Links for the week ending 18 August 2013

"The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans." Carol D. Leonnig with a companion piece to dude Barton Gellman's latest surveillance bombshell at The Washington Post.

"What, fundamentally, are SWAT teams for?" At The New Yorker, a brief follow-up by Sarah Stillman on one of the issues raised by her piece last week on civil forfeiture. (Hat tip to Jody T.)

"'To say that black people in general are somehow more suspicious-looking, or criminal in appearance, than white people is not a race-neutral explanation for racial disparities in NYPD stops: it is itself a racially biased explanation. This explanation is especially troubling because it echoes the stereotype that black men are more likely to engage in criminal conduct than others.'" Kristen Gwynne at Alternet covers Judge Shira Scheindlin's historic ruling finding that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy violates the Fourth Amendment.

Egypt goes up in flames. At the Wall Street Journal, Maria Abi-Babib and Leila Elmergawi report on the violence of the government's brutal attack on supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood — and the retaliatory attacks by Islamists against Egypt's Coptic Christians.

'If I see you again, I’ll shoot you in the leg,' a police officer told my colleagues, Sharaf al-Hourani and Mansour Mohamed, and me. Security forces on the roof of a nearby building watched us through binoculars. Two helicopters circled overhead. Everything The Washington Post's Abigail Hauslohner has filed from Cairo this week is a must-read.

"'The aid that we give to Egypt is coming back to the U.S. and keeping 30 of my people working,' Baron told me. Specifically, he said, 30 of his 57 employees are working on parts for the M1A1 Abrams tanks that we give to Egypt." From earlier this month, NPR's Julia Simon reports on the closed circle of money-transfers that ensures that the United States will keep sending military hardware like tanks and fighter jets to Egypt.

"But at a time when the Islamic State is undergoing a revival in Iraq, killing more people there than at any time since 2008 and staging a spectacular jailbreak last month that freed hundreds of militants, the push into Syria signifies the transformation of the group into a regional entity." Liz Sly at The Washington Post reporting on how Iraq's Al-Qaeda organization has successfully pushed into northern Syria.

"The first time I dictated a post that mentioned 'Gitmo,' the military’s nickname for Guantánamo, it wrote 'Got Milk.'" The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg is one of the few people whose possession of Google Glass seems to me like an excellent thing.

"Since May, when Mr. Obama said at the White House that sexual offenders in the military ought to be 'prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,' lawyers in dozens of assault cases have argued that Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to 'unlawful command influence,' tainting trials and creating unfair circumstances for clients as a result." Jennifer Steinhauer reports for the NYT on This Week In Creative Ways To Avoid Punishing Rapists In The Military.

"Until last week, Norfolk, Virginia police classified sexual assault claims to be 'unfounded' — or not valid — by default." By Rebecca Leber at ThinkProgress. (Hat tip to Jill Heather.)

"Two things happened to me the same month: I was beaten up in front of parliament for the first time and I realised that in all my interactions, including professional ones, I no longer felt I was perceived as a journalist first: I am now a person with a pink triangle." At the Guardian, journalist Masha Gessen explains why she and her family are fleeing Russia.

"I pointed out that he and his boyfriend had been photographed in Afisha’s kaming aut issue and used their full names. That was four months before the law passed, he explained. Since then, 'everyone’s gone savage here.'" Julia Ioffe at the New Republic with "Gay Life in Russia: Eight Horrific Stories."

"That's because, as the group drove through the mountains, they saw black effigies hanging outside service stations." From The Race Card Project at NPR, Michele Norris tells the story of a teenager's journey to The March on Washington in August, 1963.

"A 2007 federal court order required New York to provide inmates with "serious" mental illness more treatment while in solitary. And a follow-up law enacted in 2011 all but bans such inmates from being put there altogether. But something odd has happened: Since protections were first added, the number of inmates diagnosed with severe mental illness has dropped." Christie Thompson reports for ProPublica about the suicide of an inmate in solitary confinement.

"With this in mind, is it fair for Anthony to be denied life-saving treatment because he is a black male and therefore the target of discriminatory discipline policies and a structurally racist criminal justice system?" Rania Khalek on the shocking case of an Atlanta hospital denying a place on the transplant list to a 15-year-old black boy for "non-compliance," a denial since reversed after public outcry.

"By law, Branco should have been notified of the delinquent 26 cents before coverage was terminated, and that didn’t happen, Resnick said. They should have been given an option to pay." On the other hand, what's shocking when you can be denied a transplant over 26¢? By Karin Price Mueller at NJ.com. (Hat tip to Jill Heather.)

"Instead of expressing frustration about their struggles, Silva found, they were adopting an entirely new definition of adulthood in which success was measured not by marriage and homeownership, but by defining and conquering emotional problems, mental illness, family chaos, and addiction." At The Boston Globe, Ruth Graham interviews author Jennifer Silva on her new book on the surprising coping strategies of working-class young adults in an era of inadequate job opportunities and enormous student debt.

"Some opponents of the practice argue that admissions should simply be based on concrete, meritocratic standards. However, as the study reveals, what is considered meritocratic to some may simply be based on what benefits the group with whom they most identify." Rebecca Klein at HuffPo on a study that found that white people changed their mind about the importance of academic achievement on college admissions when they were told that a disproportionate number of Asian-American applicants would be admitted on that basis.

"Richard Beasley had believed that no one would come looking for the divorced, unsettled, middle-aged men he was targeting. But he should have known better." I am more than a bit dubious about the whole end of men thing, but this story in The Atlantic by Hanna Rosin about a serial killer preying on vulnerable older white men is striking nonetheless for what it reveals about changing blue-collar life.

"Boys, on average, spend two fewer hours doing household chores per week than girls do (they play two hours more). And if they live in households where children are compensated for doing chores, boys make and save more money." Soraya Chemaly at Salon on the "wage gap" that starts in early childhood.

"From accusations of plagiarism and erasure to the current controversy surrounding disgraced male feminist Hugo Schwyzer (in which he openly admitted to using his relationships with white feminist bloggers to harass and silence women of color), the feud between female bloggers of color and their high-profile white counterparts has enough drama and intrigue to fill the first seasons of a reality show. And while the takedowns make for great entertainment, the pain behind them is palpable." At Salon, Jamie Nesbitt Golden writes about #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

"Our equity does not lie in a 'colourless' (which really means 'white') society. It doesn’t lie in a few people achieving a great deal, in the hopes that their success will trickle down. It lies in the same solutions that will work to address all oppression." Jessie-Lane Metz at The Toast, "On Oprah and Transcending Race."

