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Javier E

E.P.A. Dismisses Members of Major Scientific Review Board - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-scientific-review-board.html

policy science trump research

shared by Javier E on 08 May 17 - No Cached
  • Members of the board say they have reviewed the E.P.A.’s scientific research on the public health impact of leaking underground fuel tanks, the toxicity of the chemicals used to clean up oil spills, and the effects of the spread of bark beetles caused by a warming climate. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A larger, corresponding panel, the 47-member Science Advisory Board, advises the agency on what areas it should conduct research in and evaluates the scientific integrity of some of its regulations.
  • Both boards, which until now have been composed almost entirely of academic research scientists, have long been targets of political attacks. Congressional Republicans and industry groups have sought to either change their composition or weaken their influence on the environmental regulatory process.
  • “In recent years, S.A.B. experts have become nothing more than rubber stamps who approve all of the E.P.A.’s regulations,” Mr. Smith said at a House hearing in February. “The E.P.A. routinely stacks this board with friendly scientists who receive millions of dollars in grants from the federal government. The conflict of interest here is clear.”
Javier E

You're Not Going to Change Your Mind - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...going-to-change-your-mind.html

confirmation bias desirability bias psychology research bias

shared by Javier E on 29 May 17 - No Cached
  • A troubling feature of political disagreement in the United States today is that many issues on which liberals and conservatives hold divergent views are questions not of value but of fact. Is human activity responsible for global warming? Do guns make society safer? Is immigration harmful to the economy? Though undoubtedly complicated, these questions turn on empirical evidence.
  • Unfortunately, people do not always revise their beliefs in light of new information. On the contrary, they often stubbornly maintain their views. Certain disagreements stay entrenched and polarized.
  • A common explanation is confirmation bias
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • the psychological tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs
  • If this explanation is right, then there is a relatively straightforward solution to political polarization: We need to consciously expose ourselves to evidence that challenges our beliefs to compensate for our inclination to discount it.
  • But what if confirmation bias isn’t the only culprit? It recently struck us that confirmation bias is often conflated with “telling people what they want to hear,” which is actually a distinct phenomenon known as desirability bias, or the tendency to credit information you want to believe.
  • we decided to conduct an experiment that would isolate these biases
  • The results, which we report in a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, were clear and robust. Those people who received desirable evidence — polls suggesting that their preferred candidate was going to win — took note and incorporated the information into their subsequent belief
  • . In contrast, those people who received undesirable evidence barely changed their belief about which candidate was most likely to win.
  • we observed a general bias toward the desirable evidence.
  • What about confirmation bias? To our surprise, those people who received confirming evidence — polls supporting their prior belief about which candidate was most likely to win — showed no bias in favor of this information.
  • They tended to incorporate this evidence into their subsequent belief to the same extent as those people who had their prior belief disconfirmed. In other words, we observed little to no bias toward the confirming evidence.
  • Our study suggests that political belief polarization may emerge because of peoples’ conflicting desires, not their conflicting beliefs per se
  • This is rather troubling, as it implies that even if we were to escape from our political echo chambers, it wouldn’t help much. Short of changing what people want to believe, we must find other ways to unify our perceptions of reality.
anonymous

Opinion | I Survived 18 Years in Solitary Confinement - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...litary-confinement-reform.html

