rights and membership of Jews in newly unified Germany, and antisemitism's pervasiveness across Europe during this period.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I remember my teacher telling us a job was available to walk a younger child home from school. This was around 1981 and I was 9. Of course, I had been walking my little sister home since I was 7.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
do grief properly after fetal loss (“abuse of corpse” charges) or who actually have the messy cases of dangerous pregnancies that politicians and activists wanted to believe were just prochoice distractions. I’m alive, my sister-in-law is alive, we each went on to have living children, hallelujah.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I talk about this, and about other losses like my sister-in-law having her water break at 22 weeks and needing to be induced even though the fetus wasn’t yet viable, because for too long women were told to keep quiet. Horrific cases in the U.S. are basically punishing women who don’t 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
And isn’t Ireland already essentially divided between Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland?
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
So they reject imperialism, yet think that they can dictate the precise political arrangements of a foreign state (rather than leaving it to Israelis and Palestinians to figure out). Because foreign powers doing regime change has a great track record, right? 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
First was 28 years ago, and I suddenly realized that I was at high risk for a potentially fatal bleeding disorder DIC when I thought things were fine. So I simultaneously mourned a loss and realized my life required prompt legal access to this procedure.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Yes, and even very wanted pregnancies can be hazardous. I needed a D&C twice, to end pregnancies where the fetuses died but hung around a while. I got prompt care in Toronto, but women in some states face delays that can kill them because of bad laws and scared hospital lawyers. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Simply making an obvious statement can come across as pandering, so I didn’t always pay attention. But messing up an obvious thing sends a signal. Doesn’t change anything in the Middle East, but it does indicate if the local community matters to you.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Makes sense, I care more about action than statements. I’ll acknowledge that esp early in someone’s term, statements can sometimes indicate direction and priorities. “Oct 7 bad” is an obvious thing to say. It doesn’t make Hamas disappear. It just acknowledges your constituents. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
on combatting antisemitism. We’ve seen how things are worse in Toronto than Vaughan. My kids South of Steeles were just talking about doing advanced voting when it opens, no tweet today would stop them from voting against Chow.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
At this point, I have no interest in Chow’s statement or responding to it. She’s had 3 years. We haven’t forgotten how she couldn’t manage a basic tweet on Oct 7 2023, or show up a year later, or attend a press conference with police after synagogues were shot, or attend a candidate debate 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It’s part of what made anti-abortion laws so deadly in recent years. This “abortion is never necessary to save the mother’s life” line became popular among Protestants who had no idea that Catholics developed the doctrine of double effect to declare that life-saving terminations were NotAbortion.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It’s possible someone heard an argument by someone who had known the halachic argument, and repeated it without knowing the origin. I’ve seen this with anti-abortion arguments: talking points that originated from Catholic sources are repeated elsewhere, without the religious context. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
More like Halacha on this issue makes sense because it is rooted in basic biological fact, and others can come to a similar conclusion from that fact even without exposure to the Halachic argument. Pregnancy can kill.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
So they use terms like “over-represented”, as if people who work hard being successful is abnormal, and react to rejection from super-competitive programs by complaining that “they” are making it impossible for white men to get in.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It was just psychologically necessary for the dominant group to feel that they were naturally superior and deserved what they had. So they rigged the system, and when other people succeed despite that, they respond with rage. Look at responses to women catching up and surpassing men in college. 2/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It’s not “suddenly”. From changing admissions criteria at Harvard to lower the number of Jews, to a major Canadian magazine asking if University of Toronto was “too Asian”, going back to efforts to prevent African American education, this was always the case. Merit itself wasn’t the goal. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Sounds like an argument that a horrendous outcome was inevitable, ignoring that there was a triggering event which made things about 1,000x worse. If you can pretend that 1,000x worse was always going to happen, then you can defend the triggering event instead of condemning it.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
save those fleeing later, and Israel stepped into that role instead. For the most part, it’s not that Israelis have different values, it’s that they have different family histories and couldn’t go to pluralistic democracies.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
So the conversation seems to break down when North Americans talk to Israelis. Because two things are true, for two different sets of people. These pluralistic democracies really did save entire Jewish communities from destruction and gave them good lives. Those same democracies wouldn’t 6/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I know my family was safe in Canada when Nazism spread, but so many people close to me had grandparents in Europe. The same country that protected my family slammed the door shut on theirs. Immigration increased somewhat after WWII, but never returned to the previous open immigration system. 5/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Having a big country taking people in was awesome, and it was also part of settling and holding on to territory from First Nations whose rights were not being protected. It was specifically European immigration that was encouraged, and that was further restricted in the 1920s to cut down on Jews. 4/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Countries like the U.S. and Canada, for Fiddler in the Roof Jews like my family, were amazing and showed that we could thrive even as minorities in a place where the rights of all were protected. It makes sense that we support that. But not everyone was protected…3/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The number of immigrants to Palestine skyrocketed after other countries, like the U.S., UK and Canada, closed their doors and Hitler came to power, and increased even more just after statehood with Jews from Arab countries and Holocaust survivors. 2/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
It helps to understand that Zionism flourished when liberal democracies stopped being the solution to persecution of Jews. When countries like the U.S. and Canada had open immigration for European Jews, it literally saved those fleeing pogroms. Only 1% of those fleeing ended up in Palestine. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
When my oldest was 7 mos, I took a child protection lawyer position, and one case involved a baby around that age choking to death on a small object. Not a great job for dealing with new mom anxieties.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
PSA: I wish everyone could be mindful that Cornell discussions are going to be hard and bring up feelings for a lot of women, who may not have disclosed anything, and how you react may show that you are safe or further traumatize them. Also, not disclosing to unsafe folks is a valid choice.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
At least it wasn’t a knife. Toddler are cute but terrifying, exploring the world with no concept of danger or gravity or choking risks.
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The thing about Christian comments about the “Old Testament” is that ideas were already evolving among the Pharisees 2,000 years ago, but those oral discussions were lost to Christianity (but preserved elsewhere).
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Yeah, modern publishing makes people think it’s a Book, when it is really an anthology. A collection of writings, in both poetry and prose, from different people at different places during different times from different backgrounds, and we can see evolving notions of God. 1/
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chayalauer.bsky.social @chayalauer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Years ago, I had to read Escape from Freedom and Sartre’s Antisemite and Jew for a course on Psychology and Politics. Still relevant, unfortunately.
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