671 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2017
    1. That means Facebook was likely mulling over the impact it would have on the atmosphere of the news feed. Right now, most content shared to Facebook is relatively unique. Occasionally popular articles or memes get shared by lots of friends, but that’s a coincidence. When people do use the Share button on the web, they often give their own description of a link. But on mobile where typing is more of a pain, a Share button could encourage people to rapidly re-share link after link. That might make the feed seem repetitive and impersonal. Similar to the low-friction, easy-to-tap retweet button on Twitter mobile, Facebook users might Share instead of Liking.

      .

    2. That means Facebook was likely mulling over the impact it would have on the atmosphere of the news feed. Right now, most content shared to Facebook is relatively unique. Occasionally popular articles or memes get shared by lots of friends, but that’s a coincidence. When people do use the Share button on the web, they often give their own description of a link.

      .

  2. Sep 2017
    1. Facebook’s ‘internal policies’ amount to a kind of Stepford Wives version of civic liberalism and speech and privacy rights, the outward form of the things preserved while the innards have been gutted and replaced by something entirely different, an aggressive and totalizing business model which in many ways turns these norms and values on their heads.

      .

    1. Full Spectrum Influence Operations: Clint Watts is an expert in state-sponsored social media influence operations, and his testimony to the Senate Armed Services committee is riveting. We're vulnerable to state-sponsored attacks, he says, because we are too narrowly technological in our solutions. The Russians put together distributed and agile cross-functional networks of technologists, writers, trolls, and analysts. Americans tend to conceptualize the problem as technical, and don't understand the synergies between multiple legitimate and illegitimate entities. The Russians buy talent. Americans buy AI.  The Russians also take an ecosystem approach to the problem. "Full Spectrum Influence Operations" coordinate the actions of illegitimate actors (hackers who steal documents) with borderline actors (controllers of bot networks and paid trolls) with legitimate actors (news agencies). They identify and an infiltrate networks of "useful idiots" who are hungry for the disinformation and stolen documents they can supply, which serves their immediate ends. This full spectrum approach launders foreign disinformation into seemingly legitimate U.S. based news almost immediately. It's not the bots and the Gmail hacks that are the impressive piece -- it's the way in which the entire system is expertly leveraged to create legitimacy.
    1. www.dispatch.com/article/20160112/news/301129754

      Good local source. Respected paper, been around since 1871. wikipedia

    2. www.judicialwatch.org/.../crack-dealer-freed-early-under-obama-plan-murders-woma

      This is a conservative think tank with some legal expertise. It is funded by a variety of right-wing funders. Other sources would be preferable.

    3. www.snopes.com/wendell-callahan-meme/

      Strong source, highly relevant. Known fact-checker.

    4. www.politifact.com/.../mar/.../report-man-pardoned-obama-being-arrested-murder-fa/Cached

      Strong source, highly relevant. Known fact-checker.

  3. Aug 2017
    1. Today, more than a decade later, the law is uniformly blamed for stripping curriculum opportunities, including art, music, physical education and more, and imposing a brutal testing regime that has forced educators to focus their time and energy on preparing for tests in a narrow range of subjects:  namely, English/language arts and math.  For students in low-income communities, the impact has been devastating.

      .

    1. Music education in childhood has been linked to boosts of seven points on IQ scores during childhood (Schellenberg, 2004), and this effect has shown to last beyond high school graduation (Schellenberg, 2006).

      .

    1. Organized music lessons appear to benefit children's IQ and academic performance--and the longer the instruction continues, the larger the effect, according to a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Educational Psychology (Vol. 98, No. 2).

      .

    2. .

  4. Jul 2017
    1. The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

      .

    1. “IBM spun a story about how Watson could improve cancer treatment that was superficially plausible – there are thousands of research papers published every year and no doctor can read them all,” said David Howard, a faculty member in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University, via email. “However, the problem is not that there is too much information, but rather there is too little. Only a handful of published articles are high-quality, randomized trials. In many cases, oncologists have to choose between drugs that have never been directly compared in a randomized trial.”

      .

    1. In a letter written to Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain on Wednesday, and disclosed on Thursday, Goodell said that -- following an audited review of 100 marketing agreements from 2012 to 2015 by accounting firm Deloitte & Touche -- teams were deemed to have received $723,734 for acts of sponsored patriotism.

      .

    1. Regardless of where one stands RE: Colin Kaepernick deciding to sit out the “Star-Spangled Banner” one shouldn’t be misled into thinking this is a longstanding tradition Kaepernick is sitting out. (For the record, I believe it’s his right to sit, stand or turn cartwheels, but the point he wanted to make about the oppression of blacks has now been hijacked and we’re in a loud debate about whether or not players have a right to express themselves). NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed this morning the practice began in 2009, adding, "As you know, the NFL has a long tradition of patriotism. Players are encouraged but not required to stand for the anthem.

      .

    1. “As the crowd of 10,274 spectators — the smallest that has witnessed the diamond classic in many years — stood up to take their afternoon yawn, that has been the privilege and custom of baseball fans for many generations, the band broke forth to the strains of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ “The yawn was checked and heads were bared as the ball players turned quickly about and faced the music. Jackie Fred Thomas of the U.S. Navy was at attention, as he stood erect, with his eyes set on the flag fluttering at the top of the lofty pole in right field. First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day’s enthusiasm.”

      1918

    2. As legend has it, singing the national anthem at sporting events began during the 1918 World Series, when the nation was at war. As recounted by the New York Times of Sept. 6, 1918, it was the seventh-inning stretch of the first game between the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox.

