Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah 钟怡珊

@sarahejoyal.bsky.social

1.6K followers 6.1K following 7.4K posts

Into books, theology, life in China and random stuff. She/they

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · Oct 29

Stuff I want to talk about:

-history
-Tolkien
-gender
-queerness
-music
-theology
-the Bible
-deconstruction
-religious tolerance
-neurodivergence
-disability
-US politics
-life in China
-cute animals
-books
-twisty puzzles
-chess
-knitting
-probably more that I don't recall

8 1 67

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1m

Oh I remember the world before Google

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 31m

Should I stage a one-woman show at my apartment called 'no emperors'

2 5

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 44m

Oh goodness, this has brought up ancient memories of trying to do homework on the bus! 🤦‍♀️

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

Honestly we only ever had like 5 relatives so I think my mom had all their addresses memorized by the time I started kindergarten anyway

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

I'm left handed so I absolutely feel this

1 2

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

A thing which honestly we only ever did much of at Christmas 😂

2 2

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

PLEASE say more about this

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

I read a lot of ebooks now because there's a limit on what foreign literature anyone's going to bother importing to China, and it gets *expensive* 😵 (you don't want to know what I paid to get my hands on Emily Wilson's Odyssey)

1 3

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 1h

I always think of how poor dyslexic Claudia had to constantly hide away the one kind of story she could actually enjoy reading because her librarian mother didn't think Nancy Drew books were serious enough

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 2h

There's also a decent chance that (depending on country of origin) many of those people couldn't read

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 2h

And you could abandon a wife and family in your old country or even just the next state and start over again, and they might never find you

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 2h

I bet it was also a lot easier to commit intentional bigamy back before people started keeping records of every marriage

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 4h

"depends on whether or not it's sunny because if so I'm risking a migraine by setting foot outside"

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 4h

Having studied formal written Chinese I can say that very often it's the opposite 😂

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 4h

And unfortunately even the "cold" regions can toss up unbearable summers - I remember multiple occasions of 40°+ days as a kid, and I'm from *Wisconsin*

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 6h

People in the US have long argued that summer vacation is archaic and should be gotten rid of. A thing that is quite literally never going to be feasible because only a fraction of public school buildings have ever bothered to install air conditioning.

1 1

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 8h

This happened to the old Bare Marriage page, which afaik is still out there spamming out crap that nobody wants

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 8h

Reading his bio and now I kinda wish I didn't have to know about him either

1 1

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 8h

I will read the FUCK out of this

1 3

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 8h

Every office should have that one guy who's run in race after race for 30 years and each time gets maybe 15 votes

1 2

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 8h

My dad is ridiculously eager to go in and pick up literally any menstrual products. Also has zero chill about mentioning periods either 😂 you'd think he's the one who has them

Ź🖤🥀 @lalaspeaks.bsky.social · 1d

What’s ONE green flag about your father?

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 9h

I'm really hoping there's some looooong article or video essay out there about queer coding in gothic literature because in my experience there sure seems to be a lot of it

1 2

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 9h

Honestly most people I know only kept those for the purpose of sending letters 😂 knowing an exact address wasn't nearly as much use for navigation purposes before GPS

2 2

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 11h

I remember when they added 262 and suddenly a whole bunch of calls were no longer "local" and everyone was freaking out (anybody remember having a work phone that physically could not call outside of area code?)

Sarah 钟怡珊 @sarahejoyal.bsky.social · 11h

Yes and we memorized addresses too

(And if you ever didn't know, you just looked it up in the Big Book Of Everyone's Personal Info that would literally be *dropped outside your front door*)

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 20h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

2 2 22