Abdul Sharifu Was Buying Milk For A Neighbor’s Baby. A Snowstorm Killed Him.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Abdul Sharifu was one of tens of thousands of immigrants who have settled in Buffalo, New York, in the last two decades. Sharifu was a one-man mutual-aid operation — he had access to his cousin’s leased car, which meant he could run errands and give rides to those in need. But the very systemic failures Sharifu was working to patch over claimed him this winter. As journalist Albert Samaha conveys, Sharifu’s story is a window into one of America’s most diverse and unequal cities:

The tragedy underscored inequities that continue to grip the city. Rita Jones, who grew up on Buffalo’s East Side and manages Caudle’s flea market, said the area’s residents have complained for years that the city often neglects to pour snow-melting salt on most of the roads in their neighborhoods, as it does in more affluent and commercial districts. City officials issue blizzard warnings but otherwise leave residents to fend for themselves. Those without fully stocked pantries are more likely to brave the conditions to obtain supplies. Those unable to take time off work have less time to prepare before a storm hits. 

Because of the city’s reputation for harsh winters and its lore of producing hard-scrabble steelworkers toughened by mills that filled their lungs with asbestos and carcinogenic fumes, outsiders’ perception of Buffalo is usually framed by an admiration for its peoples’ resilience. But resilience is exhausting when repeatedly called upon — a trait honed out of necessity, foisted upon those with no choice but to navigate scarcity.  

People turned to Abdul Sharifu because they had nobody else to turn to, and he provided services that nobody else would provide. His death brought pain to those who loved him, but also left a vacuum for those who needed him. 

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“Blurred Lines,” Harbinger of Doom

Yes, it has one of the best hed/dek combos I’ve seen this year, but Jayson Greene’s look back at the spuming cultural wave known as the pop-R&B gigahit “Blurred Lines” doesn’t stop there. It aims primarily at Robin Thicke, though Greene’s got heat for everyone from Thicke collaborators Pharrell Williams and T.I. to Miley Cyrus. Sometimes the best culture-crit is steeped in a vat of acid. (That said, I regret to inform you that “Shooter” still goes superduperhard.)

Now, 10 years since its March 2013 release, “Blurred Lines” is a poisonous time capsule. In many ways, all of them unfortunate, it could be considered the song of the 2010s. Pick any disheartening pop-cultural trend of the past decade and chances are it applies to “Blurred Lines”: The hollow outrage cycle in news, increasingly reliant on hot takes tossed out with superhuman speed, often without a speck of human logic? The predatory power dynamics of the entertainment industry, and American society’s ongoing dismissal of consent? The increasingly litigious pop landscape, in which lawyers and music publishers fight for scraps, and every pop song feels safely Xeroxed from the last one? Every decade gets the songs it needs and the songs it deserves. 

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The Dystopian Underworld of South Africa’s Illegal Gold Mines

In South Africa, there are men who have lived underground for months or years at a time. They’ve suffered from malnourishment and tuberculosis. They’ve watched friends die in falls and sudden explosions. They’ve been subject to the whims of criminal syndicates and violence of security forces. These men, known as zama-zamas, are illegal miners, seeking flakes of gold in the carcass of tunnels and shafts left behind when the legal — but still-odious — mining industry collapsed:

The crash came in 1989. The price of gold had fallen by nearly two-thirds from its peak, inflation was rising, and investors were wary of instability during South Africa’s transition to democracy. (Nelson Mandela was freed the following year.) The rise of powerful unions, in the final years of apartheid, meant that it was no longer possible for the industry to pay Black workers “slave wages,” as the former chairman of one large mining company told me. The Free State goldfields eventually laid off more than a hundred and fifty thousand mine workers, or eighty per cent of the workforce. The region was almost wholly reliant on mining, and Welkom’s economy was especially undiversified. The town’s sprawling urban design was also expensive to maintain, leading to a “death spiral,” Lochner Marais, a professor of developmental studies at the University of the Free State, told me.

I first visited Welkom in late 2021. As I drove into the city, Google Maps announced that I had arrived, but around me it was dark. Then my headlights picked out a suburban home, followed by another. The entire neighborhood was without electricity. South Africa is in the midst of an energy crisis and experiences frequent scheduled power outages, but that was not the cause of this blackout. Rather, it was symptomatic of chronic local dysfunction, in a municipality ranked South Africa’s second worst in a 2021 report on financial sustainability.

Welkom is surrounded by enormous flat-topped mine dumps that rise from the plains like mesas. The roads have been devoured by potholes. Several years ago, zama-zamas began breaking open wastewater pipes to process gold ore, which requires large volumes of water. They also attacked sewage plants, extracting gold from the sludge itself. Now untreated sewage flows in the streets. In addition, zama-zamas stripped copper cables from around town and within the mines. Cable theft became so rampant that Welkom experienced power failures several times per week.

