"Why Protesting Georgetown Students Want Their School to Pay a Novel Form of Reparations"

"Activists began staging a sit-in outside the Georgetown president’s office today, calling for a conversation about race on campus and a reckoning with how the school has benefited from the institution of slavery. “We’re in a climate now were students on campus are not allowing stuff to just fly anymore,” one of the protest organizers, senior Queen Adesuyi, told me. “We’re acting in solidarity with other black students on other campuses that have to deal with the same issues.”...

Some black students had already been placed in the building, Adesuyi says, and many now feel uneasy in their own homes. The coalition of black students and allies who are leading the protest are pushing for the hall to be renamed Building 272, for the number of slaves sold to keep Georgetown afloat...

the demand that could have the biggest effect on Georgetown’s future, if the university complies, comes down to money. The student activists have proposed a new endowment fund, equal to the present value of the profit garnered from the 272 slaves, for the purpose of recruiting black professors. It’s a brilliant example of how universities could enact something in the vein of reparations—a tangible admission of the link between the horrific acts of generations past and today’s racial injustice, one that would provide an equally tangible benefit to current and future students of color."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/13/georgetown_students_protest_a_residence_hall_named_for_a_slave_selling_jesuit.html

This is like Firestone Library at Princeton, or all the old dorms that were originally built with a big bedroom for the student, a sitting room, and a little bedroom for their slave. And, like, a lot of the buildings were probably built by slaves.

It was so weird to walk around campus and wonder what those people would have thought about me and other descendents of slaves giving money to this institution and developing a sense of identity with it. I sometimes wondered if I wasn't betraying the memory of their pain. And I was lucky - there isn't any possibility that my ancestors were enslaved on that campus; I  can't imagine what it would feel like to wonder about that.

Also, in my mind, this is exactly what reparations would look like.

"Silicon Valley Has a Race Problem"

"My diverse constituents, just like me, rely on technology to engage in politics, find their news and connect with their communities.

In fact, communities of color have adopted many new media tools at a faster rate than whites.

22% of African Americans use Twitter, compared to only 16% of whites.
Despite the overwhelming adoption of technology in communities of color, Silicon Valley has a dismal record of prioritizing workforce and leadership diversity...
Through transparency, education, corporate investments and a commitment to hiring and retaining diverse employees, we can break down the barriers and bring inclusion to our innovation economy.
If tech companies follow these principles and dedicate the necessary resources, I’m confident that we can achieve a truly inclusive tech workforce by 2020."
https://medium.com/@RepBarbaraLee/silicon-valley-has-a-race-problem-5d9a84f57465

A congressional representative being real! Even though she relies on a majority white electorate. #impressed #inspired

"The Black-White Sleep Gap"

"it wasn’t just slow-wave sleep in general that in­ter­ested the re­search­ers; they spe­cific­ally hoped to com­pare how blacks and whites ex­per­i­enced slow-wave sleep. And what they found was dis­turb­ing. Gen­er­ally, people are thought to spend 20 per­cent of their night in slow-wave sleep, and the study’s white par­ti­cipants hit this mark. Black par­ti­cipants, however, spent only about 15 per­cent of the night in slow-wave sleep.

The study was just one data point in a mount­ing pile of evid­ence that black Amer­ic­ans aren’t sleep­ing as well as whites...

Blacks were also more likely to re­port feel­ing sleepy in the day­time, and they woke up more of­ten in the middle of the night. “Not­ably,” the study reads, “these as­so­ci­ations re­mained evid­ent after ad­just­ment for sex, age, study site, and [body mass in­dex].”...

“The race gap is de­creased if you take in­to ac­count some in­dic­at­or of eco­nom­ics,” says Laud­er­dale, “but it’s not elim­in­ated in the data that I have looked at.”...

Sci­ent­ists have dis­covered “clock genes,” tiny bits of DNA that act like a bio­lo­gic­al met­ro­nome: By reg­u­larly flip­ping on and off, they help the body main­tain its sense of time. And not only are these clocks in every tis­sue in every hu­man, or in every tis­sue in every mam­mal, but they can be found in “vir­tu­ally every or­gan­ism on the sur­face of the plan­et,” says Mi­chael Twery, dir­ect­or of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health’s Na­tion­al Cen­ter on Sleep Dis­orders Re­search. Cycles in activ­ity and rest are fun­da­ment­al in the ar­chi­tec­ture of life.

Mess­ing with these cycles—es­sen­tially throw­ing the body’s met­ro­nome off beat—throws the whole body off beat...

ON THE QUES­TION of how to ex­plain the black-white sleep gap it­self, re­search­ers have a num­ber of re­lated the­or­ies. (There is a con­sensus that in­nate bio­lo­gic­al dif­fer­ences between blacks and whites are not a factor.) The stress caused by dis­crim­in­a­tion is one strong pos­sib­il­ity...

She ar­gues that sleep is a re­flec­tion of a per­son’s agency. The more con­trol you have over your life—the more free­dom you have fin­an­cially, the more free­dom you have to live where you choose, the more con­trol you have over what you eat and when you eat it, the more you have the lux­ury of pos­sess­ing the time and equip­ment to ex­er­cise—the more likely you are able to cre­ate an en­vir­on­ment that fosters good sleep. “[S]kep­tics can­not ar­gue that people with poor sleep habits simply ‘choose’ to sleep poorly,” Hale and a co-au­thor wrote in 2010. “Sleep should be viewed as a con­sequence of something oth­er than choice.”...

at every level of gov­ern­ment, there are policy de­cisions—wheth­er on neigh­bor­hood noise levels or pub­lic safety or the place­ment of pub­lic hous­ing—that provide good op­por­tun­it­ies to con­sider, and per­haps im­prove, how people sleep."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/91261/black-white-sleep-gap

I want to post this is in several of my publications, but it's most relevant here. (If you follow my science or mental health posts, you already know about circadian rhythm and health)

I am involved in research about the biology of circadian rhtyhm and sleep, and I appreciate this other perspective too - there is something very cognitive about sleep, about designing and scheduling you day and moving towards sleep and being capable of turning off and trusting your environment. 

Related: Chronotype, others...

"Decolonising Science Reading List"

"As a physicist, I was taught that physics began with the Greeks and later Europeans inherited their ideas and expanded on them. In this narrative, people of African descent and others are now relative newcomers to science, and questions of inclusion and diversity in science are related back to “bringing science to underrepresented minority and people of color communities.” The problem with this narrative is that it isn’t true. For example, many of those “Greeks” were actually Egyptians and Mesopotamians under Greek rule. So, even though for the last 500 years or so science has largely been developed by Europeans, the roots of its methodology and epistemology are not European. Science, as scientists understand it, is not fundamentally European in origin. This complicates both racist narratives about people of color and innovation as well as discourse around whether science is fundamentally wedded to Euro-American operating principles of colonialism, imperialism and domination for the purpose of resource extraction...

There is a lot that has been hidden from mainstream narratives about the history of astronomy, including 20th century history. Where has the colonial legacy of astronomy taken us? From Europe to Haiti to now Hawai’i. Hawai’i is the flash point for this conversation now, even though the story goes beyond Hawai’i. If we are going to understand the context of what is happening in Hawai’i with the Thirty Meter Telescope, we must understand that Hawai’i is not the first or only place where astronomers used and benefited from colonialism."
https://medium.com/@chanda/decolonising-science-reading-list-339fb773d51f

"Turns out people get angry when you say white Americans are terrorists, too"

"Some of them objected to our decision to call the terrorists “white Americans” instead of “some white Americans” or “white American extremists.” Without qualifying the term, they argued, we were claiming that ALL white Americans were a terror threat. Other readers worried that the headline, though correct, was unnecessarily divisive. Some thought it was unfair to focus on racial data when the study's summary didn't call attention to it.

Other readers reported us to Facebook for posting hate speech. They called us racists and race-baiters. They said we were ignoring “white genocide.” They asked why were weren’t talking about “black-on-white crime.” One person threatened to file a discrimination lawsuit...

Al Qaeda killed almost 3,000 people on 9/11. The United States' subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — and more limited counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen — have meant the US public has spent over a decade imagining the enemy to be a foreign Muslim man with an AK-47 or a suicide vest. Combine that with a 24-hour news cycle that privileges simple narratives over nuance, and with policymakers who have too often shown a lack of knowledge about the history, politics, and cultures of the places where the US wages war and sees threats — and you're looking at some entrenched, perpetually reinforced stereotypes about Muslims, Islam, and terrorism...

Roof's mass shooting sparked renewed controversy over the continued importance of the Confederate battle flag to some white Southerners. While that debate has gone on, eight historic black churches have burned. At least two of the fires have already been ruled arson.

