Those Who Came Before

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925)

"Woman in bed", sketchbook page, 1872

éowyn pretended to be dernhelm, a man. to fit in, she must have worn men’s armor. so the armor in the illustrations is normal for rohirrim.

therefore, all the rohirrim rode to war just like that:

male or female

hero or villain

sea or land

even in the snow

This is the world capitalists want to return to.

One such worker for the purpose of this post we shall refer to as Dave.

Dave is a very quiet man. He confesses that if conversation happens too quickly and for too long he gets tired so we often work in silence. He's very polite and good natured but it's obvious that he would happily live and work alone for the rest of his life given the option.

He's very much in the previous generation of ranger, a practical man in his fourties or fifties happy to be kept physically busy for a day and then be sent home with some pay. I had to show him how to use a work issued smart phone.

Meanwhile the rest of the team is made up of the current generation of rangers; openly nurodivergent queer women in their twenties or thirties who work this job because it's the only setting where we can vaguely look sane.

So Dave sticks out a bit. It's really nice when he opens up though because he's an impulsive individual when left to his own devices and has plenty of stories to tell if the mood takes him. I really like working with Dave.

Anyway, one day we've got a job that takes a three hour hike to get to and early on the topic of deer comes up.

I hadn't realised this was the first time we had discussed deer, but blatantly it was. Dave's entire demeanour changes, there's a bit of passion in his voice, but it's also hushed as if he's talking about something sacred.

"Deer are my favourite animal." He says.

I'm also eager to hear Dave talk about himself, so I encourage him to say more.

"I'd love to be a deer myself."

And more

"If a genie offered me the opportunity to become a deer I'd take it. I wouldn't even stop to ask what the price was."

And more

"Sometimes I feel like I'm a deer having a dream about being a human.*

And there I am, a long time commuter to the therian/otherkin community keeping up the encouraging face of someone being politely interested, knowing that this man is straight up a therian with no frame of reference.

And I decided that I wouldn't push the subject outside of the bounds of what Dave is comfortable with, I wouldn't try to teach him the terms "Therian" or "Otherkin" but absolutely I would talk with this man as if he's a deer.

For a few bucks a month you could become a Triple-A member and yeah, roadside assistance was one of the perks. BUT ALSO you could pick up the phone, call their 1-800 number, and tell the human operator who answered that you were planning a road trip.

They'd get your starting and destination address. Ask a few questions: what kinds of hotels you liked, preferred gas stations, any interest in touristy things?

Then in 7 to 10 days you'd get a thick package in the mail of carefully customized maps. Each map was the size of a paperback book cover, perfect for holding in the passenger's or driver's lap. Each was enumerated starting at #1 and ending at #whatever number of minimaps the trip required, with a hand-drawn highlighter path drawn on the map marking the route from one edge to another; entrance & exit points for that section of the route.

Motels, gas stations, and (if requested) tourist traps were indicated in color coded ink -- again, by hand. Sometimes detours were drawn in red marker, overriding the printed map because AAA kept up to date on road closures & regional disasters.

These maps were customized for your particular trip, and were invaluable since GPS did not exist. Unless you were familiar with the local region, the alternative was buying a map at the next gas station and guessing.

I was told by a taxi driver that in the old days they had to basically memorise the Refidex to pass the Taxi Licence test, since they weren't allowed to use it during the test.

BUT searching for a picture of the 2023 Refidex led me to this!

Brisbane and environs in 1951! Fully digitised with machine readable text and high quality images! I can buy it for 19.50 - nay, I'm GONNA buy it for 19.50! (Although I wish it was $19.51).

Holy cow, they've also got 1926.

London cabbies who hold The Knowledge experience changes to their brains that are explained in every Neurobiology for Babies course. It’s a wickedly difficult skill: rather than the pizza delivery people in the OP, starting in one defined zone (pizza place) and radiating out from there, a cabbie starts a route in any position and has to navigate across a partially-medieval city with no grid pattern, deranged place names, and not many bridges across a very large river. It would be useless to refer to a paper map, so cabbies were required to have all the Knowledge memorized. This means that the paths and optimized routes would have to be at the top of one’s brain, ready for instant access. As a result, the cabbies develop materially different brain regions as they study and use the Knowledge. They have detectable, measurable changes in their hippocampi, with an increase in grey matter forming in those who pass the Knowledge test and use it.

