97% of powerful women are lesbians pursuing a “clit-o-centric” agenda, man with obviously faulty gaydar declares

Damn, Buttercup, you do a good Bird Rights Activist.

I had no idea until actually just a few years ago, that northeast Minnesota’s geological features were from now dead volcanoes. I guess if you go back far enough, everywhere has an interesting geological history.

There’s always a fear in the back of my mind that the Yellowstone volcano will blow again. I know the chances of it happening in my lifetime are slim, but it is due for a reactivation so it’s not a completely irrational fear.

Obviously this man does not know, and has never known any lesbians. If he had he would know that we actually don’t spend much time talking about men, and that the vicious slagging off of all men all the time his fevered little imagination has created is actually not approved of and would be rejected.

I would even dare to say that non feminist hetero women do it a lot more!

On Hawaii, those images of a highway (?) transected neatly by a fiery crack opening in earth are unreal. It’s like, “This road has been rerouted to Hell and accordingly paved with good intentions/hot lava from Leilani Estates onwards”

glistening pieces of paper that says “Masters of C*nt” on them

Why is the paper glistening?

“Masters of C*nt” just reminds me of that TV series Masters of Horror.

IP:

So unfair that these lesbians are getting jobs just because they have degrees or whatever!

Does he sound like the sort of guy who thinks that those degrees were earned?

Also, how crazy is it we live on a world where shit like that happens? What do you think people used to make of this sort of thing? After Krakatoa, giant pumice rafts full of skeletons washed up on the shore of Africa like a year later. How the fuck would you even begin to explain that?

With gods and apocalypses and demons and such. I mean, think about it, if a prescientific person saw a year of lurid sunsets and then a raft made of stone that somehow stayed afloat ran aground covered in skeletons, they’d pretty much have to invent the End Times, Charon ferrying the dead across the river Styx, and all of that stuff just to try to fit these events into a coherent narrative.

When the Thera supervolcano blew up around 3600 years ago, that’s exactly what happened. The dominant civilization in the Aegean at that time was Minoan Crete, which was devastated. Akrotiri, which was on the flanks of the frickin’ volcano itself, went sky-high, and massive tsunamis obliterated their navy and merchant marine while smashing their shipyards and coastal towns across the Aegean. The pumice raft thing happened there too, rendering the eastern end of the Mediterranean unnavigable for years. The Minoans depended on sea trade economically, and with the loss of their main defenses and sources of income, plus fragmented into damaged parts cut off from one another, they collapsed, becoming an easy conquest for Mycenaean Greece. The classical Greek civilization (and Charon and the river Styx!) arose from these events further down the line.

That is hardly the only legacy of that event. For starters, there’s strong evidence that the story of Atlantis is based on the Minoan collapse. Then there’s the fact that the name “Thera” became the root word for words like “terrible”, “terror”, and even “terato-“, a Greek morpheme meaning “monster”.

Adding to this, other cultures on the eastern Mediterranean were not unscathed. They lost navigation for a while and may have been impacted by other consequences of the eruption, ecological and climate disturbances. The timing is suggestive for the Plagues of Exodus to have had something to do with the eruption, in which case it wasn’t only Greek mythology that was influenced by these events. The Abrahamic religions may have been profoundly shaped by them as well. Certainly much of the apocalyptic imagery in Exodus, Daniel, and Revelation could be related to the aftermaths of this and perhaps other volcanic events with global impact. Adding to this, the Philistines appeared after the eruption in coastal areas near Egypt and the Middle East — likely refugees who had become nomadic coastal wanderers as a consequence of the blast, and probably part Minoan. They certainly shaped events recorded in the Bible.

Krakatau had somewhat lesser consequences, mostly because the most-affected civilizations had scientific knowledge and worldwide communications by then. So, no major religious implications, and a greater ability to withstand the climatic and sea navigation consequences. The main devastation was limited to the immediate neighborhood of the volcano. Nonetheless the vivid sunsets and climate and weather weirdness in the aftermath appear to have inspired some famous artworks, notably Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. The eruption of Tambora earlier in that century had serious enough effects on the climate as to cause a failed harvest and famine in large parts of the northern hemisphere, in turn leading to political unrest in a number of places.

Surplus:

Then there’s the fact that the name “Thera” became the root word for words like “terrible”, “terror”, and even “terato-“, a Greek morpheme meaning “monster”.

Really? Do they think the island’s name Thera originates from pre-eruption times, coming to mean “horror” in Greek, or did the Myceneans name it “horror” after the eruption? Wikipedia says:

Santorini was named by the Latin Empire in the thirteenth century, and is a reference to Saint Irene, from the name of the old cathedral in the village of Perissa – the name Santorini is a contraction of the name Santa Irini.[4] Before then, it was known as Kallístē (Καλλίστη, “the most beautiful one”), Strongýlē (Greek: Στρογγύλη, “the circular one”),[7][full citation needed] or Thēra. The name Thera was revived in the nineteenth century as the official name of the island and its main city, but the colloquial name Santorini is still in popular use.

Also, I didn’t know there was a buried Minoan settlement directly on Thera/Santorini – amazing.

We owe Frankenstein (and thus maybe the development of the whole sci-fi genre) to volcanoes too. I can’t remember which eruption this was, but there was one bad enough to make the weather all over the world cold and nasty. People spent a lot of time trapped indoors as a result. Mary Shelley and a bunch of other writers would get together and tell stories to entertain each other. This is when she came up with the idea for the story.

@ wwth

We owe Frankenstein (and thus maybe the development of the whole sci-fi genre) to volcanoes too. I can’t remember which eruption this was, but there was one bad enough to make the weather all over the world cold and nasty.

Tambora, 1815, which actually exacerbated the “Little Ice Age”, a 400-ish-year-longspell of really cold weather in the northern hemisphere.

RE: Volcanoes. I’ve been to Haleakala National Park in Maui, Hawaii, where there’s a dormant volcano. It’s almost like being on another planet, as you approach the volcanic crater. The terrain is just so different…all the dark rock everywhere, and the Silversword plants poking up from it. These plants really do look like gathered-up sword blades.

@Binjabreel:

I hope you enjoy your trip to Hawaii. I’ve been there twice – once for my honeymoon, then again for my 20th wedding anniversary. It’s expensive as hell, but so very worth it.

One thing I suggest you bring along with you – I don’t know what they’re called, but those shoes with the thick, flexible rubber soles, meant to be worn in water. They’re helpful for stepping on the volcanic rock, and dead coral.