1.
“Creature From the Brat Lagoon,” August 26–September 8
For New York’s latest cover story, Brock Colyar profiled Charli XCX after her album Brat spun out into a cultural movement, launched her into superstardom, and sneaked into Kamala Harris’s campaign. “In the pop discourse of today, there hasn’t been a Charli feature I felt did anything close to what the @vulture piece manages to do,” wrote Paul Bridgewater, editor-in-chief of U.K. music magazine The Line of Best Fit. “Some really incredible writing with nuance and character.” Commenter daisy_b called the story “so thorough, thoughtful and fun to read,” though lily.homma asked, “Am I the only one who thinks this isn’t a super flattering profile?” caitlin_lloyd responded, “Agree, she’s not being difficult but is constantly presented like she is.” al0271 had a different takeaway: “it’s kind of uninteresting to talk about the female experience in so many groundbreaking ways on your album just to say your art is separate from politics. if she continues this it would be very dimes square indeed — promising surface aesthetics but ultimately lacking depth or ideological value.” The accompanying photo portfolio by David LaChapelle depicts, among other things, Charli chewing off her hand to escape police handcuffs. Bradley Stern, of the Legends Only podcast, tweeted, “So nice to see a LaChapelle shoot finally feel like a LaChapelle shoot again,” while @ollie__martin concluded, “this profile and lachapelle shoot is a dream — there’s an organic sense of self awareness that is so good i genuinely want to bite my hand off.”
2.
“The Asteroid-in-Spring Hypothesis”
Also in the issue, Kerry Howley chronicled a feud that roiled the paleontology world. Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos noted the “excellent collection of weirdos (guy who works by lantern light, woman who wore a homemade dino dress to defend her dissertation) fighting over who discovered what season the dinosaurs all died in.” thomasyoung10.2.6 took time to praise the story in detail: “Descriptive enough to put my minds eye to work without labor. Concise enough to feel pithy. Sweet and colorful enough to feel sated. Simple yet elegant, William of Occam’s razor would still be sheathed, while Aristotle and Ptolemy would recognize without offense … it felt like art while reading, it made me think, therefore it is art.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was more succinct: “goddamit this good. phew.” Introducing the story on Longreads, Cheri Lucas Rowlands called the conflict the “epic drama you didn’t know you needed in your life,” adding that “Howley’s piece exposes paleontology as a ‘nasty’ field of academia, full of mean and narcissistic people, but it sure makes for juicy reading.” Reporter Brenna T. Smith wrote, “Much like the effects of the asteroid at the center of this story, my life has now been split into before and after I read this. It’s that good.” Commenter oliver29 said, “This article did what truly great writing does to almost all writers; it hurt me. I probably couldn’t have done this, and it thrills me and makes me feel bad at the same time … this piece deserves a place in future anthologies.” Reporter and former paleontologist Shaena Montanari tweeted, “It genuinely makes me happy that publications are still willing to do deep dives into the world of paleontology — and this is a good one.” On the community’s Fossil Forum, user dingo2 explained, “This is why I find paleontology hard to take seriously as a field sometimes. At least in the hot topics where it seems like everybody has a pet theory … When the ‘consensus’ about what an animal looked like, lived like, and ate can change drastically every few years, then maybe it is
a sign that conclusions being reached are a little premature.” Said commenter cdvicke405, “Science is meant to be meticulously measured, replicated, and most importantly, shared. In this article, I see one scientist sharing almost without ego and another hoarding the information like a dragon on his gold. Have we learned nothing? No one advances if no one advances science.” Added perfectlycromulent, “The main takeaway I get from this is how broken the upper levels of the academic system are. Brilliant ideas and minds wasted on competing for limited resources. I’ve known several PhDs who have found that no amount of knowledge or hard work can overcome the favoritism, rivalries, restricted access to resources, and impossible academic job market that governs this world. And we all suffer for the resulting missed discoveries and conclusions.”
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