They Were Promised Broadband And High-Tech Jobs. They’re Still Waiting.
Kentucky’s plan to bring broadband to remote parts of the state has sputtered and its future looks increasingly bleak. State leaders told rural residents it would create better business opportunities. But instead, they keep getting left behind.
How Helsinki And Oslo Cut Pedestrian Deaths To Zero
They cut speed limits, changed street design, removed space for cars and generally made life harder for motorists. Now it appears the work is paying off. Oslo and Helsinki are reaping the rewards of committed action on making their roads safer, reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero last year.
The British Once Built A 1,100-Mile Hedge Through The Middle Of India
There was nothing charming about what the British built. It wasn’t meant to protect anything except imperial revenue. It grew along the Inland Customs Line, a bureaucratic barrier that the British created to impose a high salt tax on the people living on one side of the line—the relatively saltless one.
Beyond The Growth Gospel
The Hotel Belvédère du Rayon Vert symbolizes the very empire these adherents of “degrowth,” as the movement is known, wish to overthrow: consumption, wealth, inequality, travel, and cement, the whole modern industrial condition.
How America’s Biggest Theater Chains Are Exploiting Their Janitors
The major chains — AMC, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark — no longer rely on teenage ushers to keep the floors from getting sticky. Instead, they have turned to a vast immigrant workforce, often hired through layers of subcontractors. That arrangement makes it almost impossible for janitors to make a living wage.
Why You Spend So Much Money At IKEA
IKEA’s “aesthetic per dollar” ratio is very high, says neuromarketer and author of “The Buying Brain” Dr. A. K. Pradeep. Ikea’s affordable style is its “category-busting-metric,” or what makes it stand out from all the other brands in that space, he says.
Cryptoqueen: How This Woman Scammed The World, Then Vanished
Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She told people she had invented a cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, and persuaded them to invest billions. Then, two years ago, she disappeared. Jamie Bartlett spent months investigating how she did it and trying to figure out where she’s hiding.
From 2nd Poorest Country To Fastest Growing Economy in the World
This video takes a look at Sir Seretse Khama, the man that oversaw Botswana’s transformation from to 2nd poorest country in the world to the fastest-growing economy. Botswana today is the world’s largest producer gem diamonds and is one of only a handful of middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Everything Town In The Middle Of Nowhere
On any given day, thousands of packages from Walmarts, Targets, and stores around the country travel north along a two-lane road out of Billings, Montana — past the Tumbleweed Saloon, past cows grazing on empty rangeland, past the Busy Bee Cafe and stands of short pines — to the town of Roundup, where they will be unboxed, re-boxed, and sent off to Amazon.
Cash For Kim: North Korean Forced Laborers In Poland
On its website, the CRIST shipyard advertises that they build ships for various clients throughout Europe. And we know that North Koreans are still working here today. VICE gained exclusive access to documents that reveal the wages of North Korean laborers in Poland before the Kim regime’s deductions.
Undercover Reporter Reveals Life In A Polish Troll Farm
Undercover reporter, Katarzyna Pruszkiewicz, spent six months this year working at Cat@Net, which describes itself as an “ePR agency comprising specialists who build a positive image of companies, private individuals and public institutions – mostly in social media.”.
Raising The Minimum Wage By $1 May Prevent Thousands Of Suicides, Study Shows
Between 1990 and 2015, raising the minimum wage by $1 in each state might have saved more than 27,000 lives, according to a report published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. An increase of $2 in each state’s minimum wage could have prevented more than 57,000 suicides.
How Cities Became Childless
American cities are getting more expensive, and families are being pushed out. Welcome to the future of urban living, where young people have to make a choice: money or babies?
David Altrath Photographs The Spectacular Stockholm Metro
German photographer David Altrath unveils the majestic underground tunnels and their stunning architectural and artistic detail that feature in Stockholm’s underground in his latest series, simply titled Metro.
Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Trump Tower Baku never opened.
Why Green Energy Finally Makes Economic Sense
Renewable energy is now comparable with the cost of building new coal and nuclear capacity. Existing, older power plants already have the capital investment sunk, so they are cheaper — but, in the case of South Africa at least, many of these plants are reaching retirement ages.
Three Years Of Misery Inside Google, The Happiest Company In Tech
In the first days of the Trump era, Google’s leaders were desperate to avoid confrontation with the new regime. The company’s history of close ties to the Obama administration left executives feeling especially vulnerable to the reactionary movement.
The Data That Turned The World Upside Down
How Cambridge Analytica used your Facebook data to help the Donald Trump campaign in the 2016 election. A then little-known British company sent out a press release: “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win.”
Habitat 67 Stacks 354 Prefabs That Get Urban/Suburban Balance
Habitat 67 was a 1960s experiment in dense, downtown housing that tried to combine the best of urban and suburban living. Architect Moshe Safdie wanted to integrate the qualities of a suburban home- the access to nature and views- into a high-rise.
We Are Living In A Failed State
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms.
How Chicken Became The Rich World’s Most Popular Meat
Humans gobble so many chickens that the birds now count for 23bn of the 30bn land animals living on farms. Chicken is cheap and delicious. Fans of cheap chicken have selective breeding to thank. Farmers have also benefited from the healthy reputation of chicken.