“Gender bias or intimidation? Why sex discrimination isn’t business’s biggest problem”

“It’s time that we women did what we need to do rather than continuing to organize ourselves into committees or gather information and input. A prime example for me, and someone I look forward to speaking to in person, is Shonda Rhimes. I’ve come to admire her, although she’s in the entertainment business rather than technology. She’s an African-American woman who broke all the rules when she proposed a prime-time show with a woman as the leading actor. Several years later, she brought a second show with another woman lead to television, and last year, she unveiled her third prime-time show with a female lead. Two of the three leading women were African-American.

Now, one creator/producer has changed the game completely by having three very strong women leading network television for three of the top-rated hours on Thursday nights. Every other network has to compete with her.

What’s admirable about Shonda is that she spoke less and did more.  I don’t think she’s spent a lot of time talking about what works and doesn’t work. She’s led by example.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/03/25/gender-bias-or-intimidation-why-sex-discrimination-isnt-businesss-biggest-problem/

??? what is this. Let’s not engage in tokenism/exceptionalism, please? One of the scariest things about being successful against the stereotypes is that people start building narratives like ‘if only all the other people could work hard like you!’ and then suddenly you are a symbol for how lazy everyone else is.

And of course it is both intimidation and gender discrimination. And if we are going to be upset about intimidation, what about calling out the intimidators to be less shitty instead of calling out the shit-upon to plug our noses?

"The Space Between Families"

"How lonely, that period between families.

At first, it just seems like an “adjustment period” to living outside your parents’ house. You’re not used to working a desk job. You’re trying to figure out how much money you should spend to make yourself feel better after the desk job, and how much everyone else is spending. How to have an “adult” weekend.

But after you’ve been doing those things for about a year — doling out your money reasonably, remembering to cook broccoli, changing your sheets at the end of each month — and everything still feels a little off, you’ll begin to realize it’s something else. It’s not that those things are actually so hard. You can manage a desk job, and remember to eat broccoli. It’s that when you come home from work after a particularly bad day, or a night out at the bar that didn’t end in your favor, it’s just you."
https://medium.com/human-parts/the-space-between-families-e20d2dd788c2

A reflection on starting out, and moving around. I sort of want to send it to all my friends scattered all over the place and preparing to scatter around again, and have a skype session and sigh melodramatically about the in-between-ness of right now.

"Our Growing Addiction to “Cognitive Ecstasy” Drives Technology’s Progress…And That’s Okay"

“For many thinkers and inventors, I’d bet hits of pleasure from small doses of daily discovery and the prospect of a large dose later, among other things, drives them through years of intellectual labor, uncertainty, and failure in between epiphanies.

If you buy Johnson’s view, the modern world and its increasingly extensive open human networks may be tailor-made to accelerate such endeavors… “Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Those four rooms are the adjacent possible. But once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point.”… It’s said there’s an ancient curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” That’s half right. As anxiety-provoking and uncertain as interesting times are—for our creative brains, they’re also fuel for novelty and invention.”

http://singularityhub.com/2014/09/21/our-growing-addiction-to-cognitive-ecstasy-drives-technologys-progress-and-thats-okay/

So, a part of me just slightly hates everyone who wrote this article or things described in this article (like, just look at that guy who is in the video, imagine how annoying it must be to try to tell him that he’s wrong about something) (like, he is exactly every swagger-full-of-science guy I grew up with who really wasn’t going to get that their sense of confidence mostly came from gender and race privilege and not innate merit).

But I like the ideas.

“Discriminative and Affective Touch: Sensing and Feeling”

“It has long been recognized that touch plays an important role in many forms of social communication and a number of theories have been proposed to explain observations and beliefs about the “power of touch.” Here, we propose that a class of low-threshold mechanosensitive C fibers that innervate the hairy skin represent the neurobiological substrate for the affective and rewarding properties of touch….In a wider perspective, the [C-tactile afferents (CTs)] may be regarded as an afferent system that is basically concerned with the representation of self, rather than external events, as conjectured by Craig (2002). The role of CTs as an afferent branch of a system guarding the well-being of the body would be to signal the reward and reassurance afforded by physical closeness of a caregiver, partner, etc. Many questions, however, still need to be addressed, and answered, with regard to the role of CTs, such as the absence of CT nerves in glabrous skin. Their precise anatomical location in human hairy skin is also unknown, and we do not know anything about their receptor neurobiology. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies (PET and fMRI) are addressing these issues, and there is increasing evidence for a different central neural representation to stroking hairy as opposed to glabrous skin in neurotypical and nonneurotypical populations in limbic brain structures rather than primary somatosensory structure areas (McGlone et al., 2012, Gordon et al., 2013 and Voos et al., 2013). The significant advances made in understanding the C fiber “pain” system have been made possible because of the multidisciplinary efforts of scientists and clinicians from diverse backgrounds—the same will need to be the case for the C fiber “pleasure” system.”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314003870

