The Rabbit Hole

Day 01 - A favorite song
Day 02 - A song that makes you happy
Day 03 - A song that makes you sad
Day 04 - A song that reminds you of someone
Day 05 - A song that reminds you of somewhere

I didn't discover too much indigenously Aussie music of any stripe while I was in the country, but I did get kind of addicted to watching footie matches, and it was impossible to end a game without hearing this song. It's good, and I bought a best-of collection for Hunters & Collectors, and I like a lot of their music now. I've even listened to more of other Australian bands that were popular then and now, like Powderfinger, but this is still the one song that immediately takes me out of where I am in the moment and back to my dorm, watching footie, ogling the boys.

Oh, The New York Times. Have you really--really, really, really--only just read "Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?"? That only took you, what, five years to write an article about it? Bully for you!

Message from moonlightalice: Your title could use some work.

Sigh. Look, I know that I only read it because I actually was doing a film paper on The Matrix when I was in Australia, but still! I read this paper four years ago, and this is NEWS with a capital N, E, W, and S to The New York Times. I notice that they, too, skimmed over the mathy-bits. That's journalism right there for you.

*

Another passed to me from moonlightalice (obviously, more patient than I and willing to read this stuff): Plastic Surgery: Not Just For The Emotionally Healthy Any More!

I wish I could say that my title was an exaggeration verging on hyperbole, but theirs is so ridiculous, mine is only slightly more so. I love science, surely I do, but the fact that we fund studies to find out things we already know is really depressing, especially as there has been a money scare for researchers ever since the Republicans took over two-to-three branches of government. My God, people getting plastic surgery might not like themselves very much!? SHOCK. People are embarrassed to buy condoms in stores?! HEART ATTACK.

*

And yet? I leave on a note of hope: Sometimes, selling sex is okay. I mean, it's okay to endlessly speculate over sex lives if it means we examine the root cause of deceit and pain surrounding it that have nothing to do with lack of lube or a boyfriend with an enormous cock.

I like that a mathematician did, well, the math on sexual partner numbers and the differences between the sexes. Basically, unless there's like one super busy prostitute out there, guys and gals be lying about their number. It's cheerfully blunt how the article goes, "Guys are sluts, girls are prudes...right?" at the beginning, too. Like people who think that? YOU ARE SO STUPID EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES CANNOT STAND YOU. The fact that the mathematician is so awesome and closes out that shit with, "WHY DO YOU INTERPRET WHAT PEOPLE SAY AS GOSPEL!?! NUMBERS DON'T LIE LIKE THE REST OF YOU SLUTS!!!!" I mean, uh, he tastefully phrased it thusly:

The problem, he said, is that when such data are published, with no asterisk next to them saying they can’t be true, they just “reinforce the stereotypes of promiscuous males and chaste females.”

In fact, he added, the survey data themselves may be part of the problem. If asked, a man, believing that he should have a lot of partners, may feel compelled to exaggerate, and a woman, believing that she should have few partners, may minimize her past.

“In this way,” Dr. Gale said, “the false conclusions people draw from these surveys may have a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Also? I totally clicked on the Times' dictionary function trying to copy that, and they helpfully popped up a window to explain the word I seemed to have trouble with. I now know what the word "they" means, its part of speech, and several examples of its use beyond the one in which I encountered it. Thanks, New York Times!