House of Eratosthenes

As our society has become feminized, everything is drenched in politics. You see it with the NFL protest debacle. Men watch sports to enjoy seeing men compete with one another in ritualized combat. Men don’t care about what the combatants think about anything, including the combat. Interviews with coaches are to be focused on the strategy of the game, not the guy’s feelings about life. Player interviews are only interesting because most players are black now, so they say wacky and stupid things.
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In a feminine society like ours, it is just a matter of time before masculine things like sports are either made girlish or relegated to the fringe. Boxing, for example, still exists, but only as a fringe sport done by foreigners. UFC has managed to gain an audience, but again, it is as a renegade activity, done underground and on pay-per-view. White mothers will never be taking their sons to UFC camp. They can tolerate martial arts, just as long as it is white boys in bathrobes, safely pretending to be Jackie Chan.

This is why football is so much trouble. Peak professional football was probably a dozen years ago. It was around then that white mothers, especially divorced middle-class mothers, started turning against youth football. They did not want their little baby being run over by black kids. That’s why the concussion hysteria gained traction. It’s a ready made excuse for pulling the white kids out of football, that lets white women pretend it is not racism driving their decision. After all, they loved Will Smith in the concussion movie!

It’s why the NFL’s decision to let their blacks kneel during the anthem is going to be a disaster for them. The owners signed off on it thinking it added drama and would therefore draw in girls, because girls and girly-men like drama. Instead, those kneeling black players are a stark reminder to white women that the sport of football is for violent black men, not nice suburban white boys. Youth participation in football is collapsing and this will only serve to accelerate it. The NFL has now made football anti-white and un-American.

Let us start here with where I find it more difficult to agree, before proceeding to the other. I do find the pigeonholing to be troublesome. I try to avoid it myself, which I’m sure is an effort that doesn’t show. But, to say “women act this way and men act that way,” while the observation may be true 90% of the time or more, the 90% is on a noticeable decline year after year, precisely because of the forces at work identified here by Z. As the pinking continues, men are acting more like women and, conversely, women are acting more like men.

I would be remiss in failing to mention this in light of recent events. Just this week our ground floor office was invaded by a mouse. Being immersed in porting one change at a time over the last two months from one application to another application, a process that is many times more tedious than the dreaded documentation, I was gradually made aware of the rodent incursion by way of the loudness of the human reactions, over the better part of an hour. From the dudes, I noticed…the manly, manly, green-camo-wearing, boot-camp-surviving, returned-from-deployment, maybe-killed-somebody dudes…they were, as we say in military and military-contractor parlance, fucking loud.

I couldn’t help but notice the chicks in our office were as “manly” as you would care to expect. They just kept eyes down, photocopying their invoices or whatever like it was any other day. The chatter came from the Y-chromosome set. Now it’s true that the greatest portion of this was volume-setting-eleven observations that some other dude, let it be known, is afraid of mice. That, and banging on the locked office cubicle into which the illegal alien ensconced itself to scare it back out again. Perhaps this is in contrast to the noise the females would be making, if they made the noise, but see…there is the sticky wicket. I wouldn’t know. The chicks, contrary to the cartoon stereotype, were quiet about it. People call me sexist sometimes. With justification, they & some others would say. But, I do notice these things, and give credit where it’s due. If the image of the screeching woman perched atop a chair yelling her fool head off was ever based on reality in generations past — something has changed.

So I don’t like using references to male behavior and female behavior. They do exist…but, we’re losing them and at a pretty good clip. The average age in my work setting is roughly half of mine, my boss is younger than I am, and I’m not on safe ground making references to popular culture as recent as…hmmm, the last one to give me trouble. The older Robocop, yeah. See? So part of writing is making sure people understand what you’re talking about, and I succeed at that game roughly half the time if I really try. “Fight like a man,” these days, refers to something like a nerd-slap-fight. I’m thinking Sean Connery throwing a vicious right hook, my audience might very well think, I dunno…get kidnapped so some girl has to rescue you or something.

