My ground meat patty don't want none unless you got buns, hun.
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
This massive immigrant broke several records for the U.S. Olympic team — and for the flag. →
They changed his name on Ellis Island, but this larger-than-life athlete still held the flag high for his new home nation.
Read MoreThese struggling students finally found success in an unlikely place: their phone screens. →
"We need to evolve and adapt to learning that best fits our kids — not the people serving, teaching, administering, and tutoring the kid."
Read MoreOn “Hamilton,” Brexit, and Irish Independence →
In June 2016, my wife and I headed to Ireland for a week-long vacation. It was my first time on Emerald soil, despite my unabashed affection for my cultural heritage. While I certainly wish I’d had the chance to visit earlier, there was also something poetic about making the trip during the centennial celebration of the Easter Rising, the first major conflict in the struggle for Irish Independence.
We certainly didn’t expect to hop on a plane to Ireland the day after the Brexit vote. Nor did I think anything at the time about the fact that I listened to "Hamilton" for the first times ever as we drove through Ireland that week, and in that specific political context.
So naturally, this got me thinkin'...
Americans view death way differently than other cultures. This woman wants to change that. →
"Americans want the good without the bad," Ebenstein says. "Life without death. Pleasure without pain. Light without dark. But that doesn’t exist."
Read More5 images of Victorian England that will make you rethink LGBTQ history. →
Officially, there were no homosexual men in Victorian England.
But that's just because the word "homosexual" didn't enter the language until the mid-to-late 1890s. ("Transsexual" and "transgender" would catch on even later.)
There were, however, men who engaged in sexual and/or romantic relationships with each other.
Read MoreA Louisiana Literacy Test For Black Voters, Circa 1960
You have 10 minutes, and if you got one answer wrong, then sorry, you can't vote today.
Granted, the above test is not explicitly racist. But even the worst apologist can't deny the inherent classism of it. Technically speaking, this test was only administered to voters who couldn't prove a certain level of education. Which is kind of arbitrary, no? That's not like carding someone to buy alcohol. There's no visual indicator of someone's education, is there?
Well, sure, if we consider that education is a privilege, not a right, one that is much more easily accessible to people of a certain class. And in Louisiana in the 1960s, most of those people "of a certain class" were of a certain pigment as well...
(and hey, don't get me wrong: there a lot of dumb people in this country, and that they have a voice in our so-called democracy could be seen as an impediment on progress. But as appealing as it sounds to oppress those faces, suddenly your progressivism borders eerily on fascism...)
Queen Elizabeth I's Irish Language Primer
It's a fairly well-known fact that the British empire all but obliterated the Irish language. But at some point in the 1560s, Queen Elizabeth I decided that having a few words of the Irish might come in handy with the whole let's-conquer-the-whole-damn-island-and-convert-all-the-heathens-to-Protestantism thing, and so she recruited an Anglo-Irish nobleman named Christopher Nugent to put together a basic guidebook for her to use when trying to speak with the savage inhabitants of the island. Some of the pages from this document (seen below) remain in the collection of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and are one of the oldest known attempts at translation between Irish, English, and Latin.
Clearly, it's kind of weird to be talking about Great Britain on St. Padraig's Day, but I thought this was a fun way of sharing some basic Irish words and phrases with all 3 of my loyal website followers. 'Cause who knows — it might come in handy if you're, I don't know, trying to communicate in code in order to protect yourself from a corrupt government. So here you go!
And to top it off, here's some Irish tunes that I've recorded over the years, for St. Paddy's Day enjoyment. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!
Plus a few poems I've written for the occasion...
Oh, and one last thing...
Was George Washington Actually Transgender?
...No, probably not, because this is clearly just a political smear campaign, but still. I guess it's nice then that whoever wrote this piece of propaganda was kind enough to misgender him at least. That's something, right?
A discovery has been made on this continent that will astonish the whole world. Our great and excellent General Washington is actually discovered to be of the female sex. This important secret was revealed by the lady who lived with the General as a wife these 30 years, and died the 6th instant at the General's seat in Virginia, to the Clergyman who attended her.
What is extraordinary, the last knew his circumstance previous to the ceremony of marriage, and both agreed to live together from motives of the most refined friendship. Perhaps there are fewer influences in female nature of such rigid charity than of manly fortitude.
Anyway, happy (almost) birthday, Mr. President. Er, can I say that?
The First Ever Photograph of a Human
Here's some fun weird history for your Friday enjoyment!
From Wikipedia:
"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839 in Paris, was the first photograph of a person. The image shows a street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show.
The 5 Stages of Inebriation (circa 1868)
More proof that Australians are crazy. From the State Library of New South Wales:
The photographs illustrate drunkenness in five stages, played by a male subject in a studio. Possibly commissioned by a local temperance group for educative purposes, the photographs may also have been used by an engraver for illustrations. The penultimate frame of the drunk in a wheelbarrow resembles S.T. Gill's watercolour 'Ease without Opulence', 1863 (PXC 284/30). The printed studio mark on reverse reads "Photographic Artist. C. Pickering, 612 George Street, near Wilshire's Buildings, Sydney"
It's also possible that these images were commissioned in response or relation to the Drunkard's Punishment Bill, introduced by New South Wales Premier James Martin in 1866.
Now that all that history's out of the way...I don't know, I think it's pretty accurate.
The Strange Forgotten History of Thomas Edison's Anti-Gravity Underwear
So this is a thing that happened.
Okay so it didn't actually happen, but in 1879, The London Punch was so fed up with Edison's ubiquity that they published this series of cartoons, figuring that their lighthearted attempt of futurism really wasn't that far off from reality.
I, for one, am rather disappointed that Edison's anti-gravity underwear never actually came to fruition. After all, it's not like Edison ever shied away from stealing other peoples' ideas and claiming them as his own...
Why Men Shouldn't Be Allowed To Vote
Who says women's rights activists don't have a sense of humor? Judging from this satirical piece from 1915, posted on Twitter by iRevolt, suffragettes knew how to make a good joke.
Writer, poet, activist and general badass Alice Duer Miller outlines five (obviously tongue-in-cheek) reasons why men should not be afforded the right to vote. These reasons include the fact that "men are too emotional to vote" and "because a man's place is in the army." The piece was published in Duer Miller's 1915 book of satirical poetry, "Are Women People?" based off of her New York Tribune column.
"Regulations Governing Mountain Climbing Expeditions in Nepal Relating to Yeti" (1959)
Here's a fun little gem, courtesy of Retronaut: advice from the US Embassy to American tourists in Nepal regarding the Yeti, from 1959. I especially appreciate the 3rd rule, wherein the ambassador acknowledges that, yes, okay, we don't actually have any proof of the Yeti's existence yet, but you still have to follow these guidelines, and also if you happen to find any substantial proof of Yeti claims, would you kindly pass them on to the Nepalese government?
I don't know, man, I smell a conspiracy. Unless...that awful smell is actually the Yeti itself?
A Driving Tour of Boston, circa 1964
Not much has changed in the last 50 years, including Bostonians' horrible driving habits.
Top Ten
It's that time of year again, when every website and blog and news outlet dials up their completely arbitrary criterium and publishes their "Top 10" lists for the year. This year I finally pulled off something I've been meaning to do for a while: a Top 10 list of "Top 10" lists of the year. A comprehensive list of the best of the best of the "Best Of" lists. ME SO META.