This list gets smaller each year, a sure sign that my idle reading time is diminishing. It was a year of endless pandemic chores, grant-chasing and depression. But I now have job security for 6 years and it feels like a great reprieve.

One piece needs a special mention, just because it was so surprising. This is John Semley’s account of the US postal service that somehow ends up talking about everything that ails us in this scary political moment: America, Ex Post Facto. Also, loved Sharon Old’s poem First Thanksgiving, written 16 years ago but it was new to me and it hit me very hard.

Academia

• The problems of not showing enough love for academic work (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed
• Toxic Academic Career Advice and the Wrong Answers to- ‘Why didn’t I get the job?’ — Home
• Feminist Mentors can be Misogynist Colleagues – Edge for Scholars
• Sexism in the Academy

America

• The Hour of the Barbarian
• America, Ex Post Facto | John Semley

Anthropology/ethnography

• ‘There was a prophecy I would come’: the western men who think they are South Pacific kings
• Explainer: the myth of the Noble Savage
• The “Uluru prophecy” and New Age conspiracy: Between a rock and a golden age

Ethics & the examined life

• The Problem with Pema Chödrön
• ‘My Man Friends Make Me Sad’​
• How to Stay Young Forever

Funny

• The Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Bear Expanded Universe
• The Only Possible Poems – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
• By God! This Is Simply a Gorgeous Crevasse

Games

• Defining the Abstrac​t: The games journal
• The Chaos of the Dice | The New Yorker

History

• Digging for Utopia
• Dark Emu’s Critics – Arena
• Ancient Same Sex Love Spells

Investigations

• ‘He’s very nice. The only problem is…’: chef Marco Pierre White on Jock Zonfrillo
• They Could Have Saved the Royal Family

Kids & parents

• The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake
• How to prepare your kid for the Covid vaccine
• My teenage daughter is done with childhood. Now comes the test of letting go | Andie Fox

Politics

• Leunig, Wellness, and Wokeness
• The Performance of Transgender Inclusion – Public Seminar
• Labour’s preoccupation with ‘values’ is a basic political error | Alan Finlayson

Sex

• Another victim of COVID-19: Sex between married couples

Science

• Plants Feel Pain and Might Even See – Issue 104: Harmony – Nautilus
• Our Little Life Is Rounded with Possibility – Issue 102: Hidden Truths – Nautilus
• The Selfish Dataome – Issue 65: In Plain Sight – Nautilus
• Consciousness is not a thing, but a process of inference | Aeon Essays

Technology

• Students who grew up with search engines might change STEM education forever

Writers & their writing

• First Thanksgiving by Sharon Olds | Poetry Foundation



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