The staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator had a front-row seat to the encampments and crackdowns that shook US politics. They were better positioned than anyone to cover what happened on their campus—and that’s why New York gave them a cover story. This is a tremendous first draft of history, told through quotes, reflections, and photographs:
Laura, a senior: It’s so hard to be here and to know that the tuition I pay is going to fund the genocide in Gaza. I’d been doing marches and protests all year in solidarity. But there was never a moment where I felt hopeful. Like, Joe Biden’s not going to care. And then—hearing that there was this escalation planned—it was like, Okay, we could be in a situation where we suddenly have negotiating power.
The planning was super-confidential. If you wanted to let someone in on it, you had to swear them to secrecy, one-on-one. I went to my professor’s office, and I was like, “Put your phone on airplane mode. Disconnect from Wi-Fi. This is what’s happening.”
Liam,* a junior: For me, joining was a bit of an impulsive decision. I was like, I just need to do it. I take out $50,000 in student loans every single year, and it sucks. I have to work 20 hours a week to pay off the interest. I hate sitting here knowing I’m working my ass off only so my money can go to supporting genocide. It boiled down to my integrity—we are the students of this school, we are their funding.
K., a senior: I had learned so much about the precedent of organizing at Columbia and understanding that we have this massive history of protests and that there are all these eyes on us. I have so much privilege being here. I’m from a first-gen, low-income background. So I knew that if there was ever going to be an escalation, it was something I wanted to be a part of. I consulted a lot of my friends about it, and at first a lot of us were questioning whether this would be a fully planned, well-thought-out action, which in hindsight is ridiculous. It was incredibly well planned. And it made sense that they had to withhold certain information for safety and security.
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Jasper Craven | The Baffler | April 3, 2024 | 4,546 words
In 2018, Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL, was court-martialed for allegedly murdering a prisoner in Iraq. If you followed the high-profile case, or listened to the excellent podcast about it, called The Thread, you likely know that Gallagher was acquitted after a key witness changed his story on the stand. The only charge that stuck pertained to Gallagher posing for photographs with the prisoner’s corpse. (He texted one image to a friend in California, with the message, “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife.”) Gallagher was feted by conservative media and quickly pardoned by Donald Trump. And where has he been since? Apparently, hawking seasoned salt—as well as gun silencers, knives, and jiujitsu clinics. As Jasper Craven shows, Gallagher has spent the last several years turning himself into a brand—when he’s selling stuff, he’s really selling himself. He’s also written a book, started a podcast, and launched a foundation to support police officers and service members accused of crimes; among the beneficiaries to date is Daniel Penny, the former Marine who in 2023 choked an unarmed Black man to death on the New York subway. Gallagher embraces the backlash against his history of violence—in fact, it’s central to his appeal to consumers. Craven positions Gallagher in a “weird world” of influencers that includes “the likes of acquitted Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who has written a memoir and recently partnered with a body armor company, and disgraced General Michael Flynn, who gives speeches, sells merch, and promotes a precious metals exchange.” This incisive feature offers a window into the commodification of right-wing aggression, anti-wokeness, and Trumpism. Call it warrior-culture capitalism, and call it gross, because that’s what it is. —SD
Lisa Kaltenegger | Nautilus | May 8, 2024 | 2,247 words
I love that this piece about planetary science starts with coffee. Lisa Kaltenegger is a scientist who tries to identify habitable worlds by modeling their light fingerprints. In this excerpt from her book, Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, Kaltenegger is in Vienna—a land of great coffee—but alas, is stuck at a conference with terrible caffeine options in Styrofoam cups. Thus, with her drink woes, Kaltenegger becomes instantly relatable. With a disgusting coffee in hand, and anxious about entering a room late (which is also relatable), she dithers in a hall to look at posters when she bumps into William Borucki, an American astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center. Borucki launched the Kepler mission—looking for other worlds—and informs Kaltenegger of the discovery of two