stillness is a lie, my dear
The myriad ways in which the middle class engages with poverty betray a number of social anxieties, ranging from the desire for distance to avoid responsibility for class inequality to an almost vicious pleasure in mocking people from low-income backgrounds to reinforce the notion that they are placed where they belong, thus absolving middle and […]
I’ve been thinking about epigenetics a great deal lately. I know that at least some of you probably share my tendency of getting fixated on a subject and doing it to death, and right now, mine is epigenetics, because I find it completely fascinating. Perhaps not surprising, given that genetics has always been a subject of […]
Technology is a persistent and everpresent part of modern culture: There’s an app for everything, if you want access to a range of basic public services you need technology, medical records are electronic, and not understanding or being able to use technology is a considerable social disadvantage. This has been a subject of much commentary, […]
If there’s one thing college students can be relied upon to do on a regular basis, especially those in fraternities and sororities, it’s to periodically throw parties with mindbogglingly offensive themes. It’s strange, because it happens across the board, at progressive universities and those not exactly known for their social consciousness alike, even after seeing such […]
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the responsibilities of schools are quite clear: They need to identify disabled students, determine their needs, and accommodate them. Yet, schools are failing on all three of these fronts, pretty spectacularly, especially in higher education, and the results are actively harming disabled people who are simply trying to […]
Many of us spend our childhoods being told to save money where we can: save up our allowance to buy a toy we want, save the leavings of the Tooth Fairy for a treat. As we grow older, the message that savings accounts and other savings options are a good idea is hammered into us, […]
Soleil Ho recently wrote a great piece for Bitch about what Mikki Kendall terms hipster food gentrification — in this case, she was looking particularly at the rise of collard greens, the latest ‘it’ thing now that the kale fad seems to be waning. As in other aspects of the market not just of hipsterdom but of […]
Summer is nearly upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, in all its glory. Just a couple short weeks remain until the solstice, when the day will hit maximum length, and already the weather is warm and temperate (at least for some of us), warm enough to coax us into rivers and lakes, to convince us […]
The Internal Revenue Service is one of the most dreaded, hated, and feared agencies in the United States. Agents work under aliases, experience verbal abuse on a pretty routine basis, and are used to being made the butt of every imaginable joke. Most people in the US spend their lives trying to avoid the IRS, […]
In the last few years, I’ve noticed a dramatic surge in attacks on urban farms from clueless (and nasty) city authorities. Farmers and gardeners from all corners of the country have been ordered to uproot their front gardens, farmed empty lots, and other food growing plots, sometimes in very troubling and cloudy circumstances. In some […]