Required Reading

Editor’s Note: The following post contains mentions of sexual assault. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.

‣ Hannah Bonner unravels the web of fast fashion, “slow art,” and the Kardashians’ catastrophic impact on the climate through the work of filmmaker Sara Sowell for the Los Angeles Review of Books:

To foreground the tensions between fast fashion and slow art practices, Sowell shoots on celluloid, and thus “recycles” the Kardashians’ images from their Hulu show, echoing the practices of structural filmmaker Paul Sharits, whom Sowell’s film describes as “the great recycler.” Color Negative is a polemic and visual pleasure, grappling with the history of capitalism as a cinematic attraction. After all, one of the very first actualities pictured workers leaving the Lumière factory in 1895. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to the mechanization not only of labor but also of entertainment, and to the subsequent representational intertwining of work and play. From Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) to Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023), the doldrums of labor continue to cinematically captivate us.

‣ Andrea Robin Skinner shared this week that after she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather, her mother — the late American writer Alice Munro — covered it up. Her courageous essay on the abuse she faced and the ongoing healing process for the Toronto Star is moving but deeply difficult. Please take care while reading:

I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser. 

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. My mother’s fame meant the silence continued.

‣ For the Intercept, Jonah Valdez reports on the companies courting Americans to buy property located in illegal West Bank settlements, profiting immensely from the continued displacement of Palestinian families:

But Cohen, the real estate agent, said that he’s seen demand for Israeli property increase since the war began. Before October 7, he would receive about four or five inquiries from homebuyers each week. While the immediate weeks after the attacks were quiet, interest has picked up over the last three months, parallel to a series of settlement expansions announced by the Israeli government. Cohen said he now gets 15 inquiries per week. 

Real estate companies are making an explicit appeal to wartime patriotism, leading with the conflict as a selling point and a reason to invest. 

“Although we are in the midst of the Iron Sword war,” said the Meny Group in promotional material on their website, using the Israeli government’s official name for the campaign, “the real estate market is booming.” Several other firms argued that investing in housing is a way for Jews to support Israel in times of conflict and instability. Firms also cited the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic as another crisis that the Israeli economy survived due to support from foreign and American buyers.

‣ Where has this been all our lives? The Eldest Daughters Club celebrates two years of supporting a community of children of immigrants through meet-ups and events across the United States, Iris Kim writes for NBC:

Over the past few years, discussions around “eldest daughter syndrome” have racked up over 31 million views on TikTok. Common signs of eldest daughter syndrome have been described as a strong sense of responsibility, guilt issues, overachieving and struggling with setting boundaries. But often missing in these early online conversations was how the eldest daughters of immigrants have specific cultural challenges that can amplify these traits.

Soojin Lee and Linda Yoon, therapists and founders of the Asian American mental health group Yellow Chair Collective, said that many of their eldest child clients face a unique kind of pressure from juggling multiple value systems: collectivist Eastern norms versus Western values of individualism. In some community-based cultures of immigrants, the firstborn has a special place in the extended family, bearing the weight of the family name and legacy. “As soon as there’s the first birth in the household, the eldest child pressure begins,” Lee said. She said that eldest children often break cultural or household rules to pave the way for their younger siblings, and that parents also admit to going easier on their second or third child.

‣ Scientists just figured out that ants have been amputating limbs to save each other even longer than humans have, Will Dunham reports for Reuters:

“In this study, we describe for the first time how a non-human animal uses amputations on another individual to save their life,” said entomologist Erik Frank of the University of Würzburg in Germany, lead author of the research published on Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.

“I am convinced that we can safely say that the ants’ ‘medical system’ to care for the injured is the most sophisticated in the animal kingdom, rivaled only by our own,” Frank added. 

‣ You’ve probably memorized the melody of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” by now, whether you wanted to or not — and some think there’s a shady reason why. Rebecca Jennings explains “payola,” Spotify’s complex algorithm, and what makes a hit for Vox:

Without resorting to stream-farming or some other hidden algorithmic boost, music marketers have gotten far savvier at predicting what will hit with listeners. What seems like sudden ubiquity for a song or artist is often extremely canny strategizing by well-connected industry insiders who are adept at responding to online chatter and listening habits. “People will tease songs for weeks, if not months, where the audio is already on short-form platforms but not commercially available on streaming services yet. People also test singles that way to see if their feelings on songs are right,” says Jenny Kaufman, the head of global streaming promotion at Crush Music. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen teased their song “I Had Some Help” on social media for months before it was released in May; it was recently the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts (though now second to “Please Please Please.”) “We’re seeing more and more artists drop full albums, we’re seeing more and more artists do less lead-in singles. That in part is due to the interest in seeing which songs fans will react to.”

‣ Polyglot TikToker Dan Mirea explains the surprising relationship between language and climate, and it’s a fascinating deep-dive into global linguistics *cries in no sabo kid*: