Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Photo: Drakewatch
The neo-Nazi murder trial revealing Germany's darkest secrets - Thomas Meaney and Saskia Schäfer, The Guardian
“In the beginning, they were known as die Dönermorde – the kebab murders. The victims had little in common, apart from immigrant backgrounds and the modest businesses they ran. The first to die was Enver Şimşek, a 38-year-old Turkish-German man who ran a flower-import company in the southern German town of Nuremberg. On 9 September 2000, he was shot inside his van by two gunmen, and died in hospital two days later.”
Chance the Rapper: artist of the year - Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, MTV
It isn’t hard to sell people on optimism, but it’s hard to keep them sold on it, especially in a year as cynical as this one. Yet as we tear the final pages out of this ferociously exhausting calendar year, Chance the Rapper stands as 2016’s greatest optimist. His Coloring Book was one of the albums that wouldn’t go away this year, no matter what came after it. First, it was the perfect summer album. Then summer passed, and I was still kicking up dead leaves in my neighborhood and listening to cars roll by with their windows slightly cracked listening to “Smoke Break” or “Mixtape.” Chance made the only thing this year that has fit unconditionally.
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the US - Eric Lipton, David E. Sanger and Scott Shane, New York Times
“When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk.
His message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.”
My President Was Black, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
“In the days after Donald Trump’s victory, there would be an insistence that something as “simple” as racism could not explain it. As if enslavement had nothing to do with global economics, or as if lynchings said nothing about the idea of women as property. As though the past 400 years could be reduced to the irrational resentment of full lips. No. Racism is never simple. And there was nothing simple about what was coming, or about Obama, the man who had unwittingly summoned this future into being.”
Drake Is the Thirstiest Rapper in the Game - Amy Zimmerman, The Daily Beast
“Like a particularly smooth sofa, Drake is his best self when supporting women and letting them use him. He makes an excellent, stoic prop to grind up against, and is a great guy to have cheering for you from the sidelines. In essence, Drake makes a great wifey—in fact, he hasn’t played a role this convincingly since he was a teenage paraplegic. But Drake gets himself into trouble when he trades his self-imposed servitude for the single life.”