Upcoming political / cultural baby names, based on phonetic trends

For a little comic relief and black humor during the pandemic, and to discharge my stir-crazy mind, I got to thinking about what popular baby names there will soon be, based on the existing phonetic trends.

Fashion in baby names has nothing to do with semantics, or the meaning behind a name. Most names don't already mean anything. Rather, they rise and fall according to their phonotactic properties -- the rules governing what sounds can be combined in what ways. People may tell rationalizing stories after the fact about their choice, like "my uncle had that name" or "I love that character from my favorite book". But these were already pre-screened for fitting into the existing trends for how they sound, and only within those rigid guidelines did they choose one with this meaning or that significance. (See Lieberson's A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashion, and Culture Change.)

For example, if current sound trends say that a boy's name must be two syllables, and you have ancestors whose surnames were Lloyd and Morgan, then only Morgan could be adapted to the current sound trends. You will rationalize about the meaning of family traditions, but the first choice you made was conforming to the sound patterns du jour. If none of your ancestors' surnames fit into today's sound trends, you will ignore them all (so much for that story about the importance of family roots), and find something else that's traditional in meaning yet still -- and most important of all -- obeying current sound trends.

One of the most rigid rules recently is for male names, and some female names, to have two syllables, stress on the first syllable, and second syllable ending with "n" or, somewhat less commonly, "r". Devin, Bryson, Grayden, Archer, Taylor, etc. And the vowel in the stressed syllable is mainly restricted to front vowels rather than back vowels. Back-high vowels are especially avoided. (See here for a diagram of vowel space.) In simple terms, "i" "e" and "a" sounds are fine, but "o" and "u" sounds are not, and "uh" is just barely tolerated (Hunter).

The other major tendency is for names to rhyme with each other, as parents try to put their own little variation on the existing theme. It's a form of status-striving, trying to sound unique yet recognizable to other strivers, unlike the conformist masses. But there are only so many variations on a theme, so they all end up sounding conformist anyway. E.g., Aiden, Jayden, Brayden, Cayden, Hayden, Grayden, etc.

The inspiration for this exercise came from listening to a recent episode of the Red Scare podcast, where one of the ladies said that if she had a kid, she wanted to name him "Honor," and gave a semantic rationalization -- it's trad, it's important to be honorable. In reality, it's a rhyming variation on Connor -- a name already highly popular among the elite class, but without any popular rhyming variations yet. (Donner sounds right, but would get your kid teased for being named after a reindeer.) These names adhere to the current rules of two syllables, stress on the first, second ends with "n" or "r," and stressed vowel is a front one ("ah").

Below are lists of some names that adhere to current sound trends, but that also have meaning for those whose minds are molded by today's political and cultural atmosphere (the usual place to search for names, outside of your own family roots). Some are for the Left, some for the Right, and some for overall lifestyle and persona-construction trends. I put existing names that rhyme in parentheses for comparison. Almost all conform to the rules detailed above, plus a girl's name inspired by the popular stress pattern of "DA-da-DA-da", where both stressed vowels are front ones.

Finally, there's a list of "almost, but not quite" names that could not catch on because their stressed vowel is a back one. They still have two syllables, stress on the first, second ending in "n" or "r," but that stressed vowel makes all the difference in the end. A few names could work phonotactically, but would be avoided because they sound like other names that have been downtrending for a long time. (E.g., if a new girl's name rhymed with Karen or Linda, it could not catch on because others would interpret it as a rhyming variation on an ancient, downtrending name.)

Lighten up for a bit, and enjoy.

* * *

The Left

Larper (Harper)

Recker

Planner (Tanner)

Warren, Warron, Warynn (NB: "wahr" fits better than "wor")

Byden (Bryden)

Berner

Strasser

Raddie (nickname for Radisson, from Madison / Maddie)

Brooklynn (already done)



The Right

Darwin (secular right only)

Bannon

Fasher (Asher)

Nigger (a boy named Sue, a redneck named Nigger)



Lifestyle / Persona

Bacon (Aiken; allows Macon Bacon)

Grynder

Jennder (Ender)

Hater (close to Hayden)

Texter (Dexter)

Fiver

Striver

Patron, Patrynn

Annarexis / Rexi (Annabella, Alexis / Lexi)

Rexi! How many times have I told you not to spoil your appetite!



Almost, but not quite

Groyper

Zoomer, Doomer, Coomer

Uber

Truther

Loser

Poser

Joker, Broker, Woker, Bespoker

Tucker

Trumper

Buster, Bustin (downtrending: Buster, Justin, Dustin)

Trad, Traddison / Traddie (Tr___ is downtrending for girls, e.g. Tracy, Trixie, Trina; Tr___ is trending for boys, e.g. Tripp, Trent, Trace, but Trad rhymes with only downtrending names, e.g. Brad, Chad, Tad, Thad)

Closed borders allowed people to live normal lives, free of pandemic threats; Return to open-borders Gilded Age means return of life-disruption

Just because these extreme levels of social distancing, shutdowns, and lockdowns are necessary to mitigate the damage done by a pandemic disease, does not mean that we should consider them in any way normal. What kind of fucked up world do we live in where that's something the entire country has to do for so long?

But we will come to consider it normal -- if we have adapted to utterly pointless responses to foreign threats, like the draconian TSA screening in the wake of Arabian jihadism, then we will surely adapt to responses that actually do reduce harm to us from foreign threats such as pandemic diseases.

That's why the macro picture -- that pandemics are caused by global integration, and that they will only go away with de-globalization -- is so important to keep alive in the public consciousness. The natural tendency otherwise will be to simply go along with this stuff like there's nothing less disruptive to our lives that can be done to protect us. But there is -- closing the damn border. That doesn't disturb our lives at all, only the profit streams of those elites who depend on globalized supply chains, cheap foreign labor, and military expansion.

When we enjoyed a closed border from roughly 1920 to 1980, nobody had to worry about any of these lockdowns, social distancing, canceling of all meetings, and so on and so forth. This is not a case of younger generations finally being subjected to the hardships that their grandparents had to suffer through in their own time.

Bullshit -- my grandparents were born in 1914 and various years of the 1920s. They didn't have to live through a national or regional lockdown due to pandemic disease. My mother's father was a small child during the Spanish Flu pandemic, which did claim a very young family member of his. Other than that single case, though, no they did not have to live through a dystopia like ours -- they lived through the earthly paradise of the Great Compression and New Deal era.

We'd have to go back to the middle of the 19th century, during the Gilded Age, to find ancestors for whom it was a given that their lives would be periodically disrupted and locked down by threats of epidemic and pandemic disease. Especially if yours were Ellis Islanders: they could still have been back in Europe, which was ravaged by one wave after another of cholera outbreaks during the Gilded Age.

But our ancestors who lived most of their lives from 1920 to 1980? No way -- they had it made in the shade. Naturally that did not come easy, or for free -- they had to band together and threaten or actually exert collective leverage against the elites, who backed down and kept the borders closed in the interest of national peace.

That still involved individuals sacrificing for the greater good -- but unlike us, they weren't making a massive sacrifice like giving up their normal lives, and the magnitude of their benefit was not just "mitigating pandemic disease". Wow, what a high bar for collective accomplishment -- mere survival! Instead, they sacrificed their puny, worthless individual ambition in order to enjoy the prosperity, egalitarian distribution of wealth, purity from nasty diseases, societal harmony, and achievement of one scientific and cultural milestone after another.

How did we ever fall from such heights? Because of the return of individualist ambition and status-striving, which poisons our attempts at collective action. Specifically, those generations who were born into that socially accommodating environment took its benefits for granted. Prosperity, egalitarianism, public health, amazing achievements -- those things simply happen all by themselves, and no care needs to be taken by any of us to ensure that they continue. And you can understand them -- without forgiving them -- since they knew of no other such environment, like any part of the 1830 to 1920 period of misery, dystopia, and decadence.

Once the Silents and Boomers took over the demographic pyramid, and with it the elite levers of power in all domains of society, it was game over for prosperity, egalitarianism, health, and accomplishment. Seeing no harm in the unfettered pursuit of individual ambition (the Me Generation phenomenon of the 1970s), they upended the New Deal norms and ushered in the neoliberal shithole society that we are still descending further down into.

And no, Gen X-ers, Millennials, and Gen Z-ers are not going to make things better. Going back to the Gilded Age comparison, the generation who started turning society around circa the 1920s was born circa the 1880s. We are currently in the 1850s stage of the cycle, meaning our society's saviors won't even be born for another 30 years. And of course we'll have to wait further until they've grown up into full adults in order to see major changes made to society.

In the meantime, it is crucial for us to preserve the knowledge, for our future saviors, of what has gone right vs. wrong at the macro level over many centuries worth of historical cycles. That way they won't have to figure it all out for themselves. The knowledge per se won't change anything -- we already have it with us now, and have had for some time, yet look at how much lower we keep descending since 1980. But once the social conditions are ripe for creating a generation of saviors, it'll all catch on like wildfire if we have been keeping the embers alive in the meantime.

Social healing anthems come from manic pixie dream girls

The role of the manic pixie dream girl is to coax socially wary men out of their refractory-phase shells, in order to get both sexes re-acquainted with each other during the warm-up phase of the excitement cycle.

It's a form of social integration: undoing the social isolation of everyone huddling under a pile of blankets during their emo vulnerable phase, and getting them to join a social whole -- whether it's the two sexes interacting in ordinary public places, a dance club, or actually dating and mating.

The MPDG role is a kind of social healer, nursing others out of their state of social isolation, which heals the collective back into an integrated functioning whole. I don't mean "social healing" in any other sense (social justice, etc.).

We've already seen that these roles are overwhelmingly played by women who were born during the manic phase of the 15-year excitement cycle. They imprinted on an atmosphere of carefree invincibility regarding social relations, and are the most unflappable in that domain of life -- and so, the most capable of encouraging others that there's nothing to be afraid of about social integration.

