The Dave Matthews Guide to Living and Dying

When you think about ’90s music icons, it’s hard not to see Dave Matthews as an odd man out, a beatific baja-wearing goofball slotted between grunge and hip-hop. But this stellar Alex Pappademas profile for GQ recontextualizes Matthews’ life and music — surrounded by death, but striving for joy — in a way that’s probably long overdue.

“Experiencing what I had—I was like, I gotta figure out another way to say something that I believe, that has hope at the end of it,” he says. “And I still feel like that. I can’t get rid of hope. Which I’m sure makes at least half the people who hear my music go, Ugh—this guy’s a fucking sugar-sweet nightmare.”

Which is funny, because as Dave Matthews sees it, the comfort he’s offering in his songs can be pretty cold. 

“The point is, you’re going to die,” he says. “You’ll probably die a painful death, like most of us do. You’ll wither, you’ll wrinkle—if you’re lucky!—or you get hit by a fucking train. It’s not gonna be good. And you might have love in your life, but the reflection of love is despair. And that’s it. There’s no way it’s not gonna be that. Every once in a while you get your head above the water and you can look around if you’re lucky. But mostly, it’s terrible. But that’s great. ’Cause it’s amazing. That’s how I feel.”

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The First Year of AI College Ends in Ruin

Is it surprising that ChatGPT’s widespread availability has led to college students (anecdotally) adopting it as a 21st-century essay mill? Not even a little bit. But inevitability doesn’t make it any less depressing — or, as Ian Bogost points out, any less confusing. As it turns out, the usual tools teachers use to suss out plagiarism seem as stumped by AI as the teachers themselves are. The result is a future that neither students nor professors seem equipped to navigate.

Some students probably are using AI at 100 percent: to complete their work absent any effort of their own. But many use ChatGPT and other tools to generate ideas, help them when they’re stuck, rephrase tricky paragraphs, or check their grammar.

Where one behavior turns into another isn’t always clear. Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia, told me about one student so disengaged, he sometimes attended class in his pajamas. When that student submitted an uncharacteristically adept essay this spring, Boedy figured a chatbot was involved, and OpenAI’s verification tool confirmed as much. The student admitted that he hadn’t known how to begin, so he asked ChatGPT to write an introduction, and then to recommend sources. Absent a firm policy on AI cheating to lean on, Boedy talked through the material with the student in person and graded him based on that conversation.

A computer-science student at Washington University in St. Louis, where I teach, saw some irony in the sudden shift from giving fully open-book assignments earlier in the pandemic to this year’s attitude of “you can use anything except AI.” (I’m withholding the names of students so that they can be frank about their use of AI tools.) This student, who also works as a teaching assistant, knows firsthand that computers can help solve nearly every technical exercise that is assigned in CS courses, and some conceptual ones too. But taking advantage of the technology “feels less morally bankrupt,” he said, “than paying for Chegg or something.” A student who engages with a chatbot is doing some kind of work for themselves—and learning how to live in the future.

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Life inside the South African gangs risking everything for copper

Monica Mark’s reporting is smart, informative, and empathetic in this piece delving into the world of the thieves who risk it all, not for gold — but for copper.

The copper thieves were known as izinyoka, “snakes” in Zulu, and they barely made a sound as they prepared early one morning. On the porch of a rundown breezeblock home in Johannesburg’s largest township, the three men pulled on their disguise of municipal workers’ coveralls, then shared a smoke. The air filled with clouds of nyaope, a cocktail of black-tar heroin cut with marijuana, rat poison and antiretroviral drugs.

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I Placed my First Wager When I was 10. I’ve Gambled More than $1 Million Since.

Noah Vineberg learned the art of deception early, from his father’s flashy lifestyle and routine philandering. As a teen, Pro-Line sports betting tickets were his gateway drug to a full-on gambling addiction that almost cost him everything.

I spent anywhere from $50 to $150 a day on Pro-Line tickets, using my daily allowance or money I made running the salad bar at the Keg, which paid $13 an hour and up to $300 in tips on a good night. It left me with more than enough cash to support my burgeoning habit. I don’t think my mom ever suspected anything—at least not until later in life. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t place at least one bet. The legal gambling age was 18, but back then, the tellers never asked for ID. If I was lucky, I won once every few weeks. One time, I put down $100 and accurately picked the outcome of all 10 games, which resulted in an $11,000 payout. I was never smart enough to save the money from my wins, though. I usually dumped it right back into more bets.

