The smartphone trap we built for ourselves
Can you give up your smartphone? It’s an appealing idea, but it’d be largely impossible, as Rachel writes. That’s not because of your individual failures or scrolling addiction; it’s also because you need an app to do anything, from getting a cab, parking your car on the street, or my personal least favorite, getting into a concert. That shift happened because it’s easier, yes, but it’s also cheaper for companies, and it allows them to do things like price-discriminate. But there are a number of things we as individuals can do, and a lot of work that’s already being done that the rest of us can build on to demand a life without smartphones — or at least, the choice to have one.
The Supreme Court just handed Republicans a surprisingly decisive midterm loss
It’s been a long week of pre-election shenanigans in the Supreme Court, and I struggled to make sense of it all. Thankfully, I had Vox’s in-house Supreme Court expert, Ian Millhiser, to break down just one Republican attempt to change the voting rules just before midterm elections. This story was one of two this week about the same effort in Missouri — an attempt to gerrymander the state’s election maps and give the GOP an additional House seat in the upcoming elections. Eventually, that effort failed, because the way Republicans went about it was just too ham-handed, even for this Court. Ian’s analysis should be a relief for people who are concerned about how willing the Court has seemed to accommodate requests from Republicans that would sow chaos and confusion at least, and at most, seriously affect election results in a way that would favor the GOP.
The hidden money fueling the pork industry’s fight to keep pigs in tiny cages
I am a meat-eater, and even though I often worry there is no ethical way to consume animal products, I at least have Michael Pollan's guidelines from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He puts a lot of emphasis on seeking out and consuming animals that were allowed to live lives in alignment with their true instincts and natural behaviors — a chicken that is allowed to live true to its “chickenness,” as he writes in the book. The practice of keeping pigs in tiny cages would undoubtedly fail this test, which is why smaller, more humane pig farmers take a stand against the practice.
But all pork farmers have to contribute a small fee for every pig they slaughter; that fee goes to the National Pork Board, and is supposed to be used only for research and promotion. This Vox exclusive, however, found that a lot of that money is being channeled toward a related pork industry lobbying group, which is actually using that money to push for policies — such as keeping pregnant sows in small “gestation crates” their whole lives — that these smaller farmers are often opposed to.
The strange grief of not wanting kids
The question of having kids or not is one of the biggest choices a person has to make — but, perhaps because it’s relatively new as a true choice, there’s very little discussion about processing the unique emotions involved in pursuing either option. But that is perhaps especially for those who choose not to — because, as this article by Allie Volpe informed me, that’s still a small minority. Only around 20 percent of people in their 50s and 60s don’t have children.
And that choice brings along with it something that isn’t quite regret, but is a kind of grief for a life you are closing the door on. One especially poignant part for me in the piece comes from a child-free woman who noticed all the warm smiles she was getting from strangers when she held a friend’s toddler in her lap. “No one will ever look at me like that for any reason, no matter what I do,” she said. Ultimately, though, the piece is about how you can celebrate making the right choices for yourself, even if those aren’t always the ones that the culture around you supports or values.
