You weren't kidding about the bowl cut. Holy cow.
The thing is, the secular world has gotten just much worse than in the 90s.
Hansen's blog, she says, is:
A feminist space for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum
I'm always puzzled by people who offer normal, sensible discussions about current events and history -- and do so in the context of a religion dedicated to gibberish.* I'm certainly glad that, say, liberal Catholics exist, and I am myself able to be sentimental about my Catholic upbringing, but why would you want to live your life in a profoundly hostile ideological environment?
I am often unhappy with the Democrats, but I am certainly a Democrat. The preservation and promotion of the party is entirely consistent with my values, even when the actions of the party aren't. I think some folks feel that way about primitive religions, and I don't get it.
* Anytime I write something like that I feel the need to deny that I'm an asshole New Atheist. Really, I'm not! I swear to God!
She's the one who invented soaking.
I'm pretty sure they're saying that was the mom.
Having read the whole thing, it seems overall written combating some revisionist history going on within the church (that they never said women shouldn't have careers), but this particular paragraph (not critical to that point) is not too convincing:
I am a little stunned by this. In this church produced film they admit right out loud that the mother's life often wasn't pleasant, but that message is paradoxically presented against a background of heartwarming music. As a young woman absorbing this message, I was being told that my future as a stay-at-home mom would frequently be unfulfilling, but that I should be happy anyway.
That at least seems like an effective moment of honesty in aid of the propaganda. Should they be asserting motherhood will be a bed of roses? Their target audience wouldn't believe them if they did. They aren't saying it's constant torturous drudgery either, just that it's sufficiently rewarding. I think the target audience would understand the contrasted imagined high-powered career is difficult too.
4: I think the idea is that talking about these issues from a Mormon perspective, and as an ex-Mormon, helps give space for current weak or questioning Mormons to think for themselves more.
Their target audience wouldn't believe them if they did.
Good point. I'm guessing the target demographic has done far more domesticity work than I had at that age.
The thing about the 90s is you didn't need a high powered career to live. I basically failed my way into a job that paid enough money for me to buy a townhouse and eat out three times a week.
There's a larger point here about living with (or within) a code that's interesting to me. Most folks in America have very flexible codes that are more vague signposts that point them in the direction of fulfilling their personal needs, and it's super weird to us when someone willingly accedes to an externally imposed set of rules. We literally point and laugh. But a lot of people have lived this way in human history, and when it works, it really works! There are a lot of happy, thriving Mormon families. (Also a lot of misery and kiddie rape, of course.) I kind of admire them for sticking with it, even if I'm still going to point and laugh.
Well, it's the old Grand Inquisitor's trade-off of freedom vs security, right? High levels of security and certainty about the big terrifying questions is really a comforting place to stake out, until it starts too chafe too much.
It's been a while since I read it, but wasn't the Grand Inquisitor a baddie?
Along with drudgery, one issue with staying home to raise kids is the lack of options if husband doesn't hold up his end. Two (or more) people working together for a common goal is great when that can be done, but the odds are appreciable that it can't be even with best efforts from mom (or maybe from both-- layoffs, dislocating economic change, illness, all of these happen also to people who don't make their own problems).
Also it's hard topic to think about decisively-- there's no right answer for choosing risk, just probabilities. But ignoring it systematically is a mistake.
5 right, she's the one who invented jump humping
11: I can authoritatively speak from my experience in Mr. Johnson's 9th grade IB History Class in 1992 that could in no way distort with time that yes, he was. My memory is that he was saying "the people think they want freedom, but they actually want a dictator."
The handful of Mormons I've known personally (never been to Utah, so these are emigres I guess?) have been genuinely kind and trustworthy people, much more so than the (also small) population of Evangelicals I know.
externally imposed That's the crux. If you love your lawn and churchgoing, it's not externally imposed, it's a harmonious expression of shared will. Like dreads for white people who celebrate.
"Most folks in America have very flexible codes that are more vague signposts that point them in the direction of fulfilling their personal needs, and it's super weird to us when someone willingly accedes to an externally imposed set of rules."
laws tho
10: I think it's less freedom vs. security than having a framework to think about what a "good life" is vs. what it isn't. My experiences with Mormons is that they are actually pretty kind and trustworthy and practice what they preach. And what the LDS church preaches--sobriety, industry, emphasis on family, healthy eating, mutual aid--is a really, really good life for a lot of people.
I grew up as a Millennial in a liberal, not at all religious community and most of got guidance along the lines of "just be yourself", "follow your dreams", "figure it out on your own", and so forth. A lot of my peers have ended up as healthy, successful adults, but there's a lot of ennui that's seeped into some lives, mainly expressed through overwork, overconsumption, alcohol and drug addiction, etc.
I'm older and grew up in a fairly religious community. So much alcohol.
21: The Upper Midwest and Great Plains hit differently that way.
Anyway, we didn't have many Mormons around. My aunt and uncle, who drank daily and heavily, lived in Utah in the 50s. I think they fit in because they had ten kids.
actually pretty kind and trustworthy and practice what they preach
I haven't had much interaction with Mormons outside of North Carolina, but this tracks with my experience. Also, growing up, the kids were almost all high academic performers that stayed out of trouble. [shrug]
The only Mormons I interact with are missionaries I tell to fuck off after they very persistently bother me.
Here you can tell them before they start talking because no one else under thirty wears white dress shirts anymore.
Anyway, my office overlooks a big Mormon thing. You'd see the missionaries around, but now I don't go to my office.
i grew up down the street from the large local ward. all of the evangelical kids were forbidden from playing with our destined for hellfire unitarian asses - conversely, the mormon kids were sent out to rope us in. the ambient level of mormons in the neighborhood was high. i had a pretty good look around the insides of a decent number of mormon families growing up.
in day to day general, low stakes interactions your average mormon is probably going to be pleasant, especially compared evangelical hell fire and brimstone invective that they feel entitled to let loose in any context. but the coercion deployed by mormons *inward* against girls and women generally and, in particular, anyone perceived as nonconforming, is pretty damn high. and they don't believe you can leave. build a life for yourself a continent away that could not telegraph more clearly your not-mormon-ness, and they will still send out missionaries to stalk you decades later.
Since we're talking Mormons, did they ever make an effort to settle on the Salton Sea? I would think the (initially, anyway?) cheap land, irrigation agriculture and Jordan Valley parallels and would have drawn them like flies to shit bees to honey.
It didn't exist when they were first putting feelers down in that direction. San Bernardino is the main Mormon settlement in southern California that ended up turning into anything significant. I don't know of any further efforts to evangelize the California deserts subsequently but that doesn't mean there weren't any.
While I haven't exhaustively considered all the Saints Bernard, I'm guessing none of them would be okay with Mormonism.
The window for Mormon colonization of California seems to be pretty small. The San Bernardino colony didn't start until 1851 after the Mexican-American war, and then they all got recalled to Utah for the Utah War, and wikipedia says that after that they weren't really welcome in California on account of the massacring of settlers on their way to California.
While I haven't exhaustively considered all the Saints Bernard, I'm guessing none of them would be okay with Mormonism.
You may not be okay with Mormonism but Mormonism is okay with you.
My grandmother got the Jehovah's Witnesses to leave her alone by trying to convert them to Catholicism.
The most insidious part of the propaganda is drawing a clear distinction. Between being a mom and having a career. It doesn't matter if they nicely acknowledge that being a mom isn't perfect; what they're saying is that the 17-year-old girl has to choose. She can either have a career or she can be a mom.
This is dangerous and sometimes ironically part of the backlash. One of the most feminist things I ever did was teach at a university while being visibly pregnant and the look on some women's faces was kind of like I was told that wasn't possible. You have a PhD. You can't have a family. You can't be happily married right? And that's very damaging.
It's fading a little, but some women will still say "we're in medical school" to mean that he is in med school and she is presumably working to put him through it or on kid #2. (I put my foot in it badly a decade ago when I congratulated a couple on their (obvious) double match...)
4: a lot of exMos, especially in Utah, are very much opposed to the religion, and it's not a religion that typically has a lot of room for questioning. So a space that makes room for people who are questioning is a pretty big deal. It
And in Utah, there's a difference between being Mormon (basically an offshoot of family-oriented protestantism, pretty nice), being a Utah Mormon (+ economic and social circles tied to one's standing, do keep going to church or you'll lose your job.) and being a Provo Mormon (+turned up to eleven.). Also, only in Utah is "non-Mormon" an identity marker. (Handy way to teach students about social construction.)
My general position is "not my circus not my monkeys"; shiv's is that BYU compsci majors are third rate because they get the job based on connections but software doesn't care about your recommend.
And there are even funnier 90s videos. The one about the kid who needs to come back to the fold so his little sister can be born into his family has some great 90s hairstyles and dancing.
I divide Mormons into Gordon Gee or Not Gordon Gee.
Also, I have been specifically warned about hiring tech companies based in Utah. But I don't do any contracts anyway.
