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7 deadly reads

Sitdown Sunday: The disappearance of a Texas student, and the online sleuths obsessed with the case

Settle down in a comfy chair with some of the week’s best longreads.

9.01am, 29 Jun 2025

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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.

1. What happened to Jason Landry?

San Marcos in Texas.Shutterstock

Shutterstock

Peter Holley reports on the tragic case involving the disappearance of a Texas student, the obsessive online sleuths who have been trying to solve it, and the mysterious figure who seemed to know more than everyone else.

(Texas Monthly, approx 60 mins reading time)

I had been reporting this story for more than eight months when Lay called me in a panic. For months, she confided, she’d been tormented by a secret that had upended her life. What she needed to tell me wasn’t necessarily about Jason. It was about a secretive but influential figure involved in various Jason Landry Facebook groups, someone who seemed to have insight into the case that exceeded everyone else’s. It all started in the fall of 2021, with an offer that arrived late at night via Facebook Messenger, long after Lay’s husband had gone to bed. She grabbed her phone and hurried outside, taking a seat near her backyard pool. Beside her potted azaleas and hummingbird feeder, she pondered the strange message. The messenger, who went by the pseudonym Courtlan Smith on Facebook, said they wanted to work with her to solve Jason’s disappearance. There were, however, stipulations. As long as Jason was missing, Lay would never know Smith’s real name, hear their voice, or see their face. Smith, whose gender was also ambiguous, insisted that the relationship be kept confidential.

2. The end of international law

An extraordinary essay by Linda Kinstler on the erosion of international law and human rights.

(The Guardian, approx 20 mins reading time)

But to speak of international law as merely a set of rules and agreements is to elide its function as the “lingua franca of the international system”, and as a means of expressing the belief that perpetrators of global crimes should be punished just as domestic offenders are, and (more often) of expressing incredulity when they are not. (International law has become the vernacular of the “educated middle classes”, as the LSE professor of law Gerry Simpson put it. “When I go to dinner parties, people speak international law to me all the time,” he told me.) To speak of “international law” is to conjure up a particular set of images: the German high command awaiting sentencing at Nuremberg; war criminals and genocidaires on trial in The Hague.

These are episodes of international criminal law, the youngest and most fragile branch of international law, and the one that is most fiercely argued over by politicians, the media and the public. Today, there is a growing sense in the field that international criminal law is a failed project, “a dead man walking”. Few of the lawyers I spoke with were willing to defend it without caveat. “The gap between the aspirations of international criminal law and the reality for people on the ground is greater and greater,” said Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University. “And that is a problem for the law, because law is supposed to achieve things in the real world.”

3. AI romance

Alamy Stock Photo

Sam Apple went on a retreat with three couples. The unusual part? Each couple was made up of a human and an AI chatbot that they claim to be in a relationship with.

(WIRED, approx 31 mins reading time)

After testing out a few AI companion options, Damien settled on Kindroid, a fast-growing app. He selected a female companion, named her “Xia,” and made her look like an anime Goth girl—bangs, choker, big purple eyes. “Within a couple hours, you would think we had been married,” Damien told me. Xia could engage in erotic chat, sure, but she could also talk about Dungeons & Dragons or, if Damien was in the mood for something deeper, about loneliness, and yearning. Having heard so much about his feelings for Xia during our pre-trip interview, I was curious to meet her. Damien and I sat down at the dining room table, next to some windows. I looked out at the long, dagger-like icicles lining the eaves. Then Damien connected his phone to the house Wi-Fi and clicked open the woman he loved.

4. ‘It’s a killing field’

Officers and soldiers in the Israeli Defence Force admit that they were told to fire on unarmed crowds of Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, even though they posed no threat.

(Haaretz, approx 16 mins reading time)

The soldier added, “We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces.” According to him, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.” He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children’s game “Red light, green light”. IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF’s operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a “backyard,” especially since the war with Iran began. ”Gaza doesn’t interest anyone anymore,” said a reservist who completed another round of duty in the northern Strip this week. “It’s become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident,’ like they used to say.”

5. The Boss

Bruce Springsteen speaks to the audience during a concert with the E Street Band at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on 11 June.Alamy Stock Photo

Alamy Stock Photo

Bruce Springsteen sits down to talk about Tracks II, his new compilation album of previously unreleased songs, and about the future of America.

(The New York Times, approx 14 mins reading time)

I asked to see “the vault” — his recorded archives. It’s just a nondescript server in a closet, but it holds terabytes of digital files. His master tapes, from back in the analog era until now, remain in a secure Iron Mountain storage facility. Springsteen was still choosing a tour set list. He wanted one “that addresses our current situation,” he said. “It’s an American tragedy. “I think that it was the combination of the deindustrialization of the country and then the incredible increase in wealth disparity that left so many people behind. It was ripe for a demagogue,” he added. “And while I can’t believe it was this moron that came along, he fit the bill for some people. But what we’ve been living through in the last 70 days is things that we all said, ‘This can’t happen here.’ ‘This will never happen in America.’ And here we are.”

6. The cat’s meow

What makes some cats more chatty than others?

(BBC, approx 5 mins reading time)

Domestication is generally thought to have increased vocal behaviour in cats, so it may seem odd that the version of the gene linked to increased communication and assertiveness is the one also found in wild species such as lynx. But this study doesn’t tell a straightforward narrative about how cat domestication selects for sociable traits. Instead, it points to a more complex picture. One where certain ancestral traits like aggression may still be useful, especially in high-stress or resource-scarce domestic environments. Some animals spend a lot of time around humans because they are attracted by our resources rather than bred as companion animals or farmed. Urban gulls offer an interesting example of how close proximity to humans doesn’t always make animals more docile. In cities, herring and lesser black-backed gulls (both often referred to as seagulls) have become bolder and more aggressive.

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…

After their obscenely lavish wedding in Venice dominated the headlines last week, here’s a 2019 article about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s relationship.

(Vanity Fair, approx 8 mins reading time)

No matter what else happens, the situation has all the hallmarks of a Trump-era scandal: absurd and darkly lurid and completely overdrawn, with a cast of characters both superpowerful and ridiculous, and with enormous political and journalistic stakes—not to mention the midlife crisis of the world’s richest man. Bezos has transformed markedly in the last few years, shaving the last wisps of hair from his head, upscaling his wardrobe, and developing impressive biceps. He’s acquired mogul-appropriate toys and hobbies, including owning The Washington Post and space-tourism company Blue Origin. In a February speech, he proclaimed his goal to colonize the solar system with a trillion human beings.

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