Food Networks and Midnight Shifts

How To Actually Feed America

Caroline Sutton | Slow Boring | 28th November 2025

On the evolution of the US's largest charitable food network. Food banks used to wait in line and have to accept whatever surplus food was donated, even if it was geographically or nutritionally wrong for their needs. Then some Chicago business school professors instituted a market system with bids, shares and data. It works very well. Now, twenty years on, they can't decide whether to keep it (1,600 words)

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The Midnight Shift

Lucas Vaqueiro | Urban Omnibus | 3rd December 2025

Introduction to New York's Leak Detection team: eleven sound engineers employed by the city to listen for ruptures in the 6,800-mile-long network of water pipes. Every night, they use microphones to check six miles of pipes, listening through headphones for the tell-tale gush of a broken water main spilling its contents into the chaotic layer of "spaghetti" beneath the surface that is made up of cables and tubes (600 words)