If it is what it seems to be, will we call it terrorism? Will we call the people who did it terrorists?"

http://www.globalpost.com/article/6594328/2015/06/25/white-supremacy-terrorism

#WhiteFragility

"When 'Womanless Weddings' Were Trendy"

"Small towns hither and yon — from Aiken, S.C. to Galena, Kan., to Clayton, N.M. — staged the burlesque-esque shows. "Many in the community were more than willing to pay admission to see their male neighbors in ridiculous female attire," the Encyclopedia of North Carolina notes.

In fact, the Forest City Courier of Nov. 30, 1922, estimated that more than 1,000 people attended a womanless wedding in the North Carolina community to raise money for the local Parent Teacher Association...

In his book, Friend suggests that the womanless wedding was a "ritual of inversion" created not to undermine, but to reaffirm community values.

"In mocking the very ritual they found most central to communal stability," he writes, "organizers and participants in womanless weddings raised questions about the society in which they lived. In the play, they called attention to real social change and its effects on marriage.""
http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/06/16/413633022/when-womanless-weddings-were-trendy?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150616

Huh. So many unexpected things used to happen
Related: traditional religions are not traditional about sex

"Much More Than a Hair-Brained Idea"

"The creators of Myavana, a web-based mobile and social platform, understand firsthand the frustration of the shelf scan. Computer scientist Candace Mitchell, CS 11, and chemical engineer Chanel Martin launched their Atlanta-based startup in 2013. “The goal was to leverage science and technology to provide women of color with a personalized hair-care experience that takes guessing out of the equation and delivers hair nirvana,” Mitchell says...

Consumers initiate the process on the Myavana website, where a one-time fee of $49 will buy a single Hair Collection Kit. The kit includes a special comb for the sample, instructions for getting a proper cross section, a questionnaire and pre-paid postage. Once the kit arrives at the Myavana lab—the company rents space on campus at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology—the hair strands undergo a nine-point data analysis...

The customer’s data is then run through Myavana’s recommendation system. According to Mitchell, the company’s database includes analyses of close to 1,000 products, which have been reviewed based on ingredient composition and how they react to different types of hair. The customer is then matched with a set of products based on the analysis, which the buyer receives in the mail. Customers also each receive a personalized hair-care regimen and several sample products chosen specifically to help individual users reach their desired hair goals.

The Myavana report even goes on to suggest specific hairstyles and salons in the customer’s area."
http://gtalumnimag.com/2015/06/much-more-than-a-hair-brained-idea/

That is so cool.

Fb: "Candace Mitchell, CS 11, uses scientific analysis to eliminate the guesswork from black women’s hair-care routines."

"Writing down things you're grateful for makes your life better. Really."

"There's a growing body of serious research that gratitude can really, concretely make your life better. The best part is, you don't even have do to any mental contortions to make sure you feel it — you can just go through the motions of acting as if you do.

The findings are dramatic. The practice of gratitude (which can truly be as simple as jotting down notes about what you're thankful for) has been called "velcro" for wellbeing and deemed "the new willpower." It might even make people like you. Hell, it might make you like you more."

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/27/7295851/gratitude-health-benefits

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've started posting something on this every year, because I really believe in it and I think more people should do it! (I also have a friend in social psychology who has approved the research behind it).

It sometimes feels disingenuous, yes, but it is so grounding and when I do it right before bed it is a great way to re-orient my thoughts as I try to fall asleep (#insomniac). And honestly, the practice is most important when it feels like the world is exhausting and when there are an overwhelming amount of negative things

I wrote about my daily practice here last year - I text friends every day and it's one of the best things that I do.

"Delete your tweets, rewrite history? The Politwoops controversy, explained"

"Twitter's deleted tweets rule is very simple: When the platform flagged deleted tweets, third parties with API access were supposed take the tweet down from their sites. Politwoops used its access in the opposite way Twitter intended, by using the alerts as a way to keep track of and share deleted tweets. So it was only a matter of time before Twitter had to make a decision about enforcing, or changing, its own rules.

In May, Twitter decided to stick to its guns with Politwoops, enraging many political reporters and offending government transparency advocates, who never expected the decision from Twitter, a company otherwise known for supporting transparency. The decision to cut off API access, however, wasn't broadly applied to international groups doing similar work until August. We don't know why Twitter took so long to enforce its decision between Politwoops and the similar international projects, nor why it decided to let them flourish in breach of developer usage terms in the first place...

