Recently TYG and I went to the local Ackland Museum as we do every so often. One of their exhibits was a wall of color, a collection of bright paintings on one wall. I think they set it up well.
Here’s a modern piece of pottery in the design of an old Greek vase.
Here’s some random art
We had to leave the car at the top of the parking garage, which was full for some college event. Can’t beat the view, though.
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Filed under Miscellanea, Personal
“[Deepak] Chopra and Epstein were in regular contact, joking about picking up girls, attending retreats, brokering lucrative deals and relaxing at Epstein’s residences. Part guru, part wingman, Chopra’s advice to Epstein includes the now widely circulated comments: “God is a Construct. Cute Girls are Real.” “Come to Israel with us. Relax and have fun with interesting people. If you want use a fake name. Bring your girls.” “Anything we share is between us. I share nothing with anyone but trust you.”
When Epstein informed Chopra that a woman had dropped a civil case claiming that he and Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her when she was age 13, he responded “good.”
In a recent conference Melanie Trump denied any connection to Jeffrey Epstein. Here’s some speculation why she spoke up.
AG Pam Bondi, queen of the Epstein cover-up, is out of the administration. It’s true her Toddler-toadying successor Todd Blanche has declared he’s so over the Epstein files so it’s not like he’s an improvement (he’s also said that if the Toddler fires him, his response will be “I love you, sir.”). Even so “it is good when people who show a disregard, or even disdain, for the rule of law leave this government — our government — and it’s OK to take a moment to appreciate that.” And Rep. Nancy Mace is calling bullshit on Blanche (though she’s still a transphobe).
“The same man who built an empire trafficking girls was also grooming boys to hate them. He monetized girls’ bodies and radicalized boys against them. He hunted girls and recruited boys. Those aren’t separate phenomena. They run on the same logic. If you normalize the idea that women are owed, that consent is negotiable, that power excuses everything, you don’t just get one trafficking ring. You get an ecosystem. Epstein didn’t have to abuse every girl personally to profit from a world that already excused men who did.” — from an article about how Epstein promoted the manosphere. Which may also explain henchwoman Ghislaine Maxwell’s online activity.
As noted at that link, Epstein made the world worse for women and gender equality. It’s not just him, though. If you remember #metoo, you remember how many women spoke up and said “me too!” They need the support of the system and of individual men: “It would be good if courage changed sides too. This isn’t impossible: one of my male friends, discovering the sexual abuse (this time of young men) rife in his faculty, became a whistleblower, sticking to the facts through counter-accusations and gaslighting. I think, too, of many other male friends, who love their partners, raise their boys well and must want more for their daughters than that they learn, aged fourteen, how to give a rich old guy a great blow job.”
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
I don’t know the artist, nor the book. It looks interesting though John Brunner’s work is very hit or miss with me.
And a cover by Richard Powers because that’s always worth posting.
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The whole point of writing about Undead Sexist Cliches is that these ideas — women shouldn’t vote, women shouldn’t have sex before marriage, women’s brains aren’t as smart as men’s — have been around decades, it’s only the details that change. Women’s brains are inferior because they’re smaller. Or because the important parts of the brain are smaller. Because the two sides of their brain are less connected than men’s. Or more connected. Because of testosterone. If one rationale goes down, switch to another. The cliche lives on (if you want details on any of these, you can find them in my book).
However there are always new cliches coming up that I haven’t encountered before (which is not to say they’re new rather than new to me). Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the big worry for conservatives was teen moms — babies having babies! Lots of young moms! Usually with a subtext that birth control wasn’t working so we’d better teach all those teenage sluts to abstain until marriage (and pay right-wing groups and churches to provide abstinence only education in schools. There’s always an angle).
Now though, as we face a dwindling birthrate, conservatives are very concerned women need to have more babies, and they need to start young. According to right-winger Dr. Marc Siegel, “the problem is teens and young adults. From ages 15-19 the fertility rate is down 7% and it’s down 70% over the last two decades, meaning we’re telling people that are young not to have babies, to wait until they’re in a more stable life situation, till they’re more financially secure, maybe they haven’t found the right partner.”
Wow, how crazy. Imagine telling 15 year olds to wait to start a family until their life is more stable, they’ve found a good partner, they can afford a baby. What are we thinking? Think how many more babies she can pop out if she starts young! The problem with birth control isn’t that it lets teenage girls become sexual, it’s (according to Stephen Miller’s wife Katie) that it stops them getting pregnant! An option they hate, which is why they’ve been trying to ban contraception for years (a goal the Toddler administration is in favor of).
Let’s break this misogynistic bullshit down. First, it’s about the claim (as noted at my first link) that America needs more babies to keep our work force up, pay into Social Security, etc (I guarantee you if they axe Social Security they’ll still be demanding women become breeders). It may be the shrinking population is a problem — but simply demanding women have more babies, or taking away the option not to become pregnant, are not the answer. Women are not means to an end. They have their own ends and they’re entitled to strive for them, even if those ends do not include children.
Having a lack of young workers is a problem; fine, let’s solve it. Immigration is a simple way but that means America would no longer be a white-dominant, Christian-dominant nation and that horrifies forced-birthers. Never mind that immigrants have been coming here for more than a century, and despite being shat upon as not Protestant, not white, not Anglo-Saxon, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Polish, the Chinese, etc. have become as American as anyone (though Republicans viscerally recoil from admitting this). It will happen with future immigrants too. There may be other solutions, too; if we can spend billions on ICE and on the Toddler’s Iran stupidity, we can fund Social Security and Medicare.
For that matter we could provide serious support for women. Pay for their ob/gyn care. Police companies that don’t provide a space to bottle breast milk. Fund child care. This wouldn’t turn all women into happy homemakers but it might influence a number of them. Republicans have discussed this idea for years; nothing ever happens. One “pro-natalist” couple hand-wave giving financial support in favor of giving women medals for children and deregulating daycare.
Second, but equally important, it’s a way for men such as Siegel and his ilk to shore up patriarchy (one reason proposals that would help working mothers rarely get buy-in from the right). The right-wing shrieks about groomers a lot but they’re fine with teenage marriage and resist efforts to raise the age limit. A girl of 15 is much easier to control; pass her from her parents to a husband while she’s young and she may never learn to stand on her own. She’ll have much less opportunity to get an education or a job because becoming a mom is time consuming. As Anna Kendrick says at the link, men can enter parenthood with a good chance it won’t disrupt the rest of their life; women, not so much. A standard talking point on the right is that this is fine — have your kids, then tackle your career, you’ll have time. As plenty of women have testified, starting into the workforce when you’re late 30s or early 40s ain’t so easy.
If women can’t get an education or an independent income, they’re much more dependent on marrying a man who can support them. Which some shitbag misogynists such as Scott Yenor consider a plus (Yenor wants a world of “public men and private women”). If that also makes it harder for young girls to escape an abusive, violent husband — well, I doubt anyone on the right gives a crap.
I used to think talk about the right-wing seeing The Handmaid’s Tale as an inspiration were a little exaggerated. It’s been quite a while since I was that naive.
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
While I’ve seen the recent Wuthering Heights and the 1939 version, I’ve never read the book. For my birthday, TYG bought me a copy.
It didn’t work for me. That may be because it’s the kind of book that requires quite and leisure, and suffered from me cramming it in between pets and talking to tech support about our internet outage. Or it may simply be that I bounced off it because by modern standards it’s an odd novel; a strange plot, unpleasant characters and like Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, often recounted at second hand rather than shown to us directly.
For those who don’t know, a new arrival on the Yorkshire moors meets his brooding landlord, Heathcliffe. From a servant he learns how Heathcliff’s home of Wuthering Heights once belonged to the Earnshaw family, then came his tragic, obsessive, ultimately doomed romance with Catherine Earnshaw, followed by Heathcliff’s disappearance, to return later as a rich man. Cathy marries one of their neighbors; Heathcliff seduces and marries the man’s younger sister. Everyone’s a mess, obsessive, possessive — it may be the lack of anyone to root for was a factor in not liking it — and this continues into the next generation.
I can see, sort of, why the book appeals. There’s tragedy, obsession, passion, some clever writing (Heathcliffe’s death is unexpectedly anticlimactic), warped characters and the isolated world of the Yorkshire moors in that era, where your “neighbor” might be six miles off. I may try it again some time.
