Before we delve into the posts we’re reading and loving elsewhere on the internet, don’t miss Natalia Antonova’s advice on leveraging time-tested Russian propaganda techniques to avoid being called to account for stealing your roommate’s burrito.
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‘The Kids Who Are Cleared to Leave Psychiatric Hospitals—But Can’t‘ (Duaa Eldeib for The Atlantic)
What happens when a young child urgently needs psychiatric treatment, struggles to access care, and then ends up trapped in the system? For foster kids in Illinois, this is an uncomfortably personal problem and a profound failure of the system.
As I found during a four-month investigation for ProPublica Illinois, Brasfield is one of hundreds of children in the care of DCFS who are held each year inside psychiatric hospitals for weeks or months, even though they have been cleared to leave. Instead of moving on to a foster home or residential treatment center—a less restrictive facility where children live while receiving treatment—these children have languished in secure mental-health facilities, the consequence of the child-welfare agency’s failure to find them appropriate placements.
‘Hell on Wheels‘ (Kiera Feldman for Voice of America/ProPublica)
If you think waste hauling is boring…
Michael Maldonado worked for 12 years at Sanitation Salvage, where he earned the nickname “Mikey Cardboard” because one of his routes required picking up lots of paper for recycling. Maldonado said the scrutiny of Sanitation Salvage is long overdue. But, like many current and former workers, he believes the Squitieris — who are major donors to the local Bronx Democratic Party machine — are too powerful and connected to face any serious consequences.
‘My So-Called (Millennial) Entitlement‘ (Stephanie Georgopulos for Medium)
For all the talk about millennial entitlement, are millennials really as selfish as you think they are?
Neuroscience has confirmed that you were making sense of these events with an underdeveloped brain. Along with your emotional maturity and your hormones, it’ll be a work-in-progress until you’re around 25. And the same way the small hurts of being small can still seep into your present — the way your grandmother eyed you with disgust when you went for a second helping — the chipping away of every institution you were raised to believe in can have unintended consequences.
‘Meet the New Mormons‘ (Sarah Scoles for Longreads)
Scoles revisits the land of her childhood in a powerful piece about queerness, faith, and expectations.
Aside from talking to my parents, I haven’t really had a meaningful conversation with a Mormon in years. I’m nervous they’ll think I’m an adherent — or a pariah. I’m nervous they’ll think I’m judging them for having the faith I don’t, or that they’ll judge me for not having it. I’m nervous that they — or my mom — will rip off scabs that I thought were long-faded scars.
‘Why we may never know if British troops committed war crimes in Iraq‘ (Samira Shackle for The Guardian)
People who commit war crimes should be held accountable for it, right? So why does that feel less and less possible?
But over the past three years, the question of whether British soldiers committed crimes in Iraq, and the scale on which it happened, has been largely displaced by outrage over attempts to investigate them. In the media, rhetoric has shifted radically – from horror at the alleged crimes of British soldiers, to outrage against human rights lawyers pursuing such allegations. “Mr Cameron MUST stop these vile witch-hunts against our brave troops,” read a 2016 column in the Daily Mail. Conservative politicians have echoed this line. David Cameron, then prime minister, promised to stop “spurious” claims. Defence secretary Michael Fallon criticised “unscrupulous” lawyers; armed forces minister Penny Mordaunt described these lawyers’ actions as the “enemy of justice”. When Cameron left office, his successor, Theresa May, lambasted “activist, leftwing human rights lawyers”.
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