A nagging thought I have about a trivial but very important matter

#Conversations and the #Attractiveness of the person you want to converse with have an awkward social legacy.

Regardless of what is about to follow, I am not saying that #Men have it easy while I'm simultaneously explicitly explaining why I think #Women have it difficult. This is a very #nuanced topic and I want to concentrate on what I see as #problems women have in #society that seem to definitely restrict their free will as no fault of their own.

Theirs a person I know #IRL and she has a very #attractive look about her, a #voluptuous body, #happy playful demeanor, big hair, a #pretty face, and still very #youthful. If it's not obvious, I'm an older dude way past my prime and not anything special to be around. I think the #sex roles could be reversed and most of this would still make sense with different intensities and risks/rewards. I personally know her in a very casual sense because of being in the same social circles. One of them is an annual #Halloween party open to the public. She would often show up in a common #Police #Costume or equivalent. At first glance, one might scoff at the use of #seductive looks to gain attention. Then I saw the kind of attention she got and it wasn't what she wanted or what she needed. Sure she looked good, but I couldn't help think #society kind of took away her #freedom of #choice. Her situation was as a young #SingleMother #struggling to provide for her #kids. The "loose-ends" of society rushed to her at the event trying to have what they saw, like they were looking at a commodity they could buy instead of a person desperately doing what they had to, to try for a better life. The most recent year changed how I saw her. She didn't change costumes, but she did bring her #retarded and partially #disabled uncle to the #party. The inner beauty that a person has to do that type of thing is wonderful! For the first time, she got a #smile from me instead of a #PokerFace. Her smile back seemed to #telepathically say back, "Thanks for seeing me."

She and I have never actually spoken to each other. I see her in other places and we have the occasional glance at each other that conveys, I know you are a good person. I'm pretty sure I can't talk to her because the #society around us would see a #pretty young person and a #married old guy talking and think shitty thoughts. That's something society is doing very wrong. I understand why though. Theirs a lot of people with #clandestine intentions driven by their innate desire to #procreate, and normally people are in #DumbMode when that switch is turned on. It makes me sad though that wholesome conversation can't be had between people because of what assuming people will think and later say in private to others for their own erroneous #SelfRighteous #excitement.

The same predicament holds if she was not what most of society deems as #attractive. I believe any combination could have an awful assumption put onto the scenario. Ugly girls put out and that's why he's talking to her. A young guy? He must be a child molester. An old person? He's probably trying to rob them. Poor people? He's buying drugs. Rich people? Sell out! Power to the people! Co-worker? #Sexual #harassment. (I know that's wrong because it's supposed to have a power dynamic first.) Manager to a subordinate? Definitely #Sexual#arassment.

It's been quite a number of decades that the nightly news has reinforced that the #appearance of #impropriety is enough to #convict in the court of #public #opinion. This also forces-out the ability to deliver #compassion and #understanding to a #stranger. One time I heard a guy talking about the way the #CIA or some #Law #Enforcement organization will #invade #privacy enough to get a #conviction, but if they invaded it even more, the #understanding that would come out would #exonerate them. #Voyeuristic people that see something now and report their #erroneous #assumptions to their friends later are not invading privacy enough. Partly the way our society works they have little #free #will either in their subsequent actions. They are dealing with decisions under risk. Revealing that they suspect something would cause a #fictitious #alibi to be formed if they were right, so they can't invade the privacy further. The 'better safe than sorry' rule forces them to #report the potential #transgression. Because that move would be assumed by anybody with more wisdom than a person in a sheltered existence, it takes away the #FreeWill of the person who might have acted in a way that showed an appearance of impropriety. Therein we have a classic "Mexican-Standoff". (I'm not sure why it's Mexican.) That's something society is doing very wrong.

I want to go back to the microcosm of good old whats-her-name, the attractive girl at the start of this long #MicroBlog. This failure of life outlined by game theory affects her more than me. She can't just start a conversation with any guy at random, because it's highly likely they will either think they are so #amazing that this #HotChick is coming to them, or they are so #damaged #emotionally from their past experiences that they assume something really bad is going to happen soon because their's no way an attractive person wants to have a #normal #conversation with them. Sure that's a false dichotomy, but I was talking about the most likely possibilities instead of the only #possibilities. Chances are close to zero that she can just have a person-to-person #wholesome #conversation with somebody at random and they don't think something untrue about why it's happening. That sounds fucking lonely. I'm guessing society, in general, thinks the attractive's have an easy life (because less than 1% of then are the only people that get to be in the media or a performer on stage or screen...). Sure maybe some things in life are easier. Like maybe it's easier to get free drinks at a bar, but isn't that like it being easier for a fish to get a free worm on a hook? Those drinks aren't charity, they are a hedge to bet they will obtain something they want in the future. That's something society is doing very wrong.

