Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Turns out kids these days, like kids in those days and the days before that too, do sex things, to themselves and to each other. Even in small, wholesome towns where teenagers are still cursed with hormones and interests and curiosities, and wet panties and hard-ons. That teenagers have varying degrees of interest in S-E-X is…
Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever is a a classic of children’s literature, having sold millions of copies to parents looking for a fun way to teach their children simple vocabulary. The book was first published in 1963 and then updated in 1991. Interestingly, one of the reasons for the update was to show a…
Rapper Angel Haze spent a lot of her childhood homeless and she moved into her first house when she was 16. The time Haze spent in that house in rural Virginia served as the inspiration for her latest project, Back to the Woods. After she broke ties with her major record label—and her high-profile girlfriend—earlier…
Photo Credit Andy Rash As someone with the keen observational skills of Mr. Magoo, it took me a long time to notice a problem social-media acquaintances had been talking about for months. “I woke up to four new people today asking me for money on four different donation platforms,” one friend said. “One was my…
If you pulled over one hundred people on the street, and asked them to state a religious belief they hold, I’m not sure you would get any answer more plausible than “the pyramids were built for the storage of grain.” Would you now? Yet we mock Ben Carson for this, but we do not make…
By writing this, I don’t mean to imply that many people call me beautiful. They don’t. And I’m not saying this because I would like them to. As the title suggests, I would rather they not. Why? Because if we were all to be very honest with ourselves, we would admit that I’m not beautiful…
If you’re prone to flights of depressive thoughts in the shower (who isn’t?), you’ve perhaps briefly entertained the notion that, since humans are responsible for every environmental catastrophe, maybe the planet would be better off if we all just died. While you might rid yourself of such a bleak thought by making the water scalding…
The past month or so has seen the publication of two books from men who, a decade ago, created questionable blueprints of what dating should be like for an entitled generation of dudes. Unexpectedly (to their former selves, at least) the new stories from these teachers—who, not so long ago, were demonstrating how to sleep…
Jackie Rodriguez Peña prepares a frog smoothie at her stand at the Mercado de las Brujas in Lima, Peru. In Lima’s Mercado de las Brujas, or witches market, Peruvians gather to dicker for talismans and ancient medicines. Giant slugs larger than a water bottle sweat sticky slime. Dried llama fetuses hang from the ceiling, their…
New budding romantic relationships are times of excitement in our lives. We’re excited about the possibilities of what could be built with this other person, while simultaneously ripping our hair out and overanalyzing every single reaction we have with this person. Or maybe it’s just me? And in today’s prominence of instant communication and need for…