Remember this when you hear idiot men moaning about “fake geek girls.”

The first ever novel, The Tale of Genji – which was also, coincidentally, a work of fantasy – was written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu in around the year 1000, and is still being read today. In 1666, Margaret Cavendish published what is arguably the first ever work of science fiction, The Blazing World; but even if you discount her work on the grounds of obscurity, Mary Shelley is still recognised as the mother of modern science fiction for her 1818 publication of Frankenstein, which she wrote at the age of 19. The first ever crimefighting vigilante to go don a mask, a cape and a secret identity was the Scarlet Pimpernel, created by Baroness Emma Orczy in 1905. Women have been creating comic books since the late 1800s; even in the male-dominated Golden and Silver Ages, women like Nina Albright, Ruth Atkinson and Marie Severin were still known quantities. The whole concept of young adult novels – and, indeed, of teenagers as a distinct literary audience – was introduced by Sarah Trimmer in 1802, while the novel most widely held to have prompted the separate categorisation of YA in the modern era was S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, published in 1967.

I of course knew that Mary Shelley had written Frankenstein. I read it when I was seven or eight. But I didn’t know that she’d written it when she was 19.

The only real argument I have with modern feminism is that it is now a mainstream view that male mate preferences are wrong if the male states a preference for thin or fit women, while all female mate preferences are all fine – for instance, that many/most(?) women will not date shorter-than-average men.

I understand it’s reacting to objectification and past historical and currently-happening injustices, but that doesn’t make it right.

Hate to laugh at people who I knew were going to get ripped off, but I told you so.

It is inevitable when people move away from things that they control, to those that others control. It always amazes me that people are shocked when this occurs, when it is in fact as mentioned inevitable, and the point of the entire enterprise to extract as much money as possible.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is inevitable now, and has been for a while.

There is absolutely nothing that the US can or should do about it. That time has long past, if ever there was one.

As almost anyone who reads this blog knows, I was in the US army for five years. It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad I did it. It helped me in many ways, and its lessons continue to be valuable and applicable to everyday life.

In many ways, I learned more about the world and working in the army than in any of my other 15 years of working experience, and nearly all of the most important lessons were learned in that crucible.

This story of working with Steve Jobs reminded me of that army experience, and one important part of it in particular.

One great take away from working with Steve is that there’s not much anyone can do to intimidate me now. So, bonus.

In the Army, I worked and dealt with some of the most irascible, hardcore, intimidating people in the universe. Literally in many cases trained killers. I’ve been screamed at, encouraged and sometimes belittled by the best and in some cases the worst of humanity.

It seemed horrible at the time but I – who was already pretty unflappable – became well-nigh incapable of being intimidated.

That is a surprisingly useful skill in the corporate world. Hell, in any part of life, really.

This is why I don’t get along with liberals, even though I am one. (And far more liberal than anyone on that site, too.)

There’s a reason that liberals have the reputation of being shrinking, cowering and effete: it’s because for the most part, they are.

The post I linked to illustrates that dynamic perfectly, as well as the fact that even progressives have been convinced that worship of the free market is one’s primary duty, so that boycotts are right out.

What people miss about boycotts is that even though they are often – almost always, actually – ineffective economically, their main purpose is to get people to shut the fuck up.

Did everyone in the South suddenly believe in 1965 that calling black people “nigger” to their faces was wrong? Of fucking course not. But boycotts and other successful actions made them shut the fuck up.

You can’t always change beliefs. Most of the time you won’t. But you can make people shut the fuck up. And sometimes that is good enough.

Just think if we could make the street harassers clam up?

Etc.

I call myself a “militant liberal” from time to time, but that moniker doesn’t really fit. Maybe I’ll think of a better one sometime.

I think economics as it is currently taught and learned is probably the only well-accepted academic discipline that the more you learn about it, the dumber you become.

This comment details why that it is the case.

Unfortunately to fight the enemy, you have to know what the enemy is thinking.

From the article I linked below, this also struck me.

I used to puzzle over a particular statistic that routinely comes up in articles about time use: even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers—and fathers—of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life. My mother didn’t work all that much when I was younger, but she didn’t spend vast amounts of time with me, either. She didn’t arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons or introduce me to cool music she liked. On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with one if not all three of my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend’s house, or just hanging out with them at home. When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.

The same was true for me as a kid. Then, I might have seen my parents when they forced me to come inside for dinner. On the weekend, there was a good chance I might not see them at all, not even for a minute.

How do modern kids live as they do?

Sylvia tells him she bought this house because she wanted to give her own children the kinds of childhood experiences she’d had, and when she saw the little wooded area out back, her “heart leapt.” But “there’s no way they’d be out in the woods,” she adds. “My hometown is now so diverse, with people coming in and out and lots of transients.” Hart reminds her how she used to spend most of her time across the river, playing. “There’s no river here,” she tells him, then whispers, “and I’m really glad about that.” There will soon be a fence around the yard—she mentions the fence several times—“so they’ll be contained,” and she’ll always be able to see her kids from the kitchen window. As Sylvia is being interviewed, her son makes some halfhearted attempts to cut the hedges with a pair of scissors, but he doesn’t really seem to know how to do it, and he never strays more than a few inches from his father.

