My father worked for twenty-eight years in the Hoover washing machine factory in Merthyr Tydfil. In South Wales at that time, when most labour was hard, physical, badly paid and often dangerous, people said it was a good job.
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‘The atmosphere in the house was thick with my father's depression.’
My father worked for twenty-eight years in the Hoover washing machine factory in Merthyr Tydfil. In South Wales at that time, when most labour was hard, physical, badly paid and often dangerous, people said it was a good job.
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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.
Desmond Barry is the author of three novels: The Chivalry of Crime (2001), A Bloody Good Friday (2002) and Cressida’s Bed (2004). His work has also appeared in the New Yorker.
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‘Question: ‘What do a Trabant and a condom have in common?’ Answer: ‘Both decrease the pleasure of the ride.’’
Durs Grünbein introduces photography by Martin Roemers.
A short story by Jianan Qian on stray dogs, desperation and re-education in rural China during the Cultural Revolution.
‘She’s a good-for-nothing chummer. If she survives a week on the slime line without cutting off her thumb or slicing her wrist, she’s hired.’
‘Where wealth and technology go, culture quickly follows, and soon it became acceptable, even desirable, to express an interest in Japan beyond the mere practicality offered by its products.’
‘What I’d noticed, actually, was that none of the men on the island were missing fingers.’
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