Saturday, January 02, 2016

Christmas holidays cultural diet

Lots of reading and discovering done over the Christmas holidays. Many of these come from the Bloomberg Jealousy list (a list of long form articles from other publishers that Bloomberg writers wish they had written) and the Best of Books 2015 lists that are ubiquitous at this time of the year.

The Myth of the Ethical Shopper, by Michael Hobbes (Huffington Post)
We can never really know exactly where that cheap tee-shirt we bought came from: on the maze of the world's production and logistics machine. It made me think that the only way out is to, quite simply, consume less.

Learning to speak lingerie, by Peter Hessler (New Yorker)
A fascinating article looking at recent Chinese immigrants to Egypt, who somehow end up setting up lingerie shops. Along the way, it covers cultural differences in making business, women's liberation and expectations, language barrier, local marriage customs and more.