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Javier E

History News Network | History Gets Into Bed with Psychology, and It's a Happy Match - 0 views

  • The fact that many of our self-protective delusions are built into the way the brain works is no justification for not trying to override them. Knowing how dissonance works helps us identify our own inclinations to perpetuate errors -- and protect ourselves from those who can’t. Or won’t.Related LinksWhat Historians Can Learn from the Social Sciences and Sciences /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */ var disqus_shortname = 'hnndev'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */ (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. News Breaking News Historians DC Breaking News Historians DC ‘Scottsboro Boys’ pardoned in Alabama ‘November 22, 1963’ U-Boat discovered off the coast of Indonesia Vatican publicly unveils bone fragments said to belong to St. Peter Pictured: the 'real site' of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon Historian: Taiwan can use WWII legacy to improve standing with China 'I Take Long Walks': The Emotional Lives of Holocaust Scholars Chinese historian: Xi Jinping a master of "neo-authoritarianism" History Comes to Life With Tweets From Past Celtic Paths, Illuminated by a Sundial try{for(var lastpass_iter=0; lastpass_iter < document.forms.length; lastpass_iter++){ var lastpass_f = document.forms[lastpass_iter]; if(typeof(lastpass_f.lpsubmitorig2)=="undefined"){ lastpass_f.lpsubmitorig2 = lastpass_f.submit; lastpass_f.submit = function(){ var form=this; var customEvent = document.createEvent("Event"); customEvent.initEvent("lpCustomEvent", true, true); var d = document.getElementById("hiddenlpsubmitdiv"); for(var i = 0; i < document.forms.length; i++){ if(document.forms[i]==form){ d.innerText=i; } } d.dispatchEvent(customEvent); form.lpsubmitorig2(); } } }}catch(e){}
  • at last, history has gotten into bed with psychological science, and it’s a happy match. History gives us the data of, in Barbara Tuchman’s splendid words, our march of folly -- repeated examples of human beings unable and unwilling to learn from mistakes, let alone to admit them. Cognitive science shows us why
  • Our brains, which have allowed us to travel into outer space, have a whole bunch of design flaws, which is why we have so much breathtaking bumbling here on Earth.
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  • Of the many built-in biases in human thought, three have perhaps the greatest consequences for our own history and that of nations: the belief that we see things as they really are, rather than as we wish them to be; the belief that we are better, kinder, smarter, and more ethical than average; and the confirmation bias, which sees to it that we notice, remember, and accept information that confirms our beliefs -- and overlook, forget, and discount information that disconfirms our beliefs.
  • The great motivational theory that accommodates all of these biases is cognitive dissonance, developed by Leon Festinger in 1957 and further refined and transformed into a theory of self-justification by his student (and later my coauthor and friend) Elliot Aronson. The need to reduce dissonance is the key mechanism that underlies the reluctance to be wrong, to change our minds, to admit serious mistakes, and to be unwilling to accept unwelcome information
  • The greater the dissonance between who we are and the mistake we made or the cruelty we committed, the greater the need to justify the mistake, the crime, the villainy, instead of admitting and rectifying it
Javier E

