HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
Abelard was castrated because he fucked around (literally, he got her pregnant) with the niece of a Very Important Guy who didn't appreciate that kind of hands-on approach to tutoring (today Abelard would be criticised for power imbalance, grooming, age gap - he was 36, she was 15-17 years of age, of his pupil). They engaged in a secret marriage in order to satisfy her uncle but kept it secret because if Abelard wanted to become a priest (to have a career in the church) clerical celibacy was becoming necessary.
Uncle was not happy about all this and took action:
Fulbert, infuriated that Heloise had been taken from his house and possibly believing that Abelard had disposed of her at Argenteuil in order to be rid of her, arranged for a band of men to break into Abelard's room one night and castrate him. In legal retribution for this vigilante attack, members of the band were punished, and Fulbert, scorned by the public, took temporary leave of his canon duties (he does not appear again in the Paris cartularies for several years).
End result is that Héloïse ends up in a convent and Abelard remains a monk, but cannot be ordained to the priesthood if he is castrated (there are rubrics around bastardy etc. and what disqualifies someone from the priesthood, including being a eunuch). This doesn't mean he can't continue to be wellknown, he already had a reputation as a theologian and was famous and continued to be, but since he couldn't be a priest this disbarred him from advancement to such offices as bishop, etc. but he did become abbot of a monastery, though his career continued to be controversial due to his alleged heretical teachings.
Truly a case of "fuck around and find out".
As for Kamala, certainly stories about her past were floating around for a long time (e.g. I saw it mentioned online that her nickname had been "Heels Up Harris") and it came to the point that Willie Brown had to issue a denial that he promoted her only because she was his girlfriend (and indeed, later she allegedly warned him off*). Being fair to Willy, yeah he pretty much did promote her because she was his girlfriend and that got her the start in political career, but he also promoted guys as well for being loyal to him. Old-school politician who rewarded his allies and loyalists when the fat spoils were to be divided upon gaining power.
I think the reason it didn't get play this time was (1) it was old news (2) the media and online media were working hard to squash any such distasteful racist and sexist attacks upon the Democratic Saviour From Evil Trump (remember all the havering over "how very dare you say she was border czar, she was no such thing, the Republicans are lying when they call her that"?)
*"Brown's romantic relationship with Alameda County deputy district attorney Kamala Harris preceded his appointment of Harris to two California state commissions in the mid-1990s. The San Francisco Chronicle called the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission patronage positions. When the appointments became a political issue in Harris's 2003 race for District Attorney, she responded: "Whether you agree or disagree with the system, I did the work". Brown's relationship with Harris gained renewed attention in early 2019 after she had become a U.S. senator and ran for president. Brown addressed the questions by publishing a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?" He wrote that he may have "influenced" her career by appointing her to boards and supporting her run for District Attorney, but added that he had also influenced the careers of other politicians. Brown noted that the difference between Harris and other politicians he had helped was that "Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I 'so much as jaywalked' while she was D.A. That's politics for ya."
HereAndGone2
19d ago
It's about as official as any of those "tomb of Jesus discovered" documentaries that were all the rage on the Discovery Channel years back. Possible blood sample taken from "I cut off this piece of material from the sofa in Hitler's bunker" eighty years ago, not stored in any way you could consider preservative of DNA samples, for clickbait documentary hosted by TV pop-sci host who apparently will appear for the opening of an envelope.
Yes, I'm convinced!
HereAndGone2
19d ago
I sort of had comments on this, but my main take-away impression is: please stop trying to be a cut-rate The Last Psychiatrist.
HereAndGone2
20d ago
C'mon, this is uncharitable, isn't it? Shouldn't you know better?
Yeah, imagine confusing Trollope with Dickens who was prevailed upon successfully to change his depiction of fictional Jewish characters, from the criminal Fagin in "Oliver Twist" to the saintly Riah in "Our Mutual Friend" after a Jewish lady wrote to him.
