TheNewsGal, Edition No. 81

What a week! These are the standouts.

All the things

• America’s Hollow Embrace of Juneteenth. We’re just the worst. (Zak Cheney-Rice, Intelligencer, ~6 min.)

• Jean Smart Never Went Away. The star of Hacks and Mare of Easttown discusses loss, one-liners, and 40 years onscreen. She’s just the best. (Rachel Syme, New Yorker, ~17 min.)

• Pecos Jane Has a Name. The young woman who mysteriously drowned in the Ropers Motel pool in 1966 might have remained anonymous forever, if not for cutting-edge genetics, old-fashioned genealogy — and the kindness of a small West Texas town. I’ll read anything about forensic genetic genealogy, but this piece is exceptional. (Michael Hardy, Texas Monthly, ~31 min.)

• Powerball Mystery: Someone in this tiny town won $731 million. Now everyone wants a piece of it. A seasoned reporter on a small-town news story is always a good bet. (Marc Fisher, Washington Post, ~13 min.)

(Courtesy Kip Kinkel’s legal team via HuffPost)

• Kip Kinkel Is Ready To Speak. At 15, he shot and killed his parents and two classmates at his school, and wounded 25 others. He’s been used as the reason to lock kids up for life ever since. Utterly absorbing and worth every minute. (Jessica Schulberg, HuffPost, ~68 min.)

• Red velvet cake is “the color of joy.” Here’s how it rose into America’s dessert canon. I’d always wondered about this. (G. Daniela Galarza, Washington Post, ~11 min.)

• Six Months Inside One of America’s Most Dangerous Industries. What I learned on the line at a Dodge City slaughterhouse. Yikes. (Michael Holtz, The Atlantic, ~39 min.)

• The Maddening, Twisted Story of the Diplomat Who Became a Troll. For more than a decade, employees of a Washington think tank were traumatized by an unlikely harasser: a career Foreign Service officer. Yet there was almost nothing they could do. Good god. (Britt Peterson, Washingtonian, ~23 min.)

• The unreasonable expectations of American motherhood. Truer words have never been written. (Monica Hesse, Washington Post, ~7 min.)

(Courtesy Anthony Hatcher via Bitter Southerner)

• Just Past Utopia. Anthony Hatcher’s father spent countless weekends fixing up a little beach house. That “house built on sand” held the memory of Hatcher’s very worst and very best day with his dad. Lyrical. (Anthony Hatcher, Bitter Southerner, ~9 min.)

• “The Netflix of Wellness”: Inside the Hollywoodization of Peloton. I’m fascinated, and I wish this piece were longer. (Courtney Rubin, Hollywood Reporter, ~9 min.)

• The Amazon That Customers Don’t See. Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires. Amid the pandemic, the already strained system lurched. In case you missed this must-read … don’t. (Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, New York Times, ~43 min.)

• As the pandemic retreats, we’re left wondering what we’ve been through. The pandemic reflections are coming. (Stephen Marche, Washington Post, ~7 min.)

• A Complicating Energy. Notes on a year without strangers. Told you. (Elisa Gabbert, Harper’s Magazine, ~16 min.)

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If you read one thing this week

(Scott Suchman and Lisa Cherkasky, Washington Post)

• Frito pie to the rescue, as a new foster dad navigates dinner for an 8-year-old. So sweet. (Joe Yonan, Washington Post, ~5 min.)