Minutes of a Monday #59

#minutesofamonday

Brain Food > Agreeing to Disagree

“At this point, women reading may have balled their fists in a sort of white-hot rage. We generally don’t like this conversation being foisted upon us. It is considered impolite to ask a stranger whether they want to have children, sort of in the same way that it’s considered weird to ask someone you just met how many times a day they poo, or how much they earn. It is certainly impolite to demand personal information and then pass judgement on the basis of it.

Women in their thirties don’t have the luxury of skipping their way through life unaware of their own biology or the cultural pressures around family. Reminders of it aren’t helpful, even if they are intended to be. The temptation was powerful to climb up onto the dinner table with one foot in the plate of bread and the other in my interlocutor’s dinner, arms outstretched and roar out a sarcasm-drenched ‘THANK YOU SO MUCH I WAS UNAWARE OF ALL OF THIS I WILL NOW GO AND GOOGLE ‘FERTILITY’ AND ‘WHERE TO PURCHASE A HUMAN BABY’.”

Laura Kennedy

on a dinner party, a rude question, and what to do when you feel judged (because you're being judged). You can read it here.

Soul Food

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

LOL

That human dynamo, Lee Evans, on tractor drivers.

Appendix

"I'm proud of that film, really proud of that film....I've talked to Morgan about this. It's a pretty special...it's unlike other films that people talk to you about. It's very important to people, in a deep way. And it's beyond just liking the film. It's more profound than that. I've had people tell me that it's shifted the way they think, that it brought them out of a depression, that it made them understand a deeper truth about themselves. That's a pretty cool thing to be involved in…”

Tim Robbins, in April of 2018 while a guest on NPR's "It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders," talking about the Shawshank Redemption.

AOB

My article on AI and acting didn’t land in your inbox last Friday. I have 100 excuses but I’ll offer one apology instead. There will be no stone left unturned to get it out this Friday!

Have a great week - Niall