Fresh Stacks: 5/27/23
Hand-drawn relationship advice, a poignant prank on a beverage brand, + 3 more
Meow, meow. I’m back with a paw full of new articles to share. Read on to discover what I’ve dug my teeth into lately.
Sofia Warren’s advice acknowledges the absurd.
Relationship advice can often be condescending.
’s drawn responses to requests for advice rarely are. Take the example above. A reader dared to try the oft-doomed “friends with benefits” concept, and—surprise, surprise—it didn’t end well. But instead of stating the obvious, Warren relates, and in the meantime, highlights the hilariously unprescriptiveness of modern relationships.One ‘10s alternative media outlet is still kicking.
We’ve heard about the shuttering of more than one decade-defining media company in the last month or so. First, it was Buzzfeed News. Then, it was Vice. But the one Nilay Patel runs—The Verge—is still pushing forward, and judging by the confidence he shows in his interview with
, it’s not going anywhere any time soon.Max Read (thankfully) can’t let an old online beef die.
Speaking of shuttered alternative media outlets, this post by former Gawker staff member
had me laughing, nodding my head, and remember the good ‘ol days of stealing Adbusters magazines from my high school library (sorry LCHS!).Max says his story has “no narrative shape, no clear stakes, an only semi-comprehensible moral-political sensibility, and an extreme over-reliance on vague memories of relatively internecine office politics around a series of minor incidents eight years ago,” but in reality, it re-emphasizes a message that can always bear repeating— “brands are not your friends.”
Plus, it makes that message funny.
Scott Tobias thinks you should watch Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.
I’ve never read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, and I’m naturally suspicious of film adaptations of books with this amount of clout. But if
or give anything a stamp of approval, it’s likely worth checking out.Thanks to his nervous teenage boyhood, Tobias went into the film from a similar position. As he puts it, “I didn’t know anything specific about [the book], other than it being about girl things that were terrifying and none of my business.”
But here in adulthood, it’s a different story. Tobias says the film succeeds at marrying Judy Blume’s touch with Edge of Seventeen-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s while maintaing focus on the story’s important themes—religon and the struggles of female puberty.
Richard V. Reeves points to the godfather of liberalism to keep its definition fresh.
I’m not a poli-sci major, so I didn’t know who John Stuart Mill was before reading this piece by
. Now that I do, I feel like he’s worth more of our attention.Mill’s classic essay “On Liberty” helped form the basic tenants of liberal politics, and in our “You’re an extremist!” “No, you’re an extremist!” political climate, Reeves thinks it would do us all a lot of good to go back and read the thing. Based on the rest of the post, I’m inclined to agree.
Hanif Kureishi suggests we swap out “conscience” for “superego” as a name for that voice in our heads.
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that listening to the voice in my head critiquing me all the time can often be counter-productive.
, another famous name I never heard of until recently, has a trick for keeping that voice at bay, especially while writing: don’t call it your conscience; call it the superego.Now before you put a red cape on that voice and start hearing it sing that Enrique Iglesias song, read the post. Kureishi’s point is to make that nagger less of a hero, not more of one. The goal is to find a way to shut it up, not give it more authority. It’s a very helpful suggestion.
Now it’s your turn.
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Great that you’re doing this! Thank you.