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • I Survived 18 Years in Solitary Confinement
  • Mr. Manuel is an author, activist and poet. When he was 14 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole and spent 18 years in solitary confinement.
  • Imagine living alone in a room the size of a freight elevator for almost two decades.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • As a 15-year-old, I was condemned to long-term solitary confinement in the Florida prison system, which ultimately lasted for 18 consecutive years
  • From age 15 to 33.
  • For 18 years I didn’t have a window in my room to distract myself from the intensity of my confinement
  • I wasn’t permitted to talk to my fellow prisoners or even to myself. I didn’t have healthy, nutritious food; I was given just enough to not die
  • These circumstances made me think about how I ended up in solitary confinement.
  • United Nations standards on the treatment of prisoners prohibits solitary confinement for more than 15 days, declaring it “cruel, inhuman or degrading.”
  • For this I was arrested and charged as an adult with armed robbery and attempted murder.
  • My court-appointed lawyer advised me to plead guilty, telling me that the maximum sentence would be 15 years. So I did. But my sentence wasn’t 15 years — it was life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
  • But a year and a half later, at age 15, I was put back into solitary confinement after being written up for a few minor infractions.
  • Florida has different levels of solitary confinement; I spent the majority of that time in one of the most restrictive
  • I was finally released from prison in 2016 thanks to my lawyer, Bryan Stevenson
  • Researchers have long concluded that solitary confinement causes post-traumatic stress disorder and impairs prisoners’ ability to adjust to society long after they leave their cell.
  • In the summer of 1990, shortly after finishing seventh grade, I was directed by a few older kids to commit a robbery. During the botched attempt, I shot a woman. She suffered serious injuries to her jaw and mouth but survived. It was reckless and foolish on my part, the act of a 13-year-old in crisis, and I’m simply grateful no one died.
  • More aggressive change is needed in state prison systems
  • In 2016, the Obama administration banned juvenile solitary confinement in federal prisons, and a handful of states have advanced similar reforms for both children and adults.
  • Yet the practice, even for minors, is still common in the United States, and efforts to end it have been spotty
  • Because solitary confinement is hidden from public view and the broader prison population, egregious abuses are left unchecked
  • I watched a corrections officer spray a blind prisoner in the face with chemicals simply because he was standing by the door of his cell as a female nurse walked by. The prisoner later told me that to justify the spraying, the officer claimed the prisoner masturbated in front of the nurse.
  • I also witnessed the human consequences of the harshness of solitary firsthand: Some people would resort to cutting their stomachs open with a razor and sticking a plastic spork inside their intestines just so they could spend a week in the comfort of a hospital room with a television
  • On occasion, I purposely overdosed on Tylenol so that I could spend a night in the hospital. For even one night, it was worth the pain.
  • Another time, I was told I’d be switching dorms, and I politely asked to remain where I was because a guard in the new area had been overly aggressive with me. In response, four or five officers handcuffed me, picked me up by my feet and shoulders, and marched with me to my new dorm — using my head to ram the four steel doors on the way there.
  • The punishments were wholly disproportionate to the infractions. Before I knew it, months in solitary bled into years, years into almost two decades.
  • As a child, I survived these conditions by conjuring up stories of what I’d do when I was finally released. My mind was the only place I found freedom from my reality
  • the only place I could play basketball with my brother or video games with my friends, and eat my mother’s warm cherry pie on the porch.
  • No child should have to use their imagination this way — to survive.
  • It is difficult to know the exact number of children in solitary confinement today. The Liman Center at Yale Law School estimated that 61,000 Americans (adults and children) were in solitary confinement in the fall of 2017
  • No matter the count, I witnessed too many people lose their minds while isolated. They’d involuntarily cross a line and simply never return to sanity. Perhaps they didn’t want to. Staying in their mind was the better, safer, more humane option.
  • Solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, something prohibited by the Eighth Amendment, yet prisons continue to practice it.
  • When it comes to children, elimination is the only moral option. And if ending solitary confinement for adults isn’t politically viable, public officials should at least limit the length of confinement to 15 days or fewer, in compliance with the U.N. standards
  • As I try to reintegrate into society, small things often awaken painful memories from solitary. Sometimes relationships feel constraining. It’s difficult to maintain the attention span required for a rigid 9-to-5 job. At first, crossing the street and seeing cars and bikes racing toward me felt terrifying.
  • I will face PTSD and challenges big and small for the rest of my life because of what I was subjected to.
  • And some things I never will — most of all, that this country can treat human beings, especially children, as cruelly as I was treated.
  • Sadly, solitary confinement for juveniles is still permissible in many states. But we have the power to change that — to ensure that the harrowing injustice I suffered as a young boy never happens to another child in America.
  • anonymous on 26 Mar 21
     
    A very eye-opening article and story told by a victim about young children facing solitary confinement.
anonymous

The Perseverance of New York City's Wildflowers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...new-york-flowers-spring.html

shared by anonymous on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Perseverance of New York City’s Wildflowers
  • A park in Williamsburg awaits the miniature beauty of its spring blossoms.
  • In Williamsburg, on a seven-acre park by the East River, spring will soon unfurl in blue blossoms
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Cornflowers are always the first to bloom in the pollinator meadow of Marsha P. Johnson State Park, a welcome sign to bees and people that things are beginning to thaw.
  • If New York City has a warm spring, the cornflowers may open up by late April, eventually followed by orange frills of butterfly milkweed, purple spindly bee balm and yolk-yellow, black-eyed Susans that also inhabit the meadow — hardy species that can weather the salty spray that confronts life on the waterfront.
  • Not all of these flowers are native to New York, or even North America, but they have sustained themselves long enough to become naturalized
  • These species pose little threat to native wildlife, unlike more domineering introduced species such as mugwort, an herb with an intrepid rhizome system.
  • A wildflower can refer to any flowering plant that was not cultivated, intentionally planted or given human aid, yet it still managed to grow and bloom.
  • This is one of several definitions offered by the plant ecologist Donald J. Leopold in Andrew Garn’s new photo book “Wildflowers of New York City,” and one that feels particularly suited to the city and its many transplants.
  • Scarlet bee balm.
  • Ms. Lopez, who grew up on the Upper West Side near a sooty smokestack, has always longed for more green spaces in the city.
  • In February of 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo renamed the park after the activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the central figures of the Stonewall riots and a co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries with the activist Sylvia Rivera. Ms. Johnson, who died in 1992 of undetermined causes, would have turned 75 in August 2020.
  • Mr. Garn did not intend for “Wildflowers of New York City” to be a traditional field guide for identifying flowers. Rather, his reverent portraits invite us to delight in the beauty of flowers that we more often encounter in a sidewalk crack than in a bouquet.
  • Marsha P. Johnson, a central figure of the Stonewall riots and a co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
  • Ms. Johnson was known for wearing crowns of fresh flowers that she would arrange from leftover blooms and discarded daffodils from the flower district in Manhattan, where she often slept.
  • In one photo, Ms. Johnson wears a crown of roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, frilly tulips, statice and baby’s breath.
  • Although cumulous clusters of baby’s breath are now a staple of floral arrangements, the species is a wildflower native to central and Eastern Europe.
  • Ms. Lopez and STARR have criticized a proposal for a new $70 million beach scheduled to be built on Gansevoort Peninsula, near waterfronts where Ms. Rivera once lived and Ms. Johnson died. In its place, she suggests a memorial garden for Ms. Johnson, Ms. Rivera and other transgender people
  • “We will never feed enough people, we will never plant enough flowers, never be good enough to honor Sylvia and Marsha,” Ms. Lopez said. “They cared too much, even when no one cared for them.”
  • “I have candles lit always for Marsha and Sylvia, but I’m praying especially hard now that we get a plan that includes lots of flowers,” said Mariah Lopez, the executive director of Strategic Trans Alliance for Radical Reform, or STARR, an advocacy group.
  • Her dream of the park includes a range of verdant and functional spaces: a paved area where people can vogue and hold rallies, a flower garden in tribute to Ms. Johnson, a greenhouse and an apiary for bees.
  • Tansy.
  • The redesign of the park will add a new fence around the meadow, as well as interpretive signs about the pollinators who depend on its wildflowers. “What would happen if there were no bees in the world?”
  • “We have to protect them. That’s what the function of this sweet little meadow is.”
  • anonymous on 26 Mar 21
     
    Real life story and example of how we treat history- what stories we're telling, who we're trying to save.
Javier E

Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes' ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...omism-climate-crisis-interview

climate response strategy solutions 2021 personal strategy activism

shared by Javier E on 04 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • the “inactivists”, as I call them, haven’t given up; they have simply shifted from hard denial to a new array of tactics that I describe in the book as the new climate war.
  • Who is the enemy in the new climate war?It is fossil fuel interests, climate change deniers, conservative media tycoons, working together with petrostate actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia. I call this the coalition of the unwilling.
  • Today Russia uses cyberware – bot armies and trolls – to get climate activists to fight one another and to seed arguments on social media. Russian trolls have attempted to undermine carbon pricing in Canada and Australia, and Russian fingerprints have been detected in the yellow-vest protests in France.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • I am optimistic about a favourable shift in the political wind. The youth climate movement has galvanised attention and re-centred the debate on intergenerational ethics. We are seeing a tipping point in public consciousness. That bodes well. There is still a viable way forward to avoid climate catastrophe.
  • You can see from the talking points of inactivists that they are really in retreat. Republican pollsters like Frank Luntz have advised clients in the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who carry water for them that you can’t get away with denying climate change any more.
  • Let’s dig into deniers’ tactics. One that you mention is deflection. What are the telltale signs?Any time you are told a problem is your fault because you are not behaving responsibly, there is a good chance that you are being deflected from systemic solutions and policies
  • Blaming the individual is a tried and trusted playbook that we have seen in the past with other industries. In the 1970s, Coca Cola and the beverage industry did this very effectively to convince us we don’t need regulations on waste disposal. Because of that we now have a global plastic crisis. The same tactics are evident in the gun lobby’s motto, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, which is classic deflection
  • look at BP, which gave us the world’s first individual carbon footprint calculator. Why did they do that? Because BP wanted us looking at our carbon footprint not theirs.
  • Of course lifestyle changes are necessary but they alone won’t get us where we need to be. They make us more healthy, save money and set a good example for others.
  • But we can’t allow the forces of inaction to convince us these actions alone are the solution and that we don’t need systemic changes
  • I don’t eat meat. We get power from renewable energy. I have a plug-in hybrid vehicle. I do those things and encourage others to do them. but i don’t think it is helpful to shame people people who are not as far along as you.
  • Instead, let’s help everybody to move in that direction. That is what policy and system change is about: creating incentives so even those who don’t think about their environmental footprint are still led in that direction.
  • Another new front in the new climate war is what you call “doomism”. What do you mean by that?Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement
  • They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair.
  • Many of the prominent doomist narratives – [Jonathan] Franzen, David Wallace-Wells, the Deep Adaptation movement – can be traced back to a false notion that an Arctic methane bomb will cause runaway warming and extinguish all life on earth within 10 years. This is completely wrong. There is no science to support that.
  • Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes. It can be enabling and empowering as long as you don’t get stuck there. It is up to others to help ensure that experience can be cathartic.
  • the entry of new participants. Bill Gates is perhaps the most prominent. His new book, How to Prevent a Climate Disaster, offers a systems analyst approach to the problem, a kind of operating system upgrade for the planet. What do you make of his take?I want to thank him for using his platform to raise awareness of the climate crisis
  • I disagree with him quite sharply on the prescription. His view is overly technocratic and premised on an underestimate of the role that renewable energy can play in decarbonising our civilisation
  • If you understate that potential, you are forced to make other risky choices, such as geoengineering and carbon capture and sequestration. Investment in those unproven options would crowd out investment in better solutions.
  • Gates writes that he doesn’t know the political solution to climate change. But the politics are the problem buddy. If you don’t have a prescription of how to solve that, then you don’t have a solution and perhaps your solution might be taking us down the wrong path.
  • What are the prospects for political change with Joe Biden in the White House?Breathtaking. Biden has surprised even the most ardent climate hawks in the boldness of his first 100 day agenda, which goes well beyond any previous president, including Obama when it comes to use of executive actions. He has incorporated climate policy into every single government agency and we have seen massive investments in renewable energy infrastructure, cuts in subsidies for fossil fuels, and the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline.
  • On the international front, the appointment of John Kerry, who helped negotiate the Paris Accord, has telegraphed to the rest of the world that the US is back and ready to lead again
  • That is huge and puts pressure on intransigent state actors like [Australian prime minister] Scott Morrison, who has been a friend of the fossil fuel industry in Australia. Morrison has changed his rhetoric dramatically since Biden became president. I think that creates an opportunity like no other.
  • Have the prospects for that been helped or hindered by Covid?I see a perfect storm of climate opportunity. Terrible as the pandemic has been, this tragedy can also provide lessons, particularly on the importance of listening to the word of science when facing risks
  • Out of this crisis can come a collective reconsideration of our priorities. How to live sustainably on a finite planet with finite space, food and water. A year from now, memories and impacts of coronavirus will still feel painful, but the crisis itself will be in the rear-view mirror thanks to vaccines. What will loom larger will be the greater crisis we face – the climate crisis.
anonymous

Opinion | The Kind Workers at King Soopers Who Helped a Confused College Kid - The New ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...boulder-mass-shooting.html

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Kind Workers at King Soopers Who Helped a Confused College Kid
  • A University of Colorado Boulder graduate recalls two victims of the shooting who helped a grocery shopping novice.
  • To the Editor:In the fall of 2016 I had just moved into my first apartment and was about to start my sophomore year at the University of Colorado Boulder.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Eager to finally cook food of my own, I decided to pick up groceries at the King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive.
  • I spent most of my first solo supermarket store trip asking the store attendants where various items were.
  • Right away I was struck by how welcoming and friendly everyone working there was.
  • Teri Leiker, killed in Monday’s massacre, was the employee who packed groceries into my large duffle bag. “Find everything all right?” she asked with a grin. “You could pack this thing three times over,” she added, when zipping up my bag.
  • My interaction with Teri was representative of the warm vibe and casual relationship I developed with many of the store employees.
  • Rikki Olds, also murdered in the shooting, came to the rescue several times when my self-checkout machine froze
  • , and assured me it was fine when I realized I forgot things on my shopping list halfway through scanning items.
  • Shootings have become an all-too-common occurrence in America.
  • serving as a stark reminder that at any moment Boulder could be the next target of domestic terrorism.
  • As much as a mass shooting remained a lingering possibility, never did anyone expect something of Monday’s magnitude to occur in a peaceful, quirky, happy-go-lucky college town that’s proudly advertised itself as one of the best places to live in the country.
  • I was hit with a sense of guilt knowing I had never fully expressed my gratitude for Teri or Rikki’s hard work and compassion.
  • Never did I take a second to stop and think about the role they and their co-workers played in making me comfortable in a new place and transitioning to adulthood.
  • Going forward, we owe it to ourselves to have an enhanced appreciation of life and treat one another more kindly
  • In honor of the 10 people caught in the middle of another senseless shooting, let’s all strive to be more appreciative.
  • Jack Stern
anonymous

VHS Tapes Are Worth Money - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vhs-tapes.html

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Who Is Still Buying VHS Tapes?
  • Despite the rise of streaming, there is still a vast library of moving images that are categorically unavailable anywhere else. Also a big nostalgia factor.
  • The last VCR, according to Dave Rodriguez, 33, a digital repository librarian at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., was produced in 2016
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • But the VHS tape itself may be immortal.
  • Today, a robust marketplace exists, both virtually and in real life, for this ephemera.
  • “Hold steady. Price seems fair. It is a Classic.”
  • Driving the passionate collection of this form of media is the belief that VHS offers something that other types of media cannot.
  • “The general perception that people can essentially order whatever movie they want from home is flat-out wrong,”
  • “promised as a giant video store on the internet, where a customer was only one click away from the exact film they were looking for.”
  • “Anything that you can think of is on VHS tape, because, you’ve got to think, it was a revolutionary piece of the media,”
  • “It was a way for everyone to capture something and then put it out there.”
  • preservation
  • “just so much culture packed into VHS,”
  • a movie studio, an independent filmmaker, a parent shooting their kid’s first steps, etc.
  • finds the medium inspirational
  • “some weird, obscure movie on VHS I would have seen at my friend’s house, late at night, after his parents were asleep.
  • “The quality feels raw but warm and full of flavor,” he said of VHS.
  • views them as a byway connecting her with the past
  • from reels depicting family gatherings to movies that just never made the jump to DVD
  • “I think we were the last to grow up without the internet, cellphones or social media,” and clinging to the “old analog ways,” she said, feels “very natural.”
  • “I think that people are nostalgic for the aura of the VHS era,”
  • “So many cultural touch points are rooted there,” Mr. Harris said of the 1980s.
  • It was, he believes, “a time when, in some ways, Americans knew who we were.”
  • Not only could film connoisseurs peruse the aisles of video stores on Friday nights, but they could also compose home movies, from the artful to the inane
  • “In its heyday, it was mass-produced and widely adopted,”
  • She inherited some of them from her grandmother, a children’s librarian with a vast collection.
  • Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
  • the first technology that allowed mass, large-scale home media access to films.”
  • Mr. Arrow said that home videos captured on VHS, or taped television programs that contain old commercials and snippets from the news, are particularly insightful in diving into cultural history.
  • “There’ll be a news break, and you’ll see, like: Oh my god, O.J.’s still in the Bronco, and it’s on the news, and then it’ll cut back to ‘Mission Impossible’ or something.”
  • Marginalized communities, Mr. Harris said, who were not well represented in media in the 1980s, benefited from VHS technology, which allowed them to create an archival system that now brings to life people and communities that were otherwise absent from the screen.
  • The nature of VHS, Mr. Harris said, made self-documentation “readily available,
  • people who lacked representation could “begin to build a library, an archive, to affirm their existence and that of their community.”
  • VHS enthusiasts agree that these tapes occupy an irreplaceable place in culture.
  • “It’s like a time capsule,”
  • “The medium is like no other.”
cvanderloo

David Legates: Controversial UD climate professor reassigned from White House role - 0 views

www.delawareonline.com/...4190039001

climatechange climate UD delaware climatologist education

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A University of Delaware professor and climate change skeptic was reassigned this week by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy after he and another man published controversial papers without White House approval, the Washington Post reported.
  • This is not the first time Legates has been involved in a climate controversy. In 2015, Legates was included in a congressman's request for details on grants and support provided to those who have testified in Congress on the issue of human-caused global warming.
  • "The University has no comment on his actions,"
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • According to his university profile, Legates works in the department of geography and spatial sciences, the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering Program and the department of applied economics and statistics.
  • Before that, Legates was directed by then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner in 2007 to stop using his state climatologist title in statements challenging climate change science after he co-wrote a legal brief opposing federal regulation of greenhouse gases after Delaware joined in a multistate lawsuit pressing for federal action.
  • “Your views, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration,” Minner said.
  • He stepped down as state climatologist in 2011.
clairemann

Why some people like wearing masks - BBC Worklife - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...some-people-like-wearing-masks

psychology science knowledge

shared by clairemann on 26 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Some people welcome face coverings for reasons ranging from the convenient and expedient to the more complex and psychological. But is this a helpful coping mechanism?
  • Since I've been wearing the mask, my awkward interactions with friends and family have significantly reduced,” he says. Now, he goes to the shops whenever he wants, without worrying about whom he might see. He hopes that, even after the pandemic ends, it will still be socially acceptable to wear a mask.
  • Some welcome the way face coverings reduce or change interactions that might otherwise spark social anxiety. But is this a helpful coping mechanism – and what happens when the pandemic comes to an end?
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • They have ditched their old makeup and shaving routines and are saving money, time and stress. Others have discovered that hiding their mouths affords them unexpected freedoms. Some restaurant servers and retail workers say they no longer feel obliged to fake-smile at customers, potentially lifting the burden of emotional labour.
  • “During a pandemic, we’re under severe stress, and whether you’re worrying about your appearance or you’re worried about someone harassing you or whistling at you, the masks can provide a respite from those things that can occupy our mind when we’re out in public. You have more freedom to be meditating or thinking about whatever you want.”
  • “Anonymity carries power,” adds Ramani Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at California State University, Los Angeles. “It can feel like trying on a different ‘role’ and the associated expectations of that role, perhaps freeing us of what can feel exhausting and insincere about smiling (especially when we aren't having a good day).”
  • “For introverts, it can feel great that you don’t have to talk to people you don’t know that well, but in the long run, when you get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself… [you might form] a really fulfilling or positive relationship,”
  • Think back to the last time you failed or made an important mistake. Do you still blush with shame, and scold yourself for having been so stupid or selfish? Do you tend to feel alone in that failure, as if you were the only person to have erred? Or do you accept that error is a part of being human, and try to talk to yourself with care and tenderness?
  • “Most of us have a good friend in our lives, who is kind of unconditionally supportive,” says Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who has pioneered this research. “Self-compassion is learning to be that same warm, supportive friend to yourself.”
Javier E

We should know by now that progress isn't guaranteed - and often backfires - The Washin... - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html

progress hubris arrogance optimism history Crisis culture psychology

shared by Javier E on 27 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • We assume that progress is the natural order of things. Problems are meant to be solved. History is an upward curve of well-being. But what if all this is a fantasy
  • our most powerful disruptions shared one characteristic: They were not widely foreseen
  • This was true of the terrorism of 9/11; the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the parallel Great Recession; and now the coronavirus pandemic
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • the lesson of both economic growth and technologies is that they are double-edged swords and must be judged as such.
  • 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.
  • 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,
  • 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.”
caelengrubb

Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories? | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...believe-in-conspiracy-theories

psychology

shared by caelengrubb on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The researchers found that reasons for believing in conspiracy theories can be grouped into three categories: The desire for understanding and certainty The desire for control and security The desire to maintain a positive self-image
  • Seeking explanations for events is a natural human desire
  • We all harbor false beliefs, that is, things we believe to be true but in fact are not.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • After all, you were simply misinformed, and you’re not emotionally invested in it.
  • Conspiracy theories are also false beliefs, by definition. But people who believe in them have a vested interest in maintaining them
  • People need to feel they’re in control of their lives
  • conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security. This is especially true when the alternative account feels threatening.
  • Research shows that people who feel socially marginalized are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. We all have a desire to maintain a positive self-image, which usually comes from the roles we play in life—our jobs and our relationships with family and friends
  • Most people who believe global warming is real or that vaccines are safe don’t do so because they understand the science. Rather, they trust the experts
  • we have a good understanding of what motivates people to believe in conspiracy theories. That is, they do so because of three basic needs we all have: to understand the world around us, to feel secure and in control, and to maintain a positive self-image.
anonymous

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

thefamilydinnerproject.org/...science-eat-dinner-together

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • anonymous on 04 Nov 20
     
    Suggestion and effects of having family dinner!
Javier E

Pandemic Advice From Athletes - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...athletes-pandemic-advice.html

pandemic climate change psychology endurance resilience toughness mental health goals process pacing perseverance

shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • There’s a special kind of exhaustion that the world’s best endurance athletes embrace. Some call it masochistic, others may call it brave. When fatigue sends legs and lungs to their limits, they are able to push through to a gear beyond their pain threshold. These athletes approach fatigue not with fear but as a challenge, an opportunity.
  • It’s a quality that allows an ultramarathoner to endure what could be an unexpected rough segment of an 100-mile race, or a sailor to push ahead when she’s in the middle of the ocean, racing through hurricane winds alone.
  • The drive to persevere is something some are born with, but it’s also a muscle everyone can learn to flex. In a way, everyone has become an endurance athlete of sorts during this pandemic, running a race with no finish line that tests the limits of their exhaustion.
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  • One message they all had: You are stronger than you think you are, and everyone is able to adapt in ways they didn’t think possible.
  • there are a few techniques to help you along — 100-mile race not required.
  • There’s a pacing in living day to day, just as there’s pacing in climbing.
  • Training to become an elite endurance athlete means learning to embrace discomfort. Instead of hiding from pain, athletes must learn to work with it. A lot of that comes down to pacing
  • Similarly, as you muscle through an ongoing pandemic, you must look for ways to make peace with unknowns and new, uncomfortable realities. “When we think about the coronavirus, we are in it for the long run; so how do you pace yourself?”
  • She recommends thinking about your routines, practicing positive self-talk and focusing on processes instead of outcomes
  • You don’t know when the pandemic will end, but you can take control of your daily habits
  • “always have a little in reserve.”
  • Deplete your resources early and you’ll be in trouble. Focusing on day-to-day activities will pay off in the long run.
  • If you burn out all your mental energy in one day or week, you may find it more difficult to adapt when things don’t return to normal as quickly as you would hope.
  • Pace Yourself
  • “Don’t play all your cards at once and keep a little something in reserve.”
  • Create Mini-Goals
  • Sports psychologists frequently recommend creating mini milestones en route to a big goal. There are many steps on the path from base camp to a mountain’s summit. Likewise, there are smaller, more achievable milestones to reach and celebrate as you venture ahead into the unknown.
  • Focus on Something New
  • “I’m really good at breaking things down into small increments and setting micro-goals,” he said. How micro?
  • “I break things down to 10 seconds at a time,” Mr. Woltering continued. “You just have to be present in what you are doing and you have to know that it may not be the most fun — or super painful — now, but that could change in 10 seconds down the road.”
  • And it may not change quickly. Mr. Woltering said he has spent six-hour stretches counting to 10 over and over again. “You just keep moving and keep counting,” he said. “And you have to have faith that it will change at some point.”
  • Create Structure
  • “Part of expedition life is having a routine that you’re comfortable with. When I’m on expedition, I always start the day with a basin of warm water and soap. I wash my hands, face, neck and ears and get the sand out of my eyes,” he said. “It’s something that’s repeated that gets you a sense of comfort and normalcy.”
  • During the pandemic, he has found comfort and normalcy by getting outdoors, and climbing whenever possible to “run the engine.”
  • Dee Caffari, a British sailor and the first woman to sail solo, nonstop, around the world in both directions, said structure is imperative to fight back loneliness and monotony.
  • “In your day you need structure,” Ms. Caffari said. “You need to get up in the morning knowing you’re going to make something happen.”
  • “Setting goals that are controllable makes it easier to adapt,” Dr. Meijen said. “If you set goals that are controlled by other people, goals that aren’t realistic or are tough or boring, those are much harder to adapt to.”
  • When all else fails, look to something new: a new hobby, a new goal, a new experience
  • During a particularly hard patch of a competition, some athletes say they focus on a different sense, one that perhaps is not at the forefront of their mind when the pain sets in. A runner could note the smells around her and a climber could note the way his hair is blowing in the wind.
  • When athletes are injured, sports psychologists and coaches frequently encourage them to find a new activity to engage their mind and body. The key is to adapt, adapt and then adapt again.
  • “We all want mental toughness, it’s an important part of dealing with difficult things,”
  • “The current definition of mental toughness is the ability to pivot and to be nimble and flexible.”
  • “The next moment is always completely uncertain, and it’s always been that way,” Dr. Gervais said. But adapting, adjusting expectations and discovering new goals or hobbies can allow you to continue to build the muscle that is mental toughness.
  • Bottom line? “Optimism is an antidote to anxiety,”
knudsenlu

Happiness | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...happiness

happiness psychology research brain science

shared by knudsenlu on 25 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Ah, happiness, that elusive state. Philosophers, theologians, psychologists, even economists, have long sought to define it, and since the 1990s, a whole branch of psychology—positive psychology—has been dedicated to pinning it down and propagating it.
  • Research shows that happiness is not the result of bouncing from one joy to the next; achieving happiness typically involves times of considerable discomfort. 
  • . Researchers estimate that much of happiness is under personal control. Regularly indulging in small pleasures (such as warm baths!), getting absorbed in challenging activities, setting and meeting goals, maintaining close social ties, and finding purpose beyond oneself are all actions that increase life satisfaction.
knudsenlu

A New Geo-Engineering Scheme to Prevent Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...550214

sea-levels science research knowledge education

shared by knudsenlu on 13 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • PRINCETON, N.J.—Geo-engineering, its most enthusiastic advocates will tell you, isn’t only possible. It’s already happening.
  • We know, they say, because we’re doing it—we just call it global warming. As humanity dumps billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year, we’ve engineered a different climate system: one that is hotter, wetter, and more unwieldy than what people have lived in since the dawn of agriculture.
  • Researchers speculate that planes could periodically spray a clear gas into the high atmosphere that would prevent some sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface, cooling the globe in turn.
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  • “At the same time I think he’s one of the very few people who’s said, okay, is there something we can do to slow how [ice] is going to change and how it will flow in the future?” she said. “This is kind of high-risk for young scientists, because everybody wants you to do what everyone else is doing. But somebody has to take those first steps.”
runlai_jiang

Probing the Secrets of Jupiter's Great Red Spot - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/jupiter-great-red-spot-4156733

shared by runlai_jiang on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • In technical terms, the Great Red Spot is an anticyclonic storm lying in a high-pressure zone high in Jupiter's clouds. It rotates counter-clockwise and takes about six Earth days to make one complete trip around the planet. It has clouds embedded within it, which often tower many kilometers above the surrounding cloud decks. Jet streams to its north and south help keep the spot at the same latitude as it circulates.
  • Observers have studied the gas giant planet Jupiter since antiquity. However, they've only been able to observe such a giant spot for a few centuries since it was first discovered. Ground-based observations allowed scientists to chart the motions of the spot, but a true understanding was only made possible by spacecraft flybys. The Voyager 1 spacecraft raced by in 1979 and sent back the first close-up image of the spot. Voyager 2, Galileo, and Juno also provided images.
  • Scientists have been able to measure the spot's depth using specialized instruments on the Juno spacecraft. It appears to be some 300 kilometers deep. That's much deeper than any of Earth's oceans, the deepest of which is just over 10 kilometers. Interestingly, the "roots" of the Great Red Spot are warmer at the bottom (or the base) than at the top. This warmth feeds the incredibly strong and fast winds at the top of the spot, which can blow more than 430 kilometers per hour. Warm winds feeding a strong storm is a well-understood phenomenon on Earth, particularly in massive hurricanes. Above the cloud, temperatures rise again, and scientists are working to understand why this is happening. In that sense, then, the Great Red Spot is a Jupiter-style hurricane.
johnsonel7