Tim Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard did an amazing job weaving the history of the pre-Raphaelites in with the supernatural; the sequel, Hide Me Among the Graves, was weaker but still good. In MY BROTHER’S KEEPER he attempts something similar with the Bronte family. Like Powers’ Medusa’s Web all it did was remind me of superior books of his.
When Branwell, Emily and Anne are tweens, Branwell leads the unwitting girls to make a pact with dark powers. As adults this entangles the family with the supernatural (though their father later reveals they’ve always been entangled). There’s a brooding, one-eyed, could-he-be-proto-Heathcliff werewolf. The disembodied spirit of a dead lycanthropic god. A cult that wants to awaken the deity. Angry ghosts whose ability to suck out your breath resembles consumption. And a sinister spirit that wants Branwell’s body.
I don’t mind that Powers uses the same hybrid of magic and science as multiple other books; many of them take place in the same universe, after all. I think the big problem is that the cult is too vague a threat — what will they do once they seize power? How powerful are they? — which undercuts any sense of danger. There’s a stage magician who hopes to use their knowledge to enhance his performances; that’s a great idea but he’s not developed or used enough (which hurts the big finish as he plays a large role). Overall, glad I used the library for this one.
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Filed under Reading
LOUIS THEROUX: Inside the Manosphere (2026) interviews a number of online misogynist influencers about their attitudes, their careers and the women in their lives (the interview with one guy’s mother is memorable). While their views are often horrifying, they’re also nothing new to me, though I imagine plenty of people will find the documentary enlightening. And I think Theroux manages to cover their views without presenting them as a reasonable point of view.
What was new to me was how much of these guys shtick is bait for suckers. The hook? Online classes and various supposedly lucrative investments. This isn’t new — Alex Jones made a lot of money peddling crap to suckers — but it’s interesting (and does not excuse peddling misogyny). “When they talk about misinforation on the Internet, this is what they’re talking abouThist.”
As a big fan of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass films, including the horror teleplay The Woman in Black, I had high hopes for THE STONE TAPE (1972). An electronics team working off the radar in an old house (their goal is a crash research program developing tech that will leave Japanese electronics in the dust) discovers weird screams and ghostly visions in the room where they set up their computers. The top guy doesn’t believe in ghosts but in the possibility mental impressions from intense events have been recorded in the stones themselves. Hmm, if they could learn how those impressions reach their brains, that would outdo anything in Japan’s arsenal. Even though it appears this theory is right, unsurprisingly this proves a very bad decision …
This is well acted and well written but it’s never quite chilling enough. The ghosts don’t appear to pose a real threat and the balance between the parapsychological investigation and corporate politics undercutting the research feels off. And the big manifestation at the climax is unconvincing, nothing but a display of flashing lights. Not awful but not good enough. “Look at the words — ‘pray … pray.’”
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Filed under Movies, Politics, Undead sexist cliches
A lot of IRL kept me distracted. Trixie having to go out in the dead of night Monday. Finishing up taxes and getting them mailed off. Family fun yesterday and today.
However I did complete, edit and proof both “Mage’s Masquerade” and “Oh the Places You’ll Go” though I don’t have a market for either story yet. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the success of Marvel Comics in the 1960s of Earth-616 —
— and two about superhero love lives as the Silver Age became the Bronze. First Marvel —
— and then DC.
I also wound up visiting the emergency care last Saturday for a sore I thought might be a sign of something very serious. Turned out it was just an ingrown hair — annoying and I’ll be glad to get rid of it, but not a threat.
If y’all were at work this week, I hope yours was more productive.
Art by Jack Kirby (t), Gil Kane and Dick Giordano (b). All rights to images remain with current holders.
Filed under Personal, Short Stories, Time management and goals, Writing
Got to say, this one doesn’t quite scream “fine wine here” to me.
Nor this vague pattern, reminiscent of subway maps.
This one, at least, looks cool.
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Filed under Miscellanea
“it’s not just ads for abortion clinics or pills that would be illegal—even providing information about how to get them might be prosecutable. In addition to banning the sale and distribution of abortion pills, the law makes it a crime to advertise anything “in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing an abortion.” — Jessica Valenti on a new South Dakota law.
