Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Lorde talks about her comeback to the New York Times this week. Photo: AFP
The Return of Lorde, by Jonah Weiner, The New York Times
“We pushed through the service exit, walked along empty streets and boarded an uptown 1 train. While making “Melodrama,” Lorde took lots of subway rides, auditioning rough mixes of songs on cheap earbuds, which helped give her a sense of how the music would sound in daily life. As we rumbled northward, her face was in full fluorescent light, and I wondered if people ever bothered her during these rides. “Nobody recognizes me,” she said. When Lorde does spot someone spotting her, she went on, her move is to smile, place a finger to her lips and mouth a conspiratorial shh.”
The Scott Stapp Resurrection Tour Has Begun, by Drew Magary, GQ
‘“All of a sudden, it was almost like Weiland speaking to me from the grave, man. It was a very weird feeling that I felt. I remember being in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, on the bus, and really feeling like I could hear or feel him saying, 'Dude, this could have been you. And this could be you if you continue that path. Don’t do what I did. Don’t go down that road.' And, literally, I’m having this moment.”’
'We're the geeks, the prostitutes': Asian American actors on Hollywood's barriers, by Sam Levin, The Guardian
“Another film sought an Asian rapper who could “rhyme a few lines with an accent or in any Asian language”. A breakdown for a South Korean character sought a female actor age 18 to 25 to play a 17-year-old who is “really only good at being pretty”. One character in another project was described as “Asian. Petite. Slim. Fragile.” The storyline: “A rich man keeps a woman in the basement.”’
How Facebook Helps to Reveal the Fate of Missing Refugees, by Eric Reidy, Wired
“Rumors swirled among refugees that some of the passengers were being detained by Italian authorities. Maybe Musaab was with them, or his cousin had somehow overlooked him in the confusion following the wreck. Nobody knew. Like thousands of others who have fled their homes over the past two years and joined the greatest mass migration in human history, Musaab had gone missing.”
Margaret Atwood, The Prophet of Dystopia, by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
“Atwood is a buoyant doomsayer. Like a skilled doctor, she takes evident satisfaction in providing an accurate diagnosis, even when the cultural prognosis is bleak. She attended the Toronto iteration of the Women’s March, wearing a wide-brimmed floppy hat the color of Pepto-Bismol: not so much a pussy hat as the chapeau of a lioness. Among the signs she saw that day, her favorite was one held by a woman close to her own age; it said, “i can’t believe i’m still holding this fucking sign.”’
Who Gets to Own 'Black Girl Magic'? By Clover Hope, Jezebel
“To the average person, the trademarking process may seem, in a word, boring. On top of that, the legalities of intellectual property are inherently confusing. But in the case of cultural signifiers like “Black Girl Magic,” the simple act of filing for a trademark can trigger compelling debate. Recall that in 2015, for example, Taylor Swift filed to register “This sick beat” (a phrase she used in a song on her album 1989), which fed criticism about her history of appropriation."