IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
The extraordinary story of how caver George Linnane was rescued after falling deep inside a Welsh cave system, injuring himself badly. He speaks about his return to the spot, and how 300 fellow cavers helped with the rescue.
(BBC, approx 8 mins reading time)
For this he needed to learn caving, but fell in love with the pursuit in its own right, adding: “When people think of caving, they think of small passages and crawling and misery. “And that’s really not what it’s about. We do that stuff. But we do it to get to the good stuff, pretty amazing things that 99.9% of the population will never see. “It’s another world down there. It’s like being on the moon or another planet.” He set out in a small group on the morning of 6 November, planning to be out that afternoon.
2. Is old music killing new music?
That’s what Ted Gioia wonders in this piece about how people are still drawn to older music, perhaps at the detriment of newer songs.
(The Atlantic, 12 mins reading time)
Every week I hear from hundreds of publicists, record labels, band managers, and other professionals who want to hype the newest new thing. Their livelihoods depend on it. The entire business model of the music industry is built on promoting new songs. As a music writer, I’m expected to do the same, as are radio stations, retailers, DJs, nightclub owners, editors, playlist curators, and everyone else with skin in the game. Yet all the evidence indicates that few listeners are paying attention.
A profile of the creator of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, whose reputation has certainly taken a kicking in recent years.
(Vulture, approx 41 mins reading time)
It wasn’t just scholars who worshipped him in those days. He was a celebrity showrunner before anyone cared who ran shows. In 2005, the comic-book artist Scott R. Kurtz designed a T-shirt that gestured at Whedon’s stature in popular culture at the time: JOSS WHEDON IS MY MASTER NOW. Marvel later put him in charge of its biggest franchise, hiring him to write and direct 2012’s The Avengers and its sequel Age of Ultron, two of the highest-grossing films of all time. His fans thought of him as a feminist ally, an impression bolstered by his fund-raising efforts for progressive causes. But in recent years, the good-guy image has been tarnished by a series of accusations, each more damaging than the last.
Jeff Weiss writes about the life and death of the rapper Drakeo the Ruler, who was fatally stabbed at a music festival.
(LA Mag, approx 20 mins reading time)
It had been a little over a year since the 28-year-old South Central rapper walked free from the Compton courthouse, swapping a black jail jumpsuit for designer clothes, dazzling jewelry, and blue-faced hundreds, having beaten first-degree murder charges that carried a possible life sentence. Drakeo and I first became close during this final, nearly three-year incarceration. At first, he kept calling in the hopes that I would tell the world about his wrongful persecution. But over hundreds of hours on the phone, the working relationship evolved into a deep friendship. Journalistic responsibilities became secondary to human ones. I’d never witnessed a miscarriage of justice so grave, so intimately.
5. Anatomy of a murder confession
A Texas Ranger named James Holland became famous for extracting confessions from killers – but did his methods encourage innocent people to confess too?
(The Marshall Project, approx 30 mins reading time)
Holland was lying about the license plate and the police list. This was perfectly legal — and effective, since Driskill rummaged through his memories and recalled driving through the area to visit his father, make car payments, and — perhaps — to bid on some home renovation work. He also remembered giving a woman he didn’t know a ride once, but not to Fort Worth. Eventually, he produced a hazy recollection of dropping someone off at a dollar store about a mile from where Hill was abducted.
A look at a controversial pain treatment technique that is being endorsed by celebrities.
(The Cut, approx 25 mins reading time)
Acute pain is a universal human experience, but chronic pain — obliquely defined as pain that lasts longer than should be expected from the initial injury — defies the supposed boundaries between sickness and health, the mind and the body, often with startling results. Where Aristotle thought pain was an emotion (like happiness or sadness) and René Descartes saw it as a sensation (like hot or cold), chronic pain today looks a lot like an identity, a defining way of moving through the world. But those who share the label often have little else in common as chronic pain is associated with everything from low-back pain, arthritis, headaches, and migraine to multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, post-viral syndrome, nerve damage, and genetic disorders.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
RIP Meatloaf, you were a legend. Here’s a piece by Ronan Casey about an incredible story involving the rock icon in Ireland.
(Louder Sound, approx 12 mins reading time)
The rural rockers of Ireland, in particular, are the type of loyal fan every star craves. So long as there’s a fella throwing shapes with a loud guitar and an act who’ll play the hits, they’ll go for it. And so, in 1989, Meat Loaf was booked on a ramshackle tour of some of Ireland’s worst community centres, ballrooms, hotel function rooms and other assorted sheds suddenly deemed good enough to host rock royalty. He even turned up in a few fields.
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