Reading List, Holiday Edition: Stuffing Is A Food Group And Anyone Who Says Otherwise Hates Happiness.

Darling lovely humans! Here in these United States, it’s Turkey Day Eve, so please enjoy the following longreads as fuel for the most contentious dinner conversation you can muster.

And per usual, this year I am thankful that YOU, dear reader, allow my rants and puns and gifs and existential wailings into your inbox every weekday morning(ish). Your comments in LOLs and tweets and emails and texts and love mean the world to me.

SO LET’S READ, SHALL WE?

Jessica M. Goldstein, Why don’t more men take their wives’ last names? (The Washington Post) - Friend of the Missive Alex shared this on the bird site, and this deep dive on the politics and history of the marriage name changes that nearly entirely fall on women to make resonates me me, because I wanted to do it at the time in the name of familial unity, only to have to deal with unwinding that choice when I divorced (pro tip: it’s a helluva lot harder to change your name back to your “maiden” name than it is to change it to a married one.) And I want to specifically draw your attention to the section about half way through that details the “visceral, even subconscious aversion” that men have to taking their wive’s names - and ask my male readers to examine what this deep feeling illuminates about gender politics and married identity.

Julia Belluz, Scientists Don’t Agree on What Causes Obesity, but They Know What Doesn’t (NYT) - A gentle reminder that if you find yourself inclined to comment on how much—or little—someone is eating at a holiday meal… don’t. It’s not your business, and as this article discusses, the size and shape of someone’s body is not a reflection of health, dedication, willpower or moral fitness. So STFU.

Matt Lewis, It’s Weird, but Democrats Actually Have Their Sh!t Together in Congress (The Daily Beast) - Dems may have lost the House, but I’d much rather remain, as this column illustrates, “peacefully functional”, as is my middle name. 

Julia Black, Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.' (Insider) - Eugenics says what? Seriously, this is one of the more disturbing portraits of tech-birthed narcissistic savior complexes reinventing ever-disturbing political lenses I’ve read in a while.

Kelsey Piper, Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself (Vox) - This is BONKERS. And if you read it and then read Alex Seitz-Wald’s “Vegan canapes and fat donations: How Sam Bankman-Fried won Washington before he lost everything” over at NBC News and THEN listen to Behind The Bastard’s How Sam Bankman-Fried Conned The Crypto World, you’ll be fully ready to jump in to any crypto convo at your holiday dinner table (Spoiler alert: It was a scam all along!)

I’m off tomorrow and Friday - enjoy your holiday meals if you’re having them, drink lots of water, remember to breath, know that it’s always OK to walk away from a hateful conversation, and take joy in being the person at the party who finds the family dog and spends the entirety of the evening making friends with it.

And be kind to yourself, won’t you?

xoxo Amy