Reading List: Sportsball Scions, YouTube Yahoos, Currency Crackpots, and Other Lazy Newsletter Subject Lines

Darlings! I don’t have much time this morning, so I’m going to forgo the pleasantries and attempted wit, and throw you directly into the longreads.

Jim Naismith, Basketball‘s long and winding road finds its way home to Canada (The Globe and Mail) - Despite being a Canadian living in San Francisco, I didn’t get too involved with the most recent sports ball tournament, but my goodness this op-ed celebrating the first Canadian team to win the NBA Championship, written by the grandson of the Canadian who invented basketball, made me tear up a little.

Kevin Roose, The Making of a YouTube Radical (The New York Times) - I’m often one of the people who claim that the internet doesn’t make you a good or bad person, it just provides you with the community and fuel to become who you want to be in the first place. I think it’s lazy to blame technology for people’s bad decisions or ill-natures. But then I read this Kevin Roose story on how the YouTube recommendations rabbit hole pulled in a twenty-something and turned him into an alt-right super fan, and realize that in this case technology sure didn’t give him the space to be make better decisions…

Karen Turner, Secularism is on the rise, but Americans are still finding community and purpose in spirituality (Vox) - As a thirtysomething who sits on the board of a synagogue, it doesn’t surprise me that we’re all still yearning for community and inclusion, wherever that may be.

Liz Pelly, Big Mood Machine (The Baffler) - I’ve found many bands I love through the Spotify recommendation engine, and I’ve binge-listened to many the Spotify “Mood” playlist. But this is the first time I’ve heard the term “emotional surveillance” and woof, what a concept.

Alan Rappeport, See a Design of the Harriet Tubman $20 Bill That Mnuchin Delayed (The New York Times) - I try to not include two NYT stories in a Reading List, but this account of how Trump’s treasury is punting the work to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill makes me so very grumpy and I had to share.

Yikes, today’s Reading List was all over the place. But you rock. Be kind to each other.

Xoxo Amy