Happy Thursday! I kind of can’t believe this whirlwind of a week is almost over — it has managed to be infuriating, exhausting, relaxing, and a massive relief all at once. More later on all of that. 👀
For now, I come bearing gifts. Here are some recommendations to peruse as we approach the weekend.
Reading: Unraveling My Medical Mystery
For New York Magazine, Tom Scocca detailed a harrowing account of the mystery illness he’s experienced over recent months. Not only is it a reminder of how disability will likely strike all of us in one way or another, but it’s also a revealing peek into the maddening world of healthcare, particularly the daunting aspect of navigating it as you are also experiencing unemployment.
“The medical-mystery column doesn’t usually dwell on how slowly the inquiry goes in our fractured health-care system. How the highly recommended pulmonologist doesn’t return the first phone call and only has an opening five months away, and how the major-medical center does have an appointment but isn’t in network with the major-medical insurer. How the chest X-ray is over by the East River and the breathing booth is in the West 160s and the phlebotomist is by Columbia, and how each one has its own online portal for billing and results.”
Thanks to my husband for finding this article months ago while I was embroiled in my own unemployment journey and refraining from sending it to me until after I was in a better spot with both my career and my overall health anxiety!
Reading: How to Tell When It’s Time to Start an Antidepressant
My wonderful friend, former roommate, and one of the very best people to have a sprawling hours-long chit-chat with, Kayla Blanton, wrote this article for SELF Magazine. She will claim it’s only included here because she is my pal, and while she is my pal, I truly think this piece represents exactly what my favorite health-centered articles look like. She transforms her personal experience into a piece that can service everyone through accessible explainers, essential notes, and interviews with professionals — all while never losing the warmth that readers get from hearing someone tell their own candid story.
Reading: The Coffee Machine That Explained Vice Media
When it comes to the perfect intersection of scathing and beautifully written, David Roth’s work is in a realm of his own. If you’ve ever seen something good get ruined by suits who can’t see beyond their next buck, his piece on the demise of Vice will resonate.
“The idea that a business could make nothing but money, and produce nothing but dividends, is one of the strangest and most popular capitalist fantasies. The appeal of it is obvious, but incomplete even as a fantasy, or at least dependent on another fantasy—that the people on the right side of these deals will somehow never need or want any of the things, from entertainment to medical care, that they are making impossible or obsolete, and that everyone else will consent to losing not just their jobs but all these other otherwise healthy parts of public life. It's unclear what would be left, once everything is broken down and sold off. The idea, for the victors, is I guess to get enough money to ascend to a place of pure open-bar inconsequentiality, some vile branded party where the Chainsmokers are forever about to go onstage.”
Reading: They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.
This ProPublica piece from 2022 came across my feed recently. It dives into a scientifically shoddy school of thought that insists you can infer a suspect’s guilt or innocence based on what they say and how they say it when they call 911. Despite lack of evidence that this actually works — and evidence that it’s actually landed innocent people in jail — many law enforcement continue to use it in their investigations.
“The team at ASU is looking into whether police are any better at identifying liars on the phone than the rest of us might be. ‘We think there’s no normal way to act on a 911 call,’ said the lead investigator, Jessica Salerno, a social psychologist at ASU. Given the gamut of human emotion, she explained, anyone claiming to know the right and wrong way to speak during an emergency has seen too much television.
Like most of the experts I talked to, Salerno didn’t know that Harpster’s model had already been adopted by police and prosecutors across the country. She didn’t know people were being arrested and charged because of it.
‘If this were to get out,’ Salerno said, ‘I feel like no one would ever call 911 again.’”
Reading: Only You Can Find Your Best Color
On a lighter note, color analysis videos have absolutely taken over my TikTok feed and I am so confused. I get that certain colors wash some people out or look particularly beautiful on others, but I never think anyone looks any worse or better based on what ✨season✨ they are wearing in these videos. I feel pranked!
Kelsey McKinney’s article for Defector is an interesting look at the more sinister pieces of the whole thing.
“Of course anyone could be tempted by a shortcut to self-actualization. That's capitalism, baby. Pay someone to tell you what you should look good in, and then blow money buying new things to fit your new self. But that process will never be satisfying, because we are not dolls. We are people, with preferences and dreams and ideas for how we want to feel. You cannot purchase your way to seeing yourself.”
Watching: Bridges of Madison County
Cried for a long, long time, and now I maybe think Clint Eastwood is hot? Or at least was in the 90s? I don’t know, I’m very fragile. I can’t talk about it. Watch the movie.
Listening: Las Culturistas + Mandy Moore
Mandy Moore is on Las Culturistas this week and it is precisely the pick-me-up I needed. Such joy, such radiance, and at long last, the answer to whether or not she had a Xanga two decades ago. A perfect note to end on.
Omg I was just scrolling this leisurely and was so shook when I saw my name! Thanks friend, it means a lot 🫶🏻