Rethinking Loneliness 📚 + Stigma of Solitude

Rethinking Loneliness

Singledom & the Stigma of Solitude 

Corrie Evanoff 

How the rise of single Americans is reshaping society—and the way we view and experience solitude.

Marriage rates are at a record low and the number of unpartnered adults is steadily on the rise.
Still, for any single person, it can be a pain going it alone in a society that historically favors the married. And comfortable in solitude or not, anyone can struggle with feelings of loneliness from time to time—feelings no doubt exacerbated during the pandemic.
Read on to explore and examine how singlehood has been defined throughout history and pop culture, as well as how demographic factors, office culture, and tax codes can contribute to disparate experiences of single people. Plus, the importance of life choice representation, and the power and pleasure of eating, traveling, and thriving solo.

Single Doesn’t Mean Being Lonely or Alone    - Elizabeth Brake  The Conversation  

Singles can face mistaken stereotypes and value judgments that they are less happy, or lonelier. For many, being single is simply a relationship preference or even an orientation.

BONUS READ: What To Say To Relatives Prying Into Your Love Life Over The Holidays—Or Anytime via Bustle.

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 A Profile of Single Americans  - Anna Brown  Pew Research Center

Singles are split between being on and off the dating market.

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The Hidden Costs of Living Alone   -   Joe Pinsker The Atlantic

In ways both large and small, American society still assumes that the default adult has a partner and that the default household contains multiple people.

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Your Own Harriet - Anne Helen Petersen  Culture Study

The tremendous power of life choice representation. 

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How Our Solo Homes Became Cocoons -   Jacqueline Kantor   Curbed 

The idea of making a home into a place for others, as opposed to one’s self, is falling out of style.

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Eating Alone -  Stephanie Rosenbloom  Longreads 

We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired? Why shouldn’t the French saying “life is too short to drink bad wine” still apply?

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The Married Will Soon Be the Minority -   Charles M. Blow The New York Times

This is a development with enormous consequences for how we define family and adulthood in general, as well as how we structure taxation and benefits.

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One Legacy of the Pandemic May Be Less Judgment of the Child-Free - Samhita Mukhopadhyay  The Atlantic

The coronavirus could change lingering cultural assumptions about what makes for a full and happy life.

BONUS READ: The Rise of the Childfree Movement on TikTok via Mashable.

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Why Middle-Aged Men Have Trouble Sustaining Friendships  - Billy Baker Literary Hub

Billy Baker on loneliness and finding connection.

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 How the U.S. Tax Code Privileges White Families - Dorothy A. Brown  The Atlantic

Tax policies have preserved the inequality that has long defined America.

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“Marriage Should Not Come With Any Social Benefits or Privileges” - Vicki Larson  Aeon 

 Social and legal benefits that favor the married disadvantage the single. Why should your love life be used against you?

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In a Season of Weddings and Baby Showers, What Can Single People Do to Celebrate Their Lives?  - Eleanor Gordon-Smith  The Guardian

Do you want a ritual defined by the absence of settling down, or just one without its trappings? 

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Before You Can Be With Others, First Learn to Be Alone  -Jennifer Stitt Aeon

Solitude is a practice that prepares one for social and political life. To be with others, first learn to be alone.

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A History of Loneliness  - Amelia Worsley The Conversation

Although loneliness may seem timeless and universal, the word seems to have originated in the 16th century. 

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How the ‘Crazy’ Cat Lady Became One of Pop Culture’s Most Enduring Sexist Tropes -  Rae Alexandra   KQED

The stereotype has been with us since the Middle Ages. But where did it come from? And why has it stuck around?

BONUS READ: ‘Spinster’ and ‘Bachelor’ Were, Until 2005, Official Terms for Single People via Smithsonian Magazine.

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Men Are Now More Likely to Be Single Than Women. It’s Not a Good Sign - Belinda Luscombe  Time

Almost a third of adult single men live with a parent.

BONUS READ: I Was a “Male Spinster” via Salon.

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The Ambition-Marriage Trade-Off Too Many Single Women Face

Amanda Pallais Leonardo Bursztyn Thomas Fujiwara Harvard Business Review

A study shows some women downplay their ambitions to find a partner.

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Lonely? Short of Friends? Try Looking at It Differently - Oliver Burkeman The Guardian 

You never see your friends at home alone in their pajamas, watching The X Factor, and feeling sorry for themselves.

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Can’t Buy Me Love: How Romance Wrecked Traditional Marriage  - Hunter Oatman - Stanford Collectors Weekly 

In reality, it’s the idea of marrying for love that’s untraditional.

