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.

Here’s the definitive update on the indie romance writer who faked her own death. It is, perhaps not unexpectedly, a pretty sad story.

On the resemblance of dinner to a magic show.

There’s a growing conspiracy theory on the right about asexuality. Unsurprisingly, it has its roots in anti-transness and white supremacy.

How travel influencers use their white privilege to make their money.

This is an article about people who own super-yachts. I hate everyone in this bar. All of them, without exception. As one of the people quoted in the article jokes, it really HAS made me want to bring back the guillotine.

What it’s like to go to Antarctica on your honeymoon.

A review of Spare by someone who doesn’t give a damn about the royal family.

Pamela Paul wrote about American Dirt, for some reason. Here’s some edits for her piece.

The marvelous Gina Apostol explains the unexplainable José Rizal, and it is just as delightful as you’d expect.

“We’ve come to think of art–all art–as commercial goods that warrant this calculation of the ‘Moral Nutrition Facts‘ to ensure we’re not feeding anything ‘bad’ to our brains.”

Extreme content warning for sexually violent content, but this article on rape and child sexual abuse in Amish communities is really important.

How gig workers have become care workers.

When women gain financial or reproductive independence, backlash always follows. That’s where we’re at now.

LitHub has their giant list of books to look forward to in 2023. GO NUTS.

“‘People are stupid’ is the gateway drug to a lot of worse ideas.”

“This is like The Purge, if The Purge was solely about committing crimes against North American marsupials.” For five days a year in North Carolina, you can do anything you want to possums.

W h e n will there be justice for Gina Prince-Bythewood. ANSWER ME THAT.

Is there an end in sight to the New York Times trans panic? A massive group of NYT contributors wrote an open letter to the newspaper requesting more journalistic integrity when reporting on trans issues. The next day, the New York Times published an opinion piece by (again, inevitably) Pamela Paul entitled “In Defense of JK Rowling.” So like, yeah. No end in sight, I guess.

This article on Justin Roiland of Rick and Morty includes a quote from someone who describes his behavior as “the eccentricity of a genius weirdo.” Ha ha I hate it here.

The always-excellent Wesley Lowery talks about the racial reckoning that never came.

There is an enormous battle going on about How To Botanical Garden Correctly. I love this shit.

Stitch discusses the power of collective grief in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

What happens to our online presence after we die? The Archive of Our Own can point the way for other sites.

Speaking of the archive, they’ve introduced new muting and blocking functions, which is great!

“RICO charges have become a go-to strategy for taking down hip-hop artists.” (This is the first of a two-part article about crime, gentrification, and Cop City in Atlanta, so make sure to click through!)

I will DIE MAD about Sleepy Hollow. Here’s a look back at a buddy cop supernatural procedural that should have run for fifteen seasons, and how the showrunners did Nicole Beharie so, so wrong.

Dang, Pablo Neruda was poisoned?

“Bring back the oil paintings that fuck.” A history of the clinch cover on romance novels.

Andrea Long Chu’s reviews are always a good read, and here’s the latest, on the new HBO adaptation of The Last of Us.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is… a win for creative freedom? (Seriously, though, it is.)

As a closer, I recommend subscribing to this newly launched queer epistolary romance, which you can get in installments in your inbox!

The post Lies, Conspiracies, and Scandalous Emails: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

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!

The post It’s Scary How Many Links There Are: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

….Please read these links so I can stop babbling.

This one’s for my Mumsy! The Kew Botanical Gardens guy talks trees.

Imani Perry considers how the global use of the word “auntie” is colliding with the term’s complicated history in Black America.

How has spoiler/anti-spoiler culture affected the way we engage with art? I cannot answer this question because I have never once felt that I understood exactly what constitutes a spoiler to other people.

The new anti-trans executive order in Texas is leading to a mass exodus of child protection workers.

The literature of billionaires (both fiction and nonfiction) is, at its heart, deeply sinister.

Killing Eve chose cruelty in its finale.

Inside the contentious world of font sizes on music festival posters.

My favorite thing about this piece by a scream artist for the movies is her description of how the world of scream acting has changed in response to the explosion of different kinds of roles (and therefore different kinds of screams) for women.

