The Best Stuff I Read This Week
There’s a lot out there. This is what’s worth your time.
As an editor at GEN, I consume a lot of media every week. I bookmark it, Nuzzle it, share it, Pocket it, DM it, get it through newsletters, doomscrolling, you name it. Once upon a time, we called this a “media diet.” Today, it feels more like this.
1. The Case for Ending the Supreme Court As We Know It
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor • The New Yorker • 3,600 words • 15 minutes
Perhaps you read a lot of versions of this idea this week but this is the one to come back to. “Why should the Supreme Court, an unelected body that is richer, whiter, and more male than the United States is, continue to have such outsized power in the lives of ordinary people?”
2. Like, Subscribe, Invest
Saritha Ramakrishna • The Baffler • 2,300 words • 9 minutes
The real estate hustlers of YouTube are still peddling the American Dream. If YOU have $$$ and want to make $$$$$$$ then you should listen to them now! (Please don’t.)
3. The Saga of Midori Naka
Colin Dickey • Atlas Obscura • 2,600 words • 10 minutes
“How and why the harvested body parts of atomic bomb victims spent decades abroad before being returned to Hiroshima.” Oh okay, click.
4. Are You Aging Correctly?
Heather Havrilesky • The Cut • 1,790 words • 8 minutes
“Your face isn’t the same. Like I didn’t even recognize you.” An interaction at a wedding sends Heather Havrilesky down a rabbit hole. How do we tell women they should age? Quietly? Passively? Fading away? If you’re not fine with this, she writes, don’t be fine with it.
5. How Gabby Giffords Survived a Shot to the Head and Outsmarted the NRA
Dave Cullen • Vanity Fair • 8,600 words • 34 minutes
Sure, hero astronaut Mark Kelly is running for Congress. But whenever I see him in a campaign video with his wife, I think, “get out of the way Mark, I want to hear from GABBY.”