In their movie roles, the specific kind of social integration they encourage is forming a couple between the male protagonist and a love interest (perhaps the MPDG herself). But there are other kinds of social integration that people who are just coming out of a refractory phase might be wary about pursuing, and may be tempted to continue wallowing in isolation.

An earlier post looked at resilience anthems, which appear during the warm-up phase as people start to come out of their emo cocoons. Only two of those songs are by women, and they're distinct from the male songs in having a more personal, intimate, direct, one-on-one address, as though the singer were a therapist or nurse to the listener. The kind of social integration here is all-purpose -- to get over self-doubt and self-pity, in order to form fulfilling relationships in general.

Both of these songs are performed by manic-phase births -- all three members of Wilson Phillips ("Hold On") are late '60s births, and Avril Lavigne ("Keep Holding On") is an early '80s birth. As a bonus, on the same album as "Hold On," Wendy Wilson was given a song ("Impulsive") in which she exhibits spontaneous, free-spirited traits that cement her in the MPDG role during the early '90s warm-up phase.

But the new genre I want to showcase in this post is the anthem that is a certain kind of therapeutic, self-empowerment, "you are not alone," "things will get better" type. It comes in the form of a direct, intimate, one-on-one address, like a therapist or nurse again. It's empathetic toward the listener's depression, doubt, etc., portraying it as a kind of social isolation. After trusting in the encouragement of the singer-nurse, the listener will feel better -- not in some generic sense, but specifically by being accepted by a larger group, by fitting in. It's encouraging social integration over isolation. The listener initially doubts that this is possible because of their gloomy view about their own individual quirks and traits -- but the singer-nurse assures them that being who they are is not going to make them ostracized, but will make them welcomed by the group.

The four examples are "True Colors" (1986) by Cyndi Lauper, "Hero" (1993) by Mariah Carey, "Beautiful" (2002) by Christina Aguilera, and "Firework" (2010) by Katy Perry. Lest I be accused of cherry-picking, I got them from Wikipedia's list of gay anthems. But they are universal in appeal -- they don't make any reference to the listener as marginalized, outcast, misfit, freak, weirdo, etc. All sorts of people may feel socially isolated, not just the tiny minority who are actively marginalized (or marginalize themselves).









Only one of these comes from a warm-up phase ("Hero"), one from a manic phase ("Firework"), and two from vulnerable phases ("True Colors" and "Beautiful"). So they are not linked by the phase they appear in, nor therefore what particular function they play within the excitement cycle. The tone is different according to their phase, with the vulnerable-phase ones sounding much more emo, and the manic-phase one sounding the most upbeat and carefree. But they do share the common theme described above.

All four of these songs were performed by manic-phase births: Lauper was born in the early '50s, Carey in the late '60s,* and both Aguilera and Perry in the early '80s. No matter what phase they found themselves in, they carried an imprint stemming from their birth (whose phase repeated when they were 15 and hitting their social stride as adolescents). They were meant to play a social healing role, whatever atmosphere they found themselves in at the time.

Since only one song is from a warm-up phase, it's not accurate to refer to these songs as manic pixie dream girl songs, but the performers do possess the free-spirited and spontaneous traits that are associated with the role. It may be hard to remember, but Mariah Carey was a different persona back in the '90s (see the video for "Dreamlover," during a warm-up phase, where she couldn't look like more of a MPDG). And Katy Perry was still fairly MPDG: compare the video for "Simple" (2005) with the video for "Firework," and see how similar her expressions are, looking directly into the camera with a sympathetic and encouraging look, reaching out her hand for reassurance, etc. Not a sex-bomb persona.

Finally, I'll reiterate that these are universal in their appeal, rather than "let you freak flag fly" anthems, which are a separate sub-genre on the gay anthem list, and are more apropos for deviants. I include "Brave" by Sara Bareilles in that category, since it's specifically about an outcast, someone getting bullied who ought to stand up to their bullies. Those don't show a bias toward performers born in any phase: Pink and Bareilles are warm-up phase births (late '70s), Kelly Clarkson ("People Like Us") is a manic-phase birth (early '80s), and Lady Gaga and Kesha are vulnerable-phase births (late '80s).

I looked for examples of social healing anthems before the 1980s but couldn't find any. They appear to reflect the neoliberal era's alienation and social isolation, and the need it causes for reassurance that they'll belong to a healthy group at some point. The hyper-competitive norm of the status-striving era also means that people are more likely to cut others loose, and to focus more on one's own needs than on including others in the group. The songs above serve to ameliorate the sense of hopelessness and isolation.

"Lean on Me" from 1972 is not an example, since it's about solidarity among equals within a community, rather than a relationship between nurse / therapist and patient. Its ethos belongs to the New Deal era, before neoliberalism. But for what it's worth, Bill Withers is also a manic-phase birth (late '30s).

* Wikipedia says Mariah Carey was born in either '69 or '70, with claims made in the media on both sides. But in a discrepancy over the year a woman says she was born in, always go with the earlier one. Especially if it straddles a decade boundary, and might make her think she's a full decade younger by being born "in the '70s" rather than "in the '60s".

All of Mariah Carey's personality traits and facial expressions, from her heyday during the '90s, resemble those of manic-phase births -- carefree, wholesome, and free-spirited, not an instigating provocative wild child (warm-up phase births), and not grave, tragic, or emo (vulnerable phase births).

After nursing others to health during warm-up phase, manic pixie dream girls pursue their own needs during manic phase of excitement cycle

So far we've been looking at the role that manic pixie dream girls play within the context of the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle -- coaxing wary guys out of their shells, so that the sexes can get reacquainted with each other, after 5 long years of refractory-phase hyper-sensitivity.

What happens to these girls once that role has been fulfilled, though, and the cycle enters the manic phase where everyone feels invincible and carefree? There's no longer a need for an earthly guardian angel to lift a guy up out of a deep psychological hole.

Roles are adaptive within a phase, and do not stay constant over time. New environment, new roles. Still, some may be better suited to a particular role than others are, based on their birth and development.

Once the wary people have been rescued from their emo funk by the manic pixie dream girls, during the warm-up phase, the MPDGs are then free to pursue their own social and emotional needs and fulfillment during the manic phase. They've been caring for others for the past 5 years -- it's time for a little vacation, a little break, a little "me time".

They were glad to care for others in the previous phase, and don't resent that at all. But now that that work has been done, it's time to play. They are not abdicating all duties and responsibilities, they're simply going on vacation. And it's not in a hedonistic degenerate way -- they just want to shake off their role of nurse and get footloose and fancy-free for awhile, in a wholesome way. As MPDGs, they were validating others -- now it's their time for receiving validation from others.

That's what was behind the backlash against the MPDG role during the early 2010s, after its heyday during the late 2000s: everyone understood that the MPDGs' function had been successfully accomplished, and now it was time for them -- and everyone else -- to move on to new roles during the manic phase. They were going to have more of a social life of their own, fulfill their own emotional needs, have others validate them rather than vice versa, and have some wholesome fun on their little vacation.

This change to the MPDG role shows up in a new focus on social independence during the manic phase movies with characters who, in the previous warm-up phase, may have been straightforward MPDGs. The girl in Ruby Sparks (2012) gets a life of her own, separate from her author-creator. The operating system in Her (2013) socializes with other OS's and leaves the human social ecosystem entirely. And the mermaid from Splash (1984) ends up leaving the human ecosystem of her love interest, taking him back to her own world under the sea.

This change was foreshadowed already at the tail-end of the MPDG heyday, in 500 Days of Summer (2009), where half the movie explores the MPDG leading a fulfilling married life of her own with another man, after having nursed the male protagonist out of his stagnant depression. It's not that manic pixies are fickle gypsies -- but that roles change along with the phases of the excitement cycle, and some other type of person may need her attention in a different phase (or she may need attention herself).

A more concise, impressionistic display of the changing of roles is this ad for Magnum ice cream with former MPDG Rachel Bilson from 2011 (infectious enough that I still remember it, despite watching minimal TV during my adult life). No longer nursing others through emotional rehab, she's now free to pursue a wholesome carefree treat of her own, on her own:



But the most intense signal of the changing roles is the "it's time for a little me-time" anthem that explodes during the manic phase of the cycle. These are not hedonistic, about cutting all social ties and responsibilities, egocentric, etc. They clearly place the desire for a little vacation and validation for themselves within the context of having already fulfilled their duties to others and behaved responsibly. It's simply time to take a break, catch their breath, and replenish their own emotional stores after having given to others, by having some carefree me-time fun. They will get back to their responsibilities to others, just after a brief rejuvenating vacation.

These anthems were performed by women who were born during a manic phase, just like the MPDGs were (early '50s, late '60s, early '80s). Also like the MPDGs, they socially imprinted on the manic phase environment when they were hitting their adolescent stride at age 15. And in one case, Avril Lavigne, she'd already played the MPDG role during the previous warm-up phase (the late 2000s, in "Keep Holding On" and "Girlfriend").

It's too bad that Cyndi Lauper and Shania Twain didn't have big hits from the late '70s and early '90s, when they would've been naturals in the MPDG role, to show the evolution across phases like Avril did. I assume that they at least resonated with the MPDG role during the warm-up phase, like other manic-phase births do in such an environment. By the time the manic phase rolls around, they certainly show signs of having been through a MPDG role recently -- I've taken care of others, now it's time for a validating vacation of my own.

They don't treat the generic topic of "me-time," though: it's a specifically feminine form of needing to unwind and receive some emotional validation from others. And that, too, is after having fulfilled a specifically feminine role -- nurturing others. That's why these fall into the broader "girl power" trend that characterizes the manic phase of the cycle. (There are different forms of girl power from women who were born during different phases, but that's a matter for a separate post.)

I searched the late '60s manic phase for examples, but came up empty-handed. The "girl power" songs from back then were more about social / political change, as the sudden eruption of the women's lib movement overshadowed the more mundane changing of phases in the excitement cycle. Without such a momentous one-time social revolution under way, I assume there would've been one of these anthems back then as well. Alternatively, in the pre-neoliberal era, it might have been unnatural to make songs that, in however qualified of a way, glorified me-time as opposed to couples-time, family-time, community-time, or country-time.