Piers Morgan is a little bit complicated. He's middle-class, but not really upper middle-class. He's not as posh as he sounds, turns out he's half-Irish (so ironically both he and Fuentes were raised Catholic, at this stage I am starting to believe in the Papist World Domination Plot given how many in the public eye turn out unexpectedly to be "yeah Catholic background/raised Catholic") and only gets the double-barrelled name from his stepfather, who was a pub landlord:
Piers Morgan was born as Piers Stefan O'Meara in Guildford, Surrey, on 30 March 1965, the son of Vincent Eamonn O'Meara, an Irish dentist, and Gabrielle Georgina Sybille (née Oliver), an English woman who raised Morgan as a Catholic. A few months after his birth, the family moved to Newick, East Sussex. His father died when Morgan was 11 months old; his mother later married Glynne Pughe-Morgan, a Welsh pub landlord who later worked in the meat distribution business, and he took his stepfather's surname.
So while "Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan" sounds rather posh, he's not really. He's probably personally a liberal, but he worked for the Murdoch newspapers so publicly he pushed a somewhat down-market pro-Tory line and mostly adopts whatever will grab headlines, so that means controversial/clickbait takes, be that very to the left or very to the right, whichever sells best at the moment. Here's a typical example of him talking out of both sides of his mouth:
Morgan identified as a supporter of the Conservative Party in a 1994 interview, saying he was "still basically a Tory", but expressed admiration for the recently elected Labour Party leader Tony Blair, saying "he's not radical, speaks well and makes sense".
Seemingly he's voted for both Conservatives and Labour candidates, depending on whatever the phase of the moon at the time was (or something):
Morgan voted for the Animal Welfare Party in the 2015 general election due to his low opinion of all the main party leaders. He voted against Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum but voted for the Kensington Conservative candidate in the 2019 general election because of Boris Johnson's commitment to honour the result of the referendum. Morgan has also previously voted for the Labour Party. Following Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, he called leader Keir Starmer "a good, decent, hard-working, self-made man". In November 2024, he identified as a centrist, adding "woke liberals are too loony-left for me".
So he started his career in journalism working for the Murdoch press, which is working-class/down-market pro-Tory right-wing. The News of the World was a pure scandal sheet, in my childhood during the late 60s/70s it was vaguely disreputable, racy type of paper you wouldn't admit to reading but bought on Sundays for all the scandal-mongering:
The News of the World concentrated in particular on celebrity scoops, gossip and populist news. Its somewhat prurient focus on sex scandals gained it the nickname Screws of the World. In its last decade it had a reputation for exposing celebrities' drug use, sexual peccadilloes, or criminal acts, by using insiders and journalists in disguise to provide video or photographic evidence, and covert phone hacking in ongoing police investigations.
Morgan began to work as a freelance at The Sun in 1988, at this point dropping his double-barrelled name. He told Hunter Davies in December 1994 that he was personally recruited by Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie to work on the newspaper's show business column "Bizarre", his first high-profile post. Although he was not a fan of pop music, he was considered skilled at self-publicity and became the column's main writer.
...In January 1994, he became editor of the News of the World after being appointed to the job by Rupert Murdoch. ...In this period, the newspaper led with a series of scoops for which Morgan credited a highly efficient newsdesk and publicist Max Clifford.
Morgan then leaves the centre-right paper for a centre-left paper, claiming he resigned of his own accord but more a case of "jump before he was pushed":
Morgan left this post in 1995 ...The incident was reported to have contributed to Morgan's decision to leave for the Daily Mirror editorship.. Morgan's autobiography The Insider states that he left the News of the World for the Mirror of his own choice. It asserts he was an admirer of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for most of her period of office, making the appointment surprising as the Mirror is a Labour-supporting title.
...[Is involved in several mini-scandals, including allegedly profiting from insider trading stock tips from business journalists for the Mirror, then] In the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Morgan was sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror "with immediate effect" on 14 May 2004, after refusing to apologise to Sly Bailey, then head of Trinity Mirror, for authorising the newspaper's publication of fake photographs.
