HELLO and welcome to the 343rd 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 Cinnabon! This “column” is less queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is 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.

Sick in a Hospital Town
ginger thompson // pro publica // december 2025
This is a long one, but a gripping one. Thompson was first drawn to Albany for a COVID story, after it was identified as one of the pandemic’s first hot spots, but what she found there was a much bigger story about healthcare — a hospital with a chokehold on its citizens, a hospital relied upon almost exclusively for care (which is delivered poorly at premium prices) and employment.

Lost Vegas
luke winkie // slate // november 2025
Did I recently post a piece about Las Vegas? I did. But this is a different piece, about Vegas’s alleged decline, and some of the culprits are similar to many tourism declines — foreigners hate America and everything is too expensive. But this one actually talks about something I’ve never cared or thought to care about despite it being Vegas’s reason d’etre— the gambling itself!

Falling Off The Aging Cliff at 44
emily gould // the cut // december 2025
Well, here I am, age 44, and it does feel like I am falling off the aging cliff, thank you so much for noticing.

ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners
maggie harrison dupré // futurism // september 2025
I thought this was gonna be about when someone’s partner would look something up on Chat GPT and then act like the Chat GPT response is empirical evidence that they are right about a thing that has nothing to do with your actual relationship but it turns out that no this is about people using Chat GPT as their therapist for relationship issues. Although actual therapists can also have a strong bias towards their client’s “side” of a thing, using AI in this manner is so fundamentally destructive and distressing. Anyhow I found this terrifying!

‘Mine Is Really Alive’
lila shapiro // the cut // november 2025
Then I found this one (about people developing love relationships with AI) terrifying too.

The Airport Lounge Wars
zach helfand // the new yorker // november 2025
I thought THIS was going to be about all the drama in lounge-land regarding the overcrowding of various Sky Clubs but it turned out to be, like every business-related article seems to be these days, about the ways this sector is competing for the ultra-wealthy consumer while dialing back its attention towards its middle class customers. I read somewhere recently that airlines are making most of their money from First Class (and thereabouts) passengers, while this article says they’re making most of their money from premium credit cards. Either way, yikes.

Scents from a Mall: The Sticky, Untold Story of Cinnabon
allecia vermillion // seattle met // october 2017
DID YOU KNOW THAT IT’S BON AS IN “BONBON” NOT BON AS IN “BUN” ???? AND THAT YOU PRONOUNCE IT LIKE THAT?

The Innovation That’s Killing Restaurant Culture
ellen cushing // the atlantic // october 2025
First of all, there is some data from the National Restaurant Association in this piece that seems pretty far-fetched, I don’t think this sample has been controlled for income (“More than half of adults under 45 use [food] delivery at least once a week, and 13 percent use it once a day. Five percent use it multiple times a day.”) Second of all, this was still good and I think about it a lot. The class implications, too — the idea of the country becoming a land of people who stay at home and the people who bring them things for money.

On the Death of Daydreaming
christine rosen // after babel // may 2025
Before smartphones, I simply brought boredom-busters with me everywhere — a book, a journal and a pen, a magazine, a book of puzzles. I used to love reading magazines I wasn’t going to buy in line at the store, but I also brought books to read in lines or rooms that didn’t have their own reading material offered up. For me the insidious and damaging thing isn’t the end of boredom so much as it’s the social media, texting and shopping. But since reading this I’ve paid closer attention to the micro-moments I’m filling with my phone (regardless of what I’m doing with it) that I didn’t before I got my first smartphone in 2014. I think often of what is lost in social situations, or even family time, when every trip to the bathroom or moment of silence is an opportunity to connect ourselves to another place, other people, And then I read the next piece… 

How Social Media Shortens Your Life
gurwinder // the prism // august 2025
“Continually dividing your attention between two worlds means you can never fully settle in either, creating constant anxiety and stress. And when attention is constantly switching between concurrent tasks, it imposes a “switch-cost effect” that can make people lose track of time. Thus, by constantly interrupting you, social media platforms can impair your awareness and shorten your days even while you’re not on them, so that you end up scrolling through the real world as shallowly as the virtual one.”

(feature image by ClassicStock/Getty Images)