Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War.
Look at her.
I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century.
And quite possibly a mutant.
She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).
She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“
She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across.
On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die.
She’s swum over 50,000 miles.
And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me.
Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.
Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.
Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.
A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.
There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.
This is called Afrezza. It’s an inhaler for diabetic insulin. That’s right. An inhaler. That means no more needles. It’s only for fast acting insulin, but it could still vastly improve the life of a lot of diabetics.
Imagine having to constantly prick yourself with needles to keep yourself alive, and then suddenly there’s a new product that could change the whole way you live your life for the better.
And here’s the thing: it works. It works really really well. People with diabetes that have been lucky enough to have used it think it’s amazing.
But sadly, it’s probably going to end up as a failure because the pharmaceutical company (a French company called Sanofi) that was in charge of marketing it didn’t care enough to actually try. Not only that, but they made it incredibly expensive so hardly anyone could afford it. Most people have never heard of it, and the way things are going, no one else ever will.
Please reblog this to raise awareness of this product and hopefully get another company to market it. It could change so many lives.
It would change and save my life. If there’s one thing I hate in the top 5 most in this world. It’s the fucking pharmaceutical, money mongering, heartless industry.
Imagine typing out this letter and not stopping halfway and thinking “Hmmm, this makes me sound like the worst human being in the world.”
Holy fucking shit
I found the response for anyone else who was curious
Response is gold! I’d ALWAYS want a handmade gift more than some random store bought thing!
Dude I have family that will go “can you make me this thing for generic gift-giving holiday?” and when I agree to, they PROVIDE THE MATERIALS THEY WANT. And who knows if they even paid for enough yarn for a whole bedspread! Yarn is fucking expensive and buying high quality yarn to make AND ENTIRE BEDSPREAD and then making the goddamn thing in six months- which means she spent a LOT of time she could’ve been doing other things, easily hundreds of hours depending on the level of difficulty and how fine the yarn was- and just… damn.
24 hours after I brought her home, I got a mindblowing job offer. Since I adopted her nine years ago, my life has become an amusement park. She has brought me good luck ever since I took her into my home.
I’m telling you, there’s something about this animal. Good fortune follows her everywhere.
I don’t want to be selfish. I have everything I need and then some. So, I’m sharing her with you.
Reblog Brigitte and you’ll receive fantastic news in the next 24 hours.
And when you do, please remember to help your local SPCA and support them in the difficult work they do for wonder animals like Brigitte. Any donation helps your SPCA, even if it’s just five bucks.
Kitties like Brigitte are counting on you to give back when they bring you good luck.
Death By Catchphrase 