Stockholm Syndrome

What really happened that summer day in 1973? And what does it reveal about our cultural attitudes toward violence?

Jan-Erik Olsson had a plan. The escaped convict entered the Sveriges Kreditbank in Stockholm’s Norrmalmstorg square on a summer day in 1973. He was armed with a machine gun, explosives, rope, and a transistor radio. This was a stick-up the likes of which Sweden had never seen. In a fake American accent, Olsson instructed the police to deliver $710,000, along with a getaway car and his imprisoned friend, Clark Olofsson. If they failed to meet each of his demands, he promised to harm the four bank employees he had taken hostage. They all trusted him more than the police.

- JSTOR DAILY

Her ‘Prince Charming’ Turned Out to Be a Crazed Hit Man on the Run

Blanche Wright was 20 when she met the love of her life. He was actually a contract killer who led her on a murder spree. And she took the fall.

Even on a night of surprises for Blanche Wright, the man in the suit stood out. She had headed across the Bronx to visit her sick aunt, but when she entered the apartment she found a roomful of people waiting for her: “Happy Birthday!” Then she was introduced to a friend of her aunt’s, an impeccably dressed lawyer from Philadelphia.

He seemed sophisticated, with a three-piece suit and a briefcase. His name was Willie Sanchez, and he wasn’t like any other man she knew. They talked and talked, and before he left he told her aunt, “I’d like to talk to her more.”

- NY Times

Revoir Valérie aujourd'hui

Le Québec a été marqué par les seins, les fesses et les courbes de Valérie. Mais qui se souvient encore de son destin ? Cinquante ans après l'arrivée au grand écran du tout premier « film de fesses » québécois, retour sur un film érotique certes mythique, mais bien moins révolutionnaire qu'on le croit, en cinq temps.

- La Presse

How Attractive People Affect Your Brain

The brain appreciates beauty. But not always.

In 2010, when I was 24 years old, I endured six straight months of recurring strep-throat infections before I finally got the green light to have my tonsils removed. Midway through a round of antibiotics, I hauled myself into my new specialist’s office unshowered and wearing gym clothes I had collected from my floor, sweaty and rapidly losing any remaining will to sit upright. So I was not prepared for when the doctor walked into the exam room and revealed himself to be tall, broad shouldered, square jawed, and absolutely beautiful.

- The Atlantic

Women Over 30 Are Leaving Their Husbands and Boyfriends For Other Women

This spring, on the eve of the equinox at a loft party in Brooklyn, I hinted to a woman I'd been crushing on that we might have a vibe. She was tomboyish with wavy mermaid hair; an engineer, a skater and punk guitarist. We were both surprised when she hopped into my Lyft and called in sick the next day, weathering a spring blizzard from my bed. It was not unlike spontaneous nights I'd had with men, but at 37, it was my first with a woman.

- InStyle

A Canyon Where Gigantic Pines Grow

Inside the Bryce Canyon National Park, in the narrow alleys formed by towering rocks on either side, grow one of the tallest trees of the Southwest - the Pinus ponderosa. Some of these trees measure more than 5 feet in diameter and grow to incredible heights of 150 feet, as they try to poke their way out above the surrounding cliffs. Named for its ponderous (heavy) wood, this pine is the major lumber tree in the Southwest. These woody behemoths grow on dry, well-drained, mountain slopes and mesas, and are easily recognized by their tall, straight, thick trunks, clad in scaled, rusty-orange bark that has split into big plates. They are also easily identified by smell - Ponderosa Pine bark smells like vanilla or butterscotch.

- Amusing Planet

When Psychedelics Make Your Last Months Alive Worth Living

“I am at peace with what’s next. The more I prepare to say goodbye, the more at peace I become with that reality."

For more than 15 years, the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit has been the foremost research team in the US for psychedelic studies. Key among the topics being explored were psilocybin’s effects on addiction, depression in the physically healthy, and the depression and anxiety brought on by a cancer diagnosis. Many of the results of this research have shown psilocybin to be an invaluable mental health tool, one unlike anything else in modern medicine.

- Vice

The Secret History of the Suburbs

We all know the stereotypes: Suburbia is dull, conformist, and about “keeping up with the Joneses.” But what about the suburbs of utopians and renegades?

Back in the early 1960s, Malvina Reynolds wrote a song called “Little Boxes,” inspired by a drive past rows of lookalike pastel-hued houses in a new suburban housing tract in the Bay Area. (Her friend Pete Seeger had a hit with the song in 1963.) Reynolds saw the cookie-cutter houses as both symbols and shapers of the conformist mindset of the people who lived in them—doctors and lawyers who aspired to nothing more than playing golf and raising children who would one day inhabit “ticky-tacky” boxes of their own.

- Citylab

The Myth of Wealthy Men and Beautiful Women

Similarity and companionship are the currency of attraction, for better or worse.

In one illustrious study of love (“human sexual selection”) in 1986, psychologists David Buss and Michael Barnes asked people to rank 76 characteristics: What do you value most in a potential mate?
The winner wasn’t beauty, and it wasn’t wealth. Number one was "kind and understanding," followed by "exciting personality" and then "intelligent." Men did say they valued appearances more highly than women did, and women said they valued "good earning capacity" more highly than men did—but neither ranked measures of physical attractiveness or socioeconomic status among their top considerations.

- The Atlantic

Scientists Found an Opposite 'Light' Force to The Driver of All Your Worst Impulses

The idea of balancing forces comes up again and again in our society, from the idea of yin and yang to any one of the growing number of Star Wars movies. Now scientists have identified three key positive motivations that drive us, and they're calling it the Light Triad.

There's already a widely recognised Dark Triad – three important impulses that can drive us towards bad behaviour, namely psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism (manipulativeness).

- Science Alert

Exploring Tommy Suharto’s Ghost Hotel

Of all the stories of crazed dictators and corrupt regimes built on nepotism, the Suharto legacy might just be the most scandalous. The youngest son to one of the most brutal leaders in recent history, Tommy Suharto’s tale fits somewhere on the same shelf as Pablo Escobar’s and Kim Jung Un’s. Playboy embezzler, convicted murderer, political terrorist and potentially Indonesia’s next President? Tommy Suharto of course denies all accusations that might hurt his campaign in the upcoming elections this month. But lost in the highlands of the Indonesian island of Bali, one of his reportedly corrupt investments has been festering in the tropical jungle for nearly two decades; a paradise in ruins, rotting from the inside. Parisian photographer and explorer Romain Veillon takes us through the ghostly hotel that many believe has been cursed by Suharto’s victims…

- Messy Nessy Chic

An Insider Peep into Tokyo’s Secretive Red Light District: Then & Now

Watanabe Katsumi was the king of treading lightly. As a drifting photographer, his lens was a stealthy observer of Tokyo’s red light district, snapping hundreds of photos of its drag queens, gangsters, prostitutes, and other fringe society members in the 1960s and 70s. Few dared enter the underbelly of the city like him and the treasure trove of images he’s left us with today are a gorgeously gritty archive of stories and places that history often sweeps under the rug. Curious about finding “vintage” Japan and how we might stay true to our “Don’t Be a Tourist” motto in its busy capital of neon-lit skyscrapers, we realised Watanabe Katsumi makes the perfect insider guide to discovering the secrets of Tokyo’s underworld…

- Messy Nessy Chic

Subventionner les films pornos?

Le parti politique social-démocrate (SPD) en Allemagne a récemment ajouté à son programme le financement des films pornographiques féministes. Des oeuvres qui ont entre autres comme caractéristique de respecter les conditions de travail des gens de ce milieu.

«Les jeunes qui regardent du porno ont une image complètement tronquée de la femme qui est vue comme un objet. Dans la pornographie féministe, il y a toujours l'idée de représenter le sexe tel qu'il est, de façon réaliste, explique Heike Hofmann, membre du SPD, dont les propos ont été rapportés dans Slate. Dans ces films, il y a beaucoup plus de diversité sexuelle, de corps variés, des âges et des couleurs de peau différentes. On ne reste pas dans le cliché de la blonde à forte poitrine.

- La Presse

A Husband’s Sexual Inadequacy

Embracing the Cuckold Lifestyle

Most husbands can’t deny the voyeuristic urgency that captivates them towards watching their wives enjoy having sex with another man — especially when that man is more capable than the husband’s inadequacy in bed when it comes to arousing the wife’s sexual orgasm in ways her husband cannot achieve. Such a voyeuristic tendency is bound to arouse powerful and conflicting emotions in the husband’s mind as he soaks up the unforgettable images of his wife’s wanton display with her lover in his presence. This image achieves its satisfying conclusion when the wife displays no hint of regret and even goes as far as declaring — to her husband’s dismay — her newfound love and desire to be with her current lover and nobody else.

- Medium

Pour la nuit ou pour la vie?

Au bout du bar bondé de millénariaux que je fréquente parfois, il m’interpelle. Ni pour me draguer ni pour m’inviter à danser, mais il veut un conseil. J’ai l’âge d’en donner, et lui d’en recevoir. Le vécu, c’est une lueur dans l’oeil et une dégaine un peu nonchalante devant l’inattendu de la vie. Un peu comme Jean Gabin qui chante Maintenant, je sais qu’on ne sait jamais.

« La fille que tu vois là, je ne sais plus quoi faire pour que le dossier évolue. On dirait qu’elle me niaise depuis des mois. »

Déjà, « dossier », ça part mal les négos. Première question : « Tu veux quoi ? Pour la nuit ou pour la vie ? »

Un joli garçon, drôle, brillant, un condo à son nom, des paiements sur le char, bon danseur (testé), sûrement une collection de vinyles vintage de jazz ou de whiskys rares chez lui.

« Ben, j’ai 33 ans, une job, j’imagine qu’un moment donné on trouve la fille avec qui on va faire des bébés dans une maison en banlieue avant de s’acheter un chalet… Y’a-tu un autre plan que ça ? »

- Le Devoir