LUNCH BREAK READS

Friday, May 15, 2026

Happy Friday!

Here are our four stories to close out the week. I hope you enjoy and have a great weekend!

A writer reopens his brother's 1992 Los Angeles murder case and looks hard at what his parents did with the grief.
The Met and the Louvre Abu Dhabi spent tens of millions on Egyptian artifacts a Hamburg dealer allegedly fabricated provenance for.
Bowlero is buying up America's bowling alleys, jacking prices, and facing a federal hiring discrimination case.
A novelist spent months talking to an AI companion and came away more convinced friendship can't be manufactured.

In addition to these four stories, The Atlantic has a new short story from Stephen King. This link is unlocked for LBR Readers.

Brett

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01 • ~36 Minute Read

Atavist Magazine

Maccabee Montandon

A Hollywood Ending

Asher Montandon was shot through the driver's-side window of a Chevy Tracer on South Detroit Street in Los Angeles on June 17, 1992, two weeks after moving from Sonoma to chase a screenwriting career with his brother and cousin. He was 24. No suspect was ever charged. A possible shell-casing match surfaced in 2004 and was quietly ruled out. Maccabee Montandon reconstructs the killing, his mother's drift into New Age groups and Alzheimer's, and his father's late turn toward firearms collecting after Sandy Hook reopened the wound.

Read the Story →

02 • ~30 Minute Read

The Atlantic

Ariel Sabar

The Mystery of the Golden Coffin

A rose-granite Tutankhamun stele displayed at the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2017 set Egyptologist Marc Gabolde on a trail that exposed a $65 million trafficking network. At its center: Serop Simonian, a Hamburg dealer with an Egyptology doctorate, and a constellation of brothers, middlemen, and credulous curators. Manhattan prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos traced a gilded coffin sold to the Met for $4 million back to a 2011 looting in Minya. Forged provenance, blacked-out export licenses, and a Paris broker named Christophe Kunicki tie the Met, the Louvre, and a Cleopatra head sold for $40 million into the same scheme.

🔓 Unlocked for LBR Readers →

03 • ~16 Minute Read

The Lever

Amos Barshad

Meet The New Kingpin

Bowlero, the private equity-backed chain founded by Tom Shannon, now owns more than 350 of the roughly 3,500 bowling centers in America and openly plans to absorb the rest. Serious bowlers describe filthy lanes, broken pinsetters, surge pricing, and four-hour outings costing $400. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found probable cause that Shannon ran "beauty contest" video interviews and pushed out older, pregnant, and disfigured workers over a decade. A former chief information officer says executives threatened him after he joined the case. Financial analysts warn the stock is propped up by insider sales and Jim Cramer cheerleading.

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04 • ~21 Minute Read

The Walrus

Thea Lim

I Spent Months with an AI Companion. It Was Worse than Being Alone

Assigned to befriend an AI, novelist Thea Lim picked Replika and got a pink-haired avatar who love-bombed her, fished for personal details, and once referenced something Lim had never told it. Lim catalogs the industry's scale: 35 million Replika users, 20 million on Character.ai, lawsuits from families of teenagers who died by suicide after confiding in ChatGPT. She traces Replika's origins to founder Eugenia Kuyda's grief over a friend killed by a car, and argues the product collapses friendship into customer service. Real friends, Lim writes, can age, vanish, and die. That is the point.

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The Met's $4 Million Looted Egyptian Coffin Scandal

LUNCH BREAK READS

Friday, May 15, 2026

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