Links I Loved This Month
I confess I’ve been reading fewer and fewer articles since school started because now I’m reading books and chapters and all sorts of niche things. I’m enjoying my school reading immensely – especially reading for my Theology & Medicine class – and I occasionally share tidbits of my experience and other life happenings on Instagram, if you’d like to keep up with me there.
I’m currently headed home from Salem, MA, where I had some great martinis and cried a little bit over the lack of solemn reflection I witnessed among tourists. 25 innocent people died here and yet the place has become a zoo of people dressed in sweatshop-made witch hats. It has been a strange experience, and a reminder that perhaps humanity’s worst evil is our inattention. I’ll be pondering my time here for awhile longer.
American Culture & Politics
Kate Bowler: Why Christian Women Become Celebrity ‘Influencers’
When conservative women are barred from the pulpit—or any situation in which they appear to be teaching men—they must find other ways of reaching an audience, ways that center on stereotypically gendered tropes. For this reason, women in ministry might build their platform on their expertise in parenting, cooking, nutrition, weight loss, or beauty. Those who directly take on the work of preaching and teaching will call themselves “Bible teachers” instead. No matter how closely their work resembles that of a senior pastor, women in megaministry will be introduced as authors or speakers, television hosts or parachurch founders. It is a delicate balance of professed submission to authority and implied independence from it.
U.S. Government Plans to Collect DNA From Detained Immigrants
“That kind of mass collection alters the purpose of DNA collection from one of criminal investigation basically to population surveillance, which is basically contrary to our basic notions of a free, trusting, autonomous society,” said Vera Eidelman, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
She said that because genetic material carries family connections, the data collection would have implications not only for those in immigration custody but also their family members who might be United States citizens or legal residents.
VIDEO: Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome
What is Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome? Drawing on her own research, Dr. Joy DeGruy explains how trauma from slavery has been passed on to current generations.
Ethical Fashion
There are competing opinions about when exactly Etsy took the turn that would lead it here, but most agree that the company’s IPO was one of the stops along the way. The company had taken in a total of $97.3 million in venture money by the time it went public in 2015, and Etsy’s IPO was a big deal, imbued with surreal significance; The New York Times called it “an experiment in corporate governance, a test of whether Wall Street will embrace a company that puts doing social and environmental good on the same pedestal with, if not ahead of, maximizing profits.” But Wall Street did not embrace Etsy. Within two months, share prices dropped to about 50 percent of where they’d been when trading opened. Initially a smash hit, it soured quickly into one of the worst IPOs of the year.
Can Biodegradable Denim Solve the Industry’s Notorious Waste Problem?
The company has found that designing for biodegradability provided benefits that have spilled into other areas as well: By optimizing its materials, Source Denim was able to reduce its water use by 60 percent, chemical use by 50 percent and carbon emissions by 40 percent compared with conventional denim.
Cutest News
Researchers “Translate” Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot
They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds.
ICYMI:
A Poem
Mary Oliver’s Song for Autumn
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Leah Wise is the founder of StyleWise Blog. She has been writing, speaking, and consulting on sustainable fashion, the fair trade and secondhand supply chain, and digital marketing for over ten years. An Episcopal priest, Leah holds a B.A. in Religion from Florida State University and an M.Div. from Yale Divinity School. When not working, you can find her looking for treasures at the thrift store.