The decision, however, opened the door for future content takedown policies regarding all deleted tweets displayed in any form, like, most simply, a screenshot. A screenshot taken on a laptop, in terms of recording content, the same thing as another similar screenshot accessible via API. If Twitter revokes access to developers who record deleted content, it could someday expand that thinking to rules that govern regular users on laptops or phones. Like you...

Politwoops' shutdown points to a bigger question on the horizon: Who gets to regulate and change the record of online speech? Should the internet accurately reflect modern society, or should the internet be a revised record of our past?"

http://www.vox.com/explainers/2015/8/26/9211117/politwoops-delete-tweets

(the authors have a clear opinion to the answer to that question)

I think this is important; there is this weird, intense thing about openness and vulnerability and access and privacy that is happening right now. I think we are currently setting the rules for a new version of how human beings relate to and form communities with one another, using this social tool that is the internet; we need some set of what is polite for us to do to others, and what we can expect in these social environments. 

We have an unprecedented opportunity to record information about ourselves, except its often not really for our own use, it's mostly in contexts where that information is going to be shared with other people (either with a social network that might be public, or a private company, and then sometimes the government). And we also have the opportunity to have these anonymous (or, really, semi-anonymous) versions of ourselves in all sorts of different communities. And we have this huge amount of control over what is put on the internet (we get to describe ourselves and post only certain pictures and describe only certain parts of our day) while simultaneously having no control over how it is going to be used (and, very often, a lack of awareness that a given action is going to lead to information being recorded and then used). 

So, I think we're feeling this responsibility to curate because we have the tools - but also this intense vulnerability and absence of control. And that contradiction is creating a lot of uncertainty and anxiety. And at least two podcasts.

Related: Be careful what you google; Wikipedia on open science; jenny cam Reply All

"WHY SHARING THE MCKINNEY VIDEO IS “EXPOSING” RACISM AT THE EXPENSE OF BLACK WOMEN"

"what is less obvious is the problem with our entitlement to videos of abuse and trauma. What is also fucked up is our inability to fully believe in the existence of such violence — to only be “convinced” of the “details” of what happened — until after we have watched, shared, and made viral another video of another Black women being abused.

In the last year, we’ve watched Ranay Rice being beaten and dragged, Marlene Pinnock pummeled on a highway by a California Highway Patrol officer, and now an officer digging his body into Dajerria Becton’s bare back. We share Black women’s assaults online, and they become commodified as news items, and are broadcasted globally on major networks. As Hannah Giorgis wrote for The Guardian last fall after the Rice video came out: “We viciously ingest every vivid detail of women’s victimization, line our stomachs with their blood and tell ourselves we’re watching because we want people to be ‘educated’. If only people could see enough black eyes, bloodied faces and broken ribs, the theory goes. Then they would know the truth, we tell ourselves. Only then would they care.”"
http://feministing.com/2015/06/11/why-sharing-the-mckinney-video-is-exposing-racism-at-the-expense-of-black-women/

Mmmmm.
All of this - not ready to comment yet but it strikes a chord with one of my innumerable little uncomfortabilities.

"A New Twist in the Fight Against Sexism in Science"

"What’s happening in science mirrors larger changes. In a year that saw grassroots activism prompt a national discussion of racial profiling, sexual assault, and transgender rights, marginalized voices have challenged the status quo. And mainstream media cares...

Even more unusual perhaps is how scientists successfully pushed back against the media. When BuzzFeed briefly changed the headline of its article to be clickier, public outcry prompted the outlet to change it back. When The New York Times published an article that quoted Marcy’s wife and was broadly sympathetic to him, more than 200 scientists signed a letter calling for its retraction."

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/the-year-we-really-started-caring-about-sexism-in-science/

"THE "SHARING ECONOMY" IS DEAD, AND WE KILLED IT"

"Of the eight sites listed above, only NeighborGoods is still around—after it ran through its seed funding, it was salvaged by an investor with a personal interest in the idea. About 42,000 people have signed up, though fewer than 10,000 are active. While sites like Airbnb and Uber became giant companies, the platform on which we would share our power drills with neighbors never took off.

Instead of platforms that would inspire human interaction and create less waste, what emerged were companies that awkwardly fit into—and at times completely twisted—this vision of neighborhood sharing. The "sharing economy" grew to include an odd menagerie of companies with little in common. Groupon "shared" the collective action of tipping a deal. Kickstarter "shared" a similar funding goal among many contributors. Sites like Airbnb "shared" homes, but charged by the night, like a hotel. Gig economy platforms like Uber and Handy "shared" the labor of independent contractors paid by the hour or mile. Netflix somehow even managed to fall under the sharing economy umbrella at one point...

