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Data Firm Tied to Trump Campaign Talked Business With Russians - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ambridge-analytica-russia.html data mining trump campaign russia psychology manipulation social media
shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.“We’ve never worked in Russia,” said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.
  • “As far as I’m aware, we’ve never worked for a Russian company,” Mr. Nix added. “We’ve never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don’t have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals.”
  • But Mr. Nix’s business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews.
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  • . The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.
  • Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, according to two former company insiders who said there were at least three meetings with Lukoil executives in London and Turkey.
  • Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.
  • On two promotional documents obtained by The New York Times, SCL said it did business in Russia. In both documents, the country is highlighted on world maps that specify the location of SCL clients, with one of the maps noting that the clients were for the firm’s elections division. In a statement, SCL said an employee had done “commercial work” about 25 years ago “for a private company in Russia.”
  • Asked about the Russian oil company, a spokesman for SCL said that in 2014 the firm’s commercial division “discussed helping Lukoil Turkey better engage with its loyalty-card customers at gas stations.” The spokesman said SCL was not ultimately hired.
  • But Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and develop the company’s voter-profiling technology, said Lukoil showed interest in how the company used data to tailor messaging to American voters.
  • “I remember being super confused,” said Mr. Wylie, who took part in one of the Lukoil meetings.“I kept asking Alexander, ‘Can you explain to me what they want?’” he said, referring to Mr. Nix. “I don’t understand why Lukoil wants to know about political targeting in America.”
  • “We’re sending them stuff about political targeting — they then come and ask more about political targeting,” Mr. Wylie said, adding that Lukoil “just didn’t seem to be interested” in how the techniques could be used commercially.
  • A second person familiar with the discussions backed up Mr. Wylie’s account, but spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a confidentiality agreement.
  • Though Lukoil is not state-owned, it depends on Kremlin support, and its chief executive, Vagit Alekperov, has met with Mr. Putin on a number of occasions. Reuters reported last year that Lukoil and other companies received instructions from the state energy ministry on providing news stories favorable to Russian leadership.
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Opinion | The Blindness of Social Wealth - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...facebook-social-wealth.html wealth social media social facebook depression loneliness relations psychology
shared by Javier E on 17 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • “The truth is, relationships are the most valuable and value-creating resource of any society. They are our lifelines to survive, grow and thrive.”
  • There’s a mountain of evidence suggesting that the quality of our relationships has been in steady decline for decades.
  • In the 1980s, 20 percent of Americans said they were often lonely. Now it’s 40 percent.
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  • Suicide rates are now at a 30-year high. Depression rates have increased tenfold since 1960, which is not only a result of greater reporting.
  • Most children born to mothers under 30 are born outside of marriage.
  • There’s been a steady 30-year decline in Americans’ satisfaction with the peer-to-peer relationships at work.
  • “During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.”
  • Weak social connections have health effects similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and a greater negative effect than obesity, he said.
  • In 2012, 5.9 percent of young people suffered from severe mental health issues. By 2015 it was 8.2 percent.
  • More and more Americans are socially poor. And yet it is very hard for the socially wealthy to even see this fact.
  • Most of the questions he faced at the congressional hearings and most of the analysis in the press were about Facebook’s failure to protect privacy. That’s the sort of thing that may be uppermost on your mind if you are socially wealthy
  • But the big issue surrounding Facebook is not privacy. It’s that Facebook and other social media companies are feeding this epidemic of loneliness and social isolation.
  • heavy internet users are much less likely to have contact with their proximate neighbors to exchange favors and extend care. There’s something big happening to the social structure of neighborhoods.
  • The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar observes that human societies exist on three levels: the clan (your family and close friends), the village (your local community) and the tribe (your larger group)
  • In America today you would say that the clans have polarized, the villages have been decimated and the tribes have become weaponized.
  • That is, some highly educated families have helicopter parents while less fortunate families have absent parents. The middle ring cross-class associations of town and neighborhood have fallen apart. People try to compensate for the lack of intimate connection by placing their moral and emotional longings on their political, ethnic and other tribes, turning them viciously on each other.
