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Javier E

How to Be French - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...how-to-be-french.html

france citizenship immersion culture adaptation language education psychology

shared by Javier E on 11 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • I’m pursuing French citizenship. The whole procedure can take years. Amid repeated requests for new documents, some would-be French people just give up.
  • This may be by design. “The difficulty of the ordeal seems a means of testing the authenticity of his/her commitment to the project of becoming French,” the sociologists Didier Fassin and Sarah Mazouz concluded in their 2009 paper “What Is It to Become French?” Officials can reject an applicant because he hasn’t adopted French values, or merely because his request isn’t “opportune.”
  • There’s a long tradition of Frenchification here. Napoleon Bonaparte was born Napoleone di Buonaparte and spoke French with a thick Corsican accent. He and others spent the 19th century transforming France from a nation with a patchwork of regional languages and dialects to one where practically everyone spoke proper French.
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  • Schools were their main instrument. French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references.
  • Even the rituals of friendship are different here. The Canadian writer Jean-Benoît Nadeau, who just spent a year in Paris, says there are clues that a French person wants to befriend you: She tells you about her family; she uses self-deprecating humor; and she admits that she likes her job. There’s also the fact that she speaks to you at all. Unlike North Americans, “the French have no compunction about not talking to you.”
  • Apparently, being a Parisian woman has its own requirements. The new book “How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are” says Parisiennes are “imperfect, vague, unreliable and full of paradoxes” and have “that typically French enthusiasm for transforming life into fiction.” I need to cultivate an “air of fragility,” too.
  • Apparently nobody expects me to achieve a state of inner Frenchness. At a naturalization ceremony that the two sociologists observed, an official told new citizens that they were granted French nationality because they had assimilated “not to the point where you entirely resemble native French people, yet enough so that you feel at ease among us.”
Javier E

Heady Stakes for 'Black-ish' on ABC - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...akes-for-black-ish-on-abc.html

race racism black white supremacy tv shows

shared by Javier E on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • hovering above all that is a more subtle — and quietly clever — narrative arc, involving the gap between parents and children and how each generation has a different awareness of what it means to be black in 2014.
  • I want it to succeed because the show arrives when black characters on mainstream broadcast networks who directly deal with issues like race are incredibly rare.
  • so far, his approach seems to be a hit. The premiere resonated with critics and attracted a robust 11 million viewers, besides generating a lot of positive reactions and discussions on social media. In a vote of confidence, ABC has given the show a full-season order.
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  • it seems as if networks think that post-racial story lines are the only acceptable ways of showcasing black characters on television.
  • TV is resplendent with ethnically diverse casts, from procedurals like “Law & Order: SVU” and “NCIS: Los Angeles” to hits like “Scandal” and “Elementary” to sitcoms like “New Girl” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”  But the characters on those series don’t often deal directly with racial issues in everyday life and, by not doing so, perpetuate another kind of colorblindness, one that homogenizes characters and treats race as inconsequential, when it is anything but.
  • “The PC way of handling culture has been to not talk about it,” Kenya Barris, the show’s creator, said in an interview. “But we should be talking about it.”
  • What black viewers are left with instead, said Dayna Chatman, a media researcher at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, is a dynamic that “makes whiteness the norm.”
  • reality television often showcases African-Americans, but since that genre is often about over-the-top performances, she said, it isn’t “particularly representative or flattering.”
  • there’s no middle ground: Either race is largely absent or exaggerated to the point of caricature.
  • The lack of texture and diversity on television is harder to ignore amid the rise of streaming and online series (say, Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” or Issa Rae’s “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”) as well as social media like Instagram and Vine (see King Bach’s account). They offer a welcome and much more nuanced window into black humor and culture.
  • “The business explanation is always that this isn’t what the marketplace is asking for,”
  • He said ABC and cable networks pursued him and the “Black-ish” pilot “very aggressively.” Contrary to popular belief, networks “are looking for something that deals with diversity,” he said. “The problem has been timing and having the right package behind it.”
  • “This is the first time in American history where the most famous people in America are black,” he said, naming the Obama family and the musicians Kanye West and Beyoncé. “But there’s still a really obvious invisibility on television.”
  • Mr. Barris said he was determined to do more than create a successor to “The Cosby Show,” although “Black-ish” draws from its legacy. But while the popularity of the Huxtable family centered on its warmth and relatability, it was, Mr. Barris said, “about a family that happened to be black.” He added that he wanted his show to be much more cognizant of modern racial identity, and to reflect the class and racial dynamics of being black in America.
  • “We are hyperaware of how people and the media perceive us,” she said. “And who gets it and who doesn’t get it.”
  • In 2005, Mr. Chappelle walked away from his lucrative show on Comedy Central after expressing discomfort that the line between his social commentary and racial satire had grown too thin.
  • Today, there are a few other shows operating in the space left behind by Mr. Chappelle, including “Key & Peele” on Comedy Central and “Black Jesus” on Adult Swim. But those are cable outlets with smaller audiences, whereas “Black-ish” is on a mainstream network.
paisleyd

