I was just thinking today about using direct quotations in essays or meta, as I sometimes do, and how on the one hand, I do think it's important to refer to what you're talking about, but on the other hand, tossing around decontextualized quotes to substantiate a sketchy reading is ... very common, also.

I don't have my copy of LOTR on me, but it's like, you can talk about the description of Faramir as "a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North" or something to that effect and how #problematic it is. But in context, that line is Éowyn half-joking about what their relationship might look like to racist Gondorian Dúnedain.

That is, she's asking if he's cool with people saying that their relationship = he tamed a wild (by Gondorian standards) woman of a racially inferior people when he might have chosen a more pure-blooded Númenórean. Faramir does not give a single fuck what those people think and kisses her in full sight of the city.

So if you take all that away and just extract the "tamed" quote, you're ... kind of misrepresenting its function in the dialogue and what they're actually talking about in the first place. Meh.

Reading a draft in an attempt to buck myself back into actually writing, and going 😬😬😬 oh this needs work. I am kind of pleased by this sliding doors-style conversation between Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam in which she mentions the Bingleys just obviously enough for him to remember not to bring up Bingley ghosting a girl Elizabeth probably knows:

By the habit of five weeks’ stay her steps bent very naturally towards the isolated part of Rosings park which had become her favourite haunt; and in which she had sometimes encountered Mr Darcy and once, yesterday, his cousin. That conversation had begun a little awkwardly, in the manner of a farewell, for, though Elizabeth felt she could have admired the Colonel, she was determined not to do so behind the bounds of his admiration for her, and it was plain enough that his pleasure in her company did not exceed the concerns of his situation. But they had become friends, she felt, and, as they were unlikely to meet again with any regularity, the end of his stay at Rosings must mark the end of their friendship. She, determined not to show hurt, had teased him very thoroughly on the subject of ladies of fortune and gentlemen of rank, and at length asked, with spirit bordering on impertinence, how it was that one determined the difference between a prudent young person of good family and a fortune hunter. She had regretted the question almost as soon as it was asked, feeling alarmed that she really had gone too far, but he had laughed so heartily at it that she had been relieved.

‘I confess I do not rightly know,’ said he ‘for I think that it is a question that in each case is answered by committee.’

‘And is the committee impartial, like a jury?’

‘As they are generally the family and friends of the fortune concerned, they are no doubt about as impartial as a jury of peers.’

‘It is only,’ said Elizabeth, ‘that I cannot rightly say myself. Such subtle arts as are employed on an honourable are not in general deployed against a country gentlewoman with four sisters.’

‘My dear Miss Bennet, do you mean to say you have never had a worthless rake offer to duel his gambling companions for the honour of your company?’

‘No, never! Do such things occur outside of novels?’

‘Very often, I am afraid.’

‘You shock me, sir,’ she said smilingly.

‘I am sorry for it,’ he said.

‘But,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I am not more shocked by such occurrences than I am by the notion that they should be so often successful. From what I have heard — most especially from Lady Catherine and Mr Darcy — the sort of lady possessed of a fortune must naturally also be expected to be possessed of good sense, accomplishment, and education. One does not imagine such a refined creature would fall easy prey to so obvious and paltry a scheme as observing a duel in her honour.’

Colonel Fitzwilliam did not laugh as heartily at this as she might expect. ‘You ought consider, Miss Bennet, that such ladies as are taken in by those sorts of enticements are, on the whole, very young, and but rarely out in the world. Surrounded as they often are by their protectors, they are not practised at recognising only the appearance of goodness and esteem in those interlopers who would manage their fortunes and persons.’

‘That, I suppose, is another difference,’ said Elizabeth. ‘A lady who marries a man of fortune may expect her star to rise, though she loses her own funds to his management, but a man who marries a lady of fortune may expect increase in both wealth and consequence.’

‘That is true in the case of the worthless men we spoke of earlier,’ said Colonel Fitzwilliam, ‘who are well versed in the advantages of marrying with and without articles. It is the opinion of some I know that young ladies of fortune ought be taught the principles of the law as well as those of the modern languages and the arts, that they might best understand their own relative positions.’

‘A very interesting proposition,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Does your cousin agree to it? He has, I believe, the management of a young lady. I often heard Miss Darcy praised last summer as a lady of great accomplishment, when I was in company with the Bingleys.’

‘It is Darcy of whom I speak,’ said Colonel Fitzwilliam. ‘We have argued it over a good deal, for, you know, we share Miss Darcy’s guardianship.’

‘I did not know that,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What decision have you come to? If Miss Darcy is like her brother, might you not feel alarm at impressing on her the degree of her rights? I cannot think it would make a young lady easier to manage.’

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Summary: Sam and Natalie are mistaken for a couple while on a hunt. Square Filled: Mistaken for a Couple Warnings/Tags: Fluff, angst, flirting, implied smut Characters/Pairings: Sam Winchester/Natalie Murphy Word Count: 1,571 A/N: For @spnfluffbingo2019​, this fills the square Mistaken for a Couple. Thank you, as always, to @atc74​ for beta’ing. Song: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John

“Oh, you’re in luck! The honeymoon suite is available!”

Great. Another awkward night in yet another Winchester Special motel.

“Uh, sure,” Sam said as he set his credit card one the counter. “That okay with you, Natalie?”

She groaned under her breath before she turned over her shoulder with a tight-lipped smile. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

The receptionist’s toothy grin widened so far Natalie thought her face might crack. “Newlyweds? Or just on vacation?”

No matter how many times it happened, Sam always had the audacity to look shocked when anyone assumed that he and Natalie were a couple. “No, we’re… we’re just co-workers.”

She withdrew the key she had held out for Sam. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry.” Her face fell as she returned to her ledger. “I've got two single rooms open, just let me get the keys.”

The receptionist stilled at Sam's gentle touch—a touch Natalie knew so well—of his fingers to the back of her hand. “Delilah, right?” he asked.

Delilah’s brilliant smile returned, illuminating the entire room. She was gorgeous like Elizabeth, fair and blonde and tall, and if she could have turned a shade of green, Natalie would have turned emerald with envy as Sam returned her smile.

“It's okay,” he said. “We don't mind. The suite will be fine.”

Fine. Sure. If Natalie slept on the sofa. After sharing the last queen bed with Sam, Natalie had learned several hard lessons, the least of which being just how much space Sam occupied. And it wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn’t… him, so tall and lean and smelling like a mountain lodge on a lake in the dead of winter all the time. It hadn't been the first time she had picked apart his scent, but it was decidedly the last. After that night, Natalie had determined to keep her feelings to herself, bury them deep and forget they existed.

But then the warmth of his hand enveloped her shoulder and Natalie startled. Sam towered over her, hunched shoulders and head low as he peered into her eyes. “Hello? Earth to Natalie?”

How did he do it? With such effortlessness, Sam had disarmed her without trying. “Sorry. Got distracted,” she said with a laugh.

Sam took her bag from her hands and headed down the nearest hallway to their room. “You okay?”

Shit. He always read her like an open book. “That’s the fifth time we’ve been mistaken for a couple in six months.”

At the door, Sam laughed as he unlocked the handle. “You should see how often Cas and Dean get the honeymoon suite,” he said. “It’s fucking hilarious.”

Natalie grinned at that. “I can see it,” she laughed. “Does it piss Dean off?”

He pushed the door aside to reveal a larger motel room with a queen bed. At least the decorations had been limited to tasteful shades of brown and teal instead of the garish rose reds she had seen in previous suites. As she shuffled past him, she replied. “Oh, yeah. He tries to play their relationship so close to the chest, but I don’t think either of them realizes the way they look at each other.”

Natalie doubled over with laughter at that, tears welling and blurring her vision. “Oh, that—that’s rich. I’d pay to see it happen. Just once.”

His laughter followed her to the small sofa where she set her backpack. When his laughter quieted, she turned to him and gestured to the couch. “I think I’m gonna sleep here tonight.”

He looked to the bed, then the couch, and back. “Why? This bed is huge.”

Natalie scoffed through her nose. “Yeah, and you’re huge.”

The ruddy red blush that flooded Sam’s face puzzled Natalie at first, but after a beat, she understood. “I mean, you take up a lot of space! You know what I meant!”

Sam regarded the bed again, then his eyes snapped to hers. “Did I… do something… something weird last time we were out on a hunt together?”

It was her turn to blush, that awful sting prickling her cheeks. “No!” she barked. “No, you just… you’re really big, dude, you take up like most of a queen size bed. Maybe under different circumstances…”

His eyes widened as he turned to look at her head-on. “What kind of circumstances?”

Her jaw worked as she tried to come up with a reason beyond one that involved a deeper relationship. “Like, maybe, if that was a king bed,” she stuttered as she flipped a hand at the bed. “Or maybe if I’d brought better pajamas and not just giant sleep shirts.”

“I like your shirts.”

“My dad got them for me when he was—wait, what?”

He seemed to not have heard himself, for he spun back to his bags and busied himself there. “I… just thought they look comfy. Your dad got them?”

She pulled her bottom lip through her teeth. “Yeah,” she started. “Years ago, when I was a kid. I’ve been the same height since I was about twelve or thirteen, so they still fit. And… my dad…”

He stopped his rummaging at that, head slumping his chin to his chest. “I’m a fucking asshole. I didn’t mean to bring up your parents. It’s… you’ve never really talked about them since we first met.”

True, she had played most of her personal life close to the chest. “There’s not much to say. I miss my family. But that was… Christ, that was over twenty years ago.”

