You guys have no idea how hard it was not to title this post “It’s all so tiresome.”
Some days it’s not safe to post on X even the most innocuous stuff. You immediately attract a vast army of propaganda bots. At least I hope they were bots. Or foreign. Or perhaps foreign bots. Except for the woman who was certainly a feminist bot, but that appeared to be a self-administered lobotomy with a wooden spoon composed of half indoctrination and half native stupidity. Because if those weren’t mostly foreign and mostly bots…. allow me to quote Heinlein. “I weep for the whole human race.”
Anyway, you think it would be safe, given my audience, to quote-share an idiot testifying in congress — I swear to living Bob (the registered) I’m not making this up — saying that men and women are exactly as strong as each other, so only the rankest transphobia could cause people to oppose transwomen competing with women in sports. I share quoted it with a bog standard normal thing about how women’s bodies are actually better in many ways, such as the ability to create life within ourselves, but that in the service of that biological capacity there were other things sacrificed, such as the raw strength and agility of the male body. And that those differences start in the womb. (Not said, as I assumed basic knowledge of biology those differences get more marked every year, and sealed past puberty. I assumed this was known since it’s the biological fact recruited to justify pre-puberty (and toddler!) medical sex changes. From a physiological point of view that’s the best you can do. But knowing that kids don’t know if they want to — or can — be trains or dogs it’s a complete abomination for which our age will be judged harshly. (I thought I’d grow up to be a cat for a while in early childhood.))
Never have I ever — till that moment — been called a thot, a (though the fem-bot didn’t have enough vocabulary for that. But it’s what she meant) slave of the patriarchy AND a female supremacist in the exact same post before. (Being called a communist and an anarchist is bog standard. I assume it’s short hand for “I don’t understand your political positions, and I must scream.”)
If these weren’t — mostly — bots, there’s a great wave of mental illness stalking this great land of ours, and it’s all spiraling around the most basic of our groupings: men versus women. In fact, if these weren’t all or mostly fifty cent army or bots, I’m no longer surprised the birth rate is falling. I’m surprised it EXISTS.
And the worst part of it is that it’s all based on massive crazy. On swallowing story wholesale. On seeing people as widgets who belong to groups of widgets on a characteristic only. On completely lacking a theory of mind and thinking that whatever obsesses one is in fact the crux of existence for everyone. More importantly, on a lot of crap absorbed from a lot of “education” and “mass media.” That being the two that I suspect were not bots at all, just self-maimed individuals.
It started with the almost certainly fifty cent army. One after the other they came by to inform me I had failed biology, because women can’t create life without male contribution. Look at what I said. WHERE did I say women created life ex-nihilo and not from the (thank you guys!) gracious contribution of the male added to their own ova? Yes, I could have been more precise and said “grow life” but the creation in fact happens inside us, and again, everything we are physiologically — even people who would never on their craziest moments consider being moms — designed to do. It’s what our bodies DO. It’s what we are as members of the human species. Even those who for some reason have some defect that renders them unable to, physically (I almost was) are made on the same basic template, and designed for that, which affects our entire bodies down to cellular structure.
But apparently this was heretical and I had failed biology. I was scathing. I pointed out “created” was poetic license. I didn’t say “As opposed to saying: conceive, grow and nourish because that would be too long, you arrant fools.” I was, you understand, by way of being restrained. It happens rarely, so yes, I would like a medal. Please and thank you.
Honorable mention to the almost certainly foreigner (there is one religious book that SPECIFIES this is what happens, so you know…) who was very upset, because women create nothing. Women just take the sperm and incubate it into a baby. He was either foreigner or a visitor from the middle ages. I’m too late in the day (the cats had a field day peeing behind the computer in the living room. No, I don’t know why but I assume Havey did it because he piddles on himself, and the others decided this was the new pissoir. There was much cleaning and there’s STILL eau de cat. Sigh.) to search the Medieval medical illustrations. They were however hilarious. Note the Greeks also thought this, and also that a woman could get pregnant by eating beans. Honestly, I’m almost shocked no one answered with that. It’s the type of thing an AI would find.
Another honorable mention to the religious gentleman who’s been reading the Bible in stupid and who doesn’t understand words. He kept screaming at us that women (and presumably men) had nothing to do with making babies. G-d made babies, period. He seemed to think that’s what the word “conceived” meant and so far forgot himself as to post a screen shot of the word conceive in the dictionary and a case use which was something like “Peggy conceived three months ago.” I had to point out to him only one woman ever conceived without having sex and she doesn’t have an x account. (I THINK. I mean, who am I to say?)
Next came the bizarre wave, like a new instruction had come out, to inform me that being able to have babies is nothing special. All sorts of animals (emphasis on the grossest ones. One of the responses used cockroaches) can have babies. So what. To which I got so upset by the bizarre and besides the point stupidity that I told one of the guys that this was fine. He should try to do it himself.
Honorable mention here goes to the feminist bot that started that way but that informed me — as though this had anything to do with the fact this is what we’re naturally designed to do — that not only could every animal do this, but the important thing was for women to use their minds to innovate.
I’ll give the medal back if you wish, but by then I was not being restrained at all, so I informed her that yes, sure. However if no one has babies there will be no one to give a hang about innovations, no matter who creates them. And because by then I was feeling mean (yes, I must go to confession today or tomorrow) I pointed out it also depends on what she means by innovation. Because if this means another paper on gender studies then really she had no reason to live.
She never told me what the great innovation was, but came back to tell me “I’m sorry you were indoctrinated that the most important part of you is between your legs, babe. Particularly as you advertise yourself as a writer.”