People with higher 'intellectual arrogance' get better grades: But humble people got hi... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...151006142412.htm

research knowledge education

shared by paisleyd on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • People who think they know it all -- or at least, a lot -- may be on to something
  • having an accurate or moderate view of one's intelligence and being open to criticism and ideas -- would correlate with grades
  • rating one's intellectual arrogance -- an exaggerated view of intellectual ability and knowledge -- instead generally predicted academic achievement, especially on individual course work, according to the study
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • ranslates to increases in academic performance
  • rating themselves on a "humble-ometer," people generally did not see themselves as others see them
  • other team members gave better evaluations to those they viewed as humble
  • Then they took tests -- first individually, then with fellow group members, who gave feedback on each member's work. Students earned credit for individual and group performances
  • They measured "intellectual humility," based on such traits as "open to criticism" and "knows what he/she is not good at." They also measured "intellectual arrogance," based on such traits as "is close-minded" and "believes own ideas superior to others' ideas.
  • Additional traits also were evaluated, among them assertiveness, intelligence, self-discipline, openness and sense of humor
  • intellectually arrogant whom they saw as being high in dominance, extraversion and wanting to be the center of attention, but low in agreeableness and conscientiousness
  • But it's more challenging for groups to recognize what behavior reveals another person's humility, as opposed to simply being shy or unsure
  • Learning something new requires first acknowledging your own ignorance and being willing to make your ignorance known to others
Javier E

What's behind the confidence of the incompetent? This suddenly popular psychological ph... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...pular-psychological-phenomenon

confidence psychology knowledge competence

shared by Javier E on 07 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Someone who has very little knowledge in a subject claims to know a lot. That person might even boast about being an expert.
  • This phenomenon has a name: the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s not a disease, syndrome or mental illness; it is present in everybody to some extent, and it’s been around as long as human cognition, though only recently has it been studied and documented in social psychology.
  • Charles Darwin followed that up in 1871 with “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
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  • Put simply, incompetent people think they know more than they really do, and they tend to be more boastful about it.
  • To test Darwin’s theory, the researchers quizzed people on several topics, such as grammar, logical reasoning and humor. After each test, they asked the participants how they thought they did. Specifically, participants were asked how many of the other quiz-takers they beat.
  • Time after time, no matter the subject, the people who did poorly on the tests ranked their competence much higher
  • On average, test takers who scored as low as the 10th percentile ranked themselves near the 70th percentile. Those least likely to know what they were talking about believed they knew as much as the experts.
  • Dunning and Kruger’s results have been replicated in at least a dozen different domains: math skills, wine tasting, chess, medical knowledge among surgeons and firearm safety among hunters.
  • Even though President Trump’s statements are rife with errors, falsehoods or inaccuracies, he expresses great confidence in his aptitude. He says he does not read extensively because he solves problems “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had.” He has said in interviews he doesn’t read lengthy reports because “I already know exactly what it is.”
  • He has “the best words” and cites his “high levels of intelligence” in rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change. Decades ago, he said he could end the Cold War: “It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump told The Washington Post’s Lois Romano over dinner in 1984. “I think I know most of it anyway.”
  • Whether people want to understand “the other side” or they’re just looking for an epithet, the Dunning-Kruger effect works as both, Dunning said, which he believes explains the rise of interest.
  • Dunning says the effect is particularly dangerous when someone with influence or the means to do harm doesn’t have anyone who can speak honestly about their mistakes.
  • Not surprisingly (though no less concerning), Dunning’s follow-up research shows the poorest performers are also the least likely to accept criticism or show interest in self improvement.
kushnerha