It’s not that these tools and sites aren’t good services or that they don’t make things easier. It’s rather that they have little to do with the original promise of the sharing economy. Really, it’s more of an "access economy," a term Williams used from the beginning. "We hated that terminology," he says of the sharing economy. "Hated it with the heat of a thousand suns.""

http://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is-dead-and-we-killed-it?utm_source

Hmm, access economy.

"The Dalai Lama’s Daily Routine and Information Diet"

"Compressed into this humble and humbling morning routine is the entire Buddhist belief that life is a “joyful participation in a world of sorrows.” This daily rite of body and spirit is the building block of the Dalai Lama’s quiet and steadfast mission to, as Iyer elegantly puts it, “explore the world closely, so as to make out its laws, and then to see what can and cannot be done within those laws.”...

the Dalai Lama approaches his information diet like he does his meditation — as a deliberate practice. In that sense, “meaning diet” is far more accurate a term, for he is remarkably deliberate about which aspects of the Information Age to fold into his meaning-making mission and which to sidestep. He chooses, for instance, to avoid one of the most perilous byproducts of our era, which Susan Sontag presaged in 1977 in her famous admonition against “aesthetic consumerism.”"
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/09/pico-iyer-the-open-road-dalai-lama/

This is quite lovely - I really want to have a clear philosophy about what I read and share. I feel like I sort I'd have one, I just want to articulate it.

"Executive Summary: A Survey about Mental Health and Suicide in the United States"

"A majority (65%) of U.S. adults has seen a primary care physician within the past 12 months, yet only 12% have seen a mental health counselor or therapist. Despite this, about 9 in 10 adults (89%) feel that mental health and physical health are equally important for their own overall health. However, more than half (56%) say that, in our current healthcare system, physical health is treated as more important than mental health, and less than one-third (28%) feel that mental and physical health are treated equally...

Overall, one-third of adults have ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition by a health care professional, with the most common diagnoses being depression (21%) and anxiety/panic disorder (20%). While only a third of adults have ever been diagnosed, nearly half (47%) admit that they have thought they may have had a mental health condition at some point. Nearly a third (31%) presumed they had anxiety/panic disorder (31%), while more than a quarter (28%) considered that they may have depression."

http://www.afsp.org/news-events/in-the-news/surveyresults

It's not just the social deviants.

Let's rethink our image of mental illness, and recognize the ubiquity of mental health and wellness.

Related: People with mental illness are more likely to experience violence than cause it.

"Ohio State LB Jerome Baker wants to change how athletes talk about sexual violence"

""It really bothered me that I played Steubenville," he says. "When [the story] went national, I remember watching on TV and seeing the road that leads down to the stadium. I remember thinking, I rode down that road. I was in that town."

Baker also felt judged by strangers, just for being a high school player.

"You were looked at strangely," he said, describing how he felt as a football player. "People just looked at you as violent people. I really didn't like that whole outlook on us."

He wanted to do something about it, but didn't quite know what...

The two came up with an idea to have high school football players across northeast Ohio take a public pledge to end violence against women and girls. They started with a list of the top 31 high school football players in the area, a group that was featured in an unrelated yearly series on Cleveland.com. Baker wanted all of the players to take the pledge in person together, so he began to make some phone calls. He hoped that using the biggest high school football stars in the state as ambassadors would send a strong message to the community that what happened in Steubenville was not representative of football players in general. The response from his peers was beyond what Baker could've imagined."

http://www.sbnation.com/2015/9/17/9105829/ohio-state-jerome-baker-is-changing-athletes-sexual-assault-2015

:)

"Could Storytelling Be the Secret Sauce to STEM Education?"

"The lover looks up at the princess and sees that she knows which door contains the tiger. She indicates which door the man should choose, but the story ends before the reader discovers what was behind the door. The reader also learns that the princess is just as feisty as her father, so there’s a possibility she’s sending her lover to death so he won’t marry another woman.

“It’s an old-fashioned sexist story where the end comes down to the princess’ psychology,” Fruchter said. But he appreciates it for the way it beautifully mimics binary code. In computer language, this is a “one bit” story, meaning there are two possible versions and two possible endings. In a computer, the two endings would be expressed with either a one or a zero.

When teaching, Fruchter changes the story’s ending to give the lover agency. Now the story is a “two bit” problem. The lover can either trust or mistrust the princess, and the princess can either save or doom her lover. Now there are four possible endings to the story. Fruchter then adds another character to the story: the man holding the tiger behind the door. Presumably, the princess talked to this man to find out what door he would be behind. But what if he’s been in love with the princess his whole life and can either choose to tell her the truth or a lie? Now the story is a “three bit” problem...

he finds that many kids with learning difficulties or who have struggled in other classes stay in the game longer when they have a narrative entry point. They can use their understanding of the story to try to puzzle their way through the math...

He also likes Dashiell Hammett’s famous detective novel “The Maltese Falcon” and “Mind of My Mind” by Octavia Butler, a book where psychics take over the world. Fruchter says Butler’s book is an embodiment of the proper way to write an object-oriented program."
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/06/05/could-storytelling-be-the-secret-sauce-to-stem-education/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150606

I like this. There is totally poetry in math. And it's making me think about the structures of stories and books.

"The Silicon Valley Suicides"

"While reporting this story, I came to understand quite a lot about academic stress and adolescent misery, and about my own parenting, and about how urgent it is for parents and educators to question their own good intentions. But the link between teenage alienation and the decision to die never much clarified. In fact, the closer I got to the heart of this story, the less I felt I understood that link."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/

So, this is an article about my hometown and what I still consider to be my community. I organized a dialogue on teen mental health this summer and have been working with a group of alumni of the Palo Alto high schools ever since to continue to hold these events and engage other alumni in clarifying the problem statement and establishing solutions.

When I heard about the article a few days before it was published, I was excited - there are so many things I wanted to see talked about, and I assumed that a journalist taking a systemic approach to an issue might explore them. Palo Alto is a really special place, and Palo Alto kids are really exceptional people. And I don't mean that as an indication of, like, how many of us cross the street to go to Stanford every year - I mean that my peers were self aware and passionate and deeply caring. When I was a student at Paly, we had all sorts of social norms around not triggering that sense of failure - we didn't share grades or SAT scores except with close friends, we shared notes and formed study groups and checked in with each other when people missed school, and it was a huge faux pas to post on facebook when we were accepted to colleges. My favorite thing about my high school was our "rejection wall", where seniors would publicly post their rejection letters from college and post-high school jobs (with names blacked out).

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the article, that kind of get into my feelings about The Atlantic in general. I love my hometown in that way that makes you extremely aware of and sensitive to its flaws. And I am realizing how flawed reporting can be when someone profiles your community in order to illustrate a larger narrative. (For example, no one calls Gunn "the suicide school").

The article is worth reading because it presents some useful ideas and perspectives about teen mental health in affluent, high-pressure environments (if that is something you care about). However, I do not think it is useful for getting an accurate understanding of Palo Alto or the circumstances of the deaths in Palo Alto.

This article points out and then sensationalizes several toxic elements of Palo Alto culture, and takes an under-integrated and absolutist perspective on socioeconomic class. It scares us about millennials/gen-Z being traumatized by social media and helicopter parenting and our test-and-outcomes-driven education system, and turning out empty over-sensitive automatons who are unable to think for ourselves. Hanna Rosin and her editors phrase the problem as teen suicide and point all their fingers at academic stress created by Palo Alto parents (specifically, my parents and my peers' parents).

In this way, they successfully sell this edition of the magazine and subtly encourage their audience to keep reading - they have told America's upper-class parents that they might be killing their children, and they have implied that writers at The Atlantic are grappling with the problem and will be issuing instructions as they find the answers. The Atlantic isn't the only publication that is doing this, but there is so little empathy here, and so many things that are only going to raise the anxiety of parents and make American parenting even more of a war between reality and a keeningly aggressive list of impossible expectations.

I will be the first person to agree that Palo Alto culture needs to change, and that parents need to be part of that change. But parents are not the villain of the story - I have heard from a lot of parents that they really want to learn and they aren't finding resources. From my perspective, mental health is a problem for both children and adults who are present in the Palo Alto culture, and the resultant deaths have been traumatic for everyone. Suggesting that the parents are responsible for creating this culture is only going to increase their anxiety, it's not going to address the root causes.

Right now, I am understanding the mental health problems in Palo Alto as the result of identity threat: we often understand the true "Palo Altan" to be genius-like, successful, meritorious, and highly paid with an elite occupation. And I think that, if we want to solve that, we need to have community dialogue that reveals who we really are and what we really want for ourselves.

"We still don’t know how to talk about Pennsatucky: The reality of rural sexual assault and how class plays out in “Orange Is the New Black”"

"Recent analyses of rural sexual assault in Pennsylvania —where 60 percent of its counties are rural and home to about one-third of the state’s population—using data from the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the Pennsylvania Office of Children, Youth and Families found that rates of rape and child sexual assault were significantly higher in rural counties than in urban ones. They also found that the eight highest rates of rape were in rural counties, and included the three most rural counties in the state.

Nationwide, experts believe the available numbers on rural sexual assault underestimate the problem. A 2003 report from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that in rural areas, the numbers of those who seek crisis services far exceed the number of reported rapes. The NSVRC hypothesizes that underreporting, a major factor in all states, is especially pronounced in rural areas because of the low population density, which means victims probably know or have significant relationships with their attackers...

I suspect that stereotypes about poor rural whites and Appalachians contribute to our tendency to view Pennsatucky as an irresponsible woman who has brought sexual destruction upon herself, or as an unfortunate product of a brutally impoverished culture — or both — rather than reading her rapes as emblematic of an important feminist and humanitarian issue. Women in rural places are at an especially high risk for rape and sexual assault due to structural, not personal, factors."

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/05/we_still_dont_know_how_to_talk_about_pennsatucky_the_reality_of_rural_sexual_assault_and_how_class_plays_out_in_orange_is_the_new_black/

Related: What's killing poor white women 

"Case #2: Britney"

"The Case: 

Andrea’s a writer no one reads. Then she makes a shocking discovery."

http://gimletmedia.com/2015/05/case-2-britney/

This is what the world sounds like when people are honest and genuine with each other. I love Starlee.

"New Study Reveals Scary Consequence of Catcalling "

"The study, published recently in Psychology of Violence, found that many women who feel objectified begin to obsessively monitor their looks from an outsider’s perspective. That can lead to decreased sexual assertiveness and a higher risk of becoming victimized...

The study suggests that a psychological change may occur when a woman is catcalled or otherwise harassed; perhaps her ideas of consent or bodily autonomy shift or degrade. That’s similar to the changes that occur in survivors of childhood sexual assault; they’re often later revictimized.

One of the study’s authors, Molly Franz, tells the Ms. Blog, “Studies on sexual revictimization suggest that women who experience sexual assault are more likely to be revictimized due to psychological changes that occur as a function of the original assault. Our study also points to a potential psychological change that can occur as a function of repeated objectification experiences.”"

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/09/25/new-study-reveals-scary-consequence-of-catcalling/

"Hillary Clinton's Grand Strategy to Beat the GOP: Take Bold Positions Early and Often"

"The nature of the strategy involves staking out a variety of progressive issue positions that enjoy broad support, but it’s not as straightforward as simply identifying the public sentiment and riding it to victory. The key is to embrace these objectives in ways that makes standard Republican counterspin completely unresponsive, and thus airs out the substantive core of their ideas: Rather than vie for conservative support by inching rightward, Clinton is instead reorienting liberal ideas in ways that make the Republican policy agenda come into greater focus."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121979/clinton-automatic-voter-registration-plan-puts-gop-defensive

Hmm, I am generally skeptical of media on Hillary because I know it's going to see the brilliance and positives more enthusiastically than the disasters, and I know I am going to be more convinced by the former than the latter, but I am kind of into this idea.

"In 2016 race, drug courts get second look"

"With criminal justice reform now an issue for both the Republican and Democratic side of the 2016 presidential campaign, drug courts are increasingly being viewed as a viable alternative to mandatory jail time. The War on Drugs waged during the crack era of the 1980s and ’90s packed U.S. prisons with non-violent drug offenders, but many voters and policymakers have grown disillusioned with this solution, citing the high cost of incarceration and its devastating impact on inmates’ families and economic prospects.

“The goal is not to be just drug free, but to have a meaningful, viable life. And that means education and employment. Once they’re not using drugs, people want these opportunities,” Ferdinand told msnbc. The Brooklyn Treatment Court is one of approximately 3,000 drug courts in the country – a boomlet since the first was established in Miami in 1989...

Bill Piper, the director of national affairs for DPA, said “the thing about drug courts is they oftentimes focus heavily for nothing more than drug possession, oftentimes marijuana, picking who they will treat and won’t and it makes their success rate look really, really good.”

Detractors are also concerned about the extraordinary power given to the judges. “Judges play doctor and they get to decide how much treatment [criminal offenders] get,” argued Piper.

