Reading List #32 (Patreon)

Gooooood morning! You deserve something good and informative to read. Here's a list of 12 articles I've enjoyed recently.

1) Alcohol Prohibition In America Is Not Over Yet  (2/6/15) Scott Keyes

When I worked at the grocery store as a teen in Charlotte, NC, people couldn't buy alcohol, even wine, before noon on Sundays. People would wait at the registers before the clock struck 12, looking impatient while clutching bottles of moscato. It was normal to me then, but now it really blows my mind that such prohibition era laws still exist in abundance in cities and towns across the country.

Read Length: Short

2) They Set Us Up To Fail: Black Directors of the 90s Speak Out (Reggie Ugwu) 7/3/19

White people get more bites of the apple. That’s just true. You can fail three, four times and still have a career. But if you’re black, you really can only fail once.

Read Length: Medium

3) Progressive Boomers Are Making It Impossible For Cities To Fix The Housing Crisis (Michael Hobbes)

So why do "progressives" get in the way of progress? What's currently happening in Seattle provides some insight.

Read Length: Medium

4) Restaurant Reviewing Needs a Revamp (Edward Lee) 6/28/19

What, you thought white supremacy and eurocentricity hadn't seeped into the food world too?

I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of food writers pretend to know a lot more than they actually do when it comes to … let’s call it “ethnic” food. I just never thought I would hear someone admit to it in my lifetime.

Read Length: Short

5) How To Fight 8Chan Medievalism- And Why We Must (David M. Perry) 6/27/19 

Yup, misinformation in history remains a menace. White supremacist fantasies about the past are dangerous. 

Read Length: Medium

6) Misguided Is Selling a $1.26 Bikini Through It's UK Website (Lauren Reanick)

More than 60 million people work in the fast fashion garment industry and they're severely underpaid and subjected to cruel conditions.

Read Length: Short

Related: Fast Fashion Quick To Cause Environmental Havoc 

7) Too Much Money (And Too Few Places To Invest It) Dion Rabouin 7/6/19

This explainer style article puts it into simple terms: the wealthy are literally hoarding their wealth.

The Fed's quantitative easing program pushed the cost of borrowing money to next to nothing for nearly a decade, allowing companies to splurge on debt for mergers and acquisitions and to boost revenue.

At the same time, globalization allowed them to reduce labor costs, meaning that gains effectively were returned as profit and used by public companies to boost stock prices.Read Length: Short

8) Playing Video Games Makes Us Fully Human (Brian Gallagher) 6/27/19

What are the psychological benefits and effects of playing video games? This has been studied for atleast the last 10 years. I love that I now play video games because fantasy quests, historical fiction settings, and apocalyptic simulations have been great stress relievers for me. Im not alone, of course. 

Video games “tap into that deeply-seated human desire to travel, seek out new experiences, and absorb new knowledge about the world—and about ourselves,” Etchells writes. They free us to explore unfamiliar emotional and geographical territory and learn new things without too much fear or anxiety. Video games “provide a safe place where we can relax as digital tourists within the comfort of our own home, visiting places that might only otherwise be accessible in the wildest reaches of our imagination.” 

Read Length: Medium

9) I Tried To Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Epstein in 2003 (Vicky Ward) 1/6/15

I cant wait for all the bombshells surrounding this pervert to drop, and this scathing essay by a journalist who profiled him back in the day is a good start. If you haven't heard, this celeb pal and billionaire financier has been trafficking teen girls and sexually assaulting them for years. He faced similar charges to the ones now over a decade ago but got away with a slap on the wrist.

At first—it was the early stages of reporting—I was amused at having been so crassly underestimated. For a man who clearly considered himself a sophisticated ladies’ man (the only book he’d left out for me to see was a paperback by the Marquis de Sade), I thought his journalist-seduction technique was a bit like his table manners—in dire need of improvement. If only it had all ended there. This was what it had been meant to be. A gossipy piece about a shadowy, slightly sinister but essentially harmless man who preferred track-pants to suits but somehow lived very large, had wealthy, important friends, hung out with models, and shied away from the press. But it didn’t.

Read Length: Medium

There's an excellent related read that lists out  all of the details, which you can access here.

Epstein infamously avoided federal charges — and the potential lifetime sentence that could have come with them — a decade ago after he was accused of molesting dozens of underage girls at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. He was instead allowed to plead guilty to two counts of soliciting prostitution from a minor. Epstein was forced to register as a sex offender and sentenced to 18 months in prison, but he only served 13 months in all — and got to spend 12 hours a day at an office, six days a week, as part of his work-release privileges. In return, Epstein’s secret plea deal shielded him and four alleged accomplices from federal prosecution. 

10) Before And After The Jogger (Sarah Weinman) 6/3/19

Who were the other women attacked by the real rapist of the central park jogger? 

Read Length: Medium

11)  What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Serial Killers (Carolyn Murnick)

This essay made me wonder why I'm personally interested in serial killer trivia and history.

...after ten years of researching my friend’s murder, and almost 20 since her death, I can definitively say that her killer is the least compelling thing about her story. Her killer is simply a man. A boring, attention-hungry, deeply misogynistic cipher.

Read Length: Short

12) Brainfreeze: The Birth of Louisiana's Drive Through Daiquiri Stand (Wayne Curtis) 7/8/19

I had a perfume in the sixth grade that supposedly smelled like strawberry daiquiris. I got it at an infamous post-Christmas Bath and Body Works sale, and I can still smell it now, as I definitely drowned myself in it every morning before school. Ever since, daiquiris have always held a certain mystique for me, and whenever I see it on a drink menu on vacation, I go for it. Turns out, the name was created by a random guy in Louisiana. But also, did you know Louisiana has FUCKING DRIVE THROUGH DAIQUIRI STANDS?

Read Length: Medium