Last week, in links.

• Thai Military Bans Hunger Games Salute: What Protesters Can Take From Hollywood.
• A Man on the Brink, on Louie.
• You’re Right, I Didn’t Eat That, on dieting and dating.
• Not a VA Scandal, but a War Scandal.
• Michelle Obama, Ambassador of Empathy.
• The Radical Practicality of Reparations and The Case for American History, two defenses from Ta-Nehisi Coates.
• Corruption and Terror: Somali Community in Kenya Caught in the Crossfire.
• A Cop in Sheep’s Clothing:

They send a cop to the homes of defendants seeking to apply for the public defender and have him interview and investigate them.

[…]

When put in perspective, you begin to see why Edwards has seen a drop in applications. It might have to do with the fact that people don’t want a police officer coming into their homes and asking them questions.

[…]

So the county sends a police officer to the homes of poor, underprivileged people in the guise of conducting an investigation into just how poor they are, exactly, and then use that opportunity to investigate other criminal activity and arrest those people.

This isn’t an option that is given to poor people seeking the assistance of a lawyer. This is a condition precedent to getting a lawyer.

• Allies, in Theory, on men and feminism.
• The King is Dead! On Spain’s future.
• The Consequences of the U.S. War on Terrorism in Africa.
• The Food Politics of Pokémon, on the ethics of eating one’s companion/fighter.
• How Not to Review Women’s Writing.
• The Will to Wall.
• Why Muni Workers are Feeling Sick.
• The Complicated Politics of Conversion in Northern Nigeria.
• How the CBC Leverages Blackness to Work for Wall Street.
• That Bad, on the unspoken sexual assaults and feminism:

The ubiquitous negotiations and morning-after bruises and disappearing condoms aren’t what we talk about when we talk about sexual violence. Samantha needs it to be “not that bad,” but so too, it seems, does the movement. I’m thinking of a little graphic that I saw on a friend’s Instagram feed a few weeks ago. It’s a flowchart. “Do you believe women are equal to men?” If you follow the “yes” arrow, you’re a feminist. If not, you’re an asshole. It is this same principle behind the #AllMenCan hashtag campaign that overwhelmed #YesAllWomen. The latter documented widespread gender-based violence in the wake of the Isla Vista shooting; the former insisted that men can just lean into not being misogynists and we’ll all be fine.

The flowchart and all the men who can insist that feminism is easy. It’s so obvious. This vision depends on an assumption that violence is a discrete patch on our community, the outline already visible and perforated: if we just push gently, it will pop out of our lives like a paper doll from cardboard. That’s a comforting idea for those who lack power (change is possible!) and those who hold it (but not that much change is needed!). And because the narrower definition of violence is more palatable to men, it is also strategically useful. Nice girls with proper manners are allowed at the dinner table and on Upworthy if we don’t ask for anything too disruptive.

• MOOCs and the Promise of Universal Higher Education.
• Universities as Bad Corporations.
• Waiting for SCOTUS.
• Fulbright and the Decline of America’s Cultural Diplomacy.
• Bad Science, on free-market academic medical research.
• China’s Stadium Diplomacy in Africa.
• Foxes Guarding a Hen House, on Peacekeeper Violence in CAR.
• The Anxieties of Big Data.