BBC - Future - The secret "anti-languages" you're not supposed to know - 2 views

www.bbc.com/...ges-youre-not-supposed-to-know

bbc language

shared by kushnerha on 19 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • speak an English “anti-language”. Since at least Tudor times, secret argots have been used in the underworld of prisoners, escaped slaves and criminal gangs as a way of confusing and befuddling the authorities.Thieves’ Cant, Polari, and Gobbledygook (yes, it’s a real form of slang) are just a few of the examples from the past – but anti-languages are mercurial beasts that are forever evolving into new and more vibrant forms.
  • A modern anti-language could very well be spoken on the street outside your house. Unless you yourself are a member of the “anti-society”, the strange terms would sound like nonsense. Yet those words may have nevertheless influenced your swear words, the comedy you enjoy and the music on your iPod – without you even realising the shady interactions that shaped them.
  • One of the first detailed records of an anti-language comes from a 16th Century magistrate called Thomas Harman. Standing at his front door, he offered food and money to passing beggars in return for nothing more than words. “He would say 'either I throw you in prison or you give me your Cant,'”
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  • “Slang may not represent us at our best, or our most admirable, but it represents us as human beings with anger, fear, self-aggrandisement, and our obsession with sex and bodily parts.”
  • This clever, playful use of metaphor would come to define anti-languages for Halliday. As you could see from the dialogue between the two Elizabethan ruffians, the strange, nonsensical words render a sentence almost impossible to comprehend for outsiders, and the more terms you have, the harder it is for an outsider to learn the code. It is the reason that selling words to the police can be heavily punished among underworld gangs.
  • All borrow the grammar of the mother language but replace words (“London”, “purse”, “money”, “alehouse”) with another, elliptical term (“Rome”, “bounge”, “lower”, “bowsing ken”). Often, the anti-language may employ dozens of terms that have blossomed from a single concept – a feature known as “over-lexicalisation”. Halliday points to at least 20 terms that Elizabethan criminals used to describe fellow thieves, for instance
  • Similarly, the Kolkata underworld had 41 words for police and more than 20 for bomb. Each anti-society may have its own way of generating new terms; often the terms are playful metaphors (such as “bawdy basket”), but they can also be formed from existing words by swapping around or inserting syllables – “face” might become “ecaf”, for instance.
  • striking similarities in the patois spoken by all three underground groups and the ways it shaped their interactions.
  • “The better you are, the higher the status between those users,” explains Martin Montgomery, author of An Introduction to Language and Society.
  • Halliday doubted that secrecy was the only motive for building an anti-language, though; he found that it also helps define a hierarchy within the “anti-society”. Among the Polish prisoners, refusing to speak the lingo could denigrate you to the lowest possible rung of the social ladder, the so-called “suckers”.
  • The concept of an anti-language throws light on many of the vibrant slangs at the edges of society, from Cockney rhyming slang and Victorian “Gobbledygook” to the “Mobspeak” of the Mafia and “Boobslang” found uniquely in New Zealand prisons. The breadth and range of the terms can be astonishing; a lexicography of Boobslang reaches more than 200 pages, with 3,000 entries covering many areas of life.
  • Consider Polari. Incorporating elements of criminal cants, the gypsy Romani language, and Italian words, it was eventually adopted by the gay community of early 20th Century Britain, when homosexuality was still illegal. (Taking a “vada” at a “bona omi” for instance, means take a look at the good-looking man). Dropping an innocent term into a conversation would have been a way of identifying another gay man, without the risk of incriminating yourself among people who were not in the know.
  • His success is a startling illustration of the power of an anti-language to subvert – using the establishment's prudish "Auntie"  to broadcast shocking scenes of gay culture, two years before the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised homosexuality. The show may have only got the green light thanks to the fact that the radio commissioners either didn’t understand the connotations
  • the song Girl Loves Me on David Bowie’s latest album was written as a combination of Polari and Nadsat, the fictional anti-language in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.
  • Montgomery thinks we can see a similar process in the lyrics of hip-hop music. As with the other anti-languages, you can witness the blossoming of words for the illegal activities that might accompany gang culture. “There are so many words for firearm, for different kinds of drug, for money,”
  • Again, the imaginitive terms lend themselve to artistic use. “There’s quite often a playful element you elaborate new terms for old,” Montgomery says. “To use broccoli as a word for a drug – you take a word from the mainstream and convert it to new use and it has semi-humorous twist to it.”
  • He thinks that the web will only encourage the creation of slang that share some of the qualities of anti-languages; you just need to look at the rich online vocabulary that has emerged to describe prostitution;
  • new, metaphorical forms of speech will also proliferate in areas threatened by state censorship; already, you can see a dozen euphemisms flourishing in place of every term that is blocked from a search engine or social network.  If we can learn anything from this rich history of criminal cants, it is the enormous resilience of human expression in the face of oppression.
sissij

