INTERESTING TIMES

Back in the Old Great Depression young people moved back to their families.  They could not afford rent, so they went where the roof over their head was paid for.  They took care of their elders, scrounged for food and supplies, and did whatever they could do to keep the households afloat. 

A similar process is of returning home is happening now.  Many college age kids have returned to nests recently emptied.  Older children area also returning home, or staying home instead of setting out into the world.  They settle into a spare room, use the internet, eat the food.  Some exert themselves to take care of their parents or grandparents or siblings who are less able, and do the work that needs to be done around the house.  The richer and more entitled ones hunker down with gaming or other internet pursuits and refuse to even grocery shop.  The internet is the difference.  Back in the Old days our best avoidant distractions were books, now in the New it is the bottomless pit of sex and violence and disinformation that is the internet.  A mind-corrupting abundance of dopamine hits.  Back in the Old days the youth still had a work ethic that included the possibility of picking up a rake or a hoe or a hammer.  Now in the New days the youth think they should have gotten rich and famous somehow but they didn't, and now they don't know what to do.

Granted, the distancing requirements and loss of employment are especially hard on young people who are just getting their feet wet in the world.  But I have to put it out there that there are things worth learning and exploring at home.  Elders have things to teach.  Knowing how to build a wall, fix a pipe, or grow a vegetable garden, these are valuable skills.  Sure, you grew up in a time when your parents hired someone else to build and repair the house, and you got your groceries wrapped in plastic from a grocery, or already prepared from a restaurant.  But food grows from the earth, you too can grow it.  Animal food has to be butchered--are you ready to kill your meat?  This is your chance to learn some things that have been progressively more forgotten over the last 5 generations in America.  It's a good time to be able to subsist.

Back in the Old Great Depression, people got happier.  Several different studies noticed this change.  I have lots of theories about why this was true.  I suspect that being forced to work out differences with your families helps people grow up.  Instead of remaining a petulant child who has it your way but lives alone, you can learn to live with others and understand and respect their point of view.  I think that growing up takes us to a happier place.  I think that having honest, real, loving relationships with the people you know best is the strongest foundation of happiness.

During the Old Great Depression businesses closed but there was no pandemic.  In the New Great Depression we know that when the virus finds our ailing and elderly relatives, they will die.  This is a very hard thing.  I am mourning already for people that I talk to every day.  I know that someone dear to me will die, it is only a matter of time.  Back in the Old days people were dying at a normal rate.  Now we are dying by the thousands and we're nowhere near done with that yet.  The deep sadness is pervasive.

I'm happy to read that California colleges are adopting this new standard which says that in order to not be rape, sexual interaction may occur when both partners are conscious and actively consenting. I hope that this new standard is widely adopted and eventually becomes law for the nation, not just a few colleges.

My partner points out that it does not remove the possibility of a "he said she said" standoff in court, and this is true. It requires education, so that everyone knows that it is the standard, and support such that all persons feel empowered to say "no" when they want to.

What this standard does, in my mind at least, is raise the bar ever so slightly for aggressors seeking sex. It removes the defense "She didn't say no" from play. I have been appalled to see that a raped woman cannot get justice unless she gets hurt. If she is not injured, and does not have ejaculate on her, then the court could find "no evidence" that she was raped. Requiring that a woman be injured or that there be witnesses who heard her screaming "no" before you believe that she was raped is a terrible baseline, but in practicality it plays out this way. This is why even in our supposedly open culture most raped women do not seek legal recourse. It's not worth it.

I would like to believe that a good lawyer or judge can elicit signs of the truth from a person even when they are trying to hide it. I would like to think that attentive jurors will instinctively know when someone is lying. Perhaps I am too idealistic about our court system, and it malfunctions more than it functions.

There's nothing direct or simple about the way sexuality plays out in our culture and legal system. Messy is more the word for it. Within a relationship that has been sexual in the past, men do take advantage, and women do submit in order to not be hurt. That submission is not consent. For young men who have no partner, the situation is worse. I have read that many young American men today are angry at women because they cannot get the sex they want. One such young man took up a gun to express his anger. Intense desire is normal, but such anger is dangerous. Modern youth partake of online porn that gives them an unrealistic view of sex and does not educate them on the delicacies of dating or seduction. It is an unhealthy situation, and this standard does nothing to resolve it. Who is going to teach the young people how to talk to each other, to be respectful, and to flirt gracefully? I do not know. I only know that the social structures that used to educate us about proper mating behavior have fallen apart, and nothing has taken their place.

At least here raped women are not stoned to death, though I can comprehend how this would be better for the males in a patriarchal system. She can't complain if she's dead. At least in colleges in California, "yes means yes" is an excellent new dividing line between consent and submission or worse.

Here: https://www.rxisk.org/Default.aspx
Looks like an interesting new site. Not sure how scientific or clinically useful it will turn out to be.

Made of nude men (not x-rated):
http://lovedbdb.com/nudemenClock/index2.html
Click it and it switches between analog and digital.

I don't know much about this bill, but I ran across this today: 87% of Wikipedians despise the bill and support a Wikipedia Blackout to protest it. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and it goes before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee this Thursday, December 15.

I can relate that at the public library in the town of my birth, if you type "finish it" the computer system changes your "sh it" to xxxx. Pain in the A$$. But I have a feeling that's not the kind of censorship that's coming down the pipe on this one. Can anyone give me a primer on what this law would really do? I'd appreciate it.

I'm between an iphone and a cheap prepaid phone. I now have an LG. I could live without texting though it is cool. My finances are uncertain, so it is tempting to live on the cheap to sustain. On the other hand, it is tempting to get the tools that are likely to make me most successful, and the iphone could be one of those tools. What say you?
( notes on what you guys say will accumulate )