He moved into television presenting, and has continued his chameleon-like style of being friends with/never heard of them (according as the wind blows) regarding various celebrities and public figures, e.g. "Morgan was briefly a friend of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex before she became the Duchess of Sussex, but said she cut him off early in her relationship with Prince Harry. He has been a regular critic of the couple since then, alleging they are hypocrites and claiming the Duchess is a social climber."
He wore out his welcome in UK media circles, hence the move to the USA. Mostly he has a good nose for controversy and isn't afraid (whether deliberately or not) to look like an idiot in his pursuit of headlines. Because he is such a chameleon, I would say not to take very seriously any stance he holds on any topic, since give him ten minutes and he'll swing to the opposite position if that's more tenable for public interest/attention.
HereAndGone2
20d ago
That he's even got a bishop involved is still a lot more attachment to the church than I would have expected. Imagine (let me pull someone's name out of thin air) Gavin Newsom getting a rap on the knuckles from his local bishop; although Gav was allegedly raised Catholic, I don't think I've heard bishops rapping Gav over the knuckles even the way Pelosi was rapped.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
It is entirely possible to be working and paid under the table while claiming social welfare benefits and you don't have to be an immigrant. Many criminals in Ireland have hundreds of thousands in cash and assets while claiming the dole, it turns out when the court case eventually makes its way to trial.
(Link one)
In 2017, CAB raided the home of Kenneth Carpenter and his partner, Elaine Byrne, and seized a €2,600 Chanel handbag, four high-end watches worth €100,000 and a Brown Thomas Platinum card that requires holders spend at least €5,000 a year instore. The couple's only legitimate declared income was Elaine Byrne's allowance as a lone parent.
An early social welfare target was James Gantley, a father-of-four who found his dole payments blocked by CAB in 1998. The court heard evidence of property transactions of more than €200,000, a villa in Spain and €94,000 in a biscuit tin. Mr Gantley, years later, pleaded guilty to "voicing" the ransom demand in a botched attempt to extort money from a delivery firm.
Earlier this year, gardai in Drogheda announced they planned to target feuding drugs trafficking gangs that have terrorised the Louth town by going after their social welfare payments.
Its most recent annual report showed that of the €5.6m CAB returned to the State last year, €323,000 arose from social welfare overpayments, while it also recovered €2.2m seized as the proceeds of crime and just over €3m in taxes.
Mr Ryan's thesis finds that between 1996 and 2006, CAB's social welfare activities has generated savings to the exchequer to the tune of €7,808,753.04 and received recovery payments of €4,066,136.36.
"Whilst considerably less than the financial income generated from forfeiture of assets it nonetheless represents a significant denial of cash flow to criminality from an area of the bureau that does not receive significant attention in wider academic or media discourse," it said.
The thesis, "The examination of how the methods employed by the Criminal Assets Bureau move Ireland in a new direction of crime control", was completed as part of Mr Ryan's doctoral studies at the University of Limerick.
(Link two)
McInerney has convictions for drugs, theft, assault and passing counterfeit currency.
He bought the farmhouse and land at an auction for €233,000 in 2010 and paid a cash deposit of €23,300.
McInerney was on social welfare but claimed he got the money through the sale of another property, investments in Lanzarote, the sale of a Toyota Land Cruiser.
He also said that he had found "€5,000-€6,000" in another house he bought.
He said he got the cash deposit through a combination of "horse trading" money which was "under the counter" and two people, "Marie" and "Cha" he met for a loan of €156,000, but "didn't sign any forms at that meeting".
(Link three)
A father of five faces jail for unlawfully claiming almost €283,000 in social welfare payments uncovered following a Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) investigation.
Judge Keenan Johnson remarked on the irony that John McDonagh, 50, Dalton Park, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, has begun repaying the money using funds from his current social welfare payments.
At Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday, he imposed sentences totalling six years, but suspended four and a half on the condition McDonagh does not reoffend in the next five years. The prison term was postdated to commence in July.
McDonagh pleaded guilty to theft in connection with the social welfare fraud, unlawfully claiming a total of €282,881 in the Jobseekers Allowance payments from July 2009 until August 2022.
Over the same period, his bank accounts showed he had other lodgements totalling €382,000.
There were €8,000 lodgements in the first year, but the annual figures increased to €85,000 before being detected when he claimed some of that money was from selling cars.
(Link four)
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) seized more than €116 million worth of assets over 12 years with some €64.4 million transferred to the exchequer as a result of its work during the same period, according to new figures.
…This included €22,209,595 under proceeds of crime legislation, €38,021,925 in taxes and interest collected and €4,213,719 in social welfare recoveries.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
Made an honest woman out of her/she made an honest man out of him and now they're having babies. Okay, the circumstances of how they met are terrible by my conservative religious morals but even I can't resist going "Awww" at the conclusion of this story.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
You made the joke before I could. This is oddly heart-warming and wholesome, if very strange; who knew true love began at orgies? Maybe Aella will be the solution to the TFR crisis! 😁
HereAndGone2
21d ago
If he's a Catholic gay virgin and refraining from sex to be celibate and chaste in line with church teaching, you have now made my opinion of this person (whom I know nothing about) zoom way up.
By contrast, all I know of Pierce Morgan is that he well deserves the Private Eye nickname of Piers Moron and I am surprised anyone is watching/listening to his shows.
HereAndGone2
21d ago
Difference is, if you read anything by Casanova, he seems to genuinely have liked women. The famous Don Juan, by contrast, in his fictional portrayal seems to have treated women as notches on his bedpost and to have regarded them with contempt.
Being able to end on friendly terms with your exes will save you from a lot of "they then went to their male relations and claimed he had violated them" vindictiveness, hence why he was able to live to be 73 😁
HereAndGone2
23d ago
That was the obvious joke, please applaud me for avoiding it 😁
HereAndGone2
24d ago
Ouch. Nine months? And that's enough to tank her teaching career. To be fair, if the 15 year old guys in her classes are all looking up Teacher's nude scenes that's not going to make for good discipline in the classroom.
These are the downsides people don't consider.
HereAndGone2
24d ago
The problem is that porn and prostitution, like sports, are where you make a lot of money (if you make it) when you're young but you age out fast (I think for porn there's also the novelty problem, that the consumers want fresh content all the time).
So then you have to have something else to pivot to, when you're still in your 30s/40s (which is relatively young). And for porn actresses, the majority can't act (because that's not the talent they were hired for), so it's extremely hard to break into legitimate acting career.
And so, like the former sports star who blew through his fortune and now is no longer in demand, and who failed at running a business (it often happens, the Plan B of "I'll open my own sports shop/bar" does fall through) and didn't get a gig as a pundit, or a manager, the ex-porn star is left trying to squeeze the last drops of profit out of fading glory.
It's not so much to do with shame and stigma, as it is that nobody loves a fairy when she's forty.
HereAndGone2
24d ago
I know! I'm only a few chapters in, but every time she seethes about Vance it's patently obvious that the Democrats had no answer to him. Tim was very definitely not the answer.
The amount of self-congratulation she engages in is also phenomenal, it's equally clear that this book was intended to be "Why It Wasn't My Fault". She's so desperate to demonstrate that she was omnicompetent, the best possible candidate because she had the greatest appeal to every single person in the country, she had all these relatable life experiences she could have shared if only they had enough time to run a proper campaign, that she occasionally veers into the territory of "Uh, you didn't really need to include that detail, Kamala":
We headed out of the city, through woods draped with Spanish moss and lush wetlands, to Liberty County High School in Hinesville, where the school’s marching band played for us. I told the band members that I, too, had been in my school band. I played everything from the French horn to the kettle drum. With the horn players, I shared that I’d given up the horn because it involved entirely too much spit. Tim and some of my team members later said that they were surprised to learn about my onetime musical prowess. It was another example of how there were so many more ways to connect with people, if I’d only had more time.
