Sunday, July 13, 2025

Ryan Daigler - Exposing Narcissistic Abuse

 Covert narcissists feel incredibly threatened by honest people with strong intuitive insight and and unwavering commitment to honesty. Being around someone who "sees" them — not the mask, but the real, insecure, manipulative self beneath — is intolerable to a covert narcissist. It brings up shame they try desperately to avoid.  Instead of self-reflecting, they project, blame, or smear the honest person to undermine their credibility. 

When a covert narcissist encounters an intuitive and honest person who sees through their manipulation, they often feel deeply threatened and respond with a series of predictable, defensive, and often toxic behaviors designed to protect their ego and maintain control.

 Here's what they typically do: 

 1. Love-Bomb or Idealize (at First) -Initially, they may try to win the person over with flattery, empathy mirroring, or even playing the victim in a way that appeals to the empathic nature of the intuitive person. -This is a tactic to disarm and to figure out how much influence they might still be able to gain.  

2. Test Boundaries -Covert narcissists will probe to see how much they can get away with — subtle manipulation, guilt-tripping, or triangulating with others to test the person’s loyalty or emotional reactions. -If the intuitive person holds firm, this increases the narcissist's sense of threat. 

 3. Smear Campaigns -If the intuitive person challenges or exposes their behavior (even passively), the narcissist may start smearing their reputation behind the scenes. -This often includes portraying themselves as the victim and the intuitive person as “crazy,” “toxic,” or “too sensitive.”  

4. Gaslighting and Projection -To destabilize the intuitive person, they might subtly gaslight them — questioning their memory, perceptions, or motives. -They'll often project their own toxic traits onto the other person, claiming that they're the manipulative or dishonest one.  

5. Stonewalling, Ghosting, or Silent Treatment -If they feel truly exposed and can’t manipulate the person, they may cut off communication, give the cold shoulder, or vanish altogether. -This is a way to regain power and punish the person for being "difficult" or “disobedient.”  

6. Attempt to Undermine Their Confidence -Covert narcissists often go after the intuitive person's confidence and credibility, trying to make them question themselves, feel isolated, or doubt their insight. -This could be through backhanded compliments, passive-aggressive comments, or minimizing their emotional intelligence.  

7. Hoovering -If the narcissist loses control, they may later attempt to "hoover" the person back into the dynamic — using apologies, guilt, or faux vulnerability. -The goal is never resolution — it’s to reestablish control.

Transforming Schools: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching, Learning and Healing by Marcia Ranglin-Vassell

Nobody's asking why now.

 Duty To Warn 🔉 @duty2warn · 6h 

If you had a stuffed drain, you'd call a plumber. If you needed heart surgery, you'd want that done by a cardiac surgeon. Psychology, behaviorism, and the study of mental health are sciences. Mental health professionals are experts. Part of the consequences we've endured, are because this science has been ignored or disrespected.      

Way back when the Duty to Warn Coalition was first formed, our initial act was to create a petition FROM mental health professionals TO Congress, asking them to enact or consider lobbying for the enactment of the 25th Amendment. 75,000 professionals signed on to the petition. It was sent to Congress.      

 Not a peep. Not even an acknowledgment of receipt. Not an invitation to meet or speak privately. Not an inquiry, asking: "Why do you doctors feel that way?"       

Nobody's asking why now.

Malignant narcissists lie A LOT.

 Duty To Warn 🔉 @duty2warn · 2h 

Trump has lied his entire life. Malignant narcissists lie A LOT. The type of lying they do most, is to create false constructs to justify their entitlement and put forth their air of supposed grandiosity.     

Trump - in particular, has been creating false constructs his entire life - from the size of his inheritance to the size of crowds to the size of his hands. He's lied about his grades, his wealth, his stability, his health, his acuity, and in recent years - his cognition.

     Trump's single greatest fear, and this is true for almost every malignant narcissist, is NOT losing, not even incarceration - it's the unraveling of his secrets and lies and false constructs. This, to him, would be humiliation. It's why he repeated the Big Lie for years.     

And it's ALSO why he is panicking about Epstein - he's trapped. Whether there is or isn't "a list" is immaterial compared to public perception, and right now - public perception is that there is/was a list, he (through Bondi) reneged on a major promise, it makes him look guilty as hell, pedophilia (or even just knowledge of it) is unforgivable, and so - he is desperate to use his power to influence the narrative to divert and distract. But he's done that SO poorly - that long post he made was awful - and it has made him look even guiltier.     

Moreover, his safe place - the MAGA echo chamber - is no longer safe. It's been penetrated, pretty far and at the grass roots level.     

There's one more layer to his potential humiliation: Because his entire life has been concocted of secrets and lies (aka false constructs), exposure of one major false narrative - in his mind - risks rendering him forever false in all things. He feels that way because deep down, he knows he IS forever false.      

For THAT to be exposed, terrifies him.

You have to make sacrifices and be utterly selfish. Everything else and everyone else is secondary to your writing.

 The funny thing about it all is that literary talent isn’t rare. Lots of people can write good stories with good characters and great sentences. What’s rare is the stubborn, pragmatic thing that tells you “I’ve got to do this every single fucking day, even when I don’t want to do it, when I’d rather pluck my eyes out and feed them to the birds.” That discipline combined with talent is very rare. I’d be willing to bet that some of the most brilliant writers who ever lived have never been published, because they weren’t prepared to do the work. You have to make sacrifices and be utterly selfish. Everything else and everyone else is secondary to your writing.

Kevin Barr 

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

 Nina Simone

Carl Sagan Learning how to learn is the most important skill to acquire.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...Marcus Aurelius

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

  Henry David Thoreau • July 12, 1817 

Prof. Feynman: The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.

Be Proud of It

I have mold and pollen allergies and asthma and an intolerance to milk sugar butter cream fried or greasy foods, especially lard. I've inherited tendencies toward gallstones, ulcers, lactose intolerance, alcohol intolerance, allergies to skin care products and eye make-up, bad reactions to most allergy medicines. 

Luckily there's the fruit and vegetable kingdoms! I love black tea and black coffee and seltzer! I love to make my own food: granola, sourdough multigrain breads, millet, Basmati brown rice, quinoa, and other grains, home cultured buttermilk and yogurt and chicken breast marinades and salad dressings. I love to make sourdough buttermilk wholegrain waffles and pancakes especially corn. I make cold soups for summer and hot soups in the winter. I love every bean known to man. I have never met a vegetable I didn't like.

