The Top 5: Poverty, Futurism, Mercy Workers
Also, an update on our Substack and Podcast
Hi, Friends! The Wear Household is in a bit of disarray this week. On Friday, Michael broke his leg in three places, while I, Melissa, am out in Arizona with our kids with a double ear infection, pink eye, and a norovirus that continues to boomerang around the house. Michael will need surgery as soon as we can get it, and recovery will be long. We have friends and family helping us currently, but the podcast and the Substack will be delayed this week. We would love your prayer!
The Top 5 articles for your week:
Welcome to your weekly edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week. We also greatly encourage gift subscriptions!
“Why Poverty Persists in America” (NYT)
Because this op-ed made waves this last week as a prominent sociologist, Matthew Desmond, argues that fighting poverty in America has stagnated due to exploitation of the poor. This response over at Vox says that Desmond is measuring poverty incorrectly.
“The Mercy Workers” (The Marshall Project)
Because “In the midst of that impasse, I’ve come to see mitigation specialists like Baldwin as ambassadors from a future where we think more richly about violence. For the last few decades, they have documented the traumas, policy failures, family dynamics and individual choices that shape the lives of people who kill. Leaders in the field say it’s impossible to accurately count mitigation specialists — there is no formal license — but there may be fewer than 1,000. They’ve actively avoided media attention, and yet the stories they uncover occasionally emerge in Hollywood scripts and Supreme Court opinions. Over three decades, mitigation specialists have helped drive down death sentences from more than 300 annually in the mid-1990s to fewer than 30 in recent years.”
“This Is The Dystopian Reality Of Being a Woman in Afghanistan Right Now” (Vice)
Because “‘The situation in Afghanistan as a woman is the same as a prisoner who is only allowed to breathe and walk around one room,’ Fozia told VICE World News over WhatsApp. Her name has been changed and her identity is being withheld for security reasons. ‘It's very difficult for me because I was a working woman, I was studying, I was taking my kids outside, I was going to the market, I was going to park with my family, with my husband.’”
“A New Drug Switched Off My Appetite. What’s Left?” (Wired)
Because what do we do in a “post-hunger” age?
“Can There Be a Conservative Futurism?” (The New Atlantis)
Because John Ehrett offers a conservative vision for how we deal with the problems of social media and technology. “Conservative critics of Big Tech must offer a vision of technology that goes beyond today’s policy concerns, which disproportionately involve the Internet, and that focuses on material, not merely digital, creativity. This vision must be postliberal but not premodern: It must avoid the liberal association of progress with secularization, and be rooted in abiding principles of human flourishing. In more theological terms, it must be a vision of technological progress rooted in eternity.”
So sorry to hear of your family health challenges! Prayers for full recoveries for all.
Praying for you and Michael and family