Articles of Interest - Dec 24

***TECHNOLOGY

Bose is set to Release Augmented Reality Audio Sunglasses with built-in speakers built-in and a microphone  PC Magazine  

It will soon be possible to send a satellite to repair another Or to destroy it  Economist   

***BIG DATA & QUANTUM TECH 

The role of big data in science's reproducibility crisis: invalid statistical analyses that are from data-driven hypotheses PS Mag

$1.2 billon law to boost US quantum tech  MIT Tech Review

Quantum computers pose a security threat that we’re still totally unprepared for  MIT Tech Review

In what sense is quantum computing a science?   Medium

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Rising Instagram Stars Are Posting Fake Sponsored Content  The Atlantic 

'Happier without Facebook': Users who deleted the social network say they're not looking back USA Today

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

DC slaps Facebook with latest suit targeting privacy lapses  Associated Press 

Anonymous Hacker Breaks Into A Personal Security System To Prove It's Possible  NPR 

Man sues feds after being detained for refusing to unlock his phone at airport  Arstechnica

Facebook doesn’t need to sell your data. It has been giving it away free for years Recode

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Jungle Creations’ Jamie Bolding: Content is King, ‘Now More than Ever’  Story  Hunter 

5 Ways to Make Your Website Gen-Z Friendlier Tech News World

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

The biggest brand in digital media has lost much of its lustre  Economist

Media year in review: All the big changes from 2018 CNN

***JOURNALISM

Trust in the media is starting to make a comeback  Axios

The most engaging stories of 2018  Chartbeat 

The top 10 tools for journalism in 2018  Poynter 

The U.S. Has Been Named as One of the Deadliest Places in the World for Journalists  TIME 

The funny, the weird and the serious: 33 media corrections from 2018  Poynter

‘Fake news’ and school uniforms: Our most popular research roundups in 2018  Journalists Resource

Der Spiegel to Press Charges Against Reporter Who Made Up Articles New York Times

Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Telemundo Plans English-Language Newscast For YouTube Media Post

The numbers are in: Local news isn't dying if you look to TV  Radio Television Digital News Association

***FAKE NEWS

How to recognize fake AI-generated images  Medium 

Who, what, why, where? Verification of online data  Exposing the Invisible  

What psychology experiments tell you about why people deny facts  Economist

Reporter For German Magazine Falsified Articles, Including One About Trump Supporters  NPR

Facebook’s anti-misinformation boss talks about the future of the company’s fact-checking program  Poynter 

Facebook's foot-dragging responses deepen its trust crisis  Axios 

***PERSONAL GROWTH  

She Wrapped Him in Swaddling Clothes  Becoming (my blog) 

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist says most people don’t really want to be happy  Quartz 

***GRAMMAR

Check yourself for these five common grammatical mistakes  Fast Company

***LANGUAGE

9 Books For People Who Love Language, Words, And Grammar  BuzzFeed News

Here's how many people in each state speak a language other than English at home  Business Insider

***LITERATURE

Alice Walker and David Icke: the New York Times By the Book feature controversy  Slate 

What Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Teaches Readers The Atlantic

***GENDER   

Twitter Abuse Toward Women Is Rampant, Amnesty Report Says  Wired

'You freak me out': Assistant principal allegedly harassed trans student  NBC News

***FREE SPEECH

Texas Makes Public Colleges Forbid Contractors to Boycott Israel: A Lawsuit Says That Violates the First Amendment  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Big Wins for Privacy and Free Speech: 2018 in Review  Electronic Frontier Foundation

***LEGAL ISSUES 

BuzzFeed wins defamation suit over dossier publication  CNN

For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain  Smithsonian Magazine

How software code could help you grapple with the legal code  Wired

Candy Cane, Carlton, and The Floss: Are These Dances Protected by Copyright? 1709 Blog 

***RELIGION

A Christmas Dragon Nativity Scene Riles the Neighbors  CityLab

W.Va. mom says her daughter was bullied after they balked at Bible classes in public school  NBC News

For Evangelicals, A Year Of Reckoning On Sexual Sin And Support For Donald Trump NPR

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

5 facts about Catholics in Europe  Pew Research Center 

Religious Rift Grows Between Ukraine And Russia  NPR

A Nun In India Accuses A Bishop Of Rape, And Divides The Country's Christians  NPR

18 international charities including World Vision Forced Out of Pakistan After 13 Years  Christianity Today

***GOOD NEWS 

Retiree has driven 64,000 miles helping low-income students get to college Telegram

Homeless Man Turns In $17,000 He Found in a Bag Outside Food Bank  Inside Edition

Bowling partners not bothered by age gap of almost a century  Australian Broadcasting Corporation 

This toy factory is run by volunteers who give away all the toys for free  The Washington Post

Man gives away frequent flyer miles to strangers for holidays  USA Today 

With school delayed due to a storm, driver buys breakfast for every kid on his bus  The Week 

***ART & DESIGN 

22 artists transform grain silo into the world's largest outdoor mural  The Week 

Stendhal syndrome: can art really be so beautiful it makes you ill?  The Guardian  

Accessibility guidelines for UX Designers  UX Collective  

***FILM

Movies That Bombed So Hard They Bankrupted Studios (video) YouTube

Movies With Female Leads Consistently Outperform Movies With Male Leads, Study Finds  CBS News 

***POLITICS 

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics  New York Times

The Political Insiders’ Guide to 2019  Politico 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT  

I worked at CBS. I didn’t want to be sexually harassed: I was fired  Boston Globe  

More than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse not yet publicly identified by Catholic Church  Chicago Tribune 

***CRIME 

The story of the mob’s man in Hollywood  Economist 

Using Statistics to Grapple With Crime  Undark 

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

A visual journey through addiction  New York Times

Two new movies reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the film industry's attempts to tackle America's addiction crisis  New Republic 

The 18 most striking trends from 2018  Pew Research Center 

'Sesame Street' Addresses Issue of Homelessness With New Muppet, Lily  NPR 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE 

The Best Budgeting Apps For Finally Getting Your Expenses in Check  Popular Mechanics  

The mysterious government organization that pops up at moments of financial crisis  Quartz

***ENVIRONMENT 

The White House rolls back a rule on polluting wetlands  Economist 

New houseplant can clean your home's air  Science Daily

***HEALTH 

How Hits To The Head Are Transferred To The Brain NPR

Can Parkour Teach Older People to Fall Better?   CityLab

Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism: A common probiotic holds the key  Economist

If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It's Good For Your Health NPR  

***SCIENCE

The dean of UCLA Law explains the uncertain future of forensic science  The Verge  

The 10 Weirdest Science Stories of 2018  Live Science 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Kanye West and the Dangers of Going off Psychiatric Meds  The Atlantic

Illinois Regulators Are Investigating a Psychiatrist Whose Research With Children Was Marred by Misconduct  Propublica

***NEUROSCIENCE   

Altering Memories to Treat Addiction  Undark

Your brain on art: neuroscientists define the aesthetic experience  Missouri S&T 

***PHILOSOPHY

6 essential books on existentialist philosophy  Big Think 

If universities sacrifice philosophy on the altar of profit, what’s next?  The Guardian 

