9 Features Stories You Can't Miss This Week: Man Buns, Mandates, And Manipulation

This week for BuzzFeed News, Doree Shafrir meets social media sensation Brock O'Hurn, the man behind the man bun. Read that and these other great stories from BuzzFeed News and around the web.

1. Brock O'Hurn Wants To Be More Than Instagram's Most Beautiful Man — BuzzFeed News

Photograph by Macey J. Foronda for BuzzFeed News

In 2015, it’s not unusual for a 23-year-old to suddenly find fame, and hundreds of thousands of followers, merely for being a perfect human specimen. The question for Brock O’Hurn is: What is he going to do with it? Read it at BuzzFeed News.

2. The Doctor Who Got Ebola — New York Magazine

Photograph by Christopher Anderson for New York Magazine

Helen Ouyang catches up with Craig Spencer, the New York physician who contracted ebola last year and inadvertently caused one of the city's biggest — and, some argue, most unnecessary — scares in recent history. "It was a prime opportunity for education, and they squandered it with misinformation and unscientific quarantines.” Read it at New York Magazine.

3. Domestic Violence on Campus Is the Next Big College Controversy — BuzzFeed News

Dennis Huynh for BuzzFeed News

Katie J.M. Baker has reported extensively on how student activists convinced the country to care about campus sexual assault. But can they do the same for domestic violence, which is just as common on college campuses? Read it at BuzzFeed News.

4. Lost Brother in Yosemite — The New York Times

Drew Kelly

Skilled BASE jumpers Dean Potter and Graham Hunt weren't just athletes at the top of their game: they were also outspoken advocates for legalizing the sport in national parks. That is, until last month, when their story took a tragic turn. John Branch gracefully details what became their final jump. Read it at The New York Times.

5. How Isis Crippled al-Qaida — The Guardian

Reuters

A team of journalists—Shiv Malik, Ali Younes, Spencer Ackerman, and Mustafa Khalili— chronicle the downfall of the most feared terrorist organization in the world, and how it led to the rise of another one. "According to a series of exclusive interviews with senior jihadi ideologues, Isis has successfully launched 'a coup' against al-Qaida to destroy it from within." Read it at The Guardian.

6. Four Columbia House insiders explain the shady math behind “8 CDs for a penny” — A.V. Club

http://A.V. Club

Annie Zaleski track down four former Columbia House record club staffers, including critic Sasha Frere-Jones, to recall the math and manpower behind the too-good-to-be-true deals. "It was an amazing combination of 'We are ripping you off like no one has ever ripped anyone off as a per-unit basis,' but 'We are also building a time bomb that’s going to flatten us forever.'" Read it at A.V. Club.

7. Against His Better Judgement — The Washington Post

Chuck Novara/The Southern / Via Associated Press

Eli Saslow profiles Mark Bennett, a federal judge in the meth-ravaged state of Iowa who is bound by law to dole out harsh mandatory minimums for drug offenders. The problem? It's a policy he despises. “Congress has tied my hands...I have to uphold the law whether I agree with it or not." Read it at The Washington Post.

8. California's Most Effective Pot Lobbyist Used to Be a Cop — BuzzFeed News

Ron Mullins / Sacramento NORML

California has the largest, most chaotic cannabis market in the nation. Amanda Chicago Lewis discovers how, thanks in part to the gregarious ex-cop who is negotiating on behalf of the pot industry, marijuana activists and legislators are close to a deal to rein it in. Read it at BuzzFeed News.

9. A Super Strange True Love Story — Narratively

Illustration by Ayun Halliday for Narratively

Annalisa Merelli thought she had met the man she would spend the rest of her life with — until he decided he was no longer in love with her and married Riol Dankó instead. In this heartbreaking two-part series, each woman offers her reflections on the troubled and tormenting man they both thought they knew. Read Merelli's story first here, then Dankó's here.

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