Alara doesn't actually hate Tumblr anymore

Two children are spanked. One grows up believing that it's good parenting. The other grows up recognizing it as abuse.

Think about how each one views the world in general.

The one who supports spanking believes in the just world theory, in which bad things only happen to those who did something to deserve it. Since they don't see how cruel the world is, they have no objections to having children. In fact, they spent so long tolerating being oppressed and hoping to one day become the oppressor, that they now can't wait to have children and abuse them.

The one who opposes spanking can't even process how cruel the world is. They're overwhelmed by how parents can scar their children for life, come up with the stupidest justifications for it, and still receive support from others. They also see many other examples of cruel people with power receiving the utmost compassion while the vulnerable people who they terrorize are seen as deserving of it. They can't understand how people got this cruel, and they can't figure out how to convince people that cruelty is wrong. Because of how cruel this world is, they refuse to bring a child into this world.

Some people especially want to bring children into the world because they want to make the world a better place for their own children than it was for them.

One could argue just as convincingly that going along with cultural expectations is favored by evolution because the cultural expectation is that you have kids. If you think about having kids or not as a serious question, some will decide not to, but if you never thought about it and just kinda drifted into it, you definitely will.

And then you look at me like I'm the dumbest person alive because no, it does not hit different when it's a cheese sandwich, it just becomes an incredibly obvious and tautological thing to say.

if you are doing any creative project with someone else in which money will be involved, make a contract. Doesn't need to be super formal. Get something laid out in writing that very clearly indicates what the person you are asking to do something is responsible for, the timeline in which they're expected to complete it, and the compensation they'll get for doing so.

"oh but we've been best friends since eighth grade" make a fucking contract.

"oh but this probably won't make much money anyway" make a fucking contract.

"oh but I don't know all that legalese" there are tons of pretty accessible templates available online if you research, just make sure it's one that suits your needs and you understand what's in it (it can be written in normal language without legalese, as long as it's clear), and make a fucking contract.

There's William Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

In DC Comics, we have Metropolis, Gotham City, Ivy Town, Midway City, Gateway City, Central City, Coast City, Star City, etc.

There's Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon from "A Prairie Home Companion," anyone?

To start off, some facts:

-White wine is made from sweet pulp inside of the grape (minus the seeds).

-Red wine is made from both the skin and the grape (and the seeds and stems…sometimes? Can’t remember).

-Tannin is the substance found in red wines, coffee, dark chocolate. Tannins are responsible for the bitter taste in those foods.

-Tannins are found in the skin of the grape, as well as the seeds and the stems. Therefore, most red wines will have tannins, versus most whites will not have tannins.

-Red wines vary in level of tannins, depending on variety of grape, climate, and fermentation process. Pinot noir tends to be very low tannin. Shiraz/Syrah, choice of poison for our beloved brunette surgeon, is very heavy on the tannins.

-Some white wines (most commonly Chardonnay) are aged in oak barrels instead of metal containers. Oak barrels have tannins, which seeps into the wine during the fermentation process. That’s why Chardonnays tend to be “drier” aka it has tannins.

-White wines like Sauvingnon Blancs are usually fermented in steel barrels (aka no tannins. Aka usually very fruity and light and sweet).

Your ability to taste tannins is genetic.

There is a genetic marker determining whether your taste cells are sensitive to tannins.

Basically two people can drink the exact same wine and have wildly different reactions because: 1. Person A can’t taste tannins, so they taste the actual wine flavor. 2. Person B can taste tannins, and that tends to overpower ALL the other flavors in the wine. Basically all they taste is tannins and none of the wine.

I am super tannin sensitive, so if I drink a wine like Cabernet Sauvignon (very tannin heavy, aka “very dry”, it tastes like bitter ethanol alcohol to me, whereas my best friend can’t taste tannins so the same wine is maybe a little bitter but they can actually taste the grape and different flavors. To her, a wine like Sauv Blanc is too sweet, tastes like sugar water. But to me it tastes good.

So unless it’s the taste of the alcohol or all wines you hate, chances are you might hate the taste of red wine, especially the heavier red wines, because taste the tannin overpowers everything else. And all you taste is bitter bitter ethanol bitter more ethanol. 

More tannin info: -Tannins bind to fat.

-This is why tannin heavy wines are recommended with fatty foods (Shiraz and steak). Whenever you eat food with high fat content, the fat builds up on your tongue. A sip of red wine will bind with the fat on your tongue and clear it away. That’s why the sip of wine between bites of fat heavy foods is considered a palate cleanser.

-By that logic, this is why white wines are recommended with low fat foods, like fish. Salmon is fattier than most fish, which is why Chardonnay (tannin heavy white wine) or Pinot Noir (low tannin red wine) is recommended with salmon.