Or, one might say, that telling a bunch of 17 year olds how you gave up band back in high school because it was too spitty isn't going to win many votes 🤣 (And of course, SuperKamala couldn't just play one instrument, it had to be a gamut of them).
I've really got to finish this book, there are so many plums to pull out, it's just I have to stop every now and then to take a breath from the relentless "I'm wonderful, I'm special, I'm marvellous, I'm smart, everyone loves me, everyone agrees I'm simply the best, better than all the rest (it's not my fault we lost! it's not, it's not!!)".
HereAndGone2
25d ago
I'm also willing to entertain the hypothesis that he was chosen in part so that when Kamala won, they could use FedGov power to cover up the problem/immunize him from consequences.
I wish they were that efficient. That the scandal came out seems to have taken Walz etc. by surprise, so I don't think there was that much forward planning around "when I am elected, as of course I shall be, then we fix your little problem Tim, now hold my handbag for me while I speechify at this bunch of white liberal women".
I still haven't managed to finish reading her "107 Days" book, but searching through it on Kindle here's pretty much why she picked Walz:
He said he had no ambition to be president, that his aim as vice president would be doing meaningful work to improve people’s lives. It’s no bad thing for a vice president to want to be president, unless that ambition plays a corrosive role in the relationship and causes disloyalty. That wouldn’t be an issue with Tim. He had no fixed ideas about what the role of vice president should be, saying he would do whatever I found was most useful for him to do.
...To get a young person’s opinion, I called my godson, Alexander Hudlin, seventeen years old and very much a creature of the zeitgeist. He was for Walz. “Auntie, I like him.” [As an aside, I am very doubtful about any 17 year old who is interested in some old white guy governor of some state in flyover country. This little anecdote is a bit too pat for me to believe.]
My senior staff, to a person, strongly favored Tim.
...Maya and Tony were staying with us. They both liked Walz. Maya especially liked the fact that he was not trying to be anything but the best VP for her sister: “He’s loyal, he’ll have your back on the trail, and it’s clear that you like him,” she said.
...Our first encounter [Kamala meeting Walz' wife] was in the locker room of the Temple University gym, appropriate enough for Coach Walz. It was my idea for the campaign to lean into Tim’s brand as coach, a role that conveys both strength and caring. Tim was a relative unknown nationally, but there was so much about him that would be familiar to people’s everyday relationships and experiences. Not many people have met an astronaut, and they might not love politicians, but most people can relate to a high school coach. And with early voting starting in forty-five days, that immediate connection was important. Knowing that, I’d asked the team to print up COACH signs that people could hold up at rallies.
...My first job that night was to introduce Tim Walz to the country. This was not hard: the man has a biography that could provide scripts for several Hallmark movies. I led with how he’d coached a perennially losing high school football team—they hadn’t scored a single touchdown in the first six weeks of the season before he became coach—to winning the state championship.
I went on to tell the story of how a student who wanted to start the first gay-straight alliance at the school had gone to this storied football coach to ask for his support. Walz immediately agreed to become the group’s faculty adviser. Tim said he thought it would send a message of inclusion if the adviser was a football coach, a soldier, straight, and married.
...A local farmer introduced Tim as “a lifelong Midwesterner” who “understands rural America.” Tim proved it as he spoke, connecting to the enthusiastic crowd and finding a Midwestern cadence in which to talk about reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and how Trump’s Republicans infringed on basic freedoms.
And once again, why the flip did they not listen to Bill? The guy has bucketloads of charisma, also navigated successfully the image of being a hick from the sticks, and knows how to win elections:
Bill Clinton, speaking for the twelfth time at a Democratic convention, delivered firm words. Like the cop who arrives at the door of a rowdy party, he wanted the music turned down a little. We were getting euphoric too soon, he warned. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen,” he said, clearly referring to Hillary’s 2016 loss to Trump. Don’t get “distracted by phony issues,” he admonished. “Never underestimate your adversary.”
