Every Republican senator voted for the resolution, including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, as did a few Democrats, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The bill’s sponsor said the bat’s “endangered” status would put an undue burden on the East Coast’s timber industry.

The rule found support in the U.S. House and among developers. Rock Hill-based Republican Ralph Norman, a successful developer himself, has benefited from forest clear-cutting to build large commercial warehouses. Norman suggested that the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t apply to all animals. And certainly not these bats.

“I see the bald eagle. That makes sense. I see the bears. That makes sense. But long-eared bats? I hope the white-nose syndrome wipes all of them out. We won’t have it to worry about,” Norman said at a committee hearing before a critical vote.

After a stint at the North Carolina Heritage Program, the state’s primary biodiversity agency, she landed at the Fish and Wildlife Service in DC in 2004. There, she focused on convincing private landowners to voluntarily take up conservation measures for all types of threatened critters, including longleaf pine species like the red-cockaded woodpecker. When she retired in 2019, she left feeling like the agency failed to understand and serve people on a local level. So, after settling down in Raleigh, she founded Venus Flytrap Champions, knowing full well that public support of a key charismatic species can help save whole ecosystems. Now she treks up and down the coast, trying to convince people to safeguard flytraps and, in some cases, digging them up to relocate them. Think of her as Susan Orlean’s orchid thief but for rescuing, not stealing, plants.

Micro-scale real estate. Marvelous birds with better memory than yours. Neighbors recording neighbors. Love among seniors. A profile of a woman who’s been both ubiquitous and anonymous for 15 years. All that—and more!—in this week’s edition.

1. Inside the Weird and Wonderful World of Miniatures

Scott Huler | Esquire | November 20, 2023 | 5,653 words

In summer 2020, I ordered a miniature house kit, thinking it would be the first of many cute dioramas I’d construct while stuck at home. As I write this, however, I glance over at the unopened box, a bit embarrassed that I have yet to experience the joy of making it. For Esquire, Scott Huler immerses himself in the world of working miniaturists, and a movement that exploded during lockdown and grew even more popular thanks to Instagram and TikTok. Speaking with collectors and artists, such as professional miniaturist Robert Off, Huler explores the why behind this art. What makes a roombox—the boxed display that houses a miniature 3D environment—so irresistible? I love what Huler discovers: for many miniature makers and viewers, a roombox provides a way to focus, a place of relief. An entire world in which to escape, or to control. An outlet to imagine and dream that “just offstage, there’s more going on if you could just get small enough to walk through that little doorway.” This piece brought me joy, not just because I was wowed by the skilled craftsmanship of miniaturists working today, but it also reminded me of the peace we can find within our interior world, and the power of our own imagination. —CLR

2. Last Love: A Romance in a Care Home

Sophie Elmhirst | The Guardian | November 23, 2023 | 4,036 words

I had to take a moment after reading this essay to sit and untangle the mess of feelings it brought up. It’s joyful, desperately sad, and a poignant reflection on aging: a standout piece. Sophie Elmhirst introduces us to two lovers, Mary and Derek. Theirs is teenage love, pure and easy, with no responsibility to weigh it down. But Mary and Derek are no teenagers; their meet-cute is in a care home. With just a few choice words, Elmhirst brings their characters to life, mixing their love story with memories to remind us of what came before a life of inconveniences and incontinence pads. She uses short, crisp sentences, jumping from place to place and emulating the way fragments of memory come bright and clear before fading and falling out of reach. It was as if I was sitting with Mary, listening as she grasped for a memory before finding another. In a few paragraphs, we have a snapshot of two lives, swinging from love to tragedy, the way life can—a history that makes the love story even more beautiful. “It’s different, meeting someone late in life,” Elmhirst explains. “You know you won’t have long, so the love feels more urgent.” (Even if this leads to awkward noises from the home’s bedrooms.) When the love is lost, it hits with a jolt, and Mary is shocked into facing the truth that she will never go home again. Yet, her final pragmatism is inspiring. An essay that made me think about aging in a way I never have before. —CW

