Stories that stuck with me, for your perusal.
"English is not normal", John McWhorter at Aeon.
English is the only Indo-European language that doesn't assign genders to all nouns, getting fancy with French (and fancier still with Latin), and other weird stuff about the language.
"The Best Facts I Learned from Books in 2015", Kathryn Shulz at The New Yorker.
Before birth control, "ten and forty per cent of babies born in Europe were essentially left to die," putting a slightly different spin on those old-fashioned family values. Also, London's notorious fog used to kill visibility indoors.
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape", Ken Armstrong & T Christian Miller at the Marshall Project
An older post, but a fascinating, troubling portrait of how the justice system can frequently fail women who have been assaulted. A long, triggering read, but with some true heroes working against the darkness; well worth it.
"Everything You Know About Martin Shkreli Is Wrong—or Is It?", Bethany McClean, Vanity Fair
I will confess a certain fascination with Shkreli, as well as a firm conviction that the media's been lazy in simply painting him as a monster for the sake of rage-fueled page hits. Ironic, then, that this click-baited title feels like it fills in some more gaps, and paints a much more interesting picture of the much-maligned fellow. See also: Jacklyn Collier's "My Tinder Date with 'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli", at the Washington Post.
"Afghanistan: 'A Shocking Indictment'", Rory Stewart, The New York Review of Books
A good reminder, in the face of our current actions against Daesh/IS, of just how very wrong things went in Afghanistan, and the remarkable distortions caused by the occupation.
