I'm Having A Really Nice Time Reading All The Footnotes

The most popular link last time was this side-by-side comparison of US vs UK book covers, with this podcast episode about the witch economy second.

1. A magnificent 7,000-word essay about what on earth is going on with women and cosmetic surgery.

"I firmly believe we will look back on the 'the filler and facelift era' with all the ignominy of the dust bowl farmers who, hypnotized by the prospect of UNLIMITED WHEAT, over-plowed hundreds of miles of protective native grasslands until their children’s lungs became so blackened with dirt that they could do nothing but impotently weep while their offspring suffocated in their sleep."

2. Browse an archive of historical playing cards and tarot decks, including this 1910 suffragette deck and this 1870 "chinois" take on tarot. Fun bonus fact: this non-profit archive was set up by a fairly senior Google AI guy.

3. One for the dog owners: why does a Kong look the way it does? Because of a rubber axel stop and a German shepherd named Fritz.

4. Hayley Williams is everything to me.
5. How a New Yorker cover inspired a years-long obsession with front doors.
6. What even is "literary" fiction"? When examined critically, many of the default responses to this question break down.

"It’s true that a lot of genre fiction relies on common tropes and patterns. But then, how many literary fiction submissions have I received in the last month about a young woman getting too involved in the fraught marriage of an older couple?"

7. I suspect some parents might find this piece exasperating, but I thought it was an interesting take on the fraught "how to mingle kids and adults socially" question: how to include kids without centering them.
8. Rebecca Makkai's Zillow critiques are always great fun. This one contains the sentence "we really need to talk about sarcophagus placement".
9. On choosing friction in the age of AI. Possibly related: I have started reading War and Peace, a thing I swore I would never do, and I'm having a really nice time reading all the footnotes about the Napoleonic wars.
10. A collection of data analyses on romance books, including "best of the best" lists for various subgenres.
11. On finishing a big project — in this case, a very very long hike — and not really feeling anything.
12. Interesting: "obsessive investigation" as its own non-fiction classification.
13. It is once again the time of year when I become deeply invested in ballet vloggers.