Americans would be furious if the government required that every person must carry a tracking device that broadcast their location dozens of times each day, forever

Americans have, with every terms of service agreement they click “agree” on, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Tens of millions of Americans, including many children, are now carrying spies in their pockets.

The location tracking industry didn’t really exist until the end of the 2000s. Powerful location-based apps became ubiquitous in the blink of an eye. As the decade closes, we’re inundated with stories of privacy invasions, from data breaches to smart speakers to hackable doorbell cameras and now to location-gobbling apps.

Now, to hit 1.5˚C, emissions would need to fall off a cliff, falling by 15 percent a year every year, starting in 2020, until they hit net zero.

All of those impacts become much worse at 2˚C. (The World Resources Institute has a handy chart; see also this graphic from Carbon Brief.) Severe heat events will become 2.6 times worse, plant and vertebrate species loss 2 times worse, insect species loss 3 times worse, and decline in marine fisheries 2 times worse. Rather than 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs dying, 99 percent will die. Many vulnerable and low-lying areas will become uninhabitable and refugee flows will radically increase. And so on. At 2˚C, climate change will be devastating for large swathes of the globe.

In short, there is no “safe” level of global warming

Emissions have never fallen at 15 percent annually anywhere, much less everywhere. And what earthly reason do we have to believe that emissions will start plunging this year? Look around! The democratic world is in the grips of a populist authoritarian backlash that shows no sign of resolving itself any time soon

We’ve waited too long. Practically speaking, we are heading past 1.5˚C as we speak and probably past 2˚C as well.

To really grapple with climate change, we have to understand it, and more than that, take it on board emotionally

Given the scale of the challenge and the compressed time to act, there is effectively no practical danger of anyone, at any level, doing too much or acting too quickly.

Right now, much of Australia is on fire — half a billion animals have likely died since September — and it is barely breaking the news cycle in the US

I can’t help but think that the first step in defending and expanding that empathy is reckoning squarely with how much damage we’ve already done and are likely to do, working through the guilt and grief, and resolving to minimize the suffering to come.

The results confirm what others have suggested, with the added bonus of being one of the few studies to use a real experimental design, which has the power to show causation. Additionally, it seems to suggest that we don’t need to cut out social media use completely, but just to curtail it.

A really neat study a few years ago illustrated this, finding that the link between social media and depression was largely mediated by this "social comparison" factor.

Social media, especially spending long periods of time on it, is just not that good for us. We may not need to quit it completely, but limiting our time on social media considerably, and reconnecting with friends and family in real life, is definitely the way to go.

Emotions should never be bottled up. Call or go see someone you trust and recount to them what happened. Hearing an opinion other than your own broadens your awareness. Keep a journal and transfer your emotions from your inner self onto the paper. Many people find it helpful to engage in aggressive exercises, such as kickboxing or martial arts, to discharge their feelings.

Every happening of our lives, whether good or bad, serves a higher purpose. Wisdom means being able to see past the moment and discern the greater meaning of any given situation. You may not understand it in the beginning, but as time goes by, you'll begin to see the bigger picture falling into perfect order.

Whenever you are confronted with an emotion which is making you feel or think something bad, force it out of your mind and replace it with a different thought.

A constant reminder of our ardent nature, emotions surge through us at every second of the day.

If you read a post and disagree, before you respond, do a little research. Maybe you can find some data that supports your position.

When you are quoting your opponent while using their blog post or Facebook post, use the statement as it was intended to be used. Do not try to fabricate what the meaning of a sentence was or add/subtract words to suit your needs.

When you present your argument, you want it to be organized and specific to your point. You do not want people to become confused after reading your post. You want to persuade people to take your side, not confuse them and push them away. If you stay focused on your topic and continue to make valid points, it will make it difficult for your opponent to debate your position.

When people start to rant and go off on tangents or attack the other person, the audience quickly loses interest. No one wants to back the person that turns rude, or becomes mean-spirited. They want to follow the professional, because they are professional. They want to follow the person who is positive and polite through the entire debate

The day-to-day work of a pilot is unstable, and often unpredictable. They’re away from home, and from their families, for long stretches of time. The job isn’t a typical 9-to-5— instead, pilots fly overnight from timezone to timezone, at strange hours.

