Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Parkland chief: Past epidemics reveal why we must take serious action now – The Dallas Morning News

On Sept, 27, 1918, there were 15 cases of influenza reported in Dallas. The Dallas Health Officer, A.W. Carnes, underestimated the coming pandemic and allowed the Liberty Loan parade to proceed the following day. Thousands flocked to the streets in downtown Dallas. Eleven days later Dallas had over 1,000 cases of influenza. Three days after that the count was 2,719.

The subsequent responses to the 1918 flu pandemic will sound eerily familiar today. A tent was erected at St. Pauls Hospital to handle the overflow of cases. Baby Camp, a childrens hospital, restricted all visitors. Parkland turned a chronic disease ward into an isolation ward for influenza patients and recovering patients were moved to hallway beds to make room for newer admissions. On Oct. 10 theaters, playhouses and other entertainment venues closed. Two days later, Mayor Joseph Lawther closed schools and banned public gatherings including church services.

With cases skyrocketing the mayor acted reluctantly stating, I am taking this action not because the situation in our city is alarming but as a measure of safety and precaution and because it seems to be the desire of our citizenship.

Across the country leaders unwilling to acknowledge the reality at hand and reluctant to take action contributed to public mistrust. In Philadelphia, one of the cities hardest hit, Director of Public Health Dr. Wilmer Krusen was slow to respond. Described as someone who thought most problems disappeared on their own, Krusen lost the publics trust and that mistrust led to panic and selfish behaviors. When the Bureau of Child Hygiene begged neighbors to take in children whose parents had died, the response was silence. Pleas for volunteers to feed dying patients and for nurses to deliver medical care were ignored.

From a medical perspective, surprisingly little has changed in a century. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are still our first line of defense against the spread of COVID-19. Isolating known cases, quarantining family contacts, limiting social interactions, and closing schools are the tools we have available to us. These actions are similar to 1918 but our understanding is better. Unlike 1918, local authorities today are proactively proposing these personal and economic sacrifices in order to suppress the spread of COVID-19.

These interventions are designed to delay peak transmission to give the health system time to prepare; blunt the peak so the health system is not overwhelmed; and buy time for researchers to develop a vaccine.

The NPIs are tough medicine but a true anticipation of the threat before us. Honest communication and thoughtful actions build public trust that is critical as we call on each other to act as a community in service of each other.

In his epic story The Great Influenza, John Barry quoted Albert Camus: Whats true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves. Barry went on however to warn, evil and crises do not make all men rise above themselves. Crises only make them discover themselves. And some discover a less inspiring humanity.

Stories of plague and flu pandemics often tell the stories of heroes who risked their lives to save their fellow humans. That history is also replete with acts of selfishness and abandonment. Often in retrospect we are not proud of the human behavior in these crises.

In the past two weeks I have heard the stories from across the country of stolen personal protective equipment (PPE) and workers who refuse to care for potentially infected individuals. But I have witnessed many more instances of health care colleagues understanding their risks, taking appropriate precautions and raising their hands to care for infected individuals. These caregivers are ministering with skill and compassion to the sick in full exemplar of their callings to serve. We are writing the story of our response by our actions today.

Be generous interpreting the decisions of leaders. Public health officials were criticized for an aggressive vaccination campaign in anticipation of the swine flu pandemic that never materialized in 1976. We can hope for something similar.

Inform yourself. The virus has mild clinical manifestations in 80% of those infected. Those infected with minimal symptoms, however, can spread the virus to the elderly and those with chronic illnesses who have a greater chance of severe, life-threatening disease. With proper precautions (including sufficient PPE, which is needed in greater supply) our health care professionals can remain protected so they can continue to provide compassionate care to those infected.

Finally, stay connected. We will likely be dealing with this for several months. Reach out to someone socially isolated and fearful. Pay attention to the poor and the marginalized who have historically been disproportionately affected by crises like this one. Unlike 1918, you can text, email, phone or FaceTime. Staying connected is important for each individuals and for societys mental health.

Dr. Fred Cerise is CEO and president of Parkland Health & Hospital System.