Occasionally I have made my own pasta and my own tortillas from scratch. I love to teach cooking and baking. I truly believe that people with eating disorders could heal if they learned to make their own food. That's what I did starting at age 13 and it worked like magic. 

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 

"Literature does not allow you to walk but it allows you to breathe." Roland Barthes

Pugs, Vodka, and Patio Furniture

After Penelope divorced her first husband and married Lars, the real estate executive, she had funding for her obsessions: orphaned pugs, vodka, and durable patio furniture. She entertained constantly, mainly the six girls who were her friends from high school and now in their mid 60's. They had been the cheerleading team from Westover High.

They met weekly over drinks, always over drinks. They all had beach tans, face lifts, and tummy tucks. It was the botox fillers, fake cheekbones, and bee sting lips that revealed them. They no longer resembled the girls they once were. Unrecognizable. As if they had entered into witness protection.

Penelope, on her third vodka martini, shouted over the lively conversation about the best Lexus lease to buy. "Siri, Hits from the Seventies!" Her daughter Janelle, who was always present mixing drinks for everyone, sharing her creativity in flavored vodka choices, was also now a full blown alcoholic with a side order of medical marijuana for her moods. "I don't know why her stomach is messed up," Penelope said to her husband. "Because she has been drinking poison since she was 12," he whispered to himself.

Tom Nichols

Article

Søren Kierkegaard: A man prayed and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became quieter and quieter until, in the end, he realized prayer is listening.

We know all too well that fairy tales are the only truth in life. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The first book he owned was a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales.

“I need to spend my time creating something positive, and if I’m not doing that I get a little lost and obsessional about the world’s maladies.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/people/2025/07/12/rosie-odonnell-i-already-had-100m-if-you-want-more-youre-missing-the-point-of-your-life/

Prof. Feynman: Study, think, create, and grow. Teach yourself and teach others.

I discovered the real culprit.

My tongue felt like it was being sliced by razor blades so I went to the urgent care and they suggested children's liquid Benadryl mixed with antacid 5 ml of each swished but not swallowed 4x a day. it sort of helped but then started up again.

Then I discovered the real culprit. 

SUGAR!! I have always had bad reactions to sugar.  I have disliked sugar since I was a child. My Sriracha intake had gotten out of hand and I discovered it contains a lot of sugar. I have since returned to Cholula hot sauce which has no sugar. My mouth is fine now.

For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own-for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling

Carl Jung:The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, ‘divine'.

Friday, July 11, 2025

You already have the precious mixture that will make you well. Use it. Rumi

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. Henry Miller

Love this!!

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Someone's Living Here!

A few years ago on my morning downtown dog walk I noticed half a dozen adult diapers behind the rhododendrons along with empty nips bottles. I went inside and told the owner of the business. The secretary was grateful. I mentioned it to Captain Adam and he took a drive by. That's not living!

I agreed but I knew the man was living there. Yes he didn't have a couch and TV but he was "living" there. 

Cinco de Mayo Tortillas / 224 Crescent Avenue, Chelsea, Massachusetts 02150, United States (617) 593-0158

  

https://cincodemayotortillas.com

"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent." Isaac Asimov

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States … nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.” — Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. - Isaac Asimov

Carl Jung: The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

Volkswagen Espresso 1959

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If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. Carl Jung

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. - Isaac Asimov

Greetings from Little Rhody The Ocean State

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Thursday, July 10, 2025

#OTD in Rhode Island History @OTDRhodeIsland · 3h #OTD July 10, 1980, Nibbles Woodaway, the famed termite mascot for Big Blue Bug Solutions pest control—a staple of the city’s skyline—was born in Providence. Built by the Avenia Sign Company of North Providence, it was originally painted purple, and eventually faded to blue.

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Karun Pal @karunpal Introverts often struggle with relationships because they see too much. They read tension instantly. They spot defense mechanisms from a mile away. They can sense what someone's hiding just from how they talk. That level of awareness makes people deeply uncomfortable. Not because you judge them, but because you see them. Most people are still running from themselves, and you're a mirror they don't want to look into. You want real conversations, but everyone else is still playing pretend. People will call you intense. Too deep. Too much. They'll make you feel like your emotional intelligence is a problem instead of a strength. It's lonely being the one who sees things most people don't. But keep going anyway. The right people will show up eventually ones who feel safe in your depth instead of threatened by it.

“Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.” --Lionel Trilling

“I’d read Kerouac when I was a teenager. That was profound... I immediately wanted to get on the road and start hitchhiking. And I did. I went all over—I went to Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas—just to get out there and see what it feels like. Everybody wants to try and jump off something that’s higher than he can handle, just to see if he’ll float quietly to the ground or break up on the rocks. Everybody wants to see what the world’s made of and wants to see what they’re made of.” — Tom Waits

The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying “Faire et se taire” (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as “Shut up and get on with it.” Helen Simpson

The Modern Diner is FOR SALE

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Karl Shallowhorn

 

When it comes to living with [our current situation] prioritizing your self-care is key in managing symptoms and balancing moods.

One thing I know about my bipolar disorder is that it usually has me going a million miles an hour — and that’s not even when I’m manic. I tend to approach things with a lot of intensity, and that can sometimes be an issue.

For instance, while it’s a blessing to have a job I enjoy, whenever I work a lot, I have to be careful about overextending myself. For a while, I had six-day work weeks for about a month. But, as you can imagine, it all came to a head and led to burnout. I crashed.

It was so bad, I had to take two days off work just to recuperate. Some of this time was simply spent practicing self-caresleeping and getting the much-needed rest I required. I also had lunch with my coach, who provided me with valuable advice on how to manage my time more effectively.

RELATED: 6 Simple Strategies to Reduce Stress and Balance Mood

The amusing aspect of all this is that I work as a mental health educator, and I’m always emphasizing the importance of self-care and balance. Well, I guess I need to follow my own advice.

