D&F 7/17/23

It’s a sad weekend as my favorite sport’s governing body chooses bigotry and exclusion by banning trans women from women’s cycling races. This feels like a vindictive reaction to Austin Kilips single UCI victory in the Tour of the Gila. Trans women and cis women have a huge range of physical ability, body shapes, bone densities, and VO2 maxes, but until now only one group of women was tested for testosterone: trans women. A sport with a history of doping, misogyny, and racism has decided that it’s more important to ruin one woman’s career and create a chilling effect for young trans women then to ensure women get equal pay or coverage.

To say I’m upset and disappointed would be an understatement.

It’s even more upsetting to see former and current pros praising this decision. If you’re bad at bike racing you’d have a much better chance winning if they banned the Dutch, who on the whole are taller than most women, or disqualifying anyone who wins.

Hate is hate, and the UCI is a hate group at this point. I hope history remembers this as a black stain on cycling.

Fortunately that’s not all that happened this week, as I’ve had a good time riding my bike around the bay, going to therapy, and relaxing at home after work. The highlight of my week was eating Japanese BBQ and seeing the new MI movie with Drew. Drew is my #1 action movie viewing partner as he gets the special silly thrill of over-the-top stunts and so-macho-it’s-camp stying. As a new dad, he’s been busy raising a human, but managed to jam dozens of hours of MI films and podcasts into his brain. At this point Drew is 2/3 dad, and 1/3 MI archive. We had a blast at this movie. If you love Tom Cruise running, top-of-train action, and wild stunts, you’ll have fun. I think Cruise is finally in on the joke, and reveling in it.

But wait, that’s not all, because there are still so many…

Links

• Patricia Lockwood (aka the one who kicks Miette) wrote an amazing survey of David Foster Wallace in the LRB recently, and while I love his books his legacy is much more complex and unfortunate than the bright-eyed wonder with which I read A Supposedly Fun Thing at 16.
• Warning, this is gross. Seriously. I forgot which site this “project” was on until someone from Discord posted it. Truly amazing and terrible—a man gives himself athlete’s foot: stinkyfeet
• The ship likely sailed on the US doing housing right after post-war services and social programs led to two generations buying-up housing and solidifying a car-centered suburban hellscape, but maybe someday we can go all Austrian (except for the current hard right leadership).
• Cars, they’re just like us… except way faster and deadlier and on the same streets. It’s frustrating to see a rise in pedestrian fatalities after the lockdowns of COVID and still see cities increase road speed, and avoid adding protected pedestrian and cycling roads. Cars are deadlier than guns, but anyone can buy one and drive it while staring at their phone. Wild.
• I’ll end on an appetizing note: the original sushi of Japan. I haven’t ever tried this stuff, but now I would love to. Maybe next time I visit I’ll find a vendor, because I’m a little scared to try making it myself.

Closing

Well, I just put on Den of Thieves, a ridiculous heist action film with American accent hobbyist Gerard Butler and significantly more filmic cinematography than it probably deserves. I’m a sucker for heists and “who is the bad guy, really?” action. Tomorrow I’m seeing the new Mission Impossible for the second time, and I’m preemptively stoked. Next week? It’s Oppenheimer time. Whether you’re into atomic bombs, or bombshell blondes, have a great week, space cowgirls~