Gorilla Of Destiny, Who Call Themselves "world Leading Researcher In Magic Science", Has A Few Words

These Witches Don’t Burn

“She’s my ex,” I whisper, my stomach clenching as I wait to see how [he] responds. Coming out is always nerve-wracking, no matter how many times I do it. [...]

[He] pauses a moment, considering me. Then he lets out a knowing sigh. “My first boyfriend broke up with me a few months before he went to college, too.”

“Yeah?” I ask, instantly feeling a tighter kinship with my new coworker, like seeing a familiar face in a crowd of strangers.

“What happened?”

“Some of it was the usual stuff, [...]. Mostly, though, I don’t think he wanted to date a guy.” When [he] sees my confused expression, he clarifies. “I’m trans. I came out senior year.”

Sterling, I. (2019). These Witches Don’t Burn. Razorbill.

Online-Veranstaltung zu Banned Books am Welttag des Buches

Gemeinsam mit der Kommission für Queere Hochschulpolitik der bukof (Bundeskonferenz der Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragten an Hochschulen) organisieren die Queerbrarians (eine Netzwerk queerer Librarians) ein queeres Online-Event zum World Book Day.

Nach einem einführenden Vortrag auf Deutsch von mir sprechen Eve & Lucie auf Englisch. Sie kämpfen gegen die Book Bans in ihrem County in Tennessee.

Das Event ist kostenfrei und braucht keine Anmeldung. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich willkommen.

Titel: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Datum: 23. April 2025

Uhrzeit: 16:30 bis 18:00 Uhr

Flyer & Infos

Knowledge

intellectual work, such as research (the creation of new knowledge) and learning (the creation of new knowledge within oneself)

Jonsson, B., Nunnally, T., & Cuir, G. D. (2001). Unwinding the Clock: Ten Thoughts on Our Relationship to Time (Unabridged Edition). Audio Literature.

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

This book has so many great quotes that made me think, reflect, scream and cry. Here are some of them in the order I read them, rather than in an organised way alongside my thoughts.

Sáenz, B. A. (2021). Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World. Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers.

They want us to read, but they do not want us to write.

This applies to so many different areas and aspects that it is almost universal. It is even more relevant in the current political climate in far too many countries. It's frightening and it all starts with banning books, restricting access to information and preventing people from gaining knowledge.

I don’t want you to live in the prison of my thoughts. I’m the only one who should be living there.

Ouch. That one hurt.

Happiness. What the hell did that mean? It had to be more than the absence of sadness.

I'd argue that happiness can't exist without sadness being around as well.

A lot of things happened outside the world of words.

Communicating without words is as much an art as communicating with words.

But here we are, we’re in it, this world that does not want us, a world that will never love us, a world that would choose to destroy us rather than make a space for us even though there is more than enough room.

Some people want queer people to disappear, but we're born this way, so there will always be queer people because people are born every day. You cannot make us disappear.

I wonder if people like me ever get to know what peace is like.

Not long ago I was full of hope that we could. I'm not as hopeful anymore.

[...] we will always live between exile and belonging.

Rarely have I read a better depiction of the range of emotions described by many members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The sense of exclusion versus the sense of belonging to a community. And the state of floating between the two.

Sometimes we have to be able to speak for those who can’t. That takes a lot of courage.

I always felt that it was much easier for me to stand up and speak for others than for myself. But it takes courage to do both.

We were both learning words and their meanings, and we were learning that the word 'friendship' wasn’t completely separate from the word 'love.'

Of course it isn't. Platonic love is just as strong and important and meaningful as romantic love.

It’s a beautiful thing to let the people you love see your pain.

It's just so damn hard.

How can we make them change if we’re not allowed to talk?

It's not just about banning books, restricting access to information and preventing people from gaining knowledge. It's also about banning people from expressing themselves, preventing them from telling their stories, and preventing people from passing on empathy and knowledge, because love and empathy are contageous.

Maybe we think that the value of our own freedom is worth less if everybody else has it. And we’re afraid. We’re afraid that, if someone wants what we have, they’re taking something away that belongs to us — and only to us.

