Links: Food for thought

[sonia]

A Shortcut for Caring for Others (and Being Cared For Yourself) by Anne Helen Petersen via cosmolinguist. Reasons it's hard to ask for and offer help, and creating an Emergency Guide (here's an example form) to share with others.

Women Have Been Misled About Menopause by Susan Dominus. Pro-hormone therapy for menopause. Not sure I agree, but at least it takes menopausal symptoms seriously.

Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving by Andrew J. Hawkins.

For example, people were asked to agree or disagree with the following statement: “People shouldn’t smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the cigarette fumes.” Then they were asked to respond to a parallel statement about driving: “People shouldn’t drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the car fumes.”

While three-fourths of respondents agreed with the first statement (“People shouldn’t smoke...”), only 17 percent agreed with the second (“People shouldn’t drive...”).

A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe in maintained by Kevin Deldyke. Not just names and time, but all sorts of categories of falsehoods programmers believe.

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi - Things They Don't Teach You In School by J. Schauma. Some good advice for fresh computer science graduates.

Rethinking COVID hegemony by Blair Williams.

Living with COVID is only beneficial to those in business who desire a speedy return to a pre-pandemic capitalist status quo, or for those in government who want to shirk responsibility.

The incredible story of finding my brother in my 60s by Dorothy Ellen Palmer. "Dorothy Ellen Palmer and Don Doiron were born a week apart, in the same hospital, to different mothers. They learned decades later that they were half-siblings who were both adopted. " CN: mentions of abuse, trauma, ableism.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

The curated list of falsehoods is an amazing potential rabbit hole! I have resisted by closing the tab before scrolling quite to the bottom of the list of links, and not clicking on any, but it seems to be a good resource to bookmark. Thanks for the link.

[sonia]

Congrats for resisting! I clicked on a few, and that's how I came across the next article in the list.

[panisdead]

The Shortcut to Caring link is awesome.

[sonia]

Glad you like it! I like the idea of it, but wouldn't know how to fill it out or whom to give it to...

[panisdead]

Or what I would do if a friend actually showed up at my house and mopped the living room--my most inexplicably stressful chore--but in theory I love the idea. XD

[elainegrey]

I ponder a list of questions for care to share among LJ/DW friends.

[sonia]

I'd love to see your list if you come up with one! It doesn't really talk about online care, and maybe that's why I don't fully connect with the options it presents.

[elainegrey]

My little survey last weekend makes me think that it will be hard to have a shared model like the forms because of trust and other differences. For a while, the one quick digital way to transfer money was paypal, but that's fragmented and my bank doesn't support venmo. Even just recommending media is fraught with fractured delivery channels and regional access, to some extent. While the really practical help -- like helping move furniture or running errands for someone -- it seems imaginable that there can be delivered care -- but that takes sharing an address. And contact frequently takes sharing an email or a phone number.

And when it comes to asking for help myself... oy.

[sonia]

I agree, building trust is a huge part of this. And the older I get, the more wary I am of the power imbalances and projections around helping, in both directions. (One of the lovely things about moving back to the Bay Area was receiving bits of help from long-established friendships where I knew I could ask and they were happy to give it.)

Maybe my goal around this will be to work toward nurturing more of the kinds of relationships where help can be asked and given.

[ofearthandstars]

The shortcut for caring seems like it might be useful, but I'd have to marinate on who to best share/curate one with.

Also, that last link was a pretty amazing read, but full of such sadness and pain, too.

[sonia]

Yes, it seems to have some underlying assumptions about the shape of one's life that don't always apply.

Oh yeah, I meant to put content notes on that last one. Thanks for reminding me! I've had it open long enough that I forgot the immediate experience of reading it.