I observed with interest the recent meme by young women who were amazed to find the young men in their lives thought about Rome often.
I certainly think about Rome often, though I am not a young man—I am a man in the period of life I like to call “early late middle age.” I never thought thinking about Rome was remarkable.
I’m not sure I should be considered part of the meme because I’m a history buff, and one of the historical periods that interests me is Rome. History is a hobby for me, and I think about history a lot.
On the other hand, maybe that makes me a big part of the meme.
Historian Patrick Wyman has a theory on why people (of every and all genders) are fascinated by Rome today. It’s a good theory and now I think I need to subscribe to his podcast and read his books.
And Ryan Broderick has a theory why this meme is becoming popular now:
Every 5-7 years, a whole bunch of people come of age online at the same time. Their dumb, usually playful freshman-dorm-icebreaker-level content and discourse is then pored over by media outlets and turned into these big news cycles that inevitably sour. But I think it’s just kids making sense of the world around them. It’s fun and sometimes reveals some interesting quirks about society, but it doesn’t always — and, I’d argue, rarely does — matter.
I have discovered Excalidraw and achieved nerdvana.
I, a complete design illiterate, was able to create a simple networking diagram for a marketing document in 25 minutes, having never used the tool before. Later, the client will be able to use Excalidraw’s built-in collaboration tools to make changes, and then hand off to a designer to polish.
Earlier I mentioned the movie “The Postman Always Rings Twice” but I brain-farted and called it “The Milkman Always Rings Twice” and now I want to see “The Milkman Always Rings Twice,” which would be about a milkman who’s seduced by a femme fatale who is lactose intolerant.
Do you feel any connection to the place where your grandparents came from?
My grandparents came from Eastern Europe. Poland on my father’s side, and Lithuania on my mother’s. But I do not feel like a Polish-American or Lithuanian-American. I’m just plain American. Or a Jewish American.
I suspect this is because my grandparents left those countries to get away from anti-Semitism, and found a welcoming home here. I have had the good fortune to be born in one of the few places and times in history where Jews face very little anti-Semitism.
I have avoided nearly all noir movies until now because I like stories to have good guys, and my preconception about noir is that these films entirely feature variations on bad people along with the occasional victim.
I have seen “Double Indemnity” now and I see I was wrong. Not about the bad people—although there are one or two good people in this movie, they are not the main characters. However, “Double Indemnity” is not the least bit off-putting.
These eerily cheery, aggressively punctuated messages suggest an alternate dimension in which polite, good-natured, rigorously diverse groups of friends and coworkers use Apple products exactly how they are designed to be used, without complaint or error.
I was thinking last night that my brain is still broken from the pandemic. It exaggerated my normal introversion and homebody tendencies into something resembling agoraphobia. I go weeks without going anywhere but the grocery store, picking up take-out once a week, my daily walk and that’s about it.
Yesterday I was looking through some photos I took on business trips and thought: That was me. I used to do that. I used to be that guy.
The situation is complicated by our being at higher risk than most people. But not going anywhere has its own risks.
Some years ago, a couple I was friends with pressured me to be a clown at the birthday party they were throwing for their little daughter. I firmly and repeatedly noped out on that, and they hired a professional clown, and later they said they were glad because the pro did a great job.
They told me they asked the clown what was the weirdest event he ever performed at. The clown replied that it was an adult party.