***HISTORY 

Mapping the making of America An imaginative history of the country shows what has and hasn’t changed  Economist 

Lessons from the fall of a great republic: Unworthy politicians, indulgent citizens and inequality did for Rome  Economist

***RESEARCH 

Inside the flawed world of medical publishing that allowed a lie in a paper to pollute the scientific record  The Star

Journal removes poop drawing with Donald Trump's face — but offers no explanation  Canadian Broadcast Company 

Journal removes poop drawing with Donald Trump's face — but offers no explanation  Canadian Broadcast Company  

Preying On The Predatory Journals: A Case Study  Center for Inquiry 

Is it time to start using the emoji in biomedical literature?  BMJ 

More Chinese Censorship of International Journals  Inside Higher Ed

A recent study on ego depletion can’t confirm an old one. Who is right? Probably everyone  Science News 

What can be done about research misconduct, scandals and spins?   AMJ Med

How (as an editor) I choose lists of reviewers  Scientist Sees Squirrel 

***RESEARCH AUTHORSHIP 

More than half of over 1,000 social science journals “do not have an established authorship definition  Springer  

Assigning authorship for research papers can be tricky: These approaches can help  Science Mag

Definition of authorship in social science journals  Springer

***HIGHER ED

Tales Of Rural Students In College  NPR  

Blockchain Could Rewire Higher Ed. But Should It?  Ed Surge 

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS  

Tenured Theology professor dismissed by Southwest Baptist  Bolivar Herald

The irony of a Southern Baptist seminary’s report on slavery and racism (opinion) Baptist News Global

***TEACHING

FBI Tactics Help Address Contract Cheating: Papers purchased from essay mills are technically original work and may not be flagged by plagiarism checkers  BBC

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Students at Missouri Strt Petition to Keep student media TV space  Change.org  

***STUDENT LIFE

The Rise of Anxiety Baking This year has been rough. Make some cookies  The Atlantic  

With most student news organizations in financial jeopardy, can paying staff be a priority?   Student Press Law Center 

A College Student Was Told To Remove A "Fuck Nazis" Sign Because It Wasn't "Inclusive" BuzzFeed News

Millennials Strike Again: This Time We Are Killing Cash And 'Merry Christmas' NPR

She Wrapped Him in Swaddling Clothes

And she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them (Luke 2:7 NIV)

“She wrapped him in cloths.” Literally, he was wrapped in strips of cloth to kept him warm. The old King James translation uses the memorable phrase “swaddling clothes.” It’s still practiced in some countries today.

Did he cry? Do you think he cried? When you think of the manger and the child, do you imagine him crying?  

Mary put diapers on God.

The mention of a manger is where we get the idea he was born in a stable. Often, stables were caves, with feeding troughs for animals.. mangers. It was probably dark and dirty. This is not the way the messiah was expected to appear. How often our expectations and God’s reality are not in sync. How often he appears in unexpected places.

Stephen Goforth

Regretting your Choices

The choices we make are statements to the world about who we are. When all you could do was buy Lee’s or Levi’s, the jeans you bought were not a statement to the world about who you are because there wasn’t enough variety in the jeans you bought to capture the variety of human selves. When there are 2,000 kinds of jeans, or 20,000 kinds of jeans, well, now all of a sudden it is a statement to the world about who you are because there’s so much variety out there. This is true of jeans. It’s true of drinks. It’s true of music videos. It’s true of movies. That makes even trivial decisions seem important, and when that happens, people want the best. We’ve got a bunch of studies that show that large choice sets induce people to regard the choices they make as statements about the self, and that, in turn, induces them to raise their standards.If there are 200, and you buy a pair of jeans that don’t fit you as well as you hoped, now it’s hard to avoid blaming yourself. The only way to avoid regretting a decision is not making it, so I think a lot of the reason people don’t pull the trigger is that they’re so worried that when they do pull the trigger, they’ll regret a choice they made.

Barry Schwartz quoted in Vox

Information overload is nothing new

The ever-expanding array of digital material can leave you feeling overwhelmed, constantly interrupted, unable to concentrate or worried that you are missing out or falling behind. No wonder some people are quitting social media, observing “digital sabbaths” when they unplug from the internet for a day, or buying old-fashioned mobile phones in an effort to avoid being swamped.

This phenomenon may seem quintessentially modern, but it dates back centuries, as Ann Blair of Harvard University observes in “Too Much to Know”, a history of information overload. Half a millennium ago, the printing press was to blame. “Is there anywhere on Earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” moaned Erasmus in 1525. New titles were appearing in such abundance, thousands every year. How could anyone figure out which ones were worth reading? Overwhelmed scholars across Europe worried that good ideas were being lost amid the deluge.

Figuring out book reviews, indexes and the rest took several centuries, so we shouldn’t expect an immediate solution. In the meantime we must endure information overload: the feeling that arises in the space of time between a sudden increase in the flow of information and the development of the tools to enable us to cope with it.

Tom Standage writing in 1843 magazine 

Articles of Interest - Dec 17

***TECHNOLOGY 

‘Deepfake’ technology can now create completely real-looking human faces  BigThink

Taylor Swift used facial recognition to track her stalkers at a concert  Quartz

Morgan Stanley's Numbers on Flying Cars: $2.9 Trillion, 20 Years  Bloomberg  

The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism  Harpers

The Growing Gulf Between Silicon Valley and Washington  The Atlantic 

Google says it won’t sell face recognition for now—but it will be hard to slow its use  MIT Technology Review 

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Microsoft launches its Clarity web analytics tool for A/B testing sites  The Next Web

Magazines and the iPad  Bloomberg 

The downfall of digital media (podcast)  Columbia Journalism Review 

How Companies Like Bored Panda, REI, and Vox Are Growing Their Organic Reach on Social Media  Buffer 

New media hit stumbling block, scaring away some investors  Washington Post 

***JOURNALISM

Time's 2018 'Person of the Year' is killed and imprisoned journalists  NBC News

The Best of Nonprofit News 2018 Institute for Nonprofit News  Institute for Nonprofit News 

Beyond 800 words: What user testing taught me about writing news for young people  BBC News Lab 

'They don't care': Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties  The Guardian

New Report Finds That More Than 250 Journalists Were Jailed For Their Work in 2018  NPR

ProPublica Picks 14 Newsrooms and Investigative Projects for Year 2 of Its Local Reporting Network  Propublica

Best News Bloopers of 2018  News Be Funny 

Journalists perpetuate myth about suicide during winter holidays  Journalists Resources  

Access to police records is an issue all across the country  Muck Rock

What happens when the third-party tools journalists rely on are shut down?  Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM 

Local Newspaper Closures Come With Hefty Price Tag For Residents  NPR

How to understand different reader types and drive each type to subscribe  American Press Institute

Jessica Starr, Fox 2 meteorologist, commits suicide at age 35  New York Post 

Popular Young Reporter For NewsChannel 9 Terminated By Sinclair As She Battles Cancer  The Chattanoogan

