@iamthepulta

Who were the lesbian blood sisters?

In the 80s, the AIDS crisis was devastating the world of GLBT people - as the acronym read at the time. Gay men were banned from donating blood, which was desperately needed by patients dying from AIDS. The fear around HIV was so great that doctors and nurses refused to even enter the rooms of AIDS patients. These patients were often abandoned by their families in their dying days. There was a crisis was in the GLBT community, and so lesbians stepped in.

Lesbians organized blood drives in order to give blood to AIDS patients who desperately needed it. These blood drives attracted dozens, if not hundreds of lesbians at a time who all donated their blood. They called themselves the Blood Sisters, and they organized regular blood drives for at least 4 years. HIV patients needed frequent blood transfusions due to anemia induced from the virus, and so lesbians provided this blood.

In addition to blood drives, lesbians also took place as physical caretakers for gay men with AIDS, who were often abandoned by their families and even nursing staff who refused to go into their rooms. Lesbians held hands, fed, and took care of them.

In order to honor the efforts of lesbians during the AIDS crisis, the GLBT acronym was changed to LGBT, with lesbians deliberately at the front. Lesbians were a crucial part of the fight against AIDS, and this change would immortalize it in our community.

Minnesota’s Giant Rainbow and Leather Pride Flags

June 28, 1998. Both flags measured approximately 50 feet wide and 75 feet long.

Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters

In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.

To be very clear: only the rainbow flag is older than the leather pride flag.

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

Is that why so many novels from before about 1940 feature a lengthy and often-extraneous prologue in which the author explains how they came to be acquainted with the protagonist of the novel, and the circumstances under which said protagonist related the entire story to the author, How I Met Your Mother-style?

That's a related device, yes; it's basically splitting the difference by retaining the conceit of the omniscient narrator, but reassuring the critics that there's no need to get their underpants in a twist because there's actually a very good explanation (which will now be set forth in excruciating detail) for how the narrator came to know all this stuff.

What’s up just a reminder that the Hula Girl stereotype can go to hell and is in part responsible for Hawai’i being the tourist destination and getting invaded by rich white people, and for Hawaiian culture being disrespected and appropriated

Here’s a few sources on the topic:

How America’s Obsession With Hula Girls Almost Wrecked Hawai’i (the site is weird but the research is legitimate, gives a good overview of the issue and references a lot of sources that are harder to get your hands on read: books)

“Pop” Goes Hawai’i: The Twentieth Century Origins of Tourism in Hawai’i and the Impact of U.S. Pop Culture on Women in the Islands of Aloha (this one is very long but a really good read)

Misperceptions of the “Hula Girl” (this one is a personal essay but it’s an entry in the University of Hawai’i’s academic newspaper)

Cool cool so its Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month so I’m gonna uh. reblog this

Also if you don’t have the time and/or energy to read through these articles lemme give you the basic breakdown (I’ll try to keep this short, but I’ll put it under the cut because it’ll probably still take up space)

happy yuri night everybody

This is.....niche. Do period-appropriate chickens even still exist? Idk anything about chickens. I like the fancy ones.

Period appropriate chickens ("heritage breeds") do still exist, and even include some very fancy ladies, such as:

The Brahma, a popular giant known for its massive meat production and comically large eggs.

The cochin, seen here with gold and black 'lace' pattern

The barred plymouth, an incredible forager for lightly wooded terrain

The fayoumi, often regarded as The Oldest Breed of chicken

The wyandotte, a particularly good forager as well as a bulky, meaty bird.

The Minorca, a Spanish bird with stunning black feathers

And of course, the famous indonesian ayam cemani, which has black meat and bones

Old timey chickens often ARE the 'fancy' ones!

Received an incredible email from someone at the Museum of Natural History regarding Nellie, one of the first hairless cats ever photographed

“I did some digging into the museum records and found that we are still caring for Nellie's remains after all these years.

Unfortunately, as is sadly too common with old museums, most of her history had been lost over the past hundred+ years and was no longer a part of her records. However, because of your video I was able to pull together documentation from your sources and sent them along to the person in charge of the mammal collections and we have added her history back into the records. It is possible that without your video Nellie's history may have been lost forever, and that her body may have remained labeled with a simple number and not by her name. Now she has both.”

This is her public record: https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/mammals/?ark=ark:/65665/30bc945ca8ce94a97a4d453ea2b051b96

This is so cool!!!! We found her after like 100+ years!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHH

The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”

“I was hoping they’d beat me and forget about it but to my horror they stuck my work up on the fridge”

Reading a book on sea monsters on ancient maps and I thought this was such a funny way to put it. They couldn’t even afford sea monsters :///

Shears

Viking, 800-1100 CE

today's children are gonna become teens and clown the shit out of us for 'eepy' and 'blorbo' but they'll say it in cocomelonese so we won't understand them

today’s eepy blorbo is yesterday’s heckin doggo is last week’s smexy bishie

I hate that you're right and that I understood all of that.

My new, totally uneducated guess for why humans tell stories is to keep them from getting bored and cranky while following a gazelle for four hours. No deeper mystery or meaning. Some folk needed a distraction while they tried to catch dinner so they just made some shit up. The end.

The equivalent of listening and singing to songs on your way home so you don't fall asleep at the wheel.

For millennia upon millenia, humans have had to yell creatively to keep on task 

theres a theory that the reason there are so many characters in folk tales who weave/spin is because weavers/spinners were bored while they were doing the repetitve work that doesnt require much brian power for experienced workers. e.g. the greek fates, rumpelstiltskin, sleeping beauty pricking her finger on a spindle.

so the weavers/spinners were telling stories to pass the time and then they were like 'yo but what if WE were in it.'

also interesting that making up a story as you tell it is called 'spinning a tale'

in Australian Aboriginal English, telling a story is also called "yarning."

going back to the singing bit, there’s a LONG history of work songs--both singing and whistling--being used by agricultural societies, hunters, sailors, etc. These songs could be used as a form of communication and time-keeping, but often also resulted in longer narrative songs involving folk tales & motifs. 

Most surviving work songs are only a few centuries old (such as Yankee Doodle, believe it or not, which probably started out as a 15th cent Dutch harvest song), but the practice itself is probably much, much older. As in, earliest-agrarian-societies old. As in, hunters-and-gatherers old.

Interestingly, singing predates language (and may have contributed to the development of language), and probably predates Homo Sapiens--our hominid ancestors may have been singing and whistling for millions of years before our species even existed! But as language developed, you better believe we hit upon the kickass combo of song-as-a-form-of-storytelling, and have been using it ever since to keep ourselves entertained during work and leisure hours.

We learned to Sing before we learned to Talk.

I’m just gonna sit and think about that for a minute

In all seriousness, here are a few resources I think are helpful with regards to understanding just how thoroughly Henry Kissinger screwed the world over:

I truly think understanding Kissinger, the way he thought, and the things that he did, are all indispensable when it comes to understanding the modern political climate and how foreign policy works in America and therefore, by necessity, in the world at large. The sheer amount of damage he was responsible for should never be underestimated.

I'm a survivor of the terror attacks who lived 4 blocks east of the World Trade Center. I lost my home that day, spent years homeless and destitute, and I carry a Zadroga Act diagnosis of 9/11-connected PTSD. If anyone who's doing this RP needs character coaching or if you need help with authentic scenarios, I'm available for consulting services at reasonable rates. DM me here or leave your number on the men's room wall at any leather bar and it'll get to me in 24 hours. Happy 9/11 y'all, and remember fireworks are unsafe and illegal in most jurisdictions.