Closing my tabs – 2025 05 25 – Dispatches from Dallas

Glamour UK: ‘I know I can’t live like this forever’: Meet the red-pilled men trying to quit the manosphere.
Food & Wine: Inside the Underground Market Making Restaurant Reservations Impossible. This is something I worry about as Dallas gets to be a hotter restaurant market.
Wired: 4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere.
AM NY: The wrong man: Bronx native left devastated after judge denies exoneration following 30-year legal battle. The DA’s office sought exoneration because the prosecution had misbehaved back in the 1990s. But the judge wouldn’t overturn the verdict because other convicts might decide to try to overturn their own verdicts. Judge Alvin Yearwood, I hope you get tossed off the bench and land hard on your ass.
Time: Why I’m Resigning from Positions at the National Science Foundation and Library of Congress. By Alondra Nelson, who was Director of Science and Technology Policy for the White House under the Biden administration.
New York Times: The Chef Has a Love-Hate Relationship With Your Favorite Burger.
San Francisco Chronicle: Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic. This is another one of those things I worry about as Dallas becomes more of a restaurant town. It sounds like an extraordinary experience. But at the same time, it’s not just the money, it’s all of the emotion and expectation and perfection expected of the chef and the patron. I like my dinners out a little less high-wire.
The Guardian: ‘Customers are being duped’: how murky grocery sales tactics are squeezing some Kroger shoppers. This is not why we don’t shop at Kroger any more, but it’s part and parcel with the unpleasantness of the store that’s why we don’t. The baskets in this article are overcharged by more than 15%, which adds up.
GQ: Why the Toupee Is Making a Comeback With Millennial Men. It makes sense but I’m Gen X and I prefer natural (lack of) hair.
Hollywood Reporter: Forget Psychedelics. Everyone’s Microdosing Ozempic Now. On the one hand, let’s have enough for diabetes patients. On the other hand, if it does half the stuff it’s supposed to do, no wonder everyone wants to take it. On the third hand, I worry about the side effects down the road.
Paste: Andor Season 2 Finale Postmortem with Writer Tom Bissell. I have to watch this show.
And Vulture: ‘Before Anyone Else Defines It, I’m Going to Define It’ Andor creator Tony Gilroy reflects on five years inside the Star Wars universe.
Also, Tom and Lorenzo: ANDOR Didn’t Show What STAR WARS Could Be, It Showed What It Always Was. Star Wars is what you make of it and Andor is part of the show for the kids who grew into adults.
Splinter: That Cowardly Headline You Hate Was Probably Written by a Lawyer Taking Orders from a Capitalist. I hate late stage capitalism.
Teen Vogue: How to Sniff Out ‘Copaganda’: When the Police and the Media Manipulate Our News. I really want to read the book this is based on.
Harvard Law Today: Harvard Law School’s ‘copy’ of Magna Carta revealed as original. Damn.
BBC: Archaeologists ‘confident’ destroyed monastery site found. Erenagh in County Down was destroyed by John de Courcy in 1177.
Financial Times: Beauty entrepreneur Trinny Woodall: ‘Age is irrelevant, it’s about the energy you bring’. I follow her on social media and she’s so much fun to watch. I don’t have the energy to live her life, but I admire a lot of what she does (particularly her makeover videos).