The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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A former plantation turned into a source of pride. The freedom of a street dog. The heavy toll of a gambling addiction. The strained lives of South African copper thieves. And an uplifting profile of a rock icon. Our favorites of the week, pulled from all of our editors’ picks.

1. Reclaiming a North Carolina Plantation

Cynthia R. Greenlee | Garden & Gun | April 24, 2023 | 3,050 words

I went to college in North Carolina, where I took a history-meets-writing seminar about Stagville, a former slave plantation near campus. By trawling through historical documents and walking the site, I learned how a 30,000-acre operation was made possible (and profitable) by the labor of roughly 900 Black people held in bondage. Stagville is now maintained by the state; it never occurred to me as a student that the land might be used for anything other than studying and honoring the past. As this story in Garden & Gun shows, there is another way to approach land once tended by slaves, one that can provide for local communities, now and in the future. Two remarkable sisters have been transforming Snow Hill, a former plantation not far from Stagville, into an incubator for gardeners and small farmers. They are promoting sustainability and battling food insecurity while at the same time promoting land access to populations long denied it. The sisters currently lease the land, but as Cynthia R. Greenlee explains, “using a conservation easement, which restricts development rights and lowers property values,” they plan to buy the acreage, likely worth millions, for just $37,000. “Land isn’t just a source of the compounded traumas of slavery, sharecropping, migration, and food insecurity for Black Americans,” Greenlee writes. “It’s also a wellspring of pride, knowledge, economic power, and spiritual connection.” —SD

2. The Free Dogs of India

Krithika Srinivasan | Aeon Magazine | May 4, 2023 | 2,800 words

India has the world’s largest population of street dogs, historically labeled as “pariahs” and “strays” by the British and viewed as a symbol of the decline of India. British colonialism spread the idea that dogs are only legitimate if they belong to a breed; any others are dirty, inferior creatures meant to be culled. As Krithika Srinivasan argues in this insightful piece, dogs existed before breeds, before fancy dog shows, before the upper class groomed them. Shouldn’t the country’s street dogs be free to live in public places? Despite the need to find their own food, water, and shelter — and their exposure to mostly human-made harms like traffic and cruelty — these free-living dogs live mostly autonomous and peaceful lives. Srinivasan challenges us to reconsider the long-held idea that dogs are meant to be human companions, and to rethink how humans can coexist with other beings on the planet. —CLR

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

Noah Vineberg | Maclean’s | May 10, 2023 | 5,098 words

In my city, the climate wreaks havoc on infrastructure. Potholes abound. Curbs crumble to dust after a single brutal winter. But guess what has a shiny sparkle? The newly renovated and expanded casino, located within walking distance from some of the most impoverished postal codes in town. The government insists gambling proceeds help fund “healthcare, education, social services, housing and infrastructure.” I’m not against gambling, but for some, it extracts a much greater cost than it could ever repay in helping fund community and social services. At Maclean’s, recovering gambling addict Noah Vineberg recounts how he spiraled into gambling addiction from sports betting as a teen and the steep non-monetary price he’s paid ever since. —KS

4. Life Inside the South African Gangs Risking Everything for Copper

Monica Mark | Financial Times | May 10, 2023 | 4,823 Words

Sausages, Mafia, and TwoSix: Three men at the bottom of a supply chain sourcing stolen copper for international syndicates. Monica Mark uses their story to explain how the South African gangs stealing copper have reached an industrial scale — causing outages in water, sanitation, and hospitals, and even train crashes. She sets the personal tale of these men against the larger backdrop with intricate skill: Copper thieves are widely despised (vigilantes even beat a suspected thief to death), but Mark’s account evokes empathy for those driven by poverty to this crime. Yes, they often use the money to buy drugs, but Mark explains how “Heroin helped numb everything: the chill seeping through the thin walls, the stomach cramps from hunger.” It is skinny, softly spoken TwoSix who — after weeks of negotiation — Mark manages to spend time with. TwoSix will wrench your heart. This essay does not shy away from the devastating effects of these thefts, but it also shines a fierce, unflinching light on the plight of the people committing them. As ever, it’s complicated. —CW

5. The Dave Matthews Guide to Living and Dying

Alex Pappademas | GQ | May 18, 2023 | 5,777 words

I’m not sure I ever had an opinion about Dave Matthews. I knew how I felt about his music — which is probably best left for another time, though “no thanks” pretty much sums it up — but I also think I thought he was Jack Johnson. (White guys with guitars, man; I don’t know what to tell you.) After reading Alex Pappademas’ stellar profile, though, I finally do have an opinion, and that opinion is that the world needs a few more people like Dave Matthews. Pappademas has always been able to walk the razor-wire tightrope of inserting just enough of himself to leaven a story without pushing it into This Famous Person Is Just an Excuse For My Thoughts territory, and that talent is on full display here. Even beyond the effortlessly entertaining writing, it’s a profile of the type we don’t see enough of these days: a multi-day/location/activity hang in which a rapport grows and a subject’s personality emerges. There’s lots here about Matthews’ understanding of who he is and how the world sees him, of course, but just as much about the way he moves through the world and the joy with which he approaches life and its inevitable end. Regardless of how you ever felt about DMB, you’ll leave this one feeling a little bit changed for the better. Which is probably exactly how Matthews would want it. —PR

Audience Award

And now for the big one — the piece our readers loved the most this week.

Sincerely, Your Sister

Jillian Horton | The Globe and Mail | May 13, 2023 | 5,631 words

After a bout of post-surgical meningitis in the early 1970s, Dr. Jillian Horton’s sister Wendy was left with severe mental and physical disabilities. In this gutting essay, she recounts her mother’s struggles to get assistance with Wendy’s care. Jean Horton wrote letter after letter to provincial politicians in Manitoba, pleas for help for her daughter that went mostly ignored. “Wendy needed a residence that was capable of managing the complex medical needs of adults with brain injuries,” writes Dr. Jillian Horton. “The problem was that in Manitoba there was no such thing.” —KS

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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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