During the week, we consume words in snackable, tweetable bites. But on the weekends, we have the time to take a dive into the murkier, lengthier depths of the Internet and expand our attention spans beyond 140 characters. We can brew a cup of coffee and lie back with our iPads, laptops, smartphones and Kindles.
Since you're bound to miss a few things during the daily grind, we present to you, in our weekly installation of Mashable Must Reads, a curated collection of can't-miss stories to read and reflect on. (You can find last week's must reads here.)
When Microsoft was about to launch BitLocker, its Windows software to encrypt and lock hard drives, the FBI may have repeatedly asked the tech company to put a backdoor in its software to break or circumvent supposedly secure systems. The head of the engineering team working on BitLocker at the time revealed to Mashable the exchanges he had with various government agents.
With 6.8 million followers, Elise Andrew — the founder of the wildly popular "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook page — wields an influence over the science and fans-of-science communities. But Andrew, 24, isn't a scientist; she's kind of a fangirl herself. Her F-word branding is actually kind of perfect for her mostly adult audience.
On the 12th anniversary of Sept. 11, brands tried to stay on-message by posting 9/11-related content to Twitter and Facebook. But it mostly came off as a cheap trick trying to capitalize on a painful memory for the country. So brands, take our etiquette guide as a word to the wise: Sometimes, it's better to just stay quiet.
While the new candy-colored iPhone 5C is hardly as innovative as the iPhone 5, it's the company's first budget smartphone ($99 with a two-year contract) and is "unapologetically plastic," per Jony Ive. Here, we take a deep dive into the phone's nuts and bolts — and what the lower price means for China.
The iPhone 5C wasn't the only star of Apple's show. The new iPhone 5S boasts a slew of (expected) changes, too, including a fingerprint scanner called Touch ID and a camera "burst mode" that snaps 10 still pictures in one second. And we're pretty excited about the two new metallic finishes: "space gray" and champagne gold.
Apple's big day left many feeling unsatisfied — just two products, one of which is a very smart and colorful re-skinning of a previous product? Color us surprised.
Don't have time to read them all now? In our Readlist below, export this week's must reads to your tablet to save for a time you have no distractions. Simply click the "read later" button alongside each story or or click "export" to send the entire list of articles to your preferred device.

Image: Mashable