For Teenage Girls, Swimsuit Season Never Ends - The New York Times - 2 views
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That’s what researchers in a classic study from 1998 found when they put female and male undergraduates in dressing rooms with a mirror and either swimsuits or sweaters in a range of sizes. The students were instructed to try on the assigned clothing and wear it for a while before filling out a sham evaluation of the apparel.
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To confirm that they were detecting a detrimental effect of wearing a bathing suit, and not anxieties about math, researchers ran a second study. This time, instead of math questions, they used a test of the capacity for focused attention and again found that women wearing swimsuits scored lower than women wearing sweaters
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In short, when young women are prompted to reflect on their physical appearance, they seem to lose intellectual focus.
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A Harvard Scholar on the Enduring Lessons of Chinese Philosophy - The New York Times - 0 views
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Since 2006, Michael Puett has taught an undergraduate survey course at Harvard University on Chinese philosophy, examining how classic Chinese texts are relevant today. The course is now one of Harvard’s most popular, third only to “Introduction to Computer Science” and “Principles of Economics.”
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So-called Confucianism, for example, is read as simply being about forcing people to accept their social roles, while so-called Taoism is about harmonizing with the larger natural world. So Confucianism is often presented as bad and Taoism as good. But in neither case are we really learning from them.
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we shouldn’t domesticate them to our own way of thinking. When we read them as self-help, we are assuming our own definition of the self and then simply picking up pieces of these ideas that fit into such a vision
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Do Your Friends Actually Like You? - The New York Times - 1 views
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Recent research indicates that only about half of perceived friendships are mutual. That is, someone you think is your friend might not be so keen on you. Or, vice versa, as when someone you feel you hardly know claims you as a bestie.
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“The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” replaced by volleys of texts and tweets, Mr. Sharp said. “People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”
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It’s a concern because the authenticity of one’s relationships has an enormous impact on one’s health and well-being.
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Minsky's moment | The Economist - 0 views
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Minsky started with an explanation of investment. It is, in essence, an exchange of money today for money tomorrow. A firm pays now for the construction of a factory; profits from running the facility will, all going well, translate into money for it in coming years.
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Put crudely, money today can come from one of two sources: the firm’s own cash or that of others (for example, if the firm borrows from a bank). The balance between the two is the key question for the financial system.
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Minsky distinguished between three kinds of financing. The first, which he called “hedge financing”, is the safest: firms rely on their future cashflow to repay all their borrowings. For this to work, they need to have very limited borrowings and healthy profits. The second, speculative financing, is a bit riskier: firms rely on their cashflow to repay the interest on their borrowings but must roll over their debt to repay the principal. This should be manageable as long as the economy functions smoothly, but a downturn could cause distress. The third, Ponzi financing, is the most dangerous. Cashflow covers neither principal nor interest; firms are betting only that the underlying asset will appreciate by enough to cover their liabilities. If that fails to happen, they will be left exposed.
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Why facts don't matter to Trump's supporters - The Washington Post - 3 views
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How did Donald Trump win the Republican nomination, despite clear evidence that he had misrepresented or falsified key issues throughout the campaign? Social scientists have some intriguing explanations for why people persist in misjudgments despite strong contrary evidence.
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studies show that attempts to refute false information often backfire and lead people to hold on to their misperceptions even more strongly.
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Graves’s article examined the puzzle of why nearly one-third of U.S. parents believe that childhood vaccines cause autism, despite overwhelming medical evidence that there’s no such link. In such cases, he noted, “arguing the facts doesn’t help — in fact, it makes the situation worse.” The reason is that people tend to accept arguments that confirm their views and discount facts that challenge what they believe.
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Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff - The New York Times - 1 views
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the method outlined in Kondo’s book. It includes something called a “once-in-a-lifetime tidying marathon,” which means piling five categories of material possessions — clothing, books, papers, miscellaneous items and sentimental items, including photos, in that order — one at a time, surveying how much of each you have, seeing that it’s way too much and then holding each item to see if it sparks joy in your body. The ones that spark joy get to stay. The ones that don’t get a heartfelt and generous goodbye, via actual verbal communication, and are then sent on their way to their next life.
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She is often mistaken for someone who thinks you shouldn’t own anything, but that’s wrong. Rather, she thinks you can own as much or as little as you like, as long as every possession brings you true joy.
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By the time her book arrived, America had entered a time of peak stuff, when we had accumulated a mountain of disposable goods — from Costco toilet paper to Isaac Mizrahi swimwear by Target — but hadn’t (and still haven’t) learned how to dispose of them. We were caught between an older generation that bought a princess phone in 1970 for $25 that was still working and a generation that bought $600 iPhones, knowing they would have to replace them within two years. We had the princess phone and the iPhone, and we couldn’t dispose of either. We were burdened by our stuff; we were drowning in it.
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The Power of 'Why?' and 'What If?' - The New York Times - 1 views
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the act of formulating questions enables us “to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.” This makes questioning a good skill to hone in dynamic times.
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Asking questions can help spark the innovative ideas that many companies hunger for these days
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By the time we’re in the workplace, many of us have gotten out of the habit of asking fundamental questions about what’s going on around us. And some people worry that asking questions at work reveals ignorance or may be seen as slowing things down.
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Why Tech Support Is (Purposely) Unbearable - The New York Times - 0 views
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“Don’t think companies haven’t studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service,” Mr. Robbins said. “Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you’re hearing messages like, ‘If you’d like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.’”
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The most egregious offenders are companies like cable and mobile service providers, which typically have little competition and whose customers are bound by contracts or would be considerably inconvenienced if they canceled their service.
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When things don’t make sense and feel out of control, mental health experts say, humans instinctively feel threatened. Though you would like to think you can employ reason in this situation, you’re really just a mass of neural impulses and primal reactions. Think fight or flight, but you can’t do either because you are stuck on the phone, which provokes rage.
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Lacking Brains, Plants Can Still Make Good Judgments About Risks - The New York Times - 0 views
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Plants may not be getting enough credit. Not only do they remember when you touch them, it turns out that they can make risky decisions that are as sophisticated as those made by humans, all without brains or complex nervous systems. And they may even judge risks more efficiently than we do.
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Researchers showed that when faced with the choice between a pot containing constant levels of nutrients or one with unpredictable levels, a plant will pick the mystery pot when conditions are sufficiently poor.
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When nutrient levels were low, the plants laid more roots in the unpredictable pot. But when nutrients were abundant, they chose the one that always had the same amount. The plants somehow knew the best time to take risks.
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The Anger Wave That May Just Wipe Out Laissez-Faire Economics - The New York Times - 1 views
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few would have guessed that the economic order built upon Mr. Reagan’s and Mrs. Thatcher’s common faith in unfettered global markets (and largely accepted by their more liberal successors Bill Clinton and Tony Blair) would be brought down by right-wing populists riding the anger of a working class that has been cast aside in the globalized economy that the two leaders trumpeted 40 years ago.
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The so-called Brexit vote was driven by an inchoate sense among older white workers with modest education that they have been passed over, condemned by forces beyond their control to an uncertain job for little pay in a world where their livelihoods are challenged not just by cheap Asian workers halfway around the world, but closer to home by waves of immigrants of different faiths and skin tones.
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It is the same frustration that has buoyed proto-fascist political parties across Europe. It is the same anger fueling the candidacy of Mr. Trump in the United States.
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Onion Studios - 2 views
Obama's most unusual legacy? Being a good dad. - The Washington Post - 1 views
Think Less, Think Better - The New York Times - 1 views
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the capacity for original and creative thinking is markedly stymied by stray thoughts, obsessive ruminations and other forms of “mental load.”
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Many psychologists assume that the mind, left to its own devices, is inclined to follow a well-worn path of familiar associations. But our findings suggest that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.
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We found that a high mental load consistently diminished the originality and creativity of the response: Participants with seven digits to recall resorted to the most statistically common responses (e.g., white/black), whereas participants with two digits gave less typical, more varied pairings (e.g., white/cloud).
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First they came for the facts, and I said nothing … - The Washington Post - 1 views
Why parents see their kids in the Stanford attacker, not his victim - The Washington Post - 1 views
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Turner and other elite students are living the American Dream. Parents raise them in a world of winners and losers, victory and defeat, and expect them to be victors
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They mythologize this behavior as natural order. From “boys will be boys” to “he was a born champion,” young men like Brock Turner are taught that they should aspire to be talented, successful winners.
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for every conqueror, there must be conquered. We don’t say that someone simply won a game, they demolished their competition. A young man doesn’t just “have sex” with a woman, he “scores” or “smashes.” There are no ties, and there is no second place.
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How Keeping Up Appearances Ruined a Former Dallas Banker - The New York Times - 0 views
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“He, of all people, should have known better.”
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But the annals of insider trading are filled with people who knew better, from Ivan Boesky to Rajat Gupta. What’s perplexing is their motives. Like Mr. Davis, they were already rich and successful beyond most people’s dreams.
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At his plea hearing last month, Mr. Davis said he knew that his actions were “wrong and unlawful” but otherwise shed little light on why he turned to insider trading. But clearly, he needed money, despite his years of bonuses as a highly paid investment banker and his lucrative directors’ fees.
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