More weird text spam + reading, music, and TV recommendations

Read Max roundup 7/5/2022

“you can order the cheez it tostada without toppings. giant cheez it” via @Twinkbride

Greetings from Read Max HQ. Before we start, a quick note: I’m going to do another mailbag edition later this week. Have any burning questions? Need advice? Want to share a crackpot theory? Looking for a very specific recommendation? Reply to this newsletter, or email me at maxread@gmail.com.

Thank you to readers who contributed their strange texts for this week’s column on the “pig-butchering” fraud networks behind the strange wrong-number texts that have been seeping into inboxes across the world:

What's the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?

Since publishing, I’ve seen a bunch of other fascinatingly weird wrong-number touts on Twitter — some with intriguing suggestions of wealth and success…

via @GreasyPencil

vis @_NateF_

…some with some immediate and engaging narrative tension…

via @CaseyNewton

…and some that I can’t explain at all.

via @WillGroff

This weeks’s content-consumption roundup, featuring recommendations of essays, books, TV shows, movies, and music, is, as always, for paying subscribers only. If you find Read Max useful or enlightening, please consider paying to subscribe. It’s just me and my computer and we rely on readers to survive.

Finally, a housekeeping note: We’re entering the orbit of Vacation Season at Read Max, which means our charmingly irregular schedule will become even more irregular, but also, I hope, even more charming. Paying subscribers will still receive at least one email a week, and we should be back on our regular schedule by August. Please send all questions, concerns, quibbles, qualms, solicitations, ideas, etc., to maxread@gmail.com.

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