I just tried to post a German version of the following text as a comment to TAGESSCHAU.de's eulogy to Hugh Hefner, who died peacefully of ripe old age in recent hours... and it was denied (no explanation given - I feel an impulse to seek a small bridge nearby I could huddle a while under).

So it'll have to go in here - sorry, Jeeves!

R.I.P., Mr. Hefner! Esp. because of your magazine in the 60's & 70's, that was pretty monumental at the time, and helped me, teenie, a lot toward achieving a much "broader" world view. There were the photos, of course - which however were deemed to be done in good taste by most of the women, some of them definitely not unknown, who had themselves captured/enraptured by the camera. Some of the best photographers were women, too...

But, in addition, the texts in the mag issues were eye-openers! A lot of noteworthy political interviews appeared, and others with important pop idols like John Lennon! There were great essays, e.g. one about Jesus surely being a humorous man, who often laughed. And some pretty ingenious short stories, i.a. by Asimov; one or other non-Fleming Bond short remains in positive if spotty recall.

Concerning further beyond-paper enterprises by the founder, they left little impression on me, because I essentially didn't get to know them at all. Concerning the Bunnies, and their many days of judgement, I find a 90's commentary by one of my favourite musicians, Laurie Anderson (who is for me the quintessential feminist!), enlightening:

One of my favourite books is Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait. Today I was reminded by news on the radio of more bad physics, and recall 3 instances noticed in recent times... The first 2 concern the way physical phenomena are portrayed in films; the last is on a typical bad trope often repeated in reporting on Catastrophic Climate Change (C.C.C.). Here goes:

1. Currently the biggest evacuation of people since World War II is taking place in south-western Germany, in and near Frankfurt (two sites!). Old unexploded bombs from that war were found, and need to be disabled by state professionals. Thousands (!) of people have been asked to leave their homes for a good many hours (they can return by 8 p.m. if all goes well), including a hospital and all its patients, and a radio station. -- Now, the question why so many is answered by the large blast radius of such a big bomb: One-and-a-half km's (roughly one mile). Inner bodily injury is still possible near the full extent of the radius, and it's this that reminded me of typical "escapes" from big explosions in Hollywood, like I saw last night when watching that hours-long-ad-disguised-as-a-movie BATTLESHIP. Guys diving/boating away from huge explosions easily just a few 100 metres away, and never having any problems due to the expanding spherical pressure wave. If at least one could see their ears bleeding afterwards...

2. Another typical peeve - actually mentioned in Plait's book as #4 in the "B.A. goes Hollywood" chapter - in that movie is the visible beam of light/whatever being shot from a satellite into outer space. Not only is such a beam not visible if it's a laser (or other form of plain light), it would take at least the no. of years indicated by the no. of light years the target is distant from the Earth for a one-way trip. Regarding its visibility, it could of course be a stream of very hot plasma - i.e. actual matter - issuing from the satellite... but then it would take an order of magnitude longer to get to the target planet!

3. Not many months ago, the current climate rollercoaster (yes, I of course accept that the world climate is going through a tumultous phase, but C.C.C. predicts permanent change for centuries!) made a large piece of ice shelf break off in the Antarctic. Immediately we again had many newspaper & other reports warning of rising sea levels, as if the current event had anything to do with that. That is scare hype! As the name indicates, a "shelf" is a horizontal extension of thick ice already floating in sea water. Ice suspended in water does not raise the water level as it melts - it has already displaced some water volume as it is inserted or formed in/on the water; i.e. current levels are already "raised". Should the rollercoaster abate, the shelf will probably reform in its original size over years.

I haven't read much about a psychological theory of non-substance addiction similar to this, so here goes writing it up.

The axiom this hypothesis bases itself on is Freud's Pleasure Principle. I think it isn't hard to agree that fear is a most basic emotion in humans, and that fear from pain drives us toward pleasure.

What does the "A.J." stand for? Well the "A." is for Attention, and/or its seemingly more civilised variant Appreciation. One built-in way in humans to achieve freedom from pain seems to me to be the attention of other humans, preferrably ending in some form of deeper understanding. Without it, we feel painfully alone.

As a rule, I suspect, people have built one - or even several - more or less smoothly running inner appreciation engine(s) by the time they reach the end of teenage. Some way to generate a feeling of being understood/accepted, perhaps even loved. The latter may even end up in constant "proof" in the forms of promotion, gifts or sex. I think it may be our job as adults to identify which engine we use, and whether it runs cleanly/sustainingly for the rest of what we are (e.g. our health).

Unfortunately the brain seems to easily pick up new ways to "assimilate" at least the feeling of (shared?) appreciation all the time. One becomes in danger of becoming addicted, a junkie - the "J.".

Recently I find myself watching random YouTube clips every day, something I never used to do until about a month ago. It seems to be my brain harking back to an old addiction of mine - T.V.. I got rid of my last T.V. about 18 years ago, and it gave me loads of time and space to develop new interests - i.a. I read a lot more "slow news", e.g. newspapers, since then. But my brain is media mad, and so seems to always go for moving pictures over static stuff...

It could be anything, even binge-watching the Simpsons again from the beginning.

This propensity of my brain to seek recyclable moments of seeming attention - hey, there's moving/talking people in the room! - is harder to kick than any substance addiction I have had, or may still have (sugar?). Simply also because it's so well hidden.

So, should this not just be me - but a generally homo-sapient feature - pay attention!