So,,, At Work Today I Was Chatting With This Customer, A Lady Who Had Her Two Young Daughters With Her

TIL, the residents of Cheran, Mexico armed themselves and kicked out the ruling cartel as well as every politician and policeman. It now functions as a legal self-governing indigenous community with a crime rate near 0%

via reddit.com

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. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“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. 

Someone: Thank you!

Me: Of course!

(Not ‘you’re welcome’, not ‘no problem’, nope, I say ‘of course’. I can’t figure out if it sounds weird to people or not....)

Astronaut tweets

one of my favorite astronomy facts is that the earth would become a black hole if you crushed it down to the size of a marble

Humans are awesome

USA TODAY

Scientists created the world's whitest paint. It could eliminate the need for air conditioning.

The world's whitest paint has been created in a lab at Purdue, a paint so white that it could eventually reduce the need for air conditionin

Wake up kids, new extreme paint dropped

I feel kind of bad for the new girl marrying into my family. not because there’s anything wrong with my family, to clarify, but just because there’s so many of us and even we have trouble keeping track of each other.

like, I met her and she was super sweet, and then she asked her fiancé how he was related to me, and he just kinda stared at me and said, “um... I’m not sure, actually. I don’t know. we’re... cousins?”

and then we started trying to remember how we were related. eventually I was like, “his mother and my grandmother - no, I mean, his grandmother and my great-grandmother were sisters. right?” I say to my cousin. he shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “You probably know better than me. that makes us, what, third cousins?” and I’m like, “I think it’s second cousins once removed...” (tbh, I’m not actually sure if my understanding of the family labeling system is correct.)

and this girl is just looking at us, a little nonplussed, because I’m at her bridal shower and her to-be husband isn’t even sure how he’s related to me, and there’s dozens of people at the party and not even all of us are there, and her wedding is literally next month and she is never going to remember all of us by then. if ever. (lol I still mix up some of my own cousins)

@4humanexperiment4​ You have something of a point, sometimes bad social skills can be mistaken for harassment. Just last week, a much older man gave me a compliment in a weird context, and I and the girls around me weren’t sure what to think. I asked someone, and it turned out he was mentally disabled. So yes, that does happen. But let’s be real. That kind of thing is the exception, and it is extremely rare. The vast majority of the time, when an older guy is crossing a younger girl’s boundaries, it’s because he’s a creep. 

So let me be clear. This instance was not one of those rare exceptions. This man’s intentions were absolutely deliberate and sexual in nature. There was zero ambiguity in that regard. He was not awkward about anything, he didn’t look confused when I jerked my foot away from him. He knew what he was doing. 

With that said, I’m not necessarily accusing him of being a rapist or anything. I didn’t get the sense that he intended to hurt me or get violent. But I did feel very uncomfortable, confused, and self-conscious. It was not okay.

His actions were completely inappropriate, not least because: 1, he was a complete stranger who felt he had the right to make comments about my body and touch my foot (which was just flat-out weird) without any indication from me that that was okay; 2, he was significantly older than me; and 3, I was working.

So he may not be a rapist, but he is someone who would sexually harass a stranger, a teenage girl. Don’t excuse him.

(1/3) So, the store I work at just moved to a new location where there's greater foot traffic. Today was my second day there, and my first shift manning the store alone. I’m 18, by the way. Towards the end of the day, this guy came in. Sweaty from a run. Seriously muscled, maybe mid-to-late-twenties. Anyway, he started talking, being kinda friendly and joking, and also I had the impression of flirtatious too.

(2/3) I was, you know, wearing my ‘customers’ face. Anyway we’re chatting, I’m telling him about our soaps, etc. Then, he kinda stops, looks me up and down, and says, “You know, you have a great body. Do you work out?” And I’m like, ugh, internally. I shrug and tell him I do ballet. I go back to talking about the products, kind of just, you know, moving away, but he kept moving closer to me, getting within about a foot of me.

(3/3) We talk for a little bit more about the products, then he looks down, says “Wow! Your feet are so small! They’re tiny!” and then he knelt down and he grabbed my foot around the heel and lifted it up to examine it. I was so startled I nearly kicked him, but I just ended up just jerking my foot away. He stuck around for the rest of my shift (half an hour), and said he’s planning to come back and see me again. Any advice, anyone?

Okay that is seriously creepy and I’m so sorry you experienced this. Touching you without permission is harassment. A couple thing to do if he comes back in, optional, of course:

1. Immediately alert your manager or another person on staff. Tell them he has come in before to bother you, touched you without your permission, and makes you uncomfortable. Allow them to handle him while you wait in a back room.

2. If you do not have another person working with you, be sure to keep your distance from him. Stay behind a counter. If he lingers, inform him your “boss” has a policy against loitering, and you’ll have to ask him to leave if he isn’t shopping. If he inquires further, say that the door “has a counting metric, to see who enters and leaves without a purchase, and it affects your formal review”. (A retail shop I worked at before had this, it’s real tech). This is to encourage him to leave.

3. If he strikes up casual conversation about yourself, or asks your number, work in that you “have a boyfriend”. Creepy men often respect the “authority” of a created man having “ownership” of you more than your own bodily autonomy. This can make you safer and deter him from returning.

4. If he touches you again, tell him you are going to have to ask him to leave. He will likely do a big show of “wow you’re making something out of nothing!!” Calmly ask him again to leave. If he seems aggressive, remind him of the “cameras”. It doesn’t matter if you actually have cameras.

5. If he continously shows up to bother you, make sure a manger is on shift with you to deal with him.

6. If he ever follows you home, or shows up anywhere else in your life, call the police.

I hope some of this helps!