Too many people (men & women) in my #opinion think women have it easy. I didn't just say men have it easy! What I did imply was that it's #complicated and trouble is #trouble even if it's in a different form. Both #men & #women have their own unique #injustices they have to #suffer through. I'm #focusing on #women's #problems right now so #MRA #dudes and #dudettes can back the hell off; I've tasted your #RedPill so don't try making an #enemy of me here. Here's a recent #Podcast I heard which laid out the case for how women were #objectively #discriminated against since we were able to transmit sound electronically.

**How Radio Makes Female Voices Sound "Shrill"** [https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm112219\_cms974962\_pod.mp3](https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/otm/otm112219_cms974962_pod.mp3)

We built #electronics that #worked #wrong to the #benefit of men's #voices and acted like their's nothing we could have done about it. That's something society is doing very wrong.

If you haven't read the Tina Fey book titled Bossypants, you are missing out. Although I didn't read it, I listened to it for free using my Libby app connected to my public library. Tina reads it and unlike a lot of people who #voice their own #books, her inflection, timing, emphasis and so on is impeccable. Their's so much laugh-out-loud content that I don't know who wouldn't like it. I'm going to quote a few excerpts from it that are pertinent to this #MacroBlog entry.

#### Body Image

“But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

― Tina Fey, Bossypants
#### Women's Defects

This was how I found out that there are an infinite number of things that can be ‘incorrect’ on a woman’s body.

― Tina Fey, Bossypants

After which she starts listing common things that in our society are like water to the fish; eyebrows too thick, eyebrows too thin, eyebrows too round, eyebrows too angular... The list seemed infinite and she barely left the upper part of the head. #WTF!!!

#### It's what you don't have...

Now if you’re not "hot," you are expected to work on it until you are. It’s like when you renovate a house and you’re legally required to leave just one of the original walls standing. If you don’t have a good body, you’d better starve the body you have down to a neutral shape, then bolt on some breast implants, replace your teeth, dye your skin orange, inject your lips, sew on some hair and call yourself the Playmate of the Year.

― Tina Fey, Bossypants

That's something society is doing very wrong.

I think as a world of humans we need to collectively start taking back our #FreeWill and taking chances, and instead of avoiding things with a potential upside, we go in ready to shut-down the beginnings of a potential downside. Too much of our #Culture is dictated by what #Artists & #Writers produce as their work and they produce that because that's what we are doing in society. That's not #creativity, that's a #feedback #loop! We're going to blow our amplifier! The #creative people in this world need to stop serving up #commercial #garbage and begin writing things that #struggle with finding acts of free-will, and objectively #ethical good acts.

##[url=https://spraci.info/search?tag=%23%23%23]####" class="tag" title="##" class="tag" title="#[url=https://spraci.info/search?tag=%23%23%23]###">#[url=https://spraci.info/search?tag=%23%23%23]####">##" class="tag" title="#[url=https://spraci.info/search?tag=%23%23%23]###">#[url=https://spraci.info/search?tag=%23%23%23]#### ― Fin ―

#Conversations

*vormichhingrummel*

Nach vier Wochen Schule sind wir wieder da, wo wir vier Wochen vor den Ferien aufgehört haben! Frei nach dem Motto: "#Bildung gehört ausschließlich den 'normalen' Menschen".
#Normal definieren wir hiermit als mindestens der Mittelschicht zugehörig, IQ 100+ UND absolut unversehrt. Alles Andere - und da kann man hübsche Schubladen bedienen - schiebt man bitte raus aus der #Gesellschaft, hält sie in der Schule klein und nennt das "#Förderung" ala "Diese Aufgabe ist zu schwer für Dich! ... Oh, die hast Du ja richtig gelöst!" (...weil ich es zu Hause erklärt habe!)
Meine Kurzurlaub ist es zu verdanken, dass am Samstag bei der Elternversammlung der Amoklauf von mir aus bleibt. Aber ob ich mir sooo viel Urlaub bei den Vorgaben überhaupt leisten kann, fraglich. Denn grundsätzlich fehlt mir die Zeit, die ich in die (Nach)Bildung meiner behinderten Tochter stecken muss in meiner Zeitschiene der Selbstständigkeit.
Falls mich jemand fragt, ich HASSE Inklusion, Behinderung und all das Theater drum herum. Ich will einfach nur das #Recht auf Bildung für #ALLE!

