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shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Shalhebetyah ⳧
@shalhebetyah.bsky.social
94 followers 150 following 1.1K posts
And I, shall I not have pity for Nineveh the great city,
in which there are many more
than one hundred twenty thousand human beings
who do not know between their right hand and their left,
and many beasts? 🌱❤️‍🔥
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shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I find it hard to understand why they didn't use the Mar Sleeva, which is so pretty. Neither does the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, but the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church does!
November 8, 2025 at 5:32 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Stealing a graph from @christianityon.bsky.social:
A Cartesian plane where the X axis goes from "reasonable" rightward to "unhinged" and the Y axis goes from "sincerity" downward to "irony." In the sincerity + unhinged quadrant there is a red circle labeled "the autism zone."
November 1, 2025 at 10:51 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
According to the Dhammapada this is not necessarily a problem! (Though it probably is.)
19. Although he recites many sacred texts, if he does not act accordingly, that heedless man is like a cowherd who only counts the cattle of others—he does not partake of the blessings of a holy life. 20. Although he recites few sacred texts, if he puts the Dhamma into practice, forsaking lust, hatred, and delusion, with true wisdom and emancipated mind, clinging to nothing in this or any other world—he, indeed, partakes of the blessings of a holy life.
October 19, 2025 at 8:13 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Śakyamuni Buddha, as depicted in an illustration of the Lotus Sutra. He sits on a lotus cross-legged, all gold except for his dark hair, with pursed lips, one hand in his lap, and one palm extended.
October 16, 2025 at 9:51 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
This picture is kinda famous to me for being on the cover of Christine M. Korsgaard's book "Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to Other Animals."
October 15, 2025 at 5:25 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I think I get closest to the sense of affectionate wonder and wistfulness some people feel toward the Roman Empire when I think about the communards burning the guillotine.
Illustration of the burning of the guillotine in the Paris Commune by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who had been there.
October 11, 2025 at 4:38 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Ooh, did you read it? I really loved it. Especially this bit, which I think is an excellent rebuke to a certain strand of neo-eugenicist quietly racialist technocratic ideology I've unfortunately seen more and more of:
95. As it is, “the current model, with its emphasis on success and self-reliance, does not appear to favor an investment in efforts to help the slow, the weak or the less talented to find opportunities in life.” [100] The same questions keep coming back to us. Does this mean that the less gifted are not human beings? Or that the weak do not have the same dignity as ourselves? Are those born with fewer opportunities of lesser value as human beings? Should they limit themselves merely to surviving? The worth of our societies, and our own future, depends on the answers we give to these questions. Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity or we fall into a cesspool. Unless we stop and take this matter seriously, we will continue, openly or surreptitiously, “to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption.” [101]
October 10, 2025 at 4:15 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I really like this image of Barlaam, the chief opponent of Palamas the hesychast, crossing a river. It makes me want to like Barlaam purely because I find the image beautiful.
October 4, 2025 at 7:40 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I would prefer if they embraced a guar mindset.
A guar, from Morrowind, edited to be blue on top and red on the bottom, bisected by a white strip, with four stars in the blue. Like the Democrat donkey.
October 3, 2025 at 6:56 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Bluesky won't let me cheat... but Anisota will!
Screenshot from Anisota displaying an inventory item for "Quintessence," at a quantity of 0.01, with the description "Nullity. At the heart of all creations," a rarity of "Very Rare," and a value of "0 gold."
October 3, 2025 at 5:28 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I finally have a baseline understanding of how ATProto records work! 🥳
October 3, 2025 at 4:24 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
My browser is trolling me by displaying my name with the flag of Anguilla instead of the burning heart, except when I take a picture of it, the heart is inexplicably back to normal.
I'm being profoundly
September 26, 2025 at 2:48 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Detail from Pietro di Nicola Baroni's painting Annunciazione e Peccato Originale. It depicts Adam and Eve near a tree with the serpent, here depicted with a human head. The image has been edited so that the snake has a blank speech bubble coming out of its mouth.
