Reading List: How Are We A Week Into April Already?!?!

Good morning, lovely humans! So if you got to this page via Twitter, consider it a miracle because it looks like the tiny titan over at the bird site has decided that it can’t play in the sandbox with Substack, the place I park this morning Missive (‘Twitter cuts off Substack embeds and starts suspending bots’ The Verge). Which also means I cannot embed any of the funny and/or informative and/or existential tweets y’all sent me this week and for some reason that is really bugging me (so click on through to the “I Think You Should Leave as Edgar Allan Poe stories” thread like this is 2010 or something.)

And I just want to say - watching a petty billionaire strip all of the fun out of the hellsite I’ve loved makes me appreciate all the more how much the team at early Twitter watched and listened to how their users gleefully played in said sandbox, how it adapted to how the community wanted to play and interact and build. And yes, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but my goodness it was exciting to see something built alongside users experimenting with form, style and humor, and the platform encouraging that creativity via open access and evolution. Instead, now we’re watching our recess get shortened (stay with me on the weak metaphor, I’m too far in to come up with another one) by a fragile, insecure megalomaniac throw a tantrum every time someone goes to play with someone else (arrrrrrgh, metaphor officially tapped out…)

So here’s some stuff to read without the sweet dopamine hit of Twitter embedded interstitials. 

Justine McDaniel, ‘How wild parrots beat sea lions in a race to be San Francisco’s mascot’ (The Washington Post) - This is just SUCH a charming story about how a reader poll in the San Francisco Chronicle pitting locally-adored creatures against each other, March Madness-style, in a battle to see who would be the animal to represent this weird and wonderful 7x7 plot of land we call home. This story is lovingly crafted, well-sourced and, in the end, affectionate, a really great example of how journalism adds depth and soul to what could have just been a clickbait headline. And while, as a fellow awkward, interrupting mammal, I voted for the sea lions, I love how McDaniel framed how the parrots represent SF-dwellers like me in a quote from columnist Heather Knight: “…newcomers to San Francisco who are not native but are very fun and colorful and loud”.

Tatiana Siegel, Don Lemon’s Misogyny at CNN, Exposed: Malicious Texts, Mocking Female Co-Workers and ‘Diva-Like Behavior’ (Variety) - He seems nice (epic eye roll). 

Adam Edelman, Liberals gain control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years (NBC News) - My goodness, what a relief.

McKay Coppins, The Humiliation of Donald Trump (The Atlantic) - Considering we’re most certainly Coppins stans here at the Missive, I am very much looking forward to reading this with my coffee tomorrow.

Roni Caryn Rabin, Moderate Drinking Has No Health Benefits, Analysis of Decades of Research Finds (The New York Times) - I’m a smug abstainer from alcohol (smug for making the choice to remove a substance from my life that was preventing me from being my full self BUT I DIGRESS) so obviously my confirmation bias flares up hard with this story. 

‘The Blast Effect: This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart’ (The Washington Post) - MASSIVE CONTENT WARNING but something you really should read if you can. I’ve been trying to figure out the right time to share the devastating overview of the devastating physical consequences of weapons of war on the human body. And if you want to better understand why the publication invested in showing this, you can read Sally Buzbee’s overview of why they did: Why we are showing the impact of bullets from an AR-15 on the human body.

You’re swell. Drink that water, say HEY to nature, be kind to yourself. 

Xoxo Amy