***FAKE NEWS 

Troll Factory Contributes To Russia's Worldwide Interference  NPR

How Whatsapp fuels fake news and violence in india  Wired 

How do you make fact-checking viral? Make it look like misinformation  Poynter 

How Russian trolls used meme warfare to divide America  Wired 

***BIG DATA & AI 

Kevin Kelly talks about the brain, the mind, what it takes to make AI  Gigaom

Machine learning firm win a Homeland Sec contract to develop predictive models to let computers predict who might be a terrorist  The Intercept 

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Facebook exposed 6.8 million users' photos to cap off a terrible 2018  Wired

We asked 19 fact-checkers what they think of their partnership with Facebook  Poynter 

Social media is ruining our minds—it also might save them  Wired 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Homeland Security will let computers predict who might be a terrorist on your plane — just don’t ask how it works  The Intercept 

Mapping Service Accidentally Locates Secret Military Bases  Popular Mechanics 

***INTERNET 

Google's top searches in 2018  Engadget 

How Google’s Autotype Contradicts Orwell’s Advice  The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Most Googled 'Should I?' Question Of Each State In 2018, Mapped  Digg

YouTube ‘Rewind’ was supposed to celebrate 2018: It’s now the most disliked video in the site’s history Washington Post 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Seeking the Best is a Trap Becoming (my blog)

The quest for the best: a psychologist explains why it makes us miserable  Vox

***WRITING & READING 

How Emily Dickinson Writes A Poem  Nerdwriter1

How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America Open Culture

***LANGUAGE

Jane Austen’s Subtly Subversive Linguistics  Daily Jstor  

'Justice' Is Merriam-Webster's 2018 Word Of The Year  NPR

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

Santas of color, once met with controversy, now in high demand  MPR

***FREE SPEECH

Report: 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech  The Fire 

LA College settles Lawsuit after Student Barred from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on Campus  City News Service 

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Tribute Bands - Are They Legal?  Music Think Tan

Paramount Defeats 'Wolf of Wall Street' Libel Suit From Stratton Oakmont Alum  Hollywood Reporter

Katie Couric Wins Appeal Against Gun Rights Group Arguing Documentary Was Defamatory  Hollywood Reporter 

Appeals court rules that secret OxyContin documents must be released  Stat News  

Donald Trump, Wedding Crasher, Ends Up Being Bad Copyright News for Esquire.com  Hollywood Reporter

***CRIME

Shooting Victims Face Lifelong Disabilities, Financial Burdens, Newspaper Finds  NPR

Report: Half of US adults have immediate family member who has been in jail or prison  CNN   

***RELIGION

Max Lucado Reveals Past Sexual Abuse at Evangelical #MeToo Summit  Christianity Today

The Return of Paganism  New York Times

Evangelical Author Rethinks his Book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”  NPR

Christianity Today's 2019 Book Awards  Christianity Today 

Judge sides with religious groups in ObamaCare birth control mandate fight  The Hill

At Trump's hotel, spiritual warriors pray for the president in his 'darkest hour'  Religion News Service

***MEGACHURCHES

Minister accused of stealing $800,000 from Houston's First Baptist Church  ABC-13

Former elders, pastors, and staffers from Chicago’s Harvest Bible Chapel accuse the church of financial mismanagement and a culture of deception and intimidation  World Magazine

Houston pastor on $200K Lamborghini gift  Houston Chronicle 

***THE BIBLE 

Meme Confuses Lincoln’s Bible With A Quran  Fact Check 

Slave Bible From The 1800s Omitted Key Passages That Could Incite Rebellion  NPR

***GOOD NEWS

California woman and her dog reunite after Camp Fire evacuation  CNN

Teens Surprised Their Professor After She Told Them The Holidays Are Difficult For Her  BuzzFeed News  

DNA Test Helps Mother Reunite With Daughter She Thought Died Nearly 70 Years Ago  New York Times

***ART & DESIGN

We made our own artificial intelligence art (and so can you)  Wired 

The world's best cities for street art  Afar    

The 75 best book covers of 2018 according to book cover designers  LitHub 

***MUSIC 

Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' becomes most-streamed song of the 20th century  Entertainment Weekly

Our Favorite Songs of 2018  The New Yorker

The 51 Best Albums of 2018  Spin 

'Blurred Lines' suit against Robin Thicke, Pharrell ends in $5 million judgment  CNN

Vladimir Putin Makes Moves To Control Rap Music In Russia  Huffington Post

Beyoncé, Kendrick, Cardi, and more: The Year in Good Music News 2018  Pitchfork

How Music Can Awaken Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia  Open Culture 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

Ex-Baylor frat president indicted on 4 counts of sex assault won't go to prison  CNN 

What Went Wrong in a University Harassment Investigation — and How Officials Are Trying to Fix It  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

How the IRS Was Gutted  ProPublica

More Americans are making no weekly purchases with cash  Pew Research  

How Many Hours Americans Need to Work to Pay Their Mortgage  How Much 

***ENVIRONMENT 

New studies suggest coral reefs are more resilient than previously thought  Royal Society Publishing  

Five years of record warmth intensify Arctic's transformation  Nature 

The state of climate change coverage: An analysis  Columbia Journalism Review

***HEALTH 

Questions About Treatments For Pregnant Women Arise From Study  NPR

Sleeping too much can be just as damaging to your health as having too little  MarketWatch  

A clash between modern lifestyles and circadian rhythms can lead to the development of obesity and breast cancer, USC scientist says  USC

Exercise Wins: Fit Seniors Can Have Hearts That Look 30 Years Younger  NPR

Rare brain-eating amoebas killed Seattle woman who rinsed her sinuses with tap water  Seattle Times 

Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder  Reuters 

***HEALTH & DIET 

Scant Evidence Behind the Advice About Salt  New York Times 

What Is Behind the Spread of a Mysterious Allergy to Meat?  The Guardian   

***VACCINES

Newly elected Tennessee Rep. Mark Green says he'll question vaccines  NBC News 

Was a Scientist Jailed After Discovering a Deadly Virus Delivered Through Vaccines?  Snopes

Scientists find more evidence that Alzheimer's can be passed to new patients via the transmission of "sticky" proteins under particular, but rare, conditions  Nature 

How personalized medicine is transforming your health care  National Geographic 

***TRAVEL 

These Are The Hottest Travel Destinations for 2019, According to Airbnb  Thrillist

A U.S. Transit Atlas That Ranks the Best (and Worst) Cities for Bus and Rail  CityLab  

***FOOD

What's lurking in your stadium food?  ESPN

***FAMILY

Researchers found one way that long-term marriages get happier  Quartz  

Rediscovering My Daughter Through Instagram  New York Times

Why shaming your children on social media may make things worse  The Conversation 

Most parents – and many non-parents – don’t expect to have kids in the future  Pew Research

***ANIMALS  

Rare white reindeer calf spotted on camera in Norway  BBC   

A City in Spain Plans to Exile 5,000 Pigeons  New York Times

***SCIENCE

Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms  The Guardian

Blood Splatter: How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus  Propublica 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

