‘The UN's shiny red and white SUVs were too conspicuous, and the entire Liberian police force had three vehicles’
In Liberia, the Mamba Point Hotel is the place where the Westerners stay. There is a wide, graceful veranda facing the sea and a walled garden hinting at jungle. Just up the road, late in the spring of 2004, a machine-gunner peered out from the sandbagged booth of a United Nations checkpoint. Close …
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
Jack Losh reports from rebel-held Bria in the Central African Republic, where fighting has forced thousands into a displacement camp.
Ben Mauk on the West’s longstanding love of missiles, drones, bombs and nukes.
‘The morning Helin walked out to die, she dressed carelessly in a loose T-shirt and jeans.’
‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’
‘In terms of aspiration, leaving London was the new moving to London. You slogged it out, made a name for yourself, then decamped to the sticks and devoted yourself to trashing city life on Twitter while roaming the fields in pursuit of your tweedy ideals.’
