For the Good of Society
As people who use the English language and blogging platforms, we might just know what’s Good for Society. We shall give you tips, tricks, hacks, psychological complexes that are surprisingly affective, whatever we need to do to make the world a better place.
One thing I’ve noticed happening slowly over the past few years is an increasing anger around any stories where people perceive someone is writing about something that they have not themselves experienced. This pertains of course to white male authors writing as black females but also just to people writing about a type of drug they’ve never taken. The former causes indignation and the latter annoyance. “What do they know about being a woman?” vs. “What do they know about taking Xanax?” At first this kind of...
For those who haven’t seen it I won’t give away the ending of the second season of Girls, but I’ll say that it ends with a grand, cinematic gesture by someone who’s trying to make a relationship work. It was all too familiar—I haven’t done that, but I’ve made grand gestures. Running through the rain, handwriting 20-page letters, creating elaborate art projects. Universally, the reaction I got was never anything near the reaction the character gets on Girls. The reaction I tended to get was more like this....
To have no willpower is to say to yourself, “Self, don’t do that thing I know you’re thinking about doing.” And then yourself goes, “Shutevz, you’re not my mom! Because if you were then I’d be my own mom, and that’d be weird!” and then goes and does that thing anyway. To have no willpower is to face almost constant defeat, every moment of every day, because on some level you’re probably doing something you told yourself not to do. Literally. Every. Moment. To have...
I feel like “lying about getting raped” is about as popular of a TV drama catalyst as “accidental pregnancy leading to quirky romance in universe where abortion does not exist” – a la Juno, Knocked Up. Both seem to be go-to ways to move characters around like interesting chess pieces, rather than actually constructive or realistic plot lines. In fact, I’d argue that the former is incredibly destructive. And I don’t think it’s even an argument really, just something someone should point out. So here’s how...
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20 Under 20 Finalists for Thiel Fellowship (you’re given $100,000 to create social change) Tech innovators “transforming tomorrow” People in your community personally greeted by Janet Jackson 30 Under 30 “Innovators, disruptors, and entrepreneurs” listed by Forbes “America’s coolest young entrepreneurs” listed by Inc. Rising young stars in the real estate industry, listed by REALTOR ® Magazine 40 Under 40 Craft artists of the future at the Smithsonian American Art Museum People committed to making Pittsburgh a better place “Professionals who demonstrate innovative thinking, strong determination, and results that...
Only since leaving the college paper where I worked as an A&E journalist/editor for 3 years did I realize that Minneapolis has an implicit code when it comes to entertainment journalism, most specifically criticism. This code is best described as “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This is enforced at most local publications for many reasons, the first being that Minneapolis is generally small, and the people you bash will undoubtedly find out about it, feel crushed, and...
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Nathan Heller writes about several recent books on twentysomething life in the 21st century. One trend affecting twentysomethings—and, in varying degrees, all other age groups—is the rise in premarital cohabitation, that is, unmarried couples living together. This increase in cohabitation is happening for a lot of different reasons, and it’s having many different effects on American life, but though those effects do not include an overall rise in the divorce rate (the U.S. divorce rate has actually been in decline...
So you’re not expecting! Congratulations! Unless you wish you were expecting and either haven’t yet succeeded or physically cannot, in which case that’s some super heavy emotional baggage and I absolutely do not have the fortitude or maturity level yet to even consider formulating a comment on that problem. So let’s just pretend for the sake of the next few paragraphs that you are not expecting a child, and that that’s a good thing. Let’s just get the obvious ones out of the way. You...
In college I took a class called Human Behavior in Evolution, which was a tiny seminar taught by a Larry David-like teacher who liked to yell at nerds. Our textbook was a small collection of scientific essays written by a madman who was obsessed with bees. The curriculum covered things like why humans commit infanticide, gossip and murder, and why they experience jealousy and cheat. At one point, a smartass kid in class asked, “But what about guys who never get jealous?” sure that he was...
1. Your 24-year-old metabolism has not become a glacier, it’s just a little harder to get it out of bed in the morning. 2. If you floss your teeth on the reg you get to be all, yea, I take care of my teeth, dentist, you’ve got nothing on me. 3. There comes a point in young adulthood when you need to stop smoking cigarettes. When you do, you’ll save your lungs, your wallet, and your conscience a lot of trouble. 4. Declining offered mini-loans...
The senseless killing of 20 children is certainly reason for America to start questioning itself. After a year of horrible mass murders, the gun control debate has amped up, but so has the dialog around how America deals with mental illness. I definitely believe there is more that states, towns and the country as a whole can do to help the mentally ill, and I think the resulting dialogs around this are – in the long run – healthy for our society to have. But...
My dad and I are both big movie and TV lovers, and often discuss the stock Evil Psychiatrist character who seems to show up more and more in the shows and films we see. On screen, the psychiatrist is an ideal villain, often set in scary psychiatric wards with unchallenged power over their patients—that is, their victims. After practicing psychiatry for ten years, my dad can only laugh at the blatant errors in the entertainment media’s presentation of psychiatry. To be clear, I’m not at all...