In any case, these anthems all made the year-end Billboard Hot 100 charts, and are some of the most iconic of the manic-phase zeitgeist.

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper (1983)



"Man! I Feel Like a Woman" by Shania Twain (1997)



"What the Hell" by Avril Lavigne (2011)

Lars and the Real Girl, a transition between robo-gf and manic pixie dream girl trends of the excitement cycle

On a whim last night I watched this critically acclaimed box-office disappointment, and it resonated so well with some earlier posts here on the topic of manic pixie dream girls and their place in the 15-year cultural excitement cycle.

First, recall that during the vulnerable refractory phase of the cycle, there's a retreat into the fantasy of obtaining a made-to-order robo-gf -- one who won't require all that painful social stimulation in order to court and woo.

Then, recall that during the restless warm-up phase that follows, the manic pixie dream girl archetype appears out of nowhere, as a kind of guardian angel to coax the male protagonist out of his vulnerable-phase cocoon, lifting him out of the emo funk that he'd been mired in throughout the previous phase.

Lars and the Real Girl came out in 2007, during a restless warm-up phase that should not have had the robo-gf and should have had the manic pixie dream girl. Instead of featuring solely one of those two types, the movie shows both, but in a way that is consonant with the warm-up phase -- leaving the emotional crutch robo-gf behind, and welcoming the charms of the manic pixie dream girl, as the protagonist works his way out of a deep dreary depression.

Even when the robo-gf is the focus of the plot early on, the protagonist is never depicted as enjoying a fulfilling retreat into fantasy (unlike The Stepford Wives, Weird Science, and the like). His attachment to his robo-gf is clearly shown as forced on his part, plainly an emotional crutch, and is treated as pathological by the other characters, who still want to help him through this awkward stage. This is the only way the robo-gf archetype can exist during the warm-up phase when people are itching to leave behind their emo-phase cocoons.

The manic pixie dream girl, for her part, doesn't get as much screen time as in other movies during the most recent peak of the type (the late 2000s). But it's clear what role she plays vis-a-vis the protagonist, does not exist so much for her own character arc across the narrative, and has the usual eccentricities in personality and appearance that are associated with the type.

A post on the birth phases of manic pixie dream girls showed that they overwhelmingly were born during a manic phase of the cycle. They imprinted on a social-cultural atmosphere of invincibility and carefree social relations during their introduction to the world -- and then again during their adolescence (around age 15), when they're hitting their stride socially. And sure enough, the actress playing the manic pixie dream girl in this movie was born in 1984, during the early '80s manic phase. It rarely fails!

Strangely, she is left off of lists of manic pixie dream girls. I'd been looking over them and watching as many as I could lately, to get a better feel for this character type, now that she'll be coming back during the early 2020s warm-up phase. But this movie had totally eluded my radar until mindlessly scrolling Amazon Prime.

She must have been left off because the type of people who write those lists are obsessed with individual personas, both because they're spergy nerds who don't understand social relations, and because they're status-striving types who see things as contests among individuals rather than a holistic superorganic social ecosystem. (The movie does a great job of portraying this aspect of real communities like small-town Wisconsin.)

What makes a character a manic pixie dream girl is not her individual traits that could be listed on a trading card, or an online dating app profile -- it is her relationship to the protagonist, how their social interactions drive the plot of him coming out of his emo funk. She is his earthly guardian angel, not just some isolated free spirit who wears barettes in her hair and is generally in an upbeat mood.

Another reason may be the total lack of irony or self-awareness in the movie's tone. If every other example of the character was played in a movie that was ironic or self-aware in tone, then how could this one be a true example of the type? Because tone has nothing to do with the relationship between the characters. Again, cultural critics are just doing superficial analysis, ignoring social relations and roles, and emphasizing stylistic choices like the degree of irony struck in the tone.

A final reason why it's ignored in discussions of the character type or overall genre, is that the characters are not metropolitan professionals. In the striver critic's mind, who else but yuppies and current private school kids could ever be going through a funk and need to be coaxed out of their cocoons to fulfill some higher purpose that requires social integration? Certainly not office drones in flyover country small towns.

All these exceptions recommend the movie over most of the more well known examples of the genre. The focus on the holistic social ecosystem, the sincere tone, and the humanistic portrayal of ordinary people from unglamorous walks of life -- really makes it feel like a throwback to before the current status-striving / neoliberal era. Unfortunately that meant it couldn't succeed much with audiences, but it's definitely worth watching.

Dancers show that corporeal women are ass women, not boob women

We return to an ongoing investigation that has shown that corporeal people are ass men / women, while cerebral people are boob men / women. Where else can we look for evidence? Dancing -- there are few activities more corporeal than that (there's basically no cerebral component to it).

After playing "Red Light Special" for the previous post, and knowing that I'm a fan of dancing, YouTube's algorithm suggested I watch this choreography video set to the song. "Choreography" may be stretching it -- stripperography is closer to what it is (no stripping or nudity, but NSFW).

Videos like these provide a large sample size of people that clarifies statistical impressions that might otherwise elude someone. There are dozens of women in the room, whether actually dancing or watching nearby. And there are dozens of other videos on that channel and others like it, which all show a pretty similar profile of dancers.

Notice that hardly any of them are large-breasted, and that if anything they tend to have more shapely ass-hips-and-thighs.

Aside from their static shape, which parts of their body do they emphasize while actively dancing? Far more from the waist down -- and when the upper body is involved, it's the arms and hands, not the chest region. They play up their facial expressions, whip their hair around, touch their hair or head or face with their hands -- literally the only part of their body that they avoid emphasizing is their tits.

Now, this is exotic dancing, and there are plenty of moves that are highly sexual. So it's not that they avoid drawing attention to their chests because it's too refined to indulge in such vulgar displays. If they all had big boobs, they would absolutely be heaving them around, bouncing them up and down, and touching or slapping them -- since that's what they're doing with their ass, hips, and thighs.

This tendency is true even for the women who are about equal above and below the waist. It's not just a matter of emphasizing whichever is larger.

It is already well understood that ballet dancers tend to have small-to-modest breasts, but the case of exotic dancers helps to rule out all of the existing theories about ballet dancers. It's already known that small-chested women tend to be the ones who join ballet to begin with -- not that ballet transforms large chests into small ones.

But the answers offered all suppose that it's about ballet's high degree of athleticism (at least in modern times), which would weed out women whose breasts were large enough to get in the way of the gymnastic-like movements. Or something -- it's not clear what the arguments are for large boobs being an impediment per se to athletics -- there are plenty of guys with flabby bellies and man-boobs who are on football, baseball, and hockey teams, not to mention bowling and golf.

My hunch is rather that large-breasted women are not as athletically gifted as a matter of their inner kinesthetic sense. I predict that they could remove their large breasts, and small-breasted women could get large implants, and their success in athletic training and performance would mirror other women who were similar to their original chest size. Big boobs and lower athleticism is correlation, not causation (they're both correlated to kinesthetic sense). That applies to all athletics -- dancing, gymnastics, cheerleading, soccer, softball, volleyball, whatever.

In any case, the exotic dancers show that athleticism is irrelevant. The kinds of dances you see in that video do not require minimal body fat, intense activity, explosive movements, or gymnastic-level skills. If it were the high degree of athleticism that kept large-breasted women out of ballet, then why are they also kept out of exotic dancing?

It clearly is not the physical requirements of the activity. The weeding-out process is at the level of "are you corporeal or cerebral?" or "do you have a high or low kinesthetic sense?" If big boobs don't make the cut at this basic level, it means that "ass woman or boob woman?" is related to the fundamental trait of "corporeal or cerebral," not just certain athletic activities that a corporeal person might pursue.

You could also ask them how clumsy they are. I'll bet boob women are clumsier on average than ass women, even at tasks that do not involve either region -- catching a ball, for instance. Related: rhythmic skill (one aspect of kinesthetic sense). I'll bet ass women have better rhythm, even at tasks that don't involve dancing -- tapping back or humming back a rhythm that you've just heard.

Finally, there's the matter of the target male audience for dancing -- are they ass men or boob men? I'm guessing ass men, judging again from the moves of the dancers that overwhelmingly emphasize the fertility region rather than the mammary region. (This dance fan is definitely an ass man.)

If boob men wanted to see the chest emphasized, they wouldn't watch a dance routine, but something simple like women jumping on trampolines (a la The Man Show), jogging, jumping rope, or whatever. Or an upper-body striptease. But nothing that would fall under "dancing".

Gay Peter Pan-isms: Aversion to baby-making / quiet storm songs

Back in 2012-'13 I solved the mystery of describing gay syndrome -- that is, the broad correlated pattern of traits that distinguish male homosexuals from heterosexuals of either sex. The standard frameworks were both retarded -- that gays are a kind of hyper-masculine male, or a kind of effeminate male.

The simplest framework is that they are a kind of pre-pubescent male child, one whose mindset is signaled by the view that "Ewww, girls are yucky!" That's the stage that their broad psychological, and to some extent physical, development is mostly stuck in.

It is only to the extent that adult females are neotenous (resembling children), that gays appear effeminate -- they both resemble children, gays far more strongly. But post-pubescent females have all sorts of mature traits that mark them apart from children, and from gays -- namely, anything related to motherhood (the maternal instinct, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, nurturing children, and so on).

The framework of "hyper-masculine gays" never had much support -- relative to heterosexual men, gays are smaller, weaker, more easily frightened, cry more, and are totally uninterested in girls, to name the most obvious non-masculine traits. Those are all explained by resembling a child of the age that still feels that "girls are yucky".

The only piece of evidence was that gays are highly promiscuous, which is more male than female-typical. I showed how that is easily explained in the "gays as pre-pubescent boys" framework -- what would happen if you gave an adult hormonal sex drive to a boy who was still mostly pre-social. He wouldn't feel strongly attached to anyone outside his household, and could easily cycle through friends and acquaintances. Boys and girls do this normally with friends at that age; gays differ only in having a sex drive attached to it, so they cycle through "friends and acquaintances who they get it on with," rather than just friends.

