The Weirdest Music Video Ever, the Bill Simmons Aftermath and More #Mustreads

Happy Friday!

Here’s some good stuff from the Web to ease you out of the work week, brought to you by Re/code:

1. Vox’s Kelsey McKinney has flagged … something. Calling it a K-Pop music video would be a bit like calling “Jurassic Park” a movie about escaped zoo animals. There are lots of loud noises, CGI-generated characters bouncing around and flashing colors. One of the characters wears a hazmat suit. There are animals. It’s a lot to process. It will freak out friends and family.
2. On Wednesday, ESPN suspended its multimedia star Bill Simmons for reasons that remain unclear — the network’s official statement makes no sense — but stem from a rant about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. There are many takes on this one, very few of which offer any real reporting, but the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson has a sharp piece about the mess. She tackles it all — ESPN’s highly lucrative relationship with the NFL, the organization’s seeming inability for self-scrutiny and what ESPN is really talking about when they say “integrity.”
3. In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine there is a profile of Sarah Marquis, an adventurer who hiked 10,000 miles in three years. Marquis grew up in a rural village in the north of Switzerland, learned how to live off the land (eating bugs, camping in extreme conditions, etc.) and hiked from Mongolia to Australia with nothing but a small gear cart and her 75 pound backpack.
4. The celebrity nude iCloud hack, revenge porn and countless other horrors of the Internet have all intersected with the same website at one point in their infancy: 4chan. The anonymous message board is always at the center of Internet controversies, yet its creator and owner, Christopher Poole, always seems to be nowhere near the limelight. David Auerbach asks in Slate, why aren’t more people asking Poole to crack down on the worst parts of 4chan, like they do of Facebook or Twitter? His suggestion: Poole’s cozy relationships with some of tech and media’s biggest figures.
5. On October 10, the movie “Kill the Messenger” comes out in theaters, a fictionalized portrayal of Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who penned a 1996 series that charged the CIA with a role in the 1980s crack epidemic. At the time, Webb was attacked by the government and media for alleged inaccuracies (he’s since been largely vindicated); he killed himself in 2004. The movie looks particularly good (“Hurt Locker” star Jeremy Renner plays Webb); if you want to learn more about Webb’s story, check out this longish read from The Intercept.

If you see any stories you’d like to send our way (or have any questions/comments about stories we’ve recommended), feel free to shoot an email to noah@recode.net.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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