A web developer in Montreal
It’s my birthday and I’ll make saccharine Buddhist videos if I want to ??
May contain: My thoughts on the year that passed and what I’ve learned, unsubtle metaphors, Michoacano handicrafts, accepting and letting go, mind-bending earnestness.
Find more Buddhist and Refuge Recovery videos on my YouTube channel, like the Guided Breathing Meditation, and Oral History of the Refuge Recovery Book.
Continue reading “Video: GARBAGE BAG BUDDHA: A Birthday Message”
“Intention setting” is a concept you can find in a variety of Buddhist contexts, either as a daily practice done by an individual, or a communal ceremony performed by a sangha (community) of Buddhists. Often intention setting ceremonies are performed around the new year, as a more wholesome replacement for “New Years resolutions”.
This article describes an intention setting ceremony I synthesized for my Refuge Recovery group that meets each week. I’m sharing it for the sake of any Refuge Recovery groups, other Buddhist meetings, or anyone else who wants to try a ceremony like this!
Continue reading “Buddhist “Intention Setting Ceremony” for New Years (and Refuge Recovery)”
The video is ready! Here’s the embed from WordPress.tv:
Below are the slides from my WordCamp Montreal 2018 talk A Buddhist Guide to WordPress Development.
It’s an unusual WordCamp talk for sure, as it is mostly about an ancient religion rather than a state-of-the-art website app, so I hope some can find it valuable.
FWIW if you just want to learn about Buddhism, and don’t care about WordPress, this would probably be useful to you either way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Continue reading “A Buddhist Guide to WordPress Development”
Learn about the 2018 bug in the Facebook Instant Articles for WP plugin which remains unresolved and which stops your IA posts from getting updated on FB when you update them in WP.
I wrote this up for my beloved Global Voices contributors (i.e. my job), but it applies equally to anyone authoring content on a WP site with the IA plugin running. If you are the admin for a publisher that cares about having your FB users see up-to-date versions of your content, maybe you should share it with your authors too ? ⁉
Facebook Instant Articles: Thou shalt re-scrape thine articles after important edits
If you’re not sure what FB IA are, check out my WordCamp talk on the subject: F******k Instant Articles: How do they work?
I love the expressions “gender disobedience” and “gender disobedient” as alternatives to “gender non-conformity”. They are great for describing queerness and transness from the perspective of people who intentionally subvert gender norms.
This post is me google prospecting on the term “Gender disobedience” because I found no interesting results and thought the concept needed a homepage. I hope my thoughts on the subject are interesting to you, especially if you yourself happen to be gender disobedient. To read more about me and my particular gender check out About Jer and Gender.
If you are careful to do things expected of your gender, or just happen to, you are “gender conforming”. If you do things that aren’t expected of your gender, for any reason, you are “gender non-conforming”.
Gender non-conformity is an essential concept because it’s so unspecific about the reasons or details. It’s needed when you don’t know someone’s gender or gender presentation goals.
Many people identify as “GNC” as an identity or attribute, especially because it can describe both cis and trans people across all genders.
Gender non-conforming is also an important label for those who consider themselves cisgender, yet behave in ways associated with other genders.
The only thing I don’t like about “gender non-conforming”, for myself, is that it can also describe people who do it unintentionally, or naturally without any particular agency. I don’t just happen to be non-conforming, I put effort into my disobedience.
I love “gender disobedient” as a label because it feels like the active form of non-conformity. Disobedience is something I do, not just something I am.
I reject the common gender system as it exists today, and I want to subvert it with my own style and behavior. I accept that the rules exist, but refuse to abide them.
Disobedience in other parts of life can be dangerous, and obeying is important for everyone’s safety, but when it comes to gender presentation, I think breaking the rules is safe and wholesome.
Not all rules were meant to be broken, but some of them must be.
Gender norms burden and oppress us.
My gender is non-binary, which means I am neither male nor female, the two states possible in the gender binary. I identify as agender, which means I do not believe in my own gender and/or don’t have one. Both of these mean I am genderqueer, because they are weird.
I was assigned male at birth (AMAB) with the name Jeremy and the pronouns he/him. I feel like I have been failing my male assignment my whole life and have decided to drop the class.
Jer is my real name. Most people call me that and it makes me happy. Jer is also much more gender neutral than Jeremy so it’s important to me that Jer is considered my full name.
Please use they/them as my pronouns to talk about me in the third person rather than he/him. Usually you should just say “Jer” instead of he or him and “Jer’s” instead of his like “I say Jer’s name the first time I mention them in a sentence.”