I loved the waiting that came with gambling: those final, dramatic moments of uncertainty, when a last-minute field goal or three-point shot could alter the result of the game. The feeling of anticipation— that’s where I got the high. And when I had several bets going on at once, it felt like my brain was on fire, the ultimate stimulation. Nothing else mattered in those moments. Even if I lost, I never let on that I cared. That was part of the appeal, too. People never knew if I had $100 or $10,000 in the bank. I felt like I was bulletproof, like no matter how it turned out, everything would be all right.

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Hopeless Romantic, Seeking Treatment

Everyone’s familiar with having a crush. Some, with infatuation. Parasocial attachment? Sure. But then there’s limerence — a newish word coined to capture a diffuse but well-known type of one-sided fixation. The question, as Alexandra Molotkow sets out in this illuminating piece for Pioneer Works’ Broadcast, is whether it should be thought of as a conventional psychological diagnosis.

To some, limerence is romantic; to others, it’s a scourge. For many, it’s both. A recent Cosmopolitan feature described limerence as a self-regenerating obsession that rarely leads to a healthy relationship. The magazine ran a poll alongside the article, asking readers how they felt about “falling in limerence.” Eighty-seven percent picked the answer: “Give me an all-consuming romantic infatuation or don’t waste my time.”

Though it’s almost five decades old, limerence today feels almost excessively timely. It travels well online. Algorithms feed you more of what you already like, simulating obsession, encouraging you to care about people you don’t really know. Social media can intensify a preexisting preoccupation, shoving the person (the LO, limerent object, in the jargon) into your feed, offering opportunities to lurk. But there is help available online, too: spaces for “limerents” to find each other and form community around a shared plight.

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“What Price Was My Father’s Life Worth?”

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD) is a right-wing anti-vaccine group that over the course of the pandemic has peddled disinformation and COVID “treatments” that are anything but—ivermectin, for instance, and hydroxychloroquine. Vera Bergengruen of Time has reported extensively on AFLD since 2021. Now some of the loved ones of people who sought medical advice from the group and others like it want accountability:

Jeremy had started following AFLD online after listening to podcasts that promoted conspiracies about COVID-19. At the time, the group was producing slick videos on social media, falsely claiming that U.S. health agencies were withholding life-saving treatments, and that doctors refusing to prescribe them were like “good Germans who allow the Nazis to kill the Jews.” Jeremy, who worked as an industrial sandblaster, became convinced that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were the only effective treatments for the virus.

On Aug. 26, 2021, Jeremy paid $90 for a consultation through AFLD’s online telemedicine portal. He was connected to a doctor named Medina Culver, 33, an osteopathic physician and Instagram influencer based in Henderson, Nev. Culver did not see or examine Jeremy. Over the phone, she prescribed him hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment or prevention, according to a receipt reviewed by TIME. Soon after, Jeremy received a prescription for 200mg of hydroxychloroquine in the mail from Ravkoo, a Florida-based pharmacy chain partnered with AFLD. According to his widow’s lawsuit, he took those hydroxychloroquine pills the night he died.

Jeremy’s family is suing both AFLD and Culver in Nevada district court for in excess of $30,000 in damages. The lawsuit, which was filed in February on behalf of his estate and cites TIME’s 2021 investigation, alleges that his death was linked to the falsehoods spread by AFLD as well as the doctor who prescribed it. “They didn’t even examine him. They gave him something that he used as they prescribed, and it killed him,” Jelena Parker-Hatfield says. “How can they not be held accountable for something? How in America can this be a system that works, that everybody is okay with?”

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What It Takes to See 10,000 Bird Species

In this piece, Jessie Williamson joins Peter Kaestner on an epic adventure to South America — all to try and spot some elusive birds. She is quick to realize the lengths that Kaestner will go to reach his target of 10,000 birds, writing that “for one of his top targets, the Ayacucho antpitta, he needed permission to navigate through an unstable area ravaged by Shining Path guerrillas.” Kaestner seems to take that sort of thing in his stride, in a tale that is bird watcher meets Indiana Jones.

In 1986, Kaestner became the first person in the world to see a representative of every bird family in existence, 159 back then. But the birding event that most changed his life was his 1989 discovery of the Cundinamarca antpitta, a species new to science. Kaestner had traveled outside Bogotá, Colombia, for work and was exploring a forested area up a newly constructed road. Suddenly, he heard a call he didn’t recognize.

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