Book Club: A Guide To Living « The Dish - 0 views

  • He proves nothing that he doesn’t simultaneously subvert a little; he makes no over-arching argument about the way humans must live; he has no logician’s architecture or religious doctrine. He slips past all those familiar means of telling other people what’s good for them, and simply explains what has worked for him and others and leaves the reader empowered to forge her own future
  • You can see its eccentric power by considering the alternative ways of doing what Montaigne was doing. Think of contemporary self-help books – and all the fake certainty and rigid formulae they contain. Or think of a hideous idea like “the purpose-driven life” in which everything must be forced into the box of divine guidance in order to really live at all. Think of the stringency of Christian disciplines – say, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola – and marvel at how Montaigne offers an entirely different and less compelling way to live. Think of the rigidity of Muslim practice and notice how much lee-way Montaigne gives to sin
  • This is a non-philosophical philosophy. It is a theory of practical life as told through one man’s random and yet not-so-random reflections on his time on earth. And it is shot through with doubt. Even the maxims that Montaigne embraces for living are edged with those critical elements of Montaigne’s thought that say “as far as I know”
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  • Is this enough? Or is it rather a capitulation to relativism, a manifesto for political quietism, a worldview that treats injustice as something to be abhorred but not constantly fought against? This might be seen as the core progressive objection to the way of Montaigne. Or is his sensibility in an age of religious terror and violence and fanaticism the only ultimate solution we have?
  • here’s what we do know. We are fallible beings; we have nothing but provisional knowledge; and we will die. And this is enough. This does not mean we should give up inquiring or seeking to understand. Skepticism is not nihilism. It doesn’t posit that there is no truth; it merely notes that if truth exists, it is inherently beyond our ultimate grasp. And accepting those limits is the first step toward sanity, toward getting on with life. This is what I mean by conservatism.
  • you can find in philosophy any number of clues about how to live; you can even construct them into an ideology that explains all of human life and society – like Marxism or free market fundamentalism or a Nietzschean will to power. But as each totalist system broke down upon my further inspection, I found myself returning to Montaigne and the tradition of skepticism he represents
  • If I were to single out one theme of Montaigne’s work that has stuck with me, it would be this staring of death in the face, early and often, and never flinching. It is what our culture refuses to do much of the time, thereby disempowering us in the face of our human challenges.
jmfinizio

NRA files for bankruptcy - CNN - 0 views

  • The National Rifle Association of America, the nation's foremost gun lobby, has filed for bankruptcy
  • The group said it plans to leave New York State, where it was founded in 1871, and reincorporate as a Texas nonprofit in a move it is calling "Project Freedom,"
  • New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in August accusing the NRA's senior leadership of violating laws governing nonprofit groups and using millions of dollars from the organization's reserves for personal use and tax fraud.
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  • In response, the NRA filed a countersuit alleging the attorney general was hampering the group's First Amendment rights.
  • "while we review this filing, we will not allow the NRA to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office's oversight."
  • The NRA said Friday it is in its "strongest financial condition in years," but the restructuring will help to "streamline costs and expenses."
  • The largest creditor listed on the NRA's bankruptcy filing is its former advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, with which the NRA has been in a contentious legal battle after nearly 30 years in business together.
  • "The NRA, a get rich quick scheme for its executives that pushed positions wildly out of step with gun owners, is collapsing, just as Congress readies to vote on a comprehensive background checks proposal with 90% public support,"
ilanaprincilus06

Dominion Voting Systems Files $1.6 Billion Defamation Lawsuit Against Fox News : NPR - 0 views

  • the network spread false claims that the voting machine company was involved in voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
  • "Fox endorsed, repeated, and broadcast a series of verifiably false yet devastating lies about Dominion,"
  • Fox News issued a statement Friday morning stating that it "is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court."
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  • Dominion is not the only election technology company to say it was targeted by Fox News. Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network,
  • Dominion's court filing alleges that Fox "recklessly disregarded the truth"
  • "The lies did not simply harm Dominion," the company's lawsuit says. "They harmed democracy. They harmed the idea of credible elections. They harmed a once-unshakeable faith in democratic and peaceful transfers of power."
anonymous

It's Science: Eat Dinner Together - The Family Dinner Project - The Family Dinner Project - 0 views

