More profile BS

 Really? It's a wasteland out here.

Football culture shift

 I spent more time in the last few weeks watching social media about football than ever before in my life. And it's very noticeable to me that the culture of football has shifted so much in my adult lifetime. 

The movie, North Dallas Forty (based on a novel by a former player) came out when I was in high school. That was followed by decades of terrible stories about domestic violence and drug abuse and shootings in clubs. Then there were the murder/suicides, attributed to CTE.

But now football is so wholesome. They are dancing in the endzones. They are showcasing their families, like Saquon Barkley with his adorable daughter. They are reading on the sidelines! 

It's such a massive shift in just a couple of decades. It gives me a weird kind of hope for America...

"What a shining animal is man"

 

I've been thinking so much about this issue lately (as described so beautifully by Edna St Vincent Millay): people saying that we are looking away from what's happening, but it's our nature to continue to live in the face of disasters.

"Don't believe him"

Watch this 13 min video where Ezra Klein points out that what Trump is trying to do and what he's actually accomplishing are different.

Republicans are going along with him, especially his cabinet appointments, because they need his voters and they want to get reelected. Many Republicans do not agree with what Trump is trying to do and they know that what he's trying to do is bad for America. They've always used the Democrats to constrain their worst impulses. 

In this interview, Pete Buttigieg says he has hope, but he also says everything's not going to be fine, but things have "never been fine"! Reagan tried so hard to damage the federal government. Even people my age and older seem to have forgotten this: James Watt at Interior and Pierce at HUD. Scandals galore.

Ezra points out that Trump is not using Congress because he can't - Republicans have a razor thin margin and they are not in alignment. So he is making a big show of Executive strength. But much of what he's trying to do with the executive branch goes well beyond what the branch can actually enforce. 

We will see how this all shakes out. Yes, there will be damage, but we have had damaging presidents before. The Dems will have to so much to repair, it's so unfair!

Meeting expectations

I feel genuinely bad about this. He's a nice guy; educated, liberal. But he thinks I'm "interesting" because he talked a whole time and I listened. Showed me pictures from the travel he's taken. Talked about science fiction because that's all he reads and watches. 

The absolute deal breaker was when he earnestly explained to me that science fiction is all female driven now (this is, of course, not true, except apparently in Star Trek, which is all he exposes himself to). He acknowledges that it used to be too much male driven, but that it's not right to go the other way - it should be proportional, like 51% female to reflect the population. It should be the same with race. 

I do not have the energy to explain how utterly, totally, and completely wrong headed his thinking is. But it's a tidy encapsulation of why we aren't right for each other.

He also explained how women's expectations are too high because of TV and movies. This from a guy who retired early because he has heart trouble and he's at least 50 pounds overweight. I think women's expectations are exactly where they should have been all along and men are just now realizing they aren't cutting it...

Grumpypants

 This is another thing I see quite a bit of: this scolding tone, about "scamming," or using filters on photos, or being into "drama." Who do they think this finger wagging appeals to? I give a wide berth to anyone with a chip on their shoulder (especially when they feel so strongly about it that they put it in their actual profile).

Super sus

 Called the water department to find out why my bill is so damn high ($170 this month ffs). Turns out, I'm paying the bill for the whole building. And the landlord is not allowed to do that! They are reverting the bill to him and he will be billed for the money I've paid since I moved in. I'll be getting a refund. 

But there's no way he didn't know he's not supposed to do that - he's owned several rentals and has for many years. So this is making me concerned about continuing to live here...