worth reading: september 4-october 6, 2025

every few weeks I get an email notifying me that a not-insignificant number of people I assume I don't know personally have visited this website and/or looked at my posts. if that's you, a person looking at this with your human eyeballs: thanks for visiting I guess. hope you enjoy the links.

food:

“Inside the World of ‘The Great British Bake Off’” by Ruby Tandoh (thanks EM!) (unpaywalled)
some stuff from Vittles, which has been killing it lately:
- “White People Spicy” by Kerry McInerney
  - kind of in conversation with last month's link to that Slate article about the guy trying to figure out if restaurants were neutering his food specifically but not his Asian partner's. also: lmfao @ the Danish for this one specifically
- “Who Makes the Rules?” by Sanam Maher and Noorulain Ali
  - a non-revealing title but this is about sushi in Pakistan. fascinating!
- “‘Welfare is a right, not a privilege’” by Jack Franco
  - also a non-revealing title but this is about the author running around Paris eating at inexpensive canteens and talking to people about them. also so interesting!
“The Life and Death of the American Foodie” by Jaya Saxena
- Jaya Saxena's features always hit!!
“Stew Kids on the Block” by John Devore

internet stuff::

“I Never Understood Our Data-Saturated Life Until a Hurricane Shut It Down” by Trevor Quirk
“Wikipedia is Resilient Because It Is Boring” by Josh Dzieza
“Tit for Tat” by Piper French
- this is about the economics of OnlyFans and it's fascinating.
I’m Not a Robot by Neal Agarwal
- not gonna lie: I was defeated by the Minecraft level 😔
“Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop” by Kate Crawford

tech "hardware" stuff:

obsessed with the reviews coming out about the Friend, which apparently hates your guts. who fine-tuned this thing and have they ever had a human friend?
- “I Hate My Friend” by Boone Ashworth and Kylie Robison (unpaywalled)
- “With a Friend like this, who needs enemies?” by Victoria Song (unpaywalled)
“The Revenge of the Hot Water Bottle” by Kris De Decker
“Requiem for the Rangefinder: An iPhone Air Review” by Ben Sandofsky
“One Vigilante, 22 Cell Tower Fires, and a World of Conspiracies” by Brendan I. Koerner (unpaywalled)

animals:

“Bear found behind the counter of a South Lake Tahoe ice cream shop” by Summer Lin
- unfortunately, it was not scooping.
“Snake Charmer” by Taylor Stanberry as told to Cleo Levin
- 60 pythons?!
"Unlike Our Stupid Human Arms, Octopus Arms Are All Equally Beautiful And Talented” by Sabrina Imbler

"design" catch-all category (clothes, business cards, and one weird/cool website):

two good things about clothing design from "Articles of Interest":
- “Single-Handed” by Kurt Kohlstedt for Articles of Interest
- “Skaters + Curves” by Avery Trufelman
“The Casual Archivist’s Short History of the Business Card, From Versailles to Microsoft Word” by Elizabeth Goodspeed
Crumpler
- ok this is an Australian bag company but the website transfixed me. also look at this fish bag.

it's kinda cool but kinda weird when the New York Times writes about video games (also this might be a section appreciated by no one except exactly me):

“A Group of Socialists Created a Hit Game That Tore Them Apart” by Tom Faber
- two types of people in the comments: Disco Elysium fans and old people arguing about the use of the word "socialists" in the headline
“When You Fall on Your Face, a Philosophical Designer Succeeds” by Rollo Romig
- Bennett Foddy was a virtual guest once in a game design course I took in college and every day I wish I had taken better notes

misc:

“Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children” by Alexandra Petri
“The History of the New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Checking Department” by Zach Helfand
“Cryptid Tier List” by John Paul Brammer
- smacked into the paywall like Wiley E. Coyote but thankfully it's still funny even above the paywall
“When Dementia Steals the Imagination of a Children’s Book Writer” by Katie Engelhart
- this one is so touching and lovely!
"GoPro: New World Champs Winning Run! - Jackson Goldstone - 2025 DH MTB World Championships” by GoPro Bike @ YouTube
- this like 3-minute video made me gasp several times so it's in here
“What Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson Knows About Pain” by Sam Anderson and Jack Davison (unpaywalled)
- what a superb celebrity profile! my only wish is that it was like 3x longer so I could read more of it