Month: September 2018

• How to Write a Thank You Note (The Morning News) This is a gem from the old internet by Leslie Harpold, and is the only advice you will ever need on this subject. It is a perfect, actionable formula for sincerely expressing gratitude with grace. Given that only my friends read this blog (and only a few of them), if you are reading this you are probably about to receive a thank you note in the mail and you can check how well I executed this technique 😉
• Here’s How A Registered Dietitian Meal Preps For Her Whole Family For a Week (Self Magazine) OK what? I followed a link from the host of a Health At Every Size podcast and ended up at… Self Magazine? It turns out this glossy magazine that I only know from grocery store checkout lines has multiple regular contributors who are anti-diet dietitians writing about intuitive eating and intersections of food with race, religion, gender, and poverty. This weekly meal prep advice starts from the extremely feminist premise that you probably have better things to do than cook all day, and from the extremely healthy premise that food should be delicious. See also, “I’m a Registered Dietitian and These Are the Only 3 Healthy Eating ‘Rules’ I Live By“.
• Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong (Huffington Post) Speaking of anti-diet, evidence-based food politics, this was everywhere in my feeds in the last couple of weeks and it deserved it. The discussion of the challenges around collective organizing for fat liberation in particular has stuck in my thoughts.

I was, on the one hand, deeply occupied with splitting my body into two people and then getting to know the second person. On the other hand, I had a lot of time to read while awake in the middle of the night holding that person.

A longer list with less commentary than usual:

• • The Useless French Language and Why We Learn It (LA Review of Books). Come for the poking fun at France, stay for the insights about different kinds of languages and how they are responding to English taking over the world.
  • Is Oatmeal Healthy? Here’s What the Experts Say (Time). An algorithm suggested this for me to read, which made me feel seen. But also, this is such a failure at being clickbait that is both hilarious and a work of art. Time Magazine, for some reason, is trying to drum up controversy about oatmeal but every expert they talk to immediately resolves it. Good old oatmeal, squashing any attempt to make a fuss.
  • Epic Pooh, by Michael Moorcock (Revolution SF). A funny and satisfying old rant that I had never read, about the infantile prose style of a lot of epic fantasy.
  • Magic Mike XXL is Basically Just “The Odyssey” But With Butts (Electric Lit). A vision of a non-misogynist hero’s journey.
  • The Personal Business of Being Laid Off (Hazlitt). Mainly for articulating this idea that now comes up for me all the time in daily life under capitalism:
    

    On my most recent watch [of the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail], though, I found myself emotional over one particular exchange. Joe visits Kathleen in a bid to win her over romantically and begins telling her that destroying her business wasn’t personal. In response, she tells him, “I am so sick of that. All it means is that it’s not personal to you, but it’s personal to me.”

  • Physicists Are Misled By Outdated Notions of Beauty (Motherboard). A philosopher describes what qualities of a theory count as beautiful in physics, how they got that way, and why they need to change. I love a critique of beauty standards, and this one was in an unexpected place.
  • Seattle Researcher Documents Necrophilia Among Crows (Slog). Of course!