Points for glancing at my page. Points withdrawn for not realizing I do FAR MORE than “advertise” myself as a writer, and also that I’m not posting racy pictures of myself, mostly because I don’t want to damage the eyes of the unsuspecting public. Further points withdrawn for not realizing that what I was talking about was growing babies, and that the apparatus to do so is not BETWEEN YOUR LEGS. I don’t know. Maybe she is deformed and carries her uterus and ovaries in a discrete little purse tied between her legs. MAYBE that’s her innovation. I might have called her sweetie in my answer. And something else, almost certainly not pumpkin, to show my appreciation for her calling me baby. It should have been “pumpkin” for several reasons. I did point out that yes, I was indoctrinated. Most people my age and up to ten years older were. We were propagandized to consider having children a vocation only for those who couldn’t cut it intellectually, and raising them almost an admission you were brain damaged. But fortunately I’d overcome it and realized that I could both have children and work with my mind, and be a fully realized human being.
I DID NOT finish the comment with “Fortunately no one will remember your name.” Which shows some greatness of mind. (Give me back my medal!)
Then came the champion of craziness in this whole bizarre exhibition. He — for reasons that live between his ears — decided that I was pleading for sympathy because…. hold on a minute…. because women had lost the Battle of the Sexes tennis game recently. this apparently had sobered me up after gloating over the other Battle of the Sexis tennis game.
People! You probably know me fairly well after years of reading this blog. Does any of you think I follow tennis? Battle of sexes, battle of the stars, battle of the countries or battle of the oppossums, for that matter?
I used to play badminton as a young woman, but even then I don’t think I ever followed competitions. I just liked playing it, because it was an amazing work out and it was… well, fun.
I mean I will confess to periodically cheering on Porto’s soccer club, virtually, because I know dad is happy when they win. And I have been happy when the Broncos win a big game or — hasn’t happened in forever — the superbowl because Denver is my hometown and because I have fond memories of parties to celebrate such wins. BUT I’m as likely as not NOT to watch the game, because I don’t care enough. Also this is the sum total of my involvement with team sports.
I had to deputize Foxfier, who was hanging about doing nothing (I mean she only has a small tribe of kids. How busy can she be) to figure out what the gentleidiot was screaming about.
Apparently there have been a series of battles of the sexes tennis matches, in which the male is handicapped to give the female a chance (no surprise to anyone who knows biology) and the first (?) maybe one in the seventies (maybe. Sorry Fox, the details have leaked from my ears during the night) was won by the woman, but the latest one was won by the man.
Which is why this guy thought I was trying to ingratiate myself with men because otherwise… I don’t know? Some other guy — handicapped so the woman will be competitive — will win another tennis match I probably won’t even hear about as I’m working on some two or three novels (yes, at once. Shush you.)? OR because I’m afraid random men will come to my door and challenge me to tennis matches? Because let me tell you, that is in fact a terrifying prospect, because I could never play tennis and am in dreadful shape after several years of upper respiratory infections. (Yes, coming back from that is on the schedule, and working on it in a small measure while I kick this latest.) Fortunately I DO still own guns and knives and axes and anyone coming to my door and demanding I play tennis with him (Or let’s face it her or small furry animal) will be chased off the lawn at gun point and have an ax thrown after him. (Or more likely, I won’t even answer the door because I’m upstairs and writing with headphones on, and Dan will look at the cam of the guy in Tennis Whites with a racket and go “Uh. Another weirdo. We’re not answering that.”
The point here being, note this man heard somewhere that women were gloating over this tennis game and now that women lost I must be suing for mercy. He drank the story so deeply, by the bucketfull that it never occurred to him women — like men — are in fact individuals. Women — in general, with massive exceptions (younger DIL likes baseball. Who knows why?) — are less interested in sports than men (unless our men are interested in sports. Mine is interested in mathematics. I do have to tell you he talks a lot about it. I can’t say I retain much as it all flies over my head at mach speeds. But it’s entertaining while he’s talking.) More importantly that women — in general — aren’t really in some imaginary war of the sexes, and cheering on every little victory and ruing every defeat.
I actually wrote a thing about it afterwards, on why we’re complementary, not opposites, but before that let me point out something:
Yes, you might hear more women acting like Ms. Feminist Bot above and it’s possible for men or bots who lack the company of women who trust them to believe that all of us are fully invested in this war of the sexes thing and think that we’re in some competition with men.
Look, yes, a lot more women will talk like that than men used to (that’s changed because indoctrination, foreign bots, and guzzling story.)
First, for both sexes, given them till they’re in their late twenties, please. More if they have advanced degrees. They are propagandized into the war of the sexes, and women particularly are told they will be traitors if they’re not feminist first and humans second, all through their schooling, and it takes a while for this to shed. (Apparently some people never do.)
Second, more women will SAY that, if caught unawares and asked this stuff for a poll or an interview. Look, first think of which of the sides — right or left — is violent, and you’ll understand why women who are physically weaker and more socially inclined “talk left” in public and repeat back received words, even if it has nothing to do with what they think.
I’ll be honest with you, guys, if I’m cornered in public as a sixty three year old woman currently out of shape, I WILL answer with the answer the person cornering me wants. And note THIS IS ME not some little conflict-avoidant co-ed. Because in public I am conscious I AM IN FACT WEAKER and highly dislike being beaten up (even more than being forced to play tennis.) For other women, particularly those with small kids? They are going to talk left really hard. Why? Because the LEFT IS VIOLENT. And none of us trusts polls to be secure. That’s why.