Some people certainly think so.

But not everything we need to learn can be found in a book. Or rather, I’ve learned that people are books too.

Have you ever heard of living libraries? This is an amazing description of the idea behind them.

We were in this world, and we were going to fight to stay in it. Because it was ours. And one day the word “exile” would be no more.

Hope.

Hate is an emotional pandemic we have never found a cure for.

Hopelessness.

My name is Fuzzy

Hearing someone say my Twitter and Tumblr username out loud is pretty much a spiritual experience.

Oseman, A. (2018). I was born for this. HarperCollins Children’s Books.

I can't overstate how much this quote means to me. So many years ago I came up with the username Leapfrog for a wiki page. It's based on a method used in numerical analysis and it is used in numerical weather prediction models, which is what I was working on at the time. Not much later, I started my first public social media profile, but Leapfrog was already taken. So I added Fuzzy. It's based on fuzzy logic, so again something I was just learning about. Whereas Boolean logic is based on only two truth values,

Fuzzy logic [...] is a special many-valued logic which aims at providing formal background for the graded approach to vagueness.

Novák, V., Perfilieva, I., & Močkoř, J. (1999). Mathematical Principles of Fuzzy Logic. Springer.

That is how I became FuzzyLeapfrog, or simply Fuzzy.

Both words capture my nature and soul very well. I always try to find a numerical solution, while acknowledging that the world is more complex and vague than that.

So I've been called Fuzzy online for over a decade now, but gradually Fuzzy has also found its way into offline interactions. It's not just about me though. So many people I meet offline are people I met online and we very often address each other with our online names anyway. This has brought me so much joy and probably caused a lot of confusion for people who are unfamiliar with our online names or even the concept of online names.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how often I hear it, having someone acknowledge our online connection by calling my Fuzzy loudly offline is an endless source of inner joy. I am Fuzzy.

The Importance of the Act of Reading

First, I would like to reaffirm that I always saw teaching adults to read and write as a political act, an act of knowledge, and therefore as a creative act.

Freire, P. (1983). The Importance of the Act of Reading. Journal of Education, 165(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/002205748316500103

Global Warming Will Increase Earthquake Hazards

Für Folge 129 von "Das Klima. Podcast zur Wissenschaft hinter der Krise" habe ich ein Opinion-Paper gelesen, dass auf Veränderungen der Erdbebenaktivitäten durch die Klimakrise aufmerksam macht.

Das Opinion-Paper

Bohnhoff, M., Martínez‐Garzón, P., & Ben‐Zion, Y. (2024). Global Warming Will Increase Earthquake Hazards through Rising Sea Levels and Cascading Effects. Seismological Research Letters, 95(5), 2571–2576. https://doi.org/10.1785/0220240100

Die Podcast-Folge

https://dasklima.podigee.io/129-dk129-mehr-erdbeben-durch-die-klimakrise

Do good for its own sake. Do well out of spite. ✨🌈

My new motto for the fascist era.

Fascism thrives on ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Here are some ways you can combat it:

There is an ongoing literacy crisis. Teach kids how to read phonetically (other methods produce poor literacy) and introduce them to fun books, both fiction and educational non-fiction.

Teach kids about critical thinking and the scientific method.

You can also introduce kids to edutainment like Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, The Magic Schoolbus, Bill Nye The Science Guy, Beakman's World, etc.

Help kids develop media literacy skills by asking them literary analysis questions about the media they engage with. Even very young children can begin learning literary analysis if the questions are phrased in words they can understand.

Learn and help other people learn information literacy, ie, how to locate and evaluate information.

Learn the red flags of pseudoscience, and educate other people about them.

Educate people and share media on real science and real history, because fascist narratives are full of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. (Miniminuteman, Gutsick Gibbon and Bart D. Ehrman's YouTube channel are great, by the way!)

Make learning a joyful experience, and show people the beauty and wonder of what's real. Being a discouraging killjoy will spoil your efforts.

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