  • It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit
  • And that nightly dinner doesn’t have to be a gourmet meal that took three hours to cook, nor does it need to be made with organic arugula and heirloom parsnips.
  • For starters, researchers found that for young children, dinnertime conversation boosts vocabulary even more than being read aloud t
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  • Other researchers reported a consistent association between family dinner frequency and teen academic performance. Adolescents who ate family meals 5 to 7 times a week were twice as likely to get A’s in school as those who ate dinner with their families fewer than two times a week.
  • Children who eat regular family dinners also consume more fruits, vegetables, vitamins and micronutrients, as well as fewer fried foods and soft drinks.
  • And the nutritional benefits keep paying dividends even after kids grow up: young adults who ate regular family meals as teens are less likely to be obese and more likely to eat healthily once they live on their own.
  • Some research has even found a connection between regular family dinners and the reduction of symptoms in medical disorders, such as asthma.
  • The benefit might be due to two possible byproducts of a shared family meal: lower anxiety and the chance to check in about a child’s medication compliance.
  • The dinner atmosphere is also important. Parents need to be warm and engaged, rather than controlling and restrictive, to encourage healthy eating in their children.
  • In a very recent study, kids who had been victims of cyberbullying bounced back more readily if they had regular family dinners.
  • Family dinners have been found to be a more powerful deterrent against high-risk teen behaviors than church attendance or good grades.
  • In a New Zealand study, a higher frequency of family meals was strongly associated with positive moods in adolescents. Similarly, other researchers have shown that teens who dine regularly with their families also have a more positive view of the future, compared to their peers who don’t eat with parents.
  • dinner is the most reliable way for families to connect and find out what’s going on with each other
  • American teens were asked when they were most likely to talk with their parents: dinner was their top answer
  • Kids who eat dinner with their parents experience less stress and have a better relationship with them
  • Of course, the real power of dinners lies in their interpersonal quality. If family members sit in stony silence, if parents yell at each other, or scold their kids, family dinner won’t confer positive benefits.
  • But, dinner may be the one time of the day when a parent and child can share a positive experience – a well-cooked meal, a joke, or a story – and these small moments can gain momentum to create stronger connections away from the table.
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    Suggestion and effects of having family dinner!
katherineharron

The national security adviser says there's no systemic racism in policing. Studies sugg... - 0 views

  • When a Trump administration official said he doesn't think systemic racism exists in policing, many were stunned -- especially after studies have shown different races are often treated differently.
  • "There is no doubt that there are some racist police," O'Brien added. "I think they're the minority. I think they're the few bad apples, and we need to root them out."
  • "Of course there is" systemic racism, St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said. "It's not just in police departments across this country. My goodness, there's systemic racism within pretty much everything in this country."
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  • frican-Americans are at greater risk of being killed by police, even though they are less likely to pose an objective threat to law enforcement, according to research by Northeastern University Professor Matt Miller.
  • Among those who were "unarmed and appeared to show no objective threat to police, nearly two-thirds of the victims were Hispanic or Black," the researchers found.
  • "there is profound racial disparity in the misdemeanor arrest rate for most -- but not all -- offense types,"
  • The 2017 study found that black residents were more likely to file complaints than white residents -- but "NCPD sustained complaints filed by Black residents only 31 percent of the time compared to sustaining complaints filed by White residents 50 percent of the time," the study says. "NCPD defines 'sustained' as 'the allegation is supported by sufficient evidence to justify a reasonable conclusion that the allegation is factual."
  • Latino youth are 65% more likely to be detained or committed than their white peers, according to a 2017 report from The Sentencing Project.
  • African Americans and whites use drugs at similar rates, but the imprisonment rate of African Americans for drug charges is almost 6 times that of whites, the NAACP said.
  • But they found that "blacks were 2.7 times more likely to be pulled over in an investigatory stop," NPR station KCUR reported. "Blacks were also subject to searches five times more often than white drivers."
  • But black drivers who had an infraction like a burnt out light were more often "questioned about what they were doing in a particular neighborhood, where they were heading, and whether they were carrying drugs," the report said. "Many were subject to vehicle searches."
  • "When you have the national security adviser saying he doesn't see systemic racism, well you know what? White folks also didn't see systemic racism even in the 1960s," Wise said.
  • "If white America didn't get it even when it was obvious in retrospect to everyone, what in the world would make the national security adviser believe that he or anyone else knows what they're talking about now? I think it probably stands to reason that black and brown folks know their reality better than we do."
  • "Especially after a tragedy like we saw in Minneapolis, we need to do two things -- take a hard look at our own actions and conduct, correct them where necessary, and to regain that trust by continuing to hold ourselves to the highest possible standard in a transparent way."
Javier E