  • many of us who are socially wealthy don’t really know how the other half lives.
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A reason to believe - 2 views

www.apa.org/...believe.aspx psychology knowledge brain science
shared by sissij on 29 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • They’re finding that religion may, in fact, be a byproduct of the way our brains work, growing from cognitive tendencies to seek order from chaos, to anthropomorphize our environment and to believe the world around us was created for our use.
  • “Religion is one of the big ways that human societies have hit on as a solution to induce unrelated individuals to be nice to each other,” says Norenzayan.
  • “The problem is, the more you look inward toward your religious group and its claims of virtue, the less you look outward and the more distrustful you are of others,” he says.
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  • That distrust causes much of the world’s strife and violence and is one of the reasons the “new atheists,” including British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, PhD, and neuroscientist Sam Harris, PhD, want to see religion disappear.
  • sissij on 29 Oct 17
     
    I find this article interesting because it analysis the reason of religion from the perspective of basic human nature.
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More College Students Seem to Be Majoring in Perfectionism - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...majoring-in-perfectionism.html students perfectionism anxiety social media psychology
shared by Javier E on 20 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • New data from American, Canadian and British college students indicates that perfectionism, especially when influenced by social media, has increased by 33 percent since 1989.
  • Thinking that others in their social network expect a lot of them is even more important to young adults than the expectations of parents and professors.
  • “Meritocracy places a strong need for young people to strive, perform and achieve,” he said. They have “increasingly unrealistic educational and professional expectations for themselves.”
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  • Parents in my practice say they’re noticing how often their kids come away from Facebook and Instagram feeling depressed, ashamed and anxious, and how vulnerable they are to criticism and judgment, even from strangers, on their social media feeds.
  • Perfectionism is a personality trait or characteristic that is innate in many people. It is nurtured in some environments, notably in families where personal accomplishment, academic or otherwise, is rewarded:
  • The researchers looked at more than 41,000 students’ responses on the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, which not only measures degrees of perfectionism but also distinguishes among its three aspects: self-oriented, other-oriented and socially prescribed
  • the questions posed by the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, used in the study, may be informative. Among its 44 items, scaled from 1 (disagree) to 7 (agree), are statements like these: When I am working on something, I can’t relax unless it’s perfect; The people around me expect me to succeed at everything I do; The better I do, the better I am expected to do. The scale is not a clinical instrument, but the questions might be a good starting point for discussion.
  • It’s hard to tell how much social media is affecting your child’s self-image; many feel enormous pressure to be perfect off line, too. And it’s difficult to know what, if anything, parents can do about it, beyond offering empathy, reassurance and emotional support.
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Why doom and gloom won't help us fight climate change - The Washington Post - 1 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html doom climate change psychology
shared by Javier E on 19 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • the big problem with bad news about the environment is that it too easily leads to resignation and then passivity. Consider Paul Kingsnorth, the former British environmental activist who suggests that the magnitude of the “ecocide” we face means that we have to come to terms with the reality that there is no hope. “We are not going to stop this from happening,”
  • A group of academics and activists recently published a book with an emblematic title: “Mourning Nature.”
  • Small wonder that a series of recent polls have detected many Americans declaring that they’re experiencing “eco-anxiety.” If nature is already too far gone, why go to the trouble of trying to save it?
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  • We must take to heart these environmental triumphs and not just fixate on the bad news. Let’s celebrate the recovery of our eastern forests, which after two centuries of decimation have regrown to cloak hundreds of millions of acres of unproductive agricultural land.
  • he air of New York City is substantially better today than it was in the 1950s. The water in the Potomac today is much cleaner than it was in 1947, when Louis Halle wrote his classic nature book “Spring in Washington.”
  • ome seriously good things have happened to our environment over the past half-century — because human beings took conscious and purposeful action to establish legal and regulatory incentives that changed society’s behavior.
  • Will the Earth’s biosphere as we know it survive? One thing is for sure: We need to believe so to be able to function at full capacity as concerned citizens.