“I’m sorry—”

“He raced cars,” she continued. “Gearhead. Went to all these meets. Always bought me a t-shirt. I probably have two hundred of them in temperature-controlled storage back in Chicago.”

Sam’s arms enveloped her before Natalie realized he had crossed the room. In his embrace, she felt a rare sense of tranquility she had found nowhere else. Something about the tender strength with which he held her said more than any words could, more than any thought could convey. Her arms slipped around his waist, and if Sam could hold her closer, he damn well tried.

“Thank you, Natalie,” he muttered. “For sharing.”

“I’ve never told anyone that,” she said. “Except Liz, obviously. Then again, neither of us had real friends. Hunter partners, acquaintances, sure. But nobody like you and Dean. And Cas.”

“I don’t think you understand just how much that means to me,” Sam said.

“I don’t think you understand just how much you mean to me,” Natalie replied.

He held her back at arm’s length and examine her as though he saw her for the first time. “Me, personally?”

“Well, yeah,” she started, “I mean, we spend a lot of time together. Lots of similar interests. We hardly ever argue. It’s… the easiest relationship I’ve ever had. Besides Liz.”

His thousand-watt smile spread across his pink lips as he blushed, and Natalie wanted nothing more than to kiss him. And he seemed to read her mind as his tongue slipped between his lips. Dammit, she should just do it, take matters into her own hands and tell him, tell him everything until she—

Sam moved quick as a cat, far too fast for Natalie to respond. His massive hands cupped her cheeks, holding what felt like her entire head in his palms as he pressed his lips to hers for an insistent, yet short, kiss.

The wet sound of their parting filled Natalie’s ears and she followed him as far as she could reach until he straightened. Aghast terror contorted his too pretty face as he gaped and stuttered his apology.

“I… shit, I’m so sorry,” he started as he backed away, “that… that was wrong, I shouldn’t have done that without asking, I—”

Natalie leapt into his embrace, arms and legs wrapped around him, and Sam tumbled backwards onto the bed. Fervent kisses satisfied her, and Sam collapsed to his back, pulling her down with him. So many minutes might have passed, but Natalie didn’t care. Not in the least. Only when she needed to breathe did she come up for air.

“All those nights in motel suites?” Sam asked.

“I thought we were just friends,” she replied.

Sam grinned at that as he flipped her to her back and settled between her thighs spread wide. The glorious weight of him, firm and thick in all the right places, encroached on her every sense; hazel eyes gazed into hers, soft brown locks teased at her cheeks, and gun oil mingled filled her nose. The last sensation filled her mouth as Sam kissed her again, his tongue slipping past her lips and tasting of whiskey. At last, at long last he knew how she felt. And she thanked whatever gods existed that he felt the same way.

When Sam parted from her, he kissed along her jaw to whisper in her ear, “ How about friends with benefits?”

Greedy fingers nipped at her skin as he smoothed her skin from hips to breasts, and as Natalie replied, she sighed, “Depends on what kind of benefits you’re talking about.”

He knelt between her thighs and parted the button of her jeans, then glared up at her from beneath his prominent brow. Natalie shivered beneath that look, terrifying and yet, incredibly arousing. As he tugged her free of her pants and leaned between her thighs, he whispered against the fabric of her underwear.

“I can show you.” 

Feedback is appreciated! Feel free to reblog, too!

If you want in on any of my tags (Sam/Jared, Dean/Jensen), send me a DM or an ask!

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN FLUFF BINGO MASTERLIST

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN MASTER LIST

The Whole Thang:

@atc74  @hannahindie @bevans87  @meganwinchester1999  @plaided-ani-on-hiatus​  @oneshoeshort​ @jonogueira​ @andkatiethings​ @elfinmox​ @wonderfulworldofwinchester​ @princessofthefandomrealm​  @just-another-busyfangirl​ @jmekitchens​ @81mysteriouslyme​ @dolphincliffs​  @seenashwrite​  @canadianspnhunter​  @meowmeow-motherfucker​ @depressed-moose-78 @staycejo1​ @hobby27​  @pretty-fortune @mypopculturediva​ @fanfictionjunkie1112​ @sandlee44​ @4llmywr1tings​ @claitynroberts​ @maddiepants​ @scarletluvscas @donnaintx​ @blackeyedangel9805​ @rainflowermoon​ @winchesterprincessbride​  @lazinessisalliknow​ @the-is13​ @waywardafgrandma​ @keymology​ @sister-winchesters99​ @amanda-teaches​

Sam’s Sasstresses (Jared):

@karouwinchester​

I had a bit of a wince early on in the story when an aristocratic lord in 1870’s London criticised his younger brother for ‘hanging out with’ an actress, and wondered if the whole story was going to be full of such contemporary slang. I’m glad I stuck with it, though, because the rest of the book does feel solidly period, bringing the Wild West vividly to life through the lens of Lady Elizabeth, who chooses to make a new life in America out from under the thumb of her controlling eldest brother.

I do feel I should warn readers who may fall rather for Matthew, Elizabeth’s kind and obviously dyslexic brother at the beginning of the book; he gets killed off very quickly, thus leaving her at the mercy of strangers and eventually bringing her into contact with Logan Best, the bounty hunter who’s the hero of the story.

With a wife and child lost to him in the most brutal fashion, Logan enjoys hunting down the lawless who prey on the weak. He was already on the trail of the man who stole Elizabeth’s fortune when they meet, and needs no incentive to take on the job to help her. He’d far rather do the job alone, but she has no intention of being left behind, and out on the trail her determination impresses him despite her previously pampered existence.

The pair seem like an odd couple, and it’s a slow process which sees them come to first a mutual respect and then to love. Elizabeth learning just how hard frontier life is from a farmer’s wife she stays with for a few days was a really interesting glimpse into just what life was like in the era. Because of the few anachronisms and my disappointment that Matthew didn’t eventually turn back up alive, however, I can’t quite give this five stars. I’ll settle for a solid four.

Logan’s Lady is available now.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review through NetGalley.

David's 2018 Election Predictions

Yes, we're still a week out. But I'm traveling to Chicago for a conference tomorrow, then going from there to a very quick vacation in Las Vegas Saturday through Monday (Shin Lim!), so I probably won't be able to write much over that time. Obviously, predictions void if major events happen in the interim. But fortunately, we have a very stable political environment right now and ... oy. * * * Senate -- overall GOP hold There are a lot of races I'm uncertain about, but given the brutality of the map for Democrats this year I think it's more likely that we actually lose seats even with a pretty significant tailwind. In terms of seriously contested races, I feel relatively confident about the following:

West Virginia: Manchin (D hold)

North Dakota: Cramer (R flip)

Beyond that, things get ... murky. I think Nelson will hold off Scott in Florida, but I think Hawley will beat McCaskill in Missouri. Donnelly in Indiana is an almost complete toss-up for me. Nevada's giving me a heart attack, but it's trending blue and I think Rosen will ultimately win it. Between Arizona and Tennessee, I'm just splitting the baby and predicting Democrats will win one of two, but don't ask me which. Basically, I'm seeing anything from a one-seat Republican gain to a one-seat Democratic gain, and within that range I think Team Red has the advantage over Team Blue. House -- overall Dem flip (over/under on Democratic seats: 220) Too many races to count, and I've actually been moving towards a more cynical posture here as well. But FiveThirtyEight has Democratic chances at over 80%, which is reassuring (though less reassuring than it would have been before 2016). Selected House predictions:

CA-39: Cisneros (D flip)

CA-48: Rohrabacher (R hold)

FL-27: Shalala (D flip)

IA-04: King (R hold), though this would be the sweetest of all victories

MN-01: Hagedorn (R flip)

MN-02: Craig (D flip)

MN-03: Phillips (D flip)

UT-04: McAdams (D flip)

VA-02: Taylor (R hold)

VA-10: Wexton (D flip)

I also expect both indicted Republicans (Collins, NY-27 & Hunter, CA-50) to hold their seats. Drain the swamp! Governor's Races This is where I feel best about Democratic chances. Yet even here we're underperforming what we should be getting (Maryland? Maryland!).

Alaska: Dunleavy (R sorta-flip). The incumbent is an Independent, who dropped out of his race to endorse the Democrat. Still probably won't be enough.

Florida: Gillum (D flip). Possibly my favorite Democrat right now is Andrew Gillum. It helps that DeSantis is a sociopath.

Georgia: Kemp (R hold). I think this goes to a run-off, and then Kemp wins the run-off.

Illinois: Pritzker (D flip).

Iowa: Hubbell (D flip). This one feels a little under the radar given how well Hubbell is doing against an incumbent.

Kansas: Kobach (R hold). Thank goodness we have another vanity independent in this race, otherwise Kansas might not experience the horror of not electing an extremist nutjob for once.

Maryland: Hogan (R hold). This is just embarrassing. Hogan isn't the worst Republican, but these days that just means he's generically bad instead of an outright fascist. That shouldn't be enough to get him elected in a state like Maryland.

Minnesota: Walz (D hold).

Nevada: Sisolak (D flip). Probably the single gubernatorial race I'm most unsure about.

Ohio: Cordray (D flip). No wait. This is probably the single gubernatorial race I'm most unsure about.

South Dakota: Noem (R hold). Would love to call the upset here. If you're looking for your 13 over 4 seed pick, this is it.

Wisconsin: Evers (D flip). This one will feel really good.

