July 2021 Reading List! (Patreon)

Just one reading list this month as I was off for the first half of July. And once again we have a mixture of recent things and old things. Don't forget there's a reading list discussion thread in the discord server if you want to share your thoughts on any of these! Enjoy!

Articles

$100,000 and up is not enough - even the 'rich' live paycheck to paycheck - found this article through Tiffany Ferguson's video about the role of wealth and class in lifestyle content and it reminds me of a lot of what I learned in the Science of Wellbeing course (you can't make me stop talking about this). The professor talks about how the more money you make and then you start to socialise with other rich people and be surrounded by wealth and you compare yourself to what you see around you, your spending habits increase to keep with up with the Joneses and the next thing you know you're earning multiple 6 figures but you feel 'broke'. Money is so fucking weird and insidious like that.

Videos

Get Out: Should Black British Actors Leave African American Roles?  - Not something I'd considered before. Actors play different nationalities to their own all the time but are there considerations that should be made when portraying characters who are presently and have been historically oppressed in specific ways?

How sperm got all the credit in the fertilization story - my favourite thing about this video is the comments from Europeans being like... 'ummm what's up with your country? We were taught this.' Although, I'll say my experience in the UK was more similar to the Americans in the video. We were taught, active sperm and passive egg.

How Community Organising Could Change the Game for the British Left | Chardine Taylor Stone - would highly recommend subscribing to Double Down News btw. But I keep coming back to this video, especially the bit where she talks about meeting people's material needs. Also, makes me realise how disconnected I feel from my local community, I feel very connected to online communities but actually the people who live in my local area? Less so. Is that a 21st century/age of the internet thing? Is it a London thing? Is it a middle class thing?

Boners vs. Condoms - lots of great tips in here from Lindsey Doe about using condoms if you find that your dick does not like to collaborate with them.

Dating a Sociopath & How We View You (Meet My Fiancé) - can't believe I haven't shared this yet. Found this a while ago and then went down a bit of a rabbit hole on her channel. We don't see much content about personality disorders by people with those disorders and I definitely have a lot of assumptions and narratives built up in my head from years of TV shows and movies that depict sociopaths as abusive monsters.

The Death of the Teen Dystopian Era - another brilliantly funny Nathan Zed video and an analysis of something I remember witnessing at the time. It really was a very quick phase wasn't it??? I kind of feel bad for any YA dystopia authors trying to get published now because there's this huge legacy of success but also people (the mainstream) don't care about it as much anymore???

The Four-Day Week - a while ago in the discord server we got into a big discussion about the 4 day work week and guess what I'm actually going to attempt it for a month (and document it for a video obviously!) I won't be filming on my days off obvs but I will be reflecting on the experience. I imagine it'll be a bit different to what this TED talk is about as I work for myself and I'm the "boss" but we'll see, always up for an experiment!

Podcasts

Cancel Culture | You're Wrong About - loved this episode. They really looked at 'cancel culture' from all different angles. It's history and origins, how social media platforms allow for marginalised people to be heard by powerful people and institutions e.g. #OscarsSoWhite, how the term has been weaponised by the right, public shaming and the fear that public figures on the left have that one misstep or mistake means you're in for a traumatic level of backlash like what Natalie Wyn experienced.