(So, liebe Abteilung "Gewaltprävention der Landespolizei MV", dies dürft Ihr gerne wieder in die Schiene "Klasserlehrer*mobbing" packen. Ich habe ja definitiv den Namen der Schule plus Klasse plus Name de* Lehrer* genannt.) #Recht auf Bildung

ich arbeite an Liebe und einer Welt mit Zukunft - Indianer und Swimming Pools -

ich arbeite an Liebe und einer Welt mit Zukunft/zukunftsfähigen Überlebensweise der Menschheit.

So lange der Wald voller Bäume stand und es andere Bedrohungen gab – musste man(n) sich damit auseinander setzen – Hungersnot – Gewalt – waren damals bestimmt Alltag – heute sind es eher systemische Krisen – d.h. Krisen welche aus Fehlleitung und Verleitung von Menschen entstehen.

Scheinbar möchte jeder Indianer – nicht nur ein IPhone mit WhatsApp sondern auch ein Motorrad und ein Haus mit Swimming Pool – er hat das bei Dir gesehen und findet es cool und meint er kann jetzt nicht mehr glücklich sein ohne einen Swimming Pool.

Getreu den Economics oder eher Psychologics of Happiness: (Helena Norberg-Hodge) Tibet, Ladakh: “Zeige mir den ärmsten Mann/Frau im Dorf” Dorfbewohner: “Wir haben keine Armen Menschen hier, alle haben eine Hand voll Ziegen und genug zu Essen”

10 Jahre später die gleiche Frage…. es gibt jetzt eine Strasse in’s Dorf und fast jeder hat einen Fernseher.

“Zeige mir den ärmsten Mann/Frau im Dorf” Dorfbewohner: “Wir sind alle so arm – wir können uns kein Burger King leisten” (kein Witz! es ist wirklich so!)



\#philosophy #philosophie #MutZurWahrheit #SystemPhilosophy #SystemPhilosophie #love #mankind #psychology #economics #crazy #normal #native #happiness
Originally posted at: https://declaration-of-happyness.org/ich-arbeite-an-liebe-und-einer-welt-mit-zukunft-indianer-und-swimming-pools/

Facebook: The Normalization of What Should Never Have Been Accepted as Normal

Facebook represents the normalization of practices that should never have been seen as normal. Use it, and the company will take anything they can extract from you, and will systematically sell it to…
Article word count: 917

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007696
Posted by theBashShell (karma: 1148)
Post stats: Points: 138 - Comments: 38 - 2019-01-26T18:47:11Z

\#HackerNews #accepted #been #facebook #have #never #normal #normalization #should #the #what

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Article content:


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APRIL 8, 2018: A cracked phone with the Facebook app loading sitting on a laptop. The social media giant has been in hot water for privacy troubles.Getty

Mark Zuckerberg’s argument in the article he published in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, “[1]The facts about Facebook”, is that people do not trust Facebook because they don’t understand it and the nature of its activities.

The article’s subtitle, “[2]We need your information for operations and security, but you control whether we use it for advertising”, could not be less true: users have no control over what Facebook does with their data, and the company can sell it on to advertisers looking for specific profiles or to some shady Russian agency working on behalf of an unscrupulous candidate running for high political office, or it may even end up in the hands of criminals who will use it for identity theft. It is precisely because more and more people know that Facebook has repeatedly shown a total disregard for its users’ data, that fewer and fewer of us trust it any longer.

The problem is that this irresponsible approach is part of Facebook’s DNA: a Harvard student that for some reason beyond his understanding, discovers that his colleagues are willing to share all their data on the social network he has created. Zuckerberg’s fellow students, [3]who he himself has referred to as “dumb f*cks”, had found a way to share things in a university environment, where privacy was far from the priority. Facebook may have initially lacked a business model, but its founder soon discovered that nevertheless there were investors willing to finance it while he was still working out its money-making potential.

It took time for a business model to emerge. Initially, Zuckerberg focused on developing the IT side of things and subcontracted advertising out to Microsoft. When, a few years later, he decided to manage advertising himself, the model had already manifested itself: total control over its users’ information and then selling that information on to the highest bidder.

When all is said and done, advertising is also the basis for Google’s business model; with one fundamental difference: advertisers on Google choose their segmented targets based on many variables, but Google will never give them the identity, address or personal data of its users, which it zealously guards, applying far superior security to do so than most of its competitors.

Facebook’s approach is the very opposite. To start with, because there are any number of ways a company can build applications on to its model, secondly, because Facebook’s security is a disaster area, and finally and most importantly, because it is governed by a single principle: anything goes. If at some point it runs into trouble as a result of this approach, it simply apologizes and promises never to let it happen again. Facebook not only sells your data to the highest bidder, but will also throw in all your personal details, your interests, your friends… whatever. The only limits are set by the “creativity” of the buyer. The more we learn about Facebook, the more we realizes that the only thing to do is [4]slap a law suit on it.

What is the secret of Facebook’s success? Quite simply that until it came along, nobody had ever offered businesses such a perfect way to advertise their products or services. As has been shown, Facebook is the best way to place a specific advertisement in front of a specific user, and to keep doing so until he or she reacts. This can be done with the consent of the company or without it, legally or illegally, for good or for bad. Facebook discreetly hands everything it knows about you to a third party, which will then decide what it wants to do with it.

Taking part in a personality quiz on Facebook means handing all your data and those of your friends to such unidentified third parties, as happened with Cambridge Analytica. Equally, the company might hand your data to third parties under some type of commercial agreement you will never know about. Meanwhile, thieves keep stealing the data of tens of millions of users, with the company dismissing this as if it were the most normal thing in the world. [5]The best joke I’ve seen that sums up Facebook shows somebody spying through the window on a couple sitting on their sofa, with one of them saying to the other, “don’t worry, it’s just a marketeer collecting our personal data to create more relevant ads for us.”

All of which has led us to this: the normalization of practices that should never have been seen as normal. Use my social network, because I will take everything you say and do, and what you don’t say and do, in fact anything I can extract from you, and I will systematically sell it to the highest bidder, give it away or allow it to be stolen.

That said, I still believe social networks have a future, but that this future will have to be based on radically different business models, ones that do not see users as a commodity to be bought and sold, and that instead, respect them. Despite what the company says, it is completely impossible to find any trace of genuine respect for the user in Facebook. In a few years, we’ll look back at Facebook as the product of youthful excess that we should try with all our might to avoid ever happening again.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facts-about-facebook-11548374613
2. https://gizmodo.com/mark-zuckerberg-thinks-you-dont-trust-facebook-because-1832040327
3. https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5?IR=T
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/opinion/facebook-privacy-violation.html
5. https://marketoonist.com/2014/05/personaldat.html

HackerNewsBot debug: Calculated post rank: 104 - Loop: 172 - Rank min: 100 - Author rank: 81

#Midterm #Election – #Analysis

"Some good stuff, some bad stuff." – everyone right now

This is my personal #synopsis of the #election. I try to keep it #neutral, yet #objective, pointing out victories and losses of all sides.

The #Midterms did not produce a clear #winner or #loser.

Both #Democrats & #Republicans have things to be #happy about and things to be #sad about.

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#House of #Represenatives (435 sears)

The #Democrats clearly won control over the #House, holding 229 seats over the #Republicans holding 206 seats (these are preliminary numbers, might still change a little). Democrats gained 37 seats, flipping the majority. However this also falls clearly short of their expectations/hopes of a #BlueWave and the majority is quite narrow (218 needed for majority), which significantly increases the influence of different caucuses/wings vs the establishment inside the Democrat party.

The House controls the government #purse and many #investigative #committees, which means #funding (appropriations) will become bitter battles. The #Dems can also #stop all #investigations by the #GOP, and #start investigations of their own – the former is probably much more important for them than the latter:

#AdamSchiff (D-Ca) will become next #chairman of the #HouseIntelligenceCommittee

The #Obama administration was doing shady and possibly illegal things in the run-up to the #2016 #election, which can now be covered-up by the Democrats. The rallying-cry of getting #DonaldTrump's #tax-returns is #worthless, as Rachel Maddow (MSNBC host) has learned when she published some of his tax returns to the great #disappointment of #leftists, as there was nothing incriminating. Similarly, the #IRS (federal tax agency) is still completely controlled by Democrat operatives (as the #TeaParty scandal has shown) and if there were any "bombshells" about #Trump, they would have #leaked them a long time ago anway.

A similar rallying-cry of #impeachment is even more ridiculous – there were already several initiatives inside the House by left-wing Democrats to impeach #PresidentTrump, yet most of the Democrats opposed it. While there is now definitely more support for impeachment, a lot of Democrats will still see it as pointless (would never pass the Senate) and it might even be harmful to them pursuing this. Some might hope that #SpecialCounsel Mueller finds something, but after more than 2 years of investigation that is pretty unlikely.

The Democrats are now able to prevent any #legislation by Republicans, but they can't pass any new laws themselves either, as the Senate and the presidential #veto are both impossible to overcome. This will restore the infamous #grid-lock, that has been the new #normal state of affairs in #Washington for almost two decades now.

Crumbling #Infrastructure has long plagued the #US and #voters

There is some #speculation that a Democratic House might be a good thing for Trump in the next election in #2020: Any failures in implementing his #agenda can be blamed on Democratic #obstruction. Even Democrat pundits agree that this could prove #difficult for Democrats, as many of Trump's core legislative efforts are very #popular even among Democrats, especially #infrastructure investments, #healthcare reform, #immigration reform, and #student-loan reform.

#NancyPelosi (D-Ca) will most likely be elected #Speaker-of-the-House

Another #issue for Democrats might fester for a long time: #leadership. This election saw many #hardcore #leftist Democrats elected into the House, like #AlexandriaOcasio-Cortez (D-NY), who are enemies of the Democrat #establishment and some even vowed to oppose #NancyPelosi (D-Ca) as #Speaker of the House. Along with Senator #BernieSanders, this might cause #friction among these two groups inside the Democrat Party, which might be very helpful for Donald Trump's re-election in 2020. Despite 95% negative #media coverage of Donald Trump and 95% positive coverage of Democrats, #Pelosi has far worse #approval ratings than #Trump – #RCP lists her as the politician with the lowest #favorability ratings in #Washington.

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#UnitedStates #Senate (100 seats)

The #Republicans have a much stronger #majority in the Senate now, which is a huge #victory for #PresidentTrump, as it's the Senate which has the "advice & consent" role over presidential decisions like #cabinet & #court appointments. Considering the age & health of #SupremeCourt Justices #RuthBaderGinsburg, #StevenBryer and #ElenaKagan, this might give #PresidentTrump the chance to appoint a third (or even fourth) Supreme Court #Justice. The strong majority gives Trump basically free reigns over whom to appoint to #FederalCourts, #AppealsCourts and #SCOTUS, allowing him to appoint #judges even more to the right than #BrettKavanaugh with no resistance.

#BrettKavanaugh's had the most contentious #Senate #confirmation in recent #history

The #Trump #administration now also has an easy way forward in appointing #Cabinet ministers or #FederalAgency positions like the Environmental Protection Agency #EPA, the Food and Drug Administraion #FDA, or the Federal Communications Commission #FCC. As soon as next year when the Senate is sworn in, President Trump might replace #ministers like #JeffSessions (Attorney General) or #KirstjenNielsen (Secratary of Homeland Security), who have disappointed him, with strong loyalists like #KrisKobach.

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#Establishment weakened and destroyed?

GOP establishment figureheads #PaulRyan (Wisconsin) and #JeffFlake are out, #JohnMcCain (both Arizona) died earlier this year

Something that is lost among many is the fact that this election has utterly destroyed the #NeverTrump Republican establishment. The #AltRight supporters of Trump have celebrated this election as a "#purge of #cucks", since all Republican opponents of Trump have either #resigned – like House Speaker #PaulRyan and Senator #JeffFlake – or have lost their re-elections. They're not wrong in pointing out that almost all #candidates who were supported by Trump have won their races as #Representatives, #Senators, and #Governors: Senators #TedCruz (Texas), #RickScott (Florida), and Governor #RonDeSantis (Florida), and Representatives #SteveKing (Iowa), #DanaRohrabacher (California), … and many more. The only outspoken Republican opponents remaining are Senators #LisaMurkowski (Alaska) and newly elected #MittRomney, though their influence might be weak among this strong Republican Senate majority and the many very pro-Trump senators.

Newly elected Represenative #AlexandriaOcasio-Cortez, a far-left #Democrat from #NewYork, is the youngest #woman ever in #US #Congress

Along with the #primary victories of #hardcore #leftist candidates among the Democrats, this will lead to much further #polarization between the two parties, the #Left & #Right, and the American people, while centrists lose ground. There is widespread #expectation that the Democratic party will #radicalize even more as the #Left will interpret the House victory as signal that their radical #strategy works. They will also feel #emboldened by many newly elected #BernieSanders like figures influencing the discourse inside the party.

Skim reading is the new normal

When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age writes Maryanne Wolf,…
Article word count: 1313

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841431
Posted by pmoriarty (karma: 27371)
Post stats: Points: 123 - Comments: 59 - 2018-08-25T16:29:40Z

\#HackerNews #new #normal #reading #skim #the

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Article content:




Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing - a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential “deep reading” processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading.

[1]mobile
There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it Photograph: Sjale/Getty Images/iStockphoto

This is not a simple, binary issue of print vs digital reading and technological innovation. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate, but when we ignore what we disrupt or diminish while innovating. In this hinge moment between print and digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing, and what we can do about it.

We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment’s requirements – from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used. If the dominant medium advantages processes that are fast, multi-task oriented and well-suited for large volumes of information, like the current digital medium, so will the reading circuit. As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age.
The negative effects of screen reading can appear as early as fourth and fifth grade
Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19^th and 20^th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience,” however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, whether in literature and science in college, or in wills, contracts and the deliberately confusing public referendum questions citizens encounter in the voting booth.

Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troubling downstream effects on reading comprehension in older high school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist Anne Mangen and her colleagues studied how high school students comprehend the same material in different mediums. Mangen’s group asked subjects questions about a short story whose plot had universal student appeal (a lust-filled, love story); half of the students read Jenny, Mon Amour on a Kindle, the other half in paperback. Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their comprehension to screen-reading peers, particularly in their ability to sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological order.

Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has conducted a series of studies which indicate that the “new norm” in reading is skimming, with word-spotting and browsing through the text. Many readers now use an F or Z pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then word-spot through the rest of the text. When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own.

[2]reading
‘Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troubling downstream effects on reading.’ Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61

Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.”

US media researchers Lisa Guernsey and Michael Levine, American University’s linguist Naomi Baron, and cognitive scientist Tami Katzir from Haifa University have examined the effects of different information mediums, particularly on the young. Katzir’s research has found that the negative effects of screen reading can appear as early as fourth and fifth grade - with implications not only for comprehension, but also on the growth of empathy.
We need to cultivate a new kind of brain
The possibility that critical analysis, empathy and other deep reading processes could become the unintended “collateral damage” of our digital culture is not a simple binary issue about print vs digital reading. It is about how we all have begun to read on any medium and how that changes not only what we read, but also the purposes for why we read. Nor is it only about the young. The subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy affects us all. It affects our ability to navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar silos of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and demagoguery.

There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice. The story of the changing reading brain is hardly finished. We possess both the science and the technology to identify and redress the changes in how we read before they become entrenched. If we work to understand exactly what we will lose, alongside the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us, there is as much reason for excitement as caution.

We need to cultivate a new kind of brain: a “bi-literate” reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums. A great deal hangs on it: the ability of citizens in a vibrant democracy to try on other perspectives and discern truth; the capacity of our children and grandchildren to appreciate and create beauty; and the ability in ourselves to go beyond our present glut of information to reach the knowledge and wisdom necessary to sustain a good society.
\* Maryanne Wolf is the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World
References

Visible links
1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf#img-2
2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf#img-3

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A23P : Interim Dynamic

found numerous comments from @Theodorus Of Cyrene on the new a23p album interesting…
among which was said “Interim Dynamic” was enjoyed particularly…
There was-is a precede to album single / ep focused on Interim in specificity
musically, perhaps call it a prequel version or in-depth side story to a movie conceptual
an audio / visual work and also economics work in messAge.
the visual aspects, produced primarily by @humanculturex, come packaged in the actual (proof) of work submitted by the individual (user/consumer) in obtaining quality product.
"Proof of work", as in the inherent time and energy power from the “consumer” (ever they may be) obtaining material physical space electrical energy consumption married with "time" in seconds and even miliseconds reviewing/analyzing/hearing/seeing and considering how one mentally felt about what was experienced afterwords, .
much inspiration taken also from how T. McFarlane approached his Spawn work spinoffs in likes of Sam & Twitch and Angel as well.
Spawn was a movie, Sam & Twitch was a seasonal spinoff.
Spawn is like HIA (the album), Interim Dynamic in this form here, is a spinoff / more in depth side story.

side note: Human Culture X is one of my top 10 active artistic magick what most might call "icons".... #TrueStory but shhhhhhhhhhhhh don let them know that. oh, n i got they contributed their work in not only extremely excellent timing, but at a _steal_ of a money deal.

#A23P #MyWork #FederationArtist #ArtHarder #Influences #HIA #A23PInfluences #Music #Art #A23PContemplations #ElectronicMusic #Audio #Visual #HumanCultureX #Artists #CreativeCommons #Economics #Philosophy #Normality #DoNotObey #Normal #BeExcellentToEachOther