It’s time once again for news and views that you can peruse! It’s time once again for your Weekly Reader! As always, if you have something you’d like to share, drop a link or two in the comments!
The Next Wave of Extremist Cults Will Make QAnon Look Tame (from Wired): “Cult-like extremist movements appear to provide an antidote to the potent mixture of isolation, uncertainty, changing narratives, and fear we have experienced during the pandemic by offering a skewed form of safety, stability, and certainty, along with a cohort of people who are just like us, who believe us and believe in us. As the activist David Sullivan—a man who devoted his life to infiltrating cults in order to extricate loved ones from their grip—pointed out, no one ever joins a cult: They join a community of people who see them. In 2022, this appeal of cults will only grow, and those that arise next year will make QAnon seem like the good old days.”
There will be blood: women on the shocking truth about periods and perimenopause (from The Guardian): “For some women, the end of reproductive life can mean little more than a few missed periods. But a callout to Guardian readers asking about experiences in the run-up to menopause suggests that, for others, heavier, longer, more frequent or unpredictable bleeding has left them feeling vulnerable, anxious and exhausted.”
QAnon grifter tells followers she can time travel — and says Trump will be “reinstated” (from Salon–article is from last June but I don’t think this is ever going away): “While growing her subscriber base on Twitch, Maras-Lindeman, who streams under the name Tore Says, has raked in tens of thousands of dollars, even convincing her subscriber base to donate over $80,000, so she could buy a new Tesla.”
There’s proof: electing women radically improves life for mothers and families (from The Guardian): “In 2000, by which time a third of MPs were women, a new law introduced a nine-month parental leave, which gave both mothers and fathers three months of paid leave each, plus an additional three months to split between them. At the time it was the longest amount of paid leave given to fathers anywhere in the world. “It changed society overnight,” says Ólafur Stephensen, secretary general of the Icelandic Federation of Trade and a father of two.”
America’s Food Safety System Failed to Stop a Salmonella Epidemic. It’s Still Making People Sick. (from ProPublica): “With a public health threat unfolding across the country, you might have expected federal regulators to act swiftly and decisively to warn the public, recall the contaminated poultry and compel changes at chicken plants. Or that federal investigators would pursue the root cause of the outbreak wherever the evidence led.”
“None of that happened.”
That’s all for this week’s edition but don’t worry. I’ll be back next week with more information for your brain to digest. Until then, have a great rest of your week, stay safe and happy reading!
Iacon East 