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This is true, but the discursive pausing is not "actually" a comma, it's just represented by a comma in the orthography.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23h

I suppose "unrelated" is a bad choice of word, but certainly you could not tell apart certain punctuation marks based on someone's speech, because punctuation is not "real" in spoken language.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23h

Also punctuation is just an orthographic convention to represent certain things, sometimes completely unrelated to the spoken language it's capturing. How does punctuation turn a language into a spoken language?

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

Yes, Amtrak service outside of the northeast corridor and a few small pockets of the rest of the country

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

I was going to make a joke about Karaites but for Wisconsin state law and then I realized that's a sovereign citizen

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

That's why the extent of my Brisker involvement is reading Halakhic Man, you know, in protest or something

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

And yet he still said Hadran Alach when it was finished, curious

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

My dad spent all of the time Daf Yomi was on Zevachim complaining to me about Zevachim

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

That meeting was in 1892, but in a footnote he says "Words written in Hebrew already occur in a letter of Engels to Friedrich Graeber of February 22, 1841." I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean much, but it at least had wormed its way into my head somehow.

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

I tried to find where I got the Hebrew thing and I think may have been an Edmund Silberner article aptly titled "Friedrich Engels and the Jews" from 1949 where he describes Abe Cahan recounting Engels reading to him from a Yiddish paper and asking "are you surprised I can read the loshn kodesh?" 1/2

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

Yeah, I have basically no common ground with anyone I've seen defending the essay wholesale, but that just activates my brain to go "there is actually a kernel of value in here that everyone seems to be missing by either way overshooting or slightly undershooting, therefore I must share it."

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

As I've maybe said on here before, my brain yearns for nuance even when it's pointless or even counterproductive, and I have yet to properly silence that instinct, so this entire thread can probably be attributed to that.

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

My point is and has remained (although maybe poorly articulated) that his disputation of Bauer is the only value that the essay has ever had, and he successfully (in my mind) argues for political emancipation of Jews, but that his insistence on a final "human emancipation" is where it loses me.

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

I agree with the overarching point, but I do think there's a popular conception of the essay itself that latches onto the antisemitic language used and then completely ignores the actual point he makes. My point is that it was bad for being antisemitic, but he was right in his disputation of Bauer.

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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

I would say it's a completely useless essay today, which I would also consider most of Marx's writing to be, but in that time I do think it was good of him to defend, even very backhandedly, political emancipation free of religious conditioning.

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

You may be right that I'm being too apologetic, but I think there's an argument that sans all later history and operating only in that specific context, the essay serves at a very basic level as a good refutation of Bauer's wanting to condition political emancipation on religious grounds.

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

I should maybe clarify based on your later comment, I think the main point Marx is making in his essay is that political emancipation can't and shouldn't be conditioned on any one religion (good), but because he's antitheist, he also has to throw in the "human emancipation" bit (bad).

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

I agree with that, I mostly just find Engels' trajectory on Jews throughout his life to be very interesting. IIRC he was already presenting as philosemitic in some ways (I think he had a fascination with Hebrew) in the ~1840s, which is also around when he was at his most antisemitic.

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

The reading you're describing is more akin to what Bauer said in "The Jewish Question" that Marx was directly responding to and disputing. The "opiate of the masses" is part of why I still view it unfavorably, coupled with the (potentially intended to be subversive) thing about Judaism and money.

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

With respect, I think this is a misreading of his point, which is more in line with his general "opiate of the masses" idea, and is more or less that Jews getting political emancipation is fine, but that's not true "human emancipation" which can only come without religion, property, class, etc.

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

This is to say, Marx and Engels contain multitudes, and were also products of an antisemitic oeuvre that their anti-capitalism found an easy latch onto, such that even when they were anti-antisemitic, they were being at least a little antisemitic themselves.

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

I think I view Marx's "On the Jewish Question" more favorably than most (still not so favorably though), but he was undeniably pushing antisemitism both more broadly and even in the most generous interpretation of that work. Engels was also at times a great philosemite, especially later in his life.

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

It's unrelated to the main point here, but I found this article to be written kind of confusingly, to the point where if I wasn't already somewhat familiar with the dynamics of Satmar and Neturei Karta I do not think I would have been left with the correct impression regarding his "affiliations."