"Running in the '90 years and over' category of the women’s 100 metres, Mitsu Morita of Yatsushiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture smashed the previous Japanese record of 50.9 seconds by completing the race in an incredible 23.8 seconds!!" By Cara Glegg at RocketNews24. Now we all have somebody we can want to be when we grow up. (Via @pourmecoffee.)

"The olinguito is the first mammalian carnivore species to be newly identified in the Americas in 35 years, according to Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. New mammal! Ladies, start your gif-engines! (Hat tip to Jill Heather.)

I have loved pretty much every one of Mallory Ortberg's Texts From series, but this one is sublime.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides –-
do you mean Harris?
the caretaker?

"Lane, and to an extent her mother, were affronted by taxes, the New Deal, and what they saw as Americans’ growing reliance on Washington. Eventually, as Lane became increasingly antigovernment, she would pursue her politics more openly, writing a strident political treatise and playing an important if little-known role inspiring the movement that eventually coalesced into the Libertarian Party" Do not miss Christine Woodside's fascinating essay at The Boston Globe on the Libertarian roots of Little House on the Prairie.

Need a book or two to finish out the month? Vela magazine presents The Unlisted List — more creative nonfiction by women than you could work your way through in a decade. Or a lifetime.

"As ambulances and police cars came screaming up the hill, past the demolition derby of wrecked cars to where Georgia and Patterson sobbed in the grand arched entryway to their palace, it was just another day at the Inmans', home to the poorest rich kids in the world." Finally, for anyone who consoled their own childhood miseries with a well-thumbed copy of Little Gloria… Happy At Last, here is Sabrina Rubin Erdely's masterful longread about the traumas and abuse visited upon the last living heirs to the Duke fortune.

Links for the week ending 11 August 2013

Fair warning: people who have cheerful stories to tell all appear to be on vacation this month. So abandon hope, all ye who click here. To start: "'Where are we?' Boatright remembers thinking. 'Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?' Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears." Sarah Stillman's enraging, must-read reporting for The New Yorker about "civil forfeiture" — extortion schemes run by law enforcement — in the United States.

"For a while, the residents of Manitoba Colony thought demons were raping the town’s women." This may be the most horrifying thing you read all year. By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky at VICE. (Hat tip to Jill Heather.)

"It is a sound you hear with your whole body, not just your ears. Limbs and muscles and heart and mind tense as the fast, angry projectile rushes along its arc, a path you can almost picture in your mind’s eye as you hold your breath and wonder where it will fall. It crashes, you exhale, then feel almost guilty for being glad that it exploded somewhere else, perhaps on someone else." Rania Abouzeid reports for The New Yorker from a Syrian family's basement refuge during nightly aerial bombardment.

"Mr Bagash has a question for the person who ordered the drone strike: 'What did my daughter ever do to them? She was only eight years old.' And then a bleak observation. 'They think we're rats. We're not. We're human beings.'" Yalda Hakim at the BBC on American drone attacks in Yemen. (Via Tori Rose DeGhett.)

"…the complete opposite of a generous, confident Ramadan visit of a year ago." From last week, Carol Rosenberg reports on Ramadan at Guantánamo for the Miami Herald.

More "Sketches from the Trial of Bradley Manning," from Molly Crabapple, this time at Paris Review.

"'It’s crazy pants – you can quote me,' said Will McCants, a former State Department adviser on counterterrorism who this month joins the Brookings Saban Center as the director of its project on U.S. relations with the Islamic world." Hannah Allam at McClatchy reports on experts and analysts responding to the temporary closure of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies because of an unspecified terror threat. (Via Loveday Morris.) Her follow-up piece with dude Adam Baron is also worth a read: "Instead, the organization, no longer dependent on the leadership of a single personality, is growing, with authority now spread among leaders not just in Yemen but also in Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Egypt’s Sinai. The branches that operate in those regions aren’t affiliates, the experts say, they’re al Qaida."

"'I’m taking a break from email,' said Levison. 'If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either.'" From that bastion of the liberal media, Forbes, Kashmir Hill reports on the closure of the encrypted email service used by Edward Snowden. (Via Kim Zetter.) Also Amy Davidson at The New Yorker comments on the same case: "Every time the Administration says not to worry—that surveillance does not 'target' Americans—the word seems to mean less and less, to the point where one expects it to argue that an American does not count as its target—with the legal protections that word implies—unless he is wearing a dartboard with a bull’s eye around his neck."

"The resulting photo-op—Obama looking forlornly into the distance, Putin slouched and sullen—said it all: they looked like the aging couple at the neighboring table, intently working on their food and eavesdropping on your conversation because they had nothing to support one of their own." Julia Ioffe on the geopolitical implications of President Obama's decision to cancel a September summit with Vladimir Putin.

"For five years, Vokes had inspected TransCanada projects across North America and, too often for his liking, found they were poorly constructed and didn’t meet engineering codes. He’d tried to get his superiors to address the problems, to no avail, and was fired last year. In East Texas, he found that TransCanada hadn’t changed its way—even on what may be the most controversial pipeline ever proposed for North America. At the Texas Observer, Priscilla Mosqueda reports on the findings of a whistleblower and landowners near the Keystone XL pipeline.

"Two young children in Pennsylvania were banned from talking about fracking for the rest of their lives under a gag order imposed under a settlement reached by their parents with a leading oil and gas company." Suzanne Goldenberg at the Guardian with… seriously, I can't even.

"From the start of Floyd v. City of New York, the mayor’s office has attempted to discredit the assigned judge, Shira Scheindlin, claiming that she regularly rules against the police, since she has decided for against them [sic] in other stop-and-frisk cases." Former New York State Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman comments for The Nation on a smear campaign against the judge deciding the stop-and-frisk case against the NYPD — and on the importance of empathy in the courts.

"With so much instability in Mexico, Los Zetas were increasingly looking for opportunities to launder illicit earnings through legitimate U.S. businesses. They extorted the vulnerable while rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and politically connected on both sides of the border, looking for enablers to facilitate their laundering of the endless flow of dirty money generated by the insatiable U.S. drug market. People like Tyler Graham." More knock-out reporting from the Texas Observer this week, this one by Melissa del Bosque and Jazmine Ulloa.

"This lack of awareness, coupled with numerous Obamacare regulations — especially the requirement that most Americans have health insurance or pay federal fines — is expected to create prime opportunities for illegal scammers and legal products that consumers mistakenly confuse for legitimate health insurance." Kate Pickert at Time on some of the less savory consequences of the Affordable Care Act. (Via Kayla Webley.)

"While there is some evidence that the recent Department of Labor requirement to reveal 401(k) plan fees to participants—something that was not even enacted till last year—has brought expenses down, knowledge does not leave consumers in the driver’s seat. If you discover your company plan is sub-par — the fund choices are poor, or the expenses are too high — all you can do is complain to your human resources department and hope they decide to change plans." Helaine Olen at Salon/Alter Net asks whether 401(k) plans have benefitted anyone in American society besides the financial services industry. (Hat tip to Jody T.)