3. How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco

Lauren Smiley | WIRED | November 7, 2023 | 7,704 words

Last April, law enforcement in San Francisco’s Marina District responded to 911 calls about an unhoused man who was beating a local resident with a metal object. The suspect was quickly arrested and the story soon went viral, in no small part because there was a video of the incident. But there were other videos—as Lauren Smiley writes, “In San Francisco, there’s always another video”—and in time they revealed there was more to the story, particularly as it pertained to the supposed victim. I don’t want to give the rest away, because this feature should be read in its entirety. It’s a masterful retelling of events, certainly, but it’s also a razor-sharp, much-needed analysis of the way San Franciscans now police one another via cell phone videos, Ring cameras, and other devices. This citizen surveillance, as Smiley shows, is feeding the national narrative about San Francisco as a place of squalor and violence. Tape something on your doorstep and before long, “the cops get it, the footage gets passed to the prosecutor, who hands it to the defense attorney, who tosses it like chum to the ravenous media, and before you know it, your house cam is on CNN, it’s playing on All In with Chris Hayes, it’s making rhetorical points against Tucker Carlson, it’s basically a live birth on a San Francisco sidewalk, boomeranging the eyes right back on you, threatening to put you on the witness stand, sending a WIRED reporter marching up to your garage on a Friday afternoon, hoping to talk.” —SD

4. The Naturalist and the Wonderful, Lovable, So Good, Very Bold Jay

Brian Payton | Hakai Magazine | November 14, 2023 | 3,700 words

First, let us have a moment of appreciation for this banger of a headline, in tribute to Judith Viorst’s classic childhood read, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I was powerless to resist this piece and was well rewarded for my time. Brian Payton’s Hakai story about the winged wizard known as the Canada jay is satisfying beginning to end. This is no paltry plumed profile; Payton weaves fact, anecdote, and story together so deftly that these 3,700 words evaporate before your very eyes. I could have read a story double the length and still would have wanted more. You’ll meet 81-year old Dan Strickland, a naturalist who is the world’s foremost authority on the bird species, his knowledge gained from decades spent observing and interacting with the cunning corvids in the boreal and subalpine forests where they make their home. “Our prodigious brains can store vast amounts of information,” writes Payton. “London cab drivers, for example, must memorize the Knowledge, a set of famously grueling exams covering the location of 25,000 city streets. Not bad, but a Canada jay can cache up to 1,000 food items per day—then remember and retrieve upward of 100,000 of them over the course of a season.” Not only is this story about a jay a real joy, it’s a rare treasure that reminds me of why I fell in love with reading in the first place: learning about those with such deep interests is deeply interesting. —KS

5. Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?

Caity Weaver | The New York Times Magazine | November 25, 2023 | 4,690 words

I always feel just a twinge of guilt recommending a story that has already become The Thing Everybody Read This Week. In my defense, though, I read the story before This Week had even officially begun, and immediately knew that it would be my Top 5 pick. Also in my defense, the first line is perfect. “One needn’t eat Tostitos Hint of Lime Flavored Triangles to survive; advertising’s object is to muddle this truth.” Why is this perfect? Well, because it tells you everything you need to know about what the story will be about, and what this story will be. It will be funny (as Caity Weaver’s profiles always are). It will be clear-eyed. It will be armed with some well-earned cynicism about how companies—or, rather, their vaporous and often uncanny incarnations known as “brands”—operate. The one thing this sentence doesn’t quite prepare you for is how generous the story is. How generous its subject is. And how generously you might think about things thereafter. We all have aspirations. Sometimes our life realizes those aspirations, sometimes it doesn’t. But sometimes even when it doesn’t, it does. Stephanie Courtney, the comic actor once bent on getting to Saturday Night Live and now in firm possession of a far more fulfilling gig, knows that better than anyone. —PR

Audience Award

What was our readers’ favorite this week? Drumroll, please!

Each year, cats collectively kill billions of birds, rodents, insects, reptiles and amphibians. They routinely make lists of the world’s worst invasive species. Free-ranging cats have been implicated in the extinction of Lyall’s wren in New Zealand and contributed to the extinction of 33 other species , and are considered a major threat to others, especially on an island like New Zealand — where birds, otherwise, have no natural land predators. To conservationists, it’s a major crisis.

