I don’t have any links about 2021 being halfway over, but I just felt like this post should acknowledge it. Like: What the fuck? How? It was March yesterday! But also, the coup attempt was eleventyfinity years ago, so I guess we have confirmed via science that time has not yet resumed being normal. The first of the links in this links round-up pleased me mightily, and then there are some that are a bit sad, and then we close out with some articles about cults, and yes, I do include the world of the Bachelor franchise in that. (Just kidding.) (But not really.)
“Its central question is whether one should approach the wholesale massacre of the innocents with indifference or with hypocrisy, and its conceit is that this is a relevant or fascinating distinction.” This absolute pan of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book is very good. (link)
Leni Riefenstahl and L. Ron Hubbard were gonna make a movie together, because frankly why not. (link)
Germany has acknowledged its genocidal actions in Namibia in the early 20th century and committed to sending money that they are definitely not calling reparations. Is it enough? (link)
“As Dick Snyder was later to say: ‘A publisher has an obligation to believe in the first amendment but not to publish everything that’s sent to him.’” Publishing faces a dilemma when higher-ups make junior staff work on books that directly oppose those staff members’ freedom and identity. (link)
I loved this interview with Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of the new novel The Other Black Girl. (link) Also very much loved this breakdown of how she wrote her book’s twist ending (but spoilers, of course!) (link)
The worst insult in Mean Girls is lesbian. (This movie really did not hold up.) (link)
“They didn’t get on unemployment because they’re lazy. They got on unemployment because they were fired.” Restaurant workers aren’t refusing to go back to work because they like unemployment benefits so much; they’re just refusing to go back to shit jobs that pay like shit and treat them like shit. (link)
“Teigen’s reputation-damaging tweets all share a certain essential DNA. They are all tweets mocking girls and femmes whom the pop culture of the late ’00s and early ’10s had made it clear were fair game for mockery.” The rise and fall of Chrissy Teigen. (link)
Apropos of the above, a celebrity publicist explains how to craft a perfect (or as perfect as possible) public apology. (link)
Another feminist revisits The Beauty Myth in the light of Naomi’s Wolf turn to anti-vaccine propaganda. (link)
The Hot Zone is apparently totally unreliable and carries a racist legacy that continues to affect us to this day THIS VERY DAY? I did not know! It was always kind of vaguely on my TBR list but I have stricken it from the list. (link)
I will always share a cult article. This one’s about a woman who escaped from a cult led by her mother, leaving behind her three children. The pain of this escape and her prior life has never fully left her. (link)
AND ANOTHER ONE: Amanda Montell is interviewed about her new book, Cultish, which I cannot WAIT to read. (link)
Rachel Lindsay speaks about her decision to step away from the Bachelor franchise. (I love Rachel Lindsay.) (link)
Happy weekend, my friends! Don’t join any cults! Including do not sign up for reality dating shows!