"'We had no idea what we were takeing. Here your stuff back we hope that you guys can continue to make a difference in peoples live. God bless,' the note read (complete with misspellings)." Your small inoculation against despair from the week. From Christina Sterbenz at Business Insider. (Via Kristen Gwynne.)

"A literate person backed into a corner with something he desperately wanted to prove; that’s what it took to entrench the notion that women’s libido made them into witches, that any woman with a sex drive could be worthy of death. That’s the chaos of history. Catherine Nicholas at The Toast on the foundational text of witch-persecution, the Malleus Maleficarum.

"Perhaps, a more analogous comparison is a witch hunt, suggests anthropologist Gabriella Coleman. 'For me what comes to most to mind as an interesting parallel is the extraordinary and very public demonization of women as witches during [sic],' she said. 'They were burned in very public ritual acts.'" Rebecca Greenfield asks "Are Internet Trolls the Modern Incarnation of Witch Hunters?" in an interesting (if under-proofed) short piece at The Atlantic. (Via Emily Bazelon.)

"The women, like Fernandez, say the former chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee used his significant power and credentials to access military sexual assault survivors, who they say are less likely to complain." From Kyung Lah at CNN, a report on how San Diego's mayor targeted women for sexual harassment. (Via Irin Carmon.)

"After about half an hour of holding the sweet boy’s hand, I suddenly, urgently, needed to let go. I wriggled my fingers free, only to have him clutch them again." At Aeon, Virginia Hughes writes about a study tracking the development of Romanian orphans. (Yes, it is just as depressing as that précis suggests.) (Hat tip to Jody T.)

Roxanne Gay interviews her mother at The Hairpin:

Did you ever regret your decision to stay home?

No. As they say, for women, the choices are often cruel—but in truth, I’ve never felt I sacrificed.

Why?

Because the result is good. I did what I wanted to do.

Did you feel independent?

Absolutely. I was. I felt it.

In a perfect world, there would be ten articles like this for every one article about the work/parenting balance for women in the 1%. (As for the 1% article, you guys, don't you think there should have been more inquiry about, you know, cupcakes?)

"Democracy had been saved, and Lamarr—sex pot, shoplifter, crazed aging star—was in no small part responsible." Also at The Hairpin, Helen Anne Petersen on the agony and the ecstasy of Hollywood glamor queen Hedy Lamarr.

"Despite being packaged like a story, sports have no author to blame for plot threads left hanging loose, because that shit is actually happening." Finally, at The Toast, an amazing work of cartoon philosophy by Molly Brooks. On sports.

Links for the week ending 4 August 2013

I was really not feeling the internets this week, so you'll have to pardon the list for being thinner and more depressing than usual. Bradley Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, but still faces a sentence of up to 136 years in prison after being found guilty of stealing government property and violating the Espionage Act. Journalist Alexa O'Brien has the breakdown of the verdict in chart form here. Kim Zetter writes up the verdict at Wired. At the Guardian, Molly Crabapple describes and illustrates the scene from the courtroom.

"The former high-ranking National Security Agency analyst now sells iPhones. The top intelligence officer at the CIA lives in a motor home outside Yellowstone National Park and spends his days fly-fishing for trout. The FBI translator fled Washington for the West Coast." Emily Wax at The Washington Post on the fate of less well-known government whistleblowers.

"Last month, the White House told ProPublica it was still 'looking into' the apparent massacre. Now it says it has concluded its investigation – but won’t make it public." Chilling short Cora Currier piece at ProPublica about the fate of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the mass graves of surrendering Taliban forces. Note the bit about the end about how the lead investigator was sent to prison…

"The defendants’ opinions and experiences are classified—especially their memories of rendition. Connell added, 'The government can only classify information it owns or controls. By classifying the ‘observations and experiences’ of the military commission defendants, the government is claiming something new and horrifying: the power to own and control the minds of the people it has tortured.'" Molly Crabapple again, this time at Vice, with a long piece about Guantánamo.

"I realized that between heroic resistance to and fatalistic acceptance of oppression, there was ample space for coping strategies and creative improvisation. Much of human life was and is carried on in this fertile middle ground." Lest we labor under the impression that our historical moment is without precedent, Natalie Zemon Davis writes at the NYRB blog about how her career was shaped by the restrictions placed on her after she spoke out about the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952.

"Many of the FBI’s records list only arrests and not the outcomes of those cases, such as convictions. Consumer groups say that missing information often results in job applicants who are wrongfully rejected." While "Ban the Box" may be gaining traction at the state level, a growing number of employers screen applicants via the FBI's highly flawed criminal databases. By Ylan Q. Mui at The Washington Post.

"Her informal poll shows that upwards of 80% plan to emigrate to a gay-friendly country — they don’t see a future for themselves in their homeland. For as long as they can remember, the crackdown on gays in Russia has been getting worse." Katie Zavadski reporting for Buzzfeed on a new — and illegal — online support group for LGBT Russian teens.

"The stadium, built to hold 60,000, was about half full. So many people tried to leave during Mr. Mugabe’s speech that the police formed a human chain to hold in the crowd and locked the exits to the stadium." Lydia Polgreen reporting for the NYT from the lead-up to last week's elections in Zimbabwe (and its unsurprising conclusion).

"Perhaps the only topic touchier than whether people should abandon their homes is why the problem even exists. West has heard of global warming, but he's not entirely sure it's responsible for the rising water. 'Nobody knows, I don't think. Everybody speculates,' he says. Local authorities rarely, if ever, speak the words 'climate change.'" Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones on ever-rising costs along the Atlantic shoreline, and the perverse climate-denial incentives that guarantee those costs will continue to rise.

"An emerging scientific consensus held that genetic engineering would be required to defeat citrus greening. 'People are either going to drink transgenic orange juice or they’re going to drink apple juice,' one University of Florida scientist told Mr. Kress." In case you are not depressed enough by all the previous links! Amy Harmon gets the full multimedia treatment at the NYT on the controversies surrounding genetically modified organisms — and the coming orange apocalypse.

"Klawock was more accepting — maybe because James' grandfather was so influential. Maybe because it is a rough town where a lot worse things than Apert syndrome can happen to people." Moving story by Kim Murphy for the LA Times about a young boy with severe facial deformities and the Tlingit village in Alaska that sees him as just another member of the community.

