I'm not sure why it is that I'm feeling a bit down and cynical this week. Seems everything is bugging me to my core. I think it started with an incident at Jamie's work where he said he'd restart the Girls in Science initiative that he used to do some years ago, and that fell by the wayside due to COVID. It was all encouraging girls to continue with the subject, as it's always been a bit of a boy's domain. Statistically, girls are far less likely to take up subjects like Physics. When he floated the idea with a few department heads, the Head of Maths (who also teaches Science) said that he can't do it, because a woman should do it.

Image by Me and Midjourney.

A clear of example of someone in charge trying to be woke but getting it wrong. This isn't about the gender of the person encouraging, it's about someone really passionate about science and encouraging girls to get into it. I was gobsmacked when I heard. It was yet another case of people in charge being parochial, unworldly, narrow, shallow thinkers. Of course a passionate, intelligent scientist-teacher that was a woman would be great, but if no one fit that job description and/or was interested in doing it, then there was absolutely no reason why a man couldn't do it, especially if they'd done it before, to great success. The upshot? He's put his hands down in disgust. And there's no one encouraging girls to do science. Sigh.

And the irony of it all, unless you have people encouraging girls to do science, there won't be any woman encouraging them to do it anyway.

Segue Beastie Boys for Three Tunes Tuesday, from arguably one of their best albums. Listen to the lyrics and they're as nonsensical as a high school science department that can't think laterally, or in any direction, for that matter.

Second rant is Instagram algorithms. I'm sure you're saying: 'why go on Instagram when you have HIVE?' - but for us, it's a way to connect to a particular community that are never going to end up on Hive, by nature of how they use social media. We have met a lot of great like minded people this way that we continue to connect to, even staying at their homes when we go interstate. And we like sharing images of this particular passion (in this case, Land Rovers - see @roving_tracks on Insta if you want to see what we do). Anyway, one of the ways we can share is 'REELS' - short videos a la Tik Tok. For Instagram to push your video out to more people and get more eyes on it, it looks at particular parameters. One of the way to get more eyes is to use 'trending songs' - better if they start with less than 1K, but still, a trending audio is more likely to get you more clicks.

Sigh. Again. So to scroll through Instagram REELS is to listen to the same popular songs, over and over, and rarely are they my kind of tunes. If no one does this, then things would have to change, but influencers and wannabes don't do this - they do what they're told and using the trending audio. Sometimes I'll listen to a ton of music I can't stand before I find one that's bearable.

Anyway, rant aside, our most viewed REEL on Instagram had a song I did like, by a band called Jurrassic 5, a hip hop band from the mid '90s. So this is my next song for this week.

Anyway, it's all just inconsequential stuff, but some weeks you just get annoyed at everything, from the tiniest incident to the biggest. But there's been some cool stuff this week too, one being finally finishing of Season 3 of The Great, a comedy drama very loosely based on Catherine the Great of Russia. Have you seen it? Anyway, at the end of the season, Elle Fanning as Queen Catherine the Great, having been through a far worse time than me, walks into her drawing room with a new hair do and a black dress (a corset and big skirts as was the time) and dances wildly and crazily to AC/DC. It's bonkers, and sublime, and marks a sense of liberation for the character. Now, growing up I didn't really listen to Acca dacca unless it was on the radio, but somehow I still know all the tunes - perhaps it's just an Aussie thing. And maybe I'd underrated them somewhat. But there I was surfing this week and this tune was in my head, very loud, and boy was I enjoying it. HUZZAH! And double HUZZAH, because I found the actual clip of the dance on Youtube.

Have you watched The Great? How's your week been? What gets you ranting? What are you listening to this week? Talk to me in the comments!