The Chains of Victimhood

Glorying in victimhood is a favorite path for people hurt in relationships (especially the divorced). When someone has been wronged (and wronged many times), it is easy to keep seeing life through those pain-filled moments and “define” yourself by what others have done to you. Instead of moving on and creating your own identity, your past pain becomes an excuse for not taking responsibly for today.. and a means to gain sympathy. When you meet new people, you find yourself quickly working your way to an explanation of what happened. You want it front and center so that others to see you in that light. You want that shadow of the past to fall over your face when they look at you. How much better it is to let them get to know the person you have become rather than what you once were! It’s a risky but healthy step toward breaking the chains of victimhood.

Stephen Goforth

Do you like Cake? Delaying gratification

“Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experience the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” ~  M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

A financial analyst was locked into a cycle of procrastination.

Peck asked, "Do you like cake?" She replied that she did.

"What part of the cake do you like better, the cake or the frosting?"

"Oh, the frosting!"

"And how do you eat a piece of cake?"

"I eat the frosting first, of course."

Having gained this insight, Dr. Peck started probing her work habits. Invariably she would devote the first hour or so of each day to the most gratifying and easiest of her tasks and the remaining hours never quite accomplishing the more onerous chores. He suggested that she force herself to do the objectionable tasks during the first two hours, then enjoy the remaining time.  

There is a critical moment early in your day when you make the decision as to whether you will plunge into the difficult tasks in front of you or not. Don’t allow yourself to decide – just act.  When taking the easy road is not an option, and you just plunge into the difficult tasks, you save yourself time and energy.. and make it easier to avoid those detours.

Articles of Interest - Week of June 18

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Facebook Announces Plans To Launch Cryptocurrency Called Libra NPR

An Animated Ranking Of The Most Popular Social Media Networks Since 2003   Digg

Fortnite Eclipses Facebook, Instagram as Tweens' Preferred Social Platform: Study Hollywood Reporter

Brands Push Back On Partnering With Social Media Influencers  NPR

The rise of the computer-generated influencer on social media  New York Times 

Sudan and the Instagram Tragedy Hustle The Atlantic

***MOBILE 

How to save text messages on your iphone  Wired

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

We Read 150 Privacy Policies. They Were an Incomprehensible Disaster  New York Times

A Duke study recorded thousands of students’ faces. Now they’re being used all over the world Duke Chronicle

A license plate scanning company was hacked, and now thousands of images of drivers are on the dark web  Vice

Why airport facial recognition raises privacy concerns  Washington Post

U.S. Reportedly Trying To Implant Malware That Could Sabotage Russia's Electrical Grid  NPR

***INTERNET

Dropbox Just Announced a Major Redesign That You're Going to Love, Until You Realize it Has A Fatal Flaw Inc.

How to Get Past Paywalls in Chrome's Incognito Mode  Life Hacker 

***BIG DATA & AI 

AI can tell when actors are kissing—and maybe when you are, too  MIT Technology Review  

The Problem with Quantum Computers  Scientific American  

How To Run a Hive Script on an AWS Hadoop Cluster  Virtualization Review 

A guide to some of the key terms associated with the technology, an increasingly useful tool for businesses that improves as it crunches more data  Fortune  

***JOURNALISM

The news and information that U.S. adults actually read doesn't always match up with the topics they claim they want covered more  Axios

How we Helped our Reporters Learn to Love Spreadsheets  New York Times

Dan Rather’s single biggest secret for interviewing powerful people  Vox

The New York Times has a course to teach its reporters data skills, and now they’ve open-sourced it Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA 

“Tying together two rocks doesn’t make them float”: Why newspapers are facing the end of scale Digital Publishing News 

Audiobooks are no longer exempt from the broader shifts in the podcast world  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***FAKE NEWS

A deepfake video of Mark Zuckerberg presents a new challenge for Facebook CNN

Lawyers: Files sent by Alex Jones contained child porn ABC News

Adobe has an ambitious plan to help the public spot fake images Fast Company  

About three-quarters of Americans favor steps to restrict altered videos and images Pew Research Center

***WRITING & READING

Are Colleges Friendly to Fantasy Writers? It’s Complicated  Wired 

List Of All Emojis!   