Writing for humans is like writing an interface for a new code library. Make the function calls easy to understand, hard to misunderstand…

Everybody's Equal But We're In Charge I did not make this problem. The Z-Man didn’t make it either. We did not make it so that “manly-behavior” and “womanly-behavior” have lost all meaning and can no longer be used to reliably communicate thoughts in writing. Feminism did that, and it did it by design. This is part of its own internal contradiction, the thing that makes it inherently dysfunctional even according to its own rules. Men, you see, are entirely disposable because women are strong, and capable of doing everything men can do…and yet, at the same time, any distinctions between the two are culturally driven, arbitrary, unnatural and therefore invalid. The two sexes are the same in every way, it’s just that one of them is so much better and should be running things.

It can’t work. Ever. Not really. And yet when it fails, it’s all your fault.

To the other part of it: Yes parents, of both sexes I would argue, weenied out of football. I’ll go along with the idea that the moms started this, although I have doubts about the racial angle. From having lived through it at the time, from my vantage point it looked like the whole crushing mob-think initiative of “Everything the baby does must be 100% safe.” The peanut-allergy thing rather mystified me, although I lost no time in linking it to helicopter-mom new-wives-tale fever. Soy! Herbs! Oh heavens no, keep the baby away from that…what’s this? A local girl dropped dead from eating peanut butter? What’s going on? I can get that kids get tender when they’re deprived of a challenge, but that’s evolution, which even on the micro scale takes thousands and thousands of years…what is this? Well it turns out, I wasn’t far off at all. Kids are supposed to eat peanuts and when they grow into teen-hood without them, that’s where the trouble starts. And, well yes, that’s what happened to football. As a childhood sport, it’s something Those Other Kids can play. That’s because trips to the emergency room are things Those Other Parents can do.

So now the team owners are outsmarting themselves, according to Z-Man’s theory. All sexes are the same but the females should be running things, so goes the conventional wisdom…where the female sensibilities go, so goes society. So let’s inject some drama into football and get the girls to watch. I find this delicious, because it’s even more sexually discriminatory than I am — no mean feat, that, heh heh. And it’s roughly akin to a housefly taking a shortcut through a web.

Chicks are watching football already. Or, they were. But when they watch, they’re interested in the same things that interest the guys. Combat. Not drama.

We cannot safely associate this behavior with females anymore now that the guys are doing it too. But, we need to observe it, take note of it. You can’t form a solution to a problem until you define what the problem is. This “pinkwashing” is not confined to the relatively tiny wash-bucket that is football, it’s splashing around and hitting everything inside & outside of the car, in the yard, the garage, the house.

It’s even infecting the “science,” I notice:

The researchers conducted three experiments in which undergraduate students were required to perform tasks. In one, students were asked to search online for a blender and report the lowest price they could find with the possibility of winning a cash prize. The price search task was rigged, however, and a computer would inform all participants that the lowest price was $3.27 less than what they found. All failed to win the $50 cash prize.

Some participants were asked to focus on emotions as they learned the results and others their cognitive response, such as rationalizing factors for why they didn’t succeed. During the next similar task, participants that focused on their emotional response to failing exerted more effort than those who emphasized a cognitive response.

“I do think people will be surprised that allowing themselves to feel bad about a failure can improve performance more than thinking about that failure in some instances,” Nelson said. “The kinds of thoughts — like rationalizing a failure — people tend to come up with are sometimes counterproductive.”

This time, let’s talk first about where I agree.

I can see some merit to this, especially if the computer rigged the game the first go-round. Anger, it is often said, is where people stop being poor and start putting together a plan to manage their household finances more responsibly. Anger is where people stop gaining weight and get motivated to start losing it. It is a form of self-loathing that carries a certain radiant heat not found in the other kind of anger, the anger directed at others. I suppose this kind of passion is just like money, or love; whatever problems you have that result from not having enough of it, more of the stuff will fix just those problems. Just those, no others. But, more of whatever’s missing will fix the problems that came about because it was missing, and missing passion is often the problem with not enough money, too much debt, or a too-quickly expanding waistline.

