Happy Friday, kittens, we made it through another week! Have some links as a reward for being excellent.

It’s a cult.

This is a piece that really challenged some assumptions for me, and forced me to reconsider certain perspectives about media. A good reminder that easy black and white narratives are popular but seldom helpful.

This is HILARIOUS.

Huh. You mean all those people getting column inches and air time to complain about being silenced and cancelled were…wrong and/or lying? I’m shocked.

*Pterodactyl scream of rage*

What a weird time to be alive.

My beloved childhood Book Fairs have a dark underbelly!

As someone on Twitter opined, focusing on the $.50 rise in the price of milk but not the 50% rise in home or education prices is a choice that benefits…someone.

“One message of this case is that these events — like Charlottesville, like Jan. 6 — they’re not these spontaneous, flukish events that just happen,” said Karen Dunn, a prominent trial lawyer serving as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “There is an enormous undercurrent of planning, of intent and of purposefulness that we all need to wake up to.”

ROUGH CRUST. How did I not know?!

What could possibly go wrong with such responsible actors in charge of this process?

Shot, chaser.

As usual, Leena sums it up in her usual, personal way: some people would literally rather leave the planet or invent an entire alternative reality and expend any energy to improve the one we’ve got. And that both enrages and depresses me.

Deeply invested in this prestigious and important award.

Is masculinity okay? Definitely not.

In the spirit of random stuff in the zeitgeist, I listened to both a RadioLab episode and read this piece on whale strandings in one week and never knew it was such an engrossing topic.

God, Notorious AHP is such a brilliant writer. This whole newsletter, plus its built in links are fascinating reading.