Feelings Moose

Reichert spoke plainly on this. “We are more rigidly wedded to masculine norms, norms for male development. This is for a variety of reasons. There hasn’t been a movement comparable to the women’s movement advocating for freer expression of male emotions and challenging stereotypes. Also, I think it’s important to say that reproducing a prototypical male identity is more at the core of our social organization.”

Female identities, because they are not cast as the leading forces but rather as the following forces of our society, are treated as secondary. “The idea that a boy may be empowered to define himself as a man on his own terms is too threatening to the predictable reproductive process,” Reichert said, referring to reproduction in an academic sense—as the social organization that reproduces itself from generation to generation.

All of this has culminated in a notable absence of a gender revolution for men. While the idea that women are naturally communal and emotional and men are naturally self-interested and rational has stuck over time, women have been narrowing the gap when it comes to embracing more masculine-type behaviors including being competitive and individualistic. But there has been very little narrowing on the other end.

This can be partially explained by a lack of cultural or institutional change in the ways in which we devalue female-type characteristics, activities, and jobs. Where “women’s work” is seen as less prestigious, less skilled, more menial or petty, the incentive for men to leave their traditional spaces and take on such work is very weak. On the other end, many women seeking upward mobility are incentivized by the high value—culturally and institutionally—of men’s work.

To put it bluntly, our gender revolution may have succeeded in helping some groups of women access opportunities their mothers couldn’t, but it has failed abysmally in changing cultural norms around what is valued. This has not been just a gross oversight of the movement; it has so far been a fatal one.

In this case, telling women to hoard male-type opportunities, and not insisting on a full revaluing of gendered roles and work, still leaves large groups of women forced into performing essential and invisible emotional labor at a discount—or worse. And denying men basic human features like emotions and connected relationships is a short end of the straw for them too. Forcing men to be hypermasculine pushes them into destructive behaviors that threaten us all.

In the Promundo study, men in the United States and the United Kingdom who identified more strongly with the seven pillars of the man box were six to seven times more likely to report perpetrating physical in-person or online bullying compared to men who did not strongly identify with the pillars. They were six times more likely to report perpetrating sexual harassment and were more at risk of violence from others. They were also likely to engage in destructive behaviors like binge drinking and less likely to have close personal relationships.”]

the big finding of the whole experiment was that both food and comfort are not just substantial, but required for healthy development. in the 50s the popular theory was that mothers should touch and hold their babies as little as possible to avoid “spoiling” them, especially right after birth (which explains uh. a lot about boomers as a generation).

Harlow conducted his experiment to investigate this idea, and he found that physical comfort nearly eclipsed the food as a need in the baby macaques. They would go to the wire mothers only when they were hungry, sometimes even trying to reach the milk bottles without letting go of the cloth mothers, because they so badly needed both. Harlow’s other experiments showed that being deprived of parental comfort and enrichment as babies dealt lasting psychological damage to the macaques. and today we know that human babies can just up and die without enough skin-to-skin contact.

Fire Force

the fact that if you are just nice enough and decently competent at your job and, well, Don't Get Him Fucking Killed, kim wants to join your precinct. join you. isnt that fucking crazy. why is he so sure he can. why is he so sure he wants to. does he have nothing of value Left in his precinct?? what the fuck.

the fact that he - for the first and only time in the game - smokes a second cigarette if you leave without him. isnt that insane. isnt that fucking Insane.

the fact that harry changed his life as well. not in some passing fancy way, not as an Experience he Will Remember, as a force and as a person and as a gleaming light in the midst of bone deep loneliness and grief. the fact that, arguably, he needs harry just as much as harry needs him. hes a lonely tin soldier trying to hollow himself and not want anything.

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears