IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. Are low budget horrors having a moment?
Two low-budget horror movies, Backrooms and Obsession, made huge profits, with Obsession making 330 times its budget. Meanwhile, a traditional blockbuster like Masters of the Universe flopped. Will this become a trend, and should Hollywood be worried?
(BBC, approx seven mins reading time)
“You can feel the foundations of Hollywood shaking. ‘This is a pivotal moment for the entertainment industry,’ Kayla Cobb, Senior Reporter for The Wrap, tells the BBC. ‘The traditional film industry has focused on reheating the same tired IP, but audiences – particularly Gen-Z audiences – are craving more original movies.’”
2. How the White House managed the Epstein files
In July 2025, White House officials met in the secure bunker used for US security matters. The topic on the table? How to control what would be released in the Epstein files about the US president. The New York Times has broken down what was discussed and what decisions were made in that bunker.
(The New York Times Magazine, approx 34 mins reading time)
“Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.”
3. The similarities between war in Ukraine and WWI
The Conversation has said trench systems and the use of artillery are some of the similarities between the first World War and the war in Ukraine, but the publication says the resemblance goes beyond these too.
(The Conversation, approx five mins reading time)
“Yet the deeper similarities lie not in trenches or artillery, but in the underlying logic of the war itself. Like the first world war, the conflict in Ukraine has become a contest of endurance: manpower, industrial capacity, economic resilience and political will.”
4. When ‘paedophile hunters’ target innocent people
Live broadcasts of alleged paedophiles being caught meeting with decoys – people who claimed to be underage while messaging – are becoming increasingly popular online. But what happens when these ‘paedophile hunters’ publicly accuse an innocent person?
(The New York Times, approx 13 mins reading time)
‘Akash said he was recently at an airport in Florida waiting for an Uber, when someone recognized him and asked if he was the guy from Vitaly’s video. He lied and said he wasn’t. He said he continued to get harassing messages, and prank calls to his personal phone, and his mind goes back often to the feeling of sitting in the back of a police car, thinking his life was over. He said he would never use an online dating app again. ‘I don’t really trust anyone,’ he said. ‘You never know who anyone could be.’
5. Deep sea secrets
Most of the sea hasn’t been explored – the deep sea in particular. Explorers have seen less than 0.0001% of the deep ocean seafloor. The Guardian explores the secrets of the deep sea, and the risks posed to it by underwater mining.
(The Guardian, approx 18 mins reading time)
“Certain regions of the ocean floor are home to even more hostile conditions. Vents of superheated water, packed with toxic chemicals, would spell death in our world. In the deep, however, they are home to some of our planet’s most vibrant, and alien, animal communities. More than any hypothetical discovery on Europa or Mars, they may offer our best glimpse into the origins of life on Earth. But there is a growing possibility that these rare oceanic oases may be destroyed before anyone gets a chance to study them.”
6. UFO watchers
Dispatch has looked into the communities of people in the UK who have formed to share their passion for UFO hunting.
(Dispatch, approx 11 mins reading time)
“At one of UFO Identified’s gatherings, eight people meet at the appropriately named Skymaster pub in Warrington. While regular punters tuck into their roast dinners, I speak with George, an 81-year-old widower who speaks with the passion of someone half his age, and who I’m told once fell down a hole during a Bigfoot field trip in Widnes. I also meet Jules, a middle-aged woman who has travelled all the way from Wales with her partner. She tells the group eagerly about witnessing a triangle-shaped craft above a roundabout moving silently and at an impossible speed.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
7. For the love of basketball
The NBA Finals are currently on in the US, and making headlines across the world. What is it about the series that enthrals fans so much?
(ESPN, approx 37 mins reading time)
“At the start of the 2016 documentary ‘Who is Estaban,’ there is a moment when Columbus basketball legend Estaban Weaver offers up a rapturous monologue on what propels his love of the game, down to the most granular details. The way you can hear the echo of shoes squeaking, ricocheting off the walls, or rattling the metal of some lockers in a hallway, well before you even walk through a gym’s doors. And it’s the smell, too. The smell of a gym. Sweat, but not only sweat. There are other faint undertones: sometimes rubber, sometimes stale butter, heaving a thick cloud from the opening of a largely neglected popcorn machine. It sounds weird, Weaver says in the film. But I’d bottle that smell. I’d use it as cologne.”