4/22 in the belly of the fish
few books, many articles, one tv show, and a snapshot from a midcentury modern home
Let’s jump to it, shall we. FWIW, it was Eid at the beginning of the month, and then I was traveling internationally. Late as it is, it’s here… the things I read/thought about/watched in April:
🗞 Articles 🗞
The nurse impostor by Sarah Treleaven — Chronicling years of fraud and medical abuse by a woman who pretended to be a credentialed nurse.
Resisting a Culture of Incoherence by Brandon Vaidyanathan — A look into how our current world + culture forces us to splinter our selves and what sort of inner turmoil this splintering leads to. I think about this often, especially because this splintering can be state enforced (e.g. in France, where religious identity is forced to remain at home, as if it’s a switch that can be turned on and off)…
“This is why genuine friendship and community are vital for coherent selfhood. They provide contexts that model and hold us accountable to the selves we ought to be. We need them even to develop an imagination for what coherence looks like.”
‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens by Matt Richtel — Seeing as my brother has just become 12, I am deeply invested in (and worried about) the lives of teenagers in this country. What problems are plaguing them and why. It seems that widespread internet exposure and virtual communities instead of physical ones definitely play a part.
⚠️ Try this Chrome extension for bypassing paywalls.
How Everyone Got So Lonely by Zoë Heller — A foray into what is causing the loneliness epidemic and how it might be connected to decrease in sexual activity among US adults. One of my favorite lines here is, “it’s hard to construe the liberty of choosing between celibacy and sexual strangulation as a feminist triumph.”
✨ This piece on Muslims and charitable giving in the US during Ramadan, which taught me that there are 800,000 Muslims living in New York alone and they raise millions of dollars every year to help people ✨
The Somerville Quartet by Jennifer Frey — Frey’s piece looks at the intellectual friendship between four prominent philosophers, all women, who theorized about human nature and moral philosophy. Frey highlights that despite all differences, the women sought each other out because they viewed philosophy as a worthy project with real-life implications instead of an intellectual battlefield where only one can emerge victorious.
Why is Canada euthanizing the poor? by Yuan Yi Zhu — The author brings attention to a strategically ignored side of the “assisted dying” debate. He underlines specific cases and numbers in Canada and calls the direct and indirect encouragement from medical professionals and the government for poor and disabled people to die a “new culture of death.”
On Self-Respect by Joan Didion — Every sentence here is brilliant.
“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The charms that work on others count for nothing in that devastatingly well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions […] However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un-comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.”
⚡️ Substacks in brief⚡️
Haley Nahman on:
Luke Burgis on:
Freddie deBoer on:
Default Friend on:
Simon Sarris on:
Devin Kelly on:
Anne Helen Petersen on:
📚 Books 📚
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury — I know I am a decade or so late to reading this since most people read it in high school but better late than never. I loved it. 10/10 would recommend.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway — This book has really set me back on my reading goal for the year. In theory, I have no issue putting books in the “did not finish” pile but in practice, I have never done it. I feel like I am cheating myself if I start a book, especially one of these culturally significant books, and not finish it. Especially if I don’t like it. I hate the prospect of the book getting better in the second half and more importantly I hate being a critic who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. So I am trying to finish it. I will finish it. I am 86% of the way there. 🤞
👾 Miscellaneous 👾
This compilation of Agnes Callard’s work.
The fact that the ~Oscar Slap~ happened.
A memefied version of what it’s like to write these monthly digests.