new planets. This is her eureka moment, which she shares joyfully: “Suddenly, my research to find life in the cosmos went from visionary to practical, from far-fetched to applied, from future-oriented to needed-right-now.” Modeling these new planets, Kaltenegger discovers they could potentially support life. I never appreciated that scientists daydream about their work, but Kaltenegger is open in her fantasies, her excitement brimming from every word: “I saw two worlds covered in endless oceans and waves that never broke onto a shore. . . . Would the wind carry the smell of salt from the oceans as it does on Earth?” The topic of new worlds that could support life is a fascinating one, of course, but it’s Kaltenegger’s humanity that brings her writing to life. —CW
Adam Iscoe | The New Yorker | April 22, 2024 | 5,505 words
Adam Iscoe writes 5,000 words on NYC’s restaurant reservation ecosystem that I didn’t know I needed. His story is especially fitting this week, as I’ve tried to secure reservations at a restaurant—any nice restaurant—for Mother’s Day. “In the new world order, desirable reservations are like currency; booking confirmations for 4 Charles Prime Rib, a clubby West Village steakhouse, have recently been spotted on Hinge and Tinder profiles.” Iscoe writes a fair number of lines like this that make me laugh, eye-roll, and feel despair all at once. But while I could have stopped reading at any point, his great reporting and bits of humor kept the piece from becoming a hate read. Iscoe describes an exhausting world in which you have to join exclusive membership clubs like Dorsia to snag hard-to-get tables at the hottest restaurants, or search online marketplaces like Appointment Trader to buy reservations from a reseller. A reseller could be anyone: a college student making reservations with fake phone numbers and email addresses on their parents’ luxury credit card, a private reservationist for celebrities, or a “script kiddie” that uses bots to amass “a thousand reservations with the hopes of selling fifty of them.” As Iscoe reveals, reselling can be shockingly lucrative: “Another reseller, PerceptiveWash44, told me that he makes reservations while watching TV,” he writes. “Last year, he made eighty thousand dollars reselling reservations.” I admit there was a time, when my husband and I were childless and living in San Francisco, that we regularly dined out and spent over $500 on a single meal. Those days are long behind us, and I’m certainly not going to shell out $500-$1,000 today, simply for a reservation. Luckily, after a few hours of searching online, I managed to book a table for Sunday at a restaurant I know my mother will enjoy. Granted, I booked it through OpenTable, a platform for commoners. In the end, though, all that really matters is the time spent with her over a nice meal. —CLR
You’ve seen the ads: a home in Italy for a euro. I have had many questions. Can you really buy a home in Europe for a euro? What’s the catch? Are people taking advantage of the offer? What’s happened as a result? Lisa Abend’s entertaining journey of discovery starts in Cammarata, Italy, a community in Sicily located about 40 miles southeast of Palermo. There, some homes have stood abandoned for decades after residents migrated, looking for modern conveniences in larger centers. Recently, some young locals have returned, post-education, looking for a quieter life. In a bid to reinvigorate their community, they’re actively encouraging owners of abandoned properties to sell to foreigners via a group called StreetTo. They’ll even help you navigate red tape and find contractors to renovate your new dream home. What’s more, to get you out of your new courtyard and into the local piazza, they “organize exhibitions, concerts, and gatherings for townspeople old and new.” If you’re thinking of booking a flight to shop for real estate, however, Abend suggests that you prepare yourself for disrepair. While many dwellings are severely dilapidated, they’re not beyond hope—yet their rehab will cost much more than the touted price tag. Abend also interviews Michael McCubbin, a man who, after working for chef Jamie Oliver in London for 17 years, moved to Italy and made it his home, motivated by low real estate prices. An accomplished chef, he’s turned his house into a community kitchen. “These days, the Good Kitchen also supplies weekly meals for the elderly and has taught some of Mussomeli’s youth to cook,” Abend writes. “A clutch of older men use the space as an afternoon hangout, and there’s also a free Sunday afternoon lunch. (The only requirement for those with means is that they bring something to share.)” While properties typically cost more than a single euro and require extensive renovation, one thing seems clear from Abend’s fun fact-finding mission: both buyers and locals seem to be getting more than what they bargained for. —KS
