random musings

 A 41 year old woman from the US named Taylor Casey, has gone missing in the Bahamas. She was on a solo vacation to an innocuous looking yoga resort named the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat . Taylor has been a yoga enthusiast for many years and so naturally she was excited to visit the center, telling her mom and friends that she was looking forward to learning new yoga techniques to teach to others. She went alone to a hugely popular vacation destination - the Bahamas - to a resort that was very high profile, having been endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop. She called her mother regularly and sent pictures from her vacation. She was reportedly not a person to stay out of touch for very long, nor to take hasty actions that would isolate herself from those she loved. She should have been safe. But she's missing, and noone, not the resort, nor the Bahamian authorities, can say why. The information I received was mostly gleaned from the report by Brian Entin for Ne...

  A concise explanation of apartheid and colonialism:  Why these kinds of states always end up looking like eczema splotches by u/cosmicdaddy_ in TikTokCringe

  Ok #YouthForia, come to the front! So apparently YouthForia is a small cosmetics company run by a woman named Fiona Co Chan. She received  $400,000 to invest in starting her company after a successful appearance on tv's Shark Tank. Fast forward to today, the company produces cosmetics that are favoured on Tik Tok and have been featured by several influencers in their videos. The issue arose when they put out a foundation line that didn't have many colours for darker skin tones. A few black tik toker's reviewed the foundation line and complained about the lacking shade range.Now from what I can tell, there wasn't like a huge outcry or anything. It was just typical reviews by average black content creators stating factual information helpful to their mainly black followers. Well, it appears that YouthForia got triggered! Because what they did next was unprecedented in the history of  dumb things cosmetic companies have done to alienate consumers.  How in the year 202...

So this hypothetical question has been making the rounds lately on social media. Basically if I get the gist of it right, the question is posed to women, and is intended to highlight the state of male/female relations in today's world. In essence, women are asked whether they would prefer to encounter a strange man or a wild bear, if they found themselves lost and otherwise alone in the woods.  Apparently the majority of women have been answering - Bear! Whether being truthful or trying to prove a point, most ladies online are arguing that they would feel safer meeting a wild bear in the woods than an unknown man. Many of the explanations I have read center around the same point - that wild bears generally want to avoid people and leave them alone, whereas a strange man encountering a vulnerable woman could be more threatening and dangerous to her.  Predictably, quite a few men have been ruffled by this general response, and have gone online to chastise, berate, advise and oth...

Intro     The Video     My experience     Taylor      What can we learn?     My Pinterest boards So I just came across this saga on Youtube about a Tik Toker who bears an uncanny resemblence to Kylie Jenner (honestly I think she's prettier than Kylie). I was initially drawn in by her face because I couldn't believe how much of a doppleganger she was. However, her videos about having her hair "revamped" by a supposedly expert hairstylist, and the flatly disappointing results that ensued made for riveting entertainment, and quite rightly went viral. Especially since the whole situation, whilst being very "Tik Tok" and "Influencer 2024", is also so relatable to probably every woman ever in existence. I'll link the video that explained the whole situation below. You should give it a watch and get caught up. The Video by YouTube channel Tea Spill                      ...

Note: I know Doctor Who is the BBC not Hollywood but it suffers from the same show-killing problem. It is not what Hollywood is trying to do that is out of step with audiences, it is how they are attempting to do it. Or enforce it as it appears. Everyone would agree that Hollywood needed to be more diverse; that the movies of the recent past were simply not inclusive of large populations of society. But Hollywood's version of diversity is not thoughtful, sincere or relatable.  The subverting of beloved characters is something that makes me particularly mad. Because when you weaken male characters, and insert a "girl-boss to rule them all", it doesn't say promoting strong women to me. It says pandering to the most shallow definition of female strength, whilst ignoring real characteristics that are the true source of feminine power. So a 120 lb woman doesn't have to be able to kick down ten 250 lb musclemen in order to be defined as "strong". And that is a...

 There's been talk about Amazon's The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power for months now; heated debate and sometimes outright anger over the "forced diversity" and 'toxic woke feminism" people felt it included. I heard the chatter, saw some trailers, but for the most part ignored the perhaps premature surmises on how bad it would be. Instead I chose to wait and watch for myself, then make up my own mind, relatively free from the biases swirling in the cyberworld around me. And so I did. I have to say I honestly went into the first episode with high hopes for a transcendent experience even marginally akin to the one Peter Jackson gave us in his unimpeachable version all those many years ago. I could care less whether some hobbits were now brown, whether some elves had darker skin...so what? If in a fantasy world no less,  you cannot imagine characters with slight variations in skin colour than what the book described then you're fucked. As long as the...