September 20, 2025 at 12:22 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
In conjunction with this saying from the Desert Fathers, I have become pretty darn confused about what my relationship to truthfulness should be.
One day Abba Agathon questioned Abba Alonios saying, ‘How can I control my tongue so as to tell no more lies?’ And Abba Alonios said to him, ‘If you do not lie, you prepare many sins for yourself.’ ‘How is that?’ said he. The old man said to him, ‘Suppose two men have committed a murder before your eyes and one of them fled to your cell. The magistrate, seeking him, asks you, “Have you seen the murderer?” If you do not lie, you will deliver that man to death. It is better for you to abandon him unconditionally to God, for He knows all things.’
August 25, 2025 at 2:55 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Making a video titled "15 Ways to Cultivate 'GOODNESS' (SUPER RARE) & Is it Better Than 'JUSTICE'?"

I do not think adolescent boys should read this book because it is marked by dated gender norms, but aiming to a standard of goodness higher than justice is surely better than aiming to be a sigma.
Here the just man is supposed to adhere strictly to the rule of right or equity, and to exact from others the same measure that he is satisfied to mete; but the good man, though occasionally he may fall short of justice, has, properly speaking, no measure to his benevolence, his general propensity is to give more than the due. The just man condemns, and is desirous of punishing the transgressors of the line prescribed to himself; but the good man, in the sense of his own falls and failings, gives latitude, indulgence, and pardon to others; he judges, he condemns no one save himself. The just man is a stream that deviates not to the right or left from its appointed channel, neither is swelled by the flood of passion above its banks; but the heart of the good man, the man of honor, the gentleman, is as a lamp lighted by the breath of God, and none save God himself can set limits to the efflux or irradiations thereof. “Again, the gentleman never envies any superior excellence, but grows himself more excellent, by being the admirer, promoter, and lover thereof.
August 24, 2025 at 5:21 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I love it when old books will have beautiful exhortations to virtue which move me to betterment of conduct, then promptly move on to tell outrageous lies about the Spanish nobility.
Real politeness is the outward expression of the most generous impulses of the heart. It enforces unselfishness, benevolence, kindness, and the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would others should do unto you.” Thus its first principle is love for the neighbor, loving him as yourself. When in society it would often be exceedingly difficult to decide how to treat those who are personally disagreeable to us, if it were not for the rules of politeness, and the little formalities and points of etiquette which these rules enforce. These evidences of polite breeding do not prove hypocrisy, as you may treat your most bitter enemy with perfect courtesy, and yet make no protestations of friendship. If politeness is but a mask, as many philosophers tell us, it is a mask which will win love and admiration, and is better worn than cast aside. If you wear it with the sincere desire to give pleasure to others, and make all the little meetings of life pass off smoothly and agreeably, it will soon cease to be a mask, but you will find that the manner which you at first put on to give pleasure, has become natural to you, and wherever you have{32} assumed a virtue to please others, you will find the virtue becoming habitual and finally natural, and part of yourself. Do not look upon the rules of etiquette as deceptions. They are just as often vehicles for the expression of sincere feeling, as they are the mask to conceal a want of it. “The kings of Spain, the proudest and vainest of all{35} kings of the earth, made a rule of etiquette as stupid as it was useless. It was a fault punishable by death to touch the foot of the queen, and the individual who thus offended, no matter under what circumstances, was executed immediately. “A young queen of Spain, wife of Charles the Second, was riding on horseback in the midst of her attendants. Suddenly the horse reared and threw the queen from the saddle. Her foot remained in the stirrup, and she was dragged along the ground. An immense crowd stood looking at this spectacle, but no one dared, for his life, to attempt to rescue the poor woman. She would have died, had not two young French officers, ignorant of the stupid law which paralyzed the Spaniards, sprung forward and saved her. One stopped the horse, and whilst he held the bridle, his companion disengaged from its painful position the foot of the young queen, who was, by this time, insensible from fear and the bruises which she had already received. They were instantly arrested, and while the queen was carried on a litter to the palace, her young champions were marched off, accompanied by a strong guard, to prison. The next day, sick and feeble, the queen was obliged to leave her bed, and on her knees before the king, plead for the pardon of the two Frenchmen; and her prayer was only granted upon condition that the audacious foreigners left Spain immediately.”