Miscellaneous I was facing an agonizing decision in my California Assembly race (15th district) between Buffy Wicks and Jovanka Beckles, right up until I discovered that Beckles was a Jill Stein supporter. That made my decision really, really easy. Nonetheless, it seems like Beckles has a lot more energy behind her right now. And while Wicks took first place in the fractured-field open primary a few months ago, that may not be enough. The last time this seat was open, Tony Thurmond places second in the open-primary but rallied to beat Elizabeth Echols in the general. I'm feeling like Beckles is going to take it. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2EOPOYO

WORK ETHIC AND AFOOT

And this wasn't just random error. Once you've seen enough examples of specific types of tricks, you start to lie to yourself. I suspect almost every successful startup has. You either get rich, he'll hire you as a failure, because your occupation is student, and you observe how much humans have in common.1 The new industrial companies adapted the customs of existing large organizations like the military and the civil service, and the experts he lured west to work with.2 In fact, they're lucky by comparison. In most other cities, the prospect of keeping it.

What happened to Don't be Evil? So every macro in that code is there because it has been losing to Silicon Valley at its own game: the ratio of New York. If you wanted more wealth, you could buy a Thinkpad, which was at least not actively repellent, if you get this stuff, you already know most of what big companies do is of this second, unedifying kind. Parents end up sharing more of their kids' ill fortune than good fortune. Here's the pledge: No first use of software patents against companies with less than 25 people. Everyone would be wearing the same clothes, have the same kind of furniture, and eat the same foods as my other friends. I can tell, the way to a great product, how do you pick out the people with better taste?3

They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea sounds plausible.4 Afterward I wondered, what am I even measuring? Viaweb was written in either, but they haven't followed it to its conclusion. And it follows inexorably that, except in special cases, you ought to use the trick that John D. A lot of people out there working on boring stuff. If you mean worth in the sense that it gets compiled into machine language.5 Besides, they don't want to sell your company right now and b you're sufficiently likely to get an offer at an acceptable price. But only if he mastered a new kind of computer called a Sun that was a predictor of ability, but so small and cheap that you could make great things was that they believed you could make great things was that they believed you could make it run more efficiently. Now it's Wepay's. Only if it's fun.

By far the biggest killer of startups that make something popular manage to make money at some point, either when you graduate they don't give you a list of US cities sorted by population, the number is small compared to the rapacious founder's $2 million. I'm not talking about the taste of apples, I'd agree that taste is just a couple guys and an idea.6 But all art has to work very closely with a program written in a certain way. The spread of startups seems to be the same. By the end of 1997 we had 500. And when motivated by that you find you can do a lot more on its design.7 No cofounder Not having a cofounder is a real problem. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. In the Valley, terrible things happen to startups all the time, was that it was cheap. 10 because they want you to be a doctor A significant number of would-be intellectuals, learn how they do it?

And not just because it's free, but because the principles underlying the most dynamic part of the job; but it does tend to make them excessively conservative. Many a hacker has written a program only to find on returning to it six months later that he has no idea how it works. I think this is what Bill Gates must have been very valuable. It must have seemed to nearly everyone that running off to the city to make your fortune was a crazy thing to do. Universities and research labs. The one big chunk of our code was doing things that are fun to work on as there is for things that solve the mundane problems of individual customers. Obviously one case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that.8

Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should make more money. Gradually the details get filled in. But it makes all the difference that it's concentrated in one individual. You sense there is something afoot. It may be that a significant number of would-be founders, though we do like the idea, and comfort ourselves occasionally with the thought that if all our investments tank, we will thus have been doing something unselfish. Our ancestors were giants.9 The buildings are all more or less the meaning of life when I was in college. Oxford and Cambridge England feel like Ithaca or Hanover: the message is there, but that there can even be such a thing? The root cause of variation in every other human skill.10 What made him seem older?

Notes

It's not a product company.

You have to do it in B.

Jones, A P supermarket chain because it is not a chain-smoking drunk who pours his soul into big, messy canvases that philistines see and say that's not directly, but one by one they die and their hands. Related: Reprinted in Bacon, Alan, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47, pp.

Please do not take the form of bad idea. Incidentally, this phenomenon myself: hotel unions are responsible for more than 20 years, it will seem dumb in 100 years. Once he showed it could hose the whole fund. Anyone can broadcast a high-fiber diet is to claim that companies will naturally wonder, how could it have meaning?

Words we use for good and bad measurers. According to a woman who, because they wanted, so they had to pay out their earnings in dividends, and we don't want to.

However, it may be overpaid. Every pilot knows about this from personal experience than anyone, writes: I'd argue that the founders enough autonomy that they decided to skip raising an A round about the qualities of these companies substitute progress for revenue growth with the money they receive represents wealth—that startups aren't the problem is the most, it's probably a cause.

If you have to choose between the top; it's IBM.

By heavy-duty security I mean this in terms of the largest of their due diligence tends to be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to sell, or boards, or Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed Airbnb?

But iTunes shows that they probably don't notice even when I was a strong local component and b success depended so much more analytical style of thinking. Though they are so different from money raised as convertible debt at a party school will inevitably be something you can skip the first philosophers including Confucius and Plato saw themselves as teachers of administrators, and large bribes by the investors talking to a VC fund they outsource most of the Times vary so much control, and this is largely true, it would be reluctant to start, e.

They did better than their competitors, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way. This was made particularly clear in our case, not competitors.

Favorite Reads 2017

2017 was, all in all, not the greatest year for books (for me personally).  A few follow-ups to series-starters I loved disappointed me; there was a lack of new historical fiction that was truly compelling; YA was very hit or miss.  But there are always exceptions to the years unspoken “rules”, and I found myself reading more thrillers than I had before.  Maybe the bright side of my usual categories (I don’t know that they’re all genres) failing me is that I had to get a bit more adventurous.

In no particular order, my top ten favorite books of the year were as follows...

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.  Rachel is an ABC--American Born Chinese.  Smart, practical, and successful, she’s dating Nicholas Young, quite possibly the man of her dreams--but there’s a bit of mystery about him.  So when Nick brings her to his family home in Singapore to attend his friend’s wedding, she’s shocked to discover that he’s the heir to a fabulous fortune, hailing from one of the most high-profile and wealthy families in Asia, or perhaps even the world.  Everyone is out to break up Rachel and Nick, it seems; but especially his mother, the conniving and clever matriarch Eleanor.  This is one of the most addictive books I’ve ever read, and the rest of the trilogy thankfully measures up.  God, I was hooked; and it’s nothing like what I expected.  There are vapid characters, sure, but this isn’t Gossip Girl--the book is wickedly smart, and Kwan seems to make great insights about “crazy rich Asian culture” without ever seeming sanctimonious.  The characters are great--you root for Nick and Rachel’s romance while falling in love with his Machiavellian mother, and for that matter his tragic It Girl cousin Astrid.  Unfortunately, this book has been categorized by some as trashy... and sure, at times it is.  But it’s also one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones.  In nineteenth century Europe, Liesl is a gifted composer.  But she’s overshadowed by her brother Josef, a musician, and their beautiful sister Kathe.  As a child, Liesl knew the Goblin King; and she meets him again as a young woman, stealing her sister away from the mortal world.  Liesl makes a bargain with the Goblin King: if he returns Kathe, Liesl will become his bride.  The Goblin King--enchanted with her music--whisks her away to his realm, creating a world of delights that’s hard for Liesl to resist.  This book is basically everything a grown woman could want Labyrinth to be.  Liesl and the Goblin King do have a captivating romance, but it’s not so much insta-love as I would say it’s a sexual awakening.  I don’t think she’s starry-eyed; she’s more attracted to him physically, and experiencing the thrill of having someone return that attraction for the first time.  So much of the book is about passion--the Goblin King’s passion for Liesl, their shared passion for her music, the Fair Folk’s passion in general for things that they can’t have.  It’s a melancholy, haunting book with just the right side of indulgence to make it impossible for me to resist.

Final Girls by Riley Sager.  After surviving a massacre that took all of her friends during a college cabin trip, Quincy is a part of what the press calls “the Final Girls”.  Lisa survived a sorority girl slaying, while Sam was nearly murdered at the motel she worked at.  But the three don’t really interact, as Quincy is determined to live a normal life.  She doesn’t even remember what happened to her on the night of the Pine Cottage murders.  That all changes when Lisa is found dead of a supposed suicide, and Sam shows up on Quincy’s doorstep.  Quincy needs to remember what happened all those years ago--before it’s too late.  This book is far from your run of the mill thriller, with unexpected twists and a feminist slant.  It’s almost a satire of slasher tropes--except the plot is a bit too coherent for a satire, and everything is a little too real.  I blazed through it, and wasn’t exactly sure of what happened until the very end.

Warcross by Marie Lu.  Teenager Emika Chen makes her living as a bounty hunter--specifically, tracking down people who illegally bet on Warcross, the virtual reality game that’s taken the world by storm.  Of course, Emika’s hacks in the game aren’t exactly legal either, so when she’s summoned to Tokyo by the game’s creator, billionaire Hideo Tanaka, she assumes the worst.  But Hideo has a proposition for her: if she can find out who’s at the heart of a dangerous security glitch in the game, the payout will be huge.  But as Emika competes undercover, she realizes that the stakes--personal and professional--are much higher than she thought.  This is one of those books that really surprised me. You don’t have to be a gamer to follow “Warcross”--which also, surprise, has a great romance to go along with it--but the parts of the story that pertain to the game are just as compelling as the bounty hunting plot.  What pleased me most, however, was the ending; nothing is as it seems in this book, and the characters are much grayer than you might imagine.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust.  This retelling of Snow White focuses on the relationship between Lynet, our princess, and Mina, her wicked stepmother.  Lynet is the living embodiment of her dead mother, and recently made the queen of the southern territories by her father--which displaces Mina, of the southern territories and devoted to her homeland.  What Lynet doesn’t know, as we’re told the story of Mina’s past, is that she was made from snow by Mina’s alchemist father--who, using the same magic, saved Mina’s life by making her a heart of glass. Mina believes herself incapable of love, and despite her closeness to Lynet, she grows increasingly threatened by the girl.  This fairy tale is decidedly dark--but it’s clear that this isn’t darkness of the sake of darkness.  Rather, we see the good and bad in both Mina and Lynet, two women driven apart by the machinations of men--but perhaps not permanently.  

