All the links that are fit to print

Holiday reading bonanza edition

Kia ora and welcome to the last edition of The Weekend for the year. I’ve written lots about the internet in 2022, which means regularly reading and thinking about emergent technologies. But among my favourite technologies is one that has been part of the internet for decades: the hyperlink. I love spotting that underlined blue text in what I’m reading and knowing that if I tap it, I’ll be led on a little chain of human knowledge stretching across the unknowable fathoms of the internet. It feels kind of like unwrapping a fancy chocolate. And so, for the final issue of The Weekend in 2022, I’ve compiled some of my favourite links from throughout the year for your holiday reading; to belabour the metaphor, imagine this newsletter as the text on the chocolate box describing what’s inside. Incidentally, chocolate – and links – pair well with Coffee Supreme, the sponsor that keeps this newsletter caffeinated.

-Shanti Mathias, staff writer

Six things to read on The Spinoff

Compiling this was actually extremely hard, not least because The Spinoff’s editor Madeleine Chapman has wrapped up what The Spinoff did in 2022 and our current poster campaign highlights 12 Spinoff stories from throughout the year that are definitely worth your time. But some of my personal favourite reads from through the year are below.

This is from just this week but it still counts: Stewart Sowman-Lund looks at how the “free speech debate” has played out in Aotearoa’s magazines, just one of the many excellent pieces of media analysis that The Spinoff has published in 2022.

This read about the social power of kapa haka in Aotearoa relative to its funding is a powerful, compelling reminder of how important the arts are for community building, and how much inequity exists in how performers are compensated.

The film Muru fictionalizes some aspects of the 2007 Te Urewera raids. Charlotte Muru-Lanning asks: does changing the facts matter?

Sam Brooks writes some of the best criticism in New Zealand, and this essay about Hanya Yanagihara’s fanfiction tendencies has stayed with me all year.

There are fewer maunga in Tāmaki Makaurau than there used to be, and my favourite issue of The Side Eye from this year explains what a loss this was.

And if you just want to remember what actually happened this year, you can read a follow-up to six great business stories, 10 weird local news stories, the big themes in global events, seven reasons to be hopeful about the environment, 10 days that defined the year in New Zealand politics, and a review of The Spinoff’s 2022 political predictions. Or forget it all and read 10 fast thoughts about Avatar 2. Take your pick.

Your Coffee Supreme holiday starts now
Coffee Supreme’s annual Holiday Blend is back, and it’s hotter than ever. The perfect summer drop doesn’t have to be enjoyed near the ocean. Sit back and let Coffee Supreme’s Holiday blend transport you there. Come on in, the water’s boiling. Coffee Supreme’s Holiday Blend is available online, with free shipping within NZ. Get on Holiday – no leave required.

Five things to read from other places

Some of these I’ve linked to before; these are the articles I’ve read this year that I’ve sent other people over and over because I just need someone to talk to about them.

This is a fascinating, compelling essay that ponders whether the internet is perhaps made of demons (literally and/or metaphorically). I suggest bringing this one up when everyone’s attention at the social event has started to drift back to their phones.

If what you would most like from your holidays is some peace and quiet, how about -9 decibels of peace and quiet?

Watching prestige TV? Reading ~intellectual~ novels? Perhaps as you fall into these narratives it’s worth contemplating why contemporary fictional forms are so rarely willing to let characters redeem themselves.

Interest rates are higher than ever before and the lack of stable housing in Aotearoa and elsewhere continues to hurt the poor and marginalised most. The housing theory of everything helps explain why.

If you’re likely to spend any time traversing sealed roads in the hermetically sealed bubble of your car this summer, then it might be worth understanding how Aotearoa became so dependent on private motor vehicles.

Four fun Spinoff stories for summer

But this is the holidays, so perhaps you want to read something slightly less serious?

I put my body on the line for this one – aka had to wear rabbit ears and sweat in a sticky dark bar in Ponsonby, in the heady exhilaration of NFT hype just before the crypto bubble popped. It was so absurd that the story basically wrote itself.  

This article by Alex Casey investigates how a luxury ham ended up abandoned on a footpath in Hobsonville Point – an insight into some of the truly bizarre events which make their way to local Facebook pages.

Where did flashing hazard lights as a “thank you” in traffic come from?

I loved the attention to detail in Toby Morris’s ranking of New Zealand’s 50 greatest logos; something to spot while you’re out and about this summer.

The Spinoff's independent, homegrown journalism is only possible thanks to the support of our members. Their generous donations power all our mahi including this newsletter. If you’ve enjoyed The Spinoff this year and have the means, please show your support by making a contribution today. E tōmua ana tōku mihi.

Three things to watch

The Spinoff’s video arm, Hex Work Productions, has had an amazingly busy year. I loved the whimsy of this documentary about Lynley Dodd, picture-book extraordinaire; appreciated the nuance of all the topics tackled by Alice Snedden’s Bad News, but especially the prison episode; and was totally charmed by the hard work and intimate family dynamics in Takeout Kids, particularly Brooklyn’s episode. Definitely worth sitting down with some of these videos if you haven’t watched them already.

Two book recommendations

I read a lot of articles and listen to a lot of podcasts but sometimes (often!) I crave that sense of total immersion in someone else’s world that reading a book gives me. These are two of my favourites from the year and the links that made me read them.

First, Karachi Vice by Samira Shackle is narrative non-fiction which tells the story of five people making a life amidst violence, urbanization, poverty, and changing political tides in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city. For a taste, read Shackle’s longread about ambulance driver Muhammed Safdar, who features in the book too.

Second, hearing Karen Cheung talk about resistance to authoritarian regimes in Hong Kong with Lebanese activist Joey Ayoub on the podcast The Fire These Times convinced me completely to pick up her memoir The Impossible City, about music, mental illness, protests, and building new communities. For a taster, read one of Cheung’s essays in The New York Times.

(Do both of these recommendations make it abundantly obvious that I’m interested in ordinary urban life in other places? Well, we all have our foibles…)

One request for The Weekend’s readers

And finally, making links doesn’t have to go just one way. So if any readers of The Weekend find something fascinating over the holidays that can be delivered in hyperlink form, please reply to this email and tell me about it – I’d love to include some reader recommendations in a newsletter in the new year. Meri Kirihimete, नया साल मुबारक हो and have a good one!