Content tagged with “society” under “The Interesting List”

“ A man’s recently-deceased mother had always kept a box in the very back of the freezer and refused to say what was in it. The box had been there as long as he and his sister could remember. He finally opened it. ”

“ A survey that seems to prove that consuming news primarily via social media causes you to be less engaged and more likely to fall for conspiracy theories. ”

“ A short memoir of a lesbian who transitioned, and what he learned about manhood in the process from the men in his life. Equal parts inspiring and heart-breaking. ”

“ Humans need to assign causes to events that make sense to them. And if we’re not happy with the actual cause of something, we’ll invent one. ”

“ An irreverent documentary about the concept of conspiracy theories and why some people need to believe that there are grand, hidden secrets to the world. ”

“ The Coronavirus might be the thing that tips us into a vastly expanded world of remote work, where physical contact is deemed to be largely unnecessary. The long-term effects on society – both good and bad – might be considerable. ”

“ For every developer doing amazing, cutting-edge things and writing about it on the web, there are 99 that just get work done every day using boring technology that still works just fine. ”

“ A reflection on why we collect physical things and why the digital equivalents will never be the same. ”

“ This is both an examination of how religion and politics merged in the last generation, and a personal story of the author’s widening gap with his own family over issues of faith. ”

“ A beautiful contemplation of the physical book as art object, with pictures of people who collection for no other reason than that books make them happy. ”

“ Ultimately, climate change is a migration problem. Humanity can survive it, but lots of people are going to have to move, and that causes other problems. ”

“ Attractive people generally have easier lives. We all know this intuitively, but we rarely acknowledge it. ”

“ It’s a lot harder than you think to calculate how many marriages end in divorce. ”

“ There is a ‘tourist gaze,’ whereby history and cultural heritage is packaged for what the locals believe tourists want to see, and what tourists believe is ‘authentic.’ Local economies perpetuate this overemphasis and misrepresentation in exchange for tourist dollars. ”

“ In the early 2000s, gaming companies portrayed bullying as a feature of their platforms to be celebrated. ”

“ Fascinating perspective from a bartender who watched several of her regular customers spin into self-destruction. A meditation on the culpability of forced, unwitting enablers. ”

“ A contemplation about the distraction of modern life. It’s long, but that’s kind of the point ”

“ A Black woman appears to be White, and she details her upbringing, life experience, and some of what ‘other’ White people have said to her, thinking she was the same race as them. ”

“ Nigerian immigrants to the United States might be the most successful ethnic group in the country. ”

“ A man tells the story of a ‘domestic’ who lived with his family for years and raised him and his siblings. Later in his life, he realized his parents were keeping her as a slave. ”

“ U.S. anthropologists will sometimes refer to ‘America/American’ by another word in order to maintain professional distance and objectivity from it. ”

“ Horrifying but ultimately triumphant story of a young girl who fought back and kept the secret for decades. ”

“ Advances in technology haven’t really saved us any time. They’ve just given us more stuff and raised our expectations for how life should work. ”

“ Over-tourism is a new word to describe throngs of people clogging destination sites around the world. The larger trend at work is that more people are economically able to travel, especially the Chinese, which is a significant part of the world population. ”

“ This essay describes the ‘coordination problem,’ where spending money to solve a problem often requires coordination with other people to do the same, or the money is wasted. Conversely, spending money on yourself always leads to a benefit. ”

“ Humans are not generating enough replacements to maintain the world’s current population. ”

“ The middle-aged granddaughter of Roy Disney is surprisingly realistic about all the money she inherited and how that has charted the course of her life. ”

“ Without electricity, the world is a very different place, as recent history in Venezuela has shown. ”

“ A 2013 story about poverty in Appalachia. The author is a conservative, but he concedes that there are no easy solutions to what happens in the back woods. Hauntingly well-written. ”

“ A man’s father wanted three golf balls cryptically displayed at his funeral. This Reddit thread investigates the possible reasons why. ”

“ Not surprisingly, living in a 240 sq. ft. house works better on a glossy TV show than it does in real life. ”

“ A summary of the work of J.D. Unwin, who found a correlation between the sexual restraint of a culture and its productivity and ultimate survival. ”

“ An examination of why we’re predisposed toward conspiracy theories in general and how this is magnified by religion. ”

“ The biggest problem with the American health care system might be, well, Americans. We are terrible at safeguarding our own health and terrible at interacting with health care providers. ”