Bill Clinton knows how to weave a tale. He’s one of the best storytellers in modern politics. And why was I surprised that this night, instead of his allotted twelve minutes, he would speak for twenty-nine? He wasn’t the only speaker who went long. Once again, the keynote speaker, Tim Walz, was pushed partially out of prime time in the East.
Which was too bad, because Tim gave a great speech, introducing himself to the country, making the case for me, attacking Trump on abortion and on Project 2025, presenting the values of our campaign by calling on specific examples from his own life.
Also she is really salty about J.D. Vance being the rival redneck and campaigning successfully by - get this for wicked underhand tricks - being moderate in the debate with Walz! Oh, the effrontery! How could poor, decent, honest, aw-shucks Tim ever compete with some slick Yale graduate pal of Silicon Valley billionaires?
It was not a comfortable role for him. He had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater. I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium. He’d prepared with Pete Buttigieg, a consummate debater, and I thought his big heart and his good humor would counter J. D. Vance’s malice and pessimism.
But J. D. Vance is a shape-shifter. And a shifty guy. He understood that his default meanness wouldn’t play against Tim Walz’s sunny disposition and patent decency. Throughout the debate, he toned the anger and the insults way down. As Van Jones later remarked, he sane-washed the crazy. There were no cat ladies, no pet-eating Haitians, no personal insults. Just a mild-mannered, aw-shucks Appalachian pretending he had a lot of common ground with that nice Midwestern coach.
When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, “What is happening?”
I told the television screen: “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.”
She doesn't like J.D. because he correctly forecast the election result 🤣
I got into my motorcade, but we weren’t pulling out. I asked Max why we weren’t leaving. That was when I learned we were being held up by J. D. Vance. He was out of his car and walking toward Air Force Two, in violation of every rule of security and protocol.
I later learned that he told reporters he was there because “I just wanted to check out my future plane.”
HereAndGone2
25d ago
I'm going to bet on Canada, just because it would be so funny.
HereAndGone2
25d ago
Kamala Harris just had no luck, or maybe no political instincts. She picked ol' Tim there mainly (what I've gathered from reading various reports) because he was willing to play second fiddle to her, while the likes of Shapiro were judged too ambitious (read: too much of a threat to her by comparison).
They wanted "redneck lite" and they got it, and now here he is: the much-touted successful smart governor with impeccable liberal instincts now shown to be presiding over multi-million dollar scamming where either he didn't know about it (doesn't look good) or it was known about but there was pressure to keep it covered up (looks even worse).
Doesn't look good for her if she's really going to run for governor of California. Then you have Gavin Newsom's social media putting out the likes of this which honestly makes my brain hurt trying to work out what the heck is going on (he was at some NYT bunfight? and there was criticism of how he crossed his legs? so this is meant to be a joke referencing that?)
HereAndGone2
25d ago
She detailed how she set up investments and savings accounts
Someone with that level of planning is probably even rarer in sex work than "hot, young, willing to do it all". The wealthy young sports stars and entertainers often follow the same trajectory: young, talented, making more money than they ever imagined or that their (working class/lower middle class) family would see in their entire lifetime, and along with that is the usual entourage of hangers-on and ways to spend all that money (including the tales we've all heard of managers and agents ripping them off). They generally are too young, too little educated, and not smart enough to plan ahead to the end of the career (which comes faster than they imagine) and when all the money will dry up. The smart ones get sponsorships and gigs as spokespersons for products and licensing of their image, savings and investments, plans for what they'll pivot to when the popularity wanes and the money dries up. But even there, starting up your own business can fail. The less smart ones? They're the ones end up "I used to be famous" and the subjects of "where are they now?" questions.
HereAndGone2
25d ago
But if a woman can engage in prostitution with no legal risk, no personal risks, she benefits from it, she makes lots of money, well, that is going to be a high status job and it will make prostitution high status over time.
