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The Police Act Like We Are Nothing (Melissa Gira Grant for The Appeal)
“Decriminalization has always been urgent,” said Nina Luo, a coalition member from the advocacy group VOCAL-NY. But the campaign has added urgency now because the legislative crackdown left people in the sex trades “in a more economically vulnerable place, which means criminalization and policing is having a larger impact on people’s lives,” she said.
Was One Of The Top Doctors In My Field. I Was Also An Opioid Addict. (Kayla Webley Adler for Marie Claire)
Soon, her husband was asking her to get some from the hospital for him. “I didn’t have to ask anyone to write me a prescription; I had absolute access,” Alison says. She resisted at first but gave in a few times, bringing home fentanyl left over in a syringe at the end of surgery. (The needle is uncontaminated, as it is injected into an intravenous line rather than directly into a person.) There’s an official protocol for the disposal of unused drugs at the end of an operation. Waste procedures vary from hospital to hospital, but generally doctors are supposed to have a nurse or assistant physically watch them drain the syringe into a sink or trash can. But in a fast-paced hospital environment, doctors will often ask someone to watch who isn’t really paying attention. “It’s pretty easy,” Alison says. “No one stands there and looks.” In hospitals where the person serving as a witness has to enter a code, doctors commonly know nurses’ codes and enter them even if no witness is present. (To prevent this, some hospitals now require both the physician and the witness to identify themselves using a thumbprint scanner.)
The Minnesota Murderess (Christine Seifert for The Atavist)
So began the trials of Ann Bilansky. There were two: the legal one and the one staged in the court of public opinion. Often it was hard to tell which was which. Newspapers across Minnesota and as far away as the East Coast wrote breathless accounts of the purported murder and subsequent courtroom drama. People read those stories, staining their fingers with ink, because they were thirsty for news of the devilish Mrs. Bilansky. Like any good gothic novel or penny dreadful, the story was thrilling—all the more because it was true.
The Master of Spin (Lyz Lenz for Columbia Journalism Review)
And he has done all that without uttering what is usually considered a lie, which of course depends on your definition of a fact. And your definition of the truth. And the definition of a lie. Which is why talking with Michael Sitrick is a confusing game. That’s why he’s good. That’s why he’s scary. And that is why he’s the perfect mirror to a media industry in crisis. Sitrick hewed the contrarian take when Slate was just a twinkle in Michael Kinsley’s eye. Sitrick was using the internet and social networks to stoke distrust in the media when Donald Trump was still hosting WrestleMania. Seeing journalism through the eyes of someone so good at manipulating it might offer us a window into understanding what’s gone so wrong. Or maybe it offers us nothing; maybe he was just spinning me, too.
Slippery When Wet (Kat Stoeffel for Elle)
We’re attempting to hike Breakneck Ridge, a vertiginous slab of rock that looks down onto Bannerman Island. Leaf-peeping season has come and gone; the dramatic river banks are mostly brown, and Bannerman Island is empty. Across the dark gray river is Orange County, where Graswald has been living on parole for the past year, working for room and board at a small camp with ties to her church.
Photo: David S. Ferry III