#History in my lifetime

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Thinking about ME/CFS...

I remember, back in the '80s, when the first hints of this were hitting the news, it was called "Yuppie Flu," and it was roundly dismissed (still is in a lot of places, sadly) as overly privileged, white, suburban, upper middle class women seeking attention from their doctors.

And the thing is: Long [insert virus here] Syndromes don't just effect the young, upwardly-mobile, professionals. They effect everyone.

But the suburban, Yuppie, white women were the people with enough privilege that they could go to their doctors and complain that they couldn't recover from that last flu they had.

[lady-raziel]

i can't do this anymore. i can't. i can;t.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

If They Ever Made a Historical Drama movie about the Americans with Disabilities Act

This bit from the speech by President George H. W. Bush, on July 26, 1990, would be called "Foreshadowing," and there would be an ominous swell in a minor key in the movie score:

The Administration and the Congress have carefully crafted the ADA to give the business community the flexibility to meet the requirements of the Act without incurring undue costs. Cost may be taken into account in determining how an employee is “reasonably accommodated,” whether the removal of a barrier is “readily achievable,” or whether the provision of a particular auxiliary aid would result in an “undue burden.”

Transcript of Statement By The President July 26, 1990 (From the National Archives of the United States)

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Jay-Z his second album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 November 4, 1997

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I remember, back when I was in high school (40 years ago), this mysterious "new"* syndrome trending on the news.

Because most (nearly all?) of the patients going to their doctors and seeking treatment were upper-middle class white women,** the syndrome was given the derogatory nickname "Yuppie Flu," and the hypothesis was that they were all just suffering depression because of their stultifying suburban lives. The brand name antidepressant "Prozac™" was a punchline in a lot of late-night television talk show stand-up routines at the time.

*I don't really think it was new at all. I just think social systems were changing so that more people had means to seek treatment for it.

**Again, I don't think ME/CFS is particularly limited to the Young Upwardly-Mobile Professional class of white women in their 40s; I think these were just the people with the most privilege and means to seek medical care when they couldn't "get over" a flu.

In 2016, years before long COVID was a thing, the US National Institutes of Health, the largest single public funder of medical research in the world, launched a study into a long-neglected and puzzling condition: chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME/CFS. Eight years later, the results of that study are finally out. In one of the most thorough investigations to date, researchers took a deep dive into a small group of 17 people who developed ME/CFS after an infection and found distinct biological differences compared to 21 healthy controls. "Overall, what we show is that ME/CFS is unambiguously biological, with multiple organ systems affected," neurologist Avindra Nath, lead researcher of the study and clinical director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), said in an interview with JAMA. For decades, many doctors had dismissed ME/CFS as a psychosomatic condition that was 'all in patients' heads'. Now there is little doubt: a host of biological changes underpin ME/CFS.

Continue Reading.

[laurapetrie]

She was wild and vivid in a cautious and pale world. Always burning a little more brightly than any of us around her. Then I remembered a story written by Henry James. It was the story of a young girl named Isabel. A girl who was as brave as she was beautiful, who was pure of heart and as unafraid to love. His description of Isabel mirrored that of Carolyn and I wondered out loud how it was possible for him to have known her when he wrote that story over a century ago. But, I suppose, it was because he was writing about his dream of a pure and brave American girl, who comes along maybe once every hundred years, if we are lucky. - Carole Radziwill in her eulogy for Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, July 24, 1999

[hooked-on-elvis]

Elvis Presley in 1959.

[pinnithin]

enver gortash fascinates me from the perspective of his relationship with the dark urge because like, as far as i know his alliance with them is one of the very few he didn’t actively despise. the guy was sold into slavery by his own parents (who tried to justify it by saying their child was a hateful monster and anyone would have done the same) and spent his formative years employed by a devil who gets off on gratuitous levels of suffering and manipulation. and then once he's escaped that and built himself up so he can never be used and enslaved again he meets this bhaalspawn who also had to adapt and survive a violent and manipulative environment for years by becoming the monsters who raised them.

gortash sees how the dark urge has risen to command armies and slaughter hundreds in the same way he outfoxed raphael and ruthlessly controls the people in his employ, and after earning and owning his reputation as a tyrant heres another person who might actually have like, a shared lived experience. not exactly a friend, because people like them can't afford to have friends, but someone who at least understands. and he willingly works with them on this plan to enslave the sword coast and agrees to share power with them.

and then orin lobotomizes them, puts a tadpole in their head, and leaves them for dead at moonrise.

like, can you imagine. youre working with the first person you see eye to eye with and prooooobably arent plotting to actively sabotage (or, at least would hesitate to do so) and the rug just gets yanked out from under them by their own sister, and now you're stuck with her because the plan still has to move along. and as the days go by a group of adventurers start to screw up your plot right when baldur's gate is within your grasp, and you learn that among them is your old almost-friend who you actually liked and respected - and they have no memory of you whatsoever. oh, and on top of that they're rolling with people you've actively fucked over and want to kick your ass.

did it hurt for him to learn this? did he ever think about how things could have been different? did he think, you were supposed to be my ally, my friend, someone who actually understands that becoming a monster is the only way to keep yourself safe and in control. we were going to rule together. and now you're ride or die with this squad of people you've only known for a few weeks at best, and you want me dead. you don't even remember me. you don't even remember yourself.

[something-like-a-heart]

The first major news story that I remember was the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic. I turned three years old a little under two months later, and it sparked a lifelong fascination with shipwrecks and undersea exploration.

even though she died two years before i was born, there were always tabloids in the grocery store about JonBenét Ramsey’s death and “new breaks in the case”. i would always stare at them and wonder who the pretty blonde girl was that died. surprisingly i didn’t know anything about 9/11 until grade school.

