Agentann

Europe protects women from gel manicures. Why doesn’t the US?

Toxic items at Costco that I would never let in my home as an naturopathic doctor. Many of you saw my Target video and asked me to do a Costco version so here it is. In this video, I outline some of the top commonly used toxic items at Costco. They include : ☠️ K cup coffee ☠️ Laundry detergent ☠️ Dish soap ☠️ Air fresheners ☠️ Cleaning products ☠️ Plastic bottles and cups ☠️ Garbage bags ☠️ Foil ☠️ Sunscreen ☠️ Listerine What are your thoughts on these items? Comment below. If you found this video helpful be sure to follow me for more videos like this. #Detox #ToxinFreeLife #HealthyMom #naturopathicmedicine #NaturopathicMedicine #HealthTips #healthymom #healthymoms #cleanliving #chemicalfree #chemicalfreehome #chemicalfreeliving

Moody autumnal hues for gradients ✨

Wow I look at this animal in a different light

Did you know that hyenas experience one of the most painful and difficult births of any animal? Female hyenas have a unique reproductive anatomy—what appears to be a p***s is actually an elongated cl****is, known as a pseudo-p***s. Their l***a are fused, forming what looks like a sc***um.

When giving birth, the cub must pass through this narrow and elongated pseudo-p***s, which often ruptures in the process. The birth canal is so tight that many first-time mothers do not survive labor, and a significant number of cubs suffocate before they can be born.

Mating is also complicated due to this unusual anatomy. The male must carefully navigate the female’s pseudo-p***s to achieve successful copulation. This, combined with the hyena’s matriarchal social structure, makes their reproductive process one of the most fascinating yet challenging in the animal kingdom.

So cute

Follow up …

Update to a previous story.......

There seemed to be a lot of questions in my recent post about Shirley Temple and whether or not the people back then actually would be able to recognize the pen she was holding and that the pen was red.

There were enough comments about this that I thought, instead of answering each comment one by one, I would just write a new general post addressing the issue.

So, the question is whether or not the average person back in 1934 would recognize the red Parker Duofold pen that Temple is holding.

The answer is yes, absolutely, and here's why:

For those living in media-saturated parts of the world, they wouldn't actually need to see the image in color to recognize that specific pen and to know that it was red because the Parker company had been heavily advertising their famous red pen for more than a decade at that point. Even in black & white advertisements, Parker paid the extra money to have the pen appear in color to highlight its uniqueness.

Prior to the introduction of the red Duofold, fountain pens mostly were made of hard black rubber (ebonite) that was difficult to color without making the pen brittle (some pen manufacturers got around this by encasing their ebonite pens in gold or silver metal work).

This well-known brittleness was the reasoning behind Parker's ad campaign in which they dropped one of their red pens from an airplane to show that they had overcome the brittleness problem.

Parker's advertising blitz was designed to sensationalize the pen, with bright printed colors jumping off the pages of magazines. They even commissioned a red and black airplane they named The Duofold and offered rides in it to people.

By the 1930s more pen companies were releasing pens in colors other than black (now mostly in materials such as Bakelite and celluloid) but the one everyone wanted, the one everyone recognized, the one everyone had been seeing everywhere since 1921, was the expensive and luxurious red Parker Duofold.

Because of all this, the red Duofold became a cultural symbol of success and wealth, even as the price of pens was coming down across the board.

So when the average person saw that photograph of Shirley Temple leaving a large ink blob on her contract, of course they would have recognized the pen she was holding, and, as people used to living in a world of black & white images, they would have recognized that the Duofold she was holding clearly was not pure black (see the two adverts immediately to the right of Temple's photo to see what I mean), and so had to be that world-famous and costly symbol of status: the red Parker Duofold.

I have been enjoying the comments on that original post, so please keep them coming!

Historia Obscurum

Please help support our educational outreach at https://www.patreon.com/HistoriaObscurum

Interesting

In this publicity shot from 1934, a very young Shirley Temple is shown "signing" (legally her parents had to sign it) a new film contract that garnered her a whopping $1,000 per week (around $22,700/week in 2023 money*).

But that isn't the only interesting thing going on here. In keeping with our microtheme on the social and economic history of the pen, it definitely is notable that Temple is signing with a Parker** Duofold fountain pen - specifically, a Parker Duofold fountain pen with a unique red body.*** (The ink still was either a black or a dark shade of blue.)

This is interesting because when Parker released a red fountain pen in 1921 it became a sensation, thanks to the fact that, prior to this, almost every fountain pen was black..... because they had to be black.

This was due to the difficulty in coloring the hard rubber (usually ebonite), a process that made the finished product brittle and often ugly.

But in 1921 an employee at Parker assembled a pen sample from an old experimental red barrel and cap but used the reliable black ebonite for the most brittle parts, and immediately people wanted this colorful pen.

And these pens didn't come cheap. A good fountain pen was seen as a status symbol, and a unique one like the red Duofold could elevate one's personal status in the envious eyes of hangers-on.

In fact, in 1934, that pen cost $7 brand new, which is equivalent to just shy of $160 in 2023*.

This means that this posed publicity shot of Temple "signing" (you actually can see the puddle of ink on the page where she'd been holding the nib in one place for too long) her contract was so much more than just a news event - the presence of a famous, expensive, desired pen such as the one with which she is pictured also is making a statement about her status, her parents' status, and the wealth and influence of the movie company that not only could afford to pay her such an incredible wage, but also didn't even bat an eyelash over handing such an expensive writing instrument over to a child.

But we would be remiss not to put this in context, because this was during the fifth year of the Great Depression:

That same year, nearly 13 million Americans were out of work. In cities all across the country, people waited for hours in bread lines and at soup kitchens for their one meal of the day. In many areas of the country, people literally were starving to death.

But the movie industry was doing okay. People in dire straits still spent their 23¢ admission to see stars dance and sing, and help them forget about their own troubles for an hour or so.

Those impoverished souls who saw this seemingly innocuous photograph of one of their favorite young stars would have recognized her pen, and known exactly what it was, and probably dreamed of a life with such luxury.

So, you see, pens tell us important stories in more than one way.

Historia Obscurum

Please help support our educational outreach at https://www.patreon.com/HistoriaObscurum

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* Calculated with www.in2013dollars.com

** See comment I posted in the comments section.

*** It may not be clear to us today that the pen was red, but it would have been instantly recognizable to folks back then due to the fame of the red Duofold - it was a cultural icon in the 1920s and early 1930s.

I highly recommend this place.. like going to a spa

Roasted Brussels Sprouts Salad with Bacon, Pecans, and dried Cranberries. Salad or light dinner.

RECIPE: https://juliasalbum.com/brussels-sprouts-and-bacon/