Digital labor is valuable even when we do it for free. Should we get paid?
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Work Forced
In a given year, some 3,500 unpaid prisoners make up Florida’s shadow economy. State road crews and “community work squads” incarcerated by the Department of Corrections subsidize local governments from the Panhandle to Miami-Dade: powering waste and public works departments, grooming cemeteries and school grounds, maintaining and constructing buildings, treating sewage and collecting trash.
Posted inArts & Culture, Current Events, Essays & Criticism, Story, Technology
Performance Art: On Sharing Culture
With physical distancing the order of the day as COVID-19 spreads, cultural locales — sites for communal experiences, like museums and theaters — are emptying out. What are we sharing if we’re not sharing these spaces? And were we really sharing them to begin with?
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Prachi Gupta, Tess McClure, Anna Wiener, Ismail Muhammad, and Alex McLevy.
Posted inNonfiction
No Time Like the Present
You don’t know what day it is, do you? Robert Burke Warren digs into ‘the Oddball Effect’ and fascinating brain data that may help explain why.
Posted inCulture, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
Working To Live Often Means Giving Up Your Life
You can’t have work-life balance when work dictates the balance.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
The State of Waiting
Separated by war, boundaries, and immigration policies they cannot control, one young Yemeni couple refuses to give up on love.
Posted inStory
Japan: A Longform Reading List of Longform Writing
Armchair travel is more important than ever, now that pandemic has forced us to stay indoors. Reading can take you across the ocean.
Posted inStory
The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store
American food supplies are increasingly channeled through a handful of big companies: Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect, Blue Apron. What do we lose when local supermarkets go under? A lot — and Kevin Kelley wants to stop that.
Posted inEditor's Pick
In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash
Amid the mansions and new tech money, an entire economy has developed to gather discarded items and resell them for a few hundred dollars a week, if they’re lucky. “It’s a civic service as I see it,” said Nick Marzano, who publishes a magazine about San Francisco trash pickers. “Rather than this stuff going to […]
