In this edition of your trusted Man Links, can I offer you a selection of Men Doing Things who aren’t named Donald Trump? I can’t promise they will all be saints, but they sure as hell won’t make you want to hurl yourself off the nearest cliff. Be it good or problematic, each one did something this week that received scorn or admiration.
Scorn:
“Early Book Praising Hitler May Have Been Written by Hitler”
“So he does not have to expressly say, ‘I want to be leader.’ He creates the expectation that others will call him to become the leader.”
Admiration:
“Bob Dylan Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature”
Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.
Scorn:
“Metaphorically Speaking, Men Are Expected to be Struck by Genius, Women to Nurture It”
These two metaphors are often used to describe scientific discovery and what we perceive as genius. Along with them come ingrained, subconscious associations that may have unintended consequences, according to a study published Friday in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Researchers found that we find an idea more or less exceptional depending on the metaphors used to describe it. And not just that: Those metaphors had different effects depending on the gender of the idea’s creator.
Admiration:
“CoverGirl Champions Gender Equality By Announcing Its First Male Ambassador”
[James] Charles’ accomplishment marks an important point in CoverGirl history. Having a male face represent a mass cosmetics brand is an important statement regarding societal standards towards gender: beauty doesn’t have to be gender-exclusive.
Scorn:
[Elon] Musk spoke earlier this year about the fact that he believes that the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions.” He said that he had come to that conclusion after a chat in a hot tub, where it was pointed out that computing technology has advanced so quickly that at some point in the future it will become indistinguishable from real life — and, if it does, there’s no reason to think that it hasn’t done already and that that’s what we are currently living through.
Admiration:
“Can Slim People’s Poop Treat Obesity?”
With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the Canadian government, Gaisano and his team are trying to see if swapping the bacteria from a slim person’s gut into a person with obesity through a fecal transplant will help that person lose weight. There’s already some evidence that this may work. For one, studies on mice have shown that when germ-free mice were fed the stool of obese mice, or even humans, those mice put on weight. There’s also evidence that people with obesity who get bariatric surgery not only lose weight from the physical changes, but also because of changes to their gut bacteria.
Scorn:
“Birth of the Dragon: Anger Over Whitewashing of Bruce Lee Biopic”
[The] film reduces Bruce Lee to a side character in his own story to force a white guy into the lead … Asian males can never take the lead role. Only the sidekick even in their own movie … White people, would it kill you to stop inserting yourselves into everything?
Admiration:
“Fox Sports’ Joe Buck Comes Clean About the Hair-Plug Addiction That Nearly Cost Him His Career”
“People would ask, ‘Why is your vocal cord paralyzed?’ I said it was a virus. I didn’t say it was an elective procedure to add hair to the front of my head,” Buck said. “It was embarrassing. There’s an embarrassing element to that. Any surgery done to improve one’s looks is not really something someone wants to talk about.”
Scorn:
“Samsung Note 7 Recall Expands to Replacement Phones”
The botched recall is raising questions about Samsung’s initial analysis of the Note 7 phone’s problems. At first, Samsung said a minor manufacturing error in the batteries for the Note 7 was causing the phones to overheat.
Admiration:
“Black Men Are Opening Up About Their Mental Health After Kid Cudi’s Announcement”
It’s been difficult for me to find the words to what I’m about to share with you because I feel ashamed. Ashamed to be a leader and hero to so many while admitting I’ve been living a lie. It took me a while to get to this place of commitment, but it is something I have to do for myself, my family, my best friend/daughter and all of you, my fans.
Scorn:
“Soylent Recalls Its Bars After Reports They Made People Violently Ill”
Reports of illness first emerged on Soylent’s own community discussion board on Sept. 7, 2016, when user Raylingh started the thread “Nausea and vomiting several times after eating food bars.” Soylent consumers piled in on the thread, including two who had reportedly needed trips to the emergency room after eating the bars. All told, 57 people reported troubling experiences with the food bars. Soylent users on the Soylent subreddit also complained of the same symptoms.
Admiration:
“Brain Stimulation Allows Paralyzed Man to Feel His Hand Again”
During an initial four-week period in which the participant did not detect any electrical stimuli, the participant experienced spontaneous feelings of tingling in his right arm and hand… After three weeks, the patient experienced these spontaneous sensations only in his right hand; and after four weeks, the patient stopped perceiving them altogether. Around the same time, the intracortical microstimulation began to produce tactile sensations that the participant reported originating in his hand.
If you’re still craving That Bad Man, can I urge you to look away from Trump and toward someone else? How about Mel Gibson? The Hollywood Reporter reports he’s “no longer persona non grata in Hollywood.” See? Bad things happen in the world that don’t involve politics.
Don’t you feel better now?
