Web Reads: WWI photos, North Korean souvenirs, and sky-high rent

Pictures of war. The Atlantic began running a 10-part series featuring photographs of World War I. Part one sets the stage for the war with a 1910 photo of nine European rulers. Just four years later most of their countries would be at war. The 45 photos include one of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife getting into a car just minutes before their assassination in Sarajevo.

Worldwide families. Child Trends recently published the World Family Map 2014, a report on the state of families around the world. This Mercatornet interview with one of the lead researchers draws out some of the important findings.

Dining alone? A Dutch restaurant designed with tables for one opened recently. The restaurant doesn’t offer wi-fi and encourages its solo eaters to read physical books or newspapers if they don’t want to concentrate on the restaurant’s four-course meals. In Japan, the Moomin Café handles the discomfort solo diners sometimes feel by seating solo diners at tables with giant stuffed animals inspired by the Finnish Moomin book series.

Warped reality. Adam Johnson writes in Granta about his visit to North Korea, and his search for a suitable souvenir: “I was dying to buy something, anything that would help my wife and children understand the profound surrealism and warped reality I’d experienced on my research trip to North Korea.”

Housing crunch. A long article in TechCrunch explains why housing costs are so high in San Francisco: “While we have to thank these movements for preserving so much of the land surrounding San Francisco and the city’s beautiful Victorians, one side effect is that the city has added an average of 1,500 units per year for the last 20 years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Census estimates that the city’s population grew by 32,000 people from 2010 to 2013 alone.”