MAGA's plan for moms comes at a cost
What could be more chill than heavily-encouraged early retirement for working moms? Okay, fine, lots of things. Popsicles, for instance.
If right-wing politicians like JD Vance and Josh Hawley get their way, women with children will have lots more time to make those popsicles, from scratch, the way tradwife influencer Nara Smith would. Their goal is for one parent — who can say which one — to be able to leave the workforce to care for their children full time.
There are some outstanding questions about this though, namely, who is paying for this massive cultural and economic shift, and how? Anna North looks at what it would take to convince working mothers to stay home. The answer, it turns out, is simple. But according to Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker in The Social Network, it's also not particularly cool.
📹 To summer camp or not to summer camp 🤔
Maybe a dip in the lake is what you need — but is learning the backstroke with a bunch of other campers what your kid should be up to this summer? Check out this YouTube short, where reporter Anna North and Explain It To Me host Jonquilyn Hill discuss the relative need for shipping your kid off to sleepaway. Can children just entertain themselves, in an age when all too much adult stuff is available at the click of a button? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean that bunk beds and capture the flag are the answer either.
In the full Explain It To Me episode, Hill also talked to Leslie Paris, the author of Children's Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp, who explains the "triple nostalgia" of packing kids off for the season, which taps into longing "for the American past, for camp community, and for individual childhood experience."
Is moderate drinking bad, actually?
Take the temp down with a nice frozen cocktail! Or maybe, don't.
Did you know alcohol is a carcinogen? Odds are that you did not, because as Dylan Scott, Vox's senior health reporter, told editor Sean Collins, only 40 percent of people are aware of the link between drinking and cancer. Yes, margaritas and mai tais join cigarettes on the list of cool-looking, good-time things that can get you hooked on seriously hurting your own health. (Not that drinking was exactly good for you to begin with.)
I'll admit, I was one of the 60 percent who had no idea, and after reading this very informative and smart piece about the risks of even moderate drinking, I'm doing everything in my power to forget this troublesome fact. If only there was some magic elixir that could wipe information from my mind…
🎧 Sick of "morning" sickness
Speaking of things that leave you hanging out on your knees in front of a toilet, the notably-not-time-pegged nausea and barfing that accompany pregnancy are the topic of this week's Unexplainable.
In the episode, host Julia Longoria candidly shares audio of her own heaves. While often played for laughs and foreshadowing on every sitcom that's ever existed, this side effect of being with child is no joke for millions of pregnant people, and it's seriously understudied.
Longoria speaks to geneticist Marlena Fejzo, whose personal experience with the more extreme form of "morning" sickness known as hyperemesis gravidarum led to her unfunded, homespun research, the first of its kind. What did Fejzo learn? Well, she just may have revealed the root of some pregnant people's toughest recurring symptom. Now she just needs the support to continue her work.
AI systems could become conscious. What if they hate their lives?
You know what would make me really loosen up and relax? Not going through a Terminator-style apocalypse at the non-literal hands of AI.
"I didn't ask to be born, dad" could take on a whole new meaning if the entity spitting it out is an artificial intelligence created by human beings. According to Sigal Samuel, my personal answer to this problem is one many actual scientists endorse: "Just. Don't. Build. Them."
It's likely too late though — not that suffering AI already exists, but companies like OpenAI and Anthropic would have to stop their ongoing work, something companies and governments alike are liable to resist. There are more risks and thinking to understand here, which Samuel explains beautifully, but I'm a little stuck on the unstoppable train of a looming trolley problem. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.
