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.
A young black man was found dismembered in Mississippi a month after he told his mother he was being followed by white men in three trucks. The police said they saw no signs of foul play, but his family believe he was murdered.
(Mother Jones, approx 18 mins reading time)
He left the police and called his mother shortly after 10 a.m., warning her that his phone battery only had 1 percent left. He said he was in a dollar store and dropped a pin to his location so her friend from another town could pick him up. By the time her friend arrived, around 1:30 p.m., Carter was gone. In the days that followed, Carter’s family organized search parties. The dollar store’s management showed them surveillance video of Carter walking inside and then leaving. But owners at a nearby gas station and some other businesses did not share footage. They said they “rolled the cameras back and didn’t see him. How would you even know who you’re looking for?” says Kaho, Carter’s aunt. Carter went missing in broad daylight, she adds. “For nobody to see anything, I’m not believing it.”
A young person whose entire life has been documented on YouTube speaks about how her childhood was overshadowed by social media fame that she didn’t choose.
(Teen Vogue, approx 10 mins reading time)
Claire, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, has never known a life that doesn’t include a camera being pointed in her direction. The first time she went viral, she was a toddler. When the family’s channel started to rake in the views, Claire says both her parents left their jobs because the revenue from the YouTube channel was enough to support the family and to land them a nicer house and new car. “That’s not fair that I have to support everyone,” she said. “I try not to be resentful but I kind of [am].” Once, she told her dad she didn’t want to do YouTube videos anymore and he told her they would have to move out of their house and her parents would have to go back to work, leaving no money for “nice things.”
3. Why do all male action heroes have J names?
James Bond. Jack Reacher. John Wick. Is it just a coincidence?
(Slate, approx 18 mins reading time)
I went through 790 plot summaries and wrote down each of the heroes’ names. Excitedly, I clicked Sort on the spreadsheet, not knowing what I’d find. After all, I’d already sunk quite a few hours into this. But as I scrolled down, I saw that my hunch was correct: Of these 790 movies, 33 percent have a male protagonist with a first name starting with the letter J. Thirty-three percent! The most popular J name among these strapping warriors was John, with 74 movies, followed by James, with 50 movies, and Jack, with 37. The second-most-common letter, M, with names like Max and Michael, showed up a comparatively measly 7 percent of the time.
A harrowing read examining the horrors that Ukrainian soldiers have experienced while being treated for trauma at a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv.
(The New York Times Magazine, approx 12 mins reading time)
Russia’s war in Ukraine stands out among modern wars for its extreme violence. Its front lines are close together and barraged with heavy artillery, and rotations from the front line are infrequent. Ukraine’s forces are largely made up of men and women who, until a year ago, had no experience of combat. “We are looking at a war that is basically a repetition of the First World War,” says Robert van Voren, who heads the Federation Global Initiative on Psychiatry, which provides mental-health support in Ukraine. “People just cannot fight anymore for psychological reasons. People are at the front line too long, and at a certain point, they crack. That’s the reality we have to deal with.”
With us being so reliant on our phones for everything these days, is a digital detox even possible anymore?
(BBC Worklife, approx 7 mins reading time)
As much time as people already spent on their devices, the pandemic intensified screen time. People stared at screens more during lockdown, especially in lieu of other ways to connect. But those habits haven’t ended, even as people are free to leave their homes and socialise. A 2022 University of Leeds study showed that 54% of British adults use screens more often now than they did before the pandemic – half of those surveyed look at screens for 11 hours or more each day. Fifty-one percent are on screens more for leisure than they were pre-pandemic, while 27% have increased screen use at work.
With a new film on the serial killer released this week, Nathan Smith looks back at the case, and the two female reporters who helped to solve it.
(Smithsonian, approx 13 mins reading time)
McLaughlin and Cole’s reporting sparked controversy both in the newsroom and beyond. Their first major story together, published in January 1963, was headlined “Two Girl Reporters Analyze Strangler”—a title that ignored the pair’s journalistic achievements and the fact that they were then in their 30s. Authorities were angry at the level of detail the Record American revealed to the public, and they rejected the pair’s suggestion that one man was responsible for terrorizing the women of the city. The police also tried to suppress key information, including excerpts from files leaked by the medical examiner’s office.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
A piece from 2021 looking at Ireland’s complicated relationship with U2
(MEL magazine, approx 16 mins reading time)
“You can walk all over Dublin for days without seeing anything that indicates the world’s biggest band lives here,” Cross wrote in the piece, confirming that he did, in fact, find some “Bono is a pox” graffiti. That pithy putdown has actually traveled the world, even making its way to a Tokyo gallery, where it’s treated like art. But it’s not just something scrawled on a wall: You can find the sentiment all over social media whenever Bono does, well, anything. For instance, in 2017, when Bono stupidly declared that “Music has gotten very girly,” he got meme-d, with “Bono is a pox” putting the period at the end of the sentence.
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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