Google and Facebook Take Aim at Fake News Sites - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...from-using-its-ad-service.html

new york times social media bias knowledge

shared by sissij on 07 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Over the last week, two of the world’s biggest internet companies have faced mounting criticism over how fake news on their sites may have influenced the presidential election’s outcome.
  • Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.
  • Google did not escape the glare, with critics saying the company gave too much prominence to false news stories.
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  • Facebook has long spoken of how it helped influence and stoke democratic movements in places like the Middle East, and it tells its advertisers that it can help sway its users with ads.
  • It remains to be seen how effective Google’s new policy on fake news will be in practice. The policy will rely on a combination of automated and human reviews to help determine what is fake. Although satire sites like The Onion are not the target of the policy, it is not clear whether some of them, which often run fake news stories written for humorous effect, will be inadvertently affected by Google’s change.
  • sissij on 07 Mar 17
     
    Company start to pay attention to the fake news on the social media. It reminded me of the government involvement in economics. Although internet should be a place free of speech, there are mounting amount of fake news and alternative facts now that the company need to regulate and make rules to restrict it. I think as long as there is human society, we need rule. In free markets, we also need government regulation to remain a balance. --Sissi (3/6/2017)
sissij

New Research Suggests Working Out With a Friend, Even Online, Makes You Healthier | Big... - 0 views

bigthink.com/...ven-online-makes-you-healthier

research psychology social media

shared by sissij on 25 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • That exercise is a social activity is not surprising. For millions of years our forebears physically worked together to provide shelter, craft rudimentary tools, hunt, and gather. If anything is strange today it’s how little we need to use our bodies to survive, which helps account for so many of our physical and emotional problems. 
  • Being socially active is the main reason I’m drawn to teaching group fitness, which has accounted for half of my career since 2004 (and complements the solitary time spent writing and editing nicely).
  • As it turns out, your friends don’t even have to live near you—social media is helping foster this trend as well.
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  • The researchers collected over five years of data from over a million runners, who collectively clocked in nearly 225 million miles. 
  • They noticed similar training patterns even if the runners were separated.
  • Weather, it turns out, did not dissuade one friend who saw their counterpart clocking in an extra ten minutes that day.
  • Risk of lagging behind proved to be a necessary catalyst for upping the ante. 
  • Which, obviously, is in good humor. But it helps.
  • sissij on 25 Apr 17
     
