What does appropriation mean in food culture? (link)

NPR crowd-sourced a list of the best SFF from the last ten years, and it’s a good-ass list. (link)

The Jeopardy! situation was some real fuckin bullshit and I want a recount, I want the recount to consist of everyone egging Mike Richards until he gets down on his knees and begs LeVar Burton to come back and host forever and then Mike Richards retires to, like, Chalmette. (link)

An interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, an author who writes a gorgeous, weird, fascinating range of SFF novels and has a new one out about Mexican revolutionaries. (link)

Contestants on the Bachelor franchise are, in fact, there to make friends. (link)

On misunderstanding Thoreau. (link)

I have never read not even one single word of John le Carre and I probably don’t agree with this writer’s final argument about George and Ann Smiley, but I still found this piece a hell of a good read. (link)

Mortgage approvals are systematically racist; which I know we all know, but here’s some more evidence about it. (link)

Welp, I was completely out on Y: The Last Man the series and then I started hearing about how hard the writing room worked to include trans voices and tell trans stories and now goddammit I guess they have lured me back in. (link)

“I simply enjoyed the fundamental separation of church and state.” How RPF and celebrity fandom has changed in the world of the vast internet. (link)

adrienne maree brown talks about the place of Black anger in speculative fiction and stories about Black grief. (link)

This deep dive on classic Black television is terrific, like everything Hannah Giorgis writes! (link)

Urban Meyer sucks. Here is a story of how the Ohio State football system failed a survivor of domestic violence (at the hands of one of their coaching staff). (link)

On editing fascist propaganda out of Wikipedia pages. (link)

It has been a very defeating week. If you have any good news, or anything that’s not news but is making you feel a little bit good, please drop it in the comments and make me smile. Have a wonderful weekend!

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Nevertheless: The Millions Book Preview, July – December 2020 Edition. (link)

Hope Wabuke on the KKK joke. (link)

Isabel Wilkerson considers the persistent caste system and the old, broken-down house that is America. (link)

The Netflix Babysitters’ Club is the cutest sweetest show of all time and you should watch it immediately, and also you should read Constance Grady on why the books were such an enduring pleasure that you eventually got very sick of. (link)

“A carefully veiled invitation to use dehumanizing rhetoric under the bastion of ‘the free exchange of ideas.'” Gabrielle Bellot is so great in this response to the Harper’s letter. (link)

What’s brought us to the current situation of harassment and toxicity in the comics world? (link)

“What it signals is orthogonal to what it says.” Lili Loofbourow decries the refusal of those who condemn “cancel culture” to admit the realities that shape online interactions. (link)

“What is the value of a debate that considers some human lives mainly as rhetorical quandaries?” Hannah Giorgis is, as ever, brilliant. (link)

What does power look like in the age of social media? Or, how to have healthy parasocial relationships. (link)

If you are wondering why everyone has been making cake jokes this week, Jaya Saxena is here to help. (link)

It is never appropriate to be attracted to a David Tennant character, and yet. (link)

The situation with John Ortberg and Menlo Church has been … I want to say shocking, but the truth is it’s been tiresomely predictable. (link)

Two STEM scholars put together 10 simple rules for building an antiracist lab. (link)

Seriously, though: Am I even a human person if I am not thrilled and elated with the Millions book preview?

Anyway,
Jenny

The post I’m Weirdly Not That Into the Millions Book Preview: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

“Perhaps you had better stay in the womb, I think, just to be safe.” Alexandra Petri on The News.

Bret Stephens continues to be a dingbat.

Jay Fernandez identifies a few common mistakes that book reviewers make. (Some of this is nonsense! But it’s still interesting.)

The final book in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy is coming out in 2020! AT LAST I can read Bring Up the Bodies!

Here’s Mikki Kendall talking about how not all harassment is sexual (though it is also sexual!)

On not knowing where you fit as a biracial person.

Caveat emptor: These dolls are haunted (yet collectible).

Amanda Stern wrote a book about a childhood of anxiety, and found that she had to understand parents before she could help other kids like her.

Jim DeRogatis’s new book about R. Kelly isn’t just about the failings of the criminal justice system and pop culture consumers, says Tressie McMillan Cottom; it’s about the downfall of committed, longform journalism and what that means for predators like Kelly. And here’s Hannah Giorgis on the same topic and the many many people who failed Kelly’s victims. And also Treva Lindsey on the culture’s failures around R. Kelly.

“People are mortal, but IP lives forever.” On the mega-franchises that have become our only widely shared cultural touchstones.

Jenny Zhang considers the idea of “authenticity” in ethnic cuisine and what we’re really looking for. I also highly recommend the Sara Kay article that’s linked inside of this one.

Vulture endeavors to define a beach read.

DOWN WITH SPONTANEITY.

Lindsay King-Miller writes about the appeal of murder lesbians (no, not JUST Killing Eve) (but yeah, Killing Eve).

Every NIMBY’s speech at a public hearing.

Happy weekend! What have you been reading?

The post Haunted Dolls Is Really the Highlight: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Can ballet exist without hurting women?

Couples develop their own private languages and verbal tics! (So do families.) (So do friends.) (But this article is about couples.)

Friends featured lesbians and mocked them; does one of those things cancel out the other?

An interview with amazing Saga artist slash genius Fiona Staples.

