Why Don’t You Come Back to the War

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday I stumbled on this post by Devon Eriksen on Twittex.

For those who don’t wish to follow through, he claims there were no real fat people in the fifties/sixties, when mothers cooked for their families, etc. It’s one of the those things of “he’s right and wrong” because he’s much younger than I and I can assure him the having home cooked meals was not universal, or even close to it, food was already processed by the time people bought it to use as ingredients, and there were indeed fat people (though very rarely as abnormally fat as now, but you do see those throughout history too. And I can go into that if anyone wishes me to write on fat, and why our society is exceptionally “fat”. It’s a number of circumstances, including that we’re as a rule older (the very fat people of the past were usually very wealthy, meaning they could live longer with serious physical issues. Like Henry VIII with a debilitating, never-healed leg wound) and that … well, the pictures that Devon uses to illustrate the “there were no fat people” are part of the problem. Because those pictures of the sixties and seventies show people who were by and large on extreme diets due to the worship of “thin.” We do know there are serious metabolic consequences to whip-saw dieting — trust me, I’m a case study — and to early-life anorexia, as well as to extreme dieting while pregnant, which screws up the baby.)

The post is still worth reading, and I’m very glad it can be said. It’s just his being younger than I, I think, and also falling into the writer trap of “there was a master plan.” This is usually true in novels, never true in reality.

Sure, there was a short of prospiracy of cult devotees of the communist manifesto in places of power in entertainment and mass communication which led to the poison of “Marxist feminism” inserting itself into the dynamic and making everything objectively worse.

Note henceforth I can refer to it as simply “feminism” because “feminism” in modern society is Marxist. But there was, before that nonsense, a sort of sensible feminism. It curbed the greatest excesses of societal oppression of women (which happened because women are the most precious resource of any society. Do I need to unpack? You don’t let the people who can literally give your tribe a future wander off on their own and be captured by the enemy, for ex. This leads to curtailing the movements of women, historically) and advocated for stuff like a widow’s ability to manage her own household and money, without needing to return to her parents’ home or be subordinate to her inlaws. My grandmother was a feminist in that sense and at points it was opposite what is considered feminist nowadays. How opposite? Well, you see Victorian feminism was for women and children. So, it actually encouraged a woman to have children, treat her children well, stay home with the children and have no other employment, if the husband could at all manage to support her.

This was most often not possible, btw. The mid 20th century ideal of the housewife who stayed home and did nothing but watch her kids, cook for the family, decorate and maybe garden is the ideal of a very wealthy society. As such it was probably transitory and illusory, both. It was also, and Devon is absolutely right on this, aspirational and amazing. Because if you can afford to do it — and are temperamentally suited to it — what is better than to spend your life making the life of your family and community better?

It is particularly suited — center mass — to most female personalities. Women tend to be more social than males and like to perform acts of service for the community. It’s not that we’re saintly, it’s just what evolution selected for in females probably from the time we climbed down from the trees, if not before.

While women’s work tends to be indoors and non-dangerous, most women throughout history worked. And I’m going to lay down a marker here that I’m not even sure most women watched over their own children, in the sense we tend to think of it, the sense of the mid century housewife doing everything for her own kids. (And here, as with my thinking those very thin people of the sixties and seventies — I have my own pictures and honestly it looks odd, because people a generation before and after were if not “fat” more “normal”. I think that thinness and all the dieting are reflection of “listening to experts” who indulged their own fancy — being the seed of weight problems later, that housewife having nothing to do but mind her kids seeded the boomers neuroticism.)

While people tended to raise their own kids, and certainly (as I’ve said many times) the societies (upper class Victorian, Roman) that outsourced the raising of kids to hirelings did NOT fare well long term, child raising was more… flexible in the past.

I still caught the edge of this, to an extent. I mean, my mother, like my grandmothers, worked from home in her own business, and minded me in the sense that mom — and grandma — were there and provided meals at set times. But to be honest, from the time I was four or five, I played with other kids in the neighborhood for entire days. They played at my house too, sure, but that meant mom watched us all maybe one day out of six (Sunday was for extended family.)

More importantly, going back to former times, the children were expected to help with household work at about four, and often were apprenticed/had jobs/were in serious school (how serious? Well, people often entered university in their pre-teens. And don’t tell me they didn’t learn as much. They didn’t learn the same, but the amount was maybe more than we do as preparation) all day, etc.

It is a mistake to look at the middle years of the 20th century as “the way things ought to be.” To an extent we were already seriously off course.

To the point of fat and there not being a fat gene, etc. True. But at the same time there are things that break the system and predispose people to accumulate fat.

I’m not going to defend pre-packaged food, which is a thing regulated by the government and therefore by “experts.” Like, the ones who decided in the eighties that fat was bad for you but sugar just “got used up” which is a metabolic misunderstanding of epic proportions. For me and my family I always preferred to cook from scratch, because it’s healthier and often cheaper. But let’s face it, the diet of our ancestors wasn’t particularly wonderful, between lack of refrigeration and often being limited to what grew locally. Sure, they got limited amounts of protein, which might be good in a way, but which we’ve also find stunts growth and perhaps brain development.

Go ahead and cook from scratch and local if you can, but the fat epidemic is probably more related to see saw dieting in an attempt to reach the standards of thinness the experts said we should have, and the fact our health care has gotten good enough people survive with serious illnesses. My metabolism has never been the same, for ex, since I was put on strict bed rest for six months with first son. It is likely at a less wealthy time I, myself, and my son would both have died of eclampsia.

However, there is one contributing factor that absolutely can be blamed on feminism and that Devon hit on, though glancingly: the fact that all of us work, and work ridiculous hours.

Someone else mentioned that Americans define themselves by their job, as if that justified our existence. They’re not wrong. I figured that out in the aftermath of 2018 and being let go by the two main purchasers of my work. I realized I was suffering from middle aged unemployed man syndrome, as I’d defined myself by my jobs, even though they were in many ways crappy and stress filled.

And it’s interesting that Devon pointed out corporations jumped all in on “Women should have jobs” because it expanded the workforce and therefore lowered wages for everyone, because my friend Bill Reader had tentatively told me the same a few weeks ago. As in “Was it all a ploy like importing a lot of third worlders? A way to depress wages?”

I don’t think it was a “ploy” as I don’t think it was calculated. I think it was partly, sure, the communist manifesto at the back of a lot of influential brains, but also the fact life had got so good. Women not only could stay home, but were under-utilized. Look at recipes from the fifties and these people weren’t really cooking from scratch, but buying a series of canned things and combining them, with the result that a meal that would normally take half the day to prepare (Still does to me, if I’m doing something big from scratch, which is why nowadays it’s so hard, because we don’t eat that much, and it seems a waste of time.) And cleaning the house had gotten exponentially easier with machines (Seriously. I washed clothes by hand. You don’t have any idea how much time it took.) Women found themselves seriously under-employed, and therefore started casting their minds to what else they could do.

Now, if that prosperity had hit fifty years later, when there was an internet, there would have been a flourishing of work-at-home jobs, and I still think that’s where we’ll end up. But in the sixties, seventies and eighties, what it caused instead was bored women to start ENVYING their husband who got to go out and have jobs. (The fact most men’s jobs were no longer difficult and arduous helped with this. Women are still not hankering to be construction workers, truck drivers or trash pickup workers.)

Did corporations step on the accelerator and aid and abet this ethos? Yes. But corporations are served by university graduates, and the universities had already come up with the narrative of the oppressed woman freed by work.

And this in turn depressed wages, which in turn made it absolutely necessary for everyone, male and female to be “married to the job.” Because there’s always someone who is willing to work harder/make more sacrifices than you.

Recently we found ourselves explaining to both sons that yeah, though in very different jobs, we too worked 18 hour days in our late twenties and up through our late thirties. It’s what you have to do to establish yourself. And to be honest, because of increased longevity “establishing yourself.” and gaining credibility in your field, no matter what it is, takes longer and longer and longer. I mean, Dan is still working way more hours than he should be, and he might still (I haven’t checked) be considered “the kid” in his office. (Even if he works from home.) I know I suddenly crossed from “Raw beginner” to “Old woman of science fiction” somewhere in my mid fifties, and I’m still working raw beginner hours.

As I tried to tell my parents at one time — with marked lack of success — that Americans aren’t overweight because we’re lazy but because we work too much. It’s just most of our jobs are so all-absorbing.

So, in the essentials — aside from quibbles on the “fat” thing — I’m in accord with Devon that feminism has caused a break in American life, and by extension destroyed the family in our health.

It’s more that feminism was not so much an intended thing as a trend that picked up after World War Two.

Part of the problem is that all reproduction is a war between men and women — or in the animal kingdom males and females — in that each sex tries to have the most babies with the least expenditure of energy and effort, so at the expense of the other.

If you study evolution, this is how some species ended up with things like…. well, eating your mate right after copulation, or completely atrophying and becoming a pimple on your spouse’s side, but a pimple that can still impregnate her.

