Today's Document
AnasAbdin
Claire Keane
trying on a metaphor
Peter Solarz
hello vonnie
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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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祝日 / Permanent Vacation
almost home
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
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izzy's playlists!
shark vs the universe
will byers stan first human second
Sweet Seals For You, Always
styofa doing anything
seen from United States
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seen from Maldives
seen from Singapore
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@transmutationsdelightnature
“Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter their composition? …The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.”
—Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 30 (1717)
“...A lone woman could, if she spun in almost every spare minute of her day, on her own keep a small family clothed in minimum comfort (and we know they did that). Adding a second spinner – even if they were less efficient (like a young girl just learning the craft or an older woman who has lost some dexterity in her hands) could push the household further into the ‘comfort’ margin, and we have to imagine that most of that added textile production would be consumed by the family (because people like having nice clothes!).
At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).
Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.
On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.
At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).
...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).
E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.
(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)
Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.
...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”
- Bret Devereaux, “Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part III: Spin Me Right Round…”
If I may tag onto this: it's really astonishing how much spinning you can get done when you do it in tiny increments. When I'm at a medieval market or music festival (back when that was... a thing), I carry my spindle everywhere and just spin a tiny little bit, constantly. Waiting in line for food. Sitting somewhere waiting for the next band to play, in the early morning when nobody's up yet. I can get through 100 gr of fibre in a day like this without consciously dedicating any extended time periods to it (and I'm not the best with a drop spindle). I would imagine that is roughly the way it worked in pre-modern cultures, too, which means that yes, it was possible to supply the fabric for an entire household this way, if the fabric was also taken care of properly (mended, re-used, recycled ...) and the spinner didn't suffer from illness or had any disabilities (!). It wouldn't be easy, but it also wouldn't be terrifying back-breaking labour.
@ goodgoodgoodco
https://wigreenfire.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Big-Tech-Unchecked-Toolkit_final_rev19Dec25-resized.pdf
Link to the pdf of the tool kit
Love you guys, stay safe!
I bring a real 'actually people who are pregnant do deserve some special consideration because they are effectively at least temporarily disabled if not permanently after some complications' vibe to the party that a lot of people don't seem to like
Mistreatment towards pregnant people is especially infuriating because there seems to be this idea that they either wanted or deserve to be pregnant (like when people say that a woman deserves to get pregnant for being a slut) when it's a well-known fact that many pregnancies are not at all planned and assigning moral judgements to it is really gross
i bet it feels good as fuck to intend to do something and then actually do it
when you flush the toilet in this dorm room it sounds like you’re coming into Boylston station. I wonder if that’s a problem.
i was looking up gerard way sex hospital on maps for a bit but theres a sex shop near gerard way in massachusetts
Official Post of Massachusetts
Well those are allllmost done
question. why do you have 7 featureless grey monoliths in your driveway
There's eight actually but the last one is still in the garage
question. why do you have eight featureless grey monoliths
They're actually a really dark purple
question. why do you have seven featureless really dark purple monoliths in your driveway and an eighth in the garage
Some of them do have features though. There's holes and hinges and stuff, so I can put secrets in em
question. why do you have 8 really dark purple occasionally featureful monoliths
The heart wants what the heart wants
this reads like a muppet sketch
see? See!??!
You're not wrong
This post is less than six months old.
World Heritage Post
RIP to the legend
This goose fucking rocks and had a crazy life!
I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:
He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.
Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.
Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.
When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.
Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.
Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.
As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.
His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."
Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.
Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.
After school care pulled me aside about my child dropping an f-bomb “without remorse” and I put on my concerned face and nodded a bunch.
Apparently he was building something with a younger kid “who really looks up to him and is just starting to make friends” and said “Hey, you’re really fucking good at this.” which is, in my estimation, really a parenting victory.
I absolutely failed at doing this:
We have lost the meaning of queerbait
Just because what you wanted didn't happen, doesn't mean it's queerbaiting. It is now being used an excuse when the ship you want didn't get together. Queerbaiting has to do with marketing.
Queerbait: A cookbook that you learned about from ads with pictures of people eating tasty looking soups and the author's social media posts about how soup lovers are going to love it, proves to have no soup recipes.
Not queerbait: A cookbook has no soup recipes. You assumed there would be some based on vibes and wishful thinking. No soups were ever advertised or promised.
Also not queerbait: A cookbook that was advertised as containing soup recipes has soup recipes but not for the types of soups you like.