"'It’s about . . . masturbation — which is not appropriate for my child to learn at 11,' said Kelly-Ann McMullan-Preiss, 39, of Belle Harbor, who refused to let her son read the book. 'It was like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ for kids.'" This week in People Who Have Rocks For Brains, Clare Trapasso reports for the NY Daily News about the banning of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which, coincidentally, my kid just finished reading this week. Spoiler: what upset him were the tragic alcohol-related deaths of so many characters, not the mention of the existence of masturbation.

"In addition to being among the relatively few social spider species, S. sarasinorum also display a curious trait called suicidal maternal care. It’s as cheerful as it sounds: After a few weeks of mothering, female spiders allow themselves to be cannibalized by their offspring." This week in Science Keeps You From Sleeping At Night, Nadia Drake reports from Wired on a study that shows individual spiders may have distinct personalities.

"'It takes you from hand-crafted, artisan skeeviness to big-box commodity creepiness, and enables government-level total awareness for about $500 of off-the-shelf hardware,' O’Connor says." Adrienne Jefferies at The Verge presents "The top 10 new reasons to be afraid of hackers" from the Black Hat and Def Con conferences.

On the other hand, who needs hackers when you can just rely on basic human error? "Now, add this possible breach of privacy to the list: You or your doctor type in an e-mail address incorrectly. That could mean a stranger finds out your test result or learns that a specialist just uploaded a new file from your recent patient visit—just by opening his or her inbox." By Carolyn Y. Johnson at Boston.com.

"Some books require a box of tissues nearby; this one needs a browser window open to Google, or at least a pen to scribble 'Citation needed!' in the margins." Lauren O'Neal reviews a book on hormonal birth control for The New Inquiry, and, in the process, provides a clinic on how to read pop-science critically.

"Let’s assume that all burqas are bad, that this idea of making a niqab ‘cool’ is outrageous and dangerous, that it will stall our evolution into a truly liberal society, that all our daughters will be so inspired by Burka Avenger that they will forever stay covered in black cloth. You know, just like the time every Superman fan grew up into an adult who at the slightest sign of trouble ran into a telephone booth, pulled up a chaddi over his pants and tied a towel around his neck." Funny, thoughtful musings on Pakistani TV's newest animated superhero by Mahvesh Murad at The Ladies Finger.

The Slate pitch to end all Slate pitches: "Boggle Is Better Than Scrabble." By Julia Turner at, of course, Slate.

"nothing is so horrible that you can’t figure out a way to use it to your advantage. We put in all the caveats about easier said than done" Emily Gould and Nicole Cliffe chat at The Toast about King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes.

If you have not been made depressed or angry enough by the list this week, any one of these links will probably do the trick. At The Hairpin, Emma Carmichael asks the eternal question, "Who Has a Woman Problem?"

This profile of the, well, first family of American letters is pretty great even if you (like me) have never voluntarily read a Stephen King novel and never plan to (because, seriously, isn't the real world already scary enough?). By Susan Dominus at the NYT.

"Imagine 'Jaws,' if it were released in 2014." Finally, at the NYT, Heather Havrilesky updates the classic to delightful effect.

Links for the week ending 28 July 2013

"On the downside, they found that 81 percent of the children had seen someone arrested; 74 percent had heard gunshots; 35 percent had seen someone get shot; and 19 percent had seen a dead body outside - and the kids were only 7 years old at the time. Those children who reported a high exposure to violence were likelier to show signs of depression and anxiety and to have lower self-esteem." Susan FitzGerald at The Philadelphia Inquirer on a long-term study that found the experiences of growing up in poverty entirely explained any developmental lags shown by children who had been exposed to cocaine in utero.

"The campaign has come at a time when a record number of Americans have tangled with the criminal justice system. About one in three Americans has some kind of criminal record, including arrests that did not lead to convictions, according to the Department of Justice. And NELP estimates that one in four Americans–65 million people–has a record that would show up on routine background check." Suzy Khimm at MSNBC on laws that keep employers from asking about job applicants' criminal records on an initial application.

Point: "Yet, by not specifically addressing this audience, by silencing whiteness and choosing to center again and again on black young men, Obama gave whiteness a pass. He gave it power by masking it, and making it silent." And counterpoint: "Though the president could and should do more at the level of policy, by taking a stand on behalf of the fundamental humanity and value of black men to this society, he in fact did something important, namely reconvening our ongoing conversation on race, in far more humane terms." Aura Bogado at Colorlines and Brittney Cooper at Salon on President Obama's response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer.

" I do not consent to being confronted with racism in the hopes that white folks can maybe start to exorcise their own internalized issues. Allies need to do this work on their own." Long, thoughtful essay at The Toast by Jessie-Lane Metz: "Ally-phobia: On the Trayvon Martin Ruling, White Feminism, and the Worst of Best Intentions."

"I suspect, however, like as it is happening in many academic fields, the NSA is sorely tempted by all the data at its fingertips and is adjusting its methods to the data rather than to its research questions. That’s called looking for your keys under the light." Zeynep Tufekci at Medium on how big data may be imperiling more than just our privacy.

"By November, faculty and their spouses or domestic partners covered by university health care must complete an online wellness profile and physical exam. They’re also required to complete a more invasive biometric screening, including a “full lipid profile” and glucose, body mass index and waist circumference measurements." Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed reports on Penn State's new health insurance rules that will charge an extra $100 to faculty who do not comply with stringent annual health screening requirements.

"In an e-mail to supporters on Tuesday, Warren lashed out at her colleagues for putting forth a 'so-called compromise' bill that she said amounted to little more than a 'teaser rate for our student loan system' that would make '$184 billion in profits over the next 10 years.'" Tracy Jan at The Boston Globe on the (dim) prospects for meaningful student loan reform.

"'It is a pleasure to be a model for all of you who are younger than I am,' she said to cheers. 'And if you have not yet chosen to be a model, let’s do so today. Everybody’s watching you – everybody’s watching you. So let’s do something that will make people a better people.'" From Sarah Goodyear at The Atlantic, a brief profile of 75-year-old activist Bettie Kollock-Wallace, who brought bike lanes to her neighborhood, one of New York City's poorest.

"It's not anyone's business, but as I said, I am a virgin, and I don't plan to have sex until I am an adult. But none of those facts make me feel any less passionate about fighting for a woman's right to choose and the separation of church and state in my home state of Texas." Fourteen-year-old Tuesday Cain speaks up at xojane after vicious reactions — in person and online — to her protest sign at the Texas Capitol.

"They are expressing more subtle, more complex, and more varied messages of self. What they need isn’t therapy; what they need is to know that it’s OK to be gender non-conforming. Excellent essay by Alice Dreger at Pacific Standard making a case for not rushing to medicalize gender non-conformists. (Via E.J. Graff.)

