Reading (And Listening!) List: Pray For A Swift And Merciless Mosquitopocalypse, Please.
Lovelies, it is Friday and San Francisco is hot hot hot, which means I woke up three times last night to hunt the phantom mosquito who would only emerge to harass me once I was on the precipice of sweet sweet sleep. So needless to say I’m in a punchy mood that no amount of coffee can quash (orders a second box fan so no inch of my bed is without a strong wind to blow away blood-sucking monsters.)
And hey, do you like the Missive? Do you know others in your life who might enjoy it? Why don't you forward them this here email and tell them to subscribe, all the cool dorks are doing it!
So let’s get to that sick longform content, yo!
Sarah Emerson, How Facebook Bought a Police Force (VICE) - Emerson’s deep dive into docs that reveal how the tech giant has impacted the inner workings of the Menlo Park Police Department is… hoo boy.
Dan Gorenstein, Tradeoffs (Podcast) - I grew up in a socialized medicine system, and thank goodness for that, since I was a child / young adult who had a few bouts of illness throughout her young life. But when I got to college, and complications from a previous surgery caused me to be hospitalized in Princeton and then in Calgary within months, my family and I were very suddenly faced with the dramatic differences in cost of care across the border. And since living in the US, and in San Francisco in particular, I found myself receiving the very best care but in credit card debt despite having ‘cadillac’ health insurance after I broke my leg, while seeing my father leave the hospital in Calgary after major heart surgery and recovery with nary a bill. So the premise of this podcast (that is: what are the secret costs and policy tradeoffs of the American healthcare system?) is one I am keenly interested in.
Kate Storey, 'One Grotesque Irony After Another': Inside the Rise and Fall of Gawker 2.0 (Esquire) - I still sometimes catch myself typing “Gawker.com” into my browser, as I did nearly every day from 2005 through 2016. This oral history of Bryan Goldberg’s attempt to resurrect the poop-stirring site is SO GOOD / so bonkers.
Katherine Miller, The 2010s Broke Our Sense Of Time (BuzzFeedNews) - Have only read a few paragraphs of this one after I saw it on Twitter this morning, but the premise that social media has caused our social fabric to fold in on itself is… something I will read and tweet about, for sure.
Tim Miller, What Would Delecto Do? (The Bulwark) - When Tim Miller writes about mitt Romney—or any major Republican tbh—read his stuff.
Ferris Jabr, Can You Really Be Addicted to Video Games? (The New York Times Magazine) - I am addicted to a substance that I now abstain from—thank whichever God you believe in—so I’m loathe to question anyone who says they’re addicted to something, but I also very much agree with issues brought up in this section from a piece on behavioral addiction, specially to online gaming: “the modern meaning of “addiction” is an uneasy amalgam of several contradictory legacies: a religious one, which has censured excessive drinking, gambling and drug use as moral transgressions; a scientific one, which has characterized alcoholism and drug addiction as biological diseases; and a colloquial one, which has casually applied the term to almost any fixation.”
That’s it for me this morning! Be kind to each other, mmmkay?
xoxo Amy