It's Always More Complicated

(Reporting in vaxx-boosted, by the way.)

Have been noting hither and yon stuff about blokes 'looksmaxxing' and 'mogging' (which apparently does not involve cats? is there some reference to tomcats facing off and fluffing out their fur? probably not. Who knows.)

This is yet another of those things That Blokez Do apparently in order to attract the opposite sex and I do not think it is because I am Old, and my tastes were formed in A Different Day, that I feel that there is a significant Failure To Do The Research about What Actually Pulls The Chixx.

Not that this is exactly a new phenomenon, when I was reviewing those books on yoof culture in the 60s/early 70s, I was thinking that various of the paths being pursued by (presumably) cis het men, because Teh Gayz were in separate chapters, did not seem to me necessarily terribly productive - maybe being a great dancer, but not if it was all about him showing off moves, ditto the being A Mod Face.

And after all the idea that women only go for men who look a certain way is to laugh at, cites yet again the instance of The Late Rock Star Historian, who was a scruff who was not perhaps quite at the John Wilkes level of having serious disadvantages in the way of appearance to overcome but was - well, I suppose it depends on the artist you're thinking of and there were painters who would have turned out an excellent oil-painting of him but was hardly of male-model looks. But was if not of universal appeal, considerably popular with the opposite sex.

We are frankly not surprised at reports that young women are eschewing the dating game, because what it turns up is very likely young men blatting on about their self-maintenance regime and probably trying to shill for supplements and peptides.

Am also given to wonder whether the people who follow these creatures are all acolytes of their maxxingmessage, or whether at least some % are treating them as the modern equivalent of the old-style freakshow. (Though for all I know, in the darker reaches of the internet you can find videos of men biting the heads off chickens and so on.)

While I was thinking that it would be preferable for them to contemplate upon the natural world and build bowers for, or offer particularly attractive stones to, the objects of their interest, I also became cynical as to whether female bower birds and penguins are quite so appreciative of these efforts as naturalists would have us suppose. ('Him and his bloody bowers' - 'Not another pebble')

Goodness knows, some real weirdness is revealed in You Be the Judge in Guardian Saturday, but today's produces a theory which is entirely new to me -

You be the judge: should my housemate stop warming her mug and then pouring the water back into the kettle?

But apart from all this hoohah about HYGIENE, I am rather taken with New Health Scare Theory:

Boiling water twice is a no-no for me – there is a change in quality and taste. My life had a certain drabness to it – I now attribute that to consuming poor-quality water for so long without realising.

I was going to ask are they living in a log cabin or what in Ohio if the kitchen is so freezingly cold in the mornings they have to warm up the mugs so that they do not immediately chill the coffee but I see the issue is poor insulation.

Maybe they should do something about insulation rather than bicker over 'secondhand water'?

Do I need to ask, guess the critic, given the headline on this review of the Gwen John exhibition: In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely. JJ, go and take a cold shower!

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I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:

Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama.
They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.

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Knepp: Wilding from the Weald to the waves:

After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.

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This is a different kind of heritage: Heritage Unlocked: Birmingham’s Unique Municipal Bank:

Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults.
Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade.
....
A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.

Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.

I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.

Firstly:

So, farewell then, PSC, whose advice to the sexually-bothered (rather than the lovelorn) has so oft provided fodder to oursinial musings. Guardian G2 today includes 23 of the best Sexual Healing columns

Not sure if they are The Greatest Hits rather than molto tipico of the kind of thing she addressed: in particular we note (as she stresses in the interview about the lessons learnt over 10 years of agony-aunting):

The female orgasm is still a mystery to some people
I’m still getting questions that show me people continue to think that the only “correct” type of female orgasm is one that’s purely vaginal and doesn’t involve the clitoris. For people to still think that, or to have that as the ideal, is extraordinary, but there it is. They just haven’t had the education to understand otherwise.

We also note the recurrent MenZ B Terribly Poor Stuff theme, what with the one who appears to regard his wife's bisexuality as a USP meaning *3SOMES* and two or three where one feels she did not interrogate sufficiently whether the male querent was actually gratifying his female partner before offering reassurance/solution e.g. 'My stunning wife makes no effort with our sex life' where we should like to know precisely what effort he is putting in, ahem.

However, there are also some of the wilder shores there.

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Secondly, and could we have a big AWWWW for this: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife:

Filming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.
Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusually personal and intimate BBC documentary.

Do we think this trip is doomed already???

My best friend Kady and I are planning a backpacking trip around south-east Asia in a few months and I have proposed the idea of us getting matching tattoos:

We’re both 20, and I think we’ll look back on them when we’re older and remember what a fun life we’ve lived. Tattoos are a reminder of a particular time, and I want to cherish our youth. I’ve found a cool tattoo parlour in northern Thailand, where we’ll be staying. I’ve seen videos of people having great experiences there and the tattoo artist is really talented.... It’s not like I want to get a random tattoo. I’m quite creative and have already started sketching ideas that represent who Kady and I are.