What the FUCK? I’d have gone absolutely mad if I’d had to live in a prison camp environment like that. When I was less than 10 years old I sometimes wandered 10-12 miles away from my house on my bike, all by myself or sometimes with a friend or two.

Because I grew up essentially feral and in a very rural area, my childhood play was essentially like this.

Though I never played on a formal playground, even an “adventure” one as there weren’t any playgrounds of any sort where I lived. Not within 10 miles, anyway. (Like I said, rural.)

I do remember asking my mother if I could allow some water to flow into the front yard, put some gasoline on top of it and light it up. That I even asked was a bit of a miracle, but I figured gasoline was very expensive to us so someone would notice if it went missing and then I would get into trouble.

She said yes, as long as I didn’t use too much.

So I constructed a makeshift dam, let the garden hose run until the water nearly overtopped my weak weir, and then poured a bunch of gasoline in. Then I made a little trail of gasoline away from the water so I didn’t set myself on fire, and lit it up.

It was quite impressive.

I was either seven or eight years old when this occurred.

As I said, I was nearly feral and the world was my adventure playground.

So fucking glad I am not in school right now.

I’ve read the feedback that teachers across New York have offered these past two days of the Common Core aligned ELA exam. I have the same sympathy for them, and their students, as I do for our school’s own. Their experiences, combined with today’s mistreatment of students that children are suffering at the hands of misguided test makers, have moved me to speak out. I would be negligent if I didn’t.

Imagine a Little League coach putting a team of third-graders in a game against the local Varsity team. Surely, someone would take issue with that. How, then, can I not take issue with third-graders being tasked to read and respond to text about technical instruments with which most adults are unfamiliar?

Though I did well on them, I always despised standardized tests. That sounds like a whole new level of torture there, though.

I wonder how susceptible I am to this. Everyone is, of course, to some degree.

But I’ve always – sometimes to my great detriment – cared more about being right than being part of any tribe. (Hence why I get thrown out of most tribes!)

It was not a popular opinion in my extremely religious school to be a vocal agnostic/atheist, or to tell people who didn’t believe in evolution that they were dumb, yet I did it (often).

I suspect human nature will have to be genetically altered to affect any real difference. The most likely scenario for this is not that it occurs voluntarily, but some rogue researcher in 2179 (if we survive that long) releases some genetically-modifying virus that does it covertly and illegally.

This article mentions two movies that are excellent – Hanna and Hard Candy.

Neither one got much publicity by the studio system because they starred young female main characters, but they are both great films.

Hard Candy in particular is a standout, being remarkably effective in being both disturbing and thoughtful at the same time. Many films attempt to make you confused as to who the true villain is. Almost all of them fail. However, Hard Candy succeeds in spades.

Both are highly recommended.

I know this make me an elitist, and a horrible person, and all of that but I don’t really care.

I miss the days when computers just weren’t made for stupid people. When it took actual knowledge to get anything done.

For me personally (not speaking for anyone else), tablets and “apps” are the worst thing that ever happened to the computers (including in this phones, tablets, etc.) I have to use.

No, I don’t feel lost. These interfaces are quite easy to use. Too easy. They remove all the power that was once possible, for example the useless monstrosity that is Metro, or the Office Ribbon where it still takes me 10 times longer to get anything done.

I know the average person only wants to click on Youtube videos and Facebook.

Fuck the average person. Nothing good ever gets created by them.

I guess they do need the Fisher Price single-digit-IQ interfaces, but I wish that could somehow be completely separate from me and never ruin my computing devices.

When I think about it, I just can’t believe that people browse sites and do things on the internet on a phone.

That sounds to me like someone deciding to trade in their car or bicycle for crawling like a toddler everywhere. I know the average person is fucking allergic to desktop computers for whatever reason, but still…I could no more use the internet on a phone than I can take photos with a toaster.

I’d just like to state for the record that the “Who could have known?” defense about the housing bubble and its possible effects is a poor one, and is historical revisionism both to avoid criminal prosecution by financial elites and to ensure that their behavior is allowed to occur again.

I’ve seen people I like and respect assert that no one could have known what would happen as a result of the collapse of the housing bubble and the corrupt mortgage market – which means, of course, that they did not know.

However, financial experts – and specifically those perpetrating the worst of the fraud – knew very well what the likely effects were. No, no one could have known nor given a precise chronology of the future disaster, but that the inevitable crash was likely to cause widespread economic carnage was extremely, extremely well-known in the financial industry.

Those responsible just did not care because the bonuses has already been paid out.

I was telling people as early as 2005 that the housing bubble was going to burst, and though I did not then guess the full scope of its effects, I knew it would be very bad. No one wanted to hear that, of course.

And you can bet if I knew – I who have no inside contacts, not that much special knowledge, and am little-concerned with all of that – then experts definitely knew.

But the “hoocoodanode” defense did keep the “important” people out of jail, and the regular people (most of whom didn’t know) thoroughly snookered, so it was a complete success.