Mara seems like a really cool person. I just listened to the behind the bastards episode with her and she felt exceptionally genuine.
she was active in the Weird Twitter scene (pre musk) and blew up a bunch of mine and my friends dumb joke tweets.
She also wrote a great book that I recommend.
Mara is fantastic. I especially like her voicing „The Old Woman Who secretly lives in your house“ in „Welcome to Nightvale.“
That's her? Lmao I had no idea
Other nightvale fans!
Came here looking for this. She was excellent in that role.
This made me look up the term secular in context to Judaism. How did I not know that until now?
For those that don't know, being Jewish is the only ethnicity in the world that also refers to religion and (though no longer used due to antisemitic usage) national identities. Secular Jews are quite common
I also have a few friends who are practicing Jews (I don't know if that's the right phrase), and also atheists. Judaism appears to be more focussed on orthopraxy (doing things correctly) than belief, which was confusing to me at first, as someone who grew up steeped in Christianity
I just looked this up. The idea is called an ethnic religion, where a religion is closely tied to an ethnicity as opposed to universal religions like Christianity or Islam. It's far from the only one, but it is the one that has the most mind share, at least in the West.
Only tangentially related, but I find it interesting how wildly divergent the valence of the word "Jew" can be based almost exclusively on context.
Jews are wonderful people with a beautiful culture!
How did I not know that until now?
Unironically, I'd like to know. Not having a go at you. There seem to be lots of people who don't know that. But without that bit of knowledge, the holocaust doesn't make sense.
The nazis defined anyone with jewish grandparents to be part of a jewish race, by law. That even included a few christian priests. Of course, the nazis didn't invent the idea. People never liked converts much. When you prosecute someone, you want to get the loot. It's never about selflessly helping people go to heaven.
Historically, it's a truism that a race is a result of racism. First, a group is hated or subjugated. Then membership - and supposed negative traits - become defined as unalterable, heritable facts.
I think it was something I'd been told beforehand, but it wasn't filed away correctly. For me, the Holocaust was always a tragedy. Such a massive loss of human lives will always be a tragedy. In that regard, I didn't see it as more of a tragedy because secular Jews were caught up in the mix. It's a tragedy because any life was caught up in the mix. But I also feel the Trans-atlantic Slave Trade is a tragedy and we continue to feel and reap the rewards of that to this very day, where there's a bunch of people that don't even realise Africa is a continent.
Something something XKCD 10000 mumble mumble
I just learned that her cousin is Ben Shapiro...
Oh really? Damn… Based on her appearance on Behind the Bastards the other week, I’ll just say it sounds like we’d have something in common, I hate my idiot cousin too. lol
Yeah, I bet family gatherings are... interesting to say the least, lmao
