I read this article when it first came out four years ago. I’m not generally someone who needs/heeds trigger warnings (though I’m cool with having them for peop

I read this article when it first came out four years ago. I’m not generally someone who needs/heeds trigger warnings (though I’m cool with having them for people who do) but this is probably one of the few pieces of journalism I’ve read that really viscerally fucked me up. I think it’s the way the first few paragraphs vacuum away the politics and history and just isolate these moments of true existential horror, then make you imagine them over and over again from different angles... Yeah, it’s a lot. I definitely recommend people read it. Read it because thinking about death is important. Read it because the questions about history and how we document it are important. Read it because it’s just damn good writing. But read it on a sunny afternoon with plans to do something fun later, because the headspace it puts you into isn’t somewhere you may want to stay too long. Your mileage may vary.