worth reading: october 1-11, 2024

🎃🍁

“Growing beyond the computer” by Willa Köerner and Cortney Cassidy
- pure fantasy wish fulfillment of "what if I threw my computer out the window and became a professional gardener instead" (EM read this one!)
“The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” by Rose Horowitch (unpaywalled)
- including this not only because it made a lot of people online extremely mad, but also because it made me say "huh? wuhhh??" out loud at my computer. it's also soooo funny that the author graduated college in 2023 and is diving right into higher education discourse. the sample size is one!
- and a rebuttal: “The Atlantic Did Me Dirty” by Carrie M. Santo-Thomas
“Where Do Genres Come From?” by Charlie Jane Anders
- not sure I agree 100% with this take, but it's an interesting one.
“The Cult of Wellness” by Olivia Stren and Grayson Herriott
- this one is just mesmerizing in how weird it is. it also contains someone saying the following to describe Toronto: “We need a hub of working people who are on their phones all the time, where the weather is cold and everyone is a bit miserable. A place where people are struggling.”
"The outside world knows Wim Hof as the eccentric Iceman. His family suffered domestic violence” by Anneke Stoffelen and Robert van de Griend
- content warning for descriptions of domestic violence.
- this one does something really interesting in that it punctuates the text with expert commentary. it still presents both sides of the narrative, but the commentary adds additional context. definitely worth a read.
“Digital Divinity” by Cengiz Yar and Rest of World
- a fascinating series!
“Allrecipes, America’s Most Unruly Cooking Web Site” by Ruby Tandoh
- yes, the author is the Ruby who was on Great British Bake-Off lol. did you know that Allrecipes was started by a bunch of college bros?
“Sports Celebrate Physical Variation—Until It Challenges Social Norms” by Bethany Brookshire
- worth a skim.
“In pictures: Europe's car-free plazas reclaim their former glory” by Aitor Hernández-Morales
- worth a scroll for the photos.
The "Who is Government?" series by The Washington Post (archive.today will bypass the paywall on these). these are all superb, I can't recommend the series enough. the ones I've read (in descending order of how eagerly I'd recommend them) are:
- “The Canary” by Michael Lewis
- “The Sentinel” by Casey Cep
- “The Cyber Sleuth” by Geraldine Brooks
- “The Number” by John Lanchester
“Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information” by Chris Person
- funnily enough it looks like "Chris Person" is his real-life government name??? this is a fun resource. it also contains a link to the iconic forum thread in which a bunch of bodybuilders argue about how many days are in a week (iykyk).