Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In my day, never was longer.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The willow is too close to the house.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

You cannot shame the shameless.

After roe, women are no longer free.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Weekend Wind-Down Open Thread

Weekend Wind-Down Open Thread

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In case you were wondering… a report from NYMag‘s Jesse Singal, “Men Would Rather Give Themselves Electric Shocks Than Sit Alone With Their Thoughts”:

…[P]articipants were asked to rate the pleasantness or unpleasantness of a number of stimuli, including an electric shock, and then asked how much of $5 they’d pay to experience or not experience each of them again. Then, they were asked to sit alone with their thoughts, but told that if they wanted to, they could shock themselves by pressing a button (because why not?).

Among the participants who said they’d pay to avoid being shocked again (meaning those who found it particularly unpleasant), 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women nonetheless shocked themselves rather than face, without distraction, what is apparently a terrifying hellscape inside their heads. The researchers suggest the gender difference could come down to men having greater sensation-seeking tendencies than women — that is, they get bored more easily…

***********
Apart from/as a way of avoiding the “terrifying hellscape”, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

95Comments

  2. 2.

    Cassidy

    Watching two dudes stripped to the waist and testing their chins in unarmed combat.

  3. 3.

    Botsplainer

    Wife talked me out of buying her a $1,300.00 Sybian, giving me many embarrassed, redfaced squeals of no.

    Now we’re settling into an evening of movies and light drinking….

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    where does somebody like me who is not afraid of being alone with their thoughts or of being repeatedly shocked but really doesn’t like giving away money as long as, “I can deal with it.”

  10. 10.

    Hawes

    Could you imagine what would happen if you had two dude-bros sitting opposite each with the ability to shock each other?

    It might black out the west coast.

  12. 12.

    gbear

    I saw that story and thought that maybe I should just see what life is like without the meds I’ve been taking for depression and anxiety. Seems like it couldn’t be any worse than what that report revealed to be the ‘normal’ state of the men in that test.

    At least when I need to get away from my thoughts, I just visit blogs rather than stick a fork in the toaster.

  14. 14.

    Botsplainer

    @efgoldman:

    From what I read, the ride is, um, intense, justifying the high price.

    I have Corner Stone to blame for this current fascination.

  17. 17.

    RSA

    To conduct the study, Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and colleagues recruited hundreds of undergraduate student volunteers and community members…

    Read: Eighteen- to twenty-year olds (mostly) get bored easily. Surprise! I’ve only read the above summary, though, so my impression may be wrong.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    ::::blushes even more::::
    Here’s how naive I am: I never heard of a Sybian, assumed it was a luxury car, assumed “$1,300.00” had misplaced commas and/or decimal points.

    Then I googled.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    @gbear:

    Seems like it couldn’t be any worse than what that report revealed to be the ‘normal’ state of the men in that test.

    FWIW, depression seems to be vastly underreported in men (particularly straight men) because most of the screening tests use symptoms that are more common in women (ie crying a lot, knowing that you feel sad, etc.)

    To me, it seemed crazy to claim that the gender that commits suicide more often suffers less from depression than the gender more likely to report feeling depressed, but that has been the thinking for years now (though it seems to finally be starting to change).

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    @Botsplainer:

    And here I felt guilty spending $129 on a Lelo product. You are obviously in a much higher income bracket than we are.

  26. 26.

    Randy P

    @RSA: That was the first study. They repeated it with community volunteers, average age 49, and got essentially the same results.

    Here’s another summary of the article. The actual article is in Science magazine but I can’t read the full text.

  27. 27.

    satby

    Read about the study above at Booman’s place, and I totally buy it. The men I’ve known who could not function without a TV or radio or something to distract them at all times has been staggering and, as a person who often craves peace after a stressful day, mystifying. The constant noise drove me out of a few relationships.

  31. 31.

    gbear

    This is going to be one of those threads, isn’t it? Can we run it up to 300 comments?

  32. 32.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @Botsplainer: Interesting juxtaposition between this topic and the thread title — Weekend Wind Down. I don’t think we’re talking about winding down here, are we?

