Egun-Blessed

Many-Named. Student of the Ancestors, numerologist and working spiritualist. Curator of Matrix 9D. Check the masterpost for consult availability!

[manynamedshe]

A Many-Named/Matrix 9D Master Post

*DJ Khaled voice* Another one-

So I've been doing/sharing/posting a bunch of stuff over a long period of time which might actually be useful as hell to folks, and now I'm trying to keep track of it all. Behold, the fruit of mine labors:

Marketplace

Readings for Purchase: $5 Questions | Matrix Message of Clarity | Numerology Report | Employment Numerology Report

(more at the Matrix Market)

Consultations: C, for currently open to new and returning clients

Want to support The Work monetarily? Fuel my incense habit? Fund a day off? Back my attempts to buy my weight in goldfish crackers? I'm re-opening the gift tab, here.

Writing

Weekly Newsletter: At Water's Edge

Climate Reports: March 2022 Report (subscription only) | 2021 Reports

Collective Readings: this tag

Commentary (messily tagged but still): conjure | ancestor work | numerology

Guides: addressing freezer spells | signs of domination work

Numerology: General | Calculating Your Personal Numbers | Calculating Your Personal Month/Year | Housing Numerology | Angel Numbers

Lunar Numerology: see this tag

Ritual/Offerings: The "I Am" Exercise | Unearthing the Mask | Avoiding Predatory Spiritual Service Providers | Road-Opening Blessing | Tranquility Blessing | Unraveling Past Patterns | Identifying the Right Diviner | Questions to Ask When Dating A Spiritual Practitioner

Public Prayers: almost all on Ko-Fi

Matrix Lab: the Nitro Coffee Test (still testing and taking feedback!) the Olive Oil Test

Y'all may also want to check my numerology tag to see what else is in there. I regularly hide things in the tags because I love leaving little hints and whatnot.

[lakevida]

as an empath there are many bony fish species i can't make eye contact with because their emotions flood my brain at such high pressure it gives me nosebleeds but cartilaginous fish are no problem as 700 years ago i was a smalltooth sawfish

[larkstonguesinaspicpart1]

you bitches better hope that twitter doesn’t actually die because that means that i’m going to be taking all of my excess random thoughts and putting them here instead of on my nice quiet locked account which means i’m going to be subjecting you to like 9-15 posts a day like “anyone else think young kyle machlachlan looks like a butch lesbian” or “what if tony soprano was bisexual” or “i have a mosquito bite” 

[perfectlynormalperson]

[what-even-is-thiss]

Chaos to follow in the US House of Representatives.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Oh, I forgot this isn’t how we break news anymore.

*ahem*

[what-even-is-thiss]

A lot of the people not voting for McCarthy are very... Trump. So yeah I also hate Kevin McCarthy but not for the same reason these people do. They think he's not conservative enough. I know I won't like whoever they pick because I'm a progressive, but I would personally like a functioning government if that's alright. They could solve this problem today, or it could take months. The Republicans have such a slim majority right now that it only takes five of them to mess up everyone's plans and there's more than five causing a disturbance right now.

[a-frog-in-a-bog]

“I want to decompose in a bog” well you clearly don’t know the first thing about bogs. Clout chaser

[thebigbiwolf]

Huge fan of the phrase "get pickled, idiot"

[headspace-hotel]

"I want to surrender to the moss" bro the moss is not decomposing you it is just hanging out. you're buddies

[thethirdromana]

Broke: vampires are vulnerable to the trappings of Christianity only, particularly Catholicism, no matter how dubiously applied. (See: Van Helsing's Communion wafer grouting).

Woke: vampires are vulnerable to sincere faith of all kinds, and atheist vampire-hunters need to believe very strongly in the Power of Friendship or their love of Star Trek to get by.

Bespoke: vampires are vulnerable to the faith that they followed when they were alive, and hunters tracking down an ancient vampire are obliged to learn about Neo-Babylonian theology or Middle Palaeolithic bear cults.

[surlifen]

NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

[some-stars]

This is perfect and the only thing missing is that when “thy” comes before a vowel it’s replaced by “thine”, i.e. “thy nose” but “thine eyes.” English used to do this with my and mine too (and still does with a and an).