“Days after his inauguration last year, Donald Trump pardoned two dozen activists convicted of violating the FACE Act—the federal law that prohibits violence against abortion clinics. Just one day later, the Department of Justice announced that they’d stop enforcing that federal law, and Vice President JD Vance told tens of thousands of anti-abortion activists at the March for Life that they would “never have the government go after them ever again.” — from another Valenti Substack post about the rise an anti-abortion violence. Republicans are not the law and order party. More from Valenti in this old article.
Just last week, the DOJ announced that the Biden administration arresting forced-birth protesters at clinics was religious persecution. No, it was arresting people who break the law, as witness nobody’s getting arrested for preaching that abortion is wrong.
Valenti again: “U.S. House Republicans have introduced legislation that would make it illegal for women to flush their miscarriage or abortion remains when using mifepristone. The Clean Water for All Life Act, introduced by Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, would instead require women to use “catch kits” when their pregnancy is ending—forcing them to bag up that tissue and blood and bring it back to the doctor as medical waste.” This accomplishes nothing in terms of protecting forded birthers’ beloved fetuses but it will make it easier to hurt and oppress women. “They want women who end their pregnancies at home to be shamed, and what better way to do that than to force them to bag up their own blood?”
“The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Thursday that it is investigating 13 states that require state-regulated health insurance plans to cover abortion services.”
“A Tennessee woman says Ascension St. Thomas Midtown canceled her scheduled sterilization surgery Friday morning hours after she had been admitted and an IV had been placed. The woman said she had been seeking a salpingectomy — a surgery that removes the fallopian tubes — after years of trying other birth control options. “Since I was young, I’ve never wanted kids. And I’ve wanted to pursue sterilization since I learned that that was something that a person could do,” she said. “I’ve tried a lot of different options for birth control. None of them have worked for me.” — from a woman who was denied sterilization at the last minute because the hospital ethics committee “cited a ‘duty to protect her sacred fertility.'”
Hospitals’ willingness to investigate minority pregnant women for drug use has encouraged the erosion of reproductive rights.
From a couple of years back, JD Vance explains rape victims should be forced to bear their rapist’s child — it doesn’t matter that the child’s birth is a problem for society. Which erases the fact it’s a problem for the women.
Or consider Stephen Miller’s equally loathsome wife Katie Miller who recently lamented that “Since 2007, the teen birth rate has fallen 72 percent. Hormonal birth control isn’t just poison for women’s minds and bodies — it’s killing population growth.” It used to be the right opposed teenagers using contraception because they opposed them having sex. Now they see them as breeders for the right race — and, of course, getting a girl saddled with a baby will kill her chance of independence (Katie Miller would, I suspect, be fine with a Handmaid’s Tale future — provided she got to be a wife, rather than a handmaid).
Mother Jones responds to Miller’s assertion that “You don’t need to wait for that perfect moment to have kids, you just need to have them.”: “It would take reams upon reams to unpack the arrogance of Miller’s assertions. But it’s her last claim, that women “just need to have” kids and forget the factors that go into the decision-making process, that elides the legitimate and troubling reasons why so many of us can’t decide. A short list: anxiety over the climate crisis, conflicts over career ambitions, the physical stresses, regret over the first one, and fears of identity loss. Then there are the brutal realities of having a child in a country lacking family-friendly policies: paid family leave, affordable child care, flexible working arrangements, and access to affordable fertility treatments.”
Ms. Magazine has some thoughts on fighting back: “Applying King’s arguments to current day abortion laws, we can ask several questions: Do abortion bans uplift or degrade human personality? Do they “distort the soul and damage the human personality?” Do they give people supporting them “a false sense of superiority” and make people seeking abortion feel “a false sense of inferiority?” Do they “substitute an ‘I -it’ relationship for the ‘I -thou’ relationship, and relegate persons to the status of things?” I would answer an emphatic “yes” to all of these questions.”
Filed under Politics, Undead sexist cliches
First, Jack Gaughan’s cover — weirder, I think, than many of his, though the lack of background is typical of his work.
Second, Ed Veligursky’s cover foreshadowing the world of climate change.
Third, a nicely weird looking but uncredited cover.
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