Friday links! Unmitigated pride edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 4 Comments
New York Times illustrator Tom Gauld's illustration for my essay that is totally in the New York Times

New York Times illustrator Tom Gauld’s illustration for my essay that is totally in the New York Times

I know we link to The New York Times a little too often around here, but today it’s completely justified. I wrote this essay for the Riff section of the Sunday magazine, and somehow they published it and paid me for it and everything. Mad, unrestrained props to Riff editor and Combat! reader Willy for making virtually every step of this process happen. Regulars will recognize the theme from previous posts, which makes it all the sweeter. I’ve been kicking around this idea for months, and finally I feel like I’ve articulated it properly. Today is Friday, and you won’t hear me say it often, but I am proud. Won’t you drift through a miasma of serotonin with me?

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Friday links! Same planet, different worlds edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Once again, Joy Behar cuts right to the essence of the story.

So yeah—Oral Roberts has a gay grandson, and his name is Randy. An ordinary person might find humor in the names Randy and Oral, just as he might predict that at least one lineal descendent of television’s most virulent homophobe would be gay. But Oral Roberts is not a normal person, and the whole thing blew his mind. One forgets that although we are all on the same planet, we live in emphatically different worlds. It’s Friday, and one person’s foundational assumption is another’s stunning discovery. This week’s link roundup is about the difference between how we live—and, by extension, how we assume others live—and how they actually do. I think you will find it touching and disturbing in turn.

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