Also how guys tend to cut their hair really short when they're balding early, these days.
Going back through the pictures, I'm returning to the "it's all cosmetic" opinion.
Wilford Brimley was the same age when he acted in Cocoon as Jennifer Anniston was in The Leprechaun.
When it comes to the near elderly among the lower middle class, I wonder if part of the issue isn't tooth loss. At least the grandma's face looks like maybe that's part of the issue. The other thing is that smoking really isn't good for you (references upon request) and this includes making your skin look worse.
I think it's partly down to how unhealthy middle class (Anglice) boomers were in terms of booze and cigarettes. Another factor is that the ideal of manhood then was middle aged and carrying responsibilities well. So 15-year-olds wanted to look 35 and now it's the other way round. different one is of course that poverty in itself is ageing. Poor people are 10-15 years closer to death than their richer contemporaries in this country and presumably in the US. This shows: they're going to decay a lot earlier, too. There's a magnificent photo in that thread of a depression-era mother which illustrates that one.
I doubt any population in history has been healthier or had better skin than UMC Californians today. Or spent so much effort trying to look young.
What about the European noble who murdered young women and bathed in their blood?
Elizabeth Bathory, IIRC. She was Hungarian, like the Gabor sisters. Coincidence? I think not.
I'm not saying it worked. I'm saying it sounds like it is effortful.
So are all the balding men just a selection bias of who submits photos, plus the inclination of young balding men today to shave their heads?
Sun exposure. We're all troglodytes now.
If you scroll down to figure 7 in the linked article there is a pair of twins, one of whom lived an outdoor life. Aside from cigarettes, sun exposure, alcohol and poverty, I read just now that being heavier makes you look older when you're under 40, but younger when you're past 40! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4174174/pdf/gox-1-e08.pdf
It must surely be an artifice of all the cosmetic practices of today - botox, hair dye, better make up - plus more absurdly strict selection practices for people who tend to be in the public eye.
Furthermore, people from 30-80 years ago look artificially older at age 40 or whatever because they're dressed like old fuddy-duddies.
But those arguments don't work on the thread linked, because we are comparing them to people who we see every day and presumably aren't botoxed etc, not to people in the public eye today.
(Not to mention that one of the advantages is Cliff and Norm in Cheers, age 33 and 34, each believably ten years older than that.)
Sunscreen and wind exposure, though: definitely.
Men used to wear hats nearly all the time they were outside. Now, they don't, so women are less likely to form an impression of their attractiveness before noticing the baldness. So bald men have been reproducing less, cutting the amount of baldness in the genre pool.
I read just now that being heavier makes you look older when you're under 40, but younger when you're past 40!
Can definitely believe this. There's an old line about how after she hits 45 a woman has to choose between her face and her figure. (I think it's mentioned in Sayers somewhere.) i.e. if you work to stay slim you'll have an older-looking face.
Look at me. I'm an evolutionary psychologist.
12: male baldness correlates with a cluster of symptoms including obesity, hypertension and insulin resistance, collectively known as "metabolic syndrome", so if anything baldness should be getting more common.
Also declining eagle numbers and the reduced range of native tortoise populations mean that the evolutionary disadvantage of baldness has been substantially reduced since the Classical period.
That bundt cake just brought me about a year closer to death, but it was worth it.
Define "in the past." 500 years ago people definitely aged faster than they do now. 100 years ago, UMC people then might have been healthier than UMC people now, but all the factory workers and coal miners probably weren't. 50 years ago, civilization was a lot like it is today except that we've regressed on vaccinations, alcohol and tobacco use are down, and morbid obesity is up. How do those correlate to looking youthful? We now have the the internet; Photoshop sure makes you look youthful.
The link in the OP seems to overstate the point in several cases. The caption makes it sound like a slam-dunk that the people look 30 years older than they actually are, but after thinking a bit about who's who in a group shot, in black and white, in bad lighting, I wouldn't want to make assumptions about whether the kid in someone's arms could legally drive. The professionally posed photographs all seem plausibly in the range of "attractive 20-something". I'd confidently state that bad photography makes you look older.
this interview is interesting bc the subject is clearly referring to v discreet surgery and the interviewer either doesn't get it or for some bizarre reason doesn't think it should be mentioned explicitly: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/jun/23/carine-roitfeld-rules-for-chic-french-vogue
particularly the photo with t ford - her neck and eyes have had v good subtle work. brava(o) to the surgeon!
100 years ago, UMC people then might have been healthier than UMC people now
They definitely were not healthier than UMC people now.
50 years ago, civilization was a lot like it is today except that we've regressed on vaccinations, alcohol and tobacco use are down, and morbid obesity is up.
No, it wasn't.
after thinking a bit about who's who in a group shot, in black and white, in bad lighting, I wouldn't want to make assumptions about whether the kid in someone's arms could legally drive.
This, on the other hand, seems reasonable. And the thread is of course not a balanced sample; it's people finding the best example they can in an old photo of a young person looking old.
Another big problem is that we just don't have a good instinctive idea of how wide the range of appearance is for each age. For you Game of Thrones fans out there, an extreme example: the guy playing the Mountain is less than two years older than the guy playing Jojen Reed.
Yeah, other people have said this, but I think you have to leave actors completely out of it -- any given actor is picked for a look, so you're going to sometimes get someone cast for a middle-aged role who is much younger than that but looks old. Abe Vigoda is 51 in The Godfather, and 54 when Barney Miller started airing, but he was playing characters significantly older than he actually was. It's not as if an average early fifties man in the 1970s looked that haggard.
Or the twitter thing about the Wilford Brimley line -- pictures of celebrities when they hit 49, because that's how old he was when he filmed Cocoon. That's not a statement of how old 49-year-olds looked in the eighties, he was playing a man in his seventies.
I don't have pictures handy, but I'm sure I look younger than my dad at my age. He broke his nose in high school - it's not horrible, but it's a visible bend, and I figure any disfigurement ages someone's appearance a bit - and I had the random to chance to avoid something like that. Also, he had a noticeable bald spot by this point whereas I don't. I wouldn't want to generalize from either of these things.
"The average age for men in the Bronze Age was 18 and, in the Roman era, 22," Mishima reckons aloud, in voiceover. "Heaven must have been beautiful then. Today it must look dreadful." Like the rest of the film's narration, the passage is quoted from Mishima's published work, in this case an article he wrote in 1962, eight years before his death at the age of 45 by seppuku. "When a man reaches 40, he has no chance to die beautifully," Mishima continues. "No matter how he tries, he will die of decay. He must compel himself to live."
the actor thing cuts both ways - joan fontaine in letter from an unknown woman is wildly too old to play the young range of her character but i at least do not find that a problem.
genes are definitely a factor at the extremes for a small number of people (lena horne, people), environmental factors (alcohol smoking sun exposure poor nutrition) are hugely important for the rest of us. but the big big big thing that professional beautiful people have going for them now is a far more sophisticated and effective range of variously invasive procedures than were available 20 and more years ago.
and differing standards for men-women, exhibit a that photo of the mary tyler moore cast.
It's just hard for any actress to complete with the youthful sex appeal that Ed Asner could exude in his prime.
20. CR looks successively older the deeper into the article you go. By the Tom Ford and Naomi Campbell pix she is plausibly a well-preserved 62 who has had some touchup work done here and there. I've heard the standard now is to try to look 36, even if you are 21.
Not just invasive procedures, but better cosmetics as well.
And yes, the actor thing cuts in all directions: you're always going to get weirdly young-looking actors as well as weirdly old-looking actors.
differing standards for men-women
In the past, women had to look young, slim, and fashionable to appear in public or they'd break cameras and might as well be extras in the Monty Python "we found a witch" sketch, but men could look like schlubby grandparents and no one cared as long as they weren't specifically being marketed as teen heartthrobs to sell movies. Now men have to look young, slim, and fashionable at all times too. Progress!
Because I read too much pointless 19th century fiction and poetry when I was young, I'm remembering a Kipling poem, about a seventeen-year-old English girl in Anglo-Indian society bitching about an attractive 49-year-old woman who gets all the attention: My Rival. It's a terrible poem, but evidence that in 1886, the idea of a woman in her late forties vamping men in their late teens/early twenties didn't come off as absurd.
Elizabeth Warren looks younger than 70 and its because she never washes her face.
It is so weird to me that that turned into a big thing. I know that as perfectly standard skincare advice (probably no longer current, given that skincare has gone wild in the last decade, but from my adult life) for women with dry skin. No soap, wash with water and a clean washcloth, and moisturize -- the moisturizer doubles as makeup remover if you wear makeup. I don't get why people are reacting to it as odd.
Dammit, link failure. My Rival.
As opposed to the Alex Chilton song, "My Rival"
Also, obligatory disclaimer to 24. I'm not endorsing Mishima's position. It's a memorable line, and I was struck by how many assumptions it makes about both aging and life in general.
I remember Stephen Fry saying that something about the shape of his face made it easy for him to play old men even in university, and that affected his casting.
And yes, the actor thing cuts in all directions: you're always going to get weirdly young-looking actors
Paul Rudd, notably. Which is doubly offputting in something like the Wet Hot American Summer TV show where the joke is all these actors who looked too old for the parts in the film, playing even younger characters, and Rudd still looks plausibly the right age.
33: I can't think of good examples because I'm mostly brain dead, but it seems to me that the older woman, "the femme fatale", that has a mysterious power over younger men, was a thing in 18th and 19th century literature.
She introduces me to men,
"Cast" lovers, I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to forty-nine.
And we see that old men creeping on teen girls was also a thing back then.
No soap, wash with water and a clean washcloth, and moisturize -- the moisturizer doubles as makeup remover if you wear makeup. I don't get why people are reacting to it as odd.
I think it's because people with an intensive regimen do NOT want to allow for the possibility that they may have been wasting their time and money.
43: No, it's because the Bernie Groupies are going after her in every possible way.
the older woman, "the femme fatale", that has a mysterious power over younger men, was a thing in 18th and 19th century literature.
The Marquise de Merteuil, in Les liaisons dangereuses, comes to mind?
Half the women in that thread look "old" due to hairstyle, it seems to me. These days women are supposed to have little-girl hair for their entire lives. I routinely got mistaken for 16 or 17 when I was 12; some of it is just body type and, I suppose, demeanor. (Mistaken for a scowling, brooding, mean 17-year-old, not a hot one, mind you.) I very occasionally get "you look so young!" now, but I don't think I do, and would guess a majority of people perceive me as my age or older and wouldn't dream of saying so. The little-girl hair, collagen-deficient bendy limbs, and perpetual-student lifestyle probably knock a few years off, but a brief period of smoking definitely aged me faster than my sister (who also got the body fat beauty boost, and is cuter in general).