That kind of war is all very well, but the point of it is that it leads to more children.

This broken situation where each man and woman is an independent and competing economic unit is not leading to more children, or even a healthy and connected life.

Instead, it’s led to a life of anomie where humans have value only as economic production units, and can be discarded when no longer (or not yet) functional. Where it’s a shame to not be “employed” and “producing.”

This type of life is obviously completely compatible with communism/Marxism, in which the individual only matters so long as he produces, and where he’s a widget who is the same as everyone else.

And like all forms of Marxism, it leads to death and unhappiness. (Not necessarily in that order.)

The bitterly funny part of it (more bitter than funny) is that the entire left blames this on “capitalism” and doesn’t realize their version of feminism does nothing but feed all humanity into the maw of faceless corporations.

It would be funny if we weren’t living it and at risk of dying laughing.

(Pardon the lateness. This week will be weird as it’s a series of medical tests and stuff. And the stuff is weirder than the tests. – SAH)

204 thoughts on “Why Don’t You Come Back to the War”

  1. One newspaper cartoon (Family Circus?) had this young woman doing a survey and was talking to the Mother of the cartoon.

    After asking the Mother if she worked outside the home (with the answer being no), she started to ask the Mother a question starting with “As a non-working woman…).

    Well, we then see the Mother thinking about everything she did during the day and she shut the door not giving the young woman the chance to finish the question. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Liked by 3 people

    1. One writer, working on 19th century writings about women, discovered that much of her puzzlement cleared up when she realized that “employment” included unpaid employment: working in the family business, doing housework, or even performing charitable works.

      Liked by 3 people

  2. Until recently, even in the US, the majority of the population worked on the farm. Farm work consists of quite a lot of 16-24 hour days, especially during calving, planting, and harvesting. Most people are so removed from farm life that they have no true idea how humanity has lived and worked through the millenia, they only know what they’ve seen in (fairly) modern media.

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      1. Farming has a high suicide rate. Mostly because it sucks, but also because prices for food haven’t risen significantly in the last century—and that’s without inflation.

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        1. In preindustrial farming kids went from burden to helping very quickly. Move to the city for a factory job? Kids weren’t useful for a much longer period, and the dangers–just horses on the road right outside the door, for instance–meant they needed more supervision. It made it difficult for women to work outside the home.

          Then bring in clean water and sewage treatment, vaccinations and antibiotics, and you don’t have to bury half your children . . .

          The Human population grew very slowly before those (relatively) fast innovations.

          Contraceptives make a lot of sense when you can have four babies, and be confident that they’ll live to adulthood. Also frees up women for outside work (once the kids are in those “free” public schools) bringing in money, and the household flourishes, can buy all sorts of stuff . . .

          Then it’s an easy step to put off starting a family . . . then when you do, either the career dies, or the couple is dependent on the money, so someone else is paid to raise the kid . . .

          Next thing you know, being a non-money-earning mother is low class, getting married is unpopular, and why not just be a man?

          So apparently we’re on a downward spiral toward being a woman is something only stupid people will continue to be, and winning women all used to be men.

          I can only hope that working at home can reverse the last stages of this mess. Otherwise we’re at the mercy of evolution, where ten generations from now everyone has the “we love babies” genes, the rest having naturally-selected themselves out.

          And I’m not sure those genes exist.

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  3.  …and there were indeed fat people (though very rarely as abnormally fat as now, but you do see those throughout history too. And I can go into that if anyone wishes me to write on fat, and why our society is exceptionally “fat”.

    There’s a meme that’s floated around a few times, of one of the circus fatmen.

    If they’d bothered to look at him, they’d have discovered he has kidney disease. That’s why he was “fat.”

    And it killed him. Because it’s KIDNEY DISEASE AND THERE WAS NO TREATMENT!!!

    Excuse me if I don’t have a deep yearning for “ye olden days, when them unsightly fat people just died already.”

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  4. Mid-1900’s didn’t have fat people? WTH?

    😦🤣😦🤣😦🤣😦🤣😦(No I can’t decide between shocked and LOL faces.)

    Paternal grandmother and her older brother were way overweight. As in < 5′ and > 300#’s overweight.

    Great-uncle and aunt were sheep ranchers. Besides sheep, they had a few head of milk cows. They always, and I mean, always, had a huge garden. Uncle hunted and fished. If it wasn’t grown or hunted it wasn’t eaten in that household.

    Grandma also had a huge garden (her entire backyard). She raised turkeys even after marriage, with two little ones. She walked to the turkey barn. She walked after grandpa died and she moved herself and the three remaining at home to Eugene. She walked because she never learned to drive. Yes, she took LTD Bus locally, or the Gray Hound to older daughters, but still had to walk to final destinations, or various stops to make transit switches (where uncle’s assisted living situation ultimately was, and to *our house, was a 3 bus transfer. The former, the last stop was 3 blocks away from the facility. All her grocery shopping meant using the bus. She made everything from scratch. Grandma never weighted < 200#s. She got that low because of Weight Watchers and stayed there because of Overeaters Anonymous.

    Maternal grandmother was always overweight too. Not as bad as paternal grandmother. She too made everything from scratch. They had a garden. They fished. They hunted. Nothing was bought premade.

    I will concede that my weight is lack of exercise. When I started working, work involved exercise. When I switched to one that didn’t, well the weight came. Getting older, exercise and “eating right”, don’t work as well. Did enforced dieting (not my choice) during my early teen years to loose “15# – 20#s” not help? 100% Funny, never lost it then. Did freshman college year. Went on the -20# dorm diet. Was used to lean meat, carbs, and vegs. Couldn’t tolerate fatty meats, high carbs, or fried foods. Even now can’t tolerate any of these (doesn’t stop the weight gain, now). Shouldn’t eat any kind of processed sugar. Unfortunately it is a weakness (back then it didn’t matter, does now).

    These aren’t the only ones I knew. Not anywhere close. Yes, I grew up in the ’60s, so I guess technically the above “can’t count”. Right? Everyone above, except me (naturally) were born < 1920 (specifically, 1906, 1908, and 1915). Went through the ’30’s depression and WW2 as adults. Not one of them were wealthy, either.

    (*) Yes, someone usually took her home. But she was independent enough that unless she had a lot to bring over, she usually took the bus.

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    1. Add my grandmother to the list– mom’s mom, who ate mostly cottage cheese and lettuce except for on holidays eating with family, except for when she was pregnant with my mom’s one-older brother. She was a guest of a relative at the time, and got no choice what to eat. As soon as she was not, she went back to cottage cheese and lettuce leaves.

      And yes, she was fat. To the tune of “when house bound from old age, and daughter was doing the grocery shopping, everything else would rot in the fridge because she would not eat it.

      ….Guess which of her five children is the only one without serious weight issues for their entire lives?

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Compatibly, paternal grandparents & grandma’s relatives, were (more or less) the “rich ones”. If only because of the land grants portions that remained. Until great-grandpa lost them to taxes (not to government, sold to get the taxes paid). Also grandpa was a civil engineer. When grandpa died, things changed. OTOH grandma died with her house paid, taxes paid up, and savings in the bank.

        Maternal grandparents in comparison, were never rich (looked that way to me growing up, but no). That is one reason why they hunted and fished, raised chickens, and grandma baked her own bread, raised vegetable garden, sewed, knitted, etc. (So did the other grandmother, because that is what they did!) They are the ones that their creditors got $0.10/$1 owed after they passed.

        Eight of the 9 children between the two families did way better than their parents (the one was severely disabled). Most the grandchildren are too. Took some a bit longer to get their feet under them, but we all did eventually. Looks like the great-grands and great-great-grands, are powering through too. Although, great-grands, and great-great-grands, some are just now being born so jury is out there. Have I mentioned before that my family is a tad multi-generational? (Example: Cousin just had his first child. His sister OTOH, now had 4 grandchildren.)

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      2. Epigenetics. DNA methylation, which either enhances or suppresses the expression of various genes. It’s not permanent, but it is persistent. The metabolism of one’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be different if the parents have gone through famine, especially famine during pregnancy. Now let’s talk about the “slimming” fads that went on throughout the 20th century and all those children who are primed to pack on fat and never lose it.

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        1. And then there’s a load of new (relatively speaking; 100 years old or less) chemicals that can alter these methyl groups. There are a lot of potentially contributing or confounding environmental factors. And epigenetics are very complex and our knowledge is pretty new, so there could be a lot going on there that we just don’t have a handle on. Point being, “why are people fatter now” is a very complex question that we’re not likely to be able to answer with any real accuracy. (Plenty of unfounded certainty, though…the debate isn’t lacking that.) Heck, even “are people actually fatter now than 50 years ago” has plenty of noise in it.

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          2. The real tell is that lab rats are gaining weight. As in, the most studied animals in the world, with the most regulated and unchanged diets, are gaining weight.

            “Something in the water” is a real thing, especially as the highest correlation to obesity rates isn’t city vs. rural, or elevation, or even cultural diet, but where you are in the watershed. (Louisiana gets screwed because of that.)

            Liked by 1 person

        2. :nod;

          Oh, btw, the current fad for pregnant women?

          You’re supposed to not gain weight, but also not diet. Because weight gain is associated with bad pregnancy outcomes.

          ….that this is likely related to eclampsia CAUSING weird weight gain, and folks who have serious health issues tending to have weight issues as a result of them, isn’t factored in.

          Thank goodness, I was geeky enough when I was pregnant with #1 that I tried to sit down and map otu a meal plan to get all the nutrients they said I needed, without breaking any of the other rules.

          It was not physically possible, even when I tried the “budget is no limit” route. I couldn’t get the nutrients without going over the calories.

          So I ate when I was hungry, and took supplements, with all the kids. All of them have not had major weight issues.

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          1. “It was not physically possible, even when I tried the “budget is no limit” route. I couldn’t get the nutrients without going over the calories.”

            “Mutually exclusive” has never been a barrier to the proclamations of “experts”. Most especially government “experts”. Witness the current “no new fossil fueled, nuclear or hydroelectric power plants” (essentially, “no new infrastructure”) combined with “all cars, businesses and homes will be 100% electric by [some magical date]” idiocy. 😜😜😜

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            1. But look at how it’s worded. It’s not ‘all electric cars’ it’s ‘no non-electric cars’. Ergo, if there are no cars at all, there are no non-electric cars and the program is a rousing success!

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              1. I’m afraid you’re correct; cars help maintain independence nd are thus anathema to lefties.😒

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                1. Private vehicles allow us to go wherever we want, whenever we want. As you say, anathema.

                  Which is the reason for their train fetish. It’s not just 19th century transportation for the 21st century; cars and even buses are trivial to re-route when people’s habits change, but train tracks are much more persistent.

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                  1. Which is why I think the current fascination with “light rail”, as opposed to buses, is idiotic. Of course, it’s almost certainly a matter of cui bono, just as EVs and “renewable power” are.

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            2. “Mutually exclusive” has never been a barrier to the proclamations of “experts”. Most especially government “experts”.

              I recall several years ago seeing that the CDC’s toxicity limit for caffeine (particularly in coffee) was notably below the FDA’s Recommended Daily Allowance (or vise versa). I figured neither one really knew what they were talking about, and poured myself another cup of hot black bean.

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              1. Since the “received wisdom” regarding coffee changes as frequently as the weather, I tend to ignore it. In fact, I tend to ignore just about everything from the CDC, FDA and WHO.

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                1. This is how I determine if I’ve had “enough” coffee: “Is the current cup ‘bitter’?” (Two or three cups.) And I use 1/2&1/2, not the “Do you want some coffee with your cream?” hubby declares it is. If bitter then time to switch to my fuzzy water, which my system craves (no sugar, no salt). (Gatorade is always – yuck 😝.) When that tastes “different”, then time to stop intake of liquids, depending. Might have a cup of coffee.

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    2. Yeah no heavy set folks in the 50’s/60’s, umm not so much. Mom was 5′ nothing and well over 250 lbs (likely had PCOS would be my bet). Much of the maternal Grandfather’s sisters and aunts were similar, Maternal Grandmothers side similar (pictures in the 50’s there was a camera crazed uncle, my own observation as a young boy in 60’s) although maternal grandmother was a skinny thing. Similar (though less) for the males. Cousins dads side tended slim. Most of my moms folks were Tradesmen, farmers and other primarily blue collar folks. Friends moms varied. Upper class (married to office folks) tended towards slim to slightly curved, Blue collar tended larger whether they worked or were full time homemakers. More kids tended slightly more matronly. Kids that were hefty were rare (I was one, but with severe asthma in the 60’s with limited meds and clear ancestry that tended large no surprise) though not unheard of. My girls generation (born in the ’90s) as children seemed similar though super skinny was favored if you were upper class, more chubby boys as less pick up baseball/ football/soccer than when I grew up. All the Moms were upper middle (and up) class and skinny, dads had (unsurprisingly) dad bods though mostly trim. Not the sheer heft and muscle of my uncles or my dads blue collar friends.

      Probably modern folks tend statistically overall heavier. That said, honestly I think BMI (which used athletic folks as the base) tends to shoot low. In my life I’ve run from 310 lbs to 160 lbs (I’m just shy of 5’7″ now 5’6″ as I shrink some with age). BMI says I should be 142 or so. At 175 my wife said I looked like a fluffy dog that had been soaked. At 160 she said I looked like a pale version of the kids we used to see in pictures from Biafra, when I swam in salt water I sank, basically slightly less than neutral buoyancy. You can count ribs by sight on me at 180 then I’d sink in fresh water. These days I’m at ~250 and struggling to be less. 140 or so is just insane, I’ll take 200 if I can get there, given the buoyancy thing I’m betting 150-160 is probably extremely lean. I also ran and exercised and dieted like mad to get there in my late 20’s so probably NOT achievable as a 60+ year old.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Yeah no heavy set folks in the 50’s/60’s, umm not so much. Mom was 5′ nothing and well over 250 lbs (likely had PCOS would be my bet).

        Argh, that’s another thing I didn’t think of– it is considered normal to put young teenage girls on hormones.

        Oh, and about the 50s is when the B shots for women who were low on energy were starting to phase out– grandmother had them into the early 60s, but they weren’t available by the time mom was a teen.

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      2. “BMI (which used athletic folks as the base)”

        Nope!

        BMI was created by a Belgian sociologist in the 19th century based on a survey he did of his friends of what they estimated were healthy weights. You know, the 19th century being one of the nadirs of public health and all. And then he buggered an equation to fit and did it badly. (It uses a square, but volume is cubic. This means the equation as it is starts getting weird at height extremes.)

        And the only reason it has any traction at all is that insurance companies figured out that they could use it to charge people more money, because actual medical information that means something health-wise is private.

        (I really have to do my extremely long and detailed rant about why BMI is a total crock. I haven’t yet because I want all the citations and that feels like work.)

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      3. Slightly overweight people are less likely to die than ideal weight people. The increase in death from heart problems and the like are offset by the decrease in deaths from infection.

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  5. Sarah, I think that what prompted this was a rant by RFK Jr when he endorsed Trump.

    https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/08/24/rfk-jr-brings-the-hammer-the-pharmaceutical-and-processed-food-industries-will-never-be-the-same-n4931938

    We had 16% of the COVID deaths, and we only have 4.2% of the world’s population.

    Since he’s quoting manufactured made up horseshit in the first paragraph, it’s hard to take him seriously. 

    And CDC says that’s because we are the sickest people on earth.

    This would be the same CDC that lied to everyone including President Trump about where Covid came from… since they were involved in developing it. Not to mention the same CDC that views legal gun owners as the cause of a public health “emergency”. 

    Fifty years ago, that number was less than 1%

    50 years ago we used entirely different measuring standards, and now (what a coinkydink) we use standards that rule professional athletes to be obese, and the answer is more communist control over who’s allowed to have enough food. 

     A hundred and twenty years ago, when somebody was obese as they were, they were sent to the circus.

    There were literally case reports done about them. Obesity was almost unknown. In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3%, compared to 50% here. Half of Americans have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. When my uncle was president, and I was a boy, juvenile diabetes was effectively nonexistent.

    A typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes during his entire career, a 40- or 50-year career.

    You know what WASN’T unknown? People by the tens of thousands dying every winter because of cold and hunger, even in major cities. You can have that back, and all you have to do is cripple the industrialized agriculture and food preservation and distribution systems that provide enough surplus to actually support living a life that doesn’t involve constant worry about where the next meal is coming from.  Stalin tried that; Mao tried that; Pol Pot tried that. How did that work out for them???  I’ll take his vote for Trump; everything else is just Kamala without the Kackle.

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  6. Back in the 50s and 60s Jean Kerr was writing essays about the feminine obsession with dieting. Her conclusion was that women who loved to cook had happier marrages, no matter their figure. (As she put it, she made an informal survey of the divorcees in her circle and commented, “In fact, six of them required extensive padding to look flat-chested.”) But it shows the urge to diet to achieve some “perfect” figure has been around longer than the 60s and 70s.

    Then I think of E.E. Smith and his standards, and wonder if they were the 20-s40s standards. Clarissa MacDougall, as I recall, was around 5’7″ and weighed 145 pounds. Helen of Lyrane was around 6 feet and weighed around 165. Smith’s ideal female figure had some heft to it.

    Snelson is right to note the “experts,” changed the standards to make thinness “healthy,” though I think Devon’s emphasis on procesed/convenience foods has a point. Why are there so many really fat people now? I see people in my area whose thighs are the size of my waist. I don’t know. Probably multiple causes.

    As an aside, is anyone else having the, “dancing on the edge of the volcano,” feeling, or am I unintentionally asking a trick question?

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    2. And yes, we have immensely obese people, and I keep fearing I’ll become one and …. I work too much sitting down. I often forget to eat. If anything is driving it it’s the stress.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Agreed. Stress is a known cause of inflammation, and inflammation’s a big thing in causing obesity.

