Welcome to day #99, and we go into several thinking pieces for you, followed by a tear-jerker. We mix cybersecurity, tuition costs, and a new game to guess the band name. A 10-minute mid-morning coffee break to put a smile on your face and some music in your ears!

One of our favorite websites pudding.cool has a piece on gender in books. Erin Davis, who wrote the article, wanted to read stories with real people, scars, and all but felt that most of what she was reading were covered in stereotypical makeup. Davis pulls data from two thousand books to pull out phrases and sentences that describe parts. Before you start the piece, she gives you a short quiz with short descriptions from actual books, and you have to guess man or woman. We were a ten out of ten.

In the first section, Davis addresses the head, the top features for girls are hair and cheeks, and for boys, grin and brain. Below the neck, what struck us the most was not that the Breast was mentioned the most for women but that it was mentioned more than all other body parts for men and women. We didn't catch what the gender split was among the authors of the books. Common sense might suggest it was more men than women, but we wouldn't be surprised either way.

Are women over-sensualized in media? Are men less rugged than they are portrayed? We think so, but are we asking for it? Every once in a while, a great story comes along with real people, but how many beautiful people stories come out every day? The good news is you can find stories about all types, and the more we grow and move away from classifications, the better the stories we can tell.

Two big stories in one newsletter might be a first, especially considering the stories involve the same writer. At the end of Erin Davis's story for Pudding, there is a link to another story about how she pitched the Visual Essay to Pudding in the first place. This story is as interesting as the actual story.

Davis tells the story of an unsuccessful pitch followed by a successful pitch and describes how much work each of the stories was to put together. Davis puts a lot of work into these stories and puts together a ton of data to back the conclusions.

In the wrap-up section of Davis's review, she puts together great advice. Each bullet point she lists in the wrap-up could be used to describe the first 100 published posts for With A Shout. Our top two:

Morning Brew spin-off newsletter called IT Brew wrote a story about Cyber Insurance; according to Panaseer, a British security firm, ransomware attacks grew from $500M in 2020 to over $1.2B in 2021. Insurance premiums in this new area of business insurance are expected to increase over the next several years.

Most experts recommend both, insurance is always a good hedge against an attack, but any catastrophe that could take your business offline for a short time is a steep price. Of the many challenges is trying to figure out how much protection or prevention you can create, how much time it will take to put it in place, and how much it will cost.

Data was the primary concern in the old days, and it wasn't cyber criminals, or hacking business was worried about; it was mechanical. This was pre-cloud, and if you had backups, there were on tapes, and no one ever tested the recordings. It took a lot of work to determine if the tape-recorded the right stuff or if you could pull anything off it. You can put multiple copies of data in secure places, and redundancy is critical.

As we were writing the piece on Cybersecurity - The Guardian reported a ransomware attack on The Guardian! Few details have been released, but cybersecurity could be in a race for word of the year in 2023.

Kerrang has a unique story about a lessor know band called Capital Lights. Mike Rampton writes the piece. The song: His Favorite Christmas Story, and the story about the music and how it made the story's author feel. Snot in beard describes the tears; the story is heartwarming and comes down to this:

How sweet is that! We have added that song to our Christmas playlist and plan on telling this story over and over this holiday season - thanks, Mike!

[New Section]

Here is a new idea for you in the age of Wordle and another one of our favorites Heardle. We will give you a name or phrase, and you have to guess if it’s a band name or not. Here is your first puzzle:

**Bonus Points** If this is not a band name, where is the phrase from. Use the comments section to let us know your guess.

Excellent app from The Hechinger Report. The app gives you great data on the cost of education and an opportunity to donate to the cause.

[Music Notes]

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

When Santa cries.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.