[calamitoustide]

thinking about history fic james in the current timeline scribbling poetry on the edges of his papers for work after meeting regulus not knowing where that urge came from he never had it before

thinking about history fic regulus in the canon timeline hiding away in his room afraid to go outside and face the world dreaming up visions of brushstrokes and simple melodies not knowing where those good dreams come from he never had anything like that before

[bobcatmoran]

So, with the 20th anniversary of the US's incredibly ill-advised and generally terrible invasion of Iraq, I've been reminded of where I was at the time that happened. Namely, I was in college, and I was taking a course called "Human Geography of Global Issues." The professor was a Texan, and was known for a) the fact that he loudly and proudly wore cowboy boots everywhere, sometimes capped off with a ten gallon hat — not your typical fashion at my Minnesotan college — and b) his repeated insistence, delivered in his drawling accent, that "Bush Junior is not a real Texan — the whole family are just a bunch of carpetbaggers from New England." (he was also just an absolute gem of a man — I have a very vivid memory of coming into the Geography Department offices the next year, distraught because a computer glitch meant that none of my class registrations for the next semester had taken and the GIS course I wanted to take for my minor was full — and he calmed me down, reassured me that there were ways around this for not only the GIS class but all the classes I was now locked out of, helped me navigate the system, and I got an email within the week saying that despite the GIS class having no room in the online course registration, I was now registered for it)

He was also an expert on the Middle East. And, as it became clearer and clearer as the semester went on that the then-Current Administration (which he had negative respect for) was hellbent on going into Iraq for reasons which seemed to largely amount to "Gonna finish what Daddy Bush started," he made predictions. Predictions about how easy it would be to topple Saddam Hussein and how hard it would be to fill the power vacuum. Predictions about the looming sectarian time bomb between the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Predictions about how the Kurds would react. Predictions about how the US would get bogged down and wouldn't be able or willing to leave for years and years and would, in the meantime, commit warcrimes that would just lead to the rise of new terrorist groups.

Every single one of those predictions came true.

(He also predicted in detail during one class, with terrifying accuracy and illustrations, exactly what would happen if a major hurricane hit New Orleans, which it did two years later with Katrina).

Meanwhile, on campus, a "Peace Camp" sprung up in front of the campus center, with students living in tents until…uh…ok, the goals were kind of fuzzy, but it was a fixture for the rest of the school year. At one point, the Young Republicans (all three of them :P) decided to set up a "Freedom Camp" on the other side of campus, which wound up consisting of like, two guys with signs for a single day, and which led to a sprouting of mocking signs for "Weed Camp" and "Space Camp."

Also, a group of anti-war protestors took up a station kitty-corner from campus and they were there every day until I graduated, waving signs, with cars honking as they passed.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I am a Physically Disabled (since birth) Leftist.

I was raised by a mother who was an environmentalist, back when that was a scary, political, buzzword.

I'm old enough to remember when the push for (what is now called) "Green Energy" really started to gain social traction. We were doing solar energy experiments, and making petroleum alternatives out of wood charcoal in Bunsen burners in science class (~ 45 years ago), because the consensus was that, the global economy wouldn't be able to sustainable on fossil fuels forever.

Back then, the consensus was that solar energy and wind, and geothermal, and hydro-electric could provide orders of magnitude more energy than society actually needed (even if there was less profit motive to build the infrastructure).

Anyway -- Here's my Point (finally!):

I sometimes wonder what the world would look like, today, if we had actually moved our electric grid over to "alternative" energy sources, back then.

We (might)* never would have invented the tech for high speed internet, crypto-currency, and new smart phones in our pockets every two years in the first place, because their collective energy demands would've been too high to be practical for a non-fossil fuel, non-nuclear energy grid.

But --

I have no doubt that we would still have MRI machines (never mind that they already existed, back then), and vaccines, and single-use plastics, and all the other "high" and "low" technology to keep even vulnerable people alive and healthy and thriving. Because that's worth the energy use.

Our fellow human beings are always worth it.

*Or we might have developed all of the shiny stuff we have today, but just invented them from square one to be more efficient with energy and materials.

Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.

[screamlet]

being back in a fandom where i write about american people in their 30s and 40s, i've started laughing hysterically (negative, terrified) when i remember that gay marriage in california was only legal as of 2013. and then recognized federally in 2015. that's NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING it's been NOTHING it's been FIVE MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!! i was there (an adult) and feels like it was 30 years ago and it REALLY wasn't, lol.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

This is Why July is Disability Pride Month

Thirty-Three Years Ago, today, President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (The ADA) into law; it officially went into effect on January 1, 1991.

This is the speech he gave on the south lawn of the White House right before he signed it. It was recorded by a staff member of the U.S. Justice department (uploaded to YouTube three years ago).

About 22 minutes long. Open captions in English.

We were all so hopeful and proud, that day (at least I was). I didn't realize then how much the law was nerfed by relying on disabled individuals' "right" to sue for all enforcement.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

But it's not really all that surprising, when you consider that Pope Francis is from Argentina. I remember, back in the 1980s, when there were Leftist uprisings all through Latin America, the local parish priests were often the first to be targeted by the Right-Wing governments.

Here's the Wikipedia article about it: Latin American Liberation Theology.

Rabid Joe Biden about to bomb the Vatican

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Jay-Z his second album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 November 4, 1997