This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.In this week’s edition:• Researching climate change from on (very) high • The quasi-models who helped Notre-Dame rise again • How migraines elude our understanding—and our best efforts • Seeking solace beyond the veil • The pros and cons of turning your home...

Pain isn’t weakness leaving the body, as so many gung-ho influencers love to tell you. It’s just pain. And sometimes, that pain has no seeming precursor, no dependable provenance for us to excise at the root. But we still look and we still hope, just as Tan Tuck Ming has his entire life in his search to conquer his all-consuming migraines.Once a migraine...

When Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s nursery shuts down she sets up a temporary day care in her home. It’s chaos. Abrahaimian holds nothing back as she spirals into desperation, eventually taking up the fight to have her old nursery reopened herself. Day care issues in New York may not seem that significant, but in Abrahmian’s world, it becomes everything....

Has your Kia started up on its own? You might be the victim of a flaw in Kia’s web portal that allows hackers to wrest control of cars away from unsuspecting owners. For Wired, Andy Greenberg reports on a bug that researchers have discovered affects any internet-connected Kia. While the vulnerability doesn’t make it possible to move the vehicle (yet),...

In this short, poignant essay for Jewish Currents, Palestinian performance artist Fargo Nissim Tbakhi recounts a Zoom session with a medium, Lawrence, who appears to communicate with one of Tbakhi’s friends, Dan, who has since passed over to the other side. “Lawrence asks me what I’m looking for from the session. I don’t know what to say,” writes Tbakhi....

In 2019, a fire nearly destroyed the crown jewel of France—and the nation set a breakneck five-year deadline to bring it back from the ashes. This is the story of how an army of artisans turned back centuries to restore Notre-Dame by hand, and wound up reviving something even greater than the cathedral itself:[Fromont] believed that the roof’s charpente...