Vancouver, BC. Basically everything I like and find funny mixed in with things that are important. Social Justice, History, Politics/News, LGBTQ+ issues, Mental Health and Theatre. Cite your sources.
on tiktok people will quit their jobs after going viral once but on here not only can any post get 50k notes, but if it does theres nothing you can do with it. theres no monetization or any transferable skills at all. you just made a funny post and people liked it and thats the start and end of your career
you could say "i left the stove on" with no context and it might break containment on here and people start tagging it with ships and kins and theres no way to delete it forever unless staff gets involved. your mistake will never go away but your claim to fame will instantly
its like yes im the pineapple werewolf guy but no one outside of here and like 5 posts on reddit will ever know what that sentence means. i could jump on tiktok and no one would know me. no one on youtube or facebook. this is my little corner of the internet and i will die here before i give up that title and when i do know i lost nothing in the process
@oldguardians making this answer a separate post because itâs kind of interesting*!
ââI cannot bear to hear that mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.ââ
Jane and Elizabeth attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason; and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of ve daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.â
(In the interest of not getting bogged down in legal minutiae, Iâll keep this pretty general. Please note that I am vastly oversimplifying some legal concepts here for the sake of explaining the issue clearly. If youâre an attorney/barrister/whatever, donât @ me - I KNOW itâs all much more nuanced than this.)
Pride & Prejudice is set somewhere around 1811. In the novel, the Bennetsâ ownership interest in the family estate is famously said to be âentailedâ away from the Bennet girls in favor of their cousin, Mr. Collins. This is specifically explained to be because Mr. Bennet has no sons, and thus his estate reverts back to his closest male relative.
In the real world, entailment could (and usually did) work that way. But there is an enormous, glaring issue: English entailments have long been very VERY easy to defeat** through a remedy called Common Recovery. If Longbourn was truly entailed away from the female descendants, as the novel indicates, Mr. Bennet could have hired an attorney (his brother-in-law?) to start the Common Recovery process at any time. Within a few months, the court would render a judgment giving Mr. Bennet the property outright and free from any entailment, allowing him to leave the property to his daughters upon his death*** and make them independently wealthy women. And this wasnât just a possibility - it was a very common legal mechanism that would have been almost expected of a gentleman interested in preserving his familyâs comfort. There are hundreds of cases in the English Chancery records (featuring many families that were much less wealthy than the Bennets!) invoking this very remedy whenever fathers failed to produce sons.
So entailment makes no sense - it had basically no power over landowners by the Regency Period.
Letâs talk alternatives. In 1811, the primary way of keeping property in the male line was through another estate planning technique called strict settlement. To GREATLY simplify a complicated form of ownership, strict settlement had the present possessor of property always hold a life estate interest (they own it only until their death), with their male primogeniture descendants holding a remainder fee tail interest (read: eventual outright ownership upon their fatherâs death). Each generation of life estate owner would then force their young male descendants (the fee tail owner) upon their coming of age to give the young descendantâs unknown future male sons the remainder interest, retaining a life estate for themselves (which they would receive upon their fatherâs death). Thus the ownership system perpetuates down a male line of descendants, each generation demanding the same restrictive ownership system of their own children.
If you followed that - and I donât blame you if you didnât, as this is all very deliberately obtuse - you might think âwait okay. That kind of sounds like the Bennetsâ situation. Austen called it an entailment but maybe it was actually a strict settlement!â Several academics have tried to argue that, but it also fails for several reasons:
(1) With the Bennetsâ seemingly comfortable current income, strict settlement would have provided for significant lifetime income + dowries for Mr. Bennetâs female descendants. But in P&P, itâs made very clear that the girlsâ only possible inheritance is a tiny amount from their motherâs side and nothing from their fatherâs. If they do not marry, they will be destitute. That is extremely unlikely and would be very shameful in strict settlement ownership..
