HELLO and welcome to the 301st 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 know more about the death of journalism!!! 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.
Dropshipping Journalism, by Daniel Tovrov for Columbia Journalism Review, October 2019
My #1 feeling while reading this was HOLY SHIT WHAT A NIGHTMARE IT IS AT NEWSWEEK. Also I hate clickbait. I hate what it’s done to the internet. Although apparently it delivers VERY solid traffic.
An Oral History of “Too Many Cooks,” by Jake Kleinman for Inverse, October 2018
I saw this video for the first time like three weeks ago and then I found this article and if you haven’t seen the video, do that before you read the article. Would be my advice.
Who Gave You The Right To Tell That Story?, by Lila Shapiro for Vulture, October 2018
10 very different writers look back on their experiences writing outside their own identities.
In order to write about America honestly, I have to trick myself by stepping outside myself. If I try to write a character who is a middle-aged female novelist who lives in Brooklyn, it doesn’t work. Maybe because I can’t help trying to protect myself. If I’m writing as somebody different, I can tell the truth a little better.
My Own Private Iceland, by Kyle Chayka for Vox, October 2019
About Reykjavik
In the face of overtourism, I want to make an argument for the inauthentic. Not just the spots flooded with tourists but the simulations and the fictions, the ways that the world of tourism supersedes reality and becomes its own space. It is made up of the digital northern lights on an 8K movie screen, the manmade turquoise geothermal baths, and the computer renderings of high-budget television shows overlaid on the earth. I don’t regret any of these activities; in fact, the less authentic an experience was supposed to be in Iceland, the more fun I had and the more aware I was of the consequences of 21st-century travel.
When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals, by Adam Hotschild for The New Yorker, November 2019
The story of early-to-mid 20th century raids and deportations of immigrants “preceded by a crescendo of anti-immigrant rhetoric that will sound distinctly familiar today.” This is fascinating history with a lot to teach us about the current era.
The Night She Almost Killed You, by Carmen Maria Machado for The Cut (an excerpt from her new book, “in the Dream House,”) November 2019
All these years of telling him he’s full of shit, that he needs to decolonize his mind and lose the gender essentialism, and here you are learning that lesbian relationships are, somehow, different — more intense and beautiful but also more painful and volatile, because women are all of these things too. Maybe you really do believe that women are different. Maybe you owe your father an apology. Dames, right?
I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb, by Allie Conti for Vice, October 2019
Wow it is easier to get away with this than I could’ve ever suspected! Also, love the names they made up for all these white Airbnb-owning couples on the site.
The World According to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, by Lauren Collins for Vogue, December 2019
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is like, pretty great!!
Apparently we have spent the week reading the same things!
maybe WE R THE SAME PERSON
I knew about the first Red Scare and of Palmer raids, but I’d never heard of Louis F. Post before.
Maybe we can replace a confederacy monument to Mr. Post and others who opposed Palmer & co.
if you too want to see Turtle Ibiza with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, yearn to the heavens