[fremedon]

The second person singular verb ending is -(e)st. In the present tense, it works more or less like the third person singular ending, -s: 

I sleep in the attic. Thou sleepest in the attic. He sleeps in the attic.

I love pickles. Thou lovest pickles. He loves pickles.

I go to school. Thou goest to school. He goes to school.

The -(e)st ending is only added to one word in a compound verb. This is where a lot of people make mistakes:

I will believe it when I see it. Thou wilt believe it when thou seest it. He will believe it when he sees it.

NOT

*thou willst believest it! NOPE! This is wrong

If you’re not sure, try saying it in the third person and replacing the -(e)st with -s:

*He will believes it when he sees it. ALSO NOPE! 

In general, if there’s one auxiliary, it takes the -(e)st ending) and the main verb does not. If there are multiple auxiliaries, only one of them takes -(e)st:

I could eat a horse. Thou couldst eat a horse. He could eat a horse.

I should go. Thou shouldst go. He should go.

I would have gone. Thou wouldst have gone. He wouldst have gone. 

You can reduce the full -est ending to -st in poetry, if you need to drop a syllable:

thou sleepst, thou lov'st.

In some common words–mostly auxiliary verbs, or what you might have learned as “helping verbs”–the ending is always reduced:

I can swim. Thou canst swim. He can swim.

Sometimes this reduction takes the last consonant of the stem with it:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He has a cow. 

Or reduces the -st down to -t:

I must believe her. Thou must believe her. He must believe her.

I shall not kill. Thou shalt not kill. He shall not kill.

However! UNLIKE the third-person singular -s, the second person -(e)st is ALSO added to PAST TENSE words, either to the past stem in strong (irregular) verbs or AFTER THE -ed in weak (regular) verbs: 

I gave her the horse. Thou gavest her the horse. He gave her the horse.

I made a pie. Thou mad’st a pie. He made a pie.

I wanted to go. Thou wantedst to go. He wanted to go.

This is different from the third person!

*He gaves her the horse. He mades a pie. He wanteds to go. SO MUCH NOPE!

It’s not wrong to add -(e)st to a long Latinate verb in the past tense, but it’s unusual; it’s much more common to use a helping verb instead:

I delivered the letter. (Great!)

Thou deliveredst the letter. (Not wrong, but weird)

He delivered the letter. (Great!)

I did deliver the letter. (Normal if emphatic, or an answer to a question; otherwise, a little weird.)

Thou didst deliver the letter. (Great!) 

And a couple last things:

1.) Third-person -(e)th is mostly equivalent to and interchangeable with third-person -s:

I have a cow. Thou hast a cow. He hath a cow.

I love her. Thou lovest her. He loveth her.

I do not understand. Thou dost not understand. He doth not understand.

HOWEVER! Third-person -(e)th, unlike -s but like -(e)st, can, sometimes, go on STRONG past-tense verbs:

I gave her the cow. Thou gavest her the cow. He gaveth her the cow.

This never happens with weak verbs:

*He lovedeth her. NOPE NOPE NOPE!

And even with strong verbs, from Early Modern (e.g., Shakespearean) English onward, it’s quite rare. But you will see it from time to time.

2.) In contemporary Modern English, we invert the order of subjects and auxiliary verbs in questions:

Will I die? I will die. 

Has she eaten? She has eaten.

If there’s no auxiliary, we add one–do–and invert that:

Do you hear the people sing? You (do) hear the people sing.

In Early Modern English, this process was optional, and mostly used for emphasis; all verbs could be and were moved to the front of the sentence in questions:

Hear ye the people sing? (Or singen, if we’re early enough to still be inflecting infinitives.)

Do-support was also optional for negatives:

I don’t like him. I like him not.

Thou dost not care. Thou carest not.

She does not love thee. She loves thee not.

3.) Imperative verbs never take endings:

Hear ye, hear ye!

Go thou and do likewise!

Give me thy hand. Take thou this sword. 

4.) Singular ‘you’–that is, calling a singular person by a plural pronoun–arose as a politeness marker; and ‘thou’ fell out of use because it eventually came to be seen as impolite in almost all contexts. In general, once singular ‘you’ comes into use, it is used for addressing

people of higher social status than the speaker

or of equivalent status, if both speakers are high-status

strangers

anyone the speaker wants to flatter

‘Thou’ is used for

people of lower social status than the speaker

family and intimate friends

children

anyone the speaker wants to insult

It is safer to ‘you’ someone who doesn’t necessarily warrant ‘you’ than to ‘thou’ someone who does.

