On the Thiel column, I realised around 2019 that you could very easily spot people who only discovered that this thing called ‘politics’ existed when a meme came across their Facebook feed in 2016. I decided at that time to not engage with or discuss politics with these people (including some of my friends) as not a one of them followed up this discovery by reading books or watching documentary’s that challenged their way of interpreting this new fangled politics thing they had discovered. Thiel and Musk fit very neatly into this group, that’s why they keep thinking they’ve discovered things like the grooming gangs or the JFK Assassination because to them anything that happened prior to that day they first saw a politics meme in 2016 just never happened
The simple fact is that these people are idiots, their only value being that every time they open they mouth they help to prove that wealth does not equal intelligence, a lesson academics have been trying to get the public to understand, without success, for decades. Luckily now though, a group of the most wealthy people on earth are making it impossible for people to ignore
Andreessen (self-describing as being originally a ‘normie Democrat’, and now... not) seems to have discovered that one generation of young people had developed political opinions that might be somewhat critical of capitalism (like, *gasp*), and thus to have been astonished and horrified at this radicalisation into them being ‘full-on Marxists’, to which the only possible response appears to be ‘Thiel was right all along!’
Stand-outs from the interview: (a) He discovers that ‘80 percent of my employees have radicalized into a political agenda’ using arithmetic that I would fire him for. And (b) that's not what the word ‘marxist’ means, as anyone with access to Wikipedia would know (we needn't be sophisticated here), who wasn't lazily picking up the word from Fox News.
I'm afraid I read only half of the interview before I completely lost patience; and I think Andreessen is far from being an idiot. But in his knickers-in-a-twist reaction on discovering that a spectrum of politics exists, he sadly makes himself look like a fool.
One of the more baffling things for me about America is the constant ads for prescription medicine on TV, I just don’t get it at all. The clue is in the name ‘prescription’ so they are things prescribed by your doctor, not an impulse purchase, you either need them to get better or you don’t. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it makes being a doctor in the US having patients walking in telling you they want something they saw advertised the night before, plus I notice the ads tell you the symptoms that might require this medicine so giving you the exact things you need to say to get the prescription whether you’re really suffering those ailments or not
I just don’t understand why it was ever made legal to advertise prescription medicine in the first place, over the counter medicine for headaches and stuff, fine, that’s ok, but adverts for prescription medicine is just one more of the many things that make America such a strange place that gets so many obvious things wrong
You hit on it by accident in your second paragraph. Prescription ads weren’t “made legal,” they were never made *illegal.* The presumption is that the first amendment protects advertising in general unless it’s been specifically banned. The only thing I can think of that you 100% can’t advertise is tobacco.
There are consumer protection laws that are supposed to keep drug ads accurate, but those sidestep the question of whether they should exist in the first place.
See discussion below where women discuss how "to get" their doctor to prescribe HRT. Patients are asking doctors for things at all levels. In the end, doctors decide what to prescribe, but there's no harm in asking.
I can tell you've never had to deal with a complex or esoteric medical problem. Have something more complicated than the flu and your PCP is not up to date on the treatment and likely has no idea. Every medical consumer needs to be educated and ready to ask for what they think they need, while being open to feedback from the doctor. Doctors are not gods. They do not know everything and they cannot possibly keep abreast of everything.
Well I did have an incredibly rare cancer but weirdly I decided to trust my doctor rather than ‘doing my own research’ as I realised that Google and ‘that ad I just saw’ were no substitute for 7 years of medical school and 2 decades of practicing medicine. Amazingly this worked out
In a development which will come as no surprise to anyone, bats are also more valuable than women. Lighting is one of the key factors for women's safety at night, but in a straight fight between this and the needs of bats, the bats win. And there is loads of research on what kind of lighting they need and guidance and laws to follow. Research and guidance on lighting for women's safety? A big fat zero.
I've not yet listened to the whole of the Gaiman podcast, but my impression already is how much more complicated the issue is than was presented in the New York article.
