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“The” four

I’m enough of a snoot to be dismayed when I see the following headline in The New York Times: “The Four ‘Attachment Styles,’ and How They Sabotage Your Work-Life Balance.” I’m less put off by the cliché at the end than by the magic number at the start. The four, the only four. “The” four might be more honest.

But I read on. And for a sentence or two, I thought I could see a sitting president in the description of “dismissive avoidant attachment”:

Individuals with dismissive avoidant attachment at work tend to think they are smart and everyone else is stupid. Well, maybe not exactly stupid, but definitely not as smart as they are. They most likely decide what they should do and then ignore what others want. This leads to conflict and mistrust. This mistrust can lead to others attempting to micromanage and monitor them, which just makes them more annoyed and more likely to dismiss input.

That sounds like President Dunning-Kruger himself. (The Times reports that he calls aides “Fucking idiots!”)

I read on, about “How to tell if this is you”:

From your perspective, the biggest time management issue tends to be working late. Long hours usually arise when you get fixated on doing a particular project really well. Or they can happen because you want to work on what you consider to be important first and then you also have to complete work for others.

Working long hours? Completing work for others? Only if you count watching television and being your own chief of staff.

I jumped back a few paragraphs, and now thought that our president might fit the description of “anxious preoccupied attachment”: “fear of upsetting others,” “a compulsion to check email [or in his case, Fox News] incessantly to make sure everything is ‘O.K.,’” “attention . . . hijacked whenever you experience a perceived ‘threat.’” And: “The idea of saying no may terrify you.” But the president seems to have no problem saying no to reading daily intelligence briefings, &c.

I jumped ahead and decided that one can also see in the president an element of “fearful avoidant attachment”:

You tend to spend most of your time in a state of being overwhelmed because you fear everything and feel very little power to do anything about your fears (much less the work that is also piling up).

Fear of an eleven-letter word beginning with i, for instance.

And one can find in the president at least a trace of the fourth and last style, “secure attachment style.” People with this style “know [think?] they are capable, and they are confident that others will respond well to them.” That certainly sounds like our president: “Nobody knows more about,” &c. “I alone can fix it.” “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

In other words, people can be slotted into “the” four or five or six anything, one slot per person, only if you’re looking to attract eyeballs on the Internets.

It doesn’t surprise me that Elizabeth Grace Saunders, the discoverer of “the” four, also has “the” three, in book form: The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment.

This is one of the two posts I’ve written today.

One related post
Beyond categories (On categories and art)

[Secrets to, not of? Well, I said that I’m a snoot. ]

“You can’t un-see it”

in The New York Times, Jen Gunter, OB/GYN, writes about the vagina:

As I began to think about how women often prioritize their sexual responses to please men, I looked at other aspects of gynecology with that in mind. And once you start viewing every discussion we have about the female body from the perspective of how it advances the patriarchy or how it pleases men you can’t un-see it.

Dr. Gunter’s essay is a follow-up to one from 2017: “My Vagina Is Terrific. Your Opinion About It Is Not.”

Dr. Gunter has a blog, which she describes as “wielding the lasso of truth.”

Screen life

A New York Times article about life in the White House describes an isolated, suspicious president who expresses “frustration, anger, mania” and watches plenty of TV:

By all accounts, Mr. Trump’s consumption of cable television has actually increased in recent months as his first scheduled meetings of the day have slid back from the 9 or 9:30 a.m. set by Reince Priebus, his first chief of staff, to roughly 11 many mornings. During “executive time,” Mr. Trump watches television in the residence for hours, reacting to what he sees on Fox News. While in the West Wing, he leaves it on during most meetings in the dining room off the Oval Office, one ear attuned to what is being said.

I hope it’s safe to say that whoever the next American president turns out to be, he or she will not have been a reality-TV star.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, hardly feels like Saturday. It’s easy as A-B-C, or pie. Or to switch from simile to metaphor, it’s a piece of cake. Or a walk in the park. Or a cakewalk. Or a breeze, felt while walking in the park, with or without cake.

Two fun clues: 20-Across, thirteen letters, “One extremely well-fixed.” And 51-Across, fourteen letters, “Interrogative endorsement.”

A slightly deceptive clue: 9-Down, six letters, “They typically sit near conductors at concerts.”

A clue that taught me something: 37-Across, five letters, “‘Me no __’ (punny pan of ‘I Am a Camera’).”

My least favorite clue: 45-Across, three letters, “National Caramel Mo.” Of course, right, National Caramel Mo.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

[National Nougat Day: March 26.]

A message for Shorty

[Actual fortune from today’s lunch.]

An important email will be arriving shortly.

Or:

An important email will be arriving, Shorty.

Wait — who’re you calling Shorty?

Other cookies
Lucky numbers : “Order a takeout” : Speed vs. accuracy

[I’d prefer e-mail. Google’s Ngram Viewer has e-mail dropping slightly but still twice as common as email.]

“Steel Slats”

Our leader’s idiocy has put Joe Bennett and the Sparkletones in my head. Yes, “Black Slacks.” The lyrics are so easily repurposed:

Black slacks Steel slats
Mostly in the head
Black slacks Steel slats
Well, that’s what I said

“Mostly in the head” is right.

No news

[Zippy, December 21, 2018.]

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[You can read Zippy daily at Comics Kingdom.]

Or, or, or

“It can be ‘breath’ or ‘life-breath.’ It can mean ‘throat’ or ‘neck’ or ‘gullet.’ Sometimes it can suggest ‘blood.’ It can mean ‘person’ or even a ‘dead person,’ ‘corpse.’ Or it can be ‘appetite’ or something more general: ‘life’ or even ‘the essential self.’ But it’s not quite ‘soul’ ”: Robert Alter on translating the Bible.

[I twice used Alter’s translation of the Book of Job in undergrad classes. Highly recommended.]

Alliances

Two excerpts from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s letter of resignation:

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.

*

We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Mattis then says that that on these and other matters, he is not “aligned” with Donald Trump.

“America First”? No, alliances. Not to be abandoned, not to be belittled, with partners not to be mistaken for adversaries — who themselves should never be mistaken for friends. (He likes me, I like him, we fell in love, &c.)

Mattis’s sign-off is telling: “I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.” He was serving his country and its military, not Donald Trump.