The Atheist's Belief In Medicine « The Dish - 1 views

  • Hitchens’s beliefs about his advanced cancer and its treatment were, for a man whose fame rested on his scepticism, uncharacteristically optimistic. I hesitate to use the word delusional, as he admitted that he would be very lucky to survive, but he clearly steadfastly hoped, right to the end, that his particular case of advanced cancer might lie on the sparsely populated right side of the bell-shaped curve of outcome statistics.
  • I wonder if all that medicine – which was, in fact, a form of poison – was worth it. David got ten more years, and two young children. But he also endured a disfiguring, disabling, brutal physical battering from the surgeries and chemo-sessions that tackling a tough brain tumor allow for. I say “allow for” because “required” is not the right word. What the chemo did to Christopher was beyond description – and what’s left of your body, even if the chemo works, can be extremely vulnerable to infections and diseases that can be worse than the cancer.
  • It seems odder to me for Christians to be as exercized by life-extension as the atheist. Put that down to the strange extremism of Ratzinger’s innovations on the question of “life”.
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  • our culture’s gradual alienation from the fact of our deaths – our distancing ourselves even from the old and infirm in ways previous cultures didn’t and couldn’t – is not, in my view a healthy thing.
  • No one should seek to die or give in to a disease they can legitimately fight. God knows how many pills I take a day to keep the virus – and all its and their side-effects at bay. But I get to live healthily and meaningfully. The way some elaborate and cutting edge treatments all but kill the patient in order to save her troubles me. It’s a loss of perspective as well as immensely expensive for the entire system.
  • these sophisticated treatments are taking healthcare money away from the young, taking up more and more of our collective healthcare resources, and extending lives only be perpetuating continuous agony and nausea and pain for the patient and devastating consequences for families and friends.
  • We will all die. We should not seek it. But we should not flee from it for ever.
  • at some point what seems to me to matter more is not the length of our lives but the content of them and the manner of our deaths.
  • At some point, medicine is a function of a social disease of modernity: the flight from our own mortality. But fleeing it does not defuse it. Only facing it does.
Javier E

How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File - Conor Friedersdor... - 0 views

  • Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?"
  • It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio.
  • Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.
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  • Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses.
  • Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America. Seriously?&nbsp;
  • Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who'd lose worse than George McGovern.
  • How many hours of Glenn Beck conspiracy theories did Fox News broadcast to its viewers? How many hours of transparently mindless Sean Hannity content is still broadcast daily? Why don't Americans trust Republicans on foreign policy as they once did? In part because conservatism hasn't grappled with the foreign-policy failures of George W. Bush. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the subject. Romney could neither run on the man's record nor repudiate it.
  • Most conservative pundits know better than this nonsense -- not that they speak up against it. They see criticizing their own side as a sign of disloyalty. I see a coalition that has lost all perspective, partly because there's no cost to broadcasting or publishing inane bullshit. In fact, it's often very profitable. A lot of cynical people have gotten rich broadcasting and publishing red meat for movement conservative consumption.
  • On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find. &nbsp; It ought to be an eye-opening moment.&nbsp; &nbsp;
oliviaodon

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science | Mother Jones - 0 views

  • "A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger (PDF), in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denial—the persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for that—this was the 1950s—and Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology.
  • The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment.
  • In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers (PDF). Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases. They include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.
Javier E