I can’t remember if I saw the movie Go in the theater, but I’m guessing I didn’t. (Not many did, thanks in large part to The Matrix sucking up all the oxygen at the multiplex around that time.) I have seen it approximately eight gazillion times since then, however, which made Paul Schrodt’s oral history for GQ even more of a delight than it would have been anyway. The gang’s mostly all here: director Doug Liman (who made this in his transition from Swingers indie golden boy to The Bourne Identity franchise A-lister); screenwriter John August; the cast, save for Katie Holmes and Taye Diggs. But crucially, the piece communicates how much fun it can be to make a movie outside of the tentpole factory. Improvisational shoots, handheld cameras, and a crew of rising stars who are utterly sold on the director’s vision—it all makes clear that the movie’s enduring cult success stems from the “dance like no one’s watching” ethos of its creation. People tend to compare Go to Pulp Fiction because of its nonlinear timeline and crime elements, but it’s really more like Wet Hot American Summer—small, scrappy, and overflowing with the love the cast and crew had for the project. That’s a rare thing these days outside the arthouse circuit, and I have a feeling that number eight gazillion and one is right around the corner. —PR
Philip Vance Smith II | Film Comment | April 22, 2024 | 1,805 words
If you’ve seen any docuseries set in jails or prisons recently, you may have seen incarcerated people holding tablets. As Philip Vance Smith II writes from inside a medium-security prison, these aren’t just telecom devices to handle phone and payment services. They also deliver movies and television—at costs that vary from facility to facility, but are consistent in their exorbitance. —PR
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1999 was such a bonkers year for movies that a friend of mine wrote a book about it. Some were blockbusters (The Matrix, The Sixth Sense). Some were small-bore classics (Being John Malkovich, Election). But nothing rode the line between small and big—or enjoyed a legacy so out of proportion to its initial reception—quite like Doug Liman’s Go. Cue this thoroughly entertaining oral history from the cast and crew, which featured more on-the-rise actors than any movie since The Outsiders.
Meyer: It was right when Taye Diggs had done How Stella Got Her Groove Back. We went to the airport to go to Vegas to film the movie. We’re at the ticket counter. He walks up and he gives his ID and gets his ticket and then moves aside and I step up. I’ve never seen this in my life and I’ve never seen it since: Taye’s so incredibly, ridiculously good-looking, and a specimen of yes, that he walked away and the lady was watching him go and literally went [Meyer’s eyes bulge], like she couldn’t believe that a cupid had been cut out of onyx like that. I’ve never felt more invisible and smaller in my entire life.
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Explorer posts, overseen by the Boy Scouts, are supposed to foster an interest in policing. They have faced nearly 200 allegations of misconduct:
Reporters found abuse allegations in big and small departments spanning much of the country. In Connecticut, an officer first tried to ply a 17-year-old Explorer with compliments and a silver bracelet. After her repeated rejections, he took her into a vacant house, handcuffed her and sexually assaulted her, according to police records and her lawsuit. In South Miami, police records show a detective offered to teach teenagers about sex before he assaulted them—so often that some older Explorers warned new recruits against being alone with him. And in Porterville, California, a sergeant who led his department’s Explorer program took a 17-year-old alone on ride-alongs and complained about his marriage before having sex with her, according to a now-settled lawsuit.
Supporters of the program, including police officials and Scouting leaders, say that abuse cases are rare and represent just a fraction of the tens of thousands of law enforcement Explorers over the decades. Some experts say the program helps teenagers become interested in law enforcement—boosting recruiting in a profession that faces labor shortages.
Craig Martin, who chairs the National Exploring Program, said one way to keep young people safe is the requirement that adults working with Explorers attend a Youth Protection Training at least every two years. Martin referred reporters to Scouting headquarters for specific answers, but said he believes most abuse in the program took place 25 or more years ago.
Slightly more than half of the cases reporters found occurred since 2000. It can take years for people who are abused to come forward—and many never do, experts say.
The power imbalance between officers and Explorers can leave teenagers vulnerable, said Anthony DeMarco, a lawyer who has represented several former Explorers who accused officers of abuse.
“One of the greatest injuries that the Explorers I’ve worked for have talked about is they dreamed of being in law enforcement,” he said. “And because they were abused, and because in some ways it became known, it felt like it got ripped from them.”
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My mother hadn’t made sense on the phone, muttering about a blinking light and a duck. She’d entered respite care while my father healed from a broken hip. Plucked from the routines of home, truth revealed itself in confusing behaviors and eventually a CT scan: both my parents had dementia.
He kept calling me from his room, which neighbored my mom’s. He rang, 10, 12, 14 times a day he rang, screaming that something was wrong with her mind—unaware in his own urgency that he’d already called. He’d scream. Forget. Most everyone else he knew had blocked his number due to the hammering rate of angry calls.
“She just sat in the dark all day,” he pleaded. They wanted to go home.
“The house isn’t safe, Dad. We’ve talked about this a thousand times,” I told him. He had to remember. I was only starting to understand he couldn’t.
For many, many years by then, my mother had lived mostly as a shut-in, able to walk but very unsteadily; my father used their home’s three front porch steps to keep her indoors. (The flight of steps she climbed inside had no contraindication.)
“We were so happy there,” he told me miserably. “When are you coming?”
“As soon as this lockdown is over,” I promised.
“When the hell will that be?” It was 2021, deep enough into the pandemic that we were vaccinated but still in the thick of outbreaks. I knew if I estimated a date for my arrival, and it changed, that would be the single thing his brain held onto: the fact that I’d let him down.
I knew if I estimated a date for my arrival, and it changed, that would be the single thing his brain held onto: the fact that I’d let him down.
But the lockdown did end, and I drove the hours cross-state, stopping to eat at a Chipotle. Weary already, that’s where I got the news of professional success. A publisher wanted to make an offer on my first book. I couldn’t wait to tell my mother in person.
I’d been working toward this for years, since girlhood really, when my mom bought me a word processor in middle school and taught me how to touch-type, making thought permanent. She taught me to type for the same reason she taught me to sew: she wanted me to have job skills.
But I was a kid with too much imagination and too many words I couldn’t say aloud. I went along with her each Saturday to our empty Presbyterian church, where she cleaned bathrooms and swept floors while I skipped around playing make-believe. The job was a kindness. The preacher knew how little we had; he snuck Christmas gifts into our house in black garbage bags so my mother could wrap them. My favorite part was when she cleaned the sanctuary. As she plucked hard-candy wrappers from the nooks of the choir chancel and dusted the rows and rows of pews, I got to dance around the deep plush carpet in my socks. It was such a rebellion: Socks! In the sanctuary! When I wore myself out, I’d tuck under a pew and daydream, watching for her legs as she moved through the vast room. When she got to where I’d hidden, she’d smile down at me as if I were a genuine surprise. Sweat dampened the temples of her hair, which would add extra spring as it dried. I’d roll on my back and stare at the underside of the pew, picturing worlds in the knots of wood.
My writing habit started in third grade, when I wrote a story about a teenager who stole a diamond ring to pay off gambling debts. The teacher gently asked if I had copied the story from somewhere—why should a kid my age know about bookies? We’d lost our house the summer prior, after my father lost his job. He had been a bus driver and crashed the bus, drunk. He went away for a while—jail or rehab, I don’t know. In turn, I carried our cat around in a laundry basket and called him Dad. He was a quiet, fuzzy replacement. My easy transference to a feline father-figure distressed my mother though, and when my dad came home sober for a short time, she chose to believe it would last, even when it didn’t.
By high school, I penned supernatural short stories and poetry about pain and anger. I jotted down words while locked in my room. The clatter of fingers on keys became a funnel for the noise in my mind and our home, a place to pin ideas while my father screamed.
When I arrived at the nursing facility, my mother complimented me on my boots. She grinned and called me Sandy. That’s my aunt’s name, my dad’s sister.
I dropped my mask momentarily. “It’s me, Sarah,” I told her.
She studied me, shook her head. “Oh, it is.” I wasn’t convinced anything had clicked.
I hugged her quickly, needing to make myself real to her but also worried I might transmit some COVID germ picked up at a rest stop. My hand reached for her hair. It looked foreign.
