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.
Brenna Ehrlich explores the brutal double murder of special-effects guru Daniel Langlois and his partner Dominique Marchand at their eco-resort on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
(Rolling Stone, approx 30 mins reading time)
Céline Caissie, Marchand’s old friend from Canada, was the first to realize something was amiss. The now-former general manager of Coulibri Ridge, Caissie would usually meet up with Marchand at the sun-soaked resort restaurant to evaluate the service while watching the palm trees sway above the blue sea. That Friday, though, Marchand was a no-show; Caissie also noticed that Langlois’ car wasn’t in the driveway. Caissie checked in at the front desk to see if anyone had seen the couple, but the woman manning it hadn’t seen them all day. “Céline, it’s not normal,” Caisee recalls her saying. “Dominique would never miss a lunch with you. Something’s happened.”
Meanwhile, Langlois’ friend Simon Walsh — a local scuba-shop owner — was just pulling out of his driveway when a friend called to see if he was OK. Confused, Walsh asked what was up. There’s a car a quarter mile from your house, his friend said. There’s two bodies in it. And it’s on fire.
Many women have dense breasts, a normal condition where the breast has more glandular or connective tissue than fatty tissue. But for them, standard mammography technology can be much less accurate.
Dyan Neary speaks to women in the US whose dense breast tissue obscured the presence of cancer on mammograms for years, with some having to push their doctors for more testing.
(The Cut, approx 18 mins reading time)
Six months later, in February, she had another mammogram and ultrasound. The doctors, again, said that both were negative. But the hardness in her breast was still there. McCoy ran through possible explanations in her head: At 52, she was perimenopausal, so her breasts would often hurt and were sometimes swollen. Besides, she trusted doctors — her own late father was a radiologist.
By the summer of 2021, the hardness had begun to feel like a ridge at the bottom of her breast. One day in July, McCoy was reading a book on her front porch when an excruciating pain began to radiate from her right armpit down past her elbow. That night in bed, she was awoken by a sudden pain unlike anything she’d experienced before. She looked down and saw that her right breast was severely inflamed. McCoy stood up, walked over to her bathroom mirror, and lifted her pajamas. What she saw astounded her: That breast was cartoonishly large, nearly double the size of the left. It was so remarkable that “for the first time ever in my life, and probably the last,” she took a photo of herself naked. Days later, she showed the image to her primary-care provider. The doctor dismissed it as nothing serious but ordered yet another mammogram and ultrasound.
It’s been 50 years since Peter Benchley published Jaws and terrified beachgoers everywhere. But, as Brian Raftery writes, it was also somewhat of a reflection of the 1970s in the US at the time.
(The New York Times, approx 9 mins reading time)
At a time of change and uncertainty, “Jaws” functioned as an allegory for whatever scared or angered the reader. Even Fidel Castro was a fan, describing “Jaws” as a “splendid Marxist lesson,” one that proved that “capitalism will risk even human life in order to keep the markets going.”
The success of “Jaws” — at bookstores and in theaters — had unforeseen consequences for Benchley. Throughout the late ’70s, he watched in frustration as sharks were branded public enemies. Benchley, a longtime sea lover, spent decades transforming himself into an amicable shark defender, reminding readers that the man-eater in “Jaws” was a work of fiction. “Many people took ‘Jaws’ as a license to go out and kill sharks,” said Wendy Benchley, who was married to Benchley from 1964 until his death in 2006. “We tried to use ‘Jaws’ in every way we could to sound the alarm about sharks, and about how important they were to the ecosystem.”
How hard can it be to make a new friend in a month? Kelly Stout finds out.
(Esquire, approx 19 mins reading time)
I entered the project like a newborn horse—happy to be here but awkward and unsure which way to run. I was feeling shy, so I figured I’d read up on the theory before putting anything into practice. I started with Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was less interested in influencing people than in winning friends, but I wouldn’t object to some incidental influencing. The book has much to offer the reader who agrees with the statement “Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.” It has less to offer a reader like me, who is looking for someone to text on a Thursday for a burrito in a couple hours. But still, it has a few nice lessons.
This fantastic essay details how a writer ditched his phone and went hiking across 150 miles of Switzerland, relying only on the hand-drawn maps of locals – which are included in the article – and serendipity.
(The New York Times, approx 10 mins reading time)
I start at the edge of Lake Geneva. The sun is shining; only much later will I realize that what I crave more than a map is a weather forecast. At a cafe in the lakeside town of Montreux, where I begin my walk, I meet a girl named Melanie, who draws me a map — annotated with beautiful, tiny script — that leads me uphill past a castle: the Caux Palace. She adds details about its history, as a site of negotiations on the future of postwar Europe.
The path uphill quickly enters a narrow river gorge — lush trees and suddenly a different world from the lakeside. I am alone. Higher, the woods open out into Alpine meadows, which hum with insects. The grass is so thick that at times I lose the path and wade upwards through a sea of flowers. I hike for three hours — past the castle and its narrow turrets — then sleep out in the open, on a viewing platform near the summit. I’m elated: I made it through my first day.
In this extract from his new book, aid worker Jean-Martin Bauer writes about the complex role of technology in humanitarian settings and the importance of keeping those it is being used to help at the heart of its development.
(The Guardian, approx 16 mins reading time)
I first heard about the Pouncer at a gathering of humanitarian innovation experts in Italy. A drone expert told us the Pouncer could be the solution to the challenge posed by the need for food deliveries to war-torn northern Syria. Immediately, hands shot up. We knew the area was bristling with air defences that had already made airdrops of food all but impossible, and that would be sure to fire at the drones. How would flight authorisations be obtained? How would civilians tell the difference between a military drone that could kill, of which there were many in the skies of Syria, and its edible humanitarian counterpart? There were no obvious answers to these important questions, and the Pouncer left us all decidedly sceptical.
As of 2023, the Pouncer hadn’t taken off. It seems destined for the graveyard of well-intentioned but unrealised humanitarian innovation projects. Gifford’s invention was, to say the least, controversial. In fact, many in the broader community were openly hostile to the Pouncer. Kevin Watkins, then chief executive officer for Save the Children UK, said in an interview: “This is someone who’s come up with a crackpot idea based on the assumption that technology can solve all problems.” Drones are “good at killing people and blowing things up. They are absolutely irrelevant for resolving acute hunger.”
A 20-year-old longread about a thief who only stole silver.
(The New Yorker, approx 39 mins reading time)
Sometime during the early hours of January 29, 2002, a great deal of sterling silver vanished from a mansion near Rhinebeck, New York. The mansion, known as Edgewater, was built in 1823 and for decades was the home of a family named Donaldson. Its current owner is Richard Jenrette, a retired financier whose hobby is preserving historic homes. Jenrette takes his hobby seriously. He once tracked down the last living Donaldson descendant, who had moved to the south of Spain, and persuaded her to repatriate the family’s original silver to Edgewater. This included a flatware set decorated with the Donaldson crest (a raven perched on rocks) and a dozen teaspoons, each engraved with a sign of the zodiac (a bow to the Victorian interest in astrology, and a playful means of marking the seating arrangement). All of these items were stolen, as were a toddy ladle and a fish server, luncheon knives and demitasse spoons, a chocolate pot, and a six-piece tea set—many of which were designed by such fine silver makers as Tiffany, Gorham, and Martin-Guillaume Biennais.
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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