Global Comment

Where the world thinks out loud

Must reads: Animal rights, coffee, sending nudes, Google, dating sims

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Welcome back to our weekly reading roundup. Before you see what we’re loving elsewhere, don’t miss Natalia Antonova’s take on the college admission scandal.

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Why Animal Rights is the Next Frontier for the Left (Emily Atkin for the New Republic)

Still, there’s a growing consensus on the American left that there’s something wrong about the way we traditionally consume meat—even if the moral logic behind that consensus is hazy and at times contradictory. The more enlightened among us buy eggs, milk, and meat harvested from animals that have, even in death, been treated “humanely.” Embedded within such consumer choices is the assumption these creatures should have a measure of freedom, whether to forage for grass or live outside a cage—and that, in turn, can be construed as a right of sorts, even if a limited one.

The Rise of Coffee Connoisseur Culture (Rachel Lipstein for the New Yorker)

“Coffee-geek culture—there’s a lot of us,” Aida Batlle, “a fifth-generation coffee farmer and a first-generation coffee celebrity,” says. “We’re just crazy, passionate nerds.” Hana Kaneshige, an educator at the Durham roasting company Counter Culture Coffee, illustrates an American history of mass coffee consumption, beginning around the turn of the twentieth century.

Inside the world of selling nudes online (Ashley Laderer for Dazed)

While Reddit is a very sex worker-friendly environment, subscription-based website Patreon also lacks policy against nude photos (as long as they are marked NSFW), so the site has become a popular home for sellers. Kennedy Dawn, 24, is a model and writer who started selling nudes via private messages before she moved on to Patreon. She offers various subscription tiers ranging from “PG”, featuring four lingerie or implied nudes ($5 a month), to “X-Plus”, which boasts at least 20 lingerie, implied nude, and full nude photos along with a unique polaroid ($75+ a month).

How Google Wiped a Neighborhood off the Map (Caitlin Dewey for Medium)

Annette Lott sat through the meeting with studied patience, waiting for the moment city officials would open the floor and she could ask them about Google Maps.

How one teen on DeviantArt sparked lifelong dating sim obsessions (Petrana Radulovic for Polygon)

After creating eight dating sims and two point-and-click adventure games in a two-year period, Pacthesis all but vanished from her DeviantArt and Tumblr without explanation. Following a four-year hiatus, she published one more game on her profile — Star Days Sim Date — in 2017. She never uploaded a game again.

Photo: Bernard Spragg