        I have a problem where my paying job is both exhausting and not much exercise. (Too much standing.) Doing my best to try and walk around a bit between customers – also helps my feet hurt less!

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I marvel at how physically and mentally exhausted I get after 7-8 hours of sitting at a computer scrolling through and trying to analyze proposed state regulations . Knees and legs ache like heck afterwards and it makes walking and standing painful, which also saps motivation for exercise, housecleaning, and other stuff. Knees have hurt more than usual lately so I’m trying not to overstrain them but also don’t want them to atrophy either.

          Liked by 2 people

            1. Seconded. Also, if you can get up for a few minutes? Try a few calf stretches.

              This one’s on Amazon: NewMe Fitness Workout Posters for Home Gym – Exercise Posters for Full Body Workout.

              The one where you push against the wall, on the lower right of the poster – it’s amazing how much stretching those muscles takes the ache out of your knees and feet!

              Like

      2. So, my attachment theory hobby horse thing, one of the ways it breaks you basically end up bathing in a permanent 7 out of 10 stress levels as your baseline. You pretty much end up only responding to cortisol and dopamine.

        Cortisol makes you gain weight. Eating gives you dopamine. A match made in, well, somewhere.

        Interestingly exercise also can give dopamine, which can also cause someone (usually guys) to tip over into a hyper gym bro mode.

        Someone with healthy bonding and a well bonded partner, who gets hit by a ton of stress, first has a stress response buffer, and second, does have another outlet for soothing stress that can’t be fixed, mostly by going to their partner and requesting soothing

        And the percentage of the population that has broken attachment has been going up pretty steadily since the world wars.

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        2. Even more exhausting is the constant stream of near misses. Anticipation, we know this is it…fizzle.

          More anticipation, springs tightening to almost unbearable levels…fizzle.

          It seems like the Author is stepping in over and over again to preserve us. I should think He would get tired of digging our chestnuts out of the fire.

          I’ve been living in condition orange for years. Something has to break.

          Liked by 1 person

  7. :sighs: People have been fat throughout history, including the 1960s/1950s. Peter Ustanov was pretty chooky. Orson Welles, anyone? Sure, Welles’ girth increased with age. So what? He was fat, wasn’t he? And let’s not forget Raymond Burr – he looked nothing like Perry Mason is described as looking in the books….

    Oh, and what about Friar Tuck? He was fat. Yes, he was a character in Medieval ballads. I find it difficult to believe he wasn’t inspired by a real fat person (or more than one). Fat is fat. There have been fat, chooky, chubby, and outright obese people throughout history. Didn’t Jael kill one in the Bible, or was that someone else…?

    I follow a former anorexic. Fat is not always a bad thing! Too much of anything is bad for you, but what gets left out of that pithy bit of wisdom is what is individually bad for you may not be so bad for the other person. Our modern perception of “fat” these days is morbidly skewed. Can we please be a little more sensible about this? Please?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Indeed – although I do recollect that I had one friend as a tween/teen who was lamentably overweight: Esther T., my Girl Scout buddy. I feel sorry now, for all the occasions where we harped on what she was eating. I think that she must have had some glandular issue – her parents and brother were all rail-thin, and her mother wasn’t all that awful a cook that they filled up on packaged stuff and fatty junk-food. We liked Esther, and knew that it was not normal or healthy for her in the long run to carry so much weight – but we all assumed it was a will-power failing of hers.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Ehud killed a guy who was so fat the rolls of it hid the knife he used. Apparently he caught his victim, ahem, “on the throne,” gave him the old (very old), ” I have a message for you, I have to deliver it in person, shtick and stabbed him. Then closed the door of his “inner chamber,” so the servants would think he was relieving himself and left.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Oh, it’s even more fun. I had a professor who was an expert in ancient Hebrew explain that “left-handed” was slang for a male prostitute, and “washing his feet” was a euphemism for something else. So that “private message” was assumed to be a “private massage” and you can see the rest of the story from then on…

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    5. If folks are sensible, they lose the one generally acceptable target for moral reprobation. Things like gluten free or organic only don’t have a strong general pull, and objecting to ugly people gets folks upset eventually, but “fat” has had idiots insisting it’s 100% under the control of the person who is unsightly and thus is the one moral flaw that everyone can declare and shame for, in a manner they could never get away with for saying something like “have you considered not sleeping with anything that has a pulse and holds still long enough?”

      There’s a secondary issue with TV. Just like most of the pictures from the 60s are both staged and are those that stood the test of time, the folks on TV are chosen to look good on TV.

      So you get idiots talking about how a booth babe in a chain mail bikini is “obviously fat” because the string is digging into her hip-fat, visibly. Which just means she has any body fat…..

      Liked by 1 person

      1. sleeping with anything that has a pulse

        Sorry, a pulse is a non-negotiable requirement for anyone I’m sleeping with…. 😏😁

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        2. It shouldn’t be a maximum, though.

          And judging by paranormal romance, most of them think a pulse might be optional in some cases.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Yeah, in paranormal romance, you don’t want to accept the necromancer’s invitation to “crack open a cold one.”

            Which is one reason I don’t read most authors in that genre. 🤢🤮

            Liked by 2 people

      2. Well-written. And you get guys who decry the white-bathing-suit photos of MARILYN as “too fat”. Because she’s not emaciated. And the same dude posted a photo of a female so skinny that her XIPHOID PROCESS was clearly visible and tried to claim that was “objectively attractive”. Since skeletal with great big plastic implants is apparently HIS ideal.

        I am educated. I know that everything considered “attractive” is transient and cultural, except for such vaguenesses as youth, symmetry, health, etc. But the world, or at any rate the Internet, seems to be filled with yokels who imagine their personal tastes are “universal”. Get over yourself, dudes.

        I have been “fat” since puberty, so I have no “when I was eighteen and hawwwt” to look back on. Outside-looking-in is an interesting perspective, although even today I’m not sure I wouldn’t trade for a “normal” metabolism. (I undoubtedly ruined mine in my teens trying buIimia and an0rexia. Didn’t work–if you don’t eat, people notice and nag about it, and I found I hated vomiting more than I hated being fat.)

        Liked by 3 people

        1. I’ve been informed I was fat since I was a young teen, as well– and then the same folks turn around and talk about how I was so pretty and cute and looked so great then, when they were browbeating me for eating too much and being fat. (I was usually eating about one meal a day, specifically dinner with family. If I got a big serving or at seconds, out came the scolding.)

          :ehug: Sorry your body got messed up.

          Have a theory that lack of a lot of trace vitamins– and the ones that women tend to shed, like b complex- is a contributing factor.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Oh, yeah. The well meaning scold. “If you keep eating like that you’re going to be a blimp by the time you’re 14.”

            I do understand where it came from (family has a long history of obesity), but sheesh.

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        2. Speaking of personal tastes… what’s with all the piercings? Why does every third 20-something seem to have a nose ring at the least? I’m getting to the point I want an industrial-strength electromagnet to hint to them that is a Bad Idea.

          I can look at scars, surgical messes, skin problems. I’m having a very hard time trying to be civil and polite to people with so much metal in their face meant to deliberately shock people.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. I have no idea. Piercings, tattoos, and hair dyes have become all the rage. The least permanent alteration is the dye, but the tattoos and the piercings…. A lot of the faces I see on those with hundreds of piercings, if not tattoos, they look less like they’re trying to shock and more like they’re trying to hide sadness, loneliness, or pain. Granted, you have to be watching them when you’re shopping to notice, as they’re less likely to hold up a mask when they’re looking at grocery prices….. But I think many of them got these to try to fit in or to hide emotional pain of some kind – and it didn’t work. It still isn’t working, but taking them off…means admitting it didn’t work.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Maybe they’re NewAgers, and think the Mother Ship will use an electromagnet beam to transport them up. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “facelift”…😉😜😜

              Liked by 2 people

  8. There is a fine distinction between giving ones crazies attention, versus giving them power.

    The problem with giving ones crazies seemingly harmless busywork is that they are -crazy-. You cannot predict what a crazy will do with seemingly safe means.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. My maternal grandmother (born in the 1920s) worked outside the home as a child: chicken processing plant, in the fields, etc. My mother (born in the 1940s) was the first generation in her family to (a) not work on a farm and (b) to not have to work outside the home (although she did, on occasion, by choice for extra money).
    My paternal grandmother worked in a bar, where she met my grandfather. She also did farm work as a child. Her marriage was not a happy one, and after leaving my grandfather (leaving him to raise two young boys) she went back to work–in a bar.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Paternal grandmother and siblings worked the farm as children. She stopped working the farm, when she started teaching, and again after she started following grandpa on his civil engineering jobs. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She started a mini-holiday turkey grow from baby chicks, when the first child was born. Stopped by the 3rd or 4th. But then she was creating birthday and wedding cakes for relatives. Along with making patch quilts, afghans, and clothing (including wedding gowns and christening).

