Weird Al On Alimony

In honor of Weird Al Yankovic playing at the Minnesota State Fair yesterday, here is his take on alimony.  Unlike Al, I work at the state fair to get a little extra money because of paying alimony.  Al, despite the song, has been married for 25 years and is well known for being a devout Christian who doesn't swear, drink, or take drugs. He is known as being an extremely nice guy. He has never paid alimony. I wonder who inspired him to write this song?

How & Why Family Courts are Allowed to be Corrupt

 A real life case shows how corrupt family court is. 

As bad as it is, mine was much worse. 

Partner Violence

When someone mentions intimate partner violence, people often just assume it is males committing violence against women but that is not always the case. Often, and I have seem up to 50%, it is women committing violence against men. Yet almost all social services are designed to help women not men. 

Men are less likely than women to seek help after experiencing intimate partner violence, and new research from George Mason University found that the main barriers include viewing it as a private matter, fear of retaliation, shame, and concerns about not being believed.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 44% of men report being victims of IPV, but many of these men are not receiving support, highlighting the significance of understanding barriers to seeking help.

• Across all racial and ethnic categories, viewing abuse as a private matter was the most common barrier to seeking help.
• Latino men were significantly more likely to express concerns about shame or embarrassment being a barrier.
• Black men were less likely to report concerns about not being believed.
• White men were more likely to report difficulty in labeling their experiences as abuse.

Manosphere Madness

I've never really understood the whole manosphere movement. To me it is bizarre that anyone would be attracted to it. It is like being attracted to idiocy. Of course, I view people who support Trump the same way. But people are attracted to both. Why? Wired has a pretty good article -- The ‘Manosphere’ Isn’t a Movement. It’s a Multibillion-Dollar Grievance Industry.

Many young men are driven to resentment and are financially exploited as influencers sell them classes, pills, and the illusion of clout, a new report reveals.

In “The Grift Economy: How Young Men Are Being Sold Fake Belonging and Fake Wealth Online,” researchers from the digital safety organization Reset Tech and the nonprofit Equimundo map how men are “algorithmically routed into paid communities, unregulated supplements, crypto schemes, and high-ticket ‘coaching’ programs,” which together make up a “multibillion-dollar industry.”

“‘Masculinity’ has become a commercial category that is constructed, curated, and financially incentivized online,” write the authors of the 153-page report.

First, men encounter aspirational self-help content when looking up advice on dating, fitness, or finance. Bad actors then exploit their areas of vulnerability by offering a misleading, grievance-based narrative to explain their frustrations. The paper cites, for example, a verified “business” account on X that used real economic data to falsely claim that the high rate of youth unemployment is only affecting men.

So maybe I get it a little. The attraction of the manosphere is the same attraction that drives women to dieting sites, cnspiracy theorists to ant-vaxing sites, Israelis to anti-Palestinian sites, Palestinians to anti-Israeli sites, and on and on. To be clear it is idiocy but sadly humans are all at least partially idiots and there is always someone who will exploit that to gain money and power. Exactly like family court.