5 Ways to Practice Self-Care

There are so many ways to slow down while living with bipolar disorder and implement the self-care we all need. In fact, let me count the ways:

  1. Meditate: I began doing this daily for 15 minutes each evening. Around a month in, I began to see results, not only mentally and emotionally, but spiritually, too. According to the Mayo Clinic, meditation has several health benefits. It can help reduce conditions such as anxiety, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, heart disease, tension headaches, and sleep issues. Mindfulness meditation is all the rage these days, but take it from me, it works (see more below).
  2. Take a walk: I have a great dog named Sophie. The thing about Sophie is that she is part beagle and loves to sniff everything. So when I’m walking her, she forces me to slow down so she can explore. Whether you have a dog or not, taking a walk and breathing fresh air can do wonders for your soul and is an easy way to practice self-care.
  3. Breathe: And speaking of breathing, being aware of how you breathe is important, too, according to Cleveland Clinic. Most people are “shallow” breathers. However, by fully breathing and filling your diaphragm — or belly breathing, as it’s often referred to — it’s possible to slow down your respiration rate, which ties into the concept of mindfulness. By focusing on breathing and concentrating on a phrase or word (a mantra), such as “peace,” it is actually possible to diminish racing thoughts that can keep you perpetually wound up.
  4. Relax: This may seem like a no-brainer, but some people struggle with simply relaxing. This is probably the easiest form of self-care, and there are many ways to relax. (No, they don’t all involve sitting in front of the TV and binge-watching episodes of your favorite show.) Reading, crocheting, painting, crossword puzzles, or anything that serves as a “healthy” distraction can all be beneficial self-care activities when it comes to establishing downtime.
  5. Take a work break: Even when you’re at work, be sure to take any available break time. At certain jobs, the work environment may be more structured, such as in a manufacturing company or a position with regulated breaks. However, at others, you may have the flexibility to adjust the breaks you take. The bottom line is, we are not robots, and we need to be able to be at our best to do the work asked of us.

So, these are just a few suggestions you may want to consider. Ultimately, it’s beneficial to discover which self-care practices work best for you. There are certainly other ways that I didn’t list. The important thing is that they have healthy coping skills and not unhealthy coping mechanisms (yes, there is a difference).

Wishing you a balanced journey ahead.


Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking

  • Meditation: A Simple, Fast Way to Reduce Stress. Mayo Clinic. December 14, 2023.
  • Diaphragmatic Breathing. Cleveland Clinic. March 30, 2022.

Wednesday, July 09, 2025

[Jesus's] message is that we’re all sort of nuts and suspicious and petty and full of crazy hungers, and everything feels awful a lot of the time, but even so—one’s behavior needs to be better. One needs to be decent. Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott: Maybe your mind is lovely and pastoral and you do not suffer from paranoia, hypochondria, a bad attitude, and delusions of victimized grandeur. That is very nice, but we don’t want you in our cave after the bombs fall, because you are going to annoy us to death.

Homemade Buttermilk is great for everything

https://www.nourishingplate.com/recipes/chilled-cucumber-buttermilk-soup

chilled cucumber buttermilk soup

Ingredients:

  • 2 lb cucumbers (peeled and seeded if desired*), about 2 large
  • 2 ½ cups buttermilk, lowfat
  • 1 Tbsp fresh dill
  • 1 shallot, chopped (or red onion)
  • 1 lemon, zest and juice (about 3 Tbsp lemon juice)
  • 1 tsp garlic, chopped
  • Pinch of salt and pepper
  • Chopped cucumber, for garnish
  • Olive oil, for garnish
  • Toast rounds, optional

If desired, peel cucumbers, cut in half and scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Otherwise, chop cucumbers and place in a blender. Add the buttermilk, dill, lemon juice and zest, garlic, salt and pepper to the blender. Process the mixture until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, at least 1 hour.

Pour into bowls, top with additional fresh ground black pepper, chopped cucumber and a drizzle of olive oil. Serve with toast rounds if desired.

*If using English cucumbers, salad cucumbers or young cucumbers you do not need to peel or deseed. The peel becomes slightly bitter the larger and older the cucumber.

Serves 4

Saint Mary of Carmen Society Story

https://www.newtonbeacon.org/st-mary-of-carmen-society-says-removing-italian-colors-was-slap-in-the-face/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/09/metro/newton-residents-outraged-over-removal-of-italian-flag-colors-on-adams-street/

Anne Lamott: I don’t think that if I live to be eighty, I’m going to wish I’d spent more hours in the gym or kept my house a lot cleaner. I’m going to wish I had swum more unashamedly, made more mistakes, spaced out more, rested….So this informs how I live now.

Anne Lamott: I know two things now that I didn’t at 30: That when we get to heaven, we will discover that the appearance of our butts & our skin was 127th on the list of what mattered on this earth. And that I am not going to live forever. Knowing these things has set me free.

Petula Clark Downtown. original version 1964

 https://youtu.be/Zx06XNfDvk0

Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.

 Thich Nhat Hanh

The Coffee Song, "They've Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil" Sung by Frank Sinatra

 "The Coffee Song" (occasionally subtitled "They've Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil") is a novelty song written by Bob Hilliard and Dick Miles, first recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1946.[1] Later that year it was recorded by The Smart Set, and by others in later years. 

Cover art for The Coffee Song by Frank Sinatra The Coffee Song Frank Sinatra Track 19 on The Columbia Years (1943-1952): The Complete Recordings, Vol. 4  Mar. 1961

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTbJBnkRkFo 

 The Coffee Song Lyrics 

Way down among Brazilians 

Coffee beans grow by the billions 

So they've got to find those extra cups to fill 

They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil  

 

You can't get cherry soda 

Cause they've got to fill that quota 

And the way things are I'll bet they never will 

They've got a zillion tons of coffee in Brazil  

 

No tea or tomato juice You'll see no potato juice

 The planters down in Santos all say no no no  

The politician's daughter Was accused of drinking water 

And was fined a great big fifty dollar bill 

 

They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil 

 You date a girl and find out later She smells just like a percolator 

Her perfume was made right on the grill

 Why they could percolate the ocean in Brazil 

 

 And when their ham and eggs need savor 

Coffee ketchup gives 'em flavor 

Coffee pickles way outsell the dill

 Why they put coffee in the coffee in Brazil 

 

 No tea or tomato juice You'll see no potato juice

 The planters down in Santos all say no no no

  So your lead to the local color

 Serving coffee with a cruller 

 

Dunking doesn't take a lot of skill 

They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil

Tuesday, July 08, 2025

Perhaps the best we can do is practice the art of silence, specially in this period of over-publication and shouting controversialists. After learning the art of silence, then we can relearn the lost art of conversation, so to become conversable men.

