Without further ado, some links:

“Blackness deserves a seat at the Seder.” (link)

Jay Edidin’s consistent fury with Professor X shines in this important work of journalism about X-Men sex ed. (link)

Gita Jackson (link), Mikki Kendall (link), Ijeoma Iluo (link), and Stitch (link) consider The Slap.

On a totally different note, Sara Novic considers CODA’s Oscar win and the movie’s mixed reception in the d/Deaf community. (link)

Jaya Saxena wonders if we need to keep telling Julia Child’s story. (link)

Two Twitter videos that made me very happy: one (link) and two (link)

A goblin historian explains “goblin mode.” (link)

I am terrified of TikTok, and I’m right to be. That is my final statement on the matter. (link)

Drew Magary is done with sympathetic villains. Bring on the straight-ahead monsters. (link)

“Bridgerton’s thinned notion of color consciousness only acknowledges racial difference in as much as it does not derail the story.” Kristen Warner considers the new season’s approach to representations of race. (link)

I will read literally any story about the drama that’s currently happening in some random niche online community. This week it’s herbalism! (link)

Serial killer expert Stéphane Bourgoin built his career on a scaffolding of lies. The internet found him out. (link)

Angelea Preston won the all-stars season of America’s Next Top Model, but her crown was unceremoniously stripped from her because of a brief stint doing sex work. She spoke to Bustle about her experiences.(link)

“But sometimes there is no proper way to go, there is no trick of perspective that makes everything clear.” Colin Dickey on cabins in the mountains, lateral thinking, and the COVID-19 pandemic. (link)

Charithra Chandran, who plays Edwina in the new season of Bridgerton, seems like an absolute delight in this Teen Vogue interview. (link)

Sean Campbell writes with sorrow and grace about the Black Lives Matter organization’s decision to use money from fundraising in summer 2020 to buy a $6 million dollar house. (link)

Deciding people’s worth based on the trauma they’ve survived is a broken, exploitative system, and the Mackenzie Fierceton story proves it. (link)

That’s all, folks! Have a tremendous weekend! I wish you all the best of luck in staying out of niche community internet drama, which is much more fun to read about than to participate in.

The post Yes, There Are Some Takes on the Slap Thing: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Patricia Highsmith’s diaries are going to be published in 2021. I still haven’t read The Price of Salt, and I am mad at myself about it. Maybe that will be one of my small goals for 2020.

The kids are frankly fucking inspiring.

I was super intrigued by this post about the sexist ways the Austens and Brontes are often portrayed in biographies and fiction.

“Most of us writing now were not educated by that expanded canon.” Alexander Chee on writing stories about people who are different than you.

Dahlia Lithwick hasn’t been back to the Supreme Court since Kavanaugh was confirmed. From the reporter who brought us the Chaos Muppet / Order Muppet theory as part of her Supreme Court reporting, this is devastating. It’s devastating anyway. Fuck the patriarchy.

Listen. Listen. Listen. I have no opinion about whether Jeffrey Epstein was murdered or died by suicide because I am not qualified to assess the evidence. But I do want to be able to depend on people who are qualified to assess the evidence, which, um.

Dialogue from the husbands in every haunted house movie.

Carmen Maria Machado wrote her memoir of surviving a queer abusive relationship because she could not find such books to support her when she was in the midst of the experience. Here’s also a review of her book that I thought was really good.

New English Canaan was a 1637 book that harshly critiqued the Puritan colonizers in America. Sounds fascinating, no?

The demise of Deadspin has been miserable to witness. Anna Merlan reports: Blogging is hard.

“Romance novels are social novels.” Adriana Herrera (an awesome writer!) on the possibilities that diverse romance novels offer.

Attention please, these are all the holiday movies. Brace for incoming.

Malka Older talks utopia, dystopia, and the necessity of imagining better futures for ourselves.

Feminist bookstores are having a renaissance in the South.

That’s all for today! Have a wonderful weekend, please topple the patriarchy responsibly, and I’ll see you back here on Monday, when we will all recommence weeping and tearing our hair over the future (slash, doom?) of the world.

The post I Really Need to Read The Price of Salt Already: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Frankly, I think a great parenting move would be for parents of kids of all genders to focus on being attentive to the needs of others. But oh my God, yes, men do not clean up spills or feel responsibility for cleaning up spills.

How to build a kinder online community — or, how polite criticisms en masse can still feel like hostility.

“Feminist researchers have also found that many women don’t feel that they deserve long stretches of time to themselves, the way men do. They feel they have to earn it. And the only way to do that is to get to the end of a To Do list that never ends.”

J. Ryan Stradal talks about the skills shared in common by novelists and reality TV producers.

Soraya Roberts goes deep on the public intellectual and their value to the Discourse.

“Netflix has made heartwarming reality shows central to its brand.” An excellent decision, because if there is one thing I need, it is heartwarming shows. See also Jane the Virgin.

Lord I am exhausted by the Jane Mayer thing about Al Franken but anywhere here’s a follow-up from Jezebel. Meanwhile CBS renewed Bull, because of course they did. The world is a garbage fire.

Apparently everyone on Tinder loves tacos.

The Where the Crawdads Sing lady CAN’T GO BACK TO ZAMBIA BECAUSE OF ALLEGATIONS HER HUSBAND KILLED A MAN.

Speaking of white writers, Anne Tyler adopts “a posture of racial silence” when writing about Baltimore — which Jess Row argues is common for white writers of her generation.

This is a very unsettling piece about a particular kind of work environment. I AM UNSETTLED.

Have a great weekend, friends, and reflect on the peace-giving fact that if you haven’t been kicked out of Zambia for maybe killing a man, you are doing better than the author of a Reese Witherspoon book club book.

The post Cleaning Up Spills: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

“Just as more women earned degrees, the jobs that require those degrees started paying disproportionately more to people with round-the-clock availability.” Oh shit.

The problem with Black Widow. Also, how the straight agenda ruined Avengers: Endgame. Spoilers at both of these links.

Why are we so addicted to conspiracy theories?

Here’s what happened to Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com.

Can indie bookstores be forces for good if they’re not paying their employees a living wage? Likewise, can we really claim John Beilein is sooooo greeeeeeat given that he chose to work in college basketball? (This latter one takes no prisoners.)

Here are your SF recs for the month of May!

What it’s like to travel when you have a “bad” passport.

I love Olivia Waite’s romance columns for the Seattle Review of Books, and this one about placeholder heroines is particularly excellent.

American society isn’t so much protecting shitty privileged teens as it is protecting a shitty privileged status quo.

Sady Doyle on Game of Thrones and why that last episode made no goddamn sense.

Which characters are considered disposable by showrunners and by fandoms? There’s, uh, a pretty clear pattern.

We are in a period of Hollywood handshake hyperinflation. Where is the media on this important issue?

That thing where some of the most venerated and canonized journalists just made a bunch of shit up.

I have recently been thinking that it’s maybe never? okay? to use living people’s real life tragedies for entertainment (in the context of the HBO show Chernobyl), and this article confirmed that thought in the context of the true crime boom.

And that’s all, folks! I hope you enjoy your weekends!

The post You’ve Earned Some Ice Cream: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.