rustingbridges:

why is los angeles where los angeles is

The first transcontinental railroad ran to San Francisco, and when a southern route was built the obvious western terminus was San Diego, but San Francisco elites feared the growth of another California power center so they pulled strings to get it redirected to Los Angeles, which was originally the agricultural lands feeding a Spanish mission and had no natural port. (They first built long piers around Malibu and then an artificial breakwater-protected harbor down by Long Beach.)

Then in 1892, the city was found to sit atop a major oil field and a drilling boom ensued, then in WWI the existence of a large labor force without strong left-labor organization like elsewhere on the west coast and in coastal shipping range of the wood-producing Pacific Northwest made it ideal to spin up a military aircraft industry.

Then after WWI, the booming Mediterranean-climate city drew a lot of immigrants from post-Ottoman lands as their national restructurings wrang out, then the motion picture industry relocated there from upstate New York for the weather and to get distance from Thomas Edison’s IP-enforcing goons, then in WWII that defense aerospace industry got even bigger, carrying the region through the Cold War.

Love looking out the window and seeing Badger puttering about

mapsontheweb:

The Most Popular Search Term In Each State (in 2022)

by @statspanda1

uh, what?

luisonte:

Plonk

o-fantasma:

ALT

good morning everyone

chainsawder:

plasmalogical:

Feeling the shrinking— stomach, it’s a stomach not a belly now, a mass secured in the abdomen not a sprawling softness (when it’s reduced to just a pouch at the lower abdomen it’ll be a gut) and marveling that based on experience with the creatine thing and projecting from here, the rest’s already doomed, like the warrant has been signed

brazenautomaton:

the Elvira’s House of Horrors pinball machine features Teenagers From Outer Space, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, and MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE

meaning that it doubles as the mst3k pinball machine

the premise is Elvira’s trying to sell her house so you gotta kick all the b-movie monsters out

this is actually the third Elvira-themed pinball machine (1, 2)

damonabnormal:

Dead America
Suburban Philly _ March 2023

I’m pretty sure that top picture is an anchor store for my old local Montgomery Mall, which makes this the second vibey photo this week I got thrown by recognizing

northshorewave:

One of my favorite historical curiosities is 20th century futurists who were convinced they were already living through the Information Apocalypse. “How can the human brain be expected to grapple with sixty-five channels’ worth of cable television?!” Asks some Marshall McLuhan wannabe in 1991. “It’s all a meaningless, maddening pit of context-free stimuli and subconscious impulses!” Buddy, pal, you had no idea what was coming did you.

enbycrip:

micro-usb-deactivated20230625:

I don’t know any meaderies near where I live

So, is a mead distributor an “intermeadiary”?

Okay after going down to 4 scoops/day last week failed I tried to do 4 day/1 night, and that left me too sluggish to smash, so I just did 4 full buckets of weeding.

So I guess I’m not as on the verge of stepping down as I thought, which means we should expect my final weight to come in on the lower end of the range I predicted, average side of slim or even plain slim.

squeeful:

twitter has apparently unverified the pope. i need a bishop in avignon to decide to be the funniest person on the internet

the-real-numbers-deactivated202:

wait what do chlorine and brake fluid do?

swordseer:

geekysteven:

ALT

Source

I think about this all of the time

thecollectibles:

Art by Kevin Scarborough

idionymon:

You can’t cut soft cheese in thin slices or wedges because it just gets squished, but you can with hard cheese, cause the protein holds it together. Casein point:

toskarin: