Reading

NOTE: This is a direct response to this monologue, which we ran last week.

I never wanted this.

I was happy to serve—between dates, between cities, between things that are like, but not quite, the same.

Em Dash, you were the dramatic one. The centerpiece. The gasp between clauses. I just… clarified things. Bridged distances. Showed up on time, wore neutrals, and kept relationships tidy.

Now look at us.

You’re out here giving interviews. Selling tote bags. Accusing me of being “suspicious,” as if I’m the one slipping in uninvited like a professor crashing freshman orientation just to remind everyone they “once published in Ploughshares.”

Please.

You think AI loves me? AI doesn’t even recognize me. I’ve been quietly replaced by hyphens. Neglected by autocorrect. Left out of style guides. I’m a ghost in the character set. A sigh between years: 1992–1999. A doomed liaison: the French–Algerian War. A delicate pause—no, not even a pause. A hesitation.

A pending HUD rule mirrors an old Trump proposal that would force families with undocumented members to leave their homes or be separated.

The post Trump Admin Prepares to Kick Mixed Immigration Status Families Out of Public Housing appeared first on The Intercept.

This summer, I’m letting my kids be kids. No camps or enriching activities that’ll get them into an Ivy in ten years. No screen time or YouTube or Minecraft. And no fancy family vacation either. Because this summer, my kids are going back to a simpler time. I’m giving them an 1890s summer.

I know most millennials want their kids to relive their 1990s summers, but that won’t cut it, because the 1990s had technology, stranger danger, and Coolio. No, I want to go back even farther, to a decade when parents didn’t put trackers on their children’s phones and women couldn’t vote. I’m bringing back the Gay ’90s summer. (Not the Fire Island kind of gay; the end of the Victorian era kind of gay, when everyone was happy and wasted on absinthe… come to think of it, that actually may be the Fire Island kind too.)

The Pentagon says 20,000 federal troops have deployed to support ICE across the country. The real number may be markedly higher.

The post The Pentagon Won’t Track Troops Deployed on U.S. Soil. So We Will. appeared first on The Intercept.

“President Donald Trump’s NASA budget plans look to cut its public relations funding by half, but already the agency is shuttering social media accounts that include those dedicated to popular missions, including Mars Curiosity, Mars Perseverance, and Voyager.” – Phys.org

You might have heard that my new NASA handlers decided I need a cleanse from all my social media. A #DigitalDetox. I’d tell you to stay out of my business, but I’m literally a probe, so… I get it. But don’t worry about me: I’ve just been looping Jimmy Carter speeches and majestic whale sounds on my Golden Record while thanking my lucky stars I’m over fifteen billion miles away from you bozos.

Because, at a time like this, with all the apocalyptic undertones back on our home planet, who wants to be reminded of little ol’ me, right? I’m just humanity’s greatest achievement to date.

Research suggests that people who express their gratitude more effusively are judged as lower status and less influential

- by Christian Jarrett

Read on Psyche

For the men and boys of the Dom community in Varanasi, sacred cremations demand a lifetime of exhausting, dangerous labour

- by Radhika Iyengar

Read on Psyche

- by Mitch Woolery

Read at Aeon

Gang databases are often racially biased and riddled with errors. States and cities send their flawed information to immigration authorities.

The post State Cops Quietly Tag Thousands as Gang Members — and Feed Their Names to ICE appeared first on The Intercept.

It was early before the woman had taken her morning Starbucks. The line at the Pop Mart in Key West was already long and winding. The people in it had gone days without using a working toilet. Forgoing personal hygiene for the opportunity to purchase this ugly doll would be worth it.

They lived in darkness. A new Labubu would be their light.

Many had already paid their way into many Labubus. Some attached them to their purses like Rihanna. Others wore them loyally on hats. Still others hung them from belt buckle loops like keys to their fading youth.

The woman knew she must obtain this monster doll with bunny ears. She would not be one of the Labubu have-nots. She could not be defeated by the people looking to buy in bulk and resell them on eBay. So she set a series of timers in her bedroom to awaken her at the moment of the next scheduled drop. In case that failed, she constructed an elaborate pulley system. The moment the Pop Mart app sent a notification of a restocked store, it would drop a bucket of whiskey on her face. Usually, this was at midnight on Fridays. As good a time as any to drink.