  • Only smart collective action, led by courageous people working with intelligent and well-funded organizations and agencies, can mount the necessary effort to keep our Earth from peril.
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Is Coffee Good for You? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coffee-benefits.html coffee diet health nutrition science
shared by Javier E on 19 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • experts say some of the strongest protective effects may be with Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and liver conditions such as cirrhosis, liver cancer and chronic liver disease. For example, having about five cups of coffee a day, instead of none, is correlated with a 30 percent decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to a meta-analysis of 30 studies.
  • “We don’t know for sure if coffee is the cause of the health benefits,” said Jonathan Fallowfield, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, and co-author of the British Medical Journal review. “These findings could be due to other factors or behaviors present in coffee drinkers.”
  • A study in JAMA Internal Medicine examined the coffee habits of nearly 500,000 people in the U.K. and found that it didn’t matter if they drank one cup or chain-drank eight — regular or decaf — or whether they were fast metabolizers of coffee or slow. They were linked to a lower risk of death from all causes, except with instant coffee, the evidence was weaker.
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How to Build Healthy Habits - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...w-to-build-healthy-habits.html habit habits psychology research how-to
shared by Javier E on 18 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • why is it so hard to form new healthy habits?
  • Behavioral scientists who study habit formation say that many of us try to create healthy habits the wrong way. We make bold resolutions to start exercising or lose weight, for example, without taking the steps needed to set ourselves up for success.
  • Here are some tips, backed by research, for forming new healthy habits.
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  • Stack your habits. The best way to form a new habit is to tie it to an existing habit, experts say. Look for patterns in your day and think about how you can use existing habits to create new, positive ones.
  • Start small. B.J. Fogg, a Stanford University researcher and author of the book “Tiny Habits,” notes that big behavior changes require a high level of motivation that often can’t be sustained. He suggests starting with tiny habits to make the new habit as easy as possible in the beginning.
  • Dr. Wood calls the forces that get in the way of good habits “friction.”
  • he amount of time it took for the task to become automatic — a habit — ranged from 18 to 254 days. The median time was 66 days!
  • The lesson is that habits take a long time to create, but they form faster when we do them more often, so start with something reasonable that is really easy to do
  • Make it easy. Habit researchers know we are more likely to form new habits when we clear away the obstacles that stand in our way.
  • Do it every day. British researchers studied how people form habits in the real world, asking participants to choose a simple habit they wanted to form, like drinking water at lunch or taking a walk before dinner.
  • We’re just very influenced by how things are organized around us in ways that marketers understand and are exploiting, but people don’t exploit and understand in their own lives,” she said
  • Reward yourself. Rewards are an important part of habit formation. When we brush our teeth, the reward is immediate — a minty fresh mouth
  • But some rewards — like weight loss or the physical changes from exercise — take longer to show up. That’s why it helps to build in some immediate rewards to help you form the habit. Listening to Books on Tape while running, for example,
  • Take the Healthy-Habits Well Challenge: Now that you know what it takes to start building healthy habits, try the new Well Challenge, which gives you a small tip every day to help you move more, connect with those you love, refresh your mind and nourish your body.
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Truth to tell: populism and the immigration debate | British Politics and Policy at LSE - 0 views

blogs.lse.ac.uk/...exit-will-not-reduce-migration politics truth
shared by fischerry on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Truth to tell: populism and the immigration debate
  • The populist surge that helped propel Brexit isn’t going to help the UK take control of its borders, writes Tim Bale. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been honest with voters about immigration policy, and that shows little signs of changing after a hard Brexit. The gap between rhetoric and reality has given politicians the opportunity to indulge in populist promises. People sense they are not being told the whole truth – but do they want to hear it?
  • Just as political scientists had begun to take it for granted we had moved from an era of ‘position politics’ (the clash of big ideas between two tribes) to an era of ‘valence politics’ (where competence and credibility counts most)
  • fischerry on 06 Mar 17
     
    Valence politics
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Is Technology Destroying Happiness? | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...echnology-destroying-happiness technology bias psychology
shared by sissij on 09 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Historian Yuval Noah Harari writes that happiness itself is not an inalienable right—the pursuit of it is. Semantics matter. 
  • Technology alone is not to blame, as in many ways our uneasiness with our condition seems an old trait.
  • however, Americans have turned more toward British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s demand that the sole purpose of the state, financial markets, and science “is to increase global happiness.” 
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  • But we’re not happier.
  • Harari points out that initially happiness was introduced as a check on state power.
  • Given how few we encounter on a regular basis, this threat detection system has been co-opted by the luxury of security, causing Harari to realize that: The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.
  • The Buddha actually warned against such a chase, deciding contentment was more worthwhile (and saner). The pursuit of pleasure is the root of suffering.
  • As Trentmann points out, the Latin consumere meant a “physical exhaustion of matter.” For example, the wasting disease, tuberculosis, was referred to as consumption. While we’ve redefined that word in modern times the original intention seems destined to win out.
  • sissij on 09 Mar 17
     
    The author went depth into how people see happiness. It is very interesting to see that our happiness in life does not increase as our life quality. There are ,any other reasons why we don't feel as happy as we should. The author bring up a very interesting point that happiness is very blank and hard to define, but the pursuit of happiness is what feels real to us and important to us. I think we feel less happiness is because we become easier to get what we want. The process of pursuing the happiness is lightened. --Sissi (3/9/2017)
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How the U.S. Could Sleepwalk into a War with China | Time - 0 views

time.com/...sleepwalk-war-with-china world war history thinking
shared by clairemann on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Our assessment is that both nations are rapidly ascending the slope of that metaphorical mountain, and will likely find themselves in a full-blown, Cold War-like status in the near future
  • The two nations are significantly at odds over the status of the South China Sea, which China claims as territorial waters, potentially giving them control over rich oil and gas deposits and dominance over the 40% of the world’s trade that passes through these strategic seas.
  • American companies in China who refuse to toe the line on Chinese policy issues (such as the status of Taiwan and the treatment of Uighurs); the devastating results of COVID-19 in the U.S. originating from a virus that first started to spread in Wuhan; and the freedom of Taiwan to decide whether or not to eventually unify politically with China.
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  • China; offensive cyber activities undertaken by both sides; widespread human rights violations against the Muslim Uighur population within China; and the status of Hong Kong, where the U.S. believes China to be in violation of the treaty which returned the former British colony to a “special status” within China.
  • If such an incident occurred, perhaps in the Taiwan Straits adding in the additional factor of extreme Chinese pride and nationalism over their view of Taiwan as a sovereign part of China, it could easily spark a far larger military exchange than the warning shots and close approaches we have seen thus far.
  • Larger strikes from either side could follow, as could a far broader cyberattack, perhaps against critical infrastructure. Carrier strike groups on both sides could deploy head-to-head. With even more significant losses, the temptation to employ a tactical nuclear weapons – perhaps at sea, thinking it could never then escalate to a strategic exchange – might rise.
  • The chances of the U.S. and China stumbling into a war are real and increasing.
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When Christmas was cancelled: a lesson from history - 0 views

theconversation.com/d-a-lesson-from-history-149310 christmas covid pandemic england protestant reformation
shared by cvanderloo on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Back in 1647, Christmas was banned in the kingdoms of England (which at the time included Wales), Scotland and Ireland and it didn’t work out very well. Following a total ban on everything festive, from decorations to gatherings, rebellions broke out across the country. While some activity took the form of hanging holly in defiance, other action was far more radical and went on to have historical consequences.
  • The protestant reformation had restructured churches across the British Isles, and holy days, Christmas included, were abolished. The usual festivities during the 12 days of Christmas (December 25 to January 5) were deemed unacceptable.
  • Christmas Day, however, didn’t pass quietly. People across England, Scotland and Ireland flouted the rules.
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  • Taking up arms and breaking the rules weren’t just about experiencing the fun of the season. Fighting against the prohibition of Christmas was a political act. Things had changed and the Christmas rebellion was as much a protest against the “new normal” as it was against the banning of fun. People were fed up with a range of restrictions and financial difficulties that came with the Presbyterian system and the fallout of the civil war.
