i love that one old timey 1910s trans dude who has a tiny wikipedia page for himself that he earned entirely due to him starting fights in bars and being the city’s hottest casanova
Like this glorious jerk got arrested so many times that was literally ALL THEY HAD TO WRITE IN THE PAPER
He was a vagrant street kid and Seattle girls were all over this guy, to the point where it caused a moral panic. There’s a famous anecdote about a women proclaiming her love in Denny Park and then trying to shoot herself, but most of these reports were falsely worded in a way that suggest his female admirers were “upset about being deceived” when really they were upset that he was wooing other women, or trying to get his attention by being as extra as possible.
What you also should know is that back in the day “seduction” was a literal crime that could put you in prison (unless you married the woman you seduced) but since he wasn’t cis they couldn’t really CHARGE HIM with anything. Legend.
I especially like “Seattle Woman Appears in Men’s Clothes Because She Says Her Features Make it Possible.” I can’t imagine anything but someone going “Hey! You can’t dress like that!” and him responding “Oh yes I can. You see, I look very good.”
My bros I have been doing a lot of
reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a
story because I love it okay
once upon a time there was a dude in
Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol
hated him some goddamn fascists.
See Spain had recently ended its civil
war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in
Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy
buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty
bullshit
so soon after war breaks out Pujol
travels to his local British embassy and goes “hey I wanna spy on
the Nazis for you”
“who the fuck are you?” say the
British, and kick him out
but Pujol is not deterred! He still
wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German embassy instead. “hey” he
says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them”
“yeah
okay” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit”
and
just like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German
intelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and
such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his
way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later
writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England
Pujol
had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon
public library, where he checked out a number of English guide books
and set about just wholesale making shit up
this
is slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely
did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were
basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen,
because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a litre of
wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so
that’s probably the same right?
Here
is where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves
this. “wow this dude is a
great spy” they say, because apparently none of them had ever been
the England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new
awesome spy that the British start to get worried
you
see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly
unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by
reading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio
transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and
reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England.
The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by
parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept
the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed
in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies
so
there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a
prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as
double agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking
up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great
spy- a spy the British do not have in their jail
“oh
shit” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they
have to and from this mysterious super spy.
“hey
wait” says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending.
“someone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio”
At
this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the
British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally
an Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t
interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again. It wasn’t until MI5 started
asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “oh yeah we
know that guy”
so in
1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially
becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case
officer so he can start making up even better bullshit
and he
does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d
recruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to
disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+
sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK
none of these people actually exist
Pujol
just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of
their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of
MI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but
ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive
in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy
network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agents
Pujol,
now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a
huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge
intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of
attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation
Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII
Adventures). Obviously you know how this ended
crazily
enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent.
After the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which
require personal authorization from Hitler), and a
Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)
unable
to resist being totally fucking ridiculous,
Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this
time against the USSR. “no,” he said “just help me fake my own
death and then I’m moving to Venezuela”
and
that’s exactly what he did. Juan Garcia Pujol died in 1988, at the
age of 76
Okay I’m just editing my reblog to add this picture of Juan Pujol Garcia because I feel that it adds so much to the story to picture him doing ALL THE ABOVE with this expression:
What a legend.
Thank you Jess for this extremely important addendum.
he’s my hero and also adorable
This is…holy fucking shit, I have no words for how much glee this story brings me. It’s like Mother Night but not soul-crushing
He was Catalan and his real name was Joan (not Juan) Pujol i Garcia.
After the fascists won the Spanish Civil War, Spanish names were mandatory, since the Catalan language and culture were completely banned by the fascist regime, but he referred to himself as Joan. So let’s refer to him as Joan as he would have wanted, and not use the name that the Spanish fascists imposed.
Here’s an interesting interview with him from the year 1984 (in Catalan)
“In the spring of 1940, when the Nazis overran France from the north, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country towards the south. In order to cross the border, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and together with a flood of other refugees, tens of thousands of Jews besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get that life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion.
The Portuguese government—which had little desire to accept any of these refugees—sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had a deep reverence for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.”
—Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
He comes from a very poor family. His father was an alcoholic who beat him and his mother (he once poured hot tea over her and put her in hospital several times), his brother is a drug addict, he literally built an empire out of nothing.
He credits his mother as his biggest inspiration and often has her cooking in his shows.
When he left his first restaurant he pulled a successful Jerry Maguire
– the entire kitchen staff went with him. That tells you what he’s like to work with.
He was one of the first to give a restaurant to a female chef.
He went to prison (Gordon Behind Bars) and taught inmates to bake and they opened a bakery (Bad Boys Bakery) that is still running. He hired one of them when he got out.
He did documentaries about the cruelty of shark hunting and cocaine. (when he discovered cocaine was used by his staff he didn’t fire anyone but made sure they are offered treatment)
His kids are a treasure.
He is always ALWAYS kind to servers.
When one of his partners (Marcus Wareing) wanted to leave they got into a fight and settled it in court, they no longer speak to each other but this is what Marcus said about him after the fight:
I feel bad that the first association to him for a lot of people is this shouty TV chef when he’s truly a wonderful person.
never forget that the reason he’s “shouty and angry” on his tv show is that he’s yelling at people who ignore the rules of courtesy and food safety and basically feed their customers poison, something which would enrage any good person
Uncle Gordon
Gordon is precious and I love him.
I’m really glad people post stuff like this because honestly yes, the only thing I knew about Gordon Ramsey at first was that he swears like a sailor. It’s good to know that he’s a much more genuine person than that. This is probably also a good example of how television can shape our perceptions of people; TV producers are going to focus on what gets the most attention, not on what is necessarily best or most true about a person. It’s good to be mindful of that while watching reality shows and movies.
he just…. crammed from textbooks to learn how to do the things he was supposed to know
During Demara’s impersonation as Brother John Payne of the Christian Brothers of Instruction (also known as Brothers of Christian Instruction), Demara decided to make the religious teaching order more prominent by founding a college in Alfred, Maine. Demara proceeded on his own, and actually got the college chartered by the state. He then promptly left the religious order in 1951, when the Christian Brothers of Instruction offended him by not naming him as rector or chancellor of the new college and chose what Demara considered to be a terrible name for the college.[5]:115–119 The college Demara founded, LaMennais College in Alfred, Maine, began in 1951 (when Demara left); in 1959 it moved to Canton, Ohio, and in 1960, became Walsh College (now Walsh University).
whfsdf
do students at that university, like, know? they must, right?
He described his own motivation as “Rascality, pure rascality”.
i am… in awe.
this was an extremely powerful man
Demara told his biographer he was successful in his roles because he was able to fit into positions which no one else had previously occupied. Demara explained it in the following excerpt from his biography:
’(Demara) had come to two beliefs. One was that in any organization there is always a lot of loose, unused power lying about which can be picked up without alienating anyone. The second rule is, if you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else’s domain; open up new ones…’
Demara referred to it as ‘expanding into the power vacuum,’ and described as such; ‘if you come into a new situation (there’s a nice word for it) don’t join some other professor’s committee and try to make your mark by moving up in that committee. You’ll, one, have a long haul and two, make an enemy.’ Demara’s technique was to find his own committee. ‘That way there’s no competition, no past standards to measure you by. How can anyone tell you aren’t running a top outfit? And then there’s no past laws or rules or precedents to hold you down or limit you. Make your own rules and interpretations. Nothing like it. Remember it, expand into the power vacuum!’[5]:
The one thing I think fanfic authors miss, is Rhodey went to MIT with Tony. His major was probably aerospace engineering, since many Air Force officer candidates major in this area. You know what another name for an aerospace engineer is? Rocket scientist.
Rhodey is a rocket scientist.
Rhodey is a rocket scientist, y’all. Treat him with the scientific respect he deserves.
Rhodey did indeed go to and graduate MIT for Aerospace Engineering in MCU canon. that is legit. He is a rocket scientist
tho, post MIT and probably during, his specialty became more weapons focused but no doubt he is quite knowledgeable in a lot of other related areas
A note on rocket science and weapons from a rocket scientist with a more than passing knowledge of how rocket scientists function in the US Air Force. 😀
It is completely reasonable for an aerospace engineer to go into weapons, especially missiles. And it makes sense for Rhodey to be a missile guy, since he’s working with Tony and what do we see Tony giving the Air Force at the beginning of the first Iron Man movie? The Jericho Missile.
Missiles are at their heart, a rocket problem.
For a missile, aerospace engineering is required, in at least three parts. (1) The aerodynamics of the missile, (2) the guidance, navigation and control of the missile, and (3) the propulsion system of the missile. Now if we extend this problem to Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), you also have to consider the astrodynamics problem, so this is an additional area in a missile design that an aerospace engineer would be required.
Whether Rhodey initially put himself on a path to study missiles, I can’t say. What I can say is something about the idea that Rhodey is “no doubt knowledgeable in other related areas.” This is undeniably true. The Air Force does not actually seek to over specialize their officers. They instead put them on a path that leads them towards a more “jack of all trades master of none” philosophy. So it is highly likely that Rhodey spent time in all areas related to Aerospace Engineering–including airplanes, helicopters, and satellites. To get as far as he is in the military, a Colonel, Rhodey would also have been required to do multiple over seas tours and probably spent some time doing nothing more than being a glorified admin while he was a lowly LT or Captain. (As a general rule, butter bar lieutenants are trusted with exactly zero responsibility. I can just imagine Rhodey calling up his buddy Stark to complain and Stark being like “weeeelllll, you could always come work for me” and Rhodey being all like “NOT ON YOUR LIFE” and Rhodey just continuing to press through and making it clear he is worth something until finally he’s a first LT and they actually trust him with something.)
If Rhodey did not get his master’s degree from MIT, which is likely if he was ROTC though not impossible, he probably went to AFIT for his later degrees. And Rhodey would *at least* have a master’s degree, since a master’s degree is essentially required to ascend from the rank of Captain to Major. I say *essentially* because the Air Force occasionally changes it policy on this. Sometimes it’s absolutely required and sometimes it’s merely recommended. Regardless, Rhodey would at the very least have a master’s degree. It’s also highly likely that for a Colonel working in a research based division, he would be required to have his PhD (considering it’s Air Force weapons, I’m going to make the guess that he probably works in something similar to AFRL Munitions Directorate, though perhaps not that particular group since Rhodey doesn’t seem to be based out of Eglin AFB). As a full bird Colonel, it’s also highly likely that Rhodey would in fact be IN CHARGE of the entire research directorate.
So yes, not only would Rhodey be highly knowledgeable in all areas of Aerospace Engineer, he would probably also have a PhD in it, and is probably in charge of whatever weapons division he runs.
For example USAF research colonels, check out these biographies of current USAF colonels: here and here.
It’s canon that Rhodey got his masters in aeronautic engineering from MIT and that he’s in the military weapons R&D. That’s why he’s the SI liaison. It’s not speculation. Canooooooon.
Steel Phoenix Studios 