Leopards were not only surviving but raising families in this agricultural landscape—and there was something about the way local people dealt with it that I could not fathom. I’d been trained to see the juxtaposition of large carnivores and people as a situation of imminent conflict. One day, early in my research in Akole, I drove with Ghule kaka (“kaka,” an honorific, means uncle), the farmer I was working with, to interview a woman whose goat had been killed by a leopard. Like a typical wildlife biologist, I asked her what problems she had with leopards. She brusquely replied that a particular leopard routinely came by a path in the hills, passed her house and went “that way.”

Later I asked Ghule kaka what I’d done to annoy her. “These people revere the leopard, and you’re asking her what problem her god gives her!” he replied. Nearby was a statue of Waghoba, a large cat deity that many people in the region have worshipped for at least half a century. I remember a pastoralist whose sheep was taken by a leopard. “The poor leopard had no prey in the forest,” he said. “What else could he eat? So he’s taken the sheep, and God will give me more.”

I’d started out as an arrogant young biologist convinced that we can resolve human-wildlife “conflict” only by understanding the animal involved. My experiences in Akole convinced me that it is humans who hold the key, and I soon got a chance to test that theory.

Our favorites this week included the truth behind the term “burnout,” an incisive analysis of rap scapegoating, flowers for an aging icon, the beauty of noticing hidden wildlife, and an engaging look at history’s forgotten children. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

1. Edifice Complex

Bench Ansfield | Jewish Currents | January 3, 2023 | 3,358 words

I might have recommended this essay based on the excellent headline alone, but in fact the substance is the star of the show. Like many millennials, I have adopted the term “burnout” into my vocabulary as a way of describing the feeling of working too hard, juggling too much, and feeling depleted by the grinding expectations of late-stage capitalism. After reading this piece, I’ll be endeavoring to use the word differently. As historian Bench Ansfield shows, the true origins of burnout as a concept have been obscured over time. Burnout isn’t a reference to a candle burning at both ends until there’s nothing left, but to the shells of buildings left by a wave of arson that ravaged Black and brown neighborhoods in New York City in the ’70s. Much of the damage was caused by landlords looking for insurance payouts. “If we excavate burnout’s infrastructural unconscious — its origins in the material conditions of conflagration — we might discover a term with an unlikely potential for subversive meaning,” Ansfield writes. “An artifact of an incendiary history, burnout can vividly name the disposability of targeted populations under racial capitalism — a dynamic that, over time, has ensnared ever-wider swaths of the workforce.” If this were the premise of a college class, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. —SD

2. How “The Shadow of State Abandonment” Fostered Then Foiled Young Thug’s YSL

Justin A. Davis | Scalawag | February 9, 2023 | 4,089 words

Put aside the chewy headline for a moment. Also put away whatever you know or don’t know about Young Thug, one of Atlanta’s most influential rap luminaries for a decade, and the epicenter of a sprawling and questionable criminal investigation into his YSL crew. What you’ll find is a shrewd, fascinating analysis that combines a music obsessive’s encyclopedic genre knowledge and a Southerner’s geographical intimacy, refracted through a lens of accessible (a crucial modifier!) political theory. It ably unpacks the hydra-headed beast of gentrification and economics and policing, as faced by the young Black man who’s currently the Fulton County DA’s public enemy number one. “As working-class and poor Black Atlantans fight against displacement and fall back on everyday survival tactics,” Justin A. Davis writes, “they’re joining a decades-long struggle over who exactly the city’s for. So is YSL.” This sort of piece is exceedingly rare, not because of its form but because it demands an outlet that understands and nurtures its particular Venn diagram. Credit to Scalawag, and of course to Davis, for creating something this urgent. Required reading — not just for Thugga fans or Atlantans, but for anyone seeking to understand the world outside their own. —PR

3. Joe Montana Was Here

Wright Thompson | ESPN | February 8, 2022 | 12,111 words

“No. 16 is no longer what it once was. Joe Montana now must be something else.” I haven’t kept up with American football in at least 20 years, but that didn’t stop me from devouring Wright Thompson’s astonishing profile of former 49er quarterback Joe Montana. I grew up watching the Niners (Ronnie Lott 4eva) and have fond memories of attending games at Candlestick as a child. But you certainly don’t need to be a Niner fan, a football fan, or even be into sports at all to appreciate this beautifully written and revealing piece. Thompson paints a portrait of a complicated man and an aging athlete — one of the greatest of all time — and what it’s like to watch someone else take over that throne. —CLR

