“3Three months inside China’s iPhone city.”
labor
Posted inEditor's Pick
Departures
“Tang tells the heartbreaking story of one woman, Daisy, who’s given up so much. Sadly, it’s the story for so many.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Marvel Has a VFX Problem
If you’ve seen any of the recent movies coming out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you might have noticed something’s up — or, rather, down. That something is the quality of the visual effects: sometimes overdone, other times bordering on amateur. Don’t blame the artists, though; as Daniel Chin points out in this Ringer piece, Marvel […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Toxic Tiles
House renovations surged during the pandemic, when work-from-home policies took effect and people were looking for easy, inexpensive ways to upgrade their homes. Enter “luxury vinyl tile,” of which big-box stores like Home Depot sell massive quantities. But, as reported in The Intercept, this in-demand vinyl flooring is created from plastic made by Uyghur workers […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
How the AI Industry Profits from Catastrophe
The demand for data labeling in the artificial intelligence industry — tagging videos, sorting photos, and transcribing audio in order to train AI — has created a massive need for cheap labor, leading data-labeling platforms such as Appen to hire low-pay workers in countries like Venezuela, the Philippines, and Kenya to do these tasks. In […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise
Online fast-fashion giant Shein has grown dramatically and sells a massive volume of super-cheap, disposable clothing for budget-conscious teenagers. But the Chinese company has disclosed very little about its production, reports Vauhini Vara, that it’s hard to measure its environmental footprint. Lu, the University of Delaware professor, found that in a recent 12-month period, the […]
Posted inCulture, Nonfiction, Reading List, Story
What We Wear: A Reading List on Fashion and Our Complex Relationship to Clothes
Getting dressed isn’t a low-stakes activity.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Incalculable Cost of Cheap Chicken—and the Hidden Industry That Shoulders It
“The exact number of COVID-19 deaths connected to poultry plants may never be known, but one thing is clear: the Latinx population in North Carolina has been hit hard by the pandemic.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made with Prison Labor
“The notion of work as punishment has enabled prison administrators to compel incarcerated people to work on farms and in dairies for low or no pay and without basic labor protections, sometimes in service of secretive billionaires they’ll never meet.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Highlight, Quote Posts, Quotes
Why Mother Maybelle Carter’s Work Was Never Done
“In a few years’ time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.”