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @gbear: Does that make me smarter than you? See me at #15. :-)

    Edit: just bury your face in that adorable kitty tummy and you will forget all about what you read.

  38. 38.

    Belafon

    @satby: My wife and are in the minority group for each gender. I could go the whole day without the tv or radio on; I don’t even drive to work (30 minutes) with the radio on. My wife walks in the house and turns the TV on.

  43. 43.

    MomSense

    Worked all day in the yard today and then we thought we would all go take a swim in the ocean but it was full of jellyfish!! This is not normal where we live!! Then my friend texted me that her husband saw a great white today. This is not normal where we live!! I guess he is in the process of confirming the sighting with UNE. Apparently he has seen many sharks this season and this wasn’t the first great white.

    Anyway, we decided to run through the sprinkler instead.

  44. 44.

    PurpleGirl

    First thought: And men say that women are emotional and can’t have power because we can be trusted to think rationally. Ha! ha! HA!

  45. 45.

    gbear

    @WaterGirl: My kitty hates me right now. I finally got around to combing out the matts that were developing on her hind quarters (My vet showed me the right way to do it a while back. A comb works better than a brush). She hates being combed or brushed more than anything, but it is nice to have her back to being fluffy again.

    Edit: you may be confusing me with a different cat owner. My cat is a 14 year old tortie & I haven’t posted about her for ages.

  46. 46.

    Karen in GA

    @Mnemosyne: Thank you (and your husband)! I thought better of the post title today, though, when I realized it could be taken as a reference to Song of the South. That, combined with the hip-hop goofiness… well, yikes. Hence the change.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Your soaps are so pretty!

    I had a couple of questions for you on the other thread. Your soaps are beautiful but I am allergic to a lot of scents. Can I ask what you use for the scent in Tropical Sunset and Florida something-I-can’t-recall?

    Is it possible to get those two soaps as part of the custom made shower favors thing?

    Also, we have a small local store where I bought goat’s milk soap, but they don’t carry it anymore. Do you ever try to get local stores to carry your soaps? I know the owners of the store here and I wondered what you would think of my buying a few soaps and showing them to them to see if they might want to carry them?

  52. 52.

    Botsplainer

    @Cassidy:

    I nearly pulled the trigger on it, but already went waaay secretly overboard today.

    Drunken wild hair and all. Hope she likes it. We have another trip coming end of the month. Sandals week in Jamaica. Won’t be as awesome as Belize was, but it’s a beach, and includes scuba dives even if just MoBay.

  54. 54.

    gbear

    @Karen in GA: I just turned 60 two weeks ago. Last winter a desperation to retire started setting in and I did some math and realized I can probably afford to retire at 64 if the market doesn’t tank. I can’t wait to get out of there.

  57. 57.

    Botsplainer

    @Suzanne:

    Dying to see her try one out.

    Maybe somebody could start a shop to rent out the base units. Renters could buy the skin-close attachments.

  58. 58.

    ulee

    Really? When my ex-girlfriend and I would walk our dogs in the woods she could not put away the phone.

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    We leave one week from today for Cancun. Work this week is gonna SUCK, and not just because I will be counting the minutes before vacation. No one will be covering my work for me while I’m out, so I have to get it all done this week. Barf.

    But there will be beaches and drinking. Huzzah.

  62. 62.

    Botsplainer

    Apropos to this thread, a sex-positive diary from Kos:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/02/1311380/-I-like-sex

    It’s my third favorite thing. (Things one and two are eating and sleeping.) Meanwhile, I love my two children and am grateful beyond expression that I have the ongoing experience of being their mother. AND…

    I really didn’t much like being pregnant. Giving birth and the labor process that preceded it hurt like hell. The three years that I spent being either pregnant or recovering from the process of giving birth were by far the most demanding on my physical body and required a lot of health care (and I had uncomplicated pregnancies, deliveries and recoveries.)

    I’ve had a lot more sex in my lifetime than the two instances that resulted in live births. I had a fair amount of sex when I and my children’s father decided that we wanted our sex to result in live births, but by far the majority of the sex I’ve had has been for pleasure.

