Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
DJ Khaled. Photo: AFP
For DJ Khaled, Snapchat Is a Major Key to Success – by Jon Caramanica, The NY Times
“Other hip-hop artists tend to use Snapchat as a more blatantly promotional tool, or at least aren’t as comfortable spotlighting their moment-to-moment activities. But DJ Khaled has no such inhibitions. He films himself, nimbly, while in the shower. He shoots himself slathering his body with cocoa butter. He posts clips of his pedicures and massages. A recent story line revolved around the installation of a new hammock: “It took me over 25 years blood, sweat and tears to swing in this hammock.” He once referred to his genitalia as “the theory.”
Who Won 2015? - by Rembert Browne, Vulture
“If there was one thing that outnumbered launched podcasts in 2015, it was people with hate in their hearts. And not just hate, public hate. Unabashed hate. Look at me, I hate, isn’t that cool, follow me on Twitter? If you look at how our society has traveled over the past few years, it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that this is the moment for nationwide public polarity. Either you love something, or you seem to hate its ever-living guts. The middle ground seemed to disappear in 2015. It’s sad to say, but hate is a defining characteristic of the entire year.”
Black Hermione: which character will cause the next 'racebending' outrage? – by Dave Schilling, The Guardian
“As you might have heard recently, we solved racism with the announcement of a black Hermoine in the new Harry Potter stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The casting of Noma Dumezweni in the upcoming play strikes a fatal blow for the cause of equality: a made-up wizard can be black. In this kooky, mixed-up, pre-apocalypse we call society, these are our victories.”
10 Haunting Questions I Have After Watching My First Star Wars Movie – by Caity Weaver, GQ
“In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, no one is good at their jobs. Our hero is a hapless Stormtrooper tripping all over himself not to hurt anyone (which, as a Stormtrooper, is his only job). A few minutes into the film, the “best pilot in the galaxy” crashes his spaceship in the desert. Villain Kylo Ren is so unbelievably bad at his job—botching repeated attempts to recover a map, kidnapping people he should not be kidnapping, and regularly destroying his home office with a light saber.”
#Thedress: ‘It's been quite stressful having to deal with it ... we had a falling-out’ – by Leo Benedictus, The Guardian
“Buzzfeed, whose Tumblr editor, Cates Holderness, first took the photograph into the mainstream media, normally expect traffic on a successful viral story to rise and fall like a wave. The dress picture, in the words of Mark Wilkie, Buzzfeed’s chief technology officer, was more like “a vertical wall”. Between Thursday evening east-coast time and 11am the following morning, 26.5 million people had seen Holderness’s original page. An extra technical team was assigned to stop Buzzfeed’s servers crashing.”
Streaming TV Isn’t Just a New Way to Watch. It’s a New Genre. – by James Poniewozik, The New York Times
“Streaming shows — by which here I mean the original series that Netflix, Amazon and their ilk release all at once, in full seasons — are more than simply TV series as we’ve known them. They’re becoming a distinct genre all their own, whose conventions and aesthetics we’re just starting to figure out.”