Caught unawares: intimate glimpses of friends, strangers and lovers - in pictures

Amateur photographer Alberto di Lenardo’s work was, for many years, hidden away in a secret room. Now the unguarded moments he captured are being published in An Attic Full of Trains.

- The Guardian

A Real Hotwife Doesn’t Let Her Husband Watch

Harry’s wife Anne was a staunch feminist. When she learned that Harry wanted her to cuckold him, she was adamant: 

“Sure, I’ll cuckold you,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll let you watch. What do you think I am, your own personal porn star?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Harry replied, chastened. “I get it. I have no right to use you for my own prurient, voyeuristic satisfaction. You absolutely should cuckold me, though, because that’s what I want.”

- My Erotica

Sun-soaked snapshots - Adventures across Europe in the 1970s and ’80s

Photographer Sergio Purtell spent years travelling the continent at length, capturing a romantic world of motels, cafes, beaches and bars.

 - huck

Your Life Is Full of Porn. Stop Getting Yourself Off

You’re consuming porn daily and you don’t even know it. It’s just not worth being addicted anymore. Porn ruins lives. And you don’t need to be a porno star on viagra to witness its devastating effects.

What is porn? Porn is what I call addictive habits. These habits are like porn because they start off as small and end up curtailing out of control if you let them.

- Medium

Etre un mâle, tu sais, c’est pas si facile

Le pouvoir masculin n’est ni acquis, ni facile à acquérir. Cela demande beaucoup de sacrifices. Dans un ouvrage intitulé “Les coûts de la domination masculine”, plusieurs chercheurs énumèrent ce qu’il en coûte d’être viril…

- Libération

Show Me How to Say No to This - How drugs today can cure a crushing love

In the 2004 film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a heartbroken man played by Jim Carrey undergoes an experimental treatment to erase memories of his ex-girlfriend, played by Kate Winslet, following their painful breakup. When the film came out, using drugs or other technologies to meddle with memory, especially as a way of healing from a traumatic relationship, was not exactly feasible in the real world.

- Nautilus

The Stoic Way to Find More Time in Your Day

“I just didn’t have the time.” That’s one of the most common phrases I hear from my psychotherapy clients who’ve neglected to do the exercises we talked about — things like keeping a record of upsetting thoughts or practicing a mindfulness meditation technique. Over and over again, people call me and apologize uncomfortably for ignoring their homework, as though I’m there to scold them instead of help them.

- Medium

Nearly 50 Years On, a Forbidden Seaside Ghost Town is about to Re-Open

Imagine a millionaire’s resort; one to rival St. Tropez, Italy’s Portofino, or Miami’s South Beach – abandoned overnight. Imagine the luxury hotels suddenly emptied of their guests and left to slowly decay, the boutiques, bars and nightclubs reclaimed by nature, sunbathers replaced by sea turtles nesting on the deserted beaches and the once vibrant holiday spirit silenced; nothing more than a whisper in the wind. Perhaps in 2020, such scenes are less difficult to imagine, but this is not the story of a temporary travel ban to control the outbreak of a virus. This is the story of a near 50 year lockdown of the Cypriot seaside city known as Varosha, once regarded as one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations during the early 1970s. 

- Messy Nessy Chic

“Ghislaine, Is That You?”: Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam

For a year leading up to her arrest, the vanishing act of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime friend, lover, and alleged accomplice vexed the authorities, the press, and the women who accuse her of luring them into a web of sexual abuse.

- Vanity Fair

Les Romains étaient-ils des obsédés sexuels ?

Les hommes et les femmes de l'Antiquité entretenaient un rapport au corps et à la sexualité moins pudibond qu'aujourd'hui. Un essai explique pourquoi.

Dans son essai, Les Femmes et le sexe dans la Rome antique (Tallandier 2013), Virginie Girod, docteur en Histoire ancienne, nous offre un vivant panorama de la sexualité féminine à l'époque romaine. L'ouvrage est d'autant plus précieux que l'Antiquité sexuelle a envahi notre imaginaire, au moins depuis le XIXe siècle, à travers la peinture, puis au cinéma et, aujourd'hui encore, dans la BD et les téléfilms. On associe souvent l'Empire romain à des images sulfureuses et orgiaques.

- Le Point

The First American Restaurants’ Culinary Concoctions

A study of historical fine-dining menus yields surprises. Like six preparations of frog, and delicious lamb testicles. 

COVID-19 is changing the way we dine out, but how such changes will transform the experience in the years ahead remains an open question. One thing we do know is that restaurants change over time. There’s a history to them. And historian Paul Freedman has been reading the menus from the dawn of the American restaurant.

- JSTOR Daily

Photographer Updates Postcards Of 1960s Resorts Into Their Abandoned Ruins

I found the old matchbook lying on a desk, writes Pablo Maurer. It was buried under some papers, beside a thick, water-logged book frozen solid in the January chill. I ran my fingers down its spine and read the title: “How to Run A Successful Golf Course.”

The owner of the Penn Hills Resort in the Poconos probably hadn’t followed whatever advice the author had to offer. They boarded the place up years ago, and there’s a gaping hole in the roof of his old office. Muted greens and yellows, shag carpeting peek at me through a sheet of ice.

The matchbook, which looks to be from the 60s, is about half empty – whoever was sitting here when this place finally went under surely needed a smoke.

- Flashbak