This week’s top 5 long reads

The horrific trafficking of intimate partners.homage to pitchfork. Memories of childhood spent in Kentucky kitchens. Betting your life on extreme skiing. And why should we be calm about UFOs?

Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan | Cosmopolitan | January 30, 2024 | 3,899 words

When someone first suggested that her boyfriend might be trafficking her, Kayla Gaedinghaus couldn’t believe it. She was beaten, drugged, and denied money. traffickedIn time, Gadinghaus came to understand the truth about her situation, which was by no means unusual, as Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan detail in this fascinating story.? “As of 2020, an estimated 39 percent of sex trafficking victims in this country were brought in by an intimate partner,” Johnston and Quinlan write. “Through physical violence, manipulation, or fraud, these victims are forced to engage in sexual acts for the benefit of their traffickers. It could mean sleeping with random men on the street to get drugs, or having your landlord watch you having sex through your bedroom window as part of paying your rent.” Her boyfriend, Rick, was selling her as a commodity among his friends, including powerful men such as Tramell Crowe Jr., heir to a huge real estate fortune (brother of conservative donor Harlan Crowe). It is said that people were also included. He has been funding the lifestyle of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for years). This article therefore serves to correct widespread assumptions about human trafficking, including who perpetrates human trafficking and who is harmed by it. Narratively speaking, the heart of the story is an unlikely friendship. Before joining Goedinghaus, Rick was trafficking his ex-wife Julia to his Hubbard, and the meeting of the two women changed everything. In fact, this feature is now possible. “For the first time we laid eyes on each other,” Johnston and Quinlan wrote. “Julia and Kayla had an eerie feeling that they recognized each other, as if they were standing on opposite sides of a mirror. Kayla was the new Julia, Kayla was the new Julia, and the former Julia as Kayla. They even looked alike.” —SD

Dan McQuaid | Defector | January 31, 2024 | 2,944 words

I’ve always loved music. I grew up recording music videos for “New Edition,” “Salt-N-Pepa,” and “Bel Biv Devoe” on VHS with my cousin, sitting in the tiny back seat of my older brother’s Porsche 914 convertible driving his 80s. I grew up listening to hip-hop from the 1990s. A friend is “cruising for babes.” Bay Area radio station LIVE 105 and her KOME taught me about grunge and alternative rock. And my first underground rave opened the door to a whole new world. In the ’90s, I wasn’t reading about music online yet and still relied on my local Tower Records to find music. As a customer, I was combing through new releases and reading the latest issues. Arb and NMEThen, as an employee, I obsessively curated that modest “dance/electronica” selection and gained recommendations from colleagues.But I don’t know much about Music; I have no formal musical education (other than playing a little with the violin) and have never felt confident enough to write about it. So I was drawn to Dan McQuaid’s thoughts on Condé Nast’s music publication Pitchfork. GQ. McQuaid begins by saying that he doesn’t know much about music either. But Pitchfork helped bridge the gap, especially in the early days. His writing touches my heart. It’s personal, it’s funny, but it’s not sarcastic and it comes from the heart.he looks back like this He was influenced by reviews in Pitchfork, especially by music critic James P. Wisdom. That this site has been a champion of electronic music since his 90s. And he’s also about how, in the 2000s blogging way, it was a way for people to not only review music, but also to express themselves freely and irreverently about the things they cared about in the process. I will explain. “Pitchfork not only gave me bands to listen to, it taught me how to think about them,” he writes. Wisdom also puts it well: “It’s valuable to contextualize and humanize the way we find and explore music.” A nice essay and a walk down memory lane with links to some fun archived reviews. (+1 for playlist inspiration: He now has Moby in rotation nonstop.) —CLR

Crystal Wilkinson | Oxford American | January 23, 2024 | 3,409 words

Excerpt from this wonderful book Hymn to the Ghost in the Kitchen, Crystal Wilkinson offers memories of childhood spent with Grandma Christine in a Kentucky kitchen in Black Appalachia. This work is more than just a memoir. Wilkinson reflects on her deep and close roots, her contribution to the women’s tremendous household, and her preservation as a labor of love. For Wilkinson, her recipes are more than the ingredients or the way the food is prepared. They are stories passed down through the generations from our ancestors that continue to exist in the spirit, imbued with wisdom and experience to oversee new versions of Grandma’s jam cakes. “In the corner of my grandmother’s kitchen, spirits glowed near the bucket of well water, hovered over the olive refrigerator, hovered over the flour sifter, and glided around the coal-burning stove.” she writes. Grandma Christine’s cake recipes, written in “her perfect cursive” and perfectly reproduced in her work, are a spell for Wilkinson to evoke her homeland. “3 sticks of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour, 6 eggs…” Take the time to whisper that recipe to yourself and feel emotionally full. Needless to say, this work was extremely satisfying. I savored it from beginning to end. —K.S.

Guardian | Simon Akam | January 30, 2024 | 5,932 words

I love skiing. Well, I love skiing on sunny days. If it’s too steep or too icy, I’ll furrow my brow, sweat beading, and drag my pole behind me (as if it’ll stop me) as I inch my way down that slope. Masu. I’m in awe of people like Jeremy Heitz. He races down impossible cliff sides with poetic grace, poles planted firmly in front of him, part of the fluid gliding motion. Heitz’s area of ​​expertise lies at the extremes of professional freeriding. His descent is very steep, and the gradient is twice that of the terrain at some “expert” ski resorts. Simon Akam describes these icy mountains very vividly: “The heights slid sideways for the first few meters, circling and cutting into the highest gray smear of ice.” I could feel his heart beating in my mouth. He was an avid reporter, skiing with Heitz and even completing some terrifying runs himself. But this piece is more than just an endless repetition of daredevil feats, it’s also a reflection on the nature of his sport and the sponsors who support it. Heights lost 20 of his friends, which is normal in this world. Will it be worth it? —C.W.

nicholson baker | new york | January 31, 2024 | 6,751 words

Encounter with the unknown As a child, I was full of surprises. Childhood in the ’80s was no shortage of material to keep that wonder alive. navigator’s flight; the last starfighter; E.T.. However, as much as I want to believe, I have never been able to fully accept the countless UFO sightings and reports that have come out over the decades. I had no idea why, it just felt… vague. And I read Nicholson Baker’s lively and informed commentary. new york. oh,I thought. Of course. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of believers, there’s a lot to like here. (Well, maybe not for all-out evangelists like Avi Loeb, who claims that skeptics and critics “act like terrorists.”) Baker’s position is clear from the start, but his His career as a novelist has served him well, leaving his skepticism with crackling phrases. Like a “squiggly sound.” He’s in denial, but not in denial. It can be difficult to thread the needle. He not only combs through the archives, but also connects with and generously reports on many of today’s leading figures in ufology. But none of that shakes his grounded theory. All of our flying saucer myths stem from Cold War weapons research conducted using high-tech balloons. Sure, I’d still wonder what’s out there — hell, it’s logically impossible to think we’re the only sentient life forms — but a little more denial I’m going to live on Baker Street until something comes along that I can’t do. —PR

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