August 24, 2025 at 4:28 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I stumbled on this quote and it has haunted me all day. I'm always saying that I'm a substance monist but for flesh. And "for the world of living beings is like a dancer" kills me for some reason.
The Blessed One replied, "Mañjuśrī, that is so. There are no beings who have not been one’s mother, who have not been one’s sister through generations of wandering in beginningless and endless saṃsāra. (Highlight begins) Even one who is a dog has been one’s father, for the world of living beings is like a dancer. Therefore, one's own flesh and the flesh of another are a single flesh, (Highlight ends) so Buddhas do not eat meat.
August 23, 2025 at 6:14 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I'm kinda convinced that Carol J. Adams's *The Sexual Politics of Meat* is both conditioned by Adams's MA in Divinity and highly theologically salien. This may be me trying to bring together all my interests into one nexus, but consider the following footnote:
In a convincing but surprising interpretation of this experience, literary scholar Susan Fraiman finds religious symbolism in this epiphany, seeing it as both a disruption and continuation of my theological training. I am still unpacking the baggage of my year’s experience at Yale. The blood, thorns, and martyred animal of my story imply that I reject the patriarchal aspects of Christianity while retaining its iconography of suffering. Fraiman also points out that I retain an ethic of neighborliness and care for the meek. She writes, “Caught in spiritual transit, still unpacking the baggage of her year at Yale, she is brought home by this act of violence to her calling as an independent activist-scholar—one for whom the rites of academia will always be less compelling than the justice issues raised in her own backyard. Hailed in what we might be tempted to think of as an Althusserian manner, Adams is abruptly called into subjectivity not by a police officer but by a sympathetic neighbor, who effects her interpellation as a dissenting rather than obedient citizen.” Susan Fraiman. “Pussy Panic versus Liking Animals: Tracking Gender in Animal Studies.” Critical Inquiry. 39: 1 (Autumn 2012), p. 110.
August 21, 2025 at 12:34 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I am feeling highly satisfied with the bizarre GPT-2 querying system I have set up to activate whenever I press ALT+;
August 13, 2025 at 8:41 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
As listed on the following chart, you got to the first Intermission.

I kinda think completing Homestuck is like Calvinist predestination. You're either elected to it or you're not, and you don't have a lot of free will in the matter.
August 13, 2025 at 1:57 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Origen of Alexandria's face edited onto the "First time?" hanging meme.
August 9, 2025 at 1:13 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
This would have just been a normal repost but I think Klee's "Black Knight" deserves better image quality.
July 11, 2025 at 8:03 AM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I just today became familiar with 15th century Safavid piece "The Court of Gayumars" and it has really made my day. It genuinely looks like a Pure Land.
July 7, 2025 at 8:33 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
Sometimes Nagarjuna makes my head hurt, but not this time, because I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before, from a guy who wasn't sure if he wasn't a butterfly.
5. What is distinct is distinct in dependence on that from which it is distinct; it is not distinct apart from that from which it is distinct. When x is dependent on y, it does not hold that x is distinct from y.
June 18, 2025 at 9:56 PM
shalhebetyah.bsky.social
I was trying to find information about the city of Chaghcharan in Afghanistan and found this paragraph that is beautiful to me.
Chaghcharan is not a town, it is a city. Chaghcharan is not a desert it is an area. Chaghcharan is not belongs to anyone, it is belongs to all people of Ghor and who are specially living in this valley.
June 18, 2025 at 6:01 AM