(Glances at mirror)…uh…so I’ve been told…

Or, sucking at your rigged-then-not-rigged computer blender-shopping game.

Now all that having been said, the question arises — ONCE AGAIN — what kind of “researcher” puts together an experiment such as this? An impartial researcher, adhering dogmatically to the rigors of scientific discipline, who has no idea how the result will materialize, and doesn’t care to form such an idea before the data have been gathered? This is difficult to see. And by “difficult to see” what I really mean is laughable…

The experiment itself is laughable too. We rely on these productive passions to drive some of our efforts, like trimming fat from our household budget and from the ol’ midsection, and we rely on horse sense and cognitive ability for other efforts we plan to try again, after a previous go has resulted in failure. It depends on the task. It’s probably a waste of time for me to even point it out, let alone to come up with a list for examples, for I’m sure we all have our own examples we could produce if we really try. Mine…lessee…I guess it would be when I let the battery die and I needed a jump. I had the cables, but not the experience jumping a car from the era in which we’re living now. Long & short of it was, I learned the hard way, and through my cognitive abilities not by way of my “feelings,” that cars these days have so much plastic and so little metal that the time’s come to ditch the old procedure about clipping the black clamp to the frame. Actually, that’s probably been a stupid piece of advice for awhile now…it was a case of “that’s the way we always done it.” And I’m sure it looks silly no matter the excuse, to someone in this era who doesn’t know about the old Robocop.

Now we’re in our fourth year as homeowners, I have other examples…many others…that’s home. And then there’s work. As application developers, we are victims of our own success, with many people using the systems we’ve built. Oh my, the things we have learned. From the people. About people. Last problem we solved together was…well, it was a matter of weeks ago. More like days, really. The problem had to do with people using our system in a way contrary to what we intended, and no, we would not have made progress by concentrating on how the prior efforts made us feel. In point of fact, as is usually the case, one might say we’d done an adequate job of trying that already.

As always, for the real answer, look at the old people. They do not feel the need to define themselves, and if they did, they wouldn’t do it through any sort of rage, directed at themselves or others. “Ooh this makes me feel so mad!” is a game for the young. If something perplexes and the choice is there to use emotions or cognitive abilities, the old people can be counted on to…well, probably have their grandchildren do it next time they come visiting. Point is, though, along the way they had the chance to jettison the Hulk-mad-smash battle-tactic, and/or the figure-out-cause-and-effect one too. The former gets ditched first. Even when the natural ability to support it was never quite there, the latter one continues to hang around as long as it displays some occasional usefulness. The smashy-smashy one has to go first. The ticker can’t take it for too long, so if they keep losing it around every formidable challenge that arises, into the golden years, typically they don’t make it to the golden years at all. When you look at the old people who are still here, makes sense that you’re seeing what’s been left, what’s managed to survive. The “research” is bogus.

Have Jimmy Kimmel Cry It’s been pinkified. It bears repeating, don’t go blaming it all on the chicks, the dudes are acting pink too and they’re getting pinker.

Nevertheless, the pinkwashing continues, just like a stupid dog that keeps on eating because it can’t comprehend the primitive idea of “I’m not hungry anymore.” I remember The Man Show, Season One Episode One, “Oprahization,” oh would you look at that it’s a real word now…”a dam to hold back the tidal wave of feminization,” the brain behind it belonging to one Jimmy Kimmel. Yes, that Jimmy Kimmel, who in this day & age has become the poster child for crying to get what you want. In undergoing this transformation, and willingly, Kimmel has also become the emblem of the pinkwashing. Things that just a handful of years ago were insulated from the toxic stew of this “feminization,” and in his case in fact even stood as a bulwark against it, have succumbed.

I’m thinking there’s got to be some sort of way for me to make money off this. We have a lot of people heading off in a direction that the conscientious observer knows full well — by way of using his cognitive abilities, which are looked down upon with disdain by the “scientific research” like you see quoted above — leads to a dead end. No, high-drama for its own sake doesn’t make anything better. Anywhere. It is a solvent that dissolves whatever it touches. Rapidly some of the time, very slowly most of the time, but, well there it is.

The take-away? This is yet another in a long list of transformations we have seen, over a relatively short period of time, each of which is enshrouded in a bumptious confidence so tough on the outside and so unrelenting on the inside, as to command error. And yet, no one really wants it. You have to ask, Who is building this new world? Because you have to ask in the same way, Who wants this world? The answer is nobody. Nobody wants to live in a place where our public policy is flipped in an instant, like a pancake, because some late night comedian cries. Where science tells people to stop puzzling things out logically and stew in their emotions, if they want to succeed — so that you have to wonder now how the scientists are putting together their science. Where football has become a protest without an actual message, with the game-play as an afterthought.

Nobody really wants these things. Nobody.

So how did we get here?

We got here because people got too concerned about maneuvering conversations by forcing abrupt topic-shifts, so they could climb atop the din like a pile of junk in a yard, and self-genuflect from the apex about how they, in their individual status, turned out to be right about everything.

Without devoting sufficient concern to what is and is not really true.

Lefties have backed themselves into a psychological corner. It doesn’t surprise me they didn’t see this coming — after all, if they could see the obvious consequences of their actions, they wouldn’t be Liberals — but it does surprise me that they don’t see the obvious way out….

The dilemma: 1) I am right about everything. 2) I am miserable. But that’s unpossible, because “being right about everything” means I’m Smart, which is the Liberal’s Utopia. (Once again, all the Left’s problems boil down to the Fundamental Paradox of Internet Liberalism: If only you were Smart enough to see things as they do, you’d have to agree with them. But you don’t, and you can’t be made to, because you’re Dumb, and Dumb is permanent). The tension can’t be resolved inside that loop, and the clearer they see that, the more miserable they are.

There are two obvious ways out. A) Embrace Reality or B) find something to be always and everywhere right about that doesn’t involve other people. Obviously they can’t go for A, because that would entail they were wrong about pretty much everything, pretty much their entire lives, which is unpossible, because they are Smart. But B’s got legs, if you’ll pardon the pun. That’s why so many ex-hippies got into marathon running, vegetarianism, and whatnot back in the 90s. It’s open ended — you can always run one more mile, or cut something else out of your diet. You can be as full self-righteous about it as you can about politics — “How can you continue to put that filth into your body?!?” etc. You can always keep looking for that one Hot Yoga routine that will finally lead to Enlightenment. You can channel all that energy, all that Smart, into something that can’t end, but doesn’t involve gyrating around endlessly in the Fundamental Paradox of Internet Liberalism.

I think we on the right should embrace heart-attack burgers and beer as our lifestyle badge. Start talking up how great cholesterol is. Let’s give ’em a little nudge in the right direction. Become Lifestyle Nazis, SJWs, instead of, you know, the actual Nazis y’all are now. It’s all the sanctimony with only half the self-contradiction!
- Severian | 10/10/2017 @ 05:22
Hmmm, yes…we should come up with a name for your paradox: I’m right about everything, but miserable. It’s a subset/superset thing with liberals, because I can’t think of a single liberal I know who isn’t spinning around in the vicious circle this creates, but I can think of lots of people in the vortex who aren’t liberals.

One of the things that makes the patient so very, very smart and very, very right about anything, is the capability of convincingly arguing any point in any direction. But that just closes off the one escape-route, because it contradicts the solution of “I’m right about everything, the reason I’m miserable is those other people who are wrong.” If infinite talent for arguing any point is readily available, you’d solve it by just…ya know…convincing ’em.

Instead, what we see is a haughty pronouncement of “There is no use arguing this with you because you don’t accept teh science”…
- mkfreeberg | 10/10/2017 @ 05:47
I call it “The Snowflake Recursion.” You’re the world’s most special and unique Snowflake. Anything that’s wrong with the world is the world’s fault; any conflict between You and The World requires The World to change to accommodate You. But The World never changes, which just goes to show how wrong The World is, and how right you are in proclaiming the need for change….

