Kanye West
  • DAMIAN DOVARGANES/AP
  • Kanye West

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us.

Hey, did you read:

• That the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans, when adjusted for inflation, grew just $59 between 1966 and 2011? Philip Montoro

• That the Republican leadership in the U.S. House is so divided by infighting that they’re struggling to pass routine measures on issues like the government’s helium reserves? Mick Dumke

• About what it’s like to live for a year without the Internet? Tal Rosenberg

• That Jamestown settlers ate a 14-year-old girl? Mike Sula

• Alex Pareene on columnist Howard Kurtz, who has just come out as illiterate? (Which is to say that he should have read Jason Collins’s coming-out essay in Sports Illustrated more closely before commenting on it.) Tal Rosenberg

• About the “realia”—a zebra skin, a player-piano roll, a pair of women’s shoes—stored in the collection of William Gaddis’s papers housed at Washington University? Kate Schmidt

Manohla Dargis’s analysis of the role of action movies post-9/11? Aimee Levitt

• That Kanye West is “apparently” releasing a new album in June? Leor Galil