Links for Thursday, June 1st

TINY! ANTIQUE! BOOKS! [heart eyes emoji forever]

Imagining a Black Wonder Woman:

I’m sensitive to the argument that every character can’t embody every identity, and that the solution to Hollywood’s larger diversity problem can’t possibly fall to any single movie or creator to fix. And yet I’ve begun to hear that argument not as a lament or a promise to do better with future characters and opportunities, but as a familiar admonishment to put away the brown crayon and stop trying to ruin the picture.

I’ll see Wonder Woman. I’ll likely see it multiple times. And I’m sure I’ll love it because I’ve been loving her since I was eight. But I’m also sure I’ll challenge her to love me a little more. I’ve been doing that since I was eight, too.

“This week, the prestigious Journal of Political Philosophy published a series of articles under the heading ‘Black Lives Matter.’ One problem: All the authors published in the series are white.”

This is unsurprising, but still devastating.

(please stop)

A fascinating look at the University of Science and Technology, a school run by evangelical Christians in Pyongyang:

For the staff of about 90 foreign volunteers from a dozen or so countries, teaching at the university is a chance to gain a foothold in an atheistic country by befriending future North Korean leaders and teaching them an international mind-set.

The volunteers mingle and eat with the 500 or so handpicked students, who live on the campus. Together with their families, the staff members constitute the single largest foreign community in North Korea.

The teachers, many of whom are Korean-American missionaries, are allowed to practice their faith among themselves. But the one inviolable rule is that they are not allowed to proselytize.

Silicon Valley is a show that manages to make me almost perfectly happy when I watch it, but Inkoo Kang makes some excellent points here.

Please enjoy this interview with James McAvoy; I like the cut of his jib.

Next time you’re having an off day, you can remind yourself that at least you’re not this dude.

“As the Princeton University philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt put it in a famous essay, to lie presumes a kind of awareness of and interest in the truth — and the goal is to convince the audience that the false thing you are saying is in fact true. Trump, more often than not, isn’t interested in convincing anyone of anything. He’s a bullshitter who simply doesn’t care.”

This is so nice, New York.

I was so glad to learn about Cookie Monster’s English cousin, Biscuit Monster (also, that URL slug = 💯)

Seems near the start of every summer we’re subjected to a plethora of those terrible “get your body beach-ready” posts. If you need an antidote, I personally never tire of this Nicole Cliffe classic.