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Sitdown Sunday: 'The dark room which should have been a haven began to feel like a prison'

Settle back in a comfy chair and sit back with some of the week’s best longreads.

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.  

1. Cat Person 

Alexis Nowicki reads a viral New Yorker short story, and starts to wonder: ‘Is this about me?’.

(Slate, approx 18 mins reading time)

Roupenian’s story was the first work of short fiction to ever go viral; as the Guardian put it, “Cat Person” “sent the internet into meltdown.” Now it’s being made into a movie starring Nicholas Braun, who plays Cousin Greg on Succession. But for me, the experience of reading it was particularly uncanny. I remember that, as I scrolled, I had to sit down on the train instead of leaning against the door as usual because I needed the added stability.

2. Long covid

Lucy Adams (44) writes about her battle with long Covid.

(BBC, approx 16 mins reading time)

I regularly lay in a dark room by myself because I couldn’t cope with the noise of family life and the sense that light – any light – was too bright. The dark room which should have been a haven began to feel like a prison, a place I couldn’t escape. The bed which should have felt warm and comfortable felt like a ship lurching in a rough sea.

3. Reunited

A dad searches for his missing son for 24 years. 

(New York Times, approx 5 mins reading time)

The apparent happy ending captivated China, where Mr. Guo has become something of a folk hero. His cross-country odyssey, during which he said he was thrown from his bike at least once and slept outdoors when he could not afford a hotel, inspired the 2015 film “Lost and Love,” starring the renowned Hong Kong actor Andy Lau.

4. The Beatles

A look behind the scenes of Peter Jackson’s new movie about the Beatles, Get Back.

(Vanity Fair, approx 17 mins reading time)

It’s the Beatles as none would ever see or hear them again—their last live performance as a group, January 30, 1969. It’s also the Beatles as none of us, 52 years on, has ever seen them. The approximately 43-minute sequence from director Peter Jackson’s forthcoming documentary, The Beatles: Get Back—screened exclusively for Vanity Fair—shows the full, uninterrupted concert on the roof of 3 Savile Row, the band’s headquarters, including iconic performances that would appear on their last album, Let It Be. The original footage, taken from at least nine different cameras, has been scrubbed to astonishing clarity, detail, and color, a rapturous window in time.

5. Jason Sudeikis’s hell of a year

The actor and former SNL comic on the surprise success of his show Ted Lasso.

(GQ, approx 23 mins reading time)

He became so adept at playing those types of characters, Sudeikis said, that at some point he realized he’d have to make an effort to do something different. “It’s up to me to not just play an a-hole in every movie,” he said. In conversation he is digressive, occasionally melancholy, prone to long anecdotes and sometimes even actual parables—closer, in other words, to Ted Lasso, the gentle, philosophical football coach he co-created, than any of the preening jerks he used to be known for. But he can definitely kick a soccer ball pretty good.

6. Sparks

An interview with the incomparable musicians Sparks (brothers Russell and Ron Mael), who feature in a new documentary by Edgar Wright.

(The Guardian, approx 10 mins reading time)

The performance turned the Los Angeles duo into a sensation in the UK. Hundreds of thousands of singles were sold – just missing out on No 1 – and soon mobs of screaming fans invaded stages at concerts, ripping the clothes from their scrawny bodies. In a more just world, the song that catapulted them there would possess the same ubiquity, and be sung with the same roaring drunken gusto in pubs and karaoke bars across the world as Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (which followed a year later), but stratospheric stardom, Live Aid and an Oscar-winning biopic were not in Sparks’ trajectory. 

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…

An article from 2017 about the tech insiders who are worried about the power of smartphone addiction.

(The Guardian, approx 20 mins reading time)

In 2007, Rosenstein was one of a small group of Facebook employees who decided to create a path of least resistance – a single click – to “send little bits of positivity” across the platform. Facebook’s “like” feature was, Rosenstein says, “wildly” successful: engagement soared as people enjoyed the short-term boost they got from giving or receiving social affirmation, while Facebook harvested valuable data about the preferences of users that could be sold to advertisers. The idea was soon copied by Twitter, with its heart-shaped “likes” (previously star-shaped “favourites”), Instagram, and countless other apps and websites.

More: The best reads from every previous Sitdown Sunday

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    Mute Matt Donovan
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:06 PM

    Hey Journal, for those of us who won’t be in a position to see it straight away, please; no spoilers. Like many I’ve waited 32 years to catch up with Luke, Han, Leia & Chewie. We won’t mention the prequels…

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    Mute Dean Anderson
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:16 PM

    I wonder one day will Disney and JJ Abrams be able to de-Jar Jar the prequels and release a special edition where Anakin isn’t so whingey…

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    Mute Chris Judge
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:21 PM

    “please; no spoilers”

    You’re probably safer just avoiding the internet until you see it.