Basically – in addition to neurons in the skin that send information to the brain about the temperature and texture of what is being touched, there are neurons that send information about the positive emotional value of the touch. Which is lovely, and a reminder that physical and psychological/mental systems are deeply intertwined in the brain.

Press about it – “Further research on CTs may help investigators develop therapies for autistic patients and individuals who lacked adequate nurturing touch as children. Also, a better understanding of how nerves that relay rewarding sensations interact with those that signal pain could provide insights into new treatments for certain types of pain.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140521133512.htm

Related: "9 surprising facts about the sense of touch"

"New study shows some benefits to telecommuting"

“Published in the recent edition of the Journal of Personnel Psychology, the study looked at 323 employees and 143 supervisors across a variety of organizations. The research team found that so-called “corporate citizenship,” where employees make extra effort to improve life at the office, improves with telecommuting. “Apart from doing your job well, citizenship behavior is, ‘Are you helpful to others? Are you a dedicated member of the organization? Are you committed?'” said Gajendran.

The team also found that telecommuting had little or no impact on employee productivity. Although, interestingly, it did find one use case where telecommuting actually improved performance: instances where there was conflict between boss and employee… Perhaps some type of hybrid solution would be most effective, where employees get to work at home a few days a week but still get some face-to-face time with coworkers. The average American spends 38 hours a year stuck in traffic commuting, so cutting that in half, without hurting productivity, would be a win for everyone.”

http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/20/new-study-shows-some-benefits-to-telecommuting/

"Study Of More Than 3,500 Human Brains Reveals The Cause Of Alzheimer's Disease"

"After investigating 3,618 brains, they found that amyloid accumulation was strongly linked with a decline in cognition; however, if the extent of tau aggregation was also taken into consideration, the relationship disappeared. Furthermore, the level of tau accumulation, but not amyloid, predicted age at onset of cognitive decline, disease duration and final score on a test of mental function. According to the researchers, this indicates that tau is the main driver of Alzheimer’s."
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/study-suggests-tau-not-amyloid-major-driver-alzheimers

This is actually a big deal. Maybe I have missed something in the past few years, but the last time I discussed Alzheimer's, the tau hypothesis and the amyloid hypothesis were being debated. TBH, this has been going on for like decades now so I found it kinda boring, but if we can focus on one thing... 

“Atlanta Police Shooting Victim Tried to Live a Life That Mattered”

“A state investigation of the shooting is underway. But according to friends and family, Mr. Hill had been told by doctors that he had bipolar disorder after returning from Afghanistan. They believe that his bizarre antics before the shooting — in which he removed his clothes and repeatedly jumped from a second-floor balcony — were symptoms of his illness.

In Moncks Corner, the grief and anger commingled with incredulity. Mr. Hill was the last man anyone would ever have expected to tangle with the police, they said. And he deserved better.

“To come home from Afghanistan and be killed by someone who’s supposed to protect you – that I don’t understand,” said James A. Hill, 29, Mr. Hill’s brother.

“Why would you go directly to deadly force for someone who clearly does not have a weapon?” said his father, who is also named Anthony Hill.

“I don’t hate him,” said Mr. Hill’s mother, Carolyn Giummo, referring to Officer Olsen, who has been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “I’m very disappointed in him.””

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/us/atlanta-police-shooting-victim-tried-to-live-a-life-that-mattered.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

It’s weird to think about how many stories are being told now that were just ignored before. Or not ignored- disconnected, lacking a mainstream narrative that it could be clipped to so that it could be told. In addition to race, there is a lot here about mental healthcare and the deadly prejudice that surrounds mental illness.