Cover And Coformity

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*This post was started on the road yesterday. As of now, middle of the day Wednesday, it looks like we’re going to back out of the purchase, as each inspection result that comes in discloses more expenses that must be done up front. As my experience has been that you usually double the predicted expense, the house would be ruinously expensive. And it’s already at the top of our ability to cover. So, our plans to move are suspended by now, perhaps indefinitely. The reports and studying them is the reason this is so late. The post might also read scattered and weird, since I kept being interrupted other paragraph. It might still be worth reading, who knows? – SAH*

I was raised in a very weird household, so it used to be my opinion that men were like dogs, pack animals and law abiding, while women were cats, solitary, who did what they had to do to survive.

Which goes to show you we are all influenced by the circumstances of their upbringing. And if that’s odd, so are our ideas of the world.

I know that both Foxfier and Mary have said that there is no parallel between real humans and RPG alignment, but dad is as close to lawful good as it’s possible to be. He will obey the law if it is at all possible, and works very hard not to give scandal or stand out.

That dad was obeying the whole of the Covidiocy didn’t surprise me. Yes, he’s a thinking and intelligent man, but he also has a touching belief in “the authorities” and those who are supposed to guard public health. One of the few times we’ve ound ourselves at odds was when I tried to point out to him the Clinton administration might not have the best interests of the US to heart. To him it was inconceivable that someone in charge o the country (who didn’t take over through violent revolution) should have interests that go against the country.

He probably thinks our claims of stolen elections are ridiculous, though he’ll never say that, because he doesn’t want to argue with me. He won’t have checked the numbers, and he trusts the MSM, and I imagine what the reporting has been like in Europe.

You see, dad was brought up mostly by his mom and grandmother (while his dad worked abroad until dad was in his mid-teens.) Grandma later admitted to having been perhaps a little too harsh on her 3 boys, because well… they were built like my boys and by 10 they were taller than she was. And she was afraid they’d go “to the bad” without a paternal influence.

His mom and grandmother did have his best interests at heart and were strict but fair.

Mom on the other hand, was born in a less stable family structure, in a much more dangerous area, and left to her own devices much of the time.

I don’t mean to say mom would consciously do what is wrong. But to her right and wrong have little to do with what people around her think or do. And rankly, she has very little respect for authority. Authority has to prove itself good or she’ll just assume it’s bad. (Yeah, I know. The nut didn’t fall far from the tree.)

There is no easier way to make her doubt something than to be ordered to do it, and to have authorities order her to do it. (Yeah, yeah, blah blah, nut tree. I hear you.)

So, imagine how shocked I was when she fell for the covidiocy and fell in line with all the instructions. Oh, she’d try to rebel, now and then. Like when she told me — tartly — during a call that they’d close the cemeteries, apparently afraid the dead would catch Winnie the Flu. But the next week, she’d be terrified of the China Bug and afraid I’d catch her, since I didn’t fall into line with any of the bullshit.

I have to assume that the propaganda in Europe was next level. And that at 85, mom is much more susceptible to the opinions of those around her, particularly since I doubt she’s ever spent much time on epidemiology or biology.

At any rate, according to my best friend from childhood, who had a pretty good handle on my family (having spent as much time around it, as around her own family, but with more detachment from the mechanics) I am somewhere in between. My instinct is not to trust authorities (probably because of the times I grew up in) but I do examine everything in light of rationality and life experience. So, trust but verify. Unless the authorities (and the crowd) push me to the point that I get stuck in “Effe you, no. You’re not the boss of me.” (Yeah, I know, but think on it.)

So, it’s a complete shock to me, no matter how many times I see it, that women in general seem to follow the crowd and “the people in charge” and to believe the crowd is right.

In retrospect, and looking at it from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense, since we are a species with a very prolonged childhood. Judging from both our closest ape-cousins and from modern day primitives, it is very difficult in situations of barbarism to raise children to adulthood if you don’t have the support of a family, or a tribe.

So, for most of our history as humans or pre-humans, the women who stuck out, refused to fall in with the crowd, and refused to obey left no children. Which of course, would make most women who survive, after several generations of it, would be natural conformists, with a tendency to conform outwardly and — perhaps — undermine the status quo by stealth and behind the scenes.

The female fighting mode is underhanded, undermining, and psychological. If we’re going to talk “toxic” femininity is far more toxic than masculinity. Masculinity, untamed and unbroken to society is dangerous in an open, violent way, a way in which most people understand they’re threatened by and therefore can defend themselves from.

The female form of fighting is best understood — so it is also understood what type of pond scum our ridiculous occupying Junta has installed as mock (very mock) VP — if you remember the Joe Biden Kamala Harris debate, when the little bint ripped up at the man who, no matter how corrupt and evil he is (and he is), had mentored her and nurtured her career by accusing him of having been racist against people like her.

You saw it in poor confused Joe’s eyes at that moment — and he was less confused than he is now, so he probably still knew who he was — the complete shock at being attacked by this woman who owed him gratitude and should at least have abstained from a frontal attack.

But Commie La Whorish is very female, from her means of advancement to her means of fighting. Which means she has no friends. Only people she can use until she steps on their bleeding corpses as she climbs.

That is a female who has not had her toxicity moderated by civilization, and who romps around being her evil self, and patting herself on the back for being so smart (I have it on the word of people who know her personally that she’s actually not very smart and her main points of interest are fashion and well…. herself.)

Her ilk infest boardrooms and businesses in America, making business a place where no one can be honorable, where merit is irrelevant, and where you must always watch for a knife in the back.

This is particularly bad in businesses almost wholly taken over by women, such as publishing, the arts, broadcasting, etc.

In such businesses even males adopt feminine modes of being in the world and the result is often horrific.

This entire crazy covidiocy has been a case of women and the men who have learned female modes of being in the world (and who are worse than women) running around with the bit between their teeth trying to agrandize themselves with how smart and special they are.

Note that women aren’t particularly dangerous. Not in civic life and not in business. In fact, women can be perfectly good citizens and business people.

The problem we have is that men have spent generations developing a “public mode” in which their natural male mode is curtailed –i.e. men might get very upset. They might talk of punching someone, but it would be very weird for say business partners to duel over a decision. Mine you, it was still perfectly common four hundred years ago — and tamed and civilized so people can work together for the good of whatever the objective is. So the “male way” of being in politics or business has been refined, and there’s established ways of doing things.

But while — contrary to the idiot pseudo history — women have been in business as more or less constant presences for about 100 years (and before that sporadically present) there has been no development of “ladies don’t do this” in business.

In the beginning, as a minority, they adapted to the majority’s way of doing business. Having grown up in a country seriously behind the times, I learned from dad a public-face that was/is mostly male. Oh, sure, I will be charming in a female way when in public. Well, if I can. In fact, I am a profound introvert, so when I’m in public it’s almost entirely a performance. However, I will turn my attention to discussing the subject at hand/working towards the objective of the group/business/whatever, and submerging my own advancement. At any rate, I never had much backstabbing instinct, since that is way too much work and I’m lazy.

But most women who first broke into public life, probably behaved like the men with whom they worked, because that was the way to be successful.

Honesty, though perhaps to some extent it curtails “female ways of being” (Search me. I really don’t know. I know that women in general think deeper and with more connections, while men think more clearly and point to point. So it’s possible that a “female way of thinking” could be of help in business, particularly business that deals with people. I just don’t know for sure that office-mode for males (and default office mode for 100 years of so until the current era of insanity) would curtail that. Or fully understand why it would. Note that my last “real” job in an office was 30 years ago give or take) I think the mode of being in business evolved over centuries works pretty well for both sexes.

If I understand it, this goes something like: The important thing is the job, whether the job is building houses or teaching kids, all personal grievances and agendas are submerged to that; workers are trustworthy and can be taken at their word; workers will be present at work time; there will be no personal feuds during work hours; professional etiquette requires that people pretend to be at least friendly acquaintances, no matter how much they might dislike each other on a personal level.

The list could go on, and yes, I know, there have always been issues with those rules. And other rules that involved “how to be in business” some of which I might not even know anymore, since they’ve been eroding hard for the last 20 years at least.

The problem is that in the last 30 or 20 years (different for different areas of the country) many industries became majority-female, at the same time that the women arriving at the scene came with a narrative (some of it justified, for women ten years older than I or so) of having been discriminated against and “being kept down by the man” (literally.) Note that while the narrative might have been justified at first, at least in the sense that women were basically adapting to an alien environment, but it’s not been justified at all for at least20 years, and has intensified despite it.

So women arriving in business now have never been discriminated against (by and large, okay? I know there’s always exceptions) BUT believe they’re being kept down.

Add to that the fact that since earliest schooling every teacher would be afraid of “discouraging” or somehow crushing the precious darlings (I’m not joking, and any of you who has had kids in public school recently has seen this) combined with a lot of older teachers projecting their traumas and their imagination at the kids.

These women have never actually been socialized for business, or told that their female impulses are wrong. So they come into business using the evolved mode of the extended family, the tribe and the seraglio, which means women backstab, form alliances and devote their full energies to interpersonal politics and looking good, leaving the “purpose of the organization” as a distant and possibly half-forgotten point.

Mind you this form of being in the world was great when the purpose was to suck up to the man or woman (depending on your position in the house) in power to make sure you and your children were safe and well fad. Admirable even. And in our tribal past are situations in a woman couldn’t be both honorable and safe. (honor being a thing evolved in chivalry days, and then honed to serve as a business code.) There still are in some of the shitholes of the world.

That is what’s imprinted deeply in female’s “nature”. And no one is curbing female nature, because having a vagina is magical and makes us special. (To be fair most men think this way, so they’re no help.)

Which is why even now that most rational people know that the whole damn covidiocy was MOSTLY idiocy and that wearing a mask is actually and literally worse than useless, as it seems to have worse outcomes, the people still wearing masks are mostly female.

You see, their instinct is to conform to the “voice of authority” (Which in this case is the news media and government) and to force others to conform, while taking an advantage or two along the way.

And yeah, I know this sounds terribly negative towards women. It’s not. Both women and men can unmake civilization in their own way. (And to the snowflake using the name “woke” — really — who has been bitbutcketed and who took it upon itself to lecture me on how civilization was more than two thousand years old, the Egyptians had civilization. Sure. Of course they did. As did the Babylonians and the builders of Gobekli Tepe. But where we know how their civilization worked, none of us would want to live in it, while with more or less comfort, most of us if forced could live in Western civilization, whose foremost roots lie about 2k years deep, though they could be deemed to extend the 6k years of Judaism. No other civilization (And speaking of older ones, oh, “woke” snowflake, you could have brought up India or China.) could or did develop the technology that makes our lives easier and had — pre covidiocy — almost banished famine and poverty — as historically understood– from the globe.)

The problem is that women are not being told “Yeah, you’re a woman and that’s special, but as an employee for x, your job is to do y.”

They’re not, for lack of a better term, taught to be gentlemen.

It’s already biting women in the *ss, because no sane man wants to be alone with a woman who might find it convenient to accuse him of sexual harassment to score points. No sane man wants a woman as his immediate subordinate if his removal will cause her to ascend. (Joe isn’t sane. Or in fact all there, at this point.) No sane man would start a partnership with a woman not his wife. (And some would be weary of partnering with their wives.)

Women are being taught to be feral. And either sex in feral mode (most of the feral men you’ll see are in other lands, or criminals, or of course homeless) can destroy civilization.

Going into a store where every man was walking around bare-faced and every woman masked and glowering made me sick.

I don’t want to reap the backlash that will come; I don’t want my granddaughters to be subjected to suspicion and hobbled because “women can’t be trusted in public life.”

The early feminists — early twentieth century and before — were clear about holding women up to ideals for being the best of the race. (Human race, oh, “woke”.)

It’s time we taught our daughters to do the same.

We’ve come a long way baby. And if we don’t learn to behave like civilized humans, we’re going to find ourselves back there, just as women are in most of the world.

And Humanity will be poorer.

375 thoughts on “Cover And Coformity”

  1. There’s a commenter elsewhere who is tedious about “this is why women shouldn’t have gotten the vote” every time some political disaster raises its head. There are days I agree with him, although those days tend to be few.

    I’m very, very fortunate that my superiors at Day Job follow the more masculine style of leadership. And that we were all picked for skill in our fields, so there’s no reason to compete or back-stab.

    Back before Mee Too, I was almost paranoid about not being alone with a male colleague or associate, although the reason was for my protection. Now I’m paranoid about HIS reputation and protection. This . . . is not progress.

    1. – There’s a commenter elsewhere who is tedious about “this is why women shouldn’t have gotten the vote” every time some political disaster raises its head. –

      Hey! I resemble that remark!

      But yea, worst mistake ever.

              1. Or the ‘it’ we get is got good and hard. Sure, we filled out ballots. Pulled the levers, put ’em in the machine, put ’em in the mail. Which is to say, we did *our* jobs. I hereby contend that the EC did not do *their* due diligence in ensuring the security of election. Too many irregularities that were either not investigated or were done by those with malicious intent and lots of good reasons (in their minds) to excuse, obfuscate, or out-and-out create fraud. Gobsmackingly ginormous amounts of fraud. Enough to change the outcome of a presidential election.

                What is that thing again, the one Weber was on about in Safehold? Something about a thing thrown away as if it were nothing, worthless, and of no consequence? Something like trust, integrity, faith? *shakes head*

                Naught good will come of this, save people cry out and condemn it loudly, publicly, and unceasingly such that it never happens again. A bitter lesson indeed, that government makes for a d*mnably poor servant, but a worse, vile, and terrible master.

                1. “There’s statistically improbable, and then there’s ‘violates the fundamental principles of the universe’.”

    2. If the human race were capable of governing well and wisely it would not need government.

      1. Not true. For example, driving. It does not matter which side of the road you drive on. It matters greatly that everyone drives on the same side. It takes a government to pick a side for everyone and enforce it.

        1. Nah. If we were that wise, we could agree that it would be wise, flip a coin if necessary, and peacefully abide by it as useful.

    3. Evolutionary forces shaped women to be primarily adapted for giving birth to, and caring for children, light work, and also for creating a tribal social life in which they could survive…Men were and are adapted for hunting, fighting, physically maintaining order, and toolmaking..Hence the female tendency toward conformity, passive/aggressive sneakiness, egalitarianism, and socialism…But some of both sexes, by the luck of the genetic draw, diverge from these blueprints and accomplish great things..Terrific!….Our mistake as a society has been the assumption that the exceptions to the rule are in fact typical…They’re not.

      1. Light work that never stops, because you’re doing at least two things at all times– the actual job, and monitoring.

        The real story behind multitasking.

    4. My dept at my job–a fedgov job, mind you–is sort-of recovering from YEARS of feral women running amok in it. I’m grateful that (although were are barely at half-full with staffing) in general the women still here are like me–I am a gentleman at work (and, honestly, outside of work, too–I’ve never been very good at “acting like most women” probably because I’m pretty sure I’m on SOME kind of spectrum). It’s “do the job, act like a polite professional” most of the time. The now-supervisor and her buddy can and sometimes do devolve into the ‘mean girls’ crap–but now that the actual mean girls are out of the department, they do it less. Mind you, *because* I witness their feud (back when I was a contractor) with others in the dept (and admittedly, one of them is the worst cry-bully on the planet, and that may have been the only weapons that worked against her) I don’t really trust either one of them. But the *mess* left behind by years and years of feral females…ugh.

      1. Yes, yes! Women on the autism spectrum do not behave like ordinary women. We tend to not engage in cattiness and backstabbing and to be more direct. The women I know who are on the spectrum are also more honest and more independent thinkers. I always behaved like a gentleman when I was working, even though the women around me were forming alliances and stabbing me in the back. There are advantages to being on the spectrum—if you believe feral femininity to be societally damaging.

        1. I’d agree, to a point, on the autism spectrum thing, except that…I know many women who are NOT, and who do not behave like this. Likely because, at some point, they were trained to understand that toxic femininity is not acceptable behavior? Or at least, they learned not to do it in work/certain social situations, I suppose. But yeah, even so, they’re rarer than they ought to be.

