Short answer: No. From what I can tell, paper cups weren't definitively used for coffee until 1920. (1918 if you want to stretch it.) And you would have had to drink them quickly because they weren't very good for holding hot liquids, due to the temperature stripping the waterproofing wax from the paper.
But even after we got hot liquid paper cups in 1922, there's insufficient evidence to say that it was coffee to go. It could be that the normal thing to do was to drink your paper cup of coffee sitting down near the point of sale, or at least standing relatively still. (There's some evidence for it for other beverages.) Lids for paper coffee cups weren't invented until the 1960s (which is when coffee-to-go really took off), so traveling large distances would mean an increased spill risk. That said, it's not impossible that someone was walking around with an open cup of coffee, especially a less than full one, for relatively short distances.
More details and a lot of primary sources below, including a military cooking tournament and paper cup technology (yes that's real).
Coffee in paper cups
Earliest definitive proof of coffee in paper cups is from a newspaper article advertising a military cooking tournament (???) in 1920. Honestly bring this back. Less gun shows, more logistics shows.
There's also this 1920 article about how to organize a picnic, where they specify using paper cups for coffee and cocoa. You could reasonably extend this backwards a year or two as "it was known before being published".
While the luncheon is being eaten, coffee and cocoa may be passed in pots to fill the paper cups found in the baskets.
Paper cups as portable drinking implements
This collapsible paper cup set c1920 was distributed to travelers by Socony automotive service stations. The text indicates portable use of paper cups: paper cups / for picnics and motoring— / traveling, too.
Drinking milk from paper cups in the transit terminal in 1922. This indicates that it was common to stand while drinking from a paper cup, as opposed to sitting at the booth or tables near it, which was common for conventional dishware.
Paper cups marketed to concession stands, 1918
Paper cup technology
This bit is a speculative, but the vibe I get pre 1918 is that paper cups were mostly considered too low quality to actually sell beverages in. I think it was a matter of not seeming like a quality experience to be paying for, with people preferring glass over paper cups in 1911. But this changed with the Spanish flu in 1918, where health officials demanded that soda fountain shops either sterilize their glasses or switch to individual paper cups. By 1919, Dixie was advertising using paper cups for soda foundations.
Paper cup technology actually did not develop enough to withstand hot drinks until 1922. This is when many ads for heat resilient paper cups by F. N. Burt Co. show up in trade publications. Earliest is 30 Mar.
Luellen, the man behind Dixie Cup, filed a patent on 6 May 1922
[The previous paper cup] has been restricted in use primarily to cold drinks and liquids, and has been unsuited for hot drinks for several well-known reasons. The paraffin which is relied upon to retain the pleats or folds in proper position, is susceptible to melting under the heat of the hot liquid when poured into the cup, and which on account of its lighter specific gravity will float on top of the liquid and spoil the drink. Furthermore, the melting of the parafin permits the cup folds to open up, thus breaking down the walls under the weight of the liquid and destroying the usefulness of the cup.
My present invention eliminates the objectionable characteristics alluded to, and has for its object the construction of a one piece paper cup, that will be serviceable as a holder for heated or hot drinks or liquids, and which will, when filled therewith, retain its rigidity and shape for the time necessary for the consumption or use of the contained liquid.
This was a noted weakness in the invention in 1907. It could withstand cold or room temperature drinks indefinitely, but could only be used for hot drinks like tea or coffee once or twice. They were picked up for soda fountains very early on.
Note: there is one earlier ad in Billboard in 1920 for a hot drinks paper cup, but I assign it less credibility given that it's not a trade journal, and it didn't really catch on. Likely an overstated marketing claim.
I think mid to late 1922 is a reasonable start date for when vendors could begin selling coffee in paper cups, as opposed to charitable organizations distributing it for free.
Sale of coffee in paper cups
There was a patent filed in 1953 for a paper cup that resembles a traditional coffee cup. The author comments on difficulty in public adoption of paper cups for hot drinks.
For the most part, the paper hot drink cup has been used only where dish-washing facilities are not available, as at outdoor picnics, the serving of emergency food rations and the like. Only infrequently, if at all, does one find a paper hot drink cup used in restaurants, cafeteries or similar public eating places. On the other hand, paper cups and dishes are quite commonly used in such establishments for cold foods and beverages. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the reason for this difference in usage is to be found in the tastes and preferences of the eating public.
The evidence I've been able to find throughout the 20s corroborates this. Nearly every establishment used ceramic cups and saucers: factory cafeterias, railway cars, even self-serve automats (like 7-11). I was only able to find two definitive use cases of paper cups for coffee:
Racetrack, 5 April 1930
The race-track lunchers, with paper cups of coffee in one hand and hot dogs in the other,
House republican cloakroom in 1929.
The Speaker conferred with his advisers, medical and otherwise, and it was decided that the lunch counter might be recommissioned on condition that it comply with modern rules of sanitation. Under the old order, the cloakroom dispensary used common drinking cups in supplying coffee and sandwiches were sold unwrapped. Now coffee is served in individual paper-mache cups and all sandwiches are carefuly encased in paper wrappers."
The wording here indicates that they were merely catching up on an established standard, rather than it being a new practice. Unfortunately, I could not find any earlier instances between 1922 and 1929 of it being standard practice to serve coffee in paper cups. I spent hours going through various image archives looking for people holding paper cups at coffee booths or concession stands, at sporting events and fairs/exhibitions, but they were all ceramic or enamel or indeterminate. So this is where the trail ends for me. If anyone wants to pick up the torch and continue this quest, I'd be very interested in where you take it.
All those "spend just 35 minutes doing a bunch of really hard exercises and you'll feel great forever!" videos are really discouraging. I usually end up doing like, 2 minutes of some of his while waiting for my shower to heat up, and ykw?
That's 2 minutes more than I would have done otherwise.
oh hey I have a thing like that last one that I like to do sometimes, but I do it lying down in bed. it's a very satisfying pop/shift in my hips/lower back, but doesn't always work. maybe I will try his version and see if it is more effective for me
We don’t talk enough about the two identical old women who just hang around Azula saying ominous shit in unison. What’s their deal. Is there a comic about them. Are they paid for their services
every r/relationship_advice post: first of all I want to clarify I could not ask for a more perfect and loving husband. anyway every day he tries to kill me,
sometimes you invent mind prisons for yourself for no good reason and youre like "i really like being in the mind prison" even though you dont actually like being in the mind prison
An autistic man with a special interest in the Harry Potter series has made the decision to value the lives and dignity of his trans friends more than a book about a wizard who grows up to be a cop, leaving you with no excuse whatsoever to keep wearing that Hufflepuff scarf, sources have reported.
Jack Harrington, 38, grew up reading the popular children’s stories, and soon developed an intense fascination with the world of the books, including knowing all about the suspiciously depicted money-hungry goblins, and that one time it was revealed that slavery is commonplace and accepted in the wizarding world.
In spite of this, however, Harrington has recently worked to redirect his interest towards media created by someone less troublingly focused on his friends’ genitalia.
“It was hard to do,” Harrington said. “I really love collecting things, and there’s so much merchandise to collect! But once I realised that it’s possible to collect things in a way that doesn’t make it harder for my mates to go for a piss when out and about, it really was a no-brainer.”
At the time of publication, Harrington was marvelling at the sheer amount of fiction available in the world that doesn’t actively contribute to material harm, and questioning whether you specifically really need that copy of Hogwarts Legacy for your PS5.
sometimes i worry that *i'm* wrong and SU is bad/rushed/blah blah. then i remember whites fragile need to be perfect and ego defense of thinking she's fixing things. i remember how its perfectly mirrored by stevens need to fix others. how its both beautifully symbolic in CYM an made more explicit and heart-rending in future.
yeah that shit rules. white being reformed is great. its the ultimate rebuttal to the ideology that only good/useful/perfect people deserve to live- which is exactly the standard white held herself and everyone else to. it mirrors stevens arc of selfless heroism. it mirrors the toxic, insecure selflessness thats plagued everyone from pearl to jasper to rose about what it means to "deserve" to live it ties into "love like you" of how learning self-love is intertwined with loving others. it ties into how steven can't let go of his hero role until he's confronted by *literally* having his own mind in white's body, hating the idea of being like her yet ironically reacting exactly how she would - "this is someone bad for society, they should be shattered, this is what's best for everyone." trying to hurt her only hurting him. trying to help her helping all of gemkind - from the corrupted gems to dismantling a system that was held up by those exact ideals.
yeah no SU is fantastic. i'm so sad that its reputation is "oh well it wasn't that good, but it had some lgbt+ rep :)" which is just about the most condescending crap ever. i would gladly flip it. i think most cartoons that have come after SU haven't been that interesting, they've just been mostly generic stories with some lgbt+ rep.
I remember the exact moment I fell in love with Steven Universe and it wasn't after they made the alien invasion plot explicit, the part where everyone says it 'gets good', like you have to wade through the earlier stuff like it's a fucking slog and not some of the best children's television out there. I fell in love with SU in episode 2, at this moment:
"Well done, Steven! You saved most of Beach City!"
Yeah sure, plenty of shows do a silly 'haha things got broke' bit, but this was different. This was bringing home something important that they'd been saying all episode.
This was the episode that introduced the thesis statement of the whole show, and they managed to keep that thesis statement clear throughout the entire thing, all the way to the end: "If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs." Steven Universe is a show about how things are broken, and that's okay. Steven Universe is a show about how people are fucked up, and that's okay. It's not our job to be perfect or condemn everything that isn't; it's our job to say "okay, we've got this fucking mess here, and wallowing in blame and recrimination and shame and self-hatred isn't going to help. How do we move forward?" I had never, ever seen that message committed to in another children's show before Steven Universe, and it's one of the most important things you can tell any kid -- that the mess of their life is normal! That it's okay! We have stuff that sucks and we can move on with that!
Oh, sure, other shows will have a Very Special Episode every now and again where someone makes a bad mistake and has to be 'forgiven', or is unable to do something and has to live with it, or there's a tragedy or whatever. That's not what Steven Universe did. Steven Universe got comfortable with the mess on every level and kept coming back to it, both subtly and overtly. Steven can't save the moon goddess temple, Greg fakes a broken leg to be with his son and psychologically fucks up his magic powers and the other plot of the episode that's acting as a metaphor for the whole thing involves them literally fixing that problem by duct taping over it, the Gems don't know how to raise Steven and make him a false obstacle course to boost his confidence and he has to Uno Reverse their own trick on them and shoulder the responsibility of parenting them instead of the other way around. There's an entire episode that's just Peridot confirming that her people fucked up an area of the Earth so badly that nothing will ever grow there again and this isn't resolved by fixing it, but by other characters saying, "yeah, it's broken and it sucks and we can't stop that. How about we grow a garden literally anywhere else on the planet."
And this is why it confuses the fuck out of me when people bitch about Steven Universe being 'problematic' because things suck. Yeah! That's the entire fucking point of the show! Things are allowed to suck and be broken. "Ooooh it's nazi apologism because he forgave a warlord and she didn't get murdered onscreen or whatever" he didn't forgive her! He convinced her to stop warlording and has an uneasy alliance with her! She's fixing what she broke as best she can, just like every single other character in the show! Her perfectionism and purity and total inability to live with broken things and messy truths and people who are different, sometimes in harmful ways, was the entire problem that the whole show was about! And Steven beat it! Insistence that the Bad Guys get punished or removed and the Pure Good Guys get a clean ending with no moral quandaries is the audience taking Evil White Diamond's position. It's literally being the villain of the show.
i genuinely don't think there's much, if anything, hotter than someone clearly having a blast doing something they're really good at. doesn't really matter what it is. the combo of competence and joy is absolutely lethal to me
Imo the best type of system for children to grow up in would be one that assumes the birth parents/primary guardians won't do shit and takes care of every aspect of childcare that's essential for their wellbeing and development, collectively.
But I'm just a guy who only learned how to brush his teeth properly and got glasses as a child because we had both a dentist and a doctor come to school on a regular basis. The dentist would have us all stand in a circle with our little toothbrushes and show us how to brush and correct our technique. The doctors would give us general health assessments and then have the teachers contact our patents and essentially peer pressure them into getting us any health intervention we needed. My parents only reluctantly got me glasses because they knew the teachers would judge them if they kept seeing me sit in the very front row and still squint to see the chalkboard. So I'm biased.
The only times I ever remember seeing a dentist or doctor as a child was at school. I'm quite healthy physically and I'm very grateful for all the care I got from the various professionals who cared about my well-being and development more than my actual parents did.
We had free healthcare including dental, mind you, my parents just couldn't be bothered. When my brother, as a teenager, asked our mother if she could take him to his orthodontist appointments (which he'd already arranged for on his own) she basically told him she didn't feel like it and he had to take the bus.
If I could improve anything about that system, I'd take it even further and make it so kids could see a doctor and get meds, treatments, therapy, tests, disability aids etc. without having to rely on their parents as well. I shouldn't have had to put up with being bullied and guilt-tripped about the family finances and the time investment needed to take me to the optometrist every time I needed new glasses.
Some parents would not take care of their children even if they were given all the time and the resources. Mine are a great example of that — my mother stopped working and became a homemaker when I was in kindergarten, my father worked from the garage and was also always home. They had a car and our village even had a bus that would come once or twice an hour that would take you to the next two bigger cities.
Did that, plus the free healthcare, translate into them actually parenting and caring for us properly? It did not. They only ever did any of that reluctantly when not doing it would make them look bad, and most of the time they did a shitty job because they could never resist the urge to boost their egos by means of bullying literal children.
So I have to wonder: what did they actually contribute to our upbringing? Like they didn't teach us shit and mostly they just endangered our mental and physical health — but hey, at least they gave me cPTSD! That took some work too.
A knee-jerk response to neglectful parenting I see a lot is “people should have to get licenses and take rigorous tests to PROVE that they should be ALLOWED to have kids” which is eugenics. That’s just the starting line for eugenics.
We are at a point in humanity where there is no meaningful reason why we shouldn’t be structuring our societies around wellbeing for all instead of wellbeing for the “deserving”.
Assume some parents will fail. Build social infrastructure that is designed to support failed kids rather than punish would-be parents.
They can be busy, tired, stressed about finances, ignorant, etc. They can want to do the best for their kid and Fail Anyways.
The best thing is to support the children and give them the tools they need to succeed even if the parents are already giving them those tools. Because you can never learn something too much.
