Good observations on lead exposure, IQ, and crime
Love these visualizations of the current top 10 men’s and women’s chess players in the world.
Warren Coats memoir is now published
Sports betting hurts individual savings of the bettors
“Tim Walz is the first person on either the top or bottom half of a Democratic presidential ticket since 1980 who didn’t attend law school. That is 20 individuals across 10 elections over 40 years who pursued a JD or LLB.” Link here
The Social Recession Is Accelerating Charles Hugh Smith
Invisible Rulers – What Really Drives Online Content
Mark Scott, Digital Bridge, Politico: “After years of tracking online disinformation, propaganda and other digital nastiness, Renée diResta sees patterns where others see chaos. In her new book, “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality,” the former Stanford University researcher tries to parse together a theory about why, seemingly out of the blue, online coalitions of unconnected people can quickly jump on a specific (sometimes political) issue, make it trend across social media and, in the worst cases, take it offline that can lead to real-world harm.
Case in point: the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots or the Jan. 8 attacks in Brasilia. For diResta, these increasingly occurring events, which often appear random, come down to three overlapping trends.
- You need online influencers to fan the flames of a cause.
- You need social media algorithms to promote those messages, far and wide.
- And you need online crowds of users, often with similar viewpoints to the influencer, willing to share the posts with whoever will listen.”
“Fast-forward to boredom: How switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored,” Katy Y. Y. Tam, PhD, and Michael Inzlicht, PhD, University of Toronto, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, published online Aug. 19, 2024.
“Boredom is unpleasant, with people going to great lengths to avoid it. One way to escape boredom and increase stimulation is to consume digital media, for example watching short videos on YouTube or TikTok. One common way that people watch these videos is to switch between videos and fast-forward through them, a form of viewing we call digital switching. Here, we hypothesize that people consume media this way to avoid boredom, but this behavior paradoxically intensifies boredom.
Across seven experiments (total N = 1,223; six preregistered), we found a bidirectional, causal relationship between boredom and digital switching. When participants were bored, they switched (Study 1), and they believed that switching would help them avoid boredom (Study 2). Switching between videos (Study 3) and within video (Study 4), however, led not to less boredom but more boredom; it also reduced satisfaction, reduced attention, and lowered meaning. Even when participants had the freedom to watch videos of personal choice and interest on YouTube, digital switching still intensified boredom (Study 5).
However, when examining digital switching with online articles and with nonuniversity samples, the findings were less conclusive (Study 6), potentially due to factors such as opportunity cost (Study 7). Overall, our findings suggest that attempts to avoid boredom through digital switching may sometimes inadvertently exacerbate it. When watching videos, enjoyment likely comes from immersing oneself in the videos rather than swiping through them.”
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice bed, mouth open, eyes staring at the dropped ceiling. He can no longer swallow so he gets morphine syringed under his tongue. Nurses sponge-bathe him twice a day. My nephew and I speculate on how aware he is of his surroundings. We talk to him frequently, hold his hand and sing. I decided to see how he would react to music.
Ken started clarinet lessons at age six. He was a natural, the sort of guy who could pick up any instrument and make it sound at least tolerable. On drums and backup vocals he once recorded demos with a fifties revival band called The Brylcreems. He eventually accumulated thousands of record albums. I remember in the seventies when he bought the complete Beethoven by mail order. He was a musical omnivore. He had shelves of records by Leon Russell, Howlin’ Wolf and Ry Cooder that I have never seen anywhere else.
First I played Glenn Gould’s recording of the Goldberg Variations, the 1955 version, one of our favorite records when we were kids, followed by the live version of “Time Is Tight” by Booker T & the MGs. Then the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony, the “Ode to Joy,” conducted by Von Karajan. My nephew suggested Louis Jordan, so I played “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Beans and Cornbread” and “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie.” Hours of music followed and I wish I could say my brother smiled or swayed, but he gave no visible sign of hearing anything, though it sure lifted our spirits.