If I’m supposed to measure my life in love (per Rent, the musical), can I measure my days in knowledge? How about advice? Here’s some from serial entrepreneur John Greathouse, who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week:
In a similar fashion, women in today’s tech world should create an online presence that obscures their gender. A gender-neutral persona allows women to access opportunities that might otherwise be closed to them. Once they make an initial connection with a potential employer or investor, such women then have an opportunity to submit their work and experiences for an impartial review.
He suggests that women erase gender from their online footprint — ooh, one could even go by “Mel” — to avoid hiring bias. (Bias against my own online persona is already assured by my hundreds of bad tweets, but that’s another issue altogether.) I’m lucky: As a “Lindsey” (the “e” is important here) I already have what might be considered a gender-neutral name (thanks, Lindsey Buckingham!) but I’m still not doing that great in business. What gives, John Greathouse?
Ohhhh:
Oops! Guess it’s not me, it’s you. Speaking of you, my dudes, what have you been up to this week?
Not swearing in the workplace:
The gender divide seemed less intuitive, though. Sixty percent of the women said they swore at work, while 55 percent of men said the same. Among millennials, both sexes swore an equal amount — but young men were more likely to say swearing co-workers bothered them (27 percent vs. 18 percent).
We’re now living in a period of great (though unequally distributed) abundance where our basic needs are sufficiently met, and reproduction is a choice. As a result, the reasons to be with a single mate for life are less urgent. And with the advent of connected mobile devices and the internet, we’ve entered into the era I’ve dubbed Big Dating.
Feeling spiritual with the aid of oxytocin:
Participants who received oxytocin were also more inclined to view themselves as interconnected with other people and living things, giving higher ratings to statements such as “All life is interconnected” and “There is a higher plane of consciousness or spirituality that binds all people.”
Fetishizing mentally ill women:
If you’ve had a long-term mental illness, you might be aware of the kind of men who look to women to satisfy their white knight fantasy. If you haven’t, you only need to look to the internet for proof: Scour forums, and you’ll find male teens asking questions like, “Why do I think suicidal girls are hot?” and young women wondering, “Why is this boy hitting on me more when I’m sad?”
Making plans to colonize Mars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFA6DLT1jBA
I hope that when we all get to Mars, we can leave a bunch of garbage Earth Things behind us, am I right? Here are some dudes from this week that I’d totally take with us to Mars:
- Harry Styles, the “Art Throb”
- Writer Michael Chabon’s son, Abraham, the “Prince of Fashion”
- Alton Brown, “the Showman of Food TV”
- Matt Furie, “the creator of Pepe the Frog” (but not Pepe the Frog, himself)
Yep, that’s it. There’s always next week!
