Beyond the Pain Matrix

“The DayLife Army always seemed like a troll. Then it became a nightmare. Inside the social media cult that convinces young people to give up everything.”

Source: OneZero
Published: Jun 24, 2020
Length: 41 minutes (10,419 words)

Black and Brown Tech Workers Share Their Experiences of Racism on the Job

Former employees of Pinterest, Google, Snap, and other companies share their stories of discrimination.

Published: Jun 24, 2020
Length: 14 minutes (3,558 words)

Eyes in the Sky

The annual Magh Mela pilgrimage and festival draws 250 million Hindu pilgrims to the spot in northern India where the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati Rivers meet. How do you keep a crowd that big safe? Logistics, AI, and lots and lots of cameras. How do you balance safety, surveillance, and privacy? That’s less clear.

Author: Monica Jha
Source: Rest of World
Published: Jun 23, 2020
Length: 14 minutes (3,680 words)

Trying to Parent My Black Teenagers Through Protest and Pandemic

“This is the world I let be created. They know this. They blame me for it. They are right. Also, would you like dinner? What movie should we watch?”

Published: Jun 15, 2020
Length: 18 minutes (4,520 words)

‘A Chain of Stupidity’: the Skripal Case and the Decline of Russia’s Spy Agencies

“The new hero of journalism was no longer a grizzled investigator burning shoe leather, à la All the President’s Men, but a pasty-looking kid in front of a MacBook Air.”

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jun 23, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,864 words)

What Does It Take to Become a Wine Superpower?

Canada is a leading exporter of maple syrup, oil, and bacon. Wine? Not so much. A French transplant in British Columbia is trying to change that.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Jun 16, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,122 words)

Someone is Wrong on the Internet: A Study in Pandemic Distraction

What do you do when all productivity hacks, parenting tips, and writing tricks lead to the same outcome — a total, pandemic-induced inability to focus?

Source: LitHub
Published: Jun 19, 2020
Length: 10 minutes (2,719 words)

The Cave Kingpin Buying Up America’s Underground

“John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.”

Source: Outside
Published: Jun 17, 2020
Length: 20 minutes (5,175 words)

A Pretty Penny

A review of two novels set in contemporary East Asia, If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha and Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. Both critique wealth, beauty, and power through the lens of various young women.

Source: The Baffler
Published: May 13, 2020
Length: 12 minutes (3,212 words)

Twelve Minutes and a Life

White people are allowed to go jogging. When Ahmaud Marquez Arbery did, he got lynched. “That Maud’s jogging made him the target of hegemonic white forces is a certain failure of America. Check the books—slave passes, vagrancy laws, Harvard’s Skip Gates arrested outside his own crib—Blacks ain’t never owned the same freedom of movement as whites.”

Published: Jun 18, 2020
Length: 24 minutes (6,150 words)