
Zuckerberg is getting a lot of press about this comment on the Joe Rogan show:
“I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
Zuckerberg said he is surrounded by women as a father of three daughters and a brother to three sisters. In his view, his recent passion for martial arts has “turned on a part of [his] brain that… should have been there.”
I wonder if anabolic steroids helped turn on that part of his brain — masculinity fetishists sure seem to like their ‘roids. And, yeah, this fucker is headed for a divorce, if he’s not there already. As I’ve remarked on BlueSky, hopefully his wife, Priscilla Chan, will be another Mackenzie Scott (Bezos) and give most of her half of the community property away. She’s a pediatrician so maybe she’s got the common sense he so clearly lacks.
The view of masculinity that these clowns cling to (I hunt, I do MMA, blah blah blah) is mostly performative, and they come off like giant posers. I wonder what their hunting guides and MMA coaches say about them behind their backs.
Anyway, speaking of masculine energy, my wife and I got sucked into Landman and watched it, even though the “masculine energy” portrayed there is pretty shallow. This is the new Taylor Sheridan drama, set in the oil fields around Midland/Odessa, Texas. We’ve watched some of his last big series, Yellowstone, and as someone who grew up around real cowboys, they don’t get into fights quite as often as that show would portray it. And they spend a lot more time on four-wheelers than on horses. So I’ve got to assume that Sheridan has about a shallow a view of the oil fields as he does of ranch life in Montana. But the most shallow part of both of the series is his portrayal of women. The only kinda-sorta fully realized character of the dozens of women in those to series is the crazy-but-smart Beth in Yellowstone. Almost all the rest are decorative, including Billy Bob Thornton’s ex and daughter in Landman. (The attorney in Landman is smart, I grant, but otherwise she’s poorly written.) Generally, it’s just the flattest and least imaginative characterization of women that I’ve seen in a popular series in a long time.
So I guess the real key to masculinity, in the minds of both a big deal TV writer like Sheridan and a self-hating nerd like Zuck, is a complete inability to understand or recognize the complexity of women.
Belafon
This reminds me of a review of how bad most male writers are at describing sex in books.
Old School
Meta lost a lawyer over this:
japa21
“Masculinity” per these folks would be defined as “Never having to say I’m sorry for anything, especially anything I say or do to people with lady parts.”
Professor Bigfoot
Their concept of masculinity is wrapped up in their dominant/submissive fantasies— as long as they have someone they’re above, in control of, can punch down on, they know they’re real, manly men.
rikyrah
I’m sincerely waiting for someone to explain to me how Google..
GOOGLE…
can come out and say that they are doing away with fact checking.
Um…
If I can’t trust that the answers given during a Google Search are TRUE…
Then, why would I use Google?
Scoop: Google won’t add fact checks despite new EU law
Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios.
The big picture: Google has never included fact-checking as part of its content moderation practices. The company had signaled privately to EU lawmakers that it didn’t plan to change its practices, but it’s reaffirming its stance ahead of a voluntary code becoming law in the near future.
Zoom in: In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the content and technology arm at the European Commission, Google’s global affairs president Kent Walker said the fact-checking integration required by the Commission’s new Disinformation Code of Practice “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services” and said Google won’t commit to it.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/16/google-fact-check-eu
rikyrah
Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) posted at 10:28 AM on Thu, Jan 16, 2025:
Talk to your kids—especially your teen and preteen sons.
The Oath Keepers are back with new leadership—leaked documents reveal they’re targeting youth to rebuild their image, with a focus on the Boy Scouts.
The group unraveled after founder Stewart Rhodes was jailed for seditious conspiracy over Jan. 6. He’s serving 18 years—unless Trump bails him out with a pardon. https://t.co/9dgxYtUc9R
(https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1879928800202604626?t=bL_J4uD1boVHa_lh_U24_w&s=03)
rikyrah
Donald Trump is a white DEI hire (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 9:24 PM on Wed, Jan 15, 2025:
the Bernie far left has a huge hand in having sunk Biden’s outgoing approval ratings
(https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1879731301923909976?t=LkF_g5IYg1xJ35HpKBWILw&s=03)
Chris
In hindsight, Aaron Sorkin in The Social Network did a damn fine job in nailing exactly the kind of sociopathic mentality that blossoms in the upper echelons of modern-day tech-CEO culture. Everything from the creepy objectification and hatred of women, to the “disrupter” yearning for being big enough to break things and hurt people without them being able to do anything about it, to the insecure-nerd resentment and envy of jock culture. It’s literally all there.
Sorkin got some criticism at the time for his portrayal of Zuckerberg taking a lot of liberties with real life, and being more of an Angry Nerd stereotype. Well, maybe so. But whether or not the portrayal of Zuckerberg was accurate to what we knew about him at the time, it’s certainly accurate to how he’s turned out to be since, and not only him, but the entire gaggle of Social Media Zillionaires he’s a part of. Which, for my money, means even more kudos should go to Sorkin.
