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Now, the links you’re here for:
‘I Can Hear the Suffering’: Rev Exposes Freelance Transcribers to Violent, Disturbing Content (Sarah Emerson, OneZero)
“Freelancers say that because criminal investigators and legal professionals use Rev, it’s not unusual for transcribers to hear brutal, unedited testimonies. Because medical professionals are also Rev clients, they say things like bloody surgical procedures have made it onto the platform. None of the files are uploaded with warning labels, meaning Revvers who do not wish to hear or see this material cannot easily vet jobs before opening the files.
““I’ve come across files that I thought were typical enough, and 20 minutes into the hour, it gets into the details of somebody’s sexual assault,” another Revver said. “One where somebody recorded an argument they were having with someone as it escalated. A labor dispute where it seemed like the audio was secretly recorded by the client and then uploaded by lawyers.””
Our son’s final days (Sophie Hutchinson, BBC)
“Mark had always been with them. Because of his autism, he had relied heavily on his parents as his link to the outside world. His mother had become his voice. He would tell her what he wanted to say so that she could repeat it for him. That was why they had ensured he was never left alone at the hospital.
“They have since been described as his own personal CCTV, because they witnessed Mark’s ordeal minute by minute. In the weeks following his death, they increasingly questioned what they had seen.”
Coming out of the shadows: what it means to be French and Chinese (Tash Aw, The Guardian)
“But there was also something totally foreign to me about these protests: the open dissent. Pushing back against hierarchy and authority. The protesters were overwhelmingly young, incredibly vocal and, in some instances, willing to resort to violent action – the very opposite of how overseas Chinese communities, the centuries-old immigrants known as huaqiao – have traditionally behaved. In short, the demonstrations seemed to be distinctly French.
“I had been as surprised as most people to learn that France has the largest ethnic-Chinese population in Europe. In a country where race-based statistics sit uneasily with the notion of égalité and French citizenship, it is often difficult to find accurate figures, although most estimates suggest a population of at least 600,000–700,000, more than double that in the UK.”
A Brief History of the Crock Pot (Michelle Delgado, The Smithsonian)
“Those meals—home cooked, comforting and nutritious—form the basis for the Crock Pot’s place in American food culture, Johnson says. The Crock Pot arrived at a poignant moment in America’s evolving relationship to food, as companies pumped time-saving technologies into the market at a rapid clip. The Crock Pot arrived alongside Tupperware, microwaves and frozen dinners, all promising greater convenience for working women and their families. In fact, a 1975 advertisement that ran in the Washington Post explicitly branded the Crock Pot as “perfect for working women.””
Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class (Maya Kosoff, Gen)
“I remember feeling a pang of guilt watching my working-class single mom hand over her debit card to the cashier. On the short drive home, I held the calculator in my lap, still in its blister pack. I was 14 years old, and this was the most valuable electronic device I ever owned. I was taking Algebra 2 that year — the advanced class for freshmen at my public high school — and purchasing a graphing calculator felt like an academic rite of passage. I wasn’t a math person, just a good student who’d eventually slog through Advanced Placement calculus and statistics in pursuit of some college credits.”
Image credit: NH53