      Maternal grandmother spent all day when grandpa worked in the mines just taking care of the household, in the middle of nowhere, at a cabin that makes our smaller RV trailer look big (not exhilarating, *much). Easier when they moved to Colorado for grandpa to be a mine mechanic, before and during WW2. After the war, they moved to Oregon, where he still worked as a mechanic (Chevy) and she worked part time at the newspaper (type setter/ink, backroom stuff). Did that well into her 70’s. She also sewed, knitted, and crocheted. Made a few quilts, but not the volume dad’s mom did.

      (*) Cabin had room for a double bedstead, trundle, crib, table, a few cabinets, and wood stove. Our trailer had room for a queen bedstead, table, couch, cabinets, full kitchen, and bathroom, both with running water, and extra storage. Yes, I left off running water for the cabin, did not have any. Cabin might have been slightly physically larger than our 22’x8′ RV trailer, but not a lot more.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, paternal grandfather, being the youngest, was suppose to forgo going to HS, and stay on the dry scramble homestead to farm take care of the parents. His older sisters said “No! We’ll pay for his HS, and he can stay with one of us and our family!”

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Dad’s mother was quite large, and Dad could be fat (along with one of his brothers). His father not so much. Grandkids (my brothers, me, and two of three cousins) run to fat. If I exercise like hell, I can be thinner, (Hi, I’m Pete, and am an overeater*), but a few years of weightloss got clobbered when I screwed up my knee. Trying to figure out how much the repaired knee can take, and I get occasional firm reminders that God put a meniscus in the knee for a reason, and not having half of it is going to make things touchy.

      ((*)) Belonged to OA for a while before Life got in the way. Results, meh. I try, but… I have a suspicion that a fair number of people in AA move (or should) to OA after some years. Attending a Christmas meeting at AA was makes cross with fingers difficult; OA has coffee, not doughnuts. I made it, but it was the first and last AA meeting I attended. (Alcohol can be a problem, but I can and do abstain. Sweets, notsomuch.)

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      1. I’ve done WW and OA so many times … I know how to eat. I know how much to eat. I know what to eat. I know to journal. Lazy at it, even with the Fitbit app, which is “look it up” and click, mostly. Does not work well for homemade recipes. Part of the problem is the HRH. Because that can throw things for a loop. I’m still not back to exercising after my knee collapse. Part of it is I don’t want it going, again, until through this week (okay, not even then, but not disappointing someone either). I’m the driver for taking mom and her friend to a gathering for 3 days. My right knee goes, again, and I’m driving nowhere (one sister is currently in Europe, the other is 100 miles north).

        Still don’t know the extent of what happened. Finally saw the specialist at Slocum. Took more extensive xray. Yes, there is the arthritis, otherwise no new news on why. Some speculations. Doctor did acknowledge limping while walking (because won’t fully extend when at back of forward stride (because it freaking HURTS). No have not fallen again, because I won’t let it hurt to give away. Can’t stand one leg on that leg (it shakes, won’t try, yet). Doctor was able to manipulate around kneecap with multiple “ouch”, especially around the top. Was not able to make the kneecap move (good). Still can’t fully bend (tight), or put any kind of preasure on it while bent (see definition of “oh hell no”). Go back in 3 weeks for follow up. If “still hurting” even a little, then an MRI. A lot of “I don’t know” answers to questions. Did I fall because the knee gave away? Or did I hurt the knee because I fell? Probably the former because of my left knee I know a controlled fall when knee yells OW is better than the alternative (depending on circumstances). Was I able to properly describe the fact that my right thigh and knee wanted to turn inward, away from my shin when I tried to stand (even holding on to something for dear life)? Doubt it, because nothing actually broken or cracked, and doctor could not get knee cap to move improperly. How did I hurt my left knee. Easy. Skying (on the baby green run) when head over heels, went to get up, knee said “nope, not happening”. Kids came over to ask if they could help. They got the ski patrol. The left knee has given out a few times. The last time I rehurt it, but no lasting damage (dang kitten, avoiding attacking one). Thus, drama continues.

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        1. [Flags on getting MRI]. That’s the gold standard for figuring out what’s wrong with a knee, because it’s really good at viewing the soft tissue. They can inject a contrast solution to make it really clear. I had something similar via CT scan; not as good, but “good enough”. Then on to arthroscopic surgery. ‘Tis a lot better, though I have my doubts I’ll be painfree. A blue-ice gelpack is my friend. Usually use one after morning PT exercise, and often after dinner. Good chance to read, too.

          I wasn’t allowed to go with the MRI. Back in 1991, to fix a middle ear problem (otosclerosis–stapes (stirrup bone) bonded wrong (otosclerosis–about the only thing I have in common with Ludwig van Beethovan), so the doc put in a metallic prosthetic. I was told it was titanium, but never had documentation to prove it. MRI people said “what if it was magnetic stainless? No permission!”. The kicker is that a company did a batch of magnetic stainless implants, and they Do Bad Things in an MRI. A recall was done, but a few hundred were unaccounted for, so there’s a really small chance I got one. Maybe. Possibly. Hospital says no, $SPOUSE says no. I didn’t mention the non-metallic one in the other ear, with the same lack of documentation.

          All done circa 1991-1994, so paper records long gone and never digitized. The doc quit medicine, (it took three tries to get the left ear permanently fixed, and lack of surgical success might have been a factor in her change of career path), the clinic got Borged into the nearby hospital. Had tried for other documentation almost 20 years ago and they were very reluctant to search for then-7 year old stuff. 25 years old? Nah. Would have been shredded by now.

          TL;DR: Hang in there. They should be able to figure it out, and arthroscopic surgery is quite impressive. I needed a cane for a week postop (needed it for months preop), and I use a walking stick when Kat-the-dog goes on her morning potty hike, but it’s a hell of a lot better.

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          1. Pre-caffeinated: It was 33 to 30 years ago for the ear procedures. I had received documentation for one of the ear-redos, but that went to the insurer before left ear procedure #3. Right ear, nothing.

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          2. Should be simple to find out what you’ve got. Find something that makes a strong (just not MRI-strong) magnetic field and gradually move it close to the ear with the metal link. Something like an old-school tape demagnetizer. If you start to hear a loud buzz, it’s magnetic.

            Why can’t the entire U.S. medical establishment figure that out? Why don’t they have a gadget designed for the purpose? After all, they designed a gadget to extract pool balls from the mouths of drunks.

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              1. Read the weekend Staff Duty reports in any Infantry battalion. You would be shocked at what folks get up to with alcohol and after oh-dark-thirty.

                One weekend, we had two knuckleheads apparently attempt mutual human sacrifice. Painted their barracks room red. One hospitalized, one ambulatory/aid-station. One of the MPs puked all over the crime scene, when his K-9 started joyfully licking up evidence.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. True this. Troll the ER ward admission records at any not-too-tiny city too. You’ll see stuff that “broadens your horizons,” as an old staff sergeant of my recollection used to say.

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                  1. Aesop (and Dishnet still won’t connect to the web; passes ping test, but no content. Help desk call in the morning if not fixed) is a long term ER. The one that raised my gorge is his description of a Code Brown. I am not going to elaborate; it’s near somebody’s meal time, somewhere. Description should be somewhere on the net for the curious and unwary.

                    FTW, such cases frequently end up in the morgue.

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                    1. To be fair, combat vets, ER nurses, and paramedics are pretty hard to shock. They might give you an eyebrow raise here and there, but their focus is on Fixing The Problem So You Don’t Immediately Die.

                      Later though, sometimes much later (and sometimes not so much later), there will be jokes made at your expense. Depending on how high on the weirdness/ick scale it goes, it might get passed even farther than you could imagine…

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                    3. Saw on the net a week or so ago. Eel, live, big (18″). Did not want to be there, chewed it’s way to try to escape. Patient might have survived. Saw a thumbnail pic of the irritated eel in surgery. Shudders.

                      “That’s a moray”

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              2. Seems that drunks sticking pool balls in their mouths is a fairly widespread practice. On a dare, a bet, or just foolish showoffery.

                Thing is, for most adults it’s not too hard to get a pool ball in your mouth. Getting it out again is a problem. See, when inserting the ball, it pushes the jaw back and widens the aperture. Trying to remove it pulls the jaw forward, trapping the ball.

                So it’s off to the hospital. The situation is so common, most big-city emergency rooms have a device specifically designed to remove the pool ball. Most likely, by pushing the jaw back while pulling on the ball.

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                1. A variation was used in the 1986 movie “Wanted: Dead or Alive”.

                  The hero silences a villain by stuffing a frag grenade in his mouth, and leading him around by the pin.

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            2. For this case, it wasn’t worth it. I did a fair amount of research on it, and a grand total of 1300 implants were made with the wrong stainless (series 400, great for surgical instruments, bad news for implants, plus they aren’t as corrosion resistant as series 300, the non-magnetic type). They did a recall, and in the USA, all but 250 or so were returned. 62 known implanted, and presumably the rest were scrapped. So, of the tens(?) of thousands of those produced, not much. OTOH, convince a doctor whose malpractice liability is on the line.