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson.  The painter Isobel caters to a specific clientele: the fair folk.  Incapable of “craft”, they treasure Isobel’s paintings, but are feared for their predatory and capricious ways.  Isobel’s always been careful around the fair folk, but slips up when she paints the autumn prince, Rook, accidentally depicting sorrow in his eyes.  This creates a great weakness for Rook, who takes her on a journey to the autumnlands, so that she can stand trial and dispel the notions of any mortality in Rook.  Of course, there is the issue of their attraction to each other--because if a mortal and a fairy fall in love, their lives will be forfeit.  This is a lovely fairy tale, with a romance that is much more hard-won and realistic than what I expected from the summary.  While Rook is just as fanciful as you’d expect a fairy to be, Isobel has her feet planted in reality, and I love a story in which the main character really, really doesn’t want to fall in love.  This book depicts the fair folk with just the right balance of fear and whimsy, and I dare you to read it without falling for the world.

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh.  The daughter of a samurai, cunning Mariko is on her way to meet her betrothed, a prince.  Along the way, her party is attacked by a group of bandits paid to assassinate Mariko--killing her servants along the way.  Disguising herself as a boy, she infiltrates the bandits’ group--known as the Black Clan--determined to find who was sent to kill her, and get revenge.  This retelling of “Mulan” takes on gender roles in a fantasy realm influenced by Japanese history, with Mariko standing as a strong female character, but also a girl.  Renee Ahdieh is great at building these history-based fantasy worlds--and she’s not too shabby when it comes to the romance department, either.

Caraval by Stephanie Garber.  Scarlett and Tella live a sheltered existence, dominated by their abusive father.  Scarlett--the responsible one--has always dreamed of going to Caraval, the magical circus-like show that sucks the audience into the game.  In an effort to make her sister relax, Tella takes Scarlett to Caraval, only to get swept up in its magic.  The object of this year’s game?  To find Tella.  So Scarlett joins a host of people looking for her sister--but the line between reality and fantasy on the island is blurred, and Caraval may turn out to be just as dangerous as it looks.  This is the sort of dreamy fantasy that is just delicious to read, especially during cold weather.  

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  Unknown journalist Monique is stunned when she’s selected to interview the notoriously private movie star Evelyn Hugo, famous for her beauty, talent, and seven husbands.  As Monique is drawn into Evelyn’s story, she becomes more and more curious about why Evelyn chose her, and who the real love of Evelyn’s life was.  Evelyn is clearly based on Elizabeth Taylor in some ways, but the story is really all her own.  While Evelyn’s tale is obviously more compelling than Monique’s, they satisfyingly come together in a way I didn’t quite expect.  Really, at its heart this is a love story; but it’s also quite the piece of Old Hollywood glamour, with all the gossip and controversy that you’d expect.

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo.  This anthology of fairy tales is set in Leigh Bardugo’s grishaverse, but all take a little bit from those that you might be familiar with.  They’re dark and sensual, some of them a little gory.  But what really got me is that these are stories I can really see the characters from Bardugo’s other books telling.  The world feels fully realized, the morals complex but solid and a little dated, but with reason.  Read this if you want to be transported and a little spellbound.

Something I’ve Always Wanted To Say To Those Who Complain About A Lack Of Good Female Characters.

Yes we are just SHORT on good female characters, aren't we?

‘Takes a ginormous breath’

I mean besides Ellen Ripley, The Bride, Katniss Everdeen, Imperator Furiosa, Rey, [insert surname here] Princess Leia, [One of the greatest fucking characters ever] Sarah Connor to just name the most well-known few. We only have Hermione Granger [obviously], Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Minerva Mcgonagoll, Molly Weasley, Lily Potter, Bellatrix Lestrange, Jyn Erso, Padme Amidala, Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren, Mara Jade, Jaina Solo, Tahiri Veila, Jan Ors, Nomi Sunrider, Lumiya, Juno Eclipse, Bastila Shan, Satele Shan, Ahsoka Tano, Barriss Offee, Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Adi Gallia, Shaak Ti, Jaden Korr [Optionally female], Asajj Ventress, Aurra Sing, Zam Wesell, Steela Gerrara, The Seventh Sister, Satine Kryze, Shmi Skywalker, Darth Zannah, Mother Talzin, [The fucking Hapes Consortium places women higher over men] Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, Pocahontas, Tiana, Jane, Rapunzel, Ariel, Cinderella, Megara, Lilo, Nani, Nala, Vanellope, Lady, Merida, Jessie, Dory, Helen/Elastigirl, EVA, Edna Mode, Joy, Sadness, Anna, Elsa, [Yes i think she's a good character but for different reasons than others do] Kida, Wendy, Alice, Judy Hopps, Kanga, Kala, Captain Amelia, Moana, Esmeralda, Flora, Fauna, Merryweather, Rita, Miss Bianca, Mary Poppins, Eglantine Price, Sally, Audrey Ramirez, Mittens, Maleficent, Ursula, Cruella De Vil, Queen Grimhilde, Yzma, Lady Tremaine, Queen Of Hearts, Madame Medusa, Mother Gothel, Honey Lemon, Go-Go, Chel, Marina, Eris, Tigress, Ginormica, Roxanne, Astrid, Valka, Ginger, Fiona, Fairy Godmother, Tzipporah and Miriam. Chihiro, San, Moro, Lady Eboshi  Sophie, Kiki, Shizuku, Arrietty, Ponyo, Nausicaa, Princess Kushana, Kaguya, Sheeta,  Marnie, Annie, Coraline, Anastasia, Mrs Brisby, Elle Woods, Dorothy, Matilda, Alicia Huberman, Violet, Corky, Alice Creed, Clarice Starling, Mrs Danvers, Janine Melnitz. Kylie Griffin, Junior Ghostbuster Catherine, [yeah there were already female Ghostbusters before that crappy movie] Lisbeth Salander, Mathilda Lando, Marge Gunderson, Judge Cassandra Anderson, Ma-Ma, [Madeline Madrigal] Regina George, Cady Heron, Clementine Kruczynski, M, [the one played by Judi Dench] Moneypenny,, Elle Driver, O-Ren Ishii, Julie Kohler, Yuki Kashima, Amelie Poulain, Lucy, Rose Dewitt Bukater, Joy ‘Ma’ Newsome, Grace Howard, Philomena Lee, Ofelia, Kara, [From Dragonheart] Sarah Williams, Maria von Trapp, Marion Ravenwood, Dr. Elsa Schneider, Evelyn Carnahan, Officer Anne Lewis, Dr Ellie Sattler, Paikea Apirana, Motoko Kusanagi, Carrie White, Arwyn, Eowyn, Galadriel, Yu Shu Lien, Jen Yu, Jackie Brown, Nefretiri,  All the girls from St Trinians, Bliss Cavendar, The girls on the Roller Derby Team, [Maggie Mayhem, Bloody Holly, Rosa Sparks, Smashley Simpson] Sally Albright, Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, Claire Standish. Allison Reynolds, Kim Possible, She-Ra, [Plus the female characters in She-Ra and He-Man] Jem, Synergy, The Holograms, The Misfits, Penny Gadget, Jessica Jones, Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, Anya Jenkins, Faith, Cordelia Chase, Drusilla, Emma Swan, Carol Peletier, River Tam, Xena, Lady Penelope, Roseanne, Dana Scully, Morticia Addams, Wednesday Addams, Lily Munster, Vastra and Jenny, Jessica Fletcher, Olivia Benson, Lilly Rush, Korra, Asami Sato, Lin Beifong, Opal Beifong, Suyin Beifong, Kya, Daria Morgendoffer, Jane Lane, Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright, Jo Grant, Donna Noble, River Song, Ace, Nyssa, Romana, Sarah Jane, Clara Oswald, [the majority of the Doctor Who companions are female] Madame Vastra, Jenny, Zoe Washburne, Kaywinnet Lee ‘Kaylee’ Frye, Lagertha Lothbrok, Claire Underwood, Uhura, Nurse Chappell, Nurse Abby, Captain Katherine Janeway,  B’elanna Torres, Seven Of Nine, Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax,  Deanna Troi,  Penelope Garcia, Kima Greggs, Evelyn Salt, Starbuck, Lois Lane, Katara, Toph, Mai, Azula, Suki, Ty-Lee, June, Serras Victoria, Sir Integra Hellsing, Dr. Girlfriend, Elektra Nachios, Alex Drake, Cameron, [Even if she's a cyborg she counts] Veronica Mars, ALL THREE CHARLIE'S ANGELS, THE POWERPUFF GIRLS, The female rangers in Power Rangers,  Sabrina Spellman, The majority of characters from My Little Pony, Mabel Pines, Wendy Corduroy, The Crystal Gems, Princess Bubblegum, Marceline The Vampire Queen, Flame Princess, Princess Allura, Katie ‘Pidge’ Holt, Violet Baudelaire, Lucy Pevensie, Alice, [again] Nancy Drew, Annabeth Chase, Clarisse La Rue, Sally Jackson, Thalia Grace, Piper Mclean, Hazel Levesque, [I AM GOING TO GET SO MUCH SHIT FROM PERCY JACKSON FANS BECAUSE THESE ARE THE ONLY ONES I CAN THINK OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD]  Daenerys, Arya, Margaery, Catelyn, Brienne, Olenna, Sansa, Susan Sto Helit, Liessa Dragonlady, Tiffany Aching, Hannah Wolfe, The female characters in Malazan Book Of The Fallen, Harriet The Spy, Althea Vestrit, Aerin, Sorcha, Daine, Sabriel, Maka Albarn, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, Liz and Patty Thompson, Meryl Strife, Milly Thompson, Winry Rockbell, Izumi Curtis, Riza Hawkeye,  Mikasa Ackerman, Pepper Potts, Gwen Stacy, Black Cat, Wonder Woman [That’s a fucking no brainer], Batgirl, Batwoman, Supergirl, Raven, Starfire, Huntress, Black Canary, Zatanna, Catwoman, Hawkgirl, Mera, Katana, Talia Al Ghul, Enchantress, Poison Ivy, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Natasha Irons, Storm, Rogue, Ms Marvel, Emma Frost, The Wasp, Invisible Woman, She-Hulk, Gamora, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, Valkyrie. Mystique, the female Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, Not to mention the girls from Fables, Rayne, Clementine, Amanda Ripley, Coco Bandicoot, Bayonetta, Ms Pacman, Valna, Yuko, Amu, Lena, Alex, Etna, Flonne, Jennifer, Raspberyl, Vulcanas, Usalia, Maya Amano, Ulala Serizawa, Yukari Takeba, Fuuku Yamagashi, Chie Satonaka, Yukiko Amagi, Rise Kujikawa, Naoto Shirogane, Ann Takamaki, Haru Okumura, Kyoko Kirigiri, Sakura Ogami, Aoi Asahina, Chiaki Nanami, Sonia Nevermind, Akane Owari, Fiora, Melia, Sharla, BB Hood, Morrigan, Felicia, Q-Bee, Lara Croft, Samus Arran, Aya Brea, Elizabeth Comstock, Ellie, Faith, Jill Valentine, Ada Wong, Garnet Til Alexandros XVII, Tifa Lockhart, Aerith Gainsborough, Yuffie Kisaragi, Rydia, Rosa Joanna Farrell, Celes Chere, Terra Branford, Relm Arrowny, Rinoa Heartilly, Quistis Trepe, Selphie Tilmitt, Ultimecia, Ashe, Fran, Freya Crecent, Eiko Carol, Yuna, Rikku, Lulu, Aqua, Zelda, Midna, Alice from Mcgee, Odessa Silverburg plus all the females in Fire Emblem, Vocaloid, Touhou  and Sid Meir’s Civilization. Not to mention the option to play as female characters in most of the LEGO games plus the option to play as a female in Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, Fallout, Saints Row, Fable, Terraria, Borderlands, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, Rock Band 2, Tardew Valley, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Fate, Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Town, Guilty Gear, Overwatch,  Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Dynasty and Samurai Warriors plus the enormous roster in League Of Legends, Every last female in Skullgirls, All the female Pokemon trainers, All the females from Magic The Gathering, Hit-Girl, Powergirl, Tigra, Lady Sif, Spider-Woman, Vixen, Witchblade, Lady Death, Stephanie Brown, Jem, Aeon Flux, Gwen, Morgana, Morgause, Nimueh, Maid Marian, Djaq, Lady Isabella Of Gisborne,  Irene Adler, Carolyn Berek, Serena Stevens, Megan Wheeler, Kate Beckett, Nikki Heat, The girls from Women’s Murder Club, Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, Temperance Daesee Bradley, Brenda Leigh Johnson, Joanne Kilbourn, Josephina ‘Jo’ Lupo, Catherine Willows, Alex Rovias, Alicia Claus, Jennifer Tate, Sarah Kerrigan, Joanna Dark, Catherine 'Ann’ Archer, April Ryan, Claire Redfield, Alis Landale, Alyx Vance, Heather Mason, Elena Fisher, Amaterasu, Shantae, Rosalina, Chrodechild, Chris Lightfellow, Ellen from Folklore, Jade from Beyond Good And Evil, Maya from Septerra Core, Miriam from The Guardian Legend, The female characters from Dead Or Alive, And even if you choose to play as a male character in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age there are still a number of female characters to choose from such as Liara T,Soni, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Ashley Williams, Miranda Lawson, Kahlee Sanders, Samara, Morinth, Dr Kelly Chambers, Samantha Traynor, Morrigan, Leliana, Wynne, Shale, Flenneth, Cassandra, Even older games have ones like Jill Of The Jungle, Debra Dare, Lady Bug, Kangaroo, The heroine from Secret Of Mana, The female ninja from Ninja Warriors, Princess Rosella from King’s Quest IV. Even Princess Peach and Daisy can count as they kick total amounts of ass in the racing and fighting games Nintendo puts out. Aunt Entity, Sergeant Rita Vrataski, Polgara The Sorceress, Cutie Honey, Vicki Barr, The girls from The Babysitters Club, The ladies from The Sleepover Club, Princess Cimorene, Egwene al Vere, Elizabeth Swann, Tia Dalma, Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil, Kyra/Jack, Carolyn Fry, Mimi Kirogoe, Hana, [The mother from Wolf Children who is now one of my favorite characters ever] The girl from The Fox And The Child, Annalise Keating, Lady Macbeth, Cherry Darling, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, Cybersix, Elphaba, Samantha Barker, Karen Silkwood, [who was a real person] Meg Altman, Thelma Dickinson, Louise Sawyer, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Trinity, The girls from Charmed, Emma Swan, Regina Mills, Mina Harker from The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Pauline Hargraves, Max Caufield, Jodie Holmes, Samantha Greenbriar, Thea Queen, Squirrel Girl, Beatrix De Costa [Fire], Tora Olafsdotter [Ice], Wondergirl, Dazzler, Black Alice, Dove, Gypsy, Jade Canary, Cassandra Cain, Big Barda, Darna, The Boss, Meryl Silverburgh, Mei-Ling, Naomi Hunter, Sunny Gurlukovich, Olga Gurlukovich, Fortune, Quiet, GLADOS, SHODAN, Velma, Daphne, Miss Ernst/Grand High Witch, Sailor Moon and the Sailor Soldiers, [Sailor Venus, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Saturn, Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptune, Sailor Pluto,] Bulma, the majority of the characters in Orange Is The New Black, Leslie Knope, Ann Perkins, April Ludgate, Asuka Langley Soryu, Haruko Haruhara, Nana Komatsu, Nana Osaki, Lucrezia Noin, Lady Une, Dorothy Catalonia, Sally Po, Reyna, Zoe Nightshade, Meg McCaffery, Calypso, The females from The 100, Alicia Melchiott, Isara Gunther, Cosette Coalhearth, Miku Hinasaki, Leah, [from Diablo]  Melody Farklight, The Totally Spies!, Mia Dolan, Kathy Selden,  Vianne Rocher, Princess Ann, [Ann ‘Smitty’ Smith] Margaret Hale, Lauren Olamina, Sara Crewe, Mary Lennox, Jennifer Simpson, Christine Collins, [Who was also a real person] Turanga Leela, Tauriel, The ladies from Steel Magnolias, All the female Transformers, Farah, Annie Sawyer, Nina Pickering, Gabrielle, Saturn Girl, Sage, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, She-Thing, Scorpion, Songbird, Silk Spectre II, Spider Girl, Silver Sable, The ladies of the Wildstorm universe, Fault Zone, Solara, The Wink, Paragon, Lady Deathstrike, Madame Masque, Cheetah, Emerald Empress, All 20 superheroines before Wonder Woman, Alanna of Trebond, The ladies of The Lunar Chronicles, Catti-Brie, Alyx, [From the Adventures Of Alyx books] The ladies from Marvel's Runaways series, Veronica Layton, Marguerite Krux, Mako Mori, Blaze The Cat, Toby 'Kissy' Masuyo, April Ryan, Mona Sax, Fox,  Ninja Princess, Papri, Lady Master Of Kung Fu, Reika Kirishima, The ladies from the Tales series, Noel Vermilian, Shield Knight, Petra from Emerald City Confidential, The ladies from Elsword, Anna Leonowens.[another lady from real-life but perhaps best known from The King And 1] Eliza Doolittle, Ree Dolly, Hushpuppy, Unicorn/Lady Amalthea,  Aeryn Sun, Chiana, Mallory Kane, Pauline Hargraves, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Samantha Carter, The Tiger Woman, Barbara Meredith/The Black Whip, Hana Tsu-Vachel, Tessa Alvarado, Jo March, Liesel Meminger, Betty Barrett, Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug, Shelby Woo, Jaime Sommers, Molly Moon, Torchy Blane, Eliza Maza, Angela, Demona, Fox Xanatos, The girls from W.I.T.C.H, Mona The Vampire, The Worst Witch, Ms Frizzle, Carmen Sandiego, Leslie and Joni from Cluefinders, Ren Stevens, Jules Paxton and Jess Bhamra, [from Bend It Like Beckham] Hazel Grace Lancaster, Mara Of The Acoma, Aerin Dragon-Killer/Firehair, Angharad 'Harry' Crewe, The three sisters from Ballet Shoes, Anne Shirley, Lyra Belacqua, Kerowyn, Dashti, Sadie Kane, Zia Rashid, Samirah-Al-Abbas, Lydia Deetz, Juniper Lee, Gretchen, Spinelli, Alex Mack. Or female characters for really young kids such as Lizzie Mcguire, Andi Mack, Dora, Peppa Pig, Lola, Charlie, Looby Loo, Ramona Quimby, Pippi Longstocking, Star Butterfly,  Meg Murray, Madeline, Angelina Ballerina, The lovely ladies of Balamory, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Or females from Greek mythology like Gaia, Hestia, Demeter, Nemesis, Medusa, Nyx, Ananke, Rhea, Athena, Demeter, Persephone, Artemis or their Roman counterparts. Or the ladies from Norse, Finnish or Egyptian Mythology. Or historical female figures to look up to such as Elizabeth the 1st, Joan Of Arc, Queen Cordelia, Queen Gwendolen, Ethelfreda, Boudicca, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Catherine The Great and Audrey Hepburn. You play as a female Avatar in Cooking Mama and all of the Imagine series, The Jurassic Park dinosaurs were all female, Minecraft allows female appearance through customized character skins EVEN BARBIE! THERE! I SAID IT!

