Recommended Reading #16: Hello Again 👻

This week: The one in which this newsletter returns.

Aug 17, 2025

Hello and Hallo dearest reader,

it’s been a minute since we talked, I know. But not only was I caught up in some pretty overwhelming personal business, I honestly struggled with making sense of the world we live in right now and the global vibe shift to, well, evil.

Not that there was no evil in the world before, it would be woefully naive to ignore the realities of life for the global majority, yet: it’s becoming increasingly harder to come up with the smidge of cognitive dissonance needed to, well, cope with – picture me gesturing wildly – everything. And at this point, I for one am well beyond the point of cognitive dissonance.

But I missed writing this newsletter, I missed hearing from you, I missed sharing what I listened to and read and heard and watched. Living through this truly hellish media-pocalypse with AI being stuffed down our throats, I think curation is becoming only more important. And personally, I am still the kind of person who thinks through writing. So I’m reporting back as your guide across these tumultous waters. After all, we all need respite, don’t we, respite and words of others to make sense of all this we’re witnessing right now.

I’m so touched that a few of you asked me about the return of Recommended Reading over the past few months! Just a few weeks ago at a birthday party in a hidden garden (I love being reminded that these special places in Berlin still do exist) dear L. told me that she enjoyed reading this newsletter in those long nights nursing her (incredibly cute) newborn. At home writing by myself, I’m often not very sure if anybody else out there needs this at all, so I’m truly honoured every time someone mentions Recommended Reading to me, responds to the newsletter, writes a comment or even supports this thing here by throwing some coins into the digital tipjar Ko-Fi. Love to be of service, and hearing this newsletter helps with getting through the sleepless nights of nursing is the greatest badge of honour I could possibly imagine!

As ever, I can’t wait to hear from you! This week, I’ve got an excellent documentary film for you, a view into the psyche of billionaires, a series of books that I love dearly and that may take your mind off things for a little while, and much more.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Photo Essay: The Age of Extinction

We humans are a weird bunch, aren’t we? We litter and destroy nature, but simultaneously crave it, or at least crave a sanitised version that doesn’t seem as unpredictable – or “dangerous” – as the real thing. A Truman Show-version of nature, if you will. I’m so fascinated by Zed Nelson’s photo series Polar bears in shopping malls, fibreglass mountains, indoor rainforests: how humans got addicted to faking the natural world in the Guardian, and I think I need the book now.

Film: Raw Vegan Nazis

Many a critic has called Soldaten des Lichts (Soldiers of Light) “the most important film of the year” – and I agree, because it shines a light into Germany’s Reichsbürger movement by getting up close and intimate with the protagonists. The main character is David, a raw vegan influencer touting nutritional supplements, who also happens to be deeply involved in the Reichsbürger movement – and leads a community that I don’t know how else to describe than as a cult, and an abusive one at that.

Directors Julian Vogel and Johannes Büttner (who’d been to elementary school with protagonist David, hence being able to film with him and his followers) do not use voice-over commentary – and don’t need to, letting the protagonists speak for themselves is more than enough. And understanding how their communities function, how they see themselves, and what they want to achieve, is an important lesson well beyond the borders of Germany – whatever MAHA influencers in the US are currently selling isn’t too different from David’s shtick.

Soldiers of Light has been screened at a few film festivals, and is currently shown (with English subtitles) in various cinemas around Germany (see below). For international screenings and streaming, keep your eyes peeled on their instagram.

soldatendeslichts.film

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Criticism: Writing Lessons

I’ve read many an academic article in my time, but this is the most impressive I have ever seen: Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s How to Write about Sudan, a riff on this classic – if you can’t open the link, head over to her instagram.

yassmin_a

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Commentary: Billionaires – they’re nothing like us!

WTF is wrong with billionaires? The Rolling Stone piece What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us (accessible link here, audio on the website or through the NYT Audio app) skilfully combines cultural commentary and scientific studies on how billionaires’ brains are wired differently. It’s a long one, but very well worth your time. Key takeaway:

“Wealth tends to make people act like assholes, and the more wealth they have, the more of a jerk they tend to be.”

Surprise!

Book: Noir for a new generation

The three books of Jonathan Ames "Happy Doll" series lying flat on a wooden floor. — Jonathan Ames, please give us more of Happy Doll!

A few years ago, Anton gave me A Man Named Doll to read, guessing I’d like it. Of course I did: contemporary hardboiled crime fiction with an emotionally vulnerable main protagonist who’s been through therapy? Set in contemporary LA without glossing over the various challenges of the city? Sign me up!

Ames is a prolific writer whose work spans ridiculous comedy, personal reflections on boxing, and/or alcoholism, extremely dark noir (You Were Never Really Here), columns in the vein of Bukowski and tv shows (like my forever favourite Bored to Death). And I’m really impressed how he’s propelled the noir/hardboiled genre forward into the 21st century with this one, by creating a protagonist who represents an intriguing form of masculinity. Happy Doll, the (anti)hero of these novels, undoubtedly fulfills a lot of the extremely masculine detective novel tropes: he’s a traumatised private eye who’s able to kill someone with his bare hands – but he’s also soft, tender, and reflective, he expresses honest remorse, as well as care for humans and non-humans alike, he meditates and seeks spiritual enlightenment. While being thrust into very violent circumstances, of course. Plus, Ames’ rich and vibrant descriptions of Los Angeles elevate the city itself to another main protagonist. And I’m not only writing that because Happy Doll happens to frequent the Dresden in Los Feliz, which is also my favourite bar in LA. We’re so alike!!!

We are surrounded by incredible brutality these days, so I can imagine that some of you would choose to rather not to read about more violence and corruption in their free time. And to those of you I say: you are better adjusted than I am, and in the next issue I have just the recommendation for you. But for everyone else: Happy Doll is your man. A Man Named Doll and The Wheel of Doll were published in 2021 and 2022 respectively, Karma Doll followed this last April – and I pray to the crime fiction gods that it won’t take another few years for the next one to drop.

tell a friend, won’t you?

Report: Think Foie Gras but you are the duck

Blood in the Machine

How big tech is force-feeding us AI

I do not think it will shock anyone to learn that big tech is aggressively pushing AI products. But the extent to which they have done so might. The sheer ubiquity of AI means that we take for ground the countless ways, many invisible, that these products and features are foisted on us—and how Silicon Valley companies have systematically designed and deployed AI products onto their existing platforms in an effort to accelerate adoption…

2 months ago · 118 likes · Brian Merchant

I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too: Everything is AI – even things that don’t need to be AI, like searching for the last chat with your mate on Whatsapp. Why? The excellent newsletter Blood in the Machine has a piece about big tech’s force feeding strategy.

While we’re at it, I’ve also enjoyed reading Bring Your Slop to Work Day on the blog? newsletter? of Raw Signal, apparently a Canadian consultancy – but they kind of nail the shift towards mid-ness with the use of AI/large language models.
Oh, and the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us has a really good episode on how AI/LLMs kill journalism, too: What Google Zero Means for Journalism – it left me in a pretty bitter mood though, so be warned. And The Cut also has a report on what’s happening rn Inside the Media's Traffic Apocalypse (accessible link)

Recommended Reading #16: Hello Again 👻

This week: The one in which this newsletter returns.

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