5.) And finally, that ‘ye’? That’s the nominative form of you–the one that’s equivalent to ‘I’ or ‘we.’ 

I  → thou → he/she/it  → we → ye → they

Me → thee → him/her/it → us → you → them

My → thy → his/her/its → our → your → their

Mine → thine → his/hers/its → ours → yours → theirs

Any time you’re using ‘thou’ for the singular, the second person plural– ‘y’all’– declines like this:

ye:  Ye are all a bunch of weirdos.

you: And I love you very much.

your: This has been your grammar lesson.

yours: This grammar lesson is yours. 

[darkwood-sleddog]

Sorry y’all the entire Clever Hans wiki article should be basic required reading at this point.

The “Clever Hans” effect, also understood as animals performing tasks because their handler/owner subtly and often unknowingly cues them that they’ll get a positive response is well documented. Hell, it’s been observed in drug sniffing dogs where the dogs will give false positives based on the dog’s observance of the handler’s body language. Scientifically that’s very interesting.

Dogs using buttons are not “speaking” they are using what they know will get them a desired response. Dogs do speak, to us and each other, in their own form of communication (body language mostly). We as humans are adept at being able to learn to read this just as dogs can read OUR body language (body language we often don’t know we are communicating btw). That’s neat as heck.

[darkwood-sleddog]

@typhlomys who wrote:#ok i think basic buttons like feed me/outside/etc are genuinely functional and the animals do understans those tho? ?#isnt it reductive to claim None of the button talking is valid... they definitely can learn at least a small amount of words & phrases

so the reason that words for food and outside work with buttons are because of the associative action, no different than a dog learning that cookie = the human feeds me something desireable or dogs learning that nosing the bell on the door = human will let me outside. These are generally considered good and accurate uses of buttons because the animal is getting a desired response.

The thing though that makes learning about Clever Hans and why there is so much pushback from many dog behaviorists on "Talking" dog buttons is that the dog is not actually learning human spoken language, they are simply learning association of a sound or action (pressing a specific button) and the desired outcome. You can change that "potty" button to "broccoli" or "tony soprano" and as long as the dog still gets let outside to go to the bathroom they will press the tony soprano button. Great fun for all involved when buttons are used this way imo.

Where "talking" buttons are harmful is when humans prescribe certain emotions or think that dogs can string thoughtful sentences together much as the people that own most button talking dogs that are viral online do (this includes Bunny to an extreme extent and Stella to a lesser, but similar extent).

Dogs do experience emotions, desires, fears etc. nobody is debating that, but the dog only presses a button because it receives something that is desired: treats, potty, or especially in the case of Clever Hans effect animals, ATTENTION. As long as the dog receives a desired response like attention, it may not actually feel "pain" or "scared" when it presses those buttons, it just knows the human will come baby it.

The best way to read a dog's emotions is through its native language, its body language and it is much easier, and reliable, for the human brain to learn this second language than it is for humans to rely on the dog pressing buttons that the dog has a conditional response to (not an emotional one).

Buttons become dangerous when people believe their pets can communicate complex thought and emotion through these arbitrary buttons. Concepts like pain, whether the pet likes a new baby that's been brought into its environment, if the pet feels love or disappointment, fear, etc. are all things i've seen as upheld by button people as things their animals can express. This is dangerous. Animals often hide their pain from us. Relying on a button to know if your pet is in pain is borderline neglect. Animals can easily injure babies and children. Relying on a button to know if the dog is uncomfortable with the situation you've put it in is borderline neglect.

Again, buttons for fun training and simple concepts with immediate reward are fine and valid, but the dog cannot string together a human sentence or conceptualize their emotions in an accurate way when what they are really doing is pressing the buttons they know will get them the desired response (attention). It is also worth noting that although there are several studies done on dog/animal button talking that those doing the studies are not animal behaviorists, because those already invested in learning about animal behavior and the native, silent body language between animals, already know about Clever Hans effect.

