HELLO and welcome to the 168th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about The New York Times! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
How The New York Times Works, by Reeves Wiedeman for Popular Mechanics, February 2015
An engaging look behind the scenes of what gets the paper out online, in print, and all over the world on hella tight deadlines.
Fostering Profits, by Aram Roston and Jeremy Singer-Vine for Buzzfeed, February 2015
A BuzzFeed News investigation identified deaths, sex abuse, and blunders in screening, training, and overseeing foster parents at the nation’s largest for-profit foster care company.
How A Single Mom Created A Plastic Food-Storage Empire, by Jen Doll for Mental Floss, November 2014
My Mom sold Tupperware! I have fond/vague memories of Tupperware parties in backyards, usually a potluck was involved.
What It’s Like To Be a Polyamorous Genius, by Alexa Tsoulis-Reay for New York Magazine, February 2015
Having a high IQ doesn’t mean you are going to be successful. It just means your brain works faster. It recognizes patterns. It can reach conclusions quickly. I’m laughing at jokes as soon as the punch line comes out; I multitask and boredom is my nemesis. I’m always doing five things at once. My mom hates it when we go out for dinner. I have two phones, one for work and a personal one, and I am always on both. I’m still keeping up with the conversation and I don’t understand why she’s so upset.
Our Date With Miranda July, by Lorrie Moore for The New York Review Of Books, February 2015
In which a person I love talks about another person I love. It goes well.
Playing With Fire, by Liliana Segura for The Intercept, February 2015
This is about how junk science about arson sent an innocent man to jail for life. Really in-depth good story, I’ve read a few about similar cases but this one is really thorough.
King David, by Ta-Nehisi Coates for The Atlantic, February 2015
In the February of 1996, I sent David Carr two poorly conceived college-newspaper articles and a chapbook of black-nationalist poetry—and David Carr hired me. I can’t even tell you what he saw. I know that I immediately felt unworthy—a feeling that never quite faded—because I was a knucklehead and a fuck-up. But what I didn’t then know about David Carr was that he’d written and edited the knucklehead chronicles, and published annual editions wholly devoted to the craft of fucking-up. I think that David—recovering crack addict, recovering alcoholic, ex-cocaine dealer, lymphoma survivor, beautiful writer, gorgeous human—knew something about how a life of fucking up burrows itself into the bones of knuckleheads, and it changes there, transmutes into an abiding shame, a gnawing fear which likely dogs the reformed knucklehead right into the grave. Perhaps that fear could be turned into something beautiful. Perhaps a young journalist could pull power from that fear, could write from it, the way Bob Hayes ran with it, because the fear was not of anything earthly but of demons born from profound shame and fantastic imagination.
Creative Destruction, by William Giraldi for The New Republic
This was really interesting and even relevant to this website right here and my very own life.
“The vestal and very simple concept of supply and demand will not be debauched out of its simplicity: When everyone’s an artist and no one spends money on art, art is stripped of any economic traction and serious artists can’t earn a living. Couple that with a population that overwhelmingly doesn’t mind if art and artists go extinct and you have, ladies and gentlemen, what can be fairly called a crisis.”