    Human is essentially a social animal. People cannot live without a community. Although loneliness is a aspect of life deep in everybody's heart, nobody can refuse their nature to make friends, talk to people, and emotionally engaged with others. This follows the logic of revolution. In cross-country, our coach always tells us to run together and work together in practices and races. I think maybe he is doing that in purpose since people tends to perform better with their friends around them.
katedriscoll

KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY - TOK RESOURCE.ORG - 0 views

www.tokresource.org/knowledge-and-technology

shared by katedriscoll on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • As TOK students consider how digital technology impacts knowledge, and themselves as knowers, intriguing ethical issues emerge. In the class activities below students will explore knowledge questions relating to:
  • New York Times Magazine, November 11, 2018. Behind the Cover: What Will Become of Us? Design Director, Gail Bichler. Concept by Delcan & company. Photo illustration by Jamie Chung. Prop styling by Pink Sparrow. C.G. work by Justin Metz. “We liked the idea of a robot hand holding a human skull for its reference to 'Hamlet' and the humor of a robot's contemplating the future (or is it the past?) of humans." See video link above for a glimpse inside the process for its creation..
huffem4

My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to Be Honest... - 1 views

www.yesmagazine.org/...ivilege-i-decided-to-be-honest

social media bias racism white privilege

shared by huffem4 on 10 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • I realized many of my friends—especially the white ones—have no idea what I’ve experienced/dealt with unless they were present (and aware) when it happened. There are two reasons for this: 1) because not only as a human being do I suppress the painful and uncomfortable in an effort to make it go away, I was also taught within my community (I was raised in the ’70s and ’80s—it’s shifted somewhat now) and by society at large NOT to make a fuss, speak out, or rock the boat. To just “deal with it,” lest more trouble follow (which, sadly, it often does); 2) fear of being questioned or dismissed with “Are you sure that’s what you heard?” or “Are you sure that’s what they meant?” and being angered and upset all over again by well-meaning-but-hurtful and essentially unsupportive responses.
  • the white privilege in this situation is being able to move into a “nice” neighborhood and be accepted not harassed, made to feel unwelcome, or prone to acts of vandalism and hostility.
  • if you’ve never had a defining moment in your childhood or your life where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.
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  • if you’ve never been ‘the only one’ of your race in a class, at a party, on a job, etc. and/or it’s been pointed out in a “playful” fashion by the authority figure in said situation, you have white privilege.
  • if you’ve never been on the receiving end of the assumption that when you’ve achieved something it’s only because it was taken away from a white person who “deserved it,” you have white privilege.
  •  if no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, you have white privilege
  • if you have never experienced or considered how damaging it is/was/could be to grow up without myriad role models and images in school that reflect you in your required reading material or in the mainstream media, you have white privilege
  • if you’ve never been blindsided when you are just trying to enjoy a meal by a well-paid faculty member’s patronizing and racist assumptions about how grateful black people must feel to be in their presence, you have white privilege
  • if you’ve never been on the receiving end of a boss’s prejudiced, uninformed “how dare she question my ideas” badmouthing based on solely on his ego and your race, you have white privilege
  • if you’ve never had to mask the fruits of your success with a floppy-eared, stuffed bunny rabbit so you won’t get harassed by the cops on the way home from your gainful employment (or never had a first date start this way), you have white privilege
  • if you’ve never had to rewrite stories and headlines or swap photos while being trolled by racists when all you’re trying to do on a daily basis is promote positivity and share stories of hope and achievement and justice, you have white privilege
  • As to you “being part of the problem,” trust me, nobody is mad at you for being white. Nobody. Just like nobody should be mad at me for being black. Or female. Or whatever. But what IS being asked of you is to acknowledge that white privilege DOES exist and not only to treat people of races that differ from yours “with respect and humor,” but also to stand up for fair treatment and justice, not to let “jokes” or “off-color” comments by friends, co-workers, or family slide by without challenge, and to continually make an effort to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, so we may all cherish and respect our unique and special contributions to society as much as we do our common ground.
tongoscar