Betty Cracker
Great post! Sheridan and the broligarchs personify the problem you identified, and it’s unfortunately a core truth about this backward-ass country.
On a somewhat related note, for the sake of your own sanity, do not read the trending NYT focus group piece called “12 Men Who Backed Trump Grapple With America.” I’m not typically given to violent fantasies, but I wanted to stuff all fucking 12 in a Cybertruck and roll it into a volcano and listen to their screams as I file my nails.
Old School
@rikyrah: Google isn’t doing away with factchecking. They aren’t adding it. They don’t do it now.
Chris
In the same way that what little I’ve seen of NCIS made me say “why did they remake The A-Team and make Colonel Decker the hero?” what little I’ve seen of Yellowstone makes me say “why did they remake Dukes of Hazzard and make Boss Hogg the hero?”
The Other Bob
As most sane parent’s here at Balloon Juice, I am often anxious about raising a good young man. Recently I was worried about some of the influences on my son, so I asked him what he feels makes a good man. My son is very quiet, but thought about it and said “respectful” and “responsible” . I could not have boiled it down to so few of words, but I am pretty proud of the kid. He then reassured me he wasn’t influenced by a bunch of alpha assholes on social media.
Anyway
Masculine energy in the corporate world means all gains go to shareholders; other stakeholders be damned. Private Equity, Vulture Capital, Bitcoin all exude masculine energy.
Steve LaBonne
“It’ll be because you’re an asshole. “
Old Man Shadow
Someone I was just reading about today.
Demond Doss.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/private-first-class-desmond-thomas-doss-medal-of-honor
A deeply religious pacifist who served in the military in WW2. He took abuse from his unit in boot camp before deployment. Then when someone was wounded, the person called a coward would run through enemy fire as the medic and patch them up doing his best to make sure they got to go home alive. No one called him a coward again.
Refuses to retreat because there were still wounded men who couldn’t. Gets them out of there.
Takes shrapnel to his legs. Treats himself and waits for a gurney. Then when he sees a more seriously wounded man as he was passing by, insists that the men carrying him leave him and take that man instead. Gets shot in the arm, uses a gun stock to make himself a splint, then crawls to the aid station.
That’s kind of what I think good masculinity is now. Not the rough and tumble belligerence. A quiet courage that can take insults because you’ve got nothing to prove, but when the shit hits the fan, you get to work and save people even at risk to yourself.
Humility, courage, honor, loyalty. Those qualities cross gender boundaries, but if you made me define what a good man is, I’d settle on those words and I’d add kindness and charity too.
cmorenc
@Old School: Re: Lemley’s comment about Zuckerberg’s “descent into toxic masculinity and. “
Chris
I think the only Sheridan show I’ve ever actually watched a full season of was Special Ops: Lioness, which does at least focus on women, neither of which, at least, are decorative or flat. Unfortunately, the politics of the show overall were just so fractally awful I couldn’t bring myself to watch another season.
Lyrebird
@The Other Bob: Proud – rightfully so!
And yes I am there worrying with you.
Steve LaBonne
@Old School: And it’s painfully obvious that they no longer care about the quality of their search results.
Old School
The FNYT on a meeting between Stephen Miller and Mark Zuckerberg.
Does it get more masculine than blaming the woman?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Betty Cracker:
Another memorable quote now filed away for future use. My BCrack clip file is rather extensive.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: My personal belief is that real manly men are not obsessed with domination. Instead they get on with their lives, ignore their wife’s complaints sometimes but not always, mostly take out the garbage when they are asked to, and have full control of the tv remote.
OT Have you tried out your electric snow shovel yet?
cmorenc
@Old School: Re: Lemley’s comment about Zuckerberg’s “descent into toxic masculinity and neo- Nazi madness, would Steve Jobs have followed the same arc if he hadn’t been such an arrogant idiot about his treatable variant of pancreatic cancer? Probably yes, but OTOH maybe being a cancer survivor might have mellowed out his perspective. But while alive, Jobs was even more of a raging asshole than Zuck.
TONYG
These fucking clowns. My Calabrese father had a word for guys like this jackass, Elon Musk, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and, of course, Donald Trump — the word was “cafones”. (A cafone is, basically, a jerk — but a particular type of jerk — a fake tough guy who pushes around people he thinks are weaker but becomes a wimp when facing any real adversity.). It’s probably just as well that my father didn’t live to see this generation of assholes.
Professor Bigfoot
These seem in short supply among national conservatives today.
Betty Cracker
Against my better judgment, I watched “Yellowstone,” mostly so I’d have something to discuss with my stepmom, who has a “Don’t make me go all Beth Dutton on you!” t-shirt. It was awful though sporadically fun to watch. The last season was horrid, not least because Sheridan made the bit-part role he played into a major character. Christ, what an unprofessional douchebag.
bbleh
Well at least we can be sure their emotionally underdeveloped, antagonistic, two-dimensional view of women has nothing whatsoever to do with any feelings of inadequacy.
Old School
@Steve LaBonne:
I know. It’s mostly advertising these days.