I didn’t agree with Kat Rosenfield’s larger takeaway, but I thought this paragraph was pretty smart:
“Some of this (most?), I think, is an unfortunate side effect of all our traditional sexual mores having been discarded in favor of vapid, anything-goes sex positivity with a monomaniacal focus on consent. We barely even have the vocabulary anymore to describe bad or cruel or execrable behavior that is wrong without being rape. Instead, we're left with two categories of sex, consensual and criminal, the unspoken understanding being that you're only allowed to complain about the latter, because heaven forfend you yuck the yum of the guy who gets off on making women crawl around on all fours and drink urine. It should surprise no one that women in this milieu are performing intellectual acrobatics to redefine their terrible-but-consensual sexual experiences as actually rapes; it's the only way anyone will acknowledge that something bad happened to you.”
I don’t know if Gaiman did anything that was legally rape, but I do think he took advantage of his fame to get vulnerable women to do things they quite reasonably feel violated by in hindsight. And we really don’t have a great way to talk about that within the consent framework.
Yes, I didn’t agree with Kat’s conclusions either, but I think it’s right to note that a world in which some of the things described in the Gaiman piece are considered legitimate sex acts (rather than definitionally abusive) has downsides for women. The group “We Can’t Consent to This” did some work on cases where, to me, it was obvious that a man had done a sexually motivated murder but he was pleading BDSM-gone-wrong.
Kathleen Stock in a very good piece for UnHerd calls Gaiman’s behaviour ‘grotesque opportunism’ and accuses him of being a ‘priapic creep’. I think both of those phrases sum up what he’s been doing, whether criminal or not.
Thanks for the link! I’m more torn on BDSM than Stock is because I do know people who it seems to work for, but it’s definitely a dynamic that can be used to justify gross and predatory behavior.
Has Kathleen Stock never seen an intense sports match in which the players push each other to painful cathartic heights of play? Good sports matches are defined before play starts either strict rules. The wrestler can tap out, the boxer can signal they are done. After the match there is care for bruises and warm showers or cold ice baths and nutrition and sleep.
It doesn’t sound like Gaiman established any clear rules of his game before playing.
To be clear, it sounds like Gaiman’s idea of a game is extremely different than the women he took advantage of, or that he even thought of it as a game.
This is really the problem, because everyone's kneejerk reaction (mine included) is that this is not rape. It is also not right. And I have no issue with there being a public warning to women not to engage with Gaimon unless they're game for it. But the term "rape" ends up obfuscating and detracting.
It’s not new, but it is mostly used among journalists. It means what it sounds like here, the process of interviews and research that takes something from concept to publishable piece.
I’ve worked as a reporter for 20 years and I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase. It’s definitely been around for a while.
Interesting. I work with some UK reporters these days and I’ve definitely noticed some differences in our practices — I’ll have to ask if they know/use the term.
I agree, the episodes were carefully ordered to lead to the conclusion, having taken the listener on a conflicted journey. My main criticism would be that the final episode had adverts for erectile disfunction throughout…
Re epidemic of big players turning conspiracy theorist: I wonder how many have had COVID and are suffering from brain fog and mild intellectual impairment?
I thought it was notable that the Gaiman article hit the same narrative beats as the Tortoise podcast, and I really noticed it when the Scientology section appeared at roughly the same point in the narrative. I think the article did a better job of making the case for why the Scientology section should be included (pointing out the cycles of abuse); on the podcast it felt (to me) more of a salacious inclusion, just because people are fascinated by that topic.
The HS2 bat tunnel is only one part of the insanity of the entire HS2 project, which gets madder and madder the more you look at the details. I had a peripheral involvement in it, and the small part I saw was an exercise in astonishing bureaucratic hubris and remarkable profiteering by consultants. It would make an incredible satire reflecting our current inertia.
While T is only prescribed off licence for women in the UK (despite pre-menopausal women producing a lot of testosterone) there’s been a lot of research done on oestrogen HRT. The big uk problem is getting GPs to prescribe it (instead of risky antidepressants).
If you are struggling with getting your GP to prescribe HRT, show them the NICE Guidance for Menopause - https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng23/chapter/Recommendations. It has strong recommendations for HRT (within certain parameters of course) and mentions testosterone for low sexual desire. It does not recommend anti-depressants, but does mention CBT for psychological symptoms.
I feel exactly the same re. Tortoise’s podcast. I listened to it when it first came out, thought it was excellent and shared it and recommended it everywhere. And yet it’s taken an article in an American (this is significant) paper to finally get through to not just terminally online, but to normies as well. I wonder if it is the time investment required by a podcast, or, as Rachel Johnson mused, her being accused of wrongthink? In any case, glad I’m not the only one who’s annoyed.
