"I warn you that in times of great economic chaos, especially when people had dreams of affluence that they now are not going to realize-and when they are not able to have even the choices their parents had economically-women are at risk. We will be told, "You were wrong to think you could have it all. You must repent of your aggressive ways, you must repent of your ambition." In times of fear and anxiety people will be looking for false scapegoats, false solutions, and one of those solutions will be that all of this can be solved by sending women home again."

--Betty Friedan

She originally said this in the 80s, btw.

I'm pretty sure if you're trying to pick up Hardware Store Guys being covered in sawdust and smelling like WD-40 is WHY they started talking to you. It's like catnip.

She is also over 1,300ft/400m deep at her deepest. Once she has eaten you, she will not give you back. Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead.

And when Bunjy says "the largest by surface are" what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.

She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don't even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren't "icebergs" on the technicality that they didn't calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.

(photo by Paul Berger)

She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.

(photo by George Ilstrup)

She is huge, icy, and hungry. This makes her very dangerous. Not to be fucked around with, because you WILL find out.

I don’t think people really grasp that Superior makes her own weather. There’s been days where Duluth will go from 85° to 45° in the span of fifteen minutes just bc the wind shifts. Lake effect snow can bury 2 story houses. This is usually in the UP, but if the wind is right, it’ll hit the MN shore too.

Conversely, lake effect actually makes the winters more mild right next to the shore. Like, there’s little pockets in Lakeside (neighborhood in Duluth) that can grow magnolias, and let me tell you the zone envy is REAL and it’s VICIOUS.

Second half is even better

Jesus Mary and Joseph, I clearly have zero reading skills today. CORRECTION: I waited around 6 hours just to get in. And then I got admitted after. (And what’s worse is I hadn’t eaten, then by the time I actually got upstairs, the kitchen had closed so all I got were some cups of jello and two ensures that the nurses squirreled away in their snack fridge)

dude your poem fucking bit me

#dude your dog is thought-provoking and beautiful

@antiarcticmonkeys how DARE you leave this in the tags 😂

STOP! before you decide you are irretrievably doomed, try one of the following options:

solidarity with california.

according to the results of the 2021 census:

"As of April 2020, just more than 86 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, counties that include or are adjacent to major cities with populations of 50,000 or more, an all-time high." (census results overview from The Hill)

googling shit like "why do i feel bad after hanging out with my friends" and all of the answers are either "you need better friends" (i don't; my friends are wonderful) or "your social battery is drained, you need to rest and regain your energy levels" (i don't; i've got tons of energy, it's just manifesting as over-the-top neurotic mania). why is this even happening. it's like some stupid toll i have to pay as a punishment for enjoying myself too much

I actually, genuinely think social event aftercare would fix me. I need someone to put me to bed and say "you were fun today and no one hated you"

#theres a thing called 'larp drop' thats essentially this#esp since when having a great time you might be more inclined to disregard your limits and ignore discomfort#(and forget to eat/drink if its larp whoops)#and then once you have a moment to yourself it all comes crashing in#source: once forgot to eat at larp and had a sobbing fit in my car that ended the instant i bit into a chicken nugget - @queerfarmgremlin

this is also true of festivals, conventions, pride parades, concerts, and any situation where you have a lot of fun with other people!

Literally been trying to get the phrase "Post Euphoric Depression" for those exact symptoms of fatigued dopamine&serotonin receptors.

I think the law on right to repair should give manufacturers two options: either you have to make it possible and practical for people to fix their own shit (as in, you have to sell replacement parts at reasonable prices, you have to provide repair manuals, you can't void warranties) or you have to fix your products whenever they break, for free, for the reasonably expected lifetime of the product.

my spouse and i disagree

oh my god

for people saying that context matters like whether it's hot or cold out, consider: my spouse's body temperature is at all times like the surface of the sun, they shower in molten hot water, and they lounge around the house with their shirt off, versus me shivering like a newborn baby lamb wrapped in blankets in the exact same room

I couldn’t even conceive of any possible ambiguity in this statement when I read it but the poll is evenly split so apparently people interpret this the other way more or less equally often???

(My interpretation was if you’re turning something down you are lowering whatever function it’s performing so in this case less cold air coming through the unit=temp increase)

Whereas I'm like "obviously to turn it down means to make it go lower, thus the temperature to go down." Heh.

And my brain immediately goes, "Turn it down? Do you mean the temperature or the fan?"

Having experienced a lot of it in my 20s, I think some of the worst, pettiest, most straight up this-is-just-bullying-you're-passing-off-as-praxis incidences of Queer Infighting endemic to young people can be best understood as attempts to exercise power by people with very little power.

Like you're 22, you're queer, you've just become a Marxist, the scope of World Suck is overwhelming and you have $30 in your bank account. What can you do to feel like you have any power? Well, you can try to get your frenemy cancelled for cosplaying a character from a problematic show. You can write a public callout post over someone's obviously friendly use of a slur you don't think they technically have the right to reclaim. Doing this stuff can make you feel like you have power and your actions have an impact. Unfortunately the impact in question is a negative impact on other marginalized people. But that often takes some maturity and self-reflection to notice.

I'm reminded of this post from 2017. To paraphrase, OP took part in community service via their university and part of that was cleaning the bathrooms at the local homeless community centre, which would frequently get trashed, not because the homeless people using them disrespected the work of the people cleaning them but because they had so little control over other things that happened in their lives, and the bathroom was something they could affect.

This, too, is a trashed bathroom; young queer people living through hell and having precious little control over their circumstances or the world in which they exist can affect something by using the language of social justice as a cudgel on their would-be allies, as well as getting a brief feeling of power over someone else by doing it.

It's not worth it. Don't trash your community bathrooms.