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    Mute Chris Judge
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:31 PM

    But, avoiding the internet is impossible. If you use Google chrome, there’s a few extensions you can use that will block any possible spoilers.

    This will block all star wars related stuff.
    http://wap.engadget.com/2015/12/15/star-wars-spoiler-blocker-chrome/

    Or there’s another where you can change what to block, so useful for everything and not just Star Wars:
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unspoiler/oookgbbhgojdebhnmkmhgfagoiknifgi

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    Mute Ignoreland
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    Dec 15th 2015, 1:48 PM

    Jar Jar Binks could actually have been an interesting character… rather than just a very racist stereotype:
    http://www.cracked.com/video_19728_how-internet-fixed-star-wars-prequels.html

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:31 PM

    Luke wakes up in the shower and realised the last 40 years was a dream?

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    Mute Thomas Delaney
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:55 PM

    FROM MY POINT OF VIEW THE JEDIS ARE EVIL!!! Worst line ever. Great light sabre fight though.

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    Mute Mark Godfrey
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:13 PM

    Hopefully no spoilers will get out,I still haven’t gotten over people spoiling Titanic by saying the ship sank in the end

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    Mute Ben Dawkins
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:59 PM

    The butler did it.

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:32 PM

    It didn’t sink, J.P. Morgan sold it as scrap and he insured it well for himself too…

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 8:47 PM

    That is a joke by the way…

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    Mute windbag
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:08 PM

    Any Spoilers……I will find you and I will kill you….

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    Mute Tim Outrage
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:20 PM

    The bad guy is Luke’s son

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    Mute SCO Electrical
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:21 PM

    Wrong movie, and they take his wife

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:26 PM

    He dies in the end

    3
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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:29 PM

    Kermit the frog and says to Luke, you are my father?

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    Mute bacoxy
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    Dec 15th 2015, 11:56 AM

    It is unbelievable how good it is…

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    Mute SCO Electrical
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:21 PM

    Live long and prosper

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    Mute David McShite
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:10 PM

    I was one of the lucky few to attend a private screening and it was EPIC!
    I didn’t expect Han Solo to die of a chronic case of Aldebron Piles though.

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    Mute Ken Pepper
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    Dec 15th 2015, 1:13 PM

    The last scene is amazing…. Who would have thought Jar Jar Binks was really Luke’s father ???

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    Mute Edward
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:28 PM

    passes the bechdel test.

    thejournal never fails to get a liberal feminist dig in.

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    Mute just readin
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:24 PM

    Did Luke pass his repeat Jedi exams yet?

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:33 PM

    He passed something, it had to be tested, lol.

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    Mute Lad
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:12 PM

    Perhaps getting reviews from crazy excited fans happy just to be there is a bad idea for expectations. I think a critical view might be better from a journalism perspective.

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    Mute Tim Outrage
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:21 PM

    How dare you bring logic and reason to the Journal.

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    Mute Bunny
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:20 PM

    It’s sad that people watch movies testing if they pass that Bechdel shit

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    Mute Uncle Monty
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:23 PM

    I haven’t seen any of the films. Are they any good?

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    Mute Ryan Hardy
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    Dec 15th 2015, 1:41 PM

    No

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    Mute Ciarán
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    Dec 15th 2015, 12:03 PM

    I’m fully prepared for lots of poetic rhyming with the original trilogy, fan service and general enjoyment followed by an uneasy sense of disappointment. If it exceeds this then I’ll admit that I’ve misjudged JJ.

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    Mute Peter
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    Dec 15th 2015, 3:00 PM

    Should I watch any of the previous ones for this new one to make sense? I’d like to see it but I want to understand it. I haven’t seen any of the movies.

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    Mute Dean Anderson
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    Dec 15th 2015, 3:29 PM

    @ignoreland he could have been and a lot less annoying too if he wasn’t a cgi caricature. What was Lucas thinking. I really don’t know

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:27 PM

    In a toilet far far away, use the force Luke…

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    Mute Michael Sands
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:26 PM

    I loved it when they blew off his legs, lol.

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    Mute TommyRyder
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:36 PM

    Anyone else think some scenes resembled Skellig Mikel?

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    Mute Thomas Delaney
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    Dec 15th 2015, 7:57 PM

    That was the most whimsical jape of the season old bean.

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