Listicles, tweets, your ex’s Facebook status, picture of dogs wearing costumes — the internet offers no shortage of entertaining stuff to look at. But there’s plenty of substantial writing out there, too, the pieces you spend a few minutes reading and a long time thinking about after you’ve closed the tab. In this weekly feature, Flavorwire shares the best of that category. This time around, taking mom to a gallery, Seinfeld‘s Elaine as a feminist icon, Buckley vs. Baldwin, and more.
“5 Reasons ‘Seinfeld’s’ Elaine is Feminist Icon” by Elissa Strauss, The Forward
How many more Seinfeld 25th anniversary pieces do you need? The answer is actually: just this one, which lays out why Elaine Benes is a feminist icon.
Toss out all the talk about Detroit making a comeback, Detroit still going down the tubes, or our fascination with ruin porn, and read about how Michael H. Miller brought his Detroit native mother to a big-time exhibition in New York that showcases art from and influenced by her hometown.
“The History of Debate: James Baldwin vs. William Buckley,” The New Inquiry
James Baldwin doesn’t have to do much work to make Buckley look like a jackass in this debate, but it’s still very much worth viewing.
Issue 3 of The Brooklyn Quarterly
It’s one of the best online literary magazines around, and the third issue of this quarterly based out of, you guessed it, has enough great fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to get you through an afternoon.
“How Domino’s Pizza Lost Its Mascot” by Zachary Crockett, Priceonomics
The story of why Noid, one of the greatest and most annoying mascots of the 1980s, went away is one of the weirdest and most bizarre things you will read this week.