      .

    1. During the Civil War, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an anthem for Union troops, and the song increased in popularity in the ensuing decades, which led to President Woodrow Wilson signing an executive order in 1916 designating it as “the national anthem of the United States” for all military ceremonies.

      Woodrow in 1916

    1. "When the Star Spangled Banner is played by the band on a formal occasion at a military station, or at any place where persons belonging to the military service are present in their official capacity, all officers and enlisted men present will stand to attention. The same respect will be observed toward the national air of any other country when it is played as a compliment to official representatives of such country. Paragraph 383, Regulations, U. S. Army, Ed. 1904.

      Army regs

    2. Toward the close of his speech Burrows said, "Sol diers should not be heedless to the sentiment of their songs and to the music of their bands. ... I would like to see every true American, soldier or citizen, when he hears the grand notes of our National air, rise to his feet in patriotic recognition and uncover." Almost instantly the band began to play the "Star Spangled Banner," and Colonel Wilson, the Superin tendent, and the entire battalion of cadets responded to Burrows patriotic suggestion by springing to their feet with a common impulse, which action was fol- 1 6 BURROWS OF MICHIGAN [ 1 888 lowed by every person in the audience, and all stood with bowed heads until the last note had ceased. It was an impressive sight, and attracted much public attention. Later, as a result of Senator Burrows agi tation, the Army Regulations were made to prescribe this action, 1 but it required no legislation to have the custom become universally popular. To Burrows, then, belongs the credit of first suggesting what has now become an unwritten law of the Nation.

      First to suggest standing and uncovering for national anthem.

    1. That said, Leepson explains, while researching his book he “did not find any historians who interpreted the ‘hireling and slave’ line as anything but a reference to the enslaved people who escaped their bonds and went over to the British side.” Leepson himself also believes it is “clear” this is the correct way to interpret the stanza.

      .

    1. Many historians agree with Johnson, but some disagree. They point out that Key never told anyone what he actually meant, and some historians interpret his mention of hirelings and slaves to reference all of the invading British forces. They say it echoes similar rhetoric used since the Revolutionary War to describe the forces of the king of England, especially those units purchased from German princes. American writers contrasted these miserable hirelings and slaves with the virtuous all-volunteer citizen armies of America.

      .

  5. Jun 2017
    1. Then there’s Zillow’s mention of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is a hacking statute. It’s generally for offenses like your classic shadowy person forcing their way into somebody’s email and leaking the contents, but can also apply to, say, using your old login to slip somewhere and snag a previous employer’s proprietary information. We reached out to Zillow for an explanation of why they cited the act but they didn’t comment.

      McMansion Abuse of Computer Fraud Act

    1. When we repeated this approach without age stratification, (thought by investigators at the Urban Institute to be an overly conservative approach)23 we calculated approximately 44 789 deaths among Americans aged 18 to 64 years in 2005 associated with lack of health insurance.

      .

    2. After additional adjustment for race/ethnicity, income, education, self- and physician-rated health status, body mass index, leisure exercise, smoking, and regular alcohol use, the uninsured were more likely to die (hazard ratio = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.06, 1.84) than those with insurance.

      .

    3. A 1993 study found a 25% higher risk of death among uninsured compared with privately insured adults.

      .

    1. Rates of OHCA among middle‐aged individuals decreased from 102 per 100 000 (95% CI: 92–113 per 100 000) to 85 per 100 000 (95% CI: 76–94 per 100 000), P value 0.01.

      .

    1. Six in 10 school psychologists said the Common Core learning standards, which includes state exams for students in third through eighth grades each April, has increased students’ anxiety.

      .

    2. Maybe school psychologists have problems with answering questions, too. The school groups asked 1,672 school psychologists to respond to the survey, but just 13 percent responded.

      .

    1. Six in 10 school psychologists said the Common Core learning standards, which includes state exams for students in third through eighth grades each April, has increased students’ anxiety.The report contended that the test anxiety is more common at the elementary-school level, saying students more often showed “internalized” symptoms such as excessive worry and withdrawal rather than demonstrating “externalized” symptoms, such as increased irritability, frustration and acting out.Maybe school psychologists have problems with answering questions, too. The school groups asked 1,672 school psychologists to respond to the survey, but just 13 percent did.

      .

    1. Greater consumption of flavanones, but not total or other flavonoid subclasses, was inversely associated with incident ischemic stroke. Associations did not differ by sex, race, or region for the association;

      .

    1. After adjustment for stroke risk factors, such as age, body mass index, physical activity, alcohol consumption, menopausal status, smoking, and history of type 2 diabetes,

      .

    1. Citrus fruit consumption may be associated with a reduction in stroke risk, and experimental data support these epidemiological associations that the flavanone content of citrus fruits may potentially be cardioprotective. Further prospective studies are needed to confirm these associations.

      .

    1. A diet that includes plenty of citrus fruits, such as oranges and grapefruits, may decrease the risk of one type of stroke in women, according to a new study. Flavanones, a specific compound found in citrus, may be the key.

      .

    1. Diamonds may sparkle and look good, but for better health and stroke prevention, women’s best friend may be oranges, according to the authors of a new study in Stroke. Citrus fruits, especially oranges and grapefruit, contain a type of flavonoid also found in dark chocolate that reduces the risk of stroke.

      .

    1. We’ve all heard how good citrus fruit is for us due to its vitamin C content and immune system-boosting properties. Now research is showing that citrus fruit can also help to reduce stroke risk.

