Mrs Soup

I’m 6’2 and weigh 180lbs

I usually walk everywhere with my headphones on, but I had them in my bag and I was reading a book on my phone instead (I do that when the foot traffic is light).  A young Latina was coming down the street as I was coming up the avenue, and when she got to the corner a few paces ahead of me, she turned to walk in the direction I was going.  We were traveling at the same speed, but since she was like ten paces ahead and it’s bright outside in the middle of the day, I didn’t feel the need to fall back or slow down to give her more space. At night, I try not to walk too close behind women just so they don’t feel like I’m any sort of threat.

We got to a corner and this dude standing outside of the bodega was like, “Slow down mama where you goin? You don’t have to work today, you can stop and speak.”

She didn’t break her stride. “I’m going to the gym.”  The Walk sign was on, so I didn’t break mine either.  

A block later, a young guy was coming toward us on the sidewalk riding his bike.

“What’s good shorty?”

She didn’t respond.

“Well you was lookin, you can say something, stuck up bitch.”

We kept walking.

In the middle of the next block, an older man was walking toward us and he put on a friendly smile and said, “Smile young lady, it’s a beautiful day.”

I don’t know if she smiled, but we kept walking. She went into the gym and I kept on toward where I was going thinking about how that was just five minutes of her day.  How many other blocks of five minutes are just like that?  

Only one of them was truly aggressive. The other two guys seemed nice enough and it felt more like a pleasant compliment. It felt like the kind of thing a guy says who argues with women online about catcalling. “We’re not all bad guys. We can’t even compliment women? We can’t even say something nice?”

No.  You really can’t.  I was annoyed in that five minutes and I just happened to be walking behind her with no headphones on.  Can you imagine those five minutes over and over every day of your life?  Nobody wants to be spoken to by strangers day in and day out forever regardless of what they’re saying.  

So no.  You can’t say anything. The quality of your life has not decreased because you aren’t allowed to say nice things to strange women on the sidewalk, but your silence greatly increases the quality of hers.  So just be quiet, and let her go where she’s going. 

So no.  You can’t say anything. The quality of your life has not decreased because you aren’t allowed to say nice things to strange women on the sidewalk, but your silence greatly increases the quality of hers.  So just be quiet, and let her go where she’s going. 

So no.  You can’t say anything. The quality of your life has not decreased because you aren’t allowed to say nice things to strange women on the sidewalk, but your silence greatly increases the quality of hers.  So just be quiet, and let her go where she’s going. 

So no.  You can’t say anything. The quality of your life has not decreased because you aren’t allowed to say nice things to strange women on the sidewalk, but your silence greatly increases the quality of hers.  So just be quiet, and let her go where she’s going. 

These rare color photos of Paris were taken over 100 years ago. 

In 1909, a wealthy French banker named Albert Kahn wanted to document the world using a new color photo process called Autochrome Lumière, so he commissioned 4 photographers to take their cameras all over the world.

One of the cities they documented was Paris.

Starting in 1914, Kahn’s photographers, Leon Gimpel, Stephane Passet, Georges Chevalier and Auguste Leon, documented life in Paris using color filters made from dyed potato starch grains.

They made these color photos over a century ago (with a small amount of color enhancing done on the original shots).

In addition to the many shots of Paris, around 72,000 Autochromes from around the globe were created through Kahn’s project.

friendly reminder that chris vaulted with ease over chris pratt after just telling him less than a minute before that he would be able to clear him if he only put his head down.

“One thing we found, too, is Chris can run very fast. He also has a very unique run. It’s almost a dancer’s run. And when we tried to double him for running, there was nobody who could run like him. They just didn’t have the same dynamics or the way he moves. He had to end up doing most of his running.”

“What we also found, is that we had gymnasts come in to do things, and Chris could do the same stuff that they could do, but it would look like Chris Evans. When the body doubles or the gymnasts or the runners did it, it just didn’t look like him. He has such a unique way of moving, and he could pretty much do all of his own physical stuff that wasn’t dangerous. Like this shot right here, we had a gymnast do this, and Chris actually ended up doing it better. That’s Chris here. He hops up on a tank and over a 12-foot wall. It looks effortless but it’s not that easy!”

“Chris worked his butt off for four months doing gymnastics and stunt training so in a scene like this he could go toe-to-toe with Georges St-Pierre and make it look really credible. Once the helmet comes off, 95% of that is Chris, except obviously for that massive aerial kick that he does. I think he did a fantastic job.”

gifs and commentary (blu-ray) above from @sherloques Rehearsal above from @dailymarvel

The really cool thing about Chris Evans is that he’s a super talented, athletic guy. He retains things amazingly well. I mean, I’m blown away. I can show him a 15-punch fight two times, and he’s got it. - Thomas Harper, Stunt Coordinator, CATWS

gifs & commentary from @bealeeve-me

I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.

He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.

“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”

His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”

I thought,  You have got to be kidding.

Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.

Virginia Hall (1906-1982): The Most Dangerous Spy of All 

Book 2 available here. Full entry on the website - with footnotes and citations  - available right here. Art notes after the cut.