I noticed this a long time ago, but the 2004 election let me put a number on it: 59 million. As in, “How could 59 million Americans be so dumb?” See, there are only two options for explaining the 2004 election results: 1) Lots of people have a very different conception of their — and America’s — best interests, and act accordingly, or 2) All those people are fucking retards.

#1 can’t be right, as there is The One Right Answer, and they didn’t pick it; therefore it must be #2. That was the considered opinion of all the “political scientists” down at the local U. — guys with PhDs in “political science,” who considered themselves political scientists, no quotation marks. The idea that there’s no such thing as The One Right Answer in anything but math ever occurred to them, because again, they’re all the special-est snowflakes that are, were, or ever could be, and therefore they know TORA better than any rabbi; it’s The World that’s wrong and must change.
- Severian | 10/10/2017 @ 07:52
It’s the Captain Jack Syndrome – you got everything, but nothin’s cool.

Being that their whole approach to life is backwards, they decide that the solution is to punish happy people, thinking that making other folks just as miserable will make them feel better by comparison. Maybe it’s true for some of them – there are always sadists and psychos – but most people who were once normal and healthy still have one connection to their humanity, however faint: being rotten to everybody about everything makes them bitter and angrier.

It passes my skill to discover if they realize it or not. Maybe some don’t and plunge blindly on, maybe some do and decide in some way to keep on, settling for punishing others along with themselves. Operationally it doesn’t affect the day-to-day reality, and only the grace of God saves anyone from that death spiral.
- nightfly | 10/16/2017 @ 13:58
Nightfly, that one baffles me, too. The Old New Left, at least, took a page from the Old Old Left’s book, and at least pretended that they were doing everything for the Workers’ benefit. The Workers lack the proper revolutionary class consciousness to see that X, Y, and Z are contrary to their interests, so we will ban X, Y, and Z — they’ll thank us later. It was functionally the same thing, of course, but when you drag a sufficient number of incurably violent drunks into the spotlight, most folks will sigh and say yes, there must be something to this Prohibition stuff….

The New New Left (aka the SJWs), though…. they don’t bother. In fact, they’re pretty open about punishing the normals for the unforgivable sin of being normal. Cf. Obama’s comment about “spreading the wealth around” –it doesn’t matter that you’re a pillar of your community who worked like a slave every day of his life to get what you’ve got. No, you’ve got more than what the SJWs consider “fair;” therefore the excess will be taken away from you… plus a little extra, to make sure that nobody else gets any ideas about hard work and rising above his station.

The worst part? None of them can possibly explain any of this. They have no fucking idea why they do what they do. Ask any SJW, for example, to tell you what’s wrong with patriotism. As in, what did George W. Bush’s patriotism cause him to do, that Barack Obama’s worldly cosmopolitan sort-of-God perspective prevented him from doing? The answer, of course, is “nothing,” since you can pick just about any policy from the George W. Obama years out of a hat and have no clue as to who actually did it… but they can’t tell you that, any more than they can tell you what’s wrong with NASCAR, or getting upset about football players kneeling for the anthem, or why kneeling for the anthem is good but voting with your feet against the anthem-kneelers is bad, etc. The best you’re likely to get is “wow just wow omigod I can’t even.”

I’d actually respect them a little bit if they could answer it. Even if the answer is “I’m doing it because it makes me feel good to shit on you, peasant!” At least they’d demonstrate the tiniest shred of self-awareness. But they never do.
- Severian | 10/16/2017 @ 19:25
[…] You have to ask, Who is building this new world? Because you have to ask in the same way, Who wants this world? The answer is nobody. Nobody wants to live in a place where our public policy is flipped in an instant, like a pancake, because some late night comedian cries. Where science tells people to stop puzzling things out logically and stew in their emotions, if they want to succeed — so that you have to wonder now how the scientists are putting together their science. Where football has become a protest without an actual message, with the game-play as an afterthought. Nobody really wants these things. Nobody. […]
- Wearing Lidlocks in the Labyrinth - American Digest | 10/19/2017 @ 11:46

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The PinkwashingSunday, October 8th, 2017

The Pinkwashing
Sunday, October 8th, 2017