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.

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.