Weekend Reading

A few things that I’ve read this week (featuring animal selfies and a baby koala!):

  • In 1948, a man was found on a beach in South Australia. The mysterious circumstances of his death have captivated generations of true-crime fanatics. Today, one amateur sleuth has come close to solving the case — and upended his life in the process.
    By the time anyone noticed that he hadn’t moved in at least five hours, the man on Somerton Beach must have started giving off fumes. It was about 6:30 a.m. on December 1, 1948, at the beginning of the Australian summer, and he did not look like the kind of man to sleep in the sand.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1KOZY7b
  • The Life of a Clown
    A clown wearing whiteface, a psychedelic jumper, and a pair of rainbow-colored Crocs knockoffs has gathered his youthful charges beneath the shade of a spreading tree. The birthday girl is seven years old.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1Kdzn2b
  • The Five Uncommon Habits Of Highly Productive People
    Can you be as effective in 35 hours as you are in 80? Startup veteran and developer Jess Martin thinks so. He has worked tirelessly to optimize his productivity in order to work better, not longer. Believe it or not, people aren’t born with the get-it-done gene.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1BM8Thj
  • SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines
    They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they have engaged in combat so intimate that they have emerged soaked in blood that was not their own.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1Qzo9ow
  • The Cost of Telling Your Truth, Publicly
    In her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, Jillian Lauren held back pretty much nothing—about her eighteen months in the harem of the Prince Jefri Bolkiah, playboy brother of the Sultan of Brunei; her substance abuse; her time as a sex worker. She didn’t stop there.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1GuPWHq
  • When You ‘Literally Can’t Even’ Understand Your Teenager
    A little paradox of Internet celebrity is that a YouTube personality can amass millions upon millions of young fans by making it seem as if he’s chatting with each of them one to one. Tyler Oakley, a 26-year-old man who identifies as a “professional fangirl,” is a master of the genre.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1HYEBdu
  • Despite Losing Both Legs, One Man’s Rogue Mission to De-Mine North Iraq
    HALABJA, Iraq — Before beginning his work, Hoshyar Ali takes off his prosthetic legs and lowers himself flat onto the ground. The vast field in front of him stretches on toward green hills and the jagged mountains of Kurdistan near the Iranian border in northern Iraq.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1RU1yWb
  • 16 animal selfies that capture life in the Serengeti
    Do you think warthogs are camera shy? Are anteaters more photogenic than ostriches? Thanks to an international project documenting the mysterious life of animals in eastern Africa we might be able to find out.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1JGKf8p
  • Alanis in Chains
    No regrets. Growth. Give yourself credit. Everybody is different. Their view of you may not be correct. Does it really matter? Who matters. You … Talk, listen, cry … Learn, learn about you. Be aware. Patience. Be positive. Be hopeful.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1T96Gr8
  • Hotel Melancholia
    There was a period in my life when I spent a lot of time in hotel rooms. It was normal to skit from Shanghai to Dublin via Vilnius and Rome in a month, and then begin the loop all over again: Athens, Novosibirsk, Kuala Lumpur.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1S4GVXt
  • Paul Ford
    Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1C0rExH
  • Koala baby won’t let go of mom while she undergoes surgery. Both survived being hit by a car.
    Mom Lizzy was undergoing treatment for a collapsed lung. The pair miraculously survived being hit by a car on the Warrego Highway at Coominya, west of Brisbane.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1FWR1kx