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As a psychiatrist, I’ve long wondered why some people get ill in the face of stress and adversity — either mentally or physically — while others rarely succumb.

not everyone gets PTSD after exposure to extreme trauma, while some people get disabling depression with minimal or no stress

What makes people resilient, and is it something they are born with or can it be acquired later in life?

ever since I started writing about what I call the Frightful Five, some have said my very premise is off base. I have argued that the companies’ size and influence pose a danger. But another argument suggests the opposite — that it’s better to be ruled by a handful of responsive companies capable of bowing to political and legal pressure. In other words, wouldn’t you rather deal with five horse-size Zucks than 100 duck-size technoforces?

Given all the ways that tech can go wrong — as we are seeing in the Russia influence scandal — isn’t it better that we can blame, and demand fixes from, a handful of American executives when things do go haywire?

One benefit of having five giant companies in charge of today’s tech infrastructure is that they provide a convenient focus for addressing those problems.

I’ve been searching for practical tips on how we can be less beastly to one another, especially when we’re negotiating disagreements. I’ve found some excellent guides — like “Negotiating the Nonnegotiable” by Daniel Shapiro, “The Rough Patch” by Daphne de Marneffe and “The Art of Gathering” by Priya Parker

not entirely useless tips.

The rule of how many. When hosting a meeting, invite six people to your gathering if you want intimate conversation. Invite 12 if you want diversity of viewpoints. Invite 120 if you want to create a larger organism that can move as one.

Older siblings play an important role in the lives of their younger siblings. Like parents, older brothers and sisters act as role models and teachers, helping their younger siblings learn about the world. This positive influence is thought to extend to younger siblings' capacity to feel care and sympathy for those in need: Children whose older siblings are kind, warm, and supportive are more empathic than children whose siblings lack these characteristics. A new longitudinal study looked at whether younger siblings also contribute to their older sisters' and brothers' empathy in early childhood, when empathic tendencies begin to develop. The research found that beyond the influence of parents, both older and younger siblings positively influence each other's empathic concern over time.

Researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 452 Canadian sibling pairs and their mothers who were part of the Kids, Families, and Places project and from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. They wanted to determine whether levels of empathy in 18- and 48-month-old siblings at the start of the study predicted changes in the other siblings' empathy 18 months later. The researchers videotaped interactions in the families' homes and mothers completed questionnaires. Children's empathy was measured by observing each sibling's behavioral and facial responses to an adult researcher who pretended to be distressed (e.g., after breaking a cherished object) and hurt (e.g., after hitting her knee and catching her finger in a briefcase).

"Our findings emphasize the importance of considering how all members of the family, not just parents and older siblings, contribute to children's development," suggests Sheri Madigan, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, who coauthored the study. "The influence of younger siblings has been found during adolescence, but our study indicates that this process may begin much earlier than previously thought."

a high-fiber diet came with a 40-percent lower than average risk of heart disease. Fiber also seems to protect against metabolic syndrome.

One of the mechanisms behind these benefits appears to be that fiber essentially feeds the microbes in our guts, encouraging diverse populations. Those microbes are implicated in a vast array of illnesses and wellbeing. A diet heavy on meat and dairy is necessarily lower on fiber.

The basic idea behind Paleo is that humans evolved under certain circumstances over millennia, and then those circumstances changed tremendously in the last century, and our bodies did not keep pace. We find ourselves sedentary and overfed on amalgamations that distort our body’s expectations of “food.”

For some of us, this was a concern from the beginning of President Trump’s rise — not just the policies he would adopt but also the attitudes he would encourage and the passions he would provoke.

The problem is one of social psychology. Human beings are wired to favor their ingroup and to view people in outgroups as interchangeable and dispensable. We are willing to form ingroups at the drop of a hat, based even on minor characteristics.

We tend to believe that bad things that happen to people in our ingroup are bum luck, while bad things that happen to people in outgroups are evidence of a just universe. Because we are inherently predisposed toward stereotyping, we are particularly vulnerable to propaganda.

as more Americans label the president a racist due to his worldview, the voters who continue to back him are becoming bolder in justifying their support, citing retaliation for being viewed as backing a racist.

as the president’s overall approval ratings remain relatively low, many of those who brought him to the dance appear to be dancing more closely than ever. And they are blaming their critics

After Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) tweeted the names of maximum Trump donors in his district — which are all public record, by the way — accusing them of “fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as invaders,” the backlash from Trump-supporting Republicans was severe.

