iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 05/10/2026

What are our bets that the Yeshiva student that did this (per Dr. Henry Abramson's book "Reading the Talmud") was familiar with the Lionel Hutz Business card bit? Alternatively, bets on the Simpsons' writer having studied Talmud?

Besides its unusual structure and expansive
subject matter, the Talmud is written in a virtually opaque
fashion, requiring long and intensive training to master the coded
nature of the Aramaic text. Unfettered by punctuation, for example,
any given Talmudic text can be read in radically dissimilar ways,
several of which may be possible readings but most of which will
result in error. To give you an example of how this skill is
internalized by Yeshivah students, one of the institutions I
attended had a large population of students from the recently
collapsed Soviet Union. Perhaps fearing that the Yeshivah was
precariously funded (most are), these students had the habit of
going through the cafeteria line for free second and even third
portions, and taking the extra food up to their rooms for their
next meal, to ensure that they would not go hungry in case the
cafeteria failed to open. As I walked into the cafeteria for lunch
one day, I noticed the following sign:

THE YESHIVAH PROVIDES FOOD
FOR ONE PORTION ONLY
NO STUDENT IS PERMITTED TO STAND IN LINE
FOR A SECOND PORTION

When I walked out of the cafeteria half an
hour later, I noticed that someone had altered the sign in a
subtle, Talmudic manner:

THE YESHIVAH PROVIDES FOOD
FOR ONE PORTION ONLY?
NO! STUDENT IS
PERMITTED TO STAND IN LINE
FOR A SECOND PORTION!

Frame of the Simpsons:

Lionel Hutz is holding a business card without punctuation, where he has written some in with red marker such that it reads:

WORKS ON CONTINGENCY?
NO, MONEY DOWN!

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 01/10/2026

The passage as shown in these consecutive screenshots, as well as a later passage where he says that "[p]olitical emancipation is, of course, a big step forward ... [but] not the final form of human emancipation" is pretty clear to me as saying what I'm saying.

Therefore, we do not say to the Jews, as Bauer does: You cannot be emancipated politically without emancipating yourselves radically from Judaism. On the contrary, we tell them: Because you can be emancipated politically without renouncing Judaism completely and incontrovertibly, political emancipation itself is not human emancipation. If you Jews want to be emancipated politically, without emancipating yourselves humanly, the half-hearted approach and contradiction is not in you alone, it is inherent in the nature and category of political emancipation. If you find yourself within the confines of this category, you share in a general confinement. Just as the state evangelizes when, although it is a state, it adopts a Christian attitude towards the Jews, so the Jew acts politically when, although a Jew, he demands civic rights.

But, if a man, although a Jew, can be emancipated politically and receive civic rights, can he lay claim to the so-called rights of man and receive them? Bauer denies it.

“The question is whether the Jew as such, that is, the Jew who himself admits that he is compelled by his true nature to live permanently in separation from other men, is capable of receiving the universal rights of man and of conceding them to others.”

“For the Christian world, the idea of the rights of man was only discovered in the last century. It is not innate in men; on the contrary, it is gained only in a struggle against the historical traditions in which hitherto man was brought up. Thus the rights of man are not a gift of nature, not a legacy from past history, but the reward of the struggle against the accident of birth and against the privileges which up to now have been handed down by history from generation to generation. These rights are the result of culture, and only one who has earned and deserved them can possess them.”

“Can the Jew really take possession of them? As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews. He declares by this separation that the particular nature which makes him a Jew is his true, highest nature, before which human nature has to give way.”

“Similarly, the Christian as a Christian cannot grant the rights of man.” (p. 19-20)

According to Bauer, man has to sacrifice the “privilege of faith” to be able to receive the universal rights of man. Let us examine, for a moment, the so-called rights of man – to be precise, the rights of man in their authentic form, in the form which they have among those who discovered them, the North Americans and the French. These rights of man are, in part, political rights, rights which can only be exercised in community with others. Their content is participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the state. They come within the category of political freedom, the category of civic rights, which, as we have seen, in no way presuppose the incontrovertible and positive abolition of religion – nor, therefore, of Judaism. There remains to be examined the other part of the rights of man – the droits de l’homme, insofar as these differ from the droits du citoyen.

Included among them is freedom of conscience, the right to practice any religion one chooses. The privilege of faith is expressly recognized either as a right of man or as the consequence of a right of man, that of liberty.

Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, 1791, Article 10: “No one is to be subjected to annoyance because of his opinions, even religious opinions.” “The freedom of every man to practice the religion of which he is an adherent.”

Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., 1793, includes among the rights of man, Article 7: “The free exercise of religion.” Indeed, in regard to man’s right to express his thoughts and opinions, to hold meetings, and to exercise his religion, it is even stated: “The necessity of proclaiming these rights presupposes either the existence or the recent memory of despotism.” Compare the Constitution of 1795, Section XIV, Article 354.

Constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 9, § 3: “All men have received from nature the imprescriptible right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their conscience, and no one can be legally compelled to follow, establish, or support against his will any religion or religious ministry. No human authority can, in any circumstances, intervene in a matter of conscience or control the forces of the soul.”

Constitution of New Hampshire, Article 5 and 6: “Among these natural rights some are by nature inalienable since nothing can replace them. The rights of conscience are among them.” (Beaumont, op. cit., pp. 213,214)

Incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is to such a degree absent from the concept of the rights of man that, on the contrary, a man’s right to be religious, in any way he chooses, to practise his own particular religion, is expressly included among the rights of man. The privilege of faith is a universal right of man.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 01/10/2026

Checked the MLB rules, this is legal apparently

Air Bud screenshot with the caption "He's right. Ain't no rule that says a dog can't play basketball."

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 25/09/2026

I tried to keep it a representative sample, so I'm missing some games that could definitely be included, but also I still managed to have 3 Star Wars games on there.

Morrowind
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Star Wars: Empire at War
Minecraft
Dragon Age: Origins
Fallout: New Vegas
Fable 1 (The Lost Chapters)
Mount and Blade: Warband

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 16/09/2026

I like how even a frum publication that's purposefully being deferential and friendly to Trump gives us a window into how ridiculous and dumb he is by just recounting the things he said. Some excerpts from an article on the pre-Rosh Hashana meeting with the Rabbonim and Admorim at the White House:

The president then expressed his surprise at what he views as the community’s priorities.

“I sent B-2s and bombed Iran to smithereens. I saved you guys—without me there would be no Israel left—but I don’t get a thank-you from the Jewish community. But I commuted this butcher from Iowa—what’s his name?”

The assembled all said, “Rubashkin,” and the president continued, “Oh yeah, Lubashkin—the guy is alive? And everyone is so excited—more than what I did to Iran.”

Rosenfeld said, “Mr. President, when you commuted Rubashkin, they were literally dancing in the streets in Brooklyn.”

And Trump said, “Brooklyn! I got 94 percent of the Hasidic vote in Brooklyn.”

Trump had at his desk cards with the pictures of the Rebbes and figures showing how many votes he had received in their communities.

Trump continued recounting the Rubashkin case.

“I called the judge and I asked, ‘What are you, crazy? A guy has illegal workers and you give him a 28-year sentence? Who doesn’t have illegal workers?’

“The judge said the prosecutor had wanted even more. So I said the prosecutor is an antisemite and I’m commuting the sentence.”

Rosenfeld said there are other Jews who might be in prison today because of biased judges or prosecutors and asked the president to instruct the DoJ to do a full review of every case involving an Orthodox Jew to see if there was bias.

Everyone then stood silently as Rav Aharon read “Hanosen teshuah lamelachim,” wishing a blessing upon the president while Segedin translated.

“Did you understand that?” Trump asked his frum son-in-law.

“Yes,” Kushner replied. “It was beautiful.”

“Isn’t he great?” said the president proudly.

The Skverer’s son handed a letter from his father to the president.

“Your father is still alive?” exclaimed Trump. “You’re old yourself. How old is he?”

The Rebbe’s son, feeling it was inappropriate to state his father’s age, simply responded, “Old.”

Pushed by Trump to state the age more times, the son finally replied, “Between 80 and 90.”

“Okay,” Trump agreed, “that’s old.”

Back in the Oval, Rav Aharon said Rav Malkiel would address the Israeli military draft. White House staffers appeared to have no interest in engaging the subject and said, “Rabbi Zalman will speak.”

When it became clear that Rav Malkiel wouldn’t interrupt them, Rav Aharon began to raise the issue of the draft himself before staffers again redirected, “Rabbi Zalman, it’s your turn.”

Trump then turned to the subject of a world leader he apparently assumed would be popular with the group.

“Don’t you guys love Bibi?” he said. “He’s the best guy.”

The delegation replied, “We love Trump.”

The president turned to Kushner and said, “What’s with you people, they don’t like Bibi?” Kushner replied, “Mr. President, they’re focused on you.”

A few minutes before the meeting ended, Lawler, with Trump’s permission, brought three of his constituents into the Oval: Gestetner, Lawler’s aide Rafi Silberberg, and Yehuda Zorger, a trustee of the Village of Airmont. Margaretten also entered the Oval at that time.

Trump handed out special presidential coins to everyone present and “Trump 2028” hats to some. Izzy Spitzer asked for and received a presidential pen.

Rav Malkiel handed Trump letters requesting help for two individuals.

The meeting ended after 20 minutes. Some later expressed disappointment that they had been unable to discuss with the president that which they had come for.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 11/09/2026

How would one blow this shofar?

James Hayes for Congress ad in the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh wishing the Jewish community a good and sweet new year. There are AI generated apples, honey, and what appears to be a badly malformed and therefore unusable shofar.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 10/09/2026

The love of reading was lost because whenever he was enjoying a book, his father came into the room and he had to hide it. (This *could* be the real answer, but of course, as we know, it's actually just that sometimes the show needs a plot point.)

Young Krusty reading a book titled "Life of Eddie Cantor" with a smile on his face.

Same young Krusty down in the dumps hiding the original book with one that says "Life of Cantor Eddie" after his father walks in.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 04/09/2026

These quizzes are kind of fun, and it's always interesting to see how it places me, but by their very nature they are just not going to be so good at picking up on my speech patterns compared to say, one of my gentile Pittsburgh childhood friends. This is probably ~accurate to my general speech.

Map of my taking of the extended dialect quiz that shows I'm probably from somewhere in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic, with cities highlighted for Philly, NYC, and Baltimore.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 03/09/2026

I have a feeling we're going to be seeing this picture, and maybe some other similar ones, on some of the worst people on the internet's accounts soon, paired with their antisemitic conspiracies of choice. (presumably a lot of ZOG, but maybe some more bespoke stuff too)

Some Hasidim in a very blurry picture on the grounds of the white house

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 03/09/2026

wow, I didn't know he did that

A heavily edited meme with three panels set in the oval office.

The first panel has Trump speaking to the two brothers that each serve as Rebbe of their respective Satmar communities with him standing in between them. He says "C'mon it's Elul. You're brothers. Make peace. It's time!"

The second panel the brothers are side by side (it looks as though one has his arm slightly around the other) and Trump says "Many Eluls came and went -- no peace. One Elul with Trump, the whole Satmar fight is over! They even like each other. They Like Trump! Who would've thought?"

The third panel Trump is alone and he says "This is the 10th war I've brought to an end. I am the peace President!"

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 31/08/2026

"extremely correct on exactly one issue and egregiously wrong on many others" is actually perhaps the greatest description of Norm Finkelstein of all time

But Chomsky is far from the worst offender in this regard, even within the world of male academics. For instance, his close friend and collaborator Norman Finkelstein, known for being extremely correct on exactly one issue and egregiously wrong on many others, has spent much of his recent career railing against #metoo, pronouns, and cancel culture, yet had no trouble immediately grasping Epstein’s depravity and rejecting his advances in characteristically blunt fashion – despite being far less established in his career and far more in need of a wealthy patron. While ingrained sexism may have been a necessary condition to explain Chomsky’s sympathy for Epstein, it was not a sufficient one.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 03/08/2026

Footage of a Kahanist learning he is actually Palestinian from a DNA test.

4 panels of the Simpsons scene where Homer is giving a press conference about him soon to be going to space and realizes the Planet of the Apes was Earth. Instead of the actual lines, they have been replaced by the following:

Wait a minute. Palestinian DNA.
That was our brother!
You maniacs!
You blew him up!

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 27/07/2026

And apparently they were both very upset by the suspension of the Babylon Bee from Twitter, and Talulah texted her ex-husband about it when he was thinking of buying the site.

While many of the text messages involved pleas to put money in the deal, Riley’s were more focused on politics. “Please do something to fight woke-ism.” she wrote, “I will do anything to help! xx.”

She was especially concerned about the suspension of the Babylon Bee satire site’s Twitter account, calling it “crazy” in a text to Musk. “Raiyah and I were talking about it today,” she wrote. “It was a f–king joke. Why has everyone become so puritanical?”

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 18/06/2026

Unsure if this is the same kid, but it's actually more worrying to me that this is the case regardless

My source — 15, Jewish, a colleague’s son, resident of a racially and religiously diverse suburb — estimates that at least 70 percent of the students in his school would be familiar with “goyslop.” (Another student, who feels less firm on the exact meaning, puts the number at just under half.) He is fully aware that it arose via an “antisemitic thing about Jews trying to kind of poison the minds of the people through food and stuff.” But this is not, in his experience, remotely how it operates among his peers, who see it as criticizing, if anything, corporations. “It’s not really a thing like that anymore,” he says. “Like, everyone says it.”

