Why Don’t Dystopias Know How to Talk About Race?

Angelica Jade Bastién New York Magazine
How can films and television create honest dystopian worlds if they ignore the racial strictures that make these narratives possible in the first place?

October and its Relevance: A Discussion with China Miéville

Eric Blanc,China Miéville Historical Materialism
The first purpose of the book is to tell the story for readers who don’t necessarily know anything about the Russian Revolution, who want to know what happened when, the stakes, the rhythms, the events. This is not a history of the Russian Revolution for leftists, but for everyone; it is, though, a history of the Russian Revolution for everyone by a leftist.

Murphy Oil May Be The Last Workers’ Rights Case

Celine McNicholas Economic Policy Institute
The NLRB has found these forced arbitration agreements interfere with workers’ right to engage in concerted activity for their mutual aid and protection, in violation of the NLRA.

Facebook Users Are Not the Customers But the Product (Long-Read)

John Lanchester London Review of Books
John Lanchester reviews three books on social media with a focus on Facebook, the colossal social networking corporation that now has two billion active monthly users. And, as Facebook has grown its users’ reliance on it has also grown. Facebook is an advertising company, but it is also a surveillance business that knows far, far more about its users than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. John Lanchester is “scared of Facebook.”