The Bluestocking, Vol XXII: Awful millennials, beautiful microbes and men
Happy Friday - and congratulations on making it through the BanterZone that is April Fool's Day unscathed. I think the whole thing is a conspiracy by comedians to remind us that being funny is, actually, quite difficult.
There was no newsletter last week because I was in Uganda, researching a story on the efforts to keep girls in secondary education. What's Uganda like, I hear you cry? Well, surprisingly green and leafy, and you can get a very good Chinese takeaway in Kampala. The toilets are often just a hole in the ground, but the mobile phone coverage is excellent. Here is a picture from the shores of Lake Victoria, featuring a young man who as very keen to be photographed:
Until next week,
Helen
What Happens When Millennials Run The Workplace?
Their crowded newsroom on Hudson Street has an aggressively playful vibe, like a middle-school fraternity house. Some ride hoverboards into the kitchen for the free snacks. Others wield Nerf dart guns or use a megaphone for ad hoc announcements. Dino, a white Maltese terrier owned by the lead designer, snuffles between desks.
Yesssssss. Glad to see young people are still keeping the Nathan Barley flame alive. (However, this parody piece is even better.)
The End of the Inappropriate Literary Man
Our awareness of the prevalence and magnitude of sexual assault has outpaced the systems that expose and adjudicate it. It’s incredibly difficult to match these two things up. But for activism to carry the authority of journalism—or for journalism with an activist conclusion to work—there are basic practices that can’t be set aside. Noble goals can be quickly rendered immaterial: Rolling Stone should’ve been enough to teach us that good intentions—that “believing women”—can end up hurting them dramatically in the end.
Regular readers will remember Jia Tolentino's piece about David Bowie and the underage groupie, and this article is in the same mould - exploring, questioning, doing justice both to people's own perceptions of their experience and the need for journalistic standards. Like Tolentino, I'm uncomfortable with some aspects of the #ibelieveher movement - as I see it, I will always believe what a friend tells me, but in my professional life, I need corroboration before publicising an allegation. That's an important distinction, and if it's tossed aside out of a desire to seem virtuous, the inevitable result will be that eventually a false accusation is widely shared, and a backlash will devastate dozens of survivors of genuine trauma.
Real Talk With Ru Paul
"I loved Carol. I thought it was a beautiful film. I loved the story. The Danish Girl, I couldn't see past the wigs, which were terrible. I did love that one time where he gets dressed up and looks like David Bowie. He's in a suit that has these huge wide legs, cinched waist, and he's not in women's clothes, he's in a man's suit. It is gorgeous. It's worth watching the movie for just that one shot. Anybody in that David Bowie suit, oh my God, gorgeous."
RuPaul <3. Also, reading this reminded me how much gay culture feels like it's changed since I was growing up (admittedly, I was an outsider). I remember gay culture being outrageous and provocative and, yes, unashamedly bitchy. Now everything seems so . . . serious, pious, dour.
A worthy winner of the 2015 Agar Art competition. Yes, that's bacteria.
Quick links: A Buzzfeed longread on why Ben Affleck is sad. How to screw with job interview candidates. What it's like to be the victim of trafficking. Inside Jacobin, the American magazine that thinks Bernie Sanders isn't left-wing enough. American TV drug ads are fully nuts to the rest of the world, and this story of an ineffective sleep medicine shows why. How the world's biggest videogame is nudging its users to be less toxic. SEND HELP because this Guess The Correlation game (via Ed Yong's newsletter) is disturbingly addictive.
Recommendations: After being very meh about Lenny, Lena Dunham's newsletter, I'm now appreciating it more. This piece by Jessica Knoll on her rape was a good example of the kind of writing it does well - personal, reflective, pointed.
Guest gif: May your next week go THIS well.
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