I can't reliably guess anyone's age, though. Are any of you good at it?
One of the many things I'm enjoying about Succession is the casting of women who actually look their age. OK, Holly Hunter is botoxed-up, but Harriet Walter, Jeannie Berlin, and Hiam Abbass are all wrinkled, powerful, and beautiful, a combination that I can't remember seeing on-screen to this extent before.
Terrible. I have sort of five categories -- Adult height, but still not a full grownup, which is mostly people in their late teens and early 20s; real adults but young, which is up to early thirties; roughly my age, which is early thirties through late fifties or so; nearing retirement; and genuinely old. But within a category I often have no idea, and the categories are big, and I will also miscategorize people even within those broad categories.
I can tell anyone's age within 5 years from just 5 unfogged comments.
Once I've actually seen a person though, I won't guess, because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings
that the older woman, "the femme fatale", that has a mysterious power over younger men, was a thing in 18th and 19th century literature.
Perhaps because she's capable of initiating and navigating the steps to get a young man into the sack, and knows what she wants to do once she's there.
13: IME it starts around 40 and it's SO annoying. Why does all the fat have to leave my face?
37: I use Dove soap, but otherwise the same, but to be fair, I have *very* good skin most of the time.
I'm mostly in agreement with heebie. In older films/movies, there's a way of dressing and styling *like an adult* which now just codes as much older. But I also think that most people who stay reasonably fit and healthy don't really look all that much different between 25 and 45 (especially given hair color.)
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Ume (or anyone), opinions on the Ghosn thing? Not that I'm particularly interested in him, but what he's saying about the Japanese justice system.
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Its getting increasingly difficult to keep track.
58: Oh. Sorry if my 49 gave you false hope. I was just kidding.
I can't reliably guess anyone's age, though. Are any of you good at it?
Once I've actually seen a person though, I won't guess, because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings
Yeah, this seems like a skill with little upside and big downside.
60.3: There's that person at the State Fair that guesses your age or weight. But I don't think you would want to be right every time, because then nobody would want to play.
"I'LL GUESS YOUR WEIGHT, YOUR HEIGHT, OR YOUR SEX!"
58. I regularly need to pause and subtract the year of my birth from the current year to answer the question now.
54: But then somebody is going to need to wash their face.
My work password gets updated every six months, and so mine is a fancy way of writing "I am 41" or "I am 41.5" or the exciting upcoming "I am 42". It has the added benefit of making it easy to remember how old I am.
A lot of people who break passwords for a living used to be math professors, so your fancy way maybe isn't so fancy.
This matters because the vast financial resources and numerous national secrets administered by Heebie U make it a prime target for sophisticated attackers.
Today I am learning all the vast financial advantages and numerous national secrets hidden in implicit bias training.
If you have to be trained to do it, how can your bias be implicit?
We're just sitting around and staring at each other.
As long as your password has the right number of numbers and special characters to get through your employer's automatic system and isn't a variation on your own name or "correct horse battery staple", I think you're fine.
37 et seq - its all about the fats.
on the surface, oil dissolves oil, so unless your face is oil-less, water alone isn't going to do much, but rub some oil on it and then going in with a wet warm washcloth and you're on the road to a less grimy face, but without having subjected your skin to the usually-harsher surfactants in most soap. this isn't any different than what is going on in most elaborate skin care routines, all you're doing is skipping the other steps seeking to increase the rate of skin cell turnover, slough off old skin cells, and reinforce the integrity of the skin. in a pinch you can use the freebie moisturizer in your hotel room to get all the makeup off your face, if your luggage gets lost and you are stuck in meetings until late late late, it isn't pleasurable but it'll get the job done.
subsurface fats decreasing in the face is just a continuation of what's been going on since you were a baby, the depressing thing is the acceleration in the breakdown of connective tissues leading to sag. that's what cr's very well done surgery is addressing.
That won't get rid of stains from Kool Aid and Doritos.
Some diluted acetone will clear those right up.
I would believe UMC people look much younger nowadays, for two reasons.
I thought that I pretty much didn't age between 30 and 40, when I was working out constantly and nothing bad had happened to me. Then bad shit happened and I've thought I aged 20 years from 41-45. (Am trying to work that back now.) There was a lot more bad shit then: deaths from illness, stillbirths, tragedies and that leaves its mark on people.
The other thing is something Halford once said here. Being limber looks like being young. Even without cosmetic procedures, I bet the current focus on maintaining mobility and flexibility keeps people looking younger than their peers long ago.
There are places on the internet where sober people post photos of before/after they quit drinking. It's quite stark in some people.
I'll confess it was partly my own vanity about my increasingly puffy face that led me to reduce drastically my alcohol intake (from daily to ~once a month).
Being limber looks like being young.
I'm not going to disagree with you about this, but it's depressing. Possibly my oaken inflexibility gives me gravitas? Gravitas is good, right?
The longer you put off having kids, the longer you stay looking young.
Fuck. I miss halford. But he'll never grow old in our hearts.
photos of before/after they quit drinking
Yeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. I've been putting off the re-quitting for a while, but I should pull the trigger. Last time I got a pretty water bottle. Another pretty water bottle would probably pay for itself within a week.
Unless you count last night's trip to the bar and Friday's beer with pizza, I haven't had a drink in five days.
[O]opinions on the Ghosn thing? Not that I'm particularly interested in him, but what he's saying about the Japanese justice system.
