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On June 10, 1912, a family was brutally murdered in a small Iowa town. The murders remain unsolved:

The Moores were not discovered until several hours later, when a neighbor, worried by the absence of any sign of life in the normally boisterous household, telephoned Joe’s brother, Ross, and asked him to investigate. Ross found a key on his chain that opened the front door, but barely entered the house before he came rushing out again, calling for Villisca’s marshal, Hank Horton. That set in train a sequence of events that destroyed what little hope there may have been of gathering useful evidence from the crime scene. Horton brought along Drs. J. Clark Cooper and Edgar Hough and Wesley Ewing, the minister of the Moore’s Presbyterian congregation. They were followed by the county coroner, L.A. Linquist, a third doctor, F.S. Williams (who became the first to examine the bodies and estimate a time of death). When a shaken Dr Williams emerged, he cautioned members of the growing crowd outside: ‘Don’t go in there, boys; you’ll regret it until the last day of your life.’ Many ignored the advice; as many as 100 curious neighbors and townspeople tramped as they pleased through the house, scattering fingerprints, and in one case even removing fragments of Joe Moore’s skull as a macabre keepsake.

“The Ax Murderer Who Got Away.” — Mike Dash, Smithsonian

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[Fiction] A couple returns home from Israel: 

It’s six-thirty now and the boys are back in bed; it’s early afternoon Israel time. For the moment, Noelle feels as if she’s in a bubble, lying awake next to Amram while the children are asleep. She presses her ear to the wall to see if her sisters are awake; it’s been a fitful night for them too.

She rolls over onto her stomach and back again. She wonders what she looks like from up on the ceiling, lying sleepless in her childhood bed. This is where she spent summer after summer. And Christmas vacation and spring break. Amram, who has risen, is in a T-shirt and cutoff jeans, his thighs thick as ham hocks, his prayer fringes sticking out from under his shirt, twisted as always around his belt loops. His yarmulke, blown by the breeze coming through the open window, flips over itself so that it’s barely hanging from a few tendrils of hair; it droops to the side like a single earmuff.

“The World Without You.” — Joshua Henkin, Guernica Magazine

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How two comic-book artists created the characters beloved by kids during the 1980s and ’90s. The original turtles weren’t so cuddly:

The original Mirage comic book really wasn’t made for youngsters. The Turtles diced up enemies while spouting the occasional curse word, and one of the Turtles’ allies was hockey mask-wearing vigilante Casey Jones, who beat down even low-level crooks with baseball bats and hockey sticks. But when Playmates Toys expressed interest in producing TMNT action figures in 1986 (we’ll get to those), the comic’s PG-13 attitude wouldn’t fit Playmates’ 4-8 year old target audience. In addition, part of Playmates’ marketing was an animated cartoon, which had to pass television censors. So to make the Turtles viable for the younger set, the Turtles had to soften up.

Among other changes, the Turtles became wise-cracking jokers obsessed with pizza, the Shredder became a typical bumbling cartoon villain, members of the Foot Clan were now robots so parents wouldn’t complain that the Turtles were too violent, and instead of ‘Damn,’ the Turtles shouted easily-marketable catchphrases like, ‘Turtle Power!’ and ‘Cowabunga!’

“The Complete History of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” — Rob Lammle, Mental Floss

Experiencing firsthand the boredom that overtakes the courtroom during the perjury retrial of the seven-time Cy Young winner:

As far as jury duty goes, you might think the perjury trial of the most decorated pitcher in baseball history would be the kind of blockbuster assignment you tell your grandchildren about. But if you’re enough of a baseball fan to recognize Roger Clemens, you would have been booted out of the pool in short order. The ladies and gentleman of this jury have been carefully selected on the basis of their ambivalence toward the nation’s pastime. That’s why witnesses must pause to define elementary baseball nomenclature like ‘foul pole.’ To clarify what it means for an athlete to be ‘in the zone.’ To explain that the game is played both indoors and outdoors, and that Fenway Park is home to the Boston Red Sox.

So you can begin to see why two jurors have already been dismissed for napping during testimony. Only 13 remain, and Judge Reggie Walton is determined not to lose another. The survivors have been encouraged to take advantage of the complimentary coffee in the jury lounge, for the defense is expected to argue deep into June.

