Reality cut into online time again...I did not actually watch videos, but was able to hear some.
Animals
Yellowstone Park is alive with babies of all kinds, all bubbling and squeaking.
Remember the Purple Leash Project? Want to welcome its new, gorgeous spox?
Or do you remember it and just want to send it some money already?
Farm & Garden
There are probably some flaws with this aphid baffler...
Graphic from Joe Jackson. I looked for more informative articles, which this idea seemed to deserve. Most of what Google pulled up were Facebook posts with the colorful pictures. I did find an early study of what seems to be this summer's breaking news in natural pest control. This writer did the science back in 2024 and explains how the rainbow nets work, working with red, red and white, and red and black strips only:
A 2017 study found that colored netting kept various pests off tomatoes. The 2017 study seems to have piqued Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who has been posting the pretty pictures on F******k. The "different brilliant colors" do seem to be a brilliant idea, though obviously they'd have to be applied at the right time to avoid blocking or confusing pollinators. The pests can get through the nets, physically, but they're not sure that they want to. They are too confused by the unexpected colors. Apparently the colored netting also is free from a chemical older white netting used to release, which reportedly attracted some nuisance insects.
Will nuisance insects evolve an ability to find food through confusing nets? Likely. Con suerte by then we've all rejected poison sprays, so predator populations are rebalanced and things like aphids won't be serious problems anyway.
I mean to say...aphids. Tiny helpless things you can usually disperse, killing several, by holding your thumb across the garden hose to deliver pressurized spray to the target rosebud, or whatever is attracting enough aphids to qualify collectively as a pest. How is it possible for aphids to become a serious problem? With modern technology it's easy. With modern technology the corn earworm can become a serious pest--by repeated spraying that destroys predator populations. Their being a serious problem is not something that happens in nature, the way occasional plagues of grasshoppers do. The problem is human-made so, in theory, it might be human-corrected.
Farmers are afraid to stop spraying poison before their neighbors do. I can understand this. I remember, the year we lived in a suburb, coming home from school with the usual handful of ladybirds, only to find that a neighbor had sprayed poison. Ladybirds I'd carried home from school were dying; dying aphids were, with their last hours of life, completely covering up one of my rosebuds. (Out with the garden hose and...I didn't have as many roses as expected, but I had some pretty ones.) Neighborly communication is important. That year I was lucky; the man next door was the then-stereotypical nine-to-five grouch, but his wife thought we children were amusing, so next weekend my brother and I laid all Dad had taught us about organic gardening on her. Mother helped her make sense of the infodump, We spent the rest of the summer in the suburb. We children were allowed to rake all the trimmings and prunings off the neighbors' yard and they didn't spray any more. If children going into grades one and five can work out these things in a neighborly way, grown-up farmers can, too.
Ideas, Very Bad (see also Politics)
John Scalzi explains, succinctly, why Visa's letting ChatGPT shop for owners of the card and the app is a very bad idea...down below obituaries for two other writers, RIP. (Jane Yolen wasn't a favorite of mine in the way that Ursula K. LeGuin or Suzette Haden Elgin or Anne McCaffrey were, but she was a favorite of many readers'; she was good at the kind of writing she did.)
Music
Taylor Swift.
Queen.
Pink Floyd.
The Rolling Stones.
Simon & Garfunkel.
Anne Bloom.
Aukai.
Emancipator.
Van Morrison--a whole live concert. Almost 90 minutes.
Moody Blues.
Randy Newman.
David Bay.
Bubblegum Crisis.
Local band someone posted on the Mirror: Delmarva Big Band.
Avishai Cohen.
Daniel Norgren.
Takuya Kuroda.
Paul Simon.
Politics
A certain political party really does come across like, "All of our actual policy ideas are bad, and we know it but our sponsors are making us stick to these bad ideas, but we really really REALLY HATE the other party's man." This is such an unappealing message that now if any of this party's candidates wins anything, people automatically say that they must've cheated. Endorsement by the Party of Oh How We Hate Trump is starting to count heavily against anybody. Hate has yet to give anything or anybody curb appeal.
But surely some day the sheer vein-popping effort of carrying around so much hate must bring them some benefit, they brayed...
