Shyheels

I'd agree. Nice look, nice boots.

That’s true - and red stiletto pumps is definitely not one of the caricatures on Mulberry Street!

As for Go Woke and Go Broke - it is definitely true down my end of the street. One of the big publications I have worked for as a freelance for many years is well down that road already 

Yes, it's been very dead here.

As for the AI generated story, I found it really weird. I don't know what parameters you gave the thing for writing the story, but it comes off as deeply odd and implausible and in a tone very much as though it were written by machine and not by a human. THe characters themselves seem like robots, and their dialogue robotic. As a professional writer and photographer I am not at all a fan of AI. The AI-written essays that I have seen are soulless, and read  like encyclopoedia entries. The pieces of journalism are sterile.

Writing, music and art are all deeply human endeavours - there's a reason they are called the humanities at university.

AI simply cannot replicsate, let alone replace, that and never will be able to, although there will be a growing market for it as AI produced material can be made cheaply and the huge tech companies which increasingly control these things, and to whom cost and profit is everything, will foist it on us.    

Mulberry Street was one if his popular ones - the other five less so. Regardless the bullying tactics and political pressure to withdraw from publication books that had been out for decades, as well as the political pressure to bowdlerise Ronald Dahl and Agatha Christie, among others, is rather alarming.

Not really. When your publisher refuses to publish your books because of political pressure? How is that different from being banned?

Yes I think heels denote frivolity and fun and a measure of escapism - something disliked by the inquisition, but which may well have a growing appeal to regular folk in these browbeaten times 

Yes, believe it or not six Dr Seuss titles are no longer to be published, including And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street because of supposedly insensitive portrayals of other cultures eg: a Chinese character wearing a conical hat like millions of actual real life Chinese farmers really wear. 
 

Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie books are being cleaned of supposedly insensitive language - like referring to a character as “ugly” or “fat”

These are weird, weird times. I think some future generation is going to look back on this decade and wonder what kind of collective madness seized the West. One thinks of the Fall of Rome 

Cancel culture, “wokeness”, Twitter mobs, people lives ruined because of a post or comment they made a decade ago or more, virtually everything becoming contentious or determined to be problematic, novels being bowdlerised, Dr Seuss being banned … this is not a free spirited, happy, playful society we live in

I think a large part of this is a venomously enforced high church inquisition where heels are viewed as the tools of the white male patriarchy designed to hobble women and must be dispensed with forthwith.  No disagreement will be tolerated 

I think that’s true here too. We seem to be living in an age of almost puritanical tyranny where a humourless minority sets the tone in everything from fashion to politics. The frivolity and joie de vivre of high heels merits their profound disapproval and so we see this change in styles 

Surely though the site is - or should be - more than just a place to recount interactions with the public? 

Indeed! The numbers are really getting sparse.

As for the interaction, your immediate gut reaction is probably the corrective. If it felt negative or intrusive, it probably really was.  On the bright side, interactions that feel positive at the time probably really are positive too!

I think that was the total cost not just the shipping 

There is a lot of ignorance about heels, sweeping assumptions by people with no experience or intelligent interest 

I noticed that the New York Times “Wirecutter” product review section did a big piece today on the best sandals. They had a wide range of categories but not a single one, in any category, had heels. All were flat as pancakes - both the category winners and all the others tested. Even the category for women’s dressing up/evening sandals. No heels at all. None of them. That can’t be an accident 

Both very odd interactions.

I certainly know what you mean about this place becoming a ghost forum. It has had its ups and downs, but this is awfully quiet and, as you say, awfully dull. It reminds me of the Heels 4 Men forum in its last days before it pretty much died altogether - nobody has posted there now in well over a year.

it’s kind of a downward spiral - one hesitates to invest the time and energy to post because there is so little interaction, and yet by not posting the place just becomes even more silent.

There really is, or could be, lots to say about the culture of high heels - the history, hypocrisy, the changing fashions, stereotypes, taboos, a whole range of social and cultural topics. But there is also a sense that if one went to the trouble to create a discussion-starting post the discussion would be along the lines of - yeah, true. Or, nah. And that would be that.

I really don’t know how one generates meaningful activity here. There are virtually no women posters at all and only a handful of active male posters. It’s a shame because this could be so much better than it is

Something to look forward to. I hope the recovery is going well 

There are worse fates…

I am quite proficient at self captures having learned to do it on many solo expeditions, but I don’t know the first thing about how to model high heels and in any event I’m no fashion plate and so I hang fire on that.

Very nice looking boots! They suit you! 

Very nice looking boots, and clearly just the thing for those frosty Iowa temperatures!

The frosty temperatures would have suited your new thigh boots

Pity it couldn’t  have waited another twenty years - maybe a six day recovery or no surgery at all…

I have only a dozen or so pairs of boots, but even so i have some I tend to forget about. You have a few that you wear constantly and the others kind of slip from memory 

Sorry to hear you’ve been in hospital. I hope you’re back on your feet soon.