I’m loving this new trend of people going to zoos and participating in animal enrichment. We use to observe large exotic animals for our entertainment, but the fact is that we are now trying to make ourselves equally as entertaining for them. It’s interactive, completely parpicipatory and I would argue that eventually someone’s gonna come up with something new enough that it expland ethologists understanding about how some animals think, problem solve, communicate and feel and I think its fantastic.
the story is so insane and heartbreaking. the working class female employees were kept completely in the dark about the potential dangers of radium and their workplaces were extremely hazardous. the radium paint got all over their workrooms, bodies, and clothes. the women noticed that the radium made them twinkle in the dark and look beautiful, so they would spread it all over their dresses before going out to party. also, from what i remember, they would go so far as to brush it into their teeth to make their smile look more dazzling.
basically, it was marketed to the young women as glow in the dark glitter when really they were really ingesting hundreds if not thousands of micro-doses of radioactive materials. daily. for years.
the workers were almost all young women just beginning adulthood and carving out a life for themselves, and the radiation sickness they contracted due to the company’s negligence caused them to die extremely slow, extremely painful, and tragically early deaths en masse.
workers were denied medical coverage from the company. later, multiple workers later sued the company and made labor rights history by establishing the right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labor abuse.
Saying they had syphilis was a deliberate tactic to ruin the girls’ reputations by implying that they were sleeping around (since syphilis is sexually transmitted), therefore making people less likely to listen to them.
The male management wouldn’t go near the radium without protective clothing, but doctors were paid to go into the factories and tell the girls that it was good for them. (The same companies also sold food and drink laced with radium on the same principle, citing studies that they had paid for.)
To prove that the radium companies were responsible for the deaths, they exhumed some of the dead girls to test their corpses for signs of radiation poisoning. Their coffins glowed in the dark.
okay pretty normal, let’s look at the interior photos—
WHAT THE FUCK
here we see the first example of a pattern that will recur throughout the house, which is that once your eyes adjust to the bonkers dictator chic marble-and-gilded-everything, you notice some pretty egregiously shoddy workmanship. look at how that baseboard intersects with the outlet. look at how the marble… uh, thing on the wall (i was gonna call it a fireplace but it’s not a fireplace, i have no idea what that is) has gaps and weird angles wherever two pieces meet. it’s like they’re trying to recreate versailles on an ikea budget
i… don’t hate the kitchen. i mean, obviously it’s ugly and #toomuch and there was zero effort made to match the very modern appliances and sink to the cabinets, but still, i’m a sucker for a pass-through and a big sink with a window above it.
this ceiling Fucks but the wrinkly, uneven curtains and terrible caulking around the faux-column in the middle anti-Fuck
why did we suddenly completely switch aesthetics. why is there an old TV set into the wall at floor level. why is there a tiny set of doors next to it. why does the fireplace look like an asset ripped from the original dark souls. i feel a sinister presence sucking at my soul the longer i look at this photo
i feel like whoever designed this monstrosity started with the dining room and then once they’d finished it realized they’d blown half their budget on just this one room. it’s so overdecorated that the gaudiness feels intentional, like it’s a statement rather than a side effect of genuine tastelessness. i can applaud that.
here we have the antithesis of the dining room. i don’t know what this room is supposed to be but i hate it. i’m pretty sure everything in this photo literally came from ikea. there is a lack of commitment here and it is rancid
ladies, gentlemen, distinguished colleagues, we have now hit the cornerstone of any great tacky real estate listing: the heart-shaped bathtub! this one gets bonus points for being next to a gilded mirror and surrounded by bright red damask wallpaper. as a bathtub i’d give it a 1/10 because those angles look incredibly uncomfortable, but as a place to shoot my lover through the heart while wearing a gauzy fur-trimmed bathrobe before fleeing with our ill-gotten fortune i’d give it a solid 11/10
here we are with the lack of commitment again. this literally looks like the kitchen in my college dorm but with a weird fringey lamp and some curtains that are absolutely too long for their windows
again, the mix of styles here is just killing me. half damask wallpaper and carved wall panels, half normal-ass bathroom? really? isn’t there anything truly unhinged left in this house? anything truly opulent, decadent, off the chain, extravagant, gaudy—
THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT BAY BEE!!! THAT’S MORE THE FUCK LIKE IT!!! COMMIT! TO! THE! BIT! GO BIG OR GO HOME! IF YOU’RE GONNA STICK A CEILING DOME IN THE FOYER OF YOUR SUBURBAN TEXAS HOUSE IT HAD BETTER BE TWELVE FEET IN DIAMETER AND PAINTED WITH DOZENS OF FLOWERS OR ELSE WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE EVEN DOING HERE??
and finally, to close out the show, a reminder that this entire acid trip of a real estate listing took place in an ordinary, modern single-story house in texas, one with a backyard and utility boxes on the exterior walls and neighbors who may be blissfully unaware that they live mere feet from a yawning pit of madness.
