“Just as more women earned degrees, the jobs that require those degrees started paying disproportionately more to people with round-the-clock availability.” Oh shit.

The problem with Black Widow. Also, how the straight agenda ruined Avengers: Endgame. Spoilers at both of these links.

Why are we so addicted to conspiracy theories?

Here’s what happened to Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com.

Can indie bookstores be forces for good if they’re not paying their employees a living wage? Likewise, can we really claim John Beilein is sooooo greeeeeeat given that he chose to work in college basketball? (This latter one takes no prisoners.)

Here are your SF recs for the month of May!

What it’s like to travel when you have a “bad” passport.

I love Olivia Waite’s romance columns for the Seattle Review of Books, and this one about placeholder heroines is particularly excellent.

American society isn’t so much protecting shitty privileged teens as it is protecting a shitty privileged status quo.

Sady Doyle on Game of Thrones and why that last episode made no goddamn sense.

Which characters are considered disposable by showrunners and by fandoms? There’s, uh, a pretty clear pattern.

We are in a period of Hollywood handshake hyperinflation. Where is the media on this important issue?

That thing where some of the most venerated and canonized journalists just made a bunch of shit up.

I have recently been thinking that it’s maybe never? okay? to use living people’s real life tragedies for entertainment (in the context of the HBO show Chernobyl), and this article confirmed that thought in the context of the true crime boom.

And that’s all, folks! I hope you enjoy your weekends!

The post You’ve Earned Some Ice Cream: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Just kidding! Those things are both incredible! So I’m kicking off this links round-up with Isaac Chotiner’s very magical interview with Bret Easton Ellis, as well as a review of the “old man yells at cloud” book Ellis has, apparently, written. Be blessed.

“It felt hidden, like I said a magic word and there was Prague.” An interview with Helen Oyeyemi.

The rise of publicly thirsty women.

Some thoughts on cultural appropriation, rules, and self-censorship, from Jeannette Ng.

An extremely normal and fine profile of Carmen Maria Machado. (I advise reading it in its entirety.)

How bad is EL James’s new book? SO BAD.

The medical establishment uses men as a baseline for almost everything — which has led to massive health inequities for women.

Katy Waldman found her own experiences in a book (not in a good way).

Celebrating Easter Sunday among the black congregations in Louisiana whose churches were burned by an arsonist this year: an exercise in generosity and forgiveness.

Nathan Robinson attended the Zizek/Peterson “debate” so we wouldn’t have to.

Wesley Morris grieves for the demise of the romantic comedy (and so do I).

Have an incredible weekend, friends! Mine is going to contain brambles and crawfish, so I will be the happiest camper the world has ever known. (Also a little bit of phone-banking but I’m trying not to think too much about that.)

The post Making Fun of Bret Easton Ellis: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.