Thinking about death: High neural activity is linked to shorter lifespans
The constant state of parental anxiety: Reports of ‘creepy’ man at D.C. parks cause small panic - The Washington Post - " He said police are interested in identifying the man but, he wrote, “no crime has been committed at this time — all we have is an individual sitting on a public park bench at Rose Park drinking coffee. There is no evidence of this individual approaching any children.” The mini panic doesn’t say much about whether this man is an actual threat. But it does say much about modern parenting and about our relentless anxiety. No longer are hunches spread among friends.They are spread online. This has benefits as warnings can head off real danger, which this person may possibly pose. But unverified information and unjustified fear can also go viral... “Here you have in micro the dynamics of a ‘moral panic,’ that is, a social movement that organizes itself in response to perceived moral perils and whose responses include greater vigilance, public brandings of the accused, tougher laws, and so on,” Roger N. Lancaster wrote to me after I e-mailed him about the warnings. The George Mason University cultural studies professor last year published “Sex Panic and the Punitive State,” (University of California Press) and has previously spoken with me about the current parenting climate that has parents, he says, in a constant state of dread. We keep our kids indoors and under constant supervision out of the misplaced idea that over-protection is good parenting, even though the reality is that child abduction by a stranger is exceedingly rare, he contends... “The problem is that when shifting definitions of evil combine with low standards of evidence, you get witch hunts. (Is sitting on a park bench with a cup of coffee any reasonable measure of evil intent?) “People are also right to want safe streets, parks, and playgrounds. The problem comes when reasonable desires turn into utopian wishes for an absolutely safe, absolutely hygienic — dare one say, absolutely familiar — environment. Then the public goes on a mad chase for impossible conditions.” He said, in this case, two pieces of advice he gives in his book are worth repeating:
1.Take a deep breath.
2. Always insist on hard evidence."
What makes Singapore Singaporean? Society's unique cultural traits offer a clue - "So far, we've seen that Singapore society is long—term oriented, collectivistic and largely accepting of authority. None of this is particularly out of step With general perceptions, though useful to be able to quantify."
When you have a compliant population...
So much for "stereotypes"
Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief - "When faced with a dilemma between believing what is supported by an impartial assessment of the evidence (e.g., that one's friend is guilty of a crime) and believing what would better fulfill a moral obligation (e.g., that the friend is innocent), people often believe in line with the latter. But is this how people think beliefs ought to be formed? We addressed this question across three studies and found that, across a diverse set of everyday situations, people treat moral considerations as legitimate grounds for believing propositions that are unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning. We further document two ways in which moral considerations affect how people evaluate others' beliefs. First, the moral value of a belief affects the evidential threshold required to believe, such that morally beneficial beliefs demand less evidence than morally risky beliefs. Second, people sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and on that basis, sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others. Together these results show that, in the folk ethics of belief, morality can justify and demand motivated reasoning."
Proof of the moralistic fallacy
Enthusiasm Is Key to Happiness - The Atlantic - "enthusiasm is one of the personality traits that appear to drive happiness the most. In fact, to get happier, each of us can increase our own zest for the common objects of our lives. And it isn’t all that hard to do... Two traits out of the Big Five seem to be especially important for happiness: In 2018, psychologists confirmed that high extroversion and low neuroticism seemed to be the recipe for well-being. More specifically, the correlations hinged on one aspect of extroversion and one aspect of neuroticism—enthusiasm and withdrawal, respectively...
1. Use the “as if principle.”
2. Reframe challenges as chances.
3. Curate your friends."
What Home Cooking Does That Restaurants Can’t - The Atlantic - "As a professional food writer, I have always found joy and enlightenment in trying new foods. For both work and pleasure, I have had the privilege of eating at hundreds of the best restaurants in the world: Michelin-starred spots in Florence, Italy; bouchons in Lyon, France; shawarma stands in Amman, Jordan. Yet the most memorable meals of my life have unquestionably been in other people’s homes... This opinion is not just mine. I asked several friends—some chefs, others food writers, and many that are neither—and found that, given the choice between a meal at a top-notch restaurant and one in the home of a regular person who is a good cook, they would almost all choose the latter... This might sound counterintuitive. Restaurants have access to premium ingredients and specialized equipment, and employ impeccably trained professionals. And my polling methods were hardly scientific. But I think the love for home food that I and many others have emphasizes a deeper truth: Our emotions about what goes in our mouth are intertwined with our feelings about the person preparing the food, the conversation at the table, the cultural rituals around a dish’s consumption. When dining, the social context matters perhaps even more than the quality of the food... the benefits of communal meal times to physical and emotional well-being—such as lower rates of depression and higher academic performance—are widely documented. Still, the average American eats just three dinners a week with loved ones and spends more than half of their money that goes to food outside the home. Plenty of people see hosting a large group as a stressor. Many of us are missing out on an experience that restaurants cannot provide. Dining out is transactional by nature: Bills are split, access depends on income, the time at your table is typically capped, and interaction with the people preparing the food tends to be nonexistent. In the home, the exchange happens in an entirely different way. You are not paying to consume a certain cuisine; you have invested in a relationship with someone and, as a result, are invited for a meal. You are not a customer; you are a guest—and that makes all the difference."
The Delusions of Crowds—A Review - "the rioting regularly incited by the football casuals with whom he embedded had little to do with working class social frustrations, as some cultural commentators tended to insist. Nor was the violence merely a safety valve for downtrodden people. Buford argued that group violence simply gave its members an “antisocial kick”—it was just exhilarating to smash up other people and other places... Mackay makes the case, often in gory detail, that episodes of collective mania seem to be an inevitable consequence of human nature. Humans in every time and place have cast aside their better judgment and allowed themselves to be caught up in all manner of irrational hoopla. The insights Mackay made nearly two centuries ago provide the starting point for William J. Bernstein’s analysis in The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups... Evolutionary biology has made us imitators, he reminds us, particularly when people form crowds. Social science tells us that humans prefer a good story to hard data, and decades of peer-reviewed research tells us that humans tend to opt for self-deception to critical thinking. In the end, this demi-Vulcan cant reveals as much about the author’s contempt for evangelical Protestantism as anything else, as he casually dissolves useful distinctions between a broad range of theological viewpoints. Pro-Israel dispensationalist evangelicals, for instance, are grouped with ISIS and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians... Bernstein’s explanation for such phenomena is somewhat trite. In essence, he attributes the rapid growth of eschatological thinking among the German peasantry to their desire for an escape from the drudgery of their daily lives (neglecting to mention that most people who had ever lived led lives of similar toil). He presents the rise of end-times thinking in northern Europe as a predictable psychological response to a story well told and a desire to be a part of something—collectively, people took up with a compelling narrative and turned away from reason. But anyone who has ever held a religious or political idea with fervency could tell you that there’s more to it than that. Believing in something and trying to remake your world or your soul for the better provides a feeling of supreme human agency. As Vivian Gornick put it in her 1978 book The Romance of American Communism, “for better or worse, radical politics—full of sorrow and glory—embodies the stirring spectacle of humans engaged, alive to the beauty and rawness of self-creation.” The more recent events covered by Bernstein are among the least compelling sections of his book... To Bernstein, Jerry Falwell and ISIS are selling the same bill of goods. But this kind of equivalence is self-evidently absurd... It would have been nice, though, if he had subjected the disciples of Stalin and Mao to the same withering scrutiny he brings to bear on pilgrimages by American Christians to the Holy Land."
Meme State: "Why do you need privacy? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"
Normal person: "Agreed, which is why I'm leaking these government files online"
State: *angry with gun*
Forced to download TT & SGSecure: The startling truth hidden in the reviews of government apps - "many people have been forced to leave positive reviews on government apps in order to boost the app ratings on both the Appstore and Google Playstore. A couple of people who were full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) noted that they were forced to download the TraceTogether app or sign up for extra duty shifts, or even be charged for insubordination. This prompted several other reddit users to share about how they were forced to download the government’s anti-terrorism app, SGSecure and leave a positive review, while they were serving their national service. They, too, were faced with the same threat of signing up for extra shifts if they did not download the app... another person said they were asked to ‘like’ Facebook pages that were associated to the Ministry of Defence and to leave positive reviews for the NS cookhouse. Sifting through the thousands of reviews of the SGSecure app on both the Apple Appstore and Google Playstore revealed two things. First, many 5-star reviews that were hyperbolic in describing the effectiveness of the SGSecure app. It is arguably one of the best displays of Singapore’s unique brand of humour on the internet. On a more serious note, there were also many 1-star as well as 5-star reviews in which people stressed that they had only downloaded the app because they were forced to while they were serving national service."
