Six great reads: spuds in vogue, Finland’s biggest crime and a month living in analogue

1. ‘We want to make jacket potatoes sexy again!’: how the humble spud became a fast food sensation

The fad for jacket potatoes. Composite: Guardian Design; Cathy Britcliffe/Getty Images

One of the UK’s most unlikely fast food trends of the past few years has been an influencer-led rise in appetite for baked potatoes, one of Britain’s original street foods. Sammy Gecsoyler met the spudfluencers spreading the starchy gospel.

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2. Out of the ruins: will Aleppo ever be rebuilt?

Bombed-out buildings in the Old City of Aleppo. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad/The Guardian

“For 5,000 years,” wrote Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Aleppo has been a great metropolis at the heart of a region that stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean, across the fertile lands of what is now southern Turkey, and all the way to Mosul in modern-day Iraq. Throughout the centuries, Aleppo prospered as a trade hub and manufacturing centre. It endured its share of invasions, plagues, civil strife and natural disasters, yet somehow managed to preserve a distinctive character evident.”

After the Syrian civil war, nearly two-thirds of the city is in ruins. The destruction is so vast that it will take years just to clear the rubble, let alone start rebuilding. Can Aleppo return to the city it was before the war?

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3. ‘I’d come back to the UK – but I’m not playing a cop’: Oscar nominee Wunmi Mosaku on sensational vampire smash Sinners

Mosaku. Photograph: Gianna Dorsey

The actor grew up on a Manchester council estate. Now she’s gone stratospheric for her pivotal role in Sinners – and this week she was nominated for an Oscar. Before that, the star talked to Lanre Bakare about leaving Britain for LA – and the £30 bus trip that changed her life.

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4. He called himself an ‘untouchable hacker god’. But who was behind the biggest crime Finland has ever known?

Aleksanteri Kivimäki. Photograph: Juuso Westerlund

“At 2am on 23 October 2020 – the day before the emails began to arrive in tens of thousands of inboxes – ransom_man had uploaded a much larger file. It contained every record of every single patient on the database. Everyone’s therapy notes had already been published, for free, for everyone in the world to see.”

Who was behind the biggest crime Finland had ever known? And might they have been motivated by something other than money? Jenny Kleeman spent 18 months trying to find out. The story culminated in one of the most chilling conversations she had ever had.

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5. ‘Exclusively for the elite’: why Mumbai’s new motorway is a symbol of the divide between rich and poor

The coastal road project. Photograph: Nirmal G/The Guardian

The Indian city is known for its graphic inequality – it is home to 90 of India’s billionaires, but also to more than six million slum dwellers. Now a city where most people squeeze on to buses and trains has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast, which critics say serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers’ money. Amrit Dhillon examined a road that “represents a massive transfer of wealth to the rich and imposes costs on the rest”.

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6. My analogue month: would ditching my smartphone make me healthier, happier – or more stressed?

Emma Russell. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

“Is it possible, asked Emma Russell, “to live lo-fi in a hi-tech world?” For a month, she tried: swapping her iPhone for a Nokia, picking up physical copies of books, newspapers and magazines; and using a London A-Z for directions.

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