"It’s possible that Luke has never heard the term 'Asian fetish' or 'sexual harassment,' and can’t look them up himself. I also suppose, even though he lived for seven years in China, that he doesn’t have any other female, Chinese friends he could have asked about this." Phoenix Tso at The Toast on first getting harassed while reading on the Boston Common, and then getting mansplained by some brainless dude on FB.

"Men tend to make these assumptions, but like most female baseball fans I know, I actually have a specialized knowledge of the game that my male counterparts may not. For example, I know what sections of the ballpark are the safest to sit in, where I am least likely to be harassed by men, or to overhear sexist, homophobic or racist remarks from the male voices around me…" Fabulously titled essay on being a sports fan while female, by Stacey May Fowles at The Walrus.

"The researchers' data show that middle-aged men who grew up with a sister are 17 percent more likely to say their spouses did more housework than they did compared with men who had only brothers." Stephanie Mencimer at Mother Jones on the reason why my son gets to learn how to clean bathrooms this week. (Stop whining, kid. It's science.)

"What is it that Will and Kate are actually passing along to their newborn son? Can we really call it power?" Fun essay using the birth of the future British monarch to explore the different kinds of power, by Melanie Tannenbaum at Scientific American.

"The scientists were able to make the mouse recall something that had never occurred—having its foot painfully zapped when in the familiar red chamber—and react in fear exactly like it would have in response to a real memory." From Carolyn Y. Johnson at The Boston Globe, this week's installment in "Things Scientists Do That Are Almost Certainly Not Going to End Well."

"Should you send the lady a dick pic?" Very funny public service guide for men by Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel.

"So why is the show so often portrayed as a set of empty, static cartoons, an embarrassment to womankind? It’s a classic misunderstanding, I think, stemming from an unexamined hierarchy: the assumption that anything stylized (or formulaic, or pleasurable, or funny, or feminine, or explicit about sex rather than about violence, or made collaboratively) must be inferior." I confess that I prefer reading other people's commentary about TV shows to actually watching the TV shows, and this Emily Nussbaum essay on "Sex and the City" in The New Yorker illustrates exactly why.

"I learned smells from books, which made me think they were fictional. I believed that Wilbur’s barn smelled of hay, manure, the perspiration of tired horses, and the sweet breath of patient cows, and that the salty brown smell of frying ham made Almanzo even hungrier. But when real people said That stinks, or I can smell the sea from here, or I can’t stand the smell of cilantro, I thought they were faking." At The Millions, Rebecca Steinitz (who must be the only person who's ever had dinner at my house without noticing that I have, shall we say, a heavy hand with the oregano) on being anosmic.

"The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say?

" Powerful poem by Patricia Lockwood at The Awl, "Rape Joke."

"The thriving boomtown looks less like prosperity and more like The Grapes of Wrath.

" Finally, from Susan Elizabeth Shepard, a personal essay about working a strip club in a North Dakota boom town.

Links for the week ending 21 July 2013

Reactions to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin dominated the news this week. At The Nation, Aura Bogado's immediate response is summed up by the headline, "White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman." At Colorlines, Bogado writes about the science behind implicit racial bias, "But when race is declared a salient issue, white jurors aren’t negatively influenced by the race of a defendant. In other words, talking about the possibility of prejudice helps individuals inhibit their racial biases."

 "What alternatives are there when the system fails? It should be clear by now, that despite centuries of being disappointed by the system, African-Americans believe in the value and potential of this democracy more than even white people do. We shed our lives for it; sacrifice our dignity to it; and internalize our anger in the face of it." At Salon, Rutgers professor Brittney Cooper writes, "White supremacy, meet black rage." 

 At Colorlines, Jamilah King compiles photos from protests around the nation.

"When George Zimmerman told Sean Hannity that it was God’s will that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, he was diving right into what most good conservative Christians in America think right now." At Religion Dispatches, Anthea Butler makes the argument that American Christians worship a racist god. (Via Tressie McMillan Cottom.)

 "'Ok, but maybe next year we can move to Paris.'" At MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry describes walking her daughter through processing the news of Zimmerman's acquittal.

 "Don’t just shake your head and say “so sad." Don’t just turn your profile picture black. Vote, give, act. Have uncomfortable conversations. Challenge your privilege every day - I will do the same. Don’t be quiet. Keep your eyes open. Don’t let injustice slide - no matter how “small" it seems. I shouldn’t have to ask like this, but I will. Help me. Help us. Be a true ally." A short, moving personal essay from blogger Ijeoma Oluo. (Via Rachel Hartman.)

 "The chopping down of a young man in his prime--the offense against masculinity--has always been considered more valuable than kidnappings and rapes, murders, sterilizations and wrongful convictions of women of color, by people of all ethnic backgrounds. It has become clear that the civil rights paradigm is simply unsuitable for those of us interested in liberty and justice for all." Very smart essay by Marissa Jackson at For Harriet arguing that the lack of attention paid to structural oppression of black women calls out for a human rights social-justice frame to address the outrages of racism and inequality. (Via Sarah McCarry.) For more about Marissa Alexander's case, here is Farah Stockman at The Boston Globe on "Florida's unjust gun laws." 

 "Black Twitter’s power makes perfect sense — as long as you don’t consider black Twitterers to be some mysterious 'other' group." At Buzzfeed, Shani O. Hilton writes about the organizing power of Black Twitter, and how it scuttled a Zimmerman juror's proposed book deal.  

"Hunger strike figures had steadily risen to participation by 106 of the captives, according to the prison’s Navy medical staff. Then on Thursday, the military reported the first two quit the strike. More quit during the weekend." Carol Rosenberg reporting Monday for the Miami Herald on the Guantánamo hunger strike. 

 "Though it seems as if Jahar had found a mission, his embrace of Islam also may have been driven by something more basic: a need to belong. 'Look, he was totally abandoned,' says Payack, who believes that the divorce of his parents and their subsequent move back to Russia was pivotal, as was the loss of the safety net he had at Rindge." A terribly sad profile of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnev, by Janet Reitman at Rolling Stone. (For a nuanced take on the controversy about the cover — which means that I myself cannot buy a copy of Rolling Stone at any of the nearest outlets —see Caitlin Fitz Gerald's excellent essay at Medium, "The Art of Provocation," which I found via Liliana Segura.)

 "'You take a kid who has already demonstrated that he’s not being successful in conventional school, and then you impose on him the duty that he’s going to self-study, to me that just seems insane,' said Tim McKinley, a former FBI agent who is now an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), a legal aid group." Susan Ferriss at The Center for Public Integrity on California "community schools" for troubled youths, which have left thousands of students — mostly black and Latino — with less than five hours of instructional time per week. (Via Melissa del Bosque.) 

