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worth reading: october 7-november 14, 2025
happy November! is everybody alive out there?
books, book reviews, & writing:
books, book reviews, & writing:
- “Where writers write: 12 Booker Prize 2025 nominees share their writing spots” by Rosa Bertoli
- two pieces on Philip Pullman just because I really like him (& about to get my hands on The Rose Field):
- “‘I’m alive, but battered’: Philip Pullman’s new novel was a struggle” by Sophia Nguyen
- “Philip Pullman’s Anti-Escapist Fantasy” by Lev Grossman (unpaywalled)
outdoors-y sports-y things:
- “Raising the Dead” by Tim Zimmermann
- “Rewriting What’s Possible in the Mountains” by Scott Cacciola and K.K. Rebecca Lai
- “The Man Who Held His Breath for 24 Minutes” by Sean Williams
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“Eye of the Tiger” by Benjamin Meadows-Ingram and Stacey Rozich
- this is not about sports but it is a history of Tiger Balm in the U.S.!
extremely self-indulgent video games section:
- “Exposing a Non-Gamer to Computer Roleplaying” by Trip Harrison
- some stuff from Bullet Points Monthly because I just discovered & really like them (there's so much good stuff in their backlog):
- “I broke a baseball bat over the head of a ghost” by Ed Smith
- “The Silent ‘U’” by Gareth Damian Martin
- “It’s Always Heads” by Joshua Calixto
some excellent websites:
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Seat61
- recently used this website to plan a train trip and I forgot how unbelievably good it is
- Flatwoods Monster
- Space Type Generator
-
Interacting Incorrectly by Isabel Fish
- click through this one :)
tech / AI / web culture things:
- “Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem” by Julian Crockett in conversation with Ted Chiang
- “The Future of Being Trans on the Internet” by The Verge
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"Ed Zitron Gets Paid to Love AI. He Also Gets Paid to Hate AI” by Tommy Craggs
- worth it just for the "Temu Kara Swisher" burn
- “The Scammer Next Door” by Snigdha Poonam
- “The Age of De-Skilling” by Kwame Anthony Appiah (unpaywalled)
masculinity i guess, lol:
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“The Rage in the Cage” by PJ Vogt and Pablo Torre at Search Engine
- NUMBER ONE RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS ISSUE. yes it is a podcast episode but yes it did make me chortle not once but twice...perhaps even thrice
-
“The Goon Squad” by Daniel Kolitz
- serious (NSFW) content warnings for this one and there's been so much discourse around it, but I did find it extremely compelling to read (in wincing horror) while waiting at the doctor's office. two snapshots of the discourse that I thought were interesting as well:
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“’But PornosexualGooner101 Died 35 Years Ago...This Very Night!’” by Daniel Lavery
- even more insane content warnings for NSFW language/discussion in this one. this one is only for the true internet sickos, but it adds a lot of nuance.
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“The Monks in the Casino” by Derek Thompson
- inevitable tie-in to another increasingly inescapable strand of discourse: sports gambling discourse
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“’But PornosexualGooner101 Died 35 Years Ago...This Very Night!’” by Daniel Lavery
- serious (NSFW) content warnings for this one and there's been so much discourse around it, but I did find it extremely compelling to read (in wincing horror) while waiting at the doctor's office. two snapshots of the discourse that I thought were interesting as well:
serious longreads:
- “Experiences in Groups” by Lily Scherlis
- “How I Became a Populist” by Alvaro M. Bedoya
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“She Was Ready to Have Her 15th Child. Then Came the Felony Charges.” by David Gauvey Herbert (unpaywalled)
- one of my top recommendations in this batch. read the whole thing pretty much making the scream emoji face: 😱
- "The Coloradans Exercising Their Right To Die—and a Doctor Who Helps Them Find Peace” by Robert Sanchez
and everything else:
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“Fear of supernatural punishment can harmonize human societies with nature: an evolutionary game-theoretic approach” by Shota Shibasaki, Yo Nakawake, Wakaba Tateishi, Shuhei Fujii and Ryosuke Nakadai
- yes this is a full-on scientific paper but it has really charming figures
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“The snail farmer of London, his mafia friends, and a £20m vendetta against the taxman” by Jim Waterson
- deeply baffling and yet somewhat enchanting
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“Aldi unveils jacket potato jacket complete with silver foil poncho” by Ruby Betts
- just as satisfying as the title implies
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“Making babies” by Gillian Goodman
- despite the misleading title, this is actually about the business of making advertisements featuring real life babies lol.
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“Shopping Margaret Thatcher’s Estate Sale” by John Paul Brammer
- dying to see under the paywall but the single listing (for the duckfoot pistol) is still worth it.
- “A journey to Vietnam to uncover the origins of pho” by David Farley and Ivana Larrosa
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Royal Family
- KQ this one is probably for you specifically
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"Why the Subjects of McMansion Hell Have Ascended to McMansion Heaven” by Kate Wagner
- this one barely made it through because I don't think the content is very interesting, but it does have a phenomenal title and I am an avowed McMansion Hell fan