annotations: the last of their kind, and those who watch them
Ed Yong on endlings and their keepers; the end of Babe.net; and other things I read
This is annotations, a newsletter in which I annotate a story every two weeks, and also read and write other stuff.
Here’s “some” “personal” “news”: at some point in the past few weeks, annotations hit 500+ subscribers! Thank you for your continued interest and support! If you harbor any positive feelings towards this newsletter, please consider sharing it with a friend!
annotated: “The Last of Its Kind” by Ed Yong, The Atlantic
Illustration: John Cuneo
Science writing is tough. It’s immensely difficult to get a general readership to care about these vast, complex issues that ultimately determine life on this planet more than any other beat: climate change, natural disasters, extinction, etc. A framework that some writers turn to is the illustration of the wider crisis through a single human narrative, as The Altantic’s Ed Yong does in this story “The Last of Its Kind.” This is a compact story, very cleanly and compellingly written, about the people like biologist David Sischo who have taken it upon themselves to care for species’ last remaining survivors, until they eventually—inevitably—die and go extinct. It’s a story about human-caused extinction, and about this particular species of snail, but it’s also about the psychology and the burden of the human minders who “serve as a final act of defiance, or perhaps contrition.”
HERE ARE MY ANNOTATIONS. As always, comments are open, so feel free to add your own notes in the margins.
you annotated: “Hideous Men” by E. Jean Carroll, The Cut
So many people had such smart, insightful things to say about E. Jean Carroll’s essay in the last issue of annotations. Thanks for annotating with me. Here are some particularly good ones:
Beatriz Pires:
Rebecca Stoner and Natalie Daher:
ND: right! and why should being "boy-crazy" be dangerous? well, because men
Rossi Anastopoulo:
read
Nick Paumgarten—whose feature on skiing’s most dangerous race I annotated a couple months ago—is one of the few writers whose sports stories I fervently devour despite knowing nothing about most sports. Here’s his fascinating look at the Masters Tournament at the hyper-exclusive Augusta National. [The New Yorker]
The state of our GoFundMe health care system. [The New Yorker]
Some favorites from the recent New Yorker fiction issue: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Conduction”; Andrea Lee’s “The Children.”; Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “Hereafter, Faraway.” [The New Yorker]
When a bitter sibling rivalry destroyed an $800 million oil family dynasty. [Intelligencer]
When terrible men and editorial judgment destroyed Babe.net. [The Cut]
How TikTok is shaping the music industry (see: Lil Nas X). [The Ringer]
Some really nice portraits in this piece about a photographer’s search for his 32 half-siblings. [NYT Magazine]
On loss. [The New Yorker]
(can you tell I’ve used this brief holiday as an opportunity to blitz through some of the New Yorker issues in my tower of unread magazines?)
wrote
for work, wrote some stuff about people trying to insult AOC by calling her a bartender, Bourdain Day and collective mourning, patriotic food (do not take this seriously), etc.
Hope you had a good fourth (or just a regular ol’ Thursday), enjoy the weekend!!!
jgz