  • The aftermath of the Norwich Christmas riots was the most dramatic. The mayor was summoned to London in April 1648 to explain his failure to prohibit the Christmas parties, but a crowd closed the city gates to prevent him from being taken away. Armed forces were again deployed, and in the ensuing riots, the city ammunition magazine exploded, killing at least 40 people.
  • This Christmas, police across the country are ready to enforce COVID regulations and break up gatherings. While the pandemic does make things different, with rule breaking a matter of safety as much as anything else, politicians could learn from the fallout of the last time Christmas was cancelled.
  • Like in 1647, many people today are fed up with the government’s restrictions. Many have also suffered financial difficulties as a result of the COVID regulations. Some may rail against the idea of ending a miserable year under what they may regard as contradictory restrictions on family fun.
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Misogyny Fuels Violence Against Women. Should It Be a Hate Crime? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-against-women-hate-crime.html
shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Misogyny Fuels Violence Against Women. Should It Be a Hate Crime?
  • Experts say the everyday harassment women have learned to put up with — the catcalling and lewd gestures — connects directly with more serious abuses.
  • “Men who kill women do not suddenly kill women, they work up to killing women.”
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  • Sarah Everard in London. Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan and Daoyou Feng in Atlanta.
  • Eight women, two continents apart, killed in the space of two weeks. The suspects in both cases are men.
  • London, Ms. Everard disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house, and was found dead a week later. A police officer was charged with kidnapping and murdering her.
  • In Atlanta, a gunman stormed three massage parlors and shot and killed eight people — seven of them women, six of them Asian — raising speculation that the attack was racially motivated
  • In the days after Ms. Everard’s body was found and protests calling for deeper social change grew across the United Kingdom
  • the British government announced an experimental pilot program (though there is no fixed start date yet) that would categorize cases of gender-based violence and harassment motivated by misogyny as hate crimes.
  • “Across the country, women everywhere are looking to us not just to express sympathy with their concerns, but to act,”
  • “Stop telling them to stay at home and be careful, and start finding those responsible for the violence.”
  • In Atlanta, the arrested suspect told the police he had a “sexual addiction,” according to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, prompting some activists to call for him to be charged with a hate crime there, too.
  • “What can’t be forgotten is the hate crime statute says ‘because of gender’ as well,”
  • “The angle of misogyny has to be looked at.”
  • Do ‘sweat the small stuff’
  • As women around the world watched the two events unfold, they started sharing their own stories on social media of having been in similar situations that had the potential to escalate and turn similarly violent.
  • Women spoke of all of the things that they — like Ms. Everard — did “right,” including walking on well-lit streets, and talking on the phone or clutching their keys in their pockets while doing so — and described how they still ended up in dangerous situations.
  • Asian women spoke of all of the ways in which sexism and racism coalesce to expose them to a unique form of harassment that can lead to violence and abuse.
  • Their stories confirm that violence against women isn’t an aberration, but a “global public health” crisis of “epidemic proportions,”
  • In the United States, one online survey in 2018 found that 81 percent of women had experienced some kind of sexual harassment during their lifetimes. In the United Kingdom, 97 percent of women aged 18 to 24 said they had been sexually harassed, according to UN Women UK.
  • These numbers are all from before the coronavirus pandemic; with the onset of the health crisis, domestic abuse surged and public spaces became eerily empty, leaving women feeling increasingly worried about their safety.
  • Violence against women is consistently underreported because women are scared of retaliation for speaking out or they fear the stigma associated with sexual violence,
  • UN Women’s initiative to end gender-based violence.
  • “We’re not joining the dots, nobody is making connections,
  • “There is a big picture here that we are just repeatedly missing. There are connections between the normalized daily behaviors that we brush off and the more serious abuses.”
  • a woman recalls that when she was in school, at age 13 or 14, a few girls complained to a teacher that the boys in their class had been groping them and the teacher said that they were “being oversensitive.
  • In another example, a woman recalls waiting at a bus stop when a man walked up to her and grabbed her bottom but everyone around her who had witnessed the incident remained silent.
