2026
READ VORACIOUSLY
EAT VORACIOUSLY
TAKE NOTE OF BIRDS
MAKE ART YES THAT ART
KEEP GOING
LIVE
ALT
ALTin tears over "have not polked this season". why is this the funniest thing i've ever seen
The US having an entire city in the middle of the desert dedicated entirely to gambling sounds like a thing other countries would make up about the US as a joke but its real and no one bats an eye at it
They also do divorce
You know I held myself back from going off on an infodump about the history of divorce in Las Vegas for the sake of this joke but the amount of people reblogging this version from me and not getting my history based joke about how divorce was important in shaping the economy is Las Vegas is driving me a little bit crazy
The people want an explanation so an explanation I shall give.
Basically Nevada used to be like. Nowhere. Even more nowhere than it is now. They broke several rules when they made it a state actually because the population wasn’t big enough to justify it but they wanted Lincoln to get more electoral college votes or something. I dunno.
Point is, there’s not much in Nevada. Sure, there’s silver mines. There’s local tribes who are pretty cool. There’s wildlife. There’s some neat mountains. Not much water though and water is needed for most industries and large scale civilization.
This vast emptiness ended up making Nevada what it is today though mostly because of crime. It’s hard for the feds to stop your crime when you’re surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Is the state and federal government gonna trek through the Nevada desert to scold you? I don’t think so.
Local governments today in Nevada can often trace themselves directly back to criminal organizations and corrupt groups of politicians, including the city of Las Vegas and the very large unincorporated community of Paradise which is actually where the Las Vegas strip is. Why is Paradise, Nevada still an unincorporated community despite having over 180,000 residents? Because if there’s no city government that’s one less government entity your casino has to pay taxes to. Duh.
And these crime people and casino owners and easily bribable politicians despite their many problems did figure something out. Tourists like doing things that are illegal in other places. Californian tourists in particular. And one of the illegal things that all Americans really but especially Californians wanted to do was get divorced.
Around 1930 Nevada became one of the first states to make no-fault divorce legal. Not only that but the required waiting period became six weeks. Not only that but only one spouse had to live in Nevada for those six weeks. To this day, the waiting period for divorce in California is still six months. This was huge.
This becomes a whole industry. Not only is gambling legal in Nevada but now divorce is too. When a couple decide mutually that they want a divorce but there’s no legal reason for it where they live, one of them, usually the woman, goes to live in a resort in Las Vegas or Reno for six weeks (often called a divorce ranch) and then they can get divorced.
And while one or both spouses are there, they can gamble, get pampered, see entertainment, meet other people. Then they go home after their divorce and tell their friends all about it. Now all their friends know that there’s gambling and entertainment in Vegas. And now they know about the divorce ranches. More money in the Nevadan economy.
Las Vegas is a bright shining tax evasion island in the middle of the desert built on entertainment, gambling, crime, and divorce. God bless Nevada and god bless no-fault divorce.
if I were a bee I'd fetishize the idea of a beekeeper clipping my tiny wings so I can't escape (remembers you're not supposed to say shit like that) I mean yesterday I ate two yogurts normally
yesterday i ate two yogurts normally (remembers we're on tumblr) i mean if i were a bee i'd fetishize the idea of a beekeeper clipping my tiny wings so i can't escape
New page(s)! This is a double page spread - the stitched image is linked on the website, but I'll also post it here later.
On this day, 3 December 1946, 100,000 workers in California downed tools in support of a strike by 400 mostly women department store workers, in what would become known as the Oakland general strike. In the early hours of the morning, truck drivers, streetcar and bus drivers and passengers in the downtown section of the city got out of their vehicles. Crowds of workers milled around and began to organise themselves. Merchant mariner Stan Weir described what happened next:
“By nightfall the strikers had instructed all stores except pharmacies and food markets to shut down, Bars were allowed to stay open, but they could serve only beer and had to put their juke boxes out on the sidewalk to play at full volume and no charge. ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama, Lay That Pistol Down’, the number one hit, echoed off all the buildings. That first 24-hour period of the 54-hour strike had a carnival spirit. A mass of couples danced in the streets. The participants were making history, knew it, and were having fun. By Tuesday morning they had cordoned off the central city and were directing traffic. Anyone could leave, but only those with passports (union cards) could get in. The comment made by a prominent national network newscaster, that ‘Oakland is a ghost town tonight,’ was a contribution to ignorance. Never before or since had Oakland been so alive and happy for the majority of the population. It was a town of law and order. In that city of over a quarter million, strangers passed each other on the street and did not have fear, but the opposite.”
American Federation of Labour union officials then called off the strike without gaining any concessions for the striking retail workers.
Here is Weir’s first person account of the dispute: https://libcom.org/library/oakland-general-strike-stan-weir https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1598845096967301/?type=3
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