valar morghulis

incredibly

incredibly

INCREDIBLY

DETAILED!

Look, there's Notre Dame! Individual trees! Individual lampposts! Individual boats!! (Some of them even have little people in lol, though clearly not to scale)

I thought, that I've never been in the closet, but it turns out, that one must come out officially. Interviews with you after the medal race weren't a breakthrough for me. I had talked about it [having a girlfriend] before, but for some reasons it wasn't published.

positive STD statuses and/or the last time you were tested

your marriage/partners. Also, probably should be honest about going through a divorce.

if you’re not a virgin - people use this to sleep with virgins, so creepy and nasty, just tell the truth if you’ve had sex before

your drug addiction - no, not weed you morons. if you are a meth addict, or a heroine addict, etc etc, you need to disclose that before you have sex with someone. this is a big deal, and people have a lot of reasons to say “no” to sex with someone with a drug addiction that has nothing to do with their ideas of morality concerning drugs.

the last time you took drugs and what drugs - like if you took a line of cocaine 15 years ago in college, that’s not what I’m talking about. if you got high 6 hours ago, don’t try to pass off that you didn’t. don’t try to convince someone you’re fine to have sex with because you’re “def coming down.”

if you are or are not using birth control

lying about your identity. (don’t try to pick up people by telling them you are someone else entirely that is so fucking creepy)

if you want to try something unusual/dangerous during sex with them. it’s extremely manipulative to act like you’re on the same page about the sex you want to have with someone and then half way through tell them you want to cuff them to the bed or use a whip or something. it’s hard to say “no” to someone when their penis is literally inside of you, and rapists know that. So just be fucking real with people if you’re into weird kinky shit so you can have sex with like minded people instead of tricking uncomfortable people who are suddenly at your mercy.

A lot of people think the effect has disappeared today, because women typically have less common names than men - a higher fraction of men are named the absolute most popular names like John or Jack whereas women are more spread out over different names.

But it’s really noticeable how often parents give their male children meaningful names - they’ll have a historically important namesake, or be named after a great grandfather, or have a traditional name with a meaning their parents liked. That’s why the common names tend to be common. The names given to female children are chosen because they’re “pretty” names, because their parents just liked the way it sounded, or are even just nouns / adjectives like “Lily”, “Hope” or “Summer”. They emphasise that the role of the female child is to be a pretty ornament, not to achieve meaningful things or inherit anything from a namesake.

They’re often very infantilising - sure it’s cute when you have a two year old named “Poppy” or “Precious” but she’s going to have to grow up and put that name on her CV. They very often use the diminutive -ie / -y suffix (Millie, Tilly, Becky, Georgie, Katy / Katie), which is typically used to indicate something small and cute and which many women have to obfuscate in order to construct anything that sounds like a professional identity. (I know a Katie who is pretending her name is Katherine, even though it’s legally Katie, just so people won’t think she’s being inappropriately informal in a business context.)

They also highlight just how much ageism is directed at women and how much women have to struggle to keep up with fashion, even in something as basic as their names. A traditional male name like “Joseph” or “Edward” or “James” or “Luke” is fine no matter how many centuries it’s been popular for. An off cycle name might be unusual, but that isn’t a bad thing. But dare give a girl a name that was popular too long ago - “Dorothy” or “Mary” or “Dawn” or “Gertrude” - and she’ll be ruthlessly bullied in school for it because it’s a “old lady name for grandmothers”. Don’t you know those names are ugly now, undesirable, associated with old wrinkled women who aren’t sexy? You need a young, new, sexy name like Ava or Madison or Olivia - keeping in mind of course that those will be “ugly” too when your daughter gets old.

The tendency of feminine names to emphasise beauty - and occasionally sexuality, which can be somewhat inappropriate considering the kid has to grow up with that name - is taken to an extreme if you look at porn stars’ stage names, which are all things like Scarlet or Rose or Desiree or Ravyn. Femininity, taken to an extreme, always ends up being about sexual availability.

And when women do try and give their daughters unique names, so they’ll be memorable even if their surname changes, the Daily Mail runs spots to make fun of names like Nevaeh or Unique or Evylyn because apparently that’s chavvy. And maybe it is! I’m not a fan of replacing all vowels with y either! But wow, there are just no good options for women.

And of course the moment you put a recognisably female name on your CV you become less employable, your qualifications worth less. But if you have a gender ambiguous name, you’re punished for being gnc. Good fucking luck out there.

When it was popular what were the most popular boys names? Joseph, Robert, John, William, etc. Have they become old fashioned suddenly? Of course not.

It is remarkable that she had such a strong practise and had great influence at 16. Despite various disruptions that caused her to stop painting, she returned to her practise from the 60s until the end of her life.

It was within her work that Baya found freedom. The world she painted, after all, is one where women assert their individuality and are free from the men who attempt to brand them with labels, keep them inside the home, or hold them back in any way. “If I change my paintings, I will no longer be Baya,” the artist said in 1991, after her husband died and she’d returned to painting. “When I paint, I am happy and I am in another world.”