….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.

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Quillette is bad and people who write for it should feel bad.

We do not know what Baby Yoda’s first words are going to be, but we should not assume he will talk like Grown Yoda.

The BBC endeavors to identify some of the bookish trends of the last decade. I particularly like the first one.

This Arielle Gordon piece on a music fandom (fandom?)’s teen girl message board is… it’s a lot.

Fast Color is the small superhero movie we need. I am unbelievably excited for this movie to come out on DVD so I can watch it. Gugu Mbathu-Raw is gorgeous and great and should be in everything.

“I sit and ask myself: Does anyone else in this room know Jane Austen is… white? Do they even know they are all white?” I feel genuinely fortunate to have studied Mansfield Park in a class that was specifically devoted to Literature of Empire, because I think it made me more aware of like, what the fuck is going on in the background of a lot of these white classics (slavery! empire!), but anyway, this Marcos Gonsalez piece is about experiencing the white literary canon as a person of color, and it’s excellent.

Here is a weird and slightly surrealist piece about what the internet does to us all. (It’s surrealist because it’s so fucking real. What is this world.)

The worldbuilding of the A Christmas Prince franchise has… raised some questions.

Are brands ever just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing?

TIL Lurlene McDaniel was inspired to write all her tragic books after her son was diagnosed with NOT KIDDING juvenile diabetes.

Cancel culture isn’t a real thing: By the numbers.

“I’m pretty behind on every single geek franchise out there.” Keidra Chaney, formerly of The Learned Fangirl, considers herself geek-adjacent these days. Lightly geeky.

Here’s what your phone is really doing when you do those autocomplete memes.

“Ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?” A very blessed oral history of that Folgers coffee ad.

The memes that defined the 2010s.

Common Sense Media and their ratings system are enormously comforting for parents. Here’s what’s behind them!

Ruth Wilson left The Affair under mysterious circumstances. Now it appears that it may be down to the show pressuring her to do nude scenes well past her comfort level.

“This year I picked up a pastime I thought was reserved for white people: fighting with my family about their terrible politics.” Scaachi Koul on talking to her family about Kashmir.

This Jia Tolentino essay on Cats is broadly excellent but you WILL have to live with the knowledge that Known Racist and Anti-Semite TS Eliot and Entire Fascist Ezra Pound used to write to each other “in black dialect for fun.”

Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie have such a beautiful friendship, I adore them, I want them to be in a buddy cop movie together. A buddy cop franchise!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

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