Blinding Makeup

I admit I watched the first 4 seasons of Love is Blind more or less as they came out. It really got me thinking in a more nuanced way about romantic relationships. However my big take away was a lot stranger: Men don't like makeup. 

There are a few different situations in Love is Blind where the relationship is going well until the man sees the woman and then something strange happens: though he's happy with her physical appearance, he suddenly stops trusting her. In a few cases towards the end of the relationship (mid seasons) she stops putting on make up and the man suddenly warms up to her, and in at least one case actually says it was the make up putting him off.

When a man sees a woman's face that has a lot of makeup on it, he doesn't know if he likes her face or not, what he does know is he is looking at a woman who feels like she needs to wear makeup. It is at least in my opinion ALWAYS more attractive to see a woman's face without makeup on than with makeup on. A lot of the subtle intricacies of a woman's face that can make her unique and stand out from others are covered up by makeup. A whole bunch of laddies standing around with faces that look almost exactly the same because of the latest trend in makeup is very off putting. A woman standing near that crowd who used NO makeup (all other factors being equal) instantly stands out as far more attractive than the ones with the painted masks on their face.

Of particular alarm to me was a recent trend with long fake eyelashes. They were hideous and universal. It was almost like someone in the makeup industry wanted women to be less attractive to men. In the show "Too Hot to Handle" on Netflix where the show's producers attempt to reign in notorious sexual behavior with their contestants, we frequently see these attractive women with and without their makeup on, with the gigantic eyelash thing being a big part of their makeup routine. In every scene the women are always far more attractive without their makeup than with their makeup.

So what's with all the makeup? I am reminded of scams like Mary Kay that are pyramid scheme style companies who sell makeup. When a woman attempts covers up her faces it is inherently deceptive regarding what her real face looks like, and this deception is expensive to her because makeup is not free. In an MLM makeup scam, that deception is then used on the woman to drag her into the scam, leading her to think makeup is more normal and valuable than it actually is.

Now don't get me wrong I get that little makeup used with careful moderation is not some great evil. However it's clear to me that it has gone way too far in recent history, now having the opposite effect of what it was originally intended to have, making women look like clowns instead of looking good. 

Karma

 I have an extremely unpopular opinion:

1. Cheating disproportionately impacts men, in that it is more deeply wounding to a man than it is to a woman (all other emotional resilience factors being equal.)

2. There is a natural consequence of cheating for a woman that makes the consequence of her cheating more severe for her than it is for a man, and it has to do with men being an ideal mate for longer than women are.

Cheating Disproportionately Impacts Men

If a woman is raped, a great violence has been committed against her. But in addition to the violence against her, she has been denied the choice of who the father of her child should be. She may potentially give birth to a child that is half her DNA, and half her abuser.

If a man is cheated on, a great theft has been committed against him. He has been denied the right to be a genetic father at all of the resulting child. It's not that half of the DNA was not his to choose, it's that ALL of the DNA is not his whatsoever.

For men the line between violence and theft is much thinner than for women. Because of the potential to give childbirth, women value the sacrifice that goes into creating each life more than men do. Because men as a whole spend so much time getting resources to support families, they see their own life slip through their fingers in sacrifice for wealth, and stealing from them disregards their sacrifice.

It is a joke to say that cheating impacts women as much as it does men. Anyone saying this is either callous towards men or hasn't thought it through. Contemplate this song carefully, and understand the righteous indignation behind it:

Natural Consequences

"I the Lord delight in the chastity of woman" (Jacob Chapter 2.) Peak fertility for a woman is age 18. If she has the luxury of taking herself seriously and her mate selection seriously from a young age, she is likely to have an enjoyable life. But self destructive temptation can destroy a Queen's kingdom.

Many men, including even myself, can get continuously better looking and even stronger all the way into their 50's. Women have no such luxury, they can work very hard to age almost as slow as men, or they can age much faster, those are their two choices. This means that while women get accustomed to being disproportionately desired compared to men at a younger age, as they get older that is completely reversed with men their age being far more desirable than women their age.

