Rated Reads this week takes a look at the head-empty life, a catch-up with Simu Liu and the waning appeal of sensationalist reality TV.

Why I’m Embracing My ‘No Thoughts’ Era

Life can be intense, and it certainly has been these last couple of years. It’s easy to have lots of thoughts about it all – but what if you had absolutely none of them? For Refinery29, Olivia Allen pitches a life of relaxing and letting the head empty out. There’s something relaxing in not thinking, which shouldn’t have to be explained.

Becoming a Marvel superhero tends to juice your career a little, and so it was with Simu Liu, who shot to fame last year with his role as the titular character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (he was Shang-Chi, not the rings). Now, his next big project is… Greta Gerwig’s Barbie?? For GQ, Liu explains it all, and makes a pitch for the Barbie script’s excellence that’ll remind you that it’s the Lady Bird and Little Women director at bat.

Has Reality TV Lost Its Bite?

Thanks to Netflix getting in on the game, reality TV is bigger business than ever, and so are questions like – how are there so many episodes of Married At First Sight Australia? Despite the boom, though, there are signs of a bust. Love Island, the king of this new wave of reality shows, flagged in the ratings last year, and some exhaustion greets the prospect of a new season next month. VICE investigates how audiences are becoming conscious of the harsh mental health impacts an jarring artifice of these shows.

WTF is ‘hesidating’?

Hesidating is not a misspelling, that’s for sure. Let Roisin Lanigan at i-D explain this new concept to you. It involves the avoidant behaviours that we’ve all established during the pandemic and the ensuing ways that society has changed how it considers intimacy, Simple?

From Ex Machina to Men, Alex Garland is always exploring original sin

Spooky director Alex Garland is about to return with the expectedly creepy pastoral horror of his new film, Men. As Vox explains, Men is set to continue a concern with spoiled paradises that’s run through his whole career, from the AI gone wrong of Ex Machina to the weird and warped worlds of Annihilation. Alas, we cannot forget the bear.

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