See more here:
Parkland chief: Past epidemics reveal why we must take serious action now - The Dallas Morning News

Human Behavior

Last Nights on Londons Stages, Before the Lights Went Out – The New York Times

LONDON Nol Coward wrote Blithe Spirit in a mere six days, and the perennially popular play opened on the West End in 1941, running for nearly 2,000 performances setting a record in London for a nonmusical.

Its longevity back then is in stark contrast with the most recent outing of the play here, with Jennifer Saunders, of Absolutely Fabulous fame, playing the bicycle-riding medium Madame Arcati, who communicates with the dead. A victim of circumstances beyond the control of even the most supernaturally minded, the director Richard Eyres comparatively somber revival played its last performance at the Duke of Yorks Theater on March 14; the run had been due to finish on April 11.

The production closed early after Londons West End theaters took coordinated action on Monday to close themselves down and help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Londons West End, like Broadway, has gone dark, and no one knows when the lights will come back on.

As premature closings go, the timing here was somewhat ironic, when you consider how audiences throughout World War II flocked to Blithe Spirit, Cowards inquiry into the frustrations, erotic and otherwise, of Charles (Geoffrey Streatfeild), a novelist whose first wife returns from the grave. (She died, were told, while recovering from pneumonia, which may well have had an eerie resonance for nervous playgoers today.)

When she rises up, the mischievous Elvira (Emma Naomi) scatters calculated chaos in her wake. Its giving nothing away to tell you that she ends up taking Charless second wife, the whiplash-tongued Ruth (Lisa Dillon, giving the performance of the night), over to the other side with her, though neither woman will go quietly from the land of the living.

This was easily the least buoyant Blithe Spirit Ive seen, which was presumably intentional on the part of Eyre, the distinguished director who once ran the National Theater. The trend of late has been to find in Cowards outwardly breezy plays something more psychologically acute, as was the case when Andrew Scott, of Fleabag fame, stormed the Old Vic last summer in Present Laughter. Against expectation, a character long presented as a devil-may-care narcissist was revealed to be an anxious man-child, as well. Both revivals remind us that Coward possessed a keen understanding of human behavior, in addition to a quick wit.

In this Blithe Spirit, Charles and Ruths marriage seems far from blissful well before Elvira arrives on the scene, and Eyre takes the verbal brickbats they lob at each other for real. This, like Present Laughter, is a Coward play centered around a man who draws women to him when he would rather be left alone: Both plays end with their flustered heroes fleeing female companionship, but for what precisely? Coward leaves the sequels up for grabs.

The fate of this show, however, is sealed though no one could have guessed how quickly it would flit from view. Think of the cast as the casualties of an invisible terror. It was one that Saunders, top-billed albeit in a supporting role that Judi Dench is playing in a forthcoming film, acknowledged when Madame Arcati a germaphobe before her time reacted in spontaneous disgust at shaking another characters hand. I doubt those who laughed at that gesture last week would do so now.

Across London last week, a city in gathering distress was met with theater that chimed with the prevailing mood. Before the shutdown, I caught what turned out to be the final matinee of Shoe Lady, an arrestingly quirky play from E.V. Crowe at the Royal Court Theater, best described as a surrealist nightmare in the style of Caryl Churchill.

Its like were all on the edge, says Viv, a realtor whose life goes into free-fall when she loses a shoe on the London Underground. Buck up, she says, all the while succumbing to a growing sense of anxiety, brilliantly captured by Katherine Parkinson, accentuating her characters panic the more determinedly she keeps smiling. Running just over an hour, Vicky Featherstones production cant have anticipated how much the play, which might otherwise have seemed a theatrical caprice, felt instead like a parable of precariousness in a society that, much like Viv, seems to be losing its grip.

The connection between life and art was even more keenly felt on Monday at the Southwark Playhouse, in southeast London, one of the few theaters to offer a show on the evening when the bigger houses around town were calling it quits.

There, I was among a surprisingly full house to catch the last performance of the director Jonathan OBoyles hyper-intense revival of The Last Five Years, the Jason Robert Brown musical about a couple falling apart. (Think of it as the Marriage Story of the early 2000s.) The conceit of a show that alternates perspectives across 90 minutes is that one character, Jamie (the excellent Oli Higginson), tells his version of events from the beginning, whereas his ex, Cathy (Molly Lynch), begins her version of events at the end.

