I want to talk about something that’s about to happen, but first, let me say something very clearly up front, and read this, because it’s important:
I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. ANY ACTIONS YOU TAKE IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST ARE ENTIRELY TAKEN AT YOUR OWN RISK.
There. Now, let’s get into it.
For the last, oh… forty, fifty years, there has been a quiet bargain amongst Wall Street, the markets, and people who have 401(k)s and IRAs, and a common piece of advice that falls out of it.
That advice has been that if you don’t want to be an active investor, if you don’t want to have basically a whole ‘nother job researching companies, markets, and so on, you should put your money in some kind of index fund pinned to some segment of the stock market as a whole.
That might be a foreign assets fund. It might be a technology fund. It more likely might be a Dow Jones Industrial Average fund, or an S&P 500 fund, where the market manager keeps the fund invested in the set of stocks that make up the S&P 500. It might be a NASDAQ 100 fund, run the same way. They’ve called it “investing in the American economy,” or “investing in America,” or “set and forget” investing.
It’s been a simple and good bargain. “You give us your money, we’ll have averages that make sense, and have a lot of rules to them – no additions of new companies that haven’t proven themselves, legitimate valuations, corporations with a history of profit. Number will go up. Everyone wins.”
For the last several decades, it’s been real good advice. It’s been a real good deal. It’s paid off real well, and is a part of how Baby Boomers have so much money in retirement. If you had such a thing as a 401(k) and/or an IRA and you followed the advice, it’s been a real-life case of the rising tide lifting all boats. There have been some serious storms along the way, but they’ve been followed by serious recoveries.
Well, guess who’s noticed allll that money sitting there, with nobody paying too much attention.
That’s right; it’s the techbros! And they’re wedging themselves – starting with Elon Musk and SpaceX – into that system, and if that means breaking the bargain to do it, then that means breaking the bargain to do it. It’s just a bunch of NPC money, after all. NPCs, peons, ordinaries – not real people, like them. Who, you know. Actually need that money.
(That’s an interpretation, of course. An opinion, if you like. First amendment, for as long as we have one.)
As above, historically, when being added to a major index – and thus becoming part of index funds, the kinds of funds normal people with 401K and IRA accounts invest in – a company and stock have had to prove themselves first. Be in public trading for a year, so the market has worked out a base valuation. Show profit. Show competence at running a company. Steps like that.
But for Elon and the other tech bros with all these AI startups… they’ve changed the rules. At least, the NASDAQ and Russell 1000 have.
So all of that old-fashioned safety and security nonsense? Gone. Just gone. For the benefit of him, and of his friends.
For the Russell 1000, I’m seeing conflicting information – the waved rules seem to allow technical entry within five trading days, but not actual entry until September or even December, the normal index reconstitution months. I think it’s planned to be September, but it’s cloudy.
The S&P 500, thankfully, have decided not to play along, at least for now. They were looking like they’ll allow an early entry as well – and it’s a damn good thing they have not, because they’re the largest and most important of these sorts of indexes.
Even without them, though, it’s billions and billions of dollars of forced buying by index funds – money being taken out of real companies that actually make money, and being put into the stock of Spaceboy Elon’s Clown Car Show.
The defence is that this is a “20 year buy,” that it’s a long-term investment and it’ll come good – but that’s not just what every company ever has said, it’s also horseshit. SpaceX’s rockets could possibly get to profitability, military contractors usually manage to do well, and that would be the likely route. (Tho’ others disagree, with validity.) X-twitter won’t; it’s only there to spread fascist propaganda and disinformation, not make money, so while pays back in other ways, those other ways don’t show up on balance sheets. xAI, best known as the maker of MechaHitler AI, will do far worse than average amongst so-called AI companies, particularly once Anthropic and OpenAI and who knows how many others repeat Elon’s stock trick. If his incompetent lawsuit against OpenAI showed anything, it’s that Elon and his company are very bad at making AI software.
You know what all this reminds me of, though?
There’s a famous rounding-error theft scheme, have you heard about it? It’s been used in a few movies. It’s the one where a programmer for a bank starts rounding interest payments to the nearest penny and then sending the rounded-off penny fractions to a separate, personal account because all the numbers still work. Nobody “loses” anything, but those fractions of cents round up real fast at scale.
Depending upon how the fraud is run, it’s either called Rounding Fraud or Salami Slicing. This isn’t quite that – to be clear, this is legal enough not to get investigated, particularly not by the Shitstain administration – but it’s real close to that.
Not the same. Just… real close.
