My Halloween costume in 2024 honored San, the heroine of “Princess Mononoke.” While she is flawed and biased, she is passionate and driven, and no one can deny her strength. But the concept of “strong” female characters raises many questions about what that word means and how it is portrayed in popular culture. Director Hayao Miyazaki has a perspective more grounded in reality than most.
When I first saw an Earthship on the Discovery Channel in the ‘90s, I immediately wanted to live in one. While I now recognize that there are some cons in addition to the pros, I am still inspired by the radical and thoughtful design toward net zero energy use and waste. And I was delighted to stay in one recently and learn more about it first-hand.
I have given up Facebook before, but I’ve never done anything as extreme as a digital detox. I recognize that my relationship with technology (especially social media) is unhealthy, so in the coming weeks, I hope to make my technological interactions more mindful and assess what works for me and what doesn’t. Ultimately, these are tools for me to use, not the other way around.
They say that low expectations are the key to happiness – and there is some truth to that. While I didn’t have low expectations for Italy, I tried to keep them realistic. As is the case when traveling, we encountered inconveniences, setbacks, and even some scary moments during those two weeks, but keeping perspective and flexibility helped us laugh about them, if only in retrospect.
I recently heard that the recycler near my house was accepting plastics #1 through #7, and I was incredibly skeptical. Plastics are difficult and expensive to recycle, which is why they almost exclusively become trash, winding up in the landfill, the incinerator, or the ocean. While this new program isn’t recycling the plastic, it is repurposing them for the time being.
In the time of the internet, information is at the tip of our fingers, but how that information is prioritized in reaching us is less straightforward. Our internet searches and social media feeds are individually tailored based on our unique data profiles – and the implications are much broader than what we see. How we are informed impacts how we act, and how we vote.
Over the past three weeks, we’ve looked at the story of DuPont’s production of the chemical compound C8 despite studies that indicated danger to humans. It appears their replacement chemical Gen-X may cause some of the same problems that C8 did. Additionally although C8 can no longer be produced, it is still present in pre-2015 cookware and other products. So what do we do?
I once heard someone say that turning on your faucet is the biggest act of blind faith you can imagine. Perfluorinated compounds, like those used in the production of Teflon and other non-stick, water-resistant, and grease-resistant products have shown up in drinking water all over the country (not just near DuPont plants) and in materials in every country on the planet.
When I mentioned to my dad that I was researching DuPont, Teflon, and impacts on health, he told me that when he was a kid, he lived next to their Louisville works. I was horrified as he told me how he and his friends would sneak onto the dumping grounds for fun… and how many of those friends have now died from brain cancer.
Over the summer, Christian and I watched a fantastic documentary on Netflix called “The Devil We Know” about a chemical compound used in the production of Teflon and DuPont’s role in covering up potential negative health impacts. With the release of the movie “Dark Waters” in theaters this coming weekend, it seemed like a good time to dive into the details around the subject.