Treat aromantic and asexual adults like adults!

Grace Lavery points out that misnaming and misgendering students and colleagues are not acceptable scholarly practices, nor are they covered by the principle of academic freedom.

Monsters, possession, and how we interact with pregnant people.

What do various philosophies tell us about the ethics of Chidi being swole?

Louie CK now claims that black people have supported him after he admitted to masturbating in front of women without their consent. Hannah Giorgis explores his phantom alliance with black fans.

I’m not sure I’m convinced by this defense of the hanging scene in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but I do love to watch Angelica Jade Bastien do her thing. I strongly recommend clicking on the links within the piece, as they go to several thoughtful critiques of the scene in question. (I’m still not planning to watch the show.)

Vulture also has a good piece about a Romanoffs episode about false accusations of inappropriate behavior, written by Matthew Weiner, who has been accused of harassment.

On Ada Byron’s childhood, and co-parenting with Byron.

“I don’t wan to toughen up. I want the world to soften.” On fan mail from stalkers.

Happy weekend, my friends! I am having guests over for dinner tomorrow, which is VERY frightening, so please pray for me that it goes okay and I don’t spill wine on anyone or run out of topics to talk about. For your weekends I wish peacefulness and joy!

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I thought we’d start this week’s links round-up with something heartening: An article about why the AskHistorians subreddit bans Holocaust denial on their platform.

Here’s what’s been happening with the programming at WorldCon. For heaven’s sake. Mary Robinette Kowal and a team of other cool people have stepped in to help fix it.

If you can get through how much R. Kelly makes your skin crawl, Hannah Giorgis has a wonderfully thoughtful take on his new (vile) song and all the wrongs he thinks he’s suffered.

Welp this Buzzfeed piece about sex positivity and working in a sex toys shop broke my heart.

An authoritative ranking of all the secret siblings on CW shows. Luckily they rank One Tree Hill number one, as any other decision would invalidate the whole ranking.

Uncanny Magazine is Kickstarting a fifth year, now with stretch goals to cover launching a vid channel! I love Uncanny Magazine, which has the shiniest special issues ever, so definitely consider kicking in.

Therese Marie Mailhot makes a point about the world “civilized” as adjective vs verb that I absolutely love, in this piece about marginalized groups and the demand for courtesy.

The Queer Eye reboot may be the cure for toxic masculinity. (It’s not.) It’s the porn of emotional labor.

Here’s a story about how a high school teacher took advantage of her student — and why we need better ways to talk about teachers and students.

Why is nothing wheelchair accessible in science fiction? Ace Ratcliff investigates.

How women get punished for society’s fears about children’s independence.

I hope y’all all have a wonderful and amazing weekend! Stay cool, and happy August!

The post Banning Nazis and curing toxic masculinity: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Anyway, not that anyone was sitting at home like “huh where is Jenny,” but that is where I have been. Undergoing changes and fretting about them. Not reading very much. I am not at my best, but also (ofc) feeling extremely guilty for not being at my best. Like who am I that I deserve to have days — entire weeks actually! — when I am not at my best? NOBODY, THAT’S WHO.

Oh, you know what’s a book I did read? I read a picture book about a girl who never makes mistakes. I loved it at once and it was #lifegoals but then, can you believe, as the book goes on, the girl makes an enormous, a genuinely mortifying mistake that would scar a real child for life; or if not that, then it would surely create in her a renewed desire to, from there on out, achieve perfection in all things. But in this NONSENSE PICTURE BOOK, do you know what happens? She resigns herself to making mistakes sometimes. HAH. The little girl in the picture book is WEAK and took the COMPLETELY WRONG LESSON away from her awful, humiliating error. What a terrible book.

Whatever. Here are some links.

On the whiteness of craft culture.

Extremist hate groups understood online platforms in a fundamental way long before the New York Times cottoned on, reports New York Times writer who doesn’t listen to black women on Twitter. (I’m being snarky, but this article makes some interesting points about how online platforms function, which is why I’m sharing it.)

Why judging the poor isn’t helping anybody.

Michael Twitty, author of a new book about black heritage and black food in the South, speaks to Hannah Giorgis of The Ringer about his family and his research.

Daniel Heath Justice on the students he teaches and the question of whether they are special snowflakes who don’t live in the real world. And a pairing: Kiese Laymon on people he knew at Vassar and their power and privilege.

MUMSY DO NOT CLICK THIS NEXT LINK. I WANT TO TELL YOU THIS STORY MYSELF. Everyone else, definitely click this next link. Okay Mumsy it is all right, I have now told you this story. Click away.

Watching the YA community doggedly figure out why Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give got bumped down to number two on the NYT Bestseller List by a book nobody had ever heard of was frankly magical. Here’s a YA literary agent breaking down why this story was so bonkers.

Speaking of scams, here’s an author who has lied about pretty much everything, including I SWEAR TO GOD making up an agent, building that fictional agent a website, and using a picture of Ian Somerhalder for that agent’s face. What is this world.

Wesley Morris on white supremacy in the pop culture of this summer.

“Jenny when will you stop linking to everything Ijeoma Iluo writes?” IDK friends but today is not that day. Here she is making me cry on the subject of talking to your kids about race early and often.

Have an amazing weekend! I will be inside my apartment all weekend trying to reconstruct my fractured ego.

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