Friday, November 22, 2013

Weekend Reading: The Outrage Edition

Roxane Gay had an interesting article at Salon about why we need internet outrage.

So I thought I'd link to some of the things that are outraging me lately.

The growing level of economic inequality, and the way we let corporations like WalMart and MacDonalds off the hook, saying that they "can't afford" to pay decent wages. Yet somehow they can afford massive salaries for their top executives. We all talk about it being a free market and forget that we have the power to set some of the rules of that market.

The fact that we are heading toward a post-antibiotic age, and we refuse to take steps to stop it. If that doesn't outrage you, read this news story from New Zealand which should scare you. Some patients are already living in the post-antibiotic age, and it isn't pretty. (One quibble with the first article: there are companies working on this problem. Cubist comes to mind, and they recently bought two San Diego biotechs working in the area: Optimer and Trius.)

The NSA and security theater and the spineless/clueless politicians who have enabled this. I think the people charged with identifying threats need some new tools in this age, but we should get to have a debate on what is acceptable. And that debate needs to include people who actually know how the internet works.

Misogyny and the way women are told to just ignore it and not worry about it because most internet trolls don't act on their threats.

Sexual Harassment, and how so many men choose to not see it and try to find "alternate explanations" for the things women experience.

The way some men can't stand the idea of having a job title that a lot of women also have, so they come up with another title for the same damn work.

George Zimmerman and the fact that only know are we taking away his damn guns (and only temporarily). Enough said.

Umm... happy weekend? Sorry for the downer set of links. I'll try for some happy stuff next week.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:40 PM

    Ours are mostly literary, but um, a fair amount of outrage as well. (Tune in sat morning for the full story)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it was a combination of a lot of the above sorts of things that triggered my brain to write again. Just .. shaking my head over our world's wrongs today. It seems almost insurmountable. It's not, but it feels that way.

    ReplyDelete

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