It's only during adolescence that the social sense fully develops, and people become more bonded to their peers and behave in a give-and-take way to maintain durable social circles. And since gays are still in the "girls are yucky" stage, their sex drive targets males by default, who boys are not averse to interacting with socially.

Long-time readers remember this; newer readers can search the blog for "gay" and "Peter Pan," "pedomorphy," or "neoteny". The evidence is extensive. Nobody had proposed the theory before, either professionals or laymen, and either from the left, right, or center.

* * *

Having reviewed the overall framework for the first time in awhile, let's add another example to the pattern. I wasn't even planning on looking for it, it just showed up when I was looking at different music genres.

There is a very well established genre called the gay anthem. It's not just disco-dancing stuff, as there are weepy torch songs in there too. There is major overlap between "hoe anthems" and gay anthems.

And yet there is a related kind of doing-it song that does not show up at all -- the baby-making song, or the broader genre of quiet storm song. To show how little overlap there is, Wikipedia's lists of gay anthems and quiet storm songs have around 200 songs apiece, and yet there's only 1 song that belongs to both -- "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. And that's more of a torch song than a getting-it-on, baby-making song. Only 1 out of over 200 in common? That is not a minor difference.

There are a few near misses, where the same artist and album are on each list, but different songs from the album show up on either list (gay anthem first, quiet storm song second):

1985 - Whitney Houston, "How Will I Know" vs. "Saving All My Love For You"

1994 - TLC, "Waterfalls" vs. "Red Light Special"

1998 - Brandy & Monica, "The Boy Is Mine" vs. "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" or "Angel of Mine"

The case of TLC is revealing since you'd think "Waterfalls" would be the more normie-friendly song, and that "Red Light Special" would be the one for the over-sexed group, but it's the other way around. In the YouTube comments to the video below, unlike for a hoe anthem like "Gimme More" by Britney Spears, there's no stampede of gays rushing in to identify with the song, and the girls all refer to baby-making rather than letting their inner hoe shine.



What distinguishes baby-making songs (mainly a sub-genre of quiet storm) from the seemingly similar hoe anthems, or torch songs, that make up much of the gay anthem genre? It's the juvenile vs. mature form of social interaction that is assumed. An immature person can feel attraction, infatuation, be sexually active with another person, split apart afterward, and feel lonesome after the parting of ways. But only socially mature people feel the romance and one-on-one intimacy that goes along with long-term monogamy, marriage, raising families, and so on.

Baby-making songs are not about risking pregnancy by sleeping with just any old guy -- it's the special, unique one who you're invested in, and who is invested in you, to the degree that you wouldn't mind eventually forming a family together. If it's just about fucking any random hot guy, that's a hoe anthem, not a baby-making song.

If gays are socially-psychologically like pre-pubescent boys, then of course they don't resonate with the tone of quiet storm songs, which assumes a couple that is adult, romantic, and pair-bonded. But hoe anthems and torch songs would certainly work for gays: in their pre-adolescent and mainly pre-social state, little boys (and girls) already cycle through friends and acquaintances "promiscuously," it's just that gays have an adult sex drive attached to this process, so that they are sexually promiscuous while cycling through them, and perhaps feeling all woe-is-me after the acquaintanceship inevitably breaks apart.

* * *

In typical libtard fashion, the push for gay marriage assumed that equality before the law required equality in nature -- "just like us," "same love," etc. But gays could not be more different from normal men in the relevant domains of life. If the crusaders wanted to allow them to get married, it should have been in terms of giving them the privilege despite being so different, as a form of tolerance. I don't support it, but that's the only way to do it if you do.

Instead we just got a bunch of risible propaganda making claims about how the world works, which normies already know is bogus. It politicized and weaponized social science, as part of a polarizing culture war, rather than a civil liberties approach (tolerance, admitting the vast differences in nature).

What if you got the social science wrong? Then is it OK to revoke the rights and privileges that you based on it? Libtards never stop to think about that. If scientific discoveries -- or basic common sense -- disprove your claims about nature, and those claims are the foundation for your rights argument, then your argument is incredibly fragile. A robust argument is made independently of whatever the state of nature is, a topic to which we'll return in future posts.

Strangers saying "Hi" again, as vulnerable phase of excitement cycle ends, and further changes in social weather conditions

About a month ago I posted a brief update on the transition out of the vulnerable phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, noting that there seemed to be a dead lull in public spaces around the turn of the year. Well, that has since passed, and we're back on track into the restless warm-up phase. Maybe people really just were going through one last chrysalis stage before emerging anew.

Teenage or 20-something cuties continue to brush against me in public places, although no more catcalling so far since the end of last year (I did say it's rare even when it's in the air). That was unlike the previous 5 years, when everyone was in a refractory phase.

Another update to the social weather report: I've noticed strangers saying "Hi" first, or at least responding with "Hi" when I initiate, at the public park that I sometimes go for a long stroll around. The rate has been pretty high, with only a few anti-social killjoys, and this has been true even when it's dark and you'd think they might be nervous talking to strangers. But nope: friendly neighborly behavior is back.

Was it ever gone? Absolutely: I wrote about it during the last time it was still somewhat in the air, in the summer of 2015. (I focused on the generational divides, but was still picking up on a change in the social weather conditions.) That's the same summer I pointed to in the other posts, as the last time I had been brushed against or cat-called by hormonal honies in public places where there's no expectation of a sexually charged atmosphere.

No matter what aspect of the social weather conditions you use, they all return the same picture -- the beginning of feeling over-sensitive to social stimuli had begun sometime in 2015. It did not vanish completely overnight, so I still noticed these social behaviors that we associate with the warm-up or manic phases, but they were not common enough as before, showing that the vulnerable phase was transitioning in. And I can't think of any such examples from 2016 through most of 2019 at all.

The example of strangers from the same neighborhood saying "Hi" shows that it's not just the return of sexually charged interactions between males and females. It generalizes to all forms of social stimuli, whether the other person is too old for you to be attracted to, whether they're the same sex, or whatever else.

To make a prediction, I think people will start chatting more with cashiers in the early 2020s. I've noticed a steady decline in my own willingness to chat with them over the past 5 years, despite being on friendly, talkative first-name terms with them back during the manic phase of the early 2010s (in a different city back then -- not that I've ghosted them since!). And I haven't seen many other people chatting it up with them either, not like I observed in the early 2010s anyway.

Looking further forward, I think the most reliable hallmark of the manic phase will hit, during the late 2020s, when people feel comfortable talking to strangers at length in public places, to the point where they become regular conversation partners. They'll be flying high, feeling invincible, nothing could go wrong.

The last time I took that social leap was in 2012, and made a regular realtalk buddy at the Starbucks I used to hang out at. A real eccentric conspiracy-minded Boomer, someone to blow off steam with, make observations about what was going on around us, and other typical barfly stuff.

I haven't even bothered "hanging out" in such places over the past 5 years -- I can see from outside that it's totally dead inside, where everyone is hunched over a screen of some kind, in total isolation from one another, like some spergy computer lab. There was already a heavy amount of that during the last manic phase, but there were enough exceptions to liven the place up.

On a final speculative note, maybe it's just me, but I've found myself singing out loud in public again for the first time in what seems like forever. Tonight I was in a good mood and "Listen Like Thieves" came on in the supermarket. A week or so ago, it was "What Makes You Beautiful" (one of the younger girls who works there got a kick out of that). Around that time, the thrift store was playing new wave b-sides and deep cuts all night (first time I remember getting to sing along to "Hot in the City" or "Feels Like Heaven" in public).

I've just lost that emo feeling that everyone had in public during the late 2010s -- it's not just how I myself felt, but my reaction to others. Even if I'd felt in the mood, knowing that everyone else was in an emo funk and therefore not receptive, would've kept me quiet.

When was the last time I felt so uninhibited in public? Definitely during the last manic phase, when it seemed like Trader Joe's had a new wave playlist running every night. Sometimes I stopped by just to sing along and get into the groove. As for a year? I don't know, 2014 or '15, at least at the degree of regularity that I find myself doing it now. The peak was 2013, as with so much else during that phase...

Any other suggestions for behaviors and changes to be on the look-out for, let us know in the comments.

Topless protests prove Me Too is dead, and that pol junkies are boob men / women, not ass men / women

After seeing topless protesters hijack Bernie's rally in Nevada, I can't help but fit that into the broader pattern detailed in an earlier post about how political junkies are boob men and women. The men fixate more on T than A, and the women are either busty or at least favor displaying their boobs rather than ass to an audience. The explanation is that political junkies are cerebral, which is correlated with being a boob man / woman, while corporeal people tend to be ass men / women.

That post drew on evidence from social media personas, but here we see the same pattern emerge in a different context (IRL protests).

In fact, these women protesting dairy farming are only one example of a larger tendency toward topless protesting, most notably the FEMEN group (they're Slavs, so they don't have either T or A, but always chose to display the top rather than bottom). Then there was the #FreeTheNipple thing. Both of those were part of the Slutwalk era during the last manic phase of the excitement cycle in the early 2010s, before the Me Too phase of the late 2010s.

Incidentally, the re-emergence of topless protests is another sign that the vulnerable phase of the cycle is over, and we're now in the restless warm-up phase. No way this could have happened during the height of Me Too, when women in a refractory phase felt hysterically vulnerable to unwanted sexual attention. Nor is anyone in 2020 going to call Bernie rape-y or molest-y for staying on stage with topless young women, rather than averting his eyes and making a bee-line for the exit like a good male feminist.

Earlier there was bra burning during second wave feminism. Streaking during the '70s was not political, and in any case cannot resolve the matter because the entire body was shown, not only one area or the other.

