Freshly Pressed: Friday Faves

You intrepid blogger-nauts are a talented bunch. Your eclectic range of writing styles and world-spanning knowledge create an overwhelming amount of awesome, diverse content. We’re proud to say that we’ve learned a lot from our Readers this week — everything from neuroscience to economics and beyond — and we hope you have too. Here’s a selection of some especially interesting picks from Freshly Pressed:

Was the Irish Famine Genocide?

The Famine was the greatest calamity in Irish history. People needlessly died due to cold-hearted indifference and the elevation of the market above the lives of people. Nowhere near enough aid was given as prejudice won out over compassion. Laissez faire turned into Leave them to die.

Attention all armchair historians, conspiracy theorists, and diaspora of the Emerald Isle: take note of this thought-provoking post. The Irish Famine — or the “Great Hunger” — was a calamitous moment in Irish history. Millions perished and emigrated as the potato crop failed. But could these deaths have been avoided? Was the ruling British Empire willfully negligent? Indeed, did it act in a way that could be construed as “genocidal”? Robert Nielsen weighs up the evidence in a thorough analysis.

Parenting Politics…In My House

There is still definitely an overall attitude that women – by default – take on the majority of household chores, regardless of their work status. If a woman chooses to be a homemaker, then I can understand that thought, but otherwise? We all live here, we all pitch in, it’s as simple as that. We’re raising our son so that he understands the value of equality, both inside the home as well as outside of it.

With recent media focus on high-profile businesswomen, like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, it’s refreshing to read a little perspective closer to home. Indeed, forget running a Fortune 500 company; if life has an ultimate test for one’s physical strength, mental endurance, and cognitive faculties, we’re sure raising kids is it. The Mamafesto shares a revealing insight into her apparently unceasingly hectic work/life balance, explaining how both mom and pop share the load (for the good of both their sanities).

Time to Come Out

If our sexual orientation were more often in-your-face, so to speak, as inescapably present and visible as skin color, perhaps we would reach that society of tolerance we dream about more quickly. We are not a silent minority, but in certain fields—I think of cinema and sports—we are a relatively (and in the NFL, a completely) invisible one.

For a gay person, the act of coming out is often the most difficult point in their life. It involves shattering what is essentially a lifelong façade and bearing the entirety of their self to raw, hurtful criticism; it’s something very few of us can understand. Breach of Close‘s heartfelt post on the pressure of coming out is an emotionally charged eye-opener that sheds difficult light on this anguish. We’d all do well to read it.

Did you read something in the Reader that you think is Freshly Pressed material? Feel free to leave us a link, or tweet us @freshly_pressed.

For more inspiration, check out our writing challenges, photo challenges, and other blogging tips at The Daily Post; visit our Recommended Blogs; and browse the most popular topics in the Reader. For editorial guidelines for Freshly Pressed, read: So You Want To Be Freshly Pressed.

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