Sapphic Saturday

"How much do you earn?" "How much do you make?"

No. How much have you wrested from the grubbing hands of the capitalists? Or, flip side, how much have you stolen from the workers? You don't make money unless you work at a bank. Otherwise you're just dropping your line in the flow of capital and snagging whatever you can. But of course, it's catch & release only without a bank-issued permit.

The Texan Federation's first military act was to push the hogs out of their territory. Beginning in a line from the coast, the army drove every pig northward. They devastated the landscape, using grenades and mortars whenever they caught a herd on open ground. A few soldiers, unsuspecting and inattentive, were knocked down by a big male and trampled by hundreds of hooves. A few more were lost to equipment failure, or their own mistakes, or the mistakes of fellow soldiers. Eventually, at the cost of a few dozen people and a few thousand hogs, the herds were driven north of the Red River and west out of the Arkansas area, into Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee territories. The Texans placed landmines across long stretches to mark a northern border and block the hogs' return. For several decades the Texan military would maintain this defensive line, blocking both pigs and refugees from the north.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

Patriarchy

Child is born. Child grows up among family, cared for by family. Child reaches puberty. If child is female, child stays among family and continues to be cared for. In lower status families girl will probably be put to work. If child is male and lower status, he most often leaves family and works to live. Sometimes he leaves voluntarily, sometimes he is pushed out. If male child is higher status, he continues to be cared for by family as he pursues his ambitions in society. He will be married off to a high status female to continue the family line.

Patriarchy is both the uplifting of the high status males and the casting out of the low status males. Neoliberal ideology tells these low status males they can gain status through the market. Patriarchy keeps women at home and disempowered but generally more in community than men. Isolated women are especially vulnerable. Patriarchy tries to erase people who don't fit into the binary gender system.

“What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Now a definitively answerable question: the egg. That’s how evolution works.

tbh i think the funniest phenomena that's been happening in the last couple years is "youtuber, having gone too deep into the research hole, has been made an investigative journalist against their will"

Arguably, wikipedia is the most peer reviewed source