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 29/03/2026

I know I shouldn't have even clicked on the link but curiosity got the better of me and this paragraph made me chuckle

Chabadism has become a dominant and driving force in Judaism today as in escalating Palestinian land dispossession and the Gaza genocide. The Chabad Lubavitch along with their members, “Lubavitchers” are strong advocates of the “temple movement” - the belief that their Jewish messiah, Menachem Mendel Schnersson, will return imminently. They are also open with their plans to build a masonic temple on top of the third holiest site in Islam, Al-Aqsa.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 15/03/2026

lol I thought that user seemed familiar. They said this among other stupid things in a far too long argument we had 8 months ago where they were not even the most antisemitic person to come into my replies.

Post by Muffin @montrealmutfin.bsky.social 8 months ago

No, the exile of the Jews in the 2nd century was a Christian myth.

There's no historical record of it. They were farmers they stayed there and farmed the land.

Some converted to Christianity. Some converted to Islam. Europeans converted to Judaism.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 09/03/2026

(I'm not entirely sure which racist made this claim first, but it was very popular to joke about how dumb it was back when twitter was twitter)

A weird meme presumably made by a racist that reads:

RACIST
A MADE UP WORD BY LEON TROTSKY IN 1927
WORD WAS USED TO BROWNBEAT ALL DISSENTERS OF THE COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY

STILL USED TO THIS DAY IN THE WEST TO SHUT DOWN ALL NONCONFORMISTS

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/01/2026

getting in on this weird debate from today for just a moment to point out that we actually are aware of that, because this longing is not a form of nostalgia (which is unproductive in all its forms), it's a hope for the betterment of society so that we can all live in the version we wish existed.

you are longing for a version of this country that never existed

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 11/12/2025

My friend found an insane YouTube channel the other day called Joker Box, and I can't stop thinking about this screenshot he sent me. It seems as though his whole deal is doing impressions of Heath Ledger's Joker and spreading conspiracy theories also in a Joker impression.

YouTube screenshot with three videos all from 5 years ago and the same channel. The first is titled "joker impression - agents of chaos" and has a picture of Heath Ledger's Joker as the thumbnail (1 minute and 26 seconds long). The second is titled "Fauci Vaccine testing" and has an image of Dr. Anthony Fauci next to a Nazi flag as the thumbnail (59 seconds long). The third is titled "Mandatory masks by Joker" and has a picture of a man in a clown mask above the words "MAY 1." (7 minutes and 46 seconds long).

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/11/2025

I've come to study the ways of will stancil

screenshot of Google maps showing me to be in downtown Minneapolis

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 13/10/2025

For posterity, this is what the now deleted post was. If you think this is funny, you are at least implicitly okay with blood and soil nationalism and I'm being dead serious.

Post by junlper.beer on bluesky sharing a Nazi created meme claiming Gumbo is Israeli food.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/07/2025

You sure he's not a droid that adopted the persona of a man to rise through the criminal underworld?

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 14/07/2025

how I'm feeling right about now

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/06/2025

illiteracy is a real problem folks

We want to return!
Not to Uganda, not to Argentina or to Madagascar, not even to Palestine. It is Poland that we long for, the Land of our fathers and forefathers.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 11/06/2025

It's practically spelled out in the link you posted. Fascism is foundationally built upon the nationalist state and it is via these foundations (among other things to be fair), that fascism is antithetical to socialism and therefore opposed to it.

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....

...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death.

Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 09/06/2025

I am curious where the 2% comes from

Graph showing a 30/70 split between Zionist and anti-Zionist and a 98/2 split between philosemitic and antisemitic

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 22/05/2025

I don't think Zionism is "homegrown and uniquely American"

Norman Rockwell's painting "Freedom of Speech"

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/11/2024

Thought I'd try my hand at this but instead of being normal and doing it in excel or word I thought it would be a fun to test my LaTeX skills (this took about 3 hours longer than it should've because I couldn't figure out multirows), so here's a much worse formatted and much uglier pedigree chart.

Pedigree chart that can be seen in text form in the comments.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 18/11/2024

Today I found out more about that Rabbi, you can see attached a family tree and brief blurb about him.

Family tree showing R. Meshullam Feiwel Horowitz as the father of Henia, wife of Abraham the Angel.

R. Meshullam Feiwel Horowitz of Kremenets, author of Mishnat Chachamim, published in Ostrog, 1796.

A footnote mentions this lineage is given in B.Y. (Beis Yosef, Pietrokov 1913)

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