What it’s like to live with a chronic urge to die  Huffington Post 

The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology  Aeon 

***HISTORY 

Histomap: Visualizing the 4,000 Year History of Global Power  Visual Capitalist

Showering Has a Dark, Violent History  The Atlantic  

America returns treasured church bells it stole during the Philippine-American war  New York Times

***ETHICS 

Amid ethics outcry, should journals publish the ‘CRISPR babies’ paper?  Stat News

You can donate your wedding dress to a person in need  New York Times

***RESEARCH  

EPA science adviser allowed industry group to edit journal article  Science Magazine   

Lessons learnt on transparency, scientific process and publication ethics: The short story of a long journey to get into the public domain unpublished data, methodological flaws and bias of the Cochrane HPV vaccines review  BMJ 

China introduces ‘social’ punishments for scientific misconduct  Nature 

Independent bodies – not universities – should investigate suspicions of scientific misconduct (opinion)  Horizons 

Solving the fake news problem in science: : A “citation refuting a report is counted the same way as one supporting it”  Stat News  

It is getting harder to publish in prestigious journals if you haven’t already  Science Magazine

How art and craft can boost reproducibility  Nature 

***HIGHER ED

Fallout from on-campus tragedies and athletic program controversies prompts donors to circle the wagons -- or flee  Inside Higher Ed

Facing Enrollment Declines, Colleges Seek Out New, Creative Ways To Make Money  NPR

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

Azusa Pacific University board members resign amid LGBTQ policy turmoil  San Gabriel Valley Tribune  

Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary details its racist, slave-owning past in stark report  Washington Post 

Catholic U. fires professor for relationship with subordinate  Washington Post 

Council for Christian Colleges and Universities & the NAE back LGBT Rights in Order to Protect Religious Freedom  PJ Media  

Bridging the gulf between conservative Christian colleges and the arts  Christian Century 

***LIBERAL ARTS 

How Can Colleges Help Liberal-Arts Majors Enter the Job Market?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century  The Atlantic

***TEACHING

Teaching the Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How 2 Professors Use a ‘Grade Insurance’ Project to Motivate Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How to Help a Student in a Mental-Health Crisis  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Ganging Up on a Student Journalist?  Inside Higher Ed  

Faculty groups respond to censure issue: A “troubling disregard for the First Amendment” on the university’s part  Times Daily  

***STUDENT LIFE

What Straight-A Students Get Wrong (opinion)  New York Times

Does It Matter Where You Go to College?  The Atlantic 

Trump administration held back report revealing bank charged high fees to students  Politico 

Researchers find an easy way to improve high school students' grades: Let them sleep in  Science Mag

Sleepless No More In Seattle — Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens NPR

***STUDENTS & DRUGS

Binge drinking among US high schoolers hit a record low in 2018  Quartz

Teen Vaping Soared In 2018  NPR

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

University of Illinois professor fired for falsifying data in grant applications  Chicago Tribune

Illinois Regulators Are Investigating a Psychiatrist Whose Research With Children Was Marred by Misconduct  Propublica 

Scientists are leaving academic work at unprecedented rate  Inside Higher Ed 

University of Illinois professor fired for falsifying data in grant applications  Chicago Tribune

Professor sent mercenaries to save her student from ISIS  The local 

Man charged with beating instructors at community college  KARE 11

 

Seeking the Best is a Trap

We have this sense that there is an objective best, and in virtually no area of life is that true. It’s not even that, “Well, there’s the best for me, and then there’s the best for you.” It isn’t even clear that there is a best for me. There’s a whole set of things that are probably more or less equivalent.

If you have this mindset that says, “I have to get the best,” it’s so hard to figure out what that is that you end up looking in panic around you at what other people are choosing as a way to help you figure out what is the best. I think it’s partly because they are struggling to define the best, and they can’t do it on their own, so they’re madly checking out other people’s decisions as a way of figuring out what really is the best. It’s extremely destructive.  

Barry Schwartz quoted in Vox

Writing your Own Eulogy

A visualization technique that asks people to write their own eulogy. It’s a technique that Daniel Harkavy, CEO and executive coach at Building Champions and co-author of Living Forward, has been teaching executives for over 20 years.

Harkavy’s tip is to write your eulogy first as if your funeral was today and everything you’ve accomplished so far was all you ever would. “Picture your memorial service as if it were being held right now. Your casket is sitting center stage, and as you look down the center aisle you see the first three rows, usually reserved for those with whom we were closest. Who’s sitting there for you?” he asks. “Most likely your family and dearest friends. Now keep looking down the aisle, and now you’re looking at rows 10 through 20. Who’s sitting there? Probably acquaintances, clients, customers. What did you give to the people in these rows?”

Harkavy says when he walks clients through this exercise during his speaking engagements, they usually all say the same thing: “We gave them our best!” He then asks them what they gave to the people sitting in rows one through three–and their answers usually amount to “We gave them our leftovers.” In other words, their work-life balance is out of whack.

“When you go to write your eulogy, you need to be brutally honest. Don’t pull any punches. You want to really feel this,” Harkavy says. “What would those closest to you say about who you were, how you lived, and what you had to give them, and why would they say that?”

Michael Grothaus writing in Fast Company

Articles of Interest - Dec 10

***JOURNALISM 

The top 25 news photos of 2018  The Atlantic  

Get rid of the content no one reads: Offer surprises and “candy” and other tricks for retaining subscribers  Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

'Killed for speaking the truth': nine journalists murdered in 2018  The Guardian  

From a Myanmar jail, a children’s book about the power of journalism  Columbia Journalism Review  Columbia Journalism Review 

A Capital Gazette photographer had a powerful rebuttal to “enemies of the people”  Washington Post 

Podcasts Are Getting Newsier. Here Are 8 New Ones Worth a Listen  New York Times  

Interviewing white-collar criminals: 6 tips from Harvard Business School’s Eugene Soltes Journalism Resources

A Future With Less News:  The possibilities and limits of journalism in the digital era  New Republic 

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Thomson Reuters will cut 3,200 jobs by 2020  CNN

It's Almost Impossible to Be a Mom in Television News For female television reporters, the decision to have kids can be a career-ending one  The Atlantic 

How two traditional competitors are working together to grow audience  Better News

How many of us pay for online news?  Reuters 

At NPR, an army of temps resents a workplace full of anxiety and insecurity  Washington Post

***TEACHING JOURNALISM 

China study abroad trip proceeds as planned despite journalist arrests  Daily Nebraskan 

My advice for aspiring explainer journalists  Vox

***FAKE NEWS

How Does Misinformation Spread Online?  Psychology Today

The War on Truth Spreads Democratically elected leaders borrow from the anti-press playbook of dictators and tyrants (opinion)  New York Times 

***TECHNOLOGY

Your smartphone's AI algorithms could tell if you are depressed MIT Technology Review  

New Scam Apps Take Advantage of iPhone Touch ID  Wired 

***BIG DATA & AI  

Plunging into AI? Not a good idea  Zdnet 

Google's artificial intelligence program, DeepMind, wins competition to predict how complex proteins fold themselves into 3D shapes  The Guardian  

The latest AI-enhanced gadget you're using is probably not actually 'intelligent'  Poynter