Perspective: Treat Climate Change Like The Next World War | WNIJ and WNIU - 0 views

www.northernpublicradio.org/...-climate-change-next-world-war

climate change

shared by johnsonel7 on 11 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • But now we as a global community have some monumental decisions to make about our children’s future within just the next 10 to 25 years -- basically, two or three Presidents worth. 
  • It’s so easy to ignore, or maybe even too daunting to think about, as we go about our everyday lives. But we’re now well beyond the luxury of ostrich behavior. As Illinois’ future climate morphs over the next few decades to become more similar to that of northern Texas or South Carolina today, I urge you to think about the magnitude of it and take action, because we need a mobilization the size of which humanity has never seen. 
tongoscar

From Climate Change to Omnicide - Tablet Magazine - 0 views

www.tabletmag.com/...rom-climate-change-to-omnicide

shared by tongoscar on 22 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • As this decade dawns, we are confronted with the reality of climate crisis—both in the image of uncontainable fires raging across the Australian bush, and in the voices of young people speaking truth to power and calling out for their future and the living Earth.
  • And as this future has arrived with smoke-filled air, its vocabulary has evolved: from the innocuous sounding “climate change,” to “climate crisis,” and now “climate collapse,” gradually awakening us to an accelerating disaster. Our seas polluted with plastic, air toxic, trees burning whether in the Amazon or Australia, we are also including other words to describe the nature of this crisis: ecocide, our deliberate destruction of the natural environment; and most recently: omnicide. Omnicide images a crime “we have previously been unable to witness because we have never imagined it.” Across Australia—with billions of dead animals and birds, and millions of people suffering ill health effects—we are witnessing what the world will look like with three or more degrees warming, “the killing of everything.”
  • With almost a hundred homes destroyed, we waited in the smoke-filled air, just out of the mandatory evacuation zone, with our go-bags ready, for nearly a week without electricity.
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  • This insecurity, anxiety, is especially affecting young people, who rightly fear for their future, fear that the current system is pushing the Earth beyond its ecological limits.
  • Understandably we try to place the future of climate crisis within the images of our present conditions—that this way of life will continue, saved by technological solutions or planting millions of trees.
  • While this vast devastation unfolds across Australia, its politicians—paid by climate deniers—are in the process of developing a huge new open coal mine helped by Siemens, which also profited from the Holocaust as a leading corporate participant in Hitler’s “death through work program,” despite the protests of Fridays for Future activists;
  • What will our world look like two, or three degrees warmer? We can already see signs of a future few of us want to imagine.
tongoscar

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-2019-1.5427586 - 0 views

www.cbc.ca/...climate-2019-1.5427586

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Climate change is costing cities as they try to adapt and mitigate. Farmers are facing increasing challenges, which can lead to consumers paying more for food.
  • "In my line of work, we do track the numbers and we do try to quantify the behaviour of the climate system, but ultimately what really matters is where it intersects and impacts with the people we love and the things we do," said Deke Arndt, chief of the global monitoring branch of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
  • "Some people who work in weather-sensitive sectors such as agriculture … are seeing [climate change] on an annual basis, and they're seeing [it] through greater extremes,
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  • The fires raging in Australia are just a recent example of the challenges a continuously warming Earth will present. To date, 28 people have died, including two firemen, and millions of animals are thought to have perished.  Then there are hurricanes. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian sat almost immovable above Abaco Island in the Bahamas for more almost 24 hours, killing at least 70 people. Heat waves killed an estimated 1,500 people in France in 2019. The good news is this is far below the 2003 heat wave that killed an estimated 30,000 across Europe, with 14,000 in France alone. And here at home, a heat wave killed 66 people in Montreal in 2018.
tongoscar

Redding joins the country in a march for women's rights | KRCR - 0 views

krcrtv.com/...y-in-a-march-for-womens-rights

shared by tongoscar on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The Women's March annual event initially started outside the Redding City Hall on Cypress Avenue as many gathered to listen to speakers and make their way down the street.
  • Some stated why they decided to participate in the march, the answers ranged from advocating for social change to bringing awareness to global issues.
  • "I'm marching because I feel like, kind of like, the whole theme this year is global warming and I think that it's something that really needs to be talked about because people sometimes don't believe it and awareness needs to be spread," marcher Elle Weaver said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "I am marching because I don't want this world to change me," said Natalie Larson from Redding. "Maybe one person cannot change the world but this person can make sure that I don't get changed."
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