things to rage against
I de-capitalized the title, which is better than decapitating it perhaps, as I seem to do with a lot of my online writing lately. I just feel more drawn to lower case, for a while, so it's a good thing this one's got Is.
over the past few days or so, I've assembled a small list of pet grievances that make life feel to me just weirder and weirder. where are we living. what is this world.
one thing i found strange and unpleasant was the morbid way the media, starting with netflix, is bandying around that actor's last words clip. have you seen it? while als is a terrible illness that does need more awareness, i don't think recording a man in its last stages struggling to put together words (theoretically aimed at his daughters) and having it go viral is doing it. the inhumanity of it. here's this man's last words to his kids. because we live in an era where nothing is private, where intimacy needs to go viral if it's to have any meaning at all. it's just madness. the way people are sharing it like it's the best thing on earth? why? from what i've heard, he's not saying anything revolutionary or groundbreaking - be kind, take advantage of every moment, love.
aren't we a bit old to be gawping and applauding such simple words just because someone is dead? and what use, if our understanding of live the moment (as you should because you could, indeed, end up forgetting how to speak in a wheelchair) translates to share it on instagram then spend the next hours checking what reactions you got.
another thing that adds to my sense of confusion and disconnection from this digital world was, listening to a podcast i really enjoy, bella freud's fashion neurosis, the 90 minute recording had to be interrupted three times to tell us how amazing claude ai is and how you should definitely subscribe if you haven't already. i love the show because it blends together psychology and fashion, two subjects i'm interested in, and reveals a very candid, open, intimate and real side of famous faces.
the people who watch this kind of thing, presumably, do so because they enjoy bella's elegance, insight and genuine human anecdotes that are shared. is it really our main issue right now that we don't use enough technology and ai? i hardly think so. if i'm taking these ninety minutes to hopefully connect and find kinship in this kind of dialogue, do i really need a reminder that i should be chatting to ai? it seems mad to me.
another thing i found baffling was, i tried to read a recommended book for a course by one of the professors - sarah hill. talking about hormonal health, periods and other fun stuff targeted specifically at women. something i'm very keen to learn more about. only to have to put it down within the first chapter because she felt the need to clarify she meant "biological females" and meant no disrespect at all, whatsoever, to anyone who might identify as a fruitbat of some kind. i thought, really? you're a scientist, writing a book about how hormones affect the female body specifically, and trying to provide women some help understanding complex stuff, and yet you feel pulled to apologize and perform a public mea culpa for not including anyone who -even if transitioned - wouldn't be in this category anyway?
i find it strange and, as the kids say, cringe, how humanity has become a sort of taboo luxury fetish. how we peddle ai slop to one another and don't feel awful about it. or pretend we don't, anyway. how we're so desperately driven by peer pressure and toeing the line that we say it's blue when it's obviously green.
little, tiny madnesses, but they add up, don't they?
do we really regard nothing as sacred anymore? have we lost the concept of shame? but also, that of nobility? of beauty in our human condition? strange times we're living in, that's for sure, and i felt the need to share. thanks for reading if you've made it this far.
contrary to appearance, i'm actually a really happy, positive sort of person. i'm having a terribly nice day, but dumb shit sure does get even the happiest of us down, don't it.
how's your sunday?
The infection of hard science by wokeism undermines a field that is supposed to be a search for truth.
If a scientist believes, or even feels they have to pay lip service to the entirely false concept that sex is anything other than biological, set before birth, then they corrupt their entire work.
I was just thinking the other day how science first started out, how exciting this search for truth must've been. And now. A shame, I was looking forward to her class.
I couldn't do academia ever again. It was becoming policy to not gender authors when quoting them. "For clarity".
No, it wasn't.
Keep smiling, it is free. :) (Apart from the calories needed to move the muscles)
How the fuck is that clarity :)) i get confused by all the they/thems even when they are linguistically correct and necessary.
Oh, I am. Lots of reasons to smile. Sing. Or at least hum. It's an interesting life.
Tut tut.
I am glad life is interesting.
It is my number one problem, being distracted by wanting to delve deeply into even the most mundane things, like the bright yellow tape on the floor of the train in my periphery as I write this, and the process of its manufacture and installation.
Yay to the lower case. I get shitty with capitals - they're so self important. And who decided a capital should be at teh start of a sentence like some inflated egotistic wanker. Surely the full stop of the preceding sentence is enough - why the overkill?
I'm guilty of voyeurism - I want to know how someone died. But then, dammit, clickbait is to blame - if we're dumb enough to click on tempters that news agencies know we'll click on as they understand these base human needs for story and drama so they can suck us in to sell ads, then, well .... I'm not sure where I'm going with this but we're all guilty of wanting to know. Maybe it's because we like to know others are suffering in the way we do, or that they're suffering more than us, or what we'd do in that situation - some misguided empathy perhaps... but perhaps the danger is in more when we turn ourselves away and no longer care.
I definitely wouldn't click on that though, to be fair. That's going way too far. They shouldn't even ethically be putting that out there. I was reading how Steve Irwin's death was filmed but it was never put out there out of respect, but I tell you what if it was it would have been watched a gazillion times.
People feel the need to be apologetic, to cover their bases.
With some things.
I was considering a case in Perth where a chef decided not to serve vegans or cater for vegans. The article presented it as if he was some kind of hero, like it was too hard for him to whip up a spagetti with olive oil and gar;ic and a side salad for the one poor vegan who might have been invited to a family dinner at the one steakhouse in town. All the comments were lauding him as some kind of fucking hero, like yay, vegans are assholes anyway, so demanding. We can literally and metaphorically cater for some groups, but notothers, depending on where our vitriol is aimed.
We want and need to know for sure. It's comforting in a perverse way. As for that vegan thing, people are just polarized andncontrarian. We need someone to rage against and punish so we settle on piddly differences like diet. I'm afraid until we stop falling for this bs, we won't be progressing...