It’s leveraging a trust to take advantage of people who have replied on that trust, abusing it and extracting small amounts of money and value from absolutely gobsmacking numbers of workers, all for the benefit of Mr. Musk. Elon will be scooping money out of retirement fund investments into long-term proven stocks and shovelling that money into his stock that absolutely does not have the value it’s being assigned so he can be Mister Champion of Capitalism, Mister Trillionaire.
And if it works, all his little fascist friends absolutely are going to do the same thing with their companies, too. This doesn’t stop with Elon.
Funny thing is, it may not even be noticed at first. See, the thing about forced purchases of stock is that it keeps demand up for that stock, which keeps the price of that stock up, regardless of any underlying value. If the Russell 1000 roll it in starting in September – more or less as NASDAQ-100 fund fulfillments would be petering out – that could keep the support going through the entire year, maybe.
They might get away with it for a while. On paper. While the right people cash out. It certainly won’t break the bank…
….until it does.
And that’s the trick, isn’t it? If this goes through, if this works even mostly as planned, then even without the S&P onboard it still eventually breaks the bank.
It breaks the bank because it breaks the trust. It breaks the bargain. Absolutely wrecks it, because literally everyone who can will follow suit, and do the same goddamn thing, over and over again.
And that is absolutely the kind of shift that destroys a market. It’s the dynamite that sets off a collapse.
But as long as they get to cash out first, who cares, right?
It’s a mass technically legal theft, a small sip taken each time but with oh so many portions and from so, so many people, a new kind of abuse that doesn’t yet have a name, but absolutely will; we’ll make one for it, in the aftermath.
Particularly if the S&P 500 change their mind again and decide to join in after all.
People have talked about neo-feudalism and techno-feudalism, but I don’t think that’s right. Early European feudalism – which was, people forget, under the Roman Empire – was arguably the western empire trying to keep its shit together and failing. Trying in the worst way possible, maybe, but hindsight is always 20/20.
These guys? They just want to loot it all.
They aren’t the feudal lords.
They’re the barbarians who have broken through the gates. Remember that even if this fails, they still tried, and they will try again.
Although cross-dressing is one of the motifs that I trace within the Project, not all instances of cross-dressing reflect gender identity or sexuality. At least, not in the most overt sense of gender identity. Madame de Saint Balmon took a "masculine" role in protecting her lands during war, in part because she ended up on the opposite side of the war from her husband. This study of two portraits that reflect subtly different presentations of her life and activities shows the balance between admiration and normalization that such transgressive actions can inspire.
Abbott, Carmeta. 1993. “The Portrait as Text: Two Depictions of Madame de Saint-Balmon (1607-1660)” in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice vol. 19, No. 1.
This biographical article isn’t directly relevant to lesbianism, but provides an example of a woman who broke gender norms and was celebrated for it. I’ve added her to my list of fascinating 17th century women.
Madame de Saint Balmon was a French noblewoman who lived in the first half of the 17th century. Although she was an acclaimed poet and playwright, she avoided the court. Her management of the family estates launched her military fame in the context of the 30 Years War. (One contributing reason for Saint Balmon’s military leadership is that her she and her husband we’re on different sides in the war–she remaining loyal to the French crown while he was on the opposite side.) This fame led to a near-contemporary biography titled (in French) The Christian Amazon, or the Adventures of Madame de Saint Balmon. She was also immortalized in a number of portraits, including the two military-themed works by a single artist that are the focus of this article.
In a common style of the day, both portraits frame the central equestrian figure with a panorama of images representing scenes from her life and deeds. The two center slightly different aspects of her life, possibly related to the different intended audience is for the works.
Both paintings feature the dominating image of Saint Balmon, wearing male clothing (a completely male outfit, not only individual garments) seated on a rearing horse wearing a sword and holding a lance. Above her are saints, angels, and cherubs. Below is a landscape representing her lands, with scenes of battles as well as more peaceful activities, such as a group representing a salon. The article provides background for some of the skirmishes depicted, including one in which she received both bullet and sword wounds during a successful raid.
The smaller of the two portraits focuses more consistently on Saint Balmon as a military hero, without imagery associated with more conventional feminine virtues, well the larger portrayed mixes military and courtly imagery. The article suggests this difference reflects that the smaller work was intended for her family, while the larger may have been commissioned for the Queen of France and thus needed to soften her image somewhat.
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and dentists is that - I suppose depending on their specialty - is that they love looking around the inside of your body, where all the blood and guts are. (In the case of dentists, close-up views of the gums and around the tongue.) If they have cameras floating around in there, they want to show off the view to the patient, and are rather hurt if you decline on grounds of ickk.