"Breaking Bad" By Niccolo Machiavelli « The Dish - 0 views

  • If a man is truly a man through force and fraud and nerve, then Walter becomes the man he always wanted to be. He trounces every foe; he gains a huge fortune; he dies a natural death. Compared with being a high school chemistry teacher? Niccolo would scoff at the comparison. “I did it for me.”
  • Walt is consumed all along by justified resentment of the success others stole from him, and by a rage that his superior mind was out-foxed by unscrupulous colleagues. He therefore lived and died his final years for human honor – for what &lt;img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-150262" alt="466px-Portrait_of_Niccolò_Machiavelli_by_Santi_di_Tito" src="http://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/466px-portrait_of_niccolocc80_machiavelli_by_santi_di_tito.jpg?w=233&amp;#038;h=300" width="233" height="300" /&gt;Machiavelli calls virtu, a caustic, brutal inversion of Christian virtue
  • his skills were eventually proven beyond any measure in ways that would never have happened if he had never broken bad. And breaking bad cannot mean putting a limit on what you are capable of doing. What Machiavelli insisted upon was that a successful power-broker know how to be “altogether bad.”
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  • the cost-benefit analysis of “breaking bad” when the alternative is imminently “dying alone” is rigged in favor of the very short term, i.e. zero-sum evil. If Walt had had to weigh a long, unpredictable lifetime of unending fear and constant danger for his family and himself, he would have stopped cooking meth.
  • was he happy? Yes, but in a way that never really reflects any inner peace. He is happy in a way that all millionaires and tyrants are happy.
  • Breaking Bad should be taught alongside Machiavelli – as a riveting companion piece.
  • It should be taught because it really does convey the egoist appeal of evil, of acting ruthlessly in the world
  • The benefits only work if your life is nasty, brutish and short. The costs are seen in the exhausted, broken eyes of Skyler, the betrayal of an only painfully faithful son, the murder of a brother-in-law, the grisly massacre of dozens, the endless nervous need to be on the alert, to run and hide and lie and lie and lie again, until life itself becomes merely a means to achieve temporary security.
  • Machiavelli differs from later realists like Hobbes—and more contemporary “neorealists” like the late Kenneth Waltz—in recognizing that human agency matters as much as the structural fact of international anarchy in determining both foreign policy behavior and ultimate outcomes in world politics.
  • a leader’s choices can have a pivotal impact on politics, both domestic and international.
  • Though fortune be capricious and history contingent, the able leader may shape his fate and that of his state through the exercise of virtu. This is not to be mistaken for “virtue”, as defined by Christian moral teaching (implying integrity, charity, humility, and the like). Rather, it denotes the human qualities prized in classical antiquity, including knowledge, courage, cunning, pride, and strength.
Javier E

Our Cold Civil War Intensifies, Ctd « The Dish - 0 views

  • Taken alone, it would appear both sides share equal blame for the present political paralysis as each shifts to their ideological poles.
  • while both sides may be guilty of running to their respective corners, one is clearly more liable for putting the kibosh on negotiation deal-making.
  • one gets more&nbsp;liberal, the more he or she wants&nbsp;elected officials who compromise.
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  • only the Republicans are carrying out a primary purification to fit their no-compromise dispositions.
  • polarization per se is not the current critical crisis – it’s a refusal to compromise, to reach out from one’s ideological end of the spectrum to meet in the middle (where most of us already are), and demanding that one’s representatives refuse to negotiate to get things done and better the country.
  • A consistently liberal position is fine if you’re prepared to meet the other side halfway – and vice-versa of course. In fact, sometimes a strong position can help facilitate a real deal.
  • it’s the GOP that is the outlier, and long has been.
  • Liberals and conservatives&nbsp;are coming to rely on different worldviews motivated by different interpretations of what “reality” is. The Republican party has clearly decided that the only path open to them is to further embrace the resentment exhibited in rural, displaced white voters – people whose concerns have been unconscionably ignored but who have directed their anger at an entirely inappropriate target. They see Obama as the enemy but they vote for the people who are their real enemies.
  • If you think about it point by point, it becomes even less sensible. The debt? That was a result of Bush’s unfunded wars, irresponsible tax cuts and his corporatist Medicare expansion (which was itself just a subsidy for drug companies). The recession? A logical endpoint&nbsp;of a decades-long abandonment of responsible financial regulation. Immigration? There have been no significant changes to our immigration law since 1986, when Saint Reagan pushed through a bill that provided legal status to many who were undocumented – and the right conveniently proceeded to forget that. Ditto with gun control, since Reagan supported the Brady Bill publicly, and that clearly must be erased from the record.
  • The left, by contrast, did not throw Democrats out of office for supporting the Bush tax cuts. It did not throw Democrats out of office for opposing cap-and-trade legislation, immigration reform, or for stonewalling Obamacare until the very last minute when Scott Brown’s surprise election made inaction untenable. The left complained about these realities but never pretended that the reality was any different than what it was; we had the best we could get and that while Obama has let us down on specific issues, he has been a wholly underappreciated president – and history will very likely vindicate him
katherineharron