I think it’s a further example of how Americans (who are wildly more numerous online than other English-speaking groups) pay attention to and share American sources, despite all the anti-MSM stuff. The idea of regularly reading/listening to a foreign media source just doesn’t occur to very many of them. Hence we have Americans “discovering” British scandals and being OUTRAGED that no-one told them about them, which has to mean no-one else will have heard of them at all.
American here and I have an overstuffed podcast feed with years of backlog. Ever since cutting my commute down to 2 days a week post-covid, there simply isn't enough time to consume it all. Whereas I can skim an article and get the gist in a few minutes. Sadly, one cannot really skim a 6-part podcast.
Second I am a loud and proud user of T and the big O and not a sceptic like the people you talk about.
However in their defence the medical establishment has said T doesn’t work for a normal middle aged man and the big O is still only prescribed on label for diabetes. Finally the said invermectin was a horse dewormer and covid wasn’t caused by a lab leak.
There are good reasons to be upset by the medical industry over the last decade and that is before we get to lockdowns
On the Thiel column, I realised around 2019 that you could very easily spot people who only discovered that this thing called ‘politics’ existed when a meme came across their Facebook feed in 2016. I decided at that time to not engage with or discuss politics with these people (including some of my friends) as not a one of them followed up this discovery by reading books or watching documentary’s that challenged their way of interpreting this new fangled politics thing they had discovered. Thiel and Musk fit very neatly into this group, that’s why they keep thinking they’ve discovered things like the grooming gangs or the JFK Assassination because to them anything that happened prior to that day they first saw a politics meme in 2016 just never happened
The simple fact is that these people are idiots, their only value being that every time they open they mouth they help to prove that wealth does not equal intelligence, a lesson academics have been trying to get the public to understand, without success, for decades. Luckily now though, a group of the most wealthy people on earth are making it impossible for people to ignore
You could get a similar impression from an interview between Ross Douthat and Marc Andreessen in the NY Times <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html>.
Andreessen (self-describing as being originally a ‘normie Democrat’, and now... not) seems to have discovered that one generation of young people had developed political opinions that might be somewhat critical of capitalism (like, *gasp*), and thus to have been astonished and horrified at this radicalisation into them being ‘full-on Marxists’, to which the only possible response appears to be ‘Thiel was right all along!’
Stand-outs from the interview: (a) He discovers that ‘80 percent of my employees have radicalized into a political agenda’ using arithmetic that I would fire him for. And (b) that's not what the word ‘marxist’ means, as anyone with access to Wikipedia would know (we needn't be sophisticated here), who wasn't lazily picking up the word from Fox News.
I'm afraid I read only half of the interview before I completely lost patience; and I think Andreessen is far from being an idiot. But in his knickers-in-a-twist reaction on discovering that a spectrum of politics exists, he sadly makes himself look like a fool.
[Edit, Sunday: adjust wording]
One of the more baffling things for me about America is the constant ads for prescription medicine on TV, I just don’t get it at all. The clue is in the name ‘prescription’ so they are things prescribed by your doctor, not an impulse purchase, you either need them to get better or you don’t. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it makes being a doctor in the US having patients walking in telling you they want something they saw advertised the night before, plus I notice the ads tell you the symptoms that might require this medicine so giving you the exact things you need to say to get the prescription whether you’re really suffering those ailments or not
I just don’t understand why it was ever made legal to advertise prescription medicine in the first place, over the counter medicine for headaches and stuff, fine, that’s ok, but adverts for prescription medicine is just one more of the many things that make America such a strange place that gets so many obvious things wrong
You hit on it by accident in your second paragraph. Prescription ads weren’t “made legal,” they were never made *illegal.* The presumption is that the first amendment protects advertising in general unless it’s been specifically banned. The only thing I can think of that you 100% can’t advertise is tobacco.
There are consumer protection laws that are supposed to keep drug ads accurate, but those sidestep the question of whether they should exist in the first place.
See discussion below where women discuss how "to get" their doctor to prescribe HRT. Patients are asking doctors for things at all levels. In the end, doctors decide what to prescribe, but there's no harm in asking.