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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 · 01/10/2026

I'm quite far from being a Catholic, so I don't believe he actually has any divine authority, but I do think someone should be looking into the rules on Church Patriarchs rooting for a baseball team.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 30/09/2026

I think it's probably some combination of both where many other Dems would have at least started out similarly, but Biden especially was just never going to actually do something like cutting off aid.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 30/09/2026

I'm becoming increasingly convinced the good Mayor thinks he only holds office and therefore authority in NYC, when in actuality, he-- *checks notes* oh, uh, my bad, he's right actually. My apologies.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 28/09/2026

They were all changed either in civil court here or before they left Denmark

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 28/09/2026

Mini figures did *NOT* have their names changed at Lego Ellis Island

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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 · 24/09/2026

The pool itself was basically never used, probably mostly due to it being way too small to actually fit a class, and we had pretty small class sizes. The one time I remember we used it, there was exactly one person who showered after (also the class schedule just didn't make that so possible).

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 24/09/2026

My school had separate locker rooms for the gym and for the pool. I had permission to use the pool locker room for class in the gym in case my IBD required me to be on a toilet for a while, but when I was in the gym locker room I recall the showers only being used for extra space to change.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 24/09/2026

She was amenable (not sure how serious she actually was) to converting, but her husband was worried she would take it too seriously and he wouldn't be allowed to eat treyf anymore.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 24/09/2026

Only slightly related, but it's always tickled me a bit how the vast majority of my family connections to prominent German Jews come by way of a marriage to a descendant of the North Carolina Cone family, who was born, raised, and has remained Protestant.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 24/09/2026

Raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt...

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 24/09/2026

English isn't ready for begedkefet spirantization

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/09/2026

The most effective progress made by the DSA continues to be in that tradition of entry into electoral politics. There are all kinds of arguments to be made about this, but I think everyone is better served if the argument is about the virtue of electoralism itself by simply having multiple orgs.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/09/2026

I have no illusions of a "purge" of this or that group or tendency improving things, but I *do* question 1. the motives and rationale of those who joined a non-umbrella org only to explicitly defy its existing program, and 2. why the DSA must continue to exist as it does now.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/09/2026

Rereading my earlier post(s), I maybe could have been more clear, but I think the "democratic" descriptor is pertinent to the DSA first being founded and later resurging as an electoral movement. Maybe I'm too stuck on that past, but imo it hurts everyone involved to have the DSA as an umbrella org.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 23/09/2026

This is true abstractly, and maybe this is a misunderstanding or just an outdated view on my part, but the way I have always understood the DSA's outlook on means has been via the electoral process; "democracy" used for describing not simply the ideological aim, but importantly the electoral means.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 22/09/2026

Saw a truck for an SEC Hardwood Services company today, there are Securities and Exchange Commissions everywhere for those with the eyes to see

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/09/2026

Corey O'Connor can't wish me an easy and meaningful fast on Bluesky, he hasn't even updated his profile here to indicate he's no longer just the Mayor-elect! Mamdani is Bluesky's mayor, and I'm tired of him not acting like it.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/09/2026

It was bad enough that he refused to make a statement on the Port Authority here getting renamed "Pittsburgh Regional Transit" over such trivial things as "he doesn't live here" and "he wasn't even the Mayor of New York when that happened."

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/09/2026

I've defended him for a long time now, but I'm getting sick of him privileging the Jews of New York over the rest of us... It's Yom Kippur here in Pittsburgh too Mr. Mayor, or do you think that doesn't warrant a statement since you're "only Mayor of NYC," and "other cities have their own Mayors?"

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/09/2026

This is what people mean when they talk about how wealth is too concentrated nowadays: individual middle class Jews used to get to control the media to some extent, now it's all centralized by the employers, so us little guys don't get to have our more personal propaganda in the news cycle.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 20/09/2026

They could pay more, but the OU themselves are spending too much on controlling the media that there's only so much left over for their employees 😞

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 18/09/2026

Correct guy who thinks terrorism is bad and should be condemned regardless of who does it, and that it doesn't reflect on other people who share the terrorist's religious, national, ethnic, etc. background.

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Sammy/שמואל @sammyshear.com · 18/09/2026

guy who thinks someone condemning acts of terrorism done by Jewish people is because they're antisemitic (and that's bad) because he's islamophobic and thinks that people condemn acts of terrorism done by Muslims because they're also islamophobic, but that's good

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