Did you read about Jay Z, Ventra, and “necropants”?

• Courtesy Wikicommons
• Jay Z

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

Hey, did you read:

• About fiction’s truth-telling advantages over nonfiction? —Steve Bogira

• About a pair of Icelandic “necropants,” made of human skin and perfect for Halloween? —Tony Adler

• That 17 years after California launched a “notoriously lax” medical marijuana program, accompanying social problems have been minimal? —Mick Dumke

• Lou Reed on Kanye West’s Yeezus? —Kate Schmidt

• Sasha Frere-Jones on Lou Reed? —Leor Galil

• Robert Christgau on Lou Reed? —Mara Shalhoup

• Jim DeRogatis on Lou Reed? (I just really wanted to contribute one.) —Gwynedd Stuart

• That, this being the 28th/58th anniversary of the events in Back to the Future, the Hill Valley Project is reconstructing the movie in “real time” as a series of tweets? —Tony Adler

• Jay Z on his controversial partnership with luxury department store Barneys, which was recently accused of racial profiling? —Drew Hunt

• All those times that the Ventra reader fails to read your card? It might not be failing to charge you. —Sam Worley