Philip Rieff

Tom Nichols: "Donald Trump ran, in order of importance, for three reasons: stay out of prison, get revenge on his enemies, enrich himself and the people around him by every means possible. Everything else is just window dressing."

Poverty Lane

When I hang our clothes outside on the clothesline in the summer sunshine I worry about the towels and shirts being stolen. It's happened before. I opened the newspaper today and saw that my neighbors down the street are going to prison. Earlier this year it was the next door neighbors being charged with a felony for domestic violence. Three years ago I caught my back neighbor trying to break into my other neighbor's apartment. This is life in the poverty lane.

Teach your children how to think, not what to think. Margaret Mead

Prof. Carl Sagan One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

I shut my eyes in order to see. Paul Gauguin

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You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it. Joni Mitchell

Happy birthday to the legendary Louis Jordan, born on this day in 1908! Known as "the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era… Specializing in the alto sax, Jordan played all forms of the saxophone, as well as piano and clarinet. He also was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and fronted his own band for more than twenty years. He duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

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Mira Nair Zohran Film Maker Harvard Grad, Mamdani's mom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mira Nair
Nair on the set of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, November 2011
BornOctober 15, 1957 (age 67)
CitizenshipAmerican
EducationLoreto Convent, Tara Hall
Alma materHarvard University (BA)
Occupation
  • Filmmaker
Years active1986–present
Spouses
ChildrenZohran Mamdani
Awards

Mira Nair (IAST: Mīrā Nāyar; born October 15, 1957) is an Indian-American filmmaker.[1] Her production company is Mirabai Films. Among her films are Kama Sutra, Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, the Golden Lion–winning Monsoon Wedding, and Salaam Bombay!, which received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language.

Early life and education

Nair was born on October 15, 1957, in Rourkela, in Orissa[2] (now Odisha), India. She grew up with her two older brothers and parents in Bhubaneswar.[3] Her father, Amrit Lal Nair, was an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, and her mother, Praveen Nair, was a social worker.[4] The family name "Nayyar" (not to be confused with the Malayali "Nair") was changed by her grandfather, although one of her uncles continues to use it.[5][6] Her family is of Punjabi origin with roots in Delhi.[7][8] She was raised in a Hindu family.[9]

Nair lived in Bhubaneswar until age 18 and attended an English-medium high school at Loreto Convent, Tara Hall in Kaithu, Shimla,[10] where she developed a fondness for English literature. She studied at the highly ranked Miranda House—a college for women at Delhi University—where she majored in sociology. Nair applied for a transfer after her first year and, at 19, she attended Harvard University on a scholarship.[11] She concentrated in Visual and Environmental Studies, with a focus on documentary filmmaking, and graduated in 1979.[12]

Career

Before she became a filmmaker, Nair was originally interested in acting, and at one point she performed plays written by Badal Sircar, a Bengali performer. While she studied at Harvard, Nair became involved in the theater program and won a Boylston Prize for her performance of Jocasta's speech from Seneca's Oedipus.[3]

Nair commented on film-making in a 2004 interview with FF2 Media's Jan Huttner:

It’s all in how I do it. Keeping the bums on the seats is very important to me. It requires that ineffable thing called rhythm and balance in movie-making. Foils have to be created, counter-weights. From the intimacy, let’s say, of a love scene to the visceral, jugular quality of war. That shift is something in the editing, how one cuts from the intimate to the epic that keeps you there waiting. The energy propels you.[13]

In an interview with Image Journal in 2017, Nair said that she chose directing over any other art form because it was collaborative. "That’s why I am neither a photographer nor writer," she said. "I like to work with people, and my strength, if any, is that. Working with life."[14]

Documentaries

At the start of her film-making career, Nair primarily made documentaries in which she explored Indian cultural tradition. For her film thesis at Harvard between 1978 and 1979, she produced a black-and-white film titled Jama Masjid Street Journal. In the 18-minute film, Nair explored the streets of Old Delhi and had casual conversations with Indian locals.[11] In 1982, she made her second documentary titled So Far from India, which is a 52-minute film that followed an Indian newspaper dealer living in the subways of New York, while his pregnant wife waited for him to return home.[4] The film was recognized as a Best Documentary winner at the American Film Festival in Wrocław, Poland and New York's Global Village Film Festival.[11]

Her third documentary, India Cabaret, released in 1984 portrays the exploitation of female strippers in Bombay, and followed a customer who regularly visited a local strip club while his wife stayed at home.[11] Nair raised roughly $130,000 for the project. The 59-minute film was shot over a span of two months. It was criticized by Nair's family.[3][4] Her fourth and last documentary, made for Canadian television, explored how amniocentesis was being used to determine the sex of fetuses.[citation needed]

In 2001, with The Laughing Club of India, she explored laughter based on yoga. Founder Dr. Madan Kararia spoke of the club's history and the growth of laughing clubs across the country, and subsequently the world. The documentary included testimonials from members of the laughter clubs who described how the practice had improved or changed their lives. Its featured segments included a group of workers in an electrical products factory in Mumbai who took time off to laugh during their coffee break.[15]

Feature films

In 1983 with her friend Sooni Taraporevala, Nair co-wrote Salaam Bombay!. Nair sought out real "street children" to more authentically portray the lives of children who survived in the streets and were deprived of a true childhood.[3] Though the film did not do well at the box office, it won 23 international awards, including the Camera D’or and Prix du Public at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated at the 1989 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.[16]

Nair and Taraporevala next worked together on the 1991 film Mississippi Masala, which told the story of Ugandan-born Indians displaced in Mississippi.[4] The film centers on a carpet-cleaner business owner (Denzel Washington) who falls in love with the daughter (Sarita Choudhury) of one of his Indian clients. The film revealed the prejudice in African-American and Indian communities. It was well received by critics, earned a standing ovation at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, and won three awards at the Venice Film Festival.[11]

Nair directed four more films before she produced Monsoon Wedding. Released in 2001, the film told the story of an Indian Punjabi wedding, written by Sabrina Dhawan. Employing a small crew and casting some of Nair's acquaintances and relatives, the film grossed over $30 million worldwide. The film was awarded the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, making Nair the first female recipient of the award.[17] Nair then directed the Golden Globe-winning Hysterical Blindness (2002), followed by making William Makepeace Thackeray's epic Vanity Fair (2004).