4. Creatures That Don’t Conform

Lucy Jones | Emergence Magazine | February 2, 2023 | 5,179 words

The forest path near us is a never-ending source of delight. I love being the first to see animal tracks in the snow. I look forward to the first yellow lady slippers that appear as if by magic near the marshy section, not to mention all the leaves and flowers as they sprout, and the myriad fungi that cling to the trees. Lucy Jones shares this wonder in nature (at slime molds in particular!) in Emergence Magazine. There she finds equal parts beauty, mystery, and wonder — a coveted yet all-too-elusive feeling nowadays — as she scans the forest for varieties that she’s just now starting to notice. “My eyes were starting to learn slime mold,” she writes. “My ways of seeing were altering, thanks to my new friends who were showing me what to look for. What was once invisible was quickly becoming apparent. It challenged my sense of perception. How little and how limited was my vision! How vast was the unknown world.”—KS

5. Children of the Ice Age

April Nowell | Aeon | February 13, 2023 | 4,400 words

April Nowell opens this piece with a delightful story about a Palaeolithic family taking their kids and dogs to a cave to do some mud painting, which feels like the modern-day equivalent of exhausted parents taking their offspring to McDonald’s and handing them a coloring book. I was instantly entranced. Such stories are rare, partly because evidence of children (with their small, fragile bones) is tricky for archaeologists to locate, but also because of assumptions that children were insignificant to the narrative. Nowell explains how, with the help of new archaeological approaches, this is changing, and the children of the Ice Age are getting a voice. I am ready to listen, so bring on these tales of family excursions and novices struggling to learn the craft of tool sculpting (as Nowell explains, “each unskilled hit would leave material traces of their futile and increasingly frustrated attempts at flake removal”). A Palaeolithic archaeologist and professor of anthropology, Nowell is an expert in this topic, but her vivid writing and human-based approach makes her fascinating field accessible to all. —CW

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Sandhill cranes are monogamous birds; during courtship, the male valiantly tosses vegetation or mud into the air and fans its wings above the body, before dancing with abandon and letting out a unison call. Then the pair throw their heads back—the male at a deeper angle—and the female lets out two calls for each call the male emits. Lifelong pairs rely on this short, sharp unison call for relationship maintenance—it’s a pair’s shorthand to stay connected, or to alert a mate to a threat in their breeding area. Dancing, too, is used not only in courtship rituals, which are said to be infrequent in lifelong pairs, but also as a communal activity. These cranes have at least ten different types of dances and as many calls; their dances are so lively, with leaps, bows, and head pumps that I wonder whether this is why a group of cranes is also referred to as a dance or swoop of cranes.

The park draws tens of thousands of tourists a year and is a major economic engine for the region. Now these tourists pop their heads through the roofs of safari trucks, or sit inside, jabbing at their phones and looking blankly out the window, wondering how the trip of a lifetime turned into a vigil.

We read a number of stories across the web this week, and you can always visit our editors’ picks or our Twitter feed to see what you may have missed. Among this week’s #longreads, here are five standout pieces that we recommend.

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1. A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Botched Deal: Inside the Science Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of

Jackie Flynn Mogensen | Mother Jones | June 23rd, 2022 | 6,566 words

In May 2020, a plane full of monkeys intended for COVID-19 research was supposed to depart Mauritius. But it never did. Who purchased the monkeys? Where were they supposed to go? When Jackie Flynn Mogensen looked into the failed flight, and began to investigate the secretive global trade of research monkeys, she found there was an even bigger story: The U.S. is experiencing a primate shortage, and there aren’t enough monkeys for research across many areas of medicine. Primate research has led to life-saving discoveries over the decades, but it remains controversial, with no guarantees, despite animal testing guidelines, that animals are treated properly. “But no matter how you or I feel about it,” Mogensen writes, “it’s clear the practice has saved—and is saving—human lives.” This is a fascinating dive into the monkey trade and the players within it, like Matthew Block, who’s been a target of animal rights groups for years and, as you’ll read, is the owner of the company who arranged the flight. Mogensen also reports on a few alternatives, like lab-grown organs, but we’re still a long way from a world without animal testing. —CLR

2. Jason Brassard Spent His Lifetime Collecting the Rarest Video Games. Until the Heist.

Justin Heckert | Vanity Fair | June 27th, 2022 | 5,900 words

I can count on my hands the number of video games I’ve played in my life, and the only way I ever won a round of Mario Kart in middle school was by shoving my friend off the couch in the den where she kept her console. But even as an uninitiated reader, it was impossible not to become invested in this story of a man who amassed an impressive collection of old and rare games, only to have them stolen in one fell swoop. A satisfying true crime tale, much more Knives Out than Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, this piece features quirky characters who work at game stores with names like Grumpy Bob’s Emporium. It’s also a poignant meditation on nostalgia and how we assign value to objects that speak to our past. I needed a distraction from the barrage of terrible news this week, and Justin Heckert delivered. —SD

3. One Woman’s Wholesome Mission to Get Naked Outside

Gloria Liu | Outside | June 13th, 2022 | 3,100 words

It may come with being British, but growing up I was very prudish about nudity. A communal changing room meant an elaborate wiggle dance under a towel, into a swimming costume that would have met with Queen Victoria’s approval. Upon moving to the Pacific Northwest, I found more liberal attitudes toward nudity, and I relate to Gloria Liu as she discusses her jealousy of “friends who were less inhibited, so comfortable in their own skin.” Liu takes us on a gentle journey as she attempts to emulate these friends, and go naked outside. Spoiler alert: She makes good progress and ends up describing a beautiful nude night hike, where “Taking my clothes off with others wasn’t the exercise in courage or cutting loose that I thought it would be. It was an exercise in faith. To be naked, I had to believe that the world could be good. And tonight it feels like it can be.” This essay starts by considering nakedness — but ends up reflecting on friendship and the importance of building memories. —CW

4. How the Yurok Tribe Is Bringing Back the California Condor

Sharon Levy | Undark | June 22nd, 2022 | 3,433 words

Condor 746, on loan from a captive breeding program in Idaho, traveled to California in spring 2022. He’s the first California condor in over a century to reach the ancestral land of the Yurok Tribe, and made the journey to mentor four young birds in a condor facility in Redwood National Park. Condors are very social, explains Sharon Levy, learning best and benefitting from being under the wing of an elder. In this piece, Levy beautifully traces the journey of the species, and the incredible efforts of the tribe to ensure the bird’s successful reintroduction to the wild. It’s an insightful look into what it takes for captive breeding programs to work over time: creative solutions, dedicated biologists, and — in the condor’s case — monitoring for lead poisoning. (And a bonus: there’s an amazing photo of a chick next to a hand puppet — the first condors reintroduced were reared by puppets!). —CLR

5. The Confessions of a Conscious Rap Fan

Mychal Denzel Smith  | Pitchfork | June 28th, 2022 | 2,287 words

Hip-hop has had subgenres nearly as long as it’s had the spine of a breakbeat, but at some point it was riven by a more seismic distinction: mainstream vs. underground, and specifically the rise of “conscious” rap. Mychal Denzel Smith was one of the many people who internalized that stance, who viewed hip-hop as a vessel of liberation and awakening to a degree that became an identity of its own. That was then, though. Now, with the 2022 return of Black Star and Kendrick Lamar — both avatars and resurrectors of conscious rap — Smith interrogates his onetime fandom, as well as the evolution (or lack thereof) of the music itself. “I was artificially limiting my perspective,” he writes, “in the name of some grand vision of consciousness that never cohered into anything other than my own sense of intellectual superiority.” This isn’t a discussion about art vs. artist. It’s a coming to grips with our own reductive tendencies, our willingness to flatten ourselves in the name of aesthetic belonging. If you’ve found that the backpack fits a little bit differently these days, this piece will help you notice where the straps are chafing. —PR

Reintroducing condors to the wild proved difficult, however, and the process became a dramatic lesson for biologists on the importance of parenting and the slow pace of growing up among these long-lived, highly social birds. Scientists learned that time spent with adults was critical to the behavioral development of young condors. They also found that in a species where adults follow and protect their offspring for a year or more after the birds fledge, youngsters pioneering landscapes empty of condors require lots of human babysitting.