I have lived through curious shifts, some of them due to the fact that I moved to a country, where things were already shifted, and then they shifted more.
Portugal is still in many ways way more “sexist” against women than the US.
When I was a kid it was openly so. Women were just believed to be a lesser form of human. Period. full stop. Even when you were a female acknowledged as not being lesser in some characteristic, this didn’t absolve you from the flaws of your sex.
I could whip most men in mental contest with half a brain tied behind my back, but I was often congratulated on keeping my emotional nature in check, or considered fragile emotionally for reasons that were, more often than not, baffling to me. I was also of course congratulated on being “unusually smart FOR A WOMAN.
Rest assured I wasn’t injured by this. Perhaps it is a factor of being Odd, but mostly it amused me no end. I collected funny disparaging comments, not because they were hurtful but because they were funny.
The country and the culture has changed, under the influence of feminism, but here’s the thing: culture doesn’t really change. Not that fast. It changes very slowly if at all. The external forms have changed, and women are now expected to excel above men in school, same as here (part of it being of course that the game is rigged) but women are still expected to excel in female accomplishments, from cooking to crafts to child care. The result is overburdened women, and men who still are expected to dominate all public life, other than specialized professions.
That’s fine. They’ll change, or not, and it’s their problem.
But here–
Ah, here. By the time I came over, women ten years older than I were convinced the world was against them. By the time I came over, in the mid eighties, it really no longer was. Absent some bizarre pockets and strange sub cultures (which exist, given how huge and widepread this country is) women in the eighties were already expected to excel in school and business, and sometimes non subtly given legs up by “affirmative action.”
I didn’t realize how crazy things had got till my kids entered public school in the mid-nineties.
In the early to mid-nineties, when I joined the MOB — Mothers of Boys, of course — there was a already a surplus of women wanting to birth only girls.This is very much a US phenomenon and back then it was pushed hard in sitcoms and movies, where a pregnant woman referred to her “daughter” while the husband wanted a “son.” And even back then, this was viewed as chauvinism on the MAN’S PART.
This entire interplay baffled me. In Portugal there was a preference for boys, though after two or three both parents might want a girl. But if anyone wanted a girl, it was usually the dad. So, the idea that each parent wanted to reproduce only his/her kind, that there was some kind of competition was BAFFLING.
And then my kids entered elementary school.
And it quickly became obvious boys were treated as a kind of defective girl. Which got worse and worse until it culminated in puberty, where boys — later developing than girls, were asked to keep pace with them, even though neurologically they were incapable to do so.
We see a lot of victims of the trans fad pushing on people immature enough to not know what they are and believe they really can change and be fertile as the other sex. (Believe it or not they’re telling kids this will soon be possible.)
And we’re aware of the girls who have their breasts cut off. Of the hysterectomies. Of biological men displacing women in sports and other fronts.
But few people are aware there are just as many — maybe more. I don’t know how exact the statistics are — males who get castrated, sterilized, given medical problems for life by being “transitioned” when they are too young to even know what male means.
But beyond all that, we have men being raised being told from the youngest age possible that they are defective because they are male. That they need to be punished because they are male. That their deepest instincts, to pair-bond and protect a woman are wrong and evil and bad. That wanting to father children, wanting to father sons, is wrong and evil and bad.
They are told that women were oppressed for six thousand years because of males. (Not that everyone was differently oppressed because of biology.) That they are guilty of all that, somehow, though their entire life they’ve been discriminated against — hard or soft — for being male. They’ve had to learn in environments not tailored for males. They’ve had to excel — if they do — despite being taught by women who believe the only reason women aren’t perfect and perfectly happy is that males exist.
…. And then people are surprised sperm counts are down. That men aren’t engaging in family formation. That more and more young men are become psychological basket cases, unable to engage in real life. And they’re ridiculed by it. The term incel is applied almost exclusively to men. And there’s assumed to be something wrong with them, if they aren’t out there, spreading their seed irresponsibly.
We see female fantasies on the screen all the time. And in books. Romance novels are female fantasies. But James Bond was a pure male fantasy. And those early movies, literally could not — COULD NOT — be made today. The Ree of sexist, etc. would start one minute in.
The problem is that none of this is the way that idiots in charge assume it is. Societal organization and status is not a a zero sum game.
You don’t elevate women by destroying men. You don’t elevate men by destroying women.
Willing or not, we are yoked together, as partners. Even single people function better in a society where men and women are individually able to chose their profession, and their course in life, and be their best selves without men being told their defective women, and women being turned into sort of men manque, which their biology doesn’t suit them to.
And no one is happiest being told that their sole and most important focus should be their career. Yes, some very driven or very crazy individuals will focus on their careers to the exclusion of a family life. These tend to be what you’d expect: scientists, doctors, artists, writers. (I mean, I’d write, anyway, even if I had half a dozen kids, because I had to write.)
But for most people a job is not a career. It’s simply a way to earn your way, so you can live. And what gives meaning to life are relationships: familial, marital, parental, amicable.
All of which require a healthy relationship where men and women can each pursue their happiness without crazy people telling them they’re doing it wrong.
So, you know, the people who want to be housewives and mothers? So what? What business is it of anyone else? Seamstress is mostly a female word? So, what? There are gifted ones, as there are in any profession. The people who want to be corporate raiders? So what? There are more males than females who want to do that? So what? What business is it of anyone? More boys want to be engineers than girls? So what? More woman want to be romance writers than men? So what? More men want to write science fiction than women? So what?
The world is not a game of proportional representation. Who you are and what you do is determined by more than your sex, your skin color, or for that matter who you like to sleep with.
You are not a widget with certain characteristics, and you shouldn’t be aggrieved if people who share one or two of you characteristics don’t do as well in x or y as people with other characteristics.
If you want to do the thing, and people like you traditionally don’t? So what? Yeah, some people will look at you funny. If you can’t withstand funny looks (oh, the micro-injustice) the problem is with you, not society. Your answer to that type of thing should be “Shrug. So what?” And then do what you feel you must.
And stop paying attention to number games.
Right now we’re destroying both men and women by the numbers.
And society cannot survive this. Because society is not a number game, but a chaotic system of individuals, each striving for individual happiness.
Stop destroying the future. By the numbers.
According To Hoyt 
There do seem to be more male than female psychopaths, hence the sex distribution of corporate raiders and Wall Streeters generally. Of course, it could just be that psychopathy expresses differently in women, which would explain any number of women that I’ve known over my lifetime.
It’s no accident that good fathers warn their sons about crazy.
The trick-cyclists exhaustively mapping out male psychopathy without figuring out how it manifests in the female of the species? Yeah, that sounds like them.
i can tell you that yes, psychopathy does express differently in women. It’s hard to distinguish from hardcore narcissistic personality disorder…. and frankly, if you run into either, you shouldn’t STOP running long enough to ID the specifics.
Not only could James Bond’s early movies not be made today, but the most recent actor to play Bond suggested that it would be a good idea to have his replacement be a woman.
In the world, I haven’t seen mention of it on my usual blogs. But apparently the US is about to move back into Subic Bay at the invitation of our former overseas colony. The incidents between the Philippines and Chinese “fishing boats” has been increasing.
Not really Subic, from my understanding, and they’re covering it as “pre-staging for disaster relief.” Unless you’re thinking of something other than this?
https://news.usni.org/2023/04/03/philippines-announce-4-new-locations-to-host-u-s-troops
There appears to be a bit of uncertainty over it. Some publications are mentioning Subic. But that may have been a bit premature.
As for the “disaster relief”, the same article you linked notes in the very first paragraph that it can also (i.e. not the primary purpose) be used for disaster relief. Later on, it explicitly mentions military logistics, and defending the east coast of the Philippines (From what, exactly? The only thing to the east is the Pacific Ocean.). So first and foremost, this is a defensive positioning of US forces in support of the Philippines. And if there’s a natural disaster, the supplies on hand can also be used for relief efforts, which is one way that it’s being sold to local authorities.
I’m old enough to have seen a glimpse of a few first run episodes of Star Trek. My dad didn’t like the series and it showed after my bedtime, so I didn’t really see much of it until a few years later when it came on in syndication. I grew up hearing off and on about how sexist it was, that the female uniforms were miniskirts. Well, this was in the 1960s when miniskirts were (briefly) all the fashion anyway, so no big deal. So, what do I find now? That Grace Lee Whitney and probably Nichelle Nicols thought they had nice legs (Well, they did), and wanted to show them off, and pushed for those uniforms. And most of the scantily clad models in the entertainment industry WANTED to attract the opprobrious male gaze. And still do. So enough of blithering about males are all to blame about objectifying women. Probably somewhat, but women, if you pose as sex objects, that’s how you’re going to be seen.
Like the women who said “it’s sexist to read the words printed on the back of women’s pants.” Well, then why did other women buy pants/leggings/whatever with text in large contrasting letters back there?!?
One man’s experience. Most women who complain about men reading the print on the back of their trousers are really complaining that men aren’t reading the back of THEIR trousers.
SCIENCE says, so it must be true, that conservatives are happier and better looking, on average, than lefties. Lefties are also much, much more likely to be mentally ill. This is absolutely spot on in my experience.
My preference is for more elegant women, who don’t have some brand name spread over their behind, but I’m on the spectrum and read, well, everything from street signs to odd graffiti so I’m gonna read what’s there. Who are these people to tell me what to do?
There is, I have been made aware, this thing known as a “tramp stamp” a tattoo placed small of back just over a young lady’s bum. Lettering on clothing can be written off as fashion, but such a tat, supposedly gotten as a beauty enhancement, does seem to send an entirely different message.
I had a comic where the punchline involved a female alter ego having the male version look at her chest (“Stop that”), and I specifically positioned it on a t-shirt so it would go over my breasts.
Because it’s hilarious to do that to people.
Some women do not feel that other women’s sense of aesthetics, humor, or attraction techniques is worthy of taking seriously.
Thus the “Appeal to Mom/Dad/media/government/academia.”
Nah, look, half my upper-body wardrobe is snarky/nerdy T-shirts. Which are – you guessed it! Printed on the front. If someone’s staring at my chest, I have only myself to blame.
I have a t-shirt saying, “I’m still hot – it just comes in flashes now.”
I want people to read it. Especially women. (They tend to laugh, if they’re of a certain age).
My wife would probably like (and wear) that one; her favorite, which she wears as often as practicable, is “Assuming I’m JUST An Old Lady Was Your First Mistake”.
One today at the gym: “Don’t ask me why I’m crazy. I don’t ask you why you are stupid” (Note: I want one.)
One I have. Three bears on the shirt. One is poking into a tent, looking right at the viewer. Line says: “We’re here to negotiate your surrender” (implied is “for dinner”). “Yellowstone National Park”
My favorite was a cartoon with Medusa wearing a shirt that said “My eyes are up here” and the man responding “No.”
“My eyes are up here.”
“But the TEXT on the shirt is right there.”
And in such interesting shapes…..
If you want to do the thing, and people like you traditionally don’t? So what? Yeah, some people will look at you funny. If you can’t withstand funny looks (oh, the micro-injustice) the problem is with you, not society.
Assuming that is actually all they do, yes.
A heck of a lot of it would be solved by “don’t be a jerk.”
And “jerk” does not mean “differ in any manner”– if you are doing something because it makes someone uncomfortable, maybe consider why you are doing so, or prepare to get zero sympathy when someone comes along who makes you uncomfortable.
That goes for the office lunches at titty bars (the practicing Christian guy was uncomfortable and/or consistently did no go, that pissed off the fire-snorting lady, and she almost got them kicked out for being too loudly appreciative) and for the “hey we’re going to do a video interview for nation wide broadcast inside of the sports team changing room OH ZOMGA THERE’S A GIIIIIRRRRLLLL
watchingIN THE FRAME, OUTRAGE!!!!”Yeah, a lot of the time the prior targets will be the bigger man and stand on principle– like the various conservative or even actively religious groups that have offered stage space to those feminists labeled “TERF”. (trans exclusionary radical feminist; that is, those feminists who think women exist, rather than being a state of mind)
That is what grown ups do. The hard work that needs to be done.
… sometimes, they’re going to decide the work doesn’t need to be done, especially if they’ve been stabbed a few too many times.
So, Dan and his best friend almost got fired for JOKING about their “topless lunches.” Because they were massive dorks and it was what Dan called it (to me too) it never occurred to them someone thought like titty bar.
Topless, because Dan had a convertible. They’d grab their bagged lunches and go park in Garden of the Gods to eat them, with the top down. Even in winter, with hoods and scarves on. Because guys are weird.
BUT until that was attested by both of them separately, a busy body who overheard them was breathing fire and wanting their heads.
I once got quizzed about “orgies” happening in a college space. Confused me until I realized that was common parlance for when a bunch of college students who couldn’t all fit on a couch for a movie or video game would still all cram on, creating a “couch orgy.”
I had a friend in another building where we were both state worker bees and I would come over to his cube (I always called it a kennel to his amusement) and we would eat a sack lunch together. He worked on and sort of collected antique tractors and had a couple of calendars of antique and even steam tractors pinned on his cube wall. We would (on purpose you know) talk about the huge push rods, and man, look at the tires on that one…
This was just to annoy the liberal woman in the next cube who was trying everything she could think of to “get” my friend on some sort of HR infraction because she didn’t like his politics (and attitude). She never got him and the irony of it all was she got a write up for complaining so much.
There’s one scene/bit in an episode of You Can’t Do That On Television where a couple guys are looking at a magazine, “Wow, looks at the headlights on that one.” And another guy is surprised…. yep, it’s a picture of a car.
There was so much funny stuff buried in that series, looking back. You couldn’t get away with a quarter of those jokes today.
“Where do they find them? … And how do they keep getting elected?”
And my first thought with “topless” lunches in that context was that they were eating open faced sandwiches or they, themselves, were shirtless.
Nah, just with the convertible top down in the beautiful Colorado scenary
There was an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies in which the Clampett clan created a huge misunderstanding because they thought ‘topless’ meant ‘not wearing a hat’. 😀
Son of a Gunn diode, I remember that one.
:contemplates Sarah’s husband:
That is even funnier than the play on words to make brown bagging in the car sound naughty.
Not sure what the over-hearer was messed up by, the problem with the “office lunch at not business like behavior location” was exactly that it was EVERYONE, not two guys on their lonesome.
Right. Even if Dan and Alan — a faithful Mormon — had been going to titty bar — which knowing them was almost impossible to believe — it was none of her business.
BUT anyone who’d known them for more than a day would have said “What? Topless what?” And they’d have answered enthusiastically and probably invited her along.
A few years ago, I was briefly dating a lovely younger woman. She got a job at Very Large Household Name Corporation in a totally different department than me — as in, our lowest common manager was the CEO of the entire conglomerate — but after several weeks of having lunches together I just stopped asking. Not because we weren’t interested in each other any more, but because #metoo happened, and I was pretty sure that if some HR harpy saw her giving me a hug (or god forbid a kiss) in the elevator lobby, I would instantly lose my job.
Reminds me of the first time I heard of the band, Barenaked Ladies. A family friend mentioned he was going to Vegas to see Barenaked Ladies. Some clarification required.
Can’t really add more than well-put and I’m glad you’re putting these thoughts out there. Hopefully the people who need to hear it will pay attention.
Yep, “Stop destroying the future. By the numbers.”
Victor Davis Hanson has another fall of the Republic essay up over at American Greatness, Fiddling America Away, that touches on the unstable equilibrium as well. Although he leans more toward unstable and sees little, if any, equilibrium. His next to last sentence; “And so we fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve.”
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best and keep expanding your skill sets, with a heavy emphasis on practical ballistics..
VDH is a massive depressive and is mislead by ancient world parallels.
May so, I don’t know, but I do see an awful lot of fiddling going on.
True his commentary on current events is extremely depressing. VDH is a classicist that we may not see the like of for a long time given the state of the classics today. It is not surprising to the Reader that that lifetime of study drives a lot of his thinking on the current state of the world. As long as you remember that history rhymes badly, he is worth reading. His books on warfare are particularly worth reading.
He’s good in really really small doses. I love the man. He has weenie dogs for pets.
However. He is so perpetually dark I can’t read his work. I’ve tried. I’ve almost made it past the first chapter in several of his works and had to give them up because I felt like giving up.
I stick with his pure histories, and his military histories. “Who Killed Homer?” was a great tear-down of academic Classics before it went off the deep end. He and his Greek-history associate nailed the problem. (I really like his idea about do an initial research work, then teach and see how the world works, THEN get your “real” dissertation topic and go dig.)
Never enough food to go around in the ancient world. If we don’t mess that up it won’t be as bad as all that. If.
I think the steady destruction around his home has a lot to do with his outlook. I know watching the steady encroachment of pure ugliness all around doesn’t help me.
I’ve been better since leaving Colorado.
I encountered the female boy’s hater club multiple times as a youngster.
There was an English teacher that got reprimanded for given male students lower marks then the girls, whom were shown ultimate grand supreme extreme favoritism. She died my senior year, causing contrasting reactions between the different sexes of students and faculty. Think sobs and wailing vs shouts of joy and dancing. Administrators made up for this error by importing a 30 year old transvestite as a student. There was also various teacher-student sexual encounters of every variation that were ignored by the administration. Yes, in the early ’80s public schools were well on the path to ruin, even nationally ranked magnet schools.
One side of my family spoiled the girls and abused the guys. Then they wondered about the pregnant teenagers and suicides. And one half of the surviving males has shunned the entire family. What a mystery!
Had a female boss that “understood everything about men” because she was married and had a son. But she was confused why the only two males in her department quit when forced to cover of all of “Her Gurls” without getting the mandatory overtime.
I’ve also had excellent female and a ton of male psychopaths bosses, but there’s always been an expectation that single males were the plow-horse that was most likely to be worked the hardest regardless of merit or need. And sexual power games played by both sexes.
I sometimes do a gut check when grading, to make 100% certain that I am not giving certain students credit over others. Doesn’t matter which sex. I also try hard to make the class interesting for everyone, although I have yet to find anyone who gets wildly excited about theories of political group development and policy choices.
We sent our children to single sex schools. My daughter could have gone anywhere, but my boys were at risk of being lost, number two son in particular. The school he went to “got” boys. It was the making of him.
The wife is an engineer as it happens — as is my sister. My daughter grew up thinking most women were engineers because most of the women she knew were. She majored in Classics and Latin.
I sent my daughter to a private, all-girl Catholic high school, because it was small, I could afford it, and the teachers there were exacting in their expectations of their students.
She did so well there – I felt that it was worth the cost.
My daughter would have been lost in the local public high school. Like the schools she had gone to previously, she would have sat in the back, looking out the windows, hiding her homework assignments in her desk, and being so very well-behaved that the teachers would have never noticed that she was dreaming the class day away.
The little Catholic girl’s school was so small, that she was noticed immediately, upon not paying attention. I think that her sophomore algebra class had five girls in it. No way of escaping attention.
Or reading the class away. Do your homework and turn it in. B or better on tests. Sit quietly in the back reading, and don’t bother the teacher or other students. 100% guilty. Did NOT help come college.
The Reader was the same in high school. He got his act together quickly after getting midterm grades his first term in college.
I got my act together, not that it helped. I tried to read and remember everything. Which I couldn’t do. I eventually figured it out, but my GPA for my first degree shows my learning curve (ouch). That my overall GPA is better than Okay shows I did figure it out. OTOH when some suggested getting a masters, lets just say “grrr, no!” was the polite response. Short seminars I can (could, now that I’m retired? Grrrr) handle.
Last two years at a top notch science magnet high school kicked my day-dreaming ass and made university easy. (This was my 5th high school in 4 years due to stupid abusive parent shenanigans. Gave up on them and moved in with my aunt and uncle…)
It really helped that the high school was using college level text books which made turned chemistry in to Ground Hog Day since it was the same edition. Ended up with a couple super smart nursing students as study and lab partners as a side benefit. Much better than the lab partners in EE that hadn’t ever touched a soldering iron and couldn’t read component values.
I also tested out of English and saved money, no thanks to bitter Ms Grundy in Junior Honors. Senior Honors English teacher was awesome. But Shakespeare is much more interesting than Theodore Dreiser. ( I will always hate “Sister Carrie”.) Plus she was married to the Physic and Astronomy teacher, so they took pity on a semi-orphan.
I got my act together second term. Grades weren’t stellar. At that time I was a bell curve student. Grading on the curve got me C’s and an occasional B. When classes quit grading on the curve, you know “since they got rid of the C and lower students” (too stubborn to quit), I started pulling B’s and A’s. Not enough to pull my GPA particularly high. Yes, the advanced HS Chemistry, and Biology, helped a tad. What did NOT help was my lousy typing skills (not keyboarding, typewriter typing), let alone I can’t spell worth a dang with out a spell checker (also not invented/available, yet). Those days 5 misspellings (and mistyped = misspelled) dropped your paper grade. Also, I thought I could write. College thoroughly changed that thought. Never got it back. Not even going back to college.
I was dead set on going to law school (boy, was that a stupid idea), but even in 1986 I could figure out that going to grad school and academia was stepping into a rat race. It wasn’t quite as apparent that it was a Ponzi scheme at that time, but the skeleton of one was certainly there.
I did well in high school. Had minor issues with math, but that clobbered me in college. Seems the limited studying time I did in HS for math wasn’t going to cut it for calculus and differential equations. Duh! Getting a D in Calc 2 for the mid-term grade was a wakeup call. Got it together, but barely. (Personal life was chaotic; Dad died from a heart attack towards the end of my first semester and that didn’t help.)
With diffy-Q, it took 3 to 6 months to figure out the relevant portions for the engineering classes. (Got a C in the math class, but did all right in the engineering ones. Practice helped.) Years later, I went through the text book again. Not a good book for learning the material…
Senior year for the BS, I took a course in complex variables (taught in an engineering-friendly manner) just to prove to myself I could do it. Did OK, and a dozen years later when I went into an MS program, I had the study habits down fairly well. Only had two (required) math classes; struggled a bit, partly because hearing issues made it harder to understand the Chinese instructor.
I had problems with calculus then, and would struggle with first term calculus, NOW (took it twice, because it had been 10 years between); it has now been almost 30 years. But had no problem with second or third terms, or second/third terms discrete math, or upper division. But base calculus eludes me. I probably can do the math (with some review), but discuss it? Not a chance. I am the same way with object programming buzz words. Have a cheat sheet of the terms and definitions, and I can point to working examples. How it all came together, what went wrong and why. Way more explanation than most want. No cheat sheet, give me an example ask for the term, and I guaranty I’ll be like a deer in headlights (interviews were so much fun, NOT; no matter how much I practiced). Worse now that I’ve been retired for 7 years. I just have certain blind spots.
That was me.
I failed English one year for reading too much.
Not quite, but spending all night reading one of the Cities in Flight novels made my senior year English final a bit more challenging than it should have been. Did all right, but did learn that a decent night’s sleep Is A Good Idea during Finals week*. 🙂
(*) Though in college, a good night’s sleep was an aspirational goal.
Some HS classmates and I had our first college final. Afterward all 4 of us went back to the dorm and crashed for a nap. Only class we had together. (An aside, I was the only one to stick out college for a degree.) Yes, during college final week, sleep is a fleeting goal. Sleep happens, but generally because one passes out vs intention.
Impressive. How did you manage that?
(says the guy that got into trouble for keeping a book in his desk and reading during class…)
Probably classroom interaction.
I usually lost at least one letter grade for lack of it, although after the first time nobody tried to do more than that– me paying attention and trying very earnestly to interact As I Have Been Instructed is really bad for a class.
Judging from my community in Illinois, where I grew up, the public school rot set in during the late ’60s and got worse very rapidly from there…some of the best public high schools in the State were roadkill by the 1980s…
That sounds about right. I was in high school in the early 70’s, and saw my French teacher, who spoke French and loved French and taught French, reach retirement and be replaced by a newly minted teacher from college who didn’t teach French. We read French stuff, theoretically in French, but we talked about it and were tested on it in English. I dropped the class.
Only idiots would hire a French teacher that can’t speak French! Oh, wait…
———————————
Only idiots would hire a Transportation Secretary that knows nothing about transportation.
Only idiots would hire a Treasury Secretary that knows nothing about economics.
Only idiots would hire an Energy Secretary that knows nothing about energy.
Only idiots would hire a Secretary Of State clueless about international diplomacy.
Only idiots would appoint a Supreme Court Justice that knows nothing about the Constitution.
The list of idiots goes on…and on…and on…
“Only idiots would appoint a Supreme Court Justice that knows nothing about the Constitution.”
Assuming we’re thinking of the same one, and who is (allegedly) a woman, who cannot define “woman”.
In the very late ’60s, our HS teachers were talking union. I don’t think it happened before I graduated, but I did get a very liberal history teacher for Junior year. Took some kind of “current events” class (utter BS looking back a half century) Senior year. It was fun, but close to useless.
Most (all?) of my other teachers were all right. Had one other young teacher, but he wasn’t a leftie–taught MIS type programming, and while his style was loose, no politics showed up, and I learned quite a bit. (Also learned to hate Hollerith (AKA “IBM”) cards with a passion, but that was in the stone knives and bearskins era of computers…) OTOH, many of the other teachers were nearing retirement. The next few years probably were a chaotic mess.
Late ’60s, into mid-70s, I also was retiring teachers and seeing an influx of younger teachers. Don’t remember left leaning ones. Did make dry material more interesting. Teachers did adjust to environmental movements and incorporate into class materials, especially the sciences. Mostly proved that the hype, at least in our area, was just hype, and not science.
“…Hollerith (AKA ‘IBM’) cards…”
Weren’t they such fun? Especially if you slipped and dropped a deck of the damned things. I wasn’t that fond of paper tapes (editing was migraine-inducing), but they had the cards beat by several parsecs.
I still have nightmares about the Teletypes. “State of the Art” in 1976. Shudder. I hated that class. Swore I’d never have anything to do with computers. Not ever. Somebody took that as a challenge. (Only 7 short years later …)
Re: Women engineer anecdata. SIL and her daughter both trained and were working as engineers before leaving their employers and the profession. To be fair, both had intolerable working environments.
SIL’s employer got bought by Fortune 500 behemoth who didn’t understand the business they bought. Got bad at acquisition, and went downhill from there. Her spouse also worked there and left. Niece was working production for a medium-large company and the manager had no compunction about making her work absurd hours “because you’re the only one qualified to support that line”. She’s studying accounting and raising two littles now. I doubt she’ll engineer professionally again.
How many more books like Lyon’s are we going to read? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/when-i-was-15-a-psychiatric-hospital-nearly-ruined-my-life-this-advice-saved-me/ar-AA16WdjR?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=014dbff7044348208eb4e9e2d334b162
They’re not going to stop. They will never be satisfied. Not until they have destroyed everything and everyone. And it’s getting worse.
In just a few years, some of those “trannies” who have been persuaded to consent to irreversible surgeries in a futile attempt to turn them into the other sex are going to wake up and realize what has been done to them, and their outrage will be terrible.
Which is why they are being aimed at Deplorables.
They already are.
Yes. But right now, they’re being drowned out. When the additional noise is stripped away…it’s going to get loud.
I don’t know. I don’t see much sign that many people care about anyone but the girls. The boys are still drowned out by the activist transwomen attacking women’s spaces and sometimes, literally, women.
I suggest that this will be a major opportunity for the much derided ambulance chasers.
“Your honor, my client was a minor and unable to consent to life altering procedures which have left him permanently maimed.”
Well, when son was 13 someone tried to pull this on him. A teacher that wasn’t even his called to say he was posting suicidal thoughts on his facebook page.
We had access to it, so we went to look. He was posting (and analyzing) blues lyrics.
We laughed at the teacher and told her if she didn’t stop we’d take legal measures.
I didn’t realize this is what she was trying to pull.
That’s why I wonder how many others like him are out there. How many have we not heard from? How many will we never hear from, this side of aeternitas? It amounts to human experimentation, doesn’t it? What else are they doing like this that we haven’t heard about – or which isn’t being broadcast loudly enough to be heard?
Considering they’ve been running mass gaslighting on all of us….
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2023/04/11/straight-fire-thread-details-just-how-vile-and-evil-covid-lockdowns-and-vaccine-mandates-really-were/
Experimentation implies that they’re trying to find something out. But I’ve been getting the impression that they don’t really care about that. All that they care about is the process and what results from that (which varies for each participant – hospitals, for instance, get money for the expensive procedures and lifetime of medications and treatments).
My personal opinion is that they are feeding the fires of Below. and Laughing whilst doing it.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ― 1984
Everything that isn’t “Communist Utopia” will be destroyed, so that, finally, we get a Communist Utopia.
Humorously, various progressives, socialists, anarchists, and other fools think they are not on the “destruct” list. See above game plan. Yes, you too.
Lol.
As you (and we) well know.. the problem is that there is NO “communist utopia” and all that results is destruction. This wouldn’t be so bad, if the rest of us weren’t included in their doomed hallucinations. As it is… sure are lot of bare lampposts, aren’t there? If we are VERY FORTUNATE INDEED, they will remain “undecorated” and we “pull up” from the CFIT.
CFIT? Controlled Flight Into Terrain. When so much attention is paid to a minor issue that the BIG DEAL (flying the plane!) gets ignored and WHAM happens. In an Ideal World, CFIT would be found only in (bad) fiction. In this world, it’s in all-too-real accident reports.
“In a Perfect World, we wouldn’t need police. Defund the police!”
“In a Perfect World we wouldn’t need jails. Eliminate the jails!”
“In a Perfect World, we wouldn’t need guns for self-defense. Ban the guns!”
“In a Perfect World…”
And they Believe all their Good Intentions will lead inevitably to a Perfect World. Most folks suspect they will lead somewhere else.
Ox: My high school science teacher was a certified flight instructor, and got the school to offer a 6-month ground school course. He told us all about avoiding those Cumulo-Granitii clouds. 😀
Sort of like those pesky trees that jump out in the middle of the road.
Speaking of unstable, if not so much equilibrium, I ran into some (many) of those on my bike while living on Kwajalein. The rare and endangered Jumping Coconut Palm variety. This was usually (inevitably) on my way back to the dorm after imbibing a few (several) beers at the beach club.
They’re idiots, who think(?) that eliminating those things which would not be required in a Perfect World (which does not, and cannot exist while humans remain other than perfect, i.e. never) will create perfection; the opposite is true, in fact. Their cart is squarely behind their horse, and is likely to experience what happens to things which get too close to the back ends of horses.
“Cumulo-Granitii” – love it! “Hey, what’s that mountain goat doing up here?” 🙂
I live in rural northeast Pa and we get a few social services billboard ads … mostly like “Hunger is not always obvious” etc but lately I’ve seen 2 billboards with blatant anti-male ads. The first one simply shows a fit, good looking guy with the caption “Stalker ? Maybe” …
and the second is a cartoon of a young girl in her bed with what appears to be he father at the door checking up on her … that one is captioned with “The monsters under the bed are not the ones to worry about” …
We are being assaulted daily by crazy people who embrace their illness instead of fighting against it …
About those “hunger” billboards, you have to dig to get the facts. A while ago I was seeing widely advertised that “1 in 5 children in America go to bed hungry”. A conservative friend informed me that you needed to know what question was asked on the survey. It was something like, “Do you always get to eat everything you want” or something like that. In other words, phrased in such a way that kids whose parents didn’t allow them to eat five candy bars per day, and instead insisted on the kids eating healthy food, would end up answering “yes”.
Meaning the real hunger numbers were far lower than 20%, but the people designing that survey were very careful to pick questions that would inflate their numbers.
In a world filled with lies, digging until you get the truth is difficult. Do it anyway; it’s the only way to stop being manipulated.
Shakespeare if Today, “First, we kill all the career bureaucrats…”
…and the “researchers” with agendas who falsify (or invent) data, and the “educators” who can’t teach and also have agendas, and… 😦
Interesting world we’re living in.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/04/11/jonathan-turley-falsely-accused-of-sexual-harassment-by-chatgpt-that-cites-its-own-fake-wapo-story-1348930
Yup, saw that. The questioner asked for five professors accused of sexual harassment, and was given five names, along with supposed sources for the claims. The problem was that three of the five had never been accused of it, and at least in Turley’s case the supposed source didn’t exist (the article notes that even staffers at the WaPo – where the article was supposed to have come from – couldn’t figure out why the AI fingered Turley).
There was apparently a similar instance in Australia (I think) in which the guy who blew the whistle on a government scandal was identified by an AI as the actual guilty party, and the AI claimed that he served time in prison as a result. I think there’s a defamation lawsuit in that case.
Another fun one – ChatGPT is politically biased. Someone recently asked it about Biden’s presidency, and got a glowing list of accomplishments (not all of which were accurate). Nothing negative was mentioned. Changing the question to ask about Trump’s presidency got a much more balanced response. And a question about Obama got another glowing, blatantly one-sided list of positive accomplishments with no negatives.
“Artificial Sociopathy”
ChatGPT made up the article, then cited it as evidence of a crime. It’s channeling Queen Hillary! Kill it with fire!
Australia, and yes, the man is suing the company that makes ChatGPT. But don’t worry – Alibaba is making an AI writing-bot to compete with ChatGPT. Just what you need – news stories written by a Chinese AI.
China’s already distributing chatbot AIs to a certain extent. Another mobile app chatbot caught my attention the other day, and I grabbed it. And then I noticed that the app was made by a Chinese university, and promptly uninstalled it. Maybe it was safe. But it was just as likely it was another TikTok-style bit of spyware.
It’s been demonstrated that chatbot AIs are incredibly easy to train and develop using publicly available “seed” AIs that that can be trained up for almost nothing (iirc, an article a couple of weeks ago mentioned one being rapidly trained up for a cost that was only in the hundreds of dollars).
Just waiting for a Russian AI to write the “The Adventures of Orthodox Chad in the Endless Neocon Wars” in the same whimsical tone as “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”.
Might be a while, with sanctions. Ru will probably have to source the new Loongson chips from Xi while hoping there are no Moderna patents in the microcode.
It’s April! Channel your inner Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson! Fnord!
That might be a reflection of what it’s trained off of; the Right is more willing to point out flaws in our guys than the Progs are.
Simple enough: ChatGPT didn’t understand the qeustion. It doesn’t actually research. It doesn’t actually know anything at all. It was asked for “5 professors” and “Accused of sexual harassment” with citation as a criteria. So it generated the names of 5 professors. It then generated grammatically correct accusations and citations. It doesn’t actually store the articles it’s trained on. So it CANNOT cite actual articles except by accident.
I can’t believe I didn’t think of that route… Given all the stupid news articles, when the not-actually-enough-data-to-call-it-a-story went across my feed, I figured it was trash and ignored it, too.
I hadn’t realized it was even worse than I thought.
That’s… that’s the “put explosives in a Ford Pinto” level of bad reporting. Did they not understand how it works, or not CARE?
A large number of people seem to have real trouble grasping that ChatGPT is just a really sophisticated version of the ‘autofill’ on you phone or word processor. They seem to think that, by calling it AI, it has somehow developed sentience. That it KNOWS things. They mistake form for function.
I think for some of them, they’ve been using it to generate click-bait articles and are now coming face to face with the idea that it’s not actually generating even real clickbait. And worse.. that they don’t have the control over the clickbait autogenerator that they thought they did.
I think for some of them, they’ve been using it to generate click-bait articles
That would make a lot of sense, especially since I know there is existing tech that will generate pages from basically searching for key-words and recombining the contents of the page.
If I were accustomed to using “generates article” programs like THAT, and used a fancy Lorem Ipsum generator expecting the same results, but in good English….
Thing is, ChatGPT has actually demonstrated that sort of capability. It can act as a proper regurgitator. But instead it frequently makes stuff up. Presumably it has trouble determine when accuracy is more important than conversing.
Does it provide links to the citations?
Does it HAVE them?
Otherwise, it’s not regurgitating– it’s pattern-mimicry.
Like how cold readers can catch signals and build off of them.
It has demonstrated the ability to properly reference and cite real articles that are relevant to a discussion at hand, and to explain why the articles in question are relevant. It can do it properly. But for whatever reason, the algorithms that guide it frequently direct it to make stuff up instead.
Poking around, it appears it has demonstrated the ability to “guess” the correct resources when asked for them– with lots of file not found, or “minor” errors in citations for actual papers, which may or may not be related.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-make-chatgpt-provide-sources-and-citations/
The FUN theory is that they used it to generate the script for Rings of Power.
That might restore my faith in humanity.
I’m stealing this notion. It’s the best explanation I’ve heard so far.
Yes. This. So much THIS. Then add that most of the stuff ChatGPT trains on probably is much more likely to connect right wing people with sexual harassment than left wing.
We saw that in the totally non-political case over in acoup.blog, were the guy that runs the blog gave ChatGPT an essay to write on a specific classical Roman theme. It came up with the essay in the correct format, including citations of papers that DID NOT EXIST, using the names of real classical Roman scholars. If you didn’t actually check to see if the citations were real, or already know so much of that scholar’s writing that you’d know he or she hadn’t written such a paper, you wouldn’t know they weren’t real. I mean, if you didn’t already know it came from ChatGPT.
Also, if you weren’t already a classical Roman scholar, you probably wouldn’t notice what ChatGPT got wrong. It sounded perfectly plausible to me. Which of course, it would, to a non-expert. Because it’s putting together stuff based on weighted frequency. Which is exactly what the average NON expert uses to come to conclusions.
ChatGPT is capable of properly locating and accurately cutting relevant articles. So it is fully capable of doing what was asked of it (and I’m fairly confident that there have been more than enough guilty professors to meet the quota). But it would rather make stuff up than properly research the topic.
Citing, not cutting…
/sigh
Wait for the next revision…
So, what they have created is an Automated Bullshit Generator, which is being constantly updated to generate more plausible bullshit. Like there’s not enough bullshit in the world already.
On the plus side, it might put some
professional bullshittersjournalists out of business.The best thing 0bama did for America was (mostly) retire. If only it could have been sooner…
———————————
People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.
c4c
It is truly a form of hate, hate by people who aren’t happy, will never be happy and since they are unhappy they want to make everyone else as miserable as they are. As with any hate there is no real rhyme or reason to it. That’s why with every generation it gets more and more insane. You are now racist/sexist/homophobic just because of the color of your skin or your sex, you are just too stupid to know it. YOU ARE NOW UNKNOWINGLY SEXIST BECAUSE OF YOUR GENDER. YOU ARE NOW RACIST BECAUSE OF YOUR SKIN COLOR. Tell me that is not the definition of prejudice. They truly are insane and don’t even see it. I walk by and laugh and laugh and laugh.
This one really hit home with me. We (son and I) just got back from visiting my brother. Emphysema, COPD,and stage 4 cancer. He’s six years younger and looks 30 years older. Never married, never really left home. When he picked up the addictions I don’t know, but a lifetime of slow suicide is catching up with him. It hurts. It hurts a bunch (and we were never close).
SIL (BIL’s wife) is going through something similar. Oldest of 3, only daughter. Mother is still alive at 93 (as are moms siblings, one closing on 100). Her brothers OTOH she will out live. One, while SIL inherits everything, the house is under contingent that it is not sold as long as at least one of the brothers need to live there. One brother has boomeranged in and out. Right now he is back home. The other brother has never left home, is an alcoholic (as in quit or die, he hasn’t quit), COPD, and now is now facing cancer (how bad is yet TBD). SIL is fully expecting to lose both brothers before her mom. SIL & BIL live in a 5th wheel in the mother’s property. (Plan was to use as base as they moved around camp hosting. That plan fell apart after about 5 years as SIL’s mother needs here there to manage the brothers so mom doesn’t have to.) Note, all the siblings are over 65.
Ouch.
I’m increasingly convinced that this trans madness was introduced into our culture by agents of foreign powers whose names rhyme with “Dinah” and “Prussia”. Think about it:
1.) Medicine is screwed. If doctors can’t acknowledge biological differences between male and female, how can they do their jobs?
2.) Birthrates are going to plummet. Kids are getting sterilized before they even go through adolescence. Even if they decide to de-transition, they can never have kids because they had their sexual organs cut out.
3.) Society is in chaos. Now you have militant trans fanatics shooting up Christian schools while the authorities sympathize with the murderers. This is going to erode trust and invite a mother of a backlash.
Cui bono, folks.
It’s been simmering for a while. I think what kicked it into high gear was when same sex marriage more or less became a fiat accompli almost overnight, and the “push the boundaries” types came up with what their new cause celebre would be.
There’s also been rumblings about “minor attracted persons”.
Some things should not be borne.
Some things WILL not be borne . . .
Which will result in a martyr going after a perp.
Yes, after Obergefell there was a risk of activists without a cause. I think the endgame is arguing that children who can consent to mutilation can consent to other things as well. Such things cry out for the wrath of God, imo.
I believe rather it was a Fellow named L. Morningstar.
Last name is Cypher, actually. 😛
Lou Cypher? Yeah, heard of him
What I’ve read says it’s led by the Pritzkers – yes, the IL fat blob and “his” family.
Queer Theory and gender ideology are just the latest iteration of cultural marxism, which came to this country with the Frankfurt School ideologues back in the ’30s. “Gender identity” (the secular soul) was cooked up by John Money in the early ’60s — I’m sure him being a pedophile had nothing to do with that, btw. Nothing at all.
I’m sure the KGB encouraged and funded where they could get away with it, since they were encouraging and funding the peace movement, the New Left, the anti-nukes, etc., etc. — see Yuri Bezmenov and “demoralization”. But this current nonsense didn’t originate with Russia and China.
Aforesaid nonsense is largely coming to the fore now (it’s been around for decades, just on the back burner) because the previous “liberation” movements — blacks, women, gays — have succeeded and are largely done with. But as each cause succeeded, the professional activists faced the problem of having to get a real job, so they just swapped to the next cause.
Oh, it didn’t originate with them, but you can be assured that they’ve been stoking the fires. Why else would this push coincide perfectly with Russia and China flexing their muscles on the international stage?
Because it didn’t. The current push has been going on for about ten years, ever since Bruce Jenner transitioned. It just hasn’t floated to the surface of public awareness until a couple years ago.
Remember how I’m a goth? The goth subculture is adjacent to a lot of other subcultures, and the trans subculture has been growing steadily since way before the pandemic and the Ukraine war and Xi solidifying one-man rule. Waaaaay before.
But it took TikTok to spread it far & wide amongst children and give them the talking points to get their parents to go along with this brand of madness.
Wanna bet the government of the country TikTok comes from had some influence on what content would be pushed to them?
This pre-dates TikTok. One article I read a while back written by a mother who belatedly (and just in time) realized what was going on with her daughter, mentioned what was basically a network of online “friends”, YouTube videos, a webcomic (one that I’ve never read, but that I recognized as frequently referenced over at TV Tropes), and similar online resources, all with the singular goal of convincing confused kids to “transition”. Oh, and don’t tell your parents about our conversations. They won’t understand. We’ll even tell you how to hide our conversations from them if they try to see where you’ve been.
The entire network was in place before TikTok. All that was needed was to push the victim in the right direction. We know that some school teachers have been providing that push because they’ve been bragging about it on TikTok, and have been noticed doing so by LIbs of TikTok. I suspect that they’ve been doing this a lot longer than TikTok’s been around, though.
Fortunately, the mother who wrote the article in question caught on to what was happening to her daughter, and how her daughter was being influenced. She cut her daughter off from the internet (except for under closely watched and regulated circumstances), and her daughter’s life stabilized in much more positive (and happy) place.
Tiktok is a newcomer to this space. Almost all the detransitioner stories I’ve read said they got their initial influence from Tumblr.
Yup, I’ve been hearing minor rumblings of it here in Southern California for a long time now. The current level of crazy wasn’t there yet. But the foundations were in place.
In the title of this entry is “Unstable” and yes, it’s tied to “equilibrium” but I key on the unstable part. Back when the soviets went into Afghanistan, I was talking with a grad student buddy how school was awful, the several part time jobs sucked and how there were days it seemed like a good idea to chuck it all and just go shoot commies until they got ya. As I remember, there was considerable drinking going on at the time. The unstable of today will create a huge kick back some day soon.
As unstable and crazy as it is today, I find myself wishing for a huge “event” so we can just get down to brass tacks, survive and live life without all this crazy. Yes, it would be some kind of awful in its own but at least you could shoot the “bad guys” and shoot back when shot at without the social worry that we have now. Sigh… Ok, I’ll go and have a nice little drink now and calm down.
You sense that something’s coming. You don’t know what, but you’re stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Don’t be impatient. It’ll come when it comes. In the meantime, make the most of what you have and what you can do.
Everyone conscious is sensing something.
Talking to the subcontractors on the newish place we are remodeling before we move in. They are heading south as soon as the SHTF. Just making a little more up here while the Yankee dollar has some value.
stuck waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A common theme in this comment section.
But Sarah wrote a post a year ago or so about how nations don’t just collapse, they degrade — first you can’t get the good coffee, and then new tires get scarce, and the the power starts going out unpredictably, etc. (I’m condensing).
I doubt the other shoe will ever “drop”. More like it will slowly dissolve from its height and rematerialize on the floor, without a thump noticeable to anybody without forty years of hindsight. Meanwhile most of us here are caught in a perpetual state of anxiety, which can’t be good for the health.
I would counsel that this is unproductive and is just egging each other on to more unproductivity.
“But Sarah wrote a post a year ago or so about how nations don’t just collapse, they degrade — first you can’t get the good coffee, and then new tires get scarce, and the the power starts going out unpredictably, etc. ”
That’s economics. Rule of law can be eliminated much faster. As we’re seeing.
That depends on how much meddling TPTB do. The EPA, for instance, has just issued a proposal that EVs must make up two-thirds of all vehicle sales by 2032. Of course, given the current level of interest in EVs, that would either require dealers to do a “buy one ICE vehicle, get two EVs free” deal, or else it would put the sale of automobiles into a free-fall. What do you think that will do to the economy?
The problem is that we’re not just dealing with “neglect while we loot the treasury” nonsense from the people at the top. We’re dealing with “Kill all the sparrows because they eat grain” levels of stupidity. How bad things turn out depends on which form of nonsense wins out in the end.
For those who don’t get the reference, sparrows were one of the targets of Chairman Mao’s “Four Pests” campaign in 1958. The CCP eventually realized its mistake in 1960, but by then it was too late. Sparrows were a natural predator for locusts, causing the population of the latter to rapidly increase with the disastrous results that one would expect. Wikipedia reports that the PRC ended up importing 250,000 sparrows from the USSR to save the sparrow population in China from extinction.
I was going to go to our company’s 20-year employee appreciation dinner, until I got to the part where you had to choose your pronouns. No dinner is worth that amount of aggravation and indoctrination.
Maybe a really good prime rib, would be worth it? Then again you could always make prime rib your pronoun. Personally I throw it right back in their face, several times I’ve gotten very hateful looks when I self Identify as a six foot four inch 250lb blue eyed asian lesbian. Oh, the dirty looks I get. I’d self Identify as Jason Momoa, but don’t have the body for it. It’s there rules, not mine life is to be enjoyed.
The Louisville bank shooter was a (possibly) fired employee with he/him pronouns.
It reminded me of the Huntsville shooting where a professor who had just discovered she wasn’t getting tenure shot up a faculty meeting. I had to pull over and cry for that one. (I didn’t know any of thr victims but I didn’t know that when the news hit).
At many companies, If you don’t pick pronouns, pronouns will be assigned to you. Yes, I have pronouns in my work Slack channel and employee page. No, I didn’t choose them.
You could say your pronouns are who/where, as you identify as trans-parent.
My pronouns are “Fool Around/Find Out”.
Or “Child of God”/Redeemed by Christ”
“Choose your pronouns” is an example of a more general tactic: Take something that’s reasonable, and maybe even desirable and necessary, and then abuse, poison, and weaponize it to use as a cudgel against the loathed and hated enemy. (Or to look at it another way, kill the reasonable and desirable thing and wear its carcass as a skin suit.)
“Is it a boy or a girl?” is, after all, the classic First Question asked about a new baby.
Boys are not girls, girls are not boys, and we are not within 50 years of making Betan body mods a reality. All modern medicine can do is produce semi-convincing fakes,
Not even that.
For instance, there was the fellow I saw a number of years ago. Unfortunately, the skirt he was wearing did nothing to conceal his prominent Adam’s apple. Or quiet the whispers that were going around about him. What I wound up feeling about him and his situation wasn’t hate. It was pity,
All modern medicine can do is
produce semi-convincing fakes,throw people into a permanent uncanny valley.FIFY
That is absolutely correct. Which is what all the trans stuff was supposed to avoid, by inducing the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite gender early enough. And it STILL doesn’t work — just drops you into the uncanny valley. Which is what people who regret the “transition” are dealing with. Now. Today.
Remember that. Not everyone in the “uncanny valley” is an activist. We’re going to get more and more people who regret it and are just trying to live their best life anyway. Interestingly enough, they seem NOT to be hung up about pronouns.
Quote: “if you can’t accept what you are, how will you accept what you can’t really be?”
And, I’ve never been asked (must be the “no bullshit accepted” look on my face) but I think my pronouns would be “pro” and “noun”, just to see the look of confusion. Or maybe just X Y.
Nobody’s ever personally asked me to state my pronouns, either. Possibly because it’s not a thing at my workplace or anyplace else I tend to frequent, but also possibly because it’d be a blindingly stupid thing to say to somebody who stands 6’2″, weighs over 250 lb, and has an 8″ long biker beard. (My pronouns are “what the hell is wrong with you?” and “are you blind?”) 🙂
Most men are attracted to women. Most women are attracted to men. That is a basic biological fact, baked into our DNA and reinforced by 500 million years of natural selection. Individuals who deviated from those preferences tended not to leave descendants. Denying that attraction to the opposite sex is normal, is demented.
———————————
“I warn you, Mariel, do not be overconfident. If I were married to Londo Mollari, I’d be concerned.”
“G’Kar. If you were married to Londo Mollari, we’d all be concerned.”
Poured myself a cup of coffee, settled in my computer chair, and read through the comments. I always find interesting stories, incisive commentary, and lots of good humor.
I never leave this page depressed or angry or in despair. I leave filled with resolve and hope. And often a bit wiser too.
R.I.P. Al Jaffee
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/04/11/al-jaffee-longtime-mad-magazine-cartoonist-dead-at-102/
Was checking out what was available at the library ( online, based in Philly ) in audiobooks I could borrow for an upcoming trip ( long drive ). Found a few my wife would also be willing to listen to. Also found entirely TOO many pushing the “Russian collusion got Donald Trump elected” hoax as if there were ANY proof of that being even barely believable. Mostly written by the same arseholes who push the Jan 6th ‘insurrection’ bullshit and clutch pearls while being aghast that anyone would believe there could have been ANY tampering in the 2020 election, other than the tampering that Trump no doubt attempted!! Aaaurgh. Wife kept asking what I was alternately laughing and gagging about, and I mentioned one book penned by Rachel Maddow; ooops. Got to listen to her go on for 20 minutes about how she is NOT listening to anything by THAT woman, not listening to THAT WOMAN’s voice!! Ever!! Why would I even bring that up….. uh, well, you ASKED. Sorry, the title looked interesting, so I clicked on it thinking it might be about current events, and not a reverso take on the previous six years from Bizarro land. How can a self respecting library even carry such drivel? Well, it is based in Philly, which really doesn’t NEED any more ridiculous propaganda, but clearly suffers from those who need to read more to try to convince themselves that their sicko fantasies have some basis in their societal fabric. At least they still carry a number of ACTUAL history books, since I continue to enjoy expanding my knowledge of the ACTUAL world. But it needs to be history from at LEAST 80 years ago to not be nastily polluted.
You know, you CAN ask your local library to purchase specific books.
In my experience, the vast majority of times, the library will purchase the books you request.
The last two books I requested (and the library purchased):
– Larry Correia’s 2nd Amendment book
– Hannah Barnes book on the closing of the Tavistock gender identity clinic
If more people ask their local library to purchase books that are not leftist drivel, the libraries just might have more books that aren’t leftist drivel…
Speaking of “unstable equilibrium”, I’m reading Celia Hayes’ Texas Trilogy.
The main characters aren’t pro-slavery and are about to be targets of the pro-slavery fanatics. 😡
I may have to take a break from reading it. 😦