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US blames China's CMOC for predatory tactics behind cobalt glut
CMOC's second-largest shareholder is Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co, which also has a direct equity stake in Kisanfu. Low cobalt prices are harming upstream producers and recyclers. Australian miner Jervois Global cut jobs in March in response to falling prices, which it blamed on Chinese oversupply. The company also mothballed a project in Idaho last year, which would have been the first new US cobalt mine in decades. Cobalt prices are expected to rise before the end of the decade as need for the mineral explodes along with demand for electric vehicles according to the Cobalt Institute report. Even Congo is considering a quota on cobalt exports to bolster prices.|>
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https://www.intellinews.com/azerbaijan-kazakhstan-and-uzbekistan-join-forces-to-power-europe-324450/
https://caspiannews.com/news-detail/azerbaijan-crucial-for-bulgarias-gas-diversification-says-president-radev-2024-5-11-0/
Also still fishing for thoughts on Georgia.
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And the secession thread is dead, so this can go here.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-are-there-riots-new-caledonia-against-frances-voting-reform-2024-05-14/
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Attn. (esp.) teo:
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-push-greener-aluminium-hit-by-erratic-rains-power-cuts-2024-05-10/
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President of Iran's helicopter has crashed in bad weather.
The one about the kid who needs to come back to the fold so his little sister can be born into his family
What.
Also my brain knows that Provo is extremes-ville for Mormon, but my heart knows that Provo is where The Great Brain went to the academy and brought basketball and secret contraband.
Women have always had to put up with unreasonable expectations:
http://kaleberg.com/public/Infernal%20Triangle.jpg
It's never a good time to crash your helicopter into the mountains in heavy fog, Moby.
It was a Huey too, probably around 50 years old.
Well, a 212. Twin engine, much more reliable. But unfortunately even the most reliable of helicopters tends to undergo performance degradation when someone flies it into a mountain.
I thought the blades could chop through the mountain.
"Hard landing" is apparently the preferred Russian euphemism for "crash". I guess if a good landing is any landing you can walk away from, a hard landing is the other kind.
The flight plan didn't account for the possibility that the mountain might try to come to Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem.
AMHB, I worked on a couple of helicopter crash cases in the decade before this one. Very early on in a helicopter crash case, you go to a hangar somewhere and walk around the wreckage (with someone you've brought along who knows shit). Impossibly fragile is the impression I got.
The first was somewhere in this drainage -- 46.7140589,-115.2191518 -- in January.
Wikipedia has really helped me make puns.
Let me recommend most highly, AIHPDHB, Chickenhawk. Made of magnesium!
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"With the forces that I have at my disposition we will be able to re-establish Republican order," said Le Franc, the high commissioner.|>
The Washington Post is reporting that colliding with the ground is bad. Which seems right, but they willing give McMegan money, so maybe withhold judgment.
I've never seen narcolepsy close up until tonight. It's really bizarre.
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This is very cool https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/17/nile-shipwreck-herodotus-archaeologists-thonis-heraclion
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I guess he's dead?
Along with his foreign minister, his head of security, a local ayatollah, and, tragically, two aircrew.
The state of some on the left mourning that bastard. He's responsible for the deaths and torture of thousands of Iranians from the 80s when he was chief prosecutor sentencing thousands of Iranian leftists to death to the recent Woman, Life, Freedom protests where it was much the same.
I'll always remember the local ayatollah for having the right name when I needed it.
ICC head Karim Khan finally gets off his ass and finally issues arrest warrants Netanyahu, Sinwar, Gallant and Haniyeh. I would have liked to see Ben Gvir and Smotrich there but at least it's a (long delayed) start.
Haniyeh is wishing he'd gone to Iran when he had the chance. While Qatar is not a signatory they issued statements pledging cooperation and praising the inclusion of the Occupied Territories as being under ICC jurisdiction.
Yes, I'm sure we can rely on Qatar to do the right thing here.
They wanted to give him the boot at least twice within the last 8 months but the Biden administration intervened and asked them not to so...
The last time they wanted to kick him out before that it was Bibi who asked to let him stay in Doha.
And I'm sure the US which is also not a signatory will be rushing to hand over Bibi to the ICC the next time he visits.
Some day the mountain might get them, but the law never will.
They tell you that, and then they fuck you over.
These secateurs are emblazoned with a cobra. I'm feeling a brand manager from a cobra-free country.
Do Americans actually say "secateurs"? I was taught pruning shears.
To me, it sounds like a non-secateur.
73-75: yes, like I said, I'm sure we can rely on them to do the right thing here. I reckon they'll have arrested Haniyeh and handed him over for trial by the end of the year at the latest. Probably much sooner.
But this is the first time I've heard the word "secateurs".
This sunflower is pretty, but it's dripping tree blood everywhere.
Yet who would have thought the old sun to have had so much sap in him?
But, so fucking pretty. I forgive you, sappy flower.
