Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
Behind TikTok’s Boom: A Legion of Traumatized, $10-A-Day Content Moderators (Niamh McIntyre, Rosie Bradbury and Billy Perrigo / TIME)
Horrific videos such as these are part and parcel of everyday work for TikTok moderators in Colombia. They told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism about widespread occupational trauma and inadequate psychological support, demanding or impossible performance targets, punitive salary deductions and extensive surveillance. Their attempts to unionize to secure better conditions have been opposed repeatedly.
TikTok’s rapid growth in Latin America—it has an estimated 100 million users in the region—has led to the hiring of hundreds of moderators in Colombia to fight a never-ending battle against disturbing content. They work six days a week on day and night shifts, with some paid as little as 1.2 million pesos ($254) a month, compared to around $2,900 for content moderators based in the U.S.
My Harrowing Journey Through Gay Conversion Therapy in Russia (Vadim Smyslov / GQ)
At his clinic, Goland told me about a patient who, once “cured” of homosexuality, “developed schizophrenia, yet remained heterosexual.” He spoke of an economist and Riga native who “became obsessed with sex with women.” He continued: “In every one of them I was able to build an indifferent, icy attitude toward members of their own sex, and all thanks to autogenic training and hypnosis. By submerging them in these states, I taught them how to crack their minds like a walnut.”
The consultation with Goland cost $300, which my editors paid. But the doctor told me I would need two or three sessions a week at the same rate—fees the website could not cover. I wasn’t sure how I’d pay for the sessions, but for a start, I planned to sell my laptop and cell phone. I’d have to make other concessions too: Goland said I would need to relocate from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod for at least a year. He advised me to find the book A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality and read it through carefully. And he admonished me that the treatment required a wholesale detachment from potentially sexual situations with men: no more gyms or banyas. In order to exert total control, he even had one of his patients living in the clinic itself, working as a security guard.
Farmers in Thailand use ducks to remove pests from rice paddies (Fascinating)
https://twitter.com/fasc1nate/status/1587969420315369472
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Image: Joe Yates