Finally, big congratulations to all this week’s Pulitzer Prize winners. Here’s a Flipboard Storyboard featuring some of their award-winning journalism.

https://flipboard.com/@theculturedesk/the-pulitzer-prize-winners-have-been-announced-bgb7u60ona1ohk6h

Elmo hasn’t been laid off, but the Trump administration is threatening his employer, PBS, and other public service broadcasters. @TheConversationUS reports on the shifting landscape of media as a result of cutbacks and closures of commercial and community outlets, and how public and nonprofit organizations are filling the gap.

https://theconversation.com/trump-targets-npr-and-pbs-as-public-and-nonprofit-media-account-for-a-growing-share-of-local-news-coverage-255740

Zambia has a long history of mining, since it’s the second biggest copper producer in Africa. But things have kicked up a notch in the past couple of years as a result of the metal’s critical role in wind and solar power. @thexylom’s Kang-Chun Cheng looks at Zambia’s relationship with China, a huge investor since the 1970s, and what happened when she tried to visit the Copperbelt area of the country.

https://www.thexylom.com/post/six-decades-later-zambians-ask-were-chinese-mining-infrastructure-investments-worth-it/

Something heartwarming from Utah and Idaho, where Salt Lake City and Boise have managed to circumvent bans that were meant to prevent the flying of pride flags by declaring that the flags are official city emblems. Here’s more from @AssociatedPress (our @CultureDesk shared this yesterday).

https://apnews.com/article/boise-salt-lake-city-pride-flags-law-13c8f9f7269d1b33daaa7ef041c6c497

This week, @thecontinent celebrates the work of award-winning photographers based in Africa, including Temiloluwa Johnson and Cinzia Canneri, both of whom won World Press Photo Awards recently.

https://continent.substack.com/p/photo-essay-lenses-on-africa-global

Applause, please, for the companies that have managed to make jobhunting even worse, thanks to AI. @404mediaco’s Samantha Cole reports on the experiences of a woman named Ken, who was interviewed by an AI avatar that said “vertical bar pilates” 14 times in a row. She related her experiences on TikTok and received more than 3,000 comments, many sharing similar stories. “A company tried to send me to an AI interview for an HR position… Why would I want to work HUMAN resources for a company that won’t even dignify me with human interaction???” one person wrote.

https://www.404media.co/ai-recruiter-apriora-tiktok/

There’s a new genre of TV shows, comics and board games in Taiwan. Inspired by what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine, producers, writers and artists are imagining a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Elaine Lin and Clara Preve wrote about this for @timkmak’s Counteroffensive.

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/taiwan-imagines-what-happens-the

How can humans live peacefully near grizzly bears? @KnowableMag looks at how they adjust their behavior to coexist with us, but we need to change as well. “Historically, grizzlies were shot, trapped and poisoned across much of the continent,” writes Lesley Evans Ogden. “Today, attitudes are shifting from human domination of nature toward mutualism — and that means learning to get along with our neighbors.”

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2025/conflicts-between-people-and-grizzly-bears

Arizona’s Elections Procedures Manual states that supervisors have no discretion when certifying results — or at least, that’s how it’s always been interpreted. @TucsonSentinel reports on a court ruling that threw out that section of the manual, and that may now shake up pending criminal charges for conspiracy against an election supervisor who delayed certification of Cochise County’s 2022 midterm results. “Ambiguity in election certification laws is a problem in several swing states across the country,” writes Jen Fifield.

https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/042925_az_election_certification/are-local-officials-duty-bound-certify-elections-arizona-ruling-creates-new-doubt/

The wellness to right-wing pipeline is a real thing. For @nybooks,
Hari Kunzru writes about “Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat,” by @derekberes, @matthewremski and Julian Walker, and “Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness” by Stewart Home. Both books lay bare the ascendancy of paranoia and pseudoscience [story may be paywalled].

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/05/29/doing-their-own-research-conspirituality-fascist-yoga/

David Armstrong has been a health reporter for decades, so he thought he was prepared for the cost of being sick in America when he was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of 2023. But even he was shocked to find that Revlimid, the drug that keeps his incurable multiple myeloma somewhat at bay, costs almost $1,000 for a daily pill. Here’s his story for @ProPublica about how it came to cost so much and why the price keeps being hiked. When Mark Alles, president of the drug’s manufacturer Celgene, appeared before the House Oversight Committee in 2020, he was quizzed by then-Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). She concluded: “The drug didn’t get any better. The cancer patients didn’t get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/revlimid-price-cancer-celgene-drugs-fda-multiple-myeloma

At the beginning of February, the U.S. and Salvadoran governments struck a deal allowing the former to ship detained migrants to the latter’s brutal CECOT prison. @TexasObserver’s Orlando J. Perez examines the human and economic repercussions of this scheme, both now and for the future. “The longer the United States bankrolls and applauds this ‘iron fist’ illusion, the faster that illusion will spread across a region already battered by insecurity and disillusionment with democracy,” he writes. “Ultimately, sacrificing the rule of law for a made-for-TV spectacle is a devil’s bargain. It may offer momentary political gain, but it leaves behind broken families, weakened institutions, and a more dangerous hemisphere for everyone.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/trump-texas-offshoring-justice-el-salvador/

Australia voted last week for a Labor majority — and when we say “Australia voted,” we mean that. Before the election, @taniel of @bolts talked to politics professor Judith Brett about the country’s compulsory voting law — its history, how it’s evolved, and whether it leads to better engagement as well as turnout. “Look, the fines that one pays are pretty minimal; you get a letter, and you’ve got to give a reason why you didn’t vote,” says Brett. “I don’t think the fine is the reason people vote. I think they vote because everybody votes. It’s the political culture around voting … What we know from research is, if you don’t have compulsory voting, the people least likely to vote are poorer people, and people from new migrant groups, and often the young. I think it means that there’s more of an egalitarian pressure on our politicians, and I think we end up with more egalitarian policies.”

https://boltsmag.org/compulsory-voting-australia-election/

And finally, to the sea cucumber. @KnowableMag deep dives into these diverse, spiny, slimy creatures, the threats they face, and how to protect them.

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2025/weird-wondrous-sea-cucumbers

Our @CultureDesk shared Lyz Lenz’s story for her newsletter, Men Yell At Me earlier this week, and we’re sharing it again. How could we not celebrate the sublime writing of Lenz on the subject of the drive to fight the declining birthrate, and Trump’s ambition to be the “fertilization president?” “Just the phrase ‘fertilization president’ made millions and millions of embryos in the bodies of women yeet themselves themselves right on out of their respective uteruses,” she writes. “They were like ‘send me into the ocean with the microplastics, I’d rather live there than turn into an American son forced to grow up grunting in gyms, optimizing my sales techniques, wearing tight Andrew Tate-ass pants, and calling women “females” online, as our civilization slowly collapses and women would rather watch “Pride and Prejudice” for the seven millionth time than text me back.’”

https://lyz.substack.com/p/conclave-of-chads

We’ve read more about Joe Rogan in the last couple of weeks than we really wanted to — first, with the Menswear Guy’s story for Bloomberg on his influential physique, and now, with @Daojoan’s article on the dangers of the Roganified male mystique, and what to do about it. “That pipeline doesn’t stop because we roll our eyes at it. It stops when we block it with something real. The Roganification of masculinity is a symptom. The disease is deeper. But the cure won’t come from debunking or mocking. It will come from reclaiming the terrain of meaning. Of power. Of identity,” she writes. “The future of men is being whispered into a mic. What these men hear next — rage or renaissance — depends on what we build. And whether we build it fast enough.”

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-roganification-of-the-male-mystique/

Farmers struggle to make a profit at the best of times, and times just got worse. @gbhnews spotlights how cuts in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s federal grant programs mean Massachusetts schools, food hubs and food pantries can’t buy fresh produce, and farmers are left with cases of unwanted produce. Who wins? No one.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-05-01/massachusetts-farmers-scrambling-to-sell-crops-after-usda-funding-cuts-leave-them-without-a-buyer