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grozat

it frightens me

heartsl0b

road trip

lindleland

there is so much to unpack in this clip

lindleland

strathshepard

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979) movie poster by Jean-Michel Folon

bluemuffin-draws

Eva Strapp or whatever

redlipstickresurrected

Józef Mehoffer (Polish, 1869-1946, b. Ropczyce, Poland, d. Wadowice, Poland) - In the Enchanted Garden, 1903, Color Lithograph on Paper

eukaryotasmain

Go on, I’m listening

peachy-faery

you are my peach, you are my plum

apas-95

sraithpics

David Cleary!

aiteanngaelach-deactivated20241

i'm in Ireland and the search for that bastards name is still blocked and hidden... the legnths the british go to defend and protect their instruments of colonialism and violence is beyond belief. no justice for the victims and yet every measure taken to protect David James Cleary and his fellow murderers.

undeadentropy

Never a better time for the Streisand Effect than when it's a government covering up acts of brutality and evil.

stele3

if you complain about the Chinese government covering up Tianamen Square, then complain about this, too.

guiltfactory-moved

this lamb keeps trying to sacrifice itself even though no one really needs or wants it to do that

rannnnz

my designs for the amongi in the new show

bark-barkley

I WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS

softwetmoss

And also occasionally by pufferfish

sua-sponte-deactivated20200331

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

is-the-post-reliable

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

abalidoth

Fun little math trick I find really helpful: the ratio of a mile to a kilometer is within 1% of the Golden Ratio. That means that if you have a good memory for Fibonacci numbers (1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89) you can convert pretty accurately by taking consecutive Fibonacci numbers.

For example, 89 kilometers is really close to 55 miles (55.3). Or, say you need to convert 26 miles to kilometers: 26 can be written as 21 plus 5, so taking the next Fibonacci number up gives 34 and 8, meaning it should be around 42 kilometers. Sure enough, it's 41.8 km!