Jason Ziedenberg, the director of research and policy at JPI, said while drug courts may be appropriate for a small group of people, “more people should get diverted from the criminal justice system entirely and to the public health system instead as early on as possible.”

Still, in a telling sign of how swiftly and completely the conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill has shifted on this issue, both the DPA and JPI could not name a single national lawmaker who was outright against drug courts.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amid-2016-election-drug-courts-get-closer-look

"13 Facts About Sleep Paralysis That Will Keep You Up At Night"

"In sleep paralysis, the body remains paralyzed in REM atonia while the brain awakens and the eyes start to open, explains Breus. Sufferers become alert in a transient conscious state, but they are unable to move voluntary muscles or speak. Although involuntary muscle movement, like breathing, is not affected, there is often a sensation of chest pressure, which is why many people wake up from sleep paralysis gasping to take a deep breath. Episodes can last anywhere from 20 seconds to a few minutes."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/carolinekee/sleep-paralysis-is-scary-af?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgp#4ldqpgp

I get these, usually when I'm in a state of nervous anticipation about something in my life, like waiting to hear about something important or heading into a new school or job or whatever. Not necessarily a time of fear, just the anticipation and huge unknowns.

I can't move but I'm super alert and I feel this intense terror and have auditory hallucinations - like, someone I know saying my name. But never someone I'm afraid of, usually it's someone who is in the house or dorm or whatever and could logically be trying to talk to me. Or sometimes a creak will wake me up, or there will be a shadow cast from something outside a window. And whatever stimulus it is, all of this random and nameless terror will focus on it and I will feel this deep need to escape but be totally unable to move.

I didn't know what it was until I took AP Psych, and since then I've been able to develop some coping mechanisms, and now I can escape that state of immobile terror (once I realize what is happening, I am able to focus on controlling my face muscles, and if I can do that then I break out of it). It's so important to know how you work, and there is a huge power in being able to name an experience.

"The Meaning and End of The Donald "

"But while the periodic uncovering of the massive bucket that contains this breed of American voter is enough to turn your stomach, it’s also — more importantly — enough to turn your head. These voters shouldn’t be ignored. Indeed, the feeding of their ravenous appetite for stupid rhetoric drives much of the political discourse and marketing in this country. Trump targets them overtly, with no pretense of serving up anything other than xenophobic hate speech. That openness will actually make it harder for other candidates to target them in more coded language. Knowing that these idiots exist is depressing. But being ignorant of their foolishness and the way it’s manipulated to win elections is even worse...

While I misjudged the beginning, I’ve never had any doubt about the location of the scene where this campaign will end. I can even give you the exact address.

1100 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20004

That’s the address of Donald Trump’s newest hotel. It’s within bullhorn distance of the White House and, get this, it just happens to be opening in 2016."

https://medium.com/sargasso-sea-review/the-meaning-and-end-of-the-donald-6ee95ffafa0b

I avoid reading about Donald Trump, because I don't want to give him a by more free publicity or indicate to news sources that they can get my clips by writing about him, but this was worth it. 

"'Empire' Nods To A Very Different Take On Policing Than We Usually See In Prime Time"

"there's the climactic courtroom scene at the heart of nearly every episode, in which the defendant's guilt is clearly established during a withering cross-examination by the DA. The courtroom scene is a TV staple but a real-world anomaly: In real life, defendants almost never take the stand if their cases even get that far, because almost everyone convicted in our criminal justice system is given a sentence without ever actually standing trial. We dispose of more than 90 percent of state and federal criminal cases through plea deals — deals those defendants often take because going to trial can be costly and time-consuming.

An overworked public defender pushing her clients to take plea deals makes for less sexy TV than a noble, dogged prosecutor kneecapping the bad guy on the stand. But the idea that our justice system looks more like the latter — that it is fundamentally fair and works for everyone — has long been passed off on TV as neutral and not as, say, a very specific set of ideological assumptions...

It's worth noting that Empire isn't the only show on TV right now that's absorbing the national story around race and policing — the others just tend to take a very different stance. Last year, while the Eric Garner case was all over the news, Laura Hudson at Slate wrote that CBS's Blue Bloods, in which sentient mustache Tom Selleck plays the head of the NYPD and the patriarch of a family of career police officers, had several storylines that treated issues of race and policing in ways that meant to flatter its older, white audience."

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/10/02/445045620/empire-nods-to-a-very-different-take-on-policing-than-we-usually-see-in-primetim