Title is from Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories". Handle means "storyteller" in Nahuatl. This'll mostly be about pop culture, linguistics, philosophy, history, and other things that interest me, but also about writing.
In the past month I have been exposed to some seriously mentally deficient women on this site. I am talking individuals that cannot follow the simple flow of a thread or comprehend basic sentences.
I am not going to go full "repeal the 19th" because my wife and daughters are smart with high level function. But damn I do think maybe we need to have some kind of intelligence test people need to pass before they can vote.
(yeah. I know there are dumb dudes. This thought just came from my recent experiences here.)
I mostly call for the repeal of our 19th as a tongue in cheek jab, mostly. But yes, definitely need some sort of competency test or background check for voting.
That one poll made me want to do this with better options!
What do you primarily call these?
Thongs
Flip flops
Slippers
Chanclas
Chappals
Tsinelas
Jandals (or another word that basically means ‘Japanese sandals’)
Pluggers
Some other term (tell me in the tags what it is/where you’re from)
Remaining time: 5 days 2 hours
(Please keep in mind (1) this is just for fun and learning new stuff, (2) people do stuff differently than you and that’s okay! You do stuff differently than them! and (3) it’s a poll about slip-on summer shoes, not life or death.)
I looked this up and I'm really glad she's doing this
I highly recommend checking out this site Ms Brockovich made (https://brockovichdatacenter.com/#) and clicking through the various map filters cuz look at this
the site says there are 33 operational AI data centers there, and altho i only counted 30 green dots, what i DID notice was that only like 7-8 of them at most are NOT in a highlighted area with the drought filter on
when i re-counted this time including ones in areas that were just 'Abnormally Dry' on the map, I got about 16, which is still only about HALF of the fucking already-operational AI plants the map has info on
all the other ones are located in areas with at least moderate drought conditions :/
“Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.” - Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, 1953
My thing with the anti-Harry Potter movement is that it's not ENOUGH if everybody stops spending money on HP related stuff (which, yes, absolutely don't spend any money on official HP stuff), it's like they want its existence completely wiped from everybody's minds and that's not a realistic goal. She doesn't make royalties off of thoughts, you're giving her too much power by acting as if she does. That's the part that convinces me that it's not actually about Protecting Trans Lives to them, it's only about virtue signaling and feeling good for hating something.
I just saw a comment on fb that ran off the misconception that dowries were a sexist subjugation of women for the purposes of buying and selling them like objects, and since this morning I would rather die than engage with a stranger on fb I'm going to talk on here instead about dowries as they were around Jane Austen's era/regency England.
Basically: dowries were an inheritance. It was a way to give a daughter what they would need to live comfortably at the time when they were most likely to need it - leaving their father's care and support and beginning a home elsewhere. In Austen terms we're generally talking about a sum of money, but dowries can also include items for a household like linens and China (goods like this were called a trousseau from at least the 1830s onward). Dowries very materially improved the life of a woman as they were meant to.
Some of the ways they did this were actually before marriage. We tend to call every inheritance a woman was to receive a dowry but that's incorrect, most of Austen's heroines don't have a dowry, though we know how much they'll inherit upon the death of their father and/or mother. Fortune =/= dowry. The Bennets of Pride and Prejudice, the Dashwoods of Sense and Sensibility, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and even Emma Woodhouse in Emma all will inherit a little to a great deal of wealth but not as a dowry. This means that even Emma, who will one day have the staggering amount of thirty thousand pounds, would not be bringing wealth immediately into a marriage (though in her circumstances she has a father who would hardly let her live impoverished if she had chosen to marry a penniless man).
For women as poor as the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice (though they should've had more money each, if their parents weren't useless, as has been discussed) the distinction between dowry and eventual inheritance didn't mean much: a max of fifty pounds per annum in interest was literally less than what some servants were paid so couldn't alleviate the need for their husbands to have an independent income. But what money a woman could bring into a marriage definitely increased the likelihood of her preferences being realised. Northanger Abbey's Catherine Moreland, who "would have three thousand pounds" means she has enough of a fortune to "smooth the descent of [General Tilney's] pride" and make him consent to the marriage of his son to her. She certainly would've been glad her parents saved this money for her, instead of feeling that she was an object being bought or sold. It empowered her choices, rather than reduced them.
That the inheritance of a woman is presented as a dowry also reduces the chances a woman and the man she loves will need to wait to marry until either of them inherit something or he makes a living. If Anne Elliot of Persuasion had had a dowry, instead of a future inheritance (a "share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers hereafter"), would she have broken off that original engagement? In ch23 she tells Captain Wentworth she would've been engaged to him when he had only "a few thousand pounds" and the likelihood of more thanks to an advantageous posting. If she would receive her own few thousand pounds upon marriage would that've been enough to remain engaged from the first, and perhaps even marry once he had added a few more thousands to that instead of needing to wait for Wentworth to build their shared fortune himself?
We can also see that a dowry was an inheritance parents provided for their daughter's benefit, rather than a sale price, by how carefully marriage articles were drawn up. This could legally define pin-money (how much money a woman would receive for her private usage and upkeep from her husband), and often specified that the husband couldn't diminish the bulk sum of his wife's fortune, only use the interest it generated, so that there would always be something to support the wife and her children no matter how spendthrift he was. Think of it like an old-fashioned pre-nup or family trust.
This is a huge reason why eloping was so bad, it meant there hadn't been articles drawn up beforehand and so the legal default of 'everything the wife has is now the husband's in full' applied instead of the chance to preserve her rights to her own fortune. If Wickham had succeeded in eloping with Georgiana Darcy in Pride and Prejudice her thirty thousand pounds would've become his in full when she turned twenty-one, though her guardians could've withheld it before then, and he could've spent it all and left her penniless without legal consequence.
There are plenty of historical examples of husbands without the regulations of marriage articles squandering the fortune and selling off assets, leaving the wife eventually destitute. Marriage articles are a response to that as father's wanted to protect their daughters and her future children. It actually limited the power of a husband in favour of preserving the comforts and rights of his wife, so was opposite of misogyny (though the society and laws which required these extra protections was undeniably sexist and male-centred)
Nor was receiving an inheritance upon marriage a specifically female-only practice. Eldest sons would generally receive the bulk of their inheritance when their father died, but it was common in this time and for centuries beforehand for them to be confirmed as heir or given a set income from their father (or one of their father's lesser estates, if we're talking nobility and the ultra rich) as part of the marriage articles (which would generally benefit the wife for the remainder of her life, either as a jointure or dower). Younger sons, if not already provided for, could also be given something upon their marriage and may have a commission in the army or a church living bought for them, to give them some independence. In Sense and Sensibility, after accepting the engagement of Edward and Elinor, Mrs Ferrars gives her son ten thousand pounds "towards augmenting their income" and this allows the marriage to occur. No one accuses Mrs Ferrars of selling Edward off in matrimony, even though what she's doing is so similar to a dowry that the narration points out it's exactly what "had been given with [her daughter] Fanny".
Fortune hunters and those marrying purely for money and a comfortable lifestyle definitely existed, as they do now, but dowries were not a socially and legally mandated way to give women to men to benefit them financially. 'Mercenary' marriages were frowned upon, and women were taught to look out for fortune hunters (like Wickham). Nor was it considered only men who might marry primarily to benefit from their spouse's wealth (Charlotte Lucas being a sympathetic female example). That both men and women could have inheritances gifted upon marriage, and were represented as seeking to marry for money, helps show that the practice of dowries wasn't a sexist practice which reduces women to little more than livestock.
In fact, there's an argument to be made that the very existence of large dowries being a cultural norm indicates that daughters were valued and loved. Instead of leaving everything they could to the sons (which would be expected if daughters were worthless objects to be given away at any price) these daughters were considered worth saving for, worth drawing up legal contracts to protect the living standard of, and worth leaving an inheritance often equal or greater than what younger sons would receive (as they could earn their own income). A dowry didn't reduce the humanity of a woman, it empowered her choices and protected her future. It was the women without dowries or an inheritance that were in danger of needing to marry whomever would take them.
Even the thing called “bride price” isn’t actually buying and selling women. It’s actually that a man getting that money together showed he can take care of a wife. Or, in many Native American cultures where women owned the property and men moved in with them, and still had bride price, that he can take care of his wife’s land.
#we chose macrocystis because every other kelp was rotting at that time of year #we kept the crabs 12 to a sea table because we were sharing the space and couldnt use more #the crabs were subject to a non-natural light cycle because other researchers kept leaving the lights on overnight (via Dicrocoeliumdendriticum)
Archaeologist. We sometimes choose places to dig because our gut says “this is nice, I’d settle here”. I’ve had field directors say “this has paleo energy” about areas. Often we see big hill in our dig area, we dig on big hill.
Most recently, I’ve found two sites because I was walking to my next hole and saw some petrified wood I wanted. Started picking up pieces and saw a half buried biface lmao.
Other site, I was walking and imagined a little native girl running along the ridge. I had a gut feeling to dig like 5m from where the hole was. Found a utilized petrified wood flake. Could’ve written it off as a plow fact, but due to all the pet wood I’d been collecting throughout the area (I’m a greedy little thing who wants pretty rocks), I knew the was it was broken was inconsistent to how the pet wood naturally breaks.
What sealed the deal for me was cleaning the mud off, and it cut me so, yup, definitely utilized.
So glad you commented this because I was looking for the term for “people saw a pretty rock and took it with them” forEVER now and couldn’t find it. Fuckin love manuports
The Dinosaur Resource Center is absolutely amazing. Next best dinosaur exhibit I’ve been to after Actual Literal Dinosaur National Monument. NYC and Denver have great set-ups, too, but both National Monument and the Resource Center feel very current but accessible.
If you’re ever down in Colorado Springs, folks who haven’t been, it is a shortish gorgeous drive, especially if it’s rained recently.
Recent archaeological dig tour had me (with permission) going around poking bones going “burnt, burnt, not burnt, burnt, polished” because it turns out I handle bones. Often.
We do the stick thing in archaeology too. We actually have a tool for it bc most of our stuff isn’t stone like dinos are. So we have this thing we stick in the ground and it takes out like a very small core of the layers. And the kind of ironic thing is that all of those instincts that make you say “oh yeah someone totally would have lived here” also made a bunch of OTHER people say that and so the sites are disturbed. x.x
RE: “not come into lab over weekend”, “laboratory” is to labor as “observatory” is to observe. Of course nobody wants to come into the place where they labor!
A Door on Other Time @tlaquetzqui - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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