When only one region is shown, it's always about taking off their tops, not baring their buns. Nothing prevents them from taking off their underwear, or wearing a g-string or something, and twerking around on stage. Or only pulling down their pants enough to moon someone. The fact that mooning is already a widely established form of revealing private parts to diss someone, and yet is never done during these racy protests, shows just how inclined they are away from the back and toward the front.

Left-right love-hate pop-punk (spin on Miley's "7 Things" for leftie babes drawn to populist bros)

To continue the Valentine's Day theme, I'm struck by the mutual fascination between leftie babes and populist bros, and channeled it into a love-hate song about reconciliation and realignment, to lift our spirits in these overly polarized times.

These girls feel bored and restless and lonely just hanging out with the same incestuous clique of internet leftoids (or right-wingers, in the guys' case). Then there's the widely acknowledged pattern of girls (on all sides) finding left-wing guys not-so-appealing, and having to hate-fuck hot guys who are moderates or conservatives in the culture war.

It's not just hotness, though -- girls want a guy who's complex and puzzling, almost to the point of infuriation. They want to build dramatic tension by being tragically torn between liking his light side and hating his dark side. Why can't he just be one type, and make himself simple to figure out and react to?

That's why these restless, curious-minded girls are drawn not to generic conservatives, but those who frustrate their innocent worldview, committed to left goals on economics and foreign policy and right goals on society-and-culture.

I'm making the relationship an online one, where most of these fascinations take shape.

The love-hate tone calls for an endearingly bratty wild-child singer and audience -- those who were born, and later came of age, during the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle. Born in the early '90s, adolescents in the late 2000s (and matching the current shift into that phase, leaving the vulnerable phase of the late 2010s).

The tune is one I'm sure they'll remember, "7 Things" by Miley Cyrus, 2008. (In my lyrics, "MAGA" rhymes with "saga".)

* * *

I'll problematic-fave this:
"Strong border and single-payer"
Though the reasoning sounds devious
The father instinct's there

You chose Obama, then went MAGA
It's so illogical to me -- still I care

And now we're scrolling stale takes
We can't rekindle rebel flames
Until you've read my thread:
The problematic things about you

The problematic things about you
Bro brain, kink-shame, you're so mature
You talk sweet, you like slurs
You make me clap, you make me "yikes"
I don't know which replies to hide
Your frens, they're spergs
When you post like them, get no converts
I wanna simp for the king I know
The most problematic thing of all time that you do:
You make me fave you

It's awkward and it's silent
As we await election day
But what I need to see from you
Your support for Bernie's dream

And when you meme it, I'll retweet it
If you next it, I'll receipt it

Let's be clear
Oh I'm not logging off
You're solving problems this year

The problematic things about you
Bro brain, kink-shame, you're so mature
You talk sweet, you like slurs
You make me clap, you make me "yikes"
I don't know which replies to hide
Your frens, they're spergs
When you post like them, get no converts
I wanna simp for the king I know
The most problematic thing of all time that you do:
You make me fave you

Though sometimes I'm literally shaking
From the takes you share online
You still restore my faith in humanity, no lie

The faith-restoring things about you
Your stare, your size, your bold replies
When we chat, I fantasize
You make me clap, you make me "yikes"
Now neither one I'll have to hide
Left-right timeline
When we're realigned, 50-state landslide
I wanna simp for the king I know
The most faith-restoring thing of all time that you do:
You make me fave you

Blame Warren, not Tulsi, if Bernie doesn't soar in New Hampshire

Since Tulsi was not seriously contesting the Iowa caucus, leftoids could not blame her for getting a few percent of the vote that could otherwise have gone to Bernie. She has been campaigning in New Hampshire, though, so expect her to get several percent there. But because the NH race will be close, as in Iowa, this time the leftoids will target her if Bernie gets another statistical tie, which looks likely.

The left shut their mouths while Lyin' Liz Warren came back from a near flame-out at the end of 2018, when she broadcast her DNA results that proved she wasn't even remotely Native American. Indeed the left helped her come back -- she was about as good as Bernie, just not totally. She was a solid progressive, not a neoliberal, a populist firebrand, and of course a woman. They were on the same team, would pool delegates at the convention, and together destroy the Establishment.

Roughly half of Bernie's 2016 coalition -- the more yuppie demographics -- defected to Lyin' Liz, and they hardened their allegiance to her because they've had more than a year of zero punishment from the left for defecting. If anything, they've seen signs of encouragement from the left. They can still switch to Bernie, but it will take a lot more effort now that they're so strongly attached to Lyin' Liz, who they were only vaguely happy-clappy about at the end of 2018.

After sucking up 20% of the vote in Iowa, Lyin' Liz is set to suck up about 15% in NH -- far more than Tulsi will. Warren, not the DNC, cost Bernie a solid win in Iowa. If he essentially ties or even loses NH, that will also be due to Warren, not the DNC. Because the left opened the gate to this progtard Trojan Horse, they are ultimately the ones responsible for Bernie's failure to decisively win the early primaries and knock the Establishment off-balance.

Suppose that the DNC rules allowed Tulsi to get a few delegates with a 5% share of the vote (current rules say you need 15% in a district or statewide to be viable for getting delegates). Is there any wonder whether Tulsi would pool those delegates with Bernie at the convention? She endorsed him last time, resigned as the vice-chair of the DNC over its flagrant interventions to derail his campaign, and has come to his rescue several times during the primary -- most recently when Lyin' Liz stabbed Bernie in the back by lying that he told her a woman could not become president.

Would Lyin' Liz pool delegates with Bernie? Of course not -- she refused to endorse him last time, put no skin in the game to help Bernie's campaign, indeed entered the race precisely to split up his previous coalition, and has repeatedly stabbed him in the back with ridiculous lies (he said a woman couldn't be president, he receives dark money and I don't, etc.).

Anyone who complains about Bernie's lack of a blow-out victory in NH, like the one he enjoyed in 2016 (winning over 60%, with Hillary getting less than 40%), should have been single-mindedly focused on destroying Warren in total. Her history, record, funding, image, everything.

Instead, they whine about Tulsi, who might get 5% and who has helped Bernie so far. Would that 5% have turned out if Tulsi had not been campaigning? I doubt it. They're most sympathetic toward Bernie, so assuming they turned out, and there were no Tulsi, they would go to Bernie. But you can't assume turn-out -- we don't have mandatory voting, let alone in party primaries.

Tulsi draws more from Indies than from hardcore Democrat partisans, which makes them less eager to vote in primaries. And they're clearly turned off by the shift Bernie's campaign has made vs. 2016. He's more of a standard-issue woke progressive call-everything-fascism type this time, just one who's offering Medicare for All -- including everyone all over the world, a woke neoliberal poison pill which is designed to prevent it from receiving broad support.

I think the Tulsi voters supported Bernie in 2016, but would have mainly stayed home in apathy due to his more woke yuppie focus this time around, at least at the primary stage. They're plainly not very excited for him this time, and Tulsi is simply responding to that rather than causing that to begin with -- it was the prog left in general who changed Bernie's campaign, not Tulsi.

In that way, Tulsi votes are non-votes -- they're not for a major candidate, and are letting people know that the voter would otherwise have stayed home. But these lesser candidate votes allow for transparency, if the major candidates want them back. If they stay home, their motives are opaque. Was Bernie 2016 too woke, or not woke enough? If you stay home, no one can know which direction you lean in on that matter. But if you show up to vote Tulsi, you're letting them know which direction they'll have to change toward in order to get your vote.

That's how it works with third-party candidates in a general election. When I voted Nader in 2000, I had absolutely no intention to vote before I'd heard of his campaign. I did not vote for any other office that election. And I didn't vote again until 2016, when it again felt like a candidate was promising major change on the theme of globalization (voted Trump in the primary, when it mattered, and then the general).

Most Green Party voters in 2016 would not have shown up if the only choice were Clinton or Trump -- and they let the two major parties know in which direction to change if they wanted to get their vote in the future, rather than let their motives remain an opaque mystery.

Third parties do not cause voters to feel lukewarm about a major candidate, they are a reaction to an existing lukewarm sentiment. It is the major candidates' fault for not exciting them enough to turn out on election day. Turn-out can never be assumed, especially in a nation with far lower participation than other modern nations, and especially at the primary stage.

The hint from Iowa is that turnout in 2020 is set to be mostly flat vs. 2016 and far below 2008. Even less reason to expect or demand people to show up on primary day. Motivate them, or don't complain when they stay home.

Tulsi voters -- and Nader voters before them -- are doing the Democrats a favor. They're overcoming their inclination to just stay home, and at least signal their preference in case a major candidate wants to get them. Such voters' "involvement" does not affect the outcome, because their vote would not have gone to any major candidate without the minor candidate on the ballot -- they would have simply stayed home.

In casting a third-party vote, they remain just as uninvolved in the battle among the majors as if they'd stayed home. But at least they're helping the majors learn and improve by signaling what such voters need to show up on a certain side in the battle among the majors. Without that signal, the majors would have no clue and waste their time, money, and effort trying to figure out what to offer those who cast no vote at all.

This is all the more reason to have been savaging Warren and disciplining her supporters throughout 2019. Unlike Tulsi voters, they are hardcore Democrat partisans who are reliable primary voters, and already showed up to vote in the last Democrat primary (for Bernie). So the vast majority would still have shown up this time, if Warren were not in the race. And they would have mainly stuck by Bernie.

The left has gotten it completely backwards because they're too similar to Warren and her supporters -- professional-class progressives, regardless of how they "present" to the public on social media. The left must be kept out of any attempt to realign the Democrat party, or its successor, into a new era after the current neoliberal era.

MeToo moral panic officially dead, as theme of rape / trauma disappears, leaving only generic non-physical "sexism"

About a year ago, I noted that MeToo was winding down during the final year of the vulnerable emo phase of the excitement cycle. The refractory state that people are in during the vulnerable phase makes them hyper-sensitive to unwanted social contact, and primes them to resonate with the theme of unwanted attention or contact, or with victimization in general.

