The Price Of Plenty: How Beef Changed America
Exploitation and predatory pricing drove the transformation of the US beef industry – and created the model for modern agribusiness. The industrial slaughterhouse was a triumph of human ingenuity as well as a site of brutal labor exploitation.
A Corridor Runs Through It
Imagine yourself as a modern-day alligator in central Florida, where 12 acres of wild land is sacrificed to development every hour. This is a story about what happens when the South’s creatures no longer have room to move — and about a project aimed at preserving the few corridors that connect what remains of the wild land.
For Cops Who Kill, Special Supreme Court Protection
The U.S. high court’s continual refinement of an obscure legal doctrine has made it harder to hold police accountable when accused of using excessive force. Sick with pneumonia, agitated and confused, Johnny Leija refused to return to his hospital room. Moments later, Leija was dead at age 34.
An Adult’s Guide To Social Skills, For Those Who Were Never Taught
Unlike topics like math or science, social skills are more of a “learn on the job” kind of skill. When you’re a child, you can learn how to manage conflict, make friends and navigate groups by doing it. But not everyone learns the same lessons the same way.
I Stumbled Across A Huge Airbnb Scam That’s Taking Over London
As the short-term rental goldrush gathers pace, Airbnb empires are being rapidly scaled and monetized. This is the curious tale of a man called Christian, the Catholic church, David Schwimmer’s wife, a secret hotel and an Airbnb scam running riot on the streets of London.
The Doomsday Invention: Will Artificial Intelligence Bring Us Utopia Or Destruction?
Philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that true artificial intelligence, if it is realized, might pose a danger that exceeds every previous threat from technology—even nuclear weapons—and that if its development is not managed carefully humanity risks engineering its own extinction.
How To Prepare Your Kids For Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet
Artificial Intelligence will rule the jobs of the future, so learning how to work with it will be key. “There’s three job opportunities coming in the future,” says Avi Goldfarb. He divides them up into people who build AI, people who tell the machines what to do and determine what to do with their output, and, finally, celebrities.
How The Far-Right Helped To Create The Most Powerful Facial Recognition Technology
Clearview is the most powerful form of facial recognition technology ever created, according to the New York Times. With more than 3 billion photos scraped surreptitiously from social media profiles and websites, its image database is almost seven times the size of the FBI’s.
The Food Deserts Of Memphis: Inside America’s Hunger Capital
In the ‘food deserts’ of Memphis, Tennessee, dominated by fast food outlets and convenience stores, locals lack what seems a basic human right in the richer half of the city: a supermarket. With a big gap in life expectancy, are these Americans doomed to die younger than their neighbours – or can they fight for their right to nutrition?
The World’s Oldest Winery in Armenia
The Areni-1 complex, uncovered in 2007, contains a 6,100-year-old winery replete with fermenting vats, a grape press, and subterranean clay storage vessels. Altogether, it’s the best-preserved archeological site in the ongoing search for winemaking’s birthplace.
The Last Days Of John Allen Chau
In the fall of 2018, the 26-year-old American missionary traveled to a remote speck of sand and jungle in the Indian Ocean, attempting to convert one of the planet’s last uncontacted tribes to Christianity. The islanders killed him, and Chau was pilloried around the world as a deluded Christian supremacist who deserved to die.
Parents Shouldn’t Spy On Their Kids
With tracking technologies such as mSpy, Teen Safe, Family Tracker, and others, parents can monitor calls, texts, chats, and social media posts. Apps that make it easy to invade kids’ privacy are a recipe for arrested development.
My Summer Internship At Google Turned Me Off Silicon Valley Forever
Silicon Valley has much to offer the world. Life-altering technological innovations have been emerging from this region for years. But it’s not the place for me, a young queer Black woman who wants to do much more than work on ad software.
Chaos At The Top Of The World
It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet. These are the untold accounts of the people who were there.
The Inevitable Decade Of Marvel
On July 21, 2019, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ became the highest-grossing film ever, on its way to adding nearly $2.8 billion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s $22.5 billion global box office total. The 2010s were defined by this superhero takeover—though the plans for it were laid even before the decade began.
The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generation’s Biggest Art Heist
The skilled climber and thief Vjeran Tomic, whom the French press referred to as Spider-Man, has described robbery as an act of imagination. He was driven partly by aesthetic desire. “Certain paintings can provoke me like an emotional shock,” he said.
Inside Nxivm, The ‘Sex Cult’ That Preached Empowerment
Citing the fact that Keith Raniere had a cast of girlfriends, the media declared that Nxivm was not a self-improvement company at all but rather a “sex-slave cult.” A federal investigation was opened, culminating in Mexican police officers plucking Raniere from a pricey villa.
Meet The Bag Man: 10 Rules For Paying College Football Players
How to buy college football players, in the words of men who deliver the money. These men are fans who believe they’re leveraging football success $500 or $50,000 at a time.
How To Prepare Now For The Complete End Of The World
Some people now are considering what it means to live in a world that could be shut down by a pandemic. But some people are already living like this. Some do it because they just like it. Some do it because they think the end has, in fact, already begun to arrive.
Some people now are considering what it means to live in a world that could be shut down by a pandemic. But some people are already living like this. Some do it because they just like it. Some do it because they think the end has, in fact, already begun to arrive.
The Empty Houses That Foreign Aid Built
After the devastation of the 2004 tsunami, aid agencies promised to rebuild Indonesia “better.” Fifteen years later, their failures are all too obvious. The disaster hit Aceh the hardest. The evacuation buildings are unmistakably the shiniest features of the city’s newly built landscape.
The Productivity Paradox
Higher productivity means the expectation of rising wages and abundant job opportunities. In a time of Facebook, smartphones, self-driving cars, and computers that can beat a person at just about any board game, how can the key economic measure of technological progress be so pathetic?