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA  

LinkedIn Learning Opens Its Platform (Slightly)  Ed Surge

The Psychological Toll of Becoming an Instagram Influencer  Medium

Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source  Pew Research Center

***FACEBOOK 

Here’s How Facebook’s Local News Algorithm Change Led To The Worst Riots Paris Has Seen In 50 Years  BuzzFeed News

Facebook Emails Show Its Real Mission: Making Money and Crushing Competition New York Times

Facebook must decide: Is it for the mob or for democracy? (opinion) Monday Note

***PRODUCING MEDIA 

The Best Podcasts of 2018  New Yorker  

The 11 best documentaries of 2018  Vox

***INTERNET

Google's Autocomplete Suggestions For Questions About Every State, Mapped  Digg

Poll: Smartphones are winning the internet Axios

***PERSONAL GROWTH  

Study: after 75 years the most fulfilling lives had one thing in common  Becoming (my blog)

How an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to make better decisions: The world is a complicated place and Bayes’ theorem can help us navigate it  Vox 

A Harvard study tracked two groups of men over 75 years and those with the most fulfilling lives had one thing in common  Fast Company

***WRITING & READING

The best-selling fiction novels of the last 100 years LitHub

Writing has ‘got to be weird before it gets good,’ says Casey Gerald  PBS 

Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?  New York Times 

7 Essential Tools to Improve Your Business Writing Skills  The Frisky 

***GRAMMAR

Scholars Talk Writing: Hyphens, Oxford Commas, and Pronoun Preferences (sub. req’d)  The Chronicle of Higher Education  

One in ten British adults don’t know when to use ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’  The Sun

Twitter responds to the Smocking Gun incident  TIME

***LANGUAGE

Who decides what words mean Bound by rules, yet constantly changing, language might be the ultimate self-regulating system, with nobody in charge  Aeaon 

How We Ask Questions Matters  The Chronicle of Higher Education

George H.W. Bush, Language Guy  The Chronicle of Higher Education

***LITERATURE 

Should Studying Literature Be Fun?  Chronicle of Higher Education 

The Bookshelf shares a video homage to literature  Quill and Quire

Why the Hell Are We Still Reading Ernest Hemingway?  The Daily Beast 

***GENDER   

The Woman Who Outruns the Men, 200 Miles at a Time  New York Times

This journalist created a system to make sure more female experts got on air  Poynter

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Campuses are seeing a Surge of Anti-Semitic Incidents  Inside Higher Ed

Students at Columbia University interrupted Comedian deeming his jokes too offensive  Inside Higher Ed 

Veterans Affairs’ diversity chief was told not to condemn white nationalists  Washington Post 

Nursing while black  The Tennessean 

***CRIME 

Confidential informants are supposed to keep their work confidential. These two didn't  USA Today 

This map shows where in the US cyber crime costs people the most CNBC

Florida schools cover up crimes: Rapes, guns and more Sun Sentinel

***PRIVACY & SECURITY

Sorry, your data can still be identified even if it’s anonymized  Fast Company 

***RELIGION

Fundamental Baptist church pastors cover up sex abuse, rape  Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Wiccans Outnumber Presbyterians in the US  Christian Post 

25 Questions about Hanukkah, Answered!  Mental Floss 

6 things a Texas pastor learned from traveling with a group of migrants  CNN

Book charting decline of white Christian America wins Grawemeyer Award in Religion  The Presbyterian Outlook

Under pressure, Museum of the Bible moves charismatic Christian conference off-site  Religion News Service 

Christian Activist who burned LBGTQ books from library charged with misdemeanor Sioux City Journal

Nuns improperly took as much as $500,000 from Torrance Catholic school  Press Telegram

ATF: There have been 5 attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in Washington state this year  CNN

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Southern Baptist pastor turned aspiring congressman embroiled in Election Fraud Controversy: Mark Harris owes $53K to man at center of allegations  CNN

***GOOD NEWS

9-year-old gets Colorado town to end ban on snowball fights  ABC 13 

Homeless man turns in $17,000 cash he found outside local food bank The News Tribune

Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free  The Guardian

UPS driver takes home shelter dog who hopped into his truck  The DoDo

California nurse adopts baby left at his hospital  The Week magazine

Nurse overhears conversation: Decides to donate a kidney to a woman she'd never met Chicago Tribune  

FIU student defies odds, walks across stage for his diploma Local 10  

***ART & DESIGN

Why we all take the same travel photos  Wired 

Walmart Acquires Art & Décor Retailer Art.com  Tech Crunch 

The Best Art of 2018  New York Times

***MUSIC 

The Best Music Of 2018 (all female)  NPR 

Spotify’s Most Streamed Artists are all Male  Mashable 

The 12 Days of Christmas: the story behind the holiday’s most annoying carol  Vox

How J.R.R. Tolkien Influenced Classic Rock & Metal (video)  

The Strange History of Smooth Jazz: The Music We All Know and Love … to Hate (video)  

***FILM 

The American Film Institute releases annual list of its Top 10 movies  Entertainment Weekly

NPR's Favorite Movies Of 2018  NPR

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Media pivots away from advertising  Axios

***ARTICLES ABOUT JOBS

482 hiring managers looked at nearly 20,000 résumés and found the classic advice to limit your résumé to one page might be wrong after all  Business Insider 

Telemundo Stations Launch ‘University’ to Staff Newsrooms Broadcasting & Cable

How to advocate for yourself in the newsroom  The Ground Truth Project 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Ranking the most charitable states in the country  Thrillist 

Start-Ups Aren't Cool Anymore: It’s harder for Millennials to thrive as entrepreneurs now  The Atlantic

How To Recognize The Signs Of A Toxic Work Environment (infographic) Daily Infographic

 ***ENVIRONMENT

Researchers find plastic particles in every sea turtle tested for study  Axios

Carbon emissions rise again in 2018, new report finds  Axios

***HEALTH

In Minneapolis-St. Paul, the nation’s healthiest urban region, almost everyone lives within a 10-minute walk of a good public park. Shouldn’t we all?  New York Times   

Giving Patients a Voice in Their Mental Health Care Before They’re Too Ill to Have a Say  New York Times   

A shot-in-the-dark email leads to a century-old family treasure — and hope of cracking a deadly flu’s secret  Stat News

41 Percent of Americans Do Not Intend to Get a Flu Shot this Season  National Opinion Research Center 

Cushioned shoes aren't good for your feet  BigThink 

***HEALTH & TECHNOLOGY

1st baby born using uterus transplanted from deceased donor  KUTV 

***FOOD

Dollar General tries to make healthy food more accessible CNN

***PARENTS 

Stay-at-Home Mom says Judge left her feeling bullied: “I don’t care about your children”  Sacramento Bee

Guatemalan father denied temporary visa to attend 13-year-old daughter’s funeral after she was murdered in the US  Newsweek 

How Incarcerated Parents Are Losing Their Children Forever  The Marshall Project

Couple endures emotional crime in bizarre botched adoption  Orange County Register

***CHILDREN

First data from massive NIH study shows effects of screen time on kids  Axios

Teaching kids to code: I’m a developer and I think it doesn’t actually teach important skills  Slate 

