People who have never seen Lake Superior do not often understand how deadly and terrifying it can be. I’ve been asked many times if there is a monster legend associated with the lake, because I am an American highway legend specialist and Scottish folklorist.
There are a few legends associate with the lake. For example, there is an old Anishinaabe legend that there is a sturgeon in Lake Superior that can swallow an entire city.
However, when I have been asked this question, I often respond:
The lake is the monster.
There are old sailor’s superstitions still current among sailors and residents of the towns around the lake. I learned many of them while working on the water one summer and gaining a newfound respect for Lake Superior’s incredible power. There is a sense among the people there that the lake itself is sentient.
One example of the lake’s power is a phenomenon called The Three Sisters. This is when three rogue waves form and wash across a ship so quickly that the water does not have time to clear the decks. Many shipwrecks have been caused by The Three Sisters, most notably the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ship was found at the bottom of the lake split in half, and it is thought that The Three Sisters were responsible for its sinking.
Lake Superior is also so cold that it doesn’t allow the bacterial growth necessary for dead bodies to rise to the surface. The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead, as the old legend goes. There are many shipwrecks where the bodies are still there, almost perfectly intact despite having been down there for years.
The lake is a force of nature on its own, and as one explorer said, the most dangerous piece of water in the world.
I had to learn more about this little guy. Turns out this is a voiced over video for comedy. His name is Wilfred Warrior. He’s a Chinchilla Persian from London, and he has an INSTAGRAM.
Although He looks like a sad goblin, He is very loved
And very happy ❤
I feel better now knowing the cat wasn’t actually being yelled at or mocked.
if you guys look it up there’s pictures of them like wrestling and hanging out and just generally being good ol boys who love each other and it’s really cute
i don’t want to google him in case my suspicions about him eventually being eaten are true
He wasn’t! Pocho lived to be in his 50s. He died in 2011 and they had a huge funeral
the saddest thing you’re going to find is him crying at Pocho’s funeral, and believe me, it’s really heartbreaking. That man lost his best friend.
“One pervasive feature of the post-#MeToo landscape has been distraught men apologizing for their gender, fretting about old drunken hookups and begging for guidance on what they can do to help. (Of course it took only moments to transform a mass catharsis into an emotional labor factory.) O.K., fine. You know what you could do to help? Everything.
How about Matt Damon refuses to show up to work until his female co-stars are paid as much as he is? How about Jimmy Fallon refuses to interview anyone who has been credibly accused of sexual assault or domestic violence? How about Robert Downey Jr. relentlessly points out microaggressions against female contemporaries until he develops a reputation for being “difficult” and every day on Twitter 4,000 eighth-graders call him an “SJW cuck”? How about Harvey Weinstein anonymously donates $100 million to that legal defense fund and then melts into the fog as though he never existed?
How about hundreds of male movie stars spend months developing a large-scale action plan to help female farmworkers battle systemic gender inequality? How about men boycott Twitter? How about men strike for International Women’s Day? How about men take on the economic and social burdens of calling out toxic patterns of gendered socialization? How about anyone but the oppressed and John Oliver lifts a finger to change anything at all?
Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well-intentioned but floundering, as though they are not the experts. They have a chance to do better by Time’s Up.
Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install this glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”
Men need more practice being uncomfortable, so they can get better at it – good enough to doing something constructive (rather than oppressive or destructive) about it.
Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War.
Look at her.
I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century.
And quite possibly a mutant.
She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).
She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“
She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across.
On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die.
She’s swum over 50,000 miles.
And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me.
Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.
Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.
Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.
A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.
There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.
I’ll never forget the conversation I had with my ex guy friend a few years ago. We were 24. And he was talking about this girl he met at work that he really liked. She was 17.
He was telling me how he liked her, and didn’t want to have sex with her until she was 18, and he just wanted to date her cuz sex would be “wrong”
But here’s what struck me about the conversation. When listing all the things he liked about her, not one of them was ABOUT her. It was about how much she like him and was interested in him and his life in his hobbies. How she found everything he did was amazing and cool.
And here’s where it really hit home for me “she’s not like girls our age” (I guess forgetting he was speaking to a girl his age) But what he meant by that wasn’t that she was special, what he meant was “she’s not old enough to have met more interesting people to compare me to” and “she’s not experienced enough to fight me on my bull shit”
Because of course a teenage girl is gonna find a 24 year old man who has a nice car, a money to pay for things and the freedom to be involved in all his fun hobbies, of course she’s gonna find all that Amazing. Cuz she’s in highschool. Where as “girls his age” expect that. It’s not cool and amazing. Girls his age expect more. Girls his age also aren’t gonna fall for cheesey one liners and compliments, especially not in the same way an insecure still figuring herself out teenage girl is.
And let me tell you, this guy was no “loser” when it came to women. He was popular, good looking, everyone knew him, and for a lack of better words he “got around” But when it came to serious relationships I’m sure he heard a mouthful from the few women he dated “get a stable job so you can move out of your parents house” (and look no shade, the economy is rough but if you’re dating someone and they’re not even looking for jobs it’s annoying and trust me there was no fire under his ass to try) You know who he isn’t gonna hear that from? A teenage girl in highschool.
Thankfully nothing came of this. But what I really want to say, young people, if an older person is interested in you don’t trust them. Especially if you’re in highschool or just getting out of highschool. They don’t think you’re special, they think you’re not gonna be able to see their flaws. They’re trying to feed their ego. Cuz guess what? You are special. And you deserve every opportunity to figure out how goddamn special you are and be able to find someone just as special as you, and find you just as special and be able to have healthy equal relationships with that person. But that person who’s 6, 7- 10 years older than you isn’t interested in how special you are. They’re interested in how special you make them feel. And they will manipulate you to keep it that way.
Older people, keep your friends in check. Like I said, this guy wasn’t a loser, he didn’t have a history of dating young girls, he championed women’s rights, LGBT rights- you name it. White knighted his way past my ability to see thru his facade. Took me way to long to see what a shitty person he was.
But that person who’s 6, 7- 10 years older than you isn’t interested in how special you are. They’re interested in how special you make them feel.
As small as the world 