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.
The Dyatlov Pass incident, where a group of young people died mysteriously, appears to have been solved… or has it?
(The New Yorker, approx 25 mins reading time)
The tent was partly collapsed and largely buried in snow. After digging it out, the search party saw that the tent appeared to have been deliberately slashed in several places. Yet, inside, everything was neat and orderly. The skiers’ boots, axes, and other equipment were arranged on either side of the door. Food was laid out as if about to be eaten; there was a stack of wood for a heating stove, and clothes, cameras, and journals.
The murder of Mac Dre has long been one of hip-hop’s great unsolved mysteries.
(Passion of the Weiss, approx 35 mins reading time)
“The victim was lying on his back, with his left leg out straight and his right leg bent at the knee,” Detective Babcock wrote in his crime scene report. This was several years before he would appear on America’s Most Wanted, American Gangster and a show on the Investigation Discovery channel about women who may have killed their husbands. “The victim’s left arm was slightly across his body and his right arm was out straight,” he wrote. “The right side of the victim’s neck was up against a small tree.”
A look at the fact-checkers trying to sort fact from fiction in India.
(Rest of World, approx 20 mins reading time)
Misinformation is a challenge globally, but in India, it’s practically baked into the ruling party’s communications. And while the platforms that are host to this misinformation, like Facebook and Twitter, have made attempts to curtail it, it hasn’t been enough to stem the tide. The average Indian media consumer is inundated with misinformation from the time they open the day’s paper to when they lie in bed scrolling on their smartphones at night, so much so that if they don’t make the effort to seek out facts for themselves, they risk responding to a fictional reality.
4. Who decides what’s disgusting?
A visit to the Disgusting Food Museum in Sweden.
(The New Yorker, approx 25 mins reading time)
An Icelandic shark dish, called hákarl, was the first assault on his stomach. “Eating it was like gnawing on three-week-old cheese from the garbage that had also been pissed on by every dog in the neighborhood,” he said. Next up was durian, a spiky, custard-like fruit from Southeast Asia that “smelled like socks at the bottom of a gym locker, drizzled with paint thinner.” But worst of all was surströmming, a fermented herring that is beloved in northern Sweden. De Meyer said that eating it was like taking a bite out of a corpse.
Alexandra King writs about a year of grief and how she got through it.
(The Guardian, approx 7 mins reading time)
I deleted Instagram, with its stream of baby and pregnancy announcements pegged to every season (a special bundle coming this New Year! Can’t wait to meet our little pumpkin! Introducing our beautiful Christmas gift!); visited an acupuncturist who tutted after I stuck out my tongue (too much salad, apparently); stopped touching paper receipts (something about hormones); half-heartedly eliminated dairy (why?) and spent hours lying in savasana at mercifully dark yoga studios, where I would weep quietly in the strangely comforting company of strangers.
6. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
A podcast from the New York Times that looks at the latest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
(The New York Times, approx 22 mins listening time)
In the past few days, the deadliest violence in years has erupted between Israel and the Palestinians. Tensions had been building for weeks and now they have come to a head. Hundreds of missiles are streaking back and forth between Gaza and cities across Israel. And on the streets, there are shocking scenes of mob violence against both Arabs and Jews. Why is this happening and how much worse could it get?
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Who invented the high five?
(ESPN, approx 15 mins reading time)
The low five had been a fixture of African-American culture since at least World War II. It might seem impossible to pinpoint when the low five ratcheted itself upright and evolved into the high five, but there are countless creation myths in circulation. Magic Johnson once suggested that he invented the high five at Michigan State. Others trace it to the women’s volleyball circuit in the 1960s. But the Sleets story quickly shot around the Internet and into local newspapers, displacing, or at least undermining, all other claims. Sleets was budging his way atop the high-five hierarchy.
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