Hi my name is Carl Austins and these are my articles:
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The Quiet Crack in the World’s Favorite Game
By: Carl Austins If you drive long enough through the flat, sun-struck farmland of Gujarat, you’ll pass fields where the wind hums across dry soil, where irrigation canals cut the earth like shallow scars, and where the tallest landmarks are not buildings but stubborn trees that refused to die. It’s the kind of place where…
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The Long Neck of the Law
By: Carl Austins On a warm July afternoon in the quiet English town of Malmesbury, the sort of scene that usually belongs to slapstick films — or dreams one has after too much cold medicine — unfolded with perfect, improbable clarity. It began with the bark of tires, the splintering shudder of a shopfront giving…
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Threads of Cloth and Longing: The Unraveling Love Story of Meirivone Rocha Moraes
By: Carl Austins In the humid haze of a Brazilian afternoon, where the air hangs heavy with the scent of rain-soaked earth and distant barbecue smoke, Meirivone Rocha Moraes sits cross-legged on the threadbare rug of her small living room in Sidrolândia, a modest town in Mato Grosso do Sul. The ceiling fan whirs lazily…
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The Town That Unplugged Itself from the Global Economy
By: Carl Austins On a crisp October morning in 2023, the mayor of Marinaleda, a sun-bleached village of 2,700 souls in southern Spain, stood on a flatbed truck in the middle of the main square and announced that the town was going off the euro. Not leaving the European Union, not printing pesetas again; just…
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The Cat That Cost Five Million Dollars and Taught Us Nothing
By: Carl Austins Somewhere in a quiet Virginia warehouse in the spring of 1965, a gray-and-white tabby lay on a stainless-steel table while a veterinarian in a surgical mask threaded a thin wire through the soft fur behind her ear. The wire ran beneath the skin, down the spine, and emerged near the base of…