(2) It would have been inconceivable for Mr. Bennetâs father to have forced him to benefit a cousin over his own descendants, even if they were women. One of the fundamental points of strict settlement was to avoid this outcome (aka to avoid the entailment system). People did NOT want a distant male cousin to inherit property simply because there wasnât a primogeniture male descendant - they knew that if anything, their own female descendants could always produce a male heir in their marriages. Plus, Mr. Bennetâs and Mr. Collinâs fathers apparently hated each other (ref Mr. Collinsâ initial letter) - why would Mr. Bennetâs father force his son to benefit the son of a man he himself hates?
(3) For many many other reasons, a strict settlement does not match how the family talks about/treats the estate in the novel. Thereâs literally a whole law review article on this topic (cited below), and Iâll defer to that for a full discussion.
So weâre left with two possibilities: the land is entailed, and for some reason Mr. Bennet isnât willing to pay a small amount in attorneyâs fees to undo the entailment for the enormous benefit of his daughters (extremely unlikely, robs the story of all its tension), or the land is subject to a bizarre + shameful strict settlement that goes directly against everything that would have been normal at the time, and none of the characters know that (makes no sense in the story).
And then, of course, thereâs the truth: the âentailmentâ is simply a narrative device that does not reflect actual law or historical transfer of property at death, which is perfectly fine. Jane Austen was not writing a law textbook or even a legal drama. And her underlying point remains clear: Regency-era women were often in economically precarious positions and forced to marry to maintain their social and economic standings.
((If you do want a version in your head that works under the law, maybe we imagine that Mr. Collinâs father actually owned the home but was in debt to Mr. Bennet so he gave him some kind of strange lifelong leasehold interest with income from the property included. And then we ignore the passage saying Mr. Bennet having a son would have âavoidedâ the home passing to Mr. Collins + pretend that the family lied to everybody about the home being entailed to save face))
For additional reading, I highly recommend A FUNHOUSE MIRROR OF LAW: THE ENTAILMENT IN JANE AUSTENâS PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Peter A. Appel (linked). His analysis reflects my own reading of Regency inheritance law, and I think his conclusions are generally sound. There is significant other scholarship on this subject, but I find Appelâs work the most persuasive.
â-
* At least to me, who admittedly studies this for a living
** For fun War of the Roses reasons!
*** Or much more likely, to a male relative conservator/trustee for their benefit (probably Mrs. Bennetâs brother, the attorney)
So weâre left with two possibilities: the land is entailed, and for some reason Mr. Bennet isnât willing to pay a small amount in attorneyâs fees to undo the entailment for the enormous benefit of his daughters
I don't think this is particularly out of character for Mr Bennet aka neglectful father of the year. I agree that it probably comes down to authorial decisions/plot reasons, but one of those reasons could be to express how bad a dad Mr Bennet is. It seems very in keeping with his general attitude of ignore it and maybe someone else will solve it.
yes yes I know Mr. Bennett is a negligent father. Please read the full article for a more thorough discussion of that: there's a difference between being neglectful (not paying much attention and hoping it all works out) and downright cruel (deliberately creating a situation where your daughters WILL be homeless).
We know he is not cruel, and there is substantial textual evidence that he is not completely negligent either. Upon Lydia's "elopement", Mr. Bennett immediately leaves to deal with the problem and is shown to be highly conscientious of the economics and social politics of the situation. He also is implied to have discussed quite frankly with Elizabeth the economics of saving for their allowances and dowries, suggesting that these issues are at least on his radar and heâs looked at how to remedy them.
In doing this kind of litcrit, you have to look a bit closer and more critically than accepting the trope. Yes, he is somewhat absent from his family, but he is never written to be a cruel man. And in the full context of probate law at that time, you will see that a failure to provide in this way would likely have been considered cruel and wholly unacceptable for a genteel father of five daughters. And there is no textual evidence for Mr. Bennett acting that way.