I can tell you've never had to deal with a complex or esoteric medical problem. Have something more complicated than the flu and your PCP is not up to date on the treatment and likely has no idea. Every medical consumer needs to be educated and ready to ask for what they think they need, while being open to feedback from the doctor. Doctors are not gods. They do not know everything and they cannot possibly keep abreast of everything.
Well I did have an incredibly rare cancer but weirdly I decided to trust my doctor rather than ‘doing my own research’ as I realised that Google and ‘that ad I just saw’ were no substitute for 7 years of medical school and 2 decades of practicing medicine. Amazingly this worked out
In a development which will come as no surprise to anyone, bats are also more valuable than women. Lighting is one of the key factors for women's safety at night, but in a straight fight between this and the needs of bats, the bats win. And there is loads of research on what kind of lighting they need and guidance and laws to follow. Research and guidance on lighting for women's safety? A big fat zero.
I've not yet listened to the whole of the Gaiman podcast, but my impression already is how much more complicated the issue is than was presented in the New York article.
I didn’t agree with Kat Rosenfield’s larger takeaway, but I thought this paragraph was pretty smart:
“Some of this (most?), I think, is an unfortunate side effect of all our traditional sexual mores having been discarded in favor of vapid, anything-goes sex positivity with a monomaniacal focus on consent. We barely even have the vocabulary anymore to describe bad or cruel or execrable behavior that is wrong without being rape. Instead, we're left with two categories of sex, consensual and criminal, the unspoken understanding being that you're only allowed to complain about the latter, because heaven forfend you yuck the yum of the guy who gets off on making women crawl around on all fours and drink urine. It should surprise no one that women in this milieu are performing intellectual acrobatics to redefine their terrible-but-consensual sexual experiences as actually rapes; it's the only way anyone will acknowledge that something bad happened to you.”
(The full piece is at https://open.substack.com/pub/katrosenfield/p/on-what-women-want .)
I don’t know if Gaiman did anything that was legally rape, but I do think he took advantage of his fame to get vulnerable women to do things they quite reasonably feel violated by in hindsight. And we really don’t have a great way to talk about that within the consent framework.
Yes, I didn’t agree with Kat’s conclusions either, but I think it’s right to note that a world in which some of the things described in the Gaiman piece are considered legitimate sex acts (rather than definitionally abusive) has downsides for women. The group “We Can’t Consent to This” did some work on cases where, to me, it was obvious that a man had done a sexually motivated murder but he was pleading BDSM-gone-wrong.
Can I ask what part of Kat's conclusions you disagreed with/objected to?
Kathleen Stock in a very good piece for UnHerd calls Gaiman’s behaviour ‘grotesque opportunism’ and accuses him of being a ‘priapic creep’. I think both of those phrases sum up what he’s been doing, whether criminal or not.
https://unherd.com/2025/01/neil-gaiman-and-the-perils-of-bdsm/
Thanks for the link! I’m more torn on BDSM than Stock is because I do know people who it seems to work for, but it’s definitely a dynamic that can be used to justify gross and predatory behavior.
Has Kathleen Stock never seen an intense sports match in which the players push each other to painful cathartic heights of play? Good sports matches are defined before play starts either strict rules. The wrestler can tap out, the boxer can signal they are done. After the match there is care for bruises and warm showers or cold ice baths and nutrition and sleep.
It doesn’t sound like Gaiman established any clear rules of his game before playing.
To be clear, it sounds like Gaiman’s idea of a game is extremely different than the women he took advantage of, or that he even thought of it as a game.
This is really the problem, because everyone's kneejerk reaction (mine included) is that this is not rape. It is also not right. And I have no issue with there being a public warning to women not to engage with Gaimon unless they're game for it. But the term "rape" ends up obfuscating and detracting.
This is always a good start to my Fridays.
Is "report out" a new term, or have I just not noticed it before?
It’s not new, but it is mostly used among journalists. It means what it sounds like here, the process of interviews and research that takes something from concept to publishable piece.
I’ve worked as a reporter for 20 years and I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase. It’s definitely been around for a while.
I think it must be American because after more than 20 years at all levels of the (British) game I never heard it.
