If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
The Transformative Power of Nature on Children and Society MIT Press ReaderMIT Press Reader: “…During the past 15 years, a growing body of research has linked our connection to nature to reductions in vitamin intake D deficiency, myopia, obesity, diastolic blood pressure, stress-related salivary cortisol, heart rate, diabetes, and mood disorders.
Studies have found that for young adults, the more nature they experience, the more life satisfaction they feel daily. In short, time in nature heals. Nature exposure in childhood or adolescence might also protect against cognitive decline and mental health issueslater in life.
Access to nature can literally be a matter of life and death. In 2017, a study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet Planetary Health suggested that people who live in green neighborhoods live longer than those with little nature nearby. And in 2018, UK researchers reviewed studies involving more than 290 million people of all ages from 20 countries. Their analysis confirmed what other researchers had been reporting.
They also found that green space exposure reduces the risk of preterm birth, premature death, and high blood pressure — all of which disproportionately affect people of color…”
Think Deepfakes Are Bad? ‘Cheapfakes’ Are Far More Dangerous
Daily Beast: “You’ve likely already been schooled on how to spot a deepfake, a dangerous but relatively immature artificial intelligence tool. Are there odd shadows or glares? Are the lips synced up with the audio? Are there too many or too few fingers on the hands?
But as Israel and Hamas wage war on both a physical and digital battlefield,disinformation experts are ringing the alarm about deepfakes’ easier-to-deploy and far more ubiquitous cousin: cheapfakes. “Cheapfakes are much more dangerous, because the images are real. And therefore, they’re more believable,” Tamara Kharroub, who helps head the Arab Center Washington DC as a Middle East media researcher, told The Daily Beast. Cheapfakes are exactly what they sound like: cheaply manipulated content. The tactic involves decontextualizing, distorting, or manipulating pre-existing audio, images, or videos with the use of readily available digital software like Photoshop or iMovie.
There’s a good chance you’ve already seen them. It can be as simple as posting an image from an entirely different conflict or region with a misleading caption, placing incorrect subtitles onto a video, or cropping an image to remove crucial context. Compared to deepfakes, cheapfakes require a fraction of the money or technical knowledge to produce, and so knowing how to spot them can go a long way toward stemming disinformation.”
