Things: helpful/interesting

Trustworthy amigos? ¡Muy helpful!

Helpful:

• I closed my previous post with this link to a conversation between slightly-right-of-centre journo-provocateur Andrew Sullivan and gender rights activist Dr. Dana Beyer, and it is worth re-posting. It was helpful for me to hear Beyer walk Sullivan through some of the science on the trans condition.
• Mary Strachan Scriver sent me to this Aeon piece by Mallory Feldman and Kristen Lindquist: What makes a woman’s body — a helpful meditation, not just for fellas (like myself) who take all kinds of things for granted, but really . . . for anyone. BTW, if you’re wondering whatever happened to “Prairie Mary” she remains a productive writer over at Medium. And yes, the old blog at blogspot indicates she is NOT at Medium, but Mary tells me she’s been locked out of her Google account and cannot post or change anything on the old site. At least her content remains intact and accessible — for now.

Interesting (and probably helpful in ways I can’t quite name):

• “This year made me believe China is the country with the most can-do spirit in the world.” From Beijing Dan Wang writes a year-end-summary of Chinese politics, industry and culture. It’s very long, but also a carefully studied and welcome contrast to the sort of “Klingon Empire” treatment our media reflexively gives this subject matter.
• Also on Wang’s site (which I only discovered today): Violence and the Sacred: College as an incubator of Girardian terror — this rates for me as one of the sturdiest applications of Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. Also, Wang’s treatment of Thiel is at once more generous than Smith’s, and more revelatory than David Perell’s. (Not that I’m trying to enflame anyone’s envy in this particular triangular configuration.)
• “It bothers me that writers can’t create audiences on their own websites, with their own archives, and their own formats. And they certainly can’t get paid in the process” — Robin Rendle explores, beautifully, the rise of the newsletter and the decline of the website, and argues for the latter’s resurgence.