System Hacks
Seventeen Million Steps Out of Poverty
Brazil’s latest social mobility surge is real, fast, and historically unprecedented—but it remains fragile, reversible, and politically contested.
System Hacks
Cracks in the code where resistance blooms.
System Hacks
Oil, Diamonds, and the Ghost of Freedom: Who Owns Liberation?
Angola’s liberation movement defeated colonial power — only to replicate its architecture of control. What happens when freedom becomes governance, and governance becomes greed?
System Hacks
Lisbon’s Earthquake and Brazil’s Aftershock
A Natural Disaster Helped Trigger a Revolution.
System Hacks
Compost the Year: Inside Lisbon’s Ethical Assembly 2025
At the tail end of a chaotic 2025 — a year of climate backslides, algorithmic delusions, and resurgent fascisms — Lisbon wants to compost it all.
System Hacks
When Film Was Freedom: Portugal’s Art Rebels Return to the Screen
The Cinemateca Portuguesa digs up the 60s and 70s avant-garde — when artists like Ana Hatherly and Julião Sarmento turned their cameras on life, politics, and each other.
System Hacks
Half a Century After the Cells of Ilha Grande, the Dictatorship Still Rules by Proxy
Born in a dictatorship’s prison, the Comando Vermelho evolved into a parallel republic—proving that Brazil’s war on crime was never about justice, but about preserving power.
System Hacks
When Modernism Went Underground: How Exiled Artists Punked Vargas’s Brazil
The dictatorship wanted unity. The exiles gave it noise, color, and chaos.
System Hacks
Whindersson vs. Brasília: Who Really Helps the People?
From donating oxygen in Manaus to raising funds for Indigenous communities, Whindersson Nunes embodies an inversion of roles: the clown gives life while the politician plays games.
System Hacks
Lisbon: From Slave Port to Summit Stage
The Black Europeans Lisbon Summit forces Portugal to confront the history it has long silenced — and the racism that still shapes the present.
System Hacks
Flamengo on Trial: Racism, Football, and the Price of a Nation’s Game
A R$100 million lawsuit shows how Flamengo embodies the contradiction of Brazilian football: diverse on the pitch, exclusive off it.
System Hacks
Teen Scientist Just Punked Big Plastic: Cassava!
How a school science project from Brazil could flip the script on packaging waste.
System Hacks
Renato Freitas: The Outsider Curitiba Can’t Ignore
Tracing the unpolished, improbable rise of a politician who doesn’t know how to bow.