      ,`

    1. Some factors that may contribute to erosion of public trust in science stem from outside of the scientific community, such as hype and exaggeration of scientific findings by the media and scientific facts or advice given by popular non-scientist celebrities. For example “the popular press greatly exaggerates the definitiveness of vitamin D research.”17 Health advice given by celebrities also contributes to public confusion, noted Caulfield. For example, a systematic review on the advice given by Dr. Oz found that almost half of the TV celebrity’s advice conflicts with scientific literature18. “When you have that kind of confused message around science, it is no surprise that the public is so incredibly confused”, Caulfield said.
    1. Several Warriors players, including stars Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, have also been vocal about their distaste for President Fuck Face.
    1. EC aerosol can contain some of the toxicants present in tobacco smoke, but at levels which are much lower. Long-term health effects of EC use are unknown but compared with cigarettes, EC are likely to be much less, if at all, harmful to users or bystanders.
    1. E-cigarettes may contain harmful substances. However, the types or concentrations of chemicals, including nicotine, vary based on the brand. Because e-cigarettes have only been readily available in the United States since 2006, there is limited research on their health risks.
    1. Way before 2017’s Wonder Woman started its rise to becoming a cultural touchstone, there was already the Wonder Woman pose. Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School, did a really popular TED talk in 2012 on “high power posing.”
  6. May 2017
    1. Consumer Data Industry Association

      The Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) represents the consumer credit reporting information industry before state and federal legislators. It is a lobbying and PR group for the credit industry.

    1. According to the Air Quality Standards Coalition in Washington, an alliance of business, labor, and local governments,

      Description

    1. dogs, cats and primates that together comprise just 1 percent of the total

      This statement on the types of animals involved in testing was rated half true by Politifact. See the full treatment.

    2. Cindy A. Buckmaster: Animal research Is a labor of love for animals and people

      This page was analyzed on May 5, 2017 and was found to have low virality and impact. While the content may be either true or false, it is nnot moving through the network in the way we see hoaxes or clickbait move.

    1. Then, yesterday, this black man and memeber of antifa, a man who has videos posted to YouTube about killing whites and burning their homes down, walked onto campus, killed one white boy and attempted to kill more before being taken into custody. 

      Is this man really "antifa"? Does he have videos online about killing whites? Was the murder racially motivated?

    1. Employment Policies Institute

      SourceWatch has an article about the Employment Policies Institute. Note that the organization in this article is not guaranteed to match the article in SourceWatch. Please read with care.

      If you read the linked article, we invite you to summarize it in a comment below. If this is a mismatch, please tag a reply "mismatch".

    1. Employment Policies Institute

      SourceWatch has an article about the Employment Policies Institute. Note that the organization in this article is not guaranteed to match the article in SourceWatch. Please read with care.

      If you read the linked article, we invite you to summarize it in a comment below. If this is a mismatch, please tag a reply "mismatch".

    2. SourceWatch has an article about the Employment Policies Institute. Note that the organization in this article is not guaranteed to match the article in SourceWatch. Please read with care.

      If you read the linked article, we invite you to summarize it in a comment below. If this is a mismatch, please tag a reply "mismatch".

    1. Employment Policies Institute

      SourceWatch has an article about the Employment Policies Institute. Note that the organization in this article is not guaranteed to match the article in SourceWatch. Please read with care.

      If you read the linked article, we invite you to summarize it in a comment below. If this is a mismatch, please tag a reply "mismatch".

  7. Apr 2017
    1. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 2,000 human traffickers and identified 400 victims last year.

      Where are these figures from? Do they underestimate or overestimate the problem?

    1. “After the FCC embraced utility-style regulation, the United States experienced the first-ever decline in broadband investment outside of a recession,” Pai said in February. “In fact, broadband investment remains lower today than it was when the FCC changed course in 2015.”

      Has broadband investment declined? If so, is it a result of net neutrality? If not, what are the actual figures?

    1. On occasion the Timely office would get phone calls and letters from Nazi sympathizers threatening the creators of Captain America. Once, while Jack was in the Timely office, a call came from someone in the lobby. When Kirby answered, the caller threatened Jack with bodily harm if he showed his face. Kirby told the caller he would be right down, but by the time Jack reached street level, there was no one to be found.
    1. Former President Barack Obama will be paid $400,000 to speak at Cantor Fitzgerald's healthcare conference this September, according to a new report.

      Is Obama really making $400,000 from a financial services firm paying for a keynote?

    1. If you saw a link saying “Chocolate cures cancer!” from a little-known blog, the Related Article box might appear before you click to show links from the New York Times or a medical journal noting that while chocolate has antioxidants that can lower your risk for cancer, it’s not a cure.

      Chocolate cures cancer!

    1. A scan of my public web presence (a.k.a. Twitter) revealed that I was friends with Parker Higgins, that we shared an interest in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit, and that we’d written together in the past. Quintin modified the text of the invite so it appeared to be from Parker, and swapped out the profile picture of the sender for Parker’s. If I were careless, I would have missed all the teensy details cluing me in to Quintin's scam—the fact that Parker’s e-mail address was misspelled, or that the button to open Google Docs had redirected to a URL that wasn’t the real Google.

      Fun things to do with a Twitter Timeline

    1. DId a black man named Garrett Morgan invent both the gas mask and first traffic light?

    1. They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based. AP: CrowdStrike? TRUMP: That’s what I heard. I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard. But they brought in another company to investigate the server. Why didn’t they allow the FBI in to investigate the server? I mean, there is so many things that nobody writes about. It’s incredible.

      Is CrowdStrike Ukranian-owned?

