"The Year in Overrated Pop Culture"

"This is not to say that I never find myself on the side of critical consensus—I do more often than not, probably. My favorite movies of the year—The Handmaiden, The Love Witch, Elle, Moonlight, Embrace of the Serpent, Cemetery of Splendor—were all acclaimed to various degrees. But there’s something particularly frustrating about being on the other side, of being indifferent or worse regarding that thing everyone says they love. It can make you feel alienated from humanity, like you’re from some other planet and have not been gifted with the gene that allowed everyone else to experience the pleasure at hand. It can make you very suspicious and cynical of anything that looks like groupthink.

See, the reason I’m suspicious of this way of thinking is that I’m susceptible to it, too. I like to think that when I enjoy pop culture that’s critically acclaimed, I do so organically. But I know that when I see something that doesn’t wow me after hearing how amazing it was—Manchester by the Sea is a perfect example—an extra layer of disdain accompanies my critical assessment. It’s a multivalent frustration—at the movie, at the crowd, at myself—like being in a room where everyone is laughing and not getting the joke."

http://themuse.jezebel.com/the-year-in-overrated-pop-culture-1790260055?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

I just loved these two paragraphs.

"The Agency"

"The Columbian Chemicals hoax was not some simple prank by a bored sadist. It was a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely chosen to generate maximum attention. The perpetrators didn’t just doctor screenshots from CNN; they also created fully functional clones of the websites of Louisiana TV stations and newspapers. The YouTube video of the man watching TV had been tailor-made for the project. A Wikipedia page was even created for the Columbian Chemicals disaster, which cited the fake YouTube video. As the virtual assault unfolded, it was complemented by text messages to actual residents in St. Mary Parish. It must have taken a team of programmers and content producers to pull off...

ho was behind all of this? When I stumbled on it last fall, I had an idea. I was already investigating a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the Internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency. The agency had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.”...

As Savchuk and other former employees describe it, the Internet Research Agency had industrialized the art of trolling. Management was obsessed with statistics — page views, number of posts, a blog’s place on LiveJournal’s traffic charts — and team leaders compelled hard work through a system of bonuses and fines. “It was a very strong corporate feeling,” Savchuk says. Her schedule gave her two 12-hour days in a row, followed by two days off. Over those two shifts she had to meet a quota of five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and 150 to 200 comments on other workers’ posts...

The boom in pro-Kremlin trolling can be traced to the antigovernment protests of 2011, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets after evidence of fraud in the recent Parliamentary election emerged. The protests were organized largely over Facebook and Twitter and spearheaded by leaders, like the anticorruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who used LiveJournal blogs to mobilize support. The following year, when Vyascheslav Volodin, the new deputy head of Putin’s administration and architect of his domestic policy, came into office, one of his main tasks was to rein in the Internet. Volodin, a lawyer who studied engineering in college, approached the problem as if it were a design flaw in a heating system. Forbes Russia reported that Volodin installed in his office a custom-designed computer terminal loaded with a system called Prism, which monitored public sentiment online using 60 million sources. According to the website of its manufacturer, Prism “actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremism.” Or, as Forbes put it, “Prism sees social media as a battlefield.”...

“You have to remember the Internet population of Russia is just over 50 percent. The rest are yet to join, and when they join it’s very important what is their first impression.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html

So, obviously, we have to take anything published in the US about Russia with a little grain of salt. It's when I read things like this that I appreciate how free our press is, but America still had decades of anti-Russia propaganda that kinda continue to dominate our narratives.

But - this makes me think a lot about social engineering and the relevance of making spaces seem unsafe, and the way that these coordinated trolling attacks are meant to also change our sense of safety in our physical spaces. It's making me think about how much of the news about the world around me is filtered through the internet these days, and how much I miss college when there was a closer pairing of internet knowledge and conversation with 

"Protein linked to Parkinson’s travels from gut to brain"

"The idea that alpha-synuclein can spread from the gut to the brain is very new, says Alice Chen-Plotkin, a clinician and Parkinson’s researcher at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. These new results and others have prompted scientists to start looking outside of the brain for the beginning stages of the disease, she says. “Increasingly, people are wondering if it starts earlier.” 

Some evidence suggests that the gut is a good place to look. People with Parkinson’s disease often suffer from gut problems such as constipation. And in 2015, scientists reported that a group of Danish people who had their vagus nerves severed were less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. Cut alpha-synuclein’s transit route from the gut to the brain, and the disease is less likely to take hold, that study hints."

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/protein-linked-parkinsons-travels-gut-brain

"At-risk students improve when they take a race and ethnicity class – study"

"The Stanford University study analyzed a pilot program of ethnic studies classes at three San Francisco high schools and found that, on average, at-risk ninth-graders encouraged to enroll in the course performed significantly better than their peers who didn’t...