 "Official statistics from the 2009 National Center for Education Statistics analysis say women make up 51 percent of all adjunct faculty, but a smaller survey conducted by the adjunct group Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which asked faculty directly about their employment status, put the proportion of female adjunct faculty at 61 percent. By way of comparison, the American Association of University Professors estimates that full-time tenured faculty are 59 percent male." Kay Steiger at The Nation on attempts to unionize a disproportionately female contingent work force in academia. 

 "But the idea that Detroit will march shiny and new out of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan is unrealistic. Bankruptcy is only a tool intended to fix the problems of the past, and there is no precedent for the scale of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy that is being attempted here." Micheline Maynard at Forbes on what to look at during Detroit's bankruptcy proceedings. (Via Lizzie O'Leary.) 

 "'We used to have just two or three overdose calls a week,' said Terry Walsh, Portland’s deputy fire chief, who oversees emergency medical services. 'Now we’re seeing two, three, four a day.'" That's Portland, ME, you guys: population just over 66,000. Katherine Q. Seelye for The New York Times on steeply rising heroin use in northern New England. (Via Jim Roberts.) 

"Because, in Texas and Ohio and all these states, if they really wanted to prevent abortions, they would make long-acting, reversible contraception free. Study after study after study shows that when women have access to long-acting contraception like IUDs, and when they don’t have financial or access barriers, their risk of abortion just plummets." Dr. Jen Gunter being interviewed by Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing. 

"Texas officials have declined to establish a state-based health insurance marketplace, a major provision of the federal Affordable Care Act. So private organizations are working to educate Texans about coverage options through the federal health insurance exchange, which opens on Oct. 1." Shefali Luthra at The New York Times reminding us that states like Texas have a pretty incomprehensible idea of what it might actually mean to be pro-life. 

"The group wore rainbow armbands and carried a sign: 'We Do: Full Equality Under The Law.' Members walked in silence as they rounded the corner on Main Street, passing a jewelry store, a tanning salon, the office of the tax collector, when a man in his 60s popped out and shouted, 'They can’t just walk down our streets like that!'" From Tracy Jan at The Boston Globe, a report from the first skirmishes in the battle for marriage equality in Mississippi. (Via Martine Powers.) 

 "But because of how the government responded to Snowden, those who are willing to take on the big fight now have a model for how to do it, how to iterate based on what they learned watching Snowden. The U.S. government, far from deterring future whistleblowers, has just incentivized a new generation of them by acting like a megalomaniac." danah boyd at Medium making an interesting case for why the publicity accruing to the person of Edward Snowden may help advance civil disobedience against the surveillance state. 

"Unlike every other person in opposition politics during the Putin era, Navalny understood that Putin was not Russia’s main problem. Rather, the problem was the post-Soviet culture of greed, fear and cynicism that Putin encouraged and exploited." The New Republic's Julia Ioffe on the importance of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose conviction this week of corruption in a politically motivated show trial sparked protests in Russia. 

"He wanted to use nontraditional metrics to gain an edge, like DePodesta did for the Oakland Athletics in Moneyball and is trying to repeat in his current job with the New York Mets. Only so far, Lampert’s experiment resembles a different book: The Hunger Games." Gleeful exposé by Mina Kimes at Businessweek at the outcomes of the attempt to run the Sears behemoth according to the principles of Ayn Rand. (Hat tip to Jill Heather.)

"Perhaps most striking, 93 percent of pandoraviruses' 2,500 genes cannot be traced back to any known lineage in nature. In other words, they are completely alien to us." Time to tell my kid that his 6th-grade biology lessons on the three domains of life may suddenly be out of date. By Christine Dell'Amore at National Geographic. (Via @pourmecoffee.) 

"An analysis of 352 front-page stories from the Times in January and February 2013, we found that Times reporters quoted 3.4 times as many male sources as female sources. Excellent research by UNLV students on further gender disparity at The New York Times. By Alexi Layton and Alicia Shepard at Poynter. 

"What we're, in effect, doing is training children to see that women and girls are less important than men and boys. We're training them to perceive that women take up only 17 percent of the space in the world." Geena Davis talking to Jackie Lyden at NPR on the dearth of female faces at the movies. (Via @saltypepper.)

"This is the emotion of the women’s story. It does not move. It does not satiate. It does not provoke tears or laughter, or even good clean fear. Maybe it titillates, but ultimately, it is intended to worry. The women’s story sidles up to you at a party and asks in the honeyed voice of a false friend whether you or other women like you might be doing sex or love or motherhood (the top tasks of the woman) slightly wrong." I know we sorta covered this topic back in the mommyblogging days of yore, but Anna North at Salon does a fine job of extending the conversation to cover a broader range of the lifespan of, you know, well-educated white women. (Via Dana Goldstein.) 

"We would sit around a table in a Midtown office with a generous view, and we’d each give our prepared pitch–Peru; Mexico; Alexander Graham Bell; Henry Ford and square dancing; Braddock, PA. And then the listener would sit back, digest, and say,: 'So, this is a story about a young girl…'" Vela magazine founder Sarah Menkedick complicates and makes more interesting the debate about how well women are represented in "serious" journalism, regardless of the publication outlet. (Via Pagan Kennedy.) 

Finally, this two part report from Istanbul from the inimitable Elif Batuman at The New Yorker.

Links for the week ending 14 July 2013

"George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder." Justice denied in Florida, by Lisette Alvarez and Cara Buckley for the NYT.

"Pictures taken from the air on Monday show blackened tanker cars concertinaed on top of the space where the popular Musi-Cafe used to be, a night-time hangout that was packed when the train roared into town." A team of Reuters reporters including P.J. Huffstutter on the fiery freight train disaster that has left some 60 people dead in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic. (Via Jim Roberts.)

"The lawyers released the video on the eve of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, and, as it happens, hours before a U.S. District Court judge called Guantánamo’s tube-feeding practice 'painful, humiliating and degrading.'" Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald on a new video campaign featuring Mos Def on the force-feeding policy at Guantánamo.

"Corrections officials confirmed they would discipline striking inmates, who object to conditions in solitary confinement and also have grievances about prison food, rehabilitation programs and other policies." Meanwhile, in California, 12,400 prison inmates are on a hunger strike. By Paige St. John at The Los Angeles Times.

"I write about the Islamists and their network of social services, the roots of their power—a piece that is definitely more complex to build than a frontline piece. I strive to explain, not just to move, to touch, and I am answered with: 'What’s this? Six thousand words and nobody died?'" At Columbia Journalism Review, a brutal essay by Francesca Corri about the realities of reporting in Syria — for $70 per article. (Via Molly Crabapple.)

"As the euphoria fades, the opposition remembers that if they were asked to debate how many legs a cow before them had, one faction would question whether the animal was actually a cow, another would say four, and yet another would claim the tail a limb." Sarah Carr at Jadaliyya on the widening social and political divisions in Egypt. (Via Laila Lalami.)

"It has been one week, and nobody knows where the former president of Egypt is." At The Washington Post, dude William Booth and Abigail Hauslohner write about the wholesale arrest and disappearance of many of the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"A question unimaginable in most major American cities is utterly commonplace in this one: If you suddenly found yourself gravely ill, injured or even shot, would you call 911? Monica Davey at the NYT on Detroit's prospects as it faces possibly filing for bankruptcy. (Via Jennifer Steinhauer.)

"At a time when non-whites make up roughly 37 percent of the U.S. population, the percentage of minorities in the newsroom has fallen to 12.37 percent from its 13.73 percent high in 2006." Riva Gold at The Atlantic on the most recent report on newsroom diversity from The American Society of News Editors. (Via ProPublica.)

"But the big picture is sobering: tipped restaurant servers experience poverty at three times the rate of the rest of the workforce, the report notes, and use food stamps at twice the rate. Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post on a new report that found that mothers working in restaurants in five cities spent as much as a third of their income on childcare. (Via Rebecca Traister.)

"Alma Saldana, 30, the sister of activist Paula Saldana, stopped taking birth control last year after two nearby clinics closed and the one remaining wanted to charge more than she could afford. She bore her third child, Adrian, last month." Esme E. Deprez for Bloomberg on the black market pills and unintended pregnancies that are the options left for poor women in rural Texas. (Via Suzy Khimm.)

"Research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2011 found that, between 1984 and 1989, HPV was present in 16.4% of oropharyngeal cancers. By the dawn of the 21st century, however, that number had skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2004, HPV was present in 71.7% of all oropharyngeal cancers. Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing making a very compelling case for why the HPV vaccine is a good idea regardless of whether one possesses a cervix.

"If you live in a rich area like San Francisco, Colorado or the suburbs of Washington D.C., you’re likely as healthy as the Swiss or Japanese. If you live in Appalachia or the rural South, you’re likely to be as unhealthy as people in Algeria or Bangladesh. Maggie Fox at NBC News reports on a country-by-county survey of health in the United States.

"Research shows a typical A-cup boob weighs in at 0.43 of a pound. Every additional cup size adds another 0.44 of a pound. That means a hurdler with a double-D chest carries more than 4 pounds of additional weight with her on every leap. And when they get moving, the nipples on a C- or D-cup breast can accelerate up to 45 mph in one second -- faster than a Ferrari." At long last, Amanda Hess at ESPN tackles the important question of how cup size impacts women's participation in sports. (Spoiler you don't need if you yourself own a pair of these in larger sizes: a LOT.) (Via Virginia C. McGuire.)

YOU GUYS HOW DID I MISS THIS ARTICLE? From 3 July, by Jennifer A. Kingson in the NYT, "But as Katrina Capasso, a llama owner in Ballston Spa, N.Y., discovered, 'They're like potato chips.' It's hard to stop at just a few." NOW EVERYBODY SING ALONG. (Via Jia Tolentino at The Hairpin.)

"The root of the issue is as simple as this fact: women, research shows, buy and read books by both women and men, while men predominantly read books by men. The solution? We think it’s to read books by women, especially women outside the literary establishment." This, you guys. By Emily Gould, of Emily Books, which is where I bought the super-creepy and awesome Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns, which I then stayed up REALLY LATE to read in one sitting, which then made me cranky and irritable for days to follow. So, uh, you should read it, too! And buy stuff from Emily Books!

"'Have you read as much junk as I have? We must talk about junk! Facts are becoming harder and harder, more elusive. We're in a muddle, a mess. There's such a racket going on. There are so many lies around, readers are beginning to think: don't bother me with whether this is true or not true; I'm busy.'" Renata Adler is interviewed by Rachel Cooke at the Guardian. You can by Speedboat at Emily Books, by the way. I'm just saying.

Looking for more good books to read this summer? Sarah McCarry has some suggestions at The Rejectionist.

"Just 50 years later, it’s almost impossible to imagine a government-sanctioned ban on a piece of literature, or to picture the Supreme Court debating whether adults should be allowed to buy an 18th-century novel, no matter how dirty. The era of mainstream literary censorship is over in America. And in some ways, we have the eccentric, exuberant—and yes, erotic—“Fanny Hill” to thank for it." At The Boston Globe, Ruth Graham writes an appreciation of the cultural significance of the pornographic 18th century classic.

In his introduction, Barrie describes how Ashford studied the adults she encountered and borrowed and modified things she heard discussed at home for use in The Young Visiters—the Crystale Palace became the Crystal Palace; the Gaiety Theatre became the Gaierty Hotel—and cautions readers against spending 'another week-end in a house where there may be a novelist of nine years.'" Alice Bolin at The Paris Review on reading the magnum opus of a nine-year-old novelist (not the greatest ever, I am contractually obligated to note, but that's another matter).

"Here is a transliteration of the beginning of the Mool Mantra: Ek Ong Kar, Sat Nam, Karta Purkh…. It sounds nice, right? Certainly it sounds better than 'I hate my job, I wish I was dead, I hate everything.'" Sarah Miller is laugh-out-loud funny at The Awl on seven days in the New Mexico desert at a Kundalini Yoga festival.

"The Man-Child wants you to know that you should not take him too seriously, except when you should. At any given moment, he wants to you to take him only as seriously as he wants to be taken. When he offends you, he was kidding. When he means it, he means it. What he says goes. Moira Weigel and Mal Ahern at The New Inquiry laying out "Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child."

"'No one's ever called me with good news before,' he said. 'I don't know what I'm supposed to say.'" Finally, bring tissues. A lot of tissues. Lisa Fenn at ESPN on why she stayed involved with the young subjects of a story she reported in 2009. (Via Yvonne Abraham.)

Links for the week ending 7 July 2013

The story of the week was the military takeover in Egypt. Women report from Egypt's public spaces at their peril, but there's plenty to read, even so. Sarah A. Topol at Businessweek gives you a list of ten ways ex-president Mohammed Morsi precipitated a crisis. Abigail Hauslohner reports for The Washington Post on the overthrow of Morsi and the dismal prospects for whomever takes the reins next ("'I don’t know anyone in his right mind,' said Egypt’s foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, provoking laughter from his aides. 'Wait, wait — I’m joking with you,' he added. 'Don’t put that.'"). Also check out coverage at McClatchy by Nancy A. Youssef on Friday's violence.

