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.

A researcher decided to do neurofeedback experiments on indigenous children. Like, recently. We never learn anything, I s2g.

Should rich people be allowed to do science? PERHAPS NOT.

How classics fans (may) get funneled into alt-right content on the platform previously known as Twitter.

Andrea Long Chu on Rachel Cusk.

A fascinating read about the lasting legacy of trauma.

The original actors for The Avengers have gone back and dubbed it all into Lakota! How absolutely fucking cool!

A Canadian writer grapples with the lessons she learned from Alice Munro, and the lessons she learned from learning that Alice Munro protected a child sex abuser over her own daughter.

Also Neil Gaiman. Y’all, I’m tired.

The main reason I continue to resist TikTok is because I know it would get me like this and I do not want to be got.

Whither relationships in TV shows.

Drew Magary tried out a Cybertruck, and I’m moved to hear that everyone hates you when you drive a Cybertruck.

There will never be another Game of Thrones; or, the death of journalism.

Kenyan protestors have found inspiration in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

Happy Friday, friends! What have y’all been reading lately?

The post Remember when I used to do link round-ups? appeared first on Reading the End.

“We try not to get too hung up on the split infinitive”: Here’s some charming stories about copyediting and style guides.

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw at the Daily Dot adored Logan and made me feel pretty sure that I will too.¹ Likewise Emily Asher-Perrin at Tor, who does the excellent thing of saying a superhero movie is very good without trashing all other superhero movies.

Emily Yoshida wrote this thing about silent murder girls in Logan (and elsewhere).

Raise a glass to the spoilsport big sisters of literature.

YA author LJ Alonge on how to write black stories without catering to the white gaze.

Do not read this article if you have not yet finished season one of The Good Place and dislike spoilers (also, catch up on The Good Place!). But here is an interview with showrunner Mike Schur about how he crafted the season, and it’s aces.

I feel tingles of pleasure when I read negative reviews of Iron Fist, which sounds like a badly paced, badly directed, badly written mess. Yay. Maureen Ryan calls it “about as exciting as a slice of Velveeta cheese left out in the sun too long.” Kwame Opam describes it as a “boring, confused, and often offensive mess of a series.” Susana Polo says it was so bad she found herself “incredulously texting coworkers who also had screener access to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.”

This piece on The Learned Fangirl draws parallels between the WGN show Underground (which I haven’t seen yet) and Nisi Shawl’s superb work of what she calls AfroRetroFuturism, Everfair.

Buzzfeed ran a round-up of takes on the women’s strike and a round-up of reports from women on why and how they did or did not participate.

This profile of The Ripped Bodice, a romance novels bookstore in Los Angeles, made me happy in every possible way.²

Another links round-up, another Vulture piece by Angelica Jade Bastien making me happy. This one’s about Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends. Stay brave!

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