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: the nail-filing touch is the chef’s kiss on that image.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: This, entirely.
The mini snow blower is just flat out GREAT. I mean GREAT. I mean, if you have the EGO power head already, and get snow— GET YOU ONE.
NetheadJay
@The Other Bob: That is very good. How old is your son?
Chetan Murthy
@Old School: huh, the way I remember it, Ms. Sandberg was -instrumental- to the success of Facebook. It’s interesting that they’re rewriting that history how to make her the bad guy.
scav
It’s not as though they could fit anything more complex than a school lunchbox definition of masculinity into their cortex.
Chris
@TONYG:
“Oh, a chickenhawk! Did you pick up a small crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world that you mean business this week?”
“No…”
“Did you try to pick up a small crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world that you mean business this week?”
“YES…”
sab
My youngest stepson is an active loyal Democrat, but he is also a First Adapter. So he did buy a honking big EVgasoline hybrid pickup truck. It has a front and back seat, so the cargo bed isn’t much bigger than my Honda Fit ( it is taller since no roof.) He can barely fit it up our driveway or squeeze it into his condo association parking space.
I am a luddite and I do not understand First Adaptors because I do the opposite (if it worked in the eighteenth century it will probably still work now) but he really isn’t an asshole or MAGA.
He is losing his enthusiasm for electronics. They die so young. No more 30 year old washers plugging away in the basement.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
To go back to a person who was referenced a couple threads ago, Sarah Taber did a video where she and one of her friends watched the first episode of one of the series in the Yellowstone universe just so they could clown it and call out everything wrong with it.
It was pretty good. (Don’t know if it’s still up anywhere, don’t remember where I saw it, unfortunately).
trollhattan
What am I thankful for? I am thankful for living in a world where I must become acquainted with people I would never associate with, merely because they are billionaires (real or imagined). What a way to expand my Weltanschauung. Thanks, America!
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Thank you. I have been waiting to hear from you.
NetheadJay
@Chetan Murthy: She very much was. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s now tearing her down, but talk about rewriting his own and the company’s history, as well as lack of self-insight.
Miss Bianca
@Chetan Murthy: wonder how she is feeling about that whole “Lean In” concept now…if I were her, I would be praying for Zuck to learn into a wood chipper, personally…
Jeffro
this right here
by “masculine energy “, they mean “male supremacy“…even when the male in question does nothing to contribute (to a relationship, a workplace, or a community)
or does worse than nothing…even the ones that actively hurt a relationship, a workplace, or a community are still at the top of the pyramid, in their minds.
after all, look who they chose to lead them
Lobo
@Old Man Shadow:
My aspiration!
Searcher
@The Other Bob: I suspect a big influence on boys is how many older guys — fathers, grandfathers, coaches, classmates — they have yelling at them about “being a man”.
Lobo
@Old School:
They will always throw you under the bus!
Jeffro
Mrs. Fro read that this morning and was appalled. I told her not to bother sharing any details with me.
I also asked her when was the last time she saw a piece about 12 Biden/Harris voters and their thoughts. She just looked at me…
CHETAN R MURTHY
@NetheadJay: and I remember being told by Googlers that the started hurting me women when they realized the boys simply couldn’t design products anybody wanted to use. Not to save their damn lives, even.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Yellowstone re-re-reimagined as Landman gives us a heaping dose of Billybob Thornton, who is infinitely more watchable than Costner and it’s not until the third(?) episode everything in the storyline halts for the lecture mocking the pretty lawyer and her alternative energy foolishness [and hooboy are those “facts” ever 180 degrees off]. They had faked me out right up to that point.
Family structures are essentially the same, with the same wisecrackin’ fillies.
Is it worthwhile otherwise? Only if you really like Billybob, since Texas vistas are not Montana vistas if you know what I mean and I know you do. Other than that, cowboys who need to be taught a larnin’ are now roughnecks who need to be taught a larnin’.
swiftfox
On my way to Arizona, August 2019, I was driving on the interstate between Odessa and Midland, between noon and 1 pm. It was bumper-to-bumper with the oil tankers, tractor trailers, etc. I pulled out for a peek to see if I could pass in the right lane. Next moment, the tanker that was in front of me went into the right lane, and then onto the right shoulder. I did not touch his rig in any way. Eventually he got back on the road, caught up to me. Didn’t do anything else. Very odd driving.
glc
@Steve LaBonne: They do care, a lot. The searches were becoming too effective, which reduced ad income, so they rolled back to a point that encourages repeated searches, and more ad revenue.
This is all fully documented at this point.
It’s definitely not a case of indifference.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: I mentioned it in an earlier thread, but I have a nasty tendency to come into the conversation late, as you may have noticed.
Seriously, though— it’s heavy as hell for a hand-held tool, but way lighter than a standard snowblower; and for my sidewalk and walkways it’s absolutely brilliant.
KatKapCC
Well, this is…interesting.
Busy boy.