Her hair had always been a stubborn mass of curls. A stylist once bothered to count fourteen cowlicks on her head, a bob that normally points every which way: up, left, front, back, under, through. Ever practical, for years she kept it in short corkscrews. Except after cancer, the decade prior, when she didn’t lose her hair with chemo, she celebrated by letting it grow long and wild. To my children, she looked like a friendly witch. To me, the cloud of silver made her appear rapidly aged. Maybe the cancer did it. Maybe all the rest caught up with her.
Now, at the nursing home, it was in odd, straight stalks. An aide must have tried to tame it, which looked like a failed revolution up there. Her hair, like her memory, had gone flat.
I wheeled her to my father’s room. He took a half-second to recognize me in my face mask but quickly started demanding help moving them home.
My mother studied her lap, then finally interjected, “This is my husband.”
Dad guffawed. “She knows that, Lois! This is Sarah! Sarah! It’s Sarah.” He looked at me helplessly. “We have to get out of this place.”
I couldn’t argue.
I felt like I had no idea what I was doing coordinating their care from afar and was dogged by a sense that if all this had happened on a more natural timeline, I would manage better.
My mother had me at nearly 40. Is that your grandma? people asked me when I was a kid. It embarrassed us both, like she’d achieved a Biblical-level miracle having me at that age.
Now I was just past 40 myself. She had eclipsed 80, and my own kids were school-aged. A generation felt missing somewhere—the one who was supposed to teach me how to mother while helping my own parents as they faded.
Time twisted around inside me. I still didn’t know how to rescue my mother, I didn’t know how to rescue either of them.
Families often follow patterns, and although it was too soon, it was my turn to start enacting my mother’s roles. When her own mom had gotten too frail to live on her own, my mom had taken her in, giving her my childhood bedroom. I couldn’t do the same with my parents—I would not subject my children to formative years with my father in their space, his voice whipping lasting pathways into their minds.
But I also knew the current arrangement wasn’t working. I’d begun to buckle under the strain of my father’s deterioration and my mom’s mental drift. I didn’t know how to shield my children from what I was feeling.
I didn’t know how to look beyond each brutal moment.
My mother could. It might have been the key to her survival.
I didn’t know how to look beyond each brutal moment.My mother could. It might have been the key to her survival.
I remember a time when she was in the kitchen popping popcorn and forgot to put the top on the popper. I heard her shriek and laugh, and I ran to the door to see kernels launching like missiles in all directions. Popcorn was all over the floor, the counters, shooting toward the living room, filling the air with a seemingly endless bounty. It caught in our hair, bounded off her shoulders, and she pealed with giggles.
My father exploded, Lois, you could break a wet dream! (one of his favorite insults), but that time, Mom and I doubled over laughing at the sheer anarchy of corn pelting him too as he yelled over the mess.
I started trying to get my mom to move out back when I was in first or second grade. Sometimes she would threaten to leave, but he countered that he would track us down and set fire to wherever we went, with us inside. I was small, skittish, but fear motivated escape in me, while it rooted her in place.
When she wouldn’t leave, I decided to run away, but I was unsure of how to pack my cat into my suitcase. I couldn’t leave without her, the cat. Or my mother.
Each evening until I moved off for college, my father drunkenly slurred and screamed, chasing me around the house until I caged myself in my room and he pounded outside. I’d stayed there safe, until his attention refocused on my mother, then I’d run out and draw his anger toward me again. I was faster, could outrun him.
He had the longer-term benefit of blacking out, forgetting it all in the morning. When I was 21, with no one mentioning the irony, he got sober. He’d “blown up like a balloon,” Mom said. An early user of Dr. Google, she diagnosed him with kidney or liver failure and told him he had two choices: dry up or he would die. She detoxed him at home.
A couple of weeks into sobriety that would span the rest of his life, she called me at college and told me I could come home. He was “better.”
