This week, I have been riddled with angst, hopelessness, and despair, and have been mostly reading:

• The early bird gets the worm - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner
• Anzacs behaving badly: Scott McIntyre and contested history - Philip Dwyer at The Conversation: "There is an obvious disconnect between what historians know and what the popular perception of our past is. It is this disconnect that has jarred with some in the public and led to McIntyre’s sacking. […] It is difficult if not impossible for historians to overturn popular myths. Myths are popular because they represent stories we want to hear; they feed into the collective psyche. Anzacs behaving badly is not something we want to acknowledge."
• Give 'Em Hell, Bernie - Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone: "Sanders genuinely, sincerely, does not care about optics. He is the rarest of Washington animals, a completely honest person. If he's motivated by anything other than a desire to use his influence to protect people who can't protect themselves, I've never seen it."
• Hillary Clinton Condemns Criminal Justice System Her Husband Helped Build - Andrew Jerrell Jones at The Intercept: "During Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House, the number of people imprisoned by the federal government nearly doubled, from 85,565 in 1993 to 156,572 in 2001."
• “I could be a father, but I could never be a mother”: Research on Childfree Women in Canada - Interview with Gillian Ayers: "For many of the women, if they couldn’t mother the “right” way, they weren’t going to do it at all. This belief became apparent to me when, for example, 20 of the 21 women I spoke with cited financial reasons for remaining voluntarily childless." That's the showstopper for our stereotypically cat-centric household. Precarity is incompatible with parenthood.
• Cowardly Firing of Australian State-Funded TV Journalist Highlights the West’s Real Religion - Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept: '“SBS supports our Anzacs” — and apparently bars any questioning or criticism of them. That mentality sounds like it came right from North Korea, which is to be expected when a media outlet is prohibited from saying anything that offends high government officials. Any society in which it’s a firing offense for journalists to criticize the military is a sickly and undemocratic one.'
• Signaling theory and credentialing theory in sociology - Fabio Rojas at orgtheory.net: "The theory asserts that the main reason that education correlates with income is that is a signal of intelligence and work ethic, not learned skills. I.e., employers like college graduates because they are good workers, not because they have useful skills."
• The problem with wanting 'peace' in Baltimore - Kazu Haga at openDemocracy: "[C]alls for people to be “peaceful” in the face of the most recent police killing infuriate me. The calls for “peace” that act as a euphemism for “stop protesting” sickens me. When law enforcement and politicians tell people to protest “peacefully” as a way of saying “stop being so mad,” it repulses me. The gross and dangerous misunderstanding that people have of the concept of “peace” disgusts me." (see also)
• The Treasury View of HE: Variable Human Capital Investment - Andrew McGettigan, who is so much smarter than me that reading him gives me vertigo, writing for Goldsmiths, which you're not allowed to call Goldsmiths' College any more, for very serious branding-related reasons: "I have no glib solution to which you might sign up. But when hard times find us, criticism must strike for the root: the root is undergraduate study as a stratified, unequal, positional good dominating future opportunities and outcomes. What might find broader public support is a vision of higher education institutions that are civic and open to lifelong participation, instead of places beholden to the three-year, full-time degree leveraged on loans and aiming to cream off ‘talent’."
• Survey Finds Only One House In Capital Cities Affordable For Single Person On Newstart - Max Chalmers, New Matilda: "A new survey by a top charity has revealed that during one weekend last month, just 10 homes in the entire country were available for lease at rates that wouldn’t create ‘rental stress’ for a single person living on the Newstart allowance while they look for work. Only one of those homes was in a capital city – the rest were in regional areas."
• How to Talk to Your Kids About Bernie Sanders - Kimberly Harrington nails it at Medium: "We’re used to being lied to. We like it. It’s soothing. So this situation is uncomfortable for us too. Just know this: you are not alone. We will get through Truthmageddon-Honestypocalypse-2016 together."