    Read the whole thing. It’s a gem. My 19 year old daughter appreciated my posting it during a Facebook discussion, as a positive.

  63. 63.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    I think part of the problem (of diagnosis) is that depression often manifests itself in men as irritation, anger, road rage, etc.—“active” behaviors that don’t fit the traditional model of depression as passive, listless, devoid of energy.

  64. 64.

    Botsplainer

    @Suzanne:

    Where in Cancun? You resort locked, or can you get out to something like Isla Mujeres (20 min fast ferry from Cancun, real cheap).

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    So Hotwire.com has been showing a commercial with a middle-aged gay couple looking forward to getting away from their kids for the weekend so they can get some sleep.

    Congratulations, married gay/lesbian couples — you have reached the same level of “boring” that us hetero couples have been at for years. Who’d’a thunk it? :-)

  66. 66.

    Suzanne

    @Botsplainer: We are staying in the hotel zone (I think at the Westin) because we wanted a hotel with kids’ amenities, but we will definitely be getting out and about, going into the city, going to Chichen Itza, etc.

  68. 68.

    Botsplainer

    @Mnemosyne:

    I just filed a divorce between a pair of women here in Kentucky, complete with alimony request. The yin and the yang, the bad with the good.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    That’s one of the reasons depression has traditionally been gendered as “female” — the non-active symptoms weren’t recognized as depression. Hopefully, doctors are coming around, but it’s still a struggle for men to be properly diagnosed.

  71. 71.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve also seen gay couples arguing about their home renovation on HGTV and cooking dinner in the Crate & Barrel catalog. I can’t wait until I see them stressing over their finances in a Chase ad and complaining about the messy bathroom in a Lysol commercial.

  73. 73.

    Botsplainer

    @Suzanne:

    Chichen Itza is a nice day, but go early and make sure you bring a bathing suit for Ik-Kil Cenote, which is awesome.

    I love Isla Mujeres – maybe a 25 minute ride from the Cancun hotel zone to the ferry port, a cheap (under $10 pp) fast ferry that takes 20 minutes and runs frequently, and you arrive in a fishing village with amazing ceviche (cheap), beautiful snorkeling, cheap food and $2 beach beers. We were completely fine with letting our middle schoolers wander on their own – it’s a working fishing village, super safe, with kind, gentle people. Completely different atmosphere from Cancun.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    I can’t remember the title, so I didn’t mention it, but there was a good book by a (male) psychologist about 10-15 years ago that put a lot of the pieces together. Another big thing is self-medication with alcohol. A woman might go home and have a weepy evening with a bottle of wine; a guy goes to a bar, gets shit-faced and boom!—barroom brawl.

  76. 76.

    PurpleGirl

    I had planned to continue working until 70 so I could get the higher SS benefit. But having lost my job in 2008 and not having found another one yet… well, now I may be guaranteed to live my last years in true poverty. (FYI to anyone who wonders why I so dislike Jamie Dimon and the rest of the financial bastards.)

  78. 78.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    Carol Tavris had a really eye-opening chapter about it in her excellent book The Mismeasure of Woman. She was the first person I saw who pointed out how strange it was to say that women suffer more from depression when men kill themselves more often.

  79. 79.

    Botsplainer

    @Suzanne:

    If you make it, I thoroughly recommend Sol beer and the Tik n Xik. Tik n Xik is a Mayan fish preparation, usually something like red snapper. The fish is covered with spices and adobo paste, wrapped in banana leaves, and slow cooked on a really smoky fire. It is served with corn tortillas and a savory citrus slaw, like fish tacos.

  84. 84.

    PurpleGirl

    @ulee: (1) my age; (2) I stutter (and yes, people get antsy about my ability to talk on phones; (3) my typing speed is only about 40 pm (for data entry they want 9000 characters per hour) and who knows what else goes on the minds of those hiring.

    ETA: It got to a point I stopped looking because I couldn’t stand applying on-line and getting NO RESPONSE.

    ETA2: This has happened before. I usually have had to have someone in the company/organization pushing for me.