Interesting. I work with some UK reporters these days and I’ve definitely noticed some differences in our practices — I’ll have to ask if they know/use the term.
I picked it up from an editor who grew up in Hong Kong and started his career at news wires…
The Tortoise series on Gaiman was outstanding, not least for the repeated emphasis on listening to all six episodes before committing to an opinìon.
I agree, the episodes were carefully ordered to lead to the conclusion, having taken the listener on a conflicted journey. My main criticism would be that the final episode had adverts for erectile disfunction throughout…
Art Vandelay!
Re epidemic of big players turning conspiracy theorist: I wonder how many have had COVID and are suffering from brain fog and mild intellectual impairment?
I thought it was notable that the Gaiman article hit the same narrative beats as the Tortoise podcast, and I really noticed it when the Scientology section appeared at roughly the same point in the narrative. I think the article did a better job of making the case for why the Scientology section should be included (pointing out the cycles of abuse); on the podcast it felt (to me) more of a salacious inclusion, just because people are fascinated by that topic.
I believe this might have been due to the difference in libel laws - it’s much easier to sue for libel in the UK than the US.
Oh, that makes sense — thanks!
My recommendation to Labour is to adopt a new slogan -- "We're gonna do it like America!" -- and to show this by renaming the party to Labor.
Oh, please DO report on Musk’s gaming “achievements.” His response to this coming to light is most revealing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2025/01/16/elon-musk-vs-asmongold-the-gaming-feud-explained/
The HS2 bat tunnel is only one part of the insanity of the entire HS2 project, which gets madder and madder the more you look at the details. I had a peripheral involvement in it, and the small part I saw was an exercise in astonishing bureaucratic hubris and remarkable profiteering by consultants. It would make an incredible satire reflecting our current inertia.
While T is only prescribed off licence for women in the UK (despite pre-menopausal women producing a lot of testosterone) there’s been a lot of research done on oestrogen HRT. The big uk problem is getting GPs to prescribe it (instead of risky antidepressants).
If you are struggling with getting your GP to prescribe HRT, show them the NICE Guidance for Menopause - https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng23/chapter/Recommendations. It has strong recommendations for HRT (within certain parameters of course) and mentions testosterone for low sexual desire. It does not recommend anti-depressants, but does mention CBT for psychological symptoms.
Thank you - personally I was fine but so many women are palmed off (with ADs, not CBT).
I don’t think it’s great that this piece seems to suggest that there is more uncertainty about safety than there actually is.
Completely agree re the Tortoise podcast on Gaiman. Thought its embrace of the complexities of the story was really illuminating.
Having said that maybe, on reflection after the New York piece, they paid a price in not just pursuing a hard-edged news line.
Thanks Helen, as always. Curious to see you write of ‘reporting out’ - first time I’ve spotted that phrase but probably just me out of touch!
I feel exactly the same re. Tortoise’s podcast. I listened to it when it first came out, thought it was excellent and shared it and recommended it everywhere. And yet it’s taken an article in an American (this is significant) paper to finally get through to not just terminally online, but to normies as well. I wonder if it is the time investment required by a podcast, or, as Rachel Johnson mused, her being accused of wrongthink? In any case, glad I’m not the only one who’s annoyed.
I think it’s a further example of how Americans (who are wildly more numerous online than other English-speaking groups) pay attention to and share American sources, despite all the anti-MSM stuff. The idea of regularly reading/listening to a foreign media source just doesn’t occur to very many of them. Hence we have Americans “discovering” British scandals and being OUTRAGED that no-one told them about them, which has to mean no-one else will have heard of them at all.
American here and I have an overstuffed podcast feed with years of backlog. Ever since cutting my commute down to 2 days a week post-covid, there simply isn't enough time to consume it all. Whereas I can skim an article and get the gist in a few minutes. Sadly, one cannot really skim a 6-part podcast.
Yes, I completely agree.
First I love your stuff
Second I am a loud and proud user of T and the big O and not a sceptic like the people you talk about.
However in their defence the medical establishment has said T doesn’t work for a normal middle aged man and the big O is still only prescribed on label for diabetes. Finally the said invermectin was a horse dewormer and covid wasn’t caused by a lab leak.
There are good reasons to be upset by the medical industry over the last decade and that is before we get to lockdowns
Keep up a great service and thanks again