But there was no doubt for those in the room that we were all witnessing a finish of a different sort, given that it is entirely unclear when any of us will find ourselves in a London playhouse again. The audience that night had seemed especially focused, as if everyone present was savoring for keeps the experience of live performance.

Taking an empty Underground train home, I couldnt help but feel that Jamie and Cathys unraveling had acquired a resonance well beyond what the composer-lyricist Brown could have imagined. I wont soon forget the surge of feeling throughout the auditorium when the show got to its closing sequence, and ended on a single word: Goodbye.

Continue reading here:
Last Nights on Londons Stages, Before the Lights Went Out - The New York Times

Human Behavior

UMMC experts give tips on dealing with anxiety and stress during coronavirus outbreak – WLBT

Dr. Daniel Williams, Division Chief in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Associate Director in the Office of Well-Being says quote..."I dont have control over whether there will be toilet paper in the store. All I can do is make reasonable attempts to get it, and if worst comes to worst, come up with a plan B. He adds. when people dont have things, they get very creative. No matter what is upsetting you, your feelings are normal and nothing to be ashamed of.

Read the rest here:
UMMC experts give tips on dealing with anxiety and stress during coronavirus outbreak - WLBT

Human Behavior

Surveillance Capitalism: Bigger Brother | by Tim Wu – The New York Review of Books

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

by Shoshana Zuboff

PublicAffairs, 691 pp., $38.00

In the 1970s, when Shoshana Zuboff was a graduate student in Harvards psychology department, she met the behavioral psychologist B.F.Skinner. Skinner, who had perhaps the largest forehead youll ever see on an adult, is best remembered for putting pigeons in boxes (so-called Skinner boxes) and inducing them to peck at buttons for rewards. Less well remembered is the fact that he constructed a larger box, with a glass window, for his infant daughter, though this was revealing of his broader ambitions.

Zuboff writes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism that her conversations with Skinner left me with an indelible sense of fascination with a way of construing human life that wasand isfundamentally different from my own. Skinner believed that humans could be conditioned like any other animal, and that behavioral psychology could and should be used to build a technological utopia where citizens were trained from birth to be altruistic and community-oriented. He published a novel, Walden Two (1948), that depicted what just such a society would look likea kind of Brave New World played straight.

It would risk grave understatement to say that Zuboff does not share Skinners enthusiasm for the mass engineering of behavior. Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School since 1981, has made a career of criticizing the lofty ambitions of technoprophets, making her something of a cousin to the mass media critic Neil Postman, author of Technopoly (1992). Her intimate understanding of Skinner gives her an advantage that other technoskeptics lack. For as she posits in her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, we seem to have wandered into a dystopian version of Skinners future, thanks mainly to Google, Facebook, and their peers in the attention economy. Silicon Valley has invented, if not yet perfected, the technology that completes Skinners vision, and so, she believes, the behavioral engineering of humanity is now within reach.

In case youve been living in blissful ignorance, it works like this. As you go through life, phone in hand, Google, Facebook, and other apps on your device are constantly collecting as much information as possible about you, so as to build a profile of who you are and what you like. Google, for its part, keeps a record of all your searches; it reads your e-mail (if you use Gmail) and follows where you go with Maps and Android. Facebook has an unparalleled network of trackers installed around the Web that are constantly figuring out what you are looking at online. Nor is this the end of it: any appliance labeled smart would more truthfully be labeled surveillance-enhanced, like our smart TVs, which detect what we are watching and report back to the mothership. An alien might someday ask how the entire population was bugged. The answer would be that humans gave each other surveillance devices for Christmas, cleverly named Echo and Home.

Most of us are, at bottom, quite predictable. Do you, perhaps, reliably wake up at 7:21 am, take your coffee at 8:30 am, and buy lunch between 12:18pm and 12:32 pm? If youve just had a fight with your spouse, might you be expected, within the next twenty-four hours, to spend money on something self-indulgent? Does reading news about the latest political outrage tend to prompt an hour of furious clicking? And despite flirtations with radical politics in late adolescence, do you always vote for the presidential candidate who is considered a safer choice but has overarchingly progressive values? Basic science suggests that the more that is known about you, the more predictable you become. Once your behavior is known, to the extent that it can be predicted, ityoucan also be manipulated.

How? Skinner demonstrated his theory of behavioral control by so-called operant conditioning in rats. He would place hungry rats in boxes. They came to realize that pressing a lever on one side of the box delivered a snack: after several repetitions, the rat, upon being deposited in the box, learned to head straight for the lever. As for humans, the idea is that if the tech industry knows where you are and what you like, it can use a variety of tricks and techniquesupdates, buttons, listicles, and moreto create the levers we are conditioned to pull (or click) on. All of this induces us to make choices in slightly different ways than we might have otherwise, which is known as behavioral influence.

To most people, the assertion that we are living in Skinner boxes might sound alarming, but The Age of Surveillance Capitalism goes darker still. Skinner, at least, saw himself as a do-gooder who would save humanity from its own delusions. His behavioral engineering was meant to build a happier humanity, one finally at peace with our lack of agency. What is love, Skinner wrote, except another name for the use of positive reinforcement?

Zuboff, in contrast, sees Silicon Valleys project of behavioral observation in the service of behavior control as lacking an interest in human happiness (other than as a means); its goal is profit. Thats why Zuboff calls it surveillance capitalism. If industrial capitalism depended upon the exploitation and control of nature, then surveillance capitalism, she writes, depends instead upon the exploitation and control of human nature. The term refers to the idea, just described, that we spend our days under constant surveillance, motivated by the offer of small rewards and punishmentsradical behavioralism made flesh.

Her book is not without flaws. It is far too long, often overwrought, and employs far too much jargon. Its treatment of Google, which dominates the first half, will strike anyone who has spent time in the industry as too conspiracy-minded, even for those disposed to be critical. Other books, like Bruce Schneiers Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (2015), offer more technically sophisticated coverage of much of the same territory.

But I view all of this as forgivable, because Zuboff has accomplished something important. She has given new depth, urgency, and perspective to the arguments long made by privacy advocates and others concerned about the rise of big tech and its data-collection practices. By providing the crucial link between technological surveillance and power, she makes previous complaints about creepiness or privacy intrusions look quaint.

This is achieved, in part, through her creation of a vocabulary that captures the significance of tech surveillance. Her best coinage is almost certainly the title of the book, but there are others of note, like prediction productsitems that employ user data to anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later and then are traded in behavioral futures markets; or the extraction imperative, which is her phrase for what motivates firms to collect as much behavioral and personal data as possible. The dispossession cycle is the means, for Zuboff, by which this is accomplished. Of the essential amorality of the tech industry, she says, dryly, that friction is the only evil.

Viewed broadly, Zuboff has made two important contributions here. The first is to tell us something about the relationship between capitalism and totalitarian systems of control. The second is to deliver a better and deeper understanding of what, in the future, it will mean to protect human freedom.

It has long been a cornerstone of Western belief that free markets are a bulwark against the rise of tyrannical systemsin particular, against the kind of surveillance and spying on citizens practiced in the Soviet bloc. Capitalism, the theory went, venerated privacy and protected against surveillance through its embrace of property as value. That seemed most obvious in the form of houses with thick walls and individual bedrooms, but also in semi-private spaces, like bars and motels. If private spaces for every individual were once (say, in the sixteenth century) only something the rich had, the spread of wealth to a propertied middle class and the building of homes with separate rooms (the invention of upstairs) is what made it plausible for legal thinkers like Louis Brandeis to speak of the masses enjoying a right to privacy, to be unwatcheda right to be let alone. It is not surprising that we dont begin to see the legal idea of privacy form until the eighteenth century, with the spread of private spaces in which one could conceal oneself from the unwanted gaze, whether it belonged to neighbors or government.

Consider the ways that, by the 1960s, the rise of a propertied middle class had put each man in his castle, each drinker in his saloon, each employee in his own office. Consider the ways in which private physical spaces (like bedrooms), along with semiprivate spaces like motels, bathhouses, and dance clubs, created their own expectations of privacy. (It is very possible that various examples of counterculturethe rejections of Victorian morality, the gay rights movementcame about when private space permitted individuals to do forbidden things unwatched.) The same happened with the first private virtual spaces like personal computers and hard drives. Capitalism, which called all of these things types of value, pressed for more private spaces.

But what were learning is that the symbiosis between capitalism and privacy was maybe just a phase, a four-hundred-year fad. For capitalism is an adaptive creature, a perfect chameleon; it has no disabling convictions but seeks only profit. If privacy pays, great, but if totalizing control pays more, then so be it.

In a capitalist system, the expected level of privacy can actually be captured by one single equation. Is there more money to be made through surveillance or through the building of walls? For a long time, the answer was walls, because walls made up houses and other forms of private property. Meanwhile, if you asked someone about the size of the surveillance industry in, say, 1990, theyd probably have looked at you funny. The conversation would have been about the hiring of private detectives, or the hidden microphones popularized by the Watergate break-in. To speak of surveillance as a source of economic value would have been nothing short of ridiculous.

Today, the balance has shifted. There is still money in building walls, but the surveillance industries must be counted as among the most significant parts of the economy. Surveillance is at the center of the business models of firms like Google and Facebook, and a part of Amazon, Uber, Lyft, and others. Surveillance capitalism is expanding to other industries: Admiral, a British insurance firm, uses Facebook data to help price its products differently to different prospective customers. (It seems that people who write in short, concrete sentences and use lists are safer drivers; excessive use of exclamation points suggests recklessness behind the wheel.) Life insurance firms like John Hancock offer discounts tied to an agreement to monitor the customers Fitbit usage. And these are just examples that happen to fit the journalistic imperative of being easy to describe.

Zuboff is right to argue that something transformational happened in the early twenty-first century in the relationship between capitalism, privacy, and, by extension, human autonomy. What emerged, she thinks, is a new form of power, which she terms instrumentarianism (not her best coinage). This form of power, according to her, does not depend on coercion or terror, as under a dictatorial system, but ownership of the means of behavioral modification. It other words, she thinks that the future belongs to whoever is running the Skinner boxes.

But her description of the emergence of this new form of power is not, as Ive already suggested, the books strong point. Zuboff tells a story of an evil and mysterious Google that makes the awesome discovery of the power of behavioral surplus and hides it from the world while piling up riches, like some kind of Victor Von Doom hiding somewhere south of Palo Alto. Her narrative will please confirmed Google haters, and her distance from the industry does save her from being anything like an apologist for the power of the companies, but it risks caricature.

In Zuboffs account, the purported idealism of Googles founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, always hid darker motives. Their dedication to open platforms, like their dont be evil motto, was just a kind of smoke screen. But in seeing such sinister intent, Zuboff overcredits Google relative to lesser-known figures like Lou Montulli, an engineer who, while at Netscape, invented the browser cookiethe Webs first and most important surveillance tool.

In my view, the history of Google is a bit less Doctor Doomian and more Faustian. Its a tale of a somewhat idealistic and outlandishly ambitious company whose mission became corrupted by good old-fashioned revenue-demanding capitalism. I see its IPO as the turning point: while claiming it wanted to be different, the firm adopted a corporate structure that ultimately had only superficial distinctions from any other Delaware-incorporated company. Its role in the rise of surveillance capitalism is therefore a story of a different set of human failings: a certain blindness to consequence, coupled with a dangerous desire to have it all.

Though we may quibble over the narrative, Zuboff isnt wrong about the result. Googles success with a surveillance-driven advertising model did inspire others, most especially Facebook and Amazon but also the cable industry and share economy firms like Uber, to engage in a race to see who can collect the most information about its users, leading us into what is indeed the age of surveillance capitalism.

All of this leaves one hard question: Just how much does any of this matter? Do Google and Facebook, viewed as agents of behavioral modification, really have a greater influence on us than either traditional advertisers or other sources of influence? The Marlboro Man, who debuted in 1954, was credited with a 3,000 percent increase in sales of a cigarette that had once been marketed as a womans brand (original slogan: Mild as May). And how might we measure the influence of Google against that of an outlet like Fox News, which follows a more traditional propaganda formula? Can platform influence really be compared to the power of earlier forms of propaganda, like the broadcasts that united Germany behind Hitler?

Zuboff, anticipating these objections, warns us not to be blind to new forms of power. (As the twentieth-century French philosopher and Christian anarchist Jacques Ellul pointed out, it is those who think themselves immune to propaganda who are the easiest to manipulate.) But what makes it hard to answer the question is the fact that it is entwined with a different phenomenon: the return, to center stage, of the dark arts of disinformation. No one can deny the present influence of social media (see Donald Trump, election of). Yet much of that power seems to derive from traditional propaganda techniques: false or slanted information, scapegoatism, and, above all, total saturation with repetitive messages.

The tools of surveillance capitalism clearly aid and abet propaganda techniques, but they are not the same thing. To be sure, the microtargeting made possible by data collection has made it easier for the Russian government to reach the right American voters with fake news and divisive information. But Im not certain that this is what Zuboff has in mind when she depicts instrumentarianism as a new form of power.

Where she is right is in asserting that state power and platform surveillance will combine in terrifying ways. In fact, where Zuboff operates at exactly the right pitch of darkness is her discussion of surveillance capitalisms marriage with the state. Here it is not Google or Russia, but the Chinese government that is pointing the way.

For some years, the Chinese state has been trying hard to establish a social credit system () to keep a running tally of each citizens reputation. With the stated goal of increasing public trust, the idea, while only partially implemented at this point, is to create a general sociability score that can be increased by good behavior, such as donating blood or volunteering, and decreased by antisocial behavior, such as failing to sort litter or defaulting on debt. Losing social credit has already led in unpleasant directions for some: it was reported in 2019 that, owing to untrustworthy conduct, 26.82 million Chinese citizens were barred from buying airplane tickets and 5.96 million from traveling on Chinas high-speed rail network. And China goes even further in its coupling of military-style surveillance technologies with big-data analytics to track and control the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, using checkpoints, cameras, and constantly updated files on virtually every citizen of Uighur descent.

It is hard to imagine anything more Skinneresque than the engineering of social trust through rewards and punishments. There might be a fewtrue believers, indeedwho can see in Chinas social credit system a good model for our future. But for the rest of us, the urgent question is: How can we stop it, or something like it, from happening here? What, if anything, can be done to avoid the dystopia we will face when the last remaining gaps are filled in, when our behavior is better modeled and even easier to control?

Reading Zuboff leads to an important answer to this question. The protection of human freedom can no longer be thought of merely as a matter of traditional civil rights, the rights to speech, assembly, and voting that weve usually taken as the bedrocks of a free society. What we most urgently need is something else: protection against widespread behavioral control and advanced propaganda techniques. And that begins with completely rethinking how we control the collection of data.

That will require not a privacy statute, as some might imagine, but a codified antisurveillance regime. We need, in other words, laws that prevent the mass collection of behavioral data. Most people think that privacy laws are in place to do this, but existing privacy laws, including the European privacy law, have done little to actually slow down the collection of data. Instead, they supposedly give us more control over when data is collected and how it is used, which in practice just means pop-up notices and the placing of some limits on how data is used. None of this is bad, but it doesnt actually prevent surveillance. There is a reason that Facebook says it welcomes European-style privacy regulation.

A real antisurveillance law would accomplish something different: it would stop the gratuitous surveillance and the reckless accumulation of personalized data. It would do that by allowing only the collection of data necessary to the task at hand: an app designed to help you mix cocktails would not, for example, be allowed to collect location data. Gratuitous surveillance would be bannedand after collecting data, firms would be forced, by default, to get rid of it, or fully anonymize the rest of it.

What we have learned, what Skinner and secret police alike have realized, is this: to know everything about someone is to create the power to control that person. We may not be there yet, but there is a theoretical pointcall it the Skinnerlaritywhere enough data will be gathered about humanity to predict, with some reasonable reliability, what everyone on earth will do at any moment. That accomplishment would change the very structure of experience. As the legal scholar Jonathan Zittrain has said, it would make life a highly realistic but completely tailored video game where nothing happens by chance.

Thats why we must dare to say what would sound like blasphemy in another age. It may be that a little less knowledge is what will keep us free.

See the article here:
Surveillance Capitalism: Bigger Brother | by Tim Wu - The New York Review of Books

Human Behavior

The Other Columbus: Horror in the time of corona – Columbus Alive

You probably shouldn't get on a horror movie kick in these times. But if you must...

As a connoisseur of the macabre, Im here to tell you that most of you dont watch enough horror movies, and it shows.

With all of the panic-shopping, the rampant spread of misinformation on social media and a run on guns at Vance Outdoors (an uptick in business so steep the shop has had to halt online sales to focus on the panicked people coming in the doors looking for weapons), its wild right now. We are at the make-or-break scene in movies where the social order begins to crumble and people start exposing their true forms. As someone whose diet consists of watching one horror movie per day, I can read the signs. I know which of you will break first, who will open the door in a panic, who will demand we go back for the lost soul.

Horror movies are important lessons in human behavior, which many of you are starting to discover the hard way: No one ever listens to the scientist ("Outbreak"). The government is morally unequipped to save you ("Resident Evil"). The traits of that jerk in your office are magnified in a crisis ("The Belko Experiment"). The rich are better than you and deserve to be saved first ("Snowpiercer"). All of these tropes are playing out on CNN right now.

Heres the thing about horror in the time of corona: You shouldnt try to play catch-up now. Youre not properly inoculated against the fear that comes with watching a movie about a doomsday scenario while living in one, so exposure to the idea of a life-threatening disease ratchets up your anxiety. Watching a horror movie about disease right now is like breaking up with someone and playing nothing but Sade songs nonstop for three weeks. Youd OD on the industrial strength heartache youre mainlining. So while horror movies could have helped you before, now is not the time to take up the hobby.

But lets say youre a sore-tooth poker, that you just have to watch something that speaks to you in this time of gut-churning angst and teeth gnashing. Fine. I offer the 2011 film "Melancholia." The film stars Kirsten Dunst as Justine, whose crippling depression upsets nearly everyone around her at all times, until it is learned that the Earth is on a collision course with a rogue planet that will destroy everything that has ever existed. Suddenly her long-standing angst seems to have prepared her for the inevitable, while everyone around her devolves into puddles of spiraling fear. She finds peace and is able to guide her sister and nephew through the darkest moments of the story. Thats at least a horror film with a lesson in it, is what Im saying.

We are fighting two viruses right now: the physical virus and the accompanying emotional virus. There isnt a vaccine for the first, but the second has some relief: art, music, books, phone conversations, board games, puzzles, movies that have nothing to do with diseases, learning a craft, exercise, finally cleaning out the basement. You know, real self-care level stuff. But not horror movies. Stay away from that stuff for now. There are a ton of better ways to spend your quarantine that wont raise your anxiety levels.

Go here to see the original:
The Other Columbus: Horror in the time of corona - Columbus Alive

Human Behavior

The Value and Ethics of Using Phone Data to Monitor Covid-19 – WIRED

Google and Facebook are considering efforts to analyze the collective movements of millions of users to determine how the deadly novel coronavirus is spreading across the US, and to gauge the effectiveness of calls for social distancing.

The results could be shared with government agencies working to head off what could become an unprecedented public health emergency over the next few weeks. Those with knowledge of the plans say every effort is being made to protect user privacy by anonymizing the data. They say a rough picture of how people are gathering and moving around could prove vital to combating the virus, which threatens to overwhelm US hospitals if the current rate of transmission does not change.

Still, the plan may test peoples attitudes toward privacy and government surveillance, amid growing concerns about the ways in which big tech companies track their users. Some companies already share some aggregate data, but it would be new for Google and Facebook to openly mine user movements on this scale for the government. The data collected would show patterns of user movements. It would need to be cross-referenced with data on testing and diagnoses to show how behavior is affecting the spread of the virus.

As a researcher, I would be interested in analyzing aggregated and anonymized location data related to human behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic crises, says Marguerite Madden, director of the Center for Geospatial Research at the University of Georgia. As a private citizen, I would not be comfortable with private companies turning over my location data to governmental agencies unless I was made fully aware of the use of the data and trusted the data would be used as specified in the data agreement.