As the gold-mining companies scaled back in South Africa, they left behind wasted landscapes and extensive subterranean workings, including railway lines and locomotives, intact winders and cages, and thousands of miles of copper cable. Many companies had devised protocols for withdrawing from depleted mines, but these were seldom followed; likewise, government regulations around mine closures were weakly enforced. “It’s as if they just locked the door — ‘Now we’re done,’ ” a mine security officer said of the companies. Shafts were often sold many times over, the constant changing of hands allowing companies to evade responsibility for rehabilitation. By the early two-thousands, according to authorities, South Africa had a large number of “derelict and ownerless” gold mines across the country, creating opportunities for illegal mining. Mining researchers in South Africa sometimes joke that the story of gold mining runs from AA to ZZ — from multinationals like Anglo American to zama-zamas.

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Ed Sheeran Confesses: Tears, Trauma, and Those Bad Habits

Despite hearing “Bad Habits” on the radio at least twice a day, I know very little about Ed Sheeran, but I found myself unexpectedly charmed by Brian Hiatt’s interview with him for Rolling Stone. Sheeran comes across as a genuinely nice guy — and one who has had to deal with a tremendous amount of loss.

Sheeran isn’t afraid to say what he means in his songs, at nearly all times. If he’s grown up and is a father now, he sings, “I have grown up/I am a father now” — the opening line of 2021’s =. His use of metaphor is sparing. He loves Van Morrison, but if Sheeran wrote a song called “Listen to the Lion,” it would probably be about a trip to the zoo, and a Top Five worldwide hit to boot.

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America Doesn’t Know Tofu

This essay does not deviate from its one topic: tofu. And I loved it for that. It is a pure homage to soybean curds — cooked the right way. With a smattering of history and copious mouthwatering descriptions, I came away with a real tofu craving.

Five months after my first taste of melting tofu, summer break arrived, and I was back in Guiyang. It took two weeks of meandering produce markets, buying and tasting different tofus, asking shop owner after shop owner, to find a teacher. Finally, one agreed. The next day, I woke in the dead of night, crawled out of bed, and wandered over. I had apparently undershot my wake-up call. At 4 a.m., the only thing for sale was sex, and my teacher was nowhere to be seen. I sat down on the curb outside his boarded-up shop, across from three women huddling in the shadows. I had nothing to do, so I pulled out my journal and began jotting down tofu goals. Learn best practices for coagulating soy milk. Measure their water’s mineral content. Figure out the specific roles of acid and alkaline…

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My Decade of Temporary Homes

“My father was a charming man. Large of belly and thick of neck, with an appetite for lard-heavy meepok, fried Spam, and braised pork belly. He could and did talk to absolutely anyone. He was my cousins’ favorite uncle and my classmates’ favorite Dad,” Rachel Heng says of her father, a lawyer with a gambling problem so severe, he lost millions. Heng writes beautifully about family bonds and what home means as she reflects on what she, her mother, and her brother faced attempting to find a stable housing situation in the years after her father abandoned them.

Our second home, if you could call it that, was the living room in the small flat of an aunt. Thus began my years of sleeping on the floor. I did not feel it as a hardship. At nine, sleeping on the floor seemed fun, like camping, though I had never been camping.

I remember little about my aunt’s flat. When I think back on this time, I think of the slice of apple my mother had told me to eat that I secretly threw out the window. The next day, my aunt found it in the common corridor outside the front door, shriveled and brown, beset by ants. I remember the hot slick of shame as I lied that I had no idea how it got there. I was punished nonetheless, made to stand in a corner in this unfamiliar place, reflecting on my crime.

My grandmother spoke Hokkien, no English, and little Mandarin. I did not speak Hokkien and my Mandarin was poor, so we spoke little. I was scolded by her often. Though I remember little of the substance of her scoldings, I remember their tone well: aggrieved and indignant, which at the time I took for dislike, but now I understand to be love.

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A Scammer Who Tricks Instagram Into Banning Influencers Has Never Been Identified. We May Have Found Him.

He hijacked the accounts of Instagrammers who earned a living straddling the gray area of what Meta considers acceptable content and made them pay to get their accounts back. Pro Publica took up the case, tracking down a scammer that has exploited Meta’s security loopholes and ambivalent customer support.

OBN exploits weaknesses in Meta’s customer service. By allowing anyone to report an account for violating the company’s standards, Meta gives enormous leverage to people who are able to trick it into banning someone who relies on Instagram for income. Meta uses a mix of automated systems and human review to evaluate reports. Banners like OBN test and trade tips on how to trigger the system to falsely suspend accounts. In some cases OBN hacks into accounts to post offensive content. In others, he creates duplicate accounts in his targets’ names, then reports the original accounts as imposters so they’ll be barred for violating Meta’s ban on account impersonation. In addition, OBN has posed as a Meta employee to persuade at least one target to pay him to restore her account.

“Once you’re put on Brandon’s radar, whether someone’s paying him or not, he has this personal investment in making sure that your life is miserable and that he’ll try and get as much money out of you as he possibly can,” said Kay Jenkins, a Miami real estate agent and model. Her main Instagram account with roughly 100,000 followers has been repeatedly deactivated since 2021.

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