Monday roundup

The evacuation of forced displacement from Aleppo was a crime against humanity in a series of crimes against humanity.

A correspondent looks back on her 12 years in Africa.

Repatriating kleptocratically gained assets is complicated.

Agrochemical companies try to buy scientists.

And now, the Carolyn roundup:

Eating meat makes one just as complicit in animal cruelty as growing it.

It's never too soon to talk to children about consent and boundaries. You can and should talk to kids about things, including what words mean.

This generally applies to all kinds of decisions,

Spouses are each other’s No. 1 person in day-to-day life, so neither one has any business making decisions that favor a parent without the other’s input, consent and support.

And this applies to all kinds of forgiveness and grudges:

You figure out why the apology wasn’t enough. Then you figure out what would qualify as enough. Then you ask for it — of the offender, if that’s where it needs to originate, or of yourself, if it’s a change that must come from within.
Then, fun part, you learn whether “enough” is possible.
If it turns out not to be, then you make a choice: Keep the anger, or keep the person in your life. It’s not fair to keep clinging to both.

This reminded me of RM.

The whole point of intimacy is that it’s mutual — I give freely, you give freely. The idea that you can breach anyone’s defenses by working angles till they buckle is intrusion plus delusion, not to mention an alert to them to maintain some protective distance between you.

I used to think that having plenty of money would immunize couples against having to fight about it, but I've since learned better (I may have posted this before and mused about how I see no value in living frugally for its own sake; there's a fine line between conspicuous consumption and martyrdom).

I heard echoes of my mother here. I learned years later that the others know (they don't buy her side of the story).

How to handle divisions of labor and requests for help. Pair with this piece on mutual support, which you should in turn pair with these examples of mommyjacking:

...And you can see even more on STFU, Parents, where all of these examples originated! #mommyjacking https://t.co/oRYOiLUhbo

— STFU, Parents (@STFUParents) December 29, 2016

Somewhat related and very true:

I haven’t seen any situation end well where half of a couple feels (or continues to feel) entitled to use leverage against the other half.

Two tricky questions, well answered.

Spot on:

The difference is insecurity, which I don’t believe is a personality trait. It’s a fear that you won’t be okay if you don’t get exactly what you want, and frankly that’s a stressful and exhausting way to live. Life doesn’t just serve up what we want. It puts us in situations we can’t control, it introduces us to people who have their own ideas and agendas, it makes us sick or better sometimes on a whim, it subjects us all to temptations and feelings and variables we can’t predict.