The Wireless

Weekly Reading: Best longreads on the web

08:40 am on 21 August 2015

Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.

 

Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown Jr., Jason Mitchell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., and Corey Hawkins in Straight Outta Compton. Photo: Unknown

Here's What's Missing From Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up – by Dee Barnes, Gawker

“But what should have been addressed is that it occurred. When I was sitting there in the theater, and the movie’s timeline skipped by my attack without a glance, I was like, “Uhhh, what happened?” Like many of the women that knew and worked with N.W.A., I found myself a casualty of Straight Outta Compton’s revisionist history.”

How Did The Edge Get Away With the Cucumber Number? – by Alex Casey, The Spinoff

“It’s obviously deeply problematic that the station itself is owned by the same company which screens The Bachelor. This means that one facet of MediaWorks is procuring women to participate in what was, by all accounts, an earnestly-conducted search for true love. All the while, another, far more powerful section of the company was slut-shaming them by testing their oral sex technique, on live radio.” 

Beyoncé Is Seen but Not Heard – by Matthew Schneier, The New York Times

“Why has Beyoncé gone mum? Even if the public expects an unreasonable amount of disclosure from its icons, few of her fellow celebrities have followed her lead. She may have concluded that face-to-face interviews are not in her interest. (She keeps an archive of all of her media mentions and all photos of herself.) She occasionally comes off daffy, as when she told GQin 2013, “I’m more powerful than my mind can even digest and understand.””

Wanted: one mayor – by Simon Wilson, Metro

“The problem of finding good mayoral candidates for Auckland is mirrored at council level, where there is a similar dearth of talent emerging to shake things up. It runs deep, and it’s a surprise. The super-city was supposed to make Auckland such an economically and socially vibrant powerhouse, it would attract a high quality of candidates for public office. Why hasn’t that happened?”

Dating Will Never Die – by Moira Weigel, New Republic

“If there is one thing I have learned from combing through over a century of material about dating, it is this: People have been proclaiming that dating is about to die ever since it was invented. What intrigues me about these pieces is: Why does anyone still read them?”

Early Notes on the Ashley Madison Hack – Jon Herman, The Awl

“This is new territory in terms of personal cost. The Ashley Madison hack is in some ways the first large scale real hack, in the popular, your-secrets-are-now-public sense of the word. It is plausible—likely?—that you will know someone in or affected by this dump.”

Unlocking Maori identity: keeping New Zealand’s indigenous people out of jail – by Toby Manhire, The Guardian

“With 8,500 prisoners among a national population of 4.5 million, New Zealand ranks as one of the highest jailers in the developed world. But as has been repeatedly highlighted in reports by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Māori component is staggering. While those who identify as Māori make up about 15% of the New Zealand population, the corresponding figure behind bars is more than 50%.” 

Did we miss something? Tell us about it in the comments section.