"Do you encrypt all your own e-mail, as a result of this stuff? No, that's really hard." At The New Yorker, Maria Bustillos talks to one of six people who can publicly discuss "What It's Like to Get a National-Security Letter."

"Even two years later, the view from the mesa is jaw-dropping, a forest Golgotha. In a gap 40,000 acres wide, for miles in every direction, every tree is dead. As the wind whips grit into our eyes, Williams tells me that trees in some areas burned so hot that the trunks vanished, leaving ghostly holes." The deaths of 19 Arizona firefighters this week mark a sobering occasion to read this Yale Environment 360 piece on megadroughts and the American Southwest, by Caroline Fraser. At The Los Angeles Times, Alana Semuels has a brief overview of the history of American attitudes towards fighting fires at the margins of settlement.

"In another instance in Gezi Park, I witnessed a Kurdish 'teyze' (an older, traditional woman) from southeast Turkey in a heated, compassionate conversation with one of Istanbul’s better known transgendered activists. The dialogue, which I witnessed, was mostly about the need to love and understand each other’s suffering." Zeynep Tufekci being indispensable yet again, this time on the "anti-postmodern pluralism" she is witnessing in Turkey right now.

"Volunteers both male and female, designated by Blank Noise as "Action Heroes," sat at the tables and invited complete strangers to stop and talk with them. The subject of street sexual harassment was off limits. At the end of each encounter, the "action hero" offered a flower to his or her interlocutor. Sarah Goodyear at The Atlantic Cities writes about a grassroots activist group's extraordinary plan to make one of Bangalore's scariest streets safe.

Reminding you again of Torie Rose DeGhett's excellent weekly round-up, This Week in War. You'll read a lot of dude journalists if you follow her links, but you'll also be very well-informed.

"When she became pregnant, Ms. Martin called her local hospital inquiring about the price of maternity care; the finance office at first said it did not know, and then gave her a range of $4,000 to $45,000. 'It was unreal,' Ms. Martin said. 'I was like, How could you not know this? You’re a hospital.'" Elisabeth Rosenthal for The New York Times reporting on how Americans get born into the costliest and most confusing health care system in the world.

"Mort had eaten a poppy-seed bagel shortly after arriving at the hospital where she gave birth, causing the positive drug test that separated a new mother from her infant for five days before authorities decided there was not enough evidence to hold the child." Kristen Gwynne at Alternet on why "drug-testing women at birth is not the best idea."

"The initiative tells mothers to give 500ml breast milk to their children once they reach the age of six months and to use formula if they don’t have enough. It was a campaign that dramatically increased sales of Danone infant formula in Turkey, but have lead to breastfeeding mothers moving their babies on to powdered milk unnecessarily." Melanie Newman at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism on a text-messaging campaign to new parents that — surprise! — benefits the company's bottom line rather than the health of infants.

"Indeed, they mistrust women, whom they see as enforcers of middle-class earning expectations they cannot meet. The love these men feel for their children is far stronger than any romantic connection they’ve made with those children’s mothers." From Dana Goldstein at The Daily Beast, a fascinating, nuanced review of a new book about poor urban dads.

"A lot of people might listen to my evidence and say, okay, we have to teach these women to trust. This is yet another way we have to fix low-income women. I think that is the wrong approach. I think the way to teach women to trust is to make sure everyone around them is trustworthy." Barbara Raab at NBC News interviews Judith Levine about her new book, Aint No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why It Matters. (Via Dana Goldstein.)

"The reversal in Harrisburg reflects a wider trend: Millennials are 40 percent less likely to move out of their home state than young people were were in the 1980s." Nona Willis Aronowitz reports for The American Prospect about young people who are staying in their depressed — but cheap — hometowns rather than strike out for the big city. (Also via Dana Goldstein.)

"Had I gone off and set it off as she deserved, in all probability I would have been seen as the terrorist threat. Especially on the eve of the Fourth of July." At Salon, Brittney Cooper writes with heartbreaking grace about an encounter with casual white racism while traveling to see family for the holiday.

"Slim novels are always deft, and powerful, like Joss Whedon heroines." Mallory Ortberg and co-conspirator Nicole Cliffe went live this week with The Toast, which would be your new one-stop shopping destination for awesome even if all they published was their own stuff, like this gut-punch humor from Ortberg, or this lovely piece on Paul McCartney from Cliffe. But there's more!

"The first thing I tell my students is: Do not even bother to blog unless you find it fun or someone is paying you for it. Those are the only two good reasons to do it. The second thing I tell them is: Probably no one will pay you for it. Fun is actually the only good reason to blog." From Kate Harding at The Toast, and linked to with love from me to all of you all from the academic/mommyblogging cohort of 2005.

I know this was one of the first progressive blogs a lot of us were reading back then: "So Long, Farewell: Today We Close Pam's House Blend."

"So I wish that the women’s magazines put more resources into longform consistently every month. I think it would help to cultivate women magazine writers. They are very heavy on the personal essay and the service pieces, and those are important and they have their place. But I think, while it was well-intentioned to do a lot of 'Rah-rah here are great women writers, and here are great women editors,' that wasn’t the conversation that needed to be happening." Long but rewarding conversation at Beyond The New Yorker between Meagan Flynn and Pamela Colloff from Texas Monthly about journalism, advocacy, and that recent debate about whether women's magazines get unfairly jilted when awards get handed out.

"It’s so much easier, if you have the option, to be a girl, not a person. It’s definitely easier to be a girl than it is to do the work of being a grown woman, especially when you know that grown women are far more fearful to the men whose approval seems so vital to your happiness. And yet something in me was rebelling against the idea of being a character in somebody else’s story. I wanted to write my own. " Laurie Penny at the New Statesman with "I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl."

"But I do have to thank Dowling for teaching me a very important lesson: I did not have the privilege of pretending to be a kitten stuck up a tree, waiting for some man to come save me. Asher Wolf at her blog on most definitely not being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. (Via Molly Crabapple.)

"Our bodies are intractable, inescapable realities, and so little about them has to do with choice. I cannot choose whether to be hungry or thirsty, healthy or sick. A slave cannot choose to be free, a woman cannot choose to be equal, and no one on earth can choose to be safe from the violations others inflict on their bodies." Knock-out essay about being at the Texas Capitol during the filibuster, by Amy Gentry at The Rumpus. (Via Martha Bayne.)

I wrote to him every day, and he replied the way a hero in a Nicholas Sparks novel would: every day, on small squares of lined paper, in a skinny, distinctive scrawl. The way he missed me was encoded in his descriptions of the calls of the drill sergeants, the hunger of the early morning. My mom watched the envelopes arrive with a mixture of bemusement and concern." Finally, at The Toast, in memoriam for one of the fallen, by Anne Helen Petersen.