Productivity culture is a lot like a religion, says self-help historian Kate Bowler. "Wouldn't now be a great time to imagine that we are not going to be masters of our destiny? That we’ll all likely need each other in the months ahead?" I'm extremely excited to read her book.

Anti-Racism Daily unpacks "cancel culture"—from its overhyped power to its real impact (or lack thereof) on systemic injustices. "Some people have lost their jobs after being canceled. Police chiefs, prison wardens, or Fortune 500 CEOs have not been among their ranks."

Margot Williams on 20 years of covering "America's not-so-secret terrorism detention complex" and the chilling banality of this country's torture system. Follow it with this interview with Mansoor Adayfi, who was imprisoned for 14 years at Guantánamo. And if you're interested in a deeply reported book on how post-9/11 detention and Islamophobia helped pave America's road to Trumpism, you must pick up Spencer Ackerman's Reign of Terror.

E. Alex Jung interviews Mitski. I am an eager student of Jung's profile writing, and maybe it's worth a few words about why. When you're interviewing someone, especially someone who has been profiled a thousand times, you'll inevitably reveal things about yourself. It's a way of being in genuine conversation rather than just extracting information. When it comes time to edit the piece, though, the writer's extensions of self are usually edited out, on the theory that no one cares about them. But not in Jung's work. He lets us in on the whole back-and-forth, and readers feel like we were there. Plus we get the benefit of Jung's personal theories and insights about his subject. This Mitski piece is a perfect example, because she doesn't want to say anything about her life—not even the names of her cats. And yet we come away knowing her better than when we started reading. (Thanks for coming to my journalism seminar. Extra credit reading: Delia Cai chatting with Jung about his career.)

The rapid ascent and tragic assassination of rapper Drakeo the Ruler, by Jeff Weiss. "To begin to understand why it happened is to grapple with the most corrosive aspects of humanity: the need for revenge and hatred of the other; our capacity for rage, ego, and jealousy. It is the boomerang of racism, police corruption, and the worship of violence. Yet it is also a condition of the spiritual and material poverty that infects most aspects of modern American life."

Apparently it's music-links week. My last rec is Emma Carmichael's delightful consideration of Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time, "a contentedly unresolved document about a grown woman losing and then reestablishing herself at a life stage when her story could have easily joined so many others in the ether."

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Cruising, a podcast road trip to visit the handful of remaining lesbian bars in America. Transnational, a Vice series about trans experiences around the globe. Some beautiful wolf moon photos. Wayne Koestenbaum's video poems.

"I believe that people are culture. How they live and move and myth-make and endure and drape and pose and want and want and want and observe and comment and declare. That’s culture. Andre Leon Talley’s sense of self was culture." -Saeed Jones.

"Talley’s fascination stems, in part, from his being the only one. In the media or the arts, the only one is usually male, always somewhat 'colored,' and almost always gay. His career is based, in varying degrees, on talent, race, nonsexual charisma, and an association with people in power. To all appearances, the only one is a person with power, but is not the power. He is not just defined but controlled by a professional title, because he believes in the importance of his title and of the power with which it associates him. If he is black, he is a symbol of white anxiety about his presence in the larger world and the guilt such anxiety provokes. Other anxieties preoccupy him: anxieties about salary and prestige and someone else’s opinion ultimately being more highly valued than his. He elicits many emotions from his colleagues, friendship and loyalty rarely being among them, since he does not believe in friendship that is innocent of an interest in what his title can do." -Hilton Als, in 1994. The piece is packed with incredible quotes, including Talley on his calling to uphold "the world of opulence! opulence! opulence! maintenance! maintenance! maintenance!"

Rest in opulence, ALT.

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For the people who can't get into Wordle, here's a history timeline game based on Wikipedia. (Thank you, Sarah Blank!) 

And for my fellow Wordle obsessives, my new thing is using the day's answer as a prompt for a 5-minute free-write.