pimpdaddysalad's house of treats

Leo // 19 // NC // he/him // INTP // Libra // loony

[guerrillatech]

[headspace-hotel]

thinking about how in ancient times, at least people knew that the lives their children would lead would….vaguely resemble their own???

People have always fondly reminisced about The Good Old Days and complained about Kids These Days, of course. But—and I cannot stress this enough—when my mom was born the Internet did not exist.

[headspace-hotel]

like I’m thinking about how I am a college student and during the pandemic, work, education, and relationships have been almost totally dependent on a network of technology that literally did not exist when my parents were college students.

When my mom was in college, she just wouldn’t have been capable of predicting what college would be like for me. I took a full semester of college from 5 hours away because I can virtually attend class through a pocket sized device that projects my image and voice into a shared virtual classroom where I can interact with my professor and other students. I wrote research papers without physical access to a library because I could read my college library’s books on my computer.

If you’re a Mesopotamian farmer, hitching his oxen to a plow, like…idk, man. I can’t picture myself at 40. I feel like a Mesopotamian farmer, trying to imagine his sons riding John Deeres.

[headspace-hotel]

It’s so persistently portrayed as this eternal, cyclical thing: Get a job, buy a house, get married and have kids, save for their college, send them off to college. This is the cycle of life. 2.5 kids, buy a house, have a steady career. Just as your father before you did, and his father before him.

Except they didn’t. His father before him didn’t do this, and your son will not live like you. This is not enshrined in tradition. This is not life. This is not how things are, or have been, or how they ever been. Look at it. This beautiful, ageless world of saving for your kids’ college and paying off mortgages and nuclear families. There is no way of life to pass down to your children, no tradition, nothing your father gave you that you can give to your son! You were born into a world that is unintelligible and inaccessible to the children you wanted to inherit it, and you and your children will both die in a world that is as foreign to you both!

I don’t envy the Boomer generation, nor do I have some kind of conceited disdain for them for not being able to adapt to now. So, so much of what defines our lives happened for the first time in their lifetime, and the absence of those things cannot be explained to us. Do you remember what it was like before television? Well…what is “it?”

It’s like our generation’s dim memory of childhood before Internet, and the vast, panicky knowledge that our childhoods were mostly full of a quality best described as the absence of internet, and there is no way to transmit that idea to the kids of today or explain it. We remember it, so, so clearly. It was real. But it’s gone. Annihilated.

[meirmakesstuff]

There’s a midrash that before he died, Moses was worried about what would become of the Israelite people after he was gone. God brought him forward in time to the schoolhouse of Rabbi Akiva. Moses listened to the discussion but could not understand a thing, and nearly despaired, until he heard a student ask Akiva, “how did you arrive at this conclusion?” Akiva responded, “it follows from what Moses taught.” Reassured, Moses returned to his own time and died.

I taught this midrash last week to a class of about ten 3rd-8th graders whom I have been teaching since September and have never met in person. I asked them to continue the midrash: if Moses made a second stop in 2021, what would confuse him, and what would reassure him?

The youngest kids had a fantastic time imagining Moses trying to use an iPad, trying to understand that he was in a classroom, that we were doing remotely what he had seen Akiva do in person. The older kids wondered if he would be astonished at our level of literacy, or our coed learning.

When I asked what would reassure him they were momentarily stumped: it wasn’t the first time this group has struggled to identify positives about their lives and experiences, except in a guilty “some people have it worse” kind of way. I reminded them of what reassured Moses in the schoolhouse of Akiva: knowing that what he taught had evolved from rather than superseded the traditions of our ancestors. “Who are we learning about right this very minute?” I prompted.

One of them acted it out: Moses peering suspiciously at his iPad, then exclaiming, “They’re learning my Torah in there!” We are not unmoored, we are evolving. It is easier to see the changes than the things that remain constant, but I think there is value, whatever your cultural tradition, in asking “what would reassure my ancestors?”

[lazaefair]

“The children are using this vast, incomprehensible magical network to mock that damned Ea-Nasir and his terrible copper. Good.”

[vrabia]

i love to think about how my ipad holds vastly more knowledge than was available to sumerians in 2000 bce, but if one of them saw me scribble away on it with my stylus, they would know what it is! from 4000 years across history, they would recognize this object if they saw me use it! and maybe they’d say ‘you know, we use something like this where i’m from’. and i’d say ‘i know. in school we learn that you invented them.’ and in a weird, convoluted, wonderful and very comforting sense, they invented my ipad too.

[tygermama]

I can’t help feeling like if you chopped up an onion and started frying it, it would smell like home to them too

[googlemenot-deactivated20230921]

[discountalien-pancake]

Once upon a time i saw a post about Historical Haircare™️ and the post was all like “yeah people didn’t wash their hair that often and they definitely didn’t use soap bc soap is harsh and strips the oils!”

Which is sort of true.... if you only look at Europe. And European soap.

Because let me tell you, if you live in the tropics? Or the desert? You are washing your entire body, including your scalp, with as much frequency as you can possibly justify. Which is often. Twice a day, even.

And whaddya know, this is reflected in the soap and soap-like substances used in South/Southeast Asia and the Middle East, which were far milder than european soaps, smelled nicer, and were used in conjunction with moisturizing oils. Because people who live in hot climates know how to live in hot climates. Wow. Mindblowing.

And upon the advent of British Imperialism, rich Brits coming home from India also brought home the practice of “shampooing” which is literally derived from the Indian* term “champu.” This was in the early 1800s, so as early as the fucking Regency period we have Europeans using soap-like substances on their hair.

AND let us also not ignore the face that this post talked about the harshness of soap while talking about modern, factory-made soap, and not the soap that was essentially made by hand for centuries. Modern industrial soap follows modern industrial recipes that use far less fat than historical or hobbyist-made soaps. These contain more fat than is necessary, which will remain after wash and helps moisturize. Also, one of the primary moisturizing agents, glycerine, was first derived from olive oil by Muslim scientists. People knew how to make soap that didn’t fuck up your skin and hair and they fucking used it.

So like. Yes, the powdering and brushing was a thing, but so was washing your hair if you weren’t a fucking European.

—

*i do not know which language it belongs to and wikipedia does not tell me

[softblockwashere-deactivated202]

[milfposting69]

[pimpdaddysalad]

Poor social skills

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

being pregnant has significantly increased the amount of times i’m told “yeah my spouse, who im married to, doesnt want kids and i do” or the other way around like bro. why in the fuck did you get married. did you even have one single conversation about your shared goals. your relationship is going to fail. you are going to make each other miserable. what the hell are you thinking.

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

[dogsuffrage]

I’m betting against GME I decided. Clearly I’m the minority opinion but everything I have seen feels like a deadly mix of the high of an initial win, confirmation bias, an influx of newbies, a constantly shifting narrative, and misinformation (I have spent hours looking at this and have seen literally zero reputable sources explaining the strategy). All this leads me to believe the current hold is kinda just mass hysteria.

[pimpdaddysalad]

Buying in at this point is mostly just out of spite to hedge funds. you wouldn't make any money buying in now. But holding for longer keeps the stock price up for longer until more hedge fund short sell contracts expire. At which point theyll have to sell a ~300$ stock for ~50$

[miggylol]

[redsatinsheets]

y’all love to mock asian nail salon owners so here’s a little background for your dumbasses:

during the vietnam war, many vietnamese refugees came to america, a lot being women and their children. an american actress, tippi hedren, flew to sacramento, ca. to visit a refugee camp. she wanted to meet the women who were living there and figure out ways to support them. many of them had lost their husbands in the war and were now left without an income and many had no knowledge of how to begin to provide for themselves and their children. while there, tippi noticed that many of the women were fascinated with her manicured nails. tippi had gotten the idea to fly her manicurist to the refugee camp to teach the women how to do nails, in hopes of giving these women a way to support themselves and their families. tippi had paid for 20 women from the refugee camp to attend beautician school and help them get their licenses & eventually find jobs. about 51% of manicurists in the u.s. are vietnamese and many of them are direct descendants of these 20 women who were given the chance to go to beautician school at the courtesy of tippi. so next time y’all want to mock and make fun of hardworking nail techs and treat them like shit, just remember that this is all because of the labor and the persistence of their ancestors who came here with nothing.

[pinkcheesegreenghost-deactivate]

Another reason California has a high number of Vietnamese nail techs, is because you can take the test in Vietnamese.

As in, you don’t have to be required to test in English to get licensed which makes the transition easier to learn English gradually.

Anti-Asian sentiment is at an all time high while people still demand their nails to be done.

Respect your service provider.

[golvio]

Here’s a source, if you’re interested.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Just so people know, it’s still racist to imitate Asian nail techs even if you’re a PoC or otherwise marginalised. I’ve seen a lot of people try to claim otherwise, and it’s not ok. Knock that shit off.

[geekremix]

I was at a nail salon and a woman of color next to me started making fun of how they speak to me. I don’t think she realized that I was asian as well and I was extremely offended. 

[clownboybebop]

me: to really understand Frankenstein, we have to take into account that Mary Shelley was surrounded by creative men who really didn’t take her seriously, so in addition to sci-fi horror, it can also be read as an exploration of female creative frustration and-

The burglar that broke into my house: bodily autonomy?

me: exactly. Now,

[wizardbreasts]

[powerburial]

We are all familiar with the christmas song: “you better not shout……you better not cry” and so on. But what interest me is this line: “be good for goodness sake.” now we all know that this is , of course, bullshit. The children are good ..not for the sake of goodness itself…but for the sake…of the presents.

[depsidase]

[politicalsci]

Noam Chomsky, was born to Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. 

Lessons From Chomsky [x]

“One of Chomsky’s simplest principles is among the most difficult to apply in practice: You should judge yourself by the same moral standards that you judge others by. This has formed the core of his critique of U.S. foreign policy… In both linguistics and politics, Chomsky often uses his famous “Martian coming to Earth” example: Try to imagine what our planetary affairs would look like to someone who was not part of one of the particular human societies, but was separate from them and able to see their commonalities. They would perceive the similarities between human languages, rather than the differences, and they would see the bizarre ways in which each country perceives its own acts as right and everybody else’s as wrong, even when the same acts are being committed.” 

For the best introduction to Chomsky’s political thinking see Understanding Power, a set of conversations between Noam Chomsky and members of the public.

[gorps]

[dreaming-jaybird]

It’s me roachie

[zoomar]

I am called Short-Ears, for I have a cousin with long ears. 

[hedgehog-moss]

The postwoman was telling me this morning that our little ritual of morning coffee & gossip might come to an end next year because of new regulations for rural post offices—postmen and women in the countryside are ‘less efficient’ than their colleagues in cities, so they will now have a tracking app on their phone monitoring their whereabouts and how long they spend in each house, and will be penalised (more postboxes added to their shift) if they spend more than X minutes per postbox, because if you have time to chat for 5 minutes you have time to deliver more post, which means employing less people and saving money. The postwoman said “The guidelines only talk in terms of postboxes, 800 postboxes per day, delivering post to postboxes—this whole time I thought I was delivering post to people!… A lot of people are waiting for me outside their door when they hear me arrive, am I supposed to throw the letters at them from behind the wheel and not even leave the car to kiss them hello and ask how they are? It’s not like I stay for an hour.” 

She will also no longer be allowed to do any favours—there are elderly people living in isolated farms around here, and she (and other postmen) often offer to bring some groceries to them (which they don’t buy during their shift) in winter when the roads are bad, or meds from the pharmacy, and starting next year there will be inspectors doing surprise inspections of postmen’s cars to check for anything that is not post, with penalties if they find groceries or other stuff. I couldn’t think of why so she explained gloomily that the post company started a (paid) service to provide this kind of assistance so it is now wrong to offer the same help for free. 

We joked about having secret subversive chats over coffee next year but yeah this is all pretty depressing. She said doing people little favours (like when she offered to ask around in farms to find me some kittens to adopt, and deliver the kittens to me) and exchanging a few words to check on people and their little stories every day is what she loves about her job, and these new rules seem to have been invented specifically to make her hate her job. Capitalism makes for a really joyless, loveless society.