I don't think that has been demonstrated historically. You can have hetairai, geisha, and Les Grandes Horizontales, but while they achieve fame, a degree of wealth, and social influence, they never become high-status enough to overcome falling back into poverty; extravagance was expected of such women, but eventually the source of wealthy lovers dries up.
The Second Empire was undoubtedly the golden age of French courtesans, who became idols of their time. Legendary women, whose wealth and power were astounding, whose beauty and seductive charm overcame the reason of men... Virginia Rounding doesn't simply recount their lives; she also strives to describe the mythical aura that surrounded them. Take Marie Duplessis, for example, who became the prototype of the virtuous courtesan; Apollonie Sabatier, who knew like no other how to put everyone at ease in her salon, where the most bawdy conversation was the norm; La Païva, a Russian émigré who seemed to enjoy the fresh flesh of wealthy young men; and Cora Pearl, a flamboyant English beauty, who had the gift of "making bored men laugh." The Great Courtesans offer us a vibrant portrait of nineteenth-century Paris and its most brilliant personalities. A venal woman was judged not only by the price she commanded for her favors, but also by her degree of freedom in choosing her clients. The humblest prostitute, at the very bottom of the ladder, had no choice but the common man; the elite of the demimonde, the renowned courtesan, had an almost infinite selection at her feet. Generally, the size of the fortune outweighed the personal qualities of the potential lover—but still, she had a choice. At least, that was the optimistic view of her situation; in reality, the more luxuriously the courtesan was kept, the more she spent, and the greater her need for money became. Her role consisted of spending, rather than saving, the money with which her wealthy patron showered her, for the conventions of the time demanded that a man of the world's mistress be a highly visible ornament, proof of his social standing, and not a liaison hidden away in a discreet apartment.
HereAndGone2
25d ago
The one porn actress I ever heard of going on to a mainstream career was Marilyn Chambers, and she seems to have ended up going back to porn eventually (but also some independent movies).
HereAndGone2
25d ago
I highly doubt she won't be able to find a normal job, in fact it may be a plus!
Eh, Stormy Daniels had to go peddle her tale of Trump around the chat show circuit to make more money after spending whatever payoff she got. That's not someone who has gracefully transitioned into a new, lucrative career after aging out of acting in porn.
Maybe the new society will embrace the likes of Bonnie Blue, but I think she's probably just at the wrong time: already known, already labelled, not the fresh new e-star who will be the one to become the AI face of 'we're the new start-up so daring we hired an e-thot to be the face of our marketing' company.
HereAndGone2
25d ago
Since then, I refuse to discount the possibility of wanton fraud as a factor nationally anymore.
I mean, seeing what happened in Minnesota, holding your hand over your heart and swearing that no political operatives or voting bloc were ever involved ever at all in anything remotely dodgy is going to leave you with egg on your face.
I expect a certain level of mild corruption in any election in any country. Right now we've got both Texas and California competing as to who can be "most partisan gerrymandering in the history of the state". So all we can really expect is that most elections will be mostly honest, with any manipulating within small and manageable levels.
HereAndGone2
25d ago
You're being reasonable, cjet79. What I want is to laugh at the people online who were staunchly swearing up, down and sideways that the 2020 election was the bestest, most secure, safest, most honest election ever and that there wasn't even the teeniest-weeniest possibility of fraud, hacking, or error and who then swung to the opposite side about 2024 with evidence that the same voting machines which were impregnable in 2020 were leaking like colanders in 2024.
I went to the trouble of looking up the Maricopa county results in 2020 which seemed, on the face of it, to be suspicious. No need for fraud, just a tiny swing in votes was enough to flip from red to blue.
So there could be several such instances, as well as common error and yes, even perhaps some scattered fraud here and there. But nobody wants to hear that. When Our Guy won, it was the best election ever. When Their Guy won, it was fraud and foreign influence.
Now you know what women have to put up with. For all you guys complaining about women not responding on dating apps, imagine our friend above times a hundred.
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