***LANGUAGE

Language wars: the 19 greatest linguistic spats of all time The Guardian

UVA Scientists Use Machine Learning to Improve Gut Disease Diagnosis University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science 

***PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism – What can curb the scourge?  University World News 

Senior Chinese law researcher target of PhD plagiarism claims  South China Morning Post

***LITERATURE

A Very Happy 50th Birthday To 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'  NPR  

The Strange Story of a Secret Literary Fellowship  The New Yorker

The tree thought to have inspired Dr. Seuss' 'The Lorax' has fallen  CNN 

***POETRY

Review of Campbell McGrath’s New and Selected Poems  The New York Times

Sanderson Dean’s ‘Stark Raving Dad’ turns frazzled parenting into poetry  Mercury News 

With his translation of some of the best works by legendary poet Sachal Sarmast, Ghaffar has once again, outdone himself   The News Sunday

This 13-year-old is teaching people about climate change through poetry  CBC  

Human factor behind integrating technology into learning  University World News  

A poet-to-poet perspective on the life and works of St. Francis Assisi  Angelus News 

Food Poetry Walk  Greenfield Recorder 

***GENDER   

This Picture Featuring 15 Tech Men And 2 Women Looked Doctored: The Women Were Photoshopped In

BuzzFeed News 

Eight women who achieved personal or professional milestones after the age of 50  Washington Post 

All-Women Sailing Crew Raises Awareness of Plastic Pollution TIME

Female Historians Try to End the I-Didn’t-Know-Any-Women Excuse for Men-Only Panels  Chronicle of Higher Education 

Gender Stereotypes Banned in British Advertising  New York Times

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

 'Avengers,' But Make It Without Women, Or Men Hugging, Or Levity In General    NPR

The disturbing return of scientific racism  Wired

Documentary About Charleston Church Shooting Explores Forgiveness  NPR

Looking Under the Hood: 14 Years Photographing White Power The Daily Beast  

Key findings about U.S. immigrants  Pew Research Center

***FREE SPEECH

Is offering assistance to illegal immigrants a protected religious practice?  Economist

The court ruled that First Amendment protections don't apply to a corporation that operates a public access channel in New York PC Mag

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Texas court says photographer has no recourse against university copyright infringement  Houston Chronicle

Genius accuses Google of copying its lyrics data (updated) Apostrophes were reportedly the telltale clues Engadget  

Twitter user banned, claims “viewpoint discrimination”: Court disagrees  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***RELIGION

Atheists & Agnostics Also Frequently Believe in the Supernatural, a New Study Shows  Open Culture

Died: Lloyd John Ogilvie, Celebrated Preacher and Senate Chaplain  Christianity Today 

The Southern Baptists are beset by two related fiascos  Economist 

Ex-pastor sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing $800,000 from Texas megachurch  ABC-13

Tennessee preacher-cop calls for execution of LGBTQ people  CNN

Man Runs Into Riverside Church And Allegedly Says He’s Going To Shoot Everybody  CBS-LA  

Church-state group complains: 18 players baptized at school football field  AL.com

How Should Christians Have Sex? (opinion)  New York Times

***GOOD NEWS

This Guy Offered "Free Dad Hugs" At A Pride Parade And People Really Needed Them   BuzzFeed News

He is a stylist to Hollywood stars: But his most personal work is giving cuts to the homeless Washington Post 

This carpenter builds crutches for kids: Now it’s his turn to walk  National Geographic  

Calgary Couple uses shopping spree win to stock up groceries for Calgary Food Bank  Social Sharing  CBA

Teen boys save woman's life: Four teenage boys save 90-year-old Oklahoma woman from burning house  CBS News 

***REALLY?! 

Alcohol is now being marketed as a ‘wellness’ drink  New York Post 

Have You Seen The Hot Cheetos And Forever 21 Collab?  Essence 

Florida social media coordinator paid in hot dogs  The Take Out  

A Honda lawnmower is now the fastest in the world, hitting 100 mph in 6 seconds  CNN

