longform journalism

Hi longreads! I'm sorry I missed last week - I was traveling and it really threw off my groove.

• Congress Is Pushing for a Medicaid Work Requirement. Here’s What Happened When Georgia Tried It. (2025/06)
• Your Lost Suitcase is Probably in Alabama (2025/07)
• Violent Delights (2022/12)
• The radical 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet – and left thousands of children unable to spell (2025/07)
• From the archives: For the Wealthy, Sports Opened a Back Door to Elite Colleges (2019/03)
• From deep in the archives: The Man in the Latex Suit (2005/07)
  content notes: murder, sexual violence
• Poetry: I, Too, by Langston Hughes
• Short story: An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried, by Debbie Urbanski
• Podcast: We Are Living in a Casino - Panic World (2025/06)

… and because I keep forgetting to do this, you have two charities to consider donating to this week: Debt Collective, a U.S.-based debtors union, and Turtles Fly Too, a sea turtle rescue organization.

This is the penultimate Monday of my school year! (I'm a school librarian.) I will do my best to keep up with the workweek reading recs over the summer, tho!

• The Man Who Unsolved a Murder (2025/06)
• What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection. It Was a Police Riot. (2025/06)
• Where the Wild Things Aren't (2025/?)
• Is Google about to destroy the web? (2025/06)
• Podcast episode: It Could Happen Here: Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #20 (2025/06)

I keep forgetting to post nonprofit/fundraiser links… this week's nonprofit is Wikimedia Foundation.

 

• In Defence of Big Women Who Take Up Space in the World (2025/05)
• Eurovision Reminds Me of a Country That No Longer Exists (2025/05)
• One of My Babies (2025/05)
  content note: incarceration, violence, moral injury
• The Haves and the Have-Yachts (2022/08)
• From the archives: Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters (2020/01)
• Why incels take the “Blackpill”—and why we should care (2025/05)
Podcast: In Bed with the Right: Project 1933: May 1 to May 31

Happy Monday(?)! I don't know about you, but I'm a K-12 educator and I am counting the days until summer vacation. Only five Mondays left for this school year… (Don't worry, I will continue posting over the summer!)

• Violent Delights: The serial killer media industrial complex rages on, but what has it taught us? (2022/12)
• Technology is supposed to decrease teacher burnout – but we found it can sometimes make it worse (2025/01)
• AI Therapy is a Surveillance Machine in a Police State (2025/05)
• Cringe! How Millenials Became Uncool (2025/05)
• From the archives: Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves (2018/01)
• Podcast episode: A Little Bit Culty: Healing In Public: Sarma Melngailis on Life After Netflix

Good morning and happy Monday!

• Reading Behind Bars, and Beyond Barriers (2025/04)
• The Girl in the Kent State Photo (2021/04)
  tw: police violence, gun violence, photo of a dead body
• When a Child’s Life Becomes the Family Business (2025/04)
• Rewriting the Relationship Between Elephant and Keeper (2025/04)
• Fiction: To Hurt a Haunted House, by Stephanie Wytovich
• Podcast: Behind the Bastards: That Time the British Did a Genocide in Ireland (Part 1)

Two nonprofits this week: CD Books to Prisons is the nonprofit highlighted in the first article. There's also the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop for incarcerated people in MN.

 

• What Happens If You Just Don’t Pay Your Student Loans? (2025/04)
• The Worst Magazine In America (2024/09)
• They Spent Their Life Savings on Coaching (2024/06)
• Mormonism's Sci-Fi Swan Song (2021/07)
• Picture of health: the women turning chronic illness into empowering art (2021)
• Podcast: A Little Bit Culty: Healing In Public: Sarma Melngailis on Life After Netflix
• Short fiction/Podcast: Where a Heart Would Fit Perfectly, by S. Qiouyi Lu

This week's nonprofit is Debt Collective: "We are a debtors’ union fighting to cancel debts and defend millions of households. Join us to build a world where college is publicly funded, healthcare is universal and housing is guaranteed for all."

• My £2,500 cavapoo is a middle-class cliché. He’s also a fake. (2025/03)
• The Romance History Forgot (2025/03)
• Operation Atacama: The $1m cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall (2025/03)
• Inside the Fight to Save the World's Most Endangered Wolf (April/May 2025)
• Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time? (2025/03)
• Academic: Literature & Cultural Studies: Cute Studies Syllabus (Prof. Erica Kanesaka)
• Podcast: The Lazarus Heist (series)
• Poetry: Every Morning by Mary Oliver
• Fiction: Work, and Ye Shall Eat by Walker McKnight

This week's nonprofit is Trans Lifeline.

For better or for worse, it's Monday! I'm in GMT+9, so it's evening here. If Monday is just starting for you, I hope yours goes better than mine.

• Democracy is Done: The Rise of Corporate Monarchy (2025/02)
• The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians (2025/02)
• The Missing $25 Gift Cards that's Rocking the Hamptoms (2025/03)
• Poetry: Try to Praise the Mutilated World, by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh
• Academic: Performing Normal but Becoming Crip: Living with Chronic Pain
• Podcast: The Gateway: Part 1: Catalyst
  tw: suicide, repressed memories, child sexual abuse

United 24 "is largely focused on helping [Ukranian] civilians. It assigns its funds to the Ukrainian government for use in 3 areas: defense and de-mining, humanitarian and medical assistance, and reconstruction of Ukraine." Thank you, tanaqui, for the nonprofit recommendation last week!

Oops! I forgot to post yesterday because I was off work for Emperor's Birthday (Observed). You can go see him give a speech and everything.
… anyway, on to this week's reading recs!

• You Might Not Recover from Burnout. Ever. (2024/10)
• Can Dogs Use Human Language? (2023/08)
• This is How We Fall Out of Love with the World (2025/02)
• ChatGPT Goes to Church (2024/06)
• Podcast: "Alien Abductions, Part 1" on American Hysteria

There's an accidental theme here: Are we alone in the universe? Capitalism alienates us from each other, grinds us down to dust, and leaves us hoping that so-called "AI," aliens, and/or animals can talk to us in a language we understand.

This week, I encourage you to support your local public library and/or Queer Liberation Library. (You can sign up for a QLL library card for free if you have a U.S. mailing address.)

P.S. Starting this Wednesday, I'll be adding fortnightly self promo threads. Please keep all self promotion in those posts.

Good morning and happy Monday! I have today off work because tomorrow is a holiday.

• The Hidden History of Trans Healthcare (2025/02)
• The Cancer Scams that Foreshadowed "MAHA" (2025/02)
• My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword (2025/02)
• The Genocide the World Ignored (2025/02)
• Academic: Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference
• Poetry: American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin, by Terrance Hayes

The nonprofit this week is UNHCR's fund for Tigray.