#we dont use honorifics in my first language so whenever i have to select options (usually for flights) im always so confused#like what is actually the difference between miss and ms#i like miss bc it sounds more historical and im a historian so
"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)
"Ms." - prounounced MIZ, btw - is a third option popularized by gloria steinem in the 70s - mainly through her feminist magazine Ms. - which is meant to be a neutral term, usable for any and all women regardless of marital status (hence the soul destroying irony of the tags above). it gained wider general acceptance when geraldine ferraro, the first woman to be nominated as VP on a national major party ticket, started using it widely to avoid confusion, since she was married but used her maiden name professionally. eventually over the years it came into common use though i do think the brits are a little more critical of it than americans (as far as i'm aware lol)
"obscure facts only a tumblr user would know" and it's one of the most influential institutions of second wave american feminism. PLEASE open the schools
Hi. I'm an unmarried woman in her forties. I use Ms. and pronounce it "miz", though I don't correct people who accidentally use a soft S. I use Ms. because it's no one's business but my own whether I'm married, to a man or anyone else, and that's what Ms. means. It means fuck off, my marital status is irrelevant, just as it is for every man who uses Mr.
I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"
That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.
I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesyāI'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.
Also, I've taught English and worked as an editor for twenty years. I am quite literally the grammar police. This use of Ms. is a standard construction. If you didn't learn it in school, someone failed you.
#in the episode of Daria where thereās a rumor that her and tom had sex#upchuck knowingly refers to her as the lovely MIZ Morgendorffer#this was the end of season five meaning this wouldāve been fairly common knowledge in 2001
Thereās a theory that early Europeans started saying ābrown oneā or āhoney-eaterā instead of ābearā to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa āthe faceless womanā because saying her true name awakens her from her slumber
English has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize itās spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.
Iceland does! They are the illhveli, literally āevil whalesā, and they live to kill you. They love nothing more than killing and eating humans and sinking their ships. Their greatest enemy is the steypireydur (thatās blue whale to you), which is the greatest of the good whales and the protector of sailors.
All evil whales are, well, evil. So evil that if you speak their name at sea, they will hear it and home in on you. So instead you use all sorts of euphemisms for their names. Also if you try to cook their meat it literally disappears from the pot. Thatās right, theyāre so evil, you canāt even eat them.
They include such types as the hrosshvalur (horsewhale), with big eyes and a red mane and tail. This is probably the best known and most feared of the lot.
The raudkembingur (redcomb) is especially cruel and bloodthirsty even by illhveli standards. If you manage to escape it, it will die of frustration.
Good luck escaping the mushveli (mousewhale) though, it has legs! And will clamber onto the beach in pursuit!
Or what about death from above? The stƶkkull (jumper) leaps high into the air and pile-drives boats to pieces.
Meanwhile the skeljungur (shellwhale) sits in the path of boats and lets them get wrecked on its shelly hideā¦
⦠while the sverdhvalur (swordwhale) slices through boats with its dorsal fin.
The katthveli (catwhale) is relatively harmless though. It meows.
The same canāt be said of the lyngbakur (heatherback), a classic island fish that lets sailors get on its back and then dives, taking them to a watery grave.
The nauthveli (oxwhale) on the other hand specially targets cattle, attracting them into the sea with its bellow before tearing them apart.
How can you avoid all these murderous whales, like the taumafiskur (bridlefish) here? Any of a number of ways, including getting a steypireydur to help. There are substances, ranging from angelica to sheep dung and chopped fox testicles, that they find abhorrent. And you can distract them with loud noises and barrels.
For more, I assure you this link will answer all your questions.
This is also why fairies were referred to as the āGood Neighborsā and why there are so many nicknames for Satan.
The concept of avoidance speech is endlessly fascinating and rife with plot points for writing, but honestly Iām just thrilled about the EVIL WHALES.
people are always like āi have face blindness but iām good with namesā or āim terrible with names but i never forget a faceā well baby idk how to tell u this but i am . bad at both.
my husband put on a wig, in front of me, and i immediately got distressed and mad because it looked like a stranger was in our house and my ape brain wanted to attack
I once accidentally filled in a form using my internet name, went "that's not right", realised I didn't remember my legal name, panicked, and started filling it in with the names of everyone in my lab in order until I stumbled on the name that I recognised as being used for me.
#i FREQUENTLY stare at anybody who is blonde with bangs going 'is that my best friend i've lived with for 3 years...?'#the answer is always no it's just a different blonde girl with bangs
I used to be a nanny. So I was taking this toddler to various activities in town and stuff, and parents would be there of course with their own toddlers and
EVERY
TODDLER MUM
DRESSES
THE FUCKING SAME
Same haircuts, same jackets, same tops and pants. I could NEVER tell anybody apart. I was there in my leather jacket and workboots and crew cut so they all got a huge advantage in recognising me, but I was shit out of luck. I had to try to see what child they were with and guess.
it is very instructive to play both silent hill and resident evil videogames because they are very similar except for how silent hill is good and resident evil is stupid. it helps you figure out what is stupid in a video game and what is good
for example, in silent hill games, you are confronted with many weird baroque puzzles you have to solve to proceed, because that is the dark and creepy and confrontational nature of the world you are in. in resident evil games, you are confronted with weird baroque puzzles you have to solve because apparently, separate from and unrelated to the ongoing zombie apocalypse, the raccoon city designers designed the subway station map so that if you insert a red jewel into the correct diamond shaped recess, a drawer opens that contains a live hand grenade
In the novelizations of the original two Resident Evil games, which came out before the series left Raccoon City or Umbrella corp, the author's own justification for all this was that the puzzles were commissioned by the same paranoid rich CEO who gave bored company engineers and scientists limitless budget and creative control to protect his evil secrets as obtusely as possible. So basically a delusional billionaire gathered a bunch of amoral computer nerds and told them "while you're farming artisinal lizard demons for the army, I need you to make it as confusing and difficult as you possibly can for anyone to get in and out of my office alive" and I guess their autism lit up like a blazing star with a free ticket to design a real world lucasarts adventure game. This is implied later in the book to be exactly the reason why none of them made it out alive.
Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
You listen to music regularly? Why? Have you even tried quitting? Could you quit? You get music stuck in your head? Wow. You're so ruined and music brained. I bet you make your partners listen to music with you when you have sex. Music addiction has really ruined a whole generation. You know it's not realistic to expect reverb in real life, right? You're probably so desensitized that you don't even feel anything anymore when you hear a bird singing that it wants some fuck.
imagine me with several though bubbles over my head that say "i should draw fanart" "i should design another website" "i should code something fun and interactive" "i should write fanfic" "i should practice animation" "i should make diy merch" "i should add on to my design portfolio" "i should work on my animatic" "i should draw fanart" "i should d-