‘What’s really going on with mental health’
John Burn-Murdoch at the Financial Times
One of the “biggest stories of the past decade has been worsening mental health among young adults,” says John Burn-Murdoch. The “rise in young people’s psychological distress is certainly real — it shows up most unambiguously and alarmingly in sharply rising rates of hospitalization.” The “shift in how people conceptualize mental health could be seen as a positive,” but if it is “happening more among some groups than others, it will distort our sense of what is really getting worse.”
‘Sure, e-bikes seem fun. Until you’re on my operating table.’
Blake Taylor at USA Today
What is “missing from the debates surrounding e-bike freedoms and regulation is the focus on the injuries that happen when youths crash their bikes,” says Blake Taylor. If kids “could see the internal injuries and what happens in my operating room, and in many trauma centers across the country, and what it takes to save these lives or prevent devastating disabilities, maybe they would rethink their priorities.” These “e-bike injuries are not like those associated with traditional bikes.”
‘Dragging the Constitution into every political fight will kill it’
Clive Crook at Bloomberg
The United States Constitution has “endured, it has adapted and it has been the foundation for unsurpassed prosperity and material advance,” says Clive Crook. But “disagreements over policy are reflexively pitched as arguments about constitutional foundations,” and “as a result, rhetoric escalates and polarization intensifies.” Bringing the Constitution “into every political dispute also threatens the constitutional order — by framing the courts as unaccountable political players and lowering the electorate’s respect for their role.”
‘Is democracy a joke? Count Binface says no.’
Scott Simon at NPR
The U.K. Reform Party’s Nigel Farage “does have one opponent who’s got a household name: Count Binface,” says Scott Simon. Count Binface has “already run and lost” previously, but he is “campaigning on hard, specific pledges,” and his “odds of being elected should not be discounted.” A decade ago, Britons “voted to name a polar research vehicle Boaty McBoatface,” so there is “some history of the British recognizing the value of a good laugh, perhaps especially in politics.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