The Karma here is that as men shed cheating women their options improve, and as cheating women are shed their options decline. Though I strongly resent this song's lack of sympathy for the damage done to who it is addressed to, I very much appreciatethe tone of regret, desperation, confusion and recognition of maybe-permanent loss that effects and vocals in the song portray:

Lose/Lose Situation

Men in our society generally do respect women, thanks largely to the feminist movement. The dark side of that success is now men are often disrespected by women. No man wants to be cheated on just so he can have the satisfaction of watching Karma run it's course - cheating on some level can be forgiven. However the point of no return comes fast with cheating, and Karma is a vengeful bitch.

Self Actualization

The dancing went well. It got a huge dose of cardio going once a week that I was not otherwise getting. This made me feel a lot better, and think a lot clearer, I suspect because of neurogenesis. This huge improvement in quality of life for me has me thinking a lot about self-actualization vs. the existential crisis.

Most of humanity believes in a benevolent higher power because they have had the experience of becoming desperate, praying for help, and witnessing a miracle as a result. But then why does the higher power not reveal itself to us in every detail? The only answer that works for me is that our beliefs dictate our choices and this higher power highly values our free will. So in the end, our higher power forces us to find our own way of overcoming the existential crisis, thus granting us self-actualization.

Though I have never used drugs, alcohol or tobacco, I am a fan of the notorious industrial band Skinny Puppy. They say heroin users have the existential crisis solved. When an active opioid addict gets out of bed in the morning, they know exactly what their purpose in life is going to be that day: they are going to hustle until they have enough drugs to avoid withdrawal. 

But when people get into recovery, the existential crisis is still waiting for them with all it's horrific riddles and doom. Skinny Puppy had a band member die and disbanded in 1995, and had a comeback in 2004. This is the first song off that first new album when they came back, and among other things it describes the existential crisis better than any other song I know:

The name of the song is I'mmortal. So is the problem either that we are all mortal and are going to die, or is the problem that our souls are immortal so we'll always live with the consequences of our actions? The answer is: yes!

Dancing Past Midlife Crisis

 

Last week I confessed to a friend of mine and her boyfriend "I don't care if I have to pay a male sex worker to take me dancing at a gay bar, I will be on a dance floor this New Years!" (He was like "well... good luck with that..." but she knew I was 100% not joking.) Then this happened:

My age starting with a 5 has been a huge issue for me - I finally have employment that allows me to live comfortably after a lifetime of keeping my "career" on the back burner in favor of family and personal projects, but my life is over half way done - so what good does this comfort do? Just after I turned 50 I met a 55 year old knife fighter on the mat who taught me to focus on my strength training and to stop pouting (and since then I have become 20 lbs lighter and 10% stronger):

In 2021 I went to Detroit for a wedding. My wife's health issues that keep her in bed most of the day were acting up, so I took her back to our hotel room and with her blessing headed back out to the dance floor. It wasn't very long before cell phones were out and people were recording me. (Same cellphone recording happened more recently at an event for high school seniors I was chaperoning.) That 2021 dance floor in Detroit was the most fun I have had in decades. 

I took a year of ballet in grade school and was a captain of a small ballroom dance team for a year when I was in High School, and when the early 90's changed the dance scene entirely, I would practice in a mirror in a basement to a metronome. Later in my 20's I attended hundreds of dances. Dancing was never a sexual thing for me, but rather a fun way to spend time with friends in a social and healthy activity. But you know my ride-or-die BFF's I used to go dancing with in my teens and 20's? They are old or dead now, mostly from ailments that could have been prevented through cardiovascular exercise!

I haven't been sleeping well latey, partly due to lack of any signficant cardio exercise. When I dance I like to hit the dance floor for about 3 hours straight, 180 minutes... take off 30 minutes for slow dances and water breaks, that's 150 minutes. It says "preferably" above because the American Heart Association has noticed it doesn't actually matter very much if that 150 minutes per week is all at once or in multiple workouts, and I am still going to be doing my martial arts and strength training exercises of course.

The big problem with cardio training is it is highly repetitive and thus more likely to result in injury. Over the last 10 years I have been injured jogging more than once, causing me to miss out on several months of serious training. With casual dancing however you are just doing whatever moves you feel like with the beat of the music setting the pace, making it the safest possible cardiovascular exercise.

I don't do break dancing or dirty dancing, but everything else is on the table: swing, hip hop, EDM, goth, square dancing, Latin, ball room, you name it, I am down! The problem is I am going to have to find people to do this with: maybe I know some people already, maybe I don't. Dancing is literally the only thing I want in my life but don't have, and for the sake of my mental and physical health, I have decided to embrace a new adventure of finding dance in my life again.

LGBN

In 2000, George W. Bush (the W,) the worst President of the United States of America (POTUS) of all time, became POTUS under shady circumstances. He proceeded to get the USA into wars that had massive popular disapproval and questionable legality. 

In 2004 after starting those wars, the W was popularly and legitimately re-elected. This was a slap in the face to those of us who cared about peace and healthy democracy. The USA paid dearly in blood and money for decades. But beyond that the balance on the Supreme Court changed to eventually allow the biggest threat to the integrity of the USA's democracy, Citizens United v. FEC, allowing nearly unlimited access to the manipulation of our democracy by those who have the most money. 

I have despised Trump since long before 2016 because if his involvement in ACN and other Multi-Level Marketing schemes which damaged communities and destroyed families. He went so as to promote ACN on The Apprentice:

So yes I was horrified when he soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Though he wasn't re-elected in 2020, his impact on the Supreme Court led to the overturning of universal abortion rights in the USA. Virtually no one recommends abortion as the ideal form of birth control: any argument over abortion is a bad omen for any society that has to have it. But as Americans when faced with the choice of two evils (a woman being able to threaten the life of a man's unborn child, vs a woman having to provide legal proof of rape or incest in order to access abortion,) we should pick the evil that allows more personal freedom, not less, but instead we have chosen to have less freedom in the USA.

Beyond this, Trump showed sincere contempt for democracy on January 6th, 2021:

And after all that, the citizens of the USA re-elected Trump! This is the similarity between 2004 and 2024, is the USA reinforced bad behavior against it's own democracy (W's 2000 election scheming & Trump's January 6th.) 

Universal abortion access was the single most sacred political institution for feminism. It is roadkill. The LGBT community needs to radically accept the political reality in which they exist, in order to best serve LBGT. The most important thing to remember is this: 52% of Americans will never accept a difference between sex-at-birth and gender - they frankly will not acknowledge any such thing as gender that is not biological sex-at-birth. That 52% of Americans also believes almost any biological male in a female only space is a threat to female safety, and that same 52% believes in protecting females with lethal force.

I have numerous trans friends, but I do not believe they are well served by using language that 52% of their country will never understand. When a biological-male says they are a woman, having 52% of the country feel they are a threat is of no service to that woman. What I strongly recommend instead is that going forward we completely drop the use of "transgender," and instead use "non-binary." The reason why is claiming to be non-binary is not claiming to be something-you-were-not-at-birth, and is offering more transparency to that 52% who will otherwise possess lethal force and see you as a threat. I think the use of non-binary instead of transgender will make transgender people far safer and far more accepted in our society. 

What the phrase non-binary effectively communicates: this person is not going to conform to your expectations for males and females, but they do not expect you to call them something you do not think they are. I used to think this controversial scene from a recent popular video game was under-serving the transgender cause and was over-preachy towards the transphobic, but now I am thinking is it is the safest survival strategy:

As for gender, I have been against gender specific pronouns since the first Trump presidency:

As a nation we have been in dark places before. We can use that adversity to build personal resilience and stronger, more sustainable survival strategies. Dress however you need to, but if that doesn't meet conservative expectations, I recommend describing yourself as non-binary and as they/them in order to more easily interact with society safely. 

Joseph Smith: Innocent

The founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Church,) Joseph Smith, was in no way a polygamist. There are two things that must be considered: 

1. The actual evidence that exists and what that evidence suggests, and
2. the narrative that emerges from that evidence powerfully defends Joseph Smith and The Church. It raises questions for Brigham Young, but Brigham Young has always been a problem for The Church and we've been eschewing his influence on our religion since the day he died.

Evidence:

You want a complete breakdown of the evidence? OK, you asked for it, so pay attention:

Joseph Smith, his wife Emma, and Joseph's brother Hyrum were main leaders of The Church before Hyrum and Joseph were assassinated on the same day. They always did preach against any form of polygamy, and excommunicated people for doing anything like polygamy. All of Joseph Smith's interpretations of scripture reject polygamy, and that Jacob 2 verse 30 clearly means "if God wants to a chosen people to grow He will command them to be monogamous, otherwise they will fall into the same evil practice as David and Solomon and have multiple wives." All of the evidence to the contrary is pure trash, and yes this can easily be proven with each and every wife example that has been brought up, as per the video above. That's why DNA evidence has proved that Joseph Smith had no children with anyone but Emma, is because he was only having sexual relations with Emma. If you doubt this, watch the above video again, more carefully this time.

Narrative:

This is very good news for members of The Church, because means that Joseph Smith WAS trustworthy, and that he was NOT a womanizer or pedophile. Now we can look at how The Church got side tracked by polygamy:

Basically people who later led The Church after Joseph Smith did not work very closely with Joseph Smith for very long, and were heavily influenced by other religious sources. The Church was only one of may Christian Utopian movements, and many of those movements disagreed with monogamy. The Church absorbed and was otherwise exposed to these movements both in North American and in Europe. The new leadership under Brigham Young may have believed Joseph Smith had practiced polygamy, even though in hindsight Joseph obviously did not. The fact that this new leadership intentionally altered the historical record shows there was an organized movement soon after Joseph Smith died to try to make Joseph look like a polygamist. Confused or disagree? Watch the last video above again, more carefully this time.

Joseph Smith was a hard-core monogamist and this is great news for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Good Posture

By "good posture" I mean the practice of while you are standing or moving, keeping your spine in a straight line (usually perpendicular to the ground):

This has numerous advantages for self defense. Naysayers of good posture are generally justifying their own bad posture from overspecialization in some kind of combat sports or fitness training, ignoring 99% of physical therapists everywhere. Here's another view on good posture I agree with:

Recap checklist of that video:

1. Crown of your head stretches for the sky, with a chin tuck as a side effect.
2. Slightly tuck the lower ribs.
3. Keep your hips slightly tilted forward so that your hips are under your shoulders.
4. Shoulders rolled back instead of rolled forward (thumbs facing forward, elbows back.)

The first advantage of being in good posture is having awareness. It requires mindfulness to maintain good posture for most people. You are more likely to defend yourself successfully if you are present rather than when you are distracted.

The second advantage is that you appear stronger and taller. You look like a harder target with good posture. You are less likely to be attacked with good posture.

The third advantage is better posture = better strength. Consider the similarity to dead lifting posture to healthy standing posture as listed above:

The fourth advantage is better posture = less injury. Injury is a poor strategy in a self defense situation:

The fifth advantage is that better posture gives you more lower body flexibility. This is because your nerves and spinal column are a limited length, and slide around inside of your body. When your back is as straight as possible, that uses less of your spinal cord and gives more slack to the nerves in your legs:

Sixth, good posture also gives you more upper body mobility:

Seventh, be it charging or fleeing, running speed is valuable for self defense. Posture improves running speed as well:

Eighth, in grappling we often speak of trying to break the other person's posture in order to dominate them by taking them off of their feet. Part of this is because posture significantly impacts balance, which is valuable for self defense even beyond grappling:

Ninth, good posture helps you keep maximum control over your own head. If your jaw is sticking out forward with your shoulders hunched, your jaw is more exposed to a strike, and it's easier to yank down on your head to control you:

10th, good posture helps our breathing. This helps us heal, but it also helps us get more oxygen into our body when we need that oxygen in an emergency:

11th, good mental health is valuable for making good decisions, and making good decisions is valuable in self defense situations. Good posture helps with mental health:

12th, if you want to verbally de-escalate a situation, which is arguably the most important self defense skill, posture helps with this as well:

In several Chinese martial arts there is an exercise called "standing meditation." One of the most valuable reasons for doing standing meditation in martial arts is simply to consciously work on your posture and postural awareness, for all of the above reasons: