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it wasn’t until 2017, when a group of Swedish archaeologists and geneticists extracted DNA from the remains, that the sex of the warrior indeed proved to be female.

In archaeology, as the researchers admitted, we can’t always know why a community buried someone with particular objects. And one female warrior does not mean that many women were leaders, just as the reign of Queen Elizabeth I was not part of a larger feminist movement.

These findings don’t reveal an ancient matriarchy. But neither do they reaffirm the idea of societies in which men dominate completely. What they indicate is a lot more mundane and relatable: Some women were warriors and leaders; many weren’t. There was inequality, but it wasn’t absolute, and there were a lot of shifts over time.

Fifth, people don’t like to be told what to think, and may rebel if they feel that they’re being pressured to think a certain way.

our training model of “teaching people to be good” is based on the illusion that you can change people’s minds and behaviors by presenting them with new information and new thoughts.

If this were generally so, moral philosophers would behave better than the rest of us

People change when they are put in new environments, in permanent relationship with diverse groups of people. Their embodied minds adapt to the environments in a million different ways we will never understand or be able to plan

doing life together with people of other groups can reduce prejudice and change minds.

This points to a more fundamental vision of social change, but it is a hard-won lesson from a bitterly divisive year.

impervious to evidence, willing to believe the most outlandish things if it suited their biases

this was the year that called into question the very processes by which our society supposedly makes progress.

It turns out that if you tell someone their facts are wrong, you don’t usually win them over; you just entrench false belief.

this was the year that showed that our models for how we change minds or change behavior are deeply flawed.

The courses teach people about bias, they combat stereotypes and they encourage people to assume the perspectives of others in disadvantaged groups.

One of the most studied examples of this flawed model is racial diversity training

Our current model of social change isn’t working.

but the bulk of the evidence, though not all of it, suggests they don’t reduce discrimination.

One meta-analysis of 985 studies of anti-bias interventions found little evidence that these programs reduced bias. Other studies sometimes do find a short-term change in attitudes, but very few find a widespread change in actual behavior.

First, “short-term educational interventions in general do not change people.”

Third, training can make people complacent, thinking that because they went through the program they’ve solved the problem

Our brains are statistical organs that are built simply to predict what will happen next

This makes sense because, in prehistoric times, faulty predictions could lead to some very unpleasant surprises — like a tiger eating you or sinking in quicksand.

So-called prediction errors (like finding salmon instead of turkey on your plate on Thanksgiving) send us into a tizzy because our brains interpret them as a potential threat.

Keep doing what you’ve been doing, because you did it before, and you didn’t die.

all essentially subconscious efforts to make your world more predictable, orderly and safe.

Routines and rituals also conserve precious brainpower

It turns out our brains are incredibly greedy when it comes to energy consumption, sucking up 20 percent of calories while accounting for only 2 percent of overall body weight.

Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

Not only is there the seeming capriciousness of the virus, but we no longer have the routines that served as the familiar scaffolding of our lives

“It’s counterintuitive because we think of meaning in life as coming from these grandiose experiences

grandiose

grandiose

Of course, you can always take routines and rituals too far, such as the extremely controlled and repetitive behaviors indicative of addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various eating disorders.

it’s mundane routines that give us structure to help us pare things down and better navigate the world, which helps us make sense of things and feel that life has meaning.”

In the coronavirus era, people may resort to obsessive cleaning, hoarding toilet paper, stockpiling food or neurotically wearing masks when driving alone in their cars. On the other end of the spectrum are those who stubbornly adhere to their old routines because stopping feels more threatening than the virus.

You’re much better off establishing a new routine within the limited environment that we find ourselves in

Luckily, there is a vast repertoire of habits you can adopt and routines you can establish to structure your days no matter what crises are unfolding around you

The point is to find what works for you. It just needs to be regular and help you achieve your goals, whether intellectually, emotionally, socially or professionally. The best habits not only provide structure and order but also give you a sense of pleasure, accomplishment or confidence upon completion.