The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations has been criticizing the Japanese justice system for many years, because Ghosn is right to the extent that once you've been arrested, and certainly after you've been charged, you're effectively screwed. Police can hold a suspect for questionning, often in police cells rather than a detention center, for up to 23 days, and this can easily be extended by rearresting them on a different charge. There's a widespread belief that they use this time to force a confession to get the case closed, and although the situation has improved slightly as interrogations must now recorded in a small number of specific types of cases, there's still huge pressure. Once a written confession has been signed, courts pretty much never accept a retraction on the grounds that it was forced. And if the suspect doesn't confess but the case is taken to court anyway, aquittals are virtually unknown; when they do happen it's at the end of a trial system that can take a very long time in complex, high-profile cases. The guy accused of hacking the Mt Gox bitcoin exchange was recently aquitted of all but one of the charges against him, to great surprise, but only after 11 months in detention and a trial lasting more than three years. The trials in the Recruit bribery scandal lasted 13 years. Ghosn's could well have taken a decade, even if he were able eventually to prove his innocence.
The flip side is that prosecutors are reluctant to serve papers if they aren't completely sure they'll win the case (only about 40% of criminal cases ever go to trial) or if they're under political pressure to ignore it, so you get instances like the Shiori Ito case in which a biographer of Abe wasn't arrested for rape despite clear evidence after friends in high places allegedly exerted pressure on the prosecuters (Ito eventually won a civil suit for damages last month).
I drink a lot less living alone -- it largely doesn't seem worth the trouble mixing myself a cocktail unless there's someone else there. The flip side is that the children are now old enough to have a drink with me in the evenings when they're home, which is nice. Newt's return from Canada devastated my Campari supply.
"wrinkled, powerful, and beautiful, a combination that I can't remember seeing on-screen to this extent before."
Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg would like a word.
82: Thanks Ume. How do civil trials compare?
I don't think I've ever had a Campari supply.
But you're a well-educated alcoholic.
Justice system and corporate governance, I should have said.
Every time Meghan Markle is in the news, it makes me think of Halford. He was just so excited that she was becoming a British princess. Of course it all went to shit.
84: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg would like a word.
Tell me when they're all in the same series together.
85: I know nothing about civil trials in Japan, but there's an obvious comparison with the OJ Simpson case.
...It yields surprisingly good limited series on cable?
76 et al.: Well, shit, and I was proud of myself for cutting back to one drink per night barring special occasions. (Down from 2 most nights.)
My longterm goal has been to average below seven most weeks, which I've kept careful track of. That being said, the occasional binging happens. Like today. First time English beer has made me chatty drunk. Unnerving.
Police can hold a suspect for questionning, often in police cells rather than a detention center, for up to 23 days, and this can easily be extended by rearresting them on a different charge
I know a guy who knows a guy who is in this situation--being repeatedly rearrested to extend detention indefinitely--and ugh. To be completely and utterly fucked. No interest in actual justice.
Stanley, how do you feel now? Is it a positive change or more meh?
I believe civil lawsuits are much less resorted to in Japan - in particular, judges apparently have much more leeway to hold it against someone that they didn't take every effort to settle out of court.
No soap, wash with water and a clean washcloth, and moisturize -- the moisturizer doubles as makeup remover if you wear makeup.
I thought it was: no soap, but okay to use a non-soap cleanser? What is the difference between a soap and a non-soap cleanser? I honestly don't know, except that apparently soap is too harsh for the face. And then the French introduced micellar water, which I also don't quite get. It's supposedly "magnetic," with magical little micelles trapping and lifting out dirt and impurities...
I read just now that being heavier makes you look older when you're under 40, but younger when you're past 40!
I hear this a lot, but I don't actually believe it. To be sure, I think that being super-skinny after a certain age (40? 50? late middle age?) can make a person look older, because the face can look drawn and gaunt, which is not a look that reminds us of youth in its bloom of health and hope, and etc. But super-skinniness aside, I think that more weight is more aging, in general.
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I can't stand these videos from Australia of the poor injured koalas. The stupidity in government over there would be staggering in any other time. Fucking climate denialist fascist politicians ought to be taken out and shot.
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To return to the OP -- hang on, aren't a lot of these Aging Faster people of the generation that had/is having the longest life expectancies the US has ever seen? If so, surely we're judging them based on sunscreen and outdated cultural markers.
97.1: get thee to the lab muffin's blog, charming very funny and smart chemist, will answer all your questions re: soap v micellar water v oil etc. her video on acne includes a hilarious flashback sequence https://labmuffin.com/video-my-top-5-acne-tips/.
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Some of the Megxit coverage is driving me nuts with its cute, coy ignorance of anything that has to do with Canada. 'Could Harry and Meghan become King and Queen of Canada?' Well, okay, but last time I checked, Canada already had a queen. Her name is Elizabeth II, and she's not just on our currency by accident. She is, legally and constitutionally, Queen of Canada.
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My dad hated "the Brits," but loved Elizabeth II, and was loyal to the British Crown. O Canada!
Well, shit, and I was proud of myself for cutting back
You can still be proud of yourself. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to drinking alcohol.
Stanley, how do you feel now? Is it a positive change or more meh?
It's been an extraordinarily positive change. I see it most notably in my sleep. The no-alcohol sleep is Teh Good Sleep. (But when I first stopped, it took about a month for the good sleep to show up. And I definitely used to be a person who thought that alcohol helped me sleep; I definitely, very strongly, no longer believe this.)
When I do drink, I also notice alcohol's depressant effect, often feeling extra blue a day or two after drinking.
OK, I've got it. It's a multi-party deal, but it will work.
QEII renounces Canada in favor of the Duke & Duchess of Sussex, and Canada joins the EU.
Rest of UK leaves the EU.
Denmark gets the USVI back.
In return, Denmark sets up all of Greenland, other than existing indigenous communities (and their immediate hinterlands) as an independent kingdom in favor of Donald Fairhair and his crown princess Ivanka the Wise.
Who have I left out? Oh, yeah, Mexico gets Texas.
105: Good for you. Okay, I am taking the plunge, evening meal + water henceforth. I also want the good sleep.
Does that mean you're drinking at lunch?
Boy, let's hope not. My afternoons are dreary and unproductive enough as it is.
Yeah, the Saxe-Coburgs. Totally Germanic. Myself, I'm partial to the House of Stuart. But I'm also a realist.
And I am also, no joke, no kidding, a loyal subject of the Crown. Having lived in the US for too many years, I am now very loyal to the goddamned Crown.
Who have I left out? Oh, yeah, Mexico gets Texas.
And Barbados gets South Carolina.
106 appeals. I have just finished another biography of Cochrane ("Cochrane: Britannia's Sea Wolf" by Donald Thomas, 8/10, better than the other two I've read) and it goes into detail on the Brazilian war of independence which was fought between Prince Pedro (later Dom Pedro I of Brazil) and his father, John IV of Portugal. This could be a peaceful version of the same. If there is some way that Trump could be tricked into swapping the US for Greenland it would be even better. Perhaps we could persuade him that Greenland is bigger by cunning use of deceptive map projections.
I would like to amend the plan to include Scotland becoming part of the new nation of Canada. Willing to accept province status as Scotia Vetera.
Is Trump into yachts? Because at some point this plan needs to involve his flight across the Labrador Sea with all his seaborne assets being cut relentlessly away from behind.
106: A yuuge, beautiful ice palace in the geographic center of Greenland. Everybody wins.
110: And the Jacobite succession now goes to the Wittelsbachs. Monarchists can't escape the Germans, unless they accept marriage to attractive commoners.
at some point this plan needs to involve his flight across the Labrador Sea with all his seaborne assets being cut relentlessly away from behind.
If this is not a Silmarillion reference than frankly it needs to be.
I should note at this point that the Greenland ice cap is extremely flat, and you know what vehicle that makes it ideal terrain for.
I fear crossings of the Grinding Ice are no longer in the realm of plausibility.
111. What did Barbados ever do to you?
I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to drinking alcohol.
It's called a Nebuchadnezzar.
that whole efflorescence of light entertainment news kicked off ideally for me, i was trapped in a courtroom for hours waiting for a msj to be addressed, had finished all the work i could manage on paper+phone, and the mils just were endless, perfect distraction.
& the better half's reaction was wonderful.
me: remember that younger brother type from your royal lot who'd struggled emotionally and fucked up in some gross embarrassing ways, then met a nice woman from california who taught him to talk about his emotions?
bh: oh yes! (rueful mild self recognition, looks cheerful) marrying her best thing ever heard of from that crowd!
me: well, press has been relentlessly horrid to her, so, they just quit!
bh: (puzzled) they can't quit ... ???
me: they "can't" but they just did! quit!
bh: wow! (absolute delight!)
It's nice to see someone quit with it being because they are friendly with Nazis.
110: I've met some actual honest-to-god Canadian Jacobites.
There's a Gaelic College near where my father grew up. At some point the government wanted to designate it the "Royal Gaelic College", "Royal" being seen as a way of honouring an important institution. Well. The folks at the College were decidedly unhappy with the proposal. Turns out that the descendants of Scottish Catholic Clearances victims have some unresolved grievances with the British Crown.
It's easy to reject the Crown out of a commitment to egalitarianism; it takes a special kind of dedication to historical memory to do so out of dedication to the House of Stuart.
Turns out that the descendants of Scottish Catholic Clearances victims have some unresolved grievances with the British Crown.
It's not a history college, clearly.
They honestly thought that, what, the Clearances were some kind of anti-Catholic pogrom? Ordered by the government? I mean, unresolved grievances with the Duke of Sutherland and the Chief of Clan MacDonald I could understand.
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So what did the US Supreme Court do today? (1) Clarified [through RBG] that an order denying relief from a bankruptcy stay is immediately appealable (and thus must be appealed immediately) and (2) Sent back to the circuit for further consideration what employee stock ownership plans are supposed to do when they have inside information and thus know that the stock is way overvalued. This latter situation must be fairly common. Is the right answer really 'go down with the ship'?
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Apologies if this was suggested upthread, but I'd think that having kids earlier would explain some of this, because damn, does that age you.
Actually, what probably explains all of it is that some people age faster than others, and you can select all the fast-agers from the past and make it look like people were born with one foot in the grave.
Ok, I'm done now.
Ogged! How the hell are you? (Agreed that having kids ages you)
123: Definitely not a history college. Nova Scotia Scots have a... romantically distorted, say, view of Scottish history and emigration. The basic accepted view is that every Nova Scotia Scot is descended from a Catholic who was forcibly kicked off the land by the English. That this is not *quite* what happened doesn't really matter.
(I legitimately thought that Scotland was a Catholic country until my mid-teens. In my defense: half the people I knew were Scottish and all of those were Catholic.)
