Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a blog.

Tens of thousands of years ago people foraged and hunted for their food and ate whatever they could. Among their forage were wild cereals, which included the ancestors of modern cultivated wheat, barley and others.

People like sweet things. Grains are starchy, but if sprouted they start converting those starches to sugars, so people would've left grains in water to sprout. These sprouts are also easier to digest, thus more nutritious, which bestowed an invisible advantage on those sprouting their grains.

If grains are left in water too long, however, they begin to ferment. Alcohol is produced. People like alcohol.

In ancient Mesopotamia the fermented grains were experimented with, resulting in an early form of beer. The process of making that beer was quite complicated and involved a combination of sprouted and mashed grains.

People wanted beer all year round, but early beers did not have long shelf lives and the grain could only be harvested at certain times. So the ancient Mesopotamians invented a way of storing the ingredients for beer.

It was made of the grain mash, honey, dates and spices that were fermented to make beer. For storage, prior to fermentation, the mixture was baked dry, cut into smaller pieces and baked again to remove all water. This produced bapir, a product very much like biscotti, which could be stored for later rehydration and fermentation. Sometimes it was eaten instead.

I've made bapir, and I've eaten it. It is brittle but delicious. It's also a form of unleavened bread.

Bread was invented as a way to store the ingredients for beer, which was most likely a development from a chance discovery. Leavened bread (that is, with bubbles) may well have been discovered when a mixture like that for bapir was accidentally allowed to ferment before baking. Yeast is responsible for both alcohol production and leavening.

In fact, lots of folks believe wine and mead (which predate beer) spontaneously fermented. And once people went "holy shit this sweet stuff makes my head fuzzy if I leave it out for a while!" They just started doing it on purpose for trial and error. Noone is 100% certain how beer was invented exactly, but the logic train is basically Sweet turns to Booze when Left Alone. (We did not discover yeast NOR the molecule of Ethyl Alcohol until the 1900s). After we got a handle on beer, it wasn't long before we realized: Grain can be made into beer if left alone in a bucket BUT ☝️ hot makes it not liquid. And boom. Bread. (And since alcohol evaporates roughly 50 degrees (F) before water, it no longer got you drunk)

It's also largely believed that many cultures' agricultural revolution was kick started in order to make larger amounts of beer/grain based alcohol. Grains are significantly faster, cheaper, easier, and higher yield than honey and grapes, so beer was cheap. Wanna make more beer? You need more grains. Wanna make more grains? Well, gotta settle down in one place and grow them. En masse. On purpose.

Students: ok

Student 1: Hello. I am the president of the United States.

Student 1: I’m the president of the United States. How can I help you?

Student 2: I’d like to make a complaint about the Vice President.

Student 1: Okay let me just get out my chalkboard where I tally complaints about the Vice President. Let’s see, that makes five… hundred! What’s your complaint?

Student 2: Well you see, I’m here to assassinate you, but I don’t think that guy should take over when you’re dead.

Student 1: Okay let me make some calls. Beep boop beep boop beep beep beep. Hello? I’m here with— What’s your name?

Student 2: I’m William Shakespeare.

Student 1: I’m here with William Shakespeare and he convinced me we need to replace the Vice President. When? Let me ask. — When were you planning to assassinate me?

Student 2: I mean I was thinking like, as soon as I was done talking to you.

Student 1: Okay sounds good. Yes we need to replace him right now, one moment. Beep beep boop beep. Hello? You’re fired. Bye. Ring, ring. Oh, it’s my assistant again. Hello? What’s that? Oh, they want to know if you’re the same William Shakespeare who wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Student 2: Yes, that’s me.

And you have your staff play with their kids while you hold them in the tiny restroom as they come completely undone because they just found out that their golden boy husband is having an affair with the someone he's been doing residency with for the past three years.

He confessed that he'd rather be with the other woman but she's of a different faith and it's more important to have kids than to be happy. And no. No he will not grant her a divorce. And he will not stop seeing the other woman - because he's a man. It's his right.

TRUE story.

Also - She was NOT THE ONLY ONE to fall to pieces in our store for similar reasons.

I loath the ideology of "tradwives". It is a false doctrine preach by Patriarchy not a divine being.

It is the nature of evil to hide this way.

Married out of college, 4 kids, he spent 15 years building up his career while she took care of the house and the kids. When he was earning $600k a year suddenly he started to pull away - she wasn't as pretty anymore, the kids were loud, the house was a mess... She wasn't good enough anymore. He got himself a flat. He got her me and my precedessors to help with the kids. No, they can't divorce, that would make him pay her money for the kids and he didn't like that. Every once in a while a bill would be unpaid. My weekly checks would bounce. We lived in a $1,5mil house around DC and our gas or water was turned off more than once.

Somehow he was always out of money.

By accident she learned from a friend of a friend that he was actually seeing a young lady lawyer for a few years now. It wasn't her, it wasn't lost interest. He was just a piece of shit.

Thankfully, she had family that took no shit and they stood behind her and borrowed her money for lawyers to force the divorce now that she had proof of him cheating. She's spent tens of thousands to get there while he was resisting every step of the way - because without divorce he wouldn't have to pay her alimony, he could just throw scraps whenever he wanted and still pretend to be a good dad.

She's spent tens of thousands and two years to free herself from this man, and when she could finally go to work (thank fuck she finished college) she was earning $25k a year.

She only managed to get away with the support of her parents and family. Through the au-pair grapevine I've known other families like that. Too many. Lady down the street tried to commit suicide when same happened to her - she was from Taiwan and had no support to get free. And people around scorned her for being "dramatic" - women who held on to their places with their fingertips talked shit about her, because their own husbands would never...! Right?

This? Is why conservatives want to take away no-fault divorce--because if some dude says no to a divorce and you don't have any (IRON-TIGHT) evidence of cheating? Then you're stuck in that situation and he doesn't have to pay a drop toward you and your kids. He can go get a flat, fuck his mistress, and you will starve with your kids until you can get some kind of proof of him cheating and a judge who likes you.

Now imagine all of this horror movie shit, AND you can't open a bank account without this piece of shit opening it with you. That was what women dealt with until about the 70s when we were finally allowed to open bank accounts with a man's signature.

That is what conservatives and fundies want to take you back to. When this shit was just the fucking norm.

There are old white guys still alive who remember who damn nice it was when a woman couldn't open a bank account without a man's signature and his dad could go live a double life with a mistress with zero repercussions and oh how they slather and drool for those times. And how they have waxed poetic about these halcyon days to their desperate daddy-issues sons now eager to please and without the social skills or emotional maturity to understand the fucked up nature of it all.