The far, far more likely explanation is that Jane Austen was writing a clever romance novel and not a law textbook.
just found out that accidentally in love by counting crows was literally made for shrek. they didnt just choose it. it didnt exist before. they asked counting crows to make a song for shrek 2 and thats how we got one of the best songs ever made. insane.
at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.
it obviously makes sense, but one of my friendâs kids is going into swim class, and all the parents got an email today going, âwhen little ones are scared, they cling on to instructors. PLEASE trim their nails.âÂ
i donât know why thatâs so funny to me, but just. the idea of this poor, scratched swim instructor having to make sure to email before each class as a reminder to please declaw the children SENT me.Â
When I taught swim lessons I remember trying to delicately ask parents not to cover their child in shea/coconut/olive oil before lessons.
âI understand your skincare regimen and wanting to protect their tender baby flesh from the pool chemicals, but COULD YOU NOT OIL YOUR CHILD LIKE A GREASED PIG before tossing them in the POOL? Thanks EVER so much!â
I ran into this post years ago and to be honest, it has completely reoriented the way I engage with food.
Like. Iâve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.
But now Iâm just like.
Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I donât.
Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?
Pizzaâs been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyoneâs enjoying the pizza, but if we donât want âeveryoneâ to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.
Thatâs just. Thatâs how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you donât make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what canât be preserved before the dust can.
So I thought y'all would like this too
This great white comes to the jersey shore every year and this year they named her and have been tracking her hella so this is Mary Lee and she decided to show herself under this rainbow for pride month
A true gay icon
Iâd like to entertain and enliven you now with the saga of my Slut Era.
Iâve always been a serial monogamist and my shortest long term relationships clocked in at three years. So perhaps thatâs why when I finally broke it off with my ex I went insane on dating. Part of it was definitely just that between anxiety and loneliness I wanted to fill up my time.
This happened when I was living alone for the first time, no roommates, just me and my little cat Leeloo. I didnât want to come home to an empty house so instead I set up dates.
Most of these were disastrous. Iâm not everyoneâs cup of tea and I had a lot more first dates than second because theyâd seen enough, including the one where people aggressively complimented me.
But after a few months I had four people I was seeing simultaneously. I was up front with all of them that things were not exclusive, and they all agreed, so no infidelity took place here, just a lot of hijinks.
Hereâs who was on the dating roster:
⢠An apprentice woodworker that weâll call Jill. I honestly thought at 26 years old that her being 21 wasnât a problem age gap and I quickly learned that there was a vast gulf of both maturity and life experience between us. Jill described herself as âheteroflexibleâ and had just dumped her first boyfriend to flirt it up with me.
⢠A married woman looking for a friends with benefits. Weâll call her Alice. I insisted on meeting her husband first to be sure I wasnât part of a cheating mess and he gave me his blessing when I stayed over at her house. Years later when he and Alice had divorced I would go on to sell him and his new fiancĂŠe an engagement ring and we both realized at the end how we knew each other and it was wildly awkward. Alice was nice, but a hardcore vegan who insisted I brush my teeth if I so much as ate string cheese before I could kiss her. She was also unhappy in her marriage and was feeling out if Iâd want to get serious.
⢠A bartender dubbed Snakebites, so called because of her signature piercings. She cooked me a steak so raw it was still mooing and some of the best asparagus Iâd ever had. In our singular sexy encounter she bit my nipple and I never got over it. Really don't bite someone if you don't know their preference and work up in pressure. We werenât terribly compatible but neither of us were willing to admit it yet. Truthfully I considered still dating her solely because I desperately wanted her bathroom. It had all black tile, black toilet, black sink, a rain shower in the corner and a jacuzzi tub. I may not have loved her but god I loved that bathroom.
And finally,
⢠My beloved, who I would go on to marry, who was dealing with a lot of personal stuff at the time. Obviously that meant I liked them the best of all the people I was seeing because we were both disasters at the time.
So thatâs the cast of this little misadventure. Now, our story begins with Jill.
Jill was someone who heightened my anxiety. Each of the three times she came to my home she brought and left more stuff. A self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans collection of DVDs. It was like she was trying to move in. She also liked to deride my taste in things, frequently calling me a pleb when I mentioned a band or show I liked.
