America's 1% Has Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens. We are building something immense together that, though invisible and immaterial, is a structure, one we reside within—or, rather, many overlapping structures.
Why Love Hurts: The Sociology of How Our Institutions Rather Than Our Personal Psychological Failings Shape the Romantic Agony of Modern Life. “There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love,” philosopher Erich Fromm wrote in his foundational 1956 inquiry into what is keeping us from mastering the art of loving.
But why is it, really, that frustration is indelible to satisfaction in romance? At least since Jacques Ferrand’s 17th-century treatise on lovesickness, scholars have attempted to shed light on the phenomenon that has inspired the vast majority of art, music, and literature since humanity’s dawn — the pain of love. 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism.
The Great Battle of Fire and Light — Wait But Why. Note: This is the second post in the series.
The first one is here. There is a great deal of human nature in people. – Mark Twain The animal world is a stressful place to be. The problem is that the animal world isn’t really an animal world—it’s a world of trillions of strands of genetic information, each one hell-bent on immortality. And in a universe that wants to turn order into chaos whenever possible, the immortality of anything—let alone a delicate and complex genetic code—is a constant uphill battle. Animals are just a hack these outlier genes came up with—temporary containers designed to carry the genes and help them stay immortal. But genes can’t talk to their animals, so instead they control them by having them run on specialized survival software. In simple animals, the software is an automated program that runs the animal on instinct.
Why Do You Have to Pee the Closer You Get to a Bathroom? - Shape Magazine. You know that terrible "gotta go" feeling that seems to get stronger and stronger the closer you get to your front door?
You're fumbling for your keys, ready to toss your bag on the floor and make run for the bathroom. The Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, in its eighth and final season, is as big as television gets these days.
More than 17 million people watched the season’s opening. Judging by the fan and critic reaction though, it seems that a substantial portion of those millions are loathing the season. Indeed, most of the reviews and fan discussions seem to be pondering where the acclaimed series went wrong, with many theories on exactly why it went downhill. People in higher social class have an exaggerated belief that they are better than others. WASHINGTON -- People who see themselves as being in a higher social class may tend to have an exaggerated belief that they are more adept than their equally capable lower-class counterparts, and that overconfidence can often be misinterpreted by others as greater competence in important situations, such as job interviews, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
"Advantages beget advantages. Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash. Why wealth equality remains out of reach for black Americans. Black History Month has become the time to reflect on all the progress black Americans have made, but the sobering reality is that when it comes to wealth – the paramount indicator of economic security – there has been virtually no progress in the last 50 years.
Based on data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance, the typical black family has only 10 cents for every dollar held by the typical white family. While there is no magic bullet for racism, access to wealth, and the security to pass it down from one generation to the next, would go a long way toward changing the economic trajectory for blacks.
As researchers who study historical and contemporary racial inequality, we mostly conceive of wealth as a maker of success, but its true value is functional: the independence and economic security that it provides. Out of slavery Until the end of legal slavery in the U.S., enslaved people were considered valuable assets and a form of wealth. Housing assistance and education. Skim reading is the new normal. The effect on society is profound. Look around on your next plane trip.
The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Study: Religious fundamentalists and dogmatic individuals are more likely to believe fake news. New research provides evidence that delusion-prone individuals, dogmatic individuals, and religious fundamentalists are more likely to believe fake news.
The study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, suggests that the inability to detect false information is related to a failure to be actively open-minded. The rise of online social media has led to growing concerns about the spread of unsubstantiated rumors, misleading political propaganda, and blatantly false articles designed to create viral web traffic. Even the U.S. Army has become involved in efforts to understand and combat disinformation in cyberspace.
The Root of All Cruelty? The philosopher David Livingstone Smith, commenting on this episode on social media, wondered whether its writer had read his book “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others” (St. Martin’s). The Science Is Clear: Dirty Farm Water Is Making Us Sick. The bad behavior of the richest: what I learned from wealth managers. If nearly a decade interviewing the wealth managers for the 1% taught me anything, it is that the ultra-rich and the ultra-poor have a lot more in common than stereotypes might lead you to believe.
In conversation, wealth managers kept coming back to the flamboyant vices of their clients. It was quite unexpected, in the course of discussing tax avoidance, to hear professional service providers say things like: “I’ve told my colleagues: ‘If I ever become like some of our clients, shoot me.’ Because they are really immoral people – too much time on their hands, and all the money means they have no limits. I was actually told by one client not to bring my wife on a trip to Monaco unless I wanted to see her get hit on by 10 guys.
Hysteresis: The Phenomenon Behind the Anti-vax Movement. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are a safe and effective tool for the prevention of childhood diseases, a significant minority of the U.S. population remains skeptical of the practice, as evidenced by the persistence of the anti-vax movement. This has sometimes made it a difficult task to achieve the desired level of coverage required for the protective effects of “herd immunity” to kick in. The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change. Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty. But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change.
Most members of the migrant caravans come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – three countries devastated by violence, organised crime and systemic corruption, the roots of which can be traced back to the region’s cold war conflicts. How a kingfisher, an owl, & a penguin helped redesign Japan's Shinkansen. Thinking Traps. Pumpkin pies, pilgrims and pre-existing conditions: PolitiFact’s 2018 Thanksgiving dinner guide. The conversation may start out innocently enough, but there will be hints of what’s to come after the turkey’s been carved.
"I love all of you, regardless of your pre-existing conditions. " "My, my, you’re getting tall! Almost as tall as the border wall. " Study: Racial resentment influences appraisals of President Obama's economic performance. New research published in the journal Electoral Studies indicates that racial beliefs can lead some Americans to minimize President Barack Obama’s economic accomplishments. There's a psychological link between conspiracy theories and creationism. Ask a three-year-old why they think it’s raining, and she may say “because the flowers are thirsty”. Her brother might also tell you that trees have leaves to provide shade for people and animals. These are instances of teleological thinking, the idea that things came into being and exist for a purpose.
Teleological explanations for natural phenomena are rejected by scientists because these explanations appeal to intentions. But trees do not grow leaves and rain clouds do not drop water with an outcome in mind. Keeping Up With The Kardashians may make viewers cold-hearted towards poor, study suggests. 'BlacKkKlansman' Shows How White Supremacists Make Language Into a Weapon. The opening scenes of Spike Lee’s new movie, BlacKkKlansman, are in black and white. The movie is a period piece based on the true story of a black man, Ron Stallworth (played in the film by John David Washington), who became the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black officer in 1972 and then successfully infiltrated the city’s local Ku Klux Klan chapter in an elaborate sting operation. The origins of Thanksgiving. Before gobbling turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie -- or engaging in a well-informed political spat with your family -- some of you might wonder where the Thanksgiving tradition originated.
Trump borrows from the old tricks of fascism. Eli Saslow & Derek Black - From Racism to Redemption in "Rising Out of Hatred" - Extended Interview - The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Video Clip) The Trick To Thinking Clearer and Better – Personal Growth. The late historians Will and Ariel Durant spent four decades of their life studying, compiling, and writing the history of Western civilization. The product of their efforts, The Story of Civilization, went on to fill four million words, across 10,000 pages, divided into 11 separate books. How feelings took over the world. On a late Friday afternoon in November last year, police were called to London’s Oxford Circus for reasons described as “terror-related”. The demise of the nation state.
What is happening to national politics? Read like the presidents: Obama's and Trump's summer reading lists. Don't worry. Let the 44th and 45th Presidents of the United States be your guides. Barack Obama put out a short list of books he's been reading. "This summer I've been absorbed by new novels, revisited an old classic, and reaffirmed my faith in our ability to move forward together when we seek the truth," Obama wrote in a Facebook post Sunday.
Things AMERICANS Who’ve Never Traveled Don’t Know About the World... People who think their opinions are superior to others are most prone to overestimating their relevant knowledge and ignoring chances to learn more.