Why Shen Yun's Music Resonates With Our Souls - 0 views

www.theepochtimes.com/es-with-our-souls_3195460.html

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Music has its beginning in sacred spaces. Whether in the East with the music of sages or in the West with our Gregorian chants, music has for centuries been used to convey a reverence for the heavens, express human emotion, and connect with the world around us.
  • With ancient China, the five tones of the pentatonic scale had direct relationships with the five elements in our physical world and the five major organs of our human bodies. Whether it be singing or playing tunes on a bamboo flute, music was meant to aid in the connection between heaven, earth, and humankind. 
  • While the task of combining two very different musical languages may be a Herculean one for arrangers, and playing the incredibly precise music a challenge for the musicians, the conductor, in a way, gets to reap the rewards with a powerful, versatile ensemble at her fingertips.
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  • Sometimes the story takes a turn and characters find themselves in a celestial palace, and the music has to be able to evoke a heavenly feeling, a sound so convincing you almost glimpse heaven. Sometimes the story calls for warriors on a battlefield, and the orchestra provides the strength and power and intensity of the battle. Sometimes the dance is an ethnic or folk dance, and the music takes on the sound of horses roaming the Mongolian grasslands, for example. 
  • “In ancient Chinese times, people also believed the ideas behind the music were more important than what’s on the surface … and that’s why I love Shen Yun music so much. It’s very inspiring and powerful—invigorating at the same time. It can be humorous, it can really cheer people up.”“It all ties into this mission to celebrate the best of humanity, both East and West, the values and the heroes from the past, or even today.”
Javier E

Merck CEO Ken Frazier Discusses a COVID Cure, Racism, and Why Leaders Need to Walk the ... - 0 views

hbswk.hbs.edu/...-leaders-need-to-walk-the-talk

role model racism Black career life leader

shared by Javier E on 15 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • Frazier: It means that no matter where you are in the world, you should have access to this vaccine because it is a global pandemic. And my view is unless all of us are safe, none of us are safe.
  • when you think about the world that we live in with climate change, with ecosystem disruption, with populations moving around the way they do with human mobility the way it is, this pandemic is just the first of many that we could experience as a species because those conditions are only going to get worse going forward.
  • Neeley: The EU union has barred Americans from traveling to Europe. Frazier: Yes, because they see the spikes in this country, which goes back to the fact that we aren't doing the things that we could do to suppress the epidemic. We Americans, we value liberty. I know this is not a political science conversation, but the fact of the matter is if you think about the United States of America and its history, liberty has been a very strong theme in our politics. And I've always believed it's because historically, we've had these two big, beautiful oceans protecting us from the rest of the world. And so we could say it's all about my liberty. It's not about security or group security.
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  • Harvard Business School, I think put out a study a few years ago, showing that something like 30% of all hiring for what's called sort of bachelor's level jobs are for skill sets that don't require a bachelor's. So that alone exclude something like 70% of African Americans for no reason.
  • This whole pandemic, what it's done, it's unmasked the huge disparities that exist in our society already. I mean, the fact of the matter is this educational one we just talked about in terms of access to broadband and hardware. But you look at the disparities. I mean, the African American according to a study at Yale is 3.5 times more likely to die from COVID than a white. Somebody who's Latinix is three times more likely to die. So this has unmasked these huge structural elements of racism that existed in this country for a long time. And we need to step up to those structural elements that determine the lives of so many people.
  • Well, this virus doesn't really care about that. And if you're going to do it, if you're going to exercise your liberty at my personal expense, then we can't control the pandemic. And the Europeans are looking at that and they're saying, "We don't want you bringing that into our shores."
  • We have to have the psychological armor to defend ourselves against the racism that's all around us, that's the first piece of advice.
  • The second piece of advice I give is that, you really can't plan your career. You have to take advantage of all the opportunities that you have before you. And I believe that at least in my own instance, what helped me a lot was that I wanted a certain level of autonomy and accountability. And when you do that, you get more responsibility because you are willing to go outside the lane of what most people do.
  • it's sort of humorous to me when people say to me, "I don't see color. I don't even notice that you're a Black man." Every minute of my life, I realize I'm a Black man. How they don't realize it is beyond me. But I really think it's important for young African Americans to have their own communities, to reinforce one another so that they can deal with that incoming.
  • My father Otis Frazier 's father, Richard Frazier , was born in 1861. And so I have only one generation between me and slavery, which is quite unusual for someone at this stage. And my father only had a third grade education and what passed for third grade education for an African American child in South Carolina, between 1906 to 1909. But he was self-taught. He had immaculate habits of speech and dress and behavior, and he was his own man. And he gave me the single most important piece of advice I've ever had when I was growing up in the inner city. And here it is, he would say to me, Kenny, what other people think about you is none of your damn business. And the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be
  • now I can see when you're running a company like Merck and Wall Street is criticizing you because you don't do what they want you to do, I can hear my father saying, you know what they think about you is none of your damn business.
  • And that is what it meant to be a man to me, was to get up every morning, go to work, take care of your family, take your family to church on Sunday and to make sure that your children understood the importance of education and opportunity. And so, while I was born in a really tough inner city neighborhood, I always tell people I had the good fortune to be born in my mother and my father's house. More my father, because my mother died when I was really young and I was raised by a father who was not sentimental about his children, but had high standards. And it helped me a lot to have to live up to my father's standards, which I'm still living up to.
Javier E

