Music: The Weather by Lawrence
A friend introduced me to Lawrence the other day and I’m hooked. The bittersweetness of the lyrics and the beautiful singing make this song so enchanting. I can’t stop listening to it.
Movie: Promising Young Woman
Trailer for Promising Young Woman
Carey Mulligan is such a great actress and this movie is fantastic. Playing off the female revenge trope, the movie deals with themes of sexual assualt, feminism, and trauma. I don’t want to say too much about this movie because I think it’s a must-see for everybody and it’s best to go into it knowing as little as possible.
Podcast: The Pleasure of Pain
Ask anybody who knows me and they’ll probably say I’m a least a little masochistic. For instance, I like eating spicy food, doing hard workouts, and just testing my willpower in general just to name a few examples. I might lean more on the eager side but I think all of us experience some pleasure from pain (maybe not every form of it). Philosopher Masahiro Morioka has written about the consequences of our trend toward a “painless civilization” and argues that suffering and challenge are what give life meaning. Interestingly, according to the podcast, psychological research seems to affirm Morioka’s belief about challenge and meaning.
Wikipedia: Yangtze River Dolphin
Credit: Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences via Wikimedia Commons
While researching for my recent blog post, I was reminded of the sad case of the Yangtze River dolphin, also known as the baiji. Long ago, the Yangtze River dolphin and the Chinese lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Communists attacked. Due to the combination of pollution from industrialization and hunting from the degradation of cultural values, the Yangtze River dolphin’s population rapidly declined during China’s Great Leap Forward. Although there are occasional sightings, the species now is considered functionally extinct.