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 some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
The Colombian drug lord’s private menagerie was dismantled after his death in 1993, but the hippos were thought too dangerous to move and left behind. They have been multiplying ever since, and officials are struggling to keep them under control.
(The Guardian, approx 20 mins reading time)
The presence of these beasts in the heart of South America, waddling at night down rural paths and staring into the headlights of jeeps and motorcycles, might be comical if it weren’t so deadly. In Africa, hippos are thought to kill about 500 people a year, making them among the most dangerous animals to humans, according to the BBC and other sources. And while, for now, violent encounters in Colombia have been limited, unsettling incidents are increasing. The beasts have attacked farmers and destroyed crops. Last year, a car struck and killed a hippo crossing a highway. (Hippos tend to spend daytime hours in the water and move around land at night, adding to a menacing sense of danger striking in the dark.) This wasn’t long after a hippo lumbered into the yard of a school, sending frightened teachers and children running for cover. The animal munched on fruit that had fallen from trees before shuffling off to nearby fields. Although nobody was hurt, the incident was widely covered in the Colombian media, increasing pressure on the authorities to do something.
Gordy Megroz goes undercover to report on Richard Overum, a man who hunts businesspeople he suspects are breaking the law, and earns millions from the US government for doing it.
(GQ, approx 21 mins reading time)
Overum’s sense of humor—often childish—helps him add levity to his day-to-day, which is otherwise earnest and sometimes dangerous. He’s been working as a professional whistleblower for over a decade now, zigzagging the country to cozy up to suspects that he charms and cajoles with cunning, lies, and manipulation in order to coax from them the blueprints for any number of white–collar scams, from Ponzi schemes to prime bank frauds. As a motivator, the cash that he might collect is never far from Overum’s mind. Back when it was instituted, in the post-Madoff era, the whistleblower programs were meant to bolster enforcement at underresourced government agencies. Authorities at the SEC and CFTC would now have help in the form of newly incentivized citizens. And in the most general sense, the program has worked as intended: In fiscal year 2023, the SEC received over 18,000 tips, and awarded nearly $600 million to 68 individual whistleblowers.
In an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, Al Pacino recounts growing up in the South Bronx, his complex relationship with his mother before her untimely death, and what drew him to acting.
(The New Yorker, approx 34 mins reading time)
Our South Bronx neighborhood was full of characters. There was a guy in his late thirties or early forties who wore a suit and a collared shirt with a loose, tattered tie. He looked like he had gone to a Sunday service and got ashes spilled all over him. He would quietly walk the streets by himself; when he spoke, the only thing he said was “You don’t kill time—time kills you.” That was it. Our instincts told us he was different than we were, but we just accepted him. There was more privacy back then, a certain propriety and distance that people gave one another. When Cliffy, Bruce, Petey, and I got a little older, eleven or twelve, we spent hours lying flat on our stomachs as we fished through sewer gratings for lost coins.
This was not an idle pursuit—fifty cents was a game changer. On Saturday nights, we would see guys just a few years older than us who had started to date, taking girls out to the movies or on the subway, and we’d get up on the storefront roofs and pelt them with trash. Sometimes we’d split up a head of lettuce and toss it at them. A string bean thrown from twenty feet away could really sting. In the summer, we opened up the hydrants, which made us heroes to all the young mothers who let their small children play in the water. We hitched ourselves to the backs of buses, jumped over turnstiles in the subway. If we wanted food, we’d steal it. We never paid for anything.
The melittologists – or bee biologists – in British Columbia who are finding and cataloguing new species of pollinators.
(Hakai Magazine, approx 20 mins reading time)
Despite knowing what species his mystery bee is not, Rampton cannot determine what it is. So when his mentor, Lincoln Best, a bee biologist—aka melittologist—and expert taxonomist with the Master Melittologist Program at Oregon State University (OSU) visits Calgary that fall, Rampton brings out his mystery specimen. Seeing it under the microscope, Best gets excited. It’s Hoplitis emarginata, he explains, a small stonecrop specialist that is related to the mason bee, known only from a handful of sightings and specimens from northern California and southern Oregon. Discovering one in the Kootenays, about 850 kilometers away, represents a giant northward range extension. “I know more about this bee [species] than anyone, and I’m shocked that it’s up here,” says Best. In fact, he suggests Rampton’s find could be a new species altogether, given that it was found foraging on a different type of sedum than the few found in Oregon and California.
If you haven’t already heard that Oasis’ Noel and Liam Gallagher are reuniting for a tour next year, where have you been?
It’s a reunion that many thought would never happen, given the 15-year feud between the brothers. If you’re wondering what led to their falling out, here’s a timeline.
(Vulture, approx 12 mins reading time)
The media narrative has long painted Noel as the pragmatic, occasionally sober musician, dutifully writing the songs and leading the band while Liam peacocked in a drunken stupor as the stereotypical rock star. Former Oasis drummer Tony McCarroll painted a different picture in his autobiography, The Truth: My Life As Oasis’s Drummer, describing Liam as a puckish rake who was genuinely a good dude and Noel as an egotistical asshole who calls his fans “fucking idiots.” Of course, the reality is probably somewhere in between. Liam is on record as being fully invested in living up to the rock-star mystique, while Noel sees music as a profession and himself as a professional.
Billionaires have been spending millions on luxury, customised bunkers to live in – but what about everyone else? Patricia Marx writes about the underground hideouts and survivalist properties on the market in the US.
(The New Yorker, approx 22 mins reading time)
After weeks of scrolling, I found a handful of dream hideaways on the market whose sellers were willing to let me take a tour. There were two bunkers in Montana, one of which sleeps at least ninety; a prepper bunker in Missouri that features an inconspicuous entrance and a conspicuous arsenal of guns (not included in sale, but makes you think twice before criticizing the kitchen-countertop choice); a defunct missile-silo site in North Dakota; and a twenty-thousand-square-foot cave in Arkansas used by its previous owner to raise earthworms. (Favorite bit of real-estate marketing copy: “The worm room speaks for itself.”)
Two Earth Sheltered (Bunker) Homes on +/-7 acres in the beautiful Paradise Valley of SW MT. . . . The second earth home shelter is +/-6000 sf. . . . Over 300 feet long underground, with 2 floor levels living area, and a basement storage area. Many small BR, with options for bunk beds; 1 master suite. 11 toilets, 7 showers, 15 sinks. 2 alcohol cook stoves/ovens. . . . —$1,550,000, Survival Realty
A longread from 2021 about the Disgusting Food Museum in Sweden, which exhibits – and let’s visitors taste test – culinary horrors from around the world.
(The New Yorker, approx 28 mins reading time)
An Icelandic shark dish, called hákarl, was the first assault on his stomach. “Eating it was like gnawing on three-week-old cheese from the garbage that had also been pissed on by every dog in the neighborhood,” he said. Next up was durian, a spiky, custard-like fruit from Southeast Asia that “smelled like socks at the bottom of a gym locker, drizzled with paint thinner.” But worst of all was surströmming, a fermented herring that is beloved in northern Sweden. De Meyer said that eating it was like taking a bite out of a corpse.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say