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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.
The term really seeped into mainstream consciousness in 2020 during the pandemic. Five years on, many people – who don’t have Long Covid – feel as though they have experienced some form of cognitive change.
(The Cut, approx 10 mins reading time)
Before the pandemic, the term brain fog existed but was not nearly as widely used. Its first recorded appearance in the lexicon was in the 1850s, but using language about murky weather to describe murky cognition dates back to at least 1817, when a German physician wrote of “the clouding of consciousness” as the chief symptom of delirium. The use of the term brain fog saw a resurgence in the 1990s, when chronic fatigue syndrome entered the public consciousness; cognitive impairment is among its most prominent symptoms. These days, brain fog is a term applied to countless contexts beyond COVID, the trappings of which haunt my targeted ads. I’m foggy due to perimenopause — here’s an aesthetically packaged supplement that will help! No, it’s undiagnosed ADHD. (It presents differently in women! That’s why you never knew! Take this quiz to receive a customized plan!) Or, no, I have unprocessed trauma, or dopamine imbalance, or is it gifted kid syndrome, the burnout former high achievers experience after years of high expectations? I suppose it’s not surprising that such a varied dragnet of potential explanations exists. When more Americans say they have significant cognitive problems than at any other time in the past 15 years, the culture demands answers.
After 40 years, Ruth Marcus left the Washington Post after it killed her column criticising owner Jeff Bezos’s latest editorial edict. In this essay, which includes the column that the newspaper refused to publish, she explains why she left.
(The New Yorker, approx 23 mins reading time)
I tried, as you will see if you read the column, to give the editors a way to get to yes. I made almost no mention of Bezos’s post-election efforts to cozy up to Trump. I did not question Bezos’s motives. The column was, if anything, meek to the point of embarrassing. But I thought that it was important to put my reasons for disagreement on the record—not only to be true to myself but to show that the newspaper could brook criticism and that columnists still enjoyed freedom of expression. Running it, I believed, would enhance the Post’s credibility, not undermine it. Just before 1 P.M. on Monday, March 3rd, my editor sent the column to higher-ups for review. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have gone to the copy desk in a matter of hours. This time, silence ensued. Early Wednesday evening, some fifty hours after the column was first submitted, I received a call from Mary Duenwald, who had followed Shipley from Bloomberg to serve as a deputy. The verdict from Will Lewis, she said, was no. Pause here for a moment: I know of no other episode at the Washington Post, and I have checked with longtime employees at the paper, when a publisher has ordered a column killed.
Who is Syria’s new leader? An incredibly in-depth profile of the man by Raya Jalabi.
(Financial Times, approx 27 mins reading time)
Over the years that followed, Sharaa tended to his fragile military alliances and, when he could, decimated rebel groups perceived to threaten his dominance. He gained admirers and detractors in equal measure, earning a reputation for thoughtfulness and charisma as well as for double dealing and ruthlessness. “Sharaa had no problem spilling blood,” said one allied fighter, who was formerly a rival, “as long as other solutions were attempted first.” Sharaa’s ambitions eventually outgrew Nusra’s limitations. Its designation as a terrorist organisation was a major impediment to expansion, making the leaders of other rebel groups wary of merging with it. In 2016, Sharaa cut ties with al-Qaeda entirely, in what is widely viewed as one of his most strategically adept moves. It was a tactical rebranding that allowed him to consolidate control. But it also required him to step out of the shadows.
Heavy breathing. A pen clicking. Lip smacking. Loud chewing. These are just some of the sounds that people with misophonia find absolutely intolerable. Jake Eaton, who has it himself, looks into the disorder and why we still know so little about it.
(Asterisk, approx 26 mins reading time)
It’s a teenage rite of passage to explode into rage at your parents. While the usual outburst is sparked by some combination of hormones, insecurity, and authority issues, for me it was a popping sound in my father’s jaw. I first noticed it at the dinner table. Every time he took a bite, the disc of cartilage that cushioned his jawbone would slip out of place and snap back. Chew, click, chew, click. Like a drum, his mouth reverberated the sound, which changed in pitch each time he opened to take a bite. Layered beneath all of this was the wet percussion of normal chewing. The trio — jaw pop, meat squish, fork scraping teeth — became inescapable. And it drove into me, first through my chest, a surprising shock of affront and disgust that then suffused through my whole body. It was the first time I ever got scared that I wasn’t in control of what was inside my own head.
We all watched Taoiseach Micheál Martin meeting US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week. Ahead of the meeting, Sean Murray spoke to the undocumented Irish living and working in the States about their fears under the new administration.
(The Irish Examiner, approx 16 mins reading time)
One may think of undocumented as “living in the shadows”, as Enda Kenny put it. But that’s only partly true. The undocumented Irish live and work in their communities. They pay taxes. Their kids go to schools. They eat in local restaurants and drink in local pubs. It could be more of a case of hiding in plain sight. Aisling*, an undocumented Irish woman living in a major US city for most of the last decade, sends her children to school and creche each day. She goes to work, and pays tax. Employed in hospitality, she and her colleagues are trying to find the positives where they can. “That’s the thing,” she said. “The entire kitchen is all undocumented Hispanics. Like every single one of them. Everyone’s a little bit nervous, but we’re trying to make light of it. Last week we were joking ‘oh what are you going to do when you get home?’. Another said ‘I’ll save you a seat on the bus’. And I mean the administration have said they’re targeting restaurants and construction sites. Anywhere where say there are immigrants. Like stereotypical undocumented jobs.”
In a Mennonite community in rural West Texas, a six-year-old girl who was not vaccinated became the first person to die of measles in the United States in a decade. Tom Bartlett spoke to her father. A tragic but important, well-written article.
(The Atlantic, approx 11 mins reading time)
Peter said that he has doubts about vaccines too. He told me that he considers getting measles a normal part of life, noting that his parents and grandparents had it. “Everybody has it,” he told me. “It’s not so new for us.” He’d also heard that getting measles might strengthen your immune system against other diseases, a view Kennedy has promoted in the past. But perhaps most of all, Peter worried about what the vaccine might do to his children. “The vaccination has stuff we don’t trust,” he said. “We don’t like the vaccinations, what they have these days. We heard too much, and we saw too much.”
An enjoyable read from 2019 on the war between paper towels and hand dryers.
(The Guardian, approx 29 mins reading time)
The Dyson Airblade, released in 2006, was no ordinary hand dryer. The first model – which asked for dripping hands to be inserted into its frowny mouth – had a curvilinear form and brushed silver body. It looked so futuristic that it was used as set dressing on the Star Trek reboot in 2009. Inside the dryer, the air blew at speeds exceeding 400mph; its filter claimed to capture 99.95% of all particles 0.3 microns or bigger in size from washroom air; it cost about £1,000. The Airblade was not the first high-speed dryer, but its luxe appeal and Dyson’s brash marketing revolutionised the restroom universe; more and more, the hand dryer began to seem like a vital accessory to class up a joint. After the Airblade’s launch, a battle began to boil, pitting the dryer industry against the world’s most powerful hand-drying lobby: Big Towel.
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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