My initial plan was to take a Sunday off from newsletter. And then I fell sick. Here’s the full story. Nothing to worry about. But it was a bit crazy (I am not yet fully recovered). Anyway, here I am, back after missing three Sundays, typing this away from a hospital bed.

I think it’s a wonderful way for brands to make their employees feel great - by getting a ‘film’ made on them that celebrates their work. Such videos can also be viewed as good content for your hiring guys, who can use these stories to quickly show any candidate what working in the company really means.

Of the six films that I shot in Myanmar earlier in Feb, only one was on this theme. The other five (yet to be published) were customer success stories (fishermen, small shopkeepers, poultry farm owners, farmers etc.). I am sure some of you followed me on the journey via my BTS videos that I shared in the earlier newsletters. If not, do watch them - quite fun they are.

The 3MinuteStories adventure is six years old now and I want to share the second video that I made back in 2014. It’s about how rapes are not always about sex.

Yesterday I had 125 rapes catalogued in my Google Sheets and I did some analysis. You may want to check it out.

Here’s the entire Google sheet if you want to play around with the data yourself.

I leave it to you to draw your understanding of why men rape, what explains the rape culture, does it have anything at all to do with ‘sexual frustration’ or ‘poverty’. Also, instead of relying upon my 30 days data from cases that came in media, if you really care to know, I would recommend you do read up work of people who decided to spend at least few years understanding what’s really happening (and that means a little more than just theorizing). Some travelled and met the rapists, others met the families of victims / survivors. I have mentioned two such books in the blog. One of the books (on victims) is gut-wrenching to read.

If you are a woman you may have resonated with the sentiment #AllMenAreTrash - you may often respond with ‘yes I feel the same’.

I explained on my insta few weeks ago why men often don’t respond to this sentiment like other women do. Click on the below image to view all the slides. It all boils down to not realizing what “kind of conversation” is one getting into (women in general are better at spotting a ‘feeling conversation’ than men are).

I am not sure how many of you have already seen it but I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 the same evening that I fell sick. It was amazing. I also noticed some amazing similarities between how the federal government in US came for the protesters in the late 1960s to how the Modi government has been misusing Delhi Police to target dissenters.

While in the hospital, I finished reading an interesting book - ‘How Democracies Die’ - will probably share something from there next. Coincidentally, the book also briefly mentions the particular incident on which the above Netflix movie is based (Chicago protests). I remember I was in Chicago in 2016 for a month, just before the elections and it was a sinking feeling to see Trump emerge a winner. What a relief to know that the asshole is finally getting kicked out. I think I would have taken longer to recover had he won :) Wish me speedy recovery and see you next Sunday.

PS: this twitter video made me cry a little bit