As Avi Loeb said about his graduate students sometimes having to deny they helped him or trust him or believe in him “I understand. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be able to have careers in the field.” Some people are constrained and therefore the data is caca.
Are more women than men leftists? I don’t know. All the data is polluted, because people — particularly on the left — would like you to believe so. Because… well, they’re all about dividing and conquering. Yes, I know a large number of women — and men — who appear to be lefty bots. I also have been surprised by more women than men coming out as conservative once they feel safe to do so. BUT this could be a sampling error. Honestly, it’s probably the same. I suspect the difference in the votes comes from fraud. I suspect imaginary, dead and not supposed to be here women vote overwhelmingly for the left. And despite my daft (I say what I mean) hand with imaginary characters, I can’t fix those.
Anyway, what I do know is that women in general are NOT in fact constructs of someone’s mind. Women are no more widgets than men are.
We are individuals, with our own path, our own thoughts and our own abilities. I have no grudge against women who never found someone to have children with or who, for reasons of force majeure (including physical or mental conditions) believe they should not be mothers. I feel a little sad for them, because it was the most amazing adventure of MY life (and I’ve had an adventurous life) but they have agency and can make their own decisions.
None of which changes the fact I set out to make when I — foolishly — quote-tweeted an idiot. Our bodies are made on a template wholly designed by millions of years of evolution to conceive, incubate and nurture new life.
Of course, we are sentient beings, so we are also capable of living our lives for other purposes, including, yes, scientific innovation or artistic or athletic pursuits or whatever tickles our grey matter. (I will take exception at living your life for gender studies. Repeat after me: NO ONE WILL REMEMBER THEIR NAMES. It’s like auto damnatio memoria.)
As are men. Men and women ARE NOT THE SAME. The same forces that shape muscles and bodies wholly differently into two general models (with variations and of course glitches) also shape our brains from the moment of conception (just about.) Men and women use their brains differently. I’m reminded of this daily as Dan and I take wildly opposed paths and often (more often than not) come to the same conclusion.
Men think more directly, from point to point. Women think in webs. (Now keep in mind like all characteristics this is a spectrum. But in general these being the effect of testosterone and estrogen, the most webby of men will be more direct in his thoughts than the most linear of women. But they can be close enough.)
There are other differences, too, but this is not a class on biology, and there must be still some unpolluted biology books. Find one from the eighties, maybe?
For various tasks, but more importantly for the one of creating and nurturing children, it is better to have both. We’re complementary. He watched my back and warded off threats as I waddled about 8 months pregnant and unable to see my feet, for instance.
Does this mean I believe we should have quotes for hiring women? Are you joking now?
I think we should get rid of all quotas and ALL indoctrination in what men and women SHOULD do, and hire the most capable people for whatever, letting the chips fall where they may.
If — as I predict — most engineers will be male and most nurses female, so what? ARE THEY THE BEST PEOPLE FOR THE JOB? THEN HIRE THEM.
Because people aren’t widgets. And if you let them choose without trying to social engineer them, most people gravitate towards what they’re good at, or at least can do with the least effort/pain. (Humans, in common with nematodes, don’t like pain.)
Yes, you’ll find out that some women like refinishing pianos, some men like playing them. (In my case, because I was grandad’s shadow when he did carpentry jobs. In his because music and math seem to be linked very deeply in his brain.)
BUT the way to bet is the other way. Because of that difference thing. And that’s okay, because female jobs aren’t superior, male jobs aren’t superior, and there is no percentage in pushing one into the job of the other.
Yes, you might find, either formally or informally, as the engineer goes home and talks the problem over with his wife, that women can bring new perspectives to some problems, and vice versa. But let that happen naturally.
HIRE THE BEST PEOPLE.
The only women jobs males can’t do is that growing a baby thing. And the only men jobs women can’t do is impregnate someone. Other than that…. we can try. Sometimes the results will just be inferior. But that might be the only person willing to do it at that time, too. Again, merit not sex. Hire individuals, not groups.
AND stop believing the other sex is a vast, formless group. Even our Bob knows better. That’s actually and for real crazy cakes.
If you think that, go out and talk to a dozen women. Provided you don’t do it when they’re all together, you’ll find vastly different people. And the same for women talking to men.
What you do with it, afterwards, is your problem. Just stop being stupid.
According To Hoyt 
A large thing is many people aren’t intelligent, they’re just loud. And there’s the difference between the truly stupid, and the willingly ignorant. And all of this is to virtue signal to others in their CISG troop, and so gain status in it.
And did anything I wrote make any sense at all?
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Yes. It does.
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Every so often, I stumble over advice to writers on how to write an intelligent character—that is, someone more intelligent than the writer. And the advice is… not great, because it’s often written from the pen of someone with moderate intelligence.
If I were to give the advice, it would be to map out every single connection, detective style, to the end that they’re moving toward, and then to take out half to three-quarters of the steps in the finished product. BUT it’s also possible that the intelligent character will miss something “obvious” along the way, because they are focused on one reality.
Anyway. Most people have no idea what intelligence actually looks like, because often the most intelligent thing a person can do is to be quiet.
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Many of the most intelligent people have enough extra brain power to use a few cells for social interaction.
Of course many intelligent people could care less about social interaction.
The public generally only considers lack of social skillz as a marker for Intelligence.
Which just goes to show how dumb the public is.