    1. But it was the involvement of the liberal blog Daily Kos that really catapulted Ossoff onto the national map. The blog has been the largest driver of Ossoff's eye-popping $8.3 million fundraising effort to date after the first quarter. It bested its previous fundraising record for a single candidate -- $412,000 for Elizabeth Warren in 2012 -- in a single week. Daily Kos's pro-Ossoff fundraising efforts crossed the $1 million mark on February 28. As Daily Kos political director David Nir and I exchanged emails this month, he argued that Georgia's 6th district "very well could be a test case for the future of Democratic targeting."

      David Nir

    1. This is the third-highest turnout since 18-year-olds first got the vote in 1972, and a 1.6 percent increase over 2012. 
    1. In a tweet, Guo apologized to adherents of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), saying that he previously thought the allegations of organ harvesting were a hoax. “But judging from Li You getting a new liver, I saw that this kind of thing is really happening! I didn’t make this clear [in the interview], so here I express my apologies to Falun Gong believers,” Guo said.

      Is the Chinese government forcing the "harvesting" of organs?

    1. Cuddling kittens can kill you, warn scientists

      Can cuddling with kittens (via "cat-scratch fever") kill you? Was is the real risk and liklihood and how does it compare to other risks?

    1. During 2012-13, more than 17,000 calls (an average of one an hour!) came into poison control about children who were exposed to the detergent packs.

      Did more than 17,000 calls come into poison centers in a single year because of pods? Is that a lot? Has the number of calls increased? Are these a danger?

    1. Sorry, moms-to-be, if the above doesn't scare you off, your OB/GYN is going to. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends that pregnant women never let their core body temperature rise above 102.2 degrees, which can cause birth defects. The ACOG suggests that pregnant women limit their time in hot tubs to 10 minutes, or they will be at a higher risk for hyperthermia. Oh, and unlike that old wives' tale, you can, in fact, get pregnant in a hot tub.

      Can hot tubs cause birth defects?

    1. Pool chemicals cause nearly 5,000 emergency room visits per year

      Do pool chemicals cause nearly 5,000 emergency room visits per year?

    1. Warren, meanwhile, continues to skirt congressional ethics laws by failing to include a $1.3 million line of credit against her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home on financial disclosure forms.

      Did Senator Elizabeth Warren skirt ethics laws by failing to declare a $1.3 million line of credit?

    1. Rape survivors will go to jail if they refuse to testify in Louisiana: District attorney

      Did a district attorney really say that rape survivors will go to jail if they refuse to testify in Louisiana?

    1. Fourth District Court Judge Thomas Low had glowing praise for a man who was convicted of molesting two female relatives while they stayed at his home three years ago.

      Did a Utah judge praise a convicted molester during sentencing as "a good man"?

    1. That being said, news saying that firearms deaths have not only dropped significantly in the last year, but they have hit an all-time low since records keeping began over a century ago is a positive message worth repeating. Here is the full release from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

      Have unintentional firearms deaths hit an all-time low?

    1. The U.S. Army Corps spend $1 million in tax payer money to hire Florida cleaning crew to clean up trash left by environmental protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline.

      Did the U.S. Army Corps spend $1 million in tax payer money to hire Florida cleaning crew to clean up trash left by environmental protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline?

    2. CLAIMS by a James Cook University researcher that the Great Barrier Reef will be ­“terminal” in five years have been rubbished by one of his own colleagues.

      Will the Great Barrier Reef be "terminal" in five years?

    1. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteor­ologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $("#videoads").delay(10000).fadeOut("slow"); }); <!--//<![CDATA[ var m3_u = (location.protocol=='https:'?'https://adserve.jbs.org/www/delivery/ajs.php':'http://adserve.jbs.org/www/delivery/ajs.php'); var m3_r = Math.floor(Math.random()*99999999999); if (!document.MAX_used) document.MAX_used = ','; document.write ("<scr"+"ipt type='text/javascript' src='"+m3_u); document.write ("?zoneid=334"); document.write ('&amp;cb=' + m3_r); if (document.MAX_used != ',') document.write ("&amp;exclude=" + document.MAX_used); document.write (document.charset ? '&amp;charset='+document.charset : (document.characterSet ? '&amp;charset='+document.characterSet : '')); document.write ("&amp;loc=" + escape(window.location)); if (document.referrer) document.write ("&amp;referer=" + escape(document.referrer)); if (document.context) document.write ("&context=" + escape(document.context)); if (document.mmm_fo) document.write ("&amp;mmm_fo=1"); document.write ("'><\/scr"+"ipt>"); //]]>--><a href='http://adserve.jbs.org/www/delivery/ck.php?n=ae06b907&amp;cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE' target='_blank'><img src='http://adserve.jbs.org/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=334&amp;cb=INSERT_RANDOM_NUMBER_HERE&amp;n=ae06b907' border='0' alt='' /></a> The article quotes dire statistics from the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin Madison to indicate how dire the global cooling was, and would be. Experts suggested grandiose schemes to alleviate the problems, including “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,” Newsweek reported. It added, “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.” Sound familiar — except that the “climate change” alarmists were warning against global cooling?

      Did most climate scientists in the 1970s fear long-term "global cooling"?

    1. Fewer than 1 percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method, according to research by Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong.

      Do fewer than one percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method?

    1. The great physicist Richard Feynman adds to three other giants of physics, Maxwell, Clausius, and Carnot, who have explained the “greenhouse effect” is solely a consequence of gravity, atmospheric mass, pressure, density, and heat capacities, and is not due to “trapped radiation” from IR-active or ‘greenhouse’ gas concentrations.

