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.
Ana Kinsella writes about the wonders of Irish butter and its contribution to the country’s soft power.
(Vittles, approx 13 mins reading time)
For the twelve years I lived in London, I kept a list of foods I missed from home, a catalogue of groceries into which all my feelings of displacement could be channelled. Among all the items on the list, Kerrygold had an almost totemic significance, even though it was widely available in London, and not just in specialist stores or big supermarkets. During moments of homesickness, digging into the Irish butter in my North London kitchen almost felt like going home and touching grass, the green, rain-soaked land manifesting in a block of pure yellow sunshine, made from nothing more than cream from Irish cows and a touch of salt, all wrapped up in distinctive golden paper packaging that has remained largely unchanged in my lifetime.
Patricia Devlin investigates how foxes, badgers and hares are being snared and sold as live bait to illegal hunting networks around Ireland.
(The Journal Investigates, approx 11 mins reading time)
Foxes are also advertised for sale in the barbaric underground trade. The Journal Investigates has obtained images and videos of caged foxes being posted in the online groups. The wild animals are typically sold for around €100 each. In one video, a terrified fox can be seen trying to escape from a wooden dog box. Another image shows a fox enclosed in a steel cage with the caption: “First come first served…100 bob [sic].” Requests are also made to purchase wildlife within the social media groups. One individual, who asked if there were any “small cub foxes” for sale, wrote: “Good money there lads if ye have something for me [sic].” Hares are also sold for up to €30 each, while badgers can reach hundreds of euros.
How often do you get earworms – that is, random songs that get stuck in your head out of nowhere? Marianne Eloise had one for over two years. This is what she did to try and get rid of it.
(Vulture, approx 10 mins reading time)
It was not unusual that I would have a song stuck in my head. My mind has always been prone to fixation: I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder at 17, which left me with obsessions that prompted me to perform time-consuming rituals and tasks. Earworms were not uncommon for me, though they’d eventually get forced out by something else. “It’s Hard to Say” was different. It wouldn’t leave. By the time of my engagement, it had been wedged in my mind for months, a chorus joining me the second I got out of bed and popping back up as I went about my morning errands. After our trip to Greece, I’d hoped an unrelated move from London to Brighton would shake it free. But when I awoke on an air mattress 150 miles away, there it was, different lyrics but always the same track: Everyone shakes to the beat with a barrel down their throat. It followed me for the next two years, on trips around the world and during my normal daily routine, in a way that seemed like a taunt: My brain was taking the mechanical “now press repeat” directive at the end of the song a little too literally.
Heartbreaking reporting on the negative impact social media is having on teenagers, in some cases leading to tragic circumstances.
(The New Yorker, approx 46 mins reading time)
Lori began delving into Anna’s social-media accounts. “I thought I’d see funny cat videos,” she said. Instead, the feeds were full of material about suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders: “It was like, ‘I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child.’ ” Anna had told a friend about a live-streamed suicide she had viewed on TikTok. “We have to get off social media,” she’d said. “This is really horrible.” But she couldn’t quit. A friend of Anna’s also told Lori that Anna had become fixated on the idea that, if her parents knew how disturbed she was, she’d be hospitalized against her will. That prospect terrified her.
(This story contains details of sexual assault that some readers may find distressing)
The mass rape trial in France has horrified the world. Gisèle Pelicot’s bravery has been commended by thousands, and French women have rallied behind her. In this piece, Sophie Gilbert captures one of the reasons why the case is so disturbing.
(The Atlantic, approx 8 mins reading time)
Not all men rape women, the adage goes. But the Pelicot case has upended that argument: not all men, but any man, of any age, any profession, any marital status. Living in a small town of 6,000 people, Dominique was able to find 72 men nearby who were allegedly willing—as per his invitation on a forum titled “Without Their Knowledge”—to “abuse my sleeping, drugged wife.” The site he used, Coco.fr, was shut down earlier this year, but it has been implicated in 23,000 separate crimes that are under investigation by more than 70 public prosecutors’ offices across France. Not all men but, still, so many men. One defendant in the Pelicot case, a 72-year-old former firefighter and truck driver who was described by friends and family as “kind,” “attentive,” and “open to others,” told the courtroom that he had “a deep respect for women,” and that if his ex-wife were present, she’d tell them, “He loves the woman in all her diversity, all her complexity.” Nevertheless, he is accused of raping an unconscious woman, Gisèle’s lawyer countered; the man has denied the accusation. Another defendant explained that he realized what he was doing was wrong when Gisèle moved while he was assaulting her, and Dominique quickly ushered him out of the room. “When I crossed the garden, I thought about reporting the incident,” he said in court. “Then life resumed its course; the next day, I went to work very early, and that was that.”
College professors in the US are experiencing a similar predicament: their students aren’t prepared to read books.
(The Atlantic, approx 10 mins reading time)
This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover. “My jaw dropped,” Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.
Who invented the high five?
(ESPN, approx 14 mins reading time)
The low five had been a fixture of African-American culture since at least World War II. It might seem impossible to pinpoint when the low five ratcheted itself upright and evolved into the high five, but there are countless creation myths in circulation. Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the high five at Michigan State. Others trace it to the women’s volleyball circuit in the 1960s. But the Sleets story quickly shot around the Internet and into local newspapers, displacing, or at least undermining, all other claims. Sleets was budging his way atop the high-five hierarchy.
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.
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