Politics, Parenting and Personality Disorders
plus other interesting stuff I came across this week that I thought you might like too.
Weekly reads
How the Biosphere 2 experiment changed our understanding of the Earth by Katarina Zimmer for The BBC. This is the coolest experiment I had never heard of.
All Haka, No Mahi: Aaron Smale On Why Te Pāti Māori Risks Being All Song And Dance by Aaron Smale for The Listener. Not everyone will like this. But I agree, post haka in the house we have seen a lack of strategic follow-up or legislative maneuvering that might have converted that visibility into policy progress.
A Case For Reproductive Futurism by Eva Shang for Silicone Valet. The declining birthrate of the global west is the greatest crisis facing humanity (it doesn’t matter how warm the planet is if there is nobody left to bloody live on it!!) People will tell you it’s because life is so expensive, but it’s more to do with social and cultural shifts. I (childless btw) think a part of it is that parenting needs a rebrand so I am going to start gently dropping pieces in from people who don’t winge and moan about it.
An Open letter to Jacinda Ardern on open letters to Jacinda Ardern by Hayden Donnell for The Spinoff. New Zealand needs more satire.
Sleeping With the Enemy: Partners’ Heterogamy By Political Preferences And Union Dissolution by Bruno Arpino and Alessandro Di Nallo for The Duke Union Press. A great research paper on how couples with different political leanings face significantly higher risks of breakup. It’s not just loud partisans either, even moderate mismatches carry higher risks of separation. My take is that this challenges the romantic myth that ideological opposites “balance each other out.” I’ve never believed that. Maybe in an age where dating apps let you filter by religion, education, occupation - and, of course, the ever-crucial height - the filter that really matters is politics.
Nobody Has A Personality Anymore by Freya India (my favourite writer on the internet) for her Substack GIRLS.
We have lost the sentimental ways we used to describe people. Now you are always late to things not because you are lovably forgetful, not because you are scattered and interesting and secretly loved for never arriving on time, but because of ADHD. You are shy and stare at your feet when people talk to you not because you are your mother’s child, not because you are gentle and sweet and blush the same way she does, but autism. You are the way you are not because you have a soul but because of your symptoms and diagnoses; you are not an amalgam of your ancestors or curious constellation of traits but the clinical result of a timeline of childhood events. Every heartfelt, annoying, interesting piece of you, categorised. The fond ways your family describe you, medicalised. The pieces of us once written into wedding vows, read out in eulogies, remembered with a smile, now live on doctors’ notes and mental health assessments and BetterHelp applications. We are not people anymore.
Graph of the week
Something living in my head rent free
I am beginning to suspect the Air New Zealand quiz is deliberately easy. Perhaps designed to activate your brain’s reward system, spark a sense of accomplishment and subtly make you feel happy when flying with them.
Fact of the week
George W Bush has been out of office for 16 years and is still younger than the last two presidents.
Happy reading,
Maddy xx