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One of the most intelligent people I know has trouble articulating his ideas. He told me once that he enjoys talking to me because I actually understand what he’s talking about. I’m not at the same flight level he is, but I can actually see him from where I’m flying, 5,000 feet further down. (That metaphor is mine, not his). Which means he doesn’t have to figure out how to rephrase his ideas in simple language, he can just say what he’s thinking. Sometimes I don’t have the background to understand a concept, not having read the author he’s referencing — but “let me tell you what that author said” is easy for him, whereas “let me explain to you what the idea means” is hard for him to explain to someone who didn’t get it the first time.
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Good heavens! You had an interesting day, it seems.
My wife liked baseball; I liked baseball enough to go to games with her, because I liked her. She liked baseball because her father did.
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I watched a lot of soccer games with dad. Took me years to figure out I really didn’t care if he wasn’t around.
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My sister/Brother-in-law for years went to the College World Series. She’d bring a book (or three), and sit next to him reading while the games were going on. When my brother-in-law was asked if it bugged him, he was like, “We are both doing what we like, together. What’s not to like?”
My Family may be a bit on the odd side.
And Vive la différence!
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My grandparents, Grandma was the one who loved football. Grandpa was a nerdy engineer who loved science fiction. He was also the only grandparent who wasn’t appalled when my parents named me Arwen.
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Grandma loved baseball. Grandpa memorized the dictionary for fun.
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Men are different than women.
Vive la différence!
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yep.
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I ran across someone who thought that given that most of the advantages for athletes are not under their control, being a male was not any different, so allowing males in women’s sports was just part of that.
I pointed out that’s, rather, an argument for not having women’s sports.
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https://photos.app.goo.gl/F9WSAdvbZQEAUQSq8
It’s really a great gold medal, except I still struggle to figure out how to get WordPress to display inline images.
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Thank you!
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Go to page with image, right click on it, copy image link.
Come here, click on the weird little + sign that shows up in the comment box if you are on a line without text.
Click the one that says “image.”
Click “insert from URL.”
Click the little arrow on a u-turn symbol.
Discover that google images don’t work for that.
Copy the image, paste it to TwiX, post.
Copy image URL….
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Nice!
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The URL has to end with .jpg, .png, .gif or some other suffix WPDE recognizes as an image format. That gives you an embedded image.
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Sounds like way too many fools and bots trying to impose their insanity on you. Yeah, people are definitely not widgets despite the efforts of certain groups to turn us all, men & women, into such. We all have our own ideas and interests and they’re likely to stray from any extremists idea of what they “should” be. The way some people seem determined to continue to deny basic differences between the sexes is just bizarre and disturbing.
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“Battle of the oppossums” would be lit.
And yes on the what to do in public. If I can’t figure out the sex of the person in front of me, I say “Sir.” Which has ticked some women off. But we all know what would happen if I guessed the other way, and I am small and not physically impressive in the least.
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The battle of the oppossums may or may not have occurred just off the property at 03:30 the other night. Judging from the lack of corpse delivery this morn, chances are good they did not cross the invisible “you will DIE” line that Neighborcat considers sacred.
I can remember once upon a time that, when sex was indeterminate, male that gender neutral assumption, i.e. “he/him/his or sir.” Can’t recall anybody getting het up about it until somewhere around y2k or so.
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One particular customer.
T-shirt and shorts. Ball cap. Tattoos. Flat chest. Face indeterminate. Height average man, tall woman.
Always offended by “sir”.
*Shrugs*
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There was at least some of this going on in the 90s. I remember that, when I went to college, they insisted on calling us “first-years” instead of freshmen, on the grounds that seeing the letters m-e-n in succession would cause those delicate womyn to have the vapors and assume that only men were supposed to be in college and drop out to become the 4th wives of some Mormon polygamist.
Or something like that. I never really understood why being called “freshmen” was supposed to be so harmful to women, but it definitely was.
(As a side note, I always thought that differentiating between “freshmen,” students with less than a quarter of the credits they needed for graduation, and “first-years,” students just starting at a school, made sense. Some first years enter with AP or transfer credits that would make them sophomores or higher, while part-time students can remain “freshmen” for two or even three years. But that was definitely NOT why my school insisted on the terminology. It was explicitly about sexism.)
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Fresh(man) +Wench = Schwench.
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Freshwench!
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As memory serves (I’ll take mine rare, with extra sauce), the ’90s were when the term “Chairperson” was inflicted upon the general public. Hated it then, hate it now, but I haven’t needed to deal with anybody in the Chair of (dis-or-dat) Honor in ages, so it’s no longer a pet peeve.
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Although the men who want to be called ma’am are also scary.
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If I can’t determine “ma’mm” or “sir”, I use “Hey! You!” Can’t win either way. Go for the kill.
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if I knew nothing more than the sex of the person and wanted them to invest on my behalf for strong capital gains with the attendant risks, I’d pick a man; did I wish for capital preservation, I’d pick a woman. Playing the percentages. This mimics the actual division of financial labor in my household where my wife is solely responsible for the day to day finances and I manage the income and investments. Again, playing the percentages and playing to strengths. Why people insist on doing otherwise baffles me.
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Population parameter, sample statistic, and individual strength.
Strengths are kinda hard to assess, but we can do them a little bit objectively for a small number of individuals, and that can be done well enough to solve a lot of real problems without considering statistical models.
A problem is that we tend to educate/train people to care about statistical types of knowing first, before they have the understanding of those numerical phenomena to accurately prorate the value of any aggregate model ‘knowledge’.
(Training instructors, Education majors, on statistical ideas in combination with weak statistical training does not give us primary schoolers with statistical excellence. It often gives us rote compliance to whatever nonsense the instructors push about the big picture.)
Another problem is that if we want better than quick and dirty sorts of small numbers, we actually need clear eyes and a cautious understanding of what statistical tools can tell us.
On ‘muh sex war’, a scholar of women’s studies, and a scholar of mechanics and statistics have usually had entirely different educations, to develop ways of knowing that can be incompatible.
Likewise, scholars of race war studies, and some of the scholars of war, statistics, and psychology. (But, also, different topic of dispute, if also a fairly recent one.)
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See also Holly Mathnerd’s essay from the 29th,
One Way that Sex Differences Matter on the greater male variability hypothesis
(and in 2005, Larry Summers was cancelled for this recognition of reality; he appears to have developed some other infirmities)
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Most wise men I know have (Allow? Ask?) their wives to handle the household finances. This extends to small businesses. I sell to the trades, one in particular, and husbands do the labor, hiring, purchasing; while wives handles AR, AP, payroll, taxes.
My wife refuses to do the taxes. That’s fine; I’ve been doing them since Carter was President, anyway.
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Because I’m the computer geek in the household, money accounting devolved to me. I’m susceptible to impulse spending, and she’s a damned good anchor for such, so while I keep the books, she has major input (and/or decision influence) on the big purchases.
Been doing the joint taxes since we got married, so 24 years right now.
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Before we started managing our investment finances (um, actually had any to manage), we used to swap month to month who handled the checkbook balancing. It is weird. We each can balance it; to the penny, month to month. But the minute we swapped? Dang thing would be wrong, and a PIA to balance. True to this day. After 47 years and 3 months.
Now hubby handles the investment balancing and management. I know what, why, and how, he does things. Just no *interest in actually doing that work. I balance the savings, checkbook, and credit cards. Using a program doesn’t help. Does the math. But math is wrong if something is missing or entered incorrectly.
FWIW to you youngsters, I am not necessarily recommending things this way, but it works for us. We have a single checking, saving, credit card, and basic investment account, with a primary and secondary (two primaries, but that isn’t how accounts work). Other investments, IRA/ROTH, accounts are separate by name only because legally they have to be. There are no mine, yours, and household, accounts. This is rare, these days. It works for us.
We can get away with this, for a number of reasons. First of which, we built this together. We started with nothing. Secondly, we have the same spending philosophy, can use credit, but using credit doesn’t mean there is extra money in money accounts at the end of the month (it has to pay the credit bills). It also helps that we now can pull from investment accounts to makeup any shortfalls; but this wasn’t always true. Neither of us are spend thrifts. Seriously the hardest thing in retirement is actually spending the money we’ve saved all these years.
(*) To the point where we are evaluating two different management teams for options, for when either hubby doesn’t want to manage them anymore, or (God Forbid), can’t. We even explain why (“I could. I don’t want to.”) After a year, both are a miniscule net (of fees) percentage ahead of hubby’s gross percentage. Either choice will work out longer term.
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Banking for us was unusual. We had our accounts from before we were married (moved to Oregon 2 years post-wedding), and due to a bunch of unusual circumstances, had accounts in various places locally. Eventually, these got rationalized, and we have main accounts at one credit union, as well as retirement stuff elsewhere.
$SPOUSE inherited her mother’s account with a big financial company, and that’s going well. Now that I have to extract money from my IRAs, I’m doing a similar account with the same people.
I had exposure to a lot of banks when I moved here, and have noted that almost all of them have been Borged at least once over the years. Some cases, multiple times, usually as fallout from the 2008 hassles and the never-ending Summers of Recovery. In comparisons, much more stability in the credit unions. One did join a larger regional CU, and the small public-employee CU got bought by the local CU. (That one was originally focused on the lumber/wood products industry, but moved quickly as the economy changed.)
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Wife had a PhD in Math, taught college math, was treasurer for a couple of service groups for many years – who better to handle our finances?
Until she was no longer here, and some things had been opened by her as principal (because it didn’t matter, so long as the bills got paid) and some accounts ran verifications back to her AOL email (because that’s what she used at the time we opened the account) or text to her phone (which I still had/have, and had the password). And there are still a couple automatic payments to religious accounts that I don’t know how to administer; at least I got almost everything else under control.
Verizon still thinks she’s the account owner; just can’t bear to change it. Pain in the backside to break out of PayPal, but accomplished.
Had the most marvellous positive accounting interaction with Weight Watchers; there was a recurring charge for like $45/month and I couldn’t figure out what it was for; had already cancelled the auto pay for my wife. Called them, they couldn’t find it. Called back immediately as the next charge was posted, and got a second-level help person to look through that day’s transactions – by scrolling through the list. Found it – we had been paying for my daughter’s WW monthly, but I didn’t remember that, and it wasn’t marked in any way – but it was going to Montana WW, and then I knew. She reversed that one, and cancelled the auto pay, and we left the couple others I had noticed alone, as it was an authorized charge. Local MT WW had closed up, so wasn’t getting used.
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Heed not the clankers, for their voices, though many, depend fully on their prime directive, of giving their requestors that for which they ask, and those requestor are fiddycent dudes in Bangladesh.
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Or Moscow, or Peking (however they insist we spell it nowadays).
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Like you i tend to find this kind of exhausting. Cool image BTW.
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Okay, I’m mentioned.
Today you have had more adventures in online idiocy than I am equipped to process this minute.
Anyway, I do not think it is too hard to understand that the shape of the woman pelvis allows for humans to have live births at nine months without counting on the woman being able to survive being cut open.
I also do not think it is hard to understand that the mechanics of the woman pelvis result in fairly serious optimization short comings compared to the man pelvis when it comes to strength and stuff.
Where it gets hard is the medical research into torn ACLs, and the surgeries to repair torn ACLs. The part where I have to start taking more things on trust is how the gait differences feed itno muscle fatiguing differences and then into the risk of ACL tears at for ‘similar’ activity levels.
But, on ‘humans are not widgets’, I might actually be a little good on understanding that (these days, after decades of failures), except in comparison to a lot of your other regulars.
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Um. *Glances at list of handymen called when something-she-can’t-do needs doing* Anyone who thinks men and women are absolutely the same physically is welcome to come over and prune several dead branches off a tree, get on my roof and clean out part of the gutter trough, and then deal with the gutters that can’t be reached safely from a standard ladder. And move three sacks of mulch all at once.
Who knew that a sack of mulch is a LOT heavier than a sack of topsoil of the same size? I do, now. G-d bless the inventor of the wheelbarrow!
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Mulch absorbs more water. A lot more!
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As does some topsoil. Rain soaked Supersoil(tm) weighs about 2X the dry stuff does. I stopped buying it, but the vendor stored it outside. If the pile had been unwrapped in a wet spring, whee!
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Depleted uranium. It’s the new hotness in mulch these days.
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“Because if this means another paper on gender studies then really she had no reason to live.”
Since being sick, this read to me as “pen and paper gender studies.” To which my nerd brain replied, “But that’s LARPing, not tabletop!” Which, after further reflection is about the same save one might need sunscreen a bit more than the other, and one might be more likely to smell of Cheetos and yellow ‘Dew.
There are better ways of escapism. Somebody should introduce these ‘bots to classic spec fic (probably while drunk, so they can read it without the femme filter on).
“Are more women than men leftists? I don’t know. All the data is polluted, because people — particularly on the left — would like you to believe so.”
The evidence is likely that there is a slight edge to female, but the evidence is circumstantial. Women are more social and tend to nod and smile and follow group dynamics than men, and the indoctrination is big on social cohesion. Also, the left hates men with a purple screaming hopping up and down pants full and kicking on the floor fit of stinky passion. They hate women just a little less, but wish women to be more men and men to die, but if they can’t they can be women.
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I’d be careful visiting Europe again Sarah. They could put you in prison for this post. And they are capable of going back YEARS to see if you ever deviated from the current TRUTH®.
The way I look at it – why engage with the mentally ill? Look at all the time and energy spent and you didn’t, COULDN’T change a single one of their diseased minds. I have to admit that after a couple hundred words I start skimming because I already know I agree with everything.
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They could put me in jail for a lot of things. While I’m a US citizen they’ll tread carefully
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Don’t forget the theory that female hair acts as like a flower’s stigma!
The air-sperm gets in their hair and travels in and makes the baby, so if her hair isn’t covered you can’t tell who the child belongs to….
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My vague memory was there was something or other in the late 90s– maybe with one of the Williams sisters? I think that’s their name? One of them has a given name that sounds like Serenity and no way am I trying to spell it– and so was shocked there’d been one in the most recent December, in Dubai, and we’re supposed to care.
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It’s the we’re supposed to care, and all of us are supposed to be humbled, after “gloating” before that BOGGLES me. Don’t these people have LIVES?
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Yeah, the biggest amazment is we’re supposed to care.
It’s only been a day since I went looking for this stuff and the main take-away was “December” and “in DUBAI?!?!?”
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I don’t know that there was an actual match but iirc in the ’90s male tennis player Andre Agassi publicly stated that even the Williams sisters (who were among the top female players at the time) would get their clocks cleaned by a mid-tier male player. Or something like that.
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There was once a poll where the question was, “If you played a tennis match against Serena Williams, would you be able to score a single point?” The person posting about it on Tumblr was all upset that so many people were answering “yes” to that poll and was claiming that those yes answers represented misogyny. My thinking was no, they represent the number of people who can play tennis at a decent-for-an-amateur level of competence, i.e. who will be able to at least return an easy serve.
If you know anything about tennis, you’re probably nodding along by now. For anyone who doesn’t, I’ll explain. If Serena Williams was going up against me, who have never played tennis in my life, she could just hit easy shots that she’s 100% guaranteed to make, and still get them past me. But if she’s playing against someone who can actually play, she’ll have to take the more difficult shots to get them past him: the shots along the edge line that just get inside the court, the serves that just barely skim above the net as they come in with blazing speed… You watch two tennis pros playing each other, and those are the shots that score points. But those are also the shots that go wrong: the shot is just outside the line instead of just inside, or the serve clips the net. Every time your shot goes wrong, you give your opponent a point.
So the poll answers were not actually saying, “Yes, I could hit a shot that Serena Williams would be unable to return.” They were saying, “I could return the easy shots, forcing Serena to take the hard shots in order to win. At some point in two sets of six games, she would make at least one small error on her shot, so I could score at least one point in the process of being defeated 6-0, 6-0.”
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By mid-tier male player, I’m assuming Agassi meant on the pro level. Because (see my other comment about the poll) I’m pretty sure that the Williams sisters would wipe the floor with amateurs: skill can definitely overcome a strength advantage in tennis. But at the pro level, yep, the testosterone advantage in strength (and endurance, there’s a reason why women’s tennis matches are best-of-3 while men’s are best-of-5, and my comment that the Williams sisters could wipe the floor with amateur male players is assuming a best-of-3 match) will tell. Ms. Williams, either of them, is used to returning balls coming in at a certain speed. The balls hit by male opponents would be coming in a lot faster, potentially throwing off her timing and making her returns a little less precise than they would have been against female opponents. At the pro level, that’s all it takes to lose a game.
