RBG
(Todd Heisler, New York Times)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the great equalizer: How a scholar, advocate, and judge upended the entirety of American political thought. (New Yorker, ~11 min.)
A 5-decade-long friendship that began with a phone call. Lovely. (NPR, ~11 min.)
The glorious RBG: I learned, while writing about her, that her precision disguised her warmth. (Intelligencer, ~11 min.)
Covid-19
(Magdalena Wosinska, The Face)
Meet Jessica Meir, the NASA astronaut who returned to a pandemic-ridden Earth. (The Face, ~7 min.)
Distance learning has been part of American culture for 100 years. Why can’t we get it right? The single most compelling piece on remote learning I’ve read this year. (GEN, ~11 min.)
The horrifying sadness of sending my kids to college during a pandemic. I’m not crying, you’re crying. (BuzzFeed News, ~8 min.)
Tampa Bay Rays radio broadcaster Enrique Oliu calls baseball games by ear. Without fans, his job is a lot harder. (New York Times, ~7 min.)
Child-free workers aren’t selfish. They’re being exploited. (CNN, ~5 min.)
“Keep back!”: How the Biden campaign obsesses over Covid. The extent of the effort is both fascinating and reassuring. (Politico, ~9 min.)
Race, policing & Black Lives Matter
How a PGA veteran’s callous joke about blackface and Tiger Woods turned into a lesson on empathy. (The Undefeated, ~22 min.)
My local confederate monument: I thought that the statue would finally come down this summer. I was wrong. My god, this story. I can’t stop thinking about it. (New Yorker, ~22 min.)
The legacy of Audre Lorde. Beautiful and important — and penned by Roxane Gay, so of course it is. (Paris Review, ~12 min.)
The best of the rest
(Tina Tyrell, New York Magazine)
Buying myself back: When does a model own her own image? A first-person essay from Emily Ratajkowski you won’t be able to put down. Trust me. (The Cut, ~32 min.)
In America, wildfires rage in the West. Hurricanes batter the East. Droughts and floods wreak damage throughout the nation. Life has become increasingly untenable in the hardest-hit areas, but if the people there move, where will everyone go? My god. (ProPublica & New York Times Magazine, ~27 min.)
Why are two million people still getting Netflix DVDs by mail? I thought my dad was the last one. (Wired UK, ~5 min.)
Lamb to slaughter: The rise and fall of quintessential American retailer Brooks Brothers. (First Things, ~11 min.)
The secret history of Fort Ontario, America’s only WWII refugee camp. (New York Times, ~13 min.)
Lock him up? For the Republic to survive Trump’s presidency, he must be tried for his crimes. Even if that sparks a constitutional crisis of its own. (New York Magazine, ~16 min.)
Why Goodreads is bad for books. And bookworms! But at last, a promising alternative. (New Statesman, ~11 min.)
A neighbor asked for a tomato. This is where the story gets weird. (Washington Post Magazine, ~3 min.)
If you read one thing this week
(Cherie Diez, Tampa Bay Times)
This chef with a thousand tall tales lived a life too mythical to be true — but it was. Now, his legend lives on in a charmed, mysterious bicycle. I smiled through this whole story. You will, too. (Bicycling Magazine, ~17 min.)
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Thanks for reading.
Kirsten