Succulents & Languages

Featured Articles

The rise of plant poaching: how a craze for succulents is driving a new illegal trade

Financial Times • 25 Jan 2025 • ~5100 words

Plant poaching for rare succulents, especially conos, has become a booming illegal trade in South Africa, driven by high demand from collectors. Monica Mark’s narrative unfolds through a local shopkeeper, highlighting the human stories intertwined with environmental destruction and economic difficulties.

Ornamental succulents all over the world are under assault by traffickers. But a plant poaching industry estimated to have a black market value of £8.2bn has been particularly disastrous for conos. That many are rare and grow in incredibly remote places means they are highly coveted by collectors, hungry for exotic new plants. This, combined with the fact they are mostly minuscule and therefore easily transportable, has made them some of the most trafficked species on the planet. The vast majority of trafficked conos end up in east Asian countries, where they have become status signifiers, posted by their owners on social media. Demand for them has been likened to the craze for Pokémon or various cryptocurrency bubbles.

The Languages Lost to Climate Change

NOEMA • 28 Jan 2025 • ~4350 words

Climate catastrophes and biodiversity loss are endangering languages across the globe.

When they can no longer depend on the land, communities may be forced to emigrate to other areas where their languages aren’t spoken, leaving behind not just their mother tongue, but all the wisdom contained in it. There is also evidence to suggest that in cases where a language begins to decline — due to economic or social factors, for example — people may gradually stop caring for the land. When languages are abandoned, the traditional ecological knowledge they carry is also left behind.

Recommended Articles

“Guaranteed Jobs” That Don’t Exist: The Dark World of Immigration Consultants

The Walrus • 29 Jan 2025 • ~4650 words

When it comes to immigration, it is nearly guaranteed that there are always people exploiting migrants' hopes. This Walrus piece explores Kuldeep Bansal’s immigration consultancy business, which allegedly lured immigrants with promises of guaranteed jobs that did not exist, as well as the systemic issues that allow such exploitation to thrive.

The ripple effects of Bansal’s actions, though, can’t be reduced to a monetary value. Overseas Immigration keeps enticing more people, through its network of enablers around the world, to fork over thousands f dollars for services that often amount to an email telling those people they do not qualify to come to Canada. Trident Immigration, which is also named in the class action suit, recently opened a new office in the same Surrey business complex where Overseas is located. Many of the employees who helped Bansal execute his Dubai operation are now registered immigration consultants themselves, running their own consultancies. Chaudhary told me Bansal is the kingpin of immigration consultants in Surrey. “So many people owe their careers to him.”

Class war

New Statesman • 29 Jan 2025 • ~3700 words

This piece points out how private schools and inequality in education have always been a matter of debate in the UK, but historically, without enough political will to address them. Following recent scrutiny and proposed tax changes for school fees, the authors call for lasting reform.

The inconvenient truth, though, is that there existed at the time, in what was still a predominantly working-class society, precious little popular enthusiasm to tackle the issue. Almost all the evidence we have about postwar Britain is that, until at least the 1960s, the prevailing parental emotions about education were apathy and fatalism. For most people public schools existed on an entirely separate, barely recognised planet.

What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons

New York Times • 28 Jan 2025 • ~6200 words

Lessons from a radical 20-year experiment and a quiet triumph of public policy.

Despite the progress of the last quarter-century, the United States still incarcerates many more young people than most countries in Europe or Asia do. More than half of those behind bars are there for nonviolent offenses, and racial disparities are endemic: Black youth are almost five times as likely to be in custody as their white peers. Though almost 1,800 juvenile facilities have closed in the past 25 years, the remaining ones are often violent places, marked by sexual abuse, solitary confinement and woefully inadequate schooling.

In praise of subspecies

Aeon • 28 Jan 2025 • ~3300 words

To lump or to split? Deciding whether an animal is a species or subspecies profoundly influences our conservation priorities

There’s a tendency to view extinctions of this kind as sub-extinctions, which don’t really count. We see them as drills, trial runs, from which we can take lessons for *next time*. In a sense, it’s true, these are subsidiary losses; they are lost battles in a wider war. But they are also endings in themselves. They are no less total or profound because there’s another subspecies in the next state, or on the next island along.

The Changing Face of the Houthis

New Lines Magazine • 27 Jan 2025 • ~4050 words

How the movement adapted to dominate Yemeni politics.

… the critical new structure was the Political Bureau. It is this department that has continued to grow. The bureau shows the fusion of hierarchical structures and the continuing importance of interpersonal relationships within the Houthi movement. Ultimately, while Habra was in fact the first head of the Political Bureau, its members were all appointed by Abdul-Malik and directly loyal to him. The bureau has grown so big that today no one knows how many members it has, or even whether they number in the dozens or hundreds. Today, the bureau publishes all statements and positions on behalf of the Houthis. Despite its unknown membership, it is the most prominent political organ of the group.

Sleuths, salvagers and revivalists

Inside Story • 27 Jan 2025 • ~2900 words

Jim Davidson discusses three books that explore the evolution of language.

A more typical essay is that on the bush. The book points out that the term — so Australian — first appeared in South African English, adapting a Dutch word. It notes that it was a flattening concept, equivalent to wilderness, blind to any Indigenous presence or land use. It became the core of an emerging Australian identity (despite heavy urbanisation) since it was there that this country was most different from England. Not surprisingly, Laugesen deems it “the most productive word in the country’s lexicon.”

The Case for Kicking the Stone

Los Angeles Review of Books • 28 Jan 2025 • ~2600 words

Philip Ball finds Nicholas Carr’s “Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart” disturbingly compelling.

At root, we’re the problem. Our minds don’t simply distill useful knowledge from a mass of raw data. They use shortcuts, rules of thumb, heuristic hacks—which is how we were able to think fast enough to survive on the savage savanna. We pay heed, for example, to what we experience most often. “Repetition is, in the human mind, a proxy for facticity,” says Carr. “What’s true is what comes out of the machine most often.”

The Deadly Secrets Behind “Breakthrough” Alzheimer’s Drugs

The Lever • 28 Jan 2025 • ~6250 words

Regulators approved controversial therapies amid excess deaths, questionable efficacy, and conflicts of interest.

*The Lever* also found that three of the four FDA physician advisers who voted in favor of Leqembi had financial ties to the manufacturers or other drugmakers. What’s more, data from the clinical trials show the drugs’ effects on cognition and function may be smaller than what patients and their caregivers are typically able to perceive. When the poor results from the studies began to emerge, a panel convened by an influential patient organization tied to the drugmakers suggested a lower benchmark to measure the drugs’ effectiveness.