    5. Pretty sure it was Pence who wouldn’t dine with a woman not his wife.
      The MSM / libs used this to go after him as being either
      A) Afraid of women
      B) A misogynist and likely rapist

      When more likely the reason was not wanting to be accused of inappropriate behavior towards a woman. After all, ALL WOMEN SHOULD BE BELIEVED #METOO!!!! Funny, isn’t it, how fast #metoo died off when job lots of libs / Dems started getting called out…

  3. I’m a bit comforted by seeing women going around without masks… of course, more men are still abandoning the face-diaper, but it’s cheering to see that some women are rejecting the covidiocy.
    One of the first indications I saw of someone making mock of the whole thing was a woman at an open-air market in a yuppified area of San Antonio. (The Pearl Brewery weekend market, if anyone is interested.) Masks were required going into any of the premises, but outdoors … a lot of people were wearing the da*ned things, in obedience to the dictates posted about “Face Covering Required.” She had on a gauzy, spangled belly-dancer’s nose veil. I thought it was an apt response to the whole round of nonsense and gave her a thumbs-up across the way.

    We had a toxic troop, back in the day, when I was stationed in Spain. She turned out to be a pathological liar, of the most poisonous kind. The girl lied like she breathed, effortlessly and automatically. Once we became aware of this and she became our most immediate disciplinary headache, our detachment NCOIC always had me sit in on any interviews in his office with her – me and the First Shirt, too. And we three were to take notes and file a memo for record afterwards.
    Toxic, vengeful, feral women are a pain in the *ss, especially to those of us who apparently have a more masculine tolerance and turn of mind. They make it awful for us, with the men that we work with.

    1. > The girl lied like she breathed, effortlessly and automatically.

      My sister is one. No word that came out of her mouth could be trusted, because she’d lie about *anything*; things of no importance that she would be caught on within minutes, things that actually worked to her own disadvantage… it didn’t matter what the subject was, though she favored anything that would stir up trouble.

      She was born like that; or at least, from the time she learned to talk. No amount of lecturing or spanking stopped it. I’m not even sure it was deliberate; it’s like there is something broken in her head. She went on to have some ex-husbands who deeply wished they’d needed warnings about her. But butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and most people don’t actually *listen*, or bother to connect the dots if they do… not until they’re looking back wondering how they got trapped in the flaming dumpster. She was also a petty thief; again, mostly just to cause trouble. She’s learned how to work the divorce, alimony, and child support rackets now.

      In 2014 her name showed up on our land line’s Caller ID. There was no point to listening to anything she said, so I punched “mute”, and put the phone back on the base station.

      1. Yup, just like our little problem child – lied about stuff that didn’t matter, stuff that could be easily checked and disproven. There was something deeply broken and unfixable in that woman. What made it worse was that she was vengeful – anyone who had ever crossed her was for it. Lie upon lie. About a year later, when I had moved on to another assignment, I got a letter from her, forwarded from my old APO address. She wanted me to file a statement supporting her petition to upgrade her less-than-honorable discharge, a discharge which was richly deserved, IMHO. I tore up the letter and threw it in the trash. I was already on a DOD list which kept my own security regarding where I was assigned, so she couldn’t make any further trouble for me.
        What a toxic woman. I’m still slightly astonished that I got off fairly lightly from that experience.

      2. I’m sorry to hear that. My family has been fortunate. All of us are odd in our own way, and some of us can be highly opinionated, but, we’ve all been able to trust each others intentions were good, even if we did not agree with them.

        I can hardly imagine what it would be like growing up without that.

        1. OTOH when you grow up to trust those around you to not lie and backstab, even though you do disagree and argue, you know they are arguing their point out of love and what is best (PIA, but still, not vengeful). THEN you run into that toxic person … OMG, ever been slammed by a metaphorical 2×4, then a baseball bat?

          “Wait? What? … I don’t give a rats ass what you were told. I don’t have a clue what is going on. Leave me out of this.” AND the joy is (see post below), the person who got tricked (whatever you call it) into trying to rope me in, knew that at that point they’d had been given ALL the facts I knew, and my opinion on said facts, whether they’d asked for them or not. They might find that trait irritating at times, but dang it has its uses.

        2. @harryv: are you related to Pam Huff’s Harry? The Norns weave Story with our lives; sometimes the author cribs from The Author,,,

          1. Probably not, unless there are a lot more psuedonims going on here than I’d thought.

            This name is a game handle I’ve been using some variation of since Zelda 1 came out.

    2. *can instantly SEE that One Woman in Deck*

      My only saving grace was that she for some insane reason decided to BRAG AT ME about it. Apparently, she thought the surface electronics chief was accurate in his idea of what I was like… (He was seriously disturbed and thought I was having sex with…basically every dude on the ship who ever played HALO. Uh, no.)

      She was a sexual predator.

      She also lied, but she was a sexual predator and thought I’d think it was awesome.

      So I managed to “Accidentally” avoid her… but how do you report “this gal is deliberately trying to seduce superiors so she can blackmail them idiots”?

      1. Speaking of ships, in re the Fitzgerald/McCain incidents, there has been much made about one of them that the OOD and the CIC officer “weren’t speaking to each other”.

        Do we know for a fact that they weren’t speaking to each other in a social catty way, or were they just literally negligently not in communication during the crisis?

        It seemed like a throwaway line in the initial news articles that got seized on by generally right-leaning pundits and has now become a Known Fact™ about Women In The Military, but given the number of level-headed ex-military women just on this forum, that seems like it should be investigated for truth.

        1. I can’t claim any kind of first-hand or similar evidence, but from what I’ve seen– it seems to be more division feuding, than “cat fight” ….stuff.

          It actually looked a lot like where my ship had one poor SOB who was actually qualified for the job, and the other guy he was supposed to talk to who was also undermanned, but literally everybody there was male. There were…. a lot of issues.

          Going off of responses when I pointed out basic stuff anybody who had ever SEEN ship duty should’ve known, the “oh look it was a cat fight” stuff was nonsense.

          Navy officers have issues. IT’s not because of what’s in their pants.

        2. There’s in-depth investigative stuff including mildly redacted interview transcripts findable online.

          My read was the two Gentleladies by Act of Congress were in fact not issuing syllables directly one to the other, but that it was personal friction, and only gender-based in that berthing arrangements, division assignments and duty rotation aboard a not enormous ship didn’t enable them to stay separate to where friction would not generate heat.

        3. Whether it’s true or not, the problem is that there’s a massive failure in Navy training and procedure. You don’t walk away from your duty station, and you don’t fail to pass on vital information just because you’re pissed at someone.

          You. Don’t. Abandon. Your. Station. Well, maybe that Navy is okay with that now, but that’s not my idea of how a navy ought to be run.

          That’s a *massive* failure at the command level. And as we found out later, not the first, second, or even third ship where it got bad enough there was a collision. Since we’re talking about more than a decade spanning the incidents, it’s apparently a problem the Navy has no intention of correcting.

          1. You. Don’t. Abandon. Your. Station

            You can’t not when your “station” requires 9 people to function at basic level, and there are 2 assigned– one of whom is on TDY to the mess decks.

            For an example of what I’ve seen.

            Husband’s duty was a 12 person station, he had ONE. Himself.

            My first duty station was also 12, they got the secondary supervisor certified to do certification so that we had a whole six for our 12 person office, so we had five people who could calibrate, besides the physical only guy.

            This was ….2004? Ish?

            1. (the physical only guy was intelligent but evil, he got certified for HALF of the calibration requirement. He also falsified his work records, which is why after years of recording him falsifying work records he got fired.)

            2. When my dad took command of one vessel during the Carter years, it was such a hot mess that it could not get out of San Diego without breaking down and being towed back to port.

              He turned it around, but the methods cannot be used on women: Too mean. Just as the hazing required to weed out the congenital gammas and the ones who enjoy it too much are madness between guys and gals.

              Women have no business in the navy. There are not enough who can do the job to make the cost of disrupting the operation worth it. And those women are better off leading the Auxiliary ladies forces anyway.

              1. I know women in the nay. (Adopted, practice DIL, for ex) Some are in there fair and square. I’m fine with that. JUST DON’T GIVE THEM BREAKS YOU WOULDN’T MEN.
                (I respond quite well to male environments, and male ways of dealing with things. Training, not any weirdness. Women can be trained. Or at least SOME can.)

                1. 25 years ago I had that convo with my dad, and he predicted what we have now. He said that is all well and good, but we *can’t* do what you (And I, back in the day) proscribe. Can not, not in a democracy, not with the gummint we have, not with human nature.

                  He was right.

                  Just like communism will work if you get all the boundaries and rules right.

              2. My crazy uncle was in when they were able to use the old methods– they didn’t work very well then, either.

                Same reason there’s issues with women– the predators break the system.

                The rules have to be enforced. And the Navy is really bad about actually doing that, kinda since creation…..

                1. Yes, sure, Communism requires everything to work perfectly.
                  BUT even good systems can be destroyed by making exceptions, creating work arounds and poisoning the whole thing with the idea that women — the majority of the race — are an oppressed minority. As it’s being proven with free trade and the constitutional republic.

                  1. The rules work well…when they’re USED.

                    In my limited experience, the “I get to abuse folks and it’s just allowed hazing” worked worse than “psycho women can game the system” thing, with less obvious fixes (like charging women for objectively false accusations).

                    Part of the issue is that the Navy was REALLY FREAKIN’ SCREWED UP after ‘nam.

          2. What incidents are you talking about that there was more than a decade spanning them? The McCain and Fitzgerald incidents happened in the same year. And there was no “abandonment of station” happening with either one.

        4. There was a lot going on with the Fitzgerald incident, and the rebuttal letter the Commander (who was severely injured in the incident) sent to the inquiry board was quite interesting, and rather scathing as to higher authority’s shared responsibility. It also spoke well of the professionalism of the two watch officers in question.

          The thing about 7th Fleet, and Fox can confirm this, is that there are not enough ships or personnel to do all the things that the Navy is required to do there. PACOM is the largest AOR by area, and most of it is containing China. The optempo there is ridiculous. The way ships’ schedules work in the US is different than how they work in 7th Fleet. FDNF (forward deployed naval forces, the ships in Japan and the destroyers in Spain) have much foreshortened maintenance and training schedules compared to those in the US, and while their deployments might last half as long, they have more of them. There’s a lot of cross decking, which is sending people from one ship to another ship in order to have them maintain some kind of currency with equipment and qualification while their ship is being fixed or upgraded or whatever. That can lead to its own issues. There’s also a lot of cross-cannibalization of parts and equipment across the cruiser/destroyer squadron during inspections and certification events, so a ship may be certified “ready” but not actually have everything or everyone it’s supposed to.

          As someone who has conducted crew certification training and assessment (not for anything engineering-wise or technical) for those ships, I can tell you there’s significant pressure from and for the ships (which don’t want to get dinged for not being ready), their type commanders (same), and higher, to request waivers from the certifying bodies for personnel, training, and equipment not on hand. Over the course of the certification process, if you can show that your crew is *scheduled* for a school or training, but has not yet attended, it can still count toward your readiness evaluation. Because nobody, least of all Congress or the American people, want to hear that the ships are old, undermanned, and too few for their mission.

          That’s as a general thing. For the McCain, specifically, I blame the Captain for not having set Sea& Anchor detail. Yes, it was early in the ship’s day, but they were already on restricted maneuvering. MY Captain brought my ship safely in through some very heavy fog (visibility down to a quarter mile or less) in Norfolk, and we had Sea & Anchor out as soon as we started preparations to enter the channel. It sucked, but we got in safely. Yeah, his crew might have complained about the long detail, but at least they’d all be alive.

          That’s my personal opinion, though. Not an official criticism.

          1. Readiness reports in the military are all fraudulent. They all lie. Every unit in the entire military is actually functioning at least one readiness level lower than reported.

            “Sure we can have that vital piece of equipment that’s been a hanger queen for the past nine months ready to deploy in 24 hours. We’ll just k-ball the parts needed. Never mind that while it will work while on the shop floor here, once it gets to the forward operating area it will fail in less than a week.”

        5. Some of the patterns of that information provided to various parties are interesting in hindsight.

          We can now be pretty confident that conservative media was heavily penetrated by someone’s disinformation assets.

          That particular version of events could have been an information operation of some sort.

          I’m too fried to analyze further, even if my memory was cooperating fully, and if the evidence on the infowar side wasn’t ambiguous.

          1. Most conservative media from the Bush years forward was and is a disinformation asset.

            Just as the stories that speak to a need to reform the police that make it out onto the progressive News are ones that are easily debunked by the right, so stories that undermine the SocJus military (sorry ladies. I bought the dream, too, once upon a time) are those debunkable by the left.

    3. I think we’ve achieved critical maskless in my little corner of SE Texas. When I went to the convenience store this morning, none of the customers were masked. That’s the first time that’s happened in a year.

      “like she breathed, effortlessly and automatically” that’s how I describe my padding of schedule.

      1. Unfortunately, Kalifornia is still at Critical Mask. 99% at the grocery store.

        At least some of the clerks have stopped mask nagging.

  4. Learning to do the best job you can on whatever the topic is works well for business. (And personal life.) Maybe it’s an Odd thing, or maybe it’s being raised by scientific types (an engineer and a paleontology nut), but doing the best job you can was a value that was instilled in me from a young age. (Oddly enough, I’m having to talk my middle child down from that—her perfectionist ways get in the way of, well, actually finishing assignments. “Perfect but incomplete” is not as good as “Complete but imperfect.”)

  5. I remember a description of the four types of a one fighter pilots a while back. It broke down i to four types:

    1: Steamrollers
    2: Bushwakers
    3: The Sniper
    4: Tanks

    I realized I fly in the steam roller style: if I’m coming after you, you know it and I will do my absolute best to stay bolted to your tail until one of us is dead.

    After reading that, I figured, I should actually go learn and try some bushwacking tactics. The results were way beyond anything I was expecting. Turns out teaching a steam roller how to ambush someone means you get ambushed by a steam roller. And if you were struggling when you’re on even footing, just imagine what’s going to happen when they’ve got the jump on you?

    And teaching a group of people who normally butt heads loudly and with force, to backstab is a great way to end up getting backstabbed by a tire iron, in lieu of the usual hatpin…

      2. Huh. I was thinking of old space fighter combat sims like X-Wing. Steamroller was definitely my default.

      3. >> “Derp: four typoes of Anime pilots…”

        That makers more sense. I mean, who wants to be the tank in a real dogfight?

        “Hey, bad guys, shoot ME! I’ll bet MY plane can take it!”

        Also: “typoes?” That might be the most ironic typoe I’ve seen yet. 😛

        1. Well, there was one Dauntless pilot who managed it. I’ll have to go find the name again, but he managed to shoot down four Zeros in a single engagement. They were boom and zooming him in succession, but he was effective enough in defending against the attacks that he was able to, eventually, shoot down four of them when the got careless on the extension.

          That more how the Anime Tank pilot flies; they just *don’t die* long enough to eventually win.

        2. “Hey, bad guys, shoot ME! I’ll bet MY plane can take it!”

          You’ve just described Wildcat vs. Zero. And I read of at least one case of a Thunderbolt whose guns failed to fire where the pilot just basically hunkered down behind his armor plating and waited until the German fighter ran out of ammo, then poked his head up and flew home.

    2. I describe the staff meetings at the VP level at prior job a couple decades ago as “gladiatorial games” – any topic that came up, from the veep or anyone else, he wanted fought out until there was blood on the sands in front of him. I never knew if this was a subcontinent thing or just this guy, but it did prepare me well for many years later at another job when a female manager in another department decided to spring a public ambush, and given my gladiatorial background I had automatically come prepared, charged her ambush and thoroughly routed her attack. I actually got along with her afterward, too – I don’t know if it matters, but she was from an extracontinental latin culture and apparently getting publicly defeated at work by a dude was not a reason for grudges.

      Getting similarly defeated in a business setting by a female may have triggered a different response.

      1. And I’m not quite sure why WP put this here as a reply – I think I was doing a general reply to Sarah. WPDE.

      2. Showing up her might have actually helped solidify your position in her eyes.

        Also, it’s possible that there was a mix of irrational emotions and logic at play – the former leading to her first actions, and the latter (after you’d proven yourself) leading to the later actions after she’d been forced to acknowledge your basic competence.