On triplethood and its difference from twinness.

“I can’t shake a sense of foreboding when I consider a Zuckerbergian pornverse.” A visit to the Erotic Heritage Museum for a talk on digisexuality.

White supremacist groups, including domestic terrorist groups, actively prey on and recruit white boys through social media. Teaching kids the truth about our history can protect them.

“they killed someone” like what are you protestant

JK Rowling was not included on a list of 70 great British books. This is not censorship or being silenced.

Amy’s Kitchen assures consumers that it’s a positive brand making positive impacts. OR IS IT? (It is not; brands are terrible; have faith in nobody except for Tony of Tony’s Chocolonely; and not even him; but oh God if it turns out he’s bad I will be crushed.) Anyway, Jaya Saxena is terrific.

Somehow, there was a time before the internet. At least that is what Hari Kunzru claims.

A McSweeney’s quiz about having a toddler in this stage of the pandemic.

Emily St. James considers the parental apology fantasy.

Twitter has been a crucial lifeline for trans people. Will that disappear now that Elon Musk runs it?

With Pamela Paul’s departure as editor of the New York Times Book Review, the renowned book review venue is at a tipping point.

“Feminism, much like BDSM, doesn’t figure into the text of the Fifty Shades trilogy itself, nor does politics more broadly.” Happy tenth birthday, I guess, to Fifty Shades of Gray.

What’s going on at Netflix?

“Am I a book stylist? I am not. Or maybe I am, I don’t know. Would it be the worst thing in the world if I were?”

I’m obsessed with this story of a Grey’s Anatomy writer who just! made up all sorts of tragedies about herself! part one (cw made-up cancer) and part two (cw made-up abuse but also a bunch of real abuse)

Democrats keep getting it wrong on abortion.

Kim Cattrall is happy with her decision to never return to Sex and the City.

This is what a black hole sounds like.

These have been: LINKS.

The post LINKS: Some Links appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

MUMSY READ THIS ARTICLE. Everyone in it is such an asshole. THANKS AND SEE YOU SOON. (link)

Did your mom keep buttons in that one kind of cookie tin? Priya Krishna goes long on food containers and how we repurpose them. (link)

In trying to rewrite sexist narratives about the women of the 90s (and other recent times), films and TV shows often flatten out their complexities. (link)

Someone’s gotta stop Disney. (link)

Here is a piece about Margaritaville in Times Square that’s really about our relationship to work and leisure and how fucked up it all is. (link)

BLOB COVERS. Now that someone’s pointed it out, I can’t unsee it. (link)

Jails and prisons were always unbearable. Under COVID, they’ve gotten worse. (link)

“If one race—black people—was essentially invented in order to be bought, sold, used, and enjoyed at will, the desire to transform oneself into that race, even imaginatively, amounts to the capitalist impulse to own.” Namwali Serpell on racial transformation. (link)

“Viewing the average R. Kelly defender as uniquely deranged misses the societal forces that empower people like him in the first place.” Shamira Ibrahim on her time among the R Kelly supporters at his trial. (link)

The dangers of stan Twitter. (link)

“There would be no River of Gender to cross and leave my old life behind.” Ryka Aoki (whose new SFF book Light from Uncommon Stars I reviewed this week!) on what Ranma 1/2 meant to her. (link)

Who coaches the life coach? (or, cultish nonsense, part eleven trillion) (link)

Have a beautiful and majestic weekend, my darlings! Remember to strive for ethical behavior in all things! And remember that even if someone does a slightly unethical behavior unto you, it’s wise to have a sense of proportion rather than stalking and harassing the person what wronged you over the course of five years.

