I keep thinking of just how amazing My Mom Jayne is and how emotionally powerful.  This particularly wonderful quote from Mariska's stepmother keeps circling and circling within me and I cannot deny its truth:

"There's no way when you love somebody that they ever leave your heart. I don't care who, I don't care how angry you are, I don't care anything. If you really love somebody they remain in there." 

I've noticed lately that the stats section of my blogger is oddly very high. Now, since I know that as much as I love writing and find peace in it I am not a particularly riveting writer, I seriously question the legitimacy of these figures.

Are there bots generating the traffic or could there be thousands of readers in Brazil and Vietnam reading what I write? I would be thrilled if there really were, but somehow I think not. 

What I don't get about it, though, is why they are targeting my blog. Wouldn't the creator of a website or blog be the one to generate false stats, not an outsider? I'm scratching my head on this one.

I Googled to find out more about fake stats and traffic bots:

AI Overview

In relation to bot activity and traffic, Brazil and Vietnam appear in several recent analyses and reports, particularly regarding cybercrime and bot farm operations. 

Brazil:

• Cybercrime Epicenter: Brazil is consistently ranked as a significant source of malware, bots, spam, and phishing attacks. A specific botnet, "Horabot," originating in Brazil, has been active since at least November 2020, delivering banking trojans and spam tools to victims, primarily Spanish speakers. This botnet targets sensitive information like credentials and financial data.
• Large-scale Botnets: Brazil has been identified as a hub for large botnet operations. The BadBox 2.0 botnet, for instance, infected 1.6 million devices globally, with 400,000 active within Brazil. These devices are used for launching DDoS attacks, spreading malware, and creating proxy networks for illicit activities.
• Political Manipulation: Bots have been observed as influential tools in Brazilian political discourse, particularly during elections. They can inflate the appearance of support for specific candidates or viewpoints by rapidly posting content at the extremes of the political spectrum. 

Vietnam:

• Bot Farm Operations: Vietnam is identified as a location for bot farms, which use numerous fake social media accounts to manipulate algorithms and create the impression of trending topics or public sentiment. Human operators in these farms might be assigned topics to provoke outrage, further driving engagement and virality.
• Sophisticated Scams: Vietnam-based hackers have been linked to using fake AI video generator websites to distribute malware, highlighting their use of advanced tactics.
• Growing Bad Actor Presence: In a 2019 analysis, Vietnam ranked among the countries hosting the most "bad actors" in absolute terms and generating a high proportion of malicious traffic relative to its population. 

General Trends:

• Advanced Bots and AI: The rise of advanced AI and machine learning is fueling the development of more sophisticated bots that can mimic human behavior and evade detection.
• Profitable Cybercrime: The increasing prevalence of bot attacks and bot farm operations indicates the high profitability of these activities for cybercriminals. 

In summary, both Brazil and Vietnam are significant locations in the landscape of online bot activity and cybercrime, with specific focus on botnets, fraudulent operations, and manipulation of online narratives. 

I have eczema; it appears a lot on the sides of my face which I've always been self-conscious about over the past ten years since it first started seriously appearing in my life.

This morning a coworker told me how great my skin looks lately, especially my ears. I don't recall that she and I have ever discussed my eczema, but it's not like it hasn't been right out there for everyone to see.

"I think it's the drinking, don't you?" She lowered her voice when she commented. I had told her a few weeks back that my dry January had turned into a dry 2025.

Soon I'll be going into my seventh month without a drop of wine, or any other kind of alcohol, and I think she might be right. My skin problems flared up way before I started drinking back at the beginning of Covid, but when I stepped into the bathroom after our talk, I realized my coworker was right, then I realized that the last time I remembered a bad flare-up was earlier this year.

I really want to tackle other health-related aspects of the damage my drinking did. I'm not sure if 2-3 drinks a night meant I had a problem or not, in a clinical way, but I know that I feel better since I quit and I'm also finally starting to get a little bit of a stab at the huge weight gain that I let take over my life these past few years.

Menopause or not, less eating or not, this is still my fault.

Metabolism can turn its back on you after you reach a certain age and what once gave me a pass on eating whatever I wanted, now has deserted me and it is up to me to fight back. I eat half of what I used to, but now I need to do twice the work.

 

Like much of the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s, "The Children's Hour" comes from that era when homosexuality was considered the "worst evil of all." I'm not sure if William Wyler meant to or not, but in this film the director finds a surprising sympathy for his main character Martha. Despite its emphasis on the supposed lesbianism of the two leads, "The Children's Hour" is not really a story about being gay. Instead it focuses (or tries to) on how one bad little girl can ruin two adults's lives forever simply by opening her mouth.

