By far the most important news in this round-up is that the Murderbot TV show is going to have a show-within-the-show of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I continue to try to temper my expectations about the Murderbot show, but I could not be more straightforwardly excited for the Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Here, also, is the Murderbot trailer.

I also devoured this article about cult murders, every paragraph of which is more insane than the last. After reading it, I then chomoped my way through this four-part podcast series about the cult in question and its ties to the neo-rationalist movement. Mad as a bag of cats, these people.

In other news, The Millions has posted their Great Spring Book Preview. Huzzah!

How long should you stick with a show to see if it’s going to get good? Daniel Parris ran the numbers and reports that the answer is six episodes. There you go. Question answered.

God, I love reading about art world stuff. Someone found this painting that they claim is a lost Van Gogh. All the experts are like “lol no.” The owners have sunk over a million dollars into trying to have it authenticated.

The new book about Facebook confirms exactly what you think. Facebook knows what it’s doing. They just don’t care. (The excuse they gave for their platform being used as a tool to enable genocide in Myanmar is that they didn’t have that many people on staff who spoke Burmese. I just.)

I expected to be amused (and I was) by this article about being the person who wrote those shitty tweet round-up articles for Gawker. But the piece is also a really thoughtful exploration of what it means to draw generalizations from what you’re seeing on just your one corner of the internet.

Not to be dramatic, but the words “personalized for you and your mood” in this article about an AI romance novel–writing company sent a chill down my spine.

“‘The disparagement of empathy is the flip side, I believe, of a deliberate effort to set up a permission structure to dehumanize others, and to narrow the definition of who should be included in a democratic state, or in a Christian community,’ she said.” Opposition to empathy is running rampant on the right, including the Christian right.

I want to go on a cross-country train trip so bad. Even this article about train food being aggressively mid (surprise surprise) has only piqued my yearning, because it’s also about community and homemade food and shared culture.

“To the extent that they are discussed at all, equality, justice, and liberty are instead framed as conversational achievements.” Always here for rigorously dragging Agnes Callard.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr told this journalist that he gave his son cancer by having him vaccinated, a claim that has no basis in fact. Robert F. Kennedy Jr fucking sucks.

“I’m Cursed With Knowledge About Zootopia’s Abortion Fan Comic, And Now So Are You.”

“Girlboss logic with a MAGA facelift.” On the feminine aesthetics of MAGA. (Would that all those breathless articles in 2016 about how Nazis wear their hair would have been this critical of why they are styling themselves that way.)

We never run out of things to say about Lolita. Here’s Claire Messud.

Take care, friends! It’s scary out there!

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Apparently my beloved, very insane Doctor Odyssey is on the bubble for renewal, so please watch it! It’s so silly and such a goofy, fun reset for my brain every week. It’s about a bunch of horny doctors on board a cruise ship, and every week has a theme. Here’s an interview with Joshua Jackson, who stars in it.

New Fansplaining article dropped! Amanda Rae Prescott does a deep dive into the long history of racism in the Bridgerton fandom and the fandom of period romance more broadly.

“If Rachel Zegler has no defenders, it means I’m dead.” How the young star of Disney’s Snow White remake is being set up to take the fall for the movie’s failure.

The tech bros love to talk about (and grievously misunderstand) epic poetry. Why?

You can’t post your way out of fascism. This article is a terrific reminder to pick up Katherine Cross’s book, Log Off, which I am very very excited to read.

While I’m not tremendously interested in assigning this or that label to queer people of the past, I was still interested to read this piece on Oscar Wilde and bisexuality.

As women in sports have become more prominent and visible, they’ve also acquired more stalkers.

The flight attendants who have served on ICE’s deportation flights speak out about the conditions on those flights. Deportees are not treated like people, and no plans seem to exist to evacuate them safely in the case of an in-flight emergency.

A historian of ancient Rome breaks down why Gladiator II fucking sucks.

“You’re doing really well if your university seeks to destroy your newspaper.” The student journalists of Texas are facing an uphill battle.

RWA is filing for bankruptcy. Here’s an overview of how RWA tanked their own organization through racism.

Stay safe out there! And catch up on Doctor Odyssey on Hulu! It’s so fucking silly! I promise a good time!