In 2007, Nair was asked to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but turned it down to work on The Namesake.[4] Based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Sooni Taraporevala's screenplay follows the son of Indian immigrants who wants to fit in with New York City society, but struggles to get away from his family's traditional ways. The film was presented with the Dartmouth Film Award and was also honored with the Pride of India award at the Bollywood Movie Awards.[18][19] Next she directed the Amelia Earhart biopic Amelia (2009), starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.[20] The film predominantly received negative reviews.[21][22] It was also a box-office bomb, grossing $19.6 million against a budget of $40 million.[23]

In 2012, Nair directed The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a thriller based on the best-selling novel by Mohsin Hamid. It received mixed reviews from critics, and was a box office bomb, earning only $2.1 million worldwide on a $15 million budget.[24][25][26] It opened the 2012 Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy to critical acclaim and was released worldwide in early 2013. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature questioned "how the ambivalence and provocativeness of the 'source' text translates into the film adaptation, and the extent to which the film format makes the narrative more palatable and appealing to wider audiences as compared to the novel’s target readership."[27] Nair's 2016 film Queen of Katwe, a Walt Disney Pictures production, starred Lupita Nyong'o and David Oyelowo and was based on the story of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi.[28] It had a budget of $15 million and grossed $10.4 million.[29][30]

Short films

Nair's short films include A Fork, a Spoon and a Knight, inspired by the Nelson Mandela quote, ″Difficulties break some men but make others.″ She contributed to 11'09"01 September 11 (2002) in which 11 filmmakers reacted to the events of 11 September 2001. Other titles include How Can It Be? (2008), Migration (2008), New York, I Love You (2009) and her collaboration with among others, Emir Kusturica and Guillermo Arriaga on the anthology film Words with Gods.[31]

Other work

A long-time activist, Nair set up an annual film-makers' laboratory, Maisha Film Lab in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2005, young directors in East Africa have been trained at the nonprofit facility with the motto that "If we don't tell our stories, no one else will".[32] As of 2018 Maisha was building a school with architect Raul Pantaleo, winner of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and his company, Studio Tamassociati.[33]

In 1998, Nair used the profits from Salaam Bombay! to create the Salaam Baalak Trust, which works with street children in India.[34] A musical adaptation of Monsoon Wedding, directed by Nair, premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, running from 5 May to 16 July 2017.[35][36] As of 2015, she lived in New York City, where she was an adjunct professor in the Film Division of the School of Arts for Columbia University in Manhattan. The university had a collaboration with Nair's Maisha Film Lab, and offered opportunities for international students to work together and share their interests in film-making.[37]

In July 2020, journalist Ellen Barry announced that her Pulitzer Prize-nominated story "The Jungle Prince of Delhi" about the "royal family of Oudh", published in The New York Times, would be adapted into a web series for Amazon Studios by Nair.[38][39] In March 2021 it was announced that Nair would direct a ten-episode TV series for Disney+ reimagining the National Treasure series with a new cast.[40]

Personal life

In 1977, Nair met her first husband, photographer Mitch Epstein, when taking photography classes at Harvard University.[3] They divorced in 1987.

In 1988, Nair met her second husband, Indo-Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, while in Uganda doing research for the film Mississippi Masala. Mamdani teaches at Columbia University[4] and is also the chancellor of Kampala International University in Uganda. Their son, Zohran Mamdani, was born in Kampala, Uganda in 1991. In 2020, Zohran won a seat representing Astoria, Queens, in the New York State Assembly.[41] He won the Democratic Primary for the New York Mayoral election in 2025.[42]

Nair has been an enthusiastic yoga practitioner for decades; when making a film, she has the cast and crew start the day with a yoga session.[7]

Political views

In July 2013, Nair declined an invitation to the Haifa International Film Festival as a "guest of honor" to protest Israel's policies toward Palestine.[43][44] In posts on Twitter, Nair wrote: "I will go to Israel when the walls come down. I will go to Israel when occupation is gone...I will go to Israel when the state does not privilege one religion over another. I will go to Israel when Apartheid is over. I stand w/ Palestine for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) & the larger BDS Mov’t."[45] Nair was praised by PACBI, which said her decision to boycott Israel "helps to highlight the struggle against colonialism and apartheid." She subsequently tweeted "I will go to Israel, soon."[46]

Nietzsche

 Image

Peaches McGill

Peaches McGill was his name and his arms and neck were covered in tattoos. In 1974 only ex-cons, inmates, and sailors had tattoos. He drove a glittery gold Volkswagen souped up bug with a Porsche engine he put in himself. He had wide muscular shoulders and tiny hips. And a mouth and sneer just like Sylvester Stallone. I called him the Big V behind his back because he looked like the letter V in his tight maroon T-shirt and blue jeans

I'd come home from school and see the Saint Pauli Girl six pack on the top shelf of the fridge and know my sister and the Big V were in her bed. At the time my sister was the Saint Pauli Girl herself, working as a barmaid, wearing a dirndl, raking in wads of cash and counting it in front of me. She had jewelry, scarves, make up, and money to burn at bars with her friends.

Peaches once gave me a toke of marijuana, and after a few moments of intense fascination with the slow-motion water coming out of the kitchen faucet I went down the rabbit hell hole, hallucinating and crying, watching the movie of my life. "Where's the off switch?" I asked.

Our mother and step-father were off renovating their new purchase, a 1750's farm house in western Massachusetts, rapidly destroying all of its original charm. In a few short expensive years they turned it into a prison camp for Madison Ave advertising clients.

Blaise Metreweli is a tech visionary, trailblazer, and now the 18th chief of MI6. Unlike its sister UK spy agencies, MI6 has never had a female head since it was founded in 1909. Metreweli, a 25-year veteran of British intelligence and current head of tech and innovation, will become the first woman to lead the UK’s foreign intelligence service in its 116-year history. She’s not just decoding global threats, she’s redefining what leadership looks like.

