Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Why College Graduates Feel Betrayed by Noam Scheiber: “Perhaps most alarmingly, recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work. Between 1990 and 2018, it was almost unheard-of for the unemployment rate of recent college graduates to exceed the country’s overall rate. But that has been the case for five straight years now.”

The College-Educated Working Class by George Packer: “Political and media elites hoard status and wealth by keeping you in a perpetual fever of resentment and fury. Meanwhile, tech giants addict you from toddlerhood to devices that alienate you from other people and the natural world, trapping you in a hall of mirrors, until you give up on the idea that truth is even knowable and surrender to the wildest images of unreality. Your sense of your own existence grows fragile, and your job prospects are as precarious as your mental health. Whatever your race or gender, it feels like a liability. The system is a conspiracy against your chance at a decent life.”

What a Catholic Church Unafraid of Donald Trump Means to the World by Christine Emba: “The Roman Catholic Church and its leader possess what is needed now: a robust moral vocabulary — for calling out good versus evil and demanding justice and peace — that appeals to something higher and more compelling than grim realpolitik, and an independent, consistent point of view that transcends partisan politics.”

If We Are So Rich, Why Are We So Unhappy? by Alex Arnold: “The decline of civic participation, attention given to digital simulacra over real community, pursuing consumption over commitment—these all obviously have structural dimensions. But they also point to what medieval theologians called “‘spiritual sorrow’, a learned antipathy to the hard, slow, sometimes costly and painful work of loving one’s neighbors.”

Gerrymandering is crippling democracy by MSW: “Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has led an effort to create nonpartisan commissions that draw congressional lines. He rightly understood that ‘safe’ districts make our politics more extreme, as incumbents have little incentive to compromise with the other party. The only way they lose their seat is from a primary challenge, almost always from the extreme. Until we can do better than 36 competitive races out of 435, our democracy will be imperiled.”

Pope Leo condemned the scourge of gambling. Some US Catholics beat him there. by Michael J. O’Loughlin: “Companies have billions of dollars at stake and their lobbying feels relentless and effective. The social fallout, including addiction, bankruptcy and even suicide, can be devastating. The church has something to say about the issue, highlighting the moral, ethical and spiritual aspects of legal, predatory online gambling. With Leo now on the record against ‘the scourge of gambling,’ joining bishops and other church leaders in many U.S. states, perhaps more Catholics will tune in to the exploitative nature of these products.”

High Schools Are Losing the Struggle to Block Pot—Even During Class by Andrea Petersen: “The schools’ battle against cannabis is happening as a growing body of scientific research reveals how dangerous THC, the main psychoactive component of marijuana, can be for the teenage brain. Studies have found that the regular use of marijuana by teens is linked to poor performance in school and deficits in attention and memory. The commercial products now sold in states that have legalized cannabis are much stronger than the marijuana commonly used in decades past, researchers said.”

Anger or Hatred? by Joshua L. Cherniss: “While liberalism is always fragile, today it is particularly vulnerable, thanks to both its successes and failures. Liberal successes let us forget the worse alternatives from which liberal democracy shields us; they foster complacency, boredom, a longing for something more exciting. Liberal failures lead many to yearn not only for reforms—which Galston acknowledges are needed—but for more radical transformation.”

Amid alienation and looksmaxxing, Vatican document offers young men purpose by Jeromiah Taylor: “A generation of young men who struggle to emulate aspirational standards of appearance, often resorting to artificial modification of the body, are in dire need of the church’s affirmation that they are just fine the way they are.”