Researchers concluded that the results of the study show that “culturally relevant” teaching is an important part of the education of students at risk of flunking or dropping out.

“Slight little nudges that help people reframe their experiences can have a big effect,” Dee said.

Other cities that have instituted ethnic studies offerings in school districts include Oakland and Los Angeles.

In Portland, Oregon, students recently lobbied for the class to be offered on a wide basis in public high schools.

But the non-traditional curriculums have been challenged by some conservatives in places like Arizona, where state legislators passed legislation banning ethnic studies from schools in 2010."

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/14/stanford-study-at-risk-students-race-ethnicity-class-performance

I mean, we DO get ethnic studies in the "traditional" curriculum, we learn about all the different kinds of white people. We learn ancient European history, we learn how various European ethnic groups arrived in America, we learn about their struggles and we learn about the influences of those ethnic groups.

The rest of us just get used to being invisible/not really existing, and literally only learning about ourselves through the interactions our groups had with white people. We learn our double consciousness.

"Cuomo: Subway Therapy Post-It Notes Will Be Preserved"

"The project was created by the artist Matthew Levee Chavez when he brought sticky notes and pens to subway stations in the days following the Presidential election and encouraged New Yorkers to share their feelings. People around the world have since contributed. Working with Chavez, the New-York Historical Society will archive the sticky notes - an emblem of emotion and humanity in the month following the election - so they can be carefully preserved as their removal begins this morning. 

The New-York Historical Society will preserve a large selection of notes as part of its History Responds Program. Beginning Tuesday through Inauguration Day on January 20, 2017, members of the public can continue to participate in the project by placing sticky notes on the glass wall inside New-York Historical's front entrance on Central Park West at 77th Street."

http://gothamist.com/2016/12/16/cuomo_the_hoarder.php#photo-1

"“Big Pharma” & Privilege: Or Why I Wish Allies Would Stop Using This Phrase"

"Let me take a big deep breath here as I calmly say this: I am sick of being nice about this shit, and I’m horrified that those fighting in the social justice realm are constantly ignoring what disabled people are telling them about their experiences...

Those of us with disabilities who are on medication regularly depend on “Big Pharma” to stay alive. The reason I wish people would just stop throwing the phrase around is that they are only looking into a fraction of what’s wrong with the medical system when they talk about it. And even if they’re not about to spout off some unsolicited advice or some shame to any disabled person happening upon them, they are in a minority of those who don’t use the phrase to shame people for doing what it takes to survive...

I have been at this so long and have heard it’s all in my head so many times from friends, strangers, doctors, and loved ones that, despite having a ridiculously long list of diagnosis and more specialists than I care to admit to, I still sometimes genuinely worry that I’m a hypochondriac. Or worse, maybe I’m suffering from what used to be called Munchhausen’s… Maybe I just want attention. The worst part of this phenomena? I’m not the only chronically ill person who struggles with this."
http://camillalaurentine.com/2015/04/22/big-pharma-privilege-or-why-i-wish-allies-would-stop-using-this-phrase/

I think this is a little bit the same moral-of-naturalness that lead to distrust in GMOs. But more than that, I think it's a weird American idea of individualism that says that we should all be prepared, at any moment, to make a solo trip through a prairie state like John Wayne. We should be able to provide for all our needs by ourselves, reliant on no one.

I want to live in a world where we expect to trust, rely on, and nourish each other to become more than waht we are alone. Where we respect and value needs, instead of seeing a need that we don't share as a *word florrid, unecessary, gold-digger* want.

"Women start out as ambitious as men but it erodes over time, says researcher"

"“But while men’s ambition increases over time, women’s decreases. My research suggests that this drop is not associated with wanting to have kids, or to stay home and look after them. It’s related to not having support, mentors or role models to make it to the top, and the subtle biases against women that lead to their choices.”

Ryan said she considered mentors to women as being senior people in the workplace who actively sponsored, endorsed and promoted them, while role models were people in leadership positions women looked up to, but who they did not necessarily know personally.

Without both kinds of support, it was an uphill battle for women seeking promotion, Ryan said.

“We often put the ownership on women, telling them to lean in and speak up, but if the workplace culture isn’t supportive or appreciative it’s an uphill battle,” Ryan said.

“You can only try this for so long, and it’s these sorts of women who try but aren’t supported who often, over time, become less ambitious, or who leave and start their own businesses, because they get tired of the fight within the organisation.”...

“It’s great to say women are agentic beings, but to say it’s all a free choice not constrained by context and certain conditions placed on them is not always correct.”"

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/19/women-start-out-as-ambitious-as-men-but-it-erodes-over-time-says-researcher?CMP=share_btn_tw

! This last point. I'm realizing how much I can't take advice from some people, because no matter how much they might think they do, most people don't have a full view of the constrictions in my world. And I'm so jealous of people who can make choices with more freedom, who can really behave independently of context.