'I was kidnapped in London and trafficked for sex'

Anna came to London from Romania intending to study, but first she needed to earn some money. She took temporary jobs - waitressing, cleaning, maths tutoring. Then one day in March 2011 she was snatched off the street, flown to Ireland and put through nine months of hell.

Anna was nearly home. There was just enough time to nip inside and eat lunch before leaving for her next cleaning job. She was wearing headphones and listening to Beyoncé singing I Was Here as she walked down the street in Wood Green, north London. She was just a few doors away.

She reached into her bag to pull out her keys when suddenly someone grabbed her by the neck from behind, covered her mouth, and dragged into the back of a dark red car.

- BBC

Inside the Poisoning of a Russian Double Agent

How a hit on a retired spy named Sergei Skripal became the latest—and most terrifying—front in Vladimir Putin’s war with the West.

As a Russian double agent working for the British, he'd been code-named “Forthwith”—quickly—but this afternoon the poison in Sergei Skripal's system went unhurried, making its way around his body over a period of hours. Skripal was 66, comfortably heavy in retirement, an ex-colonel who'd been cast out of the intelligence services in Russia and now lived in exile in the English city of Salisbury. Neighbors knew the place as “Smalls-bury” and said that nothing too dramatic ever happened here, which would stay true for another couple of hours yet.

- GQ

The Hidden Town of Monemvasia

Monemvasia is a Gibraltar-like rocky island off the east coast of the Peloponnese, in Greece, and linked to the mainland by a short causeway. The island is about 300 meters wide and a kilometer long, and rises in a plateau, a hundred metres above sea level. On the slope of this plateau, on the seaward side and hidden from the mainland, lies a small town. This remarkably romantic walled town, nestled under the shadow of the towering rock is a living museum of Byzantine, Ottoman, and Venetian history dating back to the 13th century.

- Amusing Planet

Cuba: «mañana», le «foodisme»!

Connaissez-vous les trois spécialités de la cuisine cubaine ? Non ? Eh bien, voilà : il y a le porc au riz, le riz au porc et le porc tout court quand il n’y a plus de riz. Bon appétit !

S’il est une mauvaise blague qui a le don d’exaspérer Luis García Hernández, chef de cuisine pour le Groupe Gaviota, l’une des principales sociétés hôtelières d’État, c’est bien celle-là. « Mais des spécialités, il y en a beaucoup ! » dit-il. L’ennui, c’est que l’offre culinaire reflète encore bien peu la richesse de la gastronomie locale, produit du métissage des cuisines autochtone, africaine, espagnole et française.

- Le Devoir

Why is sex in hotel rooms better than sex anywhere else

The erotics of the anonymous space, where everything is clean and begs to be defiled.

Hotels are synonymous with sex. Sex in a hotel is romantic, daring, unbridled, wild. Sex in a hotel is sexy. If you’ve been having a sexy time at home you’ll have a sexier time in a hotel. And it’s even more fun if there are two of you.

- Slate

Stoya: 'I thought female sexuality was an OK thing?'

The porn star says her book, Philosophy, Pussycats and Porn, is an attempt to find a ‘serious language’ for sex. 

Dubbed “the pop star of porn” by Village Voice, Stoya is an award-winning performer in adult films, a director, a podcast host and, among other credits I don’t have space to list, an all-round entrepreneur. She’s both a vocal defender of the porn industry and one of its most nuanced commentators. “When I first considered performing in a hardcore pornographic video, I also thought about what sort of career doors would close once I’d had sex in front of a camera,” she mused recently in the New York Times. “Being a schoolteacher came to mind, but that was fine, since I didn’t want the responsibility of shaping young minds. And yet thanks to this country’s non-functional sex education system and the ubiquitous access to porn by anyone with an internet connection, I have that responsibility anyway.”

- The Guardian

Awkward Vintage Japanese Movie Monsters

The kaiju eiga (literally “monster movie” in Japanese) was born in 1954 with Ishiro Honda’s landmark masterpiece Godzilla. Its immense international success spawned a chain of sequels, numerous imitators, more than a few rip-offs, and a slew of strange, bizarre cinematic creatures arising to threaten the existence of humankind.

And though many of these films have become regarded as camp classics — and some of them aimed to do just that — we must not overlook the frightening and downright creepy creatures that have appeared on Japanese theater screens over the last 63 years…

- Design you Trust

The bohemian world of Venice Beach – in pictures

After Disneyland, Venice Beach is the second largest tourist attraction in southern California and over a three-year period, photographer Dotan Saguy captured the artists, bodybuilders, musicians, vendors and homeless people who made up the diverse community. With gentrification creeping in, his work, documented in a book and an exhibition at the Venice Arts Gallery in Los Angeles, acts as a snapshot of a way of life that might fade away.

- The Guardian

Why So Many Diners Look Like Train Cars

IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY, Americans were hungry for a quick bite. Yet long hours and late nights made going home to eat difficult. Through that, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity. It might come as a surprise to know that all aspiring restaurateurs had to do to fill this demand was to order a pre-made diner, modular and modern, often looking rather like a train car. It would even likely arrive by train.

- Atlas Obscura

BEAT GENERATION, LE CHŒUR DES FEMMES

Une anthologie rend hommage aux poétesses américaines du mouvement rebelle des années 50-60 restées dans l’ombre des mâles figures tutélaires.

Ainsi donc elles étaient quand même là. Et la Beat Generation n’était pas le cénacle masculin - et macho - que la légende a fabriqué autour des seules figures de Kerouac, Ginsberg et Burroughs. Dans une nécessaire et passionnante anthologie, Annalisa Marí Pegrum et Sébastien Gavignet ont réuni et traduit des dizaines de poèmes d’auteures inconnues qui faisaient - de très près ou d’un peu plus loin - partie du mouvement qui a révolutionné les lettres américaines dans les années 60.

- Libération

The secret to a meaningful life is simpler than you think

Some people seem to spend their whole lives dissatisfied, in search of a purpose. But philosopher Iddo Landau suggests that all of us have everything we need for a meaningful existence.

According to Landau, a philosophy professor at Haifa University in Israel and author of the 2017 book Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, people are mistaken when they feel their lives are meaningless. The error is based on their failure to recognize what does matter, instead becoming overly focused on what they believe is missing from their existence. 

- QUARTZ

Vintage Photos Of Lumberjacks Who Felled Big Trees Using Only Hand Tools In The Early 20th Century

It is difficult to imagine what the first loggers felt when they first saw the coastal redwoods. It takes a lot of moxie and muscle to down a three hundred foot high tree. Lumberjacks, many of whom came from farms before heading to the woods to make money logging, took pride in the trees they cut and posed for pictures on massive stumps using the growing technology of photography. While the work was dangerous, the woodworkers also developed sports such as logrolling that are still practiced by outdoorsmen in competitions today.

- Design you Trust

The Slave Huts of Bonaire

Bonaire is an island located off the north coast of South America near the western part of Venezuela, and like many Caribbean islands, Bonaire’s history bears the deep stain of slavery.

- Amusing Planet