An Age of Hyperabundance

Laura Preston didn’t really believe in the promise of artificial intelligence—which is exactly why Project Voice, a conference about conversational AI, invited her to come speak at the event. She would be their “honorary contrarian speaker.” So she did. But more importantly, she spoke to the people who are trying to get a cut of the AI-dominated future. The result is immersively reported and somehow as entertaining as it is terrifying. (Well, almost.)

Everyone at this conference kept invoking loneliness and claiming the antidote was conversation. That didn’t track with my own experience. My most desperate moments of loneliness have been in conversation: on a Hinge date, doomed but persisting as a form of protocol. At a publishing party, surrounded by people who look and talk like me, all of us a little drunk but maintaining our nervous, manic professionalism. My moments of connection, by contrast, have been beyond language. Biking along the east edge of Prospect Park on an August night, hearing cicadas chant their reedy iambs, as loud on that stretch of Flatbush as they would be in the countryside, remembering summers of childhood, a house that’s gone, and my grandmother’s two-handed wave from the threshold.

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What Did the Vikings Eat?

Daniel Serrahas has been studying the food habits of the Vikings for over 20 years—and demonstrates them to be farmers, rather than “gnawing off the meat of the bones of wild animals.” Maddy Savage and Benoît Derrier give a respectful report of Serrahas’ work and provide his recipe for Viking fish porridge for good measure!

Viking imagery often focuses on seasonal banquets of roasted lamb accompanied by mead. While the elite did enjoy this kind of food (and used it as a way of expressing their wealth), Serra’s research suggests that everyday cooking was quite different.

He said most people focussed on developing simple, “tasty”, “feel-good” dishes that could be easily shared and helped keep them warm in Scandinavia’s harsh climate. “The winter would have been cold. So, yes, people working in those conditions would probably need a hot meal. A hot, comforting meal – filling.”

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Bats of the Midnight Sun

For Hakai Magazine, Trina Moyles introduces us to Jesika Reimer, a chiropterologist who is leading the world’s first gene-flow study to better understand the hibernation patterns of bat colonies in Alaska. Bats, who have a bad rap as vectors for rabies, are little understood for the critical and varying roles they play in the environment.

Bats are incredibly diverse in their adaptations. They’re the only mammal capable of true flight, living on every continent except Antarctica. Next to rodents, bats are the second-largest mammal group in the world, with over 1,400 documented species and counting. These range from massive fruits bats—the size of a small human child—to the tiny bumblebee bat, which weighs in at just two grams. The fish-eating bat, meanwhile, has elongated feet for raking the surface of the water to catch fish and crustaceans. And the Mexican long-tongued bat uses its long, tubular tongue—nearly half the length of its body—to feed on nectar. Bats are the major pollinators of over 500 different plant species, boosting both natural habitats and human agriculture.

Despite these wonders, the bat has an unfair reputation as a “bloodthirsty, rabies-carrying rodent,” Reimer says. “In North America, less than two percent of wild bats test positive for rabies, a number significantly lower than, say, foxes,” she points out. In 2021, only three people in the United States died from rabies contracted from bats.

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One Man’s Quest to Transform the West Texas Desert

Shaun Overton, a former programmer from Fort Worth, Texas, has a vision: to turn his 320 acres in far West Texas into a desert forest. Overton, having no formal experience in ecology, hydrology, or agriculture, has grown an audience by sharing videos on TikTok and YouTube from his property, Dustups Ranch, about his efforts to change the landscape into one of abundance. His work has caught the attention of conservationists as well as volunteers who want to help; critics, however, are skeptical, saying he should instead focus on restoring the natural habitat rather than try to grow a forest in a harsh environment and climate. Ultimately, it’s an inspiring journey, and Wes Ferguson captures it nicely.

Overton recently began using the bulldozer he purchased to put in a dam for a pond—again, learning as he goes. He’s also using it to build terraces along a hillside where he hopes to soon plant fast-growing “pioneer” trees that can withstand the harsh conditions of the desert. Once those trees are established, he wants to add fruit and nut trees.

Addington says he is reserving judgment until he’s had a chance to visit Overton’s property. “Shaun is conservation-minded. He really is. He cares about the land, and he wants to improve it,” says Addington, 67, a longtime environmental activist who has made headlines over the years for, among other things, defeating a proposed nuclear waste site near Sierra Blanca. When asked if Addington thinks a desert forest is possible, he pauses. “Not a forest, no,” he says. “You can catch water and grow things. Ranchers have done that out here before. It’s not exactly new, to be honest.”

But Addington has noticed the attention Dustups is bringing to Hudspeth County, both in the form of online views and the volunteers who flock from around the state to work on the property. “I’m interested in what Shaun’s doing to get more people out here, so they’ll actually appreciate the land. You only protect what you love, right?” he says. “Most people drive through here at 80 miles per hour. They don’t realize what’s out here.”

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Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost Break Down the Making of Shaun of the Dead, 20 Years Later

Shaun of the Dead was a British movie that launched a new genre: zombie romantic comedy. It also launched the Hollywood careers of director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In this endearing interview, the three look back on the film fondly.

Nick Frost: I saw a picture of us at the [Shaun of the Dead] premiere the other day, and it struck me that I’m now the age Bill Nighy was at the premiere.

Edgar Wright: No way.

Frost: Yeah, really. What was Bill? 50-odd? 54, 52? We’re in that ballpark now. And it’s funny, I’m doing a job with kids who’re in their 20s, and it’s like, I am their— I’m not Bill Nighy at all, but age-wise, I’m their Bill Nighy.

Simon Pegg: We used to sit around in Bill’s trailer, just listening to him tell us stories about his wilder days. He was just like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the shoot. It’s crazy to think that we’re that age now.

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The Toxic Culture at Tesla

Colleagues using the N-word frequently and openly. Spray-painted swastikas in the parking lot. White-power graffiti in the bathroom. Inappropriate touching and catcalling. On-the-job injuries. A lack of training. The list goes on. Bryce Covert’s cover story for The Nation is a deep dive into the rampant and blatant racism, sexual harassment, and discrimination that Black and female employees face at Tesla, and its factory in Fremont, California, in particular.

After Jermaine Keys’s twins were born, he needed more than the $15 an hour he was earning at a construction company. So in September 2019, Keys got a job at Tesla’s Fremont factory, which paid about $23 an hour. “It was a big difference,” he told me. At first, Keys enjoyed the job. But a few months in, his supervisor started calling him “boy.” Keys heard white coworkers use the N-word and call people “monkey.” There was a swastika drawn with a black marker near where he clocked in to work every day. Black workers, he said, were made to do things like clean up the work area when the assembly line was slow; white ones weren’t. “It was just hurtful,” Keys said. When he said something to a supervisor, he was told to put his head down so he wouldn’t get fired.

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Silicon Savanna: The Workers Taking on Africa’s Digital Sweatshops

You may have read about the trauma afflicting American workers who do content moderation for tech companies. But these days, moderation work—and, thus, the aforementioned trauma—is increasingly being outsourced. In fact, it’s being sold as a way to help people climb out of poverty:

For companies like Sama, the conditions here were ripe for investment by 2015, when the firm established a business presence in Nairobi. Headquartered in San Francisco, the self-described “ethical AI” company aims to “provide individuals from marginalized communities with training and connections to dignified digital work.” In Nairobi, it has drawn its labor from residents of the city’s informal settlements, including 500 workers from Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa. In an email, a Sama spokesperson confirmed moderators in Kenya made between $1.46 and $3.74 per hour after taxes.

Grace Mutung’u, a Nairobi-based digital rights researcher at Open Society Foundations, put this into local context for me. On the surface, working for a place like Sama seemed like a huge step up for young people from the slums, many of whom had family roots in factory work. It was less physically demanding and more lucrative. Compared to manual labor, content moderation “looked very dignified,” Mutung’u said. She recalled speaking with newly hired moderators at an informal settlement near the company’s headquarters. Unlike their parents, many of them were high school graduates, thanks to a government initiative in the mid-2000s to get more kids in school.

“These kids were just telling me how being hired by Sama was the dream come true,” Mutung’u told me. “We are getting proper jobs, our education matters.” These younger workers, Mutung’u continued, “thought: ‘We made it in life.’” They thought they had left behind the poverty and grinding jobs that wore down their parents’ bodies. Until, she added, “the mental health issues started eating them up.” 

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