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Why Are Increasing Numbers of Women Choosing to Be Single? - Emma John   The Guardian

The word ‘spinster’ is still freighted with pity and misogyny, yet the number of women living this way is growing. It’s time to reconsider what it means to be ‘never-married’.
BONUS READ: The Women Who Are Involuntary Celibates via The Guardian.
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Single Moms vs. Single Dads: Examining the Double Standards of Single Parenthood: Examining the Double Standards of Single Parenthood   -  Maressa Brown   Parents

Investigating the disparities and pinpointing how we can do better to support all solo parents.
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Decolonizing Love In A World Rigged For Black Women’s Loneliness -  Shaadi Devereaux   Refinery29

The world is rigged for Black women’s loneliness and isolation. Here’s how to decolonize love.
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Lonely? Short of Friends? Try Looking at It Differently  - Oliver Burkeman    The Guardian

You never see your friends at home alone in their pajamas, watching The X Factor, and feeling sorry for themselves.
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Can’t Buy Me Love: How Romance Wrecked Traditional Marriage  - Hunter Oatman-Stanford   Collectors Weekly

In reality, it’s the idea of marrying for love that’s untraditional.
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Families of Choice Are Remaking America - Bella DePaulo   Nautilus

Through their networks of friends, singles are strengthening society’s social bonds.
BONUS READ: The Rise of Platonic Co-Parenting via The Guardian.
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Traveling Alone, in Groups -  Debra Kamin  The New York Times

Group tour companies are accommodating more and more solo travelers, who are looking for company—and someone else to handle the complexities of traveling during the pandemic.
BONUS READ: On Breakups and Taking Your Dream Adventure Solo via Outside.
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How Being Single Has Been Rebranded -  Vicky Spratt  Refinery29

There’s a reason why the most lucrative forms of popular culture continue to ask questions about how men and women should be (or not be) together—it’s because we haven’t got it right yet.
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Adventures in the Art of Being Alone - Maria Popova   The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)

“Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person.”
BONUS READ: May Sarton’s Stunning 1938 Ode to Solitude via The Marginalian.
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How to Enjoy Being Single - David Robson   Psyche

Defy society’s singlism and discover ways to embrace a joyful, independent life.
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Alone in the Kitchen: The Seductive Nature of Solo Cooking - Wendell Brock   The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If two’s company and three’s a crowd, maybe now one is the magic number in the kitchen.

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https://getpocket.com/collections/rethinking-loneliness-singledom-and-the-stigma-of-solitude?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Earth 🌎 Puzzle

Earth Puzzle

The Earth Puzzle is a map of the globe unlike any you’ve seen before. Start anywhere and see where your journey takes you. This puzzle is based on an icosahedral projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!

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the Earth Puzzle from Nervous System on Vimeo.

WHIMSY PIECES
16 unique puzzle pieces shaped like animals from around the world

ARTWORK
Based on photographs from NASA's Earth Observatory which we transformed into an area-preserving icosahedral map projection

INFINITY PUZZLE
infinitely reconfigurable, no edges, no fixed shaped!

950🌠

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Earth Puzzle from Nervous System on Vimeo.

Earth and Moon Puzzles 

Explore the Earth and Moon through our mind-bending, never-ending jigsaw puzzles. The Earth Puzzle is a map of the globe unlike any you’ve seen before. Start anywhere and see where your journey takes you. This puzzle is based on an icosahedral map projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!

Map Projections

A classic map imposes distortions and orientations that reflect our preconceived notions of the world. The Mercator projection, which is the map we are most familiar with, unrolls the globe into a rectangle with even spacing of latitude and longitude, inflating Greenland into a massive tundra and smearing Antarctica into an unrecognizable white smudge at the bottom. It makes it seem like the Arctic is impassably vast, when actually flying over it is the fastest way to get to Europe from the US. More subtly, it reinforces the idea of a world split into West and East. Even a true globe typically has a fixed North-South axis, forcing us into a certain viewpoint.

The Earth puzzle is based on type of map called a polyhedral projection, where the sphere is projected onto a shape with planar faces and then unfolded flat. In this case, the globe is projected onto a icosahedron, a 20 sided shape of equilateral triangles. This reduces the distortion seen in most maps. This type of map was most famously explored by Buckminster Fuller with his Dymaxion Map. However, unlike the Dymaxion Map, our map is equal-area, meaning the relative size of landmasses is preserved exactly.

https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=8293

We created software to turn a Mercator projection into an icosahedral one. This allowed us to transform photographs from NASA’s Earth Observatory and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into our icosahedral mapping. We use a technique called spherical barycentric coordinates to project the sphere onto the icosahedron. These are area coordinates where every point on a triangle is identified as the weighted sum of its 3 vertices. If you take a point in a triangle and use that to subdivide the triangle into three smaller triangles, then the weight associated with each vertex is proportional to the area of the opposite triangle. Barycentric coordinates are commonly used in computer graphics to interpolate quantities on triangular meshes. You can extend this idea to spheres using spherical triangular patches and their areas. By doing so, the same area on the sphere corresponds to a proportional area on the icosahedron. The whole thing works in a GLSL shader. First we draw a triangle and its barycentric coordinates. We use those coordinates to compute a point on the sphere using spherical barycentric coordinates. From that point, we get the latitude and longitude, which allows us to look up the texture of a Mercator map.

We used the tool to design the projection such that the vertices of the icosahedron do not lay on land. The vertices are the only fixed point of the puzzle, and a seam must pass through them in order to make the puzzle flat. By putting the vertices in the ocean, it means all continents can be assembled into continuous shapes.

Infinity Puzzle

While Fuller always envisioned his Dymaxion Map as reconfigurable, we take this one step further by making a 442 piece puzzle with no edges. There is no fixed orientation or configuration of the puzzle. Assemble it such that all the continents form an almost continuous land mass or put all the oceans together. Put Antarctica in the center. This extends the Infinity Puzzle concept we first introduced with the Infinite Galaxy Puzzle (which has the topology of a Klein Bottle). The Infinity Puzzles are puzzles that truly have no border: pieces wrap around connecting from one part to another. There is no fixed final shape. The first Infinity Puzzles tile, connecting the left to the right and the top to the bottom. The Earth Puzzle’s pieces have more complex relationships, where pieces rotate 60 degrees to zip the seams of the map in different ways. This demonstrates how the infinity puzzles are not simply tiling puzzles but represent a broader range of possible borderless puzzles.

The Earth Puzzle can be assembled into countless shapes because it has the topology of a sphere and pieces wrap around with a rotation.

Growing the Puzzle Pieces in 3D

The puzzle pieces we generated for the Earth and Moon puzzles are similar to the maze pieces in our Geode Puzzles. However, there’s a fundamental difference: they had to be grown in 3D on the surface of an icosahedron. To do this, we created a new version of our Maze system which is a simulation of elastic rods. The puzzle piece edges grow, lengthening, until they collide, pushing each other into contorted shapes.  Because the puzzle pieces are growing on a 3D surface, we have to unfold them to a flat pattern so they can be turned into a jigsaw puzzle.

 

Whimsy Pieces

The Earth Puzzle includes 16 figure pieces shaped like animals indigenous to different parts of the world: a kiwi on New Zealand, an alpaca in South America, a giraffe and rhino in Africa, and different whales and marine animals throughout the ocean.

 

Explore the Earth and Moon through our mind-bending, never-ending jigsaw puzzles. The Earth Puzzle is a map of the globe unlike any you’ve seen before. Start anywhere and see where your journey takes you. This puzzle is based on an icosahedral map projection and has the topology of a sphere. This means it has no edges, no North and South, and no fixed shape. Try to get the landmasses together or see how the oceans are connected. Make your own maps of the earth!

The Earth Puzzle has 442 pieces and costs $120. As a companion, we are also releasing the Moon Puzzle so you can also explore lunar geography. The Moon Puzzle has 186 pieces and costs $60. Both puzzles use imagery courtesy of NASA, the Earth from the NASA Earth Observatory and the Moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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The Earth and Moon Puzzles are for sale in our shop now along with our other Infinity Puzzles.

https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=8293

https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_cat.php?categoryID=1484

https://vimeo.com/299538058#_=_

Opera 🎼 Mozart

Opera de Mozart

👇  ♪  📽  ♪  👇

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - Dove Sono 

Renee Fleming  - Porgi amor - Glyndebourne
Jascha Heifetz - Rondo by Mozart
Mozart  - 3rd movement Cadenza
Cheryl Studer - Porgi amor
Leontyne Price - Dove Sono
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - Porgi Amor
Fleming, Kanawa, Hong, Hadley, Terfel and Robbins - Sextet from Mozart's Don Giovanni  

Mozart 🎼 Don Giovanni ♪ Complete 🇺🇸 Subtitles 

👇 🎼 👇

https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2017/08/don-giovanni-complete-with-english.html

                         

Mozart's 🎼 Don Giovanni
👇 🎼 👇
https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2020/04/mozarts-don-giovanni.html
                                   
Mozart ♫ Don Giovanni ♫ Carlo Maria Giulini
👇 🎼 👇
https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2017/08/mozart-don-giovanni-carlo-maria-giulini.html

Best Sound Bars 🔊 4 Home Theater System🔉 🔊

🔉 Best Compact Sound Bars 🔊

For Your Home Theater System

December 16, 2021

Soundbars vs Surround Sound Speakers:

Which is Best for You?
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RS Recommends: 

The Best Compact Sound Bars to Upgrade Your Home Theater System. Don't let a lack of space stop you from experiencing excellent audio quality

When you hear the term “home theater audio system,” it’s easy to only think about big 5.1 surround sound speakers, but that’s not always the case. Compact sound bars are a major improvement over the speakers built into your TV, and can fit neatly under it.

The major problem with TV speakers is that modern 4K TVs are designed to be as thin as possible, which means there’s not a lot of space for audio equipment. Compact sound bars may be short, but they’re still taller and wider than the speaker space inside your TV. What that means: these little “bars” help create a larger, more immersive sound-space than just using built-in TV speakers alone.

Better still, well-known audio companies and TV brands have begun making their own compact sound bars, so you’re not sacrificing audio quality if you get one. As a person who was skeptical about sound bars until I tried one, I can attest to the big difference they make in your home theater experience, even in a small living room or studio apartment.

What Are the Best Compact Sound Bars?

There are many factors to consider when choosing the right compact sound bar (or portable sound bar) for you; below are the most important ones, which we considered while we were researching this list.
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Size: 

We’re defining “compact” as sound bars under 30 inches long. These sound bars won’t take up a lot of space, and can be mounted on the wall under your TV set or placed on top of an entertainment unit or shelf.
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Connectivity: 

Sound bars connect to your TV by getting plugged into ports like optical audio, HDMI, and RCA (red and white). Some sound bars have multiple ports, which allow you to use them with several devices at once, and other sound bars support Bluetooth, so you can stream audio to them wirelessly.
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Smart Features: 

While you should get a sound bar to improve the audio quality of your home theater system, we’ve also chosen one that can be used as a smart-home hub.
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Upgradability:  

All of the compact sound bars we’re recommending will sound great on their own, but some can be part of a larger audio system you can build over time.
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Vizio SB2920-C6

EASY TO INSTALL
VIZIO has become a popular TV company over the past few years, but its compact sound bar is no slouch. It measures 29 inches long, which makes it the largest compact sound bar we’re recommending, but it’s still relatively small compared to setting up an entire speaker system.
The SB2920-C6 has an optical, Aux (3.5mm), coaxial, and RCA inputs, plus an output for a subwoofer. VIZIO includes several cables with the sound bar, so you can connect it to your TV (and other devices) right out of the box. The only upgrade you can make to this sound bar is adding a subwoofer, so you can’t use it to build up a surround sound system over time.
This sound bar supports high-resolution audio formats like Dolbys DTS Studio Sound, DTS TruVolume, and DTS TruSurround when you use an optical cable. You won’t get real surround sound audio out of this sound bar, but it will mix 5.1 audio into stereo.
VIZIO covers the basics with the SB2920-C6, but it doesn’t have any smart features, and its upgradability is somewhat limited. Still, it’ll be a big improvement over your TV’s built-in speakers, and deserves more than a brief look.
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Bose TV Speaker Small Sound Bar
MOST COMPACT
The Bose TV Speaker Small Sound Bar delivers big, booming sound in a sleek, compact package. Paired with your TV, the portable sound bar creates a louder, more immersive listening experience than through your TV speakers alone. You’ll hear every rip and rumble from your favorite action film, with deeper bass and loud, room-filling sound. Music and effects are brought to life in vibrant detail, while Bose’s “dialogue mode” pulls out every word and expression from movies or commentary, to ensure that conversations sound crisp and clean.
The surprisingly powerful speakers amplify sound throughout the room, making this great for music listening too. Pair the sound bar to your phone via Bluetooth to soundtrack your next party, or to set the mood for when you want to relax with a good album in rich, audiophile quality. Press the “bass” button on the included remote to turn up the beats for extra oomph.
At 23.4 x 2.2 x 4 inches, this is the smallest Bose sound bar, and one of the most portable sound bars available overall. The TV Speaker’s light weight (just over seven pounds) makes it easy to mount on the wall or position on an entertainment unit or counter  (you can add mounting hardware for an extra $40).

