I saw Ocean’s 8 last weekend and, consequently, I’ve been reading entirely too much about heists, grifters, and confidence women.
- Scammers: they’re just like us “…a good example of the road all grifters must navigate: the thin line between fun evil and dark evil.”
- The fiends and the folk heroes of grifter season: “Grifter season comes irregularly, but it comes often in America, which is built around mythologies of profit and reinvention and spectacular ascent. The shady, audacious figures at its center exist on a spectrum, from folk hero to disgrace. The season begins when the public catches on to a series of scammers of a particularly appealing sort—the kind who provoke both Schadenfreude and admiration.”
- How an aspiring ‘It’ Girl tricked New York’s party people — and its banks: “Of course, this money almost always comes with strings attached. Sometimes you can barely see them, like that vaudeville bit in which the pawn dives for a loose bill only to find it pulled just ahead. Still, everyone makes the reach. Because here, money is the one thing that no one can ever have enough of.”
- I found this observation incredibly interesting: Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes had the same tell: their hair
- And yet: even though Elizabeth Holmes is definitely a scammer, she’s going to be able to keep her job.
- A famous diamond, a Gold Coast store and a heist so close to being pulled off.
- The motivational appeal of heist movies: there’s just something so wonderful about seeing 8 brilliant women come together to pull off a cleverly designed plan–and get a bit of revenge at the same time.
- A couple of provocative essays from Electric Literature that I found to be interesting: Vladimir Nabokov taught me how to be a feminist and the literary roots of the incel movement.
- McSweeney’s has some important tips for all us ladies out there: modern tips for looking after your human husband (this reminds me of nothing so much as Katherine V. Forrest’s Daughters of a Coral Dawn…)
- And this. This is the single best thing I read last week: woman inherits the earth: dinosaur feminism and virgin births.
