I'm busy listening to Beyoncé, who hopes that her new album inspires us all to "release the wiggle." I'm ready to comply, so let's get straight on to the links. More movement, fewer words.

"Ono’s body, my body as I sat at my computer watching hers, is a repository for unplanned interactions, for unintended consequences — for performances of all kinds." Julia Cooke on watching Yoko Ono's "Cut Piece" in post-Roe America.

Alex Sujong Laughlin on the pressure to "sell out" in order just to have a financially stable life. Another option: Literally selling shares in ~yourself~.

"I don’t know what my father thought when I could no longer communicate with my Mandarin-speaking grandparents. Or when I begged to stay home while he and my mother made their weekly 40-minute drive to San Francisco for groceries — fish plucked from murky tanks and leafy heads of jiè lán, a bitter Chinese version of broccoli. Now on the receiving end of my daughter’s withering looks, I imagine he felt rejected." Connie Chang on not passing assimilation on to her children.

The cloud, where we keep so much of our digital detritus, is not placeless. All this data is stored in Iceland and Singapore and the Atacama Desert, and—newsflash!—the whole infrastructure is maintained by humans. Steven Gonzalez Monserrate, a "cloud anthropologist," writes about the lives of data-center professionals.

Why Instagram feels so unsatisfying lately, and the seemingly endless pivot to video.

It's dangerous to be a pedestrian in the United States, and it's getting worse. Marin Cogan figured out how walking became a potentially deadly activity.

John Paul Brammer with an expansive, immersive read on the history of life on this planet, speculative biology, and "humanity's elliptical highs and lows."

 

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Deep thanks to my paying members! If you're not yet among them, you can become a paying member for just $15/year. I'd love your support. 

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New work from Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter, naturally. Here's some background on the samples and production. Also! There's a lovely new song from Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser.

I know people think that Pearl the oyster mascot is terrifying, but to me they are the height of fashion. Schiaparelli energy! I'm adding them to my style moodboard. Two thumbs up.

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Girls' Night In compiled reader suggestions for dividing up household chores. What I love is that each of these tips comes with context about the people who are sharing this labor, because what works for one household doesn't necessarily work for another.

Aug 17, virtual: I'm in conversation with Nona Willis Aronowitz about her new book, Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution.