Avoiding the news. Thinking about phobias instead.

It’s a perfectly fine, sunny day here … but extremely cold. One of the advantages of being a retired person is that I can enjoy days like this without having to worry about scraping frost off my windscreen before setting off the commute to work. 

And because it has not rained or snowed overnight, the pavements were dry and not slippery when I went for run. The bridle paths are no longer elongated mid puddles but have frozen solid, as has the mill pond. I watched geese land indignantly on the frozen millpond, looking extremely surprised as they skidded rather than splashed down. 

News from the various conflict zones continues as bad as ever. i can understand people not watching the news … altogether too depressing! 

So here are a few oddities that have made me smile. 

Every so often Facebook throws up posts which contain recipes, sometimes interesting,sometimes not. I suppose it’s because I occasionally stop to look at one in more detail that they keep popping up - the algorithms are  watching us. Anyway, just before a recipe for things to do with courgettes, there was this introductory statement, which struck me as amusingly odd:  

“Thanks to this dinner, I lost 10 kilograms. I will never get tired of this zucchini recipe!”

Was the recipe so awful that the commentator could not stand to eat it and so lost weight? If she expected to “never get tired’ of it, surely she would put on weight rather than lose weight. 

In an article about phobias, I came across two new words:

koumpounophobia = fear of buttons

coulrophobia = fear of clowns

I know quite a lot of people who are afraid of clowns; maybe it’s the combination of crazy antics with the sad-face make-up which makes them so disturbing. But a fear of buttons, where does that come from? And just imagine how difficult life must bebif you have to arrange all your clothing to have zips or velcro fastening.

One of the oddest phobias mentioned was a fear of bananas! What threat do bananas pose? Apparently it’s more than just a dislike, more like an odd kind of allergy. People who suffer from this type of fructophobia don’t just dislike bananas but suffer anxiety and nausea if they find themselves close to the fruit. Two Swedish politicians, Paulina Brandberg and Teresa Carvalho both suffer from it, the former, Sweden’s gender equality minister, going so far as to ask for rooms to be checked for the possible presence of this menace!m

Here are some of the main causes of Fructophobia.

• Traumatic experience or negative association with fruits.
• Learned behavior from family or peers.
• Genetic predisposition or family history of anxiety disorders.
• Overprotective parenting or excessive fear reinforcement.
• Cultural or societal influences.
• Underlying anxiety or sensory processing issues.
• Previous allergic reaction or aversive experience with fruits

In our family Granddaughter Number Two is fructophobic and lachanophobic (having an irrational fear of vegetables). Asking her to pass a dish of broccoli across the dinner table can lead to black looks and sometimes downright refusal to do so. It’s amusing, however, to watch her tentatively lift a dish and hold it as far from herself as possible. We think she once had a traumatic experience with a soggy strawberry, a fruit she used to devour with glee as a toddler!

People can be a little crazy, and some of them reach important positions. There’s this:

“Power in the United States will soon be shared between people who believe they will ascend to sit at the right hand of God, perhaps after a cleansing apocalypse, and people who believe their consciousness will be uploaded on to machines in a great Singularity.

The Christian rapture and the tech rapture* are essentially the same belief. Both are examples of “substance dualism”: the idea that the mind or soul can exist in a realm separate from the body. This idea often drives a desire to escape from the grubby immanence of life on Earth. Once the rapture is achieved, there will be no need for a living planet.”

*Tech rapture: NEW YORK — By 2045, humans will achieve digital immortality by uploading their minds to computers — or at least that's what some futurists believe. This notion formed the basis for the Global Future 2045 International Congress, a futuristic conference held here June 15-16.

Oh boy!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!