Bob Costas two days ago: “What I’m about to say doesn’t mitigate the crime that [O.J. Simpson] quite obviously committed.

“He was a hail-fellow-well-met, and everything changed on the night of June 12,1994.

“We can hold multiple truths in our head at the same time, even if some of those truths at [that] time confused people…people who are inclined to view it through an emotional prism” — i.e., O.J. murder trial juror Brenda Moran, a.k.a. “Brenda Moron” — “rather than a rational prism.

“It is simultaneously true that there’s a long history of injustice by the [Los Angeles] justice system toward African-Americans, and that continued well into the 1990s and to some extent continues today.

“Plus the Simpson situation was not long after the Rodney King situation…the beating caught on camera and then those officers acquitted…there was a lot of tension, to put it mildly, between the African-American community and the LAPD. All these things are true.

“It’s also true that Mark Fuhrman was a racist who lied about this and used the n-word. It was also presented that some of the chain-of-custody was mishandled. There were mistakes there.

“All those things can simultaneously be true, and it’s also true that it’s impossible to even postulate that anyone other that O.J. Simpson committed those crimes. The evidence, both circumstantial and hard evidence, is simply overwhelming, and there’s no other explanation.”

There’s really, really something wrong with college-age males who are into sexual choking. Ditto the young women who are also allegedly into it, as choking does nothing to heighten pleasure or bring about orgasm.

Yes, this is an actual thing, and there’s something truly foul and psychologically fucked up in the hearts and minds of the eager-beaver perpetrators. I’ve lived a vigorous sexual life for many decades, and I’ve never so much as flirted with even the idea of choking…are you kidding me?

“The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex“, posted by Peggy Orenstein — N.Y. Times, 4.12.24:

“For the past four years, Dr. Debby Herbenick — one of the foremost researchers on American sexual behavior and director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University — has been tracking the rapid rise of ‘rough sex’ among college students, particularly sexual strangulation, or what is colloquially referred to as choking.

“Nearly two-thirds of women in her most recent campus-representative survey of 5,000 students at an anonymized ‘major Midwestern university’ said a partner had choked them during sex (one-third in their most recent encounter). The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened had shot up to 40 percent from one in four.

“As someone who’s been writing for well over a decade about young people’s attitudes and early experience with sex in all its forms, I’d also begun clocking this phenomenon. I was initially startled in early 2020 when, during a post-talk q & a at an independent high school, a 16-year-old girl asked, ‘How come boys all want to choke you?’ In a different class, a 15-year-old boy wanted to know, ‘Why do girls all want to be choked?’ They do?

“Not long after, a college sophomore (and longtime interview subject) contacted me after her roommate came home in tears because a hookup partner, without warning, had put both hands on her throat and squeezed.”

Comment #1: “It’s so strange how a song called Perfect Day is one that I find myself wanting to listen to when my day is everything but perfect.” Comment #2: “This is what having fun with depression is like.” Comment #3: “After listening to this I have a sudden urge to clean toilets in Tokyo.” Comment #4 “You made me forget myself…I thought I was someone else, someone good” might be the most relatable lyric in history.” Comment #5: “This song is like watching something beautiful die.”