The post Pippa Soo Demands Broadway Week: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Colonial Williamsburg has become a space for truly complex, careful conversations about American history.

In America, the arts depend on charitable giving; that’s not ideal.

“The Death of the Fuck”: on puritanism and sex scenes in books.

I found this article fascinating — it’s about how the modern world assumes we want everything to be speedier and more efficient, but that’s not actually what we want all the time! God, I miss Blockbuster.

Meredith Shiner reflects on the high holy days, Palestinian lives, and that one CBS interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

“I progressed, swift, undeterred by silent letters, diphthongs, schwas, into a wintry future—my birthday is in January—of which two things could be said for sure: I would be five years old; I would be able to rely on myself.” Elisa Gonzalez considers homeschooling and what it means to be an autodidact.

Adam Serwer contemplates the snitch state.

“Rumor baiting is eclipsing constructive reflection. The pattern seekers are more interested in uncovering a juicier story than finding justice for victims who must now compete with specious secret-society rhetoric and crude Diddy memes to be heard.” A thoughtful piece about conspiratorial thinking and the exploitation of young artists in the music industry.

This profile of Palestinian American historain Rashid Khalidi (whose book I read this year) is excellent, and I am eager to read his next book on the links between Ireland and Palestine.

“What lengths may some fans go to get noticed?”

“With many patients, the drug is closer to brain damage.” A dopamine agonist used to treat Parkinson’s can lead to wildly out of character behavior and loss of impulse control.

Molly Young shares an abecedary of her enemies.

“Male historians will never stop explaining things. Female historians might, one day, stop listening.”

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And now, some links!

How do you feed the Olympic athletes? Step one: Buy 3 million bananas.

Celebrity book clubs are run by enthusiastic and voracious readers, but that doesn’t make them immune to publishers’ campaigning for their top titles.

“Everything I did on these friend dates was aggressive, pathetic, or insane.” Kelly Stout set out to make a new friend in an (1) month. (That timeline is way too short imo.)

Two humanitarian surgeons, with extensive experience of working in war zones, write about their time in Gaza, “None of [our experience] prepared us for what we saw in Gaza this spring.” This is a hard read, but a very important one. What’s happening in Gaza is straightforwardly genocide, and the US is eagerly supporting it.  I also recommend this piece by a former IDF soldier and scholar of genocide.

“If there’s one fundamental human impulse that the internet has indulged more than anything else, it’s our desire to be huge bitches.” Twenty years of Yelp.

The queerness of monsters.

“When he asks how much we paid for this vacation, he is unable to best the low price that Ramona has given us. This makes me feel like we are in an armored truck of value, impervious to the rest of the world’s scams.” Traveling via Costco.

A big chunk of undersea cable disappeared. Did Russia take it?

“Some of my past times, including Combs’s stalking me at the Vibe office, had to be redacted. I blacked them out in order to keep the lights on.” A really, really stellar piece from Danyel Smith on her own experiences with Diddy.

Oh my God this piece about The Gods Must Be Crazy and its apartheid legacy, oh my God.

Mo Ryan begs her fellow white women not to let what happened to Nicole Beharie on Sleepy Hollow (I’ll die mad about it) happen to Kamala Harris.

“[J.D. Vance is] still really only good at one thing: advancing by slavishly attaching himself to people richer and more powerful than himself, casting them aside when they become inconvenient.” lol

Wake up, babe, new UNESCO World Heritage sites just dropped.

“People don’t just bring their aspirations to the city. They also come with their wounds. The city is a segregator of wounds.” On Sinéad O’Connor.

“Your child does not need a comms strategy.” Linda Holmes does not support AI-written fan mail.

The journalist for this piece deserves a Peabody. What happens when writers break up? I loved this piece so much. I have forced it upon everyone I’ve ever met. They’ll never stop hearing about it. NEVER.

CALL ME BASIC, but this interview with the Supermarket Sweep gays made me feel tender towards the world.

What are we to make of White Women for Kamala and similar events?

Locked cases may prevent products from being stolen from retailers like Target and CVS, but they’re also preventing products from being, like, sold.

Rose Eveleth is doing a terrific new podcast about sex testing in sports, and she writes about the ethical challenges of writing about athletes’ bodies.

What Tim Walz has is tonic masculinity.