Taiwan Is in the Clutches of a Claw Machine Craze Atlas Obscura

***ART & DESIGN

Frida Kahlo's only known voice recording possibly found in Mexico  The Guardian 

The Winners Of The National Geographic Travel Photo Contest Are Breathtaking  Digg

Women Who Draw: Explore an Open Directory That Showcases the Work of 5,000+ Female Illustrators Open Culture  

Highways and Rivers Form Capillaries on Anatomical Paper Organs by Katrin Rodegast This is Colossel

***FREELANCING 

Narrative nonfiction on the intersection of culture and politics  Catapult Story

Writing packages  Medium's Blop Culture magazine  Medium

Story ideas on culture, books, music, film & beyond  Bitch Media

***SOCIAL ISSUES

Thorn uses Amazon-powered AI to save minors from sex trafficking  Quartz

Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong New York Times

***IMMIGRATION  

5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.  Pew Research Center

Trump Administration to Hold Migrant Children at Fort Still  TIME 

In nearly 100-degree heat, migrants still packed outside in camp at international bridge USA Today

The U.S. Wants Visa Applicants' Social-Media Handles  The Atlantic

***ENVIRONMENT

The Cold War Project That Pulled Climate Science From the Ice  Wired

The global plastic problem is even bigger than you think  Axios

The Brilliant Colors of the Great Barrier Revealed in a Historic Illustrated Book from 1893  Open Culture

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Boundaries   Becoming (my blog)

***HEALTH

Two-hour ‘dose’ of nature significantly boosts health – study  The Guardian

The association between quality measures of medical university press releases and their corresponding news stories—Important information missing PLOS

Am I Sleeping Too Much?  GQ

Marijuana Damages Young Brains (opinion) The New York Times

Maine becomes 8th state to legalize assisted suicide Associated Press

***MEDICAL RESEARCH

Scientists may soon be able to make a universal blood type Sillicon Republic

Meta-Research: A comprehensive review of randomized clinical trials in three medical journals reveals 396 medical reversals  eLife 

UVA Scientists Use Machine Learning to Improve Gut Disease Diagnosis  University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science 

***TRAVEL

Yes, an Epic Around-the-World Train Trip Actually Exists  Afar  

20 of the world's most beautiful Buddhist temples National Geographic

The (New) Great American Road Trip: Where Else to Stop in All 50 States  InsideHook

***FOOD

Why Food Reformers Have Mixed Feelings About Eco-Labels  NPR

Five Myths about Fast Food  Washington Post 

Realistic Ceramic Sculptures of Decadent Desserts Examine Our Culturally Complex Relationship With Food  This is Colossal

***FAMILY

Ancestry and other DNA-testing companies are bringing old family secrets to light: These friends are now dealing with the truth about their fathers Huffington Post

How Much the Everyday Changes When You Have Kids Flowing Data

***ANIMALS 

Scientists Explain Puppy Dog Eyes  NPR  

This Guy Offered "Free Dad Hugs" At A Pride Parade And People Really Needed Them People fell into his arms crying Buzzfeed News

An Everyday Ritual Becomes a Zoological Tour with a Japanese Company’s Animal Tea Bags This is Colossal

Washington state waterfront owners asked to take dead whales  Associated Press

***SCIENCE

Cosmologists Clash Over the Beginning of the Universe  Wired

Science is often poorly communicated. Researchers can fight back  Vox

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Adolescents' Tech Addiction Is A Growing Problem, Therapists Say  NPR

No, You’re Not Addicted to Social Media  Undark

***CHINA 

In China, What 's The Attitude On The Street About The U.S.? Economist

How the trade war with China could crush California’s $2.7 trillion economy CNBC

***ETHICS

Ethics in Scientific Research: An Examination of Ethical Principles and Emerging Topics  RAND  

Deep ethics: The long-term quest to decide right from wrong  BBC

***RESEARCH 

Mexico Backs Down on Researcher Travel  Inside Higher Ed Rules  

Peer review is not just quality control, it is part of the social infrastructure of research  The London School of Economics & Political Science  

