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Mass Media


The Karen Effect:ย A Cop Town’s Reckoning with Police Power

Zhandarka Kurti

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Americaโ€™s latest referendum on police power is coming from an unlikely place: Canton, Massachusetts, a mostly white upper middle class and pro-police suburb located just fifteen miles outside of Boston. Jury deliberations began this week in the second murder trial of Karen Read, who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend. For the past three years, the case has divided Canton, with a significant number of residents convinced that Read is being framed by the police and the wealthy local families with ties to them. While the case has all the elements of a true-crime saga, its significance lies in that it is shedding a light on the deepening crisis of police legitimacy among white Americans. In addition, it is also revealing--yet again--the pernicious effects of whiteness, as seen by the inability or unwillingness of Karen Read supporters to connect her fight against a corrupt police and legal system to the current anti-ICE/police uprising.
A History of Pan African Revolt cover.

Reading Pan-African Revolt

Tim Bruno

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โ€œI mean, weโ€™re talking about the last twenty years. Thatโ€™s most of our lives. Maybe even all of yours!โ€ Tentative silence. Itโ€™s always hard to gauge how this kind of direct appeal will go over. Then ...

First as Tragedy, Then as Slop

Gus Breslauer

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...I think itโ€™s safe to identify MrBeastโ€™s primary schtick as the fusion of two favorite ultra-rich past times, philanthropy and decadence. MrBeast is far from the first tycoon to master these crafts. However, his Frankenstein brand of philanthropic decadence is the novelty that has propelled him to the top of YouTube, becoming the first โ€œbillionaire YouTuber.โ€

โ€œTogether, We Can Create the World We Want to Seeโ€: An Interview with ChatGPT

Hard Crackers Editors

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Recently, an editor at Hard Crackers discovered that many students in his classes were having their homework assignments written for them by an artificial intelligence (AI) program called ChatGPT, a piece of software that draws on ...

Drawing Ourselves into the Picture

Mike Morgan

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My mother Leah frequented the Durban Public Library in South Africa at least once a week.ย  As the youngest child, I was often forced to tag along with her.ย  I enjoyed those sessions.ย  I used to ...

“Everyone Agrees”

John Garvey

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When a politician, TV anchor or newspaper opinion writer starts out by saying that โ€œEveryone agreesโ€, I think itโ€™s time to pay attention.ย  There are not too many instances where everybody agreesโ€”except about something thatโ€™s really ...

โ€˜Stick a Fork in Their Ass & Turn โ€˜em Over – Theyโ€™re Done.โ€™

Josh Machlin

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Sorry to be a โ€˜Negative Nellyโ€™ (& co-opt a Lou Reed lyric again), but pull up a stool and let me tell you why the Covid crisis is really just a mirror to a species already ...

Politics from a Baby Boomer

Tanzeem Ajmiri

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In March of this year, a Hard Crackers correspondent took a trip to New Hampshire to visit a friend. It was her first time being in a place that was majority white and she was interested ...

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Advertising in the Virus Age

To borrow a phrase from the Madison Avenue ad people โ€œIn these difficult times, itโ€™s reassuring to know that we still have enough of what we need.โ€ย  Well, letโ€™s be more truthful here.ย  We may have ...

The Everyday Abolitionism of 13 Reasons Why

Jarrod Shanahan

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Itโ€™s an all-too-familiar scene. An alienated young man named named Tyler Down approaches a school clad in black, strapped with guns and ammunition, and bent on cold-blooded mass murder. But unlike the tragedies making headlines across ...

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