Reading

“Using nicotine is unequivocally very bad for you. It’s also, unfortunately, what gets me through my days.” —Emily Gould, from her essay “The Secret Shame of Smoking Moms”

Moms don’t want trinket dishes for Mother’s Day—they want cigarettes. A mom would rather have a bag full of cigarette butts than a fluted trinket dish. That said, moms do want ashtrays. So they will use that little dish to ash the cigarettes you will buy her.

Moms don’t want smocked dresses. Moms do NOT want to fold their pendulous breasts into elasticated smock-front dresses. Moms do NOT want thin pleats of fabric expanding and contracting across their pendulous breasts. Please do NOT buy these for the moms.

For the 84-year-old Jun, staging his own show-stopping fake funeral becomes a glorious celebration of life still to be lived

- A film by Mari Young and Anika Kan Grevstad

Watch on Psyche

- by Nikhil Mahant

Read at Aeon

The New York Review of Books presents the fifth and final installment in a series of online events hosted by Fintan O’Toole. For our final event, O’Toole hosts Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal for a conversation about the future of progressive politics during the second Trump administration. You may view all available recordings in this series on this page.

The post The Future of Progressive Politics appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

How everyday scents can influence friendships

The post Smells Like Friend Spirit appeared first on Nautilus.

The bioengineers of the deep are inching their way into an expanding role in ecosystem change

The post Sea Sponges on the Move appeared first on Nautilus.