The Musings of Mr K.

"Deny comfort to the oppressor.

Defend the poor and sick.

Depose the capitalist oligarchy"

This photo always cheers me up a bit. It’s a front-page article from 1955 about Christine Jorgensen, one of the first women to have sex-reassignment surgery.

Since the text is a bit small and I couldn’t find a larger copy, here’s what the small blurb says:

A World of a Difference

George W. Jorgensen, Jr., son of a Bronx carpenter, served in the Army for two years and was given honorable discharge in 1946. Now George is no more. After six operations, Jorgensen’s sex has been changed and today she is a striking woman, working as a photographer in Denmark. Parents were informed of the big change in a letter Christine (that’s her new name) sent to them recently.

yes, there are many things cursed, rhino-ways!

for instance! rhino hearing?

EXCELLENT

rhino sense of smell?

FANTASTIC

rhino vision?

ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT

rhino eyesight is is so short-range that they can't really make out any objects more than about ninety feet away, and details just straight-up elude them!

that's okay though, because if you're a rhino you can always just put your head down and charge any suspicious blurs in your vicinity, and as long as they're smaller than an elephant, you're good :)

This guy in the photo wandered into known poaching areas, and they had to airlift him to safety ASAP

They need to be transported upside down because were they in a harness, the pressure on their rib cage would crush and damage the lungs (potentially fatally). The alternative is to put them on stretchers like this:

However it takes ~30 minutes to secure a rhino to a stretcher, meaning they need to be knocked out for far longer, and the anaesthetics used can cause either respiratory depression (breathing suppression - less common) or hypoxemia (low blood oxygen - more common) - this is where being suspended upside down actually helps!

A study was done in 2015 to compare sideways lying (like on the stretcher) to upside-down suspension that showed that being upside down actually increases blood oxygen levels as it stretches open the airways, making it the safest, easiest way to transport these 1-3 ton beasts

You can read more about upside-down rhinos here!

There's a huge sense of social isolation that comes with being perceived as male, because now people are subconsciously treating me as a potential predator. All strangers, no matter their gender, keep their guard up around me.

It made me realize that there is no inherent camaraderie in male socialization as there is in female socialization—unless, of course, it's in very specific environments. And the fact I don't amnbiently experience this mutual kinship in basic exchanges anymore is an insanely lonely feeling.

Absolutely, because it's an extremely sticky issue.

Frankly, this is something I would've never understood without living the experience.

It's now blatantly clear to me that most cis men probably experience chronic emotional malnutrition. They're deprived of social connection just enough for it to seriously fuck with their psyches, but not enough for them to realize that it's happening and what's causing it.

It's like they're starving, but don't know this because they've always been served 3 meals...except those meals have never been big enough.

This deprivation comes from all sides of aisle, by the way.

In the case of women: When I'm out in public and interact with women, all of them come off as incredibly aloof, cold, and mirthless. I have never experienced this before even though I know exactly what this composure is—the armor that keeps away creepy-ass men.

As someone who used to wear it myself, I know this armor is 100% impersonal. Nobody likes wearing it, and I can say with absolute certainty that women would dump the armor in favor of unconditional companionship with men if doing this didn't run the risk of actual assault. (Trust me when I say women aren't just being needlessly guarded.)

But I only have a complete understanding of this context because I've experienced female socialization. If I hadn't, I would've thought this coldness was a conspiracy against me devised by roughly half of the human population. Even now, with all that I know about navigating the world as a woman, I'm failing to convince my monkey-brain that this armor isn't social rejection.

And as for male socialization? Again, it seems taboo for a man to be platonically intimate with men for reasons I have yet to fully understand, but I think it boils down to a) the fact society teaches boys that it's not okay to be soft with each other, and b) garden-variety homophobia. Our media only shows men being intimate with one another when they're teamed up against a dire situation, and I'd bet real money it's a huge reason why men gravitate toward activities that simulate being teamed up against an opposing force.

But men are not machines of war. Yes, testosterone absolutely gives you Dumb Bastard Brain, but that just makes you want to skateboard a wagon down a hill or duct-tape your friend to the wall, not kill someone.

The human species looks so much colder standing from this side.

I can see how men might convince themselves that their feelings of emotional desperation is personal weakness as opposed to a symptom they're all experiencing from White Imperialism. Because this human connection, this frith, is as essential for our wellbeing as water is.

It’s why I will gladly tell my friends I love them, freely give them back scratches and stuff just to help them feel connected to another human being.

kot - a regular cat

koshka - a regular female cat

kote (internet slang) - a cute chubby little guy, every single cute cat on the internet

kisa -  a pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kisunya - an extra pretty, flirtatious, graceful, cranky and haughty lady

kis’ - just a dork, controlled by aliens

kotik - a bit more disney version of a regulat cat

koten’ka - cuddly little fella, will purr and knead you to death 

kotofei - usually a big, old, extra fluffy cat, who knows a lot of bed time stories

kotyandra - fast, thin and slinky, we’re not sure if it’s even a cat 

koshak - a tough street guy, dogs fear him

kotyara - extra round, exrta big, kind ass fella. 

the list is endless.

artist https://twitter.com/Filkit1 Here is their twitter

Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are great, and I suspect it’s because they were made by someone with limited resources. But they found a way to make something good, maybe even something fantastic with those limited resources, and they wanted to write it down and share with their friends so that they could also make something out of saltines and potatoes. Recipes from the 1910s and the Great Depression are written down and shared in love.

Slavery and War are the reasons.

Okay. Maybe that’s a little too harsh to not explain… Let’s start with Slavery.

Back in the first 400 years of America being populated by white colonizers and  enslaved black folks it was mostly black people doing the cooking. Particularly in the South. Oh, for sure you’d have poor white folks cooking for themselves and their families, using traditional recipes handed down. Or making things with New World foods like Potatoes and that newfangled Corn stuff.

But particularly in the South, Slaves did the majority of cooking. And when they were freed in the 1860s and 70s, you suddenly had a mess of wealthy white folks who didn’t have a -damn- clue how to cook. You know how Tiana’s Dad started up a restaurant in The Princess and the Frog? Yeah. LOTS of former slaves did that. Used the skills they learned working for white slavers to cook banging meals they knew the white folks couldn’t cook for themselves.

It took -decades- for white folks to start getting their culinary feet back. To really understand how to cook and make recipes work.

And then you know what happened? WW1. Food shortages before the Dust Bowl happened caused people to tighten their belts and try and figure stuff out. Know what the most popular meat was on the dinner table? MUTTON. Sheep. Lamb. Delicious and flavorful and just -so- good for you with it’s healthy amounts of fats and all the luscious goodness in that nummy snackiness.

Recipes expanded. Exploded. Got shared.

Then WW2 hit. And this is where shit went sideways again… but this time? Not because of Shortages. See, Mutton was cheap. Cheap for the people, Cheap for the Government. And that made it the premier Ration for American GIs… but.

Tinned mutton is a slimy gross paste. 

And soldiers were eating it two to three times a day. No MRE packs with variety menus. Just straight up canned mutton over and over and over and over. And when they got home? They BANNED it from the dinner table. The sheep industry in the US went from top dog to bottom of the barrel. 

So once again you’ve got American Culinary Understanding flailing and reaching out for anything it can to replace a -staple- of the American Diet.

“Beef, it’s What’s for Dinner”. “Pork, the Other White Meat” “Chicken of the Sea”

Folks knew how to prepare -Mutton- and -Lamb- and maybe Chicken. And now they’re slapped with these other foods? Add in the massive changes in availability of new products (Again that are largely untested) and marketing pushes for things like Crisco or Gelatin…

See, Jell-O between WWI and the late 40s was largely used by women who had tea in the afternoons. Gelatin already featured heavily in cookbooks intended for Ladies Who Lunch.

But then you hit the late 40s and you have these harried women who were trying to put A Nice Dinner on the table for their husbands, and their husbands remember dinners where their mom had like 6 or 7 daughters to help her while the men were out in the fields, and aunties and grandmothers to hand to take the baby for a minute but their mother made two pies for supper and two for dinner, every day!*

And so these women, who now have refrigerators instead of iceboxes and have far less support in caring for their children than previous generations, are trying to put together a Nice Dinner 7 days a week. And here’s this miracle substance that can turn out these jewel-tone dinners and desserts, and they make it in savory flavors now, and it’s very modern and there are lots of recipes!

Basically, Jell-O was the Instant Pot of the post-war period. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Yeah, people didn’t know what they were doing to some extent, but a lot of people who did really needed a quick way to do things alone for which they’d had community support before.