What's behind the confidence of the incompetent? This suddenly popular psychological ph... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...pular-psychological-phenomenon

confidence knowledge psychology brain science bias science ignorance incompetence

shared by Javier E on 06 May 20 - No Cached
  • To test Darwin’s theory, the researchers quizzed people on several topics, such as grammar, logical reasoning and humor. After each test, they asked the participants how they thought they did. Specifically, participants were asked how many of the other quiz-takers they beat.
  • Dunning was shocked by the results, even though it confirmed his hypothesis. Time after time, no matter the subject, the people who did poorly on the tests ranked their competence much higher. On average, test takers who scored as low as the 10th percentile ranked themselves near the 70th percentile. Those least likely to know what they were talking about believed they knew as much as the experts.
  • Dunning and Kruger’s results have been replicated in at least a dozen different domains: math skills, wine tasting, chess, medical knowledge among surgeons and firearm safety among hunters.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Dunning-Kruger “offers an explanation for a kind of hubris,” said Steven Sloman, a cognitive psychologist at Brown University. “The fact is, that’s Trump in a nutshell. He’s a man with zero political skill who has no idea he has zero political skill. And it’s given him extreme confidence.”
  • What happens when the incompetent are unwilling to admit they have shortcomings? Are they so confident in their own perceived knowledge that they will reject the very idea of improvement? Not surprisingly (though no less concerning), Dunning’s follow-up research shows the poorest performers are also the least likely to accept criticism or show interest in self improvement.
  • Someone who has very little knowledge in a subject claims to know a lot.
  • the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s not a disease, syndrome or mental illness; it is present in everybody to some extent, and it’s been around as long as human cognition, though only recently has it been studied and documented in social psychology
  • “Obviously it has to do with Trump and the various treatments that people have given him,” Dunning said, “So yeah, a lot of it is political. People trying to understand the other side. We have a massive rise in partisanship and it’s become more vicious and extreme, so people are reaching for explanations."
  • Even though President Trump’s statements are rife with errors, falsehoods or inaccuracies, he expresses great confidence in his aptitude. He says he does not read extensively because he solves problems “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had.” He has said in interviews he doesn’t read lengthy reports because “I already know exactly what it is.”
  • the Dunning-Kruger effect has become popular outside of the research world because it is a simple phenomenon that could apply to all of us
  • The ramifications of the Dunning-Kruger effect are usually harmless. If you’ve ever felt confident answering questions on an exam, only to have the teacher mark them incorrect, you have firsthand experience with Dunning-Kruger.
Javier E

In the Battle Between Bots and Comedians, A.I. Is Killing - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...cial-intelligence-chatgpt.html