Ds. Please. Try intelligent debate. Show us some plans to cushion the shock of the necessary budget cuts, to keep Social Security disability pensions, to defend the environment from wasteful data mining centers. Stop quibbling about theoretical models of global climate change--is it warming or cooling this year?--and build showers and closets into government offices to reward employees who walk to work in sweaty weather. Get tough on chemical spraying. Deport foreigners who try to ensnare us in their tribal wars. Stop insulting and alienating women by calling abortion a "right," much less making it the only one of our civil rights you do anything about. Without trying to regress back to the one-size-fits-none, no-choice, government-run model for elementary schools, find ways to broaden the choice of schools open to poor children. Get the cost of a college education back to where every 17-year-old who has academic talent can afford to be educated for an academic career. We need two viable parties. And if you want to punish Trump for his recent bad decisions, ignore him.
Role Confusion
While the young woman lacks the life experience to explain what she's talking about, both young men seem completely lost:
How can men lead if women are in control? Here's the deal: Women want a man who can lead but we do know that most of the poor things were not given that ability. Some women settle for relationships where they have to lead. Some hold out for a man we feel able to trust and follow. However, men do NOT become leaders merely by bellowing "I'm bigger so I should be the leader." We say, "Then just line up behind the ox and the mule." Men become leaders by demonstrating leadership abilities over time. Yes, the first several dates are job interviews for which you're paying; if it's any consolation to you boys, the first several dates usually aren't as much fun as going to the same places alone would be for the girl, either. Yes, a crucial leadership skill men have to demonstrate is not ever even suggesting any activity that could cause a baby to be born before marriage. Yes, the minute you start jittering around like that old pop group, wanting to "go All The Way, Roseanna," you put yourselves in the position of followers, for life. Yes, if you stay out of that trap, we're impressed, and we begin to build the kind of trust that will eventually make (a few of you) the leaders in your families.
Great harm has been done by confused Christians who tell young women that the man is supposed to be the leader in every home or that all wives need to be, or can be, submissives. That is one way a marriage can work but, in reality, things are seldom so cut-and-dried as they are in theory. There's another pattern where both men and women who take charge on a job crave opportunities to lie back, relax, and let their mates take the lead at home. There are many functional families, that even tolerate a little ridicule from the ignorant, where the man is submissive--and in d/s relationships between people who are free and over age 21, the submissive partner is the one in control, and the other one will be the leader whether she likes it or not. There are all sorts of permutations, not to mention perversions, within d/s relationships. And yes, there are couples who stay together, drawn by friendship and carnal passion and responsibility for their children, on a try-to-be-equal basis. Men who don't want to be the leaders don't have to be.
Men who do aspire to be leaders would do well to study the Bible story of Abraham. It would be a good topic for a book a Christian man ought to write. Abraham was commended for his ability to lead a household that included his own father and a platoon of servants, but it seems to have taken either a crisis or a clear command from God to get Abraham to tell anybody to do anything. Even as a religious teacher, a prophet, his style was to parade around showing people how his flocks and herds prospered even though he sacrificed firstborn lambs and goat kids rather than sons. Abraham gave people a good example to follow. Mostly, it seems, they didn't follow very well. His wives and children, except for Isaac, do not seem to have been especially enlightened people. Ishmael was said to be a prophet of the One God but even the Arabs allow that he was not a very effective one. The mere existence of Ishmael was a reminder to Abraham of the trouble he got into by, far from telling less enlightened people what they ought to do, letting them tell him what to do, for the sake of peace. Abraham was the old man who sat in front of his tent, not even the riding boss supervising the herds...except when his less than faithful foster son was in danger. Then he took command of his own private army. Probably the mere idea of Abraham giving orders was enough to shock people into following those orders.
In contrast to Abraham we have Nabal, who might have been given a better name at birth but was known as The Fool, who threw his weight around when David asked for provisions. If Nabal's wife and servants hadn't ignored Nabal's bellowing and bullying, as they were probably in the habit of doing, David's men might have burned the house over Nabal's head. As things were, the fact that nobody took his attempts to be the boss seriously apparently sent Nabal into a fatal stroke...and everybody rejoiced.
Furthermore, for any of my Insane Admirers who may be reading this...If women who really want leaders attract men whom we are never going to follow, though they are appealing on a strictly superficial level, this creates a sort of sex-free female-dominant friendship that seems to be deeply gratifying to some men. I've had a few male friends I called slaves--to their faces. They liked being called that. I suppose it trivialized the suffering of people who were literally enslaved against their wills, and "followers" would have been a better word. Bottom line: if you're the friend who's always willing to drive for me and my date, move my furniture, take my computer to the shop, etc. etc. etc., you are appreciated in a way. A day will come when you need someone to stay with you in the hospital, baby-sit your niece, take your dog to the vet, etc. etc. etc. I will do those things. I always have cared for each and every follower I ever had. But I never felt the least little hint of physical attraction to any of them.
Shame
Over the weekend I heard a report on gangs of mostly Pakistani, but including other Muslim countries, immigrants "grooming" English schoolgirls for the unenviable life of prostitutes in Muslim society. In some of the tribal customs Islam has historically tolerated, women and sometimes men who were "corrupted" by adults before they were even half grown, in order to be marketable at puberty, were blamed and punished for all the sins adults made them commit, told that they can't hope to go to Heaven, and then generally treated like dirt for the rest of their usually short lives. And some sections of British and American society have historically tolerated these customs, too; but, THANKS TO FEMINISM, we now recognize this form of child abuse as an intolerable evil.
Reports of this crime were allegedly censored for seventy years. Well, when people tolerate censorship, that sort of thing is possible. Censorship never exists to protect the innocent. Any attempt at reparations to women needs to begin with a renunciation of censorship.
(There should be no talk of reparations to anybody else until all males have made reparations to all females. For example, by way of compensation for all the bullying inflicted on female property owners, if we're going to talk about "reparations" all land should be owned by females.)
Can I believe that the crime went on? I can. I say this although, and because, as a "vulnerable" young woman of twenty-one I was positively rescued by Muslims who all, without exception, behaved as honorably toward me as it is possible for human beings to behave; although, and because, my personal rags-to-riches story involved Muslims who stepped in and supported my work in a way my biological relatives should have done, but didn't. Muslims are capable of behaving honorably toward men and toward women. They are capable of being the best friends, the best adoptive brothers and sisters, anyone could hope to have. At the same time some of the same Muslims--not most, but some--are capable of behaving shamefully toward people they judge to be morally inferior. Even if a prostitute was doped, raped, and tortured at age ten, they think, the fact that she (or he) did not immediately commit suicide, but did what per abusers demanded person do, shows that person is an inferior grade of human being who should be spat on. In many tribal traditions of primitive thought, if a really good person is raped, she or he will prove that person really is virtuous by committing suicid.
I can say, at the risk of sounding like one of those morons who babble about "safety" meaning never going out alone, that there are a few things adults can teach "vulnerable" girls to do to make themselves seem less "vulnerable" and more respectable. The early teen years, the first few years when people live or work on their own, and the years when women are nursing babies, are vulnerable periods of life but some proactive self-defense is possible. Stop staring into people's eyes, for a start. The line between sharia-compliant and "trashy" dressing is so broad as to be diffuse, but don't be the one who shows most skin or wears most bondage-inspired styles in your neighborhood. Don't flirt with people you don't know well; if they're nice people and find you attractive, flirting is cruel, while if they're cruel people... Don't scream and shout acros the street. Say no to all drugs. However sorry or trashy or no-account or drunken or even abusive your parents may be, don't say anything disrespectful of your parents to people outside the family, or participate in a conversation where they do. Have a posse; be seen as a social leader. Be independent--a feminist. Be modest about your religious affiliation, but affirm it with modest pride.
Television and the Internet give us the model of young women who make money by going on stage in what appears to be underwear, simulating sex with a microphone, wailing about how they "need" men...understand that, if you've not been offered a "celebrity" contract that includes all kinds of security, this is not the way to liberation for you. My generation used to sing a song that was about defining your image as a musician, not avoiding "grooming gangs," but the same principle applies: "You can't dress 'trashy' till you spend a lot of money." The more vulnerable and penniless and desperate you feel, the more you need to avoid any form of nonverbal communication, including clothes styles, that comes from the general set of styles and behaviors classified as "trashy." "Redneck chic" and "ghetto style" and even actual vice are options for people who don't know themselves to be "vulnerable." If you just want to feel safe and loved, don't imitate that kind of people.