I can't speak for the general principle, but I definitely look younger (by a lot) than my father or grandfather at the age I am now (48 soon). Both of them were actually in tremendous physical shape, my grandfather until he was very old -- he was an incredibly physically youthful and hale 100 year old,* and only got frail looking the last 2 years of his life.** And last time I saw my Dad with his shirt off -- in his late 50s or early 60s, I guess, he's 69 now -- he still had visible ab muscles.
But they were both much greyer, and much balder than me at the same age. Far more visible wrinkles. Much worse teeth. I would guess, but don't know for sure, that if you'd asked someone to guess the ages of us (comparing photos of us all in our late 40s) you'd place me as a decade younger than them, easily.
* as in, when he was in his late 90s, you could go for a walk for a couple of hours, and he'd only have to take the occasional sit down for a cup of tea, no walking stick. He could beat me at tennis into his 70s, and I remember playing football with him and my brother when, looking back, he was in his early 80s.
** he died a few weeks short of his 103rd birthday.
130: I saw pictures of your grandfather in his early to mid 90's and he looked like he was in his early to mid 70's.
Nah the Royal Family isn't really German. Not any more. Monarchs born in England back to at least Victoria. Current Queen's mother 100% Scotch goes back generations. Billy's mother as English as could be. Queen Alexandra Danish(?). Where's Teck? Queen Mary was of Teck but born in Kensington.
Apparently "not really English because descended from immigrants" is something it's still OK to say if you say it about certain people.
Apparently "not really English because descended from immigrants" is something it's still OK to say if you say it about certain people.
134: I think if your ultra elite position depends upon the fact that your line of descent makes you the supposed personification of Englishness, it seems like it's fair game to point out what that line of descent actually is.
135: It is a neat refutation of Little England nostalgia,* but AFAICT the people guilty of and relying on that nostalgia aren't the royals themselves.
*Which category I just sucked from my thumb. I stand to be chastened.
135. Yes, but if your line of descent is English since 1738 (birth of George III), I think you're justified in asking how much further you have to go back before the Germanness or whatever is lost in the mists of time. Arguably they're actually Angevin, or Norman, since they can trace their line of descent back to Henry II or William I. Why are they less French than German?
I mean, unresolved grievances with the Duke of Sutherland and the Chief of Clan MacDonald I could understand.
There's still ways to blame the English, and the monarchy specifically, no? Well, blame the guys you mentioned, of course, but they were responding to forces from points south: unification of the crowns made financialization of Scottish land much more likely. Those aristocrats went from being important power brokers to being marginal actors in the far off North Britannic provinces. The wool resulting from cleared land was presumably mostly sold to England and to clad the imperial war machine. And the resulting money let them play at being dipshit aristos in the capital. If James VI had said he was happy with his nice big ordinal and drafty house in Edinburgh, that particular problem wouldn't have occurred, or at least had been much reduced. But his choice tied Scottish peasants into a much more developed capitalist and imperialist system. And what protects people from the ravages of capitalism is regulation by the state. (Or socialism, but I suppose it was a bit early for that.)
138: if you zig and zag to find the oldest ancestor, they're descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages. If you accept his historicity, anyway. But they don't mention that much.
What did Barbados ever do to you?
Settled South Carolina, for one thing.
I had a college roommate who claimed descent from Niall of the Nine Hostages.
So, which thread has the betting pool for how long before a right-wing pundit tells us that actually, a government plotting to have one of its own ambassadors assassinated is just operating rationally in the difficult modern world, and anyone who objects is a snowflake?
Pages 17 to 26 of the new documents look a lot like people talking about ordering a hit on Yovanovitch.
At the very least, a current Republican candidate for Congress was talking about it. The Hyde Amendment by Robert Ludlum.
He seems to have had a breakdown at a Trump club last May. Also in various pictures with Guiliani and his Ukranian buddies and also with Trump.
Probably as with a lot of Trump stuff less competent nefariousnessthere than one might infer, but in another way. a lot more there in terms of craziness. I still think one of the most ominous lines in the whole sad affair was Trump saying "She's going to go through some things." on the phone call.
And buffoonish evil can be pretty fucking evil when backed of tens of millions of my friends and neighbors. (Whom I regard as far and away the biggest threat to humanity and freedom currently going.)
Pompeo's continued silence and lack of support for his staff are truly despicable and alarming.
I mean everything about everything is despicable and alarming, but this actually manages to stand out a bit from the bed of nails.
My daughter posits that it might be analogous to something like the Nancy Kerrigan attack. Hyde a Shawn Eckardt. Rudy Giuliani as Jeff Gillooly...
150: He's described as "a former Marine". He's put on some weight since then. Not to be fattist, but on an obstacle course he'd be an obstacle.
Also relevant "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" I don't believe Trump actually chews the rushes in his rages. But you can see how leading towards the Fuehrer could get you to assassinate an ambassador.
[Looking for a cite for Henry II's chewing the rushes, I found this wonderful sentence Geoffrey Greymantle had arranged the marriage of his daughter, Hermengarde-Gerberga, to Count Conan of Rennes.]
And so by degrees down the rabbit hole until I discover Fulk, Count of Anjou, who handed over the running of his kingdom to hs son Kendall Roy Geoffrey.
In his latter days, he
ceded his principality to Geoffrey his son so often mentioned.
