Read this: the baddie never left
All the buzziest cover stories and cultural commentary from last week—curated and condensed by yours truly.
There are too many good articles on the internet and not enough mental energy to read them all between TikToks, Slack threads and your third iced coffee. That’s where I come in. Every Sunday night, I round up the best celebrity profiles, essays, fashion features, political thinkpieces, and Internet fever dreams—filtered through my brain so you don’t have to use yours.
These are the links worth knowing, the interviews worth skimming, and the essays you should reference in conversation. If you want to go deeper, the link’s right there. If not? I’ve got you covered.
This week’s top reads include: Kylie’s unapologetic return to baddie supremacy, Tinx’s sex life, AI anxiety, and everyone quiet quitting Saturday Night Live.
Kylie Jenner: ‘The baddie never left’
Dazed (Cover story)
By Kacion Mayers
Credit: Dazed, The Celebration Issue
Kylie talks legacy, lip kits, and why full glam isn’t going anywhere…even if the internet is pretending to like freckles and chapstick now. This cover story doubles as both image rehab and life update: she opens up about growing up on camera, running a business empire before she could legally drink, and why she’s still the most-followed Kardashian-Jenner on Instagram (sorry, Kim).
According to the Dazed cover story by Kacion Mayers, Jenner is not rebranding. She’s scaling. The pink frosting, vodka sodas, and Crumbl collabs aren’t desperate pivots; they’re product extensions from someone who’s been monetizing the beauty-industrial complex since middle school. I mean, a boy legit once said her lips were too small to kiss…so she overlined them and launched a billion-dollar brand.
This profile traces how Jenner’s early experiments became an empire, long before TikTok made GRWMs a genre. Her glam might be softer now, but don’t get it twisted: in her words, “the baddie never left.”
Tinx Wants You to Be Horny
PAPER Magazine
By Ivan Guzman
Credit: PAPER Magazine
Christina Najjar (aka Tinx) has traded her “Rich Mom Walk” persona for something messier and a lot more fun: your horny existential aunt with a book deal. In this PAPER Q&A, she opens up about Hotter in the Hamptons—a novel-slash-TV-show she describes as Sex and the City meets TikTok—and reflects on brand burnout, public cancellation, and the slow soul-death of being online too long.
Tinx knows the influencer pipeline well: start oversharing, go viral, get brand deals, water yourself down, repeat. “I used to talk so much shit,” she says. “Now I think, what if that brand wants to work with me?” She’s done pretending she has it all together. Now, she’s betting on longform: books, podcasts, horny photo shoots, maybe even a Pop Crave tweet. Her goal? Revive eroticism for the end times. “To be horny is to be alive,” she declares. Fair enough girl.
Two Paths for A.I.
The New Yorker
By Joshua Rothman
Credit: The New Yorker
This piece is a bit heavier but worth it, especially if you’re as intrigued by AI → terminator pipeline as I am. The essay in The New Yorker’s Open Questions section tackles two very fun possibilities: that AI will either become sentient and kill us all or stay dumb and still ruin everything. Truly a choose-your-own-dystopia situation.
On one side, you’ve got former OpenAI insiders yelling “Code red!” about machines outsmarting humanity by 2027. On the other, academic skeptics saying, “Relax, AI’s not magic.” The article reads like a philosophical cage match between tech doomsday preppers and Ivy League buzzkills, and somehow they’re both right.
If you’ve ever stared at ChatGPT and thought, “This thing is either the future of civilization or the reason I’ll lose my job and never write again,” this essay will feel alarmingly familiar.
So, Who’s Leaving Saturday Night Live This Fall?
Vanity Fair
By Chris Murphy
Credit: Vanity Fair
The Season 50 finale has aired, which means it’s officially time for Saturday Night Live: Who’s Getting Axed Edition. Vanity Fair’s Chris Murphy breaks down the looming cast shuffle with the usual mix of speculation, coded farewells, and “we’re just taking some time to think” PR lingo.
The headlines: after nine seasons, Mikey Day might finally trade in sketch comedy for cake judging full-time. Heidi Gardner’s hinting at burnout. Bowen Yang, who’s racked up Emmy noms, iconic sketches, and a cult-level podcast following (me included), could be nearing a graceful exit after seven memorable seasons.
There’s no drama—yet. But with new cast members already in rotation and Lorne Michaels inching toward the great Canadian exit he’s been teasing since 2021, it’s clear the show’s heading into another “transitional era.” Read on for retirement theories, backhanded compliments, and who might be vying for Lorne’s crown.
Chase Sui Wonders Is Crushing—Just Not How She Expected
Highsnobiety
Credit: Highsnobiety
Chase Sui Wonders, Harvard grad and one-time Pete Davidson girlfriend, is in her Chinatown studio with a new mission: less red carpet, more Final Draft. This profile is less about reinvention and more about what happens after the pop culture buzz fades…and how to make work anyway. She talks about nearly quitting the industry to work retail in Beijing, getting her break thanks to a two-page Hail Mary email from her best friend, and why she’s more excited by directing than leading-lady life.
