Editor’s note: TheNewsGal is off next week in honor of Labor Day.
Covid-19
Your School District’s Reopening Survey. I laughed till I cried. (McSweeney’s, ~2 min.)
The disconnect between the stock market and the real economy is destroying our lives. (In These Times, ~8 min.)
Persistent, long-lingering cases of Covid-19 are the pandemic story everyone’s ignoring — and they’re as fascinating as they are scary. (The Atlantic, ~16 min.)
Inside the barbershops keeping the NBA shaped up in the bubble. (GQ, ~10 min.)
Six months into the pandemic, our “surge capacity” is depleted — it’s why you feel awful. (Elemental, ~15 min.)
Race, policing & Black Lives Matter
(Washington Post)
The Birmingham Belles celebrate the Old South in hoop skirts. Some former Belles say it’s time to stop. (Washington Post, ~8 min.)
Life as a black “digital nomad” isn’t the same. (The Cut, ~7 min.)
Vivian Stephens helped turn romance writing into a billion-dollar industry. Then she got pushed out. (Texas Monthly, ~35 min.)
The ice cream truck song has a racist past. So Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA wrote a new one. (Los Angeles Times, ~2 min.)
When a Black lineman from Colorado State went knocking on doors in a white neighborhood, he found himself at the dangerous intersection of a national racial reckoning and a world of internet-conspiracy fanaticism. (Sports Illustrated, ~20 min.)
Why women’s suffrage matters for Black people. (The Undefeated, ~9 min.)
The best of the rest
(Myka Stauffer, Instagram via New York Magazine)
YouTube influencers Myka and James Stauffer shared every step of their parenting journey — except the last, when they gave away their adopted son. (New York Magazine, ~26 min.)
In the hours after Beirut’s tragic explosion, Texas pediatrician Seema Jilani navigated utter chaos to get her preschool-age daughter to a hospital. (New York Review of Books, ~12 min.)
One Twitter account’s quest to proofread The New York Times. I’m a fan. (The Ringer, ~24 min.)
“Hannity has said to me more than once, ‘He’s Crazy’”: Fox News staffers feel trapped in the Trump cult. (Vanity Fair, ~12 min.)
John Ratzenberger, who played mailman Cliff on Cheers, has a plan to help USPS. (Rolling Stone, ~2 min.)
Sex, lies, and cheap cologne: An oral history of Abercrombie & Fitch’s softcore porn mag, er, catalogue. (MEL Magazine, ~18 min.)
Age 35 isn’t a fertility cliff. Why do we think it is? (Slate, ~9 min.)
The women making QAnon conspiracy theories beautiful on Instagram. (The Atlantic, ~13 min.)
Behold the chaos of Trump’s reelection campaign, as only Olivia Nuzzi — the most compulsively readable politics reporter on the trail — can write it. (Intelligencer, ~35 min.)
Mark Zuckerberg is despoiling a tiny coastal village and Oregon’s natural treasures. The state invited him. (Willamette Week, ~16 min.)
One woman’s quest for self-improvement via a year’s worth of MasterClass courses from the likes of Malcolm Gladwell, Anna Wintour, and Werner Herzog. (Longreads, ~25 min.)
Elaine Hendrix, née Meredith Blake, answers every question we have about The Parent Trap. (Vulture, ~14 min.)
If you read one thing this week
(Jess Dugan, TIME)
I’ve been paralyzed since I was 3. Here’s why kindness toward disabled people is more complicated than you think. (TIME, ~15 min.)
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Thanks for reading.
Kirsten