I will not be mad if you forget and I am happy to answer questions if anyone has them. I’m hoping you will accept me as I am and do your best to respect my identity.
If you know me well, this information is probably both news and ancient history. Here are some things that most of my friends take for granted:
Maybe that last one is a bit heavier than most conversations get, but it’s been true since university, when I learned that gender and sex didn’t have to mean the same thing.
At the time no one told me about non-binary, genderqueer or agender as identities I could have for myself, just the option of being binary-female if I wanted. That option didn’t and doesn’t have much appeal to me, it would just be another kind of drag like the male drag I’ve been doing my whole life.
Recently I’ve been reading about gender and the different labels and definitions people use to describe themselves. The more I read about gender non-conforming people, the more I realized I was reading about myself.
This list isn’t necessary, but I’m including it for anyone curious what, in particular, being genderqueer means in my own life.
I don’t know how I will present in the future, but you can expect me to do things that “men shouldn’t do” with my fashion, grooming, behavior and everything else. This is okay both because I’m not a man, and because men can do anything they want whether they are trans or not.
Maybe in the long run I’ll seem “normal” and everyone will assume I’m a man, maybe I’ll be perfect neutral androgynous and everyone will be confused. It seems very unlikely, but maybe I’ll get to a point where people think I’m a woman.
Either way I suspect I will always be non-binary inside, and I plan to live that reality in public.
Thank you for your attention if you’ve read through all of this, and for any understanding and patience you can bring to the challenge of honoring my identity and wishes.
If you are truly humble then someone giving you a complement makes you feel a little bit humblenoid.
Humblenoia is that feeling when you hear something nice about yourself, but you don’t believe it.
The humblenoiac is often found refusing compliments and, paradoxically, arguing against their own merits.
I finally started watching Parks and Recreation recently and it’s a wonderful show. The humor is goofy but also really subtle and honest. I love the many details they work into the shot or script that reward you for paying close attention.
One such detail is the brief but heartwarming appearance of a character named Walter (Walt) Koypond, played by Brendan Jennings, in Season 5 Episode 12.
Continue reading “An Ode to Walter, who was afraid of a lot of stuff in Pawnee, Indiana”
Exodus 4:24-26 (New Century Version):
24 As Moses was on his way to Egypt, he stopped at a resting place for the night. The Lord met him there and tried to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised her son. Taking the skin, she touched Moses’ feet with it and said to him, “You are a bridegroom of blood to me.” 26 She said, “You are a bridegroom of blood,” because she had to circumcise her son. So the Lord let Moses alone.
A lot happens in these three verses from Exodus 4. Yahweh has just sent Moses to Egypt with his “walking stick of God“, his 3 new miracles and an existential threat for the Egyptians.
Out of nowhere, while Moses is resting for the night God shows up and tries to kill him. The following verses imply that God was angry at Moses for not circumcising his son, but it’s never mentioned before this. His wife Zipporah seems to know that God is killing Moses because their son is uncircumcised, and does impromptu surgery which seems to satisfy Yahweh who leaves them alone and doesn’t kill anyone in the end.
To me the emotional crux of this passage is Zipporah’s reaction, which implies that she had wanted to avoid circumcision for her son, and she’s mad at Moses for forcing her to do it. She calls him “bridegroom of blood” which was probably a sounded better in the original language.
There are a lot of scenes in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy where Yahweh suddenly gets really angry and kills one or many of the Hebrews with little to no explanation or warning, but this is a rare one where he tries to kill the main character. It’s interesting how passages like this were maintained in the Bible despite making God look pretty terrible from just about any vantage point.
Here’s another analysis of this passage that I pretty much agree with (though the author is probably coming from a very different perspective than me).
I kind of wish this scene had made it into the movie.
As an enthusiast photographer I chose Fujifilm as my system about a year ago, buying the already out of date but affordable X-E1 camera ($800 with the 18-55mm kit lens). My plan was to upgrade to whatever came out as an update to the X-E2, which I already knew was missing features from the flagship (i.e. expensive) X-T1 that had been announced. Fuji is releasing a new camera, the X-T10, a cheaper but feature-compatible version of the X-T1 without weather sealing, missing the coveted ISO dial and with a smaller EVF (electronic viewfinder). This article is my analysis of the most interesting features of the X-T1 that are new to me as an X-E1 user and the ways they do or don’t apply to the X-T10.
Continue reading “Experiences with the Fuji X-T1 in light of the X-T10’s imminent release”
