'We cannot rely on starving individuals to control their own refeeding'

'This is not a system remotely capable of rehabilitating two million starved people'

Omar Shabana at Al Jazeera

Israel has "imposed starvation" on Gaza, where the "population now resembles skin stretched taut over bones," says Omar Shabana. "Such severe malnutrition has been witnessed throughout history," and it is known that "recovery from starvation can be just as devastating." Refeeding syndrome happens following a "dangerously rapid metabolic shift from a catabolic to an anabolic state," and "patients require carefully planned treatment" to live through it. But "imagining such care is heartbreaking" in Gaza, where the "medical infrastructure has collapsed."

Read more

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'More must be done to make owning top-end goods desirable again'

Andrea Felsted and Carolyn Silverman at Bloomberg

Music "offers an insightful way to map the fortunes of the luxury industry," say Andrea Felsted and Carolyn Silverman. "Name-checks" of expensive brands in "song lyrics skyrocketed during the luxury boom from late 2020 to early 2023, cementing fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci as cultural phenomena." But "since then, mentions have slumped, underscoring the crisis facing the industry, with sales down across the sector" and "many young people turning away from conspicuous consumption."

Read more

A 'weird social media post gendering coal'

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

The official U.S. Department of Energy recently referred to a piece of coal as "she" in a post on X, and simultaneously, the president has "signed numerous executive orders aimed at 'Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry' and reversed Biden-era pollution regulations on coal-fired power plants," says Arwa Mahdawi. Perhaps the Trump administration is "so keen on personifying coal" because it's "trying to sanitize the deadly impact of coal pollution and associate it with Mother Nature."

Read more

'Many people in non-abstinent recovery still avoid their preferred drugs'

Maia Szalavitz at The New York Times

Recovery from addiction is "still largely viewed as lifelong abstinence," but "in reality, most people who resolve addictions do not reject all substance use forever," says Maia Szalavitz. Because of stigma, "few people are open about their 'non-abstinent' recovery" and the "scarcity of recovery stories" like these "distorts drug policy" and "bolsters the continued dominance of abstinence-only rehabs." To "end the overdose crisis" we "need to acknowledge that there's not one 'right' approach."

Read more