Here’s a study indicating that Americans are lonely and young Americans are the loneliest of all. It’s from quite a while ago, 2018. But it’s not atypical of the sort of figures such polls often get, and this one has some interesting generational data:

More than half of survey respondents – 54 percent – said they always or sometimes feel that no one knows them well. Fifty-six percent reported they sometimes or always felt like the people around them “are not necessarily with them.” And 2 in 5 felt like “they lack companionship,” that their “relationships aren’t meaningful” and that they “are isolated from others.”

The survey found that the average loneliness score in America is 44, which suggests that “most Americans are considered lonely,” according to the report released Tuesday by the health insurer…

The latest survey also found something surprising about loneliness in the younger generation. “Our survey found that actually the younger generation was lonelier than the older generations,” says Dr. Douglas Nemecek, the chief medical officer for behavioral health at Cigna.

Members of Generation Z, born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, had an overall loneliness score of 48.3. Millennials, just a little bit older, scored 45.3. By comparison, baby boomers scored 42.4. The Greatest Generation, people ages 72 and above, had a score of 38.6 on the loneliness scale.

I have no idea why anyone would be surprised at the fact that younger people are most lonely and older people least. I would bet that when the “Greatest Generation” members were young, they were even less lonely than they are now, because old age sometimes does lead to increased loneliness (and by the way, people over 72 are not Greatest Generation members for the most part; they are the “Silent Generation” and Boomers. The Greatest Generation is mostly dead, and its very youngest members are 97 at this point.) But as a generation, the Greatest and the Silents tended to have more ties to other people than young people do today.

I think of my parents and their friends. My parents were so old they weren’t even the “Greatest”—according to the chart, the were the “Lost” generation. They grew up in a certain community and lived there all their lives, although my mother briefly moved to New England to be near me in her extreme old age. The community in which they lived was tight – that is, few people moved away and the entire crowd had known each other since at least high school, with just a few newcomers who had entered mostly through marriage.

This community wasn’t just tight and stable, it was also enormous. My parents knew – really, really knew – hundreds of people. My mother spoke on the phone almost daily to ten people or more, and my parents socialized most nights of the week. Some of this socializing wasn’t strictly social, but involved projects and volunteer work and fundraising.

I thought this was normal. Maybe back then, it was. Now, it’s not. I have moved quite a few times, and what’s more many of my friends have moved away, so that now they are spread out (the survivors among them, that is) all over the country. Phone and email and internet can theoretically keep far-flung people in touch, but the reality is that distance and lack of community makes it much easier for friendships to fade. Proximity isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. And few of my friends know each other, so there’s little community there.

One of the things that article I linked to at the beginning of this post fails to mention is that loneliness has two basic dimensions. A person can score high in one but low in another. For example, I would never say my relationships aren’t meaningful or close. They are. Nor would I say that no one understands me, except in the general sense that no one completely understands anybody (including himself or herself).

What I would say, though, and do say, is that I lack acquaintances in the neighborhood, a social mix of casual friends who get together. This is despite a host of efforts I’ve made to join various groups and associations and develop such relationships. And although I have three good friends nearby, they are extraordinarily busy and/or quite ill and I don’t see them as often as I’d like.

So when I took that survey referred to in the study – the UCLA loneliness scale – I came out only “moderately lonely,” and just barely. In other words, apparently I’m actually a bit less lonely than most Americans. I’m almost positive that’s because my answers to all the questions about closeness indicated that I had quite a few people who are close to me, but my answers to the questions about socializing indicated loneliness.

Young people move around a lot move than people used to. They switch jobs more, they divorce more, they marry less and later, they have fewer children. Their entertainment and their affiliative behavior tends to be more solitary; the old Bowling Alone syndrome, which is about lack of community even more than lack of friends.

I have an online community: you. It’s wonderful, but it’s not the same.

The post All the lonely people appeared first on The New Neo.

Yesterday I was at the hospital much of the afternoon and came home around 8:30 PM, but he called me again at around 11:00 PM and sounded awful. I simply couldn’t relax about it, and since I live just a few minutes from the hospital I went back there to check it out.

Fortunately, he was asleep. And also fortunately, I had a long talk with the nurse and she reassured me about various things. He’s certainly not out of the woods, but she seemed competent and on top of things.

And then, when I returned home and got out of my car, I happened to look up to the sky. The moon looked very unusual, and it occurred to me that this might be a lunar eclipse. So I got out my trusty cellphone and sure enough, it was! Plus, just by chance I happened to be stepping out of my car at the exact peak minute of the eclipse.

So that’s the silver lining, I guess.

The post On my ex and the moon appeared first on The New Neo.

Without violating his privacy with Too Much Information, I’ll just say that eight days ago I took my ex-husband to the ER and he was diagnosed with two dangerous but not-likely-to-be-lethal conditions. At least one of them would absolutely be needing surgery, so they sent him home with instructions to call a surgeon and make an appointment. The ER was full with a long wait. And the surgeon couldn’t see him for almost two weeks.

Meanwhile, at home, he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t want to go back to the ER and be sent home again, and it didn’t seem worthwhile to me either. But over the next five days he seemed to be deteriorating, and he wasn’t eating much at all. On Monday he was so ill that I called 911. They took him back to the ER, where they repeated the tests and decided this time to admit him, and that he had to have surgery – pronto. So instead of having a scheduled surgery with the preferred surgeon, it was pot-luck surgery at midnight the very day he came back to the hospital.

Fortunately, the team repaired the problem. But my ex developed a few complications and is still in the hospital. I’m the designated helper, and I’ve been going over there for quite a few hours every day. The staff has been pretty good, but they seem overworked because the place is very full.

However, there was one incident that really angered me – although it has nothing to do with the medical aspect of things. There was a middle-aged lady who came around to officially inform him of his Medicare rights – things like ye olde Patients’ Bill of Rights and the fact that if the hospital tries to kick you out prematurely, you can protest. That sort of thing. When she finished her spiel she said that we needed to vote in November, and not to vote for “that person” (she clearly meant Trump even though he’s not on the ballot) because he was going to end Medicare.

Extremely unprofessional and inappropriate, not to mention incorrect. I surprised her by snapping at her, and I’m contemplating reporting her but not while he’s still in the hospital.

The post Update on my ex-husband’s health appeared first on The New Neo.

Growing old is no joke. Nor was the ER, which has degenerated in recent years: short-staffed, very long waits, extremely depressing group of sick people sitting there for hours and hours and hours.

I finally left him there when he was somewhat better, but now I’m about to leave to pick him up. I’ll probably post more in late afternoon or perhaps not till the evening.

The post Spent many hours today … appeared first on The New Neo.

I absolutely loved Villella, and it was partly because of the way he looked, as well as the fact that he exuded a sex appeal that was different from the Apollonian quality of Baryshnikov and the exotic aura of Nureyev. I also happened to once take a class from Villella when he was in his 40s, and I can safely say that his magnetism was even more marked close up and personal.

Is he forgotten these days? Perhaps, at least somewhat, and certainly with young people. There aren’t even that many videos of him in his prime. The other day I was looking for some and found, among other things, a video of him doing “Tarantella,” a short and frenetic dance choreographed for him by Balanchine although not one of my favorites. In the video, it first shows Villella doing the two short solo variations, then Baryshnikov doing them, and then a series of other later dancers doing the same thing.

Fascinating, including the comments, only a few of which liked Villella and many of which criticized his loosy-goosy manner and casualness, especially his relaxed upper body. But what they didn’t get is that the piece was originally made for him and the carefree happy-go-lucky style was intentional in this piece and it’s something that has been lost with modern dancers. It’s very playful. Even Baryshnikov, who may have been the greatest ballet dancer of all time, doesn’t quite pull it off for this particular ballet. Let’s just say that Baryshnikov gives us the intense Russian version, very perfect but not the original artistic vision.

Here’s the clip. Unfortunately, the quality of the video for Villella and Baryshnikov is poor. Villella is shown until 1:54, and then Barishnikov, and then the rest of them. But I think despite the poor quality of the first two, it still shows what I’m talking about. Note also that as the years go by, the tempi get slower and slower, although never slow:

Here’s a short Villella documentary. The still thumbnail at the beginning gives you some idea of why so many women (me included) were drawn to him. It also has a few very short excerpts from Tarantella that are in color and of much better quality than the previous ones. He narrates some of this documentary; I think he was in his early 80s at the time, but he’s 89 now:

The post A tarantella for Edward Villella appeared first on The New Neo.

So many AI-narrated videos feature fake British accents – why?

The tone is posh and often supercilious – why?

There’s monotony.

Many mispronunciations, like “desert” for “dessert” or vice versa. Or like “read” present tense for “read” past tense.

There’s the pause at the end of a line of text even if it’s in mid-sentence.

Some feature a little exhaled sigh – “ah” – in an effort to make the voice seem human. It’s an effort that fails utterly.

But most annoying of all is when AI narration uses the first person. Who is this “I” of whom you speak, kimosabe?

The post AI narration appeared first on The New Neo.

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart — who is also his second cousin, according to a new report.

Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents, according to Thursday’s report by independent journalist Steve Robinson, who notes that such relationships are both legal under state law and not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.

While Jackson, a onetime logger and the former president of the Maine State Senate, has described Pelletier as his wife in the past, locals tell Robinson the couple has never been legally married.

Where to begin?

It used to be that people living in what used to quaintly be called “sin” – that is, in quasi-marriage outside of wedlock – were not especially politically viable. Those days are long gone, so that’s not the issue here. The issue is what I’d call the “ick factor” of being sexually involved with one’s second cousin.

But it’s not illegal anywhere in the US, nor is there much evidence that it’s harmful in the genetic sense unless there’s a known specific hereditary disease carried by both cousins. Here’s why:

he chance that a baby is born with a birth defect or disability is between 2-3%. So, if a hundred people have babies, we would expect that 2 or 3 to be born with some sort of problem. Which of course means that 97 or 98 are fine.

At 3.5%, the risk is slightly higher for second cousins. Still, 96 or 97 out of a hundred babies are born without any major problems.What this all means is that while there is increased risk, it doesn’t really qualify as a “high chance.” Even first cousins at 5% aren’t that big of a risk.

Keep in mind though that these are average numbers. Like people who are not related, your actual risk depends on the genes you and your spouse have.

Note that the article about Jackson mentions that such marriages are “not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.” Well, it’s confession time: not only are such marriages “not uncommon” on the paternal side of my own family, but first cousin marriages were also “not uncommon” among that crew. In fact, they were very common.

And they didn’t live anywhere near the north of Maine, either. They lived in Belarus.

I didn’t know very much about my own heritage until I did some genealogical research on my family about seven years ago. I found out a great many fascinating things (see this for a previous post of mine on finding a long-lost maternal relation). One of those things was that my father’s family, even at the level of my grandfather’s generation – not one of whom I ever met, including my grandfather – tended to marry their first cousins. In fact, I found that the same three surnames occurred over and over and over, so much so that the families were intertwined in a way that made it difficult for my newly-found second cousins and I to determine just how closely we were related. Were we second cousins? Double second cousins? Double first-cousins once-removed?

We finally gave up on figuring it out, but got a great many chuckles about all of us being the product of some sort of vast network of first-cousin marriage. I finally figured out something about that, though: since the families were also very large (my paternal grandfather was one of between ten and sixteen children, the first born in the 1840s and my grandfather born in the late 1860s), and this was a typical family size back then, they probably had something like over a hundred first cousins.

That’s a mighty big pool from which to choose. If they lived in the same or neighboring villages and cities, it would be a pretty convenient pool, too. Why not marry a cousin and keep it in the family?

There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of insanity or any especially dramatic genetic diseases, as far as I can tell. Oddness yes, and eccentricity. But I’m not sure that wouldn’t have been the case even without the cousin marriage. There’s a marked tendency to be good at math, and that’s about it. We don’t look like each other, either. And below the level of my grandparents, I knew very few of these relatives, but found a whole host of them – really nice people, by the way – through genetic testing. We tried to piece together what had estranged the families, and decided it had to do with a business they were in together that precipitated a falling-out.

In recent years, there’s not been a whiff of cousin marriage or even second-cousin marriage in the group. But I guess that what I think of Jackson’s arrangement – I’m basically indifferent to it and certainly not especially shocked by it – has at least something to do with this family history of mine.

However, I can’t stand Jackson’s politics. But that’s a separate issue.

The post On cousin marriage appeared first on The New Neo.

I’ve seen another Nolan film: Diunkirk. I watched it in a movie theater in 2017, and I reviewed it this post, the title of which is “The Dunkirk Din.”

That title says a lot. One thing it says is that the sound problems are consistent and we can safely conclude they are a choice (and an echo). Here are some excerpts from that post:

I thought “Dunkirk” was the sort of movie that would be good to see in one of those RPX movie theaters. But I took the precaution of taking some earplugs along with me to protect my sensitive ears.

I was tremendously glad I did. One of the first things I noticed about the movie was the assaultive, hideous sound, which even the earplugs couldn’t dull enough for me. I felt the need to push them in deeper with my fingers and kept covering my ears, too. And even then, the blasting percussive bass made the seats vibrate so forcefully that it almost felt as though those Spitfires were flying right over us.

I assume that was the point. Unfortunately, it seemed to be almost the only point of the movie, which concentratee on giving the audience the feeling that we are participants in Dunkirk, The Video Game.

The film is a real blockbuster and has been widely and highly praised. But I had so many quarrels with it that I left the theater almost angry.

Read the whole thing, if you’re interested.

I had been forewarned by reviews about the sound problem; that’s why I came to the experience prepared with the earplugs. But although the sound wasn’t the only problem, it certainly was a big problem. I’ll not subject myself to that again.

The question is, why does Nolan do this? Apparently he’s more interested in spectacle and visuals than in the lowly human interaction known as spoken communication. Now, movies are definitely a visual medium, and so that’s very important. But if people can’t follow the plot and are bombarded by almost-assaultive music, that’s pretty awful. However, Nolan is so highly praised that maybe most people don’t care, or agree with him that spoken human interaction isn’t particularly important.

In that post of mine on Dunkirk, there’s a quote from some veterans of the actual WWII Dunkirk who had attended the movie. They remarked that the film experience was louder than Dunkirk itself had been.

If you’re interested in the technical reasons given for the sound choices in Nolan’s films, see either or both of these two rather short videos:

[NOTE: I also saw the Nolan film Interstellar, but I didn’t review it here. Nevertheless, I distinctly recall being frustrated at not being able to understand quite a bit of the dialogue.]

The post That Christopher Nolan sound appeared first on The New Neo.

I haven’t been able to find a good replacement for the jacket, so I figured I’d just have a new zipper put in, because it’s so badly broken it can’t be fixed. I took it to the local place I’ve used for years for alterations, and they said it would cost eighty-two dollars to replace the zipper.

Eighty-two dollars.

That’s considerably more than the jacket originally cost. I could replace the entire jacket for much less than that, if I only could find one a lot like it. I’ve looked and looked but so far no dice.

So I set about to find someone else to do the alteration, and discovered that such people are hard to find. It’s like shoemakers. I guess repairing clothing is outdated, although it seems to me that there’s still a need. But the craftspeople just aren’t there any more. I called a host of them and for the most part their phone numbers no longer work.

I did manage to find one person who still does that sort of thing, but she’s off for the summer, and she added that she’s already booked up in September and much of October. She charges forty dollars for a zipper replacement. But again, the entire jacket originally cost something like that, and it’s not even that old.

For that matter, why do zippers break so often these days? Do they not make them like they used to?

And don’t tell me to do the zipper replacement myself. I haven’t a clue how, although I can sew. They taught us in grade school, and it was pretty intensive. I know how to do all sorts of fancy stitches, but not how to replace a large zipper in a jacket. I actually tried to do something similar with a sweatshirt, but gave up.

My guess is that schools don’t teach kids how to sew anymore, either.

I’m in a grousing mood.

The post Whither alterations? appeared first on The New Neo.

When I was about to start writing, the blog went down. Nor was it the usual “too many requests” problem. This time the glitch was at the level of the host’s server, and it affected quite a few sites. I don’t know how many, but when I phoned the server the agent told me that a whole tranche of their hosted sites were down, and that it would probably take “a few hours” to fix the issue. It seems to have taken close to three hours.

This sort of thing is frustrating. But it happens now and then with all hosts, as far as I can tell. A while back I looked into changing hosts, and there seemed to be many problems reported for all of them. So I’ve stuck with mine, for better or for worse.

Apologies to everyone who was trying to access the site this afternoon. But at least it wasn’t that something was wrong with this particular blog.

Meanwhile, I used part of the down time to work on a document in Word, and discovered that a recent update there had generated a bunch of automatic things that I don’t want. For instance, there were constant AI prompts trying to guess what I wanted to write next. I do not want that sort of “help.” But to figure out how to turn it off was not the easiest thing, although I finally accomplished it.

Technical stuff; gotta love it.

The post I’m baaaack appeared first on The New Neo.