AI comedy humor psychology

shared by Javier E on 18 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • Tony Veale, a computer scientist who wrote a book on comedy and A.I., “Your Wit Is My Command,” is impressed with new large-language models’ ability to imitate genre and voice, analyze and generate metaphors, explain itself and even admit mistakes. He’s bullish on computers making professional-level jokes in five years and when asked about originality responded that A.I.’s process isn’t any different from that of young artists. “Many comedians, such as Eddie Murphy and Jerry Seinfeld, trained themselves by repeatedly listening to and repeating Bill Cosby’s early comedy albums,” he wrote in an email. “We all learn from those we aim to emulate and transcend.”
  • Plus: Much comedy doesn’t get that far past the imitation stage. People like old jokes. Sitcoms and stand-up are often derivative. Topical comedy often leans on formulaic phrasing and predictable rhythms
peterconnelly

Opinion | What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...anti-gun-ad-campaign.html

guns new york times opinion

shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s, a kid took in a fair number of public service messages.
  • Make guns less cool, less acceptable, less a part of the supposedly “American way of life.” Scare people. Gross them out. Even try humor.
  • But simple messages stick, and when done well — particularly when lives are at stake — have proven highly effective.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Not only does this country have more guns than people, but over the last 30 years, Americans have grown less supportive of stricter gun laws. Astonishingly, in 1959, 60 percent of Americans favored a ban on handguns except those used by police officers and other authorized persons; today that figure is 19 percent.
  • Bearing in mind that the killers in Texas and Buffalo were both only 18, we could try to get through to the next generation.
  • Obviously, not everyone transformed into responsible citizens while imbibing these messages between doses of Sugar Pops and “Scooby-Doo.”
  • Or it could go personal, using a testimonial from a child who lost his sister in a school shooting or a teenager whose friend committed suicide at 14 using a weapon kept in the house by his own parents.
  • Public education and creative P.S.A.s helped reduce teenage cigarette use significantly. While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV. Those efforts are ongoing.
  • Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters
  • Through technology and schools, it could bring kids into creating and disseminating the message.
criscimagnael

America!: Leaf-Peeping with Marjorie Taylor Greene | The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...ng-with-marjorie-taylor-greene

shared by criscimagnael on 30 Oct 21 - No Cached
    • criscimagnael
      criscimagnael on 30 Oct 21
       
      Although this comic strip is a parody/comedy, it reflects real life. The woman is set in her ideas, so nothing will change them. The man is trying to help her, and point out interesting things, but she has to ruin it because her mind is already set. She has come to a conclusion with evidence or premises backing it, and she is trying to rationalize her way to sounding correct.
Javier E

Hey, Elon Musk, Comedy Doesn't Want to Be Legal - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...elon-musk-twitter-parody.html

comedy twitter musk news social media psychology

shared by Javier E on 14 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • while labeling something parody might be bad for comedy, it can be essential for credibility. If people can’t tell whether an article was satirical or not, that chips away at trust that is essential for a news organization. But what’s good for comedy isn’t necessarily best practices for journalism or social media.
  • Even today when the lines between comedy and politics often blur — years after the press marveled that young people trusted Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” more than the news media, which now seems like a much darker development than it did back then — the idea that free speech might involve some trade-offs seems obvious.
  • But maybe not to Musk, who appears as naïve about comedy as he does about the economics of social media.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The reality is that good comedy can’t be suppressed, particularly these days when gatekeepers have never had less power.
  • While he’s not especially good at comedy, Musk is a wonderful comic character: The boss who thinks he’s funny but isn’t. He’s Michael Scott from “The Office,” whose terrible jokes everyone must if not laugh at, at least put up with.
  • One reason Musk might think he’s hilarious is that every joke he makes gets a glowing response from his vast population of followers. Why? Comedy is subjective. But I bet a few just admire him and want his attention. This can be its own form of cringe humor and mocking it can really bring people together.
  • Musk doesn’t need to own his haters in a tweet. They already work for him for free. It’s entirely possible that we will look back on his tenure at Twitter and conclude that this was his only good joke. Judging by recent moves, he might screw that up, too.
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