It's not that teaching your pet to push a button is "invalid", it's just making it a core aspect of the way you can communicate with that animal does not put you in a position to providing that animal with the best care, nor does it provide you with the best understanding of the animal's actual emotions, only learning the actual way that animal expresses itself and communicates will do that. Not buttons.

[grison-in-space]

Look, I accidentally trained my old lady to respond to body language cues as subtle as shifting my feet or leaning forward without realizing I was doing it... until my spouse moved in. At that point, we found that my very well trained dog could run through an array of cues from me and be beautifully responsive, but if my spouse tried to ask her to do anything she acted completely confused: she was ignoring verbal commands entirely and carefully watching the way my body moved to tell her what I wanted her to do.

I have joked in the past that I'm the button: she knows the words for several things she often requests (outside, dinner, attention, space to hop onto a bed or sofa) and will present herself in front of me and whine to get my attention. I have learned to cycle through those words until she makes an exaggerated YEAH THAT'S IT joy response and races off towards the object of her desires.

I wasn't aware that the dog button studies were not being conducted by behaviorists -- not even animal cognition researchers? Those folks don't necessarily care so much about animal behavior in the sensory-social-ecological context of the animal--they tend to be using animals as models to try and understand human cognition--but they certainly ought to know exactly who Clever Hans was. If it's linguists... Oh no, this is a trap linguists keep winding up in. Over and over and over and over again, just like with the primatology sign language stuff...

Hm. I should go looking

[sanguinebutch]

my new year’s resolution is to become even more cryptic, eldritch, monstrous, blood-sucking and unholy. and maybe tidy my room.

[just-shower-thoughts]

Imagine how much historical knowledge wasn’t written down because our ancestors thought: “What idiot isn’t going to know this?”

[libertarian--princess-deactivat]

So ancient Egypt’s best friend basically was called Punt. They traded all kinds of fun stuff with them; ebony, incense, gold, silver, myrrh, leopard skins, baboons for pets… and the Egyptians wrote a lot about the land, the people living there, what their houses looked like, records of trading expeditions to there (like, robust, oceangoing ships with thousands of men); they wrote down everything imaginable about this place… except for where it actually was.

We still to this day have no geographic fix on this ancient empire’s whereabouts, because what idiot wouldn’t know, right?

[snipertrifle]

Until the 1850s British condiment sets came with bottles for oil and vinegar, and three spice containers for salt, pepper and…nobody knows. Potentially mustard, but it’s just a guess because no one ever wrote it down.

[elidyce]

And this is why historians love, really love, those incredibly dull people who write in their diary every day about what they wore and what they had for dinner and how many miles away their friend Mr So-And-So’s house is in that one village. Because they are the only ones who *do* write down what was in the third spice jar, how many miles away this now-nonexistent village was and so on. Seriously, the diaries of really dull people are HISTORICAL TREASURES OF OTHERWISE LOST MINUTIAE.

Somewhere out there there is almost certainly a diary that would expose the true contents of that third spice jar because of the one time it was low and this person had to have a quiet word with the butler or something and it was the most interesting thing that happened all week so they wrote it down. And I hope that diary is found someday because now I really want to know.

[vi0letl0ve-deactivated20200525]

That’s weirdly heart warming. Like, even if you are incredibly dull and live a normal boring life, you still might be the most interesting person to some historian some day

[sonia-marmeladova]

(for the record, we do know where Punt was! it was probably Eritrea! egypt mummified baboons from Punt, whose hairs matched with present day species in Eritrea!)

[mikkeneko]

[dilfgifs]

David Harbour as Santa Claus Violent Night (2022) dir. Tommy Wirkola

[home-and-having-tea]

You ever think about how unified humanity is by just everyday experiences? Tudor peasants had hangnails, nobles in the Qin dynasty had favorite foods, workers in the 1700s liked seeing flowers growing in pavement cracks, a cook in medieval Iran teared up cutting onions, a mom in 1300 told her son not to get grass stains on his clothes, some girl in the past loved staying up late to see the sun rise.

