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Readings

Excerpts from the best and most bizarre new books, testimonies, government documents, journals, news reports, speeches, and letters.

The Long Goodbye

From sign-offs in the correspondence of the philosopher collected in Letters and Other Texts, which was published in July by Semiotext(e). Wishes, wishes, wishes Friendship and wishes Thinking of your…

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Call Me by Your Pain

From first names given to babies born around the world during the early months of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Corona Corona Kumar Corona Kumari Covid Covid Marie Covid Rose Coviduvidapdap…

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Vanishing Cream

From CV Dazzle, a project by Adam Harvey that demonstrates how makeup, hair styling, and accessories can be used to foil facial recognition technology. Harvey ran the below looks through…

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Extra Extra

From the headlines of advice columns published in the New York Times since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic. If You’ve Got Lemons, Make Limoncello How to Raise a…

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System of a Clown

From an interview of Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, by Sara Eisen, the cohost of Closing Bell on CNBC, conducted in June. sara eisen: Larry, I…

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Walking Tour of an Imaginary Homeland

From Things to Do in Hell, a poetry collection, which will be published next month by Coffee House Press. The airplane inside us was running out of pretzels We took…

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When Life Gives You Lemon

From FCC complaints filed between 2016 and 2017 that allege inappropriate behavior by CNN host Don Lemon. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and published…

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After the Fires

From A More Perfect Reunion, which was published in June by Bold Type Books. Even before Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, many were debating the utility of pacifist resistance.…

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New Whirled Order

From In the Land of Good Living, a memoir, which was published last month by Knopf. At my Miami Catholic school, we didn’t have snow days, naturally. We had hurricane…

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Troubleshootings

From a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting held on June 2 using Zoom, a videoconferencing platform, which lasted seven hours. Richard Tefank is the executive director of the commission, Mike…

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The Report

From “No Man’s Land,” a story from her collection Many People Die Like You, which will be published this month by And Other Stories. Translated from the Swedish. The report…

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I Won’t Beg.

From Here Is the Sweet Hand, a poetry collection, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I have before. I took off a skin. I put…

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Worst Responders

From a 2017 complaint filed by David and Gretchen Jessen against Fresno County and the city of Clovis, California, for damages incurred during a police raid on their home. In…

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Knife Play

From The Lost Writings, a collection of fragments, which will be published next month by New Directions. Translated from the German. I was sitting in the box next to my…

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Melancholy Science

From “Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment,” an essay from the collection Splinters in Your Eye, which will be published this month by Verso. On July 22, 2011, a neofascist Norwegian terrorist named…

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Soul Proprietor

From an interview with Tony Spell conducted in April by Victor Blackwell, an anchor for CNN. Spell, the pastor of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had been cited…

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Fever Dreams

From accounts of dreams reported during the novel coronavirus pandemic, collected in March and April by Erin Gravley and Grace Gravley on their “i dream of covid” website. I was…

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Near-Death Experience

From An Inventory of Losses, a collection of fictive essays that will be published next month by New Directions. Translated from the German. On an August day a few years…

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Old Ways

From Foxfire: Story, a collection of oral histories as told by people in the southern Appalachian Mountains, published in April by Anchor Books. The stories originally appeared in Foxfire Magazine.…

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The Gamblers

From Unwitting Street, a collection of short stories that will be published next month by New York Review Books. Translated from the Russian. They were two in a square unheated…

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Cat Ladies

From a study published in Biological Conservation by scientists at Nanjing University. The article, titled “Where there are girls, there are cats,” was published in February, then retracted without explanation.…

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Night Trees

From a manuscript in progress. each tree sticks itself upward dark into light or light’s the medium for each to define itself aslant against air saturated with water pixelated molecules…

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Rally of the Dolls

From guidelines for women presented in a series of infographics issued by the Malaysian government in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Translated from the Malay. Create a temporary workstation…

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The Hills Have Eyes

From images hidden by cartographers in maps of Switzerland that have been published by the Swiss Federal Office of Topography. A man overlooking the town of Interlaken from a summit…

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States of Care

From a report published in April by the Kaiser Family Foundation, detailing the amount of money each state received per COVID-19 case in the first round of grant funding under…

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The Last Picture Show

The national box-office report for the weekend of April 17–19, reflecting all self-submitted earnings by theaters in the United States, where government orders aimed at halting the spread of the…

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Burn After Eating

From responses to Freedom of Information Act requests regarding internal discussions about the food served at various government agencies and organizations. The documents, from between 2015 and 2020, were published…

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Sick Sad World

From The Unreality of Memory, which will be published in August by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  Viruses and bacteria hijack our minds; they make us act weirdly. For example, Toxoplasma…

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September 2020

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