Geoffrey conducted himself with excessive barbarity to the
inhabitants, and with equal haughtiness even to the person
who had conferred this honour upon him : on which, being
ordered by his father to lay down the government and en-
signs of authority, he was arrogant enough to take up arms
against him. The blood of the old man, though grown cold
and languid, yet boiled with indignation ; and in the course
of a few days, by adopting wiser counsels, he so brought
down the proud spirit of his son, that after carrying his
saddle* on his back for some miles, he cast himself with
his burden at his father's feet. He, fired once more with
his ancient courage, rising up and spurning the prostrate
youth with his foot, exclaimed, " You are conquered at last !
you are conquered !" repeating his words several times.
Later, the old man went to Jerusalem to repent of his sins, but that's another comment
Was that the Fulk of Anjou who married Satan's daughter? Or a different one?
He's described as "a former Marine".
I prefer to say "ex-Marine" because they always get so entertainingly furious about pointing out that it is former Marine, not ex-Marine, because once a Marine always a Marine or some such rubbish. Or just "soldier". And if they say that "Soldier" means US Army, you can simply reply that you were saying it with a lower-case S.
And if you fall below their standards, you become a sub-marine.
No, there were many Fulks, and this is a different one. The confusion used to drive Hitler mad in history lessons and he determined to clear it up. His war aims were sloganised as "Ein Reich, Ein Fulk, ein Führer"
Fulk the elder, who trod on his repentant son, later repented of some of his own sins:
In the same year the old man, having discharged all secular concerns, made provision for his soul, by proceeding to Jerusalem ; where compelling two servants by an oath to do whatever he commanded, he was by them publicly dragged naked, in the sight of the Turks, to the holy sepulchre. One of them had twisted a withe about his neck, the other with a rod scourged his bare back, whilst he cried out, "Lord, receive the wretched Fulk, thy perfidious, thy runagate ; regard my repentant soul, O Lord Jesu Christ." At this time he obtained not his request; but, peacefully returning home, he died some few years after."
It was, I think, Fulk's nephew Fulk who married Satan's daughter, so called because she left him for the King of France, whom she ruled in her turn. William of Malmesbury again:
He had a wife, who, being enticed by the desire of enjoying a higher title, deserted him and married Philip king
of France ; who so desperately loved her, regardless of the adage,
" Majesty and love
But ill accord, nor share the self-same seat,"
that he patiently suffered himself to be completely governed by her, though he was at the same time desirous of ruling over every other person. Lastly, for several years, merely through regard for her, he suffered himself to be pointed at like an idiot, and to be excommunicated from the whole Christian world.
All very Succession
157,158: I suspect that NW has been bitten by Moby.
"Lastly, for several years, merely through regard for her, he suffered himself to be pointed at like an idiot"
Nice.
But, no, I don't mean married a woman who was really nasty and was referred to as "Satan's daughter". I mean that there was a legend that one of the Fulks had literally married Satan's daughter Melusine, and had had children by her before she returned to Hell in a flash rather than take communion.
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A container with about 24 tons of American chicken feet cleared Chinese customs Tuesday, potentially heralding the start of a new trading era between the two countries.|>
162. Oh, rats. I must look that up. There was another wonderful story about hell in William of Malmesbury, which has the side-effect of showing just how much the monasteries were sanctuaries of heresy and atheism. All those books they read.
I don't bite. But 157 and 158 are good.
How can chickens lay eggs if China has their feet?
That isn't where chickens keep their eggs, mobes.
Right but if they can't stand, you need somebody to hold them up so they can lay.
You order in chicken supports from Guangzhou.
The container contained whole chickens. For historical reasons, chickens are counted in feet (cf. "sixty head of cattle".)
140. They're also descended from Woden, for what it's worth. I place far more faith in Niall, of the two.
So you need to divide feet by two to count actual chickens?
The Queen is of course descended from the prophet Muhammed. I forget how, though. Presumably through some Spanish royal line.
It is most rational to count monarchs by heads, too.
173: OUT ON THEE, CHURL!
It was the concern for counting feet that originally gave rise to the expression, "Don't count your chickens before they scratch."
144 et seq: This thing with Yovanovitch really shows how screwed we are, and why. It's yet another case of the best lacking conviction and the worst being full of passionate intensity. Upon finding out that Yovanovitch was being monitored, her attorney called for an investigation by "the appropriate authorities" and termed the matter "disturbing." Strong words!
If you can engineer a one-footed species of chicken you can get twice as many through the same import quota.
post dissolution of ussr the ruling elites of us & other western powers turned a blind eye (charitable read)/enthusiastically profited from (realistic) to gansterification of russian & e european economies & political systems & those chickens (1 or 2 footed) coming home to roost big time.
Speaking of dissolution of the USSR, the Russian government has "resigned".
By coincidence (genuinely; I picked up an old unopened copy of the LRB) I was just reading this story about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. It's surprisingly topical.
'Of course I understand the West wants to get gas and oil from Russia,' he told inspectors from Scotland Yard who interviewed him in hospital, 'but one shouldn't be involved in political activity if one doesn't have political beliefs. And beliefs can't be traded for gas and oil. Because when a businessman is trading he's trading with his money but when a politician is trading he is trading with the sovereignty of his country and the future of his children.' The transcripts of Litvinenko's interviews were released last year; he was clearly trying hard to win the police over to his cause. He was good at speeches. 'In case there is from the top administrative pressure for political reasons,' he said, 'be firm ... bring this case to the end.' The men from Scotland Yard were impressed by his faith in them: 'Last month I was granted British citizenship and I very much love this country. Possibly I may die, but I will die as a free person, and my son and wife are free people. And Britain is a great country.'
...
