‣ Cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel — which we eagerly anticipated at the beginning of this year — is finally out. Charlie Tyson writes in the New Yorker:Bechdel has long insisted on her artistic independence. “I have less than no interest in speaking to the mainstream,” she told The Comics Journal in 1995. In another interview five years later, she reiterated, “I don’t want to be yet another commodity on network TV. I like being a pervert in the twilight.” In “Spent,” inevitably, Alison’s anti-capitalist reality show fails to sell, and she and Holly end up affirming the value of craft over that of mainstream success.Yet it’s hard to deny that acclaim has advantages. “Spent” is polished, intricately detailed, and bursting with bright color—a visual luxuriousness that stands in contrast to the black-and-white and spiky cross-hatching of the original “Dykes.” Even so, the gang is instantly recognizable, though now gray-haired, a bit stouter, and with expressively lined faces. Ginger, who spent most of the original “Dykes” procrastinating on her dissertation, is now an English professor contemplating retirement. Lois, no longer a promiscuous drag king, remains mischievous and irrepressible, even while getting pilloried on Fox News for leading a school workshop on gender identity. Sparrow works for Planned Parenthood while her partner, a man named Stuart, continues to play the attentive house husband, now sporting a skirt and bun. Their child, J.R., who is nonbinary, is off at college: Oberlin, of course. In other words, the Dykes are back, and so are several of the old comic strip’s signature features—subcultural in-jokes, baroque plant-based cuisine, and freewheeling erotic complications.‣ Apparently New Jersey has a trendy new duplex style, which looks to me like a house with two eyes sticking its tongue out. David Brand reports on the futuristic cubes popping up around the state for Gothamist:The boxy, semi-detached homes are everywhere. They come in shades of beige, cream and slate, with four gigantic front windows, and facades of stucco and gray brick, sometimes with smooth wood cladding for added decor. Nearly all of them feature a pair of matte black garage doors, one for each unit, and either a single dark gray staircase dividing the carports, or two sets of stairs that flank the building.Instead of fully pitched roofs, like the older homes that surround them, the duplexes feature large decks with expansive views of Manhattan. They also come with hardwood flooring, open-concept plans and kitchen islands that developers and real estate agents say attract young urban professionals, many of whom leave New York City for more space.Despite their ubiquity, however, they’re missing something essential to any architectural trend: a name.‣ Nathan Fielder, comedian and possible genius, is back with a truly unhinged season of The Rehearsal loosely revolving around flight safety. Adam Nayman writes about his methods and what they say about our topsy-turvy world in a review for the Walrus:Nathan’s need to obsessively insulate his collaborators against life’s uncertainties via the Fielder Method is, among other things, a pantomime of paternity—one in which father doesn’t necessarily know best. The most uncomfortable episode of season one found Nathan confronted with the unexpected attachment issues of a young boy who’d been enlisted to “play” his son on screen and was now seemingly having difficulty letting go of the relationship. The impression was of a line that had been crossed, and Nathan’s angst over his status as a “Pretend Daddy” (also the episode’s title) cut through the show’s calculus of surrogates, stand-ins, and doppelgangers; it felt real.Determining whether ontologically wonky shows like Nathan for You or The Rehearsal are “real”—measuring how much of their ostensibly spontaneous action is scripted, or whether the people on screen are really everyday civilians or else skillful accomplices—is futile not because the answer is irrelevant but because it matters enough that the auteur has cornered the arguments in advance. “Reality,” Nathan said back on Nathan for You, “is what you make of it,” and he makes good on this premise. The set-ups of Nathan’s projects, with their open-cattle-casting calls and embedded promises of fifteen seconds of fame (temptations yoked tightly to non-disclosure agreements), are not only conducive to bizarro moments but finessed for escalation.Nathan loves frameworks, and he also loves showing himself lurking at the edges of various construction sites, overseeing while being seen. The Rehearsal ’s much-vaunted scale replicas of a dingy Brooklyn bar, fluorescent airport lounge, stylized studio headquarters, and an oversized childhood nursery serve explicitly as prosceniums or echo chambers. They amplify their own artifice and make all the world into a (sound) stage.‣ Speaking of aviation, the Washington Post‘s Natalie B. Compton has the scoop on airlines that are scamming passengers who travel solo:“Airline prices can vary by number of travelers, but the differences aren’t consistent or clearly tied to group size,” a spokesperson for the travel booking company Kayak said in an email. “KAYAK data shows no clear trend regardless of number of travelers — it’s important to note that the examples in the [Thrifty Traveler] article involve one-way fares on a few uncommon routes, not round-trip tickets.”It’s unclear how long airlines have charged varying rates by passenger number, or when the tactics are applied. The Post confirmed this pricing structure is not new for Delta. But it’s new to some airfare experts beyond Potter.Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, said historically airlines have charged more for multiple tickets. While he hasn’t personally seen a price change for solo versus multiple passengers, “my understanding is that this new pricing is not new,” he said in an email.Kelly said American Airlines rolled out these types of fares months ago, and Delta and United have recently started to copy the approach.