By now, the May/June issue of the print magazine should be arriving in member mailboxes. Readers will notice the contents are posted online, behind the paywall. (To view, become a member today!) We have begun to pull out pieces to feature for the internet at large, though, and this Tuesday we shared the South African Ernst van Zyl’s case that his country’s central collapse presents an opportunity for decentralized innovation. (Take notes, dear reader.) The South African state may be crumbling under its corruption, mismanagement, cadre deployment, and racially discriminatory policies, but especially in the Afrikaans community, local initiative is rebuilding.

Earth Day came and went last weekend with little fanfare. Alina Clough, president of the DMV branch of the American Conservation Coalition, spent Saturday cleaning up a public park. It was sweaty, menial work, but a satisfying expression of care for the ecology that we shape and shapes us in turn. Meanwhile, in another part of the District, environmental activists were protesting, expressing their anxieties about the future with wishes that would guarantee a less secure and prosperous future. Clough concludes, “America’s youth should be using their vigor to clean parks, their brain power to innovate, and any remaining energy to get off screens and enjoy the outdoors. Anything else, especially useless publicity stunts, is a waste of clean air.”

Managing Editor Jude Russo has noticed, like you might have, that the internet doesn’t seem to work as promised. The closure of BuzzFeed News is just the latest reminder that there is something unsustainable about a model built on traffic-based ad revenue driven by social media. Social media use is declining and siloing; Russo wonders if we’re returning to the era of forum posting. Search engines, now weighed down by advertising optimization and political scale thumbing, can’t find you what you want unless you already know what you’re looking for. Perhaps a healthy online world of decentralization is returning, or perhaps not.
Best,
Micah Meadowcroft
Web Editor

An Evening With the Night Wolves

Jonathon Van Maren