Unemployment benefits: Claims from Asian Americans have spiked 6,900% in New York. Here... - 0 views

  • Across New York, businesses like Lam's have shut down during the coronavirus pandemic and Asian American workers have filed for unemployment benefits at extraordinary rates. In the state, about 147,000 self-identified Asian workers have filed initial unemployment claims in the last four weeks alone, up from just 2,100 during the same period last year.
  • That's a 6,900% increase — by far the largest percentage increase experienced by any one racial or ethnic group.
  • Not surprisingly, claims are skyrocketing for every group in the state, reflecting the sharp economic downturn that nationwide has left 30 million Americans filing first-time unemployment claims since mid-March.
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  • Asian workers make up about 9% of New York state's population and work force, but now account for 12.5% of initial claims over the last four weeks. A year ago, they made up just 3.7% of claims during the same time period.
  • White workers, for example, make up 65% of New York's labor force, but only 51% of recent claims.
katherineharron

A fresh wave of coronavirus job losses is about to come crashing down - CNN - 0 views

  • The coronavirus pandemic has quickly thrust the world into recession as bars and restaurants shut down and countries instruct their citizens to hunker down. The question now is just how deep the pain will be, and how long it will last.
  • A picture of the economic devastation in North America and Europe has already started to emerge. A US government report published Thursday showed that 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week — a sudden 33% jump over the week before and the largest percentage increase since 1992.
  • This week is expected to be much worse. Goldman Sachs predicts that a shocking 2.25 million Americans will have filed for their first week of unemployment benefits. That would be eight times the number of people who filed last week and the highest level on record.
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  • Fears about joblessness on this scale could jolt markets again. Investors have priced in a recession by now, but may still be processing the size of the hole the coronavirus has blown into the global economy, Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab, told me.
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down 35% from its all-time high in mid-February, erasing all its gains since President Donald Trump's inauguration. Between January 20 and last Thursday, $27 trillion was wiped off global stocks, according to Bank of America.
katherineharron

Another 3 million Americans file for unemployment benefits - CNN - 0 views

  • Millions of Americans are relying on unemployment benefits for their livelihoods after losing their jobs to the coronavirus crisis.
  • Another 3 million people filed initial unemployment claims last week on a seasonally adjusted basis,
  • It was the eighth week in a row that the number for initial claims decreased after peaking at 6.9 million in the final week of March
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  • But now that initial claims have been falling for two months straight, economists are beginning to shift their focus to continuing jobless claims, which count people who are filing multiple weeks in a row. That number stood at 22.8, up slightly from the prior week.
  • Federal and state outlays totaled just under $102 billion, as of May 12, up from $12.7 billion at the beginning of March.
  • In April, the federal government paid out nearly $27 billion in unemployment benefits as the money from Congress' historic enhancement to the program started to flow, Treasury Department data shows.
  • Lawmakers in late March approved a $600 boost to weekly payments for up to four months and added 13 weeks to benefits, both compliments of the federal government
  • States, meanwhile, delivered just over $21 billion in benefits in April, up from about $4 billion the month before.
  • As more Americans join and remain on the unemployment insurance program, spending will continue to skyrocket. The outlays to date show that states have struggled to handle the surge in claims and to implement the federal provisions, said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist at Evercore ISI and former Treasury official.
katherineharron

ACLU files suit on behalf of journalists in Minnesota - CNN - 0 views

  • "The past week has been marked by an extraordinary escalation of unlawful force deliberately targeting reporters," the ACLU says in Wednesday's filing.
  • "We are facing a full-scale assault on the First Amendment freedom of the press," Brian Hauss, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement. "We will not let these official abuses go unanswered. This is the first of many lawsuits the ACLU intends to file across the country. Law enforcement officers who target journalists will be held accountable."
  • Reporters have been arrested by police from Florida to Nevada; pelted by police rubber bullets fired by police from Washington, D.C. to California; and attacked by protesters from Arizona to Pennsylvania. In one of the highest-profile examples, a CNN crew was briefly taken into custody on Friday by Minnesota State Police on live TV.
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  • The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker said on Tuesday it has counted 211 "press freedom violations" since the start of the George Floyd protests last week, which in some cases have led to riots.
  • "In every case that we are aware of, there are strong indications that officers knew the journalist was a member of the press," the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press stated in a letter to Minnesota authorities on Tuesday.
  • This was the largest coalition to sign such a letter in the Reporters Committee's 50-year history. "We'll be sending similar letters to other jurisdictions around the country," a spokeswoman said.
  • Take swift action to discipline any officer who is found to have arrested or assaulted a journalist engaged in newsgathering."
  • "Inform your officers that they themselves could be subject to legal liability for violating these rights."
  • "Ensure that crowd control tactics are appropriate and proportional, and are designed to prevent collateral harm to journalists covering the protests.
  • "Continue to exempt members of the news media from mobility restrictions, including, and especially, curfews."
  • "Release all information about arrests of or physical interactions with the press to the public to allow it to evaluate the legitimacy of police conduct."
manhefnawi

Why Do We Forget What We're Doing the Minute We Enter a Room? | Mental Floss - 0 views

  • Scientists used to believe that memory was like a filing cabinet. You have an experience, and it gets its own little file in your brain. Then, later, you can go back and open the file, which is unchanged and where it should be. It’s a nice, tidy image—but it’s wrong. Your brain is much more complicated and sophisticated than that. It’s more like a super-high-powered computer, with dozens of tasks and applications running at once.
  • A 2011 study found that the Doorway Effect is the result of several of these brain programs running simultaneously. Researchers taught 55 college students to play a computer game in which they moved through a virtual building, collecting and carrying objects from room to room. Every so often as the participants traversed the space, a picture of an object popped up on the screen. If the object shown was the one they were carrying or the one they had just put down, the participants clicked “Yes.” Sometimes these pictures appeared after the participant had walked into a room; other times they appeared while the participant was still in the middle of a room. The researchers then built a real-world version of the environment and ran the experiment again, using a box to hide the objects people were carrying so they couldn’t double-check.
Javier E

Football and racist language: Reclaiming the Y-word | The Economist - 0 views

  • Game theory Sports Previous Next Latest Game theory Latest from all our blogs Football and racist language Reclaiming the Y-word Nov 9th 2012, 16:28 by B.R. ENGLISH football grounds in the 1980s were not pleasant places. Fans were squeezed into caged terraces which were often left open to the elements. Hooliganism was rife and the country was in a state of moral panic as lurid images of fighting youths became a fixture on news bulletins. Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, convened a "war cabinet". Ken Bates, the chairman of Chelsea football club, suggested electrifying the fences in the stadiums to keep the warring factions apart. By the end of the decade English football reached its nadir. In 1985, 39 Italian football fans had been killed in Heysel, Belgium after a riot by Liverpool supporters. In 1989, Liverpool supporters themselves were the victims as 96 lost their lives at Hillsborough as a result of incompetent policing.Some time toward the beginning of that decade, aged around ten, your correspondent was taken to his first away game by his father, a fanatical supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. The game was a derby with Chelsea, a bitter London rival. Chelsea's fans were among the game’s most notorious. Many were skinheads; foot soldiers of extreme right-wing parties such as the National Front and the British Movement. Tottenham, because of the area in North London in which it is situated, had a large and visible Jewish following. It did not make for a pleasant combination.&nbsp;At one point during the first half the hostile Chelsea crowd fell suddenly silent. Quietly at first came a hissing sound, like someone letting out gas from a canister. Before long the hissing reached crescendo. It was a terrifying sound for a small boy. But I was too young to grasp the significance. Only later was I filled in: the Chelsea fans were mimicking the sound of cyanide being released at a Nazi concentration camp.&nbsp;As the years wore on, the abuse towards Spurs fans became less subtle. When clubs with a large right-wing following came to Tottenham’s White Hart Lane stadium, such as Chelsea, West Ham, Leeds and Manchester United, the anti-semitism was relentless. One common&nbsp;song ran:Spurs are on their way to BelsenHitler's going to gas ‘em againThe Yids from TottenhamThe Yids from White Hart Lane&nbsp;The Y-word. It was the most relentless chant of all. Thousand of opposition fans, faces snarled, would come together in spiteful mantra: “Yiddo! Yiddo!” It was directed towards Tottenham fans and players alike. It would go on for minutes at a time, many times in a game. After a while it was so commonplace that one became immune to it.&nbsp;At some point during that time, something odd began to happen. Tottenham fans began to appropriate the Y-word. Gradually they began to refer to themselves as Yids. The club’s supporters started to describe themselves as the “Yid Army”. Soon the word was being chanted solely by Tottenham fans referring to themselves in a spirit of celebration and of togetherness. It had been reclaimed in much the same way that the word “nigger” was taken back by black hip-hop artists and “queer” was by gays.As a result, the word died as an insult, at least within football grounds.
Megan Flanagan

Steven Avery of 'Making a Murderer' files appeal - CNN.com - 0 views

  • wants to be released from prison while the Wisconsin Court of Appeals considers his latest challenge to his 2007 murder conviction
  • alleging violations of due process rights in his prosecution for the 2005 rape and murder
  • declined because the President cannot pardon someone convicted of a state criminal offense
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  • 18 years in prison he was exonerated based on DNA evidence connecting the attack to another man.
  • Tissue and bone fragments that matched Halbach's DNA profile were found outside Avery's mobile home
  • Brendan Dassey, confessed to authorities that he had assisted his uncle in raping and killing her
  • second motion claims a juror pressured others into voting guilty.
  • allowing him to continue to file pleadings with the court on his own - that's what lawyers are hired to do,
proudsa

Feds Want Nebraska, Oklahoma To Quit Harshing Colorado's Mellow - 0 views

  • asked the Supreme Court to stay out of a controversial lawsuit&nbsp;the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma filed last year&nbsp;challenging the constitutionality of Colorado's legalization of marijuana.
  • "original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States."
  • When Nebraska and Oklahoma sued last December and asked the Supreme Court to intervene, they argued that "Colorado’s affirmative authorization of the manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana presents a substantial obstacle to Congress’s objectives under
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  • But Verrilli countered that the federal government retains authority to review on a "case-by-case basis" significant drug trafficking crimes.
Javier E

Concern Over Colin Powell's Hacked Emails Becomes a Fear of Being Next - The New York T... - 0 views

  • The latest hack could well spur a new rash of email deletions across the country as millions of people scan their sent mail for anything compromising, humiliating or career-destroying. It adds to the sense that everyone is vulnerable.
  • “I think more and more people are realizing that there isn’t a thing you can say in an email that isn’t likely to be hackable or discoverable at some later point,”
  • Washington may be behind other big cities in learning that lesson. Bankers on Wall Street have favored very brief emails since their conversations were splashed across front pages because of lawsuits filed after the financial crisis. In 2010, Goldman Sachs executives used the acronym “LDL,” for “let’s discuss live,” when a conversation turned at all sensitive.
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  • Similar precautions have been common in Silicon Valley since a 2009 Chinese state cyberattack on servers at Google and other tech companies.
  • Hank Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs chief executive, refuses to use email. Ben S. Bernanke, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, once set up an email account under the pseudonym Edward Quince in the hopes of greater privacy.
  • In Hollywood, a breach at Sony Pictures in 2014 spilled out gossipy secrets and persuaded film crews, actors and executives alike to adopt security measures they once considered paranoid. Studios have turned to a new class of companies with names like WatchDox that wrap screenplays with encryption, passwords and monitoring systems that can track who has access to confidential files.
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