Global Comment

Worldwide voices on arts and culture

Must reads: Treasure, New Jersey, gunfluencers, Backpage, a lesbian cruise

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There’s a Treasure Chest Worth Millions Hidden Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. These Searchers Are Dedicating Their Lives and Savings to Finding It (Julia Glum for Money)

According to legend, it wasn’t until about 2010 — he won’t say exactly when — that Fenn took action, driving into the mountains, hiking an indeterminate distance and leaving the chest in a secret spot. He also self-published a book, The Thrill of the Chase. In it, he coded nine clues about the treasure’s location into a 24-line poem about “the home of Brown,” “the blaze” and “where warm waters halt.”

Inside Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle with the Feds (Christine Biederman for Wired)

Maybe they should have seen it coming: The betrayals. The asset seizures. The changing zeitgeist. They were, to be sure, brazenly cashing in on the sex trade. But here’s the thing: Silicon Valley had better hope they win. United States v. Lacey is a dangerous case, with potential consequences far beyond the freedom of two aging antiauthoritarians.

The Time I Went On A Lesbian Cruise And It Blew Up My Entire Life (Shannon Keating for Buzzfeed)

What I didn’t expect was everything else that would happen to me — and is still happening to me — thanks to this one little week in my otherwise pleasantly uneventful life.

The hired guns of Instagram (Kaitlyn Tiffany for The Goods)

And because Facebook, and by extension the Facebook-owned Instagram, forbids retailers to run ads that promote the sale or use of firearms, her platform is also a place to market guns that can’t be easily marketed online.

Whose Jersey Shore is it? (Britta Lokting for Curbed)

Asbury Park has a diverse makeup of black, Hispanic, and gay populations; it has been home to those who are stigmatized or struggling. When Amy Quinn, the deputy mayor, moved there in the early 2000s, she called the city the Island of Misfit Toys. “Everyone was coming from a bankruptcy or a break-up,” she said. “It was the place you went when you were figuring out what to do.”

Photo: Eric Kilby