[In 2013 High Court judge Robert] Owen wrote to Theresa May, the home secretary, requesting a public inquiry: this would allow the chairman to consider secret material in closed hearings, balancing the government's security concerns with the need for open justice. May rejected Owen's request. She offered six reasons for her refusal, including public expense. Marina Litvinenko filed a claim for judicial review, asking the High Court to re-examine the government's decision. In February 2014, three High Court judges ruled in her favour. They described May's refusal as 'irrational' and 'legally erroneous' and requested that she reconsider.
...
Altogether the inquiry looked at 720 locations where polonium traces were found, heard from 62 witnesses and read through 5000 pages of evidence. Appendix 12 - not included in the published report - contained the evidence given behind closed doors under the Official Secrets Act. It presumably included evidence from Litvinenko's handler at MI6, whom he used to meet in the café at Waterstones on Piccadilly (since purchased by the oligarch Alexander Mamut); there were probably intercepts of telephone chatter picked up by the NSA or GCHQ. What exactly the evidence was we will never know, but it was enough for Owen to conclude that not only did Lugovoi and Kovtun kill Litvinenko but there was a 'strong probability' that they did so under the FSB's direction and the execution was 'probably approved' by Putin.
These were stronger words than anyone expected. 'I'm gobsmacked,' said Robert Service, who had been the inquiry's main background witness on Russian history and politics. 'It shows the autonomy of the judicial process from politics.' Marina Litvinenko felt vindicated. 'It is unthinkable that the prime minister would do nothing in the face of the damning findings,' she said. She was wrong. The government had known the secret evidence all along and it had not stopped them courting Putin. In Davos, where he was attending the World Economic Forum, Cameron explained that while Litvinenko's murder was shocking it was necessary to keep working with the Kremlin 'because we need a solution to the Syrian crisis'. (It's a questionable and probably delusional argument. The US is unafraid of imposing sanctions on Russia and in any case Britain is hardly an important power in such global games: Moscow takes only the US and China, and sometimes Germany, seriously.) Marina Litvinenko proposed targeted sanctions against, among others, Putin, the head of the FSB, the prosecutor general and the chief investigator who had blocked Scotland Yard's work in Russia, as well as companies involved in producing the poison. The government refused, but Litvinenko's proposal is part of a larger movement of policy suggestions and campaigns that struggle with the consequences of being the financial capital of the world.
gansterification: transition to social and economic structures dominated by thuggish geese.
162: To bring up Crusader Kings again, there's an event thread that simulates this, but with the details filled in with the plots of Rosemary's Baby and the Omen movies. Always nice when you get to play the offspring, since it turns out Satan's son has awesome stats.
As for the Russian government changes, there's just too much damn news today.
Putin is going to be head of the State Security Council, and the powers of the President are going to be reduced and distributed, many of them to ... wait for it ... the State Security Council. He something similar before, with Medvedev as "President." Ho-hum, business as usual.
The other plan doing the rumor circuit was confederation with Belarus, with Putin moving up to head of the combination. I prefer this plan.
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now at law firm Akin Gump.|>
186. Supposedly Belarus (Lukashenko) is balking at the idea of union with Russia. Less opportunity for graft.
Akin Gump is overrun by Abbasids? Is that good or bad?
183: geese coming home to roost, you mean. Anyway, you better take it back, kayak!
The exact motives for Wednesday's decisions remain unclear, though domestic pressures could explain much of it. In his address, Putin focused on such issues as economic growth, tackling rising poverty, and endemic corruption. The Kremlin has struggled to boost Putin's near-record-low approval ratings, which soared after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Real incomes have fallen by half in a decade amid a stagnating economy, under pressure from U.S. sanctions over the Crimean annexation as well as relatively low oil prices.
London loves dirty money and Russia has a lot of it.
There was chatter about Whitehall sitting on an intelligence report on Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. Any news on that? FOIA suits? (if GB has such things.)
Speaking of not drinking, it turns out that not buying a bottle of whiskey helps cut back. Now I want a drink, but to get one, I'll have to leave the house. The closest bar is a newish bar tended by a man who tended bar at the bar I used to go to before I started going to the bar I usually go to when I go to a bar now. I have seen him only two times in the past six years or so. Once when I saw him on the sidewalk and he told me he works Wednesday night at the newish bar by my house and once when I was kicking a car that didn't yield to me when I was crossing the street on a green light with my son.
It will probably be more involved than I'm willing to deal with for a couple of drinks.
The Kremlin has struggled to boost Putin's near-record-low approval ratings, which soared after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Boy, that does not sound like a good link to make.
Very true. Correlation is not causation.
197: Putin seems to me like the kind of leader you either love or hate, but probably many Russians view their leaders as something they just have to accept, so there's no point in having an opinion.
Or they hate him but want to not be arrested.
183: ❤️ !
anyone who enjoys light reading re ludicrous royalty, highly recommend the quest for queen mary, the trick is to skip all the tedious wind up re who is related to who & how and go straight into the bizarre interview notes. random parrots, fabulous extended haight for the aesthetics of sandringham which does sound creepy and hideous af & her wartime war on trees, vines etc is glorious. doesn't quite reach the heights of 99 views of marge, but close! cinematically related, we started watching a private function (1984, m palin & m smith, among others) and it was so wonderfully disturbing had to stop after 30 min as better half couldn't take it, so kid and i will finish without him.
hate not haight how phone did that an enduring mystery.
hate not haight how phone did that an enduring mystery.