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.

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.

The China seeds mystery, solved. (link)

IDK maybe we shouldn’t have poured so much money into mercenaries who are now wandering around doing coups, just a thought. (link)

Roxane Gay offers some theories for why people are so awful online. (link)

The Dear America books taught (mostly white!) girls that they had a place in history. (link)

Jenée Desmond-Harris, AKA New Dear Prudence, has a new column called Race Manners at the Times, and the first column is excellent. (link)

Star of Rutherford Falls Jana Schmieding discusses her passion for food and its place in indigenous culture. (link)

Soraya McDonald considers Recy Taylor and the history of interracial rapes of Black women. (link)

How did colonialism get to be such a popular premise for board games? (link)

One of my favorite genres of online writing is parents who have developed a white-hot passionate hatred for some piece of media their child consumes. Here is a ranking of all the trains in the Thomas and Friends Storytime podcast, based on how much the writer hates them. (link)

“I have the feeling that I am supposed to root for it, somehow, because LeBron is firmly established in the culture as A Good Dude, and because it can’t be very harmful to have a little fun with nostalgia, and what kind of asshole evaluates Space Jam: A New Legacy on its merits as a movie? Have some fun!” (link)

“But it never occurs to them that Whitehead and Gay come from a very different class to begin with, and are not necessarily standing in real solidarity with me.” On Black pop culture and who gets to shape it. (link)

Let’s celebrate LeVar Burton Jeopardy! week with this Esquire profile of LeVar Burton, a true American icon. (link)

CONFEDERATE VAMPIRES LITERALLY WHY (link)

“But, like, did Driver become the horse, or was he always the horse, deep down?” Ashley Reese, asking the important questions. (link)

“Aragorn occupies a unique position in the canon of formative crushes in blockbuster cinema in that he’s absolutely a sex symbol, while the actor who portrays him is absolutely not.” The analysis of Aragorn that my heart desired. (link)

“Uncle Sam first needs to get a grip on the problem. It needs to begin collecting hard data on the application and enrollment processes facing citizens, putting numbers to the time tax and analyzing it through the lens of race, gender, income, state of residence, and health and disability status.” This is such a good idea I almost cried when I read it. (link)

I am also so happy to report that the ?first? annual? TRANSreadathon is happening tonight! It’s a 24-hour readathon in which we’re celebrating trans and nonbinary authors by reading for 24 hours in a row, starting this evening at 8:00 PM EST. Amazing, no? You can read whatever you’d like! And meanwhile our social media accounts will be highlighting trans and nonbinary authors, so you can get plenty of recs for amazing books. I have a certain number of books to read by trans and nonbinary authors. Never you mind how many! It’s a normal, sane number of books! SHUT UP.

The post Mystery Seeds: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

All of this to say, please be gentle with yourself if you’re having a hard time right now. Here are some links!

Gabrielle Bellot writes about her long affection for Ms. Marvel and what Kamala Khan’s struggles have meant for her as an adult. (link)

What does it mean to write trauma well? (link)

“From the use of solitary confinement, which amounts to torture, to the punitive charges for phone calls, every aspect of the American system, major or minor, seems to be motivated not by the desire to prevent crime or to rehabilitate prisoners, but by the impulse to inflict spectacular, exemplary pain for the satisfaction of a general public that derives a furtive pleasure from its proximity to suffering.” Hari Kunzru on mass incarceration. (link)

Mara Wilson discusses The Narrative and the reasons Britney Spears never had a chance. (link) Also: Britney Spears is not in control of her image, and she never has been. (link)

Another excellent piece in Stitch’s series on fandom for Teen Vogue! (link)

Not seeing herself in the world of Lord of the Rings, Namina Forna decided to create her own. (link)

Arcadia is a perfect play, and that is the end of the matter. (link)

Variety reported on the sets of Joss Whedon’s shows and what the atmosphere was like. (Not good at all.) (link)

“The love-hate relationship with the musical form that made Dolly possible is a reflection of the push-pull of Southern culture for non-Southerners. They may hate country music but they have a ceaseless appetite for its white escapism — sonic, visual, and embodied.” Tressie McMillan Cottom on Dolly Parton. (link)

On the rightwing attack on trans women and girls in sports. (link)

“She was a shiny button.” Kelly Marie Tran deserves better and always did. But she’s succeeding in spite of the haters. (link)

I caught up on WandaVision and I liked it a lot! Except for that I was/am very mad that Monica Rambeau didn’t have more to do, considering that she’s the most beautiful human in the whole world. Here are some links about that:

• The puzzle box format that TV viewers have come to expect does a disservice to the emotional storytelling in WandaVision. (link)
• “WandaVision was always telling us what type of show it was. There was no greater mystery to figure out, no big puzzle that really even needed to be solved. All we had to do was sit back and tune in.” Carly Lane on the finale. (link)
• “Once we have found our way past so much grief, after so many spent and destructive illusions, what do we want? Who else can we try to be?” (link)

Having a bionic arm isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; or, a very useful article that all Stucky fanfic writers should take into account going forward. (link)

“White feminism has always been exclusionary.” Koa Beck discusses the archival records that show the history of white (and cis, and straight) feminists excluding all other voices. (link)

I only care what Black women have to say about the Oprah interview, so here’s a few:

• The hostility and trolling that Meghan Markle has faced is a pure example of misogynoir, and we shouldn’t look away. (link)
• “[Oprah is] something of an emissary, a reactive translator of emotion, a master weaver, pulling disparate revelations into a collective portrait that colonizes the mind.” (link)
• “I’ve rarely heard white friends discuss their parallel experiences of first realizing their privilege.” Salamishah Tillet on Harry’s racial awakening. (link)

Phew, this is an article about cops who danced with protestors at a Black Lives Matter event and then stormed the capitol. (link) SORRY THE LAST LINK WAS SO SAD.

The post Quarantinaversary: 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.

Watch Ted Lasso, please. I beg you will watch Ted Lasso. I am saying this for your own good, because I want you to feel positive emotions in your life, and frankly where else can that happen? (link)

How to throw a non-terrible con. (link)

“NXIVM was a distillation of all the failures and lies of corporate feminism.” No, I am not yet finished being fascinated by cults. (link)

(White) women’s anger as marketing strategy. (link)

Who gets named in crossword clues? (link)

Whatever did happen with all those white people buying books about antiracism this summer? (You already know the answer.) (link)

“I now know about so many consumer goods I previously had no idea existed.” Roxane Gay on pandemic dread-induced shopping. (link)

Nothing is fun anymore. (link) Except for Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is fun.

And this; this one thing is fun. Romance novelists and readers raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Stacey Abrams flip Georgia all the way blue. (link)

Speaking of blue, THE GREEKS DID HAVE BLUE. I am shook and cannot believe so many people have misled me for so long. (link)

The National Theatre has rolled out a new subscription-based plan where you can watch their plays online for free! They launched this month with a library of 11 plays, and they’ll be adding new plays monthly. (link)

How should you incorporate food into fantasy worlds? NOT RACIST-LY, PLEASE. (link)

In conclusion, watch Ted Lasso. You may report back to me when you have finished it.

The post Two Words: Book. Concierge. (A Links Round-Up) appeared first on Reading the End.

“To celebrate what was good and criticize what was lacking in the American Revolution were two sides of the same civic coin. Both were necessary for political reasons, but not least because both were true.” On the historians’ debate over The 1619 Project.

To nobody’s surprise, the Catholic Church continues to resist transparency on child abuse by priests. Also the owners of the New Orleans Saints are for some reason involved???

As a 28-Year-Old Latino, I’m Shocked My New Novel, Memoirs of a Middle-Aged White Lady, Has Been So Poorly Received.

Heeheehee this is just some Little Women fanfiction about Jo writing fanfiction, as she would.

Comics discuss the jokes that should be retired in 2020. I agree with most of these, but I also love Sara Schaefer and Shalewa Sharpe for being so like, positive and kind in their answers. What nice people.

Black authors are changing what YA publishing looks like. (We hope.)

Would your partner Force Majeure you?

“The baby takes a ton of purse stickers (as in, they are stickers that look like purses) and puts them on the floor, and they look really awesome since we don’t have a rug, but I can’t even compliment her art or really look at it because of dopamine.” Rebecca Harrington tries a dopamine fast.

Historical movies and biopics consistently sideline women, people of color, and queer people in a very ahistorical manner. Fuck the Oscars.

Most people who live to an extremely old age — allegedly — are lying or mistaken. Is Jeanne Calment one of those people? Warning: This article is a journey.

Museums are grappling with the fraught histories of their funders and their acquisitions.

Here’s Roxane Gay on the complicated emotions that Kobe Bryant’s history and death have engendered in her and many people.

And that’s all the links I have for you right now! If you’ve read anything interesting this week, please drop it in the comments so I can read it too. Have a wonderful weekend!

The post Let’s Take a Moment to Appreciate The Boston Review: 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.

These are just some motherfucking snails inside some motherfucking dollhouses.

Why casting Nagini as an Asian woman is so offensive.

Ron Charles considers whether we still need Banned Books Week, and reaches no real conclusion.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a writer I adore, talks about Howard Zinn and why it matters that his work was essentially and fundamentally collaborative.

I can’t wait to read Rebecca Traister’s latest book, Good and Mad. Here’s everything she was reading while she wrote it.

I typically click straight out of articles that bewail how easy it is to “cancel” somebody, but Wesley Morris has a lot of interesting, thoughtful things to say about art and morality. He also, in my opinion, missed some nuance — as people who complain about cancellation culture often do. Vulture put on a terrific round-table of responses from critics, including another forever-fave of mine, Angelica Jade Bastien. Their conversation helped me to understand something I believe but have been struggling to articulate about artistic disagreement.

What your favorite Shakespeare play says about you.

Roxane Gay reflects on the Kavanaugh hearing and harassers who claim themselves as the victims.

How to tell a good made-up language from a bad one.

Reese Witherspoon peddles a version of Southern femininity that isn’t available to everyone.

Here is a (very spoilery) superb appreciation of Practical Magic, my favorite Halloween movie.

Happy weekend!

The post Snails in Dollhouses: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

This article on fanfiction’s rebranding in the past few years is excellent, and features Naomi Novik saying many intelligent things.

What it’s like for women who flee North Korea.

The librarians who track down the books their patrons only sort of remember.

Since I began this links round-up, we’ve fortunately moved on from some of the recent Netflix nonsense, and we are now talking about To All the Boys We’ve Loved Before, which is wonderful. But here’s Linda Holmes going deep on the flaws of Netflix’s everyone-knew-it-was-gonna-be-awful Insatiable; and Smart Bitches Trashy Books on Kristan Higgins’s latest. You should also check out this terrific piece where Samantha Puc talks to some fat activists about Insatiable and the harm it does.

The third report on Black Speculative Fiction has come out. LD Lewis has a postmortem.

The Netflix adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is pretty delightful. Maggie Fremont watches it while attempting to make her own potato peel pie.

On language and education as tools of imperialism.

You can have as many problematic faves as you want; just be prepared that some people won’t agree with you. (See also: me on Twitter bitching about Kylo Ren.)

SURPRISE the men interviewed in the New York Times‘s By the Book mention male authors almost four times as often as they mention female authors. Women are close to gender balanced. (This is not a surprise.)

And to close with someone trying to rebrand for bad bad jerkface purposes: Louie CK staged a surprise and unwelcome (to the women present) comeback. “The world can live without the comedic stylings of Louie CK,” says Rebecca Traister. Jaya Saxena asks why these men are so convinced we need them back. Roxane Gay considers sexual assault and redemption.

Happy weekend! I wish you joyous cocktails with friends if your heart desires them, or peaceful reading beneath a weighted blanket if that’s your pleasure. I decline to admit which one of those I will be doing.

The post Rebranding, for Good and Evil: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.