“Killed for their bones,” Al Jazeera
There is no shortage of horrifying stories about people taking innocent lives, but rarely do we see anything like what’s recounted in this Al Jazeera piece, which takes a deep look at one East-African country, where people with albinism are hunted, decapitated and sold to witchdoctors, who then use their skin, hair and bones “to cure everything from disease to bad luck.” —Ibrahim Hirsi, workforce and immigration reporter.
“Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank. Here’s why,” the Los Angeles Times
In light of all the rhetoric surrounding immigration these days, here’s an interesting data-driven look at jobs in Los Angeles’ construction industry in the last several decades by the Los Angeles Times. As the industry’s labor force has become more heavily Latino and less unionized, wages have gone down. But are immigrants the cause or the effect of that development? —Greta Kaul, data reporter
“The Retail Apocalypse is Suburban,” Slate
In this piece for Slate, Henry Grabar explains how the decline in bricks and mortar retail will hit suburbs worse than cities. Not because it won’t hit both (it will), but because cities went through their own retail Armageddon once already — five decades ago. —Peter Callaghan, local government reporter
“Icelandic language at risk; robots, computers can’t grasp it,” Associated Press
Your iPhone is killing the Icelandic language. No, really, reports the AP’s Egill Bjarnason: Your smartphone might be smart, but it doesn’t have the capacity to work in the Norse dialect spoken by about 400,000 people. Icelanders, owing to their tourism and finance industries, speak pretty good English. Tech companies typically haven’t supported the Icelandic language for their products, so the residents of the island roll with English on their electronic devices. It’s an approach that’s worked for them fine, but it’s had the side effect of gradually eroding use of the native tongue. Could Icelandic go the way of Latin? Personally, I hope not, given that Icelanders have a word, solarfri, that we should all adopt: “when staff get an unexpected afternoon off to enjoy good weather.” —Sam Brodey, Washington correspondent
“This lawsuit goes to 11,” Bloomberg Businessweek
Like most things attached to “This is Spinal Tap,” this piece by Businessweek’s Robert Kolker — about a lawsuit over money potentially owed to the movie’s creators — is weird, wildly entertaining and a little depressing. It’s also a revealing look at how far companies who control revenue attached to films will go to hide the money. As Kolker writes of Harry Shearer, one of Spinal Tap’s stars and co-writers: “In 2013, Harcourt advised Shearer to ask Vivendi for a complete statement of his interests in This Is Spinal Tap. … According to Vivendi, Shearer and his three creative partners’ share of total worldwide merchandising income from 1984 to 2006 was $81, and the total income from soundtrack sales from 1989 to 2006 was $98. That’s just dollars, with no zeros at the end.” —Andy Putz, editor
