Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Macklemore. Photo: AFP
What Do White Liberals Fear About Macklemore? – The Muse
“White privilege, in all of its many meanings, universalizes white people. They would prefer to feel special, individual, especially the liberal sophisticants. They hope there is a gulf between them and someone like Macklemore, but the distance is more like an inch.”
From Pickup Artist to Pariah – by Rachel Monroe, The Cut
“I wasn’t even sure how to begin. All the PUA dictates and manosphere Reddit threads were crowding my head with their stupid acronyms and their reductive explanations of evolutionary biology. Manosphere principles presume that heterosexual relationships are a zero-sum power game where men and women are always operating at cross-purposes. I was starting to wonder if maybe they were right.”
Sophia Nash, a beautiful car crash – and how she escaped alive – by Jonathan Milne, Sunday Star Times
“Her estranged husband Thane made his way up and down Ponsonby Rd, handing out his cellphone number and asking bar managers to call him if she turned up. Time and again, in breach of her bail conditions, she would go out drinking; he would call the police. Repeatedly, perhaps 10 times, she was locked up for the night in the cells at Auckland Police Station – just across the road from the hotel where she and Thane had spent their wedding night.”
If You Get Laid Off, Go To Iceland – by Amos Barshad, The Fader
“The timing of the trip was fortuitous, or perhaps the exact opposite of that; either way, it was arbitrary. I’d made the plan to go to Reykjavik—for an obscure, beloved little music festival called Iceland Airwaves—months before. The idea then was to go as a reporter: I hadn’t planned on running away from my problems, because I hadn’t planned on having any problems. But things change quickly. For the first time in nearly a decade of writing for money, I was a man without a land.”
Rihanna, Blissfully Adrift, Juggles Styles on ‘Anti’ – by Jon Caramanica, The NY Times
“That all these songs exist side by side reaffirm that Rihanna is our least aesthetically consistent — least aesthetically committed? — major pop star. At this stage of her career, music may be the least essential brick in her house. And as Rihanna has made clear time and again, not only is the sum greater than the parts, but the sum might also have nothing to do with the parts whatsoever.”
Dear Mike Hosking – I saw your Waitangi rant, and I can help – by Hirini Kaa, The Spinoff
“I know you are used to talking in (and your followers listening to) soundbites: short, snappy sentences that are so well delivered they seem to mean something. It’s the sort of style that has served Donald Trump well. But sometimes you need to go deeper to actually understand an issue. Sometimes jamming a complex idea in between advertisements and entertainment news just won’t get enough data across.”