Zohar Jacobs 🕎
@zoharjacobs.bsky.social
Migrant Jewish intellectual. Writer, historian, mystic | Fiction in Sunday Morning Transport, Analog, Asimov's & Clarkesworld | Oxford, UK
Less a Hellenized Jew than a Judaized Hellene, I wonder how I ought to feel about the complexities of Hanukkah. But I am strongly in favor of candles.
December 1, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Less a Hellenized Jew than a Judaized Hellene, I wonder how I ought to feel about the complexities of Hanukkah. But I am strongly in favor of candles.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
If you can spare the time, this is worth reading in one sitting. Trust.
For World AIDS Day, here's a piece I wrote in 2016 about the effect of growing up queer during the crisis era, and the way books (library books especially) were essential to surviving those days.
lithub.com/reading-and-...
lithub.com/reading-and-...
Reading and Writing My Way Through the AIDS Crisis
The last third of A Long Gay Book records the discovery of the new reality. She confronts a world of magnificent, joyous chaos where no connections are given, no relations taken for granted, and ev…
lithub.com
December 1, 2025 at 4:34 PM
If you can spare the time, this is worth reading in one sitting. Trust.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind
November 27, 2025 at 4:32 AM
Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Cyber Monday is here and deals are going fast! These deals are diaphanous. They are receding even as we speak, becoming mere memories of deals, prices longed for but lost, hints at what could have been had for less. A golden slant of sun through window falls on an empty countertop. Act now.
December 1, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Cyber Monday is here and deals are going fast! These deals are diaphanous. They are receding even as we speak, becoming mere memories of deals, prices longed for but lost, hints at what could have been had for less. A golden slant of sun through window falls on an empty countertop. Act now.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
At last! An independent longitudinal qualitative study getting to heart of why artists do what they do and how, identifying barriers & brakes & how ACE’s institutions favouring policies >2010 impacted + conditions for artists’ emotional, environmental & economic resilience. DM for pre pub copy.😊
December 1, 2025 at 12:08 PM
At last! An independent longitudinal qualitative study getting to heart of why artists do what they do and how, identifying barriers & brakes & how ACE’s institutions favouring policies >2010 impacted + conditions for artists’ emotional, environmental & economic resilience. DM for pre pub copy.😊
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Santa knows when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake.
Judah Maccabee knows if you've been assimilating into the surrounding culture and he is NOT going to be okay with it
Judah Maccabee knows if you've been assimilating into the surrounding culture and he is NOT going to be okay with it
Judah Maccabee, auditing your religious practices over the year for any evidence of Hellenization.
November 27, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Santa knows when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake.
Judah Maccabee knows if you've been assimilating into the surrounding culture and he is NOT going to be okay with it
Judah Maccabee knows if you've been assimilating into the surrounding culture and he is NOT going to be okay with it
Getting actively tired of being asked where I'm from. I've been here since I was a teenager, twenty-five years now – and I know I'll never sound like a local, but do you have to remind me?
November 30, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Getting actively tired of being asked where I'm from. I've been here since I was a teenager, twenty-five years now – and I know I'll never sound like a local, but do you have to remind me?
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.
November 30, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
I heard there was a secret verse
That David used to make AI worse
But you don't really want to pub that, do ya
That David used to make AI worse
But you don't really want to pub that, do ya
this is quite the detail
November 30, 2025 at 3:36 PM
I heard there was a secret verse
That David used to make AI worse
But you don't really want to pub that, do ya
That David used to make AI worse
But you don't really want to pub that, do ya
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
I’ve seen a worrying number of readers angry when a book is not exactly what they expected, which is a way to trap yourself permanently.
November 29, 2025 at 7:06 PM
I’ve seen a worrying number of readers angry when a book is not exactly what they expected, which is a way to trap yourself permanently.
So hard to depict the launch of a Space Shuttle in a literary novel without the tone going all techno-geek. Focus on the subjective experience of the protagonist, yes, but you also can't assume that the reader remembers what it was like.
November 29, 2025 at 5:55 PM
So hard to depict the launch of a Space Shuttle in a literary novel without the tone going all techno-geek. Focus on the subjective experience of the protagonist, yes, but you also can't assume that the reader remembers what it was like.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Enceladus in the E Ring - From Val Klavans (valklavans.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/fpHjw2
November 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Enceladus in the E Ring - From Val Klavans (valklavans.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/fpHjw2
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Well this is quite genuinely disturbing
Pointed out by my friend @carloshasanax.bsky.social . There's something weird and unsettling about a fairly homogeneous culture spread out across Europe that then collapses into an orgy of genocide.
www.science.org/content/arti...
www.science.org/content/arti...
Headless bodies hint at why Europe’s first farmers vanished
Wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture
www.science.org
November 27, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Well this is quite genuinely disturbing
New winter cheer concept.
November 27, 2025 at 3:07 PM
New winter cheer concept.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
I think this is an underrated source of the extent to which Bluesky is in a false consensus about public AI hatred. If you are a power user on a microblogging site you are basically by definition not going to see the "take the effort out of reading and writing" machine as being useful
I think more than anything else AI feels like a miracle to people with questionable literacy because it can read and write for you, and a lot of us who are highly literate underestimate how many of our society's leaders, esp in business, struggle with literacy.
It's pretty much mandatory at work that I appear to be using it, so I've doe a few functional things with it, and it's a moderate time-saver if used right. But nowhere near worth it's stock value, energy cost.
Then I realize there's a lot of people who simply can't write coherent paragraphs.
Then I realize there's a lot of people who simply can't write coherent paragraphs.
November 26, 2025 at 7:25 PM
I think this is an underrated source of the extent to which Bluesky is in a false consensus about public AI hatred. If you are a power user on a microblogging site you are basically by definition not going to see the "take the effort out of reading and writing" machine as being useful
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Slept dreaming of, woke up thinking about the extraordinary What Resembles the Grave but Isn’t by Anne Boyer
November 24, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Slept dreaming of, woke up thinking about the extraordinary What Resembles the Grave but Isn’t by Anne Boyer
November 23, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Came across this again by Ruth Lepson … must look for more of her work.
November 23, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Came across this again by Ruth Lepson … must look for more of her work.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Your yearly reminder that “holiday” celebrations that only include Christian traditions are not, in fact, inclusive even if you don’t use the word Christmas, so tbh I’d rather you just say it’s Christmas.
Until a few years ago, ugly holiday sweaters didn’t exist. They’re ugly Christmas sweaters, with some generic Jewish iconography to be “inclusive.” But the truth is, when I have to buy one to wear to a work party, I feel like I’m in another culture’s drag.
November 22, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Your yearly reminder that “holiday” celebrations that only include Christian traditions are not, in fact, inclusive even if you don’t use the word Christmas, so tbh I’d rather you just say it’s Christmas.
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
They're also responsible for one of the best emails I've ever received, when the college office sent out a plea for sightings of Professor Biscuit while conveniently forgetting to mention that he was a cat...(I won't comment on how often a similar email might have gone out about human Professors...)
November 21, 2025 at 1:01 PM
They're also responsible for one of the best emails I've ever received, when the college office sent out a plea for sightings of Professor Biscuit while conveniently forgetting to mention that he was a cat...(I won't comment on how often a similar email might have gone out about human Professors...)
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Today’s random find in the #ASPLibrary: a Russian book of Ephemerides of Minor Planets for 1994. 🔭
November 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Today’s random find in the #ASPLibrary: a Russian book of Ephemerides of Minor Planets for 1994. 🔭
Thrilled to finally be able to share this! Both because I'm happy for Erik and because I read this novel almost exactly 2 years ago now, loved it, and have been waiting impatiently to be able to recommend it to other people.
November 19, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Thrilled to finally be able to share this! Both because I'm happy for Erik and because I read this novel almost exactly 2 years ago now, loved it, and have been waiting impatiently to be able to recommend it to other people.
You may not realize it, but what you need in your life is an epic poem about the migration of eels. I'm serious, it's amazing. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2024/03/26/e...
November 19, 2025 at 2:07 PM
You may not realize it, but what you need in your life is an epic poem about the migration of eels. I'm serious, it's amazing. longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2024/03/26/e...
Reposted by Zohar Jacobs 🕎
Excited for the time, around 30 years from now, when we start publishing people's DMs in lieu of the fact we don't write letters to each other anymore
November 18, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Excited for the time, around 30 years from now, when we start publishing people's DMs in lieu of the fact we don't write letters to each other anymore