more brain flotsam

Hedgehog-shaped jar, Neolithic period (3500-3000 BCE)

Too many beds

Accidentally kidnapping a mafia boss

Really nice guy who hates only you

Academic rivals except it’s two teachers who compete to have the best class

Divorce of convenience

Too much communication

True hate’s kiss (only kissing your enemy can break a curse)

Dating your enemy’s sibling

Lovers to enemies

Hate at first sight

Love triangle where the two love interests get together instead

Fake amnesia

Soulmates who are fated to kill each other

Strangers to enemies

Instead of fake dating, everyone is convinced that you aren’t actually dating

Too hot to cuddle

Love interest CEO is a himbo/bimbo who runs their company into the ground

Carrying stuff is huge.

If you can put meat in a bag, you can carry more meat. If you can put something like nuts in a bag, then nuts abruptly become a food that you can bring back to the tribe or save for later and not a food that you're required to eat on the spot because they are tiresome and stupid to carry by hand. In both cases your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better.

If you can put your baby in a bag, you now have both your hands free to stick a spear into things, pick nuts, fish, dig tasty cicadas out of the ground, etc. Your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better, and so did your ability to defend yourself while you do it. (And let's face it, your babies were already getting downright ridiculous in terms of the time it takes them to be fully walking-ready, due to brain size and being essentially premature; inventing Multitasking With Baby is like, pure survival at this point, and your way to do that is to create a specialized bag.)

If you can put water in a bag (first water containers very well may have been animal bladders or stomachs, not pots) you can bring water to your sick tribe members and they have a much higher chance of recovering.

And then you have elaborations of the basic "thing that contains objects" idea. If you make an exceptionally loosely woven bag and put it in the water, you can on occasion finesse some fish into it. And then you have delicious fish. If you put yourself in a loose and flexible bag of animal skin, your tribe can operate in the cold better, which changes your entire migration pattern and opens up new environments to you. If you make a hard container and fill it with water and put it over your fire, you have invented a new type of cooking that unlocks whole new food types, such as vegetables that need softening in order for humans to eat them. (Of course at the same time your stomach is becoming steadily more dependent on being able to fuck with your food in this way, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the less energy you spend on digestion, the more energy you have to spend on other things, like brains. And big brains are good for unlocking whole new levels of communication, allowing for fantastic new levels of foraging cooperation, passing knowledge through generations, mate selection, and even various sorts of mental recreation where you imagine something that you don't see, and then convey that to your fellow beings.)

LOKI’S HAIR FLIPS - SEASON 1

Big Bird has been waiting for the store to open for a very long time now. He’s a patient bird, and he knows about waiting his turn, but his watch has the big hand on the three and the little hand on the nine and he’s pretty sure that Alan usually open the store when the little hand is on the seven.

Finally, when the little hand goes all the way to the four, the door opens.

“Hi, Big Bird,” Chris says, his eyes red and puffy. “We aren’t going to open the store today.”

Big Bird doesn’t understand; Hooper’s store opens every day. “Why aren’t you opening the store, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I need beakpaste, I’m all out.”

Chris just looks sad. “Big Bird, did you hear about The Snap?”

“No,” Big Bird says, and the way Chris is talking is very scary. He feels like he might need to sit down. “I don’t even know how to snap!”

Chris steps out form behind the door and gestures for them to sit on the stoop. When they’re settled, Chris takes a deep breath before he speaks. “Well, a bad man named Thanos came to Earth. Do you know about Thanos?”

“Yes,” Big Bird nods He heard some of the grownups saying that name. “He fought with the Avengers.”

“That’s right,” Chris says. “And the Avengers lost their fight. Sometimes, even when grownups try really hard, they can’t do all the things they want to do, and sometimes that means that bad things happen.”

“Did a bad thing happen?”

“Yes,” Chris says, taking Big Bird’s wing in his hand. “Because of Thanos, a lot of people are missing. And Alan is one of them.”

