The FADER Weekend Reading List

Rachel Pick, Motherboard

Rachel Pick went to a marijuana conference (for companies and their investors, etc.), and found herself surrounded by older white men (who do not get down with the pots). Which doesn't really sit right. Maybe it's because young black people still end up with felonies because of minor, marijuana-related drug charges. Pick, and those she spoke to outside the conference, note that it's kind of crazy that "people in certain zip codes are becoming millionaires while people in other zip codes continue to become felons." With medical marijuana, writes Pick, "the Big Pharma equivalents could end up taking all. At the end of the day, business is business. Viridian is as much the color of money as it is the color of marijuana."

Aria Dean, The New Inquiry

In this really smart, academic-style essay for The New Inquiry, Aria Dean explores problems with how "white selfie feminism" has become mainstream:

"As long as its framework is derived primarily from its racist, classist, capitalist “lean-in” equality-core (#freethenipple) predecessor, we—specifically Black women, but also perhaps all of us here whose bodies and selves are failed by a second-wave capitalist, classist, racist, cissexist, ableist feminism—do ourselves a disservice by considering it in the least bit viable."

Peter Meehan, Lucky Peach

This is a love poem to mustard, the most exquisite, low-brow/high-brow of all condiments. Read and fantasize about yellow squiggles and squirts and tenderly spreaded Dijon. 😍

Rawiya Kameir, The FADER

"A hoe never gets cold, which is why Cardi B is bare-legged and coatless when she shows up to meet me just a couple of days after winter storm Jonas immobilized much of the east coast earlier this year," this profile begins. The former stripper from the Bronx turned her Instagram account into a career, and then Kameir got to hang out with her for a day and find out all about her IRL.

Sharon Lerner, The Intercept

Major corporations like DuPont poison us and our earth and then lie about it. Lerner of The Intercept shows us just how DuPont concealed the dangers of Teflon. Definitely worth the read, though the idea that fellow humans can be so careless, deceptive, and blinded by greed is hard to stomach.

Lisa Blanning, The FADER

We all know that Berlin is the coolest city on the planet. But how did it get that way, and what can Berlin teach the rest of the world? Lisa Blanning explains the political and cultural history of Berlin's cool factor since the Wall came down.

Robert Epstein, Aeon

How many times a day are you reminded that the Internet changed everything? A lot of times, I'm guessing. But real talk this time—it's the most insane election year probably ever, and the way we are fed information about candidates and candidates' "platforms" is crucial. Robert Epstein makes the case that we may be living in a Brave New World:

"What would happen if new sources of control began to emerge that had little or no competition? And what if new means of control were developed that were far more powerful—and far more invisible—than any that have existed in the past? And what if new types of control allowed a handful of people to exert enormous influence not just over the citizens of the US but over most of the people on Earth?"

Cynthia Than, Inc.

A crazy origin story for the world's brightest colored snack. 🔥