When asked to navigate a route between two points, they describe the mental process as instantaneous and explosive visuals: it sounds as if the map generates itself behind their eyes. (One potential tradeoff, though, is the decrease in associated brain matter in areas associated with other forms of memory.) After retiring, the brains of London cabbies would appear to return to “normal” - when not exercised, the brain region dedicated to holding the Knowledge seemingly rewires itself - which is exciting because it indicates that brains are still capable of rewiring and adaptation even in later life.

That’s all very interesting for neuroscientists, which is why it’s in all the textbooks and underpins a lot of our understanding of brain plasticity (adaptability) especially in old age. After all, it’s only ever adults who go through this process: babies rarely do a PhD in becoming a human Google Maps.

Some science-fiction series, like Dune, have explored the idea of no-longer-human navigators. still, it’s under-explored. Today, researchers are interested in seeing how London cabbie brains could help with Alzheimer’s research, or other progressive brain conditions that deteriorate the hippocampus.

The point of them is to make them shelve stable longer. Its very cool. So yeah its not "cheese" but in the same way that cereal isnt wheat. Its made with cheese, there are just other things added so it could be shipped across a stupidly large country.

And so the two surgeons filmed a handover after heart surgery and sent it to the Ferrari pitcrew who were told to critique and improve handover process

And from this:

we got this:

The error rate during patien handovers dropped from 30% to 10% with the F1 informed protocol.

I love this!

And it that it wasn't a one and done.

The doctors went to the race tracks to watch the car changes and the pit crews went to the hospitals and watched a live transfer and offered suggestions and they kept working with them to improve.

After there was a successful improvement of the most vital metrics of a handover of a patient from surgery to ICU, the pit crews also worked with other hospitals for other procedures and it's now a whole thing of trying to apply the specialized, streamlined and speedy teamwork and nonverbal coordination of pit crews to other high-risk fields.

November 1978. Downtown Denver. A line of women stretches around the city block, some clutching envelopes, others gripping checkbooks, a few carrying cash they'd hidden at home for years.

They weren't there for a sale or a concert. They were there to open bank accounts. At a bank that finally treated them like adults.

Just four years earlier, American women had won the legal right to get credit cards without a man's signature. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 said banks couldn't discriminate anymore. But laws on paper don't rewrite institutional culture overnight.

Walk into most banks in the late 1970s, and you'd find the same old attitudes wearing new masks. A woman's salary? Supplemental income. A female business owner seeking a loan? Too risky. A divorced woman trying to rebuild? Suspicious.

The system had been forced to let women in. But it sure as hell wasn't rolling out the welcome mat.

So eight Colorado women stopped waiting for invitations. Carol Green. Judi Wagner. LaRae Orullian. Wendy Davis. Gail Schoettler. Joy Burns. Beverly Martinez. Edna Mosely. Each committed $1,000 of their own earnings as seed money. Together, they rallied investors and raised $2 million to do something unprecedented in the West.

They opened The Women's Bank. Not a lending circle or a feminist fundraiser. A fully chartered, federally insured commercial bank. The first women-owned bank west of the Mississippi.

The founders figured maybe a few dozen curious customers would show up on opening day. Instead, women flooded in by the hundreds. By closing time, they'd deposited over one million dollars.

One million. In one day.

These weren't just transactions. They were declarations. Every deposit said: I trust you to see me as I am. Every new account meant: I'm done asking permission to control my own money.

The Women's Bank went on to finance businesses that male bankers had dismissed. It offered financial education. It proved that a bank centered on women's economic reality wasn't charity work. It was smart business.

Gail Schoettler later became Colorado's Lieutenant Governor. The bank eventually merged with larger institutions, as community banks did. But the message had already spread. Women across the country saw what was possible when you stop asking for a seat at the table and build your own institution instead.

Today, when a woman signs for a mortgage or launches a business without a male cosigner, she's standing on ground those eight women broke open. They didn't just start a bank. They proved that women's economic power was never the problem. Access was. And access could be seized, not granted.