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Yes, I did mean a pro. I suppose I could have clarified that a bit better.
it’s unfortunate that so many people – including the athletes themselves – don’t realize what a difference the accident of chromosomal arrangement at birth makes. And I can’t call it unfair, since the mere fact that someone is able to compete at the upper levels of male or female athletics indicates certain advantages at birth that the athlete was able to take advantage of (coupled with a *ton* of training; genetic advantages help a lot, but they don’t put someone at the top by themselves).
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The most famous Battle of the Sexes was in 1973, Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King. King won, although she was (a) much younger than Riggs, and (b) there were accusations that Riggs had deliberately thrown the match.
In 1998, Venus and Serena Williams bragged that they could take on any man outside the top 200, and the 203rd-ranked man took them up on it. He beat them both in successive matches, with the outcome never really in doubt. He claimed that he’d tried to play more like the 600th-ranked player to try to keep things fun.
Apparently there was a recent match between a couple of the top women’s and men’s players, but I heard nothing about it, and I actually follow sports.
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Riggs and King apparently had a rematch not long after their first game, and he beat her. That, of course, encouraged the claims that he threw the first match.
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I think the player who beat the Williams sisters was also a smoker which course makes him less fit.
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Serena and Venus Williams.
And no, I’m not a tennis fan.
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I keep seeing one of the sisters (Serena, I think) repeatedly pop up in TV ads. It feels a bit like someone’s still trying to turn her into some sort of national celebrity independent of tennis.
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It sounds like you were in a cherry mood. 😁
Helen Smith has a somewhat related post up on Instapundit today quoting a young woman who complained on social media about trying to find a guy when she’s spent much of her life being taught to hate them. There’s a lot of screwed up stuff being pushed these days that’s fouling the gender relations.
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I sympathize with that. Whatever her other problems may be, it is very hard to get past “you don’t need a guy, he’d just assault you and men are all stupid anyway” combined with “and if you do need a guy, you’re so incompetent you should be grateful he tells you what to do every moment of the day.”
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Take the howling and poo-flinging as proof that
You are correct.
You are more intelligent.
You are wiser.
You are Victorious.
The more those are true, the more the opposition are reduced to impotent rage and excretia abuse.
Bots. Sots. Halfwits. Nitwits. Mugs. Thugs. (Omit further theft of Blazing Saddles….) and Monkeyshits.
And when you “Thank you for sharing!” or better yet “Thanks for your praise! It makes my day!”, well, inducing a stroke is not -technically- murder….. (grin)
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She’s catching flack, so she’s over the target.
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Well darn. I don’t live close enough to you to knock on your front door and challenge you to a tennis match. Of course, I haven’t played tennis in more years than I have fingers and toes, so that would probably be more than enough of a handicap. Frankly, I’d rather challenge you and Dan to a shooting match at your local range; but like I said, I don’t live close enough to drop in like that.
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I like sports. Football, especially college football, as well as college basketball and baseball. That’s pretty unusual, not because I’m a woman, but because I’m a nerd. I’m always vaguely afraid to confess my love for sports, because I’m afraid that the people around me will start mocking me.
I had to point out to him only one woman ever conceived without having sex and she doesn’t have an x account. (I THINK. I mean, who am I to say?)
Aren’t you Catholic, and thus supposed to believe that Mary, Mother of God, was without sin? In which case, we can be almost certain she doesn’t have an X/Twitter account, because there’s nobody on that app without sin!
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There’s geekery to the sports. It’s the numbers. Numbers, stats, those things are to a geek like cotton candy is to kids. Also, women tend to like men. Fit men doing active fit men things, playing with their wood and balls or balls and hoops, and suchlike- yeah. What woman likes highly trained physically fit men getting all sweaty while exerting themselves in skillful, competitive fashion? Couldn’t be farther from what women want. Heh.
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Yeah, but we’re not supposed to admit it out loud lest someone think we’re easy.
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I too like baseball, though in High School I was the archetypal Nerd. In fact, I lettered in baseball though I never had an at bat or took to the field, because two years as the team equipment manager qualifed one for the letter. I became an equipment manager because the baseball coach caught me in the computer lab after school one day typing away on the Telex connected to the MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, a U of MN timeshare system on which I had a student account) system via an acoustic modem running at 60 baud. He bribed me into running team statistics on the device by offering his teacher-level access. A couple of weeks later, he sweet talked me into running the pitching machine in the batting cage. Before I knew it I was hook, line, and sinkered into the program.
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Ha!
I had the same gig for my very small-prep-school football team – until I was fired as a senior for refusing to believe anyone would practice in a monsoon, and did not show up.
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Some some self-made-idiot leftists (BIRM) will defend bullies and violent psychpaths who look weaker “because they’re oppressed”. It appears now that some of them will defend obvious, ludicrous, poisonous falsehoods for a similar reason. Indeed, they form a deep attachment to diabolical falsehoods and will defend them with every shred of credibility they possess, and with whatever they think they can beg, borrow, or (usually) steal.
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I think some people truly think that men and women cannot be equal (in value as human beings) if they are not interchangeable.
Heck, they’ll apply that to the difference between two men as well. I don’t think William Shakespeare could have done what George Washington did and I don’t think Washington could have done what Shakespeare did.
