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 the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Andy Greenberg tells the story of high-level hackers seeking to crack the code to a locked USB drive worth $235 million in Bitcoin.
(Wired, approx 8 mins reading time)
“For years, Unciphered’s hackers and many others in the crypto community have followed the story of a Swiss crypto entrepreneur living in San Francisco named Stefan Thomas, who owns this 2011-era IronKey, and who has lost the password to unlock it and access the nine-figure fortune it contains. Thomas has said in interviews that he’s already tried eight incorrect guesses, leaving only two more tries before the IronKey erases the keys stored on it and he loses access to his bitcoins forever.”
On Friday, pop sensation Taylor Swift re-released her 2014 album 1989 – this time with extra tracks “from the vault”. The AV Club goes back in time to analyse the original ten-time Grammy-nominated album.
(The AV Club, approx 4 mins reading time)
“Looking at it now, it all seems so simple: the year was 2014, and Taylor Swift turned the world upside down by releasing a pure pop album called 1989. Already a superstar, 1989 sent Swift into the stratosphere. The singles were inescapable, the tour was a triumph, and the album neatly nabbed her the second of her three Album of the Year Grammys. She was raised up on a lofty pedestal that would soon topple over, but for a while, she was the ruling golden girl living out her glory days.”
Dan Davies’ book In Plain Sight is the astonishing account of how Jimmy Savile established himself at the heart of British life. Caroline Cadwalladr asks: How did we fail to detect the monster in our midst?
(The Guardian, approx 5 mins reading time)
“It was 1980, and I was nine years old,” he says. His mum, for a treat, took him to a recording of Jim’ll Fix It. “It was a big deal. It was still the age of three television stations; he was one of the biggest stars in the country. And I just had a really weird, visceral reaction against him. I couldn’t really put it into words. But I was creeped out by him.” In his teens, he stumbled across a copy of his autobiography, “which was just so dark and weird and odd and posed so many questions about him” that his fascination grew. And, from then on, he found himself collating a “dossier”. He just kept on noticing him cropping up. In Andrew Morton’s biography of Princess Diana. In the Sun, describing himself as the “Godfather”, who “fixed” things. Telling Lynn Barber in an interview for the Independent that getting a knighthood was “a relief”, that it got him “off the hook”.”
Reuters uncovers the aftermath of Hawaii’s worst wildfire, as local and federal agencies are reckoning with the toxic chemicals created when a built environment burns.
(Reuters, approx 8 mins reading time)
“The area around Lahaina has also been grappling with a persistent drought, and the dry vegetation likely fueled the speed and severity with which the fire spread. That drought has also helped to keep pollution from water runoff in check. In the two months following the fire, less than a quarter inch of rain has fallen on the area. But as November heralds the start of a wetter season that tends to peak in January, that relief may be short-lived. Heavy rainfall would raise the threat of toxic ash and soot washing into the sea where coral reefs and other marine life could suffer.”
Evan Osnos looks at China today, as party officials are vanishing, young workers are “lying flat,” and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country.
(New Yorker, approx 30 mins reading time)
“When I return to China these days, the feeling of ineluctable ascent has waned. The streets of Beijing still show progress; armadas of electric cars glide by like props in a sci-fi film, and the smoke that used to impose a perpetual twilight is gone. But, in the alleys, most of the improvised cafés and galleries that used to enliven the city have been cleared away, in the name of order; overhead, the race to build new skyscrapers, which attracted designers from around the world, has stalled. This summer, I had a drink with an intellectual I’ve known for years. He recalled a time when he took inspiration from the dissidents of the Eastern Bloc: “Fifteen years ago, we were talking about Havel.” These days, he told me with a wince, “people don’t want to say anything.” By the time we stood to leave, he had drained four Martinis.”
Zaria Gorvett looks at scientists and their fascination with finding alien “plants”.
(BBC Future, approx 5 mins reading time)
“Each year, towards the end of September, the vast swathes of birch, aspen and mountain ash forest that surround Lapland in Finland abruptly turn canary-yellow – an arctic autumn spectacle the nation calls “ruska”. It’s all down to the normal process of deciduous plants losing their chlorophyll as they prepare to hibernate during the winter. But it’s thought that the vivid colours that appear across cooler regions of the globe each autumn may provide a glimpse into the striking scenery found on some alien planets all year-round.”
Aja Romano writes of the harrowing events and subsequent FBI investigation that form the subject of the new Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon.
(Vox, approx 6 mins reading time)
“To understand how the eventual string of murders could have gone unchecked for so long, it’s vital to understand both how exploitative the guardianship system was and how the community revolved around it. White community members sought oil leases and then through guardianship gained further control over the Osage. In order to make this system work, you needed people who were willing to exploit the Osage as their guardians and people who were willing to look the other way while they did it, often in exchange for bribes or access of their own. This meant you needed people within every part of the social and legal system.”
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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