Early Europeans Could Not Tolerate Milk but Drank It Anyway, Study Finds - The New York Times - "Europeans were consuming milk without lactase for thousands of years, despite the misery from gas and cramping it might have caused... People without the lactase mutation consume about as much milk as people who carry it. Yet people who cannot make the enzyme do not suffer any significant health problems. They do not die at a higher rate, they do not have weaker bones and they have just as many children as people with the mutation do... Early Europeans may have also lessened the painful effects of milk sugar by fermenting milk into cheese or turning it into butter. (In Ireland, people who harvest peat from bogs have occasionally found massive containers of “bog butter” dating back thousands of years.) Consuming milk without lactase became riskier later, in times of crisis, Dr. Evershed and his colleagues argued. Starvation has been shown to shift mild symptoms, such as gas and cramps, to more dangerous ones, like diarrhea... for those who could tolerate it, milk could have restored fluid levels, making it more likely that they could recover from the infection."
Depressed parrot who stopped talking tells new owner to 'f*** off' - "A sad parrot who refused to talk after his owner died has finally found a voice – telling his new keepers to ‘f*** off’. Jesse, the potty-mouthed African grey, was so down in the dumps he started to pluck out feathers."
Meme - "WHEN YOU REALIZE THAT THE PROSPERITY OFFERS YOU EVERYTHING SATAN OFFERED CHRIST"
A Lot of What We Think We Know About World War II Is Wrong - "almost everything the Germans made was over-engineered, from the tanks to gas-mask cases to the field jacket of the lowly landser. Eventually, in the German military archives in Freiburg in the Black Forest, I found a memo from early December 1941, signed by Hitler, in which was the line, “From now on, we have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons.” In other words, up to that point, they had been consciously doing so. Needless to say, his instruction was not followed; those all-metal, finely-designed-yet-cumbersome and utterly pointless cylindrical gas-mask cases were made right up to the end of the war, while still to come was the Panther tank, not to mention the Tiger, with its Porsche-designed six-speed hydraulically controlled semi-automatic pre-selector gear-box, as complicated and sophisticated as it sounds and entirely unsuitable for front-line combat or use by poorly-trained young drivers. The transmission on a U.S.-built Sherman tank was a robust four-speed manual, simply made in vast numbers. America built 74,000 Sherman hulls and engines; Germany built just 1,347 Tigers... Almost every narrative history of the war ever published almost entirely concentrates on the strategic and tactical levels, but gives scant regard to the operational, and the result is a skewed version of events, in which German machine guns reign supreme and Tiger tanks always come out on top... Until the start of 1944, the priority for manpower in Britain was not the army or navy or even air force, but the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Well-fed men and women were kept in the factories. Germany, on the other hand, was very under-mechanized but had a vast army, which meant it was dependent on horse-power and foot-slogging infantrymen. As a result of so many German men at the front, their factories were manned by slaves and POWs, who were underfed and treated abominably, and whose production capacity was affected as a result... Germany built a surface fleet before the war, which could never hope to rival Britain or France and in doing so neglected the U-boat arm... there were never enough U-boats to more than dent the flow of shipping to Britain. In fact, out of 18,772 sailings in 1940, they sank just 127 ships, that is, 0.7 percent, and 1.4 percent in the entire war. Suddenly, rather than appearing like David against Goliath and backs-to-the-walls amateurs as is so often depicted, Britain emerges once again as a global super-power in command of the largest trading empire the world has ever seen, while Germany, despite impressive victories on land early in the war appears to be woefully under-resourced and flagrantly squandering what supplies it could call upon. What’s more, after the initial glut of conquest booty, the occupied territories swiftly became a drain and burden that had to be manned and which proved a further drain on precious resources. The words “Teutonic” and “efficiency” usually go together; in the Second World War, nothing could have been farther from the truth."
Yep, That's a Jetpack For Runners
This Man Flew Over Mt. Fuji on a Real-Life Jetpack, and It’s Absolutely Breathtaking
How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail - The Atlantic - "How we arrived at a place where Wall Street misdeeds go virtually unpunished while soccer executives in Switzerland get arrested is murky at best. But the legal window for punishing Wall Street bankers for fraudulent actions that contributed to the 2008 crash has just about closed. It seems an apt time to ask: In the biggest picture, what justice has been achieved? Since 2009, 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That may seem like a big number, but the money has come from shareholders, not individual bankers. (Settlements were levied on corporations, not specific employees, and paid out as corporate expenses—in some cases, tax-deductible ones.)... The more meaningful number is how many Wall Street executives have gone to jail for playing a part in the crisis. That number is one... following the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than 1,000 bankers of all stripes were jailed for their transgressions... Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division"
Meet DD-umbo… the female elephant with a HUGE pair of BOOBS - "South African wildlife photographer Renata Ewald captured the comical pictures of the unusual elephant at Kruger National Park... Humans are the only animal in the world to have permanently swollen breasts all-year round, as all other animals only develop boobs after the latter state of pregnancy as they get ready for breastfeeding."
We're Probably Imagining Aliens Wrong - The Atlantic - The Atlantic - "Humans have always had the impulse to cast alien life in our image, says British science writer Philip Ball. It’s a tendency that goes back centuries, and has only been propagated by modern science fiction. In this video by Adam D'Arpino for Aeon, Bell argues that this tendency could actually be limiting us in the search for aliens. “When we start speculating about what advanced extraterrestrials are like, we’re really just talking about ourselves,” he says. “Such failures of imagination can become a straightjacket for our thinking. How can we move beyond solipsism and Hollywood tropes?”"
Astronaut: If You Think UFOs Are Aliens, You're an Idiot - ""Obviously, I've seen countless things in the sky that I don't understand," Hadfield told the Canadian broadcaster. The retired astronaut also was a pilot for both the Royal Canadian Airforce and US Navy. "But to see something in the sky that you don't understand and then to immediately conclude that it's intelligent life from another solar system is the height of foolishness and lack of logic," he added. Other experts have suggested that adversaries could be behind the mysterious sightings, suggesting other nations like Russia or China may be invading US airspace using highly advanced technologies."
Rep. Bowman calls Manchin ‘the new Mitch McConnell’ - "Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Monday said Sen. Joe Manchin “has become the new Mitch McConnell,” denouncing the West Virginia Democrat for maintaining his support of the legislative filibuster while opposing his party’s expansive election and ethics reform bill... “Now,” Bowman said, “Joe Manchin is doing everything in his power to stop democracy and to stop our work for the people, the work that the people sent us here to do.”"
The circular firing squad of the left strikes again
Democracy means letting the majority do whatever they want, apparently.
[VIDEO] Claire Wineland Dies at 21 and Leaves Beautiful Message - "When you pity people who are sick, you take away their power... I have something called cystic fibrosis, but I’m actually not here to depress you all about cystic fibrosis. I’m actually here to talk about, how do we change the way that we treat sick people? And that we stop pitying them, and start empowering them... we teach sick people that when they are sick, somehow, some way, they cannot be as happy as normal, healthy people, right? We teach them that their happiness, their contentment in life, their joy in life, is tied to how healthy we are... people who are sick, and nurses and doctors, as well, everyone in the medical community, everyone in the health care community, get so stuck in this notion that a hospital room is this cold, sterile, white place where we go to be sick, and that that’s all that it can be. And we get so stuck in that that we cannot see the possibility. We can’t see what we can make out of it. We don’t see what we can do with it... Innovation happens, art happens, because of suffering, and when we clamp down to that suffering, when we teach people who are sick, when you teach little seven-year-old me that because I’m sick, I don’t have anything to give to the world, I don’t have anything to create
A Series of Mysterious Bleeps and Bloops Defined the Early Days of the Internet - "Before all our phones were online all the time, before there were wifi connections in houses, planes, libraries, and coffee shops, we were logged off before we made the conscious decision to log on. Doing so meant listening to familiar dial tones, then a series of mysterious bleeps and bloops, and finally a loud static-y crash that sounded like a radio stuck between stations (if you remember that sound too)... Much of the “conversation” you hear from a modem is figuring out which protocols to use, like two strangers in a foreign country figuring out which language they both speak... Part of the “training” the modems have to do together is figuring out how well it’s working and what frequencies to communicate at... It’s a reminder of a time when we weren’t surrounded by the internet, and instead had to invite it in—and that rush of anticipation when you could hear it coming"
Absurd Creature of the Week: The Parasitic Worm That Turns Crickets Into Suicidal Maniacs | WIRED - "The some 350 known species of horsehair worms invade insects. After developing for several months, the worms mind-control their hosts to make a kamikaze dive into water, and then escape through holes bored in the insect's exoskeleton. The parasites end up in a tangled knot that can be as heavy as the tattered---and oftentimes very much alive---host they leave behind... Now, it’s nearly impossible to identify an infected cricket, for this is no clumsy zombie of popular culture. Outwardly, the cricket behaves quite normally, save for a brilliant little trick the worm plays: It manipulates them to shut the hell up with the chirping. Chirping is, after all, energetically expensive, not to mention a real fine way to get yourself noticed and eaten, a rather anticlimactic end to the worm’s grand scheme... In nature, it’s typically one worm per cricket, though every now and then two or three will emerge. In Hanelt’s lab, however, his record is an astonishing 32 worms erupting from one unfortunate host... there is still much, much to be learned, just as there is with other highly sophisticated mind-controllers like wasps that enslave cockroaches and fungi that zombify ants."
Meme - "Dovalbun: RIGHT so when I started my sociology course in college, my teacher stated us off with 'well I guess we have to do icebreakers. i'm Jon, and I fear bears. why do I fear bears? because bears can run at 30 miles per hour and Chester Zoo is 30 miles away. that means a bear can be outside this door in an hour. why would a bear be here? because they can smell fear and I fear them.'"
Multiple partners are associated with higher testosterone in North American men and women - "Previous research has shown that being partnered is associated with lower testosterone (T) in men and women. To address how multiple partners may be associated with T, we examined 47 men and 48 women who were single, monoamorously partnered (partnered), polyamorous (having multiple committed relationships), or in a polyamorous lifestyle but not currently multipartnered. Men who were partnered had lower T than all other men, and polyamorous men had higher T than single men. Polyamorous women had higher T than all other women. Measures of sociosexual orientation (SOI) and sexual desire differed in women by relationship type, but not in men. Findings are interpreted in light of ‘competitive’ and ‘bond–maintenance’ relationship orientations and statuses."
More proof that women are more sexually plastic than men
Addendum: female sex drive more plastic
(2) Ninety Two Percent: Examining the Birth Trends, Family Structure, Economic Standing, Paternal Relationships, and Emotional Stability of Biracial Children with African American Fathers - "92% of biracial children with African American fathers are born out of wedlock and 82% end up on government assistance
Texas girl Aurora Castner born in jail graduates top of class, heading to Harvard in the fall - "A Texas teen who was born in jail exceeded all odds as she graduated from high school at the top of her class and will be attending Harvard University in the fall. Aurora Sky Castner graduated third in her class at Conroe High School Thursday night 18 years after she was born in the Galveston County Jail... Castner’s mother was incarcerated at the time she gave birth and was not a part of her life since the day her father picked her up as a newborn from the jail and raised her as a single dad."
Writing About Writing | Facebook - "English has two different terms for words that come into English from other languages. A 'calque' is translated from the source language. (E.g., flea market, beer garden, paper tiger) A 'loanword' is ported in its original form. (E.g., cafe, bazaar, kindergarten) Perhaps ironically, the word 'calque' is a loanword, while 'loanword' is a calque (from Ger. 'lehnwort')."
I like my women how I like my advent calendar. : Jokes - "I like my women how I like my advent calendar. Against my wall, flaps open, ready to be eaten."
Polish woman speaks Singlish on TikTok as she's been in S'pore for a while - "The best videos are of her explaining why saying some Polish words in Singapore can result in awkwardness, mainly because they sound like vulgar words in Hokkien. For example, "tkanina" means "fabric" in Polish, but "fornicate with your mother" in Hokkien. And another example, "lampa" means "lamp" in Polish, but "balls" in Hokkien. And if you're wondering why an Eastern European woman is hanging out in Singapore for a while now, that's because the woman is the wife of Singaporean beatboxer Dharni Ng, who is better known by his stage name, Dharni... Dharni previously spent a number of years in Warsaw, Poland, having relocated there to pursue his career in beatboxing... he originally travelled to Warsaw to do a gig, and he ended up finding success in a local talent show with two others. That partnership eventually fizzled, but he was so enchanted by Poland, its culture, and beautiful girls, that he had to stay on."