      Did famous physicist Richard Feymann deunk the greenhouse gas theory of global warming?

    1. A multi-million-dollar solar road project in Idaho does not produce enough power on most days to run a single microwave oven.

      Does a multi-million dollar "solar road" project not produce enough power on most days to run a single microwave oven?

    1. Your dad wants to cut all of our federal funding but thanks for the tweet

      Does the Trump/Republican budget cut all the federal funding for local libraries?

    1. Bret Stephens was most recently deputy editorial page editor for Rupert Murdoch’s deeply conservative and climate-denying Wall Street Journal,

      Is the Wall Street Journal "Deeply" Conservative?

    1. One of the earliest studies, sponsored by the Police Foundation in 1974, found that women encountered many of the same kinds of situations (involving angry, drunk or violent individuals) and were as capable as men. The study’s most important finding, though, was that “women act less aggressively and they believe in less aggression.” The researchers predicted “the presence of women may stimulate increased attention to the ways of avoiding violence and cooling violent situations without resorting to the use of force.”
  8. domestic-violence.martinsewell.com domestic-violence.martinsewell.com
    1. Direct, especially physical, aggression was more common in males and femalesat all ages sampled, was consistent across cultures, and occurred from early childhoodon, showing a peak between 20 and 30 years.
    1. Female cops accounted for just 3.4 percent of officers involved in the “83 most serious lawsuits” against the LAPD from 1986 to 1990. While the stats suggested that female cops aren’t reluctant to use force, the commission reasoned, they’re not nearly as likely to use excessive force.
    1. The purpose of this article is to call for a reassessment of this presumption: to suggest a rethinking of American historiography, and one that considers the ways in which, in its historical epoch in the 1920s and 1930s, fascism had a very real presence in the USA, comparable to that on continental Europe.
    1. The 400 ppm level is regarded as a milestone by climate scientists, as the last time concentrations of the heat-trapping gas reached such a point was millions of years ago, when temperatures and sea levels were far higher. The field project, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and known as ORCAS, found that there is still air present in the Southern Hemisphere that has less than 400 ppm of CO2—but just barely. In the north, the atmosphere had first crossed that threshold in 2013
    1. Most climatologists agree that, while the warming to date is already causing environmental problems, another 0.4 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature, representing a global average atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) of 450 parts per million (ppm), could set in motion unprecedented changes in global climate and a significant increase in the severity of natural disasters—and as such could represent the dreaded point of no return.
    1. The mean IQ of first-born kids was just over 103, second-borns just over 100, and third-borns about 99, they found. But if a child's elder sibling had died, leaving him or her to be raised as first-born, their IQ lept up to match the top scores of 103. Likewise if both of two elder siblings had passed away, these third-born children had IQs matching that of first-borns, they report in Science

      not first born

    2. Eldest siblings are, on average, 2.3 IQ points more intelligent than their younger brothers and sisters, says a study of Norweigan kids.

      2.3

    1. The analysis revealed that firstborn men have, on average, an IQ that is about 2.3 points higher than those who are second-born. The trend continues such that second born men have higher IQs than their third-born brothers, and so on.

      From Science

    1. “This effect on intelligence replicates very well in large samples, but it is barely meaningful on the individual level, because it is extremely small,” said Professor Schmukle. “And even though mean scores on intelligence decline, in four out of 10 cases, the later-born is still smarter than his or her older sibling," he said.

      Only just

    1. First-born children tend to be more intelligent than their siblings, perhaps because they get extra parental attention in early life compared to siblings, a new study finds.
    1. Let the family dinner table fights begin: First-born kids really are smarter than their younger siblings, a new study found.
  9. paa2015.princeton.edu paa2015.princeton.edu
    1. The subjective likelihood reported by parents is measured by a Likert scale with four cat-egories: very likely, likely, fairly likely, and not likely at all. Because individuals may havedifferent definitions aboutlikely, this type of scales makes difficult the comparison across indi-viduals based on their subjective likelihood. For this reason, this paper focuses on the extremesof the Likert scale.

      high and low

    2. Parents will decide to continue investingin human capital if they havehighexpectations about this likelihood.
    3. havinghighorlowexpectations about the teenager’s likelihoodof attending Higher Education, translates intohighorlowperceived opportunity costsofthose alternatives not related to schooling (such as early motherhood or early employment).9This mechanism directly impacts teenagers’ behaviour.
    4. e measure of expectations considered in this study, reflectsa combination of aspirations and beliefs about the likelihood of attending Higher Educationreported by the main parent, who in the majority of cases, is the mother.

      defining high expectations

    5. Using the Longitudinal Study of YoungPeople in England (LSYPE) and the National Pupil Data (NPD), I model the likelihood ofbecoming pregnant and having a child conditional on several socio-demographic factors andparental expectations.
    6. My findings show that high parental expectations decrease the likelihood of teenage preg-nancy and motherhood, and that this effect is about half of the effect of being born to ateenage mother.
    1. “Parents who saw college in their child’s future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets,” he said.
    1. Parent’s supportive interactions, expectations for their child to earn a college degree (57%–96%), and child’s preschool attendance (64%–89%) increased across quintiles.
    1. Harassing your daughter about finishing up her homework may not thrill her at the time, but she'll thank you later in life. According to a study conducted by the University of Essex in England, she will probably be more successful than the kids of less pushy moms.
    2. Girls With Nagging Moms Grow Up to Be More Successful
    1. Scrolling through Facebook, I found some people had shared a link titled “Study Finds Girls with Nagging Moms Grow Up to Be More Successful”. Reading this, I thought it made perfect sense, but wondered what sort of study was done to prove this.
    1. A child diagnosed with thyroid cancer after the Fukushima nuclear accident is missing from government checkup records, an aid group said Friday, raising questions about the thoroughness and transparency of the screenings.
    1. It's not natural to outlive your child. This has always been my greatest fear," she wrote in a chapter called "I'm Princess Leia's Mother." She went on to note her worries over Fisher's history with substance abuse. "Carrie is my child and I love her with every ounce of strength I possess. … I don't know if I could survive that."
    1. The monthly Sea Ice Index provides a quick look at Arctic-wide changes in sea ice. It is a source for consistently processed ice extent and concentration images and data values since 1979.
    1. Until now, it was believed that only worms, bacteria, and fungi could digest vegetable cellulose and use it as a source of carbon for their growth and survival. Plants, in contrast, engage in the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide, water, and light. In a series of experiments, Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse and his team cultivated the microscopically small green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a low carbon dioxide environment and observed that when faced with such a shortage, these single-cell plants can draw energy from neighbouring vegetable cellulose instead.
    1. A biological research team at Bielefeld University has made a groundbreaking discovery showing that plants can draw an alternative source of energy from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy eventually providing the evidence to show that people draw energy from others in much the same way.
    1. A biological research team at Bielefeld University has made a groundbreaking discovery showing that plants can draw an alternative source of energy from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy eventually providing the evidence to show that people draw energy from others in much the same way.
  10. Mar 2017
    1. The role ordinary people played in the propaganda war can be illustrated by the wartime phenomenon of war landmarks. Throughout Austria and Germany local communities erected wooden objects which, in the course of month-long celebrations, were punctured by a series of nails. The participants had to pay for the privilege by contributing to war charities. Moreover, they had a creative part in the nailing ritual for every iron nail represented a particular motto chosen by the participant. Initiated and organised by local worthies, the success of this practice ultimately depended on widespread participation. By means of collective action, the wooden objects were – or, sometimes, were manifestly not – turned into steel figures symbolising the local community’s iron will to see the military campaign through. The practice of erecting war landmarks was without parallel in other countries. The nearest equivalent in Britain was the tank bank, launched by the National War Savings Committee in November 1917. Tanks, exhibited in central squares from Bristol to Glasgow, solicited money from the populace for war bonds rather than war charity. Similar to the iron-nail war landmarks, tank banks were places of both spectacle and performance, sites where not only the organisers but also the audience played an active part. Both practices elevated ordinary people from mere viewers to true participants. Timing, though, was different. While the nailing ritual flourished in the mid-war years, the tank banks only got rolling in the final year of the conflict. By then, German savings had been eaten up by inflation and civilian morale reached a low ebb. Tank banks mobilised financial and symbolic resources in Britain that had already dried up in Germany.

      Participatory propaganda

    1. The early years saw a number of distinguished faculty, including five presidents of the American Political Science Association: Walter J. Shepard
    1. APSA presidents serve one-year terms
    2. The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States.
    1. Welcome. I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. My work examines how international forces shape democracy and domestic reforms, 
    1. And 1.5 million climate refugees were driven into the cities in Syria, where they collided with refugees from the Iraq War.
    2. The drought in the eastern Mediterranean is the worst ever on record – the records only go back 900 years, but it’s historic.
    1. On one of the thousands of conversations intercepted on the defendants’ cellphones, the leader could be heard warning a customer who owed money that ‘‘he should be careful, lest he be tortured or found underground,’’ a prosecutor said.

      Tap

    2. The tentacles of the scheme reached to Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue high-rise where prosecutors say a US ringleader lived in an apartment one floor below Donald Trump’s own place. There, he oversaw a network of Internet sites that formed ‘‘the world’s largest sports book’’ that catered ‘‘almost exclusively to oligarchs living in the Ukraine and the Russian Federation,’’ prosecutors said.On one of the thousands of conversations intercepted on the defendants’ cellphones, the leader could be heard warning a customer who owed money that ‘‘he should be careful, lest he be tortured or found underground,’’ a prosecutor said. Advertisement The ring paid Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov — already under indictment in a separate US case accusing him of bribing Olympic figure skating judges at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City — $20 million in gambling proceeds in a two-month period alone, court papers said. In another transaction in late 2010, the same man wired $3 million from a Cyprus bank account to another account in the United States, the papers said.
    1. “The prevalence of thyroid cancer detected by advanced ultrasound techniques in other areas of Japan does not differ meaningfully from that in Fukushima Prefecture,” Takamura wrote in Epidemiology.

      prevalence

    2. , wrote on behalf of 11 members of a WHO expert working group on Fukushima health consequences. Theirs was one of seven letters to Epidemiology published online last month that blasted Tsuda’s methodology and conclusions

      Seven letters to EPidemilogy

    3. The initial round of thyroid screening, started in late 2011, was simply to provide baseline data, as any radiation-induced tumors were not expected to emerge for at least 4 years.
    4. Scientists emphatically disagree. “The evidence suggests that the great majority and perhaps all of the cases so far discovered are not due to radiation,” says Dillwyn Williams, a thyroid cancer specialist at University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
    1. In Chernobyl, excesses of thyroid cancer became more remarkable 4 or 5 years after the accident in Belarus and Ukraine, so the observed excess alerts us to prepare for more potential cases within a few years.

      Predicts higher number of cases.

    2. n conclusion, among those ages 18 years and younger in 2011 in Fukushima Prefecture, approximately 30-fold excesses in external comparisons and variability in internal comparisons on thyroid cancer detection were observed in Fukushima Prefecture within as few as 4 years after the Fukushima power plant accident. The result was unlikely to be fully explained by the screening effect.

      Conclusion

    3. The minimum empirical induction time for thyroid cancer is 2.5 years for adults and 1 year for children, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.31 Therefore, we considered it possible to detect thyroid cancer related to the accident by screening using ultrasound even within the 2011 fiscal year.

      Minimum induction time.

    4. Furthermore, according to the data reported by Fukushima Prefecture,27 positive lymph node metastases were observed in 40 of 54 cases (74%) operated at the Fukushima Medical University Hospital.

      Lymph node metastases.

    5. One concern is that the approximately 30-fold increase observed in the number of thyroid cancer cases in external comparison might be the result of a screening effect.

      Screening effect too small

    6. we observed an approximately 30-fold increase in the number of thyroid cancer cases among children and adolescents using the area/district of residence to provide a surrogate for exposure information (Table 2).

      30 fold increase

    7. Among the 110 cases, 87 cases were operated by the end of December 2014: 86 cases were histologically confirmed (83 papillary carcinomas and three poorly differentiated carcinomas), and one case was diagnosed as a benign tumor.

      110 cases

    1. ulti-core nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has produced approximately 230 times higher-than-normal thyroid cancers in Fukushima Prefecture
    1. The second report received from Japan proves that the incidence of thyroid cancer is approximately 230 times higher than normal in Fukushima Prefecture
    1. The radiation level in the containment vessel of reactor 2 at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant has reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, the highest since the triple core meltdown in March 2011, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc. said.
    1. Remaining silent is a huge mistake on the part of those desirous of freedom. Ayn Rand put it this way: “Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked…If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.” If we allow ourselves to be cowed by the PC police, we are the ones to blame for the bad policies that result.
    1. On the show, Oz identified Smith as a scientist, but Smith has no experience in genetics or agriculture, and has no scientific degree from any institution. He studied business at the Maharishi International University, founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Before the show aired, Bruce Chassy, a noted molecular biologist, wrote to Oz; he is a founder of Academics Review, a group of researchers who often debunk popular scientific claims. Chassy is professor emeritus in the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois. “As a public-sector scientist, researcher, and academic administrator with more than forty years’ experience, I am appalled that any medical professional would give a platform to the likes of Mr. Jeffrey Smith to impart health information to the public,” Chassy wrote. “His only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party.”
    1. Undeterred, the source credited with promoting the story, website Ending the Fed, kept pushing demonstrably false, unbylined articles on its Facebook page. According to a recent BuzzFeed analysis, the site was responsible for four of the 10 top-performing false election stories on Facebook in the three months before election day. Collectively, the four stories generated approximately 2,953,000 engagements. Ending the Fed's Facebook page, titled End the Fed, has 350,000 Likes.
    2. Over in Romania, Ovidiu Drobota, the 24-year-old behind Ending the Fed, has been paying attention to the controversy over the prevalence on Facebook of fake news stories like the ones he disseminated.
  11. Feb 2017
    1. Most of the characteristics in Britt's list are not specific to fascism but are shared by many conservative governments: nationalism, militarism, scapegoating of enemies, "rampant" sexism, obsession with national security and with crime, protecting the power of corporations and suppressing the power of labor, and close ties between religion and the ruling elite. Other features seem at first to be more specific to fascism, or at least a dictatorship of some kind: disdain for human rights and intellectual freedom, controlled mass media, corruption and cronyism, and fraudulent elections. But even these characteristics are defined so broadly as to blur all major differences between classic fascism and the U.S. political system today
    1. Free Inquiry is a bi-monthly journal of secular humanist opinion and commentary published by the Council for Secular Humanism,
    1. For example, 65% of transgender 14- to 18-year olds seriously considered suicide in the past year compared with 13% in the British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey, and only a quarter of participants reported their mental health was good or excellent.
    1. Our findings provide evidence that social inclusion (social support, gender-specific support from parents, identity documents), protection from transphobia (interpersonal, violence), and undergoing medical transition have the potential for sizeable effects on the high rates of suicide ideation and attempts in trans communities. In contrast, we did not find statistically significant effects for social transition, gender support from sources other than parents, or religiosity/spirituality, other than an unexpected finding regarding strong gender support from leaders.
    2. Among trans Ontarians, 35.1 % (95 % CI: 27.6, 42.5) seriously considered, and 11.2 % (95 % CI: 6.0, 16.4) attempted, suicide in the past year.
    1. In the study by researchers at Western University in London, Ont., 35% of trans people seriously considered suicide over 12 months and 11% tried to kill themselves.
    1. The National Comorbity Survey, a nationally representative survey, found that probing for intent to die through in-person interviews reduced the prevalence of lifetime suicide attempts from 4.6 percent to 2.7 percent of the adult sample (Kessler et al., 1999; Nock & Kessler, 2006).
    2. Further, the survey’s focus on discrimination may have resulted in wider participation by persons who had suffered negative life experiences due to anti-transgender bias.1 As the relationship between minority stress and mental health would suggest (Meyer, 2003), this may have contributed to a higher prevalence of negative outcomes, including lifetime suicide attempts,
    3. While the NTDS provides a wealth of information about the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people, the survey instrument and methodology posed some limitations for this study. First, the NTDS questionnaire included only a single item about suicidal behavior that asked, “Have you ever attempted suicide?” with dichotomized responses of Yes/No. Researchers have found that using this question alone in surveys can inflate the percentage of affirmative responses, since some respondents may use it to communicate self-harm behavior that is not a “suicide attempt,” such as seriously considering suicide, planning for suicide, or engaging in self-harm behavior without the intent to die (Bongiovi-Garcia et al., 2009). The National Comorbity Survey, a nationally representative survey, found that probing for intent to die through in-person interviews reduced the prevalence of lifetime suicide attempts from 4.6 percent to 2.7 percent of the adult sample (Kessler et al., 1999; Nock & Kessler, 2006). Without such probes, we were unable to determine the extent to which the 41 percent of NTDS participants who reported ever attempting suicide may overestimate the actual prevalence of attempts in the sample. In addition, the analysis was limited due to a lack of follow-up questions asked of respondents who reported having attempted suicide about such things as age and transgender/gender non-conforming status at the time of the attempt.
    4. Analysis of other demographic variables found prevalence of suicide attempts was highest among those who are younger (18 to 24: 45%),
    1. This year the Williams Institute helped convince the Department of Labor to add a sexual orientation question to its survey on experiences with provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act. It assisted the Bureau of Labor Statistics in evaluating to what extent domestic-partner benefits are accessible throughout the country. The Williams study of best practices for asking and analyzing sexual orientation survey questions has aided the Department of Health and Human Services in its recent commitment to LGBT inclusion in major federal health surveys — a critical and enormous source of data to health researchers.
    2. In his 2010 decision striking down California’s Proposition 8, U.S. district judge Vaughn R. Walker said that one purported scholar and anti–gay marriage figure’s testimony amounted to “inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight.” Meanwhile, Walker cited Williams research more than 30 times in his 136-page opinion. And in a July court brief arguing why the Defense of Marriage Act should be struck down as unconstitutional, the Justice Department cited the institute’s exhaustive report on the history of discrimination against LGBT individuals in state employment (Williams Institute executive director Brad Sears presented the findings at a 2009 House hearing).
    1. Beyond the overall number of suicide attempts, the rates are consistently high from respondents ages 18 to 65, when they begin to recede. Trans men are the most impacted, with 46 percent reporting an attempt in their lifetime. Trans women are close behind at 42 percent, and female-assigned cross-dressers report rates of 44 percent.
    1. Suicide attempts are alarmingly common among transgender individuals such as Lampe; 41% try to kill themselves at some point in their lives, compared with 4.6% of the general public.
    1. An oft-cited 2014 joint study by the American Society for Suicide Prevention and UCLA Law School’s Williams Institute estimated that over 40 percent of us have attempted suicide at least once.
    1. Cox also cited troubling statistics, namely that 77% of trans children experience bullying or harassment in schools while nearly 50% attempt suicide, in highlighting why it is so important to offer trans students the support they need.
    1. In some ways Norway and Germany were similar: predominantly Christian, racially homogeneous, and suffering hugely in the Great Depression. But Germany’s workers movement failed to make common cause with family farmers, unlike Norway’s alliance. The German left was also split terribly within itself: Communist vs. Social Democratic.

      Common Cause With Farmers

    2. The key to avoiding fascism? An organized left with a strong vision and broad support.

      Key to Avoiding Fascism

    3. Donald Trump’s obvious affection for authoritarians is prompting worried comparisons of our polarized country to the polarized Germany of the 1920s and ’30s. Since I’m known to see in polarization both crisis and opportunity, my friends are asking me these days about Hitler, the worst-case scenario.

      Polarization Can Be Good

    1. Lynchings formed the bloody backdrop of Southern life for a century after the Civil War. Between the 1860s and 1960s, thousands of black Americans were killed in public acts of racial terror. Millions more fled to cities in the North and West in an effort to escape this environment. Many soon discovered that, in many ways, the rest of American society was no less racist.

      No Less Racist

    1. So what is going on when people listen to James Brown’s unrelentingly upbeat track? Ziv thinks the answer lies in what happens to our personality when we are happy. “There has been work in the past that has shown when you are in a good mood, you agree more and process information less rigorously. Depressed people tend to be more analytical and are persuaded less easily.

      Analytical Depression

    2. Ziv’s research would instead suggest that “easy listening” tunes carry the most danger. In 2011, for instance, she found that music has the power to alter people’s moral judgements. She asked a group of volunteers to listen to a fictional radio advert for a website that claimed to be able to create false documents so people can receive a higher pension. Half of those who listened to the advert also heard Mozart’s Allegro from A Little Night Music playing in the background, while the other half had no music. People who listened to chirpy background music tended to be more accepting of unethical, cheating behaviour Similarly, a separate group were asked to listen to another advert describing how participants could cheat on a seminar paper for college using a website. Again, half of those who listened to the advert also heard James Brown’s I Got You (I Feel Good) playing in the background. In both cases, those who listened to the advert with the background music tended to be more accepting of the unethical, cheating behaviour encouraged in the adverts. In some instances the participants even reported seeing it in a positive light.

      Feel Good Music

    1. Bruenig makes the argument – correctly – that if you are going to base your tuition policy around the idea that it should serve to reduce inequality (something many sensible people would think is nuts), then the only way to do that is by charging sharply progressive fees. 

      Sharply Progressive Fees

    2. Matt Bruenig in this article: eliminating tuition does not, in any way, change inequality between rich and poor students.

      Even Bruenig

    3. First of all, eliminating tuition doesn’t eliminate debt.  Sweden, famously, has both free tuition and significant debt.

      Tuition != Debt