              I’m not willing to get another round of surgery in the right ear to win the MRI lottery. CT scan is almost as good, and good enough.

              Like

  10. My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother were home workers. Grandma Rose painted dishes and sold them. Her mother made drapes.

    Neither was technically employed, but they both ran a business while taking care of home and children.

    Not working? On the censuses they’re both listed as house wives.

    As far as the obesity thing, Dad often pointed out that actresses up to the 1960’s looked like women. He said that the shift was because the fashion industry became dominated by men who were interested in preadolescent boys.

    Accurate or not, weight trends do seem to follow fashion trends.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Watched Star Trek TOS “The Cloud Minders” yesterday. The “Droxine” character was supposed to be so beautiful as to move -Spock-. Her arms were so thin she looked unhealthy and fragile. Off-putting. I tend to prefer women who are sturdy, have some padding, and do not look like a sudden hug would break things or cause bruises. Athletic can be nice, but not emaciated extreme. -Girls-

      I didn’t like the trend when I was a kid. Hasn’t improved much over the decades.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. And again in the ’90’s with the waif models (who were multiple pack a day cigarette smokers with heroin issues). Seems every 20-30 years or so the “boyish” figure comes into vogue, 1920 flappers, 1960-70 straight dresses and jeans, 1990’s waif style. Of course most of the modern models are rail thin 5″10’+ with limited Breasts/hips (Except for the now extinct Victoria Secret/ Lingerie sub breed intended for the “male eye”). A lot of that is because it is 1) easier to design fashion if you can ignore curves and models that have very long legs accentuate things 2) Honestly many of the designers really would rather have a young boy than a normal shaped woman.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. I had not meant it as ambiguous I was referring to their sexual proclivities. But honestly, both of the meanings are correct.

              Like

          2. One of the Screwtape Letters features the demon Screwtape giving Wormwood tips on sexual temptation and how best to use male sexual desires to their detriment:

            “In a rough and ready way, of course, this question is decided for us by spirits far deeper down in the Lowerarchy than you and I. It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual “taste”. This they do by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, actresses and advertisers who determine the fashionable type….

            “Thus we have now for many centuries…. As regards the male taste we have varied a good deal. At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men’s vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium.

            “At present we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. (Note: this was in the early 1940s) Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female’s chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children….”

            Liked by 1 person

      2. IIRC the original Star Trek aired right around the time that “Twiggy” became the supermodel of the day.

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  11. I agree that most young people were thinner. OTOH, I was looking at pictures of young people from my town in the 1940’s, and they looked pretty much exactly like young kids today, minus make-up and weird hair. Their faces looked less anxious, though.

    OTOH, usually when people have pictures of middle-aged women being thinner back in the day, it’s pretty obvious that the ladies are just as chunky on average, except that they are wearing girdles, corsets, camisoles and slips, lined skirts, and so on. Undergarments do create a smoother line.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Oh, dear lord, yes. My mom wore enough support garments that to quote Pratchett those poor things were subjected to pressures normally found in hte heart of stars.

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      1. From an early Matt Helm (with Helm commenting about his wife’s girdle), while women were allowed to have two legs, they must look like they only have one buttock.

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          1. Like Hermione’s bag (or Gay Deceiver’s “annex”), way bigger inside than outside? Larry may have said that, but mine was definitely Matt Helm, in Donald Hamilton’s “Death of a Citizen”.

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  12. One thing I noticed regarding unemployment is that the average length of unemployment doubled from its worst levels after the 2008 recession and still hasn’t reverted to the worst levels from 1948 through 2008. The length unemployed didn’t start to go down until 2012, which explains why the interest rates were driven to zero despite everything being “wonderful” Under the Obamination and Bidenocracy, if you lose your job, you’re not finding another. You can get the data on FRED if you’re interested.

    BTW, average length of unemployment is starting to increase again, from elevated levels, which is a very bad sign for the economy and might explain why the Fed is talking about cutting rates with the stock market at all time highs. Everything is just awesome. Mind, the other thing that would explain the Fed action is that they’re following the market, rather than leading it, they don’t actually do what they say they do — shocking isn’t it?

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I named one of my chickens Janet Yellin, because she was always “yellin” and nothing she said made sense.

        She gave herself a darwin award.

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    2. As someone that is currently underemployed and is looking at backup options just in case, I know the job market is being artificially messed with somehow. Exactly how, I don’t know, but I suspect the worst.

      Which will be unleased and will roll over the first few months of a Trump administration if he wins.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Anecdotally, I have been hiring folks as a manager for nearly forty years. (not HR, just running things) The quality of applicants for no tech retail is so poor that I can only shake my head. For most of the last 3 years have NOT had tons of applicants. In the last six months I am seeing a shift and have had over 250 applicants for 3 positions. In addition I would put them into 3 categories. 1) Retired and re-entering workforce part time. 2) Unskilled but disgusted with management at current employer. 3) Very skilled and even credentialed but not able to find ANY work in their field.

      The younger ones with low experience and low skill levels are of such poor quality in education and grasp of the simplest of concepts that I really just want to nuke every public school and chase all teachers out with tar and feathers. They have knowingly or not done an extreme disservice to their own communities that they deserve our scorn.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Definitely a three-I have a degree in Technical Writing and most places that want a technical writer want someone that does a half dozen of the other jobs…and they want to only pay them “technical writing” rates and not engineering or development.

        And it’s easier to think of bad managers versus good managers when looking back.

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          1. I suspect that if we survive the Kamela and her Kabal of Kooky Kommunists, there’s going to be a wave of hiring as people discover that “AI” isn’t intelligent, and a lot of these tools require people that actually know how to Do Things (TM).

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Unfortunately, no one is going to discover that until someone can test them and detect the garbage…. which means you have to have some clue as to what you should be getting.

              Liked by 2 people

        1. He’s been getting “projects.” The projects are lists (sometimes long lists) of paired paragraphs, sentences, images, etc. He’s asked to tell the employer which items best meet the standards the employer has set.

          Liked by 1 person

  14. How about smoking?

    The only folks I know who quit smoking and didn’t gain forty pounds are the ones who switched to vaping.

    My mom was a teen in the fifties and sixties, and from her tales absolutely everyone smoked. (Her father did NOT approve.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I smoked a bit in high school in the late ’60s, then at college (1970) smoked regularly (pipe, cigar and cigarettes). Stopped somewhere in 1983. By 1986 it was policy at work to forbid indoor smoking. Not sure when it became law in California.

      AFAIK, I was the only one in our family who smoked (parents, both brothers), while Dad’s father and one of his brothers (and SIL) smoked. On Mom’s side, Grampa smoked, as did both of her sisters. One set of cousins smoked, not the other.

      Oregon has firm policies against vaping. I think the policy is off; looks like a good way for smokers to quit. ($SPOUSE claims “slippery slope/gateway drug” for teens. Not gonna argue. Never vaped, don’t intend/need to.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Second hand smoke for me. Dad was a smoker. Dad’s older sister and two younger brothers all smokers. Both mom’s siblings are smokers, and uncle’s wife. Two SIL’s smokers, and one niece took it up (she now vapes. Although I think her vaping is more medical. Smoking took up because of lack of diagnosis. She has lupus, seizures, and some other genetic issues.) Then there was work. USFS, I think 1/2 the crew smoked. Late ’70s so not illegal to smoke inside or in rigs. Lowly seasonal crew had no say. Guess what? I have no, none, zip, tolerance for cigarette smoke or residuals (can cause migraines, gee who knew?) None. (Any smoke really but campfire is tolerable.) Yes, I will cross the street to avoid a smoker. I’d train Pepper to avoid but she’s semi retired and not doing public access anymore. I can generally avoid mostly on my own. Not deadly to me, just irritatingly painful.

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      2. I’m familiar with the studies on vaping leading to smoking.

        They ignored the teens were using hacked vapes to smoke pot.

        These are also the vapes that explode, and burn the user, since THC doesn’t work like nicotine.

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    2. I was seriously bipolar as a teen. A doctor suggeted I take up smoking. It worked–no more mood swings.

      In my mid thirties I quit for six months. My one remaining friend begged me to start again.

      After 50 years (two packs a day), a young lady at my tobacco shop suggested I take up vaping. She had gotten her father to quit smoking by switching. It worked for me and I now feel much better. I am very much in favor of vaping.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. There is nothing bad associated with vaping, beyond “nicotine.”
        And nicotine, well…. is it better or worse for you than microdosing meth for ADD or psych meds for bipolar and depression? It’s a valid argument, but one that the left wants to stamp out.
        I’m not sure why beyond “Hate nicotine, love pot.”

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        1. I suspect it’s because nicotine and tobacco are inextricably linked in what passes for their minds. Of course, it was never the nicotine that caused most of the health problems; that was all the other garbage in tobacco smoke, mainly combustion byproducts. But good luck getting that through their skulls.😒

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  15. Our family has the problem that we’re of primarily Portuguese stock-which is to say we’re built to put on weight to survive medium-length famines.

