One of the best things in life… is basketball. Intramural, adult leagues, or even just pickup. Probably half the people I know right now, I met playing basketball.

Including the author of this guest post, Sam Ransohoff.

Sam and I met playing basketball, and went on to co-author Whether Fit-Shaming or Fat-Shaming, It Still Needs to STOP on Fitness Reloaded. We had so much fun, we decided to keep at it! 

Without further ado... here's 10 Things You Do At Pickup That I Make Fun of You For.​

Kids these days -- amirite? 

​No, but actually. For real. Kids these days are more sensitive and fragile than kids of the past. Even according to the president of an elite university that I spoke with recently, “Today’s college students are not like you.”

When I wrote For the Love of God, STOP Asking People If They're Okay, I never really thought anyone would care. I love psycholinguistics (I just finished James Pennebaker's The Secret Life of Pronouns, and it was SOOO good!), and I'm all about empowerment... but people hardly seem riveted when I talk about either topic. 

​But somehow, STOP Asking People If They're Okay tends to be one of my most popular posts every month. Given this, I've got another one to add to the list:

​STOP TELLING PEOPLE THEY LOOK TIRED.

I am a proud member of the Exeter alumni community -- see also: What it's Like to Go to Phillips Exeter Academy, the "Best High School in the Country". Exeter made me a thinker. It made me a listener. It made me unafraid to share my opinions. The Harkness Method of teaching, in which every class is a debate, a dialectic, or a discussion, was a foundational part of who I am now. 

And now, due to an ill-informed Change.org petition, the future of that is at risk.

Guys, I'm, like, soooo vaccinated right now!

​In just a few days, I'm headed to Thailand. Then Sri Lanka. Then Vietnam. Then... who knows? And, at the last minute, I decided to do the responsible thing and get my vaccines.

It's mid-January: the days are short, and the nights are long. The inauguration is coming up, and all those beautiful holiday lights are down.

Some nights, as I return home to see another neighbor has taken their lights down, I wish we could leave our lights up all year -- or at least all winter. Perhaps they should come with a 'Holiday' mode and a 'Rest of the Year' mode. 

I see this meme on Facebook sometimes. Part of me loves it, because I love talking about ideas. Even if I have no intention of actually designing my own board game or launching an American Mail Order Brides website to help women escape a trump presidency... it's still fun to talk about execution and logistics. 

Still, part of me hates this meme. As a psychologist, I understand that gossip is a powerful evolutionary tool that basically enabled our entire existence. 

One common misconception about feminism is that it's not about "equality," it's about giving women more rights than men. Guys (which I obviously mean in a totally gender-inclusive way). This couldn't be further from the truth.

Real feminism seeks both to eliminate inequality and to empower women to live their lives the way they want to. Meaning that some change has to come from men. But some change has to come from women.

I mean, we're equal, right? That means that men and women need to improve. 

And one of the ways in which women need to improve is in their use of hedging language.

Sometimes, facts rub people the wrong way. But that doesn't make them untrue. From genetics to psychology to economics to statistics, there are plenty of politically incorrect facts that many of us don't know -- and, in some cases, have even been made to believe the opposite. 

But facts matter. Science matters. Research matters. History matters. And that is why I wanted to dive into some politically incorrect facts. Consider yourself warned. 

There is a lot of fear surrounding GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. Understandably so -- new technologies are always scary. They always require rigorous testing to prove their safety and efficacy. But there's a difference between healthy skepticism (which is a good thing) and flat-out rejection of scientific facts (which is a terrible thing).

It doesn't help that many so-called "scientists," like Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who is actually a statistician, not a biologist), as well as celebrities, like Gwyneth Paltrow (who have no background in science or statistics), passionately spread misinformation, falsehoods, and half-truthes in order to scare others into their way of thinking.