Portside

Don’t ask users; Don’t ask Zuckerberg; Don’t ask the workforce; Bad news for democracy; Bad news for news; The good news

Faces Places (Visages Villages in French) is an unexpected—and perhaps final—gift from the visionary eighty-nine-year-old director Agnès Varda. Varda had previously announced that her 2008 documentary self-portrait, The Beaches of Agnès, would be her last film, doubting that she had the physical strength to undertake another full-length feature. But chance, which Varda has often acknowledged as her best assistant, intervened; the making of Faces Places is the proof.

The authors challenge the popular view of Leave voters as those left behind educationally and financially. They explain why it is individuals from an intermediate class, whose financial position has been declining, that represent an important section of the Brexit vote.

Thanks to a decades-long effort by the chocolate industry, chocolate is now being convincingly sold as a health food. But the chocolate-industrial-research complex distracts us from issues like what in our food contributes to the obesity and diabetes epidemics; chocolate certainly isn’t the solution here.

“The Trump administration is talking about a potential imminent U.S. military action to hit back.”

"Africa fed the world, but the world eats without Africa."—Dr. E. Obiri Addo

Here are several updates from the on-going Palestinian struggle for justice and peace.

Do Nguyen Mai reflects on Tommy Le’s fatal shooting by King’s County police and what it means for Vietnamese America.

The mural artist, Arnautoff, who at that time was a secret member of the Communist party, dropped subtle political messages into his mural. He depicts four dock workers on their (union-guaranteed) lunch break, discussing the news of the day.

Studies of the energy-harvesting proteins in primitive cells suggest that key features of photosynthesis might have evolved a billion years earlier than scientists thought.