      1. That’s more personality style. The totally chill guy is just as likely to be the one to climb into the phone booth with you as the one to picks you off at 50nm before you even knew they were there 🙂

  6. During the mask idiocy I found that the most fearful people I knew were/are women. They are the ones who were doubling or tripling down: meeting “in person” while outside, wearing masks, sitting 6 ft apart. They were also the ones most concerned about appearances. I know that’s a blend-in go along don’t stand out thing.

    And, yes, women in the work place are nastier and far more back-stabby than men. Even today. I’ve always tried to approach work stuff in a straightforward manner. In academia, that does cause problems because that whole endeavor is, as you pointed out, feminine in how it runs its wars.

    But today, I did all my grocery shopping **without a mask!!** And, while there were still many more people with masks, there were many without and the majority of those without masks were women. The line from “Lola” comes to mind…”It’s mixed up, muddled up, shook up world…”

    1. The sign says per CDC guidelines, wear a mask if you aren’t vaccinated. Since I’m sure everyone in town is lawful, I guess 99% of the grocery shoppers, including all children (who can’t be vaccinated, mind) are vaccinated. Yeah. Uh-huh.

      Meanwhile statistically we’re a bunch of anti-vaxxers out here, with very low adoption. (Not my immediate social circle, where I seem to be the holdout, but in general.)

      Vax has become “Don’t ask,” and while some people are still telling, some people are starting to figure out maybe they shouldn’t tell.

          1. Pound me too?

            Why would I want to pound on you Sarah? [Very Big Crazy Grin]

        4. Yup, was exposed to the virus, fought it off. Live virus vaccination is not considered safe these days but it is still vaccination.

          1. Oh and hardly anyone in far upstate NY is going masked in the stores now that the “Fully Vaccinated are exempt from mask wearing” signs are up, although I have seen a few unlucky children still masked because their mothers are following the letter of the law rather than the spirit (or the science).

      2. The local county Public Health Overlady has issued requirements that businesses must ask:

        https://abc7news.com/santa-clara-county-coronavirus-vaccine-health-order-covid-requirements/10659797/

        While they found some 1D10T who is going to actively discriminate by requiring they show proof of vax before being allowed in their store (I assume that sign goes up next to the “No Dogs or Chinamen” sign in their front window), I have seen reporting that Silicon Valley businesses are mucho concerned about collecting and maintaining the required lists.

        Were I running any business with employees I’d have a list saying everyone is vax’d, with documentation that company policy is anyone who wants to be officially recorded as notvax can apply to have that record entry changed using the appropriate hardcopy form intriplicate, which I’d fail to process until after this rule is thrown out in court.

      3. > vaccinated

        I can truthfully answer “yes”, and have documents to prove it. Polio, rubella, tetanus, diptheria, measles… Like “attitude”, “vaccination” has become overly-specific in common usage.

        Looking up what schoolkids are commonly shot up with now, the cdc.gov site recommends a *lot* more than I got, plus multiple boosters all the way through school. I’ve never even heard of some of the diseases they’re supposed to immunize against… and they’re “recommending” multiple flu vaccinations now. I wonder if they’re still lining up schoolkids in the hallway, or if they’re expecting the parents to have it done…

      4. This was NJ and both Trader Joe’s and Wegman’s had taken all signs down. I know that TJs corporate said that customers no longer have to be masked in their stores, but I hadn’t heard about Wegman’s. I was very happy.

        1. I was in Costco in NJ today. No masks required. The wife was the only woman not wearing one and I saw only one or two other men. The wife said Wegman’s was better.

          1. The proportions of masked vs. unmasked seemed about the same in the two stores. But in TJs I did see more senior citizen types *without* masks.

    3. I had my semiannual checkup with $STD_DOCTOR, mostly for diabetes. I had the Kung Flu (AFAIK) March ’20, and this time he didn’t dispute. But, this time I got the Vaccine Talk. At first aimed as if I were a basic low-information voter (Trust the CDC! They say it’s safe and effective!!!!eleventy111) I countered with reservations about mRNA and the SARS problems some years back. and mentioned that the public health people managed to blow their credibility, and that the take rate for the Vax was 42% in the county last week. (This weeks numbers strangely dropped about 5-6% in the two counties I looked at.) I think he figured he wasn’t going to dazzle with brilliance, so he went the other way.

      I wasn’t going to try to convince *him* to rethink the not-vaccine, but I made it clear he wasn’t going to convince *me*. Somewhere along the line, he said something like “I know I won’t convince you, but here’s the talk.” I got the distinct impression that a) he was going to go along with anything the CDC said, plus laughable attempts at appealing to my “Civic Duty” to get the shots, and b) anything bad about Saint Fauci was going to be ignored, if he even heard about the email release. (I think Fauci is a liar and a Virgo Galaxy Cluster hack, and he should have been sacked over his Aids oversight years ago.)

      Part of the Civic Duty spiel was so that places like Fred Meyer (Kroger) wouldn’t have to force everybody to mask up, since nobody in county is stupid enough to have someone demanding to see a vax passport. He certainly wasn’t in Fred Meyer yesterday. Not a huge percentage unmasked, maybe 10-15%. OTOH, people without masks just go on their business and those with masks carry on. One or two other stores have low numbers of employees masked up. That’s a $8900 OR-OSHA fine if *anyone* is unmasked, but it seems that some stores just have that fuggitol attitude. Of course, it means small stores get hurt worse, all according to plan. Arggh.

        1. The William Wallace treatment sounds appropriate, though if it’s not practical, lamppost decoration would be sufficient.

          1. Hiv. And he may only have treatments discovered under his oversight of the crisis

    4. Remember: If you got your tetanus and measles shots, etc., you are “fully vaccinated”. If your interlocutor choses to lie, you are not obligated to set him straight. Silence your inner Hermione Granger. Go full Jordan Peterson on his backside.

      ” Of course, I’m fully vaccinated”

      If they’re honest enough to ask if you got the Covid-harm reduction therapy shot, of course, lying is a sin. Tell the truth.

  7. Oh, and I am so sorry about the house – it sounded so promising, early on, and I thought that you might like the area… almost as much as you would like Texas.
    Check back with us, when the Daughter Unit has got her real estate license and works for a local brokerage. She might be able to help set you up right.
    Even if South Texas is blood hot in the summer…

    1. Don’t forget North Texas. We’re slightly cooler. We haven’t had a 100 degree day in a long while. I’m sure there are still places to buy that aren’t insanely expensive.

  8. which means women backstab, form alliances and devote their full energies to interpersonal politics and looking good, leaving the “purpose of the organization” as a distant and possibly half-forgotten point.

    Variation in application of the Iron Law. Normally the feedback mechanisms of private business make “dedicated to the organization itself” most easily fulfilled by dedication to the goals of the organization. However, what you’ve got is people using “Oppression” as an excuse and various legal “remedies” to the claimed oppression to bypass that feedback allowing the Iron Law to proceed in all its glorious horror.

  9. But Commie La Whorish is very female, from her means of advancement to her means of fighting. Which means she has no friends. Only people she can use until she steps on their bleeding corpses as she climbs.

    Ask Willie Brown. There’s interviewage from around when her campaign fell apart where Willie is still surprised that, after he started his sidepiece up the political ladder by arranging that she get appointed to various statewide commissions in Sacramento, she quickly stopped returning his calls, booty or otherwise.

    Poor guy.

  10. [picture at top of page]

    Ugly clothing, designed by someone who hates women.

    Generally, that means “high fashion.”

    2. The background makes me wonder if it is a designer’s retrospective at the Met Museum in NYC. Or some themed display about “The Little Black Dress” or something.

      2. It looks like the average, pre WuFlu, shop window on 5th Ave. One of the great accomplishments of modernity is to take beautiful women and make them look ugly.

        1. Got nothin’ on some of the gawdawful fashion for men — typically makes ’em look like gangsters or pimps, or perhaps like they forgot to finish getting dressed.

          Side note: for the elegant male, Gentleman’s Gazette is a pleasant YT channel.

          1. …Fashion for men? Ye blobs and little fishes. You have your suit, your work clothes, and the worn out comfy stuff you have to work in the yard. What else do you need?

          2. The CMA who did my vitals today was dressed normally, though I saw far too much of his tattoos to want to be in the same room as him. Protip: Occult and/or satanic symbols on your arms isn’t a good look.

            1. *geek hat on*

              It’s really freaking COOL how many of the “occult” symbols are actually just Catholic.

              I got banned from any tattoos that I wanted in the Navy because neopagan Norse gangs stole Irish Catholic symbols. 😀

              Annoying, but cool!

              *throws up metal hands, which is an old Italian ward against the Evil Eye that some metal singer got from his grandma*

              1. I was so delighted when I found that out, because not long before I learned this my father–who doesn’t entirely understand Mom and I’s love of metal–was wondering dubiously (as he comes from a rather restrictive Protestant background, before he became LDS) what it’s origins were. Originally my answer was “I have no idea.”

                He got a semi-relieved “huh” when I told him a few weeks later where it came from.

            2. Checks Qwant for articles on Irish Catholic symbols: Out of the top 20 on this list, https://irisharoundtheworld.com/celtic-symbols/

              One of his tattoos was sort of close to #15, the Ailm. (outline of a square cross, in some form of frame. Not necessarily a circular one. Nothing else came close to Celtic.

              Others in view:
              Pentacle in a circular frame, a large dagger between two columns(?), which dagger had a very thick line connection to the partially hidden skull further up on his arm. I didn’t try to read the knuckle tats, nor the lettering on the back of his neck. OTOH, he skipped the side-of-the-neck ink popular with the prison crowd (not sure which gangs, we have the selection, mercifully in small numbers so far).

              The guy wasn’t built like a biker, (at least not the Harley dudes I’d see in San Jose* in the ’90s) but it was particularly creepy for a guy taking my blood pressure… Hell, the biker dudes from SJ were less creepy.

              (*) Near the jail/court/cop shop at that time. I used to live in a considerably rougher neighborhood, though I’d stay away from the bar. The pizzeria next door (hold the Jalapenos and anchovies, please) was interesting enough.

              1. Honestly? I suspect it was more than the tats creeping you out. I’m betting they didn’t *help*, but in my experience with people like that, it’s because they’re an outward, visible sign of something that’s setting your instincts off, saying “There’s something wrong with this person, be wary.”

                2. Most likely. Actually, he was polite, but you sure as hell could see the tattoos in all their glory.

                  In some ways, I was expecting him to act more off-kilter, to match the tats. The presentation he gave was normal, but I suspect my subconscious was saying “It’s an act!” The conscious aspect was that he *was* rather polite, more so than one would expect from a medical assistant.

                  1. Psychopaths (and not all pyschopaths are evil) can definitely read wrong to non-psychopaths, so it’s possible he was that. But, as I said, they aren’t all automatically BAD…but I’m fairly sure that they all trigger instincts as “be wary of this person.” But yes, whether he was a ‘good’ psychopath or a ‘bad’ one, your brain was probably accurate in telling you “This is an act!” Because it likely WAS an act.

                    1. Yeah, this was a little bit more subtle than the Far Side cartoon of dangerous creatures (piranha, ticked off grizzly, guy with pool toy, clown wig and a bazooka), but it’s nice to know that the subconscious can tell me things that my conscious is a bit fuzzy about. (And yeah, being Oregon, it’s a gun free free fire zone.)

                    2. I’m pretty sure that’s why my brain starts gibbering warnings and flailing red flags whenever I see Zuckerberg or the dude who runs Twitter in ANYTHING. They’re so off to my perceptions that even PHOTOS trigger it.

                      (Which says to me, also, that they aren’t doing the act very well, or aren’t bothering anymore. So they code as “lizard person” pretty much all the time…)

                    3. Jack Dorsey.

                      Even when he’s had a haircut and a beard trim, I just get the “he was such a good neighbor, I’m shocked they found all those bodies in his back yard” vibe.

                    4. Yeah, Zuckerberg hits the uncanny valley smack in the center. The news I follow doesn’t show much of Jack, so I’m not so much triggered by seeing a picture of him. (Might be an advantage. I don’t watch video news, and still pictures of Jack don’t trigger me. I’m happy to say I don’t know what either of their voices sound like.)

                    5. Also, every pic I’ve ever seen of Jack Dorsey, his pupils are the size of pinpricks. I’m fairly sure someone has a raging drug addiction…in addition to being a lizard person.

      3. It looks like the sort of Goth Summer Wardrobe thing that chains will do every five years or so. In this case it’s made unattractive by the hats and the slightly hunched-looking mannequin poses. But I see this sort of thing worn by my women friends all the time.

  11. My sister tried the “if women ran the world there’d be no more wars” BS on me at a party a number of years ago. I retorted that there’d be one more war and everyone would end up dead so, yeah, if women ran the world there’d be no more wars — atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

  12. > If I understand it, this goes something like: The important thing is the job,

    It used to be. Everyone had to pull their weight, or they starved, or were conquered, or they went out of business. There wasn’t enough slack in the system to support much dead weight.

    The problem is, even after half a century of bad administration, recession, depression, and general recto-cranial inversion, much of the West is still inconceivably rich by historical standards. Businesses support parasites that would have killed them before.

    For example, in the old days grocery stores operated on razor-thin margins. Now… Kroger just donated another $5M to “social causes” on top of the $5M they dropped into BLM’s account last year. They’re so rich now, they not only can afford to piss millions away supporting terrorism, but they’re willing to lose all the customers who will never enter their stores again because of it, and apparently they don’t care what their stockholders think at all. They’re not even close to the only company doing that sort of thing.

    1. It’s not their money, it’s the shareholders money, they’re just managers and that’s why. They have no skin in the game.

        1. Just so.

          They do have to pay the donativum though. BofA pledged $1B to BLM. Hell, Goldman only gave $10MM. This will get them good will from their regulators and ensure that “public policy” tilts in their favor.

            1. By their actions, they hate all of us, too. With the petulant power of a thousand dying smartphones. We just happen to outnumber them by a few orders of magnitude, though, should we realize it.

            2. Grandfather worked for them back when they were Bank of Italy.

              Dad at one point in the 90s commented that he was glad his father hadn’t seen what they’d turned into.

  13. I know that both Foxfier and Mary have said that there is no parallel between real humans and RPG alignment, but dad is as close to lawful good as it’s possible to be. He will obey the law if it is at all possible, and works very hard not to give scandal or stand out.

    *laughs gleefully*

    My argument is that there’s no connection to humans from RPG alignment as they are popularly played. The reality is just more complicated than some moron with “but we made a law, you must sacrifice babies!”

    My darling husband is Lawful Good, Vimes style.

    It DEEPLY embarrasses him, as he fancies himself more a Lawful Lawful with a side of Lawful….

    2. A youngish woman work teammate was geeking out over the D&D campaign she’s playing in (which is fine, the rest of us may be 40/50-something men but we’re all D&D geeks too) and mentioned she was playing a paladin.

      I asked her, “Have you had the argument over whether to kill the werewolf babies yet? You haven’t really played a paladin if you haven’t argued over whether to kill the werewolf babies.” 😀

      1. Please tell me she was familiar with the whole baptized mandatory chaotic evil thing?

        This stuff actually really helped me with dealing with mental illness in real life philosophy– “what if there’s someone who REALLY CANNOT be trusted on X, but otherwise they are awesome?”

        1. D&D played well with intelligent people can help with a lot of things. Playing a cleric helped my with my faith, but running a religious war helped more (the arguments were epic). Psychology is pretty much mandatory. Ethics, and not just to not murder your fellow players either, makes an appearance- fair play, and understanding perspectives alien to your own (at least if your fellow players/ DM are interesting, that is). History, because who *doesn’t* want to re-fight the Anabasis, Cannae, or what-if the Fulda Gap?

          Role play can be pretty awesome.

          1. Yeah, but the alignment system is taking every moral and ethical issue that the wisest souls in history have broken their heads over for millennia, misunderstanding half of it, boiling it down to a set of rules, and handing it over for play to some sophomoric players. (Some of whom will have the legitimate excuse of being sophomores.)