Lydia Polgreen on the Cass Report. This piece is so good.

KLAXON KLAXON WE HAVE NEW EURIPIDES CONTENT.

Why do the family members of crime victims show up for events like CrimeCon?

“There is no playbook for a President Kamala Harris because presidential politics has never imagined a Kamala Harris.”

“How sports gambling came to be such a hulking, clanging presence in our life is the ultimate sports media story—which is funny, in a ghoulish sort of way, given there’s not a lot of sports media left to tell it.”

“Believing you have no part in it is as naive as believing that touching a hot stove won’t get you burnt.” Morgan Jerkins can’t turn away from the tradwives.

“Over a twelve-year period from 1989 to 2001, virtually none of the winners of any high-value prizes were legit.” This story about the McDonald’s Monopoly game is Wild.

The news media is—again—utterly failing to meet the moment.

A prominent advocate for accessibility in gaming appears… never to have existed?

Buy physical media, friends! You won’t regret it!

The post I own a lot of DVDs now: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

A researcher decided to do neurofeedback experiments on indigenous children. Like, recently. We never learn anything, I s2g.

Should rich people be allowed to do science? PERHAPS NOT.

How classics fans (may) get funneled into alt-right content on the platform previously known as Twitter.

Andrea Long Chu on Rachel Cusk.

A fascinating read about the lasting legacy of trauma.

The original actors for The Avengers have gone back and dubbed it all into Lakota! How absolutely fucking cool!

A Canadian writer grapples with the lessons she learned from Alice Munro, and the lessons she learned from learning that Alice Munro protected a child sex abuser over her own daughter.

Also Neil Gaiman. Y’all, I’m tired.

The main reason I continue to resist TikTok is because I know it would get me like this and I do not want to be got.

Whither relationships in TV shows.

Drew Magary tried out a Cybertruck, and I’m moved to hear that everyone hates you when you drive a Cybertruck.

There will never be another Game of Thrones; or, the death of journalism.

Kenyan protestors have found inspiration in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

Happy Friday, friends! What have y’all been reading lately?

The post Remember when I used to do link round-ups? appeared first on Reading the End.

The Britney Spears truthers are out there, and they are CONVINCED.

“Is it tantamount to sexual harassment to fantasize about being a piece of ice so a Swedish hockey player will glide on you?” This story fascinates me because the only person who I feel clearly did something wrong is the Kraken social media team. AND YET everyone is very unhappy!

Evette Dionne and Tirhakah Love explore the allegations against Lizzo.

The publishing industry keeps consolidating. It’s terrible for books (yes, even now that S&S was not sold to PRH after all!).

Native communities shoulder the cost of reburying the ancestral remains that were taken from their nations. It’s a heavy burden to carry.

Free returns aren’t free (surprise!).

The history of cooking videos!

“Even if you could integrate Bama the brand, you cannot integrate Bama the social reproduction machine.”

“The production team created the conditions of our existence but when we were frustrated with these conditions, we simply turned on each other.” What it’s like to be cast as the villain of a reality show. And speaking of that…

“Quote me on this in capitals and bold letters. Don’t hire anybody to help you through the casting process.” How the cast of season 45 of Survivor got selected.

I’ve been saying for ages that prioritizing the fear of being taken advantage of is morally corrosive, so it’s nice to read an article that’s making that exact same argument from a place of more authority than I personally possess.

What’s it like to be named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists?

This piece on Michael Oher of The Blind Side is tremendously great, top to bottom. I read it three times in a row.

What are we to make of the social media tradwives?

“I’m just saying that he is the sort of guy who is a typical Burning Man attendee these days: the establishment in a goofy hat.” It has been a true pleasure to see the mess of Burning Man.

NUN MUTINY.

“If not blurbs, then what?” This is a terrific piece on the necessity and the injustice of book blurbs.

As someone who is presently watching (and loving) The X-Files for the first time, I endorse this explanation of why it is Good, Actually. (I actually think this writer is understating how good and important the chemistry between the two leads was, but whatever.)

The internet is written in pencil.

A lot of what gets written about AI-generated literature is … kind of garbagey, but this article is legitimately good, thoughtful, and interesting.

JUSTICE FOR NEANDERTHALS.

Happy Friday!

The post lol this is horribly overdue: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Uh-oh. The Millions and Lithub both have their big second-half-of-the-year book previews. RIP me and my admirable resolution to read my own damn books rather than constantly checking out huge stacks of 15 books at a time from the library.

What’s happening to sex workers is a warning about algorithmic content moderation.

My pledge to you is that I will always, always share content about reborns. Always. Trust.

The always-brilliant Gita Jackson wrote about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

“There’s a book I love that no one else knows about.” Molly Templeton on the pleasure and sadness of being a fandom of one.

“The term ‘salmon farming’ yields 2,698 titles, 95 of which are works of fiction.” On the real and fictional salmon falmers of Norway.

Why are the networks siding with the streamers?

AI isn’t going to disrupt books because the people making AI don’t understand what people want from books.

Clio Chang, a hero for our times, researches what exactly is in that subway water that drips on your head when you’re waiting for the train.

This is an incredibly cool visualization of how a translator approaches her work, the different iterations she tries on a passage, and how she makes her decisions.

I have clearly not been using my copywriting powers for evil enough. This is the story of a copywriting scammer who made millions sending scam psychic letters.

“In our risk-averse climate, a lot of what is exciting, original and untested is being published by independent publishers.”

The Ann Landers / Dear Abby feud is one for the ages.

America’s Next Top Model turns 20. The Cut speaks to former contestants about their experiences.

Rafia Zakaria on passport freedom.

Et vous? What have you been reading on these here internets that you’ve enjoyed? Please share!

The post What If a Links Round-Up, But on Tuesday? appeared first on Reading the End.

The always-great Angelica Jade Bastien reviews the new The Little Mermaid.

At the close of the inaugural #EndOTWRacism campaign (but hopefully there are many more iterations to come!), Stitch reflects on what fandom needs.

“The music of a bygone time, a simpler, better era, when cars weren’t sold by direct-to-consumer, the internet barely existed, and prices were negotiable and opaque.” Inside the National Automobile Dealers Association, a weirdly powerful force in the Republican party.

Maureen Ryan’s book Burn It Down promises to be a barn, um, burner. Vanity Fair excerpted a chapter about the racist, sexist, bullying culture on Lost.

Here is the update on Caroline Calloway, because you know we all needed that.

True crime got worse.

“The operative factor is the training to recycle their traumas through violence.” Why it’s not surprising that the man who killed Jordan Neely was a marine.

“Dark romance novels don’t fear abusive men—if they did, the books would be wiped clean of their assault scenes. Their ultimate fear is of non-normative desire.”

Here is what is up with the embarrassing Hannah Gadsby exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

The downfall of Tom Sandoval.

Why are there so many gd Persephone retellings!!

The ghost of carbon monoxide stories (a folklore perspective).

Writing for robots: The SEO arms race and all the garbage it’s left us with.

If you missed the recent Anne Carson discourse, please feel to treat yourself.

And a lovely piece on a poet shelved directly next to Anne Carson on my bookshelves: my beloved CP Cavafy!

Tressie McMillan Cottom perfectly explains why I dropped out of Ted Lasso, the first season of which I loved beyond reason.

“A deteriorating rest stop on the road to nowhere.” Last Angelica Jade Bastien link, I swear! This one’s a review of The Flash.

“And these efforts do not include plans for training or mentorship or support long-term career trajectory for up-and-coming BIPOC who may be thrown in the deep-end on the job, and be expected from the start to do it well.” Black women are being erased from book publishing.

“How I treasure any artwork that preserves a silence or recognizes a limit!” Zadie Smith reviews Tár.

The dueling realities of Caroline Calloway and Natalie Beach.

Leave the deep ocean alone. Leave it alone. Leave it alone.

What is a bottle episode? Kathryn VanArendonk is now the authority on all things bottle episode, and she has a handy guide to understanding what is and isn’t one.

A guide to the many queer bookshops of the UK. (This is not useful to me but I want UK readers to be happy too.)

Happy 75th birthday to “The Lottery,” a perfect jewel of a short story. Writers reflect on what the story has meant to them.

Every time I’ve heard someone wonder why all animated movies don’t look as good as Spiderverse, I have thought, there is a reason for this. And surprise, I was right.

Happy 4th to those who celebrate, by which I mean I hope everyone’s able to have a chill quiet weekend!

