its weird how much bullshit there is about how to be a good parent and what to do and what not to do, and really basic tricks like babies want to be swaddled and if you hold them at a 45 degree angle they’ll stop crying is never mentioned, even though like every gramma probably knows this

This is honestly what I fear will happen every time I hold a baby. My innner monologue is just “don’tdropit don’tdropit don’tdropit don’tdropit don’tdropit don’tdropit don’tdropit oh god what if I shake it”

IS THAT WHERE THE WORD “LOO” COMES FROM!?!?!

I was thinking the same. That’s some old-timey scat porn.

The painting is “La Toilette intime (Une Femme qui pisse)“ by François Boucher (1970). The guy was pretty famous back in the day and was known for standing on the strange intersection between Rococco and porn.

There is a wonderful (and true) story about Queen Victoria visiting Cambridge and, viewing the picturesque River Cam (which was pretty much an open sewer in those days), inquired as to what were those pieces of paper floating in the river. Her companion, a Master at Trinity, said very tactfully that they were notices…

This was the John Snow that knew something.

THANK YOU. I had no idea how proper bathroom procedures went about in those times. I’ll never look at gravy boats the same way.

It’s called a bourdaloue, and you use it like so:

Honestly, I don’t even want to go back to 1995 when I lived in Japan without the Internet or a computer or a cell phone. My small Gaijin commune of friends lived for care packages of VHS tapes and magazines. We were like apes who could read Rolling Stone and watch X-files.

One of my favourite quotes is that if we went back in time, we wouldn’t be able to stand the smell. If past people travelled forward to us, they couldn’t stand the noise.

I’m more interested in how a proper woman in Victorian times (think Jane Austen novels era) would use a “bathroom” at a guest’s house. Elizabeth and Jane are visiting the Bingleys for tea and cake. Jane feels a rumble, she has to shit and soon. The carriage ride back home is like 2 hours long on bumpy roads. What do?…

I wonder if that fake Victorian lady collects her poo in the basement for authenticity’s sake?

Flush toilets, vaccines, penicillin, birth control and tampons are things we don’t often take time to appreciate but life without them isn’t pretty. That’s why I’d choose a holodeck over a time machine in my nerd fantasies.

This image really gets to the heart of what kickstarted the real change in public sanitation - cheap microscopes. They not only gave scientists the ideas that go into germ theory, but once they became inexpensive enough to be readily available, a certain number of interested laypersons could see for themselves what…

I LOVE THIS! Sending myself a whole bunch of links to read up tonight...

Look, if you don’t want to have a life-long commitment, do you, but let’s not harp on long-term marriages and assume that they’re all sexless or joyless or whatever. At my wedding three weeks ago, we said till death, because this man is my chosen family. I would not leave him just as I would not leave my sister. I’m…

Exactly - Marriage right now is not permanent. I can end my marriage any time I feel like it. There is a process but it’s not like I would be forced to stay with my husband if I no longer wanted to be married.