Reading Recap: May 2026
American Bulk by Emily Mester
We Americans love to consume. Mester shares her family’s story centered around what they buy and keep. She shares different psychological reactions to past scarcity and how we manage that fear. This book of linked essays will make you think about your own purchasing and accumulation of stuff.
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Home is the center of life. Without stabling housing, building any sort of foundation is difficult. In the U.S., far too many people are facing housing insecurity. They are trapped in a system that profits off of them through higher rents, fees, and penalties. It would only take a small amount of money to resolve many of these major issues. In fact, it would likely be a net savings in spending by reducing waster cost in other areas. Desmond writes about his time living amongst the housing insecure as well as the landlords that server them.
Your Face Belongs To Us by Kasmir Hill
The origins of facial recognition tools and the start up company who dared cross the Rubicon to bring it mainstream. Unchangeable bio markers forever linked to your digital history threaten the hope of any privacy in the future. Advertisers and governments alike a happy to apply this tech as they see fit, often without the public’s knowledge or any sort of accountability.
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble
While this book is bit dated, the lessons about how technology is not neutral apply more than ever today. We often treat Google search as a public resource even though it is run by a for profit private advertising company. What’s profitable for search results is often harmful for non-majority groups. The same concerns are present in large language models. Search is easier to understand the generative AI, so it is worth looking at these lessons from older technology to better understand the harms that may emerge in new tech.