Big Bird has to think about that for a moment. He went missing one time, when he was a blue bird in a circus, but his friends found him and brought him home. But something about Alan’s face tells Big Bird that this isn’t the kind of missing where your friends can find you.

“Is Alan dead, Chris?” Big Bird asks. “I remember when Mr. Hooper died.”

“The honest answer is that we don’t know. He might be. Or he might just be missing.”

Big Bird tries to understand that. “Missing?”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “He might come back some day, and he might not. We just don’t know.”

Big Bird wants to cry. He loves Alan, and he doesn’t want any of his friends to be missing. “Is anyone else missing?”

“Yes,” Chris says. “Some of your friends may be, or their parents, or yours cousins and uncles and aunts. A lot of people are. And it’s very scary.”

“What can we do?”

Chris is crying a little, a few small tears pooling at the side of his eyes, and Big Bird wants to do something, wants to say something, but he kinda feels like crying too, and doesn’t know what will help. “I don’t know,” Chris says. “I think the only thing we can do is be here for each other, and love each other, and take care of each other. When things are scary, and when bad things happen, the most important thing to do is look around at the people who are still here, and try to do your best for them.”

Big Bird nods. “Hey Chris?”

“Yeah, Big Bird?”

“Do you want a hug?”

Chris nods. “I would very much like a hug, thank you.”

less unstructured time than ever, constant 'extracurricular' obligations cutting into time spent socializing, exploring, relaxing.

more supervised than ever, not allowed to take public transport or spend time alone in public spaces (previously the norm for teens and pre-teens, until media sensationalism made hypervigilance the norm). not allowed to be around peers except when adults are available to supervise/drive.

(despite the fact their parents are working more than ever? bc our whole culture around employment is abusive and exploitive. fewer and fewer families can afford to have parents at home, even as kids are allowed to do less and less without adult around.)

capitalism run amuck + defunding of parks, libraries, etc means it costs money just to exist in public, which is fucking nuts. (it also costs money just to get to public spaces. our world is less walkable than ever and public transport programs are constantly sabatoged. no wonder when kids are desperate to get their driver's permit--at extra expense and risk.)

and when kids do try to spend time away from home, they gets accused of loitering???

you've built an environment composed of nothing but soulless strip malls and chain coffeeshops, and decreed that kids who spend time there are a "nuisance." literally where the FUCK else are they supposed to exist? at the parks & sports fields you stopped funding? at the libraries you closed on weekends? at the movie theaters & arcades & restaurants they can't afford? on the streets they cannot drive on, on the sidewalks that lead nowhere, and where you have banned bicycling & skateboarding & rollerblading & existing for any length of time?

kids these days want to spend time outside, time in public, time hanging out with friends in person. kids these days do not want to constantly rely on the internet as their main source of socialization & leisure. but you have stolen all their options.

Grammy's Cucumber Salad

-2 cucumbers, between 10-12" long

-1/2 large sweet yellow onion

-1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

-1/2 cup sugar

-3/4 cup sour cream

-2 tablespoons mayonnaise (optional)

-2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill weed or 1 tablespoon dried dill weed (optional)

-Salt and pepper to taste (start with 2 teaspoons each)

Microwave the sugar and apple cider vinegar for between 1 and 2 minutes until sugar is dissolved, stirring at least once halfway through. Set aside to cool while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

Peel 4 strips off the cucumbers if you want some peel, peel completely if you want none. Slice in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Cut each half into thin slices no more than 1/2" thick. Cut the onion in half from pole to pole. Cut the root and stem off the half you are going to use, then slice the half lengthwise. Then slice each half crosswise into thin slices, preferably a little smaller than the cucumbers if possible.

Combine the sugar-vinegar mixture, sliced cucumbers and onions, sour cream, salt and pepper, and dill and mayonnaise if you're using them. Taste salad and adjust vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper as needed. When you're satisfied, cover it and refrigerate it for at least 2 hours. Take it out half an hour before you want to eat it for maximum flavor.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

Dinosaurs Smelled Magnolias by Dalton Day