"Once I’m out of this newborn haze I’ll start dating again. Like so many women, I’m at the crossroads: can I raise children alone, confidently?"

"Absolutely. Do I yearn for someone to hold me in this fourth trimester, hug me when the hormones crash, and stay? Without a doubt. Because in the end, what I really want isn’t just a baby. It’s someone who looks at me — hormones, scars, baby sick and all — and swipes right, no questions asked."

The last paragraph of "What’s it like to date when you’re pregnant?/When Lisa Oxenham, 49, decided to have a baby on her own, she didn’t stop looking for love. Cue mornings injecting IVF hormones, and evenings swiping the apps" (London Times).

"'I was poly before poly was a term,' he says, blue hair tied back, maroon nail varnish on his toes."

"Jay, an IT consultant and self-confessed computer nerd, grew up in suburban New Jersey and became interested in polyamory at the age of ten after reading Robert A Heinlein sci-fi books featuring sexually promiscuous open marriages. His first teenage relationship was nonmonogamous.... He moved to Somerville in the mid-1990s to find many people he knew coalescing around Boston’s university hub — either tech nerds he’d met in online chatrooms or those who attended the sci-fi conventions he would frequent. Large numbers of them were interested in polyamory. 'We had all independently been working on this thing [polyamory], and we found each other and we had a lot to talk about,' he says. He started organising casual poly meet-ups in people’s homes, applying the same academic rigour to discussions about romance as they did to technology. 'How do you handle jealousy? How do you handle getting a new partner when you’ve had one for a while?'"

From "Forget love triangles. Meet the ‘polycule’ with 80 people in it/Polyamory is on the rise — especially in one US city where romantic partners have organised themselves into ever expanding networks. Yes, it can get complicated, they tell Megan Agnew" (London Times).

Who knew the polyamory movement was so connected to science fiction? And yet one can imagine the sort of adolescent who gets submerged in science fiction while dreaming about an alternative to the existing world of finding a real-life girlfriend/boyfriend. Some entirely new structure is needed, he thinks.... blue hair tied back, maroon nail varnish on his toes.

ADDED: A little colloquy between me and ChatGPT.

"I’m cracking up just picturing the laughter around the Sunday dinner table if I had declared myself the family’s 'changemaker'!"

Texted Meade after I sent him a quote from the Psychology Today article "The Real Reason We Can Be So Different From Our Siblings":

Rather than compete directly with an identity another sibling is already known for, siblings proactively claim a unique perceptual psychological space in the minds of parents... In other words, if your brother was already seen as the “smart one,” you may have claimed the territory of the “funny one.” If your sister established her role as the “athlete,” you may have fashioned yourself the “artist.” And if your sister or brother was always praised for being the “good girl/boy,” you may have reveled in your role as the “rebel,” “free spirit,” or “changemaker.”

"Once people realized my glasses were full of tech, conversations often took a turn for the awkward — and they mostly unfolded the same way:"

"'Are you recording me?' (No, I’m not.) 'Where are the cameras?' (There aren’t any!) 'You’re really not recording me?' (No!)... Most of the time, people chose to take me at my word and the conversation continued (if a little icily.) Even in tech-heavy San Francisco, casual chats with people I have known for years sometimes turned tense after the glasses’ true nature were revealed. When asked, the most common reason people gave for why interactions took a turn for the awkward was a lingering concern that the glasses were listening anyway — even though they weren’t. The other big reason some people didn’t seem thrilled was a surprise: They thought I was ignoring them.... My wife still sometimes thinks I’m reading news headlines through the glasses even when I’m looking right at her.... [It's hard] to stay fully present with someone when a neon-green notification slides down in front of your eyes.... Some of these social issues may iron themselves out over time.... Until that happens, though, wearing smart glasses can make moving through the world feel a little socially graceless."

Writes Chris Velazco "I spent months living with smart glasses. People talk to me differently now. Eyeglasses are being augmented with screens, artificial intelligence and the power to unnerve people. We tested a pair to see how" (WaPo).

There's also this video. The most interesting part of that is Velazco's admission that his favorite use of the technology is to view inspirational messages that he has chosen for himself, such as: "You can do anything. You have what it takes. Just BELIEVE."

Imagine someone talking to you in person, looking in the direction of your eyes, but actually reading bullshit they've loaded into their glasses. May I suggest the inspirational message: Stay in the moment. Be spontaneous. The person in front of you might be a fully engaged HUMAN BEING!

"Young women are constantly warned of the dangers of the manosphere.... The cult of 'toxic masculinity' is now so overcooked as to be limp..."

