Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Inventing transparent wood, saving a language, how emoji is changing the way we communicate and more in this week's look at the web

1. How Empowerment Became a Purchasable Product Originally used by social workers to encourage marginalized communities to rise up from poverty and oppression, the term “empowerment” has taken on completely different definitions in recent years. It’s been transformed into a mass-marketing tactic—especially when pertaining to women—flaunted by corporations (like the #StrengthHasNoGender campaign from Brawny paper towels, a company owned by Koch Brothers who have spent …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Inventing new products for women's health, driving a wooden concept car, photos of SoCal's modernist architecture and more in our look at the web

1. Whales Are Eating Our Trash A recent surge in whale beachings (over 30 cases in Europe so far in 2016) is causing major concern for researchers and marine biologists. Not long ago, a necropsy of a beached whale revealed huge amounts of car parts and plastic waste, including buckets and netting in its stomach. Though the ocean waste may not have been the primary …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Vale Zaha Hadid, a new high-speed train in Japan, Siberian unicorns and more in this week's look around the web

1. Architect Zaha Hadid Dies at 65 Dame Zaha Hadid, widely considered one of the world’s greatest living architects, died at the age of 65 from a heart attack. Her sudden and shocking passing ends an award-winning career in which she produced some of the world’s most ground-breaking works, including the MAXXI Museum, Spain’s Bridge Pavilion, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Museum and the London Olympic Aquatic …