A giant fan-shaped network of hidden basins has been discovered beneath East Antarctica, revealing that several well-known subglacial features are actually part of one massive geological structure. The finding sheds new light on Antarctica’s ancient tectonic history and could help scientists better understand how the ice sheet behaves today.
Five states have already implemented bans on soda and candy through federal food assistance programs, with over a dozen more set to take effect this year.
Abusing poor people is popular.
The real aim is not to make people eat healthier foods, but rather to discourage people from using assistance programs. The benefits are not free, but cost a significant amount of time and energy to obtain. If they are stingy and/or restrictive, then it quickly becomes a waste of resources to chase after that pittance. Nobody wants to have to make a separate trip just for the food stamp shopping, let alone struggle to figure out what is "allowed" only to get stopped at the register because items are rejected. People will buy worse food with cash which can purchase anything, or go to a food pantry.
If the government really wanted people to eat healthier foods, then it would subsidize things like spinach instead of sugarcane. Another good approach would be buying healthy foods in bulk to distribute through programs or food pantries. It's not that difficult; people just don't choose to do it.
At roughly 5.5 million, a colony of ground-nesting bees that scientists discovered under a New York cemetery may be one of the largest bee aggregations ever documented.
Subsequent research showed that the bees have likely lived there for more than 100 years, thriving in the cemetery’s undisturbed sandy soil—an incredible discovery.
I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I sprayed weeds in the prairie garden.
Black raspberries are ripening. Blackberries have green fruit.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I potted up the giant African marigolds.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I watered the patio plants and barrel garden.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I've seen a fox squirrel.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I picked a handful of black raspberries along the edge of the prairie garden.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- I watered the new picnic table garden.
EDIT 6/4/26 -- After sunset, we went out skywatching. We saw Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury in a line. \o/
At least 2 bats were out tonight, skimming along the edges of the yard and up the driveway. There were more fireflies, surprising given how dry it's been recently, but I am happy to see them.
Having finished up a series of articles on general sexuality topics, I'm now embarking on an extended series of biographical articles. Initially this will be several short articles scattered across time periods, then finishing up with two much more extensive books about Anne Lister. The Lister material may easily tide me over for most of the month, if I break it up into manageable bite-size pieces.
Anonymous. 1697. The history of the intrigues & gallantries of Christina, Queen of Sweden, and of her court whilst she was at Rome faithfully render’d into English from the French original. London: Richard Baldwin.
I have been trying, in a desultory fashion, to track down a lead on a memoir that is said to include gossip about Queen Christina’s lesbian activity in Paris. A footnote in one book cited the current work in a context that implied it had content of this type. Alas, on reading it through, the only “intrigues and gallantries” discussed are with men, although there is reference to Christina’s cross dressing.
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that this wasn’t the work in question, given that it specifies Rome rather than Paris. So the quest goes on.
The word “gallantries” is an interesting detail. In modern use—though usually in archaic contexts—“gallant” and “gallantry” tend to have a sense of dramatic performative chivalry, of gender-based deference, and especially of military valor. (When I was searching in my blog for examples of “galant” to cite, one group came from my transcripts of my great-great-grandfather’s Civil War diaries, where he describes a soldier’s promotion for “galant services” in battle.) But in the 16th and 17th centuries, (to some extent into the 18th) it was a codeword for illicit sexuality, both heterosexual and, when relevant, homosexual. Brantôme’s Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies {https://alpennia.com/lhmp/lhmp-199-brantome-1740-vies-des-dames-galantes} was about the illicit love lives of women of the French court, both with men and with other women. Wahl’s Invisible Relations {https://alpennia.com/lhmp/lhmp-313c-wahl-1999-invisible-relations-part-2...} discusses French gallant culture. Manley’s The New Atalantis {https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-30d-new...} refers to “The Gallant Quarter” of a city where one went in search of sexual adventures. In The General History of the Pyrates, {https://alpennia.com/lhmp/publication/6935} Rackham is described as “the lover and gallant of Anne Bonny.” In Mary Wortley Montague’s 18th century letters, {https://alpennia.com/lhmp/lhmp-416-montagu-1763-letters-right-honourable...} she speaks of a lady’s “gallant” in a context that clearly refers to an extra-marital lover.
All of this is to say that “intrigues and gallantries” is a blinking neon sign that this tract is concerned with gossip and sexual scandal. Just not the specific scandals I’m researching.
# # #
As this publication isn’t directly concerned with same-sex relations, I’ll only be summarizing and quoting a few pertinent details. In general, the work is a hit piece on Christina, alleging all manner of immoral and criminal behavior, with as great a salacious spin as possible. While Christina was capable of autocratic and violent behavior, I’d hesitate to put credence in any specific detail given here without corroboration. Nevertheless, it speaks to the types of opinions floating around. The claim in the subtitle that it is “rendered into English from the French original” is fiction. I believe the best current scholarship is that the work was originally written in German. Nor is there any confirmable truth in the text’s assertion that the original text was in Italian.
The text asserts that the primary reason for Christina’s abdication was falling in love with an inappropriate man and the desire to “give herself up to her own fancies,” whereas more reliable evidence points to her conversion to Catholicism and a stated belief that she was not suited for marriage.
There are regular references to romantic encounters with men (though it is less explicit whether these are claimed to be sexual), such as the Duke of Guise and the Marquess Monaldeschi, a cardinal in Christina’s household, whom she did, in documented fact, have murdered for some indiscretion. Then in Rome, she is asserted to have returned the advances of Cardinal Azzolini, who had been appointed as something of an advisor and household manager for her by the Pope. [Note: There is an inescapable anti-Catholic flavor to the whole text, in accusations of sexual impropriety against church officials, as well as motivated by Christina’s conversion. This isn’t to say that Catholic officials of the 17th century werent having sexual affairs right and left–only that there is a somewhat delighted emphasis on these things.]
During travels away from Rome, there are several mentions of a woman named Fanchon Laudini “a she-favorite of the Queen” who had access to her personal correspondence. Christina is said to have taken her into service “for her talkativeness and because she was tolerably handsome and very handy in whatsoever she did.” She was made a woman of the chamber and given in marriage to one of Christina’s household staff. There’s no particular implication associated with the reference to Laudini’s attractiveness and, in fact, this is followed by a claim that Laudini became mistress to another man in the household and pregnant by him. But evidently Christina liked her well enough to forgive this.
A reference to Christina cross-dressing comes when she is traveling in Hamburg and needs to escape a mob, infuriated by her public performance of Catholicism. The passage simply notes that she was “in men’s apparel.”
Another reference to women being appreciative of another woman’s appearance comes when an Italian noblewoman escaping ill-treatment by her husband begs Christina’s protection. “Her majesty, seeing a woman is so fine, well shaped, and of considerable quality, had all the consideration and regard for her possible.” Christina did, indeed, go to some trouble to protect her. [Note: I included these references to Christina admiring other women’s appearance specifically because the text doesn’t attribute any homoerotic context. Although it’s clear that the author was focused on heterosexual indiscretions (despite presumably knowing of Christina’s reputation otherwise), same-sex admiration is depicted as ordinary and expected.]
The text’s emphasis on Christina’s connections with men also appears in a passage discussing the Duchess of Poli becoming “first lady of honor to the Queen” which notes that she had few duties as such “for besides that her Majesty had other ladies and damsels, she had so little inclination for her sex, at least in the beginning, that women were seldom seen with her, and when she went abroad, she had never any followed her.”
Some interesting gender-bending appears in a passage about a valet in the Queen’s household who is dressed up as a woman as part of a masquerade entertainment, at which the Queen “took great pleasure in seeing him in this habit” and afterward employed him as a spy in women’s disguise on several occasions.
There is one ambiguous anecdote regarding a woman referred to as “the fair Riga,” mistress of the Marquess Del Monte. And operatic entertainment was arranged by Del Monte which Riga, along with other ladies, joined Queen Christina in viewing boxes in the Queen’s great hall. The text then says:
“The Queen was pleased to the highest point, that her opera succeeded so well, commended the Marquess before his face, and withdrew very late; and the scandalous chronicle said, that she went to abandon herself with the fair Riga.”
If this is, indeed, a reference to Christina and Riga having a sexual encounter–something hinted at by the reference to a “scandalous chronicle” as the source–it is glossed over with little fanfare. It’s interesting, perhaps even significant, that this detail is attributed to a different source, thus retaining the author’s focus on heterosexual scandals.
In sum, this is a curious tract. It has a clear intent to besmirch Christina’s reputation, yet in sexual terms, primarily does so by detailing the intrigues of her household and male friends. It mentions cross-dressing but only in the most pragmatic context. It notes her admiration of specific women but also claims she had little interest in female attendants. And it hints only once at a possible erotic encounter with a woman, but undermines it by attributing it to a “scandalous” source and failing to make any substantial commentary. So if we want to find gossip about Christina’s same-sex affairs, we need to continue looking.
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