Weekend Reads v. 4.10.2024
Butter, Confetti, and 33k Sound Effects.
As we enter the first weekend of what was surely Anne of Green Gables’ favorite month, please be advised that I will be taking every opportunity to share Pinterest worthy photos of autumn leaves or cozy reading nooks.
This week’s round up of links unintentionally weighs heavy in the direction of one topic – men. More specifically, the roles men play when the future is female. This topic is especially important to me because I have young nephews, nieces, and godchildren in my life. I’m no sociologist or psychologist, but the 3 articles touching on this theme ask important questions of societies working to achieve equality.
The answers to the questions posed by these articles are tangled and not always easy to articulate. It is for this reason I’ve also included answers to other very important questions. Questions like, what is the absolute best butter? And how can I incorporate confetti into this moment?
I hope you have something fun planned for the weekend!
Bridging the Gender Gap: Encouraging Men into Female-Dominated Jobs. An Experiment in Social Work.
Never mind the stacks of research that prove her assumptions about porn are wrong, author Ruth Whippman shares compelling insights in her article, “5 Things I changed my mind about as a feminist ‘Boymom’.” For one, she observes “caring about boys is not a betrayal of feminism, but a crucial part of the feminist project.” The biological qualities of the male brain may have been the most interesting insights for me:
“At birth, a baby boy’s right brain hemisphere (the part that deals with emotions and emotional regulation) is more than a month behind a newborn girl’s in development and resilience. This relative immaturity means that baby boys are more easily distressed, less independent, cry more often than same-aged girls, and find it harder to calm down. This brain vulnerability also means that boys are more severely affected by almost every environmental stressor or parenting “mistake.”
Understanding the innate traits of boys more as vulnerabilities and sensitivities than any kind of hardwired destructiveness turns the nature versus nurture story on its head. “Boys will be boys” has always been a kind of rationale for doing less parenting. “They’re just wired that way,” we shrug, as we watch our small male humans run riot in the supermarket or bash each other with Tonka trucks or haze their fraternity brothers until someone asphyxiates.
But really, it is the other way round. Because of their innate fragility, boys need more parenting, not less. They need more nurturing support from caregivers than girls, and they need it for longer.” Source
The non-profit Queer Majority unpacks a new set of data points that indicate “men now face more hiring discrimination than women” with sensitivity and awareness of the systemic barriers facing women. It’s a really well-done article.
These phone cases / carriers were designed to resemble equipment used for rock climbing, and I gotta say it kinda works.
I’m fascinated about the flop that is Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film. He “borrowed $200 million against his Napa Valley winery business to personally bankroll Megalopolis’s nine-figure budget when studio backers deemed the project too risky.”
So many situations could use emergency confetti.
The absolute best butter for every occasion, or so says Forbes.
What’s the fastest way to alphabetize your bookshelf?
OK, so this kind of scares me. “Someone put facial recognition tech onto Meta’s smart glasses to instantly dox strangers.”
More than 33,000 sound effects from the BBC archive are available for you to download.
“Millennials Will Age Terribly.” Ouch. This essay’s harsh title betrays the wisdom it shares. Spoiler: Millennials will save us all.
Just finished this book, and now onto this book. The finished book was well-written with deeply flawed characters. The new book is, well, what can I say that’s positive. Thankfully it’s short.
A friendly notice that I used Amazon affiliate links in this post. If you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission, but let’s face it. No one remembers their Amazon password and so if you click on my link, get stonewalled by the password situation, and choose to bypass the website in favor of using your app to make the purchase, that’s ok.