It could be as simple as making your bed as soon as you get up in the morning or committing to working the same hours in the same spot.

Pandemic-proof routines might include weekly phone or video calls with friends, Taco Tuesdays with the family, hiking with your spouse on weekends, regularly filling a bird feeder, set times for prayer or meditation, front yard happy hours with the neighbors or listening to an audiobook every night before bed.

The truth is that you cannot control what happens in life. But you can create a routine that gives your life a predictable rhythm and secure mooring.

This frees your brain to develop perspective so you’re better able to take life’s surprises in stride.

I attended a Thanksgiving dinner several years ago where the hostess, without warning family and friends, broke with tradition and served salmon instead of turkey, roasted potatoes instead of mashed, raspberry coulis instead of cranberry sauce and … you get the idea.

Too many people are still longing for their old routines. Get some new ones instead.

It wasn’t that the meal itself was bad. In fact, the meal was outstanding. The problem was that it wasn’t the meal everyone was expecting.

When there are discrepancies between expectations and reality, all kinds of distress signals go off in the brain.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday ritual or more mundane habit like how you tie your shoes; if you can’t do it the way you normally do it, you’re biologically engineered to get upset.

This in part explains people’s grief and longing for the routines that were the background melodies of their lives before the pandemic

That her medium was poetry is no mere detail. It is almost the whole story. Poetry not only allows her to express herself – her desire for consolation, her anxiety about what’s disappearing. It is also the form of writing par excellence that can keep an eye open for what is peripheral. It can discern truths that words otherwise struggle to articulate. It glimpses, and hopes.

to know Socrates was to know someone who sought all the truth, and in so doing, realised it mostly lies out of sight.

Moses too does not see anything directly. He apparently doesn’t see anything at all. Instead, an oblique experience is granted to him. It is better described as a kind of unknowing, rather than knowing. He must leave behind what he has previously observed because this seeing consists in not seeing. That which is sought transcends all knowledge.

What she realises is that the truth which is beyond us, which is discerned only indirectly, is the only truth that is truly worth seeking. That which we can readily grasp and manipulate is too easy for us. It’s humdrum. It leaves life too small for us, the creature with an eye for the transcendent. But look further, and what you are offered is what she calls truth’s ‘superb surprise’. That’s why success lies in circuit. Our humanity is spoken to, from a direction – a source – that we had not expected. And our humanity expands as a result.

now, after a year of pandemic, I realize that wasn’t the problem. The rubble was real, all right. It just wasn’t normal.

it always, somehow, came back to that essential human craving for things to be normal, and our inability to believe that they are not, even when presented with compelling evidence.

This phenomenon is well-known to cognitive scientists, who have dubbed it “normalcy bias.”

the greater risk is more often the opposite: People can’t quite believe. They ignore the fire alarm, defy the order to evacuate ahead of the hurricane, or pause to grab their luggage when exiting the crashed plane. Too often, they die.

Calling the quest for normalcy a bias makes it sound bad, but most of the time this tendency is a good thing. The world is full of aberrations, most of them meaningless. If we aimed for maximal reaction to every anomaly we encountered, we’d break down from sheer nervous exhaustion.

But when things go disastrously wrong, our optimal response is at war with the part of our brain that insists things are fine. We try to reoccupy the old normal even if it’s become radioactive and salted with mines. We still resist the new normal — even when it’s staring us in the face.

Nine months into our current disaster, I now see that our bitter divides over pandemic response were most fundamentally a contest between two ideas of what it meant to get “back to normal.”

One group wanted to feel as safe as they had before a virus invaded our shores; the other wanted to feel as unfettered

he disputes that followed weren’t just a fight to determine whose idea of normal would prevail. They were a battle against an unthinkable reality, which was that neither kind of normalcy was fully possible anymore.

I suspect we all might have been less willing to make war on our opponents if only we’d believed that we were fighting people not very different from how we were — exhausted by the whole thing and frantic to feel like themselves again

Some catastrophes are simply too big to be understood except in the smallest way, through their most ordinary human details

In these exceptions, the needs of adults and children found recognition and accommodation. But many teens whose schools remain closed — which includes students at all public schools in San Francisco — were effectively told that they weren't allowed to see other human beings their age with whom they didn't already live.

The entire calculus behind the exceptions assumes a so-called typical teen experience — but it's disproportionately typical for teens who are white, middle- or upper-middle-class and male.

it is developmentally appropriate for teens to seek emotional support from romantic partners or friends, rather than caregivers.

But what parents and other authority figures need to understand is that teens are responding to a stymied developmental imperative.

Though the fear of missing out (or truly missing out) isn't a clinical diagnosis, we know that scrolling through social media feeds can leave teens both forlorn and anxious about where they fit in.

Still, the revision's monumental impact on teens seems to have been a happy coincidence — and teens' mental health cannot remain an afterthought.

Furthermore, policymakers should invest in teen mental health by subsidizing telehealth therapy and creating hotlines to manage short-of-crisis stress.

Our teens need the kind of forceful advocacy from adults that resulted in the reversal of playground closings in California.

Teens aren't cute little kids anymore, but they're just as vulnerable — and in this situation, arguably more so.

It's one of the most consequential laws governing the internet, and it provided a crucial liability shield for technology companies for content they didn't themselves create, like comment threads.

and it has never even been updated to take into account any of the technological changes that have happened since.

What Rule 230 isn't (though it's often portrayed that way) is a bedrock for free speech protections: It's simply a rule that permits internet companies to moderate what other people put on their platforms — or not — without being on the hook legally for everything that happens to be there

There is an opportunity to use technology to protect people's ability to safely participate in democracy and enable a different America — the America we witnessed in Georgia on Tuesday — and a different world.

After Republicans lost the White House, the House and then the Senate, technology companies no longer feel pressure to cozy up to conservatives to keep their prerogatives.

But don't mistake the technology industry's lobbying points about free speech as being related to any real care for American democracy.

The major technology platforms enabling hate speech all have one thing in common with our 45th president: self-interest.

Freedom of speech is truly a value to cherish, but we cherish it through facilitating the expression of truth, not the unfettered right to spew lies and incite violence without consequence.

I’d non-defensively ask them, ‘Do you know how Google works?’ ‘What do you think my news feed looks like? Do you know why yours looks that way?’”

I would expect the following to happen.’ I

cognitive dissonance.

is to acknowledge that some conspiracies do exist — Watergate, the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals, the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s network of underage sexual abuse.

And if people better understood the mechanisms and the economics, maybe then you can talk about the content.”

Witnesses come forward, then victims. And journalists circle like sharks to get the story. I try to get them to think about concrete things and logistical details, including the bureaucracy that’s required to maintain these vast alleged plots.”

“Sometimes it’s about turning the ‘do your research’ paradigm back on them,” he said. “I never appeal to authorities like the government or mainstream media, but I subtly imply that what they’re saying doesn’t match the historical record, which works better than outright dismissing them.”

Unfortunately, social platforms are often the worst forum for talking about these thorny issues. In many cases, a face-to-face conversation is a better place to voice your concerns.

They can also allow participants to pick up on subtle facial and body language expressions — or tone of voice — that may dissolve tensions.

“There it is. Biden’s wearing a wire.” It’s actually just a crease in his shirt. And a popular meme among teens was the claim that Wayfair is shipping children in industrial-grade cabinets.

The main gist of QAnon is that elite satanic pedophiles are everywhere and they’re coming to get your kids. More specifically, pedophiles are everywhere among liberals, celebrities, and the media.

“Q is the best thing that has ever happened to me.” There are now 87 QAnon supporters who have run for Congress, and the first will be elected this November. “I think it’s something worth listening to and paying attention to.” And Trump refuses to push back against QAnon because QAnon loves Trump.

One of the major reasons QAnon is on the rise right now is because when the world is scary and uncertain, we are drawn to magical thinking.

owners are careful not to challenge contemporary Christian orthodoxy and only suggest a hope of reunion.

found other evidence that pet owners were increasingly likely to view animals as part of the family. He wrote that an increasing number of gravestones used family names after the second world war

He also found that owners would increasingly often refer to themselves by familial pronouns like “Mummy”, “Dad”, or “Auntie”.

Since then, cremation has become more common for those who wish to mark their pet’s death.

Other modern pet memorial services include paw prints cast in clay, framed collars, and even the chance to turn their ashes into diamonds. But many owners still opt for the simpler approach of burying them in the back garden – or what is euphemistically termed “communal pet cremation”.

Christianity has traditionally held that animals have no hope of an afterlife. But Pope John Paul II said in 1990 that animals do have souls and are “as near to God as men are”.

“what lies ahead … is not an annihilation of the universe and all that surrounds us. Rather, it brings everything to its fullness of being, truth and beauty.”

Mulling over past “what ifs” helps us better plan for the future.

“That’s a very important, very distinctive human ability,”

That means separating actual events from possible events and pretend play helps children do that. What would happen if I could use this banana to call my grandma? What if this pencil could take flight

by pretending, children are practicing deciphering others’ emotions and beliefs. But an alternate hypothesis is that pretend play helps kids develop a skill known as counterfactual reasoning.

Open the box, they told the kids, and you’ll be able to play with the toy.

They asked a quarter of the children to pretend to be someone else while they completed the task — Batman or an intrepid adventurer like Dora the Explorer.

And the kids did get frustrated. In an odd twist, none of the keys actually worked

The children who pretended to be the hardworking fictional characters stayed calmer. They also spent more time trying to open the box and tried more keys.

For kids, of course, play isn’t about learning or planning or regulating emotions. It’s about having fun. Play may be “evolution’s way of building in an insurance policy” to learn and develop, said Dr. Feigenson. It’s so enjoyable that most kids can’t resist, and along the way they develop the skills they need to succeed as adults.

“It’s a demonstration of this very cool idea that you have remnants of previous thoughts still rattling around in your head, and you bind the representation of what’s happening now to the fading embers of those old thoughts,

They watched a series of nouns appear on a computer screen, one after another, and after a brief distraction recalled as many of the words as they could, in any order. Repeated trials, with different lists of words, showed a predictable effect: The participants tended to remember the words in clusters, beginning with one and recalling those that were just before or after.

This pattern, which scientists call the contiguity effect, is similar to what often happens in the card game concentration, in which players try to identify pairs in a grid of cards lying face-down.

remembering a fact (a broken table) recalls a scene (dancing), which in turn brings to mind more facts — like the other people who were there — and so on.

“When you activate one memory, you are reactivating a little bit of what was happening around the time the memory was formed,” Dr. Kahana said, “and this process is what gives you that feeling of time travel.”

How could they? As might be expected from a law that tries to create a single accountability formula for every American school, No Child Left Behind is replete with technicalities and split hairs.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not want to take on the Bush administration over the federal law. The chancellor denied this, saying ''nothing is served'' by turning a tough equity issue into politics.

Recently, Mr. Klein had his photo taken with Bill Gates, who presented the city with $51 million to create small high schools. But principals of small high schools, like Louis Delgado of Vanguard in Manhattan, say transfers have devastated them this year.

Bias can be thought of as a malleable and quickly-adapting entity. It is important to anticipate situations which are likely to lead to bias or have led to discrimination in the past, and create systems to eliminate or lessen the likelihood of these behaviors from occurring.

Another aspect of unconscious bias training should include the standardization of company policies, protocol, and procedures.

when unconscious bias training is implemented, it is imperative to have measures in place to assess incremental changes and progress.

You can also use both systems, acknowledging that you have an intuition, and feeding it into your System 2 model.

In each case, there was a failure of imagination, as Tom Friedman has noted. Warnings found little receptiveness among the public or government officials. We didn’t think what happened could happen. The presumption of progress bred complacency.