Americans especially grow up believing that we were all created equal. The people Britain originally called "conservatives" didn't agree with this. Some tribal customs in countries now considered Muslim actively dispute it. In my adoptive brother's native language there are completely different vocabularies for people of different levels of social status. At one point in England it was documented that British society had been influenced by this to the extent that a female Brit described herself as a lady who was insulted by being referred to as a woman. Well, in some parts of Asia there are different words for male adults, elders, children, the things these people do and the things they use, and of course different pronouns, that work the way "lady" and "woman" worked for that wretched Englishwoman. The differences of caste are ingrained in the way people think. As a language learner you're taught that this older man, as it might be your father or your tutor's father, is a shaykh and another older man is a buzzud, and nobody even explains what the difference is; they think it's obvious. Shaykh means an old honorable gentleman and buzzud means an old useless wretch, and there's no sense that these categories might overlap or that people who fit into these categories have a lot in common. And the gap between the females is even wider. As a language learner you're likely to be taught enough different words for respectable women of different ages and social levels that you're supposed to forget about the words for less respectable women, most of which aren't used in polite conversation anyway.
Relevance to UK or US families concerned about these gangs? Well, first of all, it's one of those widespread natural phenomena where, for overlapping sets A and B, very few A are also B, but most B are also A. Most celiacs aren't schizophrenic but about one-third of classic schizophrenics are celiacs. Most Muslims despise prostitutes (admit it, most of the rest of us do too) but they don't belong to the gangs that actively recruit non-Muslim children into that lifestyle. My Muslim friends shunned women they perceived as "dirty" or defiled, rather than abusing them.
But. In the Virginia sense of the word, at least, any female can choose to be a lady--not a wimpy female but a female born and brought up to wield power, albeit in a gracious way. (Trans-folk can choose to act like ladies, too, and will encounter much less prejudice if they do.) It is a matter of personal choice; not merely, as some feminists have complained, a matter of which men you're related to. If you didn't grow up with a father who was, at least in the US sense, a gentleman, it takes more conscious learning and choice. If at least one of your parents does not have a pedigree with an unbroken line of descent from someone who came to Virginia a good long time ago, you'll never be a Virginia lady; but you can choose to be someone Virginians will recognize as a lady. If you do, yes, I'd expect that Muslims would recognize you as one too. This is a good thing and has practical benefits. But, as a lady, you can't condone the way a small minority of Muslims are actively encouraging others to treat women they do not perceive as ladies. A lady is responsible for rewarding good and discouraging evil.
As a Virginia lady I cry shame on these Muslims. As a Virginian who appreciates loyalty, who was shown respect by Muslims as a child and friendship with Muslims as a young beginner-in-life, I say that these evildoers have brought dishonor on all Muslims. Even on my friends, and my parents' friends. With love and loyalty and respect for those friends I call for a policy that recognizes the shame these men have brought on the countries and religious tradition they claim.
We all need to consider what the Koran actually teaches about men and women. We have heard recently that a certain religious teacher claims that it teaches that women are "chattel" and "animals." This quote is probably being taken out of context. Too many Arabists say that the Koran teaches that God made men and women spiritually equal, though women are physically weaker, and that because sinful mortals considered women's work less valuable than men's certain concessions to male supremacism had been allowed. We need to require Muslims admitted to our country, or countries, to reflect at length on the fact that we no longer consider women's work less valuable than men's, and its corollaries, such as
* Men's upper body strength used to make them superior to women as laborers; now it makes them inferior to machines. Women pay taxes to maintain public places. Women would, normally, have equally as much right to access to public places...
* ...if men had not misbehaved in public places, creating suspicion and requiring men to be very circumspect, even apologetic, if we choose to continue to allow unsupervised men to be out in public space at all. In the presence of any American female, even an infant, a foreign male should bow his head and shut his mouth.
* Whether men, as a class, can be law-abiding enough to deserve civil rights has been called into question by their hatecrimes against women. Some men obviously belong in all-male work camps and should be in those. Men allowed to move freely among free people, live with families, go to school, vote, etc., need to clean up their behavior. The question is not "Why did those cowardly men sit in their seats while a man stood up and stabbed Iryna Zarutska?" but "What were the murderer and those other unaccompanied men doing in train cars that have seats?"
* Although we thank veterans for their service, the superior value of males as soldiers consists of their disposability. Biologically we can do without men. No man should ever for a moment forget this.
* So long as people think in terms of social status, they need to think of their own social status as the lowest. The Maharajah of Rajput therefore has lower status than a welfare mother's neglected four-year-old in the US, and must demonstrate that he has learned to behave accordingly. A renowned medical doctor from Bombay who comes here to do volunteer work with homeless patients is lower in status than his patients are. Although this is mostly a way of thinking that everyone can ignore once the newcomer has overcome tendencies to feel superior to others, behavior that demeans Americans should never be tolerated. We don't bow. You do.
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