-People who are sensitive to tannins can drink tannin heavy red wines with fatty food and generally the wine won’t taste gross. The fat on your tongue (from that steak) will bind with the tannin and neutralize the tannin taste. Aka the only time I ever drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz is with a steak or heavy, creamy pasta. Aka never bc I don’t often eat either.

-The reason dairy helps coffee taste better is because the fat in milk/creams binds with the tannins in coffee and neutralizes the bitter taste. This is why people who can’t taste tannins can generally drink coffee black without milk (sugar is a different story). It’s also why almond milk in coffee is the worst idea (almond milk is already bitter and has no fat).

More wine facts: -90% of the “aromas” of wine are marketing BS

-You know the labels that say like “cherry with a hint of blackberry?” There’s no real way to infuse cherry or blackberry into grape wine without screwing with the fermentation process. It’s all created by the wine marketing industry to sell you win. Sometimes if you smell cherry before you drink the wine, you might taste it in the wine (because majority of flavor comes from smell). Or if you think there is cherry flavor in the wine, your brain can trick your taste buds into tasting it.

-The only true flavors found in real grape wine are grapes (obviously), oak/earthy flavor (the barrels), vanilla (barrels, oak sticks), tannins. (There are a few others but can’t remember. I think maybe cinnamon?).

-People’s perception of wine often affect how good it tastes to them. Social psychology studies show that people will rate the exact same wine differently if they’re told the wines are different in price. (They rated the more expensive wine as tastier).

(Side note: if you do order a white wine that’s too dry for you, order an accompanying shot of Saint Germaine or other elderflower liqueur and mix it with your wine little by little until you like the balance. This will boost the alcohol content a bunch, so be careful, but it will also sweeten the wine and add a pleasantly floral, fruity overtone. I did this for a friend of mine who only drinks dessert wines when she stopped by unexpectedly and all I had on hand was super dry stuff.)

For a truly sweet wine, look for an ice wine or a moscato - these are wines that actively taste sugary. A riesling or a gewürztraminer will not taste sugary, but neither is it likely to be bitterly dry - riesling is the sweeter of the two and the safer bet for sweet; gewürztraminers are “complex” wines in that they can range from dry to off-dry to sweet depending on preparation. They tend to have a lot going on, flavor-wise, at least in my experience.

So there's this woman I follow on YouTube named @aketchjoywinnie, and she lives in a traditional village either in or near the border with Uganda. She does a lot of short videos on the local culture and diaries going up through her current day-to-day, which is that she has a suitor she likes and is hoping the tribal elders approve the match.

So I'm sitting here crocheting and watching YouTube shorts and she just straight-up rewired my brain chemistry. She's explaining how dowry works, and then she said "in some western cultures, the dowry can be an expensive ring."

HOLY FUCK

Like

She's not wrong

She's absolutely not wrong

We tend to view an engagement ring these days as consumerism for consumerism's sake but it was historically a way for a man to show he had the wealth to care for a wife, and, should anything happen to him, it was something she could sell to support herself through the mourning period while her family helped her get everything back together.

"If you can propose with a dowry of a ring, why can't you propose with a dowry of fifty goats?"

SHE'S NOT WRONG.

There are a number of ways money can change hands at a marriage. Sometimes it goes to the couple, to help them establish themselves, sometimes it goes from one family to another.

My brother in law's wife grew up in rural China, an only child (of course). When he traveled there to meet her parents, he understood that he would be expected to provide a substantial gift to her parents, enough to help ease their old age. They were Chinese village middle class, but he's urban American middle class and thus far wealthier.

He thought he might have to buy goats, but it turned out her parents wanted a boat. A nice little fishing boat with a motor and fish-finding sonar.

Bride price says "women are highly valuable. If you want our daughter, you must compensate us for the loss." Dowry says "women are a huge burden. We will pay you to take our daughter off our hands." They are actually enormously different and have very different implications for women.

Her culture may call it dowry when they speak English, but the British, who for obvious reasons invented most of the words we speak when we speak English, had dowry as a cultural thing, and when they encountered societies that did the opposite, they didn't call it "male dowry" or "reverse dowry" or something, they coined a completely different phrase. (A phrase that itself carried sexist implications, as it was positing that women in that culture were property that could be sold... in most cultures with bride price, it is not thought of as buying a family's daughter but as compensating them for losing her labor. Which just goes to show you that people who have dowry find it very hard to comprehend women being valuable in a culture.)

