A while ago I read something on Twitter that got me thinking. The tweet read something along the lines of: “What kind of sci-fi dystopia are we living in where robots taking all our jobs is considered a problem?” A slightly more positive spin on this is: “The problem isn't that robots are taking over our jobs, the problem is that we've created a world where that's somehow a bad thing.” These feel like somewhat glib responses to increasingly complex questions about inequality and automation; however, what they actually ask are fundamental questions about what we value and how we structure society. In essence: “Why should we work?”
Month: March 2021
Ep #71 Entrepreneurism in Academia and Ethics on The Ground: This Month of TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #71 Entrepreneurism in Academia and Ethics on The Ground: This Month of TFS This week on TFS, the Strangers continue with our new panel format and dive deeper into the topics of entrepreneurism and ethics. They talk about how universities and by extension academia is becoming more and more business-like … Continue reading Ep #71 Entrepreneurism in Academia and Ethics on The Ground: This Month of TFS
Boob Boxes: Post-Mastectomy Prosthetics and the Artifice of Breast Cancer
I chose to go flat. But I almost wasn’t allowed to. This is largely due to the unacknowledged psychological tension that underlies deeply gendered illnesses: that it is possible to have one’s gender or sex taken away by disease or disability; literally eaten by cancer and its aftermath. The sick person is then framed as one who has been robbed of the “natural” trappings of motherhood, wife-dom, and feminine sexuality. The aesthetics of breast cancer therefore remained fixated on a loss of idealized womanhood.
Ep # 70 Familial Ties and Family Debts: Susan Ellison on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Bolivia
The Familiar Strange · Ep# 70 Familial Ties and Family Debts: Susan Ellison on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Bolivia This week we bring you an interview with Dr Susan Ellison from Wellesley College. In this interview, Familiar Stranger Alex asks about her experiences working in the city of El Alto and the neighbouring town of … Continue reading Ep # 70 Familial Ties and Family Debts: Susan Ellison on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Bolivia
Taking Stock in California: Inequity & Grief
Having meaningful conversations about systemic racism and social immobility can connect people as much as the act of absorbing someone else’s microcosm of grief and relating to it. Ideally, I think, the conversations should encompass both the macro issues and the micro everyday scenes: acknowledging the social values that might hinder social change and communicating the process of witnessing everyday pain that reminds us of our shared humanity.
The Familiar Strange 