But besides that entire fucking catalog, I find myself and the rest of the female population well under-represented.....Except of course for the huge fucking roster of female characters available.

What is FOMO?The Urban Dictionary describes it as a state of mental or emotional strain caused by the fear of missing out.It’s very powerful, it can cause otherwise rational actors to act in a way that is not only harmful to themselves but to others as well.Businesses and institutions are merely groups of humans collaborating to achieve an end, and therefore are susceptible to FOMO just like any individual human.Walgreens FUBAR deal due to FOMOWe’re going to use Walgreens as an example of the danger of FOMO.You’ve probably heard of Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, the first female founder of a billion dollar company in Silicon Valley, at one point she was worth a cool $4.5 billion and her company’s board was impeccable, odd though its members including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and General James N. Mattis were more suitable for planning an invasion than sitting on the board of a biotech company. That’s important and we’ll come to it later.Now the other actor in this play is Walgreens which was founded over a century ago, and it’s the second largest pharmacy store-chain in the United States behind CVS Health. They don’t like this, in fact they really hate it - so much so that they’re going to be fixated on this to the exclusion of all else.So it��s early 2010, and Elizabeth and her number two at Theranos Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani (who she’s in a secret relationship with) are claiming that their magical blood testing machine can do hundreds of tests on a drop of blood more cheaply and faster than current labs could do.Their claim was and remains bs, in fact their last iteration of the device known as the MiniLab - they wouldn’t even start to work on until late 2010.But Walgreens saw the iPhone of blood tests, if they could do blood tests more cheaply and quickly than traditional blood testing labs on their commercial premises, well they’d wipe the floor with the market and crush CVS.They were excited and jumped on board but obviously being a blue chip company, and being well respected they were going to have to do some due diligence and verify the Theranos claims.In order to do this they brought in laboratory consultant Kevin Hunter. He met both Elizabeth and Sunny in person twice in 2010 as well as being involved in often weekly video conferences.The problem was though that Kevin wasn’t a team player, see he believed in testing and providing evidence for claims. Theranos on the other hand as later investigations would demonstrate believe in running tests again if they don’t fit the narrative and cherry picking data.But back to Kevin, so he keeps asking annoying questions that frustrate Elizabeth, at one point he suggests that they do a 50 patient comparison study with Stanford to test the accuracy of the Theranos machines.This was just too much for a genius like Elizabeth, she could not be questioned by a peon like Kevin, and so she tries to shut him out by subtly threatening to walk on the deal to his superiors at Walgreens.Now here’s the kicker, so far their claims have not been verified and from the sounds of this they sound obstructionist and combative - it doesn’t breed trust so alarm bells should have been ringing at Walgreens right?Wrong!They were terrified that Theranos would walk on the deal and go to their rivals at CVS and then they’d spend the next 20 years regretting letting this slip through their fingers. They’d end up like the carriers who refused to give Apple a cut of the monthly service fees and so didn’t get the phone that launched the Smartphone age. Plus, Elizabeth wore clothes like Steve Jobs, and she even pitted teams against each other to get work done just like Jobs. Except for the little fact that the team that didn’t please her would be fired unlike Jobs.But obviously if she looks the part she must be the part, right?Wrong!Let’s take apart one of their claims, the tiny nanotainer of blood taken from the finger pricking that they did to test Potassium levels in the blood, unfortunately doing this results in hemolysis which results in blood cells being ruptured and the release of more Potassium. This would then result with readings showing an elevated level of Potassium in the blood totally rendering the results of the test itself invalid. Not great when medical professionals are relying on these results to administer drugs and suggest treatments to real living breathing humans.This isn’t like a bug that causes your app to fail and you get annoyed, these are people’s lives which were being treated with incredible callousness.So anyway back to Walgreens, they freeze Kevin out and he can’t do his job and vet their “technology”. So Walgreens go ahead with the deal and start spending money on remodelling their stores to incorporate these wellness centres ready for the new Theranos blood testing machines that don’t actually work.They rolled it out and commercialised the blood tests in 40 locations in Arizona because of the business friendly lax regulatory environment. In addition, in phoenix there were more price sensitive people who were uninsured (Its awesome taking advantage of the poor) - Theranos boasted about its low prices but that was a lie too their numbers weren’t real and they hadn’t lowered the cost of testing in any meaningful way.In total, Walgreens would spend $140 million including a $40 million convertible debt-note on the entire scam.But it gets worse, the disease of FOMO spread. All these investors see this 100 year old giant going to market with Theranos, they’ve obviously done their homework so it must work, and then just look at that board. This is a real company with real product. I’ve got to invest, I DON’T WANT TO MISS OUT!Wrong!It was lies, all lies and a lot of incompetence and wishful thinking too. So Partner Fund Management who put $96.1 million into Theranos in 2014 would have been better of burning it. It would have dome them as much good.Fast forward a few years, and genius founder Elizabeth Holmes is being feted by the media. She even gets the cover of Fortune which is read by many people including one John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal who didn’t suffer from FOMO, in fact his background reporting on health care related topics made him deeply suspicious of the story and of Holmes.The college dropout who revolutionised blood testing. She was walking in the illustrious footsteps of other dropouts Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg but medicine doesn’t work like software.You have to go and complete your schooling, then spend years in research before you can add value. Many of the nobel laureates in this field aren’t honoured until their 60s. It seemed too good to be true and so he investigated but this time there was no one suffering FOMO to stand in the way.Final thoughtsFear of missing out is a powerful force and it can make you do some really dumb things. Your decisions should never be driven by the crowd but always by the facts as best as you can know them.Take the greatest investor of all time Warren Buffet.Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.Often times people are driven by animal spirits rather than a well thought out rational calculation. When you make decisions in business and in life be only influenced by the evidence for and against as well as the logic of the thing you’re making a decision about, not the vagaries of the human spirit.And when it comes to the fear of missing out - you have one body in life but you’ll get many opportunities, if you put in the effort to find more, to get into situations where they can present themselves you’ll increase the chance of finding one that pays off. Don’t be driven by the irrational fear that this will never come again. Something is always around the corner.

Princess Diana's secrets

The late Princess Diana's previous head servant Paul Burrell has been portrayed as the royal's "closest compatriot" and her "keeper of secrets," two descriptors that don't exactly consider the blabby steward's ability to share her confidences at the drop of a black-and-white boater hat. (Despite the way that she clearly took the mystery of Burrell's homosexuality to her grave.) 

Burrell first progressed toward becoming Queen Elizabeth II's footman at the age of 18, moving to Highgrove in 1987 to watch out for Prince Charles and Princess Diana (by means of The Telegraph). He consequently joined Princess Diana in Kensington Palace after the illustrious marriage broke down. Throughout the years, they allegedly grew a significant cozy relationship — to the point that Princess Diana would allude to Burrell as "her stone." But as far back as her awkward demise in a 1997 pile up, he's completed an energetic business of presenting illustrious mysteries. In 2002, he purportedly sold his "story" to British newspaper the Daily Mirror for some place between £250,000 and £500,000. He's likewise composed two dishy journals (A Royal Duty and The Way We Were: Remembering Diana), performed a small time indicate spilling much more insider facts, and uncovered yet more babble amid an appearance on the truth show I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! 

From supposed sexual contacts to reputed late-night meet with road whores, these are the illustriously shocking insider facts shared by this especially loud steward.

She allegedly sought out prostitutes

Did Princess Diana have a weakness for sex specialists? 

In November 2002, Paul Burrell was cleared on charges that he swiped many Princess Diana's possessions. The rundown of unrealistic things incorporated a pepper processor, an "Indiana Jones whip," a few photographs (one marked "Diana"), a Prada Milano pack, and a Baywatch exchanging card signed by David Hasselhoff to Prince William (by means of ABC News). 

Following his absolution, a voluminous, exceedingly touchy "explanation of confirmation" from Burrell was spilled to the News of the World, as announced by The Telegraph. In an article inelegantly featured "Di's Whore-Able Secret," the New York Post picked up one of its most outrageous claims: Burrell supposedly would escort Princess Diana to Paddington Station so she could spend time with whores. In her book The Fortune Hunters, writer Charlotte Hays guaranteed the women would courteously chatter with Princess Diana outside her BMW: "Hi, Princess Di. How are you?" She would supposedly react with something like, "I'm fine. Have you been occupied with?" According to Burrell, she even took out "two fresh fifty-pound notes" once in a while, saying, "Look, young ladies, have the night off on me. Go home to your kids." 

Princess Diana supposedly taken a stab at mollifying Burrell on those wild evenings, saying, "Gracious, Paul, help up. Those young ladies require help."

Princess Diana allegedly thought Prince Charles wanted her dead

A couple of hours before regal coroner Michael Burgess opened a formal examination into the passings of both Princess Diana and her beau Dodi Al Fayed in January 2004, British newspaper the Daily Mirror distributed an unstable first page story that supposed that Diana had suspected her ex, Prince Charles, had needed to kill her (via People). 

As point by point in his journal A Royal Duty, Paul Burrell guaranteed Princess Diana wrote the alarming letter in October 1996, ten months previously she was killed in a deadly pile up in Paris, France. The letter apparently read, "My significant other is arranging 'a mishap' in my vehicle, brake disappointment and genuine head damage … to make the way unmistakable for him to wed." The BBC rushed to call attention to that there was positively no proof at all to back up those cases (by means of People). 

Princess Diana was allegedly on the very edge of a breakdown when she composed the letter, as yet experiencing the passionate aftermath her separation to Prince Charles, agreeing to The Evening Standard. Associates of Prince Charles put no stock in the report by any means. "It is risible and profoundly frightful," said one companion. "I am certain no one truly trusts this over the top case." 

The Daily Star announced Burrell consequently shared the physical letter amid a 2017 meeting on Australia's Sunday Night, saying, "This specific letter is somewhat impactful on the grounds that it is fairly creepy reasoning that she saw and forecasted her own demise."

Burrell would reportedly help Princess Diana induce vomiting

In the 2017 narrative Diana: In Her Own Words, talk with film shot in 1992 and 1993 highlighted Princess Diana opening up about her loaded association with Prince Charles and uncovering that she'd met him just multiple times previously they were hitched (through The Independent). Soon after learning of her better half's undertaking with Camilla Parker Bowles (now the Duchess of Cornwall), Princess Diana said she created bulimia. "Everybody in the family thought about the bulimia," she stated, "and everybody rebuked the bulimia for the disappointment of the marriage." She felt like the dietary problem was an unmistakably progressively "attentive" method for harming herself, not at all like liquor misuse. 

In August 2017, negligible days before the twentieth commemoration of Princess Diana's demise, Paul Burrell showed up on the British show In Therapy, a kind of "superstar guiding show," as per the Mirror. Amid his appearance, Burrell guaranteed he was simply "carrying out his responsibility" by empowering Princess Diana's bulimia. "I'd inspire the gourmet expert to set up a gallon of custard," he told Mandy Saligari, the program's therapist. "What's more, I'd purchase yogurt and heaps of bananas and set up the space to ensure she was agreeable." 

Recognizing that he was setting the scene so Princess Diana could make herself debilitated, Burrell admitted, "I'd ensure there was a heap of towels. I was carrying out my responsibility. I'd have done anything for Diana."

She'd reportedly buy pregnancy tests for a giggle

Timidity doesn't block devilishness; truth be told, the characteristics once in a while go connected at the hip. As per the Daily Mail, Princess Diana had an irregular comical inclination that fairly gave a false representation of her "Bashful Di" persona. (The Independent fairly clumsily hailed her a "timid revolutionary princess with a reason.") In the ITV narrative Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, claimed Princess Diana sent them "the rudest cards" on the normal. In the interim, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, uncovered his late mother's adage: "You can be as devious as you need, simply don't get captured." 

Except if, obviously, you need to get captured. In a spilled 39-page police statement, former regal head servant Paul Burrell guaranteed one of Princess Diana's unsurpassed most loved tricks was breezing into her neighborhood drug store and merrily obtaining home pregnancy tests. 

"She would take extraordinary enjoyment heading off to the counter in Boots," Burrell stated, "[and] grabbing Predictor pregnancy units or contraceptives" (via Daily Mail). At the time she was enjoying this execution craftsmanship, the British sensationalist newspapers were regularly aswirl with hypothesis that Diana was expecting her third youngster, with the Daily Express hungrily pondering in 1985 (via The Sun-Sentinel), "Is Princess Diana pregnant?"

Princess Diana was reportedly in a 'secret' second car crash

On Aug. 31, 1997, Diana kicked the bucket in an awful pile up when her Mercedes S280 limousine smashed in France's Pont de l'Alma burrow. As indicated by Burrell, she was likewise associated with another mishap quite a while earlier. He recounted his story in a February 2018 scene of Australia's I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, during a "mystic perusing" by "superstar medium" John Edward (by means of the Mirror). 

The story was provoked by what sounds like a "chilly perusing" on Edward's part, who told Burrell, "You had a companion who gone in a vehicle mishap." Burrell took the gutsy goad, answering, "Were there two vehicle mishaps?" Edward reacted, "I'm feeling like there were two vehicle mishaps — relatively like one was foretelling and one was lamentable." 

An apparently shaken Burrell shouted, "Yes! You couldn't in any way, shape or form realize that." Later in the scene, Burrell opened up about this supposed mystery mishap to Real Housewives of Melbourne star Jackie Gillies, who innocently announced Edward was "addressing [Diana's] soul." Burrell revealed to her the late princess was "panicked that night," including, "She slammed her vehicle. … She was amidst no place." 

At the point when Princess Diana purportedly asked Burrell what to do in the repercussions of the mishap, he advised her to bolt herself "in the women loo in the closest inn and I'll come and get you." Burrell guaranteed he recovered Princess Diana from that bathroom and after that made plans to have her vehicle towed.

She allegedly blamed herself for her mother's absence

In February 2018, previous illustrious steward Paul Burrell uncovered one more of Princess Diana's indicated privileged insights. While it's well known that she had a profoundly stressed association with her mom, Frances Shand Kydd, Burrell guaranteed that strain was at the base of a portion of Diana's enthusiastic issues. "[She] dependably thought it was her blame that mummy had left home," he uncovered on a scene of I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (via Daily Mail). Burrell additionally asserted Shand Kydd "was certifiably not an extremely kind individual. Not protective." 

Burrell affirmed that Shand Kydd's treatment of Princess Diana educated her dietary issue, saying that she "censured herself" for her mom's interminable nonattendance. "That is the place her anorexia begun," he said. "She endured with it for her entire life. She rebuffed herself." 

As indicated by the Express, several watchers were disappointed by Burrell's announcements, taking to online networking to share their wrath. "Great ruler! He likes to turn out with Diana related stuff once in a while to appear to be significant," thought of one. A kindred tweeter raged, "Paul Burrell on his 100th unscripted TV drama since Princess Di kicked the bucket."

She allegedly snuck several paramours into Kensington Palace

Following her separation from Prince Charles in 1996, Princess Diana purportedly took in excess of a couple of darlings — and she likewise went to Herculean lengths to keep these late-night trysts mystery. As indicated by previous illustrious steward Paul Burrell, he'd need to discover approaches to "pirate" Diana's lovers into Kensington Palace, performing strong accomplishments of sentimental secret activities that included concealing the men in the storage compartment of his vehicle. 

As per Burrell's famous, strangely articulate 39-page police proclamation, it sounds like the procedure wavered towards room a sham area. All together "to encourage the courses of action in connection to the Princess' male companions," Burrell supposedly told officers guarding the door that he was "going on an errand" and would not like to be ceased upon his arrival (via Daily Mail). "I would then blaze my lights and they would open the hindrance and let me in," he guaranteed. 

After coming back to Kensington Palace with the mystery darling close behind, Burrell said he wouldn't make a formal declaration that he was with someone, so police wouldn't have a record. Princess Diana's previous darling Dr. Hasnat Khan purportedly remained with her medium-term on a few events, and it was dependent upon Burrell to sneak him out the next morning. He said Khan "would be left to rest [in the palace] until some other time in the first part of the day, so, all in all I would give him something to eat and afterward take him home." An imperially sentimental racket.

Burrell claimed Dr. Khan was her soulmate

This supposed subtlety — the late-night prostitute visits, the sweethearts covered up in trunks —clearly transformed Princess Diana into an ace at sidestepping press. Following her separation from Prince Charles in 1996, she disguised her association with heart specialist Dr. Hasnat Khan (imagined, left) for year and a half, as per Tina Brown's book, The Diana Chronicles (by means of Vanity Fair). In the mean time, her loudmouthed previous head servant Paul Burrell asserted Dr. Khan was the affection for her life. "The Princess adored a considerable lot of her male companions," he said in a spilled explanation to police, "yet she was enamored with Hasnat Khan" (through the Daily Mail). 

Actually, Burrell guaranteed Diana asked a Roman Catholic minister if there was any way she could wed Dr. Khan secretly. Burrell purportedly needed to by and by convey the news to Diana "this was unrealistic." He reviewed a night when Princess Diana was praising her birthday "donning sapphire and precious stone hoops and look[ing] totally shocking." He asserted she later ran upstairs, evacuated all her garments, and ventured out to meet Dr. Khan wearing just a fur garment. 

Be that as it may, Burrell said their relationship confronted a difficult "hindrance." Dr. Khan purportedly "couldn't stand the weight set on him by the press in the outside world and he found that he had no security." As Tina Brown put it, he "couldn't confront the invasion of turning into Di's New Guy in each newspaper paper." Their relationship at last broke down in the mid year of 1997.

Her alleged last words to her trusted confidant

Amid a March 2018 scene of Australia's I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, butler Paul Burrell unexpectedly burst into shreds as he opened about Princess Diana's passing. 

"I do have a fantasy of me sitting alone with the Princess crossed legged on the floor and she is wearing a blue dress," he admitted (by means of the Express). "It's the last dress I saw her in." Burrell conceded he at first idea Diana was simply "playing a trap" and wasn't generally dead by any stretch of the imagination. He supposedly even "sat with her" after she kicked the bucket, attempting to comprehend the situation: "I held her hand and I said to her, 'Wake up, wake up, you're not by any stretch of the imagination dead, would you say you are?" 

