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Javier E

The Triumph of Obama's Long Game - 0 views

nymag.com/...iumph-of-obamas-long-game.html

politics US policy foreign policy israel gender obama health care strategy conservative

shared by Javier E on 23 Jul 17 - No Cached
  • Speaking of ideology versus reality, there is, it seems to me, a parallel on the left. That is the current attempt to deny the profound natural differences between men and women, and to assert, with a straight and usually angry face, that gender is in no way rooted in sex, and that sex is in no way rooted in biology.
  • This unscientific product of misandrist feminism and confused transgenderism is striding through the culture, and close to no one in the elite is prepared to resist it.
  • And so we have the establishment of gender-neutral birth certificates in Canada; and, in England, that lovely old phrase, “Ladies and Gentlemen,” is being removed from announcements on the Tube
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • We have dozens of new pronouns in colleges (for all those genders that have suddenly sprung into existence), and biological males competing in all-female high-school athletic teams (guess who wins at track).
  • Worse, we have constant admonitions against those who actually conform, as most human beings always have, to the general gender rule.
  • We have gone from rightly defending the minority to wrongly problematizing the majority. It should surprise no one that, at some point, the majority will find all of this, as Josh Barro recently explained, “annoying.”
  • I say this as someone happily in the minority — and who believes strongly in the right to subvert or adapt traditional gender roles.
  • But you can’t subvert something that you simultaneously argue doesn’t exist.
  • the core contradiction of ideological transgenderism. By severing the link between sex and gender completely, it abolishes the core natural framework without which the transgender experience makes no sense at all.
  • It’s also a subtle, if unintentional, attack on homosexuality. Most homosexuals are strongly attached to their own gender and attracted to traditional, natural expressions of it. That’s what makes us gay, for heaven’s sake. And that’s one reason the entire notion of a common “LGBT” identity is so misleading. How can a single identity comprise both the abolition of gender and at the same time its celebration?
  • Exceptions, in other words, need a rule to exist. Abolish gender’s roots in biology and sex — and you abolish gay people and transgender people as well.
  • Yes, there’s a range of gender expression among those of the same sex. But it’s still tethered among most to the forces of chromosomes and hormones that make us irreducibly male and female. Nature can be interpreted; it can even be played with; but it cannot be abolished. After all, how can you be “queer” if there is no such thing as “normal”?
  • Transgender people exist and should be treated with absolutely the same human respect, decency, and civil equality as anyone else. But they don’t disprove traditional notions of gender as such — which have existed in all times, places, and cultures in human history and prehistory, and are rooted deeply in evolutionary biology and reproductive strategy.
  • Intersex people exist and, in my view, should not be genitally altered or “fixed” without their adult consent. But they do not somehow negate the overwhelming majority who have no such gender or sexual ambiguity.
  • the entire society does not need to be overhauled in order to make gay or trans experience central to it. Inclusion, yes. Revolution, no.
  • The added problem with this war on nature is the backlash it inevitably incurs. There’s a reason so many working-class men find it hard to vote for Democrats any more. And there’s a reason why a majority of white women last year voted for a man who boasted of sexual assault if the alternative was a triumph for contemporary left-feminism.
  • You can’t assault the core identity of most people’s lives and then expect them to vote for you. As a Trump supporter in Colorado just told a reporter from The New Yorker: “I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life. The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.”
  • One of the features you most associate with creeping authoritarianism is the criminalization of certain political positions. Is anything more anathema to a liberal democracy? If Trump were to suggest it, can you imagine the reaction?
  • And yet it’s apparently fine with a hefty plurality of the Senate and House. I’m referring to the remarkable bill introduced into the Congress earlier this year — with 237 sponsors and co-sponsors in the House and 43 in the Senate — which the ACLU and the Intercept have just brought to light. It’s a remarkably bipartisan effort, backed by Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz, among many solid Trump-resisting Democrats and hard-line Republicans.
  • it would actually impose civil and criminal penalties on American citizens for backing or joining any international boycott of Israel because of its settlement activities. There are even penalties for simply inquiring about such a boycott. And they’re not messing around. The minimum civil penalty would be $250,000 and the maximum criminal penalty $1 million and 20 years in prison. Up to 20 years in prison for opposing the policies of a foreign government and doing something about it!
  • I’m not in favor of boycotting Israel when we don’t boycott, say, Saudi Arabia. But seriously: making it illegal?
  • Every now and again, you just have to sit back and admire the extraordinary skills of the Greater Israel lobby. You’ve never heard of this bill, and I hadn’t either. But that is partly the point. AIPAC doesn’t want the attention — writers who notice this attempted assault on a free society will be tarred as anti-Semites (go ahead, it wouldn’t be the first time) and politicians who resist it will see their careers suddenly stalled.
  • pointing out this special interest’s distortion of democracy is not the equivalent of bigotry. It’s simply a defense of our democratic way of life.
caelengrubb

How We've Failed MLK Jr's Dream of Economic Justice | Time - 0 views

time.com/...uther-king-jr-economic-justice

shared by caelengrubb on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Economic justice was not new to his agenda
  • The March on Washington sought equality before the law, but also an economic bill of rights for poor white, black and brown workers. He had constantly linked civil rights and labor and poor people’s movements; as far back as 1957, he condemned “the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”
  • Trump Administration tax cuts have allowed the wealthiest Americans to pay a lower tax rate than the poorest, and multibillion-dollar companies like Amazon are often able to effectively avoid paying federal taxes.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Worker and union rights established in the New Deal era are fading, and Census Bureau figures released last fall show that income inequality in the U.S. is at its highest level on record.
  • Today, nearly 40 million Americans remain poor, and a majority of students in many schools do not have enough to eat
  • One-third of African Americans there lived in poverty in 2018, the year for which the most recent data is available. Most of the city’s public-school students need subsidized lunches, and black child-poverty rates are above 50%
  • Tax and budget cuts in the 1980s and again after the 2007–2008 financial meltdown destroyed budgets and crippled education. And though the police department is now “integrated,” police-community relations remain tense and often explosive.
  • This all sounds too familiar to a country that spends twice as much on health care as any other advanced nation, where “right to work” laws subvert unions, where gun violence is at epidemic levels, where greed overpowers concern for the earth, where the top 1% of earners own more wealth than 90% of the rest of us combined.
  • To address interrelated evils, King called for a revolution of values
  • To his dying day, King saw a new dispensation of economic justice as attainable. On April 3, 1968, he told a mass meeting of sanitation strikers and their supporters to remember that “either we go up together or we go down together.”
  • More than a half-century later, that promised land of economic justice remains out of reach.
anonymous

Your Pandemic Tech Habits - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pandemic-tech-habits.html

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Your Pandemic Tech Habits
  • Therapy from afar. Books on the iPad. Friends via screens. Here’s the tech that’s sustained us.
  • A rock musician and a chamber orchestra violinist discovered apps that allowed them to play music with others far away. A woman in Toronto says she’s learned how to take courses and order groceries online, but she longs to be with her great-grandsons.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • Some of you said you had formed new habits that you think might stick, including meditating online and gathering weekly with pals over Zoom.
  • Some readers said they were grateful for virtual stand-ins but could not wait to get back to the library and hugging their family members.
  • This year, reading together has strengthened our bond at a distance. He calls me all of the time, asking me to please read him another story.
  • During lockdown, we discovered we could use an app called JamKazam to play music together over the internet in real time.
  • reading e-books on my iPad
  • To be honest, I miss holding a physical book in my hand, turning a page and the satisfying feeling of closing the book when you’ve finished.
  • My new tech habit is meditation class by Zoom. I have never before been able to successfully meditate
  • But being at home, in my most comfortable chair in front of the fireplace with a cup of coffee has worked for me. Meditation has been a great tool to help me cope with the stress and anxiety of this terrible, no-good year.
  • I started drawing cartoons that highlight how our lives have changed during the pandemic
  • I’ve been able to maintain my social ties with my musician friends and make some new musical friends as well. Last, but not least, I am encouraged to keep practicing.
  • My new habit is ordering groceries online and no contact pickup
  • My “shoppers” have done an outstanding job! It’s a true improvement that should remain in place
  • I am 86 years old and haven’t hugged anyone in my family for one year. But I’ve learned to use Zoom and to order my groceries online, both of which helped me keep myself fed, independent and sane
  • I’ve attended services at my synagogue without having to put on my snow boots. I’ve gone to art galleries and operas without having to dress up or worry about where to park.
  • My psychologist is now doing telehealth visits, and I love it. It’s my hope that this becomes a permanent option in the future.
  • Not only for me, but for the multitudes of people who need mental health care and aren’t in a position to access it in person.
  • I teach ballet to older women. When we had to stop dancing together in person, I was motivated to find a way to deliver a class in some form. With an iPhone, my teenager’s tripod and the tech advice of my three adult children and my son-in-law, I was able to quickly learn to record a ballet class, edit it on my laptop, make a YouTube channel, upload the video and share it.
  • I purchased Duolingo and brushed up on French and picked up Arabic and German.
  • I go to an annual girls’ weekend trip on Lake Gaston with five other women. That had to be canceled last year. We’ve instituted a weekly Zoom call on Tuesday nights after we put the kids to bed to catch up with each other and talk and laugh, and sometimes cry.
  • It’s brought us even closer together than the usual once per year weekend could
Javier E

As a Doctor, I Was Skeptical About the Covid Vaccine. Then I Reviewed the Science. - Th... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-vaccine.html

vaccine science pandemic Covid-19

shared by Javier E on 05 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Until last week, I wasn’t sure I would get the vaccine. Some media reports highlight that mRNA vaccines have never been approved for use in humans outside clinical trials, making it seem like a new technology that has not been tested before. The vaccines were developed at such speed, I couldn’t be sure that major side effects hadn’t been overlooked. I worried about autoimmunity caused by expressing the coronavirus spike proteins on my own cells.
  • Every day in the emergency department, patients walk away from essential care against medical advice, and we watch them go with a shake of our heads and a rueful smile. Just like them, isolated with my doubts, I was ready to exercise my right to free will and refuse the vaccine.
  • When my non-medical friends asked me about it, I was torn between telling them my concerns and playacting the doctor who recommends the latest proven therapy.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The guilt I felt about this compelled me to objectively review the literature on mRNA vaccines. Not being an expert in virology or biochemistry, I realized I had to quickly master unfamiliar words like “transfection” and concepts about gene sequences. Slowly, the information I was devouring started changing my beliefs.
  • I learned that research into using mRNA for vaccinations and cancer therapies has been ongoing for the past 30 years. Trial and error have refined this modality so that it was almost fully fledged by the time Covid hit
  • The mRNA from the vaccine is broken down quickly in our cells, and the coronavirus spike protein is expressed only transiently on the cell surface.
  • Furthermore, this type of vaccine is harnessing a technique that viruses already use.
  • It was humbling to have to change my mind. As I booked my vaccination time slot, I realized how lucky I am to have access to all this research, as well as the training to understand it.
  • As medical professionals, we cannot afford to be paternalistic and trust that people will follow advice without all the facts. This is especially true in Australia, where the vast majority of us have never witnessed firsthand the ravages that this disease can inflict.
  • Like all new converts, I am now a true believer: I’d like everyone to be vaccinated. But autonomy is a precious tenet of a free society, and I’m glad the ethicists have advised against mandating the vaccine
  • just hope that with more robust discussion and the wider dissemination of scientific knowledge, we may sway people like me — who have what may be valid reservations — to get the vaccine.
ilanaprincilus06

Mexicans Travel To U.S. For COVID Vaccines As Mexico's Rollout Stumbles : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...their-countrys-rollout-stumble

Mexico Covid-19 vaccine

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • less than 5% of the population has received a COVID-19 vaccine dose, the rich and well-connected have found a faster way to get their hands on one: travel north.
  • Some Mexicans with family ties or dual citizenship in the United States, or who just can afford the airfare, are heading to the U.S. to get vaccinated faster than the many months of waiting for one back home.
  • The phenomenon has sparked intense debate: between officials who believe U.S. residents should have priority and those who feel that, in a general sense, the more people vaccinated the better
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • He said only those who have had the disease understand how he feels. He had to get his hand on a vaccine quickly. But most of Tijuana's limited supply was going to front-line hospital workers.
  • He insists that no one at the vaccination site checked whether he worked or resided in the county, the two requirements necessary to get a shot there.
  • But vaccine tourism has become a bit of a phenomenon in Mexico. It's easy to find testimonies and tips on social media and in chat groups about getting a vaccine in the U.S.
  • The Biden administration has said the United States will send Mexico more than 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses.
  • Earlier this month, President Biden said, "We're going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first and then we're going to help the rest of the world."
  • "In this particular case, amid a worldwide pandemic, life and health of everyone should be priority No. 1,"
anonymous

'I Cry on Tuesdays and Fridays' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-mental-health.html

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • ‘I Cry on Tuesdays and Fridays’
  • Moms are still primal screaming their hearts out.
  • Michelle Pasos, 46, describes herself as someone who has “always been extremely healthy.”
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • That is until the pandemic, when she ended up in the emergency room because she had a bad reaction to a drug prescribed to bring down her elevated blood pressure.
  • when the hospital gave her the option of going home and monitoring herself, or staying an extra night, she chose to stay. It was the first time she had felt calm in a year.
  • Primal Scream phone line
  • explored the emotional and economic pressures on a generation of moms,
  • hough there is additional federal support to families, more Americans are vaccinated every day and job loss is not quite as dire as it was in the early days of the pandemic, unemployment claims remain higher than they were in previous economic crises
  • And moms are still not OK.
  • “Despite the increased labor force participation of mothers, mothers are still having a really hard time,”
  • Despite their return to the labor force, they are not having much relief at home, and by that I mean, many children are still home-schooling.
  • She added that the burden of remote school has fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of mothers
  • Almost every mother I have spoken to during the pandemic, no matter what their financial and family circumstances, has expressed guilt about complaining
  • Lower-income parents have already been hit harder by unemployment than their higher-income and college-educated counterparts.
  • Research has shown that in states where children received only remote instruction during the pandemic, mothers’ labor force participation has been lower than in those where children attended school in person.
  • “Now it’s like 76 percent of moms and 94 percent of dads with college degrees,” he said. This suggests that where families could afford for one parent to step back from work to deal with domestic labor, mothers were bearing the brunt.
  • While I can list these labor market statistics all day, the emotional impact of Covid-19 is ongoing, devastating and harder to quantify.
  • “I cry on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sometimes I have an extra bonus day, like on this Monday,”
  • when she called into the Primal Scream line
  • Why Tuesdays and Fridays? On Tuesdays, her husband has a lot of meetings, and her day isn’t light either, so even though she is trading off baby care, it’s “really high octane all day.”
  • It’s a matter of having kept things nominally together all week, and then you have this big letdown,”
  • She said she has felt “terrified” for two years, after being anxious during her pregnancy as well, because she wanted her daughter so badly.
  • “I must have buckets of cortisol,”
  • “More than parental status or gender, education has been most decisive in who has lost jobs during the pandemic,”
  • But mothers shouldn’t have to slap on a Pollyanna smile.
  • , there was already a gender gap in caregiving before the pandemic, and moms were more likely than dads to step back from paid work to fill any family needs.
  • The past year has only exacerbated the difficulties caregivers face in the United States.
  • We can acknowledge that things could be worse, but at the same time honor the fact that our circumstances are still so far from good.
Javier E

The Disease Detective - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...metagenomic-sequencing.html

detective disease Pandemic Science research medicine

shared by Javier E on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • What’s startling is how many mystery infections still exist today.
  • More than a third of acute respiratory illnesses are idiopathic; the same is true for up to 40 percent of gastrointestinal disorders and more than half the cases of encephalitis (swelling of the brain).
  • Up to 20 percent of cancers and a substantial portion of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, are thought to have viral triggers, but a vast majority of those have yet to be identified.
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • Globally, the numbers can be even worse, and the stakes often higher. “Say a person comes into the hospital in Sierra Leone with a fever and flulike symptoms,” DeRisi says. “After a few days, or a week, they die. What caused that illness? Most of the time, we never find out. Because if the cause isn’t something that we can culture and test for” — like hepatitis, or strep throat — “it basically just stays a mystery.”
  • It would be better, DeRisi says, to watch for rare cases of mystery illnesses in people, which often exist well before a pathogen gains traction and is able to spread.
  • Based on a retrospective analysis of blood samples, scientists now know that H.I.V. emerged nearly a dozen times over a century, starting in the 1920s, before it went global.
  • Zika was a relatively harmless illness before a single mutation, in 2013, gave the virus the ability to enter and damage brain cells.
  • The beauty of this approach” — running blood samples from people hospitalized all over the world through his system, known as IDseq — “is that it works even for things that we’ve never seen before, or things that we might think we’ve seen but which are actually something new.”
  • In this scenario, an undiscovered or completely new virus won’t trigger a match but will instead be flagged. (Even in those cases, the mystery pathogen will usually belong to a known virus family: coronaviruses, for instance, or filoviruses that cause hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and Marburg.)
  • And because different types of bacteria require specific conditions in order to grow, you also need some idea of what you’re looking for in order to find it.
  • The same is true of genomic sequencing, which relies on “primers” designed to match different combinations of nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA).
  • Even looking at a slide under a microscope requires staining, which makes organisms easier to see — but the stains used to identify bacteria and parasites, for instance, aren’t the same.
  • The practice that DeRisi helped pioneer to skirt this problem is known as metagenomic sequencing
  • Unlike ordinary genomic sequencing, which tries to spell out the purified DNA of a single, known organism, metagenomic sequencing can be applied to a messy sample of just about anything — blood, mud, seawater, snot — which will often contain dozens or hundreds of different organisms, all unknown, and each with its own DNA. In order to read all the fragmented genetic material, metagenomic sequencing uses sophisticated software to stitch the pieces together by matching overlapping segments.
  • The assembled genomes are then compared against a vast database of all known genomic sequences — maintained by the government-run National Center for Biotechnology Information — making it possible for researchers to identify everything in the mix
  • Traditionally, the way that scientists have identified organisms in a sample is to culture them: Isolate a particular bacterium (or virus or parasite or fungus); grow it in a petri dish; and then examine the result under a microscope, or use genomic sequencing, to understand just what it is. But because less than 2 percent of bacteria — and even fewer viruses — can be grown in a lab, the process often reveals only a tiny fraction of what’s actually there. It’s a bit like planting 100 different kinds of seeds that you found in an old jar. One or two of those will germinate and produce a plant, but there’s no way to know what the rest might have grown into.
  • Such studies have revealed just how vast the microbial world is, and how little we know about it
  • “The selling point for researchers is: ‘Look, this technology lets you investigate what’s happening in your clinic, whether it’s kids with meningitis or something else,’” DeRisi said. “We’re not telling you what to do with it. But it’s also true that if we have enough people using this, spread out all around the world, then it does become a global network for detecting emerging pandemics
  • One study found more than 1,000 different kinds of viruses in a tiny amount of human stool; another found a million in a couple of pounds of marine sediment. And most were organisms that nobody had seen before.
  • After the Biohub opened in 2016, one of DeRisi’s goals was to turn metagenomics from a rarefied technology used by a handful of elite universities into something that researchers around the world could benefit from
  • metagenomics requires enormous amounts of computing power, putting it out of reach of all but the most well-funded research labs. The tool DeRisi created, IDseq, made it possible for researchers anywhere in the world to process samples through the use of a small, off-the-shelf sequencer, much like the one DeRisi had shown me in his lab, and then upload the results to the cloud for analysis.
  • he’s the first to make the process so accessible, even in countries where lab supplies and training are scarce. DeRisi and his team tested the chemicals used to prepare DNA for sequencing and determined that using as little as half the recommended amount often worked fine. They also 3-D print some of the labs’ tools and replacement parts, and offer ongoing training and tech support
  • The metagenomic analysis itself — normally the most expensive part of the process — is provided free.
  • But DeRisi’s main innovation has been in streamlining and simplifying the extraordinarily complex computational side of metagenomics
  • IDseq is also fast, capable of doing analyses in hours that would take other systems weeks.
  • “What IDseq really did was to marry wet-lab work — accumulating samples, processing them, running them through a sequencer — with the bioinformatic analysis,”
  • “Without that, what happens in a lot of places is that the researcher will be like, ‘OK, I collected the samples!’ But because they can’t analyze them, the samples end up in the freezer. The information just gets stuck there.”
  • Meningitis itself isn’t a disease, just a description meaning that the tissues around the brain and spinal cord have become inflamed. In the United States, bacterial infections can cause meningitis, as can enteroviruses, mumps and herpes simplex. But a high proportion of cases have, as doctors say, no known etiology: No one knows why the patient’s brain and spinal tissues are swelling.
  • When Saha and her team ran the mystery meningitis samples through IDseq, though, the result was surprising. Rather than revealing a bacterial cause, as expected, a third of the samples showed signs of the chikungunya virus — specifically, a neuroinvasive strain that was thought to be extremely rare. “At first we thought, It cannot be true!” Saha recalls. “But the moment Joe and I realized it was chikungunya, I went back and looked at the other 200 samples that we had collected around the same time. And we found the virus in some of those samples as well.”
  • Until recently, chikungunya was a comparatively rare disease, present mostly in parts of Central and East Africa. “Then it just exploded through the Caribbean and Africa and across Southeast Asia into India and Bangladesh,” DeRisi told me. In 2011, there were zero cases of chikungunya reported in Latin America. By 2014, there were a million.
  • Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne virus, but when DeRisi and Saha looked at the results from IDseq, they also saw something else: a primate tetraparvovirus. Primate tetraparvoviruses are almost unknown in humans, and have been found only in certain regions. Even now, DeRisi is careful to note, it’s not clear what effect the virus has on people. “Maybe it’s dangerous, maybe it isn’t,” DeRisi says. “But I’ll tell you what: It’s now on my radar.
  • it reveals a landscape of potentially dangerous viruses that we would otherwise never find out about. “What we’ve been missing is that there’s an entire universe of pathogens out there that are causing disease in humans,” Imam notes, “ones that we often don’t even know exist.”
  • “The plan was, Let’s let researchers around the world propose studies, and we’ll choose 10 of them to start,” DeRisi recalls. “We thought we’d get, like, a couple dozen proposals, and instead we got 350.”
  • Metagenomic sequencing is especially good at what scientists call “environmental sampling”: identifying, say, every type of bacteria present in the gut microbiome, or in a teaspoon of seawater.
  • “When you draw blood from someone who has a fever in Ghana, you really don’t know very much about what would normally be in their blood without fever — let alone about other kinds of contaminants in the environment. So how do you interpret the relevance of all the things you’re seeing?”
  • Such criticisms have led some to say that metagenomics simply isn’t suited to the infrastructure of developing countries. Along with the problem of contamination, many labs struggle to get the chemical reagents needed for sequencing, either because of the cost or because of shipping and customs holdups
  • we’re less likely to be caught off-guard. “With Ebola, there’s always an issue: Where’s the virus hiding before it breaks out?” DeRisi explains. “But also, once we start sampling people who are hospitalized more widely — meaning not just people in Northern California or Boston, but in Uganda, and Sierra Leone, and Indonesia — the chance of disastrous surprises will go down. We’ll start seeing what’s hidden.”
lucieperloff

Opinion | Why the Latest Republican Assault on L.G.B.T.Q. Rights Is Different - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...anti-lgbtq-laws-us.html

opinion politics bias discrimination diversity

shared by lucieperloff on 08 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Last month, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed into law a discriminatory bill to prevent transgender people from using restrooms aligning with their gender identity at any business or place of public accommodation.
  • hese new laws are the latest in a series of unprecedented legislative assaults aimed at trans people that have swept state houses t
  • are not simply living in a state of emergency; we are living in many states of imminent danger
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Anti-equality extremists are clearly targeting transgender people again to score political points by demonizing marginalized communities and mischaracterizing movements like Black Lives Matter.
  • We need to take action now to prove the anti-trans arguments are wrong and unjust, and to draw maximum attention to what Republican leaders in these states are trying to do.
  • there simply is not a sudden population explosion of trans people, nor any sort of demand for special or new rights. This is about fairness and equal treatment.
  • t has significant health and safety consequences, especially for trans youth.
  • This includes laws like those in Arkansas, where legislators have banned critical, gender-affirming medical care for transgender children,
  • Active resistance is needed from administrators within the education system who are tasked with enforcing discriminatory trans sports bans, which isolate and prevent trans students from playing sports on teams consistent with their gender identity.
  • which requires businesses with “formal or informal” policies of allowing transgender people to use the appropriate restroom to post offensive and humiliating signage
  • So far in 2021, we are on track to exceed the number of trans and gender-nonconforming people murdered in 2020
  • extremist legislators continue advancing measures at a breakneck pace
  • Sometimes we have to make uncomfortable decisions because we are pushed to the fringes.
cvanderloo

Democrats Call For Fast-Tracking Citizenship For Undocumented Essential Workers | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...hip_n_6002173fc5b6ffcab964638e

immigration undocumented citizenship democrats republicans opinions

shared by cvanderloo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Sen.-designate Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) are pushing for undocumented essential workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic to be fast-tracked for U.S. citizenship. 
  • Padilla’s own parents came to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1960s and worked in restaurants and house cleaning.  
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 16 Jan 21
       
      Shows how your experiences shape your opinions.
  • “These are people who feed us, clean our homes and hospitals and offices… and they do all this while living in fear of deportation, exploitation and now of this pandemic,”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • many who work in meatpacking, farm work and other front-line industries don’t have the option to work from home, and their employers don’t provide them with paid sick leave. 
  • Biden and Harris’ platform includes a commitment to work with Congress to pass legislation to create a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants in the U.S.  
  • As the coronavirus surges, Latinx and Black people are around four times as likely to be hospitalized as white people, and nearly three times as likely to die,
  • Last month, France fast-tracked citizenship processes for hundreds of immigrant front-line workers, including health care workers, garbage collectors, housekeepers and cashiers. 
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 16 Jan 21
       
      Example of other countries do the same thing
  • Undocumented immigrants are among those hardest hit by the pandemic since they are disproportionately represented among workers deemed “essential” — from farmworkers to building cleaners — who are risking their lives while millions of Americans stay home.
  • Patrice Lawrence, co-director of the immigrant group UndocuBlack Network, said legislation recognizing immigrants’ “humanity and our contributions to this country is long overdue” and that a bill protecting undocumented essential workers is “the bare minimum this country can do.”
Javier E

How to Remember Everything You Want From Non-Fiction Books | by Eva Keiffenheim, MSc | ... - 0 views

medium.com/...non-fiction-books-df17096d517f

books reading learning notetaking memory long-term

shared by Javier E on 05 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A Bachelor’s degree taught me how to learn to ace exams. But it didn’t teach me how to learn to remember.
  • 65% to 80% of students answered “no” to the question “Do you study the way you do because somebody taught you to study that way?”
  • the most-popular Coursera course of all time: Dr. Barabara Oakley’s free course on “Learning how to Learn.” So did I. And while this course taught me about chunking, recalling, and interleaving
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  • I learned something more useful: the existence of non-fiction literature that can teach you anything.
  • something felt odd. Whenever a conversation revolved around a serious non-fiction book I read, such as ‘Sapiens’ or ‘Thinking Fast and Slow,’ I could never remember much. Turns out, I hadn’t absorbed as much information as I’d believed. Since I couldn’t remember much, I felt as though reading wasn’t an investment in knowledge but mere entertainment.
  • When I opened up about my struggles, many others confessed they also can’t remember most of what they read, as if forgetting is a character flaw. But it isn’t.
  • It’s the way we work with books that’s flawed.
  • there’s a better way to read. Most people rely on techniques like highlighting, rereading, or, worst of all, completely passive reading, which are highly ineffective.
  • Since I started applying evidence-based learning strategies to reading non-fiction books, many things have changed. I can explain complex ideas during dinner conversations. I can recall interesting concepts and link them in my writing or podcasts. As a result, people come to me for all kinds of advice.
  • What’s the Architecture of Human Learning and Memory?
  • Human brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by reading sentences.
  • we store new information in terms of its meaning to our existing memory
  • we give new information meaning by actively participating in the learning process — we interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate
  • To remember new information, we not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what we already know.
  • Learning is dependent on memory processes because previously-stored knowledge functions as a framework in which newly learned information can be linked.”
  • Human memory works in three stages: acquisition, retention, and retrieval. In the acquisition phase, we link new information to existing knowledge; in the retention phase, we store it, and in the retrieval phase, we get information out of our memory.
  • Retrieval, the third stage, is cue dependent. This means the more mental links you’re generating during stage one, the acquisition phase, the easier you can access and use your knowledge.
  • we need to understand that the three phases interrelate
  • creating durable and flexible access to to-be-learned information is partly a matter of achieving a meaningful encoding of that information and partly a matter of exercising the retrieval process.”
  • Next, we’ll look at the learning strategies that work best for our brains (elaboration, retrieval, spaced repetition, interleaving, self-testing) and see how we can apply those insights to reading non-fiction books.
  • The strategies that follow are rooted in research from professors of Psychological & Brain Science around Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel. Both scientists spent ten years bridging the gap between cognitive psychology and education fields. Harvard University Press published their findings in the book ‘Make It Stick.
  • #1 Elaboration
  • “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know.”
  • Why elaboration works: Elaborative rehearsal encodes information into your long-term memory more effectively. The more details and the stronger you connect new knowledge to what you already know, the better because you’ll be generating more cues. And the more cues they have, the easier you can retrieve your knowledge.
  • How I apply elaboration: Whenever I read an interesting section, I pause and ask myself about the real-life connection and potential application. The process is invisible, and my inner monologues sound like: “This idea reminds me of…, This insight conflicts with…, I don’t really understand how…, ” etc.
  • For example, when I learned about A/B testing in ‘The Lean Startup,’ I thought about applying this method to my startup. I added a note on the site stating we should try it in user testing next Wednesday. Thereby the book had an immediate application benefit to my life, and I will always remember how the methodology works.
  • How you can apply elaboration: Elaborate while you read by asking yourself meta-learning questions like “How does this relate to my life? In which situation will I make use of this knowledge? How does it relate to other insights I have on the topic?”
  • While pausing and asking yourself these questions, you’re generating important memory cues. If you take some notes, don’t transcribe the author’s words but try to summarize, synthesize, and analyze.
  • #2 Retrieval
  • With retrieval, you try to recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory. While retrieval practice can take many forms — take a test, write an essay, do a multiple-choice test, practice with flashcards
  • the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ state: “While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval, greater retention results.”
  • Whatever you settle for, be careful not to copy/paste the words from the author. If you don’t do the brain work yourself, you’ll skip the learning benefits of retrieval
  • Retrieval strengthens your memory and interrupts forgetting and, as other researchers replicate, as a learning event, the act of retrieving information is considerably more potent than is an additional study opportunity, particularly in terms of facilitating long-term recall.
  • How I apply retrieval: I retrieve a book’s content from my memory by writing a book summary for every book I want to remember. I ask myself questions like: “How would you summarize the book in three sentences? Which concepts do you want to keep in mind or apply? How does the book relate to what you already know?”
  • I then publish my summaries on Goodreads or write an article about my favorite insights
  • How you can apply retrieval: You can come up with your own questions or use mine. If you don’t want to publish your summaries in public, you can write a summary into your journal, start a book club, create a private blog, or initiate a WhatsApp group for sharing book summaries.
  • a few days after we learn something, forgetting sets in
  • #3 Spaced Repetition
  • With spaced repetition, you repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals.
  • The harder it feels to recall the information, the stronger the learning effect. “Spaced practice, which allows some forgetting to occur between sessions, strengthens both the learning and the cues and routes for fast retrieval,”
  • Why it works: It might sound counterintuitive, but forgetting is essential for learning. Spacing out practice might feel less productive than rereading a text because you’ll realize what you forgot. Your brain has to work harder to retrieve your knowledge, which is a good indicator of effective learning.
  • How I apply spaced repetition: After some weeks, I revisit a book and look at the summary questions (see #2). I try to come up with my answer before I look up my actual summary. I can often only remember a fraction of what I wrote and have to look at the rest.
  • “Knowledge trapped in books neatly stacked is meaningless and powerless until applied for the betterment of life.”
  • How you can apply spaced repetition: You can revisit your book summary medium of choice and test yourself on what you remember. What were your action points from the book? Have you applied them? If not, what hindered you?
  • By testing yourself in varying intervals on your book summaries, you’ll strengthen both learning and cues for fast retrieval.
  • Why interleaving works: Alternate working on different problems feels more difficult as it, again, facilitates forgetting.
  • How I apply interleaving: I read different books at the same time.
  • 1) Highlight everything you want to remember
  • #5 Self-Testing
  • While reading often falsely tricks us into perceived mastery, testing shows us whether we truly mastered the subject at hand. Self-testing helps you identify knowledge gaps and brings weak areas to the light
  • “It’s better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.”
  • Why it works: Self-testing helps you overcome the illusion of knowledge. “One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.”
  • How I apply self-testing: I explain the key lessons from non-fiction books I want to remember to others. Thereby, I test whether I really got the concept. Often, I didn’t
  • instead of feeling frustrated, cognitive science made me realize that identifying knowledge gaps are a desirable and necessary effect for long-term remembering.
  • How you can apply self-testing: Teaching your lessons learned from a non-fiction book is a great way to test yourself. Before you explain a topic to somebody, you have to combine several mental tasks: filter relevant information, organize this information, and articulate it using your own vocabulary.
  • Now that I discovered how to use my Kindle as a learning device, I wouldn’t trade it for a paper book anymore. Here are the four steps it takes to enrich your e-reading experience
  • How you can apply interleaving: Your brain can handle reading different books simultaneously, and it’s effective to do so. You can start a new book before you finish the one you’re reading. Starting again into a topic you partly forgot feels difficult first, but as you know by now, that’s the effect you want to achieve.
  • it won’t surprise you that researchers proved highlighting to be ineffective. It’s passive and doesn’t create memory cues.
  • 2) Cut down your highlights in your browser
  • After you finished reading the book, you want to reduce your highlights to the essential part. Visit your Kindle Notes page to find a list of all your highlights. Using your desktop browser is faster and more convenient than editing your highlights on your e-reading device.
  • Now, browse through your highlights, delete what you no longer need, and add notes to the ones you really like. By adding notes to the highlights, you’ll connect the new information to your existing knowledge
  • 3) Use software to practice spaced repetitionThis part is the main reason for e-books beating printed books. While you can do all of the above with a little extra time on your physical books, there’s no way to systemize your repetition praxis.
  • Readwise is the best software to combine spaced repetition with your e-books. It’s an online service that connects to your Kindle account and imports all your Kindle highlights. Then, it creates flashcards of your highlights and allows you to export your highlights to your favorite note-taking app.
  • Common Learning Myths DebunkedWhile reading and studying evidence-based learning techniques I also came across some things I wrongly believed to be true.
  • #2 Effective learning should feel easyWe think learning works best when it feels productive. That’s why we continue to use ineffective techniques like rereading or highlighting. But learning works best when it feels hard, or as the authors of ‘Make It Stick’ write: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.”
  • In Conclusion
  • I developed and adjusted these strategies over two years, and they’re still a work in progress.
  • Try all of them but don’t force yourself through anything that doesn’t feel right for you. I encourage you to do your own research, add further techniques, and skip what doesn’t serve you
  • “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”— Mortimer J. Adler
Javier E