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I actually have some interest in this and there is an excellent wikipedia page on The Battle of The Sexes. The ‘official’ three where two in ’73 and one in ’92 with a bunch more that were more casual. Only the one in december ’25 involved the female player being given a handicap and there were a lot of complaints about that. Of the official 3, two were won by the male and the third, Billie Jean King Vs Bobby Riggs in which King won 6-4,6-3, 6-3 is the one that gets talked about the most. But there is serious evidence that Riggs threw the matches to cover gambling debts.
The thing about Venus and Serena WIlliams is that they made these bold claims that they could beat any male player ranked above 200 (the higher the number the worse you are.) Karsten Braasch ranked 203 at the time and almost twice their age smoked them 6-1 and 6-2 and said they could not beat anyone above 500. He also famously did not warm up, played 18 holes of golf first, and drank a bottle of whiskey. He also claimed that he played like a 600 rank player to keep it interesting.
More recently Serena has stated that she simply cannot compete with male players and it is not fun.
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My brain keeps insisting that Roger Federer (one of the greatest tennis players of all time, who as a bonus never lost his temper on the court, unlike many of the other famous ones) played in a battle-of-the-sexes match, but I’m pretty certain I’m mistaken. I do know that of all the tennis players whose names I know, Federer is the one I have the greatest respect for. A great player (one commenter said “In an era of specialists, you’re either a clay court specialist, a grass court specialist, or a hard court specialist… or you’re Roger Federer”), but more importantly a decent human being and genuinely nice guy, from all I have heard. Married to the same woman for years (not as surprising in the tennis world as in Hollywood, but still worth mentioning), no scandals, kind and pleasant in person from all reports.
But I could find no mention on Wikipedia of any “battle of the sexes” match involving Federer, so my brain is probably conflating him with someone else.
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I have never been fond of the female fondness for indirection. Some of my old HS classmates told me that they’d have loved to have me ask them out, and I said I didn’t know they were interested. They said they were doing all they could to signal interest. I could have used a female intermediary I trusted (sister, cousin, something like that) who could talk to them and then explain to me what was going on.
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I’m old enough to where the clue by four has hit enough times. Sometimes there are signs. Like, she looks you in the eye longer than the average person. Makes excuses to touch you, smiles a lot, laughs at your terrible jokes. These are the fifty-foot tall letters on the giant billboard of signs.
The other stuff, it’s naught but a secret language of hair flipping, chase-me scurrying, constant side glances, and finger biting. And hiding in the phone, clamming up whenever you’re nearby, literally sitting quietly and reading… That stuff’s just weird, man, if it’s supposed to indicate interest.
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But if you DO notice, it can be kind of fun.
Had a student working in one of the computer labs I monitored while in Nursing School; I helped her with some moderately complex database stuff.
She hit on me almost the whole time. Very cute, nice person, and I was VERY married.
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This has always been a problem, and is even worse now than it used to be. Men have been clueless for as long as anyone can remember. Making matters worse, the environment in general now is one that constantly reminds everyone that “unwanted attention” (meaning by men toward women) is sexual harassment, and can get you fired from your job, or otherwise ruin your life. As a result, many men are reluctant to check whether they’re reading the signals correctly. Worse, many women don’t really understand how to properly indicate interest anymore. There are women out there who seem to genuinely think that if she glances at a guy (not holding locked eyes; just her glancing at him), he should understand it to mean that she’s interested, and wants him to chat her up. There are also women who decide that they want to play “hard to get” and want him to chase her after an initial turn down, forgetting that one message that’s constantly hammered into everyone is “No means no. Asking again is sexual harassment!”
So, yeah. It’s worse than it used to be.
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Ooooh boy. What you have to remember is that women are also not omniscient.
I fell in love with Dan from his prom pic on his mom’s wall. Well, maybe not love-love. He claims he fell in love when he met me at his birthday.
We never managed to convey this to the other. We were 18. I don’t know what we thought would happen if the other kenw we liked him/her, but both of us were terrified. So we dated other people, I went back home…. four years later I called him and decided to be just tell him….
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“four years later I called him and decided to be just tell him….”
I had already figured you were that kind of woman.
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Oh my, the courtship rituals of the nerdy and introverted. I will note that on my first date with a young lady (now wife of nearly 42 years), two “gentlemen” from my dorm (one of whom was her ex-boyfriend) decided to tag along. Luckily, our choice of movie (Kramer vs Kramer I think) didn’t intrigue them, so they went off to play video games at an arcade (this being 1980) and walked back to campus (having run out of quarters before we ran out of movie). We had the advantage that all that separated us was a few miles of the nicer parts of Worcester MA (yes there ARE nicer parts) and a bit of Holden Ma. and she had a car. Much simpler to deal with than the Atlantic Ocean. I think she was seventeen and I not quite nineteen. We figured it out after a week or so. And yes, by the end of the second date (which worked much better), I was smitten and knew I had found the one for me.
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The expectation is that the guy will make the first move. A clever woman figures out how to signal the guy while letting him think it was all his idea in the first place.
Unfortunately, both sides of the mess seem to be having trouble these days.
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Another honorable mention to the religious gentleman who’s been reading the Bible in stupid and who doesn’t understand words. He kept screaming at us that women (and presumably men) had nothing to do with making babies. G-d made babies, period.
Are you sure it wasn’t a girl from Cape Cod…?
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Our Hostess said
Although there is no biblical evidence of it the opinion of the pre-Nicene fathers was that the lady was in question was assumed bodily to heaven. To the best of my knowledge no internet provider (even Starlink) provides access to that address. Given all the slop you had to put up with in the replies to your comment it seems likely that someone does provide service to Hell.
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