***ANIMALS  

Dog waited weeks for owners at home burned in Camp fire  Press Democrat  

Twitch and Izzy with unusual condition wobble their way into your heart  Freep 

Police officer rescues chicken from shed fire  New York Daily News

Origins Of The Top Dog Names Of 2018: Pop Culture, Brunch, And Baby Names  NPR

***PSYCHOLOGY  

Psychology’s Replication Crisis Has Made The Field Better  FiveThirtyEight 

***NEUROSCIENCE   

Neuroscientist: we are always hallucinating  The Atlantic 

How does chemo brain work? One cancer drug might interfere with brain signaling  Science Magazine

***PHILOSOPHY

A Russian city is embroiled in protests over Immanuel Kant  Quartz 

***HISTORY  

Plague linked to the mysterious decline of Europe’s first farmers  Nature 

The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul From the Revolution to the Civil War  The Week magazine 

***ETHICS

Why Are Scientists So Upset About the First Crispr Babies?  New York Times  

How to know if you’re an ethical leader  Fast Company 

***RESEARCH 

A look at how four institutions responded to scientific misconduct  Science and Public Policy

Tips from seven academics on how to do a good peer review (sub req’d)  Times Higher Education  

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Phil now has an entry on reproducibility  Stanford  Encyclopedia of Philosophy 

***HIGHER ED

In Unusual Letter, Democratic Senators Ask ‘U.S. News’ to Change Emphasis of College Rankings  Chronicle of Higher Education 

Brightwood College announces sudden closure amid accreditation, financial turmoil  10 News 

Moody’s Gives Higher Ed a Negative Outlook, Again  Chronicle of Higher Education 

Actually, Academe Never Was All That Great (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Education 

Small private colleges are shrinking and struggling  The Texas Monitor

50 Colleges Hit With ADA Lawsuits Inside Higher Ed

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

Disgraced Ole Miss coach expected to be next Liberty U head coach College Football Talk

Northwestern College vice president chosen to lead Christian Canadian university  Northwestern College 

Ex-Wheaton College student pleads guilty to theft for stealing classmates' technology Daily Herald

Four fires under investigation at Wheaton College Boston Globe

Northwest Christian University athlete arrested on suspicion of rape  Register-Guard

Azusa Pacific Trustees Resign, Citing Objections  Inside Higher Ed 

***LIBERAL ARTS

One Way to Set Up Liberal-Arts Majors for Success: Focus on Skills The Chronicle of Higher Education

What a Liberal Arts College Is and What You Should Know US News

Humanities and STEM as Overlapping Circles Inside Higher Ed

Lies About the Humanities — and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (sub. req’d)  Chronicle of Higher Education

***TEACHING

How College Faculty Can Beat the Cheat  Ed Surge

How One University Uses ‘Sneaky Learning’ to Help Students Develop Good Study Habits Chronicle of Higher Education  

A Teacher Was Fired For Refusing To Use A Transgender Student’s Preferred Pronoun  BuzzFeed News 

Another Study Debunks the idea of Learning Styles  eLearning Inisde 

***STUDENT MEDIA  

The Student Press Law Center issues a Censorship Alert over an Arkansas Student Newspaper  Student Press Law Center

Media adviser in Alabama being ousted after students post story upsetting provost  Student Press Law Center

***STUDENT LIFE

Millennials experience work-disrupting anxiety at twice the US average rate  Quartz  

Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials  The Atlantic 

***ACADEMIC LIFE  

Writing and Teaching With a Terminal Illness  Chronicle of Higher Education 

The Expensive Superficiality of M.F.A Programs: They exist to train aspiring artists in how to sound sophisticated — not how to create art  Chronicle of Higher Education

American higher education has always had some profoundly serious flaws, so let’s stop pining for an idealized past and work on a better future  Chronicle of Higher Education

Are numbers of doctorates awarded finally starting to reflect the poor academic job market?   Inside Higher Ed

Study: after 75 years the most fulfilling lives had one thing in common

For over 75 years, Harvard’s Grant and Glueck study has tracked the physical and emotional well-being of two populations: 456 poor men growing up in Boston from 1939 to 2014 (the Grant Study), and 268 male graduates from Harvard’s classes of 1939-1944 (the Glueck study).

Due to the length of the research period, this has required multiple generations of researchers. Since before WWII, they’ve diligently analyzed blood samples, conducted brain scans (once they became available), and pored over self-reported surveys, as well as actual interactions with these men, to compile the findings.

The conclusion? According to Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one thing surpasses all the rest in terms of importance: “The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period. ”Not how much is in your 401(k). Not how many conferences you spoke at–or keynoted. Not how many blog posts you wrote or how many followers you had or how many tech companies you worked for or how much power you wielded there or how much you vested at each.

No, the biggest predictor of your happiness and fulfillment overall in life is, basically, love.

“It’s not just the number of friends you have, and it’s not whether or not you’re in a committed relationship,” says Waldinger. “It’s the quality of your close relationships that matters.”

Melanie Curtin writing in Fast Company 

Articles of Interest - Dec. 3

 ***JOURNALISM

Americans Still Prefer Watching to Reading the News – and Mostly Still Through Television  Pew Research 

The red couch experiments: Early lessons in pop-up fact-checking  Nieman Journalism Lab 

In Yemen, Lavish Meals for Few, Starvation for Many and a Dilemma for Reporters  New York Times  

Journalism and journalism students are experiencing a ‘Trump Bump’ (opinion)  Tampa Bay Times 

Canada’s Supreme Court Ruling likely to have a Chilling Effect on Journalism  Vice 

Pro tips from scholars for journalists (and vice versa)  Journalists Resources 

In defense of documentaries as journalism  Columbia Journalism Review  

Kentucky newspaper wins public records lawsuit, but what will actually be released is uncertain  Muck Rock 

More than two dozen journalists worldwide have been killed by members of organized crime since the start of 2017  New York Times 

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

How recasting the “online producer” job helped the Miami Herald focus on audience and mission  Better News  

Freelancer Rate Database  Contently 

Where the death of local news hits hardest  Axios

Why ‘news for millennials’ media plays never panned out  Digiday 

***FAKE NEWS

Misinformation bots, smarter than we thought  Axios 

The godfather of fake news  BBC News

An Anti-Vaxxer’s New Crusade  Propublica

Facebook Should Enlist Its Users to Clean Up Fake News (opinion)  Bloomberg

***SOCIAL MEDIA  

Instagram 'Close Friends': What It Is and How to Use It  Wired

Twitter has banned misgendering or "deadnaming" transgender people  the Verge 

“What Are Those?” Meme Creator Young Busco Has Died, According To Reports  BuzzFeed News 

The Infinite Lifespan of Memes  Wired

Tumblr Moves To Ban All 'Adult Content' — Here's Why That Matters  Digg 

Critics Say YouTube Hasn't Done Enough To Crack Down On Extremist Content  NPR

Inside TikTok, the premier app for firefighters who enjoy lip-syncing to ‘Baby Shark’  Washington Post

***PRODUCING MEDIA

A guide to recording spatial audio for 360-degree video  NPR 

***THE INTERNET 

The Friendship That Made Google Huge Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company—and the Internet  The New Yorker 

New report suggests Latin America will lag in internet growth  Axios

***TECHNOLOGY

Rogue Scientist Says Another Crispr Pregnancy Is Underway  Wired

Google to shut down Hangouts in 2020  Axios

The CRISPR Baby Scandal Gets Worse by the Day The alleged creation of the world's first gene-edited infants was full of technical errors and ethical blunders  The Atlantic 

***BIG DATA & AI  

Amazon Says the same machine learning courses that it uses to teach its own engineers will be offered for free  Tech Crunch 

A Bayesian linear regression in R for time series forecasting  Towards Data Science

The Surprising Power of Small Data: More information isn’t necessarily better in health care or business  Stanford

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Nexstar To Buy Tribune Media For $4.1 Billion, Creates Giant TV Station Group  Media Post

Sunset magazine, a California icon, struggles amid declining ad sales and management missteps LA Times

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The rise of the professional “influencer”  Becoming (my blog)

How vividly imagining your own death can help your next career move  Fast Company

***WRITING & READING

Ben Yagoda Crunches the Contractions  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE 

‘That Walk Was a Bear!’ Is ‘Bear’ Slang in That Sentence?  Chronicle of Higher Education  

The World’s Most Efficient Languages  The Atlantic  

***LITERATURE 

The 10 Best Books of 2018 The editors of The Times Book Review choose the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year  New York Times  

NPR’s Guide to 2018 Great Books  NPR 

***GENDER   

Global report on gender violence says women most likely to be killed by intimate partners or family members  Axios 

Smart dress shows how often women are groped at clubs  Quartzy

Inside the All-Female Trek to the North Pole  Wired 

America’s sexist obsession with what women politicians wear, explained  Vox

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Teaching while black: white professor calls security on black adjunct  The Commonwealth Times

Swastikas spray-painted on walls of Jewish professor at Columbia  Washington Post  

Analysis on the diversity of magazine covers from 2012-2018  Ceros

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Everything You Wanted to Know About Emojis and the Law  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

 ***CRIME

The police departments who destroy rape kits before testing them  CNN 

NJ.com's ground-breaking look at police force  Poynter 

***RELIGION

Killing Of American Missionary Ignites Debate Over How To Evangelize  NPR 

Do missionaries help or harm?  BBC 

This Pastor Is Melting Purity Rings Into A Golden Vagina Sculpture  Huffington Post

Kenny Marks, CCM star of the '80s and '90s Dies  Cross Rythms 

Brawl forces Church to Briefly shutdown Christmas Display  KJRH  

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Members of both parties find meaning in family but differ when it comes to faith  Pew Research

***GOOD NEWS 

Twitter users help reunite friends who met on vacation 12 years ago  Teen Vogue 

97-year-old New Jersey woman has served on every Election Day since 1939  NBC News  

Vietnam War veteran meets stranger whose Christmas card lifted his spirits  CBS News

San Diego man donates $1 million to California school devastated by fire  NBC Los Angeles

A Texas cotton farmer is battling cancer and couldn't harvest his crop. So his neighbors did it for him  CNN

Hundreds pack funeral for Vietnam veteran they did not know after viral obituary post  MSNBC

He opened his motel to families hit by flooding: Now he's a full-service good Samaritan  CBS  

Anonymous 'Santa Claus' Surprises Customers by Paying Off All Layaway Items at Vermont Walmart  People 

Sinatra the blue-eyed Brooklyn husky's mysterious journey and miraculous reunion  ABC News

***REALLY?!

Couple Forced to Prove that New Mexico is a state while applying for a marriage license  Las Cruces Sun News

Grandfather banned from US holiday after accidentally ticking 'terrorist' box on visa form  The Independent

Accused maple syrup bandits fly through Canadian Town during police chase  Calgary Sun 

A homeless man found rare artwork from Disney's 'Bambi' in a trash bin. When it sold for $3,700, the seller tracked him down to split the proceeds  CNN

Women Sue After Breaking Into Theme Park And Hurting Themselves  WBTW 

The 40 Most Insane Things That Happened In Florida In 2018  BuzzFeed News 

Grandma mistakenly booked into all-male jail, staff thought she was transgender  WWLP 

American Airlines passenger left in wheelchair overnight at airport after flight was canceled   Fox-17

***ART & DESIGN

I spent 15 years sanding and grinding mussel shells to create my sculptures. Then I was diagnosed with heavy-metal poisoning  Toronto Life 

Google is Building Digital Art Gallaries you can Step Into  Tech Crunch

***IMAGES

National Geographic's 100 best images of the year  National Geographic 

Reuters' best pictures from 2018  Reuters 

***MUSIC 

Neuroscience says listening to this song reduces anxiety by up to 65%  Fast Company

Can you teach AI to dance?  YR.media 

***FILM

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Courtesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Terminator, Four Weddings and a Funeral & More  Open Culture 

This is the most influential film of all time  MarketWatch 

***STUDENT MEDIA   

A High School Newspaper Was Suspended For Publishing An Investigation Into Football Players’ Transfers  BuzzFeed News 

Liberty University students create independent news outlet  News Advance  

***STUDENT LIFE 

More millennials now live in suburbs than in cities  CNBC 

Graduate School Is Terrible for People's Mental Health  The Atlantic  

Millennials are killing countless industries — but the Fed says it's mostly just because they're poor  San Francisco Gate 

Teens Say Social Media Isn’t As Bad For Them As You Might Think  BuzzFeed News

Pot is edging out alcohol and cigarettes as the teenage drug of choice  Pacific Standard   

Is a smartphone a necessity for college students today?  Inside Higher Ed  

***ACADEMIC LIFE  

Student made social media threat to kill FAU professor, cops say  Sun-Sentinel 

Judge: UM deprived professor of due process in disciplinary case  Michigan Live 

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Why US life expectancy is falling, in three charts  Quartz  

40 years ago, this journalist survived the Jonestown massacre: He warns it could happen again Washington Post

What the dip in US life expectancy is really about—inequality: While poor Americans are dying earlier, the rich are enjoying unprecedented longevity  Vox  

My mom’s suicide changed everything: Here’s how I found hope again  USA Today  

The American abortion rate is at an all-time low  Vox

More than one-in-ten U.S. parents are also caring for an adult  Pew Research

***BORDER ISSUES   

What we know about illegal immigration from Mexico  Pew Research 

Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After “Zero Tolerance” Was Reversed  Propublica 

BuzzFeed gave six kids traveling in the migrant caravan cameras to document what life looks like for them  BuzzFeed News

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Pension Plans For Millions Of Americans Are On The Brink Of Collapse  NPR

Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It (opinion)  Bloomberg 

Americans Value Equality at Work More Than Equality at Home  New York Times 

***ENVIRONMENT

The new  arctic frontier: As the ice melts, U.S. prepares for possible threats from Russia and China  Washington Post 

Climate change strike: thousands of school students protest across Australia  The Guardian 

The World's Largest Ocean Cleanup Has Officially Begun  Forbes 

Only vehicles producing zero emissions will be allowed to drive freely in downtown Madrid  The Guardian

In California’s Fertile Valley, Industry and Agriculture Hang Heavy in the Air  Undark 

***HEALTH

Interactive map shows how many years breathing dirty air takes off your life  Air Quality Life Index  

The science is clear: dirty farm water is making us sick  Wired

What’s in 5-hour energy shots? 17 ingredients: 16 of them are basically useless  Mel Magazine

FDA’s ‘flawed’ device pathway persists with industry backing  Associated Press  

Investigation: Lives Lost Amid ER Violations  Web-MD 

Intermittent fasting is no better than conventional dieting for weight loss, new study finds  The Conversation

***HEALTH & SLEEP 

Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can’t  New Yorker

Why screen time can disrupt sleep  Salk 

Why Hospitals Should Let You Sleep  New York Times 

***HEALTH & KIDS 

Docs Say Kids With Concussions Don't Have To Stay In The Dark For Days  NPR

Number Of U.S. Kids Who Don't Have Health Insurance Is On The Rise  NPR

***TRAVEL

Want to Escape Modern Life? Try a Weekend in a Prison Cell  The Atlantic

Mic’s best places to travel interactive  Mic 

The Best Things to Do in 25 of America’s Most Fun Cities  Thrillist   

***FOOD & DRINK 

The Hidden Struggle to Save the Coffee Industry From Disaster  Medium 

The Best Craft Brewery in Every State  Thrillist    

Sainsbury's to stock edible insects on shelves in a UK first  The Guardian 

52 of the World’s Most Out-There Myths About Food  Atlas Obscura 

***CHILDREN 

These Are the Most Popular Baby Names of 2018  Fatherly 

ADHD Diagnosis Is More Common For Youngest Students In Class  NPR 

The "homework gap": 12 million schoolchildren lack internet  Axios

New Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment  Foundation for Economic Education  Fee.org 

The best new perks for working parents  Quartz 

***CHILDREN & SCREEN TIME

New inequality trend: how parents approach screen time  Axios 

Should You Make Your Kids Wait Until High School for a Cell Phone?  Life Hacker  

***ANIMALS 

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here  New York Times

***SCIENCE

New Quantum Paradox Clarifies Where Our Views of Reality Go Wrong  Quanta Magazine

Archaeologists Are Looking for Dead Sea Scrolls Inside 2 Newfound Qumran Caves  Live Science  

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Lack of sleep intensifies anger, impairs adaptation to frustrating circumstances  Iowa State University  

Using imagination to unlearn fear  The Naked Scientist 

***NEUROSCIENCE   

This Is Your Brain on Hate Researchers are studying how white supremacism may rewire people  Vice

The Pathology of Prejudice What neuroscience tells us about the persistence of hatred  New Republic 

Experimental Brain Stimulation Relieved Depression Symptoms In Study  NPR 

***PHILOSOPHY

An exhaustive, interactive mapping of the history of philosophy  Deniz C Önduygu blog 

6 essential books on existentialist philosophy  Big Think 

***ETHICS

My Mother Taught Me to Kill  Narratively 

Harvard Medical School Dean Weighs In On Ethics Of Gene Editing  NPR

The Ethical Pitfalls of the Viral “Best Burger in America” Essay  The New Yorker

***RESEARCH  

Controversial visiting researcher — heavily criticized as having racist work — sparks pushback Daily Northwestern

New COPE guidelines on publication process manipulation: why they matter  Research Integrity and Peer Review   

Canadian scholar says he's been 'persecuted' for his research on colleagues who published in predatory journals  Inside Higher Ed 

The double standard of retractions  The Varsity 

A look at retractions from Science from 1983 until 2017  Springer

Where are the ethics in academic publishing?  Times Higher Education 

A suite of automated tools is now available to assist with academic peer review—but humans are still in the driver's seat  Nature 

***HIGHER ED

What the Rise of the Mega-University Might Mean for the Rest of Us  Chronicle of Higher Ed

This "coding bootcamp" is now accredited as a bachelor's program  Axios

Why Your HR Officer Is Leaving  Chronicle of Higher Ed

UW-Stevens Point Faculty Want Regents To Oust Administrators  Wisconsin Public Radio

Why One University Is Handing Out Hockey Pucks to Prepare for an Active Shooter  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

***HUMANITIES

Why Are Students Ditching the History Major?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

In a High-Tech World, Humanities and Other Liberal Arts Are More Essential Than Ever  The Daily Beast

***TEACHING 

Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

What Is the Purpose of Final Exams, Anyway?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Seniors Think What They’ve Learned Will Help Them Do Their Jobs. Do Employers Agree?   Chronicle of Higher Ed 

“Transformative” teaching is exhausting. Here are some suggestions on how to lighten the load Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Influencers

The internet now means influence can come from anyone, anywhere; it can be visible or invisible, paid for by any power, approaching you any of myriad ways. Influence used to be understood as a top-down phenomenon, with governments, advertisers, donors or other powerful figures holding sway over the masses. These days we understand that the most powerful influences aren’t the distant ones but the most immediate and social — so the powerful tend to exert their influence by pretending to be ordinary people.

Marketers, for instance, work harder and harder to obscure the distinction between ads and real life. The last decade featured the rise of the professional “influencer” — someone paid to use their personal magnetism to promote specific agendas online. Instead of the top-down influence of a commercial or a billboard, these ads are embedded, shared by someone who seems, on some aspirational level, like a peer. The companies paying teenagers to hawk diet tea on Instagram are using the same tactics the Chinese government did when it recruited commenters to post hundreds of millions of pro-Communist Party messages online.

We like to think of our characters as fixed: We have our beliefs and our morals, religions and parties, states and countries, friends and enemies. We are inevitably ourselves — inescapably ourselves. We should be able to resist this kind of manipulation. But a steady stream of social-science studies suggests otherwise, demonstrating again and again how easily social pressures can affect the things we say, believe, do, think, eat. Our anxiety over influence goes back to the same fear Thomas Aquinas had, the same doubt families of alcoholics or cult members have. In the face of powerful influences, how can you locate and hold onto that original, irrefutable spark of self, your free will, your character, even your soul? That’s the fear that the idea of influence lays bare: that you can’t. Or that it might never have existed in the first place.

Annalisa Quinn writing in the New York Times

Self-Control can be Contagious

Not only do you tend to hang out with people like yourself, your friends will influence you toward or away from self-control. Even the people you are forced by circumstances to hang out with (like co-workers) have an influence on your behavior. 

That's the finding of researchers who asked participants to watch people either select carrot sticks or cookies to eat before taking tests related to self-control (not involving cookies and carrots). Participants who watched someone eat cookies before the tests did not do as well as those who had watched someone decide to eat carrots. 

In another test, participants were told to think of a friend with good self-control. This group performed better on a handgrip test (used to measure self-control) than did the participants assigned to think about a friend with weak self-control. Other tests showed similar results.  

The conclusion: If you surround yourself with people who make wise choices, you are more likely to do the same. You can boost your self-control simply by networking with other people who reinforce positive behavior (or vise versa). And when you show a lack of self-control, you are probably influencing someone else to do the same. 

Details of the study were published by the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 

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Stephen Goforth