Lunch Break Reads: October 28, 2025

Young Canadians are spending their way through existential dread, and a new feature in Maclean's explains why. "The Doom Spenders" explores how a generation facing impossible housing costs, wage stagnation, and climate anxiety has turned to splurging on luxuries they can't afford as a form of control. It's retail therapy with a nihilistic edge: if long-term financial security feels out of reach, why not buy the concert tickets, the designer bag, the $50 cold plunge session?

This ProPublica investigation shows how Oklahoma has become the blueprint for Trump administration education policies. The state mandated Bible instruction, restricted teaching about racism, promoted PragerU videos, and embedded election conspiracy theories into standards. The result? Oklahoma ranks near the bottom nationally in student achievement, with second-lowest proficiency rates and last-place teacher pay.

Single people are increasingly using AI to write dating profiles and flirty messages, with 26 percent of daters now admitting to using it. This New York Magazine piece explores the consequences: the nurse practitioner whose grammar suddenly became suspiciously eloquent, the woman accused of being a Russian scammer after sending an AI-crafted text, and profiles that all sound identically "flavorless."

Vanessa Veselka revisits a 1985 encounter when she was a 15-year-old hitchhiker and a trucker pulled a knife on her before letting her run into the woods. Decades later, she sees news about serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, a long-haul trucker convicted of torturing and murdering young women, and begins investigating whether he was her attacker.