[quecksilvereyes]

there are scriptures all over the world painstakingly crafted hundreds of years ago with paw prints and spelling mistakes or drawings covering up mistakes. a bunch of teenage girls 2000 years ago gathered to walk around their hometown, getting fast food and laughing with their friends. two friends shared blankets before people lived in houses. a mother ran a fine comb through her child’s hair and told it to stop squirming sometime in the 1000s. there are covered up sewing mistakes in couture dresses from the 1800s, some poor roman burnt their food so well past recognition that they just buried the entire pot. there are broken dishes hidden in gardens of people no one even remembers anymore

[theropoda]

children eleven thousand years ago enjoyed jumping around in puddles made from the footprints of a giant sloth. children loved muddy puddles so long ago there were still megafauna alive

[captainlordauditor]

There’s a record of an emperor of Japan in the 9th century talking about his cat - how pretty it is, and how it stalks birds and curls up in a circle and meows mournfully for company and escaped its collar. All completely normal ordinary cat things. And then it ends with him saying “it is superior to all other cats”. I am delighted to be united across 1200 years with this fellow cat owner with exactly the same feelings about his cat that I have about mine.

[souperluminal]

Scissor Wizard and Paper Wizard

It’s probably fine to leave them alone together.

[souperluminal]

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

[flagellant]

I cannot fucking believe how much I'm losing my mind right now over soy sauce history. I'll tell all of you about it after I finish this essay because I need to un-distract myself enough to finish it but what the fuck? What the fuck is going on? I'm losing my fucking mind.

[flagellant]

During World War 2 there was a push to industrialize the Japanese soy sauce industry to be better for mass-production. This innovated the chemical fermentation technique and the semichemical fermentation technique utilized by Kikkoman; rather than ferment for four years in gigantic cedar barrels, kioke, instead fermentation takes place for six months or a year in stainless steel barrels which utilize electrolysis to artificially speed up fermentation processes.

During Postwar occupation by Americans, Japan was experiencing massive shortages for the raw materials needed to make soy sauce nationwide, and was forced to rely on exported materials from America to make production. A single American woman named "Ms Appleton" was given total control of apportioning all American soy bean rations to companies, how much, and to who. She had no knowledge of soy sauce, allegedly.

She apparently had so much power over Japanese soy sauce production that she could singlehandedly shape its future by threatening to not give soy beans to any company, family, or factory which did not utilize her specific requirements of semichemical fermentation (reduced from chemical fermentation, since it was that abhorrent). These days, the term soy sauce is distinct from traditional shoyu, and requires distinguishment because of such a radical difference the two products are.

Here's the problem, folks:

I can find absolutely no evidence that Ms Appleton ever existed. There are no sources about this specific period in Japanese history that I'm able to definitively confirm. All of the sources which reference Ms Appleton are referencing in circles with each other; there is no listed source for any of them. Kikkoman's official English website is a veritable goldmine of information regarding this piece of history, with an entire 4 size 13 paragraphs. It not only gives me a first name, Blanche, but also tells me she worked for General Headquarters and that her policies and decisions shaped governmental policies heading into the future.

Except any variation of searching for Ms Appleton, Ms Blanche Appleton, and so on gives me absolutely no information about her ever existing. By appending keywords such as Ms Blanche Appleton+soy sauce, or Ms Blanche Appleton+GHQ, we can find the same couple of sources that are circling each other--or, in the case of the latter, only Kikkoman.

But there is NOTHING else. I'm getting pageantry from some minnesotan town; I'm getting world war 2 veteran records and obituaries when trying to follow that route; I'm getting k-12 teachers and a Titanic survivor named Charlotte. There is no fucking evidence of a Blanche Appleton to substantiate these claims.

And this is fucking massive. Because there should be way more information on her if this was the case; she was apparently powerful and influential enough during the occupation that she could singlehandedly enforce whatever arbitrary rules she wanted on the soy sauce industry and they had to comply or else have no product at all. That level of power is fucking insane. Imagine having so much raw influence over Japan that you could order them to completely renovate and change how they produce and make SOY SAUCE, literally one of if not THE most important thing in Japanese culinary history--and yet there's absolutely zero reference to this outside of like, three specific sites, and none of them have sources, or if they do, they source those sites.

What the fuck is happening here? There shouldn't be radio silence about this woman. There should be records of her policies, there should be legal documents in America which record how she apportioned out American exportation of soy beans to Japan, there should be sources talking about this woman's ability to transform Japan's soy sauce production so heavily that today only 1% of all soy sauce is made with pre-WW2 traditional techniques.

So if she's that big a deal then why does she not exist?

I feel like I'm losing it. I can't think about this too hard because it gives me a headache trying to comprehend any possible answer. There is so many levels to how this shouldn't be happening that I can't settle on just one. I don't understand how some foreigner American could have an iron fist over soy beans so hard that she could apparently influence national policy heading into 2022 but I can only find a first name on the Kikkoman website.

[flagellant]

I literally just sent in a Freedom of Information Act request to the national archives asking for any records of a Ms Blanche Appleton, her reports, census information, anything. I can't believe that I'm having to use FOIA to try and ask the government to prove a woman existed because she was that big of a deal in SCAP/GHQ.

[flagellant]

This is a translated page of Kikkoman's .co.jp website, with an apparent picture of Ms Appleton.

But this says that she has an apparent good knowledge of soy sauce brewing--directly contradictory to the Kikkoman.com claim that she had "no experience". And it also claims she was in charge of GHQ, which I'm going to assume is a mistranslation, but still.

Major General Murcutt doesn't exist. Douglas MacArthur was appointed head of GHQ/SCAP during the occupation of Japan. This now just has more questions. How did this woman become so important to GHQ that she could directly speak with a Major General? Any level of power or public view she SHOULD have isn't here. You don't just get to be colleagues of a Major Damn General in Post World War 2 Japan. That isn't given to any random housewife.

[flagellant]

I just emailed a shoyu brewer family, Yamaroku, about this. The Yamaroku brewery was established 400 years ago; if the company/family were affected during the 1950 import rations and under the thumb of the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers, they'd have records and memory of Blanche Appleton or what it was like during that period as a brewery.

I am at the point where I am genuinely considering the possibility of Blanche Appleton never having existed. There is the chance that Kikkoman invented an 'ambassador'-type person with high influence in the General Headquarters during the occupation to grant itself apparent influence/validity/power above the rest of the competition. "The woman who controls all soy materials coming into Japan visited our main factory and said she liked us :)".

It's incredibly fitting that my first act of serious investigative journalism is about soy sauce. Like, I'm a little annoyed at how on brand this is for me. Of course I'm overly invested in this weird little nitpick about soy sauce. Of course I'm making this the government's problem.

Of course.

[flagellant]

It's currently 12:14AM. I have just learned that a private individual submitted a research query to the Japanese National Diet Library in 2008 regarding any information or proof of Blanche Appleton in relation to soy sauce production.

The researchers found absolutely no reference or evidence of her that was not directly related to the Kikkoman company, even after trawling the archives of the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper since 1945.

This information was told to me by a follower of mine--who asked to be anonymous. So right now we have evidence that Japan as an entity cannot find evidence of Blanche Appleton ever existing within relation to soy sauce production. And I can't find evidence of Blanche Appleton existing in obituary records, nor any publicly available birth/deaths.

Right now there seems to be more and more evidence that Miss Blanche Appleton was a complete invention of the Kikkoman Company possibly dating back nearly a hundred years. But why?

If nothing comes back from my Freedom of Information Act request, I'm going to be contacting Kikkoman directly. I'm not going to just let this slide. People have been noticing this since at least 2008. Who is Miss Blanche Appleton? Why would she be faked by Kikkoman? What's the point of this lie, and if it's the truth, if she was real, why can't I find any proof of that?

Who is Blanche Appleton?

[flagellant]

Why is everything starting to point towards yakuza/organized crime Kikkoman origin story and why am I researching zaibatsu breakups of the GHQ and where assets from various clans got sent to.

[awheckery]

I found her

I have an active Ancestry.com account, so I made a guess at her birth year and hit paydirt basically immediately

Ms. Blanche Appleton was born Blanche Harriet Schnitzer, October 22, 1903, in Manhattan, New York City, the only child of affluent immigrant parents who were apparently very invested in her education. I found records of at least two international trips with her parents before she turned twenty. Here's her passport photo from her original application in 1922, to compare against the above photo:

(cut for record dumps and original documents ahoy)

When I said her parents were invested in her education, I meant it. She earned a bachelor's degree from Wellesley in 1924...

...and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1925.

Blanche followed that up by pursuing a doctorate (what.) in Political Economy from Columbia U in 1926

buuuuuut her academic career was put on indefinite hold when she apparently eloped with one Charles Applebaum in December of that year.

Ten years later, they were both apparently going by the surname of Appleton, both on their international travel records and on the following census.

I couldn't find when they divorced, but by the middle of 1947 Blanche's permanent address was in Washington D.C., and she was working full time for the UNRRA, bouncing around various posts from China to California.

I can also definitively place her living in Tokyo, Japan in 1954. She apparently remarried at some point, to a Dr. Melville Day Dickinson, also of GHQ-SCAP, because she's his surviving widow on his American Foreign Service death certificate, seen here. (Note his last American address matched hers on her earlier travel papers.)

Blanche Dickinson (nee Appleton, nee Schnitzer) died September 9th, 1974, and according to the Ancestry research page put together by one of her relatives (which I think you need to be logged into Ancestry to see), her obituary was published in the Washington Post on September 17th, 1974 and featured a comprehensive overview of her long career in US foreign service, including her time as a "food analyst" at SCAP under Gen. MacArthur.

I can't access that obit, I can't find access to any archive for it online, but apparently the obit's title was "Blanche S. Dickinson, 70, AID Economic Adviser," so I'll pass that mission off to somebody else.

tl;dr, Blanch Appleton WAS a real person, and apparently she was something of a badass, but the jury's out on whether she was involved with the yakuza at all

(btw @inneskeeper if you want, I can and will download any and all documentation you want off Ancestry so you can have the primary source documents for your own reference)

[headspace-hotel]

I did NOT expect her to be real

[susansontag]

thought this was neat

[becomedog]

if on something like giving the option of a gift of food you are like “but what if i AM crossing a boundary/being rude” i’ll share an exchange between my therapist and myself i often think of:

me: “i just want to respect their boundaries”

therapist: “you can’t respect boundaries when they haven’t expressed them. those aren’t their boundaries, those are your assumptions.”

[phoenixyfriend]

Scott Westerfeld is up there with Suzanne Collins as "Sci Fi futuristic dystopia authors who had Something To Say And Damn Well Dedicated Themselves To That Something."

[kcrb0202]

What's the series? I would like to read it

[phoenixyfriend]

The Uglies trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, Specials) with the additional books Extras. (Apparently he's written another series recently, but I haven't read it yet.)

Topics that Westerfeld touches on:

The necessity of informed consent for medical procedures, and how willing the government is to violate that consent for "the greater good."

How body modification isn't inherently bad, but the ways it can be leveraged against the population to enforce order is very bad.

The elements of biology that play into finding someone attractive, and how those can be leveraged against people unfairly. (e.g. clear skin can be a sign of health, but acne isn't actually a sign of evil, what the fuck)

How the normalization of certain beauty norms, when enabling those norms through state-funded body mods, can completely divorce us from reality.

The dangers of over-reliance on gas and oil.

Invasive species, and the ways that advances in science like genetic editing in plants for purposes of capitalism can lead to major environmental harm.

How placid acceptance of a secretive government division meant to handle dissidents is only enabling evil, harming both you and your children.

Self-harm, and why people do it, and how horrifying it is to see a loved one engaging in it.

The damage you can do to a loved one by not accepting their disabilities.

He predicted influencer culture (as an extreme form of economic policy) back in 2006 with Uglies.

The dehumanization of 'less advanced' peoples, even if they're less advanced by the design of people in power refusing to share technology and declaring themselves gods.

Sex happens and it's normal, but be careful about jumping into it while you're still finding your feet in a new place.

Sometimes, friends grow apart, and it might be better to accept it than to cling to someone who's outgrown you, or whom you've outgrown.

Courtesy of @sroloc--elbisivni:

Separation by age cohorts as a form of control that actively harms all parties involved.

How people who want to control your life will never reach a point where they are satisfied.

How quickly you can fall into the societal norms of a group without recognizing how they may harm you.

The lengths people will go to to take back control of themselves are frightening, but that doesn’t make them wrong for wanting it.

ALSO also “the punk teen inside you is right.”

Also all of this takes place in a setting where money is not a thing, in the sense that all things necessary to survival (food, healthcare, housing, etc.) is provided, no resource scarcity at all. Very communal, very Star Trek... very panem et circenses.

[virgoassbitch]