2018: Random Play Top 40

from Popula, est. June 1, 2018

Dec 23, 2018 11:00AM EST

The Editors @popula

Here we present some favorites from our first six months of publishing.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
A House for Mr. Soyinka
A visit to the author’s house with photos wow

Brian Hioe
Technoleviathan
On the difference between Silicon Valley technosurveillance and the Chinese kind

Keguro Macharia
Loving Moi
Friendly milk supplied by a dictator

Ashley Feinberg
The National Enquirer Used to Be Fun and Good
Then not so much.

Gabrielle Gamboa
For My Father
A father and a daughter.

Sarah Miller
Bob and the Mystery of the White Stones.
Is the mystery solved? kind of

Lorenzo Andolfatto
Certain resemblances between Ba Jin’s ‘Jia’ and ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’
Watching the soaps in Italy after school, vs. translating a fruity Chinese novel

Agri Ismaïl
Red Cards
Football is for people who can accept a loss.

Kaila Philo
A Black Voice in the Echo Chamber
On black “conservatives”

Joeva Rock
Abject Lessons
Twisted textbooks in Africa.

Ezra C. Daniels
Are You At Risk for Empathy Myopia?
Spoiler: yes

Mimi Pond
Blind Dates of the Near Future
Not gonna get any easier

Glenn H. Shepard, Jr.
Coxinhas and Petralhas
Brazilian slang before the election

Sophie Haigney
Down with the daily crime story
The cops shouldn’t be telling the story.

Maria Bustillos
I Love Desi
Early complications of identity politics

Trevor Alixopulos
I Make You a Cocktail: Luna Negra
A story, a recipe, a song, a drawing

Magunga Williams
I really do not give a shit so long as the person makes a purchase
Pretty much what it says

Sasha Frere-Jones
I Thought I Was Taking Medicine
Ten years on benzodiazepines

Oliver Corlett
In a Pig’s Eye
Wot’s a gammon, then

Yemisi Aribisala
Konkoksie
The taste of a skin color.

Sarah Miller
Moviegoing in the Age of Anxiety
Don’t be late!

Rose Fiala
Sailor Moon Made a Woman Out of You
What you wanted, and what you got.

Henry Giardina
George
Just read this please.

Grigor Atanesian
Siloviki
The Apparatus that Dares Speak its Name

Vanessa Davis
Dog Neighbor
Cave canem

Shuja Haider
The Ambien Diaries
SWIM has done it all.

Safia Aidid
The Cafe Talkers of Somalia
Fighting while seated.

Scott Korb
The Extravagant Inversion of Values
When you miss God

Rachell Sumpter
One-Piece Bathing Suit
Deep dive

Lucas Iberico Lozada
Bad Paperwork
Immigration disaster is happening to all of us

Ingrid Burrington
Neodymium
Magnets: how do they work?

Haider, Miller, Alixopulos
What Richard Dawkins Doesn’t Want You to Know About Islam
Everything! Just like him

Maria Bustillos
The Center Held Just Fine
Sorry, Joan Didion is the worst

George Jelinek
Why I hate hospitals
An Australian emergency medicine expert, on just a human level

Bryan Washington
One of Y’all Can Write it Down
The job of teaching prisoners isn’t romantic or literary; it’s something else altogether

D. Estevam
Eu acordei com medo
Just before the election, a carioca faces the frightening reality of Brazilian politics

Ron Regé, Jr.
If Everything is Free
Things would be so different

Meher Ahmad
Jennalee
What if you were just a performer in the circus of your own marginalization.

Aaron Bady
Country Roads
John Denver’s glib appropriation of West Virginia, mountain mama.

R.E. Hartanto
The King and His Beloved Dog
A beautiful but not a heartwarming fable.

Lily Lynch
“We’ve been psyop-ed with a rusty knife.”
Disinformation practiced at a high level of complexity in Belgrade.

Comments on 2018: Random Play Top 40

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Have You Ever Had a Crush???!?!

Maria Bustillos

a call for submissions from our friends at the new CAPE MAG

Jul 29, 2021 11:49PM EDT

Between Infodemic and Pandemic: The Paranoid Style in Taiwanese Politics

Brian Hioe

Conspiracy theories are apparently a side effect of the Delta variant in Taiwan

Jul 22, 2021 7:00AM EDT

Loss For Words: A Meditation on the Ubiquity of Bizarre Corporate Language

Lucy Schiller

"Sometimes a CEO would come in and pace. He needed to “think out loud.” We’d have pastries, coffee; I remember feeling at a loss: how do I behave in front of this client when I have truly no idea what I’m supposed to do or be?"

Jul 20, 2021 1:17PM EDT

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