Any time we look at the life of a transgender man throughout history, there are a number of hurdles we must first overcome. There are many reasons for a person assigned female at birth to wear clothes associated outside of that assigned gender. Historically, there is a precedent for women to dress as men to gain economic status or to more comfortably live in a relationship with another woman. It’s important to untangle these threads in order to find the motivation. Victor Baker is a clear example of how these threads can weave a complete life story. If given access to our modern labels, we can see how he might have identified. (Read full article)
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
My recipe for spaghetti with tomato sauce, based on tonight’s performance:
1. Set pot on range.
2. Turn heating element to high.
3. Retrieve can of diced tomatoes from pantry.
4. Realise that can of diced tomatoes is four years past its best-before date.
5. Spent ten minutes rummaging in pantry to find slightly less expired can of diced tomatoes.
6. Finally locate can of diced tomatoes that doesn’t outgas when opened.
7. Upend diced tomatoes into pot, which I totally forgot was already over heat and has now reached a dull red glow.
8. Dodge with surprising agility for a thirty-five-year-old with a desk job as a sudden steam explosion propels sizzling chunks of tomato eight feet through the air, liberally splattering the spice rack on the opposite wall.
9. Decide to have spaghetti with basil instead.
That isn’t half as bad as the time I put my cast iron pan on the stove to finish drying it before I applied vegetable oil, went to work on a physics problem while it warmed, and forgot it until the pan began to smell.
Realizing I’d forgotten it and worrying that it might rust if I left it to cool and then forgot about it until the morning, I dumped some oil into it.
i am so fond of this whole series of San Francisco city scapes. especially this one. they make my eyes want to jump up and down and my heart goes “aaahhhh.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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