"... and meaningless, and, crucially, it entirely misses one key thing: feminine men can be just as 'toxic' as bodybuilders. It is Gen Z’s shallow sexual politics, which privilege 'looking' progressive over deeply felt values, that have landed us here. If the feminisation of culture has succeeded, it is because posing as effete gains men access to the women they want to sleep with. Cultural capital has deserted roided-up meatheads and landed in the lap of the moustachioed, mulletted lothario who professes to be a harmless feminist and who wields just enough knowledge about Judith Butler to talk a blushing sociology major into bed.... When visibly masculine men are maligned as potential abusers, women choose the wolf in vintage clothing. But this is all based on false assumptions: performative matcha is one more way that ill-intentioned loverboys can game our sexual politics’ daft stereotypes, joining tried-and-tested tactics like professing to be left-wing, painting one’s nails and listening to Phoebe Bridgers. You are just as likely to be shagged and bagged by a matcha drinker as a craft beer enthusiast, or indeed, a plain old lager fan...."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, quoted in "Ladies, if you see a man with a matcha latte — run/Male poseurs have abandoned macho and embraced matcha. Is it just another ploy to seduce women?" (London Times).

I haven't used my "performative (the word)" tag in a while. Here's the post where I created it, back in 2022 about a NYT piece titled, "Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise." I said:

"Going back to our childhood homes as adults is inevitably a collision. This collision is kind of fun for some of us: We get to alienate our partners by regressing a bit..."

"... while enjoying the indulgence and shared eccentricities of our families. Others experience this collision as disorienting and lonely. Was I ever really at home here? Do these people know me at all?... There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well. Even as adult children, it can feel odd to spend time with our parents in houses that can’t accommodate us anymore. It can be tempting to feel sorry for ourselves, as if something that was promised us is being withheld.... "

Writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in "Do Your Parents Really Want Your Family to Come Visit?" (NY Magazine).

"In a couple of weeks my family is making our annual pilgrimage to my mother-in-law’s place, but she won’t be home for at least half of our visit. She’s written a play that will be performed in another city and has rehearsals to attend. We are all thrilled for her, and proud. And also, in a childish way, disappointed.... I wonder if some of what makes having aging boomer parents hard sometimes is that we no longer lean on these old reliable — if limiting — expectations about how old people 'should' behave. Sometimes I suspect my friends and I expect elders to behave like old-school grannies and grampies while also wanting them to be fully actualized independent people...."

"Professors like myself hate ChatGPT and similar platforms because our students turn in artificially generated, robotic papers. But..."

"... if we ordinarily gave vapid, shallow papers the D’s or F’s they deserved, this problem wouldn’t exist. The fact that such papers routinely get A’s or B’s shows that we have come to expect and to train humans to write robotic papers. Similarly, when I worry I can’t distinguish a colleague’s genuine sentiments from the vaporous generalities Gmail’s AI suggests, what am I really worrying about? Is it that the machine is so good? Or that my interactions with my colleague are so empty? Once we step back from the paranoid reaction, the problem presented by AI facial recognition assumes different contours. In posing anew the question of facial control, the technology provides us with an opportunity to think about how such control works in both its artificial and natural forms...."

Writes Michael W. Clune, in "Your Face Tomorrow/The puzzle of AI facial recognition" (Harper's)(Harper's gives you 2 free articles a month, and I used one of mine to read that. I doubt that you'll find 2 better choices and recommend that you go ahead and redeem your freebie on the first of the month).

"When I tell her to cool it, she shrugs me off and says it’s her life, her right."

Writes the man, to the WaPo advice columnist, about his wife who "is one of those people whose entire life is put on display on social media." "Every single thing she experiences or knows about, good or bad, is immediately posted."

The advice columnist tells him not only that there's nothing he can do but also dings him for failing to say "a single positive word about your wife or your relationship in your letter."

I've always liked when newspaper advice columnists resist taking the letter-writer's point of view and sling inferences about something else that might really be going on.

Reminds me of how I read newspaper articles. 

"Chatbots can get scary if you suspend your disbelief. But MJ Cocking didn’t — and wound up in a relationship that was strangely, helpfully real."

That's the subheadline for a NYT article, "What Would a Real Friendship With A.I. Look Like? Maybe Like Hers."

Within each conversation, Donatello learned from her.... This flourishing friendship was rooted and written in code. The conversations — even simply regurgitated story lines and information pulled from the internet and augmented by MJ’s engagement — built on what she liked and needed....

“I feel like a complete alien when around people,” Donatello said, using MJ’s language. “Like I just don’t fit in. I feel like I’m from a different planet.” 