  • a woman recalls how a man sat directly opposite her on the train and touched himself and then got off the train on the next stop, as if nothing had happened.
  • There is plenty of evidence to suggest that misogyny and gender-based violence are also correlated with broader threats
  • a spike in gender-based violence — particularly domestic violence — correlates with “rising levels of insecurity in society more broadly.”
  • A sudden disappearance of girls from schools, for example, could point to a rise of fundamentalist views
  • “If only we were to listen to women and pay attention to the misogyny and aggression and violence that they deal with on a daily basis.”
  • As pervasive as sexism, misogyny and gender-based violence are, none are inevitable and they can be countered
  • “The term ‘violence against women’ is a passive construction — there’s no active agent, it’s a bad thing that happens to women,” he explained, but it’s as if “nobody’s doing it to them.”
  • “shifts the accountability off of men and the culture that produces them and puts it onto women.”
  • The second step is recognizing that male aggression against women is a manifestation of a broader systemic problem. “There’s this impulse to pathologize the individual perpetrators — that somehow the individual perpetrator is some monster who just kind of crawled out of the swamp,
  • “But if you accept the concept that it’s systemic, then there are policy implications and political implications and introspection that can be uncomfortable.
  • “And how that message plays in the community, how you talk about it, how you have police understand it.”
  • “Making misogyny a crime is like making racism a crime — it’s unfortunate, it’s ugly and we wish people wouldn’t do it, but you can’t punish somebody for saying something,” he said.
  • In other words, they’d have to show that the man assaulted her because she’s a woman, which is a tough standard to meet.
  • In the United States, a crime motivated by gender bias is considered a hate crime at the federal level and in 35 states.
  • Reporting hate crimes also requires a police force that is trained to appropriately respond to those complaints.
  • But that would only broaden the powers of law enforcement, which several women’s rights groups argue wouldn’t do much to prompt deeper cultural change.
  • . Many still felt, according to the survey, that incidents like name calling or groping seemed too normal for the police to take seriously.
  • “So what’s the point of me going to the police station and sitting there for two hours with a policeman who probably just thinks, ‘Why are you wasting my time?’”
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Here's How Social Media Affects Your Mental Health | McLean Hospital - 0 views

www.mcleanhospital.org/...s-affecting-your-mental-health
shared by caelengrubb on 07 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The platforms are designed to be addictive and are associated with anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments.
  • According to the Pew Research Center, 69% of adults and 81% of teens in the U.S. use social media.
  • To boost self-esteem and feel a sense of belonging in their social circles, people post content with the hope of receiving positive feedback. Couple that content with the structure of potential future reward, and you get a recipe for constantly checking platforms.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • FOMO—fear of missing out—also plays a role
  • A 2018 British study tied social media use to decreased, disrupted, and delayed sleep, which is associated with depression, memory loss, and poor academic performance.
  • Social media use can affect users’ physical health even more directly. Researchers know the connection between the mind and the gut can turn anxiety and depression into nausea, headaches, muscle tension, and tremors.
  • The earlier teens start using social media, the greater impact the platforms have on mental health. This is especially true for females. While teen males tend to express aggression physically, females do so relationally by excluding others and sharing hurtful comments. Social media increases the opportunity for such harmful interactions.
  • In the past, teens read magazines that contained altered photos of models. Now, these images are one thumb-scroll away at any given time. Apps that provide the user with airbrushing, teeth whitening, and more filters are easy to find and easier to use. It’s not only celebrities who look perfect—it’s everyone.
  • In recent years, plastic surgeons have seen an uptick in requests from patients who want to look like their filtered Snapchat and Instagram photos.
  • A person experiences impostor syndrome when feeling chronic self-doubt and a sense of being exposed as ‘a fraud’ in terms of success and intellect. “Whether it’s another pretty vacation or someone’s bouquet of flowers, my mind went from ‘Why not me?’ to ‘I don’t deserve those things, and I don’t know why,’ and it made me feel awful.”