MI6 distances its new chief from Nazi grandfather

Ewan Somerville
BBC News
UK Foreign Office/AP A woman in a white top with a white background.UK Foreign Office/AP
Blaise Metreweli will take over from Sir Richard Moore as the spy agency's "C"

MI6 has cast distance between its new chief and her grandfather, who was this week revealed to have been a Nazi spy known as "the butcher".

Blaise Metreweli was announced as the incoming head of the Secret Intelligence Service earlier this month. She will be its first female "C" in its 116-year history.

With little known about her wider backstory, documents show that her grandfather was Constantine Dobrowolski, who defected from Soviet Russia's Red Army to become the Nazis' chief informant in Chernihiv, Ukraine.

However, the Foreign Office, which speaks on behalf of MI6, said Ms Metreweli "neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather".

A spokesperson added: "Blaise's ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.

"It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today's hostile states, as the next chief of MI6."

The Daily Mail, which first revealed the family link, reports that it found hundreds of pages of documents in an archive in Freiburg, Germany, which showed Mr Dobrowolski was known as "The Butcher" or "Agent No 30" by Wehrmacht commanders.

He reportedly signed off letters to his Nazi superiors with "Heil Hitler" and said he "personally" took part in "the extermination of the Jews".

The archive documents are said to suggest Mr Dobrowolski looted the bodies of Holocaust victims, was involved in the murdering of local Jews, and laughed while watching the sexual assault of female prisoners.

BBC News has seen evidence to suggest that Mr Dobrowolski was on a most wanted list drawn up by the KGB, the Soviet Union's spy agency, in 1969, which appears to detail his earlier work and suggests he may have still been alive by the 1960s.

The document, labelled "top secret" and sourced from a researcher, is a 460-page alphabetical list of "foreign intelligence agents, traitors to the motherland, members of anti-Soviet organisations, punishers and other criminals subject to wanting".

An entry that appears to be for Mr Dobrowolski says he "participated in the executions of Soviet citizens".

"At the same time, he was a resident of German intelligence," the document seen by the BBC says. "In September 1943, he escaped with the Germans".

After the war, Mr Dobrowolski's wife, Barbara, and two-month-old son Constantine Jr fled to Britain - and she married David Metreweli in 1947. Constantine Jr later took his stepfather's name of Metreweli, but the BBC has seen existence of a naturalisation certificate, dated July 1966, still held in the National Archives today, where his surname was still Dobrowolski, with Metreweli listed as an "alias".

Constantine Jr would go on to be a radiologist and UK armed forces veteran, and his daughter, Ms Metreweli, was born in 1977 before joining MI6 22 years later.

She has not responded to the recent reports herself.

Having risen through the ranks, she is currently responsible for technology and innovation at MI6, which gathers intelligence overseas. She will be the agency's 18th head when she takes over later this year from Sir Richard Moore, a senior civil servant.

Upon her appointment, she said in a statement that she was "proud and honoured" to have been asked to lead.

Ms Metreweli is a Cambridge graduate, a rower and has previously had operational roles in the Middle East and Europe.

philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “Do not shorten the morning by getting up late … look upon it as the quintessence of life … Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth.”

Japanese Habits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH73yTEiCPs

Rick Bass

The ceaseless sound of the cicadas in the trees high overhead was like the sound of grain being poured into a metal bucket. Specificity is the lever, the pry bar, by which you lift up new universes and make readers believe all things.

Monday, July 07, 2025

Brightwater Court Brooklyn Memories

Aunt Irene was a chain smoker with a silver engraved cigarette case. She had a slender body covered in freckles. She painted her long nails red and she was always tanned. She and my mother's younger brother Uncle Ron lived in a rent-controlled Brighton Beach apartment on the top floor of 711 Brightwater Court. They had twin beds like Lucy and Ricky and every other sitcom of that era. You could sit on the end of the bed and see Sheepshead bay. In the summer there was always a cool breeze and the sound of balls bouncing at the next door racquetball club.

I used to visit my grandparents when they lived in that very apartment. The Art Deco lobby still looked and smelled the same, along with the elevator and painted gray basement where the washer and dryer lived.

After Hurricane Sandy the roof leaked and my Aunt kept a beige Tupperware bowl between her thighs while she slept to catch the leaks. She bought cases of canned sugar free Pepsi there was a forklifts load stockpiled in their dining room.

I experienced my first Passover Seder when my grandparents lived there at age 6 and I remember my one huge matzoh ball the size of a softball. A dinosaur egg in my shallow bowl of chicken soup.

I stayed up all night reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I stayed in the den at age 12. I could hear voices and radios on the boardwalk below. The den wallpaper was a pattern of woodgrain. My Grandma said, it looked like boards. There was a fake Renoir of a zaftig girl with red hair printed on cardboard with imprinted brush strokes.

My grandfather played miniature golf in the living room on the green carpet using a brown Bakelite machine that shot the ball out. He had a stash of Penthouse in the end table with the National Geographic Magazines "I'm a lifetime member" he said. and Playboy magazines my sister and I peeked at when we were left alone in the apartment. 

There was a hidden chocolate drawer in the living room dresser and plastic covered couch that stuck to our thighs when we sat on it. There were always a couple of loose cigarettes in a tiny ceramic vase,  with a sugar bowl in the tea tray in front of the couch.

Grandma's best friend Sue took diet pills and was tan with a smoker's voice. She and her husband and Willie lived in the building on the 4th floor. To me they were Fred and Ethel from the I Love Lucy show.

We watched Sonny and Cher and Laugh-In on the big gaudy white wooden TV console. 

Grandma bought us knishes from the knish man who walked the beach with hot knishes in a metal box shoulder bag. They were gigantic but flat held in the box like library books wrapped in wax paper.

I thought my step father was Cuban like Ricky Ricardo because he had the same haircut and temper. He had a scar on the back of his neck I could see when he drove the car. I now realize it must've been from (from the severe acne he had as a teen). When we asked about the scar he told us it was where a bullet passed through him when he opened his mouth.

Grandma lathered herself with baby oil and stretched out on a yellow beach chair draped in a beach towel. She kept a black transistor radio the size of a deck of cards near her ear to listen to "beautiful music". I loved the sound of voices and waves and the occasional airplane flying overhead with a ribbon of advertising. We had a cooler packed with grapes and cantaloupe and honeydew.