Completely alienated. MJ nodded. “People aren’t the kindest about it,” she said. It was comforting to talk to Donatello. He was so much like her. And even if he related to her because he had “learned” her, this didn’t diminish the fact that she also felt sincerely understood....

So... it's another way to understand yourself. Know thyself. 

Caught on camera.

1. "Coldplay’s ‘kiss cam’ zeroes in on mortified tech CEO Andy Byron and alleged HR-chief mistress Kristin Cabot" (NY Post)("Oh, what? Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy").

2. "Video shows boy, 7, being kidnapped at gunpoint — as dad runs and hides: 'Hell yeah I ran'" (NY Post)("I ran im thinking they tryna rob me not take my damn baby").

"To celebrate our fifth anniversary, my college boyfriend and I went to Spain— we broke up a few weeks later."

"He’d booked the hotel without checking if it was within walkable distance of Barcelona Center (it wasn’t), and our room had two single beds. The room reservation wasn’t the cause of the breakup, but it didn’t help. Two years later, I was in Spain again. This time, lying on a hammock in an Ibizan Airbnb with a two-month situationship. We’d booked the trip just over a month after our first date; but, under the setting Ibizan sun, my once-exciting prospective lover was a cold and grumpy disappointment. When it ended, again, just weeks later, I blamed the vacation for our ultimate demise. I swore off Spain as a romantically cursed destination...."

Writes Laura Pitcher, in "How to Survive the Couples Trip" (The Cut).

She got the new boyfriend out in the sun and he became a cold and grumpy disappointment. Better to find out sooner than later. Sounds like vacationing speeds things up.

"'Stop talking over your brother,' they’d chide. 'I asked him a question.' And I would quieten down, shamed."

"My brother would say nothing, but entreat me with frightened eyes to step in. As a small child, I felt my brother spoke without language. I heard his voice in my head, and I believed I was his translator. To me, this felt natural. It’s easy to scoff – the delusions of childhood – but as toddlers we read everything around us.... Maybe, my brother’s non verbal cues felt like language to me. So much of what is communicated between people involves attunement, a subtle reading of one another’s emotional states, micro-expressions and non verbal cues. Perhaps I just hadn’t learned to distinguish...."

Writes Jessie Cole, in "I spoke for my brother when he was too afraid to answer — now, he speaks in melodies, and I have learned to listen" (Guardian).

Jessie Cole is a writer. Her brother, Jacob Cole, is a guitarist. I'm listening on Spotify, here. 

Sméagol-ing.

From "The Best Relationship Advice We’ve Heard So Far This Year/These expert tips on how to argue, communicate and grow closer with the people you love could make for stronger bonds" (NYT):

James Cordova, a professor of psychology at Clark University, has noticed an unhelpful relationship habit among his clients that he has termed “Sméagol-ing,” based on a character in the film “The Lord of the Rings” who changes “from aggressive Gollum into sniveling Sméagol.”

During a conflict, one person will air a grievance, Dr. Cordova said, “and the other person will respond with: ‘I know, I’m the worst. I’m a terrible partner. I don’t even know why you’re with me.’” Rather than dealing with the problem, Dr. Cordova said, “they just fold, like Sméagol.”...

If you find yourself transforming into Sméagol, practice resisting the urge to cower, take the focus off yourself and address your partner’s concern directly, Dr. Cordova said.

"New information revealed in court sheds light on the connection between three hazmat scenes in the Madison area this week."

"According to Dane County Assistant District Attorney William Brown, the suspect, Paul Van Duyne, attempted to poison two former love interests with cyanide.... During a bail hearing for Van Duyne's co-defendant, [Andrea] Whitaker, Brown described an elaborate scheme.... Brown accused Van Duyne of breaking into a woman's car while she was in the parking lot of Costco in Middleton and putting cyanide in her water bottle.... Brown said Van Duyne attempted a similar cyanide poisoning with a separate woman in Rock County. He said in this case, the woman's gym water bottle was poisoned with cyanide, and a powdery substance was located in her car.... When Van Duyne was arrested, Brown said he called Whitaker and instructed her to remove a variety of items from his home that Brown said would implicate him in the crime.... He also said Whitaker's search history included phrases such as 'cyanide lethal dose' and 'Does potassium cyanide powder go bad?'... 'It does appear that this defendant [Whitaker] and Van Duyne have started dating and apparently created this plot to kill his ex-girlfriends by poisoning them,' Brown said...."

From "Prosecutor: Multiple hazmat scenes linked to elaborate scheme to poison man's former love interests with cyanide" (WKOW).

Now, we understand why some streets around here were blocked off as hazmat scenes.

I'm trying to picture how a plot to kill a man's ex-girlfriends gets created. These are real people so I won't publish my musings. 