The hysterics were trying to MeToo Bernie at the very end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 -- not by accusing him directly of sexual assault, but by airing accusations against former staffers and aides of his, insinuating that the leader had a culture of sexual harassment and violence in his political operation. Then they went after Biden for being a handsy creeper who had a pattern of unwanted sexual touching toward female staffers.

Neither of those attacks stuck, which showed that the hysteria was dying down, but not over with -- after all, the mainstream press spent multiple news cycles stoking the theme of rape.

By now, as we enter the warm-up phase of the excitement cycle, the hysteria is over with altogether, and before long a full-on backlash will erupt. The latest round of attacks relating to the battle of the sexes was Lyin' Liz lying that Bernie said he didn't think a woman could be elected president. There is not even a tangential aspect of rape, physical harassment, touching, trauma, invasion of personal space, or any related part of the overall theme.

The lying press, including half or more of the left, have tried to smear Bernie indirectly by pointing to politically incorrect statements made by Joe Rogan, who has only said positive things about Bernie and Tulsi during this electoral season, and whose favorable comments the Bernie campaign put into a video clip. But they didn't involve the theme of rape or any physical harm by men against women.

If anything, Rogan's "problematic" statement was anti-rape in theme, as he said he didn't want men dressed as women to fight in the mixed martial arts ring against actual women. Anyone claiming that cross-dressing men should have the right to pummel a woman's skull in, against her desire (she would only want to fight other women), are clearly the women-haters and rape apologists.

But that doesn't matter, because identity politics is for elites only -- and culturally liberal elites have decided that tranny degeneracy, up to the point of allowing someone with male hormones and muscle to beat the living shit out of a woman, are to be sanctified by woke norms, and that the collective protection of women from violent men must be sacrificed if necessary.

In any case, neither Rogan himself nor his legions of listeners were accused of physical harassment or sexual violence. They were smeared with generic accusations of toxic masculinity, sexism, problematic beliefs about women, etc.

By this point in the excitement cycle, the feminazis have realized that the theme of rape does not resonate anymore with a morally panicked audience. So they have to fall back on all-purpose accusations that someone does not adhere to woke gender norms. OK, BFD then. They can impotently hector us all they want at this point, but it won't be an outright witch hunt that is feeding and being fed by a morally panicked mob.

This reflects the normalization of our energy levels -- they are no longer plunged into the refractory state, but are returning to baseline, albeit not rocketing off onto another spike just yet. We are only entering the warm-up phase now, not the manic phase, which will hit during the late 2020s. Not being hyper-sensitive to unwanted contact anymore, we aren't marks for appeals to protection from unwanted violation of physical privacy. If you don't want to be touched, reject the person or go somewhere else or whatever -- it's not going to overload your nervous system and be the end of your life.

In this new "back to baseline" state, we don't feel the need for a savior to swoop in and rescue us from all the would-be rapists out there. This will generalize into no longer feeling the need for saviors in general to deliver us from would-be victimizers -- and that will end the leftist bubble since roughly 2015, as well as the Trumpist bubble of the same time. But that's a topic for a separate post.

(In the meantime, see here for an analysis of these leftist "savior for the victims" bubbles occurring during the vulnerable phase of the cycle, and then evaporating after that phase is done with.)

Updates on transition out of vulnerable phase of 15-year cultural excitement cycle

Maybe it's just around here, but public spaces have been absolutely DEAD since sometime between Christmas and New Year's, or a solid month already. Regardless of which type of public space, typical demographic that uses it, time of day, weather, or anything else. I've never seen everywhere so deserted all at once and for weeks on end. And the handful of people who are there are making for a very low-energy atmosphere.

At first I thought this might mean the vulnerable emo phase is merely extending into the first calendar year of the next phase, the restless warm-up phase when people come out of their cocoons. Certainly the timing doesn't have to get right down to the changing of the calendar year. So maybe this is just a final bottoming out of the "leave me alone" attitude that has grown steadily since about 2015.

However, this seems like a qualitatively different state -- not just a higher quantitative degree of the kind of emo, withdrawn, refractory behavior of the previous 5 years. It's like people have ended the refractory phase, but in order to fully come back out into the open with a new pro-social attitude, they need to go into a brief chrysalis and then emerge after a metamorphosis. Over-sensitive juvenile emos, no more -- now, socially open adolescent or adult types.

This kind of social cocoon is not to fend off stimuli that might overload the nervous system of someone in a refractory state. It is to protect them while they undergo a metamorphosis, from an immature to mature form. Why can't they be disturbed, why do they require seemingly total isolation for at least weeks and perhaps months on end?

Maybe there's so much re-wiring of their mental and physical programming, that they simply can't function well in normal social situations, which would require a stable set of programming, not one in major flux. Plus, a torrent of social stimuli would interrupt that re-wiring process by making their minds and bodies pay attention to incoming external stimuli, instead of devoting all resources to the internal re-wiring process.

It's like closing a store to the public for days, weeks, or months while it's being re-modeled or re-developed. You don't merely allow fewer-than-usual customers inside -- if the plumbing, wiring, HVAC, etc., are being torn up and re-built, you can't have any customers at all putting demands on those systems. They'll have to come back in awhile, when all the changes have been made and the systems are back online in new-and-improved form.

Unfortunately I can't reflect on what happened the last time the cycle changed from vulnerable to warm-up phase. I was living in Barcelona for the first months of 2005, and I was not part of the usual social climate there, being an ex-pat who'd been there less than a year. I did, however, notice major changes by the summer of 2005, when I was back in America, compared to the early 2000s, and that shift only became more pronounced throughout the rest of the late 2000s.

So perhaps this chrysalis stage will last through the winter and/or spring, and be finally done away with when the warm weather returns with the mating season? We'll have to wait and see. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later.

I'm also not clear on whether this affects the mass-market pop culture that so closely reflects the changes in the excitement cycle. I'd have to look at the first months of 2005 for the Billboard charts or something -- not just the #1's (which Wikipedia does have), but the new entries into the Hot 100 (the #1's have generally been out for awhile by the time they hit the top). And Billboard doesn't have that info on their site.

I have noticed that the radio has remained heavily emo in tone -- almost more so than last year. That's true for stations that play more upbeat music, and from earlier decades -- I've never heard so much late '80s soft rock on the stations that usually play happy manic-phase music. Contempo stations are relying on the emo tunes of the past 5 years still, rather than trying to hype up the brand new stuff, whatever it is.

You'd think after the new year, they'd want to make a clean break. But they're doubling down on emo for the time being. If their audiences have entered a final chrysalis, it would only make sense for the radio stations serving them to do so as well.

The first clear test will be Dua Lipa's upcoming single "Physical," to be released on January 31. The restless warm-up phase is characterized by dance crazes, and a disco-oriented social-cultural atmosphere. There was proto-disco in the early '60s, original disco in the late '70s, neo-disco in the early '90s, neo-neo-disco during the late 2000s, and soon neo-neo-neo-disco in the early 2020s.

There were a couple initial moves in this direction late last year with "Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa and "Say So" by Doja Cat (currently climbing the Hot 100). But these aren't such a clear break with the mellow, dreamy, emo phase and its start-and-stop rhythms for dance music. We need to hear something like "Hung Up" by Madonna, which didn't come out until October of the first year of the warm-up phase. It could always come earlier this time around -- but you'll know it when you hear it. And so far, we haven't heard it.

Dua Lipa modeled the cover for her upcoming single on the cover of Madonna's 2005 album that "Hung Up" comes from, so let's hope there's musical similarity as well, and we can kick off the neo-neo-neo-disco era already.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls are corporeal ass women, not cerebral boob women

We'll soon see a return of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, now that we're into the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, since that is the phase during which they appear.

That post looked at their character traits, and a pair of follow-up posts (here and here) showed that these girls are overwhelmingly born during the manic phase of the excitement cycle. They imprinted on a social mood that was carefree and invincible -- just what she needs to take the initiative and coax a wary love interest out of his vulnerable-phase cocoon.

Having covered their personality type, we continue on to their physical type. Height plays no role, ranging from 5' shorties to the 5'8 tall-for-a-girl end, although no one in the model-tall range. Not surprising: guys do not care how tall a girl is, one way or another. Still noteworthy, though: "taking the initiative" here does not mean being a tall amazon aggressor.

They have hourglass waist-to-hip ratios, which is not too surprising since that's what guys prefer in general. But it is worth noting that they are not relatively slim-hipped women with higher testosterone -- that's not the source of their taking the initiative with the guy. They have a feminine, fertile shape, reinforcing their role more as nurturers -- coaxing the guy out of his shell to heal him of his emo sickness, not strutting over to seduce him like an aggressor.

And to return to a perennial theme here, are they boob women or ass women? They are not busty: most have a B cup, with somewhat more A than C cups. Not being a boob man, I'm blind to them, and this was all news to me. I had no idea Natalie Portman was an A cup (guess she didn't get that particular Ashkenazi gene).

The only D cup is Katy Perry, but that's not such an exception anyway. First, she has a thick lower body. But to the point, I listed her because of "Simple," and in that 2005 video they dressed her in a baggy shirt so you can't tell what they're like even if you're paying attention. Their intuition told them it just wouldn't be right to have that persona coming from a girl with giant jugs.

Why not? Perhaps the sexuality would be too forward (literally) and threatening to a guy who is still wary about leaving his refractory-phase cocoon. Ass men would have no trouble ignoring them, but boob men would. The guy needs to focus on her facial expressions without distraction, to get back into the hang of back-and-forth social interactions with the opposite sex.

An ongoing theory here is that boob women and men are more cerebral, while ass women and men are more corporeal (see here for a recent post looking at political junkies being mostly busty women and boob men). So there's another reason she can't be the busty type -- she would likely be more cerebral, and that goes against the MPDG type.

She must be corporeal -- a touchy-feely free spirit in tune with nature and physical activities (like dancing), whose plans to get the guy out of his funk do not involve over-analyzing things, devising Rube Goldberg contraptions, etc. "Let your mind go, and your body will follow" (SanDeE from L.A. Story). Guys coming out of a refractory phase need to be rehabilitated physically, not just mentally, and corporeal girls will be best able to perform this role.

