This reminds me of the “penny auctions” of the Great Depression.
I’m reblogging this again, because I forgot to mention;
My family has lived in Iowa for, oh, a hundred and twenty years? Maybe a hundred and thirty.
My grandpa and grandma and great grandpa and grandma were part of the penny auctions and bullying bankers and mortgage holders into behaving.
Grandpa was 6′ 3″. Great grandpa was an inch shorter. Both were big old farm boys, who could heft an eighty pound hay bale in each hand and toss them up on the hay wagon.
Grandma told me a few times about how they went around with some of their buddies to ‘explain things’ to mortgage holders during the Depression, and how the farmers would all get together for coffee and settle among everyone in the township how no one was going to bid on the Miller auction but the Millers, and oh, if everyone could chip in fifty cents or so to loan the Millers to buy their land and equipment back at the auction, that’d be the Right Thing To Do.
This is still a point of pride for many farming families around here, decades later.
“Genghis Khan sired four self-indulgent sons who proved good at drinking, mediocre in fighting, and poor at everything else; yet their names live on despite the damage they did to their father’s empire. Although Genghis Khan recognized the superior leadership abilities of his daughters and left them strategically important parts of his empire, today we cannot even be certain how many daughters he had. In their lifetime they could not be ignored, but when they left the scene, history closed the door behind them and let the dust of centuries cover their tracks. Those Mongol queens were too unusual, too difficult to understand or explain. It seemed more convenient just to erase them.”
—
Part of the introduction to The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued his Empire by Jack Weatherford.
People usually underestimate the amount of damage that one idiot can do to an organization or a team. Thus, they tolerate him/her much longer than it’s safe to do.
street illusionists making beautiful forests in the middle of the city
ethically questionable luck and love charms (there’s some argument as to whether all of them should be banned or just the ones that fake full love rather than the ones that bring about consideration)
dwarves running the metro and the underground tunnels better than any human
elves living right on top of skyscrapers and planting trees everywhere and just glaring down human officials who tell them it’s a safety hazard like it is a safety hazard to point that chainsaw at my trees don’t u dare
teenage mages being sick of accidentally frying the circuits in their phones when they get mood swings
earth elementals being horrified at cut flower arrangements and growing the flowers into patterns that encourage particular types of sprites
cupids who don’t understand modern love as well as they think they do and getting shouted at by human friends when they hit one-night-stands or platonic friends with arrows
cupids then working rlly rlly hard to make platonic affection arrows and proudly showing them off
faries living in alleyways making careful safe spaces with farie magic for homeless or anyone in crappy situations,
@SaraSoueidan: Dear men, This is how you greet a veiled Muslim woman (a Hijabi). Hand on your chest, not offering to shake hers. 🙋
so prominent BLM activist deray mckesson just retweeted this which i think is super cool for various reasons :)))
I did not know this. Is it OK for a non Muslim woman to shake hands with a Hijabi? Or do we do the hand on chest thing too?@popcanpoli
hey so i don’t wear a hijab and i’m not muslim so i definitely don’t have the authority to answer this question (or any other questions i’ve been getting abt this) (i’m just a lil canadian politics blog i didn’t expect this to blow up lol)
BUT here are some tweets by the original tweeter (who wears a hijab) that clarify some things
one:
two:
three:
This is also good if you’re meeting an Orthodox Jewish person who’s not the same gender as you! Not all Orthodox Jews hold by this restriction, and many consider it a permissible exception to shake hands in a formal greeting context; I’d guess this is parallel to Ms. Soueidan’s last-quoted tweet above. And as that says, the sensible thing is to wait for initiation.
DO YOUR PART TO CHANGE THIS STATISTIC WHEN IT MATTERS IN NOVEMBER!
are u fucking kidding me hey kids following me please make sure yall are voting in this fuckin midterm jesus louisus (with all due respect, of course)
REMEMBER THAT THIS COULD BE LIFE OR DEATH
FUCKING VOTE
Friendly reminder that a mediocre Democrat candidate is still literally leagues better than anyone else who has a chance of winning (aka the Republican candidate who’s bending over backwards for Trump, because all the never-Trumpers are retiring or got primaried out).
Friendly reminder that Ted Cruz’s Texas Senate seat is considered vulnerable this November. Every vote counts regardless of where you live.
After what happened in 2016 and how much I pleaded with people to vote, if you don’t this time and it goes the wrong way – well I have to say get off my fucking lawn because you just gave away your own future.
people talk about women being ‘emotional’ and ‘overreacting,’ but you don’t see a woman making an arch-nemesis out of an albino whale and obsessively chasing it down like a lunatic for 585 pages
since i made this post, i’d multiple women telling me they would absolutely hunt down a whale for an extended period out of a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance, and i want to apologize for engaging in gender stereotypes
Artisan Scribbles 