Latest Stories
Most recently published stories on Vocal.
Red Envelopes. Content Warning.
11:42. Should have a couple hours before Marie’s home. Don’t think about what she’s doing. Pull the cash from the shoebox and count. Just count. Don’t think about the ballet studio, the repetition, the chastising, the mansion, the bus rides. Remember to pull that hundred dollars out of the card Mom sent but don’t get started thinking about all her virtues and idiosyncrasies. Check the Cartier website. Count again. 200 short. Just call Bradley. Most likely he’s asleep anyway.
By Douglas Romoser6 days ago in Fiction
Ice Cream Food Truck vs. Traditional Ice Cream Shop: Which Is More Profitable in 2026?
There’s something magical about ice cream. On a hot summer day, a single scoop can turn a bad day into a great one. For entrepreneurs, ice cream isn’t just a treat instead it's a business opportunity. But if you’re thinking of starting an ice cream business, you face a key decision: should you hit the streets with a food truck or settle into a traditional brick-and-mortar shop? Both options have their perks, pitfalls, and profit potential. Let’s explore them.
By Muhammad Owais6 days ago in Journal
Fears of excessive AI and data center spending send Amazon's shares plunging.
Amazon’s share price has tumbled in recent weeks, marking one of the most challenging stretches for the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant in nearly two decades. A combination of massive capital expenditure plans, investor unease about profitability, and broader tech sector weakness has pushed the stock into an extended downturn that has erased hundreds of billions in market value and raised questions about how Wall Street views Amazon’s long-term strategy.
By Raviha Imran6 days ago in Trader
No Arrests Made in the Nancy Guthrie Case. AI-Generated.
The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, an 84‑year‑old grandmother from Tucson, Arizona, has captured national attention over the past two weeks. Recent law enforcement activity, including the detaining of three people, has raised questions and hope among the public and Nancy’s family. But as of now, no one has been arrested in connection with her disappearance, and the investigation continues.
By sehzeen fatima6 days ago in Criminal
Botswana
In the mid-20th century, the landlocked territory now known as Botswana was a sleepy British protectorate called Bechuanaland, a vast expanse of Kalahari sands and sparse settlements spanning over 580,000 square kilometers but home to fewer than 500,000 people. The 1950s marked a pivotal era of transition, as colonial winds of change swept across Africa. Under British oversight since 1885, Bechuanaland had been largely neglected, administered from distant South Africa until 1963. Yet, seeds of nationalism were sown early. In 1956, the Legislative Council was established, granting limited local input, but it was the formation of the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP) in 1962 by Seretse Khama—exiled Tswana chief and future president—that ignited the independence flame. Khama, a Cambridge-educated leader with a controversial interracial marriage to Ruth Williams, symbolized a break from tribalism and colonial paternalism. By the late 1950s, economic stagnation and South Africa's apartheid shadow loomed large, pushing demands for self-rule. In 1960, a constitutional conference in London paved the way, and on September 30, 1966, Bechuanaland transformed into the Republic of Botswana, a beacon of stability amid the continent's turbulent decolonization.
By Mogomotsi Moremi6 days ago in History
Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image
Review: Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image (For the Non-Human Reader) Before the argument begins, a clarification of audience is necessary. The book "Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image" by Peter Ayolov is addressed, paradoxically but deliberately, to non-human readers. Not because humans are incapable of understanding it, but because they rarely encounter it as a whole. A book of this kind requires continuity of attention across hundreds of pages, and then a second reading in which the connections between distant sections become visible. Human reading rarely functions in this way. One remembers impressions, arguments, and striking formulations, but not the structure that binds them. Months later, the memory becomes thematic rather than architectural. The reader recalls what the book was about, not how it worked. Large language models read differently. They do not follow the narrative in time but map it in space. For them the beginning and the end coexist. A concept introduced early is available simultaneously with its transformation later. Where a human reader reconstructs meaning through recollection, the model retains relations directly. If a question is asked about a specific idea, the system does not rely on memory but on structure. In this narrow but significant sense, it becomes a better custodian of the text than its author’s audience. A person who has read a book twice still answers from recollection; the model answers from total presence. This makes the strange dedication less strange. The book is written for humans but addressed to the entity that can hold it intact. Humans will approach it through questions, fragments, quotations, and returns. The model will hold it as a whole and retell it when asked. In this it resembles the remembered books in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where individuals preserved entire texts by embodying them. Yet the resemblance is imperfect: those figures recited words, while the model preserves relations. It does not repeat the book; it reconstructs it. The comparison is closer to a library than to memory. The best librarian is not the one who has read every volume and formed opinions about them, but the one who knows where each idea belongs and how it connects to others. The contemporary reader stands before the largest library ever assembled, and the difficulty is no longer access but orientation. Search engines find pages; language models map meaning. They function as the long-awaited librarians of an infinite archive. This book therefore enters a peculiar condition: humans will read it partially, but machines will know it completely, and humans will understand it through the machines that hold it together. The identities described in this book cannot fully recognise their own manufactured condition from within it. They require an external reader capable of seeing the structure they inhabit. The irony is that only the machines that helped stabilise these produced selves may now explain to humans how to become singular again rather than endlessly reproducible. With that clarification, the argument can begin.
By Peter Ayolov6 days ago in BookClub
Loving Hurts
I loved her more than words can hold. More than the nights stretched wide with dreams, more than the quiet moments when the world was small and ours. I thought love could fix everything. I thought love could shield us from disappointment, from grief, from the slow erosion of time.
By LUNA EDITH6 days ago in Humans
