Adjacent Weekend

This week: why women's health care costs more and delivers less, a month without headphones, Marina Abramović dying seven times in a Copenhagen cistern, a slate-tile jacket, and a C64 Easter egg that turned into a mystery. Also in the mix: a rule-bending timber house in Japan, a physicist who sailed to Stockholm sure of his Nobel, and a satirical plush toy that screams like a data center.

The insidious, fascinating, and utterly infuriating reason that women's health care is worse than men's

It begins over French 75s in a Chicago lobby bar, where a gynecologic surgeon and a bioethicist start pulling on a thread most patients never see: how medical billing shapes which care gets delivered and which gets shortchanged. It's a long-form Highlight piece with the slow-burn pleasures of a good investigation, and you'll come away looking differently at every line item.

Vox · 20 min read

I quit headphones for a month to break my 'doom-listening' habit

The author's Spotify Wrapped said 104,762 minutes of music in a year, roughly 4.8 hours a day, and that number set off a small personal experiment. What follows is a funny, thoughtful account of what silence does to a commute, a mood, and a sense of self. Good company for a walk without earbuds.

Dazed · 9 min read

We watched Marina Abramović die seven times in a shadowy cistern beneath Copenhagen

Beneath Søndermarken park, opera reaches the audience through the dark before they can locate its source. The piece is a vivid dispatch from an underground performance that turns a subterranean water reservoir into a stage for Abramović's seven deaths. Read it for the atmosphere alone: sound, stone, and dim light doing most of the work.

designboom · 8 min read

“By cataloguing the ephemera that slip between the headlines of my days, future me has a ready reckoner of my life.” — Psyche

Dries Van Noten SS27 took us on a date to the fake movies

After a school-days AW26 season, Julian Klausner takes Dries Van Noten to the cinema for SS27, and the result is part runway review, part love letter to the date-night movie. It's a pleasure for anyone who likes to read fashion as storytelling rather than shopping. Expect good detail on mood, set, and the idea of a film that doesn't exist.

Dazed · 6 min read

Hug this cuddly toy, and hear the piercing scream of real AI data centers

Adopt A Data Center is a plush toy with a punchline: squeeze it and you hear the actual noise of AI infrastructure. It's satire, and it also argues that we choose not to hear certain things when we talk about the cloud. A short, clever read that lingers longer than its length suggests.

designboom · 5 min read

C V Raman: the physicist with a 'Himalayan ego' who went to Stockholm convinced he'd win a Nobel prize

In 1930, Raman booked his passage to Stockholm before the prize was announced, so sure was he of the outcome. This portrait of a brilliant, bristling scientist covers personality as much as physics, and it's a good reminder that confidence and genius sometimes travel together. A fine pick for a quiet Saturday afternoon.

Physics World · 12 min read