“I am not afraid of clowns. But there’s something that happens when you walk into the forgettable bathroom of a hotel lobby and meet a fully made-up clown standing by the sink, reflection staring back at you with the Kubrickian blankness of a greasepaint grimace. I almost wet my pants.” Buzzfeed’s Leigh Cowart heads to a clown convention where the participants know you think they’re creepy.

+ “Singapore has become a laboratory not only for testing how mass surveillance and big-data analysis might prevent terrorism, but for determining whether technology can be used to engineer a more harmonious society.” FP’s Shane Harris: The Social Laboratory.

+ “The air still smelled of lunch, warmed-up cans of Progresso soup and hot dogs from 7-Eleven. Scattered about were household objects with gruesome tales.” D Magazine’s Jamie Thompson spends time with Sergeant Brenda Nichols to see what it’s like to be a detective who works child abuse cases. “Nichols steeled herself for the work that lay ahead, reminding herself, as she had so many times before, You wanted this job.”