In Focus: Protests Spread Across Brazil
Starting late last week, with several small protests denouncing a hike in public transport fares, demonstrations flared up yesterday, encompassing larger public anger at poor public services, police violence and government corruption. More than 200,000 took to the streets of Brazil’s biggest cities yesterday, voicing frustration with the billions of dollars set aside for upcoming sports events like the World Cup and the 2014 Olympics, despite crushing levels of poverty in some places, and underfunded public education, health, security and transportation. Though the majority of the protests were peaceful, a few violent demonstrations were broken up by police in Rio de Janeiro.
See more. [Images: AP, Reuters, Getty]
“Norway’s love affair with slow-moving shows dates back at least to 2009, when an NRK employee suggested putting a camera on top of a train as it made the seven-hour trip from the capital Oslo to the west coast town of Bergen. It was an immediate success.”
— Ellen Emmerentze Jervell, “A Different Take on Reality TV: 18 Hours of Swimming Salmon”
Why am I only just today learning that Hedy Lamarr invented the precursor to wifi?
Was that a thing all of you knew and were hiding from me?
(via yourspiritinblack)
“The prosecution offers solutions. The defense lawyers could, for example, take the pages they need from their spiral notebook and transfer them to a three-ring binder, Marine Major Christopher Ruge tells the judge. The defense lawyers’ notebook, Ruge notes, ‘comes three-hole punched.’ But when pressed on it, the prosecutor is not actually sure that binders are allowed.”
— ProPublica has sent ace reporter Cora Currier to cover proceedings at Guantanamo Bay. This dispatch centers around Abd al Rahim Al Nashiri — accused of involvement in the U.S.S. Cole bombing — who has been in pre-trial hearings for 13 years. Get your Kafkaesque ya-yas out.
I’m takin it
As a newly minted freelancer, I am feeling this GIF.
Hello, this is the next stage of my existence
As some of you know, I’ve spent the better part of the last two years living a double life. In addition to making articles and documentaries and stuff, I’ve been a full-time communications strategist at BSD. Striking the proper balance between those two responsibilities has been a challenge, but it’s also been a thrilling 20-odd months of work in two very different fields.
But hey, one cannot be the servant of two masters forever. A few weeks ago, I made the decision to dedicate all of my time to my non-BSD endeavors. Today is my last day at BSD, and starting tomorrow, I will be a full-time freelance multimedia journalist. (For this post’s image, I tried to find a screencap of someone calling Sydney Bristow “freelancer” during season two of Alias, but I couldn’t endure the weird camera filters and horrible score for more than a few minutes.)
So, much like Luke Cage, I am for hire now! I have a bunch of very exciting projects in the works, about which you’ll hear much more in the coming weeks and months. But in the meantime, pitch me! If you have an idea for a story — be it text, video, or audio — don’t be a stranger. Email me at abraham.riesman@gmail.com.
Hooray!
“The chef’s name, an alias, is Kenji Fujimoto, and for eleven years he was Kim Jong-il’s personal chef, court jester, and sidekick. He had seen the palaces, ridden the white stallions, smoked the Cuban cigars, and watched as, one by one, the people around him disappeared. It was part of Fujimoto’s job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients—to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader’s yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald’s, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go.”
- Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi by The Orphan Master’s Son author Adam Johnson
I finally, finally, finally got around to reading this masterpiece. If you’re like me (meaning The Orphan Master’s Son changed your life irrevocably), this is an absolute must-read.
Minor scoop from me, over at Slate: Freedom House is going to downgrade the US in its online freedom rankings, in light of the NSA revelations.
“He once bought stock in a Chilean salmon-fishing company shortly before a salmon-killing virus hit Chilean waters. His investment in Tanzanian mining also didn’t produce profit, he says. He’s currently concerned about political instability in Mongolia, he adds.”
I made my Wall Street Journal debut today. It’s a feature about everyday Americans who are crazy enough to travel across the globe and make investments in far-flung markets.
Here’s a sidebar on how you, if you’re in for a ride, can do your own adventure capitalism.
