Issue 09 — The Threshold Reporting from Lisbon, Nairobi & Manila

A slow newsroom for the arguments that outlast the news cycle — money, bodies, and the near future, reported at length.

Founded 2019 · 41 contributors
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The Kndl

Neither here nor after

This week

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A row of terraced townhouse facades — photograph via Openverse, CC0

Money

The rent index nobody audits is quietly setting your lease

Six landlords, one shared pricing model, and a regulator that has asked for the source code twice in four years.

Ama Okonjo · 14 min

An unmade bed in an empty room — photograph via Openverse, CC0

Bodies

What the sleep clinic learned when it stopped asking about willpower

A three-year trial swapped discipline scripts for shift-pattern redesign. The results embarrassed everyone who funded it.

Rafael Duarte · 11 min

Wind turbines standing over open farmland — photograph via Openverse, CC0

Tomorrow

The town that bought its own grid and is now selling the surplus

Population 6,800. Seventeen years of council minutes. One argument about who owns the wind.

Lina Verhoeven · 18 min

A field worker resting during a shift break — Library of Congress, CC0 via Openverse

The long read

We keep calling it burnout because the other word implicates someone.

Across eleven months we followed care workers, night couriers and junior doctors through the vocabulary they are handed for exhaustion — and the vocabulary they use with each other when the recorder is off. The gap between the two is the story.

Read the essay →

Briefs

Archive →

/ 001

Portugal's four-day week trial publishes its second year of payroll data

Participation held at 89 firms; median overtime fell by 31 minutes a week.

2 hrs ago
/ 002

Nairobi's matatu drivers are organising through a fare-splitting app they wrote themselves

Roughly 4,300 vehicles on the network, no venture funding, one very tired maintainer.

Yesterday
/ 003

A court in Manila asks whether a sleep tracker's data can enter an employment dispute

The ruling, expected in March, would be the first of its kind in the region.

Tue
/ 004

Three cities quietly dropped their heat-warning thresholds by two degrees

Nobody announced it. We found it in procurement documents for cooling centres.

Mon

The Kndl

This week

The rent index nobody audits is quietly setting your lease

What the sleep clinic learned when it stopped asking about willpower

The town that bought its own grid and is now selling the surplus

We keep calling it burnout because the other word implicates someone.

Briefs

Portugal's four-day week trial publishes its second year of payroll data

Nairobi's matatu drivers are organising through a fare-splitting app they wrote themselves

A court in Manila asks whether a sleep tracker's data can enter an employment dispute

Three cities quietly dropped their heat-warning thresholds by two degrees

One long story a week, and nothing else in your inbox.