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.
1. Homegrown amateur porn heroes
Just why would people film themselves having sex, and what’s it like to make money out of doing it? A series of interviews with people who’ve done just that. (Some images NSFW. Features some photos of a sexual nature, not suitable for children to view).
(The Cut, approx 30 mins reading time)
If he is holding the camera he could look into the frame and kind of see what he was capturing. And then also when I was looking at the camera, it was like I was looking at him so my eye contact would come off really hot, because you know, this is a person that I love.
Naomi Klein is best known for her books like No Logo, and her latest is No Is Not Enough – where she finally gets to tackle the topic of Trump. Here are her thoughts on the man.
(The Guardian, approx 23 mins reading time)
Speaking at her home in Toronto last week, Klein suggested to me that Trump’s novelty was to take the shock doctrine and make it a personal superpower. “He keeps everyone all the time in a reactive state,” she said. “It is not like he is taking advantage of an external shock, he is the shock. And every 10 minutes he creates a new one. It is like he has these lasers coming out of his belt.”
3. Remembering the murder they didn’t commit
This fascinating – though disturbing – story is about six convicted killers who were exonerated due to DNA evidence. But some of them remember the crime very clearly.
(The New Yorker, approx mins reading time)
In March, 1989, Searcey drafted an arrest warrant for Taylor and White, based on information that he had collected as a private investigator. He’d heard from a seventeen-year-old whom a Beatrice cop described as a “maybe retard” that they had bragged about committing the murder. In a memo, Searcey wrote that “White was a homosexual” and “a very strange young man,” and that Taylor, in the days after the crime, was reported by friends to have been “very nervous.”
The first profile of Chelsea Manning after her release, this is the interview people have been waiting for (with some fantastic photos to boot).
(New York Times, approx 49 mins reading time)
Manning, who is 29, tapped an unplugged microwave next to the door and asked me to place my laptop inside: The Faraday cage in the microwave would block radio waves, she explained. But the unplugged microwave was already full of devices, including two Xbox controllers. “You can put it in the kitchen microwave,” Manning said; then, intuiting the strangeness of the request, she added with a shrug, “You can’t be too careful.”
5. The unthinkable fate of the Chapecoense
The tragic story of the Brazilian soccer team who perished in a plane crash is told in detail here.
(ESPN, approx 42 mins reading time)
Since that moment, Tiaguinho has been floating. Even now, just hours before this match against San Lorenzo, he is texting Graziele about names. They both like Maite for a girl; it means “beloved.” For a boy, Tiaguino pushes for Santiago, which is a family name. Finally, his teammates tell him it is time to go. He cannot resist and texts once more, telling Graziele that he loves her.
Speaking of Trump, here David Sedaris names him among the things that have made him depressed lately.
(The Paris Review, approx 12 mins reading time)
Three. I donate a thousand dollars to the Hillary for America campaign and within what seems like minutes I get an email from them saying, in effect, That’s great, but can we have more? Her organization is by no means unique in this regard. Everyone I donate to acts the same way, and I wind up unsubscribing from their emails and resenting them.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Soprano fan? Relieve the final moments of the show with this rundown.
(Salon, approx 11 mins reading time)
If we got sick of hearing about other people’s speculations on how “The Sopranos” would end in just one week, imagine how Chase has been feeling for the past three or four years. Creating a cultural phenomenon this huge is an experience that can change a sensitive soul, after all, and make him act out against his fans. Look at J.D. Salinger. His books were obscenely popular, but no one understood! They were all jackasses, as far as he was concerned. Was Sunday night’s finale Chase’s way of telling us all to fuck right off?
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