Walking into the house, it was the usual old fog, dark memories laced within dense cigarette smoke. He sat in the same, filthy-brown recliner, feet kicked up, sipping Pepsi in a glass with ice. The TV blared as it always had. I stepped timidly into the living room, feeling as though the floor could drop away any moment, spilling me into all the other times he sat perched in that chair, weighing what might throw him into a rage. Look at you two eating. Pig, he’d said to me, a hungry child. You’re trying to starve me to death, he constantly accused my mother, though she cooked for him daily. He just wouldn’t eat; his stomach had been saturated with booze.
That was before. The distant past, or at least two weeks prior to him quitting the drink. He smiled at me the first day I saw him sober, his dark eyes lighting up with the visit, then he turned back to the TV. Eventually, he drained his glass, and kicked down the footrest. That metallic clang, the slap of him bolting from the chair, clenched my stomach, my chest. I was habituated to run from the sound. He merely rushed off for more soda. I felt myself locked in fight or flight on the edge of the couch. Freeze, instead. Old terror doesn’t look like anything much. No one noticed.
Later, I’d check the fridge and see beer cans left over. I counted them with every visit, but they sat untouched. Eventually, he gave them to neighbors.
He broke every rule of AA, and fair enough, it had never helped him before. This time, he was always around temptation and ascribed to no higher power (unless you count my mother). He kept up his daily appearance at the bar and even sat on the same barstool, sipping ginger ale. She maintained her routine of working only to scrape by with whatever he didn’t spend gambling or on cigarettes, until she got him to quit smoking in their 60s.
We never talked about what a terror he’d been. I assumed it all washed away as ginger ale replaced beer and whiskey.
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We lived that sober reality for two decades, though the smallest perceived infraction could still make him snap.
But as he screamed at me in his scared, elderly state that I needed to help them both, I remembered all the years at once. His raised voice collapsed the distance between my girl’s body and my middle-aged one, bracing inside while my legs prepared to bolt.
I was starting to wonder what my mom had retained—and what was being lost, floating off like curls of smoke.
In my father’s nursing home room, his walker next to the bed and my mom gazing vaguely in her wheelchair, I panicked. I said something I would forget moments later.
It’s difficult to explain, but there’s a willful blank space in my memory. I must have suggested they should live closer to me. I must have said the words, but there’s a gap in conversation, a moment that vanished immediately in my stress and overwhelm. And then my dad was nodding, yes, my parents needed to move to a nice place near me, where I could help take care of them. A few incautious words evaporated all the years I’d distanced myself from my childhood.
We never talked about what a terror he’d been. I assumed it all washed away as ginger ale replaced beer and whiskey.
I wheeled my mom back into her room, and soon she was in bed. She pointed at the window and told me about the pond outside.
There was no pond; just darkness. She told me about the ducks that lived out there, and I wanted to cry but couldn’t because then she’d know something was wrong. It was my job to protect her. She smiled sweetly and told me how the man across the hall kept one of those ducks in his room, would you believe it?
“Right under that tree.” I looked through her open door to the Christmas tree in the room across the hall.
“I don’t see a duck. Are you sure?” I asked, hoping my doubt would cut through whatever gripped her.
“No, it’s right there.” She poked a finger out from under her blanket. Her eyes locked on something I couldn’t see.
“Hmmm.” I shrugged. She studied me—looking but not yet seeing her duck. “I love those boots, Sandy.”
Daggers in my heart.
It took weeks longer than my father wanted for me to find a suitable facility, get their Medicaid provider changed for the move to a new county. The minutiae of bureaucracy was beyond him. He only retained that I hadn’t served his needs quite yet.
My book wound up going to auction. The result wasn’t lavish, but a livable wage for a difficult book that investigated stories of abuse in evangelical church environments. It would be about brave women who spoke out against and fought the abuse.
I had meant to mostly write from the outside, as an observer, but over time, snippets of personal narrative spilled in. I tried to be antiseptic and analyze how my own childhood abuse differed from those who endured spiritual abuse; they believed their suffering had been God’s will after all. That stung in a unique way, I realized. Some people lived with pain that couldn’t be explained; others were given false reasons and told to accept it.