‣ Three months after ICE ambushed Mahmoud Khalil in his Columbia-owned apartment building, Noor Abdalla gave birth to their son, Deen. The Cut‘s Angelina Chapin speaks with Abdalla about living through her husband’s detention and case as a new mother, the injustice of which cannot be captured in words:As she learns how to soothe and feed Deen, Abdalla is also fielding calls from the lawyers working on her husband’s case. Becoming a public figure has been overwhelming for the self-described homebody, who often skipped the social events at dental school because they felt like “too much.” While out walking Deen recently, she was approached by a man who had been staring at her. “Is that Mahmoud’s son?” he asked. “We’re all supporting you.” She was relieved, and touched, but wondered what would happen if she was confronted by a person not as sympathetic to Khalil. She understands that all the attention has given their family resources that aren’t available to the roughly 1,200 other immigrants locked up in the same detention center. On May 20, Abdalla and Deen traveled more than ten hours to Louisiana to watch Khalil’s latest immigration hearing and to visit in-person so that her husband could hold his newborn for the first time. Initially, ICE denied the request. But after a team of lawyers spent 24 hours remonstrating with the detention center’s warden and a court, the family was allowed to meet for one hour in an empty courtroom. When Abdalla walked in, with Deen strapped to her chest, she burst into tears. “Mahmoud said, ‘He’s so fragile,’” Abdalla told me. “You could tell he was nervous. He didn’t want to hurt him.” Khalil played with his son’s tiny fingers and toes, and when the baby started to fuss, he walked Deen around the room while singing an Arabic lullaby. “There was a lot of emotion,” she says. “There was a little bit of pain in there as well, thinking about the missed moments over the past month” — Deen’s first visit to their local bakery with their favorite cheesecake, Khalil’s Columbia graduation. (Students chanted her husband’s name at commencement, but Abdalla says no one from the administration has reached out to her.)‣ And in such an era of regression and climate destruction, or Atmos, writer Roxane Gay considers what reproductive freedom means, asking the questions on many of our minds. For Atmos, she writes:As the prospect of having children becomes more and more unlikely, I think about all of the much younger people who feel like they won’t have the opportunity to expand their families, either. There are the emotional considerations: fear of making a mistake while raising a child, fear of perpetuating cycles of trauma, fear of being subsumed by parenthood. There are the material considerations: the threat of maternal mortality, having enough money and other resources, achieving a work/life balance, a dearth of care infrastructure coupled with the often exorbitant costs of childcare. As most parents know, to raise children successfully, you need a series of small miracles to occur.And then there is climate anxiety: the fear that we are bringing children into a forsaken world where young, innocent lives might be cut too short by climate-related disaster, or their quality of life will be far too diminished, or the ecological impact of increasing the world’s population will only exacerbate climate change. Some people have determined that they cannot or will not in good conscience bring children into this world. An entire generation of potential parents now believes that there is no possibility that they too might receive those small miracles parenthood demands. Having children is a practical consideration or it is political—or it is both. It is not only an emotional or material decision. It is a moral one, too. ‣ Mini organisms known as foraminifera have been around for 180 million years — and their fossils bear traces of the ocean’s history and climate change. Tim Vernimmen explains for Knowable Magazine:What do these past events tell us about what we might expect for foraminiferan diversity — and that of other species — on a planet we are rapidly warming up today?In a 2023 study, Pearson and colleagues used foraminifera fossil data to predict the fate of the ocean’s twilight zone, a region 200 to 1,000 meters below the surface. They estimated that the food supply reaching the middle of this zone will decline more than 20 percent in a mild warming scenario in which the average global surface temperature rise stays below 2 degrees Celsius, and decline up to 70 percent in the unlikely event that temperatures rise 6 degrees by 2100. That’s because warming increases the rate of decay of falling organic debris, so that less of it reaches the twilight zone.This would likely wreak havoc in this vast but understudied part of the world that provides crucial habitat to many marine animals that dive for prey as well as to unique species like lanternfish that descend there during the day.‣ Move over, VeggieTales — there’s a new musical vegetable group in town (whose album, for the record, I would 100% listen to): @rtenews The London Vegetable Orchestra come to Ireland for the first time on Saturday 7 June, and there won’t be a traditional instrument in sight 🥕 The musicians turn carrots, courgettes and peppers into working instruments to perform famous tunes. They are performing in Dublin at Cruinniú na nÓg, Ireland’s national day of free creativity for children and young people. #orchestra #vegetables #carrot #cruinniúnanóg #londonvegetableorchestra #rtenews ♬ original sound – RTÉ News ‣ No because why don’t librarians get to read all day? @f.c.library #fultoncountypa #fultoncounty #pennsylvania #library #librarytok #fultoncountylibrary #trendytuesday Thank you @PleasantonFun for the inspiration! ♬ original sound – The Fulton County Library ‣ The work of a true bestie is never done: @scottkress_ legend says we’re still saying goodbye 😭 (Ib @bbashyy!) ♬ original sound – scottkress ‣ And lastly, it isn’t really Pride Month without a Home Depot run: @davidgetsdressed THE HOMO DEPOT 👷🏻♂️🌈 It’s Pride Month, so let’s revisit this gem from last year. #pridemonth #gaypride #lgbt #gay #gaytiktok ♬ original sound – David Jon Acosta Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.