Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Get Ask Polly delivered weekly. Dear Polly, I’m writing to you from Paris, precisely from my kitchen table, full of empty coffee mugs I haven’t cleaned for like a week, unpacked useless goodies that I received for my job (I’m a lifestyle journalist, or what’s left of her), opened notebooks with unfinished logos for a…
She hoped their platonic bond would always outshine romantic attraction. Then her friend got a crush on someone else. Mirah was dropping me off, and neither one of us wanted to say goodbye. In a July storm we sat in her car listening to the rain. I played with the red matte lipstick she keeps…
Women have more options, for one. But a new poll also shows that financial insecurity is altering a generation’s choices. Jessica Boer, 26, kissing her cat Kip at her home in Portage, Mich. Like an increasing number of people in her generation, she does not plan to have children. “Now we know we have a…
On a recent Thursday at a bar in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Jacq the Stripper was warming up a small crowd of ten or fifteen people who had come to attend a fund-raiser for the Black Sex Workers Collective. Jacq, who wore a T-shirt that said “TIP HER” on it, is not a black sex worker….
(Trigger warning: If abuse, sexual assault, or anorexia makes you uncomfortable, you might want to avoid this one.) Over the years, I’ve attempted to write this, quite literally, 17 times. I’ve spoken to friends, therapists, lawyers, publicists. The drafts have ranged from cathartic, angry letters to litigious, hardened accounts of inexcusable treatment. Until I got…
It’s almost a like competition. Time after time, manga and anime creators have one-upped each other, escalating the arms race that will one day destroy us all. The weapons here aren’t of the ballistic variety — they’re girls. Or rather, things that are not girls that also happen to look just like girls. “Moe anthropomorphism”…
Earlier this month, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans to prosecute “100 percent” of migrants illegally crossing the Mexican border, it became official US policy to routinely separate children from their parents. Already, hundreds of children have been ripped from their families: 658 kids in the first 13 days of the program alone, Customs…
Image: Getty This week, Facebook announced that it be would rolling out a new system to combat revenge porn and explicit photos being shared on the site, Messenger, or Instagram. And all the social media network needs to protect your nude photos is…for you to first submit your nude photos. Friends, please do not submit…
Lately I have been thinking about one of the first things that I ever wrote for the Internet: a series of interviews with adult virgins, published by the Hairpin. I knew my first subject personally, and, after I interviewed her, I put out an open call. To my surprise, messages came rolling in. Some of…
Gabriel2052’s library of motor movements will know what I’m turned on by, his fingertips ghosting across the back of my neck with the right force-per-unit area. His motorized parts will know how to spread goosebumps across my skin, and his sensors will detect when my breath quickens in response. When we sleep, he will be…