HELLO and welcome to the 294th 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 teeth! 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.
The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge, by Kera Bolonik, July 2019
This is a weird story that everybody read this week and I don’t know how to feel about it… but even weirder to me is that the author of this piece is also the author of a few books about The L Word and was the host of Showtime’s Lezberado before they replaced her with me so isn’t it a tiny little world we live in!?!?!
Jia Tolentino Makes Sense Out of This Nonsense Moment, by Molly Langmuir, July 2019
It’s really cool when you love a writer and then another writer writes a thing that basically explains why that writer you love is such a good writer?
A Doctor’s Decision, by Michael Lista for Toronto Life, July 2019
This reminded me of the Doctor Death podcast — the story of an OB/GYN who made unethical and non-consensual decisions for his pregnant patients in a way that often had devastating consequences.
Poor Teeth, by Sarah Smarsh for Aeon, July 2019
In my life, Pennsatucky and her teeth are entirely familiar. She’s the slurring aunt who passed out in our farm’s swimming pool while babysitting me, and later stole my mom’s wedding band to buy the drugs that dug grooves in her cheeks. She’s the step-parent whose brain, organs and teeth corroded over the years and now lives in a mobile-home park with my construction-worker dad.
Gone, by Mark Arax for California Sunday, July 2019
Obscured from the story of the fire in Paradise, California — the worst in California history — was how “decades of greed, neglect, corruption and bad politics” led to the devastating fire, and how, unchecked, it could easily happen again. This is excellent reporting right here.
The Fall Of Mic Was A Warning, by Maxwell Strachan for Mic, July 2019
A searing and educational read about a once enormous media company who raised $30 million in venture capital and paid their employees $12/hour.
Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Tex., by Simon Romero, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Manny Fernandez, Daniel Borunda, Aaron Montes and Caitling Dickerson for The New York Times, July 2019
A border station in the desert outside of El Paso intended to process migrants for a few hours before passing them to other locations and as a forward base for agents is now being use to house migrants for weeks at a time, stuffed into rooms that are not meant to be living areas. The Times did some deep investigative journalism here and this issue cannot be ignored.
To Keep a Brother Living, by Kelsey Norris for The Offing, February 2019
A woman on TV says, Y’all are next, and she means it. The verdict’s come back and it’s no one’s fault her son is dead. No one’s fault her son was shot dead, that he was killed by police. That of all the things he was, black mattered most. On the TV screen, she’s furious, and every pixel of her is burning with a hurt she won’t cure for years—for all the time it takes her boy’s bullet-ridden body to settle into the ground.
Take Me Away, by Elleza Kelley for The New Inquiry, July 2019
I love Mariah Carey the way Mariah Carey loves Marilyn Monroe. Our love is born at the nexus of impossibility and identification. I wasn’t always sure what kind of love this was. It was not sexual or romantic, nor did I want to be like her. What I wanted, and still want, was proximity to the limitlessness of the world she had forged: I loved the key turning, the door creaking, the window flying open. I loved the secret place she made for me, for us.
The women transfixed by violent crime, by Alice Robb, July 2019
A question I have asked myself many times — “the people declaring themselves #truecrimeaddicts or #murderinos., downloading podcasts with names like My Favorite Murder or True Crime Girl Time, are overwhelmingly female. Why?” is apparently addressed in a new book that I want to read and this piece is about that book and this concept.
I know so many murderinos…
Dear God, that article about the doctor… I am not a big fan of OB/GYNs to begin with (though mine is actually quite good), but this is another dimension of horrifying.
I really like the book A Physician’s Decision, Michael Liszt for Living in Toronto. At one time, I was very interested in this book, and I decided to write a research paper on medical ethics. I turned to https://wowgrade.net/ for help, and with the help of this service, I learned that many people died from medical negligence.