Geo Wilcox
@Jeffro: WHITE male supremacy you mean.
Ksmiami
In fairness, Steve Jobs hired a lot of female designers because use and form mattered to him. Just look at Cybertruck for the wrong approach…
Ksmiami
@KatKapCC: I give up
NetheadJay
@Miss Bianca: Same here. I know someone who’s had dealings with her on a professional level. According to him she’s thoughtful but can also be quite direct. And she doesn’t like disrespect, so if I was Zuck I’d be looking over my shoulder. Hope she’s on good terms with his wife.
Searcher
@glc: Eh, The Email notwithstanding, it’s more that — everyone spent last year talking about how ChatGPT was replacing Google Search, and now half the people who would normally be working on incremental improvements in search quality (where you invest man-years of effort for tiny improvements at the margin) are now running around trying to figure out how to add AI(tm) to every aspect of the Google Search experience, instead of trying to figure out how to deal with generative AI shitting all over the internet and diluting organic content.
Quinerly
@cmorenc:
The entire Business Insider piece re Lemley
https://www.businessinsider.com/lawyer-meta-dropped-client-mark-zuckerberg-changes-mark-lemley-2025-1
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: A kid down our street had a college degree in some sort of organic professional gardening from Ashland. He had an unmotorized thing like that that he just pushed. It was amazing. Apparently that was just a one off product.
The electric snowshovel seemed similar but better.
I may have missed out this year. Ace seems sold out. I will keep trying, but next year (Trump tariffs permitting) I will get one. I can still shovel snow if done carefully, but into my seventies I am too old for this. Bad back husband already is.
The Thin Black Duke
@Geo Wilcox: TBH, there’s too many brothers who define their masculinity by thinking of women as “bitches and hoes”. Misogyny just ties the whole room together, man.
Steve LaBonne
I aspire to be a good human being (after almost 70 years I still have plenty of work to do). I have no idea (nor do I care) what it means to be a good man because I can’t see anything gender-specific about being a good human being.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: I’ve had secondary exposure to Landman since the mister watched a few episodes when I was occupying the same space but doing other things. You nailed it.
in addition to the presence of Billy Bob, Landman is superior in that it avoids over reliance on B-roll of cowpokes doing cowpoke stuff. Maybe because roughneck work isn’t as photogenic? God, I got bored of watching calfs being roped and branded and vaccinated and dewormed and what-not!
Jeffro
@Geo Wilcox: I meant ‘male supremacy’ – trumpov got an increasing number of young men of all races in 2024, compared to last time around..
White male supremacy is the top of the top of the pyramid in their minds, sure. But MAGAworld has been pushing the broader variety and unfortunately it’s been working.
rikyrah
About this masculine bullshyt.
We have the Heritage Foundation putting out a paper where they say the answer to America’s Fertility issue is:
‘Bad in excess’?
Da PHUCK?
https://www.newsweek.com/birth-rate-population-timebomb-education-project-2025-1998690
EDUCATION IS A PRIME EXAMPLE?
We can’t have women be educated…because, she can think for herself.
She delays marrying and childbearing, because she’s focused on education and then a career.
No, best to cut all that education and get women barefoot, pregnant, and homeschooling.
PHUCK OUTTA HERE!!
CHETAN R MURTHY
@CHETAN R MURTHY: aarrgh. *Hiring more women
hitchhiker
@trollhattan: I do like Billy Bob Thornton. But really I keep watching Taylor Sheridan products because I’m fascinated by how they can be so bad and so popular at the same time.
What’s the secret sauce? The interchangeable Barbie-women strut around half-dressed in spike heels. The men inflict and endure all sorts of abuse and violence. A lot of the action takes place outdoors, usually beautifully framed and filmed. The stakes are always fantastically high — ruination and shame, or super-wealth and status? It’s all on the line. And the male leads (Costner, Thornton) have an introspective quality that I think is meant to suggest tenderness.
I don’t know. Seems like there ought to be more to it than that, but if so I haven’t spotted it.
rikyrah
Women on these dating apps aren’t choosing men who admit that they are conservative. And, the men are whining.
” It’s just politics.”
No. It’s about values.
Why should a woman be with a man who doesn’t respect the fundamentals about a woman controlling her own bodily autonomy?
Then, they have the nerve to romanticize our grandmother’s marriages.
I see it all the time, on Social Media, and in podcasts…
‘ That’s a REAL woman. They don’t make them like that anymore. SHE understood loyalty, and sticking through bad times .”
No. Grandma wasn’t a real woman. Grandma was trapped.
Grandma probably got married WHEN SHE WAS A TEENAGER – A CHILD.
Grandma had no rights.
Grandma couldn’t get a job.
Grandma couldn’t buy property.
Grandma couldn’t even get a bank account or a credit card – WITHOUT HER HUSBAND’S PERMISSION.
GRANDMA WAS TRAPPED.
The disconnect is so real. They’re talking and waxing poetically about Grandma.