            1. Or Freshmen. A floating D&D game has developed at Day Job. Some players and GMs graduate, others move up into their slots. It’s kinda fun to watch from concealment. (Because no teacher knows anything about Magic:The Gathering or D&D or Call of Cthulu. Noooo, not at all. )

          2. And make for awesome family/extended family of choice jokes.

            All I have to say is “bacon bacon bread bowl with bacon” and a dozen folks will start grinning.

            They spent six hours (two part) RPing a shopping trip, and the soup bowl place was at least a third of that.

      2. Never played D&D and I always assumed ‘werewolf’ was a disease, not a species – transmitted by bite and all that – so there wouldn’t be any werewolf babies (cubs?) and it would just be a matter of holding or incapacitating the werewolf until he/she reverted back, then looking for a cure.

        I never knew D&D had werewolf babies?

        I heard the baby Orcs argument, but I’m more familiar with Tolkien I always envisioned them as imps, as mentioned in The Hobbit. Little monsters are impossible to feel warmth for: scurrying around after the big Uruks hoping for scraps, maybe growing bigger, stronger, more cunning and imaginative, but never better in the moral sense.

        1. From my experience (which may well be totally different and alien to anyone else) the paladin/baby werewolves argument goes a bit like this:

          Werewolves in were form (as wolves) are insane, tanky, bloodthirsty killing machines. In Man form, they are mostly like you and me, just harboring a terrible secret that may or may not be psychologically torturing them (alternately, they just *love* the gore). Putting them down when they rage and go all murderhappy is just good sense- they *will* kill you and other innocents if you don’t. So you do.

          Then you find ’em. Werewolf babies. Baby werewolves. Cute little buggers, too. Nearly all babies are cute. Survival mechanism, if they was ugly little snots they wouldn’t survive and neither would the species. Werewolf babies are innocent. They’ve yet to so much as kill or eat alive *bugs* for Bub’s sake.

          And then the thief pops up “Nits make lice!” or some such rot. You just know they are going to become a threat when they grow up (stay with me here- yes I know, red herring and all, but stick with it). The argument is, end a threat before it materializes, everybody wins, right?

          But the paladin, bless her darlin’ soul, ain’t having none of it. Innocent means innocent. Period. You don’t kill babies, you don’t murder the innocent, otherwise it’s smitin’ time! You don’t want a Holy Smite upside your head. Thus the conundrum.

          Either you take it that the werewolf babies are a proto-threat and nothing but, or you take it that innocent is innocent (you monster), no baby killing. Period. Even if they are doomed to become furry murder machines when they grow up, they aren’t *now* (just tiny adorable fuzzballs, actually).

          This can make for some *great* gaming, in my experience. If you treat lycanthropy as a curse you can quest for cursebreaking and create some delicious tension within the party if the players roleplay well. If an infection, is there a possible high level spell or artifact that can cure it? What sort of time element is involved? How do you handle baby werewolf moon days? You know what sort of mischief toddlers can get up to- ramp it up to eleven with *super toddlers!* How does the paladin handle it if/when the pup accidentally kills someone? How does the thief handle long term close proximity to the adorable little things he wanted to expediently stabby-stabby before? What if they party becomes attached to the little blighters and it looks like they *can’t* be cured/purified? Lycanthropy is not the fault of the babies, they had no way to have informed consent, so if it comes to that point, how do the players (especially the paladin) handle it? And much, much more.

          It has real-world analogues in the infant sacrifice (abortion) arguments, and you’ll likely see those come up as the campaign continues. It tends to fall flat if you’re dealing with lawful stupid/stupid evil players- those kinds deserve each other, but nobody else wants to see that. Throwing moral challenges at the paladin/cleric/lawful good types is so common it may be its own trope (paladin/precipice, etc). Trying to be good in a morally grey world *is* itself a challenge… And that can be applied to real life, too.

          1. That is… precisely the “do we kill the werewolf babies” argument. I played a paladin character in high school, and had the argument for werewolves, orcs, troglodytes, etc., many times over.

            IIRC werewolves encountered in the wild were assumed to be found in family groups, with “appearing: 1-6, young: 1-4” or some such. Don’t know where my old 1st ed. Monster Manual is to check.

          2. I would argue that this is not a real dilemma; it is merely an artifact of poor philosophical foundation on the part of the players and GM.

            It depends on the assumptions of the campaign’s implementation of alignment. If the mechanism behind werewolves is that they are bodies possessed by an evil spirit, and the ‘uncursed’ state is mimicry, then killing werewolf babies is appropriate, and clerics and paladins would be most likely to have this information.

            If alignment is more sociology or anthropology, maybe killing the werewolf babies isn’t the correct call.

            A real world society has limited resources to take care of people, and to absorb disruptive behavior. Furthermore, peace is the exception not the rule. War is the rule, not the exception. Chaotic evil could mean a culture that does not know how to live at peace with others. Chaotic evil could mean mentally ill and a danger to others in a way that a society may not have the resources to spare for keeping someone confined safely and alive.

            A fantasy race that is always chaotic evil could be that way culturally, or it could have serious biological issues in almost every individual.

            Consider the overlap between ‘these D&D books are racist because orcs are blacks’ and ‘Black Lives Matter is behaving appropriately and has legitimate grievances’.

            The modern players who think this is real world racism are themselves a problem that could be considered chaotic evil. I have been arguing the logical of communists being incapable of peace, and that we may have no better answer than killing all of them. If the players who have a problem with ‘dead orc babies’, ‘always chaotic evil’, etc. are of this type, then perhaps the correct answer to the debate is literally killing certain of the players and other parties who disagree with me?

            😀

            (I dearly want to kill all of the stoners, and sometimes think I can justify a moral argument for doing so. There are some other reasons I’ve gone deeper into “but perhaps there is no real better option” territory than many.)

            Hmm.

            I bet if I wrote up “Alignment for solipsists during the boogaloo”, I could get it banned from every RPG product retailer. It would certainly be less unfun to write than “HH-88 Against the Mud People”. Would be interesting to see if getting banned a bunch could be turned into some viable way to market it.

            1. I would argue that this is not a real dilemma; it is merely an artifact of poor philosophical foundation on the part of the players and GM.

              In fairness, so are MOST moral philosophical issues. 😀

              1. D&D doesn’t track resources broadly enough, and at a fine enough resolution, for “yeah, we don’t have the resources to safely raise werewolves to responsible adulthood” to be anything but GM fiat. Since situations in play are almost as much GM fiat as situations in a novel are authorial fiat, telling the players that it is a choice between starvation and putting the madman on an ice floe could easily be grimderp.

                Mental illness and very close to the bone economies are both things that feel outside of D&D’s mechanical support. Springing them on the players feels like it would be a jerk move.

                “those guys, for cultural reasons, will never hold to any terms of peace with you” feels more like an acceptable GM choice, well supported by the combat mechanics.

                Anyway, paladins are not a huge part of my sense of ‘these archetypes are huge’, but I have talked over my views on rangers before. (I have huge issues with the DnD ranger. I like cold war era Army rangers, colonial era indian fighting rangers, Texas Rangers, and in some very different ways Power Rangers.)

                I’m probably about due for reading the Matter of France, and that Anderson book, and developing some heterodox views on how DnD Paladins should be played and worldbuilt.

                2. Mental illness and very close to the bone economies are both things that feel outside of D&D’s mechanical support. Springing them on the players feels like it would be a jerk move.

                  That is where worldbuilding comes in. If the GM knows how to do good, subtle (according to the ability of the players to awareness check on subtilty), show-don’t-tell worldbuilding, then yes; they could pull this off.

                  “This massively complicated situation that will draw endless questions is this way because I say so” ain’t gonna cut it.

                  1. That is where worldbuilding comes in. If the GM knows how to do good, subtle (according to the ability of the players to awareness check on subtilty), show-don’t-tell worldbuilding, then yes; they could pull this off he should be playing something other than D&D.

                    FIFY

                    🙂

                  2. I was more thinking that if you want to have a campaign setting that operates by said logic, the players need to give informed consent.

          3. Which really comes back to “pre-crime” issues. I would assume at least some of the arguments go in the “the baby hasn’t committed a crime/gone all killy YET, and there is time enough to kill them when/if they do” direction.

            The same arguments get used when it comes to “Crime-fighting algorithms” in use today. Which have in fact been called racist.

      3. Adopt them. Like my D&D son “Hugobert the Christian Mind Flayer”. Of course, I had to retire the character, because mom-ing (or dad-)ing is a fulltime job. But I am a wicked for happy endings.

        1. *Glees*

          Did you ever watch Andromeda?

          Because that’s awesome and if you didn’t, I think you’d like a character on that….

            2. and yes, it took freaking YEARS for me to recognize the Classic 70s Or Older pulp thing of Bug Eyed Menace, BEM.

    3. Yeah. I’m probably somewhere in the lawful side myself, even when In think the laws are stupid or bad, I find myself impelled to follow them.

      But only up to a point. If a law bends my code sufficiently out of alignment, I end up going against it. Once that happens, all bets are off.

      It’s sort of like a contract, I think. Once one part of the contract is broken, all parts become broken. Or at least, I can no longer sift between the kept parts and the broken parts.

          1. A person ran for district attorney in Madison Wisconsin in the 1970s. The slogan for the campaign was “obey only good laws“. I had a bumper sticker with the slogan on my school locker. I approach laws the same way; the majority are basic morality and common sense and I will follow them, but laws which restrict individual freedom I will seek not to follow, seeking to avoid drawing attention to my failure to follow laws.
            When in the business world I sought to avoid office politics which worked great at the first company I worked at, but the second company had a backstabbing male that was evil.
            More importantly, good luck on preparing your house for sale and finding a new home at a lower elevation.

            1. basic morality and common sense and I will follow them, but laws which restrict individual freedom

              Malum in se laws vs. malum prohibitum.

        2. This. In general, studying philosophy makes for *much* more interesting fantasy religion. Natural Law is a good one. Stoicism can make for interesting bit parts, and Nietzsche/Lenin can make for some interesting villain characters.

          1. I didn’t like any of the options for Eberron’s Parthenon, so I played a Cleric of Natural Law who was basically a paladin of That Doesn’t Make Sense, Smite It!

            That was *fun*.

            1. >> “I played a Cleric of Natural Law who was basically a paladin of That Doesn’t Make Sense, Smite It!”

              Heh. I recall a D&D story in which a Paladin was psionically struck insane with… amusing results. Now I’m imagining the same happening to yours and wondering what she would then end up smiting.

            2. Also now remembering a (sadly unfinished) let’s play over on Something Awful. While there was no Paladin class per se in the setting, one of the party members was basically a warrior crossed with a health inspector, and acted kind of like a Paladin of Hygiene.

              In one scene he literally screams “You. Are. Not. HYGENIC!” as he’s beating a monster to death…

            2. Ah, mvm: found it: The moon is a Harsh Mistress”

              I think I got that one a few year back but didn’t have time to read it. Will have to do that.

  14. Sorry but not surprised to hear about the house. Keep working on making your current house salable and keep looking. You never know what’s going to turn up.

    1. This. Positioning and preparedness to jump at fleeting sudden opportunities has been the main thing I failed to have in place the times that simply amazing house opportunities appeared in front of me.

    2. What Sarah needs is one of Simak’s flying houses from “The Werewolf Principle” in 1967. Completely automated and run by artificial intelligences, and they could fly. When you got tired of where you were living, you told the house to fly somewhere else. The AIs chatted by radio and had their own parallel society.

      Van Vogt had flying houses (he called them “trailers”) in “The Search” from 1943, but they weren’t self-aware.

      1. I want a TARDIS. It goes anywhere/anywhen, can appear to be any size/appearance that you want and is extremely large on the inside.

        When I get one, I’ll let Sarah know where (& when) I got it. 😀

        1. Every now and then the TARDIS would hit some ‘bumpy space.’ Since the internal gravity couldn’t entirely damp the effects in the control room, I assume it got rather sloshy down in the subbasement where the swimming pool was.

          1. Well, obviously I’d get one that is working correctly. The Doctor “borrowed” one that was in for repair. 😀

            1. Although according to that particular TARDIS, she actually stole HIM. (By which I presume she dangled out enough psychic lures that he picked her, heh.)

              1. Naw, that was Clara. “Here, take this one. The navigation’s knackered. You’ll have lots more fun.”

                1. Eh, the TARDIS herself (in “The Doctor’s Wife”) claimed otherwise–but it’s possible that they were colluding (or, more likely the writers of the later episode forgot that’s what had been said in the earlier episode, heh).

            1. Maybe my corollary to Burge’s Law would help.

              5. Once the skinsuit is rotting and crawling with maggots, claim it was always this way.

              You can always nail 99 theses to the church door. Or start Solidarity. Or…

      2. A house made of clamped together shipping containers. To move release the clamps, put covers on the holes, and call in the crane and the trucks. It would look very modern which is probably not a selling point with Sarah however.

      1. My number one son is lawful good as was my dad. Number two son and my daughter are chaotic good as am I, My wife is making the long walk away from lawful good as she sees the truth about the institutions. It’s a pity really.

          2. Limited sample radio show, but lawful.

            He was ALWAYS enforcing the actual law in the spirit, on folks who found a loop hole.

            1. Well, true–if one goes with the radio plays, definitely more lawful. And mind you, I’ve only seen bits of the original comics/pulp novels, and more of modern comics. Modern Shadow comics, he is DEFINITELY chaotic good, what with the “Just gonna gun down the bad guys.” attitude (though to be fair, at least one of those were Cthulhu cultists, and really there is nothing else to do with that lot.)

  16. ~45 years ago I was a professional hire (rare commodity at HAL) because I had significant programming and hardware design experience. I was hired as a pre-sales support engineer working for a woman. At that time HAL hired only non-science majors for sales as they wanted to tell the sales people exactly what to say, no more, no less. At the time my preferred employer would have been TI, but they had a hiring freeze, so off to work at HAL. I quickly noted that those for whom I worked had zero clue. Time passed and the hiring freeze was lifted and I received an offer from TI. I asked the second level manager how long it would be before I could earn what I’d been offered by TI. I was told 5 years, and I said hate to leave, but goodby.

    Several years later I ran into one of the other HAL denizens at the airport. I told her hello and we chatted. She asked what I was doing, I responded, still working for TI. I told her that I liked the work at HAL, but the salary difference was just too much to overlook. She looked surprised, then told me that my immediate boss had told everyone I’d left because I didn’t like working for a woman. My first exposure to feminine toxicity.

    Since then I’ve worked for several women for whom I would have cheerfully walked through fire or walls.

  17. Grandma later admitted to having been perhaps a little too harsh on her 3 boys, because well… they were built like my boys and by 10 they were taller than she was. And she was afraid they’d go “to the bad” without a paternal influence.

    Right about the risk, if not the solution. (Insufficient data.)

    1. Well…and I get it. When a male-child is bigger and stronger than you (especially THAT young!), the single female parent, you do NOT want them to press the button that says “I’m bigger and stronger than you, therefore I don’t have to listen to you/do what you say.” (Or, really, even you are NOT a single mom.) That’s a really difficult line to walk, and all too often it does end up in ‘too harsh’ territory, because what if that button gets pushed? I can understand the fear, sigh.

        1. Aw hell, sometimes you can do EVERYTHING “right” and it STILL doesn’t help.

          Watched a true crime show last night–guy was a freaking psychopath who didn’t show true colors until well after the woman married him (and had two sons with the guy). (Granted, his previous victim–his sister–was too afraid to warn her, which caused some anger, but ultimately healing, for the wife later on. And I’m sure there were some red flags she ignored–as so many do.) Soon as he started in, she called the cops, booted him out, got a gun, kept calling the cops…and STILL the guy killed her daughter (in part because daughter refused to go get her half-brothers from school so he could kill them too–essentially goaded him into killing her so they’d stay safe) and almost killed the wife when she came home. He ambushed her, and she couldn’t get her gun out fast enough.

          So yeah, “Don’t be in the situation” can be utterly useless advice, sigh.