We fooled ourselves into thinking we had engineered permanent improvements in our social and economic systems.

To be fair, progress as it’s commonly understood — higher living standards — has not been at a standstill. Many advances have made life better

Similar inconsistencies and ambiguities attach to economic growth. It raises some up and pushes others down.

What we should have learned by now is that progress is often grudging, incomplete or contradictory.

Still, the setbacks loom ever larger. Our governmental debt is high, and economic stability is low. Many of the claims of progress turn out to be exaggerated, superficial, delusional or unattainable,

Sure, the Internet enables marvelous things. But it also imposes huge costs on society

Global warming is another example. It is largely a result of the burning of fossil fuels, which has been the engine of our progress. Now, it is anti-progress.

the lesson of both economic growth and technologies is that they are double-edged swords and must be judged as such.

What connects these various problems is the belief that the future can be orchestrated.

The reality is that our control over the future is modest at best, nonexistent at worst. We react more to events than lead them.

We worship at the altar of progress without adequately acknowledging its limits.

it does mean that we should be more candid about what is possible. If not, we might yet again wander over the “border between reality and impossibility.”

People with persistent waking anxieties also tended to play out scenarios involving future work, relationships and life generally in their heads over the course of a day. Previous research has correlated this pattern to scene-shifting in dreams: the frequent changing of the setting, from indoors to outdoors, city to country, mountains to coast.

the continuity hypothesis. This framework holds that the content of dreams simply reflects what people thought, felt and did during the day — the good and the bad, the hopeful and the frightening.

dreamers during the first phase of the pandemic recorded far more such shifts in their REM mini-dramas.

“I wasn’t expecting this, but the findings suggest to me this idea that men are mainly experiencing fear of getting sick and dying, health fears,”

Women have been weathering more secondary effects; they tend to be the ones nursing sick family members, more often than males, for instance. I suspect this is the single most likely reason that sadness is up for women in these times.”

that domestication probably began around 20,000 years ago.

much more diverse genetically than modern dogs.

All European dogs appear to have descended from one group of ancient European dogs, and the great modern diversity of dog shapes and sizes indicates an emphasis by breeders on certain very powerful genes.

Modern wolves, however, do show the incorporation of some dog DNA.

The extraordinarily rich amount of information gathered from the 27 genomes provided many new perspectives on dog domestication and their association with humans.

even while they were sometimes breeding with wolves, no new wolf DNA entered their genomes.

Pigs can be a little wild but “if you’re a dog and you’ve got a little bit of wolf in you, that’s not a good thing and those things get knocked on the head very quickly or run away or disappear but they don’t get integrated into the dog population.”

But then there was the sudden loss of diversity in dogs starting around 4,000 years ago.

The exact where and when of dog domestication remain unclear, and will never be pinned down to the kind of moment in time that dog owners like to imagine, but, in terms of a period of time and geographic area, Dr. Larson said, “We’re getting closer.”

Without conscious knowledge of why we’re choosing as we’re choosing, the argument follows, we cannot claim to be exercising “free” will.

If free will is drained of its power by scientific determinism, free-will supporters argue, then we’re moving down a dangerous path where people can’t be held accountable for their decisions, since those decisions are triggered by neural activity occurring outside of conscious awareness.

investigating whether our subjective experience of free will is threatened by the possibility of “neuroprediction” – the idea that tracking brain activity can predict decisions.

The students were then given an article to read about a woman named Jill who tested wearing the cap for a month, during which time neuroscientists were able to predict all of her decisions, including which candidates she’d vote for. The technology and Jill were made up for the study.The students were asked whether they thought this technology was plausible and whether they felt that it undermines free will. Eighty percent responded that it is plausible, but most did not believe it threatened free will unless the technology went beyond prediction and veered into manipulation of decisions.

Our subjective understanding about how we process information to arrive at a decision isn’t just a theoretical exercise; what we think about it matters.