“Asleep at the Roger Clemens Trial.” — Chris Felciano Arnold, Salon

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Japanese-pop star Hatsune Miku has millions of YouTube hits, sells tickets to her concerts at $76 a pop and has adoring fans from all around the world. She’s also not human:

Created by Crypton Future Media, Miku is the most popular avatar created to sell Vocaloid 2, the singing synthesizer application originally developed by Yamaha. In Japan, it is common to create a character associated with software, and at first glance, Miku may seem like little more than an animated mascot, not unlike the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Snuggle fabric softener bear. But Miku inspires an unparalleled creativity.

Instead of passively worshipping her, fans have mobilized into an interactive artistic community. Using Vocaloid 2, they write melodies and lyrics, sharing their songs on YouTube or the Japanese equivalent, niconico (“smilesmile”). Since Miku’s ‘birth’ in August 2007, amateurs have used her likeness in hundreds of thousands of songs, illustrations, videos, games, animations—and one rather creepy, dead-looking Miku robot. She’s a cosplay (costume role play) favorite at anime conventions and elsewhere.

“I Sing the Body Electric.” — Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times Magazine

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[Not single-page] A difficult life with a father remembered through his favorite words and phrases:

He never once found comfortable shoes, and when he’d come home from the plant after a double overtime, the searing pain in his feet would have him whimpering like a child. Swornin’ to goodness! was his pain expression. Was it his horrible feet?

His maniacal mother, my grandmother, Letha (we called her ‘Lethal’), taught him that ‘if it isn’t perfect, its not worth doing,’ thus paralyzing my father for life. It was she who dragged my father, aged eight, to a hotel in downtown Baton Rouge, busted into a room, and showed him his father in bed with another woman. ‘Look at your father,’ she said. Was it Lethal?

Or are unhappy people born unhappy?

Would he have been the way he was if he had never had children? Did I turn my father into a monster?

“Daddy: My Father’s Last Words.” — Mark Warren, Esquire

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Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Michael Hastings, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Paul Ford, VICE, fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Matt Cardin.

Cooper played heroic cowboys and espoused all-American values while the studio system helped hide his offscreen affairs:

Cooper became a hero to many, even as he developed a reputation as one of the most notorious philanderers in Hollywood. He had stiff competition — Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, the list goes on — but Cooper may or may not have slept with EVERY. SINGLE. CO-STAR. No matter his age, no matter their age, he was insatiable, before and during his marriage. How to reconcile his moral righteousness onscreen with his philandering offscreen? That was the work of Fixers, gossip magazines, and the studio system at large, which ensured that Cooper was never caught, never denounced, and held up as a paragon of American values. Of course, the way he looked in pants didn’t hurt.

“Scandals of Classic Hollywood: That Divine Gary Cooper.” — Anne Helen Petersen, The Hairpin

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The past, present and future of how we perceive time, and which units actually matter:

The time you spend is not your own. You are, as a class of human beings, responsible for more pure raw time, broken into more units, than almost anyone else. You spent two years learning, focusing, exploring, but that was your time; now you are about to spend whole decades, whole centuries, of cumulative moments, of other people’s time. People using your systems, playing with your toys, fiddling with your abstractions. And I want you to ask yourself when you make things, when you prototype interactions, am I thinking about my own clock, or the user’s? Am I going to help someone make order in his or her life, or am I going to send that person to a commune in Vermont?

“10 Timeframes.” — Paul Ford, Contents

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In 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan after deciding to walk off his base. A look at why he left, and the complications surrounding his rescue:

Within an hour, two F-18s were circling overhead. Afghan forces passed along intelligence that a U.S. soldier had been captured by the Taliban. By that evening, two F-15s – call sign DUDE-21 – had joined the search. A few minutes later, according­ to files obtained by WikiLeaks, a radio transmission intercepted by U.S. forces stated that the Taliban had captured­ three civilians and one U.S. soldier. The battalion leading the manhunt entered and searched three compounds in the area, but found nothing significant to report.

The next morning, more than 24 hours after Bowe had vanished, U.S. intelligence intercepted a conversation between two Taliban fighters:

“‘I SWEAR THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD ANYTHING YET. WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?’

‘YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE. THERE IS NO WHERE HE CAN GO (LOL)’ ‘IS HE STILL ALIVE?’

‘YES HE IS ALIVE. BUT I DONT HAVE THE WHOLE STORY. DONT KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW THAT THEY CAPTURE HIM ALIVE AND THEY ARE WITH HIM RIGHT NOW.’

“America’s Last Prisoner of War.” — Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone

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