GRANDMA IS THE ONE WHO INSTILLED IN US FROM PRACTICALLY THE DAY WE WERE BORN THAT WE NEEDED TO GO OUT AND GET OUR OWN.
Grandma and those Elder ladies in the community, are the ones who pushed the girls to
‘Get that education’
‘Get that career’
‘Travel for yourself’
All the time.
Women who didn’t have choices, had to put up with a lot of shyt.
Women who can feed themselves, do not.
My mother and her three sisters, all had failed first marriages. They were able to cut their losses because my Grandmother made sure that they were all EDUCATED before they got married. They were all employed and making their own money. So, when the time came that the marriage didn’t work for them, they knew that they could take care of themselves. You don’t have to stay in a bad situation, if you can make a way for yourself.
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: Sounds better in the original German- Kinder, Kuche, Kirche.
The Thin Black Duke
@Steve LaBonne: One of the more depressing aspects of the election was seeing a positive image of masculinity as embodied by Tim Walz rejected by Americans. Apparently, voters like asshole men.
NetheadJay
@CHETAN R MURTHY: Wondered about that but figured it out. Don’t worry, autocorrect comes for us all.
dnfree
@Betty Cracker:
BROligarchs! Awesome!
NetheadJay
@rikyrah: PREACH!!
Glidwrith
@Old Man Shadow: Humility, courage, honor, loyalty. Those things cross gender boundaries……
Stop right there. In a nutshell, this is why we have such toxic shitheads.
Those qualities are not gender specific and these males (not men) can’t exhibit those qualities. They look for anything else, but can’t stand the fact that a good human, man OR woman should exhibit those traits.
This endless hunt for defining What is a Man? Or, What is a Woman?
Answer: you should be asking what is a human being. Anything else is othering a person.
sab
@rikyrah: I know so many young women stuck untrained and unskilled when their husbands bailed on them because raising kids was too hard.
Don’t have kids, young women, until you have a jobskill to support them. Preferably but not necessarily work from home.
Belafon
@Geo Wilcox: In this case, I don’t think it’s just whites. A lot of the black and Latino men that voted for Trump did it because they like the message about men being in charge, or that women shouldn’t be in charge.
bjacques
Martial arts?
Boot to the head:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMIfAmQYig8&t=189s&pp=ygUQYm9vdCB0byB0aGUgaGVhZA%3D%3D
Spanky
@Professor Bigfoot: I ordered one after the 10 inch snowfall a couple of weeks ago, and it should arrive today, this ensuring that the rest of this winter is snow free.
This is my first EGO, and I’m pretty sure not going to be my last now that I’ve become locked in to the system. Any word on how the other heads work? Looking at the pole pruner as next buy.
dnfree
@Steve LaBonne:
This is exactly what I say to my right-wing Christian evangelical nephew, who carries on about masculine virtues. (There are feminine virtues too, he assures me.) What virtues are there that belong solely to either gender or no gender? Courage, compassion, empathy? Not gendered.
rikyrah
Because, when I think of industries overrun with women…and a woman’s influence…
Tech comes top of my list (sarcasm dripping here)
RevRick
@Chris: Anxiety about masculinity regularly crops up in American life. It erupted during the Gilded Age among middle class men, who feared they were going soft. TR’s Rough Riders was the classic example of this. Meanwhile, Billy Sunday, the former baseball player was preaching the gospel of a masculine Jesus.
In the 1950s comics books aimed at boys always featured ads warning about the dangers of being a 98-pound weakling.
Both masculinity and femininity are essentially performative. They are social roles we slap on human beings and define the expectations we have for others and ourselves. This is both comforting and constricting. The comfort lies in that it offers a preset path. The constriction comes in their rigidity. Those who don’t conform risk becoming outcasts. And because of the peculiar way these polar opposites are portrayed, they are antithetical to full human flourishing. What’s especially damaging for men is that they are socially rewarded for being cut off from themselves.
Add obscene amounts of wealth and you have a formula for sociopathy.
sab
@Belafon: I am a 70 year old white woman, and when I saw a lot of the Kamala Harris HBCU women’s sorority women’s joyful celebration I loved it, but I also had a sinking feeling that a there were many men of many races who were not being to be okay with this.
tam1MI
No lie told.
hitchhiker
@sab: I’m 72, and I just understood for the first time how lucky I was that the person I married at age 20 was such a lazy fuck.
If he’d been even a little bit motivated, he’d have been making regular money. He wasn’t, so I had to. It wasn’t long before I realized I could support myself just fine — obviously, because I was supporting the both of us, and his pot & beer habits were eating up a lot of our cash.
Out the door he went. And I had a couple of quite successful careers that I don’t think I’d have stuck with if he hadn’t been so worthless. (I can be lazy, too, given the chance.)
Professor Bigfoot
@Glidwrith: Once you get there, though, you cross all racial, religious, and ethnic lines; if you get there you can be the kind of human who celebrates all the human cultures and ethnicities and “races” (and especially cuisines!).
That is completely incompatible with straight white Christian male supremacy.
