Global Comment

Worldwide voices on arts and culture

The web’s top three #22

Warsaw City Centre

The news at the moment is frantic, with fresh information flashed in front of us every few minutes. So much so that we can find ourselves missing the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need. This weekly update can provide that for you. We do this by distilling the best of the web and recommending just three links every week that you absolutely must see.

No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads. Here are this week’s recommendations:

A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia (Rachel Cheung / VICE)

Yifan thought he’d found interesting material for a novel. Little did he know he’d stumbled upon an entire fictitious world constructed by a user known as Zhemao. It was one of 206 articles she has written on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, weaving facts into fiction in an elaborate scheme that went uncaught for years and tested the limits of crowdsourced platforms’ ability to verify information and fend off bad actors.

“The content she wrote is of high quality and the entries were interconnected, creating a system that can exist on its own,” veteran Chinese Wikipedian John Yip told VICE World News. “Zhemao single-handedly invented a new way to undermine Wikipedia.”

Read more.

Bihar: Their son vanished – then an imposter took over for 41 years (BBC News)

What happened over the next four decades is a chilling tale of deception in which a man pretended to be the missing son of the landlord and inveigled himself into his house.

Even as he was on bail, he assumed a new identity, went to college, got married, raised a family and secured multiple fake identities.

Read more.

ELEPHANT RESCUE (CBS News)

Image: Andriej Szypilow