          1. Aw hell, sometimes you can do EVERYTHING “right” and it STILL doesn’t help.

            A freakin’ men.

            Known as “life.”

            My favorite piece of useless advice is “to avoid injury, don’t be there to be hit.”

  18. > I don’t want to reap the backlash that will come; I don’t want my granddaughters to be subjected to suspicion and hobbled because “women can’t be trusted in public life.”
    —
    It’s not just women. You got your gays, your tranzis, your minorities-du-jour, your ageism, your ‘generations’, your politics, your microaggressions… they’re building a society where nobody can trust anybody, about anything. Ever.

    Several times you’ve talked about coming to America and being surprised that people left yard art out on the lawn at night, and it was still there in the morning, and talked about ‘high trust’ vs. ‘low trust’ societies.

    Last week, someone stole the chair off my front porch. A cheap plastic chair I paid $10 for back in 2011. The bitter part is, I suspect they didn’t even *want* the chair; it was just sitting there without anchor bolts or a chain, so they stole it because they could. And now my local neighborhood is a zero-trust area.

    1. People are still posting vids on porch pirates and front-lawn-kids-toy-thieves here – the 2014 passage of CA Prop. 47 made stealing anything under $950 a non-felony, and PDs won’t even arrest let alone move a misdemeanor case to the courts, which means they won’t even send a car – you have to put in your police report online to get the report # for insurance – so front lawns are a free-for-all.

      Pop 47 is why a double-digit number of Walgreens have been closed permanently in The City and County of SF:

      https://www.sfchronicle.com/local-politics/article/Out-of-control-Organized-crime-drives-S-F-16175755.php

      1. Sounds like a job for Neighborhood Overwatch. Plus either suppressed subsonic weapons, or C4 drones.

        The solution to piracy has always been to let the bodies rot where the surviving pirates can see them.

        1. I helped him drag the pieces of bodies off the road, and throw them on some rocks to serve as an example to other bandits until the wolves ate them, and kick some snow over the blood.

          — A line from a story I’m working on.

  19. So, trust but verify. Unless the authorities (and the crowd) push me to the point that I get stuck in “Effe you, no. You’re not the boss of me.” (Yeah, I know, but think on it.)

    If someone acts like they can’t possibly get you to do what they want, unless they use unjust means… maybe they know what they are doing.

    And that means that you SHOULD NOT trust them.

    Because they, who know what they are doing, don’t trust themselves.

  20. So, it’s a complete shock to me, no matter how many times I see it, that women in general seem to follow the crowd and “the people in charge” and to believe the crowd is right.

    In my experience, that’s weaponized nice.

    If you don’t do the stupid social signaling thing, you’re “not nice.”

    … if you isolate women? Especially young women? Young women who do not have a family?

    “Nice” is an insanely powerful weapon.

    :::looks around::: ANybody else notice that it’s 20-something gals who are being Adult away from home, with no support structure, who are getting abused into this?

    1. I got inculcated with “nice” too. But I only got the mild “do unto others” version, not the “excommunication if you’re not nice *enough*” version.

      “Nice” in moderate amounts is a useful social lubricant. Too much nice, it becomes a problem of its own; something that can be used against you.

      By most modern standards, I am not a nice man at all. It’s amazing how much uncertainty and beating-around-the-bush that avoids.

        1. I’ll add to that those who play the “I was just being nice” card to avoid any responsibility for the results of being dishonest about how they feel, and then treating you like a bad guy for assuming they were sincere. No, the fact that you were acting in good faith will NOT get you a reprieve; only their alleged good intentions count.

          1. The implication it took YEARS for me to figure out was “…and you were not.”

            Because if “I was just being nice” excuses their behavior, then it would excuse mine, too.

            If it’s offered as a defense– and usually, it comes up because I busted my butt to do something someone asked– means that THEIR being nice is acceptable, but MINE was not good enough.

            1. In my case it’s more a matter of not knowing I’m not wanted; I have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way and am bad at reading signals (not the best combination). I’ll leave someone alone if I KNOW they want that, but if you’re actively hiding the fact that you don’t like me then you’re not entirely an innocent victim, are you?

              But yeah, your version sounds pretty infuriating too.

              1. Thing I’ve mentioned before– I always know what will hurt folks the most!

                Because I stomped down on it. Ten minutes ago…..

                *****

                I like using classic manners. There’s ways to say “I wish to be elsewhere without causing offense.”

              2. Possible conflicting information, I’m very good at “knowing” I’m not wanted, when I am– or at least folks insist I’m wanted, and will spend a few years complaining that I didn’t stick around.

                Cynical hat is on HARD for that one, though.

    2. Yes. I see older women, and young ones. Though I also see ornery older women with nekkid faces.
      Also, the idea they can be Good Examples is another weapon. Though I guess that’s a variation on “nice.”

    3. They’re amateurs about it, too. Seriously. The little old ladies I grew up with would cause these modern twits seizures. Bless their rotten little hearts. Assuming the poor dears actually have hearts, that is.

    4. Hmm. That helps to explain Brooklyn Daughter, who was sane until she’d lived in NYC for several years. Now, sadly, she has internalized the Laws of the Woke Nice (which are basically the opposite of the Laws of the Copybook Headings) to such an extent that she bursts into tears if anybody says anything questioning the rightness of the right-thinking Nice People.

      But it’s not just the 20-somethings. I see it in slightly milder form among my contemporary women acquaintances. The core belief to which they cling, the hill they’re apparently willing to die on, is that they are Nice People… and that this requires mouthing the received wisdom of the day, even if some of it directly contradicts the received wisdom of yesterday.

      1. I sincerely believe my sister died of, basically, being lonely.

        Because she Believed she had to move away, and Believed she had to Have A Career, and Believed she had to Pull Her Weight…even when the better-than-being-alone guys she found wouldn’t….

        The stress of it just ate at her.

        She COULD have gone home. But in the…cultural stuff… she couldn’t.

        She died when I did (set up to) go home, as a stop-gap while we sold the house and Elf moved for work.

        …I’m not sure if it was related or not.

        But I hacked her social media accounts by answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” with “happy.”

    5. It’s also amazing how many deeply violent relationships start out with the woman narrating her horrific experience going “He was just so NICE.” (Though inevitably, there were red flags she ignored because SHE didn’t want to be perceived as ‘not nice.’ The Gift of Fear should be required reading for everyone at, say, age eleven or so…)

      1. Theodore Dalrymple would ask the battered women who consulted him — on average one every day of his career — if they could have predicted their partners’ violence, and they would deny it. He would then ask if they thought HE could have predicted it, and they would admit he would have, and could even list the evidence he would have gone by. Indeed, he would tell them

        She knew perfectly well the consequences and the meaning of what she was doing, as her reaction to something that I said to her—and say to hundreds of women patients in a similar situation—proved: next time you are thinking of going out with a man, bring him to me for my inspection, and I’ll tell you if you can go out with him.

        This never fails to make the most wretched, the most “depressed” of women smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean, and I need not spell it out further. They know that I mean that most of the men they have chosen have their evil written all over them, sometimes quite literally in the form of tattoos, saying “FUCK OFF” or “MAD DOG.” And they understand that if I can spot the evil instantly, because they know what I would look for, so can they—and therefore they are in large part responsible for their own downfall at the hands of evil men.

        https://www.city-journal.org/html/frivolity-evil-12835.html

  21. > So women arriving in business now have never been discriminated against (by and large, okay? I know there’s always exceptions) BUT believe they’re being kept down.
    —-
    And why so they believe that? Because they’ve been *taught* that, from kindergarten through grad school. And you got to pay for it.

    1. I would say that there is a certain amount of “discrimination” against women with children, as in “we’re paying you for 40 hours a week, taking lots of random time off to do child care and sick time makes you less valuable to the company.” But that’s hitting men more and more, and besides, complaining about it kind of sounds like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.*

      There is also the purely gender-relations social element: A very smart project manager who I’ve worked closely with before complained in the lunchroom one day that in meetings men constantly interrupted her and that she had a hard time getting her ideas and proposals accepted until they were co-opted by a man as their idea. But that happens in every social realm and isn’t just a women-in-business thing. (And for the record, it’s not okay in any realm.)

      * (It strikes me as an inversion from the Mad Men era: my dad used to tell stories about Union Oil where he would get all the crap jobs and weekend travel and whatnot because he was the only single/childless man in the office.)

      1. “* (It strikes me as an inversion from the Mad Men era: my dad used to tell stories about Union Oil where he would get all the crap jobs and weekend travel and whatnot because he was the only single/childless man in the office.)”

        Still happens. I got it routinely until Em and I got married in 2001; even after that, I still got it because “you don’t have kids”, just not as much.

        1. It does. Still single and childless, I spent the entirety of my thirties this way- weekends, late nights, holidays, well, everyone else had family time. *chuckle* The fact that such things made being not-single harder to acquire? Well, them’s the breaks, as they say.

      2. This won’t help you, but–
        Looking trying to go big view, a guy with a wife who acts as support network is a net asset in comparison.

        I was surprised that I wasn’t surprised that most of the Famous Scientists were known to be husband/wife teams.

        Family story!

        My godfather was The Big Man in our county. He did AAAAALLLLL the things.

        His wife (scary lady, survived cleft pallet when she was born in like 1899, SCARY power!) was…. a ghost. Everybody knew her, as the nice lady who hung around when he was doing anything, being Nice.

        She passed away, and “the spirit went out of him.”

        ….As my mom rather tartly observed, no, she just wasn’t there to go do the stuff.”

        She had done EVERYTHING for all his official stuff. Mom helped with some of it, as Godmother got older.

        It didn’t matter, because it was (MR. and MRS thus and such) not (THIS DUDE) doing stuff.

      3. Back when I was a young manager there was a ruling by the CA Labor Board that basically blew up any and all monitoring or timekeeping for salaried positions: In that instance an “exempt” salaried technical person, who had put in long, long hours including weekends for years, had managers clocking them in and out and complaining to them about long lunches, brought a case and (their lawyers) said “Look, I was really hourly – they monitored my time, made me document time to the minute, and complained when I came in 15 minutes late no matter how late I stayed” – and the Labor Board agreed and awarded back OT double-OT and weekend pay, plus punitive damages for not giving them the required non-exempt employee breaks and such, and applied that to that person’s entire employment career, years and years worth.

        The award was a whole boatload of money.

        The shockwaves from that ruling and award spread throughout the tech world, from legal departments to C-suites and then to HR. All managers had to attend mandatory training where we were trained that we should never notice when our reports came in or left, or how long they took at lunch. It was never to be a topic of conversation. And we were to never, not ever, write anything down or put anything in email about noticing someone’s arrival timeliness or attendance – we could note them not coming in at all for an entire work day, but nothing more granular than that. And annual review topics were to be scrubbed to only cover projects moving forward, tasks being completed, or schedules being met, never attendance level butts-in-seats stuff for any exempt position.

        I only ever saw HR in more of a panic when we had all the post-Clarence Thomas hearing mandatory sexual harassment training dumped on us a few years later.

      4. Ya know, if we as a sane society want homes and families and a generation of well-adjusted children to come after us…

        …. WHY are we encouraging young women to prioritize full-time careers outside the home and their now-absent children?? shouldn’t the career market be tilted toward grandmothers? We’d likely have less woke corporate stupid, too…

        1. Grandmas suck as predator fodder.

          …yes, I am cynical about “Oh, look, the priorities push really freaking easy sex fodder for predators.”

          Prove me wrong.

        2. Look, the world’s best predator fodder is single women with no family to protect them.

          Not even physical, but emotional.

          A young woman who is ALONE is the raw egg soaked meat for infection vector.

          Why?

          Same reason that meat and eggs are dangerous.

          You can grow almost anything from them– they are fertile, powerful.

          And that fertility invites other vectors– like, duh, young, single men. Who give massive power.

          That which can produce, produce both good and ill.

          Which is why dystopias that go “So remove the production” are not fruitful.

          1. Dystopia 101: first, control fertility. The easiest way to do that is to isolate the young women and turn them into cat ladies, and subsequently into ripe pickings for the next barbarians that come over the frontier.

            And I thought the point of dystopia was to not be fruitful??

        3. Particularly since at 58, I MIGHT be getting a little old, but I COULD still have a 20 year career, judging by family longevity. 20 to 30.
          I mean, dad retired at 80 but mostly because he drove an hour to work and back and that was getting old.

          1. I’m counting on another 30-40 years, 90 is YOUNG for women in my mom’s family and even in my dad’s if they weren’t smokers. But my mom’s mom reached 95 having smoked since age 13…

            1. For the men in my family, should violence not take us, or cancer in our late 60s, the damage wrought of the way we live doesn’t keep us much past eighty, if we’re lucky. Not smoking or dip, as most around here are wont. Nor drinking, some of us- we react oddly to alcohol. Just worn out.

              My father can’t quite use his hands anymore. Bones in his wrist are pretty much gone. Joint damage gone to the point where the little bones just wear away completely. I’ve an aunt that regularly has to go to the hospital because of low blood pressure- her body just loses blood without bleeding somehow. Nerve damage seems to crop up around mid-60s for some of us, about half of the menfolk.

              Past a certain point, you can’t just sling rocks and tote heavy loads like you’re twenty anymore. Jobs you can do have to change from up-front physical to more mental stuff. Some folks can’t take the change and just give up. Others, stubborn b*stards, decide to become commercial artists, office workers, lawyers, teachers, and suchlike.

              We get what time Himself allows. Our own choices can shorten things that would otherwise have been longer. If you asked them, the men in my family would likely tell you they don’t begrudge it, the shorter time frame. Don’t like leaving our loved ones behind, no. But being there to welcome them on the other side? We’ll take it.

        4. I alwasy had the impression that departmental sercretary jobs at the university were done exclusively by women in their 40s and 50ss whose children were old enough to not need them full time at home any more.

          This worked perfectly for shpherding clueless and frightened undergraduates through the university system, because the students were the age of, or maybe a little older than the women’s own children.

          NOw, such jobs tend to be filled by young women who are themselves just out of college, and they don’t have the manangerial and organizational skills of the older women who had experience running households.

      5. My wife stopped working outside the home once we bought our first house, number one son came along. She points out that the “non working” women get stuck with all the class mother duties etc., because the working women are too busy. Make of that what you will.

        1. I was in my twenties before I figured out that the “lack of volunteers” thing that Gen X and on have been hit with was– because women were working for pay. See also, kids playing outside…..

          So the only folks who CAN go and spend time doing volunteer work, or set it up for the Other Half to do so, are working.

          (Don’t get me started on the “that guy does so much volunteer work” stuff where they then dunk on their own wife; I watched a big BBQ thing implode because the lady never go so much as a thank you while her husband very loudly took credit for everything. He did nothing but stand at the grill and turn the meat. Then wanted to be the victim when she finally left… and he didn’t have anybody to make the salads, buy the rolls, marinade the meat– really! Who the heck thinks they’re a BBQ god and doesn’t even have a fussy marinade routine?– and the whole nine yards. He didn’t even know how it was done!)

          1. We split the volunteer duties. Sure school (in general) suffered for lack of our volunteer time. But sports, scouts, and school field trips, didn’t. Dovetailed in the “limit how much time spent in daycare, after school care” awareness. Hubby worked 7 PM to 3 PM, no OT jobs (from time son was born until hubby got shipped (transfer) to middle of nowhere at start of kids HS, and we didn’t move household). I took the later shifts, taking kid to daycare, then seeing him off to school, in the morning. Also could manipulate hours worked (by working at home to make up) to be able to volunteer to be chaperone for field trips.

            This arrangement allowed hubby to coach sports, where I supported (not like I’d be able to coach if I was at home full time anyway, not a sport person). We both did scouts. I got stuck with to go to summer camp, and extended (week long) backpacks, because of the leave without-pay-ability-to-say-no-last-minute circus (plus summer camp was not scheduled when hubby scheduled vacations). Note, backpacking, we did get to do the he starts the backpack trip, and I switch places with him on Sunday or Monday, a couple of times (which takes PLANNING). There were exactly 2 of us who could reliably volunteer for summer camp and extended hikes, out of 60 or so parents, for a relatively small troop. Weekends were better, but not an entire week.

            I am very aware of the difference between my volunteering VS my moms. Mom did not work outside the home for pay. She volunteered, at: School, Church, Girl Scouts, and Campfire, and Sports (at least little sister’s swim team). After we flew the nest, she moved on to off shoots for Shriner organizations, which she still volunteers for. This is even after having to go to work outside the home, for pay, at age 50 because of dad’s stroke.

            1. The thing that made me realize the generation thing is when I was listening to my grandmothers and realized– their work was where they volunteered .

              Both of them worked outside the home. The whole time.

              BUT.

              Reporter Grandma did it BECAUSE she was already there, volunteering.

              1. My wife likes to say she “doesn’t have time to work.” I figured out a long time ago that civilization is maintained by a small number of people, most of them women, who see that what must be done gets done. My wife is one of those people. She’s a walking, talking corporal work of mercy. I’m glad we’re able to do what we do, but then we organized our life around it.

        2. ….silly mom thing, but– thank you for specifying “working outside the home.”

          I know it’s stupid, and I know YOU recognize what your wife does, but silly little phrasing things like that do actually help on some of the … the girly stupid stuff.

          1. I always make the distinction, which my working at home and seeing the daily reality of it has only reinforced.

            1. FWIW, my wife is an electrical engineer who, pre children, worked at one of the major television networks. She would get paid very well did she choose to. That should also get rid of some of the “girly stupid stuff.”

              it’s interesting to see what she does to fill that portion of her mind. Making the bank pay us to use them is one thing. She’s really good at it. She maximizes float and rewards and we never, ever pay fees or interest.

              1. I can’t figure out if the banks like us or not. The Credit Score suggests “yes!” Because they pay out a lot to us too. We take advantage of every % off, rebate options, pay in full every month, with no fees, charges, or interest, ever; on any account.

                1. They both love and hate you. They love you because they do make money on the interchange (*) and you make their denominator better, which makes their losses look lower. They hate you because they really don’t make a lot and, if you do it right, you can cost them money. The best customer for a credit card is the person who charges a lot every month but doesn’t quite pay it all off, that maximizes the interest and the interchange. Deposits are similar, they make money by paying you very little, which improves their cost of funds but you can cost them money by doing a lot of paper checks.

                  If you have a good Co-brand card, and you should, then the bank is probably giving the partner the interchange so you can make it very unprofitable for the bank. And of course, never, ever pay fees.

                  (*) Interchange is what the bank gets out of the money the merchant pays the card company. Some goes to the bank and some goes to (e.g.,) Visa.

                  I’ve always wanted to footnote a comment.

                  1. Our bank is the local Credit Union. CC is through Costco. Since they went to Visa, everything goes on it, that won’t charge a fee for the privilege, or that the CC won’t charge a fee for (because it considers the charge as a cash advance, not a payment).

                    We haven’t paid partial on a CC in decades, essentially since we’ve started out. Even then it was to establish credit … we have been in that position of not being able to get credit because we had no credit history (old gas station fuel cards didn’t count). After those first couple of years, we only ran credit when we’d get the annual lay off notice. This was when there was CC insurance for being laid off (Wards). They eventually made it worth not doing and dropped it altogether. When we got the offer we ran the Math twice, each, compared it, ran math together, under “to good to be true we’re missing something”, we didn’t. When program first came out the following happened. When laid off, send notice letter, they paid their own fee, the CC payment owed, plus monthly interest accrued, plus X% more, during the time off. We paid a good percentage of our TV and Stereo equipment that way. Once got notice of being recalled to work, cancel the insurance. Repeat the following year. I guess too many people took them up on their offer. First major change was the insurance had to be in force at least one month before lack of work notice, then 2 months. Then they dropped the extra payments and only paid the amount due. We stopped participating after being notified of the first changes. But while it lasted 🙂

                    Also, with our history of credit, or rather lack of, we start our kid with establishing his credit as soon as he turned 18. Better start than we had but when he went to buy his car his credit came back very good, but thin. I mean there are a lot of people who’d love his credit rating (high 700’s) but not anywhere near dad’s and mine (almost as high 800 as can get … knock on ours? Our ages, I think.)

                    1. How long you’ve had the card is the most important thing as long as you don’t miss a payment, missing a payment is what kills you. Last time I looked, the wife and I were at the theoretical maximum FICO, but the sad fact is that once one gets above the subprime magic number (around 640) and particularly the prime at (around) 720 there’s not a lot of difference. Knowing all this, we made sure that we got the kids credit as early as possible.

                    2. Yes.

                      Ratio of outstanding debt to allowed debt is another factor. Which is why when unused CC get canceled you can take a brief “hit”. But when your rating is above 840, who cares? We each get bounced around when our one card hits a higher percentage of use. That is because our other two, little used, or not used (CU doesn’t care), have low limits.

                      Also suppose to be ratio of over all debt to income. But for us that is difficult for outside sources to determine. As our monthly reported income doesn’t account for different savings venues. Not even our taxes reflect all our income sources because the already-taxed doesn’t go on taxes. The only venue who knows that is the one that doesn’t care about FICO, nor reports to it (at least for what we have).

                      Whatever. At this point when a FICO is done, all I want to hear is “Wow! They really like you!” 🙂

                      That is all we want for our son, too.

                1. She has a BE EE, no BS for her. My sister too and a whole lot of others through the family. My daughter grew up thinking all women were engineers.

                    1. What matters that? The only real difference is likely in theory and the amount of math you studied. I suspect she would have preferred to be a tech since she likes to work with her hands. We’re a strange pair, I like to cook, she likes to do plumbing.

                    2. I really don’t know what matters, but I instantly go to fans of math with no college stuff at all so…. I really only care “Can you do the work?”

                    3. Don’t overestimate the worth of a college degree.

                      Lots of people do put in the effort to make their own degrees an achievement. I expect Mrs. BGE is one of them.

                      You have labored truly, and ought not shortchange yourself.

                      (I’ve maybe gone a bit too extreme on “human lives can not be summarized by a single number, comparing ‘high scores’ is pointless”, cynicism wrt universities, and cynicism wrt tertiary degrees.)

      6. Nothing like being a single guy in a very small department that supports another larger department of mostly childbearing women. The only good I got from that experience from that hellish 5 years is an enhanced ability to early detect pregnancy among the women I work with or observe. (Recently knew the local TV weather gal was preggers a month before she showed and announced it. Impressed my spouse.)

        And another job where I worked night shift and need money. I made almost as much as my department supervisor due to overtime and shift differential. Didn’t mind covering for people then since I had bills to pay off. And holiday pay was 2.5 times normal. Didn’t help my social life, but sometimes that is overrated. But I did have people try to pull the ole “you are single and must sacrifice for the breeders” scheme when it came to vacation. I did the “I have seniority and you will have a fun time covering third shift during our slowest time of the year” counter-gambit. I knew they couldn’t handle it during the busy times. Was replaced with 3 people and a supervisor when I left that job.

        1. Work is like a marriage.

          If somebody is always laying down the “you must do this to support me” card, it’s a warning sign.

          My husband DOES lay down the “I have kids” card…usually because one of the guys who has no non-work life is scheduling stuff to deliberately bite into Family Time, because he gets paid extra for it.

          This is where a GOOD supervisor is required. The guys who have flexibility should get the flexibility, the guys who have to get their kid at 4:27PM every day should GET that predictability. It’s a balance thing.

        2. My husbands job was seniority by hire date. Vacation is signed up for, starting in August, starting with the most senor. That didn’t change over the years he worked for. What did change was two parts.

          1) All seasons were open for vacations. For decades late spring to early fall, were not available for anyone to ask for vacation. Could get time off, but it was for no pay (be it act of God weather event, or special request), even if you had vacation hours still on the books. (They learned quickly to not lay hubby off in summer, as we were gone as soon as they did, and we go where communication is limited at best now, and that was before cell options.) Special request was dicey. They could approve it, then retract approval the day before. Hubby only asked once for leave-without-pay during the summer. He was going with a council Philmont Contingent with our son. He told them that if they granted approval, revoking the approval was not an option, period; no matter what the cause.

          2) Couldn’t split up the vacation weeks over allowed period. No taking a week for deer hunting, a week for Elk hunting, and a week or two for that special family *vacation. You could still take all the weeks available to you, but they had to be *consecutively. So decide which is more important to you, one of those hunting trips that spring break to Disney with the family, or that anniversary cruise trip. They could also take only the time wanted then wait until the vacation schedule came back around to see if the other times wanted were still available.

          All the above meant, for decades, our vacation schedule was Christmas Holidays. Or middle of January or February. Which meant when son was in school, vacations were stay-at-home-vacations. When hubby finally got enough seniority to be able to get summer or fall vacations, he heard complaints that senor employees were taking spring and summer break times limiting younger employees ability to take family vacation when kids were out of school. The response? To bad. Put in your time.

          Me? Waited until I knew what time hubby had scheduled. Gave bosses a heads up. At year-end used, take it or lose it, outstanding hours.

          Salary wise. I have been salary since I started programming. No comparison to my managers. Hubby has always been salary not exempt, so he got OT anyway. His managers were senor position plus highest OT hours + 10, rolled into salary, but OT never expected. Son OTOH, does make more when one counts overtime pay, than his immediate manager. OTOH His immediate manager’s quarterly bonus is much higher.

          1. Over 35 years, my dad had three vacations. Oregon Coast for two weeks, Disney Land for two weeks, and my sister died we need to clean out her house for a week.

            …. my sympathy for “oh but I have to work” is rather limited, even recognizing that ranching isn’t normal work.

    2. I have actually been discriminated against.

      And the (bleep)ers knew it.

      Because when I went “Oh, flutter flutter, may I please have an invoce for my husband?” They all totally lost their (fecal matter).

      It was freakin’ hilarious to watch the blankers melt down at the idea that someone with a Y chromosome would look at their work!

      All the more because I am not smart about cars. But I speak cars more than husband. So the funny thing is that lacking research, he’d totally go “YEah, sure, flush that system!” while I am going “….the user manual says that system is sealed and CANNOT be flushed….”

      1. Can not get away with this now, but for a few decades we go to check out computer components. I’d wonder off as sales made a beeline for hubby and son, even when son was well below teen years. My decoys. I’d get glare after glare from hubby and son … what did they know about computer topics or parts 🙂 Meanwhile I’m just checking this and that, and figuring out which one I thought I wanted … The looks on the sales force faces when they realized they’d been chatting up the wrong buyer. Cheap entertainment.

        I don’t know much about vehicles. I can check fluid levels and tire pressure. Know the principle of changing a tire, never done it. Why? When dad taught us to hunt, fish, clean, and cook our catches. Was expected to go camping, backpacking, etc., without complaint. Because, in dad’s words “your grandpa is a mechanic, he handles that.”

    3. I was born in 1980, and I have been hearing my whole life how women and girls need to be encouraged and that we need to tell little girls (but never little boys, for some reason) that they can do anything. I really want to know when they think I’ll be able to stand on my own two feet.

      Never mind that I’m in a male dominated industry (military) and doing just fine, I clearly need extra mentorship and assistance because I am less capable.

      They’ll retort that “women are still being discouraged from going into business and science!” I’m going to need them to tell me where this is happening, because it’s pretty much the opposite of the truth.

      There was an article in HBR about the lack of women in executive positions, even in companies which had a stated goal of desiring more women in such positions. Teh article discussed the fact that flex work was available to both male and female workers, but was more likely to be pushed at or taken advantage of by female workers, thus disadvantaging them. It tried to make that seem like “male privilege” that men weren’t pushed to take advantage of it, rather than female privilege that it looked less “negative” for women to do so. Not to mention the societal and familial expectations were that men would continue working (and sacrifice family to do it) almost as a given.

      1. I’ve seen women discouraged from starting business, but only because they’re not acceptable by the “oh gosh women are so abused” sorts.

        Other than that, it’s all “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” nonsense. (actual shirt that made me choose to stop shopping at a store. Illistrated by a cute bunny.)

  22. Going into a store where every man was walking around bare-faced and every woman masked and glowering made me sick.

    I don’t want to reap the backlash that will come; I don’t want my granddaughters to be subjected to suspicion and hobbled because “women can’t be trusted in public life.”

    Encouragement:

    Our local store, HyVee, never required customers to mask.

    I don’t know the details, but half of the workers aren’t masked now.

    I’ve been running into other moms of at LEAST 4+ kids there, without masks, the whole time.

    Several of the ladies I only knew because the gals mentioned “Oh, God, thank you– my kids are in the car” when I told them to go ahead of my (9ish day buying for 8) cart, but since about March I’ve been seeing more moms…shopping like moms. With three to six kids hovering around them, looking stressed for REAL reasons.

    1. Know a fellow at HyVee. The official policy, if unsaid, was that anyone not masked should not confronted (medical privacy, and likely costumer relations) AND if anyone else said anything of it, that they were to be told, roughly, “Must be a medical exemption. We can’t pry.” Currently they say “fully vaccinated” employees do not need a mask. As for the rest… well, place your bets.

    2. “With three to six kids hovering around them”
      Every now and then I see women and men with little children on leashes. One had trip boys about 6 or 7. I ALWAYS thank them for seeing to the safety of their children. I don’t mention that it helps keep them out of everyone else’s hair. The ones I like are the teddy bear packs with the straps and leash connected in the back where the little *(&*&%$%$ can’t get to them.
      I know many people would disagree but small kids out today, I believe it makes lots of Happy Happy time.
      Once they get older, if well trained the leashes are no longer needed, SOMETIMES. I have seen where I would suggest choke chains but haven’t yet.
      I have accidently tripped a child running around a store yelling. I didn’t even feel bad about it.

      1. The stupid backpack leash things are a freaking GODSEND for “spectrum” kids– including just basically odd/curious kids.

        Somewhere I have a photo of Elf, me, the two girls– and then only boy, who is attempting to drag Elf into Seaworld using brute force on the froggy backpack leash.

        He WANTED TO GO and would not accept holding hands!

        (About two hours later it saved his life because he tried to charge in to pet the Budweiser horse ON THE FAR SIDE of the pull team)

        1. We just scored (through Amazon Vine) a little backpack in the guise of a fox, with a leash discreetly attached to the back, for the use of the Grandson Unit, when he becomes mobile and too independent to be in the stroller and too heavy to be carried. I have always thought it A Good Thing for some kind of leash or leading-strings for active small children. When the Daughter Unit was three and a half or four, if something took her interest, she had the speed of chain lighting with a bolt unsnapped; half a block away before I even noticed.
          To people who disparaged having kids on a leash like a dog – “Yeah, you want to keep your dog safer than you keep your kid?”

          1. To people who disparaged having kids on a leash like a dog

            I say go F yourself and let YOUR kids get killed not mine”?

            Oh, sorry…. telepathy fail….

          2. We always kept the children on a proper harness., they still sell them in the UK. Saved my daughter from going head first off the rocks at Gettysburg among other things.

            1. “Saved my daughter from going head first off the rocks at Gettysburg among other things.”
              –
              Yellowstone for us.

              Honestly? I think it is child endangerment (abuse if actually injured or killed) to not have kids on leash or in harness, otherwise contained (stroller/backpack) when near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, or near thermal features, let alone on the boardwalks or near wild animals (although parents are worse).

      3. My parents had one of the first car seats in the Midwest (had to buy from BMW. Nurses were upset that MomRed wouldn’t hold me in her arms on the drive home from the hospital!) They aiso ordered (from Canada in the mid 1970s) a chest-harness and leash set. It got a lot of use and some comments, mostly “Where can I get one of those things/How did you make that?” Very few people scolded my folks for having Sib or I tethered.

        1. We were warned we wouldn’t be able to leave the hospital, with our newborn, without proof we had the appropriate certified for newborn car seat. We did. We’d rented one through the hospital. This was 1989. The harness use occurred 1990 – 1993, or so.

  23. >”So, it’s a complete shock to me, no matter how many times I see it, that women in general seem to follow the crowd and “the people in charge” and to believe the crowd is right.”

    To me it’s less of a shock than a bewilderment, because I grew up seeing that happen all the time. I’m not saying I was any more moral than the girls I grew up with (though I think I ended up more moral), I just – couldn’t fit in with the crowd. At all. Whatever signals they were sending each other were completely opaque to me.

    That said it absolutely infuriates me that people who think they’re in the middle of an epidemic won’t read up on the basic way vaccines work: they trick your immune system into thinking “oh, virus X is attacking me, must develop ways to stop it”.

    Meaning if you’ve already had virus X, there is no point in getting the vaccine.

    Rrrrrgh.

    1. That said it absolutely infuriates me that people who think they’re in the middle of an epidemic won’t read up on the basic way vaccines work: they trick your immune system into thinking “oh, virus X is attacking me, must develop ways to stop it”.

      I have LITERALLY been called “antivaxx” for explaining this.

      It’s hacking the immune system. If your immune system doesn’t work, a vaccine won’t help.

      1. Exactly!

        (Insert my repeated ARGGHHH! here.)

        It’s… it’s like people who know they’re going to be diving in a shark cage refusing to read up on the best way to swim away from sharks in an emergency. (Slowly, raising no bubbles – bubbles gleam like fish, meaning prey.)

        Because shark cages can fail.

        One internet commentator I ran across years ago referred to a divide not between Right and Left, but between Pink and Gray.

        Pink = nothing bad will ever happen to me and it’s someone else’s responsibility to keep Bad Things out of sight!

        Gray = the gray of concrete, of built things, of “sometimes things fall apart and please don’t let it be my bridge while I’m on it.”

      2. To be fair, if it didn’t get into the immune version of long-term memory for whatever reason, that doesn’t always mean it will never take on a subsequent encounter. I believe a malfunction of the “take this more seriously if you see it again” mechanism is related to why we sometimes develop allergies on repeated exposure to the allergen… unfortunately. (And if you got misdiagnosed due to overenthusiasm, you might just have immunity to something else!)

    2. I know someone who was diagnosed with Coronavirus and hospitalized (early 80s and complications), was given “the vaccine” (she doesn’t know which one) a few weeks after she got out, and was hospitalized with Coronavirus *again* a few weeks after that.

      Whether she actually had “Coronavirus”… given how testing is done and reported, who knows. And as to what was actually in “the jab”… that’s a whole different layer of trust in a bad system.

      1. Given that I have heard a LOT of anecdotal evidence that those who HAD Corona and then got the vaccine had a far more serious reaction to the vaccine than others…

        Which is why I now strongly suspect I had it in March 2020. I didn’t have *quite* as bad a reaction to the vaxx as some I’ve heard about, but it was more than just “sore arm and a bit achy” to the tune of home sick for three days from work…

        1. Not sure of any relation to being infected or not, but my FC is in a three month slump that basically boils down to “for like a month after vaccination the person is totally f’in drained.”

          Including for the gung-ho 20 something usual motors of EVERYTHING.

  24. I had to drop negotiations for a house in my own search. After proferring earnest money, the other party started chiseling on the price.

    It turned out to be the right move. The house I ended up jumping on has been a wonderful place that is closer to what I want out of life than anything being built today.

    Be careful with the house purchase. If you’re buying a house, you need to make sure it’s what you really want, because it’s a very expensive long-term thing.

  25. So it’s possible that a “female way of thinking” could be of help in business, particularly business that deals with people.

    There’s a military charity organization in my town run by women. I’ve often thought that if our military acquisitions system wasn’t a blackhole of bureaucracy and corruption, actually cared about provisioning our soldiers, and took one look at these organizations, they would absorb them into the logistics of the Army. It’d probably be something awe-inspiring. The mothers in this organization were stymied by all the things they *couldn’t* send the soldiers. If they had carte-blanch, you could be certain that everyone would have the absolute best equipment money (or inexorable social pressure) could buy, in overwhelming quantity – possibly carried more by charity than expense to the taxpayer.

    1. Yep. The Ladies Auxiliaries. WACs and WAVEs and whot not. But since its something women do well, we cannot be having any. Go invade a male space and corrupt it. There’s glory for you!

    2. Heh. I think government regs and rules cause more problems than they have ever solved. Wise governments get out of the way and let private individuals/industry take care of things. Alas, wise governments are rare.

      Reading a memoir by an extremely successful (in terms of cases solved/murderers convicted) homicide detective who worked in Colorado Springs from the 70s-90s–and who apparently was That Cop who was always the one getting shot at, punched, always finds himself somehow in the midst of Somthing*, etc–he admits might not have survived had not his church congregation taken up a collection a year or so after he became a cop and bought him a bullet proof vest (one of the earliest models.) It certainly wasn’t something the local gov was going to get for cops at that time (early to mid 70s). Apparently the local gov was at least a little bit wise, because apparently no one told him he couldn’t wear it.

      *That Cop to the point that he even had the “I thought this only happened to fictional detectives” thing happen to him and helped solve a murder while on vacation with his family.

  26. Weirdly enough, it’s the men in my family who are all “masks forever and ever and ever, even after we’re vaccinated.” Part of it may be that they’re older and have health issues, but I think they so completely internalized the FEAR message from last year that they can’t set it aside now, no matter how many assurances of safety they receive. Which may account for the relentless pressuring of me to get the vaccine, which is actually making me steadily less eager to get it.

    And I’ve started to wonder if at least some of the stuff about the dangers of the vaccines is psy-ops, especially the way we’re getting completely off-the-wall fears, and then stuff that actually sounds scientific and reasonable by comparison, but is apparently not the way the relevant biological systems actually work. Like the stuff about the virus protein spike being a toxin in and of itself, or of it producing a different kind of antibody than actual infection, such that those antibodies can be targeted by another virus to kill everyone who received the vaccine.

    Which leaves me wondering what the motivation for such a disinformation campaign could be. Is it simply to get enough people to not get the vaccine that they can claim we don’t have herd immunity, and restrictions will have to stay in place indefinitely. Or is it an even more sinister attempt to destroy people’s confidence in authorities, leaving them uncertain of whom they can trust?

    1. Or is the vaccine actually effective and someone doesn’t want too many people having even partial immunity to Virus 2.0?

      1. It is NOT a vaccine. It is a form of therapy designed to keep you from ending up in Hospital (or dead) from the (Red) China Pox. It does not prevent you from catching or spreading coronachan.

        It is apparently quite effective at doing that, if it does not kill you.. Itcould have killed mom, but we were able to figure a workaround ahead of time. Since, realistically, mom has 10 years tops, needing to top off the therapy every 9 months to a year to keep the Wuhan Gurgling Death from killing her is reasonable.

    2. Putting on my tinfoil hat, it’s hard to tell if the pandemic and vaccine foofaraw are parallel disinformation psyops or come from the same source.

      Bret Weinstein’s latest Dark Horse podcast interviews a doctor who has been studying ivermectin since last May and strongly advocating it since October, and Bret talks about the feeling that there’s an invisible planet out there, that we can tell from how its gravity influences events but we can’t see it.

      If he and the doctor are right, people in public health in multiple countries need to have appointments with lampposts, stat.

    3. Some of these people are habitually dishonest.

      As for the over all situation, it looks like there is a bunch of information warfare, and some of it may not have any sane reasoning behind it.

      Forex, the Russians probably want us to implode. Ransomware attacks have a chance of being state action. Oil could have been intended to support operations in the near future, but the meat is pretty clearly intended to set something off. Possibly they are operating off of an immiseration-revolution theory.

      And some rumors would spread without any deliberate seeding or cultivation. When official information sources obviously lie, rumor and distrust breed. Folks who don’t know speculate, and some of that goes viral. Some people come up with less plausible speculation, others more.

      Keeping up is much more than a full time job.

      1. It’s also interesting that it’s *always* Russia whenever the first guess comes out. It’s like the mass shootings that had to have been done by a White Supremesist, until it turns out it was somebody considerably to the left of Lenin, and perhaps prone to tanning easily.

        If you’re going to blame state actors (or criminals from a given state), it’s a friendly gesture to provide some evidence…

        1. On the other paw, given how the Russian czardom, er, government operates, I have trouble imagining a group of hackers of the type being blamed that is not at least paying off the government. It probably wouldn’t be like China, where everything computer is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PLA (military), but I’d count on KGB-types visiting every so often to make sure that certain protocols are followed and “political donations” made from any pay-offs to said hackers.

          My $0.23 worth. [Two cents post inflation.]

          1. Agreed, it’s entirely likely that the Russian government could be tolerating the gangs, possibly encouraging the activity, especially with suitable compensation, but with the history of the Russian Collusion Bovine Excrement, assertions by the US authorities that “Russia did it!” need to be backed up with evidence, preferably evidence that can be verified.

            For one thing, I’d like to see how the PLA and company have been ruled out.

            Hell, Inspector Clouseau might have more credibility than the FBI right now.

            Seen on the net:
            Q: “What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality?”
            A: “About 6 to 12 months.”

        2. There is a good reason for “Russian hackers” to be a thing; because the Russian government’s position on crackers is that if you aren’t targeting them anything goes.

          1. The FBI identified the group as a Russian cybercrime gang. Considering the state of the FBI, I’d wonder what the PLA hacking group was doing that day. 1/2 🙂

            Is there any rumbling around Efrem Zimbalist Jr’s grave?

      2. Considering who are running the CIA, the FBI, the various governors, the current Executive branch and the State and Federal Deep State and our “world class” Academies…

        Can you blame any sane country from wanting the U.S.A. to implode?

        Oh my poor country. Kyrie eleison

      3. The Russian nonsense smells like a false flag by our government to me. There is apparently supposed to be a diplomatic meeting of some sort soon, where the Russian ambassador is planning to (perhaps serious perhaps trolling) chastise the United States for human rights abuses of the protestors arrested for the Jan 6th protest.

        They’ve been held without communication in prison for half a year now for what amounts to trespassing. There have been reports that some of them have been beaten, perhaps to death, in prison. We know about it because one of them required hospitalization for skull fractures, broken ribs, and a detached retina, and his lawyer managed to get a few minutes with him before they whisked him off.

        So our government needs a distraction: Something to rage about so that they can pretend to have the moral high horse.

        BTW: The pipeline thing was the accounting computers getting messed up, not anything related to control of the pipeline.

        1. Sometimes when I lose my temper, /I/ have evidence that my loss of temper isn’t a psyop against someone.

          So, yeah, I’m in a very wild mode of paranoia, but it is possible that the paranoia might be correct to some degree.

          I write reflexively, and am a habitual troll. Some of the time I’m unsure about what my motivations are for some what I do. I think that right now, some people can be soundly confident when their own actions are not a psy op. These specific people being reasonably self-contained, honest, and having enough self-knowledge to know when they are joking.

    5. The fear thing is on point….and I think a lot of the crazy stuff is to feed that fear.

      Folks are getting addicted to being terrified.

      It’s also feeding off of the flat-out lying that is going on about the vaccines.
      IE, “There’s no connection between vaccination and the female reproductive system” vs “ob/gyns suddenly having a ton of women come in bleeding off-schedule shortly after vaccination, they’ve NEVER had anything like this happen before.” Which was answered with, basically “oh, women are hysterical.” Uh… F, no…. “Oh, yeah, women will cycle early because they’re stressed.” … one, the gals involved would’ve had that happen before, and two, everything I’ve read was that stress makes you miss a period, not start one.

      It’s like how there’s conspiracy theories all over the middle east, because folks KNOW they’re being lied to. So telling stories lets them control it.

    6. “Or is it an even more sinister attempt to destroy people’s confidence in authorities, leaving them uncertain of whom they can trust?”

      Fifteen years plus too late for some of us.

    7. My dad is the one in the family who is whole-hog on the COVID-panic wagon, and only occasionally can my mother and I insert a tiny smidgeon of common sense into it (as we both have been sneering at it pretty much from the get-go.)

      When I see him this evening, I plan to tell him about the latest Fauci email revelations. 😀

  27. Something else: some of these allegedly powerful women are incredibly insecure. How else to explain a female “journalist,” actually wanting to know if one of Biden’s nominees understood America is on the verge of becoming a right-wing evangelical totalitarian state. Quivering on the very lip of theocracy.
    Give. Me. A. Break.

  28. Look, I have worked for extremely “woke” and two-faced corporations for over 30 years. We can’t fix stupid. All we can do is be an oasis of sanity in a desert of humor and compassion.

    God bless all of us as we try to swing America back into the wind…

  29. “But Commie La Whorish is very female, from her means of advancement to her means of fighting. Which means she has no friends. Only people she can use until she steps on their bleeding corpses as she climbs.
    That is a female who has not had her toxicity moderated by civilization, and who romps around being her evil self, and patting herself on the back for being so smart”

    Every bit of that could also be said of Hillary Clinton. In fact, HRC could be considered the person Camel modeled herself off of.

    1. I want to vomit every time I hear those two put forward as an example for our daughters. Sleep with a powerful man and then ride his .. ummm … coat tails to power. yeh. that’s just what all that feminism gave us.

      1. Somewhere, Margaret Thatcher’s ghost wants to whap both of those individuals with her handbag for daring to claim to be “strong women.” Golda Mair is next in line. Margaret of Tyrol is brandishing a spear.

        1. History geek thing–
          the reporter who went to the museum and the keeper kinda pulled him over, and pulled out Maggy’s hand bag, so the guy COULD SMELL IT… and it was Old Lady With Wintergreen And Mint smell?

          You know, like, late 80s standard Grandma handbag smell.

          That guy did more for my gut level grasp of history than even climbing around historical stuff did.

          Because the Iron LAdy vs…”oh my G*d she was normal grandma but awesome”…. Wow.

        2. And the Great Eliza, Queen Elizabeth the First is warming up in the bull-pen. Yeah, never seriously piss-off a ginger with access to a headsman with a really sharp ax…

          1. I think of Margaret of Austria Duchess of Savoy who was regent of the Netherlands around the beginning of the sixteenth century. But my absolute favorite is the empress Maria Theresa. Had we had a second daughter, that would have been her name.

            1. Indeed, Maria Theresa was quite the ruling babe, in her time. Wasn’t it a contemporary who said something along the lines of “Happy Austria, with peace made through marriage!”?

              1. It goes back to the 1500s, and Maximilian (Charles V’s grandfather). But yes, it certainly applied to Maria Theresa.

                I giggled at the statues on her and her husband’s sarcophagus. You want to duck and say, “Get a room!”

              2. No, it goes back to the early 1500s and Maximilian (Charles V’s grandad, who arranged marriages that led to Charles having: Austria, Hungary [as much as the Ottomans didn’t control], Bohemia, parts of Italy, Spain, Burgundy [where the money was], the Holy Roman Empire, and the New World.) It did apply to Maria Theresa, very well in fact.

                “Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube.” Others wage war, you happy Austria marry. Part of it is from Ovid (the first clause), but the full phrase is credit to, among others, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

          2. This is starting to sound like that gag from Airplane! where that passenger starts panicking and people line up to “help” calm her down.

      2. Hillary could at least be said to have collaborated with Bill in his ‘success’. It is just that ‘accessory to a prolific serial rapist’ does not exactly count as laboring truly. The theft and graft is impressive, in a way. And they hollowed out the Democratic party to make an echo chamber.

        HRC is legitimately more accomplished than Kam Harris, in horrible destructive ways.

  30. “That is what’s imprinted deeply in female’s “nature”. And no one is curbing female nature, because having a vagina is magical and makes us special. (To be fair most men think this way, so they’re no help.)”

    I believe that femininity is special, not the mere possession of the requisite plumbing. The birth of a child (and the creation of a new human soul) is both a miracle in truth and a messy, bloody, painful way to go about continuing the species. To become a parent in truth is much, much more than simply popping out a new welfare recipient.

    Similarly becoming husband and wife is more than merely shacking up. And being a man or woman, masculine or feminine, *is* a kind of special, but all these things take work. Effort. And, yes, pain and suffering. Those who don’t think in this world and nigh all others of the past that living up to the requirements of “masculine” and “feminine” would require that sort of sacrifice are dreaming.

    It is the femininity that makes a woman special. The caring, grace, the nurturing, the adaptable, tireless, and determined manner she goes about her life is *valuable* and much desired by any man with an ounce of sense. Femininity civilizes masculinity, and vice versa. Alone, we don’t turn out as well. Alone, we are less than we could be.

    Female nature (and male nature, for its part) is not just “masculine” or “feminine.” Sure, its got similarities, but what used to be thought of as masculine and feminine is more civilized than our more brutal base natures. So, over time, masculine meant things like a protector and a provider. Feminine meant things like a homemaker (literally, the one who *makes a home.* Trust a guy who never slept in the same place twice for a rather long, long time. A home is a different thing- a better thing). Men- husbands- don’t think of themselves as protectors because their wives are weak. They do so because a wife is *valuable* (highly, and getting rarer by the day). Women- wives- don’t think of their men- husbands- as providers because they want free stuff, or themselves as homemakers because they are lazy (ha. Housework has the word “work” in it too, you know?). Husband are *valuable* and much desired for more than mere grunt work or economic advantage.

    So yeah, I believe there is something special about femininity (and masculinity). I just don’t apply it to the grown but not adult children that masquerade as grown ups, never knowing what they are missing. For those that were never taught or maleducated, they can be cured through gaining real knowledge. Willful ignorance and stupidity are, alas, fatal diseases. One just hopes to not be in the same place when they eventually explode.

    1. Mildly amusing story, I was working on a character for writing practice who comes across as a total letch, flirts with anything in a skirt– he notices ladies, and appreciates them… but in action is beyond a gentleman.

      Why?

      Because he really likes ladies. And why would you HURT someone you like? (A flip from the usual “likes ladies” means “has a need, a need to feed, and they’re fodder.”)

      Realized after like 20 scenes that he’s an exaggerated version of my dad. Who is likewise a complete gentleman, but you never doubt that he noticed a pretty lady and appreciated her prettying the place up.

      1. I enjoy being around gentlemen like that, because I know he’s just flirting, and he knows that he’s just flirting, and we both enjoy the moment without worrying.

        1. “Hey, pretty lady!” can be so many different things– from scary to ‘appreciate the gentleman flirt’.

          The writing practice was inspired by a guy doing collections at the stop light (there’s a thing in Iowa where they’ll do organized donations in SEE ME vests– the fire fighters will have over boots and the idea is to fill the boot) and the guy managed to convey so much, with maybe half a dozen words.

          It was like a half grin that hit the eyes first, and an utterly gratuitous “young lady,” and… Ah! I can SEE it, but I can’t put it on paper. 😀

          I want to be able to capture that. Because it’s awesome, and should be encouraged.

  31. I think a majority ot of women in the workforce these days have absorbed the “just get the work done” mindset. Some haven’t.
    I’ve had wonderful female bosses & coworkers. I’ve also had backstabbing bosses of both sexes (though I was useful enough not to be a target) and one coworker who filed a false sexual harassment complaint against me. She had moved into my former position and was trying to foist off part of the responsibilities onto others – including me. I let her know I wasn’t going to do her job for her in front of several witnesses, including her manager, which prompted the complaint which went nowhere, as the managers knew what was what.

    I’m pretty good at the cordial, helpful public attitude whether or not I like the person I’m interacting with, but there are limits.

  32. Just thought the following fit.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poems/the_female_of_the_species.shtml

    The Female of the Species by Rudyard Kipling

    When the Himalayan peasant meets the
    he-bear in his pride,
    He shouts to scare the monster,
    who will often turn aside.
    But the she-bear thus accosted rends
    the peasant tooth and nail.
    For the female of the species is more
    deadly than the male.

    When Nag the basking cobra hears the
    careless foot of man,
    He will sometimes wriggle sideways and
    avoid it if he can.
    But his mate makes no such motion where
    she camps beside the trail.
    For the female of the species is more
    deadly than the male.

    When the early Jesuit fathers preached
    to Hurons and Choctaws,
    They prayed to be delivered from the
    vengeance of the squaws.
    ‘Twas the women, not the warriors,
    turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
    For the female of the species is more
    deadly than the male.

    Man’s timid heart is bursting with the
    things he must not say,
    For the Woman that God gave him
    isn’t his to give away;
    But when hunter meets with husbands,
    each confirms the other’s tale –
    The female of the species is more
    deadly than the male.

    Man, a bear in most relations –
    worm and savage otherwise, –
    Man propounds negotiations,
    Man accepts the compromise.
    Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
    To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

    Fear, or foolishness, impels him,
    ere he lay the wicked low,
    To concede some form of trial even
    to his fiercest foe.
    Mirth obscene diverts his anger –
    Doubt and Pity oft perplex
    Him in dealing with an issue –
    to the scandal of The Sex!

    But the Woman that God gave him,
    every fibre of her frame
    Proves her launched for one sole issue,
    armed and engined for the same,
    And to serve that single issue,
    lest the generations fail,
    The female of the species must be
    deadlier than the male.

    She who faces Death by torture
    for each life beneath her breast
    May not deal in doubt or pity –
    must not swerve for fact or jest.
    These be purely male diversions –
    not in these her honour dwells.
    She the Other Law we live by,
    is that Law and nothing else.

    She can bring no more to living than
    the powers that make her great
    As the Mother of the Infant and the
    Mistress of the Mate.
    And when Babe and Man are lacking and
    she strides unclaimed to claim
    Her right as femme (and baron),
    her equipment is the same.

    She is wedded to convictions –
    in default of grosser ties;
    Her contentions are her children,
    Heaven help him who denies! –
    He will meet no suave discussion,
    but the instant, white-hot, wild,
    Wakened female of the species warring
    as for spouse and child.

    Unprovoked and awful charges –
    even so the she-bear fights,
    Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons –
    even so the cobra bites,
    Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
    And the victim writhes in anguish –
    like the Jesuit with the squaw!

    So it comes that Man, the coward,
    when he gathers to confer
    With his fellow-braves in council,
    dare not leave a place for her
    Where, at war with Life and Conscience,
    he uplifts his erring hands
    To some God of Abstract Justice –
    which no woman understands.

    And Man knows it! Knows, moreover,
    that the Woman that God gave him
    Must command but may not govern –
    shall enthral but not enslave him.
    And She knows, because She warns him,
    and Her instincts never fail,
    That the Female of Her Species is more
    deadly than the Male.

    1. Every time (but one) the daughter has a memorization assignment for her homeschool group, I let her skive off and learn a Kipling poem by heart instead. This is one of them.

    2. This is the poem I happened to flip open to, when I ran into a book of Kipling’s poems, and totally sold me on him.

      I could FEEL the truth of it. Not the whole truth, of course, but it’s true.

  33. “So it’s possible that a “female way of thinking” could be of help in business, particularly business that deals with people. I just don’t know for sure that office-mode for males”
    –
    Being the only female, in jobs with only males, for 3 different employers, you’d think I’d have at least 1/2 a clue. I don’t.

    My last job I do know one difference between me and the guys … I explained things without being asked. As in “Here is your answer and options. Here is why it is your answer and why you have options, or not.” Is that being female? Not according to my mom, and sisters. I get the same grief from them as I do my husband, and their husbands. “If I want to know why, I’ll ask.” Yet at work constantly got “You explain with my asking, so I don’t have to call as much”, which kind of was the point.

    But then in most my jobs, there was no career path from what I was doing, everyone was doing the same or similar job. No reason to be anyone other than, me.

  34. When I thought about it for a moment…

    The worst managers I had were almost universally female (the only exceptions was one guy from Nigeria that was of the opinion that “if your finger-bone marrow isn’t exposed, you’re not working hard enough” and the other was from the Philippines that was physically and verbally abusive, trying to get me fired so he could hire a cousin, might have been running drugs, and I found three boxes of .45 ACP ammo in his desk when they finally DID fire him), and they almost always had the same characteristics-

    *They had “favorites.” Who was usually who sucked up to them the most and/or was able to throw other people under the bus for them without asking.
    *They were rather good at getting other people into trouble.
    *They were more oriented at trying to make the upper management happy than getting the job done.

    Near the end of my last job, dealing with the woman running the office was a pain. I got in trouble (sexual harassment, funny enough!) and the only reason I still had my job was that one of the other team leads in the office went to bat for me. And (I learned this later) our office had to lay everyone off that wasn’t a salaried employee last August due to the Crow Flu, the company WAS allowed to keep 1-2 people that were hourly on staff. Guess who didn’t make THAT cut? If you can say “everyone that didn’t drink her Kool-Aide,” you’re right.

    Many of these same people were held up as “examples of good leadership at the company.”

    1. one guy from Nigeria

      Oh my freaking LORD talk about nasty cultures– we had a Nigerian priest who nearly killed off my aunt’s parish because his culture was TOXIC.

      “But the church needs it, we don’t need to pay the charge” type stuff.

      *snarl*

      1. A local Episcopal parish had that difficulty twenty years ago. As a deacon later told me, “We had anticipated Bishop Desmond Tutu. We got Brother Mugabe.”

    2. And the Filipino Mafia…. the only thing they hate worse than “not one of us” is “one of us who doesn’t play our BS games.”

      ::snarls in Navy::

      1. Yea, said supervisor decided to get into a pushing match with me.

        I don’t play that game. I shoved, got into his face and was ready to throw down right there. Didn’t care if I got arrested or fired, I was ready to take him on.

        He left after a while. I was still there. His cousin quit about the same time.

  36. As some may recall, I was publicly frightened here of the CCP Herpes turning into the Wuhan Gurgling Death. And I will go toe-to-toe with Mrs. Hoyt on knee-jerk stubborn resistance to authority. Yes, I know the numbers, Diamond Princess, etc. etc., etc., but I’m still frightened by the notion of going another round of drowning in my own lungs. Third time’s the charm!

    Of course, getting HCQ or Ivermectin in my state was a challenge. Is Portugal less inane? Mrs. Hoyt’s parents had a tough road to walk (as did mine). I am still praying for them. So…

    Nonetheless: We have treatments and networks of doctors who will help you get Ivermectin even if your governor eats paste. We’re moving into summer: Go U.V. radiation! Viruses get more infectious and less lethal as they iterate. Partial cross-immunity via other corona-viruses is real, even for the lab-artifact. Ditto long term immunity if you caught it, which means all those case numbers rising? Herd immunity chilluns!

    Share the good news, and with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, waltz into every business*, even the ones with the Please Mask / Masks required signs with just the face God gave you. I have been play testing this in two crazy-pants Soc-Jus states (including at a business that threw me out for wearing my little plastic spit guard in 2020) to good effect.

    Be the change you want to see. Move that Overton window. Spread the word.

    (*I got one small business owner who needed me to put on a mask because he’d been Karened and fined and couldn’t afford to risk it again. Be kind.)

    1. I have almost died of pneumonia twice, which is why I have no interest in living near mold and mildew.
      BUT here’s the thing: a severe allergy season is as likely to end up with me in the hospital as the Chinese Lung Rot.

      1. True. This is an embrace the healing power of “and” moment. Because I carry Benadryl, steroid inhaler, and my epi-pen with me everywhere, because I must. And were not those times in the ICU a treat? I really do understand this.

        Just because the fear is based on reality, does not mean we cannot chose to be brave, and not sacrifice the young ones to it. Just because we embrace the risk, does not mean the feelz aren’t all up in our grill.

        Laugh anyway. We who are most at risk can lead the way.

  37. A related story

    He had no business being here. Tankerman is not a position for the timid. You need to be very smart, yes, and he was. But you also have to be a swaggering asshole ready to piss in the face of any and all who think they know better than you. And they come by the truckload. Dock men, supervisors, pipefitters, engineers, boat captains, port captains, office clowns, and other tankerman. Everybody knows what’s best, but only sign the declaration of inspection. You are the man the federal regulations says is in charge. The coast guard defines a spill as a thimble full of product on the deck for which you and you alone are liable for up to a hundred thousand dollar fine and\or ten years in a federal supermax, so if piss off is not in your vocabulary you are an incident report waiting to be filled out.

    RTWT: https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2021/06/fun-with-vacuum.html#comment-form

    1. Hooooolysheepdip. Shades of the Grand Camp in Texas City, minus the boom. (MomRed has vague memories of the boom. Some of her uncles had clearer memories.)

  38. Seeing numbers of couples in stores that are split on the face diaper, with the woman wearing it and the man not.

    Wonder if there’s an even split (m/f) between those taking the jab or not?

    Workplace?
    First, the most toxic backstabbers were usually women in HR. Of course, HR was usually all women!
    Second, if there were disagreements to talk out, you could feel safer there would be no lasting repercussions if you were talking it out with a male. This perplexed me (not really) since women usually place a high importance on the “need to talk things out”.

  39. Off topic, but I though y’all would be interested:

    I had cause to go to downtown Seattle today for an eye appointment. I was expecting a blasted Mad Max wasteland of boarded-up buildings, homeless, and police everywhere.

    It… wasn’t. At all.

    I took some time to drive around downtown and Capitol Hill for an hour or so after my appointment, and here’s what I saw:

    1. One or maybe two businesses were boarded up. Several looked like they had closed permanently and were targets for graffiti, but most places were at least nominally open, including a lot of restaurants, all of which had sidewalk dining operating. The restaurants, however, weren’t the office-worker-lunchtime type, but were more of the higher-end and tourist-focused restaurants in the shopping/tourist districts.

    2. If anything, there were fewer homeless on the streets and encamped than pre-pandemic.

    3. I saw nobody at all who looked like they might possibly be Antifa types, and I was looking closely for them, especially as I deliberately drove through the erstwhile CHAZ.

    4. There were a few “Don’t Hurt Me” signs in windows, and more than one theater/venue marquee “honored” George Floyd.

    5. Overall, downtown on a bright sunny Thursday afternoon looked more like Sunday afternoon, in terms of numbers of people out and about on the sidewalk, but it was in no way deserted.

    I have to say that I’m relieved and a bit heartened. Our city government may be insane, but central Seattle looks like it’s going to spring back to normalcy as soon as King County removes the last of the restrictions.

    1. I’m still not planning to return full time to the office when it reopens, but not because I’m worried about downtown being dangerous; rather mostly because my entire team is now out of state, and because I’ve saved a lot of money on not commuting and buying lunches.

      1. because I’ve saved a lot of money on not commuting and buying lunches.
        –
        Our cash outlay dropped a lot when hubby retired (commuting costs), and again when I did (both cost types). Clothing wasn’t the cost for work for either of us. He worked outdoors, I programmed. No formal work cloths for either of us.

        1. Eugene.

          But not next door to Springfield … I wonder why? Oh, yes … Illegal to give money or goods to panhandlers on the street in Springfield. When the giver is ticketed, results happen. Plus Springfield enforces the no camping on public space and backup private to enforce same.

      2. To clarify, I don’t really think there are fewer homeless in Seattle, I just saw fewer actually downtown. I would imagine that they’re off on the fringes where there are actually people to panhandle from. There’s certainly no shortage of them in White Center, for instance.

        1. But if that means the 2nd Avenue drug market has moved elsewhere, GOOD. Maybe it’ll stay away.

          1. Washington Square Park in NYC has turned into an open drug market and den that is so bad that even the lefty Greenwich Village neighborhood is disgusted and at wits end about it.

            NYC as a whole is now more dangerous than it was in the worst parts of the 1960s and 1970s. At least then, when cops were letting stuff go it was usually because of corruption and thus had an interest in keeping things safe from the violent criminals. Now the cops, those that are left, know that if they take any action to stop the insanity on the streets, they will be demonized by the politicians and media, be harassed at home, have their families harassed, and otherwise persecuted. That is why they are quitting in droves and those who remain just sit back and watch while the city turns into Judge Dredd’s Megacity 1.

  41. “… which means women backstab, form alliances and devote their full energies to interpersonal politics and looking good, leaving the “purpose of the organization” as a distant and possibly half-forgotten point.”

    You are a traitor to your sex gender, exposing their flaws and how they abuse their power.

    I am pleased to know you.
    ~

  42. So true, Sarah. I have a career-long list of experiences with feral women. The fact that I’m on the spectrum, as well as a Christian, always kept me from engaging in their tactics. But I’ve been backstabbed more times than I care to count.

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