Anyway, as a native English speaker, I wouldn't call it dowry even if she does, because the word "dowry" has a specific meaning in English and what she's talking about is actually neither dowry nor bride price. It's the man paying the woman for her companionship and labor, or, viewed another way, it is the man expressing that he can take care of the woman, as the woman in the video said. It's given directly to the woman on marriage, not to her parents, so it's not bride price... but because it's given to the woman and not to the man, it's not dowry.

(Another interpretation of dowry, more charitable, is that it consists of things the woman will use to make a household -- cups and plates, cutlery, blankets, etc -- so it's not a gift to the man, it's the property she brings to the marriage in order to immediately get started on the work of a wife. But I have also heard this referred to as a hope chest, assembled by a girl as she grows into a woman in "hope" that someday she will marry, in which case it's not a dowry because the girl herself is building it and she will keep it, she'll just share it with her husband.)

What critters are common in your neighborhood, but really exciting to visitors?

I was something like 50 years old when I learned that not only are they not a worldwide phenomenon, they aren't even universal within the US. I hear the West Coast doesn't have them.

Everyone should come here and experience a night with fireflies at least once. They're bugs that glow, and they land on you and then fly off harmlessly, and they're pretty to look at. You can catch them just by putting a hand near them so they land on it. Then you let them go because the point to catching fireflies is just to catch them, not to keep them.

The specious argument they make is that misandry is not a thing because men are not systematically oppressed. Setting aside the fact that the patriarchy actually hurts everyone, you can say, yeah, as a gender men aren't oppressed, never mind the statistics that show that 80% of all murders are murdered men... but see, that's not what misandry would mean.

Misandry and misogyny are cognates to misanthropy, hatred of humans. Misanthropes do not systematically oppress humans. They do not have broad power over humans. The mis- or miso- prefix literally means "hatred of", and says nothing about it being systematic.

As it happens, women are systematically oppressed, so these people are pulling a bait and switch, claiming that misogyny means "systematic oppression of women" rather than just "hatred of women". If it meant that, then yeah, misandry couldn't exist. But it doesn't. Imagine a society where women are completely and wholly equal to men, you could still have a misogynist. (Though it'd be a lot less likely.)

Misandrists don't have systematic power over men in general. But boy oh boy, they sure have power over trans people (if they're cis). And if they're trans women, they have very little power, but they definitely can use what they do have to do a lateral oppression on trans men, enbies, intersex people, etc. If they're trans men... well, I feel deeply sorry for them, but they can use what little power they have to be One Of The Good Ones (tm) and argue that trans men aren't oppressed, which, um, dude, what if you developed uterine cancer? And no one would see you for it because you're a man? And insurance wouldn't cover treatment, because you're a man? This is not a hypothetical, men have died of this. Trans men are definitely oppressed, and if you don't believe it, and you're a trans man... wow, you've led a pretty charmed life so far, aside from the shit you get just for being trans at all. Did you ever talk to a different trans man, not from your socioeconomic class, before flapping your lips to betray your own people?

Like.

Wouldn't it have been a huge problem for a trans man to be property of a cis man and not allowed to wear pants?

Has it... just never entered their head, at all, that when women are oppressed to the point where they're not permitted a life free of strict social control, where they must depend on family or a husband for a living because they're not allowed to work... that this affects trans men as much as it affects cis women? Because how the fuck do you transition when you aren't allowed to live on your own, control how you dress, manage your own money...

I guess in the 19th century maybe you could run away to sea? Good luck never getting caught when you try to have a piss, though. And people in that situation now don't have that option.

I have quite a bit if difficulty discerning pleasant from unpleasant sensations. I can tell if I absolutely fucking hate a smell, taste, sound or colour, but I have more difficulty telling what is good or bad on a more subtle level than that. I know that I do prefer some things over others (Zambrero's burritos are much better than my home made burritos, for instance), but I generally have a hard time telling in the moment, especially when it comes to things that are going to be combined together to make other smells and flavours. I tend to prefer things that are simple and familiar unless they're Super Good, and since i don't know how to make the spice blends reliably Super Good and very few spices are familiar to me (didn't eat a whole lot of spices growing up), I'm mostly avoiding things I hate while making a flavour that's more interesting than plain tomato.

Kind of seems to me like people saying you need to put pasta in boiling water, when it cooks just fine after tossing it into cold water too, idk.

Or not burning your rice due to just putting it in copious amount of water, which is wrong somehow too.

Adding way too much water to rice will end up with rice porridge -- mush that used to be rice, but each grain absorbed too much water and now the whole thing is glop. I don't necessarily hate rice glop but a lot of people do, and I can respect wanting a texture where you can taste that it's grains instead of slush.

Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.

If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.

And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.

So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:

If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.