  85. 85.

    satby

    @Belafon: @efgoldman: I guess because my grandmother (who lived with us) and my mother always left the TV on I just grew up hating the constant background noise. I can ignore it and noise per se doesn’t bother me, but the idea that you can’t just enjoy some peace and quiet even occasionally is alien to me.

  86. 86.

    Botsplainer

    @Suzanne:

    Knock on wood, we’ve never gotten sick in Mexico. We stick to bottled water, distilled spirits or beer to drink, generally use bottled water to brush our teeth (I forget sometimes), and limit our ice to better hotels/restaurants or that made by us from bottled water.

  87. 87.

    Heliopause

    Well, I’ve seen all there is to see
    And I’ve heard all they have to say
    I’ve done everything I wanted to do
    I’ve done that too

    And it ain’t that pretty at all
    Ain’t that pretty at all
    So I’m going to hurl myself against the wall
    ‘Cause I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all

    You know, I just had a short vacation, Roy
    Spent it getting a root canal
    Oh, how’d you like it?

    Well, it ain’t that pretty at all
    No it ain’t that pretty at all
    So I’m going to hurl myself against the wall
    ‘Cause I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all

    I’m gonna get a good running start
    And throw myself at the wall as hard as I can man

    I’ve been to Paris
    And it ain’t that pretty at all
    I’ve been to Rome
    Guess what?

    I’d like to go back to Paris someday and go to the Louvre museum
    Get a good running start and hurl myself at the wall
    Going to hurl myself against the wall
    ‘Cause I’d rather feel bad than feel nothing at all

  88. 88.

    ulee

    @PurpleGirl: Perhaps you could look into another field. Human Services are always looking for intelligent compassionate people. It doesn’t pay much but it also doesn’t matter if you stutter or can’t type up a tornado.

  89. 89.

    satby

    @WaterGirl: I started making soap because I also am allergic to a lot of things, in fact I always thought I was allergic to perfumes: turns out only to some of the ingredients in cheap stuff. I use either natural essential oils or fragrance oils (some of which have synthetic ingredients) depending on what someone has asked for scent-wise. The usage strength is usually way less than commercial soap (2-5% total). Both the soaps you mentioned are citrus scent based, the tropical sunset a citrus floral mix and the Florida sunshine one an orange citrus scent. My sensitive friends have never been bothered, and obviously I’m not, but none of us tends to be seriously allergic (well, I actually am, but to animals).

    I can make any soap you like into shower favor size (guest soaps, around 1-2 oz like you get in a nice hotel), I just need enough time for them to cure, so ordering few weeks ahead is best.

    And if you want to rep me to a local store message me on Etsy and we can work something out with some samples, which would be guest soap sized. I would love to get more business, since I was unceremoniously “retired” last December.
    Thanks for offering. (edied for typo)

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Thanks for the reply. Sounds like the (beautiful!) tropical sunset one wouldn’t work for me :-( because anything floral usually causes a problem for me, but maybe the florida sunshine would work.

    I’ll contact you on Etsy tonight with something brief – there’s no rush, I just don’t want to forget to do it!

  91. 91.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: Message sent on etsy. First it said my password was bad, but then it took me to the email form, which I thought was odd. But it said the message was sent. Anyway… let me know next time you see me here if you haven’t received the message.

  92. 92.

    Origuy

    I just finished a book that I think a lot of people here would enjoy: Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough: Diagnosing the Medical Groans and Last Gasps of Famous Writers by John J. Ross, MD Besides the two writers in the title, it talks about Joyce, Milton, the Brontës, and others. I guess there is a lot of information available about their conditions from their correspondence. A lot of the problems they had were from the treatment used in those days.

  94. 94.

    yam

    These guys have never ridden a bicycle more than 20 miles, have they? Me darling Mrs and I did a 700 mile bike trip a couple of years ago and the silence was unnerving for the first two days then I broke through and I can now happily live in my head all day. I no longer listen to the radio in the car and I’ve taken up knitting with no TV/radio as a hobby.

    It changed my life and I’m quite happy with it. A couple of days of silence may do you a world of good.

  95. 95.

    brantl

    This idea of people willing to shock themselves rather than sit alone with their thoughts really explains the Republican Deep Thinkers, to me.

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