having the power of one Gillette

They come in all sorts of styles and are cute af. Prices are also all over the place, but I've seen them reasonably priced, especially if they need reupholstery.

For a smaller footprint, there is also the telephone table, usually notable for a shelf that would hold phone books. These often get misidentified as schooldesks or lecterns. I have one similar to the last photo and used it in a bathroom for reading material + toiletries.

I also wanted to add - if you've ever seen a weird little alcove (especially around the entryway or kitchen) in an older house, odds are it is a telephone nook!

Also, the kiss was a big deal not just because it was gay but because the trans actress was HIV positive. They wanted to show the world that you can't contract HIV just from kissing someone. Bear in mind, the AIDS crisis was still fresh on people's minds in the 90s.

as a black woman, i have seen wayyyy too many of my black friends and acquaintances even as kids in school get harassed based off of appearances in sports. i’ve seen teenage boys from opposing teams yell out during basketball games that some of the black girls were “secretly dudes” and all kinds of shit!!

when i started my natural hair journey and my hair was shorter, i was treated WAYYYY differently than i am now that my hair is longer! and that’s outside of sports as an adult!! megan is SPEAKING!!!

my heart hurts every time i see someone say something racist and transphobic towards the black and brown nwsl players, and any athlete in women’s sports!! it always goes back to misogyny, colorism, and racism!

I STAND WITH TRANS PEOPLE! I STAND WITH TRANS WOMEN!! TRANS WOMEN ARE WEMON!! I STAND WITH TRANS ATHLETES!! TRANS ATHLETES BELONG IN SPORTS!! TRANS WOMEN BELONG IN SPORTS!! I STAND WITH TRANS RIGHTS!! TRANS PEOPLE DESERVE RIGHTS!!! ANTI TRANS AND ANTI LGBT AFFECTS US ALL!!!

And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.

And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?

But nope, that's not the case:

Some selections from the article:

"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

I was watching Starships, as you do, and had the thought that surely someone must have made a similar style fanvid for horses.

Many fruitless searches later, I found myself here.

MR. SPIRO: Do you give these lectures at all of your depositions? MR. BANKSTON: I do, and you can watch them.

is ESPECIALLY hilarious to me having listened to multiple depositions Mark has had to take in the Sandy Hook case, where he has needed to lecture EVERY. SINGLE. ATTORNEY. at some point in the case about how they're violating Texas Rule XYZ, because they all, to a one, did something seriously ethically questionable during the deposition.

Short answer: OP's right. Anon, please sit for a bit and think about why it bothers you that something said a decade ago, under different political conditions, that ended up being incorrect, is being critiqued. It's been ten years. Things have changed massively. It would be nice if she was right, but she wasn't, and it's time to move on. To say that Michelle Obama ended up being wrong is not the same thing as "Michelle Obama was an idiot and a bad person for having said this."

...though to what anon was saying, I have seen those takes. Not from OP, but I have seen them. Long answer is why that bothers me.

Long answer:

I think that, in hindsight, critiquing "when they go low, we go high" is good, and we can learn from its mistakes (I can't help but think of the Andor quote, "I am doomed to use the tools of my enemy in order to defeat them.")

That being said:

I think it's useful to see it in the context of misogynoir and the profound level of shit that Michelle Obama specifically had to go through when she was First Lady (and, yk, before then, and yk, since then.)

Michelle Obama has been extremely open about how nervous she is/was/has been about, for example, how she does her hair. she was always very intentional about it during her husband's presidency. there was no nonpolitical way for her to do her hair. it always had to be straight. "respectable". (white-coded. not too Black. never too Black.) Eight years of straightened hair, for him, for dignity, for "respectability."

"Respectable" Black women, especially in politics, have always been proud-backed and dignified, all the way back to Sojourner Truth. They speak truth to power and hold their chin high and they are strong, and they Always, Always, Always take the moral high ground. To take the moral high ground is essential for The Black Woman Politican. (It still is. It's still expected, and the fact of A Black Woman Politician displaying an opinion is often taken as a moral judgement of its own; if you like what she is, you agree, and it is just. If you dislike what she is, you disagree, and it is unjust. But that's a conversation for another time.)

I would actually argue that Michelle Obama did not really have a choice to say anything else. After Barack Obama made his campaign on hope and dignity (because the Black Man Politican must also always be Dignified, Stand Tall, Proud-Backed, Strong-In-The-Face-Of-Pain-And-Fear-And-Oppression), to say "actually we should sling shit at them too" would have been seen as a stain on her (and her husband's!) legacies FOREVER.

can you imagine? if she had said to fight back in the way that they are fighting? if she had said anything other than "we must take the moral high ground" to a party full of people who, at that time, had never been anything other than centrist neoliberal shits? can you imagine the abuse that would have been heaped onto her and her family, onto her husband, onto her children, onto her legacy? could you imagine the threats of violence? the rage? the "I am so disappointed in the violent rhetoric today" from That sort of white politician, who can't imagine they might have to put their figurative elbows up? it would be a stain. forever. even when we came around and realized she was right.

Even if the thought had crossed her mind (which I'm sure it did, it always does, until you put your hands down and remember that you as a Black person will only be loved as a perfect victim because if you fight back you are the assailant rather than the victim) she wouldn't have done it. It wouldn't have been seen as worth it. At the time, very few people -- especially in the political establishment -- had cottoned onto how bad it would get. At the time, he was just one man, and even the GOP was squeamish about him.

TL;DR

Whether or not Michelle Obama made the right choice, she made the choice she had at the time, and I think that all critique of "when they go low, we go high" needs to be tempered with grace and context around who said it and why. Michelle Obama is a Black woman, and Black women are not allowed to do anything other than turn the other cheek. Otherwise, you're the problem. You're too violent. You're the aggressor. Can't you see why they did this to you, it's your fault. You deserve it.