🚨 DAMN.
Ruby Bridges said the moment she finally understood what was happening during school integration was when a little white boy told her:
“My mom said I can’t play with you because you’re a nigger.”
She was SIX.
And she said hearing that felt like “a huge weight lifted,” because suddenly everything made sense.
Why the classrooms were empty.
Why adults were screaming.
Why U.S. Marshals had to escort her to school.
Not because of anything she did.
Just because of the color of her skin.
A six-year-old child realizing an entire country was angry at her for existing.
That gap has been legally required in every U.S. public restroom since 1955. It solves four problems simultaneously.
The official name is the "open-front toilet seat." The American Standard National Plumbing Code mandated it seven decades ago. California's state plumbing code still reads: "all water closet seats, except those within dwelling units, shall be of the open front type." Install a closed seat in a commercial bathroom and you can get cited.
The primary function is contact elimination. A closed oval seat creates a continuous surface where skin presses against plastic that thousands of strangers have already sat on. Removing the front section eliminates that contact zone entirely. Fewer shared square inches, fewer bacterial transfer points between users.
Second is wiping clearance. The IAPMO, the organization that writes the plumbing codes most U.S. states adopt as law, designed the opening so women can wipe without their hand contacting the seat surface. The gap is sized for a hand to pass through cleanly.
The open front also eliminates the surface where urine pools at the front of the seat, so the next user sits on dry plastic instead of someone else's miss.
One more layer. Public restrooms use elongated bowls while home toilets are typically round. A stolen U-shaped seat from a restaurant won't fit a residential toilet. The shape mismatch makes it worthless to take home.
Seven decades of sanitation engineering in a gap most people assumed was a manufacturing shortcut.
Doc Rivers with probably the realist words ever said about LeBron -
“With MJ we allowed him to grow into greatness. With LeBron we didn’t & he STILL over achieved. He’s had some of the biggest clutch games in NBA history yet no one knows it.” 💯👑
Pattern Recognition is also the form of intelligence that causes the most stress.
You will see things that others do not.
You'll feel crazy.
Things will be *so obvious* to you, and others will just deny it.
I could never skip this classic tho
Lead singers :Nicci Gilbert, Trina Braxton, Demetria McKinney.
Tamika Scott on background
Tamela mann on her woman made Saxophone tore this one DOWN!
“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.”
In 1998, I was fired from my corporate job while 9 months pregnant because and I quote, “my priorities would be elsewhere after the baby is born.”
The lawyer I hired told me I didn’t have a case because discrimination like “that” was almost impossible to prove.
So I got pissed.
Took the LSAT. Went to law school. Passed the bar. Had 3 more kids.
Twelve years later, another woman from that same company was fired for the same reason. She sued them for a million dollars, and won, partly because I had kept every piece of evidence from what happened to me years prior demonstrating a systemic pattern of discrimination against women.
That company no longer exists. My law practice is thriving. And that baby they said would derail my priorities? She’s a brilliant attorney now working at my firm.
Turns out my priorities were indeed, elsewhere.
There are two 70-win teams in NBA history. Both had the league MVP. One was unanimous.
One had the best perimeter defender of his era. The other had a 2x DPOY winner.
Both had the best 3-point shooters of their respective eras. One had the greatest ever and another top five. Both had elite benches.
One had the greatest coach of all time with the greatest system of all time. The other had a player who learned that coach’s system, modified it, and helped implement it for a new era.
LeBron beat one of those teams while leading everyone on the court in every major statistical category, in a historically impossible situation. Jordan was a part of one of those teams.
LeBron is Everest. Jordan is K2.