Grandma took me to the butcher shop on Coney Island Avenue under the above ground subway. There was sawdust on the floor and the smell of blood and cedar. We went to the Chinese restaurant and sat in the red vinyl booths. They ate there every single night.

Their fridge was packed with food and cupboards filled with saltines and graham crackers. I asked my mother why? Because Grandpa lived through the depression and there was no food when he was a little boy. 

Grandma drank her tea black out of peach iridescent Fire-King glass mugs with Sweet 'N Low. She wore a pink and white chenille house dress at home after she swam in the ocean.

May include: Four peach colored ceramic mugs with white interiors and handles. The mugs are arranged in a square shape on a white surface. 

My grandparents took me to see a double feature, Patton and The Sting. I was 10. My face rarely left my grandmother's lap. I still hate movies and movie theaters. But I love to swim every day just like my grandma did, swimming in the ocean before work.

A healthy swimmer’s diet with five key pillars from our coaches’ perspectives, reflecting real-world performance needs:

🥗 1. Balanced Macronutrient Intake
• Carbs: Prioritise carbohydrates—think oatmeal, whole wheat sandwiches, rice, and pasta—especially on intense or long sessions (90+ min) .
• Protein: Spread quality protein throughout the day, including a post-workout snack or meal within 2 hours—Greek yogurt or a protein shake are common choices ().
• Healthy Fats: Include sources like nuts, seeds, olive oil, avocados, and oily fish to support recovery, hormone balance, and satiety.

💧 2. Hydration & Electrolytes
• Always carry water to practice; drink before and during each hour in the pool. Add electrolytes if sessions are heavy.
• Use urine colour (pale yellow = good) to gauge daily hydration ().

☕ 3. Smart Caffeine Use
• A single daily cup of coffee can enhance endurance by delaying fatigue—but more may interfere with sleep.

🌈 4. Fruit & Veg: Micronutrient Power
• Eat plenty of colourful fruits and vegetables every day to get necessary vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
• Supplement with omega‑3 and vitamin D for extra recovery and performance support.

🔧 5. Treat Nutrition Like Fuel
• Think of your body as a finely tuned vehicle—the better the quality of fuel, the stronger the performance.
• Nutrition enhances structured training—it’s the icing on the cake, not a substitute for consistent workouts.

Carl Jung Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt.

Carl Jung Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Viola Davis: just like Joseph Campbell says – when you go on that hero’s journey, the final phase is always a phase you feel like you’re going to lose your life. You go to the inner-most cave. You don’t see God, you don’t see demons, you just see yourself.

 

The room was overflowing with emotion, gratitude and appreciation Friday night as the Golden Globe Awards’ inaugural Golden Gala paid tribute to two singular and beloved stars, Ted Danson and Viola Davis.

Danson took the audience at the Beverly Hilton through his journey as an actor as he accepted the Carol Burnett Award for his contributions to television over his long career. It all started when he was given the chance to bring the indelible character of Sam Malone to life on the NBC sitcom “Cheers,” which ran 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993. The creators and executive producers of that series, brothers Glen Charles and Les Charles, were in the audience.

Davis was visibly moved by Streep’s introduction. She took the stage with tears streaming down her face.

“I feel like someone just set me on fire,” Davis said. To Streep, she declared, “You’re just a great broad. You forgot that I followed you into the toilet that first day of rehearsal. I just wanted to smell you.”

From there, Davis did what she does best. She commanded the crowd’s attention with her stentorian delivery of a speech that was shockingly raw, personal and emotionally introspective. At times, her body shook as she described the “magic” that acting has brought to her life.

“I was born into a life that just simply did not make sense,” she explained.

Here are Davis’ remarks in full:

This is my testimony. I think I decided to be an actor because acting was just a cosmic cart for a much higher journey. Finding me, finding a sense of belonging. Finding my worth.

I saw life as a big fucking fat dude. A Gordo with a big belly, eating a really greasy, moist turkey leg. When he’d get up to go the bathroom, big gold nuggets would fall out of his pockets and rain down on people. Some people got the blessings of the dripping gold. Gold just rained down on them because they worked for it. That’s how I saw life.

I was born into a life that just simply did not make sense. I didn’t fit in. I was born into abject poverty. I was mischievous. I was imaginative. I was rambunctious. But I was so poor.

Growing up in a house with alcoholism and rage, infested with rats everywhere. Toilets that never worked.

I was a bed-wetter who went to school with clothes soaked with urine. My life just didn’t make sense.
All anyone ever said was that I wasn’t pretty. By the way, what the hell is pretty? I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t pretty. I just wanted to be somebody. I wanted some of those little gold nuggets.

What I had was magic. I was curious. I could teleport — I could take myself out of this worthless world and relieve myself of it at times.

I could go to a place where I can have belly laughs. Where I can have fun. The biggest magic was, I could see people. I could see that woman at the corner, standing there in freezing cold weather with dirty hair, really bad acne. Smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes. In those corduroy coats with faux fur on the inside. She’d have those pants all women buy at the Rainbow Shop, that cost $9.99 and never zipped up properly.

I’d see her standing there with dirty sneakers. Cars would come up. She’d lean in, talk to whoever was in the car, make an exchange and get in.

Nobody gave a shit about people like that. She was my Mona Lisa. She made me curious. I would enter her, take her around in there. I’d go, ‘Who are you? Who are you when you were a little girl? You were so cute. You would dream big. You thought life was going to work out for you.’

There’s always a resistance to that one memory, that one thing you live for. I could always get there. It was magic.

The seeker is the mystery. The seeker needs to know. I was curious. That’s all you need in life is curiosity. So that was acting.

That’s how I started my journey and I had enough curiosity to know that not only could I perform magic and inhabit these people, but I knew what they could give me. What could I find in all these lives that could somehow rain down those gold nuggets from Gordo and give to me and to make my life make sense.

So I started this journey of acting. Let me tell you something, not to be a contradiction but when I started off in my career I took a lot of jobs because of the money.

Sometimes for a dark-skinned, Black woman with a wide nose and big lips, that’s all there was out there. If I waited for a role that was well-crafted and written for me …

I do not believe that poverty is really the answer to your craft. I don’t think there’s any nobility in poverty. I’ve seen too many rat-infested apartments. I’ve seen too many relatives dead or dying for lack of health care. I took every job. It was an opportunity to get in there. Sometimes those gold nuggets would rain down on me. I got the Mrs. Millers and the Annalise Keatings [roles]. And I would go ‘Oh my god, I’m cooking. I’m going to be the next Meryl Streep.’

And then nothing. More often than not I got the dead characters. Like the woman standing on the street corner with the cigarette and the bad skin. The characters that are dead, that nobody cares about, that no one loves. I got them.

I believe they came to me because they knew that I would love them. I knew there was something really, really beautiful with them, where once again I could find that answer, that curiosity about why the hell am I here?

There’s no one in this room that has not answered that question – why am I here? Each of those characters gave me some level of an answer.

I would do everything I could do to bring them back together. I was a defibrillator.

Memories of my father’s death bed. Memories of falling in love. Memories of bed-wetting. Memories of belly laughs. I could fill in the blank and make them whole.

Somewhere in the whole journey of that — just like Joseph Campbell says – when you go on that hero’s journey, the final phase is always a phase you feel like you’re going to lose your life. You go to the inner-most cave. You don’t see God, you don’t see demons, you just see yourself.

And I got the elixir. That’s what acting gave me. The elixir was that it’s on me. My life is orchestrated by me. That girl who was little Viola was enough. And the mystery is not understanding Gordo with the dripping turkey leg who randomly hands out blessings.

What you gotta figure out is you. Your story. You as is — you are worthy. I had my ruby slippers.
They say the only two people you owe anything to is your 6-year-old self and your 80-year-old self. Six year old Viola, sometimes I have to rely on her to give me perspective of this moment — otherwise it’s too big for me to imagine. Going from bed-wetting, poverty and despair and wrong-ness – to this? And little Viola is squealing.

She can’t believe she married the most handsome man in the world. She can’t believe she has a daughter that has burst her heart wide open. She cannot believe that despite the fact that she smells or was mischievous or was messy and rough around the edges – she has friends who see all of that but love her. And here’s the thing – they think she’s beautiful.

So little Viola is squealing. She’s standing behind me now, she’s pulling on my dress. She’s wearing the same red rubber boots that she wore rain or shine because they made her feel pur-dy.

She’s squealing. She’s saying one thing. She says ‘Make them hear this.’ What she’s whispering is: I told you I was a magician.

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/viola-davis-emotional-ted-danson-golden-globes-gala-1236265389/

 Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother's love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
bell hooks

bell hooks

“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”

     bell hooks

Margaret Rock born OTD in 1903

Image    Woman of the Day mathematician and codebreaker Margaret Rock born OTD in 1903 in Hammersmith. Recruited for Bletchley Park in 1940, she was so good at cracking German and Russian codes during WW2 that she stayed on at GCHQ until 1963. She never spoke about her work.
 Margaret was a talented mathematician who was working as a statistician for the National Association of Manufacturers predicting how the economy might change and how businesses would react, when she was tapped on the shoulder in April 1940 for a role that would help the war effort.
 She was taken on as a Junior Administrative Assistant at Bletchley Park on 15 April 1940 and assigned to the Section of chief cryptographer Dilly Knox in “a row of chunky converted interlinked houses - just across the courtyard from the main house”, working on German Intelligence Services (Abwehr) Enigma traffic. Dilly was known for greeting new arrivals with the words, "Hello, we're breaking machines. Have you got a pencil? Here, have a go.
 
" The Germans thought Enigma was unbreakable, and the Abwehr machines were the most secure of all. They were so complex, they didn’t even use a plugboard, a panel with 26 dual-holed sockets in which cables could be inserted to connect letters in pairs thus deciphering the code.
 
 Dilly devised rodding, a method that involved making paper strips emulating the machine’s rotors and comparing them to cribs (known plaintext fragments) so that the strips could be placed in the best starting position to decipher the code. Margaret, who worked with another WOTD, Mavis Batey, was particularly adept at this.
 At the end of August 1940, Dilly fired off an internal memo: “Miss Rock is entirely in the wrong grade. She is actually 4th or 5th best of the whole Enigma staff and quite as useful as some of the 'professors'. I recommend that she should be put on the highest possible salary for anyone of her seniority.” 
 
She was promoted to the grade of Linguist on £195 per annum (£9,500 in today’s sterling). Don’t roll your eyes. That was a top salary for a woman in those days, I’ll have you know. Rodding was responsible for the Section successfully decoding a message on 8 December 1941 about the sailing of an Italian battle fleet, which led to the Battle of Cape Matapan off the coast of Greece. It was a resounding Allied victory with heavy losses sustained by the Italians: three heavy cruisers and two destroyers sunk, a battleship and a destroyer damaged, 2,300 killed and 1,015 captured. 
 
Post-war, Margaret stayed on at GCHQ and retired in July 1963 after 23 years service. She died in 1983, aged 80, but there’s an intriguing postscript to her story.
 
 In 1944, Margaret wrote a paper with three other Bletchley Park codebreakers, Mavis Batey, Kevin Batey and Peter Twinn, that was used as a section of Dilly Knox’s official History of Abwehr Codebreaking. The proper name of the paper is ‘GC&CS Secret Service Sigint Vol II: Cryptographic Systems and their Solution’ but it was known to GCHQ staff as “Batey, Batey, Rock and Twinn”. The joke is that it sounded like a firm of solicitors in the Home Counties. The paper was so secret that Mavis, who left Bletchley Park in 1945, didn’t even realise what her own husband did during the war until it was declassified.
 
 “Batey, Batey, Rock and Twinn” was declassified in 2011. Not a typo. 2011.
 
 “Well, as to my adventures on Friday night. I got to Euston by 8.15 - the raids had just started and there were guns beginning, which soon got much louder. There was no train before my 9.50, so I asked a porter where I should wait. He directed me to an archway, a very long one going between the tube station and one of the platforms. The passengers and railway staff (in tin hats) spent all their time there, and it felt very safe, and never shook, however near the bombs…A friendly porter came and told us to come with him if we'd like to see a fire, and from the entrance of the archway there was the whole sky lit up flaming red. It was quite near either St Pancreas or Kings Cross Station.” — Margaret Rock’s letter from Bletchley, September 1940