Wherever there is political and economic uncertainty, it’s a fair bet that there are people somewhere trying to make money from it. This story looks into the companies in the market for goverment contracts to supply protective equipment, including VPL Medical LLC, a company that was awarded a $6.4m contract from the Department of Veterans Affairs four days after it was incorporated.
Reni Eddo-Lodge writes in this piece on race and prejudice: “Not seeing race does little to dismantle racist structures or improve the lives of people of colour. In order to do so, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is affected by negative stereotyping of theirs, and on whom power and privilege is bestowed – not just because of their race, but also their class and gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.”
In Letter to my Son, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes of acts of violence against black people: “The destroyers will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions. There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy. This legacy aspires to the shackling of black bodies.”
A journalist writes about the alarming degree of surveillance and suspected hacking he was subject to after working with Edward Snowden on a major story, and the paranoia it engendered.
The author of this piece looking to help readers finding the pandemic hard to comprehend outlined its scope as “everything from the virus itself to the symptoms it causes, from deceptive numbers to swirling misinformation, from our desire for simple narratives to the nature of expertise in a crisis too large for any one person to grasp.”
An unusual, powerful, essay about the author’s experience of living with and in the internet, featuring a roster of famous memes and “moments”.
An extraordinary story following a group of Cameroonian and Pakistani migrants heading for the United States on an arduous trek across one of the most dangerous places on earth, the Darien Gap, bordering Colombia and Panama.
The gripping personal story of one Uighur family’s struggles across two generations facing the repressive restrictions in place in the region.