Acupuncture, Real or Fake, Eases Pain - Well Blog - NYTimes.com - 1 views

well.blogs.nytimes.com/...ncture-real-or-fake-eases-pain

placebo acupuncture brain science

shared by Javier E on 21 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Fake acupuncture appears to work just as well for pain relief as the real thing, according to a new study of patients with knee arthritis. The findings, published in the September issue of the journal Arthritis Care and Research, are the latest to suggest that a powerful but little understood placebo effect may be at work when patients report benefits from acupuncture treatment
  • The results don’t mean acupuncture doesn’t work, but they do suggest that the benefits of both real and fake acupuncture may have something to do with the way the body transmits or processes pain signals. Other studies have suggested that the prick of a needle around the area of injury or pain could create a “super-placebo” effect that alters the way the brain perceives and responds to pain.
Javier E

How our brains numb us to covid-19's risks - and what we can do about it - The Washingt... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

psychology science research bias pandemic risk signaling

shared by Javier E on 22 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • Social scientists have long known that we perceive risks that are acute, such as an impending tsunami, differently than chronic, ever-present threats like car accidents
  • Part of what’s happening is that covid-19 — which we initially saw as a terrifying acute threat — is morphing into more of a chronic one in our minds. That shift likely dulls our perception of the danger,
  • Now, when they think about covid-19, “most people have a reduced emotional reaction. They see it as less salient.”
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  • This habituation stems from a principle well-known in psychological therapy: The more we’re exposed to a given threat, the less intimidating it seems.
  • As the pandemic drags on, people are unknowingly performing a kind of exposure therapy on themselves, said University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic, author of “The Perception of Risk” — and the results can be deadly.
  • “You have an experience and the experience is benign. It feels okay and comfortable. It’s familiar. Then you do it again,” Slovic said. “If you don’t see anything immediately bad happening, your concerns get deconditioned.”
  • The end result of all this desensitizing is a kind of overriding heedlessness decoupled from evidence — the anti-mask movements, the beach gatherings, the overflowing dance parties
  • One of the best ways to reinforce a certain behavior is to make sure that behavior is rewarded and that deviations from it are punished (or ignored).
  • But when it comes to lifesaving behaviors such as mask-wearing or staying home from parties, this reward-punishment calculus gets turned on its head.
  • With parties, when you do the right thing and stay home, “you feel an immediate cost: You’re not able to be with your friends,
  • while there is an upside to this decision — helping to stop the spread of the virus — it feels distant. “The benefit is invisible, but the costs are very tangible.”
  • By contrast, Slovic said, when you flout guidelines about wearing masks or avoiding gatherings, you get an immediate reward: You rejoice at not having to breathe through fabric, or you enjoy celebrating a close friend’s birthday in person.
  • Because risk perception fails as we learn to live with covid-19, Griffin and other researchers are calling for the renewal of tough government mandates to curb virus spread. They see measures such as strict social distancing, enforced masking outside the home and stay-at-home orders as perhaps the only things that can protect us from our own faulty judgment.
  • But these kinds of measures aren’t enough on their own, Griffin said. It’s also important for authorities to supply in-your-face reminders of those mandates, especially visual cues, so people won’t draw their own erroneous conclusions about what’s safe.
  • “A few parks have drawn circles [on their lawns]: ‘Don’t go out of the circle,’ ” Griffin said. “We need to take those kinds of metaphors and put them throughout the entire day.”
  • “The first step is awareness that sometimes you can’t trust your feelings.”
  • For people considering how to assess covid-19 risks, Slovic advised pivoting from emotionally driven gut reactions to what psychologist Daniel Kahneman — winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics for his integration of psychological research into economic science — calls “slow thinking.” That means making decisions based on careful analysis of the evidence. “You need to either do the slow thinking yourself,” Slovic said, “or trust experts who do the slow thinking and understand the situation.”
  • Thousands of us are less afraid than we were at the pandemic’s outset, even though in many parts of the country mounting case counts have increased the danger of getting the virus. We’re swarming the beaches and boardwalks, often without masks.
pier-paolo

The Election Is Almost Over. That Doesn't Mean Democrats Are Relaxed. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-democrats.html

shared by pier-paolo on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • “I’m assuming in my mind that Trump wins, because I can’t deal with being let down like that again,”
  • “Secretly, in a little corner in the back of my mind, I’m wishing and hoping that Biden wins. But most of my brain is saying, ‘OK, Trump wins and New York is not getting a fiscal bailout and we’re going to lose more ground on the environment, we’re going to lose on Roe v. Wade, we’re going to lose on health care.’”
  • It’s hard to overstate the degree of anxiety in America right now, as the country confronts a Hydra of troubles: the pandemic, the economy, the fires, the protests, the violent plots against public officials, the assault on voting rights, the state-sponsored disinformation, the sense that democracy itself is on the ballot.
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  • 68 percent of American adults said that the 2020 election was a “significant source of stress” in their lives. (Among Democrats, the figure was 76 percent; it was 67 percent for Republicans and 64 percent for Independents.) Across the board, 77 percent of Americans said they were stressed about the future of the country.
  • It’s very bumpy and you’re riding along the highway and you have pothole after pothole. The news cycle is probably under 30 minutes right now.”
  • “What we’re seeing among Democrats is the sense that ‘we were in this position four years ago, so we’re not getting our hopes up,’” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Republicans are consistently more confident that the election is going to go the way they want.”
  • “Polls give people a false sense of security, and they think they don’t have to turn out to vote,” he said. “Is there going to be a peaceful transfer of power? That’s a big question. The big worry is that he won’t accept the results, or he’s going to incite violence.”
runlai_jiang

A New Antidote for Noisy Airports: Slower Planes - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-for-noisy-airports-1520429994

technology airplane noise

shared by runlai_jiang on 07 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Urban airports like Boston’s Logan thought they had silenced noise issues with quieter planes. Now complaints pour in from suburbs 10 to 15 miles away because new navigation routes have created relentless noise for some homeowners. Photo: Alamy By Scott McCartney Scott McCartney The Wall Street Journal BiographyScott McCartney @MiddleSeat Scott.McCartney@wsj.com March 7, 2018 8:39 a.m. ET 146 COMMENTS saveSB107507240220
  • It turns out engines aren’t the major culprit anymore. New airplanes are much quieter. It’s the “whoosh” that big airplanes make racing through the air.
  • Computer models suggest slowing departures by 30 knots—about 35 miles an hour—would reduce noise on the ground significantly.
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  • The FAA says it’s impressed and is moving forward with recommendations Boston has made.
  • . A working group is forming to evaluate the main recommendation to slow departing jets to a speed limit of 220 knots during the climb to 10,000 feet, down from 250 knots.
  • New routes put planes over quiet communities. Complaints soared. Phoenix neighborhoods sued the FAA; Chicago neighborhoods are pushing for rotating runway use. Neighborhoods from California to Washington, D.C., are fighting the new procedures that airlines and the FAA insist are vital to future travel.
  • “It’s a concentration problem. It’s a frequency problem. It’s not really a noise problem.”
  • “The flights wake you up. We get a lot of complaints from young families with children,” says Mr. Wright, a data analyst who works from home for a major health-care company.
  • In Boston, an analysis suggested only 54% of the complaints Massport received resulted from noise louder than 45 decibels—about the level of background noise. When it’s relentless, you notice it more.
  • With a 30-knot reduction, noise directly under the flight track would decrease by between 1.5 and 5 decibels and the footprint on the ground would get a lot skinnier, sharply reducing the number of people affected, Mr. Hansman says.
  • The industry trade association Airlines for America has offered cautious support of the Boston recommendations. In a statement, the group said the changes must be safe, work with a variety of aircraft and not reduce the airport’s capacity for takeoffs and landings.
  • Air-traffic controllers will need to delay a departure a bit to put more room between a slower plane and a faster one, or modify its course slightly.
krystalxu

5 things you should know about how your brain learns | Voices From Campus News for Coll... - 0 views

college.usatoday.com/...5-way-your-brain-learns

brain science memory working memory science knowledge

shared by krystalxu on 07 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • how your brain learns
  • Learning builds on prior knowledge
  • The human brain consists of special cells called neurons
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  • these brain fibers grow
  • fibers connect your brain cells to one another at contact points called synapses.
  • Practice leads to stronger connections in the brain
  • brain fibers can only grow from existing brain fibers.
  • build on information that is already stored in the brain.
  • having a strong understanding of the foundational content in a given subject is essential
  • The larger your brain fibers grow, and the more brain cells they connect, the more information can be stored in your brain.
  • causes your dendrites to grow thicker and to coat themselves with a fatty layer.
  • With enough practice, these thickened brain fibers will eventually form double connections to one another.
  • The fatty coating on brain fibers also speeds up your brain’s ability to process information.
  • solidify that information or ability in your brain more permanently.
  • the brain grows fibers that relate to what you are practicing.
  • , but to also perform that skill yourself. This will help you truly learn it.
  • its general limit is five to seven items.
  • memory can be improved by taking proper care of your brain and body.
  • grouping items together before you try to memorize them.
  • a routine lack of sleep can have detrimental impacts on your health.
  • sleep deprivation can drastically diminish your brain’s ability to take in new information.
  • it is extremely important to get a full night’s rest within the first 30 hours of learning new knowledge.
katherineharron

The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1% (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • We face a frightening pandemic. More than 100,000 American have been infected with Covid-19, while tens of millions more continue to shelter at home. Meanwhile, the markets are crashing.
  • While health care workers and local governments frantically race against the clock to keep up with the escalating medical caseloads while trying to keep themselves and their families safe, Congress was still able to find the time to give money away to rich people.
  • Now here is what changed in the historic $2 trillion stimulus bill. Previously, if a married couple had depreciation deductions that exceeded their real estate business income, the couple could claim that "loss" to write off taxes on a maximum of $500,000 in income from other sources, like wages from a day job.
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  • Under the change, our rich taxpayer couple -- and this applies only for individuals, not corporations -- can now deduct an unlimited amount of "excess losses" in real estate against income from other sources. So now real estate moguls with lucrative day jobs or bountiful capital gains from other investments can go back to living tax-free, the Kushner way, before limits were put in place as part of the 2017 tax reform bill.
krystalxu

Introduction to the Field of Psychology | Boundless Psychology - 0 views

courses.lumenlearning.com/...ion-to-the-field-of-psychology

psychology brain science

shared by krystalxu on 24 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • psychosocial: Having both psychological and social elements.
  • Psychologists attempt to understand not only the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, but also the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors.
  • Some are employed in industrial and organizational settings, in health-care settings, in the media, in sports, or in forensic investigation and other law-related fields.
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  • dualism: In psychology, the belief that the mind and body are separate entities.
katherineharron

Less money can mean more contentment, study says - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • People at the lower end of the income scale take more pleasure in their relationships and enjoy caring for and connecting with others, according to a study published Monday in the journal Emotion.
  • "People who are poorer are more reliant on others to get by," said Paul Piff, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. "They really prioritize relationships because of their reduced resources, and so they are more likely to really focus on emotions that bind them to one another and find satisfaction and delight in relationships through compassion and love."
  • For the new study, "We break happiness down into all of its emotional components: all the different kinds of positive emotions we want to experience on a daily basis," he said.
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  • "As income increases, as you rise in the rankings of household income, your tendencies -- or daily experiences -- of pride, amusement, contentment go up, and your experience of compassion and love and awe go down," Piff said. Enthusiasm was the one emotion unaffected by wealth, with both rich and poor experiencing the same level.
  • "But of course these aren't absolute differences; it's not the case that wealthy people don't feel any compassion or any love," Piff said. "It's just that wealth sort of buffers you from experiencing as much of it as perhaps you should or as other people do."
  • "There is a very large literature showing happiness and life satisfaction is related to income," he said. One example is this study that found higher income increases access to social support, self-esteem and opportunities and so enhances happiness.
  • The holiday season gets "people to think about the larger communities that they're a part of and the important people in their lives," he noted. But sometimes we think, "If only we could have more money!" Then, we believe, we could get all the things we want and achieve all those things we think are meaningful or important, he explained.
  • "Even in the absence of wealth, you can still extract all kinds of meaning and all kinds of happiness and all kinds of joy by reminding yourself and surrounding yourself with all the people you love," Piff said.
tongoscar

Women's March Peters Out After Women Find Trump's Not Ruining Lives - 0 views

thefederalist.com/...mps-not-destroying-their-lives

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The Women’s March has an identity crisis. The march was inspired in 2017 out of fear that Donald Trump would in “Handmaid’s Tale” fashion strip women of all rights and dignity. After two years of a Trump presidency, and no such apocalypse, the Women’s March has lost much of its vigor.
  • This year the march began with a short rally at Freedom Plaza. Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, one of the march’s board members, started off the rally with the chant, “My body, my choice.” The marchers first made their way to Lafayette Park, then ended in front of the Trump Hotel.
  • Few brought up women’s rights when asked why they’d attended the event. Many answered that they were there to fight for climate change and immigration. One young woman named Bianca from Raleigh, North Carolina pointed out that she was disappointed the organizers decided to make their platform so broad. She said she believed a women’s march should be about issues specific to women.
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  • Some of the anti-Trump signs read, “Trump is a danger to our Democracy,” “Impeach the Mother f-cker,” “Arrest Trump,” and “All these Women yet Trump is the only b-tch.”
  • In front of Trump Tower, about 200 protestors gathered from a group called Out Now. They chanted, “We cannot rely on the election, we cannot rely on the normal channels, because Donald Trump is a fascist…We have to drive him out.”
  • Like many women at the march, “access to health care” was the only policy they could name that had anything to do with women’s rights, and it was always used as a euphemism for abortion.
  • I agreed with many of the women at the march that unfettered access to abortion is in danger. Trump has done a lot to see that abortion is no longer funded by taxpayers, and many states are requiring abortion to meet the same safety standards as other medical procedures.
anniina03

Coronavirus: Why some countries wear face masks and others don't - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/world-52015486

psychology bias

shared by anniina03 on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak some places have fully embraced wearing face masks, and anyone caught without one risks becoming a social pariah.But in many other parts of the world, from the UK and the US to Sydney and Singapore, it's still perfectly acceptable to walk around bare-faced.
  • the official advice from the World Health Organization has been clear. Only two types of people should wear masks: those who are sick and show symptoms, and those who are caring for people who are suspected to have the coronavirus.
  • a mask is not seen as reliable protection, given that current research shows the virus is spread by droplets and contact with contaminated surfaces. So it could protect you, but only in certain situations such as when you're in close quarters with others where someone infected might sneeze or cough near your face.
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  • Removing a mask requires special attention to avoid hand contamination, and it could also breed a false sense of security.
  • in some parts of Asia everyone now wears a mask by default - it is seen as safer and more considerate.
  • In mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, the broad assumption is that anyone could be a carrier of the virus, even healthy people. So in the spirit of solidarity, you need to protect others from yourself.
  • Some argue that ubiquitous mask wearing, as a very visual reminder of the dangers of the virus, could actually act as a "behavioural nudge" to you and others for overall better personal hygiene.
  • The 2003 Sars virus outbreak, which affected several countries in the region, also drove home the importance of wearing masks, particularly in Hong Kong, where many died as a result of the virus.So one key difference between these societies and Western ones, is that they have experienced contagion before - and the memories are still fresh and painful.
  • In East Asia, many people are used to wearing masks when they are sick or when it's hayfever season, because it's considered impolite to be sneezing or coughing openly.
  • But there are downsides of course. Some places such as Japan, Indonesia and Thailand are facing shortages at the moment, and South Korea has had to ration out masks.
  • There is the fear that people may end up re-using masks - which is unhygienic - use masks sold on the black market, or wear homemade masks, which could be of inferior quality and essentially useless.
  • People who do not wear masks in these places have also been stigmatised, to the point that they are shunned and blocked from shops and buildings.
  • In countries where mask wearing is not the norm, such as the West, those who do wear masks have been shunned or even attacked. It hasn't helped that many of these mask wearers are Asians.
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