Music and Mutual Aid in Buffalo (Black Perspectives)
by Tiana U. Wilson
Buffalo’s Black community has a long history of self-determination, rooted in local institutions like the Colored Musicians Club. Chartered in 1935 and still functioning today, the club helped members through the hazards of both segregation and integration.
The Last Smallpox Patient (NPR)
by Alissa Escarce and Dil Afrose Jahan
The eradication of smallpox was a world-historic achievement. In its concluding chapter in 1975, health workers converged on the home of the last person known to have caught the infection naturally, a Bangladeshi toddler named Rahima Banu.
What Should We Do With Legions of Nameless Species? (Wired)
by Matt Reynolds
Scientists today are discovering huge swaths of microbes different from any other known life on Earth. To communicate about their discoveries, they need to give them names. But the official system for naming species makes that very tricky.
The Intellectual Journey of Violent Racists (Slate)
by Alice Marwick
The fuel for white supremacists who become radicalized online isn’t just ignorant rants and memes. Pseudo-scientific racism that twists real facts and employs authoritative-looking charts plays a major role.
Playing with Emotional Trauma (Open Mind)
by Jazmin Murphy
Compared with other forms of art and literature, video games invite us to become someone else much more literally. That can make developers’ choices about the characters very fraught.
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