[newsletter]
The marginalia, a better way of doing commentary.
31 Jan 2021
Hello,
No new article this cycle. The big change over the last two weeks is the creation of a new site feature–the Marginalia. Here, all my readings, links, snippets, quotes, and notes that go into the content on the site live. Go check it out. Here’s a sample:
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But for survivors of sexual abuse, the argument over repression versus forgetting is largely beside the point. Most victims are primarily concerned with what they remember, not how.
On the origin of and dissolution of the FSMF. Again though, the ‘thorny’ topic of repressed memories usually misses the argument voiding fact that at least some ‘repression’ is the same thing ‘directed forgetting’, the terms are interchangeable, and that bad memories, real or fake, repressed or forgotten, all cause the same kinds of damage.
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Between 1900 and 1956, women increased from a small proportion of public company stockholders in the U.S. to the majority … before the rise of institutional investing obscured the gender politics of corporate control … early-twentieth-century gender politics helped shape foundational ideas of corporate governance theory, especially ideas concerning the role of shareholders.
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[you shouldn’t] say “person with autism” … This sends exactly the wrong signal. If autism is dimensional, we should think of it the same way we do height and wealth – and we say “tall person” and “rich person”. Saying “person with Height” or “Person with Richness” is strongly suggestive of “person with the flu” – it implies a binary class that you either fall into, or don’t. But that’s the opposite of what most research suggests, and the opposite of the thought process that will help you think about these conditions sensibly … most mental disorders are dimensional variation rather than taxa … a lot of people still want psychiatry to deliver the [binary]. It’s not going to be able to do that. If you hold out hope, you’ll either end up overmedicalizing everything, or you’ll get disillusioned and radicalized and start saying all psychiatry is fake.
Recently updated:
Why, much like the cupboard under the stairs, your brain might be nothing more than a happy accident.
Notes:
Site is no longer static. It’s a web app, and it might take a while to straighten out the kinks because I’m hanging on by the seat of my pants coding this thing. That said, look forward to more features like the scholia, since publishing is much easier now.
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You can find links to all my previous emails to you here.
That’s all from me! Enjoy.
Warm regards,