After putting out that monstrosity of a WBC postmortem, and before I move on to another bugbear of mine, I need a bit of a break.

Therefore, I’m putting together a list of stuff I’ve recently read from people I know, and whom I think are worth reading.

I wouldn’t hope for this to become a regular feature, because my normally-voracious appetite for reading usually hits the wall when things get stressful at work, and this year has outdone itself on that front.

Instead, I’ll put together each edition when I get enough material to be worth it.

Without further ado, what have friends wrought¹?

On Knowing Ball

Christopher Sloce has an excellent essay in Typebar about the way the media’s treatment of the NBA reflects our ongoing slide into fascism.

I really wanted to link this one in my WBC analysis and, unfortunately, ran out of space. And steam. Sloce and I have occasionally disagreed before about the way Sports Discourse happens online, but I find him an incredibly engaging writer on the things he loves, and I learned a lot from this essay.

On Queerbaiting

Friend of the publication Zoë is just about the only person who could get me to read several hundred words about 9-1-1. If that’s not enough to convince you, maybe this pull quote will:

. . . they're still finding ways to innovate on narrative tropes the same way you might "innovate" with a chainsaw to address a hangnail, or how the United States military is "innovating" in the Strait of Hormuz.

In all seriousness, just as Sloce’s essay points out that we don’t have to take the oldheads’ word for it that the NBA was better in the days when Bill Russell’s house was vandalized by fans of the team with whom he won eleven championships in thirteen years, Zoë points out that we should expect much better from a show currently on television than warmed-over tropes from the era when queer people could not be allowed a happy ending.

On the Horror of Assimilation

Until I got to this point, I genuinely did not realize I was about to send you to Typebar twice, but noted boricua sci-fi/horror writer Karlo Yeager Rodríguez has a story (free newsletter sign-up required) that, like much of his best work, speaks to the fears those of us in colonized populations develop without realizing it, and which we find difficult at best to explain to those of you who have not been trained as citizens of the empire, rather than its servants.

I’m not sure this fits the theme of the other two, but if it does, the through-line is that we know what’s in front of our eyes. We know what our brains are telling us. We do not need to accept the scraps we are given, and we can be sure that if we do, it will be at great cost to ourselves.

On Goodbyes

Here’s hoping it doesn’t take long to assemble the next edition. Hasta entonces, gente.