    But I also suspect that a lot of things are going into food that we shouldn’t be getting so much of. Processed foods, especially considering how much additional salt goes into them? Can’t be good. A lot of things like grated cheese and such products having added starch to make them easier to process and handle? Probably not helpful, either.

    Let’s not even talk about how they add things like corn syrup to everything these days, even things they shouldn’t, because it’s so cheap.

    Also, people aren’t as physical as they used to be, which is a good thing. For the most part, because a lot of that “physical” stuff included things that were dirty, dangerous, or deadly if done wrong.

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    1. I call it the “pioneering genes” making statement. I swear a low calorie diet has my system goes “don’t worry dear, we’ve got your back!” I can gain weight! Then weight loss is extremely slow. I would LOVE to see -2#/week recommended weight loss (I’m lucky if it is -2#’s/month).

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        1. Sounds about right.

          My sister has been losing weight. Same method plus she was diagnosed T2D so got some medication to help (not vegovy type) curb the snacking and portions. She’s been going to exercise 3 hours/day every day unless they are on one of their trips.

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          1. Sounds sadly far too right.
            Portion control has been the biggest thing, along with eating more fresh stuff lately. Dad has a garden and we’re doing fresh green beans, zucchini, and such.

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        2. Years ago I needed to drop some weight. I had already cut out sugar but needed to cut portions.

          For 4 days I cut my “normal” portions by 3/4, and 1/2 looked huge when I moved up. I also started using smaller plates to fool my eyes into thinking I was eating just as much.

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              2. LOL! When I fell and wrecked my hand, I had to use speech-to-text for months. Apparently my “accent” gave it fits (rather middle America nothing distinct). When I deliberately aped the locals I knew back in JawJuh, it worked better. So did my Chekov impression. But mine? Just, no.

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                1. JLab JBuds Mini. Cheap, long-duration, decent sound quality, very small, very quick to charge.

                  If you want to be safe outside, just wear one earbud and keep the other in the case. (And don’t jack up the sound overly loud.)

                  Oh, and I’ve noticed that a lot of earbud companies are now making hearing aids, since hearing aids currently don’t have to jump the “medical devices need a prescription” hoops under current US law. So if you like your earbuds and you have a smartphone, you can probably look into that for any hearing aid needs. (Not Sarah, but any other person with hearing problems.)

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      2. I’ve noticed that a non-trivial number of the really obese people at the independent grocery store seem to be Native American. The Klamath tribe was dependent on acorns and a sucker fish with a horrible taste, so if I had to guess, it would be that tribe, rather than the Modoc or the Yahooskins (all lumped together in the 1864 treaty, leading to the 1870s Modoc war).

        Liked by 1 person

        1. All of the current “cultural” foods are the result of making do with whatever government staples made it to the reservations. Ever looked at how you make fry bread? Flour, sugar, and fat. I mean, it tastes wonderful, but it’s a poverty dish and has done no favors to the metabolisms of those on the reservations.

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          1. “Paleo” hoopla aside, most hunter-gatherer diets were “whatever stands still and/or doesn’t kill me when I eat it”, and it was almost always scarce for much of the year compared to today in the West. Our bodies have not yet adapted to times of plenty – “Food good! Eat more food!”

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            1. The Klamath ate a sucker fish (I’ve heard it described ranging from “It’s OK” to “My cats won’t touch it.”) and acorns. Considering that the oaks are on the other side of the Cascades, there wouldn’t be a huge stock of them on hand.

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              2. I’ve read that there are states where suckers are preferred to either trout or bass. There are some strange people out there…

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              1. Ah, but if they aren’t part of my tribe, they aren’t Real People! [Crazy Grin]

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      3. Pre back-to-gym, I managed to gain weight eating salad twice a day.

        Now that I am back on a regular gym PT, my weight has been stable since February, plus or minus two pounds. Down three belt notches and some of my shirts no longer fit, so gainz. Over the last month the witch set point seems to be drifting down a couple pounds, so progress. of course, the exercise did the usual for me appetite-jack, so have to be careful. Big help was purging most refined-sugar crap and avoiding high-fructose corn syrup stuff. Prior damage from arthritis makes upping the weight difficult and slow. But have built up around the damage so now can at least work without more damage.

        Highly recommend anything you can do to sweat and get winded for at least 30 minutes, at least 3 or more times a week. Five or more is awesome. Can be speed-housekeeping, which I have done on days off. (Miz Kitty is -not- amused). Any reduction in the garbage sugars will likely make you feel better. The combo improves my mood greatly. I found veggies I like, so I fill up on those first.

        The key is -habit- not willpower. Don’t buy the crap and dont bring it home and you will eat less crap. Eat the veggies first and you will be less prone to gorge on starches. Bored? Clean house or dry-fire. Dont TV or snack.

        Yeah, not all things for all folks, but anything you can habituate to the positive will improve things. “Wow. I did improve things.” is a heck of a morale boost. My initial goal was just to have a gym habit. No worry about my weight or lift weight, or what the other gym rats were doing, just show up and sweat for at least 30 minutes 4-5 times a week. And wow. I did. And wow. gainz too. I will never be my 20 something skinny again. But I can be a healthier “dad bod”.

        Habits. Habits. Habits.

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        1. I’m trying to develop a habit of doing any four small tasks before bed.

          One tub of dishes, one errand, one bit of yard work…. any or all of the above.

          It’s actually been working like a charm. It was easy to accomplish and suddenly I had progress on my projects.

          And then I forgot to take my vitamins for two days, and I could barely make myself do anything last night.

          … I mean, I got at least three things done, so I’m not going to beat myself up about it, but I didn’t expect that “lack of vitamins” would so easily kick me back into the habits I’m trying to change.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. I had to leave the exercise/post-PT train when I reinjured the right knee last January. Attempting the exercises made the pain worse, and the flatworm side of my brain figured that was a strong clue. Two X-rays and 2 relevant CT scans later (two other scans for “things incidental to the complaint”. Nothing horrible, but I’ve a benign adrenal lump that’s on the terrorist medical watch list. I expect periodic CT scans for that.

          Now that matters have been fixed (for values of–the meniscus was there for a reason), I’m back to PT. Now have a stationary bike that’s set up with low/no resistance. I need range of motion from it, not more work. Have the step platform and am using the comfy reclining chair for long-arc quads and straight leg lifts. The squat ball is back in use. That’s the most painful right now. I’m doing it right, but the left leg reminds me that it hasn’t had the cleanup surgery. Not planning on doing it, but…

          That and I have the long-delayed walkway and patio paver project to do. Some hand digging, once things are defined, I’ll let John Deere help with removing the sod and getting the gravel (and sand, and pavers) in place. After that, it’s me. $SPOUSE says no-way; we both did a big paver patio, but that was in 2002. Lots of miles since then.

          There’s a portion that needs to be done before winter, beyond that, timing is optional. We’ll see. Other projects are on the list, but the tree issues are going to involve hiring a company. I have enough firewood and I’m hoping they’ll be reasonable for haul-away tree falling.

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  18. Now, now, Sarah: “Old woman of science fiction?” The proper term is “grande dame.”

    French exists to give us amusingly pretentious euphemisms. Use it for its proper purpose. Anything else is a dreadful faux pas.

    Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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  19. We seem to have lost intimate association with the foundational conditions and issues supporting The Civilizational Imperative and sought to at least partially substitute excessive self-focus.

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  20. So very much ofvour lives is now “seated”. Kids used to play outside, moving. Or inside, moving. As a kid I walked. Cool penny candy store three miles away? Walk the railroad right of way to that street. Missed bus home at school? Walk 2 miles to elementary school and catch that one. Whoops, missed it too. Walk the 5 more home.

    Even when “urban” in early childhood. Babysitter got outrageously annoying? Walked 7 miles home. At six years old. Mom freaked over that one. After that? Accepted kid would walk out of hell and head for home, avoiding/evading danger.

    .

    And yet she was surprised I went Infantry…..

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Rather offtopic (so what else is new?), but I just tried to get to Peter Grant’s blog and got nothing. He’s on Blogger, and another site (Raconteur report) is also blank. Is Google going after any Blogger-user who is to the right of Mao?

    Like

    1. Oh, Phantom’s site is up on blogspot.ca, and Dorothy Grant’s inactive site on blogger is down, so it might just be a SNAFU in the US for the blogger servers. (I don’t have any left-wing blogspot sites in my bookmarks. Bad Deplorable! Bad!)

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      1. The Reader just successfully loaded Peter Grant’s blog (it has a post dated today) and Raconteur Report (last post on Sunday – he noted last week that new posts would be sparse due to other projects and life). It might be your ISP.

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        1. Sounds like. Dish(Hughes)net can be quirky. I think the satellite I’m on is being replaced by a newer, much larger (& better?) one. I’ll see if blogger is up for them later.

          Thanks.