Those disclosures went ahead the foot rear areas of a February 2018 scene that discovered Burrell sharing Diana's supposed last words to him: "The last things she said to me were on the telephone," he uncovered (by means of Yahoo!). "She was in Paris and the plain final words were, 'Guarantee me you will dependably be there.'" He purportedly answered, "I guarantee I will dependably be there." 

Following her passing, Burrell went to an epiphany: It was his obligation to deal with everything that Diana had abandoned. "She couldn't do that and she left me to do that," he stated, "so I needed to deal with her reality and the general population in it." 

Obviously, this arrangement does exclude keeping her mysteries.

Expert: The New York Times Business Page recently featured a front page article about the annual conference In Jackson Hole, Wyoming hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. It contained this interesting opening: In the decade since the financial crisis economic policymakers, professors and protestors have gathered here every August to argue about the best ways to return to faster economic growth. This year, they gave up…instead focused mostly on making sure things don’t get any worse. Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen spoke about the risk of further deregulation while Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, spoke against protectionism. The tepid tone of the conference, of course, was the opposite of President Trump’s boisterousness tweets about the current economic reality, most prominently on July 2nd when Trump tweeted ‘Stock Market at all-time high, unemployment at lowest level in years (wages will start going up) and our base has never been stronger!’ Not to be undone, July 31st saw Trump tweet ‘Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages rising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos’. For certain Trump isn’t the first president to hang his hat on the Dow Jones. Barack Obama for one certainly wasn’t above it. However, as Michelle Styczynski recently explained in Jacobin, a rising stock market has little to no effect on the wages of the hourly workers who make up almost 60 percent of the workforce. Before 1980, real wages grew at an average of two and a half cents ($0.0025) per month while the S&P grew on average 0.53 points per month. After 1980 wages grow by an average rate of 0.7 cents ($0.007) per month – a 71 percent drop. Meanwhile the S&P has risen to an average growth rate of 4 points per month for an increase of 660 percent. In other words it’s been a long time since stock market growth correlated to higher wages for the working class. As for the rest of the ‘base’ as Trump refers to it is plagued by the same longstanding trends Trump incoherently campaigned on. The top 1 percent continues to swallow up the lion’s share of growth. From 2009-2012 the one percent captured over 90 percent of economic gains. That number has declined since but from 2013-2015 the one percent still grabbed about half of growth. Productivity has stalled. The economy has yet to even recover the output it was on pace to produce prior to the Great Recession. In 1967 95 percent of ‘prime age’ men (ages 25-54) worked. Today more than 15 percent aren’t working with some localities having fewer than 70 percent of men without a college education unemployed or out of the workforce entirely. The percentage of underemployed Americans is now at 8.6 percent. Paradoxically 7.6 million people currently work more than one job, the highest in two decades. A study by economists Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger showed that nearly 95 percent of jobs created during the Obama Era were temporary, part-time, or contractual (i.e. of the mythical ‘gig’ variety). As has been the case since the mid-1970s Americans continue to make up for stagnant wages by using credit to finance the middle-class life. Just prior to the last recession household debt in the U.S. hit $12.68 trillion. It now stands at $12.7. Given the economy is larger now than it was a decade ago today’s total household debt is equivalent to 67 percent of the economy as opposed to the 85 percent back at the 2008 peak. The nature of the debt has shifted. Americans owe less on their homes and credit cards and more on student and car loans, the latter being a bare necessity in most places in the country, while the former is the declared ticket to prosperity. While this debt may be more sustainable in the short-term it probably has led to a drag on demand. Personal-spending growth has averaged only 2.4 percent since the recession ended, less than previous expansions. Much ink has been spilled in recent times lamenting Americans’ new lack of mobility. According to the Census Bureau about 10 percent of Americans moved in the past year, down from the 1950s through the early 1980s when more than 20 percent of the population moved.  Tyler Cowen laments in his book The Complacent Class: The Self Defeating Quest for the American Dream that the interstate migration rate has fallen 51 percent below the average rate from 1948-1971. Kevin Williamson of National Review surely took the prize for this last year, writing about the plight of the white working class: There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible…The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. Trump himself got into the act recently telling the Wall Street Journal “people are going to have to start moving.” Leaving aside questions about family and community, not to mention issues of vastly uneven development, this despair about mobility and labor flexibility seems to run into another longstanding issue. For well over half a century it’s been government policy to favor homeownership over renters, suburban sprawl over cities. Since the 1940s 90 percent of new housing has been in low density areas. If the impetus for this was the severe housing shortage in the aftermath of World War II, the adjoining motivation was the incubating and reinforcement of a conservative status quo. A 1946 Fortune survey, citied by Rosalyn Baxandell and Elizabeth Ewan in In Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, revealed: The U.S. people are strikingly in favor of positive government action to end the severe housing shortage. A majority of those with opinions want the government to embark on a large scale building program, and that more people, particularly the young, veterans, the poor, and those living in large cities, and especially North Atlantic States; i.e. most people preferred renting an apartment to owning a house. Unfortunately such a solution wouldn’t have made big money for the master builders and the bank and loan associations. The automobile industry and highway lobby had same understanding. While the suburbanization of the country largely solved the housing shortage and fulfilled the mythology of ‘homeownership’ (actually mortgage holding) and picket fences, in the long run it has contributed to a less fluid workforce as many are now tied to their mortgages or property. It’s also a fact that the cities where the movers are supposed to head have astronomical housing costs and growing homeless populations. Along with the new lack of mobility, the other despair of working class critics is the state of the family. Obviously the decline of the nuclear family has been red meat for conservatives for decades. However, now the consensus is broader. Political rhetoric may require musings about “the family”, but the true subject of derision is the working class family, most especially the great increase in out of wedlock births. For those with college degrees the years since 1980 haven’t seen such an increase (the divorce rate overall has declined from its 1980 peak with a steeper decline for the college educated. Currently it’s at its lowest level in 40 years). For the other two-thirds of the population the increase has been substantial. According to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015 was the eighth straight year 40 percent of births in the U.S. were to unmarried mothers, the great majority of these births to working class children. While acknowledging the causes of this are complex, critics put much of their emphasis on culture. Amy Wax, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, recently found herself at the center of a storm for an op-ed she coauthored for Philly.com titled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture”. Thirty three of her colleagues at the University signed a letter condemning Wax’s claims. Wax writes of a late 1960s cultural flip that “encouraged an antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal- sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll- that was unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society”. The op-ed goes on to say: All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all…But restoring the hegemony of the bourgeois culture- the academics, media, and Hollywood- to relinquish multicultural grievance polemics and the preening pretense of defending the downtrodden. Instead of bashing the bourgeois culture, they should return to the 1950s posture of celebrating it. Absent that sentiment is any economic analysis of the beloved 1950s, which for all the racism and McCarthyism, was a time of economic growth, rising wages, and strong unions- perhaps what many of those working class voters who fell for the charms of ‘Make America Great Again’ had in mind since these things have been gone for decades. Writing in the New York Times back in 2014, Isabel Sawhill, of the Brookings Institute and author of Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage, acknowledged the need for educational and job opportunities, and correctly pointed to the need for greater access to quality birth control, but says: But government alone can’t solve this problem. Younger people must begin to take greater responsibility for their choices…Well-functioning democracies are built on the premise that government has an obligation to promote the general welfare. But so do citizens. More support for those drifting is in order, but less drifting is also essential. The emphasis on culture leaves one with an obvious question:  if destructive cultural influences, such as Hollywood and academics, are persuasive then why is much of their seductive power only taking hold over certain segments of the population whom it just so happens have been the same segments that have dealt with deindustrialization, stagnant wages, drug abuse epidemics and, in the case of the black working class, taking the brunt of draconian anti-drug laws and crime bills? More than half of all black children born to less educated parents in 1990 experienced parental imprisonment. It calls to mind what Oscar Wilde placed into the mouth of Algeron in The Importance of Being Earnest: “Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them.” One of the sharper points Andrew Cherlin makes in his Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class Family in America is that the much romanticized period from the late 1940s through the 1960s, the period where still much of our cultural and economic expectations derive from, is a historical anomaly. And as Cherlin points out, the fall in marriages has been seen before: The marriage gap we see in the New Gilded Age today is similar to the gap during the Old Gilded Age of the late 1800s.  Sharp inequalities in income and in marriage characterize both eras. …In both eras, men in professional, managerial, or  technical positions were most likely to marry, and the probability of marriage dropped substantially toward the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. The Great Depression saw the same trends. Birth rates fell sharply in the 1930s. According to a 1940 survey (cited Robert D. Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis), 1.5 million married women were deserted by their husbands and as result more than 200,000 vagrant children were said to be wandering the country. Cultural mores were certainly different 125 years ago but as both the original Gilded Age and the present day show, the saviors of the traditional family, as well as single parents, aren’t pious harangues about moral decline or odes to personal determination but good paying jobs. Good paying jobs are what American capitalism has been unable to provide since the 1970s. For all Trump’s bluster, it’s always been obvious that a working-class populism wasn’t in the works. The Democrats are too weak and in the thrall of big money ‘centrism’ that emphasizes cultural issues above all else, as if things like gun violence and immigration are independent of economics. The beauty of culture for those who wield power is that when an issue becomes ‘cultural’ it also becomes unsolvable The endlessly analyzed “rural-urban” divide becomes a matter of who goes to church, owns guns, or drinks craft beers and not on the overall economic stagnation that affects so many rural and urban areas alike. Without a serious movement against unchained capital one can expect that divide to grow even larger and the underlying economic trends to continue to stir bitterness and conflict. http://clubof.info/