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Sonos Beam
BEST OVERALL

I used the Sonos Beam as my home theater audio system for almost a year, and it’s still the sound bar I recommend to my friends and family.

It’s 25.6 inches long, which puts it in the middle of the pack in terms of size, but it’s fully loaded with impressive features. The Beam only has one port — HDMI — plus an HDMI to optical audio converter it bundles in the box. This may seem strange at first, but HDMI and optical audio are the most widely used standards for stereo receivers and TVs.

Most sound bars have other ports to allow you to upgrade your system over time, and connect lots of devices to them at once. The Beam has all of those features, but Sonos opted to go wireless instead. This sound bar supports Bluetooth and AirPlay 2, an Apple-developed wireless audio standard that allows you stream higher resolution music from your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV.

You can create a full 5.1 surround sound system by pairing the Beam with a Sonos SUB or Sonos Onespeakers. The Beam, Sub, and One speakers all need to be connected to an outlet for power, but connect to one another wirelessly.

The Sonos Beam is a smart sound bar, and can be set up to work with both Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant. Once it’s configured, you can control the Sonos Beam with your voice. Voice commands can be used to play music from different streaming services, change the Beam’s volume, or control smart-home accessories.

These technical features are all great, but it’s the Sonos Beam’s performance that really stands out. In my experience, the Beam does a great job when listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, or playing video games. It held its own in scenes or game sequences where there was a lot going on, and dialogue was never drowned out by background effects. I was particularly impressed with how the Beam handled bass.

It’s no surprise that the most technically-advanced compact sound bar in our guide comes from one of the pioneers of modern audio tech, but the Sonos Beam delivers on all fronts. Buy Sonos Beam $369.00 

 

👇   🔉 🎼 🔊   👇

🔊 Best Soundbars for Your TV and Home Theater

🔉  https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Best+Compact+Sound+Bars+4+Home+Theater+System 

🔉 👆👂 🔊
RS Recommends 

🔊 https://www.rollingstone.com/product-recommendations/electronics/best-compact-sound-bars-1012643/

Everything You Know☘️ About St. Patrick's Day Is Wrong🐍

Everything You Know About

St. Patrick's Day

Is Wrong

By Christine Dalton

St. Patrick's Day is upon us! 

Typically, we associate the holiday with drinking, drinking, and drinking. Oh, and being Irish.
But there's a lot more to St. Patrick's Day than most people know. Truthfully, you've probably been living a lie. When you learn all the facts, this holiday actually kind of... sucks.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but here are 10 brutally honest facts about St. Patrick's Day.

• 10 St. Patrick wasn't Irish.
   
  Historians believe he was born in what is now England, Scotland or Wales. 
  
  
• 9 St. Patrick's color is blue.
  
  
  
  WE'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE. You might want to hold off on the green face paint this year.
  
• 8 St. Patrick's Day as we know it was invented in America.
   
  Really?! Catholic University's Irish American expert, Timothy Meagher, explains that St. Patrick's Day celebrations began in the 18th century in American cities with large Irish immigrant populations."It becomes a way to honor the saint but also to confirm ethnic identity and to create bonds of solidarity," Meagher explained. Really. 
   
• 7 March 17th is the day St. Patrick died.
   
  So you're celebrating his death.... 
   
• 6  St. Patrick didn't drive all the snakes from Ireland.
   
  Probably because there's no evidence that snakes have EVER existed in Ireland. The climate is much too chilly for them. 
   5  The shamrock isn't the symbol of Ireland.
•  
  Sure, you can find shamrocks all over the Emerald Isle, but the real symbol is the harp. 
   
• 4  St. Patrick's Day used to be a dry holiday.
  
  Today's booze-bags look to the holiday as a great excuse to start drinking Guinness at 9 AM. Until 1970, however, all pubs in Ireland were closed in observance of the religious feast day. 
   
• 3  Corned beef and cabbage isn't a traditional Irish dish.
   
  It's just about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs. You're better off sticking to Guinness. 
   
• 2  There are more Irish people living in the U.S. than Ireland.
  
  The population of Ireland is about 4.2. million. In contrast, there are around 34 MILLION people of Irish descent living in America. 
   
• 1  Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are slim to none.
  
  
  
  1 in 10,000 to be exact.   Ouch.

But let's end on a happy note. At least these two guys are Irish. 

 Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/label/St.Patrick