Welcome to the 347th 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 private equity! 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.
Our Neighbors in Minneapolis
margaret killjoy // january 2026
As you can imagine, much of my reading these past few weeks have been on a singular topic: the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, and many of the pieces I’ve read on this topic are linked in my How to Help post. Margaret’s reporting has been central to my understanding of what’s happening there: “Sometimes I just lay back and think, really think, about the fact that it’s whistles and car horns and crowds versus the modern gestapo, and before I visited Minneapolis I couldn’t really wrap my head around the idea that this could work. But it does work. It works because people in pajamas and crocs will scream at fascists at seven in the morning and take a face full of pepper spray for their effort and just keep doing it day after day.”
List and Shout
lydia kiesling // the baffler // november 2025
I realize this post about the tyranny of the “most anticipated” book list is calling out a practice we actively engage in heavily, but I somehow agree with them and also agree with the importance and value of us doing them! Life is full of contradictions.
Everything is private equity
Hannah Horvath // Your Brain on Money // january 2026
“The sameness isn’t an accident. These brands are designed to signal a certain kind of authenticity without actually having to be any of those things. They’re not trying to be good at being a coffee shop or an eyeglass store. They’re trying to be good at looking like the kind of company that gets funded, because that’s what they are.”
The rise of the slopagandist
mia sato // the verge // january 2026
Nick Shirley’s viral video containing unfounded claims about childcare fraud in Minnesota was used to justify the current occupation of Minneapolis by the violent criminal gang known as “ICE.” Shirley’s part of a rising group of slopagandists — creators who claim to be journalists, but without respect for editorial standards (like trying to tell the truth)… and with access to immediate engagement data, which matters more than anything else, ever.
15 Years Ago, Portlandia Told Portland Who It Was
matthew trueherz // pdx monthly // january 2026
“This alternate-reality Portland was a sort of progressive promised land, where so many of the “real problems” were solved that we could focus on the minutiae.”
How Veganism Got Cooked
rachel sugar // grub street // january 2026
Vegan restaurants and the lifestyle itself were recently all the rage — but now they’re all closing down and it appears that the whole industry and its meat alternatives maybe peaked in 2019 and now are no longer peaking. I do feel like most of the vegans I knew in 2012 aren’t vegan anymore. This piece did make me think about all the vegetarian and vegan spots I once adored in NYC that also closed — most notably Josie’s and the many locations of Zen Palate (which apparently went downhill and then shut down due to health code violations!).
The New Yorker Offered Him a Deal
naomi kanakia // woman of letters // january 2026
On the particular form of short fiction curated and exclusively accepted by The New Yorker, which meant one thing from 1929 – 1940 (“slight, insubstantial, and concerned primarily with the quotidian problems of middle-class people”) and something else in the years after (she will tell you why), and also JD Salinger was central to the magazine’s reputation (I didn’t know he’d published the entirety of Zoey, all 40k words, in The New Yorker!). Once upon a time they were paying people the equivalent of $12k in today’s dollars for a short story! A great deal of this post is about John Cheever, but you will understand why when you read it. Then we talk about privileged formulas! It is very long, this post, which I didn’t realize going into it, but there’s a lot going on currently, things that are deeply unsettling, and reading this delivered unto me serenity of the highest order.
Lost Legends: The Great Movie Ride
brian krosnick // park lore // 2017
Friends! Can you believe this new website I have only just now discovered??? It was founded by one of my favorite authors from my dearly beloved Theme Park Tourist (RIP) website, and thus contains many of his Lost Legends pieces from the aforementioned. It’s possible I already read, loved and linked Great Movie Ride in a previous TIRTL, back when it lived where it lived then, or maybe I just saw a Defunctland documentary about it, but I went ahead and read it (maybe for the first time, maybe not) and loved it this week (again, maybe). Park Lore is also an art and design site too. Sometimes the internet feels hopeless you know?
would you rather be Alex Honnold or stay at home
becca schuh // idiots assemble // January 2026
This was funny actually, I had a nice time
Comments
Re: book lists – I think the main difference with the book lists on AS is that they still feel very much like service journalism. It’s just so damn hard wading through the torrents of books out there to determine the queer stuff, so I am very appreciative of someone else doing that!
It would be super interesting some time to understand how you go about compiling the monthly lists, speaking as someone that has now spent decades trying to refine my book-gaydar.