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. Wolf Hunters of Wall Street
Michael Lewis takes a long look at the US financial markets, specifically high frequency traders. He believes that the market is rigged by these people – and a day after his book was released, the FBI announced an investigation into this type of trading.
(New York Times, approx 56 minutes reading time, 11,202 words)
Right away he saw that, even though his friend was using software supplied to him by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and the other big firms, he was experiencing exactly the same problem as RBC: He would hit a button to buy or sell a stock, and the market would move away from him. “When I see this guy trading, and he was getting screwed — I now see that it isn’t just me. My frustration is the market’s frustration. And I was like, ‘Whoa, this is serious.’ ”
Eliana Dockterman meets the newest generation of young female comics in the US, and argues that they’re bringing feminism by stealth to our TV screens.
(Time, approx 6 minutes reading time, 1362 words)
The numbers are surprising considering that almost every sketch on Schumer’s show comments on gender politics in some way. A famous sketch from last season featured a group of female friends meeting on the street, each offering compliments to each other as they met. Every woman who received a compliment would respond with self-deprecation.
Chris Stokel-Walker shows us how Newcastle has gone from a run down and destitute former mining city to a the UK’s second most vibrant tech sector.
(Buzzfeed, approx 12 minutes reading time, 2493 words)
There is an acknowledgement that Newcastle as of yet isn’t strong enough to stand on its own, though. It needs to face outwards (hence many of the startups founded here have subsequently established a base in London), and can benefit from working between the two. There isn’t a shortage of skilled workers coming out of regional universities.
Alex Morris meets young couples who are doing relationships and marriage their own way. Instead of accepting monogamy as the norm, they’re embracing open and polyamorous relationships, challenging accepted sexual rules.
(Time, approx 32 minutes reading time, 6422 words)
Certainly, open heterosexual relationships are nothing new. Even the term “open relationship” seems like a throwback, uncomfortably reminiscent of free-love hippies, greasy swingers and a general loucheness so overt as to seem almost kitsch. But Leah and Ryan, 32 and 38, respectively, don’t fit these preconceived ideas. They’re both young professional types.
Charles Homans explores the world of the ‘dead zoo gang’, a group of Irish Travellers who made it their business to steal rhino horns from museums.
(Atavist, approx 94 minutes reading time, 18,874 words)
The crimes had begun several years earlier with a few head-scratching incidents: reports of taxidermists and antiques dealers who had received phone calls from men with Irish accents, asking if they had any rhinoceros horns to sell and evincing no particular concern that transporting or reselling the horns was against the law. Then the thefts began.
James Ross Gardner meets Roby Felix, whose husband Nathan was accused of assaulting their baby Nicholas. Was he guilty?
(Seattle Met, approx 30 minutes reading time, 6135 words)
A number of reexamined cases in recent years—aided by new technology and debate among medical experts—have put proponents of the SBS hypothesis on the defensive. Ernie Lopez, who was serving a 60-year-sentence for shaking an infant in his care to death, is now free, thanks in part to the work of retired Seattle lawyer Heather Kirkwood. So is Audrey Edmunds, a woman charged with the murder of a child in her care in the 1990s.
…AND A CLASSIC READ FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 2007, Ian Parker wrote about Bonobos, the monkey species believed to be peace-loving, matriarchal and sexually liberated. But perhaps the truth about these animals isn’t quite what we imagine.
(New Yorker, approx 58 minutes reading time, 11,708 words)
Bonobos are remarkable, Wind told me, for being capable of “unconditional love.” They were “tolerant, patient, forgiving, and supportive of one another.” Chimps, by contrast, led brutish lives of “aggression, ego, and plotting.” As for humans, they had some innate stock of bonobo temperament, but they too often behaved like chimps.
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