13 Posts found for source_month: April

For decades, American politics have relied on the same logic that polygraph machines do: that liars will feel some level of shame when they tell their lies, and that the shame will manifest—the quickened heartbeat, the pang of guilt—in the body. But the body politic is cheating the test with alarming ease. Some Americans believe the lies. Others refuse to. Some Americans recognize the lies’ … [ Read more ]

Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Fact-checking was a theme of Donald Trump’s first presidency. Journalists kept count of those first-term fictions—30,573 in all, per one count—guided by the optimism that checking the president’s words might also serve as a check on his power. In late 2020, when Trump claimed victory in the presidential election he had lost, scholars saw in his declaration the kind of propaganda … [ Read more ]

Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Concepts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Truth | Right | Wrong

A self-schema is the information and beliefs you hold about yourself. This cognitive framework influences how you feel, how you react, your actual behavior, and your perception of your place in the world.

How your self-schema influences your actions can be nuanced: For example, you may have internalized that you’re not athletic during childhood — and then, later in life, limit yourself when you want to … [ Read more ]

Author: Sarah Sloat | Source: Inverse (April 22, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

As the Republican Party evolves from a party focused on individual liberty and limits on government power to a party that more fully embraces government control of the economy and morality, it is reversing many of its previous stances on free speech in public universities, in public education, and in private corporations. Driven by a combination of partisan animosity and public fear, it is embracing … [ Read more ]

Author: David French | Source: The Atlantic (April 11, 2022) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Freedom | Liberty, Politics & Public Policy

Human beings are creatures of mimicry. We are evolutionarily supercharged to do one thing better than anyone else: learn by watching and copying others. And the most important thing we learn is how to want. 

As we grow up and live our lives, we watch others and learn what it is we ought to want. Aside from the basics, like food, water, shelter and sex, our … [ Read more ]

Author: Alex Danco | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Matt Miller is right that “localist” arrangements in education deliver maximum power to teachers’ unions (“First, Kill All the School Boards,” January/February 2008 Atlantic), which can draw on national resources and political connections, stultifying attempts at real improvement. But in a national system, the fashionable, counterevidential theo­ries of the technocratic elite remain beyond correction since, being national, they have been removed from competition.

So try … [ Read more ]

Author: M. T. Pearse | Source: The Atlantic (April2008) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

When looking at artificial intelligence from the perspective of economics, we ask the same, single question that we ask with any technology: What does it reduce the cost of? Economists are good at taking the fun and wizardry out of technology and leaving us with this dry but illuminating question. The answer reveals why AI is so important relative to many other exciting technologies. AI … [ Read more ]

Author: Ajay Agrawal | Source: McKinsey Quarterly (April2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Information, IT | Technology

The threads of friendship knows no end.
I came for knowledge, I found instead soul friends.
In my life’s unexpected crossroads, our roads converged
And in converging, I was forever changed.
And though we must part
For different dreams view different ends,
I will always cherish and retell the tale
When strangers met, and yet…
Their hearts listened.
And like children, their bond endured,
long past their march of parting.

Our roads may not converge again,
But … [ Read more ]

Author: Emmanuel Matuco | Source: Harvard Business Review (HBR) (April2009) | Subjects: Family & Friends, Inspiration, Poetry

What would a sustainable, universally beneficial economy look like? “Like a doughnut,” says Oxford economist Kate Raworth. In an eye-opening talk, she explains how we can move countries out of the hole—where people are falling short on life’s essentials—and create regenerative, distributive economies that work within the planet’s ecological limits.

Author: Kate Raworth | Source: TED (April2018) | Subjects: Audio, Economics | Economy, Environment | Sustainability, Politics & Public Policy

Doctors Haidt and Graham […] argue that there is great debate over the nature of right and wrong, but that the debate is over the meaning of five moral foundations rather than over what morality is — most of the time. Those five foundations are:

1. Harm/care: This foundation is based on our neurological tendencies to attachment, compassion, and our feelings towards those who cause harm.

… [ Read more ]

Author: Scotty Hendricks | Source: Big Think (April 1, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Excerpts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Values

Why do we get allergies? No one has a firm answer, but what is arguably the leading theory suggests that allergies are a misfiring of a defence against parasitic worms. In the industrialised world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process.

[Ruslan] Medzhitov thinks that’s wrong. Allergies are not simply a biological … [ Read more ]

Author: Carl Zimmer | Source: Mosaic (April 6, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine

The person who is wrong on purpose is afraid of the vulnerability of trying at a task that may fail. In particular, afraid of the process of learning. The “indefinite approximation” Sartre mentions is the process of double-checking, doubting, asking questions, second-guessing, saying “oops”, moderating or complicating one’s views, all the millions of mental motions involved in trying to understand things accurately. The person who … [ Read more ]

Source: Otium (April 24, 2018) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Will General Stanley McChrystal be our deus ex machina in Afghanistan? Or just the latest commander to succumb to the impersonal forces of history and geography?

Author: Robert D. Kaplan | Source: The Atlantic (April2010) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Foreign Policy, International, Military | War | Peace