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    1. The Reader’s take is that Zuck made a perfectly safe hedge. If Trump wins, he might look kindly on Zuck’s repentance. He certainly won’t be worse off than he is now. If Harris wins, all he has to do is let Meta go back to listening to the ‘whispers’ from the administration on what / who to censor this week and all will be forgiven. In the meantime, his minions will happily do what they think is ‘right’ quietly. After 4 years of this, the Democrats no longer even have to say ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome MAGA’. Zuck’s (and the rest of social media’s) minions know what to do without being told.

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          1. Because words are magic. Speaking your allegiance is a rite of passage in any cult. The cult of the Left requires absolute conformity to the cause of the week, in private and public.

            The fact that he is willing to go against the Cause on ANY level tells them that he has allegiance to something else. He is NOT THEIRS, and therefore a traitor.

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      1. Which Trump would almost certainly abrogate; it takes an act of Congress to make a non-cancellable deal.

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        1. Of course he would abrogate….. but he would either spend multiple years (the rest of his term) going thru DC district Court and DC Circuit….. or defy the courts and recruit police / troops who would obey his orders in the meantime.

          We won’t even discuss what kind of blue zone riots would erupt from “oppressed” groups….

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      2. Kind of like what DOJ is doing to Trump-proof itself.

        https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/27/biden-harris-admin-rapidly-trump-proofing-doj-as-election-looms/

        The hiring process is intended to benefit people with “intellectual disabilities, severe physical disabilities or psychiatric disabilities” but it can also be used to staff specialist positions as chaplains, scientists, and attorneys or to fill critical hiring needs, according to federal regulations.

        “The Biden-Harris administration and its allies have already signaled their intent to hamstring their successor and prevent a future president from reversing their agenda,” Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain said in an advance copy of a press release shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Exploiting non-competitive hiring authorities to fill career civil service positions could be just another component of this scheme. It’s no wonder that the public’s trust in its government has all but disappeared.”

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    3. “hand over your uranium supplies and dismantle all of your gear before crushing it, or we give you an up close and personal view on how the finished product works.

      negotiations over”

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  25. Somewhat tangentially related to this discussion of American culture and gender but it bugs the absolute hell out of me when obnoxious leftists foreign and domestic complain about/make fun of our nudity standards. “Oh Americans are so prudish, they don’t even like public breastfeeding huh huh huh.” (These are the same fucking people who wouldn’t dare dream of making fun of Islamics for saying it’s indecent for a woman to go about with uncovered hair, or face AND clutch their pearls and get the vapors everytime Trump says another naughty word.) Newsflash morons, EVERYBODY’S nudity taboos look weird on the outside looking in. There are cultures where a woman’s breasts hanging out is fine, but showing her thighs is unthinkable. There are cultures where the only male garment is a string tied around the penis and if that string becomes undone the man becomes as horrified and embarrassed as a Western man would be if his trousers suddenly fell off. Sick of the left’s stupid knee-jerk oikophobia.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. They know that their cultures, such as they are these days, are the epitomes (even if they do vary quite widely), especially compared to those barbaric Americans. “Apres nous, le deluge!”

      Ignorant twits all.

      Liked by 2 people

  26. It’s intriguing how women working in the family or for the family never seemed to register on historians’ radar, and still don’t. There were women in Lübeck and other Hansa cities that became citizens, served in the militia, did jury duty, took part in confraternity processions and had full legal authority to run businesses, but since it was for the family somehow it didn’t count. Their husbands had died, and the heir and any male siblings were either too young or incompetent, so the women took over.

    Ale wives ran ale houses and sold alcohol, but again, as part of a family business so they didn’t “count.” I dare any historian to go back to Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, and tell Albrecht Durer’s wife that she wasn’t really working – she ran his business while he did art and diplomacy. But that didn’t count, not until the last ten years or so, and even then it’s a renegade historian who would dare point to them as examples of working women.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You’d think they’d be consistent and also count out the men who worked for their families…

      But I bet they don’t

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      1. You’d win that bet. And no, I’d never assume consistency in any human, but especially so in lefties.

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  28. }}}  But there was, before that nonsense, a sort of sensible feminism. It curbed the greatest excesses of societal oppression of women (which happened because women are the most precious resource of any society. Do I need to unpack? You don’t let the people who can literally give your tribe a future wander off on their own and be captured by the enemy, for ex. This leads to curtailing the movements of women, historically) and advocated for stuff like a widow’s ability to manage her own household and money, without needing to return to her parents’ home or be subordinate to her inlaws.

    “Second Wave” Feminism. Camille Paglia is a prime example.

    I don’t completely agree with her, but she’s certainly respectable and rational in and about her positions. And she despises modern Misandrist Feminism.

    I will offer, here, a tale of the reality of things.

    Feminism paints this picture — like most liberal lies — of the idea that women were stuck in the kitchen until they rescued women from oppression during the 1960s.

    The real truth is, women were ALREADY headed in this direction, and you can see a strong sign of it in the movie stars of the 30s, 40s, and 50s — and how the main, most well known leads were depicted in movies.

    Look back at movies of the 1930s, and you can see that women were already being shown by Hollywood to be strong and fairly independent early on — One of the most well-known Oscar winners, It Happened One Night — is about an independent woman who runs away from her sheltered home life. And this is 1934. Now consider the most well-known female leads of the time — Bette Davis, Mae West, Katherine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell — all of them strong, independent women, in the same mold as Ripley and Sarah Connor. And this was even more the case during the war — women often had to be strong women because the men were off to war. And, no, this wasn’t just a depiction of High Society women, either. Ma Kettle was not a woman to be trifled with, or shoved into the kitchen.

    OK, so — what happened? Well, the 50s happened. Hollywood decided to SELL that “women are free to be just house makers” as it goes. And, interestingly, you can nail it down to sometime between 1947 and 1949 when it happened.

    In 1947, there was a nice little picture called, “That Way With Women”, starring Sidney Greenstreet, as a retired businessman of some wealth, who was forced to retire due to his health issues. But he doesn’t want to be a layabout, he’s, by nature, an active man. And he meets a veteran, home from the war (a John Garfield clone, if that means anything to you). He dreams of owning a service station, providing gas and working on people’ cars. He meets Greenstreet, who is impressed by him, and who volunteers to be a silent partner, as long as he gets to work on cars once in a while. Now, enter his daughter, a young Rosalind Russell type… she’s very protective of her father, knows about his health issues, and demands that he not work at all. She’s spunky, independent, and quite forceful. And, of course, a female romantic lead. Now, this daughter. She has a fairly basic hairstyle, wears practical heels, and a reasonably loose dress. You can see that she’s able to break into a run if, God forbid, Freddy Kruger breaks into the movie and starts chasing her, and possibly likely to even grab an axe and fight him off if it becomes needful. She’s no shrinking violet, for sure. She’s in charge of her father’s health, and she’s not about to slack when it comes to that.

    Now, Fast Forward 2 years, to 1949, and a movie called “Mother Is A Freshman”. Starring Van Johnson and Loretta Young. NOW, in only two years, we have a female lead who is a widow, her husband was moderately wealthy, and has arranged for his wealth to be in a trust, earning Ms. Young an annuity, to care for her and their college-aged daughter. One problem. It’s late August, and, dang it, she’s just already spent all that money for the year! She’s just not responsible enough to have done anything silly like keep to a budget!! The attorney in charge of the annuity, a mild nebbish played by Rudy Valee, wants to marry her, and it looks as though Mrs. Young may have to do that. but but but… he’s a nebbish!!

    Now, comes the macguffin — her grandmother set up a trust fund to pay for anyone with (insert grandmother’s name here) to go to college, and to pay expenses. Her mother had that same name, and used it. She has that same name, but never went to college. And she, in a rather ornery way, named her daughter something other than (grandmother’s name here). So: Her daughter is ineligible for the college fund. But, since she’s never taken advantage of it, the answer is simple… she goes to college for the first time in her life!

    And so things go. There, she meets hunky college English professor, played by Van Johnson, and romance ensues. In the end, she is engaged to Hunky English Professor and her future is assured… she now has a Responsible Man in her life, and no longer needs to worry about things like budgets and finances.

    Now, in addition to the general gist of the story — her being financially irresponsible and Needing A Man for things that matter — there is also the depiction of her.
    1 — she has Kim Novak style hair — she’s spending time 2-3x a week at the hairdressers to maintain this hairstyle.
    2 — she wears notably higher heels than our 1947 heroine.
    3 — she wears these tight hoop skirts that require short steps like a geisha.
    In other words, Freddy Kruger comes along, she’s toast the minute things get slicy-dicey.

    It’s an interesting comparison for two movies only two years apart, and the way the central women in the story are depicted in them.

    The real fact is — the 50s were the aberration, and the Feminism of the 60s was simply an attitude whose time had come — and the 50s had merely slowed the arrival of — not something led only by valiant 1960s women who Stood Up to The EEEEEvil Patriarchy, and without whom, women would Still Be Barefoot and In The Kitchen.

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