One of the contractors at work drove past my shack on a forklift yesterday, stopped, backed up to my window and said, “hey, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?”
My knee jerk response when asked this, even if it’s by a companionable dude old enough to be my dad, is to go, “uh, nah-” and then ramble uncomfortably until someone stops me-
-which is what I started to do, only to be cut off by Contractor saying, in an embarrassed rush, “some of the guys were asking me because you and I talk sometimes, but I didn’t want them to hit on you at work, so I told them that you Worship the Devil and would Hex them if they tried. I’m sorry.”
Which leaves me wheezing helplessly, trying to get my shit together, because this is honestly one of the nicest, most hysterical things I’ve ever heard someone say to me.
Oblivious to this, Contractor then follows up with, “and they were like ‘forreal??’ so I was like, ‘yeah, she’s probably a sadist, too, you can tell by her jewelry. She’ll stab you or something.’”
And tbh I can’t even come up with anything witty to say in response, so all I manage to choke out is, “pleASE LET THEM CONTINUE TO THINK THAT, I’M BEGGING YOU.”
And Contractor just smiles and is like, “Okay! I just wanted to let you know!” before driving off with his forklift.
Like?? Thank god for Contractor tbh. He’s an angel among men, and I hope the rest of his life is filled with prosperity and happiness and like, that he finds $20 on the ground every week for the rest of his life.
Update: Every time Contractor sees me, he does a little Devil Horns gesture at me and its adorable.
Update the Second: I saw Contractor while doing my tour and he told me that the guy that asked if I was single was around, and that if I saw him, I should just make complicated hand gestures at him while I walk by to scare him off.
A pair of researchers at Temple University has found evidence that suggests Neanderthals mated and produced offspring with anatomically modern humans multiple times—not just once, as has been suggested by prior research. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, Fernando Villanea and Joshua Schraiber describe their genetic analysis of East Asian and European people and how they compared to people from other places. Fabrizio Mafessoni with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology offers a News and Views piece on the work done by the pair in the same journal issue.
In recent years, scientists have discovered that early humans moving out of Africa encountered Neanderthals living in parts of what is now Europe and Eastern Asia. In comparing Neanderthal DNA with modern humans, researchers have found that there was a least one pairing that led to offspring, which is reflected in the DNA of humans—approximately 2 percent of the DNA in non-African humans today is Neanderthal. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence that suggests there was more than one such encounter. Read more.
I am honestly not sure why the original ‘just once’ hypothesis came into existence, or what the belief was before ‘just once’.
Humans, as a species, will mate with anything that will hold still long enough, and they’ll do it again if it’s interesting the first time and no permanent damage is sustained in the process.
I’m going to file this under the ‘look, we know it’s a water-is-wet thing, but we had to get the empirical data first, okay’ category.
The other day a white customer was mimicking the way a black co-worker talked over the phone to another co-worker, and when he asked her to stop she said “oh I bet your black too” and he’s like nah I’m white, you’re just being awful and I’m hanging up
It’s that easy
When people think empathy w/o personal association or investment is strange, it’s because they have none.
I was talking with two other white people about a community of white supremacists who lived in the area, and I said ‘man those people scare me,’ and one of them was like ‘why? it’s not like they’re going to come after you’ and I was just like….
My husband was trying to console me the night Trump won, and he said “We’ll be fine.” I was like a) if he causes a nuclear war, we won’t be and b) short of that, sure we’ll be fine, but how many people won’t be?? Including people in our own family who aren’t white??? The point isn’t us, it’s everyone who’s not a middle class white person in an opposite-sex marriage!
I remember telling my friend a story about my other friend who was trapped at a dinner with a donor to the theatre company she was part of (she and another actor had been picked up, they were miles from their housing, this was before Lyft, etc) and how the hostess was bigoted in every way you can imagine and I swear every time I mentioned something this old lady had said, my friend would be like, “Is your friend x?” I was finally like “She’s a straight white lady why the hell does she have to be a part of those groups to be offended??”
It’s shit like this that makes me think empathy and compassion are actually super powers.
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