November 2025 – Maria Yang, MD

Some interesting items for your consideration:

Why are people poor? (short video) The intelligent and incisive Jamelle Bouie comments on the recent immoral fiasco surrounding SNAP benefits.

Zohran Mamdani Wants Civilians to Replace Cops. Will It Work?

Civilian alternative programs are controversial—a prominent police abolitionist has lauded Mamdani’s plan, while one retired NYPD sergeant called it “probably the worst idea I’ve heard of in a long time.” But most coverage has failed to ask: what do we actually know about what civilian alternative response does? Are they a brilliant intervention, or a disaster waiting to happen?

The author, Charles Fain Lehman, is a fellow at the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute. I recommend his Substack, The Causal Fallacy, where he consistently uses data in a good faith to make his arguments.

Full Days and the Long Walk. Craig Mod continues to walk many kilometers and notes,

The more people with control of their attention, the better our art, music, scientific research, political legislation, and, I believe, the more kindness and empathy in the world. Also, the more prepared you can be to fight. Without understanding and cultivating fullness, you lose sight of the battles worth fighting, and lack the energy to go after them.

And here’s an abrupt transition:

The Goon Squad: Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation. A link to this was in Craig Mod’s essay above. Maybe don’t read this at work.

What are these gooners actually doing? Wasting hours each day consuming short-form video content. Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms. Parasocially fixating on microcelebrities who want their money. Broadcasting their love for those microcelebrities in public forums. Conducting bizarre self-experiments because someone on the internet told them to. In general, abjuring connective, other-directed pleasures for the comfort of staring at screens alone. Does any of this sound familiar?

The Map on the Wall. This essay now seems quaint given the drastic changes in the Department of Defense, but highlights the influence we each have as individuals.

But I can’t control what goes on “out there.” All I can do is try to foster a culture within my hangar — within our squadron — where we address things like race, gender, sexuality, and religious difference in a mature way that reinforces some very basic truths: we’re better because we’re different. We’re stronger because we come from everywhere. And, we’re much more dangerous to any potential adversary because we don’t all approach difficult problems the same way.

I Am a Drug Historian. Trump Is Wrong About Fentanyl in Almost Every Way. (gift link) The author gives a succinct summary of the history of drugs in America, then highlights why the federal government’s current approach (i.e., tariffs, threats of war, and extrajudicial murders) is wrong. He notes more effective strategies:

These successful policies all do one thing: They make drugs boring again. Drugs are not magic, they are not demonic, they are not fundamentally different from all the other problems society faces. They are highly desirable and highly dangerous consumer goods. They are not unique in that regard.

How to Be a Good Neighbor. This is from J Wortham’s Substack, where the writing is more casual and spiritual, though is just as thoughtful and genuine as their essays in the New York Times.

Good neighboring feels like an active term, and clearer to me than the vagaries of community, a noun that gets tossed around with such abandon that it has become semantically satiated and bleached of all intention and meaning. Good neighboring feels like tapping into the actual network of people and place that make up a shared ecology.

We Followed the Rules. ICE Jailed Us Anyway. (video, gift link) What ICE is doing across the nation is already horrifying in its own right. As someone who has worked as a psychiatrist in a county jail, I am sorry to say that the conditions of the detention facilities described in the video are far worse than anything I ever encountered. (To be clear, I’m not saying that it’s okay to detain people for no cause as long as they are held in more humane settings.)

I don’t think the crisis center had been open for even one week. There were dozens of staff and fewer than five patients. Most of the staff were young, eager, and brand new to social services. Only the nurses and I had experience working in higher acuity settings.

One late afternoon, an elderly woman using a walker got a hold of a pair of scissors. One arthritic hand wielded the scissors while the other gripped the walker. Her feet were heavy; she plodded across the floor, chanting, “Kill, kill.” The walker swiveled because her torso wobbled with each step.

Our colleagues fled; doors to staff-only areas clattered shut. A nurse and I looked at each other when we realized we were the only people left in the room with this patient. We both sighed. I used my chin to signal that I would follow him.

Later, I asked to meet with all the staff working that shift. Why did you all leave the scene?

“Because she had scissors and was talking about killing people,” they said. “She had a weapon.” We were fearful that she was going to kill us, dummy!

Because this was my first job as a medical director, I thought I always had to “direct”. I didn’t realize that I could keep asking questions:

How do you know that she wanted to kill other people?
What else might have happened if everyone left her alone with a pair of scissors?
What realistic damage could she have done with the scissors?
What unspoken message did we send to each other when we all left?
What unspoken message did we send to her?
Are there things we could have said to get more information from her?
What steps could we have taken to separate her from the scissors?

You can’t always believe what you think.

(To be fair, people who don’t know what to do often run away. Avoidance is a common strategy to cope with fear and anxiety.)

The nurse approached the elderly woman from one side. He took three steps for every one step she took.

“Hi. Can you put the scissors into the basket of your walker, please?” he asked.

“Kill, kill,” she continued to chant, holding the scissors in the air. She continued to plod forward.

“Hi. Put the scissors here, please,” I echoed, pointing at the basket.

Her forward movement stopped. The scissors remained in her raised hand. We stood in stillness together.

Mumbling, she dropped the scissors into the basket. I plucked them out. After thanking her, we asked her to please sit down. “And please don’t do that again. It scares people.”

“Please don’t leave when things like that happen,” I said, directing the team. “When there’s a situation, approach. People might need you to do something. Your presence alone can help de-escalate situations. And someone will send you away if it gets too crowded. But don’t immediately leave.”

For the remainder of my time there, staff never disappeared again during a crisis.

(inspired by claims that RFK, Jr., left the scene of Oval Office medical emergency)