How a Single Paper Affects the Impact Factor: Implications for Scholarly Publishing  Arvix  

The troubles of high-profile open access megajournals  SpringerLink

***HIGHER ED

Trump administration seeks overhaul of federal standards for college accreditors  Inside Higher Ed

Private Nonprofit College Closures, 2016-Present  Inside Higher Ed

University suspends library director over controversial photo display  National Coalition Against Censorship

AAUP votes to censure or sanction three institutions at its annual meeting  Inside Higher Ed

Liberty University cuts divinity faculty  Inside Higher Ed

Liberty grad arrested for statutory rape  Christian Post 

***TEACHING

We Don’t Trust Course Evaluations, but Are Peer Observations of Teaching Much Better?  Chronicle of Higher Education 

Diversity as a Course Requirement  Inside Higher Ed 

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

The Professor and the Adjunct The New Yorker

Appeals court reinstates a long-standing tenure denial case brought by a black law professor against a predominantly black university  Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

12 years after starting college, white men have paid off 44% of their student loans, while black women owe 13% more  Market Watch

A brief history of cheating at video games  Engadget

What the ideal president looks like to Millennials  YouGov

***STUDENT MEDIA  

A Student Is Expelled After Multiple Sexual-Assault Accusations. Could the University Have Stopped Him Sooner?  Chronicle of Higher Education

Kentucky university student newspaper struggles after loss of adviser and funding for student stipends  Student Press Law Center

 

Boundaries

Boundaries help us to define what is not on our property and what we are not responsible for. We are not, for example, responsible for other people.  In short, boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out.  Sometimes, we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out.  

Boundaries are not walls. But in every community, all members have their own space and property.  The important thing is that property lines be permeable enough to allow pass and strong enough to keep out danger. 

Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or show where you begin and end.  The most basic boundary that defines you is your physical skin. The most basic boundary-setting word is no. It lets others know that you exist apart from them and that you are in control of you. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices.  

Setting limits on others is a misnomer.  We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right.  The other aspect of limits that is helpful when talking about boundaries is setting our own internal limits.  We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire, without acting it out.  We need self-control without repression.  We need to be able to say no to ourselves.

Henry Cloud, John Townsend writing in Boundaries

Motivation doesn’t equal Achievement

You might think it is safe to assume that, once you motivate students, the learning will follow. Yet research shows that this is often not the case: motivation doesn’t always lead to achievement, but achievement often leads to motivation. If you try to ‘motivate’ students into public speaking, they might feel motivated but can lack the specific knowledge needed to translate that into action. However, through careful instruction and encouragement, students can learn how to craft an argument, shape their ideas and develop them into solid form. 

A lot of what drives students is their innate beliefs and how they perceive themselves. There is a strong correlation between self-perception and achievement, but there is some evidence to suggest that the actual effect of achievement on self-perception is stronger than the other way round. To stand up in a classroom and successfully deliver a good speech is a genuine achievement, and that is likely to be more powerfully motivating than woolly notions of ‘motivation’ itself.  

Carl Hendrick writing in Aeon

Articles of Interest - June 10

***JOURNALISM

“You put that many people together from so many backgrounds, of course they’re going to start chasing each other with machetes”  Columbia Journalism Review

What to Ask Yourself Before You Start a Crowdsourcing Project Propublica

Rural teens seek (but rarely find) themselves in local news coverage Reynold’s Journalism Institute  

Redacted briefs before Supreme Court violate First Amendment (opinion)  Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press  

The value of bias in a quest for inclusive journalism RTDNA

**THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Micropayments-for-news pioneer Blendle is pivoting from micropayments Harvard’s Nieman Lab

These Reporters Lost Their Jobs. Now They’re Fighting Back Against Big Tech BuzzFeed News

 Five futures for journalism  Salon

Sobering reality for news outlets: Your readers are somewhere else 99% of the time  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Google Made $4.7 Billion From the News Industry in 2018, Study Says New York Times  

That “$4.7 billion” number for how much money Google makes off the news industry? It’s imaginary Harvard’s Nieman Lab

How the Star Tribune became the most successful metro paper in America — a decade after going broke  Traffic

