Weekly Reader: Stories from Across Paste Media

Making it a little easier to find good writing on the internet.

By Lauren Tousignant | August 29, 2025 | 6:17pm

Photos: Netflix/Votes for Women/Instagram/Vinca Petersen and Dev Hynes

Weekly Reader: Stories from Across Paste Media

Happy Labor Day weekend, and welcome to the second iteration of Paste Media’s new weekly reader, where we highlight our favorite reads of the week from across our five sites: Jezebel, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, Splinter, and now Endless Mode. What better way to spend a lazy long weekend than diving into a bunch of meaty longreads from some of the last-remaining indie sites on the internet? A Ron Howard critique? An interview with Blood Orange? UFO tours in Sedona?! You’re welcome.

From The AV Club

Ron Howard has a biopic problem by Rory Doherty

From Endless Mode
How Board Games Are Used in the Classroom by Keith Law

This week, Endless Mode focused on the relationship between games and education—both how games can be used as a teaching tool, and also how games depict teachers, schools, and the educational system. As part of our Back to School theme week, our board game critic (and, yes, America’s preeminent writer of minor league baseball scouting reports) Keith Law spoke to eight educators about how they use board games in the classroom. From teaching students concrete details about history or geography, to introducing broader and more theoretical concepts from philosophy and civics, board games can serve a broad and important role in school, as Law explains. You can find more board game writing from Law at Endless Mode every Wednesday, and several other excellent Back to School essays from our regular roster of contributors.

From Splinter

The Most Surprising Part of Our Sedona UFO Tour Was What We Couldn’t See by Jacob Weindling

At some point within the next several minutes, a big flash of light filled up the night vision goggles and a bunch of brush and trees on Bradshaw Ranch became clearly visible in infrared from a mile away. It was in the same general direction my sister said she thought she saw the lights slowly moving towards the ground earlier, except I saw it on the ground. Looking at it through the goggles was so intense at first it hurt my eyes a bit, yet when I looked outside the goggles, it was completely invisible.

From Paste

Blood Orange, Between the Strings by Matt Mitchell

When Hynes’ mother fell ill in late 2023, he cancelled a show with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and went home to the grassy knolls and flat coast of Essex—to the “specificity” of his being born, growing up, and mortality. As the cold weather augmented his grief, and as hearing Sufjan Stevens’ “Fourth of July” on laptop speakers became a sobering sanctuary, he tended to her until she passed away in February, only to return to New York City and resume working on Essex Honey. He sang, “Nothing more to do but leave, following the corners of the room,” and “Another morning here without you.” He wrote, “Everything you knew has gone away,” and held pictures of the place he came from vividly within himself, processing the loss of a parent just as he had processed a loss of self on “By Ourselves” and “Smoke.” “Even if I didn’t need to be physically there to record, the idea of the literal place and, you could argue, the idea of the place, or the dream state of the place, were all very, very clear.”

From Jezebel

Conservatives Don’t Get to Claim Taylor Swift’s Love Story by Sophie Vershbow

Like so often happens, it’s clear that social conservatives completely missed the point. The blonde pop star may be marrying the football player, but the moral of this All-American love story is the opposite of the tradwife narrative they’re trying to inspire. In fact, getting engaged at 35 to a highly successful man who worships you after two decades of testing out different romantic partners, all while prioritizing your career, investing in other meaningful relationships, and developing a multitude of personal interests, is a progressive example, not a conservative one. Even without a billion-dollar music career in the mix, the lesson for young women isn’t to marry the first lukewarm frat bro willing to buy you a ring, but that happiness comes from living out loud and not settling for anything less than a partner willing to celebrate you as much as Travis Kelce does Taylor.

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