Sell in May / Memorial Day to Labor Day and the return of “summer”

The financial industry has a saying about Sell in May and go away come back on some weird thing that’s probably British and ends in day. (Go ahead, read about it elsewhere. Have fun!)

A particular region and subculture with an excess of influence had a thing about when you could wear white — from Memorial Day to Labor Day, IIRC.

I noticed some years ago, that news programs often got alternate anchors, and newspapers had different bylines showing up on the front page. And all of _that_ was often super weird — kinda crazy, more old-biased than usual (which is saying something), and often advocating for things that weren’t ever going to happen again in a quite vehement tone. Not Normal Journalism for the rest of the year.

The summers of 2020 and 2021 did not exhibit this pattern.

_This_ year, however, is a little different. For one thing, there was a lot of discussion about whether it was “safe” ever to Sell in May etc. People were thinking about whether they could take some time off, back away from the whatever.

Inevitably, this is the year I have virtually no travel, or really much to do at all scheduled for the next few months. Maybe I’ll be bored! I miss being bored.

ETA: I haven’t forgotten that we’ve got presentations and trials starting up soon, and I _also_ do recognize that summer is protest season. I know I won’t be bored.

The Evolution of Grooming

I don’t know that I totally believe this, but I _mostly_ believe this:

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=groom

In general, I think of grooming as: offering and providing small, personal services of a mildly intimate nature. So dog groomers wash and blow dry dogs. Companies have “grooming standards”, which is, make sure _somebody_ does your small, personal services of a mildly intimate nature to go with wearing “clean and neat” clothing and being clean in general. They don’t feel like they can legislate the details of what you do with your hair any more, but they are going to draw your attention to it because other people at work will also be looking at it. If you look for images of primates grooming on google, you’ll get a _lot_ of images of lice-picking.

We definitely would like to be sure that our coworkers are insect-pest free, for sure.

The replacement language for HR groups that would like to eliminate the word “grooming” from a company are problematic. “Attire” is fine instead of dress. And “hygiene” seems safe, if obscure. Invoking Hygeia is generally fine. But what to do about “grooming”? Appearance is probably a little too vague! And I’m not sure anyone wants to say, “bug free”, and further, shouldn’t that be covered by “hygiene”? Who even knows.

Getting rid of problematic computer related terminology is always a good idea. I had _so_ _much_ _fun_ pointing out how insane a lot of that terminology was when I was in college. (Altho a lot of what I pointed out is still there, but never mind that now.) Replacing “data grooming” with “curating data” or “cleaning up the data” doesn’t seem _that_ impossible as a replacement. You could also invent something fit for purpose if you have something specific in mind that isn’t covered well by curation or cleaning or filtering or sanity checking (actually, maybe _don’t_ use sanity checking), or or or.

Here’s the real problem with corporations and other institutions recoiling at the word grooming. Pedophiles _groom_: they offer and provide small, personal and somewhat intimate services. This causes them to be regarded with trust and affection and allows them to get physically close to their potential victims _and the people who are protecting those potential victims_. If “grooming” becomes _only_ what pedophiles do, and loses all of its other meaning of offering and providing personal care, we’re going to lose sight of how pedophiles convince people to let them into trusted spaces. They will once again become Oh He Would Never I Totally Trust Him. They will once again become monsters with incomprehensible magic. By calling it “grooming”, when “grooming” means offering and providing small, personal and somewhat intimate care, we rip down the shield. We show how the trick is done. They are exposed.

Banning the use of the word grooming outside of pedophile’s actions is _providing cover_ where we worked hard to blast out all the cover.

This isn’t going to stop people doing it. People didn’t stop using the word grooming because they intended to protect victims from pedophiles. People stopped using the word grooming because they didn’t want people to think of pedophiles. And denial is _super_ standard.

I’m just pointing it out, in hopes that this observation will help you spot the same trick as it is done over and over, with word and phrase after word and phrase. As we work incredibly hard to make clear how the Bad People are doing the Bad Thing and the words and phrases are changed rather than fixing the actual problematic behavior. Or, you know, making an example of the problem people.

Really thoughtful piece in WaPo about Stacey Abrams

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/08/stacey-abrams-abortion/

I find her evolution super relatable — I was raised a JW, and so until I left at 25, I was still repeating the party line. For the last few years, I was _also_ articulating that I thought it was completely ridiculous to treat being gay or having an abortion as anything more serious than having sex with someone you were not married to (or engaging in oral sex at all, for example, which was also against JW doctrine — or, for that matter, masturbating). Once I wasn’t a JW, it was a very, very easy switch for me to become fully pro-choice, as the next stage of my personal political evolution was in an anarcho-socialist direction (I’m mostly over that now. Mostly.).

Obviously, I want fair elections, and I don’t want anyone to have to work especially hard to vote — I want vote by mail, early voting, lots of polling locations, whatever works for the people served by those options. I hate gerrymandering, and I believe we benefit as a group when all people’s preferences are expressed fully. In the last few years, however, it has become abundantly clear to me that we are not going to have a democracy at all, unless we have a lot more protection for voters. I knew the Supreme Court should not have eroded or reversed earlier legislation, but we’ve sure had plenty of evidence in support of that position recently.

It is with great joy that I feel the connection articulated between a woman’s right to choose and voting rights. We have to have both. We cannot have one without the other.