***FAKE NEWS 

Americans think fake news is big problem, blame politicians Associated Press

Congress to investigate deepfakes as doctored Pelosi video causes stir CNN

The Real Problem With Fake News  The Atlantic

The one Weird Trick will help you spot Clickbait  TED 

To detect fake news, this AI first learned to write it  Tech Crunch 

***TECHNOLOGY

When Grown-Ups Get Caught in Teens’ AirDrop Crossfire The Atlantic  

Machine Learning Experts Have Found A Way To Edit Videos Of People Saying Words They've Never Said  Digg 

Why Is It So Hard to Solve Problems with Technology? Scholarly Kitchen

***BIG DATA & AI 

Google’s AI can create videos from start and end frames alone  VentureBeat  

How do neural networks see depth?  ZD Net

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Pizza Place In California Wants Patrons To Put Away Their Cellphones  NPR

Facebook bans health and conspiracy site Natural News ArsTechnica 

HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ has Instagram influencers flocking to the site of the disaster  BGR

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Schools Are Deploying Massive Digital Surveillance Systems: The Results Are Alarming Ed Week

How to stop robocalls—or at least slow them down  Wired

Privacy concerns don’t stop people from putting their DNA on the internet to help solve crimes The Conversation

CBP says traveler photos and license plate images stolen in data breach Tech Crunch

***PERSONAL GROWTH  

The Danger of Love  Becoming (my blog)

Work-Life Balance Is a Myth: Do This Instead  TIME

Be a Better Conversationalist by 'Supporting' Instead of 'Shifting'  Life Hacker

***WRITING & READING

13 methods for achieving your writing goals  PR Daily

Why Writing Better Will Make You a Better Person  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How I Taught My Kid to Read  The Atlantic

***LITERATURE

Dispute Arises Over ‘No-No Boy,’ a Classic of Asian-American Literature With a Complex History  New York Times 

10 Facts About Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go!  Mental Floss

***POETRY

How poetry influenced scientists  Cosmos Magazine

Jim Harrison’s Essential Poetry  National Review

The Making of Poetry by Adam Nicolson review — a superb study of Coleridge and Wordsworth The Times

When Poets Pray  Presbyterian Outlook

Poetry and the Art of Minimalism  Thrive Global

How Instagram Could Stifle a New Generation of Poets Ozy

There's a Poem for Every Reader (sub. req’ed)  Wall Street Journal

For Poet Billy Collins, the Vineyard Is an Entrancing Isle Vineyard Gazette

***GENDER   

Gender disparity still exists in authorship of academic medical research especially in the last author position  JAMA 

Bias in Science Hiring: New study finds discrimination against women and racial minorities in hiring in the sciences Inside Higher Ed

Women in Animated Films Make Up Only 17% of Lead Characters  The Wrap

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

Racial and gender biases plague postdoc hiring  Science Mag

Inside an all-white town’s divisive experiment with cryptocurrency Wired

A new podcast amplifies Asian American stories  Columbia Journalism Review

***FREE SPEECH

Texas becomes 17th state to enact campus free speech legislation The FIRE

Alabama governor signs campus free speech bill into law  The Hill

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Sorry, but you can’t copyright a meme  The Next Web

Court: Arresting A Driver For Shouting 'Fuck You' Out The Window At A Nearby State Trooper Is Unconstitutional  Tech Dirt

InfoWars Pays $15K to Settle 'Pepe the Frog' Copyright Lawsuit  Hollywood Reporter

 ***RELIGION

Amber Scorah On Losing Her Faith, And Her Son, In 'Leaving The Witness'  NPR

Southern Baptists discuss whether one woman can preach AL.com

Evangelicals opening to science-friendly “process” theology, says Thomas Jay Oord  Vancouver Sun

Univision, sued for news story about Evangelical Church Miami Herald

Former Liberty University professor convicted of child sex solicitation News Advance

Her Evangelical Megachurch Was Her World. Then Her Daughter Said She Was Molested by a Minister New York Times

***GOOD NEWS

97-year-old vet with the 101st parachutes again over Normandy Clarksville Now   

Woman given just 3 days to live at birth graduates from college — with honors The Week

Formerly homeless man readmitted to University of Texas after leaving school in 1975  NBC News

Indiana teacher takes students' drawings and turns them into stuffed animals  The Week

He checked on elderly resident, fed neighborhood cats and gave hugs to people going through hard times  BuzzFeed News

***REALLY?!

Grocer designed embarrassing plastic bags to shame shoppers into bringing reusable ones: Plan Backfires BongBong

The restaurant owner who asked for 1-star Yelp reviews Hustle

***MUSIC 

Learning to Love the Music You Hate  Topic

The sociology of country music lyrics  Economist

***FILM

Watch 3,000 Films Free Online from the National Film Board of Canada Open Culture

The Films that Defined Generation X BBC

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Mobile Internet Usage Reaches 800 Hours A Year Media Post

America's rural radio stations are vanishing – and taking the country's soul with them The Guardian

What Loosening Restrictions On Radio Consolidation Could Do, And What It Already Has  NPR

Longtime TV weatherman off air since slamming station's code red 'corporate initiative' during broadcast  Newsweek

***JOBS

You’re probably answering these 5 common interview questions wrong Fast Company

Career advice for TV Journalists  Twitter

Three men who all told very different lies on their resumes (and still got the job) Mel Magazine

***FREELANCING 

Personal essays and reported features on the integral role pets play in millennials' lives Bustle 

The Sierra Club is looking for new environmental writers

Food pitches  Topic magazine  

Pitches for an upcoming “Books & Authors" issue  High Country News   

Writers and photographers to produce Portland-based neighborhood guides Portland in Color and Travel Portland

Freelance pitches  Medium's new publication for women of color

Freelance games writer  Radar

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Boom in electric scooters leads to more injuries, fatalities Associated Press

Americans’ views flipped on gay rights. How did minds change so quickly?  Washington Post

Better Schools Won’t Fix America (opinion)  The Atlantic

***SOCIAL ISSUES: ABORTION

5 facts about the abortion debate in America  Pew Research Center

In Alabama where lawmakers banned abortion for rape victims—rapists' parental rights are protected Washington Post  

A majority of Americans think abortion will still be legal in 30 years, but with some restrictions  Pew Research Center

***IMMIGRATION

3 myths about Mexico and migration, debunked  CNN

Migrants in Custody at Hospitals Are Treated Like Felons, Doctors Say   New York Times

Not content with merely providing unsanitary conditions for border detainees, CBP decides to poison the entire El Paso area  Washington Examiner

Georgia professor’s immigration comments cause stir on social media AJC

***BUSINESS & FINANCE 

More Americans Are Living Solo, and Companies Want Their Business Wall Street Journal

The weakness of online consumer reviews  The Week

***ENVIRONMENT

Art from invasive species creates conversations about conservation  MPR News   

Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska Wreaks Havoc on Communities and Ecosystems  Smithsonian 

More People See Climate Change In Record Flooding NPR

Amazon Rainforest Deforestation in Brazil on the Rise for Years  Bloomberg

***HEALTH

How Early Trauma Can Shape The Brain's Response To Pain  NPR 

A new study of how spin in coverage of medical studies affects perceptions BMC Medicine

How Safe is Sunscreen?  New York Times

If You Can Do This Many Pushups in a Row, Harvard Scientists Say Your Risk of Heart Attack Is Over 30 Times Less  Inc.

How old are your organs? To scientists’ surprise, organs are a mix of young and old cells Salk Institute for Biological Studies 

Apple's 'noise' app Buzzes your wrist whenever you're in a loud environment  Wired

Don’t trust advice from streaming ‘health’ films, experts say New York Post

More evidence that autism is linked to gut bacteria Economist

***TRAVEL

136 Maps Reveal Where Tourists & Locals Take Photos in Major Cities Across the Globe Open Culture

Forget the Bahamas. China's cruises are where it's at  Wired

***FOOD

A slick video with claims about artificial food spreads online even though some of the claims are fake  CNN

The Majic of Japan’s Convenience Store  BBC

***IMMIGRATION 

Trump Administration Cancels English Classes Soccer Legal Air for Unaccompanied Child Migrants in US Shelters  Washington Post

Taking on the system: 'Dreamers' are getting law degrees Associated Press

American Bar Association Says Immigration Courts Are 'On The Brink Of Collapse'  NPR

***ANIMALS 

A New Photo Book Documents the Wonderful Homemade Cat Ladders of Switzerland Open Culture

Prison Dogs Of Angola New York Times

Ogden restaurant won’t allow service dogs; customers upset Fox-13

Stressed out? Your dog may feel it too, study suggests Associated Press

Bees can link symbols to numbers: study  RMIT University

How to Get Your Neighbor’s Dog to Stop Barking Incessantly Life Hacker

***SCIENCE 

Physicists see a quantum leap, halt it, and reverse it Wired

Share your science with a story  Science Mag

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Human Brains Are Sensitive To Musical Pitch, Unlike Those Of Monkeys  NPR 

The Men’s Mental Health Double-Bind  Psychology Today

***NEUROSCIENCE  

How Did You Learn to Type?  Life Hacker

How the brain changes when mastering a new skill Science Daily

***PRODUCTIVITY

How Did You Learn to Type?  Life Hacker

I've been working from home for 9 years — here are my best productivity hacks  Business Insider

***HISTORY

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps Open Culture

Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Person to Win Twice, and the Only Person in History to Win in Two Different Sciences Open Culture

***RESEARCH 

Conflict Over Sociologist's Narrative Puts Spotlight on Ethnography  Chronicle of Higher Education 

If the journal accepts the manuscript with only minor suggestions for improvement, authors then withdraw the paper and aim for a higher–impact factor journal The-Scientist

Exposing Hidden Defects in Citation Statistics and Journal Impact Factors  Clarivate Analytics

Knowledge and attitudes among life scientists towards reproducibility within journal articles  Bio Rxix 

After outcry, USDA will no longer require scientists to label research ‘preliminary  Washington Post

***HIGHER ED

Bakery awarded $11 million in libel lawsuit against Oberlin College over alleged racial profiling  CNN

Study: College degree a good investment, despite cost  KSNT 

Oral Roberts University pays $300K in recruiting settlement  Associated Press 

Jerry Falwell Jr. Deletes Crude Tweet over Prayer Over Trump at Church  Christian News

Louisville's Southern Baptist seminary rejects call to make slavery reparations Courier Journal

Psychology and Christianity intersect at new Houston Baptist University institute Houston Chronicle

***TEACHING 

How to Make the Best of Bad Course Evaluations  Chronicle of Higher Education

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Newspapers thrown away at two universities following publication of controversial articles  Student Press Law Center

Civil Liberties Watchdog accuses Rutgers of using unconstitutional process to found student press  Inside Higher Ed 

***STUDENT LIFE

An astounding number of American college students are going hungry or homeless Business Insider

After Restraint And Seclusion, Students With Disabilities Pay An Emotional Toll  NPR

***ACADEMIC LIFE  

Sexual harassment, misconduct behind medicine professor’s dismissal Stanford Daily

A warning from the academic underground of adjuncts and contingent faculty Science Magazine

 

 

Each Step

The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens - or better perhaps, comes alive.  

Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action.       

On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. With each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for people to admit that they are on the wrong road, often only because they have to admit that they must go back to the first wrong turn, and must accept the fact that they have wasted energy and time.     

Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil    

Dunbar's number

The number of people with whom we can maintain a stable relationship is about 150, according to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. He says: 

We devote around 40 percent of our available social time to our 5 most intimate friends and relations…and the remaining 60 percent in progressively decreasing amounts goes to the other 145.  

Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being, and happiness. Creating and maintaining friendships is, however, extremely costly, in terms of both the time that has to be invested and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them. Part of friendship is the act of mentalizing, or mentally envisioning the landscape of another's mind. Cognitively, this process is extraordinarily taxing, and as such, intimate conversations seem to be capped at about four people before they break down and form smaller conversational groups.  

Read more at the BigThink