She was working on a gorgeous little decorative table in her woodworking program. The main wood for the top had a beautiful dapple of knots like jaguar spots, and when she showed me a picture I exclaimed how pretty it was.
âDo you want it?â
âOh- I mean itâs lovely, I wouldnât mind having it, but you should sell it and make some money!â
But she was adamant. Sheâd give me the little side table. At about this time, Alice was starting to get awfully lovey for a FWB. I knew she wasnât happy with her husband but I also knew we were not a good fit. Fun fact: Alice and her husband were step siblings with a pretty hefty age gap. They got together when he stumbled upon a kink photo shoot sheâd done with vegetables. None of their family was happy about the relationship but they werenât related by blood so it was fine.
So I was fending off more overt romantic advances from Alice, and feeling increasingly like I needed to break things off with Jill. Snakebites wasnât ever initiating communication and I decided to pull a lot of plugs at once.
I ghosted Snakebites, told Alice that I thought we should cool it, and in a move worthy of a rom-com I asked my beloved if I could pretend we were exclusive to put off Jill. They agreed and I texted Jill to let her know that I was no longer single.
I was not prepared for Jillâs response. She. Was. Devastated. She flew off the handle. Sheâd just been waiting for the right time to tell me how she felt about me! How dare I do this to her!
What about the table?!
âYou should keep the table, itâs gorgeous, youâll be able to sell it, but I donât expect a free table.â
Silence met me after that text. I worried and fretted and eventually headed home.
There on my doorstep. The table.
It was a small little end table, reeking of oil and polish, but very beautiful. I brought it inside. The little drawer didnât even have a knob or guide rails. But it did have a handwritten bill proclaiming that it was costing me $500.
âI canât afford a $500 table, Jill!â I texted.
âWell you kept saying how nice it was. I spent a lot of time on it.â
âIâm not saying itâs not worth $500â (it wasnât, it was a tiny side table made by an apprentice) âbut I canât buy a $500 table.â
âMake me an offer.â
I stared at the little table. I did actually like it, but I worried about the repercussions of entering into this deal. Hesitantly I typed back, â$300.â I didnât think it was worth that much but I didnât want to insult her too badly.
This suited her for the night. But the next day she informed me she needed a new bed, and that sheâd take her $300 in credit toward a new mattress. I spent the whole next day basically wrangling with her over what she wanted and eventually she spiked back up to demanding $500 for the damn table.
âLet me just give it back,â I begged. It was not the first, second, or even third time Iâd asked to return the thing but this time she finally relented and gave me her address. Since she lived with her parents still Iâd never been over.
I called up my beloved and said, âHey, I need moral support, can you run an errand with me?â
They agreed which is how we loaded up a self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans DVD collection, and the table from hell into my little car together. Jill had said to meet her at one o'clock. I intended to drop everything off at noon and be done with this madness.
But while my beloved and I were on the doorstep leaving everything I heard, âJill? Youâre home early,â through the door. Her mom opened it to peer at us in confusion.
âI was just bringing Jillâs stuff back!â I chirped in alarm.
With little tact and a lot of speed we left her with Jillâs collection of things and then I sped out of there like my tail was on fire. I handed my phone to my beloved as I zoomed away instructing them to block Jillâs number. I was free. The tabletross around my neck had been returned.
It was about a month after that when my beloved and I officially began dating exclusively. I had wrapped up all my messy dating threads and it was a relief to be in a relationship again. They went on a trip to Mexico shortly after we made it official.
So I knew they were out of town. But next morning I walked out to my car and beheld a lipstick kiss pressed to the drivers side window.
I was petrified. I had just dumped three girls at once and had an extremely messy back and forth with one of them. Did I have a stalker?!
Of the girls, Alice seemed like likeliest candidate, being of a stronger lipstick variety girl than Jill or Snakebites. We had ended things a bit stiffly, but still cordial. She just laughed when I asked if she knew anything about it. âNope,â she said, âbut good luck.â
Iâd rather have walked over broken glass then text Jill, and Iâd firmly ghosted Snakebites so I was scared to reopen communication to ask if she was stalking me. I had to drop it. But it haunted me, that lipstick kiss.
