"Ornamental succulents all over the world are under assault by traffickers. . . . That many are rare and grow in incredibly remote places means they are highly coveted by collectors, hungry for exotic new plants." —Monica Mark for Financial Times

https://longreads.com/2025/01/28/the-rise-of-plant-poaching-how-a-craze-for-succulents-is-driving-a-new-illegal-trade/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"But laughter is also characterized by repetition. In fact, given the extraordinary variability in the sounds people make when they laugh, repetition is what makes laughter universally recognizable." —Kirsten Bell for @SAPIENS_org

https://longreads.com/2025/01/23/the-strange-power-of-laughter/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

The FBI "already knew Torswats’ real name and address. But it had still done nothing to stop him—a fact that was particularly appalling to the man who had practically handed Torswats’ identity to the FBI: a lone private investigator living outside Seattle named Brad Dennis." —@dmehro and @agreenberg for Wired

https://longreads.com/2025/01/22/the-school-shootings-were-fake-the-terror-was-real/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"The braid over my left shoulder filigreed with frost. Inside my mitten, water collected at my fingertips. Ravens flew dark against the sky." —Jessie Kindig for Orion Magazine

https://longreads.com/2025/01/15/object-relations/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"Ray Charles might have recorded at Atlantic’s studio in New York City, but the record that a customer bought . . . began its trek to that store’s shelf when it was pressed in and shipped from Memphis." Robert Gordon, Oxford American
https://longreads.com/2025/01/13/how-jukeboxes-made-memphis-music/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

"When Chrishona visited him one Sunday, his hands remained chained behind his back. The reason, Jerryon later admitted to his mother, was that he had tried to hang himself." —Elly Fishman for Chicago Magazine

https://longreads.com/2025/01/10/chrishona-hodgess-life-sentence/

"They could obey the corps and rebuild the levees to a lower height, which would put them at far greater risk of flooding, and, Curole felt, would be tantamount to abandoning the area’s centuries of history to the sea. Or they could go rogue." —Katie Thornton for The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/28/louisiana-bayou-levee-gulf

"Feel your hands in a soft grass, waist-high and moving in a strong south wind. Smell the sweetness of that grass, and behold the biggest sky on Earth save above the open sea. If this be nothing, then for me nothing be heaven." —Sarah Smarsh for Orion Magazine

https://orionmagazine.org/article/prairie-grassland-restoration-north-america/

Sinéad "O’Connor enacted courage in public, flooding the mainstream with her stirring insolence. In her passing, we realised how rare people like her were all over again." —Momtaza Mehri for @grantamag

https://granta.com/universal-mother/

#Longreads #EditorsPick #SinéadO'Connor #Memoir

"When the road rose into a mountain, I climbed; when the sky opened into rain, I got wet. The only option was to pedal and accept. Cars passed me, but otherwise I was alone. Solitude was its own kind of freedom, and I embraced it." —Laura Killingbeck for Bicycling Magazine

https://www.bicycling.com/rides/a60502952/epic-bike-ride-alaska-to-california/