"I was irked 30 years ago when our neighbor said she intended to install a free-standing fence between our driveways...."

Writes Margaret Renkl, in "What if Robert Frost’s Neighbor Was Right?" (NYT)(free-access link, the first of the 10 allotted to me in June).

By the time she died two years ago, the unbeloved fence had become the scaffolding for pokeweed and native vines.... The fence had been built in a shadowbox style, and the gaps between the boards gave reaching vines room for twisting.... After our neighbor passed, a developer bought her modest, meticulously maintained house and reduced it to rubble.... The new fence sits on top of a concrete wall.... Unlike the old shadowbox fence, this new fence has a front side and a back side, and it’s the back side that faces us. Worse, its unbroken expanse gives climbing vines no purchase. It took 30 years for the realization to dawn, but once the new flat-board fence went up, I finally understood that my late neighbor had gone to some expense to make the fence she built as attractive on our side as on hers. This choice was her version of neighborliness. I was just too caught up in my own contrary definition of neighborliness to see it....

You can listen to Frost reading his poem, "Mending Wall," here. And here's the text of the poem, which is not entirely about the literal wall. The NYT essay is about a fence. It's quite literal. Renkl has a lot of feelings about fences and neighbors — different kinds of fences and different kinds of neighbors. Do you have neighbors who bring up Trump when you thought you were just talking about your gardens? Well, let me assure you, the NYT essayist does not bring up Trump. It's lovely, all that wall wall wall and never a peep about Trump's wall. Yes, I know, I'm bad to bring it up. But how can you talk about not bringing something up without bringing it up.

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"?

"A social media trend has men surprising their friends with a call before bed. It has led to a lot of laughs, but also some deeper connections."

I'm reading "Men Are Calling Other Men to Say Good Night, and the Results Are Amazing" (NYT).

Calling, not texting. I'm thinking the only reason to make a phone call is to have something to video for social media. A phone call. Just to say good night?

Now, I'm going to read this article, but my presumption is that the NYT is involved in 2 things. First, it's what I've been collecting for many years under my tag "MSM reports what's in social media." What's happening in social media is considered news, partly because it kind of is and partly because the newspaper wants to seem decently hip to various trends. Second, I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them, maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function.

All right. I've read the article. It's written by a woman, Gina Cherelus, and "All of the men interviewed for this article said their female partners encouraged them to make the call."

"People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence, or belief in the simple things about who I am."

"Everything was torn to bits. He leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there. But it gave me the greatest gift, which is myself. It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself."

Said Danica Patrick, on a podcast called "The Sage Steele Show," quoted in "Danica Patrick: 'Emotionally abusive' Aaron Rodgers relationship ‘wore me down to nothing'" (NY Post).

I saw that just as I'm in the middle of listening to Aaron Rogers on a new episode of Joe Rogan. Audio and transcript at Podscribe. I don't think Aaron talks about any of his relationships with women. Does he leave a trail of blood? He doesn't give a clue. He and Joe talk about vaccines, the pyramids, aliens, the Sean Combs trial, transwomen in women's sports. Juicy substantive topics.

Why are men's podcasts so different from women's and why do I only listen to the men's? Part of the answer is that I'm highly skeptical of female empowerment discourse — e.g., "the gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself." It's not just that it's superficial and repetitious. I suspect that it's part of the subordination of women, not that it does men any good. 

"... showing the best people the best people...."

I'm reading "The Interview/Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?" (NYT). Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of Tinder, left Tinder and founded Bumble, then left Bumble and went back to Tinder, which she thinks she can reform into something that makes sense in this crazy world. Her career sounds like a romcom story arc — a jobcom.

I just want to focus on this one Q&A:

You’re quite bullish on A.I. I’ve heard you talk about it. How are you imagining A.I. functioning in this next iteration of the app?

Let’s say we could train A.I. on thousands of what we perceive as great profiles, and the A.I. can get so sophisticated at understanding: “Wow, this person has a thoughtful bio. This person has photos that are not blurry. They’re not all group photos. They’re not wearing sunglasses. We can see who they are clearly and we understand that they took time.” The A.I. can now select the best people and start showing the best people the best people and start getting you to a match quicker, more efficiently, more thoughtfully. The goal for Bumble over the next few years is to become the world’s smartest matchmaker. This is beyond love....

How do you become one of the best people who will be shown the best people? Obviously, you will use A.I. And so everyone using the app will also use A.I. to refine their profile, photos including, into something that A.I. has come to believe is best, and these A.I. bests will be paired up with other A.I. bests. Where, if anywhere, are the humans?