Reading List #8 (Patreon)

I love that science has the ability to add legitimacy (or complete doubt) to historical narratives and theories. I can't see where this discovery goes.

Read Length: Short 

2. The 30,000-Year History of the Sex Toy (Katy Heaney) 

This interview is about a book I now desperately want to read. 

Read Length: Medium 

3. How the Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds

I literally clicked this article because I mistakenly believed it was about something I saw on twitter regarding how the traveling patterns of ants will be used for developing self-driving cars. Instead, it's about something scary, especially for zombie lovers. "So what we have here is a hostile takeover of a uniquely malevolent kind. Enemy forces invading a host’s body and using that body like a walkie-talkie to communicate with each other and influence the brain from afar."

Read Length: Medium 

4. A Heavy Blow to One of America's Most Controversial School Boards 

"About 27,000 students who live within the district’s borders attend private schools (mainly Jewish yeshivas), while just 8,500 or so—over 90 percent of whom are children of color, mostly black or Latino, and many of whom are English-learning immigrants—attend public schools. Despite that distribution, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish majority has remained in control of the school board for over a decade."

Read Length: Medium

5. Inmates Are Using Masturbation as a Weapon. Female Guards Have Had Enough. (Brandon E. Patterson)

When I was younger, my mother prepped for six months to become a prison guard in Georgia because it was a lucrative position. However, all the whispers and warnings about sexual assault from employees and family caused her to change her mind. I was reminded of that when I read this article. These lawsuits are just at a Chicago area jail but I can only imagine how rampant the problem must be across the country. 

6. Will The Prison Rape Epidemic Ever Have Its Weinstein Moment?  (Natasha Lennard) 

To counterbalance the previous article, here's another angle of sexual abuse to consider: that of prisoners. 

7. 2017 Was the Deadliest Year For Trans People In At Least a Decade (Jackie Flynn Mogenson)

"The report notes that 84 percent of the victims were people of color and 80 percent identified as female."  

Read Length: Short

8.  The Nationalist's Delusion (Adam Serwer)

This Thanksgiving, my nana's dying best friend is going to be at the meal. She is white and a die-hard Trump supporter. I will be drinking copious amounts of wine and avoiding her because if I look into her eyes I know I will be seized with the desire to verbally assault her. I can't believe my nana is still friends with her, but they have been friends for decades. My nana thinks I'm dramatic for comparing her BFF to a Hitler supporter during the early days of Nazi Germany. MAYBE I could forgive the initial Trump vote. But it's a YEAR after and you've been exposed to all the corrupt things he's done and all the lies of his administration and YOU STILL DRIVE AROUND WITH A TRUMP STICKER ON YOUR CAR AND SUPPORT HIM ON SOCIAL MEDIA. I had to block her on facebook. Ya'll. This article was triggering. Please send your well wishes to me during this troubling time. "Trumpism emerged from a haze of delusion, denial, pride, and cruelty—not as a historical anomaly, but as a profoundly American phenomenon. This explains both how tens of millions of white Americans could pull the lever for a candidate running on a racist platform and justify doing so, and why a predominantly white political class would search so desperately for an alternative explanation for what it had just seen." 

Read Length: Long