Category Archives: Death

Reading Lists: Residential Schools and Canadian Colonialism

Content warning: this article covers topics of colonialism and genocide in Canada. In early June of 2021 news reports emerged about the remains of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. A couple of weeks later, 751 more children’s graves were counted at Marieval Indian Residential School […]
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Reading Lists: Waste Colonialism and Palestine

When there’s conflict, academics and teachers will often put together a reading list or syllabus to show the breadth and depth of knowledge on a topic that is catching broad public attention. These reading lists are designed to add context, nuance, and history to public discussions (e.g. The Standing Rock Syllabus (2016); The Environmental Data […]
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COVID-19 measures and industrial workplaces

The obsession that media has had with small businesses has hidden the most aggressive public health measures are missing the biggest driver of the pandemic: large industrial workplaces.

Roundup: Waste & COVID-19

What do we know about the relationships between waste and COVID-19? Some figures and insights are emerging, but given that we’re in the thick of the pandemic and the expressions of a global pandemic will still vary greatly by region, type of waste, and change over time, any knowledge will be both partial and early. […]
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Waste is not “matter out of place”

Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.

Yes, Genocide (a primer on the term) #MMIWG

For Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term, genocide was the effort to destroy a group as a group. #MMIWG

Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat

A Twitter essay by Mary Annaïse Heglar: Sorry, Y’all, but Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat

Not all marine fish eat plastics

The Gulf Stream, which curves along the southern shore of Newfoundland, is saturated with plastics. Fish that feed from the surface waters, where plastics tend to accumulate, are in an ideal position to ingest plastics. But what about the bigger fish that eat these fish, especially when we eat those predators? In 2016, our laboratory […]
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Science with heart

Conservation biologist Alex Bond on dealing with pollution, harm, and suffering as a scientist.

Consider the Vulture: An Ethical Approach to Roadkill

After riding along with Bill that day, I started wondering about the morality of turning dead deer into “zoological garbage.”[3] If how we treat the dead influences how we treat the living, then the most obvious question is whether this is a respectful way to treat the dead.