What’s she up to right now? She’s writing, collaborating with friends, and plotting a hometown-set project she won’t say much about (except that it’s funny). She’s interested in messy stories and characters; ones that explore identity, ambition, crash-and-burn women. And while she’s satirizing Hollywood on Apple TV’s The Studio, she’s also still romantic enough to think good art can come from it. “Maybe it’s delusional,” she says. I guess as an actress, that’s a good kind of delusion.
Miley Cyrus Told Us to Ask Her Anything
New York Times Magazine (The Interview)
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro
Credit: New York Times Magazine
Miley Cyrus has spent the past two decades doing what most people pay thousands in therapy to figure out: unpacking childhood fame, detaching from parental expectations, and learning how to reparent herself (on-camera, in heels). In this extended Q&A with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, she reflects on her Disney-fied adolescence, the backlash that came with trying to grow up in public (yes, she remembers the “Millions of Moms Against Miley” petition), and how long it really took for people to stop treating her like a punchline and start calling her an artist.
At 33, fresh off her first Grammy win for “Flowers,” Miley is mourning her grandma, mentoring Sabrina Carpenter (in her head), and releasing a new album called Something Beautiful, which is about exactly that—rage, death, and her mom going to Italy without her. She talks therapy, fame, sobriety, and the psychic weight of generational trauma. (Her EMDR breakthroughs sound like a sci-fi reboot of This Is Us, in the best way.)
Favorite quote: “All you have to say is ‘2013,’ and I know where we’re going.”
Nicole Kidman Is On a High
Allure
By Danielle Pergament
Credit: Allure
In this unusually intimate cover story, Nicole Kidman invites writer Danielle Pergament into a hyperbaric chamber (literally) and into her grief (figuratively), opening up about everything from her mother’s recent death to quantum physics to yellow-tinted sleep glasses. It’s part wellness satire, part existential TED Talk, and part proof that Kidman remains one of Hollywood’s most magnetic weirdos.
She reflects on aging (“I have more time behind me than ahead”), parenting (“I mother with full sacrifice”), and career power (“I can help people now—and I love that”). She talks about the myth of intimidation, how she’s still processing loss, and why she only takes roles that terrify her now. The profile is as rich and contradictory as Kidman herself: part Chanel No. 5 goddess, part dorky mom who watches car auctions and naps on floors.
Hacks Stopped Being About Comedy
New York Magazine—Vulture
By Kathryn VanArendonk
Credit: Vulture
Once upon a time, Hacks was about comedy—stand-up, the ethics of a good joke, the emotional labor of being funny. This season has been a bit different. It’s more about late-night television, which means ditching all that earnest soul-baring in favor of influencer bits (@Jake Shane), Antoni Porowski cooking segments, and a social media editor named Dance Mom. Deborah Vance gets her own talk show, Ava becomes her showrunner, and they both immediately sell out.
By the finale, it all blows up. This Vulture piece makes the case that Hacks by critic Kathryn VanArendonk finally found its voice by admitting it lost its soul. It’s now a savage workplace satire about what it takes to stay relevant. (Sadly, that story feels a lot more true).
Jenna Ortega Is Not Asking Permission
Harper’s Bazaar
By Carina Chocano
Credit: Harper’s Bazaar
Jenna Ortega had plans to escape to an Icelandic farm after Wednesday blew up. Instead, she filmed Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, raised chinchillas in Ireland, and became a producer on Wednesday’s second season. This profile with writer Carina Chocano follows her through back-to-back film shoots, her complicated relationship with fame, and what it’s like being taken seriously as a 22-year-old who’s been working since she was nine.
She opens up about childhood fame, public perception, and trying to be taken seriously while still being handed schoolgirl roles. I don’t usually love Ortega, but I found this piece to be a thoughtful look at what happens to someone caught between child star baggage and adult expectations, who’s just now starting to feel like she has real control.
Blind Date With Cosmo
Cosmopolitan
Cosmo’s taking blind dates literally…like, actual blindfolds. In Blind Date, editor-in-chief Willa Bennett sits down for dinner with celebrities like Reneé Rapp, Dylan Efron, Benito Skinner, and Serena Kerrigan while completely blindfolded. Her job? Figure out who she’s dining with based on a round of rapid-fire questions.
The series also pulls from the Cosmopolitan archives for some throwback dating advice, because who doesn’t want to hear what a 1997 sex horoscope thinks of their love life?
Blind Date premieres Monday, June 2. Watch the teaser now if you’re impatient and/or nosy.
Until Next Week...
If you made it this far, congrats: you are now culturally up to date and don’t need to pretend you “just haven’t had time to read it yet.” Send this to a friend who still has 13 unread NYT tabs open, or forward me anything you think should be included next week. (!!!)