Also not queerbait: a real person you follow online is making dinner. You’ve seen an immersion blender in the background of their kitchen before. They do not make soup tonight, and actually admit that they aren’t really much of a soup person.
Writing tips:
“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context
“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets
Both options convey that he's horny
How dare you be funnier than me on my own post
Biggest fuck-up ever is that people have to pay to become doctors
Like unironically we should be subsidising at least 50% of their educations. What do you mean we have a shortage of doctors we should have surplus. What do you mean they’re being overworked they should be treated like royalty, they can fix human bodies
I don’t care if some of them are only doing it for the money. I don’t care if all of them are only doing it for the money. Intentions don’t matter to the stitches in my nana’s leg or the ten billion other lifesaving treatments we all get at a detriment to their finances and mental wellbeing. Entire cities are kept alive by just a couple thousand of them what are we DOINGGGGG
Everyone wants to live forever Everyone but the ones living for work Anyone who can pay won't pay for anything Anyone who can't pay is buried in dirt Who wants a healer to tend to their bruises? Who wants a medic to stitch up their wounds? Who will pay anyone, anyone ever? To keep the mill churning out dollars for fools
For my fellow U.S. buddies, please know that the physician shortage we are seeing today is at least partially due to the federal government commissioning a study that was released in 1981 that concluded that we had a physician SURPLUS, which resulted in heavy federal action to curtail doctor trainin' and learnin' in the decades to follow.
Which we are reaping now.
(Kinda like how we are reaping the decades-long push to platform anti-intellectualism while demonizing education.)
Do not doubt my power
[thank you @greggslife for knowing me, knowing I would know this, and for also recognising it]
I would still use my turn signals in the Mad Max Wasteland. They'd call me "Signal" because I'd hit my blinker before ramming the enemy hot rods into the side of a desert ravine. I'd use my turn signal every time. They would respect me for this.
"That is Signal, the Last Follower of the Old Law."
It's amazing just how few groceries $50 of groceries is
you can stretch $50
4lb jasmine rice ($5)
24 eggs ($4)
4cups butter ($4)
4lb dry beans ($5)
buncha bananas ($2)
4lb oats ($4)
2lb ground flaxseed ($4)
10lb potatoes ($5)
10 cans tuna ($10)
2lb carrots ($3)
jar of peanut butter ($2)
a lil treat for yourself idk ($2)
people gotta come to terms with the fact that we can't get all the luxuries all the time anymore. this is like two weeks of food. (some more some less)
I kinda wanna do this, I mean buy this stuff and see how long. Can stretch it. But I live with roomies and I'm not sure how down with it they'd be.
Atomic shrimp on youtube dose some very strict budget challenges (going back a few years) and some losser ones lately. I've wanted to try something similar for a while.
i mean i'm doing it right now because of poverty reasons. it's really not bad, especially if you enjoy routone. just your meals will go from tasty crunchwrap supremes to kinda bland but easy.
Either groceries are WAY cheaper where you are or you live in the USA and are using a very different dollar that's worth way more than my dollar, but that's a great grocery basis either way. Obviously you need to vary the vegetables sometimes for nutrition reasons.
You can remove the blandness by splurging on a different bottled spice or sauce when you can afford it, and rotating through those with your meals.
I live in the USA and none of those prices conform to reality as I experience it. Every single one of those prices is low.
I live 25km from a major city in Australia and I would pay an absolute minimum of $101 AU for those grocery items, none of which are rare or difficult to obtain here, and I omitted the treat. That’s a minimum of $72 US with today’s exchange rate, and I actually trust my country to have a functioning food safety division. Even so I’m not actually convinced you wouldn’t die of malnutrition or mercury poisoning eating that much tuna and zero greens for an extended period.
“We can’t get all the luxuries all the time any more” there are ZERO luxuries on that list my friend and while I’m glad you felt able to survive on it when you made that post I really hope you’re getting more and better food now and are not experiencing related health problems.
Obviously most of these prices are high even for the cheap stores, but this one got me:
2lb ground flaxseed ($4)
I do not believe that there is anywhere in the entire world, besides an actual flax farm, where you can buy two POUNDS of ground flaxseed for less than ten pounds of potatoes.
(The carrots and potatoes are close to accurate here, but that's it. For the rice and beans, that's almost right for one pound, not four. And I live in an area with a low cost of living in the US. So neither this, nor the lister, has any bearing on OP's prices.)
It’s amazing just how few groceries $50 of groceries is