Tapping my own story into the draft pulled old memories out of me, put them elsewhere, on a page. They lived alongside my sources’ brutal recollections, footnoted to interviews, testimony, police and court records. There were far too many horrors I couldn’t write. Those just lived in me, reawakening whenever I heard his voice.
There were far too many horrors I couldn’t write. Those just lived in me, reawakening whenever I heard his voice.
Finally, the weekend came to pack my parents’ belongings into my SUV and my parents into my husband’s little electric car. We found them dressed and ready in wheelchairs.
“Are you excited?” I asked my mom.
“Sure,” she said. She did seem genuinely happy, ready for an adventure, or maybe just glad to be leaving the room. I had picked that place during an emergency—surely the next round would go better. My husband was puttering around shoving a few last items into the cars. I absently grabbed a tiny, neon green comb from the sink and started running it through my mother’s silver hair. It was clean. Whatever one aide had used to flatten her hair, another had cleared to return it to its original state.
My hands moved absently, experienced. We were at a stage where I spent plenty of time dissecting my own daughter’s tangles. If I didn’t rake through it myself about once a week, she’d clump a knot that quickly turned into a dreadlock that I’d have to pull apart hair by hair. I knew I could just cut the knots out, make her learn a hard lesson about self-care. But she loved her long hair; I loved how it turned back into rippling silk.
I ran the wide-toothed end of the plastic comb through my mom’s curls one at a time, lightly, giving each a gentle run. My own waves would never tolerate this, would rapidly turn to frizz. Hers snapped back to coils just as they always had.
Sarah Stankorbis the author of the national best-seller Disobedient Women (Worthy Books/Hachette). The award-winning, Ohio-based writer is a fan of heart-felt truth telling. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, O Magazine, Marie Claire, Vogue, Longreads, Glamour, Slate, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Newsweek, and Salon.
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In this excerpt from her book,Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, Lisa Kaltenegger makes science accessible—and exciting. Recounting the day she learned of a new discovery, her enthusiasm is infectious, and you will devour every word.
That cold day in Vienna with terrible coffee turned into one of the most exciting days of my life. Borucki told me he’d planned to find me at my talk the next day. During our serendipitous encounter, he shared an intriguing—and well-kept—secret that I really, really wanted to shout from the rooftops of this beautiful imperial city: The Kepler mission had found a new world that was just in the right spot around its star.
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People are increasingly trading their privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed writer Jia Tolentino how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be:
Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app.
Nearly every time we load new content on an app or a Web site, ad-exchange companies—Google being the largest among them—broadcast data about our interests, finances, and vulnerabilities to determine exactly what we’ll see; more than a billion of these transactions take place in the U.S. every hour. Each of us, the data-privacy expert Wolfie Christl told me, has “dozens or even hundreds” of digital identifiers attached to our person; there’s an estimated eighteen-billion-dollar industry for location data alone. In August, 2022, Mozilla reviewed twenty pregnancy and period-tracking apps and found that fifteen of them made a “buffet” of personal data available to third parties, including addresses, I.P. numbers, sexual histories, and medical details. In most cases, the apps used vague language about when and how this data could be shared with law enforcement. (A 2020 FOIA lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased access to location data for millions of people in order to track them without a warrant. ICE and C.B.P. subsequently said they would stop using such data.) The scholar Shoshana Zuboff has called this surveillance capitalism, “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” Through our phones, we are under perpetual surveillance by companies that buy and sell data about what kind of person we are, whom we might vote for, what we might purchase, and what we might be nudged into doing.
A decade ago, the sociology professor Janet Vertesi conducted a more rigorous form of the hidden-pregnancy experiment. Using an elaborate system of code words and the anonymous browser Tor, she managed to digitally hide her pregnancy all the way up to the birth of her child. In an article about the experience, for Time, she pointed to a Financial Times report, which found that identifying a single pregnant woman is as valuable to data brokers as knowing the age, gender, and location of more than two hundred nonpregnant people, because of how much stuff new parents tend to buy. She also noted that simply attempting to evade market detection—by, for example, purchasing stacks of gift cards in order to buy a stroller—made her and her husband look as though they were trying to commit fraud.
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