Sister Golden Bear
Really good essay on the whole “revenge of the nerds” tech CEO dynamic: Dork Theory. (Albeit I’d label it more poser theory, but her distinction is that while these guys look like nerds, they’re not actually nerds.)
Well worth reading the whole thing.
sab
@Spanky: We have an ego lawnmower (our second) and leafblower and we love them. We gave the first lawnmower to our kid. It wasn’t selfpowered but was otherwise fine. The self-powered one is excellent except if you are not careful it will try to climb trees. Steep learning curve there.
TBone
LOL
https://bsky.app/profile/schooley.bsky.social/post/3lffyltxcqk2p
(You have to see the photo to get this.)
raven
NEW YORK (AP) — Rudy Giuliani settled with two former Georgia election workers on Thursday in a deal that will let him keep his homes and personal belongings in return for compensation and a promise to never defame them again, lawyers and the women said.
The trial was supposed to decide the ownership of his Florida condominium and three World Series rings and was supposed to start in the morning with Giuliani’s testimony. But that never happened. An agreement was announced by all parties in the afternoon.
Steve LaBonne
@dnfree: Tell him he can go on about the masculinity of strength and courage after he’s given birth to a baby.
SW
Yellowstone lost me during the first or second episode when Kev and someone else are driving through a pasture and noticed a cow giving birth and needing help. They take about five minutes to pull the calf and then jump back in their truck and get on with their day. As if!
TBone
@raven: wtf again with the no consequences *facepalm
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: they would cry every thirty days from merely menstruating with cramps.
Sister Golden Bear
@Steve LaBonne:
None of the big tech companies and start-ups care anymore about their products, so what they customers actually want/need. It’s all about next shiny hyper-growth object that’ll bring in that sweet, sweet investor cash.
Miki
@Belafon: Not just male writers, not just bad at describing sex in books.
Sister Golden Bear
@TBone: If men had periods, there would be unlimited paid “period” days off each month.
TBone
@Sister Golden Bear: you know it, plus free abortions everywhere.
Renie
Not sure of his definition of ‘masculine energy’ but my grandmother wore those glasses and she’s been dead for over 30 years.
Professor Bigfoot
@Spanky: The ONLY complaint I have about any of them is that they are heavy AF.
Again, though, it’s evidence of how “heavy duty” they all are, and you can feel it.
I have the power head (of course), the pole pruner, the weed-whacker, the edger and of course, the snow blower.
I got my EGO mower (the littlest one) nearly 10 years ago (I have a small yard) and LOVED it. It took 7 years or so for my first EGO battery to lose its mojo (it won’t hold a charge long enough to do the yard in the mower— but it still holds enough to run any of the other tools too).
I was at Ace the other day and saw their biggest walk behind mower— has a metal deck and looks like SERIOUS heavy duty stuff… anyway, I’m quite pleased with everything I’ve gotten from them.
(well, some of the damn trees are too tall for me to reach with the pole pruner, but…;)
Katdip
As if the problem with corporate America is too LITTLE testosterone! The most recent economic catastrophes were driven by finance industries dominated by men with kill or be killed mentality – think the mortgage backed loan meltdown, Enron, private equity in healthcare, prisons, rental housing etc. Tech is just as male dominated, but according to Zuck they let in just a few too many women (and girly men) who cared about things like equal pay, work-life balance, reducing sexual harassment, and attracting and retaining a diverse workforce that reflect their customers (in the US, women are 54% of Facebook users). F- that noise, says Zuck, let’s go full on Masters of the Universe!!
sab
@Sister Golden Bear: Mine were mostly uneventful. Had cranps maybe five times in my life. So I wasn’t as sympathetic as I should have been to women who had real problems with them.
TBone
@Renie: check out the link at #86 for a belly laugh
Fuckerberg needs a man bra
TBone
@sab: I had real problems that became so severe I had my uterus lining burned out with a hot balloon (ablation) because I couldn’t take enough time off for a hysterectomy.
Miki
@rikyrah: Preach it. Preach it, preach it, preach it.
Seriously – I become livid when I read this crap about “masculinity” being threatened. Identity politics at its worse. Makes me want to specialize in immasculation politics.
NotMax
@Professor Bigfoot
Heh.
Bought a mini snow blower (non-electric then, natch) as a holiday present to the parents in 1976. Fuzzy as to the brand, but it may have been Husqvarna?
NotMax
@TBone
You mean the manssiere?
;)
divF
@Steve LaBonne: There’s a reason it’s called “labor”. Some of the hardest work a body can do.
Westyny
Christ, what a dipshit.
dnfree
@Steve LaBonne: We’ve had the discussion about my being in the delivery room and having the great good fortune of having my three daughters each emerge alive and take their first breath, and that THAT is the moment they became living human beings. I know people who have had the terrible experience of a stillbirth. But those discussions were on the topic of abortion and when a fetus becomes a human being.