For months I was jumpy, wondering which of my spurned lovers had done it. And why. Was it a threat? A goodbye? I lay awake thinking about it, worrying about how everyone Iâd dated knew where I lived, which car was mine.
Finally, nothing else happened and I moved on. The kiss would remain a mystery and I had to be content with that.
It was a year later when I finally started filling my mom in on my dating escapades that I finally got closure. She was hooting and laughing as I went over the table debacle. Then I paused and added, âAnd then this kiss showed up on my car.â
âDid you like it?â
âWhat? No! Iâm pretty sure one of them was stalking me! Who else would leave a kiss on my car?â
My mom started bellowing with laughter. âI did!â She wheezed.
Apparently. My mother had been driving by my place. And decided that a cute little gesture would be to leave me a kiss. And then decided to never mention it to me even though sheâs never done anything like that previously.
âIt scared the crap out of me!â I yelled while she collapsed with helpless laughter. âI thought I had a stalker! How could I possibly have known that was you?!â
âHow could I have known youâd just broken up with three girls at once?â She wheezed in rejoinder and like. Fair play.
So thatâs how my mom convinced me I had a stalker and I got out of buying a $500 table.
the place I work at remodeled these split gendered restrooms into âinclusive restroomsâ and never told us what they meant while construction was ongoing. I need you to know every atom of potential criticism or whining that couldâve happened disappeared when people found out this meant we got 10 fully separate private bathrooms with sinks inside. Iâve not heard a single person crack a joke about the inclusive signage. this is the world TERFs are trying to steal from you
look, I know there's no way to convince people not to try to send this copy in when they order a pepperoni pizza from their local pizza place. I know that. I just want to point out a few things, just speaking as someone who used to work in pizza. (this is in delco- delivery/carryout- the rules are different for sit down restaurant and brick oven type places, but most pizza people get is gonna be from a delco with a conveyor belt oven)
one: you notice how it's on the bleeding edge between burnt and well done? that's because that's basically the only way to get a pizza with this much pepperoni to be remotely edible. this pizza cook worked very hard to make this work, pepperoni is really difficult to use a lot of on a pizza because it interferes with the cooking. it's fatty, and fat is insulating, which means it makes it harder to cook the dough. it's not just about being stingy (though I'm sure that corporate pizza has reduced the number of slices on pepperoni pizzas to save money for sure), there really is an ideal ratio of pepperoni to crust to sauce to cheese, and you don't have to exceed it by a lot to fuck a pizza up. (this is true of most ingredients, tbh, pizza is at all times mere inches from becoming a casserole, and adding extra ingredients in excessive amounts is a good way to get to casserole, particularly if they are wet ingredients, like onions or green peppers)
two: this picture was taken for the internet, so the person probably cleaned up the pizza before they took the picture. if they cut it in a box, they moved it to a fresh box. they cleaned up extra grease, soaked it up with paper towels or napkins. your pizza is almost certainly not going to look nearly this good.
three: people who work in pizza also have access to the internet. I cannot tell you how many none pizza with left beef orders I have canceled on sight. there's a reasonable chance someone will look at this copy and go 'oh it's the meme pizza' and cancel your order immediately and without hesitation.
'oh, but this is more edible than none pizza with left beef' no, it LOOKS more edible in this particular photo because the pizza cook was feeling bored and indulgent and was willing to baby this pepperoni monstrosity and made it look nice. your crime slices are much more likely to end up floating on a sea of pepperoni grease and, if you're very unlucky, the dough in the center will still be somewhat raw. the reason that the pizza chef is proud of this is that it is difficult to do. none pizza with left beef was at least cooked.
when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they werenât really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)
anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.
i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? whatâd you get? so i showed her, and i was like, âIâm not sure why itâs a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.â
and my mom, who was some form of ministerâs wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks iâm joking.
âWhat?â i say.
ââŚitâs a cock and a pussy, Jules,â she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.
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