Twenty One Blue Jaguars

Why Women Aren’t C.E.O.s, According to Women Who Almost Were

2017-07-23T01:34:00.000-04:00

"It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s about loneliness, competition and deeply rooted barriers."

Read more in the NYT.

The Smartphone Psychiatrist

2017-06-19T21:11:00.002-04:00

Frustrated by the failures in his field, Tom Insel, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is now trying to reduce the world’s anguish through the devices in people’s pockets.

Read more in the Atlantic.

Thanks +Rohan Kshirsagar

“Because I Moved 5 Shirts”… Portrait Of An Unexpected Twitter Storm

2017-06-18T15:08:00.001-04:00

Read Katie's reflection on the viral post.

Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests?

2017-06-04T11:53:00.001-04:00

"Unmarried teenagers would jump off bridges, and other crazy reasons at-home kits weren’t approved until the late 1970s." Read more in the NYT.

HT +Ginny Fahs

Earning Less Than Their Wives Makes U.S. Men More Partisan

2017-04-17T13:48:00.002-04:00

A few insights on why gender stereotypes suck for everyone involved:

Masculinity, in essence, is something that men earn, rather than something they naturally have, and it therefore exists in a permanently tenuous state. The man card can be revoked at any time. That means that men have to find some way to reinforce their gender role in response to anything that might be seen to threaten it. Loss of income relative to a spouse seems like an especially potent threat to masculinity: earning less than their wives has been linked to men needing erectile dysfunction medication, as well as an increased likelihood of sexual infidelity.

And this Democrat vs. Republican insight was worth evaluating:

I found that Republican men who contributed less to their household income than they did two years prior became significantly less supportive of abortion rights, and the more income that they lost relative to their spouses, the more their support for abortion dropped.

... Among Democratic men, losing income relative to their spouse led them to be, on average, about 0.5 points more supportive of abortion rights, while men who gained income relative to their spouses actually became less supportive. When faced with gender role threat, liberal men come to hold more liberal views on abortion, while conservative men come to hold more conservative views.

The Post-Human World

2017-04-08T00:21:00.002-04:00

"A conversation about the end of work, individualism, and the human species with the historian Yuval Harari." An except:

I like to begin with the simple things. Look at GPS applications, like Waze and Google Maps. Five years ago, you went somewhere in your car or on foot. You navigated based on your own knowledge and intuition. But today everybody is blindly following what Waze is telling them. They’ve lost the basic ability to navigate by themselves. If something happens to the application, they are completely lost.

That’s not the most important example. But it is the direction we’re talking about. You reach a juncture on the road, and you trust the algorithm. Maybe the junction is your career. Maybe it’s the decision to get married. But you trust the algorithm rather than your own intuition.

The most important invention that’s spreading now is biometric sensors. They may become ubiquitous. Humans will consult their biometric data to determine how to live. That is really interesting and scary stuff, because we will no longer be in charge of our identity. We will outsource our executive decisions to biometric readings of our neurochemical signals to decide how to live.

Read more in the Atlantic.

Thanks, Kathy Wang

Equal Pay for Men and Women? Iceland Wants Employers to Prove It

2017-03-30T09:28:00.002-04:00

Read more in the NYT.

Thanks, +Claire Packer

A Disobedient Woman

2017-03-26T13:24:00.004-04:00

Read the Nicaraguan reflection in the NYT.

Thanks +Claire Packer

The path to market for digital tools for mental health and neurological conditions

2017-03-25T16:40:00.002-04:00

What will digital clinical trials look like? Prescription "video games" and Digital therapeutics. It's all starting to happen. Read more in MobiHealthNews.

Thanks, Rohan

Kernel is trying to hack the human brain — but neuroscience has a long way to go

2017-02-25T16:50:00.002-05:00

How Do Connectomes Contribute to Human Cognition?

2017-01-05T01:10:00.003-05:00

Find out the answer in Scientific American.

I Used to Be a Human Being

2017-01-03T20:44:00.005-05:00

"An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It might break you, too."

Read Andrew Sullivan's piece in the New Yorker. Thanks, +Adam Behrens

In 2017, Pursue Meaning Instead of Happiness

2017-01-02T14:34:00.000-05:00

The Coming Pressure on Professional Women

2017-01-01T21:23:00.003-05:00

How to Become a ‘Superager’

2017-01-01T12:54:00.004-05:00

An excerpt:

The road to superaging is difficult, though, because these brain regions have another intriguing property: When they increase in activity, you tend to feel pretty bad — tired, stymied, frustrated. Think about the last time you grappled with a math problem or pushed yourself to your physical limits. Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment. The Marine Corps has a motto that embodies this principle: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” That is, the discomfort of exertion means you’re building muscle and discipline. Superagers are like Marines: They excel at pushing past the temporary unpleasantness of intense effort. Studies suggest that the result is a more youthful brain that helps maintain a sharper memory and a greater ability to pay attention.

This means that pleasant puzzles like Sudoku are not enough to provide the benefits of superaging. Neither are the popular diversions of various “brain game” websites. You must expend enough effort that you feel some “yuck.” Do it till it hurts, and then a bit more.

Where Does Trump Get His News?

2016-12-04T13:04:00.004-05:00

BuzzFeed News analyzed all the links Donald Trump tweeted since he launched his presidential campaign to determine where the president-elect gets his news.

Trump Twitter Archive

2016-12-04T12:56:00.003-05:00

Via the Twitter API and developer Brendan Brown, who has archived Trump’s tweets beyond what is accessible via the API (a stream of data that includes information like tweet text, time, and date) -- here is Trump's Twitter Archive. Worth skimming to see what our President-Elect cares about.

Increase in hate incidents since the US election

2016-11-26T22:28:00.003-05:00

US hate incidents appear to be on the rise, with a surge just after the election. Southern Poverty Law Center listed more than 700 acts in week after November 8. Read more in FT.

Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg Study Finds Racial Discrimination by Uber and Lyft Drivers

2016-11-13T09:48:00.003-05:00

A study of Uber and Lyft by university researchers found signs of racial and gender discrimination by drivers: Longer wait times for black customers, more canceled rides for users with "black-sounding names" and longer-than-necessary routes for women passengers. Read more in Re/Code.

Google's Jeremy Wertheimer on why a bit of naiveté can be good for entrepreneurs

2016-11-07T23:48:00.000-05:00

Favorite excerpt:

Why entrepreneurs shouldn't over-think things. "If you're looking at (starting a company) rationally, you probably would decide it's not so smart ... We had a lot of self-confidence … we went at it. And once you go at it, then you're committed, and it's too late. So as you keep learning how complex it is, that's alright, because you're ready and you're committed, and your pride is involved. And you have no other options any more, and you're just going at it."

Trump’s overt sexism obscures a more dangerous bias

2016-11-07T11:47:00.003-05:00

A return to the past should not blind us to present problems. Check out Anne-Marie Slaughter's post in FT.

Thanks, +Claire Packer

TED Talk // Zeynep Tufekci: Machine intelligence makes human morals more important

2016-11-05T21:14:00.002-04:00

TED Talk // Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win

2016-11-05T21:05:00.002-04:00

How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Diagnose Mental Disorders

2016-10-23T23:52:00.003-04:00

"Machine learning could train software to spot verbal tics associated with schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder."

Read more in the Atlantic.

What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?

2016-10-23T23:31:00.001-04:00

Read more about Ellen Langer's work in the New York Times.