To reduce fatigue, which is linked to stress, rules and regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) limit the number of hours a pilot can fly and how much rest they need. During a 24-hour period, a pilot flying alone can’t log more than eight hours, for example, and they have a ten-hour minimum rest period before taking off.

But if stress creeps past that midpoint, performance starts to drop off. Too-high levels of stress mean exhaustion, panic, and blunted brain power. That’s when mistakes happen.

CRM training is designed to help pilots and crew members develop efficiency communication and decision-making skills. “It was also saying, this is what fatigue looks like, and this is how to recognize it in your co-pilot,” Bowen says. From that point on, she says, the airlines worked to develop a culture where pilots would hold other pilots accountable when they weren’t fit to fly. “It was about not protecting their buddy, but protecting overall safety,” Bowen says.

Pilot mental health is another big issue to tackle, says Quay Snyder, a former Air Force flight surgeon and a member of the Aerospace Medical Association Working Group on Pilot Mental Health. Pilots are often reluctant to acknowledge the effect that emotional stressors might have on their ability to fly, he says.

“They’re slow to recognize mental health issues,” he says, “and they might think there’s a stigma against asking for help.”

“Pilots trust pilots,” he says. “Hearing from a peer could help a pilot recognize that they may not be fit to fly. Hearing it from a physician doesn’t carry much weight, but hearing it from a peer does.”

If, eventually, everyone speaks his own language and English, is it only a matter of time before the other languages are forgotten, except by scholars, sentimentalists and curmudgeons?

While the worlds of science, commerce and popular culture unite around English, people are killing each other because they speak different languages.

Language divides as much as does land or blood, and almost as much as religion.

Such is the power of language that it can be used to make division where it barely exists. Ethnically, Belorussians are all but indistinguishable from Russians. Wanting independence from Moscow, the Russians who live around Minsk claim that theirs is a separate language, though many scholars consider it

Since your initial research indicated that $27,000 was the average price, the first offer you encountered seemed like a great deal. You overlooked further information, such as the possibility that other dealers might have lower prices, and made a decision on the information you already had, which served as an anchoring point in your mind.

Imagine that you are trying to negotiate a pay raise with your boss. You might hesitate to make an initial offer, but research suggests that being the first one to lay your cards down on the table might actually be the best way to go. Whoever makes that first offer has the edge since the anchoring effect will essentially make that number the starting point for all further negotiations. Not only that, it will bias those negotiations in your favor. That first offer helps establish a range of acceptable counteroffers, and any future offers will use that initial number as an anchor or focal point.

How much television should your children watch each day? If you watched a great deal of TV as a kid, it might seem more acceptable for your kids to be glued to the television for hours each day.

lingering perceptions based on dramatic, painful events are impacting decision-making even when those events are over.

Ariely said a home country investment bias might be generated by two perceptual factors.“The first is an overly optimistic belief about one’s own economy; an expectation of performance in their country that is higher than what would be statistically realistic. The second reason is most likely due to procedural difficulties in investing outside the country – such as less knowledge about how to access these markets.”

investors may be making decisions driven more by personal bias or irrational belief than by reality and, in doing so, they may be hindering their own investment success.

The problem? These decisions may hinder their ability to reach their desired retirement or savings goals. The choice is between changing the goal—or changing the means of reaching it.

If you could better connect your current self with your future self, you would muster up the motivation you need to accomplish the task now, and not then.

Half of the participants were to consider that their “children” would begin college in 18 years, the other half in 6,570 days. Of course, this was the exact same amount of time. But did the way they counted time influence when would they start saving for that education? Interestingly, the “parents” who looked at matters from a “days” perspective planned to start saving four times sooner than parents planning from a “years” perspective. This experiment illustrated a valuable lesson: Procrastination can be overcome by finding a way to connect to your future self, now.

If you’re tempted to procrastinate, find a way to visualize your future self. Focus on the pain that results from putting things off, contrasted with the relief of having completed your task.

“Don’t just do something, stand there.” Sometimes, taking a minute to be systematic and follow an organized approach makes all the difference. This is where critical thinking meets problem solving. Define the problem, come up with a list of solutions, then select the best answer, implement it, create an evaluation tool and fine-tune as needed.