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In other gruesome news, okay, it is not one bloke spreading his seed to 100s, but I'm not actually sure that 'a worldwide limit of 75 families for each sperm donor' as applied by the European Sperm Bank isn't somewhat on the high side, even when it doesn't turn out further down the line with more sophisticated testing that a donor has a rare cancer-causing mutation.

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And this is sad, rather than gruesome, and makes me wonder about the whole marketing of the 'freezing eggs' thing as 'a groundbreaking act of empowerment', especially as it hasn't turned out like that:

I did not anticipate the emotional landscape that I would face a decade later, as a scientific intervention became a personal meditation on time, money, and unfulfilled dreams.

This week's You Be The Judge column in Guardian Saturday: My dad wants to track my location on his phone. Should he leave me alone?:

My dad and I disagree about whether he should follow me on the Find My Friends phone app, which lets you track people in real time. He used to, but when I went to university I removed him as a follower. I don’t think he needs to know where I am all the time.
I’m 27 now, but it’s still a bone of contention. Dad says I don’t call him enough – I think that’s why he’s being so persistent about being re-added. He says: “I would know what you were up to if you let me follow you on Find My Friends.”
But I don’t want him tracking me, as he used to take it too far when I was younger. Once, when I was in a coffee shop, he texted me saying: “Hope you enjoy your coffee.” It’s nosy and I felt like I was under surveillance. It was funny for a bit, but then I thought: how often is he looking? That sort of thing happened several times as a teenager.

But honestly. She's just going about her usual normal daily business. We think Father needs to get a hobby, and to reconsider the claim that 'it’s not stalking, it’s love' (surely what all stalkers think/say?).

Am having visions of Victorian Papas putting Airtags in daughters' crinolines.... wouldn't they have been all over it, eh?

(Or, I am over here, paging Lorelei Lee:

Welcome to the femosphere, the latest dark, toxic corner of the internet… for women:

“Ideas like men are the gatekeeper of relationships and women are the gatekeepers of sex,” she said.
“So women’s currency in the sexual marketplace resides in her withholding sex from men, and you diminish your value if you have casual sex.”
Or the idea that, to counter women’s lesser earning power (the gender pay gap in the UK was 14.3% last year), rather than fighting for pay equality, a man should provide for a woman financially, and women must “embrace feminine energy” to secure a husband. Kay said: “It’s incredibly conservative, but it’s trying to reframe it as being this empowering strategy.”

Which was pretty much an update, I guess, on the 'golddigger' model that LL had been presenting.

I'm not sure Helen Gurley Brown and Sex and the Single Girl etc really fitted that model, because it was more about making sure the Single Girl made her own dough - which might lead to a position where she got her pick of A Better Class of Bloke when she got round to considering Mattermoney, but that wasn't really the endgame.

And of course, how far this is really A Thing, is maybe questionable.

Couple of pieces in today's Guardian and okay, journalism, and soundbitey, and clickbait, etc etc etc

Be more vulnerable!’ What women can teach men about friendship – and what they can learn from men

I was thinking this didn't particularly reflect the way I communicate with my lady-friends, which tends to lean more to subjects of common interest/gossip/etc rather than being deep and emotional and sharing vulnerability, which may, I contend, have to do with the fact that, hello, we are no longer young things?

And what is this thing this thing is about relationship hierarchies? We are no longer in high school, hello, if we ever were.

On the 'sharing' thing sometimes this is just not that reciprocal: looking back at Q and painful friendship rupture, and her claim that I had been having a lovely life and just bitching about certain work things while her marriage had been breaking up, my recollection is that I had been doing a lot of listening to her marital woes and not actually mentioning death and illness in my family, partner being unemployed, etc? (Okay, if the world can be divided into Ancient Mariners and Wedding Guests, I am the latter.)

We observe that the author of that column has a book to promote.

And on books and reading and the current PANIC: How to put your phone down and get back into habit of reading books.

Query: has there ever been a time when more than half the population regularly read for pleasure? I am always dubious of stats like that and wonder if Mass Observation ever undertook surveys into reading among the populace.

I am also going to distrust any WO WO UNTO THE PRESENT GENERAYSHUN emanating from a quote by one superannuated Oxford prof.

Plus, presumably dealing with a population of students with a lot of other things on their mind, far more than I had in the halcyon days when I was a student with a full grant and a remarkable, it now seems, lack of pressure compared to These Here Dayz.

I also point out the contradiction between 'read physical books! take notes!' and 'reading should not be a chore'.

But I do realise as someone who is more somebody who counts as a reading addict than one of these people that has to have pushers inculcating the habit, I may be something of an outlier here?

Am pissed off with Goodreads, which - or possibly it is some Amazon bot which is doing this - is totally inconsistently doing Weird Stuff to the information pertaining to the Clorindaverse books which I carefully manually input myself at time of publication and which is now being messed up.

I.e. existence of ebooks being disappeared (2 editions being listed rather than 3) - cover image not showing up - and something having ingested all the ISBN info into the Kindle entry so I cannot re-input that into a new ebook entry (I was wont to do this and just have the ASIN for the Kindle entry) - also having to delete whatever it is image the system thinks has been uploaded for the cover and re-uploading the perfectly good one that was already there.

And why this has happened to some volumes in this extensive saga and not others, who can say.

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In other news today, some random passing thorts:

If this is what he thinks, a) he has not been reading the right kind of science fiction, has he, because there is a fairly long tradition of This Is A Very Disturbing Idea (e.g. David Karp, One) and b) it does explains why he can get behind AI reducing art and all creativity into gloop:

“I think we are moving to a world in which we all become cells in a single organism,” Zuckerberg replied, “where we can communicate automatically and can all work together seamlessly.”

Maybe I am interrogating this from the wrong perspective, but reading this: I’m married to a man but have erotic infatuations with women on television, I was going to myself, really, duckie, why don't you just write fanfic to get it out of your system?

‘I thought of the church as a friend and it slapped me in the face’: historian Diarmaid MacCulloch on the Church of England’s hypocrisy

For the past four years, since his retirement from university teaching, he has applied that lifelong erudition to a comprehensive and richly entertaining history of the ways in which, for 3,000 years, the church has tied itself in knots over sex (and love and marriage).

MacCulloch asked the classics professor Helen King to read his book pre-publication. King is just publishing a book on women’s bodies through the ages. “She said lots of complimentary things,” he says, “but felt there was a major omission: I hadn’t mentioned the clitoris much.”
“I was embarrassed,” MacCulloch says, “to realise that was true.”

Wow, this is terrifying: Like Jay Gatsby, He Threw Parties to Get Her Attention. It Finally Worked.:

Mr. Quintero first noticed Ms. Babai in a mutual friend’s Instagram story in 2016, when he was a freshman at Quinnipiac University and she was a freshman at the State University of New York at Albany. He asked that friend, Janice Murphy, for an introduction, but it would take four years for that moment to come. So Mr. Quintero, who became affectionately known as “Gatsby” among Ms. Babai’s friends, began hosting lavish gatherings in hopes of meeting her.

Mr. Quintero found ways to stay in touch. Most notably, he had Ms. Babai introduce him to her boss, Joseph Calabrese, the owner of a lighting design and fencing company, to talk about opportunities to work with his business, Quintero Enterprises. “Little did I know at the time, this was just another step to get closer to me,” said Ms. Babai, who coordinated their phone calls and joined business dinners.

Mr. Quintero wanted to do something “big,” he said, for the proposal in October 2023, so he rented out Barclays Center and convinced Ms. Babai to join him for what he said was an awards ceremony for women in business. As Ms. Babai entered the empty arena, she was greeted by pictures of them together on jumbotrons, flowers and a group of singers performing “Say Yes to Heaven” by Lana Del Rey. As Mr. Quintero got down on one knee, he said, “I have been waiting for this moment since the day I met you.”

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Anthony Comstock arrived in Washington, D.C., in January 1873 with a collection of pornography and big plans for what to do with it.
Alas, it was not to engage in trade with it.

Bearing a veritable grab bag of explicit images, books, pamphlets, contraceptives, and sex toys that he had ordered expressly for the purposes of shock, he set up displays, first in the private homes of legislators and then in the office of the vice president inside the congressional building.As congressmen trooped by to gawk, Comstock spoke to them about the “nefarious business” of obscenity.

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I feel I've heard of this, er, colourful character before, but I can't quite place them: Charlotte Bach (born Karoly Hajdu; 1920–1981) was a Hungarian-British impostor and fringe evolutionary theorist.L 'Her alternative theory of evolution acquired a cult following among prominent writers and scientists in London during the 1970s, who remained ignorant of her original identity until after her death.'

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More fun insights from The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Why were Hansel and Gretel not English?:

These types of stories about hunger and famine abound in the folklore of most European societies, and embody folk memories of food scarcity. However, as the historian John Walter noted, these tropes are curiously absent from English fairy tales. Why?
Walter speculated that this reflected the exceptionally early disappearance of famine from England, centuries before the risk of famine had subsided in the rest of Europe. Famine remained a threat in most of Europe until the mid-18th century, and persisted in some areas into the 19th century and even the 20th century, especially in association with war. In England, on the other hand, the last national famine occurred in the 1590s, and the last regional famine in the 1620s.