  • Sperling encourages people to conduct their own behavior experiments by rating their emotions on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the most intensely one could experience an emotion, before and after using social media sites at the same time each day for a week.
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How the 'Alpha' Coronavirus Variant Became So Powerful - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-alpha-uk-variant.html research knowledge coronavirus health immune
shared by lucieperloff on 08 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • British researchers discovered that a new variant was sweeping through their country.
  • tended to become more common in its new homes as well
  • It’s making itself more invisible,”
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • . “Any successful virus has to get beyond that first defense system. The more successful it is at doing that, the better off the virus is.”
  • A lot of researchers focused their attention on the nine mutations that alter the so-called spike protein that covers the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells
  • They found that lung cells with Alpha made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses.
  • Alpha disables the first line of immune defense in our bodies, giving the variant more time to multiply.
  • They found that Alpha-infected cells make a lot of extra copies — some 80 times more than other versions of the virus — of a gene called Orf9b.
  • dampening the production of interferon and a full immune response. The virus, protected from attack, has better odds of making copies of itself.
  • people infected with Alpha have a more robust reaction than they would with other variants, coughing and shedding virus-laden mucus from not only their mouths, but also their noses — making Alpha even better at spreading.
  • . They may have independently evolved their own tricks for manipulating our immune system.
  • But studies on people who recover naturally from Covid-19 have shown that their immune systems learn to recognize other viral proteins, including Orf9b.
  • “It’s quite a tricky enterprise, but becoming more possible as we learn more,”
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St Patrick's day: why so many US presidents like to say 'I'm Irish' - 0 views

theconversation.com/ts-like-to-say-im-irish-157181 ireland UK USA biden trump kennedy presidents government
shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Biden is the most strongly identified Irish-American in the White House since John F Kennedy, the only other Catholic president.
  • rish nationalist sentiments run high in the US, especially among its large diaspora. US presidents frequently indulge these views, at least symbolically. But, in practical terms, they have had little impact on the US-UK relationship.
  • More than 30 million people in the US – about one in ten Americans – identify as “Irish”.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • there are over six times as many people in the US who claim to be Irish in the US as those living in the Republic of Ireland itself.
  • If measured by when their last ancestor left Ireland, Joe Biden is no more Irish than Barack Obama
  • Perhaps the most dramatic example of this was shown by Jimmy Carter, who – on St Patrick’s Day 1976 – marched down Fifth Avenue in New York wearing a badge emblazoned with the slogan “England, get out of Ireland”.
  • With Donald Trump being the exception, nearly every president of the last half-century has identified as “Irish”, even when the evidence of such a link has been tenuous.
  • In spite of this, US presidential administrations have sought a more balanced approach. The US considers the UK to be one of its most valuable and important strategic partners. US presidents work closely with British governments, while also offering symbolic affirmation for Ireland.
  • While Biden’s personal affinities are clear, we should expect him to follow his predecessors in placing US security interests before Irish nationalist affections.
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Uganda Election: President Yoweri Museveni Declared Winner As Bobi Wine Alleges Fraud :... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...-winner-as-bobi-wine-alleges-f Uganda Fruaud Museveni Wine
shared by cvanderloo on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has won a sixth term in office, fighting off a challenge by former singer Bobi Wine
  • Wine's run drew many young Ugandans to pay attention to politics.
  • Museveni received 58% of the vote to 34% for Wine
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Wine is alleging that votes were rigged
  • Ahead of the vote, Museveni's government shut down social media outlets in Uganda
  • Wine said that security forces were not allowing anyone in or out of his home, and he urged Ugandans to reject the results.
  • called Uganda's electoral process "fundamentally flawed," citing "authorities' denial of accreditation to election observers, violence and harassment of opposition figures" and the arrest of civil service organization workers.
  • The election has been closely watched because of Wine's appeal to younger voters — a crucial strength in a country with one of the youngest populations in the world, where more than two-thirds of the population is under age 30.
  • Wine sought to replace one of Africa's longest-tenured leaders with one of its youngest, hoping to make a generational shift that would be felt across the continent.
