So, yeah, it’s been a minute… Though it’s been quite an eventful minute! Hopefully I’ll get to that soon in a Selfie post. For now I’m just dipping my toe back in with a FTTW:

“The Big Error Was That She Was Caught”: The Untold Story Behind the Mysterious Disappearance of Fan Bingbing, the World’s Biggest Movie Star
Vanity Fair
The story uses the frame of Fan Bingbing’s disappearance (and, spoiler, reappearance) to detail the sweeping changes engulfing the Chinese film industry as the government reasserts its primacy. This is of particular importance because of how intertwined Chinese film companies and investors have become with Hollywood – rare is the American blockbuster that doesn’t have at least some Chinese underwriting. It’s a testament to the amount of money needed to make a modern popcorn movie, but also to how Hollywood actively tries to appeal to a larger, global market, and with almost one and a half billion people, China can be just as important – or more – than domestic audiences. How this crackdown will ripple across the ocean still has yet to be seen, but it’s likely something to watch develop over the next few years.

The Dreams Of A Man Asleep For Three Weeks
Kotaku
True story: a couple weeks ago I was having a dream where I was returning to a campsite in the woods when a pair of wolves came out of the bush snarling at me. They rushed me and in the dream I made a decision that if they were going to attack me I was going to attack right back. So I roared a battle cry and as the lead wolf leapt at me I bit his face. That’s when Fern woke me, “Are you okay?! You were just yelling in your sleep!”
Mike Fahey, one of the editors at gaming site Kotaku, was rushed to the hospital for a life-threatening heart condition and then had to remain sedated (though, he points out, not exactly in a coma) for three weeks. And he dreamt… 
FYI, Dream Wolves, if I had slept longer I would have bit your damn faces OFF! You’re forewarned!!

Bodies of Long-Lost Divers Discovered At Bottom of Belize Great Blue Hole: ‘They Are At Peace’
Newsweek
I hate this headline. Like, so much. Okay, sure, they found a few bodies down there, but the more important thing is the expedition and the mapping they did. If you’re not familiar with the Great Blue Hole, it is, well… okay, I’m not going to do that to you. It’s an enormous marine sinkhole off the coast of Belize that was made popular in the popular imagination by an old Jacques Cousteau expedition. What’s fascinating – and we’ve know this for some time – is that below a certain depth oxygen is replaced with dissolved hydrogen sulfide, so any marine life that ventures into those depths dies quickly. Here’s more info from Wikipedia and Belize’s own site or this cool site about “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About The Blue Hole of Belize” (spoiler, I’ve already told you a couple. The Newsweek article has a snippet from this video put together by the sub company, but here’s their longer (~8 minutes) version and if you have any interest in the Blue Hole or in underwater exploration, you should take a look (another spoiler: the sub company doesn’t even mention the dead bodies).

A brief history of the ball pit
Vox
I haven’t been in a ball pit for decades. I haven’t even been near enough to a ball pit to actually contemplate jumping in.  Back in the 90’s I almost worked at a tech company that had a ball pit (and a big slide!) but that’s about as close as I’ve come. But there’s still that lure… The article talks about the rise of the ball pit out of a concern for “safe play,” which dovetails nicely into a lot of things I’ve been seeing and reading lately (*cough*CoddingOfTheAmericanMind*cough*). 

Foxconn Is Confusing The Hell Out Of Wisconsin
The Verge
Last December the podcast Reply All did a great episode about the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut Foxconn coming to Wisconsin and the secrecy and politics behind it. The podcast took a human look behind the glitzy promises and political bullet points and is well worth listening to. This article follows on that by actually visiting the places where Foxconn promised fast-track building and thousands of jobs. Real people were displaced, lots and lots of real money was spent by relatively small municipalities who were promised enormous economic gains. What’d they get so far? A whole lot of nothing.