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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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!

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Here’s why the VFX world of the movies is so extremely broken.

Color-blind casting is supposed to create a fantasy world for a broader set of audiences. But it comes with its own problems. See also: “Does colonialism exist in Bridgerton’s world?”

The wonderful Gabrielle Bellot considers Netflix’s Sandman.

Conspiracy theories about celebrity pregnancies are unalloyed misogyny.

The CEO who (allegedly) raised everyone’s salary to $70,000 is an abuser, and he has been known to be one for quite some time. Please stop RTing his content!

What makes a dumpling a dumpling? (Challenge: Read this story without achieving semantic satiation on the word “dumpling.”)

“[She] sometimes converses like she has a tiny Bachelor producer in her brain” is the funniest description I can imagine. Anyway, here is a compassionate and smart profile of Meghan Markle!

I am obsessed with this London Underground-style map of the human body.

Why have US universities let themselves become pipelines to Lockheed Martin and similar defense contractors?

JK Rowling has uh. has written a new book. of sorts.

How Normal Gossip (a newish favorite podcast of mine!) gets made.

Masiyaleti Mbewe considers the state of African millennial fiction — though tragically without mentioning the very millennial (in my opinion) The Eternal Audience of One.

Charlie Warzel reflects on the mistake that led to him being Twitter’s main character for a day, and considers what we can learn from it.

Add this to the list of Scientology’s abuses: It relies on a steady stream of immigrant labor that it acquires by cheating the R1 visa system and abusing immigrant workers.

One of my favorite genres of article is “THIS SYSTEM IS TOTALLY UNREGULATED.” For your consideration today: dog training.

“Hollow moral leadership upheld by a spectacle of extravagant, ill-gotten wealth has enabled Britons to remain proud of rather than reflective about empire and its destructive impact today.”

“The Queen is not entitled to your grief.” Ayan Artan, a Somali-British writer, considers the marketing effort on behalf of the monarchy to conceal and erase the damage of British imperialism.

“People like Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who has gone all in on The Rings of Power, have more wealth than they could possibly use in a single lifetime, and in many respects more power than any king could ever have dreamed of; the rest of us face rising rents, inflation, and a gig economy that affords few protections when we get sick or injured.” On the new crop of fantasy TV shows.

Chinelo Okparanto considers the ethics and aesthetics of writing across racial identities.

Sarah Weinman reflects on Serial and all that it did and didn’t do.

Tips and tricks to run a good book club.

It’s always a cause for celebration when Lamar Giles has a new book out! He has a new book out AND he’s writing about social horror, yay!

Scaachi Coul is terrific as ever on the downfall of the Wife Guy. Linda Holmes on audience entitlement re: same.

This is superb TikTok journalism and I think Kady Ruth Ashcraft for doing it.

“The Very Online never leave: they hate it here but they’re never anywhere else.” On the digital afterlife of my beloved Constantine Cavafy.

So-called “secret menus” that go viral on TikTok are making the lives of fast food workers hell.

Hell of a kicker on this piece about how India’s movie industry has been affected by the rise of Hindu nationalism.

Maori polar explorers!

Happy weekend, friends!

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Anyway, here are the Depp/Heard links: Gita Jackson on the trial and Moira Donegan on the trial and that’s all the links and the other links are about other topics.

I would like to report that I love nominative determinism. Thank you for your time.

The new film Men, whose trailer I watched twice without realizing all the men are played by the same actor, doesn’t go far enough.

Ten years on, does Gone Girl hold up?

Any time a structure operates without accountability to protect itself rather than the people who comprise it, there will be sexual abuse. A massive new report details how the Southern Baptist Convention silenced survivors and protected perpetrators.

The state of today’s social media encourages plagiarism. Here’s how.

Here’s what’s going on with Seven Seas and its employees’ attempt to unionize.

I’m trying to get more into reading mysteries, so I really appreciated this rec list of historical mysteries that grapple with the violence of empire.

I have seen Double Indemnity despite never seeing movies, and therefore this introduction to it for the Criterion Collection pleased me mightily.

BRING BACK THE AIM AWAY MESSAGE.

Here’s how teens (and everyone!) can identify and avoid conspiracy theories online.

Valerie Complex speaks out about racism at the Cannes film festival.

How to end a story.

And that’s how to end a links round-up!

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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.

HERE IT IS. (link)

“I doubt Joanna Gaines had ‘Build a Personal Brand Empire Increasingly Reliant on Data Scraping’ on any of her five year plans.” A story of a home renovation show nightmare, and the increasingly surveillance-based world of personal brands. (link)

“Not everything the internet treats as ambiguous actually is. Texts generally do contain evidence that certain interpretations are more valid than others.” (link)

Why are all the TV shows and movies an indeterminate browny-gray these days? (link)

“It feels very much like we’re paying for our freedom — like they have left us to die and are selling us back the right to live.” The cost of at-home COVID tests is a significant financial burden that falls heaviest on poor and disabled people. (link)

This review of Hanya Yanagihara’s latest novel contains many spoilers for A Little Life (and cw discussions of suicide, self-harm, and abuse), and it puts its finger exactly on many of the things I found objectionable about that book, and probably this new one too. (link) (As a caveat, I don’t think it’s appropriate to try to police whether an author is sufficiently queer or sufficiently traumatized to write about queerness and trauma, and I find it very gross that interviewers have asked Yanagihara invasive questions about these things.)

The evolution of book-finding and place-finding. (link)

Joss Whedon’s impact on TV is massive; but his legacy is kind of a mess. (link) He also gave an interview to Vulture, which someone ought to have stopped him from doing but I’m glad they didn’t because he sure says a lot of things. (link)

Elmo vs Rocco and the dubious pleasures of being an adult watching children’s programming. (link)

“We are know-it-alls because we are responsible for knowing everything.” On scams and our constant efforts to avoid them. (link)

How do children’s books address slavery? And what needs to change? (link)

The Gilded Age is really good. On the other hand, how many shows about the adventures of jerky white people does HBO really need? (link)

I loooove to see the Black women of country music get their flowers. (link)

Here is a legitimately sweet and nice interview with the creator of Wordle. (link)

What book previews have you enjoyed so far in 2022? Have you read any 2022 books yet? Are there particular ones you’re dying to get your paws on? I haven’t gone on a proper Netgalley requesting spree in a while, and I definitely oughtn’t do that now, but it is still quite possible that I will.

Also, look. If you read one link from this links round-up, I beg that it will be the Joss Whedon profile in Vulture. It’s just… so damning. There are so many lines in it that made me shriek, not in a good way, and while it’s not necessarily telling you anything you didn’t already know about Joss Whedon’s mindset and behavior as a boss, it’s still fascinating to read it all in one place. My only caveat is that the writer barely challenges Whedon on his racism towards Ray Fisher, either in what she quotes him as saying or when she’s talking about the incident. Which doesn’t seem like a coincidence! In a piece that rebuts moooooost of what Whedon is saying.

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