A list of good reads
- Are you truly close to your friends? CNBC offers five crucial elements to happy friendships.
- BBC News breaks down Game Transfer Phenomenon—the ‘freaky and unpleasant’ world created when video games bleed into players’ offline lives.
- From Chandni Chowk Canada to China, the Donald is deeply deeply reviled. Business Insider (login required) looks at how the Amreeki tourist is paying the PR price.
- ‘Breaking Bad’ fans, remember the ‘Ballad of Heisenberg’? This rhythmic Mexican genre—corrido—is known for glorifying drug cartels, but a local soldier is trying to change that. Associated Press profiles him and the genre as a whole.
- The Cut explores the nascent field of ‘straight studies’, which asks: If hetero relationships are so bad, why do women go back for more?
- With the latest in alarming climate change news, Vox (login required) reveals how the world’s fish and other aquatic critters are high on traces of our prescription drugs.
- Marina O’Loughlin in Financial Times (splainer gift link) makes the case for Reddit as her go-to travel guide.
- The Atlantic (splainer gift link) details a defense strategy to use against gaslighting sociopaths who engage in ‘deny, attack, reverse victim and offender’ (DARVO).
- Wall Street Journal (splainer gift link) traces how a secretive gambler known as ‘The Joker’ took down the Texas lottery.
- Aeon offers a debate—between a psychologist and a biologist—on the significance of testosterone. Does it really make men?
- ‘The Great Gatsby’ completes a century this year. To mark the anniversary, Public Books examines the novel’s legacy within the American classroom.
- Scroll has a cool feature on The Pickle Factory, a Kolkata foundation taking the arts to unusual places—from flyovers to a former prison.