The post Links, links, links! A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Soleil Ho weighs in on Beef, Asian American representation, and the really awful things David Choe said he did but now says he didn’t do.

“It dies with us.” Linda Condega on keeping the memories, but not the nostalgia.

Wesley Lowery still wants the journalism industry to be better.

Here’s what to expect from TV shows if the writers’ strike continues. Stand with the WGA! Support labor! The studios are greedy jerks who don’t care about making good art!

The research is in (again): Knowing the end doesn’t stop you from enjoying media.

The always-great Dahlia Lithwick assures you that Harlan Crow does not want to pay YOUR kid’s tuition, and it’s not a coincidence that Clarence Thomas’s kid is the kid whose tuition he did pay.

Alex Haley seems to have… just made up a good chunk of Martin Luther King’s famous criticism of Malcolm X.

Prince Harry’s ghostwriter talks about the process.

An oral history of the scene in One Tree Hill where the dog eats the heart that Dan was supposed to get transplanted into his body.

I’m pretty stunned by the news of Heather Armstrong’s death. Lyz Lenz wrote a lovely obituary of her.

A lot of author feuds and gossips are depressing. Here are some good ones.

Kate Wagner explains the ongoing ?appeal? of McMansions.

How can we find the books that will make us feel a really specific feeling?

So-called “medical moms” share intimate details of their disabled children’s lives on TikTok. Do we feel great about turning sick kids into capital-c content?

Behind the scenes at the Westminster Dog Show!

“When popular culture thinks of Blackness, rarely does somebody think of a tiny little town or a mountainside and the Black person who’s there.” On the mythology of small towns and Blackness.

Here’s the crazy bullshit going on with cryptocurrency right now.

“You know enough to be mopey and think of expired salmon.” What it’s like to have a traumatic brain injury.

Happy Friday!

The post Beef and Brain Injury: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

I’ve been meaning to do this links round-up for approximately ten thousand years, so some of these links are a little older. You know what? Who cares! They’re still terrific!

Resy won the reservation wars. Here’s how.

“Despite the Black-film streaming guides that proliferated on the internet during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, the streamers themselves have been ill-equipped to fully articulate the wealth of important Black titles that are available.” The Black Film Archive is here to help.

While we’re on the subject of Black cinema, Slate and NPR have teamed up for a very cool project called The New Black Film Canon.

“Sudden, dramatic hair changes, she says, ‘are a big part of who I am.'” A profile of the lady who invented at-home rape kits, and how, uh, that’s all going.

Eurgh, the world is a hellscape, including TikTok.

This is a fascinating story about Black journalists who were hired to train Nigerian reporters in the 1980s.

A really stellar breakdown on SFF world-building, by TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

“Vitriol is a precious resource. Spend it wisely.” Steven Hyden contemplates the decline of the negative review. (He’s talking about music but I suspect it applies to other spheres too.)

“The hardest stunt I ever pulled off.” Stunt people are so cool.

This is a fascinating article about transnational corporate espionage.

Oscars-related things I am mad about: Jamie Lee Curtis winning over Angela Bassett or Stephanie Hsu. The Whale.

On the trope (ongoing!) of the disabled villain.

It has made me SO happy to witness Abbott Elementary come for the throat of charter schools.

A woman from Leicestershire devoted her energy to trolling Madeleine McCann’s parents on Twitter. When her involvement in the online harassment came out, she killed herself. Now her son is trying to find meaning (for himself and others) in her life and death.

Swarm dehumanizes Black women.

FINALLY, a deep dive on whump fic!!

The always-wonderful Linda Codega takes us inside the dysfunctional, sexist, unsafe offices of Wyrmwood Gaming.

Dara Horn asks if the focus on Holocaust education is, paradoxically, making anti-Semitism worse.

“There was a woman who was Irish, which was not her job, but, my God, she was good at it; she owns a pug who apparently is a successful working actor, which was also not her job.” Caity Weaver went on a package tour for millennials trying to make friends.

And Lauren Oyler went on a GOOP cruise. My cup runneth over.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends! Or if you do not have a wonderful weekend because the world is dumb and bad, at least know that you have not lost thirteen billion dollars in a single day. Yay!

The post I finally remembered to do this: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.