I wish I could remember the source, but I once read a sociologist's take that the Victorian era was a complete abberation of human development. It was uniquely weird, never existed before, will likely never exist again.

I wonder how much of that was on the back of the industrial revolution. Maybe humanity had a similar "weird" moment in the Fertile Crescent when we figured out farming.

But yeah. Victorians were an odd bunch. Delightfully contradictory.

I feel like the wild combination of Suddenly Having So Much New Technology We Barely Understand and Suddenly Using So Much New Technology We Barely Understand *May* have resulted in such new and novel situations as:

• The baby will stop crying if I give it cocaine
• My entire face is covered in arsenic
• How Wonderful That I Can Buy Guns And Heroin At The Same Store! I Certainly Hope My Lead Poisoning Does Not Lead To Bouts Of Distemper And Irrational Thinking
• There Are Bare Electrified Wires Running Through My House And My Technicolor Dress Is Highly Combustible, Which I Do Not Know Yet
• My son, Lead Poisoning Georg,, shall someday inherit my gun powder and lead paint empire,,
• NEW! Magical Miracle Substance! Asbestos! WILL NOT catch fire! CANNOT catch fire! YOU WILL NOT die! (From fire)
• Impress Your Guests And In-Laws With The Tastiest Bright White Bread Chalk And Wood Shavings Can Produce
• NEW! Baby feeding bottles! NEW! Glass baby feeding bottles! How do you clean them??? That isn't important stop asking questions. NEW!
• If Heroin And Lead And Cocaine And Arsenic And Typhoid And Tuberculosis And Radiation And Ungrounded Wires And Lead And Chalk And Arsenic And Working In The Coal Mine Are Bad For Me, Then How Am I Moving So Fuckingn Fast