This moving personal essay by Keane Shum examines the plight of Rohingya asylum seekers; “In humanitarian work, or maybe just in the ubiquity of everything in our internet age, we are necessarily desensitised by this still common brutality. But what I can never seem to get over is how medieval, even ancient, it all seems.”
How does poverty affect the brain? A new study in Bangladesh, reported on in Scientific American, explores how factors such as malnutrition and sanitation affect children’s cognitive development.
The Hu Line is China’s “forgotten frontier”; an imaginary diagonal demarcation that has great demographic, environmental, and political significance, writes Colum Murphy in the first in a series of posts on China blog Sixth Tone.
Our World in Data draws on academic research by Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg to look at the types of disaster that make it into the US media. It also looks at disaster location and media coverage. The Pacific does not fare well.
On related note, in this Vox explainer psychologist Paul Slovic seeks to explain the limits of human compassion.
An interesting podcast on Bloggingheads looks at the drivers of support for ISIS.
On the EconTalk podcast Chris Blattman replies to Lant Pritchett and offers his views on the best way for aid to help tackle poverty.