  • "Uganda has never witnessed a peaceful transfer of power since gaining its independence in 1962."
  • Wine himself was arrested in November, sparking large protests during which dozens of people died.
  • A recent Gallup poll found that only around a third of respondents in Uganda said they're confident in the honesty of their country's elections.
  • This week, Wine said the military had killed his driver and that his home was raided.
  • But Wine is alleging that the vote was rigged, as election officials face questions over how results were tallied amid an Internet blackout, according to the AP.
  • In an interview with NPR, Wine said security forces were not allowing anyone in or out of his home, and he urged Ugandans to reject the results.
  • Wine became a pop star with music that blends Afrobeat with sounds borrowed from reggae and dancehall.
  • He then turned toward politics, winning a seat in parliament.
  • Museveni recently told NPR that he views pro-Wine demonstrators as "agents of foreign schemes."
  • This week, as ballots were being counted and the outcome of the 2021 vote hung in the balance, there were worries about what a transition of leaders might look like in the former British colony.
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Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-us-canada-55648011 government overthrow
shared by colemorris on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A violent mob, whipped into a frenzy by politicians, tearing apart a town to overthrow the elected government.
  • A violent mob, whipped into a frenzy by politicians, tearing apart a town to overthrow the elected government.
  • They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Think of the Democratic party of 1898 as the party of white supremacy,"
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      its so weird how this changed over time
  • White militias - including a group known as the Red Shirts, so named for their uniforms - rode around on horseback attacking black people and intimidating would-be voters
    • colemorris
      colemorris on 17 Jan 21
       
      dies this possibly tie into the british uniforms or just a coincidence.
  • "Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the Negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses kill, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns."
  • The number of registered African American voters reportedly dropped from 125,000 in 1896 to about 6,000 in 1902.
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Man who accidentally threw out a bitcoin fortune offers $70 million for permission to d... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html man offers fortune dig
shared by jmfinizio on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A British man who accidentally threw a hard drive loaded with bitcoin into the trash has offered the local authority where he lives more than $70 million if it allows him to excavate a landfill site.
  • held a digital store of 7,500 bitcoins,
  • he discovered that he had mistakenly thrown the hard drive out with the trash.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • They can then be used as payment, with every transaction being recorded in a public list known as blockchain.
  • "The plan would be to dig a specific area of the landfill based on a grid reference system and recover the hard drive whilst adhering to all safety and environmental standards,
  • they refused the offer and won't even have a face to face discussion with me on the matter."
  • Howells first discovered that the hard drive was missing when his bitcoin was worth around $9 million. Based on the current rates, he estimates it would be worth around $273 million.
  • "The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds -- without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order."
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Vienna 'terror attack': One person dead, several injured in shooting - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html education bias CNN.com
shared by adonahue011 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
    • adonahue011
      adonahue011 on 03 Nov 20
       
      This feels like something that should be given more global attention. I think it is very interesting how our whole country is so hyper focused on the election, as it is very important. I think it proves how we have such strong biases, inherently.
  • "We are still in battle against the would-be terrorists,
  • "We assume there are several heavily armed perpetrators."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • the attackers started randomly shooting at people in a busy district packed with cafes and restaurants near Vienna's main synagogue, Seitenstettengasse Temple.
    • adonahue011
      adonahue011 on 03 Nov 20
       
      It is important to understand how global issues can also effect us as Americans, I believe often time we do not think about the world as a whole enough.
  • keep the population safe
  • said in a tweet that it was unclear whether the synagogue was a target, but that it was closed at the time of the shooting.
    • adonahue011
      adonahue011 on 03 Nov 20
       
      So similar to attacks we have seen in America.
  • Kurz said the Austrian army has been deployed to help protect buildings and properties. "We are currently going through difficult times in our republic.
  • ther leaders have shared statements expressing their shock and sorrow, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
  • entral Vienna on Monday evening, killing at least one person and injuring 15, including a police officer, according to Austrian authorities.
  • Authorities are urging the public to stay inside while the other gunmen -- it is unclear how many there are in total -- remain at large.
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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.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • 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,”
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