The post I’m Sorry But I Need to Talk about It: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

What I learned in avalanche school, by Heidi Julavits. (link)

The “lunchbox moment” is a ubiquitous story for children of immigrants; Jaya Saxena explores the potential of its ubiquity to elide or flatten out food stories that don’t fit into this recognizable trope. (link)

Jess Krug posed as Black for years, until the whole house of cards collapsed last year. (link)

Surprising absolutely nobody, comedy has a white supremacy problem. (link)

I am truly extremely helped by these flashcards of the climate people on Biden’s climate team. (link)

Exciting news! You can enjoy a thing AND still critique it. Wow! (link)

“That’s the trouble with [Seth] Abramson’s interpretive threads. Pull on any one of them, and the whole tapestry unravels.” (link)

In the digital world, we encounter ghosts every day. (link)

Tessa Miller’s new memoir is frank about living with a chronic illness (Crohn’s disease) and avoids euphemism. (link)

“In answer to the question ‘whodunit?’, Clue says ‘who cares!'” I love Clue. (link)

“The shows certainly do gloss over the pain in the ass that is homeownership.” Roxane Gay on HGTV shows and what they say about our culture. (link)

Urban bobcats and coyotes are eating people’s pets! (link)

“This review is the product of empire.” On two new books about the British Empire. (link)

Historians of atrocities can be traumatized by the subjects they study, a genre of vicarious trauma that’s poorly understood. (link)

I don’t want to go to avalanche school! Not one little bit! Have a great weekend!

The post I do not want to go to avalanche school: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

I also watched an episode of Star Trek: Discovery and it was x-tremely enjoyable and I was in favor of it. I have not seen other episodes of Star Trek: Discovery, but I am in full support of two hot people running around fighting with and for each other and traveling in time. Anyway! Have some links!

Real comfort food is epitomized by the house meal, that one meal that’s too weird for company and you’re making it because you are the only person who needs to be pleased by it. (link)

Participating in Tolkien fandom while Black is a constantly reminder of the racism within the canon (and also, like, society). (link)

Tressie McMillan Cottam broke my heart writing about Breonna Taylor’s post-it notes. (link)

What does it mean for something to be called “a people’s history”? (link)

We learn the rules for being a good person by talking about them with others. That is what makes Am I the Asshole such a valuable internet space. Maybe. (link)

Very excited that Ashley Reese has taken the time to explain Snapewives to me, as I was not in fandom at the time of this weird fucking phenomenon. (link)

Kamila Shamsie contemplates cultural appropriation and the American observer of the world. (link) Tajja Isen considers the place of sensitivity readers in the (mostly white) publishing landscape. (link)

Indoor dining: Will we ever do it again? (link)

The podcast You’re Wrong About explores the way we misremember news stories, and why. Featuring Monica Lewinsky, the Satanic Panic, and Kitty Genovese. (link)

Tolkien’s notes and papers offer a fascinating glimpse into the moral development of Boromir. (link)

Peak TV is already behind us. What we have now is a lot of mediocre filler produced by a veritable kakistocracy. (link)

Here at the end of the post I’d like to report that — speaking of mediocre filler — I’ve been watching Married at First Sight and have strong opinions about the likelihood that each couple is going to stay together. Let’s not think about that too much. I make other choices that are indisputably good, such as I did laundry yesterday and Tuesday, and on at least one of the evenings this week, I washed the dishes the selfsame night I dirtied them. Wow. What an impressive person.

The post HOUSE MEAL, a Revolutionary Concept: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

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.

….Here are some links.

Atul Gawande knows how to stop the spread of coronavirus when we reopen.

A VP at Amazon resigned in disgust due to the treatment of whistleblowers about the treatment of warehouse employees. Word.

God, Anne Carson rules.

Why we miss our weak ties so much in the age of COVID.

COVID has added a new clause to America’s racial contract.

Jaya Saxena signs up for oodles of online experiences, and reports back.

G….osh, I have learned some things about author Emily Giffin this month.

Antarctican isolation offers the perfect opportunity to observe a new accent as it forms. Antarctica also offers insight into why people are starting to go extra crazy in these exact days that we are now in.

SL Huang considers the vagaries of genre labels (as a writer whose books straddle the line between SF and thriller).

The hero our quarantine needs: The filmed staged version of Hamilton (with the original cast!) is coming to Disney+ on July 3rd.

The translation of women by women is a feminist project.

If you’re like me and have been mopity-moping around since 2013 about the lack of new Sarah McCarry books, your struggles are at an end!!

What are you up to these days, my lovely friends? Has anything from the internet particularly tickled your fancy? Drop me a line and tell me all about it!

The post Atul Gawande Saves the Day with Common Sense: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.