#159 These are a few of my favourite Things
Happy New Year!
2023 is here – can you believe it? I, for one, am excited for the year to unveil its surprises. Unusual for me, but hey – it means therapy is working, hehe!
All this week, we’re sending you our favourite Things from 2022, starting with moi.
Dolly’s take on the Atlas Obscura, a compendium of obscure places and phenomena – the “hidden wonders of the world”: You can spend hours on the site, just like Dolly, exploring locations, discoveries and cultures that have shaped civilization on this planet. Sites like these make me feel that the Internet is not so bad after all.
Nikita’s reflections on the ‘Sexy Lamp Test’, formulated by Kelly Sue DeConnick: It’s a feminist tool that assesses whether a film’s female characters can be replaced by a sexy lamp. If a sexy lamp can replace the character and the movie still makes sense, then the movie fails the sexy lamp test. Genius!
Nikita drew much-needed attention to the still-pervasive problems of female representation in pop culture. So let’s see how many movies fail (or pass) the sexy lamp test in 2023!
Ria’s musings about a website that archives chairs: As a fellow enthusiast of material culture, I loved this project’s focus on a humble everyday object we’ve been sitting on (pun intended) since times immemorial.
I’m a sucker for storytelling that extracts and highlights the historical value of the seemingly ordinary – so this had to make it into my Best of 2022 list.
Karina’s insights on Linda Barry’s journaling method: I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. Or maybe they don’t believe me (this year’s resolution was: I won’t watch YouTube shorts anymore. Guess what I did all of 1st Jan? Watched YouTube shorts in bed after a night of revelry).
In my childhood, 1st Jan meant cracking open a new notebook and starting a daily journal- one that would inevitably be demoted to a weekly journal, then to a monthly journal, and eventually into a non-journal entirely.
Karina reminisced about similar struggles and then shared Barry’s method, which is deceptively simple and immensely profound. So I’ll leave it to you to have a go.
That’s it with my list of Just One Thing favourites from 2022. Send me yours so we can compare notes.
P.S. If you’re the sort of person who makes and keeps New Year’s Resolutions, why not include “read Just One Thing every day and share it with everyone I know” in your list?
And if you’re like me, let this be the first resolution you ever fulfil (it’s going to be VERY easy, because we’ve got lots and lots and lots of interesting stuff to share with you in 2023).