With relative restraint rather than melodrama, Wyler illustrates the power of a child's words. A student at the boarding school "Karen" (Audrey Hepburn) and "Martha" (Shirley MacLaine) run, "Mary" (Karen Balkin) spreads malicious rumors (are there any other kind?). On the surface these rumors aren't true, but as things progress and Karen and Martha interact in their strong friendship and professional partnership, we see that Martha may indeed have "unnatural" feelings for her best friend.

Things reach a fevered pitch as Mary's grandmother takes action and decides Karen and Martha are not to fit to run a school for young girls. Legal action is taken, careers are destroyed and a friendship that once was fun and light-hearted is now fraught with tension.

I don't like to reveal endings to movies, so I won't do that here. All I WILL say is that Shirley MacLaine gives the performance of her life as she unravels emotionally, devastated at what is happening around and inside her. Filmed during a time when gays and lesbians were treated as criminals and freaks, "The Children's Hour" is not as harsh as it could have been. Some people would probably call Wyler's film unfashionably dated, but the sad truth is it's coming back in style now that we are slowly returning to an era that demonizes gays and lesbians and won't let them have a happy ending.

Sixteen years after I last watched The Children's Hour and wrote a blog post about it, I discovered this new book Sick and Dirty, which just became available yesterday. I have half a mind to watch the movie again, especially since I think my initial reaction might be wrong, but I just remember how upset I was by ending, much like Splendor in the Grass hit me hard, but for different reasons.

The above book opens with this:

Though long cited as a landmark for anyone studying the history of gay and lesbian film, The Children’s Hour was a last-minute addition to my syllabus. I wasn’t convinced of the prudence or efficacy of showing this movie to twenty-first-century eighteen-to-twenty-one-year-olds. It could play to them as both upsetting and horribly dated, perhaps too melodramatic in its plot machinations (triggering mockery from the students) and offensive in its tragic final moments (courting outright rejection from them).

The author discovers that her class reacts differently than she had expected, much the way I reacted the first time I watched:

I tried to offer a few words of care, though I found myself choked up. This surprised me—to be moved anew by a film that I, like so many queer scholars and critics and movie lovers, had a long, complicated, even superior attitude about. Most of the students shuffled out wordlessly, but a few came down to the front of the sloped lecture room; some had tears in their eyes, others were ashen. “I know” was one of the small responses I had to offer, promising we’d talk more about it at next week’s class.

Last night and this morning I had the worst headache I've probably had in ten years. I used to get really bad and frequent ones in my late 20s and 30s. I saw an acupuncturist back then and he felt pretty strongly my headaches tied in to the amenorrhea I was experiencing at that point in my life.

It did seem like once I started getting my period regularly I didn't have bad headaches anymore and for the most part I've been so fortunate to not have them as often.

But now that I'm entering menopause I find my headaches are returning, though none of them have been as horrible as my most recent one.

It was as if someone had punched me in the right eye socket with a sledgehammer and the accompanying tightness in my head and my nausea didn't help. I must sound so melodramatic but I really thought of the possibility I might be dying. 

I suddenly remembered an old issue of Good Housekeeping from my childhood where the writer of an article on migraines said she sometimes thought of getting out her gun and just shooting herself in the head to be over the pain. I didn't get it at the time, even thought it sounded like the writer might be dangerous.

But anyone who has ever had a migraine or other type of headache of that intensity most likely would tell you they do get it.

Once I started feeling better this morning I remembered that Good Housekeeping used to have lots of articles like that back in the day. The magazine featured a regular column called "My Problem and How I Solved It." I used to 'borrow' my mom's issues back then just to read it each month.

The one about the lady with headaches and another column stood out in my mind for years afterward. The second article had to do with this woman discovering her daughter was sleeping with her boyfriend (the daughter's boyfriend, not the mother's, just in cause my headache aftermath is making my writing a bit unclear).

"Sleeping with?" I didn't get it. 

But then I think I was around nine at the time. I asked my mom, despite wanting to keep my reading habits secret. I'll never forget her answer and how later on it would be a perfect example of why I went into "family life" in middle school knowing absolutely nothing about sex and puberty.

"That just means she was napping with her friend who was a boy." my mom told me. And I completely believed her.

No wonder I still spell S-E-X when talking about it with polite company and, sometimes, even close friends.