Great minds shape the thinking of successive historical periods. Luther and Calvin inspired the Reformation; Locke, Leibniz, Voltaire and Rousseau, the Enlightenment. Modern thought is most dependent on the influence of Charles Darwin

one needs schooling in the physicist’s style of thought and mathematical techniques to appreciate Einstein’s contributions in their fullness. Indeed, this limitation is true for all the extraordinary theories of modern physics, which have had little impact on the way the average person apprehends the world.

The situation differs dramatically with regard to concepts in biology.

 64 2 1 70 Why English and general knowledge are important

Proficiency in English is a normal requirement in the private sector, particularly in the tourism industry.

Instead of using our diversity as our strength, bigotry has turned it into a weakness. Instead of embracing English to reach out to the world, we have let it slip and are happy to be local champions.

Is there a voting system that can be relied on to distill the will of a group of people? Arrow’s impossibility theorem regarding voting and combining preferences put him in the rarefied group of economists with theorems named after them.

Drawing upon mathematical logic, it shows that there is no possible voting scheme that can consistently and sensibly reflect the preferences of a set of individuals with diverse views

Any scheme that could ever be invented will be at risk of perverse outcomes, where, for example, the choice between options A and B is affected by the presence or absence of option C; or where a vote switch by one person toward option A makes it less likely to prevail.

a worthwhile—and necessary—discussion about whether anyone should read the ancient Greeks in the first place, and if so why and how.

As someone who took Hum 110 more than 20 years ago, the news from campus has made me reflect on what I learned in the course. The answers, both equally true, are that I didn’t learn very much—and that I learned everything.

I slogged through the Hum 110 readings and wrote the required papers, but I can’t say that the words of Herodotus, Sappho, or Homer really sank in.

While in school, her thinking was station to station: take that test, apply to that college, aim for a degree. But in young adulthood, there are no more stations. Everything is open seas. Your main problems are not about the assignment right in front of you; they are about the horizon far away. What should you be steering toward? It requires an entirely different set of navigational skills.

one of the oddest phenomena of modern life. Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been.

There used to be certain milestones that young adults were directed toward by age 27: leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married, buying a house, having a child. But the information economy has scrambled those timetables. Current 20-somethings are much less likely to do any of those things by 30. They are less likely to be anchored in a political party, church or some other creedal community.

pledging to reverse decades of discriminatory agricultural lending and subsidy policies that have left Black farmers at an economic disadvantage and is racing to deploy $5 billion in aid and debt relief to help them.

Now the department is in the middle of a drastic overhaul, both of its personnel and of policies that it acknowledges have perpetuated inequality in rural America for years.

root out the vestiges of racism at his agency and to redress “systemic discrimination” that Black farmers had faced.

In July, the U.S. government announced a plan for Costa Rica to temporarily host up to 200 refugees from Central America while they are processed for placement in the U.S. or elsewhere.

The new scale and diversity of refugees is challenging tiny Costa Rica’s capacity to manage these populations and ensure protection of their human rights. The U.S. plan to send more refugees their way will only add to this challenge.

The plan for Costa Rica to temporarily house refugees is in addition to an existing program that helps Central American minors gain refugee status in the U.S.

The jury chosen for the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, is notable because it is significantly less white than Minneapolis itself.

three Black men, one Black woman and two jurors who identify as multiracial.

50% of the panel that will vote on Chauvin's fate will be Black or multiracial.

Deforestation rates are significantly lower in forests protected and governed by Indigenous people, according to a new report.

found that, on average, forests in Indigenous and tribal territories have been much better conserved than other forests in the region.

Forests are huge carbon sinks and vital tools in holding back the climate crisis as well as stabilizing regional temperatures and rainfall patterns. Indigenous territories hold roughly one-third of all the carbon stored in the forests of Latin America and the Caribbean, and 14% of the carbon in tropical forests around the world.