In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Public health messaging could take a cue from these French Covid19 vaccination campaigns. A series of new posters show the “wonders” of being vaccinated — going to concerts, family outings on the beach, hugs, and making out — all to encourage people to finish their shots. The message is: “With each vaccination, life starts again,” xoxo (quite literally).
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The new Gossip Girl reboot seems to march to the tune of inclusivity and diversity, but this self-awareness doesn’t change some underlying issues with the series: “Their narrative architectures will remain the same; extravagance and elitism are built and maintained by hierarchy and exclusion.”
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In 1978, a tornado hit New Delhi. A writer traces the events from memory to capture the debris on roads, the statues struck down by the force of wind. “The history of Delhi is also a story of climate change,” the writer notes, realizing “that some moist air and a few winds blowing in opposing directions are powerful enough to tear down buildings and kill people.”
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A sobering piece about the Muslim communities’ quest for home, survival, and identity in India shows the concessions people make to adjust to the polarizing reality of their motherland. In the end, a writer wonders: “Is this is the end of Muslims in India?“
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Eating disorders aren’t the easiest of subjects to portray on screen, but recently, detailed illustrations — from To the Bone and Insatiable — did not escape romanticizing these stories. It doesn’t help that they often lack representation, forgetting the narratives of men, people of color, and genderqueer people.
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The curious thing about modern-day cults is what keeps people going, how the binary between fact and idealism is more overlapping than we realize. “People’s attachment to an initial, idealistic vision of a cult often keeps them in it, long after experience would appear to have exposed the fantasy.”
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Every coffee addict proudly carries the tag, but an essay on our favorite beverage makes a strong case for quitting the energy juice: “…to be caffeinated is not baseline consciousness but, in fact, an altered state. It just happens to be a state that virtually all of us share, rendering it invisible.”
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The internet is rotting from within. Despite being the world’s greatest library, it is by nature self-destructive: “The links that bind it often disappear. And old content can always be altered.” An essay explores the loss of information in the digital realm, and how we can go about ensuring knowledge survives.