Evaluate information factually. Recognizing predispositions of those involved is a challenging task at times. It is your responsibility to weigh the information from all sources and come to your own conclusions.

Be open-minded and consider all points of view. This is a good time to pull the team into finding the best solution. This point will allow you to develop the critical-thinking skills of those you lead.

Communicate your findings and results. This is a crucial yet often overlooked component. Failing to do so can cause much confusion in the organization.

Developing your critical-thinking skills is fundamental to your leadership success.

So, the challenge becomes how to recommend “new videos that users want to watch” when those videos are new to the system and low in views. (Finding fresh, potentially hot videos is important, YouTube researchers have written, for “propagating viral content.”)

more than 70 percent of the videos that YouTube recommended showed up on the list only once. It’s impossible to examine how hundreds of thousands of videos connect to each first random video when there are such limited data about each one.

People want to know if YouTube regularly radicalizes people with its recommendations, as the scholar Zeynep Tufekci has suggested. This study suggests that YouTube pushes an anonymous user toward more popular, not more fringe, content.

For my November magazine story about children’s YouTube, the company’s answer to these kinds of troubling suggestions was that YouTube isn’t for kids. Children, they told me, should be using only the YouTube Kids app, which has been built as a safe space for them

 when we feel threatened by something, the initial emotion is labeled “fear." That fear, by means of hormones, results in the production of fight-or-flight responsive feelings, allowing our body to react quickly and appropriately for its own self-preservation.

To continue with our fear to frightened/inferior example above, we can look at the Emotion Wheel to more clearly visualize that "fear" on the inner circle is different from "frightened" on the outer one. Or, to switch our focus to the positive, we can use the Emotion Wheel to see that the emotion of “happy” on the inner circle can result in a feeling of “joyful," “powerful” or even “proud” on the outside circle.

The payoff is in understanding that the six emotions are only broad categories with little specificity, while the feelings are more akin to how we actually and specifically describe what’s going on in our brains and bodies.

After you have identified and selected an item from the outer circle, track that feeling inward through the two rings until you have reached the basic emotion (inner circle). Using this process, you can see that while you think you are experiencing a feeling, you are really dealing with an emotion.

you do need to consider exactly what the problem is and the ramifications of your proposed solution.

Recognize and name all feelings you are experiencing in connection with the decision

Be aware of whether you want to make a decision from this specific emotion or if you want to adjust the course.

When we feel so fundamentally disenfranchised, it’s comforting to concoct a fictional universe that systemically denies you the right cards. It gives you something to fight against and makes you self-deterministic. It provides an “us and them” narrative that allows you to conceive of yourself as a little David raging against a rather haughty, intellectual establishment Goliath. This is what worries me about journalists writing columns or tweets sneering at the supposed stupidity of the pseudoscientists and con spiracy theorists – it only serves to enforce this “us and them” worldview.

The quickest, easiest, most effective way to do this is by "consulting an Anti-You" before you make every decision. As one banking executive explained to me, "It's amazing how many poor decisions can be avoided simply by asking one other person for their opinion."

The act of explaining your situation to another person often gives you new insights about the decision before the other person even responds.  And the fresh perspective they offer in response is the second bonus.

The purpose of a decision is not to find the perfect option. The purpose of a decision is to get you to the next decision.

All of your devices emit short wavelength light, known as blue light. A Harvard study claimed that exposure to blue light before bed decreases natural melatonin production, a hormone that regulates sleep. The brightness from your phone screen can interrupt your natural circadian rhythm, and cause for shorter REM cycles and overall restless sleep.

With a constant influx of information grabbing your attention, it can put pressure on you to have your phone on you at all times to stay informed. Researchers agreed, telling The Chicago Tribune that the possibility of missing something if you don’t keep your phone nearby can induce a feeling of stress and anxiety. 

Remember the blue light? The cornea and lens can’t filter it, so the light goes to the back of the eye, which can weaken vision over time.

Though social media can be fun entertainment, it can also open up the door for harmful comparison. Being able to keep up to date with someone else’s success (or pitfalls) invites the opportunity for you to compare your life to theirs. That can invoke a feeling of inadequacy and unhappiness, according to Psychology Today

But when our own memories are challenged, we may neglect all this and instead respond emotionally, acting as though we must be right and everyone else must be wrong

In general, if you have seen something before, your confidence that you have seen it and your accuracy in recalling it are linked: The more confident you are in your memory, the more likely you are to be right. But new research reveals important nuances about this link.

This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

But when people mistakenly recalled words that were similar to those on the lists but not actually on the lists — a false memory — they also expressed high confidence.

When we recall our own memories, we are not extracting a perfect record of our experiences and playing it back verbatim. Most people believe that memory works this way, but it doesn’t. Instead, we are effectively whispering a message from our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time.

In Dr. Tyson’s case, once the evidence of his error was undeniable, he didn’t dig his hole deeper or wish the controversy away. He realized that his memory had conflated his experiences of two memorable and personally significant events that both involved speeches by Mr. Bush. He probably still remembers it the way he described it in his talks — but to his credit, he recognizes that the evidence outweighs his experience, and he has publicly apologized.

Good scientists remain open to the possibility that they are wrong, and should question their own beliefs until the evidence is overwhelming. We would all be wise to do the same.

Politicians should respond as Dr. Tyson eventually did: Stop stonewalling, admit error, note that such things happen, apologize and move on

I was useless as a navigator but couldn’t abort the mission. My teammate took over. After my frustration and fear had dissipated, I slowed my breathing and held my breath at the inhale and exhale. I focused my mind on the breathing cycle while repeating the positive mantra, “Feeling good, looking good, ought to be in Hollywood!” thus accelerating my concentration and positivity. Suddenly we came to a halt. We’d arrived at the destination. A miserable three hours felt like an enjoyable 45 minutes just through focused breathing.

he had his SEAL Team visualize the mission hundreds of times. They mentally pictured everything that could go wrong, as well as what the victory would look like. They also rehearsed it live in a mock-up of the compound the terrorist was holed up in. This tactic is a key to SEAL success.

SEAL’s don’t take anything for granted and ensure that they win in their minds before stepping onto the helo

The SEAL ethos makes quitting not an option. SEALs persevere to “find a way or make one.” Things inevitably go wrong, but they don’t entertain the concept of failure

But the claim that emotions keep things alive is too simple. After all, you can name a lot of efficient, enduring response systems that don't include emotion. Rivers are one--they skirt serious barriers and survive through history.

An evolutionary answer with a bit more detail is that we're animals: more aggressive and self-conscious than rivers and plants are. Aggression and the desire to survive that comes with selfhood helped scoot animals up the food chain.

we developed a more complex rational system too, in which we could imagine our own past and future selves. It was the ability to reason about old and future selves (to set traps, and not just run from tigers) that allowed us to dominate the food chain. Rational thought helped us shape the world for our future: rerouting rivers, breeding plants, caging tigers.

even though emotions like fear used to be helpful in the wild, they're less efficient helpmates in modern civilized life. Of course we still have plenty to fear, but our threats are not usually immediate, like a tiger, but rather distant, like money and war and homelessness.

There's a sense of danger without a practical opportunity to respond to it quickly.

We get to "wise mind" when we're able to step back from emotion and reason with it. The wise mind puts emotion and reason in conversation, or uses reason to calm emotion down.

After all, the other reason why we developed emotion is that emotion helps build relationships and bind communities.

Under any sort of pressure, they presumed all the statements were true, regardless of their labeling.

How we form beliefs was shaped by the evolutionary push toward efficiency rather than accuracy.

Before language, our ancestors could form new beliefs only through what they directly experienced of the physical world around them. For perceptual beliefs from direct sensory experience, it’s reasonable to presume our senses aren’t lying. Seeing is, after all, believing. In fact, questioning what you see or hear can get you eaten. For our evolutionary ancestors, it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when considering whether to believe that rustling in the grass is a lion.As a result, we didn’t develop a high degree of skepticism when our beliefs were about things we directly experienced, especially when our lives were at stake.

As complex language evolved, we gained the ability to form beliefs about things we hadn’t actually experienced for ourselves–and tended to believe them just as strongly.

The bigger risk is in failing to update our beliefs when new information arises

we still form beliefs without vetting most of them, and maintain them even after receiving clear, corrective information.

The next time you argue with someone about something you believe to be true, step back and ask yourself how you came to this conclusion.