Facebook: Language Frames How We Think About Things. But Changing That Language Can Backfire

And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him
 — Edith Stein, born in 1891

Two observations to buck you up:

No abrasion, no pearl.

No pressure, no diamonds

 ACTUALLY, IT MOSTLY IS BECAUSE OF HOUSING COSTS: Why are these L.A. people sleeping in pods stacked on top of each other? It’s not just the cost of housing. But there is also a lot of loneliness out there. “So many people now work jobs that might not involve co-workers. In the course of the day, if they don’t work at it, they might not have a single conversation.”

Facebook employee says he was fired for speaking out about his colleague's suicide 

How Much Should Family Members Be Able To Edit Memoir?

Dan Kois wonders if, in the age of the internet, his daughter should have the kind of editorial control she wants. “The lesson of sharing your work with a family member is that sometimes the story you wrote in private becomes less precious to you when you face the possibility of hurting someone you love with it.” – The New York Times

A man checked into a hotel and as there was a computer in his room, he decided to send an email to his wife. 
While typing in her email address, he accidentally typed an extra letter, and without realizing, sent the email to a widow who had just returned from her husband’s funeral.
The widow decided to check her email, expecting condolence messages from friends and relatives. After reading the first email she promptly fainted.
Her son rushed in to check on his mother and saw the computer screen with the message:
“To my loving wife. I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here and we are allowed to email our loved ones. I’ve just been checked in. How are you and the kids? The place is really nice, but I feel lonely without you. I have made necessary arrangements for your arrival tomorrow. I am excited and can’t wait to see you.”  

And to make you see as clearly as possible what I take to be the subject matter of Ethics I will put before you a number of more or less synonymous expressions each of which could be substituted for the above definition, and by enumerating them I want to produce the same sort of effect which Galton produced when he took a number of photos of different faces on the same photographic plate in order to get the picture of the typical features they all had in common. And as by showing to you such a collective photo I could make you see what is the typical—say—Chinese face; so if you look through the row of synonyms which I will put before you, you will, I hope, be able to see the characteristic features they all have in common and these are the characteristic features of Ethics. 

Wittgenstein’s idea: Galton took a bunch of photos of different faces. They were overlapping, so it became readily apparent what each face had in common with others. Just as Galton did this, Wittgenstein wants to define “Ethics” with a focus on what is similar.

Strategies for Students Who Have To Write About Philosophy

 
“A majority of U.S. adults can answer fewer than half the questions correctly on a digital knowledge quiz, and many struggle with certain cybersecurity and privacy questions. Anew Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans’ understanding of technology-related issues varies greatly depending on the topic, term or concept. While a majority of U.S. adults can correctly answer questions about phishing scams or website cookies, other items are more challenging. For example, just 28% of adults can identify an example of two-factor authentication – one of the most important ways experts say people can protect their personal information on sensitive accounts

Language Frames How We Think About Things. But Changing That Language Can Backfire

When a linguistic shift is too heavy-handed, too obviously driven by an agenda to change hearts and minds, it can run up against a response known as reactance. Reactance is our mind’s instinctive defense against the attempts of others to control our thoughts and behavior. – Nautilus

Sutherland Shire Council v Perdikaris [2019] NSWLEC 149:

Judgment

Mr Perdikaris Builds a Very Large Shed Without Approval

1.    The English judge and jurist Sir Edward Coke famously declared in 1604 “that the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress” (Semayne’s Case 77 ER 194; All ER Rep 62). A more modern reformulation of this aphorism is to the effect that a person’s home is their castle. But be that as it may, in 2019 the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (“EPAA”) places restraints on the number of towers, keeps, and barbicans that are permitted to comprise that castle. And once complete, if new stables, turrets, or even a moat is sought to be added to the existing structure, these will generally require some form of planning approval from an appropriate consent authority. So it was with the new very large garage (or shed) constructed by the respondents at their residential premises at Lot 27 DP 811280 (“the premises”).

NSW Land and Environment Court order Menai man to demolish 'sizeable' shed built without approval - Sydney Morning Herald

 Sydney man Vasilios Perdikaris has been ordered by a court to raze a garage he built on a concrete slab at his Sutherland Shire property without planning consent from the local council.

 

Olga Tokarczuk And Peter Handke Win Nobel Prizes For Literature

The Nobel committee cited Polish novelist Tokarczuk, awarded the delayed prize for 2018, for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Austrian prose author, poet and dramatist Handke was cited for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.” –The Guardian

Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed:  My University is Dying, And Soon Yours Will Be, Too., by Sheila Liming (University of North Dakota):

I live in a land of austerity, and I’m not just talking about the scenery. When most people think about North Dakota — if, indeed, they ever do — they probably imagine bare, ice-crusted prairies swept clean by wind. They see the clichés, in other words, not the reality — the towns that are, in fact, aesthetically identical to so many in America, with all the usual houses and shopping malls and parks and freeways. On the campus where I work, though, austerity has many meanings and many guises. Some of them you can see, like the swaths of new grass that grow where historic buildings stood just last year, before they were demolished in the name of maintenance backlogs. Most, though, are invisible. 

WSJ.com [paywall] – Citizens in a new study blame U.S. politics for stress, depression, lost sleep and other physical and mental problems….Americans are stressed and politics is a major cause, according to psychologists, psychiatrists and recent surveys. A study published in September in the journal PLOS One found that politics is a source of stress for 38% of Americans. “The major takeaway from this is that if our numbers are really anywhere in the ballpark, there are tens of millions of Americans who see politics as exacting a toll on their social, psychological, emotional and even physical health,” says Kevin Smith, lead author of the study and chair of the political science department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The study included 800 people in a nationally representative poll and asked them 32 questions. Among the findings:

• 11.5% say politics has adversely affected their physical health.
• 18.3% say they’ve lost sleep because of politics.26.4% say they have become depressed when a preferred candidate lost.
• 26.5% say politics has led them to hate some people.
• 20% say differences in views have damaged a valued friendship…”