That means they're mostly ass women, by which I mean the gestalt fertility zone -- belly, hips, ass, and thighs, as distinguished from the mammary zone. That doesn't mean they have Kim Kardashian-sized bubble butts, just that they're on the thick side below the waist (including indie darlings like Zooey Deschanel). And some are slender above and below. But if they have a tendency toward one zone over the other, it's definitely the fertility zone. In performances or pictures, they play up their lower half, not their chest.

In fact, what first tipped me off to this was the photo from an album cover by Au Revoir Simone, who I mentioned before (click for a larger view):

That picture doesn't show it, but they're not busty as well, nor do they attempt to draw attention to their chests. In their videos for that album, they're comfortable showing off their lower bodies and engaging in corporeal activities -- carefree dancing, playing hopscotch, bouncing their thighs and slapping their knees to the rhythm while seated on a bench, and the like.

I highlight their example because it goes against the overall stereotype of their upper-middle-class indie-world social scene. You'd think they'd be cerebral, dismissive of dancing, and averse to showcasing the lower body because that's what vulgar proles pay attention to. But just because the overall scene may be like that, doesn't mean there aren't exceptions like Au Revoir Simone, a corporeal minority within a scene of cerebrals.

As for social media personas, this all reminds me once again of Alison Balsam (@foolinthelotus on Twitter before she left) -- an early '80s manic-phase birth, a fertility shape rather than a mammary shape, and a dance lover. She had to have been a Manic Pixie Dream Girl during the late 2000s heyday -- the signs are still there, albeit somewhat obscured by the vulnerable emo phase she was posting in (late 2010s). Much like the type portrayed in entertainment media, there wasn't anyone else like her among the big-ish accounts -- no "Alison Balsam clones" or "that whole Alison Balsam crowd". The unique ones make an impression, and people can't get over it when they're gone.

Early '90s alterna Manic Pixie Dream Girls

In the post below about Manic Pixie Dream Girls being born, appropriately, during the manic phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, there's only one off-hand mention of the type from pop music during the restless warm-up phase of the early '90s (the phase when this type shows up).

It's worth fleshing that out with more examples, though, because at the time and ever since, the focus has been on the hard-edged aggressive women of the early '90s heyday of alternative rock, rather than the traditionally feminine helpers and partners of men. There's also the focus on the irony trend, when there was a notable counter-trend of heart-on-their-sleeve sincerity.

The background for this phenomenon was the vulnerable refractory phase of the late '80s, when soft rock and emo power ballads were the norm, and when there was a widespread fixation on being victimized (most obviously in the "Save the children" movement). During the warm-up phase of the early '90s, people were out of their refractory state, and women had to let men know that, hey, it's OK now, you can come out of your shell and we won't require a schmaltzy prostrating power ballad in order to trust you. We can just mix it up with each other again, and we women are only too eager to nurse you out of your funk if necessary -- how else are we going to connect?

That is the broad role of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and in pop music it's a more impressionistic persona that the performers convey, rather than a clearly defined character who plays such a role over the course of a narrative movie. But the basic traits are still all there -- quirky, eccentric, adorkable, directly addressing her male love interest, who may have trouble leaving his emo funk behind, but using her feminine charms and allure to pick up his spirits and get them together as a couple.

Other than that, they come in various flavors. However, all of the female singers below were born in the manic phase of the late '60s, and imprinted on that mood at an early age (as well as imprinting on the next manic phase, the early '80s, when they were 15 and just getting out of puberty). As with the actresses born in the late '60s, these musicians were best suited to playing the role of leading the charge out of the emo phase (the polar opposite of the one they've imprinted on and find most natural).

Many of the other alterna stars were born in the late '60s as well, but I'm leaving aside the hard-edged in-your-face ones (Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Veruca Salt, etc.). This is only looking at traditionally feminine ones who want to help weary guys come out of their late '80s emo cocoons.

Mazzy Star

Hope Sandoval is not as manic as the others, but no less of a pixie (5'0, size 0). As a waif, seemingly abandoned by her caretakers, she projects an anxious attachment style, but that insecurity does not diminish her eagerness and sincerity to form a deep connection. The anxiety only emphasizes how much she wants a partner, which combined with her petite frame and pouty lips, make her seem like a child who's upset that the immature boys aren't paying attention to her on the playground yet, but she's going to keep on trying until they do.

Guys in a social-emotional refractory state are behaving like prepubescent boys in a way -- "keep those annoying girls away, we don't want to play with them." But men in such a state are doubly wary of leaving their shell because they anticipate the women being in the same "leave me alone" state -- so it falls to the women to send the first signal that the anti-social withdrawn mood is over.

"Blue Flower" and "Fade Into You" (1990, 1993; live '94)



Juliana Hatfield Three

Another waif with an even more childlike voice -- this serves the purpose of not setting off the guy's alarm system. She couldn't be any less threatening -- "Don't worry, I won't bite". Guys coming out of a refractory state need to be approached more gently, so it's not a job for the hard-edged aggressive type of woman. It has to be a disarming pixie.

"Spin the Bottle" (1993)



Bjork

This case is approaching a hybrid of the disarming feminine nurturer and the in-your-face badass chick type of the same era. But she stays just enough on the nurturing side of the line, without it being primarily an aggressive come-on. Pretty sensual though, especially in a live performance -- I never expected her to have such a ripe body, based on the "Human Behavior" video that introduced her to the world.

"Come to Me" (1993; live '94)



Lisa Loeb

Not the purest example of the type -- more of a neurotic overly attached girlfriend, rather than one coaxing you out of your shell to begin with. But that's still the opposite of being refractory and not wanting attachment whatsoever. Plus her image was an eccentric waif, and the video was in constant rotation on MTV. So it's still worth including in this survey.

"Stay (I Missed You)" (1994)



Cub

Just look at how unaffectedly smiley the lead singer is, and remember this is an all-girl early '90s punk-inspired band. Hence the label "cuddlecore". Her warm welcoming vibes are too infectious to resist -- you couldn't possibly want to languish in your goth/emo cocoon any longer, could you, anon?

"New York City" (1994/5?)

Manic Pixie Dream Girls were born during manic phase of excitement cycle: Will the next be born '95-'99?

While we're still working our way out of the emo trauma-porn hangover of the past 5 years, it's worth looking for clues about where the changes will come from as we leave behind the refractory phase of the excitement cycle and enter the restless warm-up phase.

I was just thinking about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character type, which an earlier post showed clusters in the warm-up phase of the cycle, as people are coming out of their shells. She serves to coax the guy out of his refractory cocoon, letting him know it's OK to interact again -- that we're out of the phase where all social contact feels over-stimulatingly painful.

Who will play such a role this time around? I looked at the previous wave of them from the late 2000s (and the lesser crop from the 2010s), and they were nearly all born between 1980-'84 (with one born in '79, and another in '85, just outside this range by one year). That birth range was the manic phase of the early '80s. Then I checked the early '90s MPDG's, and though there weren't as many to study, they too were born in a manic phase (the late '60s: Sarah Jessica Parker from L.A. Story, and Julia Roberts).

So, this time around, will the actresses who play the role be born during the manic phase of 1995-'99? I have no idea who that could be, and this role tends to be a break-out role for the actress anyway.

Pop music doesn't offer too many examples of the role, since it has to be set within a character drama (or dramedy) narrative, where you can set up the withdrawn guy, the adorkable girl, her coaxing him, him resisting at first, and so on and so forth. It's hard to pack all that into a 4-minute pop song.

Nevertheless, I pointed to Katy Perry's deep cut "Simple" from 2005 in that earlier post, and during the late 2000s she projected a witty-banter, partner-in-crime, free-spirit persona. She's born in '84. Avril Lavigne, also born in '84, put on such a persona in 2007 with "Girlfriend," after she'd gotten out of the emo phase of the early 2000s (akin to the late 2010s emo phase, when she reverted to the emo type with "Head Above Water").

But the Manic Pixie Dream Girl wasn't meant for the Billboard Hot 100 kind of music. She was more of an indie girl. Not that I was big into the indie scene in the late 2000s, but even I remember Au Revoir Simone -- and sure enough, all three of them were born in 1980! In case you forgot or never experienced them during that phase (before their moody music for the Twin Peaks revival during the vulnerable phase of the late 2010s):

"Dark Halls" by Au Revoir Simone (2007)



That band in that time reminds me of our dear, departed anti-woke leftist Alison Balsam (@foolinthelotus on Twitter before she left). I'll bet she was like that during the late 2000s, and she too was born in the early '80s.

From the early '90s warm-up phase, the most visible Manic Pixie Dream Girl was Lisa Loeb ("Stay" in 1994), and she's born during the late '60s manic phase.

Everyone's so focused on the political domain these days, though -- who could coax us out of our self-centered partisan cocoons, and deliver us into a Manic Pixie Dream Government? Why, it's another early '80s birth -- Tulsi Gabbard, the most soothing, reassuring, and fun-loving free spirit in politics. (Her proto-form, Marianne Williamson, was also born during a manic phase -- the early '50s.)

On the younger platforms of social media, podcasting, etc., I'd expect the type to come more from the '95-'99 cohort, though. They've been listening to the Red Scare podcast to cope with the bad vibes of the late 2010s, but soon they're going to want to do their own thing.

They'll go from analytically criticizing the trauma porn industry and the absurdities of #MeToo, to becoming Manic Pixie Dream E-girls who sound the wake-up alarm to the male half of the audience, that it's OK to come out of your cocoon and mix it up with girls again. "We promise we're over that mood, and we're in a flirtatious, getting-to-know-you mood now." It won't even be that political in scope -- although they may identify as feminists -- but more about the social-cultural mood and the relations between the sexes.

I've left out the matter of explaining why the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is born during a manic phase -- or equivalently, why she was a certain age during another of the phases -- although the simplest explanation is that they absorbed the manic mood of their birth year and carried it with them for life, as a social imprinting. But if I think of something more satisfying, I'll post it in the comments, where you can spitball ideas as well. The main point here is descriptive and predictive, without necessarily understanding why the world works the way it apparently does.

War is collective, fat-tailed, prolonged; lulls are not de-escalation

From my cursory reading of Twitter political people on both the left and right, there is a widespread misunderstanding about the nature of these phases after a major military or foreign policy event. They do not represent a de-escalation, calming down, standing down, blowing off steam, retreat, or anything of the sort. All the tension is still there, if anything it is building up so that the next major spectacle will be of greater magnitude than those spectacles we have already observed.

The basic confusion comes from analogizing a collective antagonism with an individual one. If two individuals get in each others' faces at a bar, exchange a punch or two, and then walk away after a brief stand-off, then the whole thing may be over. We can breathe a sigh of relief that no more fighting will be taking place between them.

But collective phenomena generally have a positive feedback loop, whereby growth feeds into more growth, since there are multiple individuals impacted by each individual's actions. For example, if instead of an individual vs. an individual, it's a clan vs. a clan in a fight, then we don't conclude anything about "it's all over" once one round of fighting is done with. The side that lost may want revenge.

And in any case, when the other side injures or kills one of your side, you want to deter them by inflicting greater harm on them -- thus, one injury begets multiple injuries, each of which begets multiple injuries, as each slight must be deterred against by an ever greater magnitude of retaliation.

That process is like exponential population growth, where one individual begets multiple offspring, each of whom begets multiple offspring. Or the spread of an epidemic disease, where each infected person transmits the disease to multiple others, each of whom transmits it to multiple others.

The growth of these processes does not require the agents to be constantly engaged in the activity which produces the growth. Exponential population growth does not require the individuals to be constantly getting it on, or constantly popping out babies. When an epidemic disease is spreading, there may be a day or two when no new people are infected, maybe even a week.

We don't measure the growth of a human population on the time-scale of days, weeks, or even months. It takes 9 months from conception to birth, so we'd only start with the scale of years, and perhaps going by decades. Nor do we measure the rise of an epidemic disease on the time-scale of hours or days -- maybe weeks, months, even years, depending on the rate of transmission. On smaller time-scales, these processes would show all kinds of whipsaw, jagged rises and falls -- while on the relevant time-scale, we would observe much smoother patterns.

War is no different (nor is any form of collective conflict, from gangs and clans up to nation-states and empires). Warfare does not require the actors to be constantly invading, bombing, or besieging each other.

There are a variety of ways to measure the intensity of the conflict -- number dead, number injured, amount of property gained or lost, amount of territory gained or lost, and so on and so forth. No matter which one we pick, it will show the same positive feedback loop, based on the logic of retaliation.

These variables -- number of infected people during an epidemic, number dead in a collective conflict, etc. -- are distributed in a fat-tailed way, where most cases don't amount to much, but a few cases go out to the extremes -- and crucially, they fuel their own growth out into the extremes (autocatalytic). Most spats between nations don't lead to any number of dead -- some dork from one country gives another leader the cold shoulder at a summit, and although it's clearly a sign of cold relations between the two nations, it is not part of a war, and no one dies.

But then, there are the occasional cases where the spat is part of a self-fueling growth process, and one event leads to even greater events, perhaps resulting in dozens dead, hundreds, thousands, millions, or tens of millions. It is impossible to predict beforehand how far out into the extreme the process will go -- it takes on a life of its own. The point is, once it starts, it can easily increase by orders of magnitude, because it is mostly driven by its own growth and is not subject to a heavier dampening mechanism.

Even more disturbingly, these distributions have the property that no matter how far out into the extreme you have already gone, you are expected to go out even further. The clearest example is a power-law distribution, whose conditional expectation is given here (under the answer with the green checkmark). It says, given that the variable (X) has already exceeded some particular value (x), its expectation (E(X)) is a positive multiple greater than 1 of that already-exceeded value (where b/(b-1) is the multiplier).

To make up a numerical example, say the variable X is the number of dead in a war, and the particular value, x, that it's already exceeded is 10. Let's say the multiplier (b/(b-1)) works out to 1.5, or a 50% increase. Then we expect the number dead to reach 1.5 * 10 = 15. It's worse than our initial milestone led us to think.

But here's the sick thing -- this multiplier is not dependent on how far out into the extreme you are. Its formula does not include any measure of how far it is from the average. You could be far out into the extreme -- 10,000 already dead -- and still, the multiplier tells you to expect 1.5 times that, or 15,000 dead. If you reach 1 million dead, expect 1.5 million. If you reach 1 billion dead, expect 1.5 billion.

For thin-tailed distributions, like the normal or bell-curve distribution, the further out toward the extreme you reach, the less further you can expect to go. For really extreme values, the expectation is that you go no further at all -- E(X) = x, conditional on having reached a very extreme value x. For example, if you tested into MENSA as a child with a 130 IQ, you can expect to keep that same value all the way through adulthood -- your initial IQ isn't going to fuel its own growth to 150, 180, 210, and beyond. One IQ point does not beget multiple IQ points, each of which begets multiple points, and so on.

Now, just because we "expect" a multiple of the value already reached, for fat-tailed distributions, doesn't mean we'll actually reach that -- it could land short, it could stop altogether, or it could exceed the expectation. For a self-driven growth process, you can't conclude it's over until it's over.

At the least, you need to observe falling values over the relevant time-scale -- if, one week after the next, the number of people infected in an epidemic keeps dropping, that's enough to conclude that it's no longer rising but is burning out. Population growth could hit a saturation level and neither grow nor shrink, or their way of life could be pulled out from under them and their numbers plummet year after year.

(That is more likely to see due to migration into and out of an area, a la the "boomtown to ghost-town" phenomenon, not so much due to changes in birth and death rates. But still, the relevant time-scale is years or decades.)

Other examples are the social adoption of fads, where each adopter can serve as a model to multiple imitators, each of whom can be copied by multiple imitators; or, as Art De Vany showed, the success of movies (and by assumption, or by related research I haven't read, other forms of entertainment), where a hit movie grows by each viewer passing on positive word-of-mouth to other people, each of whom may see the movie and pass on positive word-of-mouth to others.

You cannot predict beforehand how far the growth will go -- will some fad be adopted by only hundreds of thousands in the US, or by millions, tens of millions, etc. Or, will some hit movie hit $1 million in profit, $10 million, $1 billion, $10 billion, etc. The process has to work itself out, and only when you see fewer and fewer people practicing a fad on the time-scale of months or years, or the number of tickets sold falling week after week after week, do you conclude that its growing phase is over.

You certainly do not conclude that a smash-hit movie is "done for" just because its ticket numbers are low measured on a Wednesday, compared to last Saturday when it was doing gangbusters. That's part of the natural rhythm of when viewers go to the movies, making the time-scale of days irrelevant -- it's weeks.

Likewise, only a fool concludes that the Iran War is "over," or "cooling off," or "winding down," or even "hitting a pause" / "standing still". We don't measure such a process on the time-scale of days, so we know nothing about where the next value will be -- it hasn't even been a week since their missile attacks on the US base in Iraq. For an empire like the US facing off against a regional power like Iran, it can be no sooner than the scale of months, perhaps years, depending on how intense the war is.

As welcome as his direct appeals to Trump have been, Tucker Carlson -- the only anti-war voice in the mass media, let alone who have Trump's ear -- has not "talked Trump down off the ledge". He may be limiting the damage done per episode by convincing Trump to minimize his retaliation, but that is not the same thing as halting the growth process. It's going to keep growing, getting worse than it already has gotten.

Even if Tucker had no impact on Trump, the admin would still go through lulls in its overall escalation of conflict against Iran. Tucker is trying to heal only one of those infected by the anti-Iran disease within the US power structure, albeit an influential one -- all those other ones are still infected, and infecting others, including influential ones. That is not going to reverse the growth of an epidemic, which I'm sure he's under no illusions of doing. It requires a full-scale realignment of foreign policy to do that.

What does the trajectory look like in this case? Well, when Trump came into office, tensions were simmering down, owing to the Obama admin's nuclear deal -- although from a different perspective, that was just a temporary lull during a 40-year campaign to weaken them and absorb them into our sphere of influence.

In any case, Trump staffed a bunch of Iran hawks into his admin, which was the first milestone. Then he abrogated the nuclear deal, another major milestone. Then he came this-close to striking Iran last summer when they shot down one of our drones. Now we have reached two major milestones almost simultaneously -- Trump ordering the assassination of their top military leader and national hero, Soleimani, and Iran retaliating by hitting US bases in Iraq with their missiles. Both of those were first-of-their-kind events between the two nations.

On the relevant time-scale, we'll have to wait over the next months, or up to a year, to see if the conflict has begun to simmer down. So far, all we have observed is growth upon growth upon growth -- notwithstanding the lulls in between each of those milestones, which again are like the ticket sales during Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, between weekends.

So far, the near-term looks only to escalate, since the Trump admin has imposed further sanctions on Iran, and Iran has said the strikes this week were only the beginning of the campaign to drive the US empire out of the Middle East. Even if nothing happens for the next 6-12 months, that does not mean things have cooled down -- lack of escalation does not mean improvement, it may mean things have reached a saturation level, or it may be a longer-than-usual lull before it explodes all the more violently when the next milestone event is reached.

In either of those cases, all the tension from before is still there, threatening to blow up in the future -- the tension will not have dissipated, until we see major concessions from one or both sides, such as the US pulling more troops out of Iraq, shutting down bases in the Middle East, slashing the funds for such activities, and the like.

In the meantime, don't mistake lulls for the dissipation of tension. This is not an acute beef between two individuals in the heat of the moment -- it is a chronic conflict between large-scale collective actors. And remember the property of the power-law distribution -- for each milestone you have already reached, expect it to go some degree further, and that multiplier will not diminish no matter how extreme the milestone may be.