12 suicides at the Shenzhen plant in 2010.

I talk to an older man with leathery skin. His right hand is twisted up into a claw. It was crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. He says he didn't receive any medical attention, and it healed this way. And then when he was too slow, they fired him. Today he works at a woodworking plant. He says he likes it better. He says the people are nicer, and the hours are more reasonable. He works about 70 hours a week.

And so when you start working at 15 or 16, by the time you are 26, 27, your hands are ruined. And when they are truly ruined, once they will not do anything further, you know what we do with a defective part in a machine that makes machines. We throw it away.

a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34-hour shift. I wish I could say that's exceptional, but it's happened before. I only mention it because it actually happened while I was there.

They can exert a kind of eerie fascination. There's a beauty to industrialization on such a massive scale. You don't have to deny it. There's a wonder to seeing so much order laid out in front of you.

And I say to her, "You seem kind of young. How old are you?" And she says, "I'm 13."

And along the edges of each enormous building are the nets. Because right at the time that I am making this visit, there has been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings, and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets.

The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait.

The only sign that the exit ramp ends is a single solitary orange cone.

And on the other side of the gates, it's the factory zone. And, whew. It's like going from the Eloi to the Morlocks. Everything changes. I've never seen anything like it. Everything is under construction. Every road has a bypass, every bypass has a bypass. It's bypasses all the way down.

And in all that time, until I saw those pictures, it was only then I realized, I had never thought, ever, in a dedicated way, about how they were made.

I should specify, have no actual news in them. They are instead filled with rumors about what Apple will do next, written exclusively by people who have no goddamn idea what Apple will do next

I will go back to my apartment and I will field strip my MacBook Pro into its 43 component pieces. I will clean them with compressed air. And I will put them back together again. It soothes me.

Can I say, I love, especially, "I am not allowed to say"? Because it implies that Siri somehow knows the answer, but she's just not allowed to tell me, which is insane, because she's a machine. Especially because-- flip over the phone. Right here, on the back, it's printed-- "Assembled in China."

Fortunately, early evacuation kept the death toll to 150.

hese groups work to protect human rights and women’s rights, end sexual violence, meet the needs of children and orphans, and promote disarmament, environmental justice, rule of law, medical care, food security, education, religious tolerance, democracy, and more.

The ‘resource curse’ falls on the poorest parts of the world when their muddy pebbles, little-used forest, or some other natural resource suddenly becomes extremely valuable

There’s a squad waiting to ambush you as soon as you leave town.”

Experts believe that ten million people died

Rubber and ivory worth millions were arriving in Europe, but the ships going back carried little besides weapons [and] manacles.

by the end of 2013 sales were up to two billion and there were more phones in the world than people.

Moments later, after our papers were checked, the UN pilot, a Russian with a rich baritone, called the children together and got them singing French folk songs. From the way the kids mobbed him, this had to be a feature of every landing. Their voices rippled with giggles, like water flutes.

The good news is that slavery can be stopped. We know how to bust slaveholders and free slaves, we know how much it costs and where to start, and we know that freed slaves tend to be willing workers in the rebuilding of our natural world. Ending slavery is a step forward in fixing our earth. There’s always been a moral case for stopping slavery; now there’s an environmental reason too.

how can the estimated 35.8 million slaves in the world really be that destructive?

The profits generated when we go shopping flow back down the chain and fuel more assaults on the natural world, drive more people toward enslavement, and feed more goods into the global supply chain. Round and round it goes— our spending drives a criminal perpetual motion machine that eats people and nature like a cancer.

you can’t afford to die in Germany.”

the cremated can be buried only in approved cemeteries, never scattered in gardens or the sea.

We think of Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the origin of our iPhones