Parfigliano
@KatKapCC: Busy boy. Shitty poker player
oldgold
I have watched Landman. Billy Bob Thornton, as Tommy Norris, a landman for a West Texas oil company is excellent. His character is well developed and Billy Bob Thornton was seemingly born to play this part. Similarly, his son, Cooper Norris, is an interesting character and plays his part well.
But, the women in the Norris family, Angela Norris, Tommy’s ex-wife and Ainsley Norris, Tommy’s daughter, are ridiculous characters. They are characters a dim, randy and immature boy entering his sophomore year of high school might have concocted – just awful. Their scenes the Mother Lode has instructed me to fast-forward through.
There is one female character, Ariana Medina, a recent Latina widow, who is romantically involved with Cooper Norris, that is well drawn and compelling.
russell
Ka-ching!!
WaterGirl
@raven: Sounds to me like they got tired of all the legal bullshit and just wanted to be done.
Baud
I hope he changes the name to DickBook.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: I just did read the whole thing – interesting writer, thanks for highlighting!
Jaybird
@Spanky: We have the edger, mower, leaf blower and weedeater. All great. I’ve been eying the pole saw – we don’t get enough snow in W Oregon to bother with a snowblower
@hitchhiker: Me too. At some point when I was about 30, I looked around and thought to myself “what exactly is he adding here?”
narya
I think a lot about Ru Paul’s observation: We’re born naked; the rest is drag.
TBone
@NotMax: hahahaha!
A Ghost to Most
It’s come to the point where I am embarrassed by the role I played in creating the public Internet. At least we had the good sense to get the hell out of Silicon Valley after one year.
zhena gogolia
@Lobo: Sounds like Joe Biden and Tim Walz to me.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I think he effectively has.
gene108
@rikyrah:
Specifically, educating women has a direct result in lowering fertility rates. This is known. First two links from a Bing search “fertility rate girls education”.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/11/the-relationship-between-womens-education-and-fertility/
https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/09/08/how-birth-control-girls-education-can-slow-population-growth/
Raven
@narya: Starship “That’s For Sure”
https://youtu.be/bB9QVrq8SrU?si=fKY_SPnSwIS5FMWE
You came into this life, unsheltered and all alone. That’s how you came in and, for sure, that’s how you’ll go out.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: It is astonishing to me how much The Social Network underplayed what an absolute sociopathic POS Zuckerberg was and is.
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan: I never saw it. I had no great hopes and didn’t want to see him heroicized.
Renie
@raven:
Rudy claims he has no money. How much compensation is he going to give them?
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia: That’s the thing: the movie made it absolutely clear that Zuckerberg was a piece of shit. And he still came off better than he does in real life. I suspect because Jesse Eisenberg has charisma that he couldn’t simply turn off to play someone as soulless as Zuck.
TBone
Tiedrich gets to the heart of this matter. It’s this:
Also
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/americas-ceos-are-fucking-pumped
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
Yes and no. Check out Table 1 at this Census report on fertility over time. It compares fertility rates by age group between 1990 and 2019.
The upshot is that while fertility rates have collapsed by about 3/4 for women and girls aged 15-19, and by nearly half for women 20-24, fertility rates for women 25 and up, taken as a whole, increased over that period.
Just not by enough to make up for all the babies that aren’t being born anymore to women and girls 24 and under.
So absent other evidence, I’d say it isn’t education by itself that results in fewer babies, it’s that women and girls aren’t having nearly as many babies when they’re too young for it. And that’s a GOOD thing.
Education plays a role in that, obviously: if you’re going to college, you probably aren’t having a baby at 19.
evodevo
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I know, right? what a way with words – I startled the dog laughing – perfect remedy for those guys…
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan: I saw so much hype about the movie that when I hear someone say “Zuckerberg,” I picture Eisenberg, and I’m always surprised when I see an actual picture of Zuckerberg because he’s so unattractive. Not that I find Eisenberg terribly attractive, but so much better.
zhena gogolia
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: She is amazing!
Soprano2
@TBone: I heard a story about a woman who invented a device that allows men to know what menstrual cramps feel like. She said most men can’t believe it hurts that much, and most women go “yeah, that’s what it’s like”. It has different settings.
raven
@Renie: undisclosed as are most “settlements”. I know a guy who sued Zep and they settled. He couldn’t say how much but he smiled
eta, I’m sure they were advised to take the money and run
lowtechcyclist
This conversation about masculinity reminds me of part of my own distant past. I kinda drifted through my early to mid 20s, keeping a roof over my head but not really knowing what I wanted to do with myself. January of the year I turned 27, I realized I had to stop doing this because I wasn’t enjoying the ride. It took a challenging few years to become the person I needed to be, and afterwards I remember – briefly, as it turned out – thinking of it in terms of my finally having become a man.
The reason why it was brief was that when I looked at the qualities that were part of me now that hadn’t been a few years earlier – integrity, trustworthiness, taking responsibility for my own life and where I was going (and not expecting anyone to come along and fix things), taking responsibility for the consequences of my actions, becoming sensitive to how I was treating others and how they were reacting…well, just from making up the list , it was obvious that there was nothing gender-specific here. So did I become a man? That didn’t seem like the way to think of it. I grew up, is what I did. And I happened to be male.
So I’ve thought the whole ‘masculinity’ stuff has been bullshit for over 40 years now.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@rikyrah: Our plan is to make you poor and stupid isn’t much of a sales pitch.
raven
@lowtechcyclist: what was your draft number?
Betty
@sab: Ah, 30 year old washers. Be still, my heart. No electronics, no plastic. They just kept working.
lowtechcyclist
@raven:
It was in the low 200s, but they weren’t drafting any of us 1954 kids anyway, so I was safer than safe.
Elizabelle
Gawd, Zuckerfuck is a dweeb. And not the kind or introspective type. Just sheer shitfuckery.
May there be guillotines and Luigis for all of these MOTUs.
BellaPea
Betty C., apparently DeSantis has appointed some dumbfuck to one of the Florida university’s boards who has come out with a screed saying that educating young women is what is wrong with the country today. He says this is happening as a detriment to young men (poor things!) and that young women need to be studying how to be good wives and mothers instead of becoming engineers and accountants. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but what a doozy to be appointing to a university board. I hope DeSantis’ political career goes down the toilet really soon after he leaves office.
lowtechcyclist
@BellaPea:
They believe in fetal personhood but not female personhood.
Albatrossity
As I noted elsewhere, Zuck has less masculine energy than a neutered hamster.
KatKapCC
@Soprano2: I refuse to believe those things truly simulate the real thing. Actual cramps are coming from inside and are going to feel differently than an outside stimulus could really match. For me, they also don’t stay in my abdomen but rather spread down my thighs and into my hips. Plus, cramps are only one of a panoply of garbage you deal with. Bloating, backache, stomach ache, fatigue, period poops, etc. Most cis men would barely survive one bad cycle before flinging themselves off a roof.
Peke Daddy
Landman also completely misrepresents renewable energy. Pure fossil fuel propaganda. Wrong on the economics, wrong on environmental impact.https://cleantechnica.com/2025/01/16/why-is-paramount-plus-promoting-big-oil-with-its-landman-series/
dnfree
@lowtechcyclist: You became a “man” by changing your behavior. But do you remember how girls became “women” in those days? By having sex with a man. That’s all it took, and we were supposedly magically transformed. Apparently lesbians never become women.
You are right—people become adults by developing mature behavior, regardless of gender.
West of the Rockies
@rikyrah:
Oh, goody… the Oaf Keepers.
The Other Bob
@NetheadJay:
He is 15. An old soul though.
sab
@rikyrah: Our military is only keeping up on recruitment goals because our young women are educated.
The young men not so much in education, test scores or phyical fitness.
sab
@Elizabelle: Thank you. What with “dork” and “nerd” rattling around being redefined, the good solid “dweeb” is still out there.
sab
@Betty: I dragged in a recalcitrant Bernina sewing machine for repairs last year. Repair guy at first glance said “that will probably need a new motherboard. $700.”
Then he opened it up and looked, and laughed. ” It’s so old it doesn’t even have a motherboard. Mechanical. it needs a new footpedal. $15.”
evodevo
@SW: Yeah lol, and not covered in blood, fluid, dirt, etc. all pristine just like they’d left the “bunkhouse”… and I suppose all the trucks carry calf-pulling equipment in their tool boxes..
Kayla Rudbek
@rikyrah: my grandma was left a widow with five children in the 1960s, college age kids to grade school. She never remarried and she encouraged her daughters to get that education (although my youngest aunt did art trade school and married an electrician). Death, divorce, disability, and unemployment are the four reasons that a woman should always be willing and able to work outside the home, and be able to drive if her health allows her to.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I certainly think of myself as male, and an adult, but embracing the word “man” (as opposed to “guy” or “dude”) is something I still hesitate at sometimes because of all the very specific cultural bullshit associated with that, which is exactly the bullshit that Zuckerberg is leaning into right now. I think the associations actually got worse as a backlash against feminism in the late 20th century.
Matt McIrvin
There was a brief teaser trailer for James Gunn’s Superman movie reboot a little while ago and even though it was just this fragmentary collection of images, it had people absolutely freaking out. Part of that is ridiculous nerd-subculture crap, but many have observed that part of the hunger is what Superman represents: the fantasy of a super-powerful man who, while he could punch you into space, isn’t an asshole. He is selfless and kind and has strong principles.
Of course, many depictions of him through the decades have either fallen short of that or been devoted to subverting it in some way, but there’s this powerful sense of an archetype that has developed.
lowtechcyclist
Since this thread seems to be only mostly dead:
Rocky Horror Picture Show, “I Can Make You A Man”
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
TBF, a lot of the worst about Zuckerberg was yet to come at the time the movie was released. But again, IMO, that just vindicates Sorkin that much more. He didn’t know everything about how this guy and the culture he embodied was going to turn out, but he knew what made them tick, and he knew it wasn’t good.