Caroline Buckee, an associate professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who has used mobile data to model the spread of contagious diseases overseas, has been involved with the discussions. She says the data may not be especially useful for predicting the spread of the novel coronavirus because its not clear how the virus spreads or how many are infected, and because the situation is evolving rapidly. But she says it may be invaluable for determining whether people are following guidelines for staying away from crowds and large gatherings. And she says the data may be very important if the virus dies down but then spikes again. For instance, if social distancing has a big impact on the rate of spread, then it could be used to reduce infections. This is a key long-term concern for epidemiologists.

Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.

The idea for Facebook and Google to analyze users movements came up during brainstorming sessions between the White House and representatives of big tech companies on Sunday, and it has moved along quickly since. These efforts are happening, Buckee says. She says the effort will not collect any identifying information about users, is not designed to track people over long periods, and will only gather aggregate trends. It is actually quite constrained in terms of what you can do with it, but for questions around social distancing it will still be incredibly helpful for policymakers, she says.

Buckee notes that aggregate, anonymized location data is already made available to researchers by Google, Facebook, Uber, and cell phone companies. Buckee and colleagues used data from cell phones pinging nearby towers to predict the spread of malaria in Kenya. That data was accurate within a few hundred meters. The data collected by phone operating systems and apps, which is often available to Google and Facebook, is typically more accurate.

Buckee says it is important to ensure that the data collected cannot be reversed engineered to track people. People are concerned, and rightly so, Buckee says. But this isnt in any sense following people around.

Facebook already provides data for the purpose of modeling disease spread through a project called Data for Good. In the coronavirus context, researchers and nonprofits can use the maps, which are built with aggregated and anonymized data that people opt in to share, to understand and help combat the spread of the virus, Laura McGorman, policy lead of Facebooks Data for Good effort, said in a statement. The effort discussed on Sunday would apparently see Facebook itself try to model the coronavirus for government agencies.

In Washington state, researchers used Facebook data aggregated from users of its mobile app earlier this month to determine that incoming weekday traffic to Seattle and its eastern suburbs had dropped by half, compared with normal times. The Facebook data fed models produced by the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute.

Excerpt from:
The Value and Ethics of Using Phone Data to Monitor Covid-19 - WIRED

Human Behavior

What Duties Do Employers Have To Protect Employees From The Coronavirus? – Forbes

Getty

With shelter-in-place orders starting to take effect, a lot of people have been spending time and money trying to stock up on supplies. With so many stores running out of items, people are turning to online ordering, especially from Amazon.com.

To meet this increase in demand, Amazon announced that it is hiring 100,000 new employees, as well as boosting pay for existing workers. But many current Amazon employees dont feel safe concerning the coronavirus and their current working conditions.

For example, workers report not having enough hand sanitizer, face masks and disinfecting wipes available. There are also complaints about being forced into close quarters during staff meetings. The complaints bring up the interesting question of what an employer should do to keep its workers safe from a coronavirus infection or to reduce its spread.

Federal Law Requirements

The primary law that governs workplace safety for most workers is the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act). One of the OSH Acts most significant provisions is Section 5(a)(1), also known as the General Duties Clause. It requires that employers:

[S]hall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees

This law is very simple and straightforward, until you try to figure out what it requires in practice.

Normally, there are regulations promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to help employers figure out what theyre legally required to do. Unfortunately, as I previously discussed in an earlier article, no such regulation exists for dealing with airborne infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Earlier this month, OSHA released some guidelines about what employers can do to keep employees safe from the coronavirus. They do not create new legal requirements for employers, but they do provide a little bit of clarity as to what employees can expect.

OSHA Guidelines Concerning the Coronavirus

Much of OSHAs guidance reflects common sense, what public health officials are already saying and what we all learned in school when we were younger.

For example, it suggests that employers promote good hygiene habits, like hand washing and covering ones mouth during a cough. However, the guidance did go over two topics that may help shed light on what employees can expect from their employers with respect to coronavirus safety. Hint: for most employees, not much.

First, it discussed the implementation of four types of workplace controls:

Engineering controls refer to mechanical methods of separating an employee from a workplace danger. Examples would be installing a better air filtration system or physical barriers like sneeze guards.

Administrative controls focus on changing human behavior to reduce exposure to a hazard. Examples include asking sick employees to stay home, making it easier for workers to stay six feet apart from each other and reducing unnecessary travel to locations with coronavirus outbreaks.

Safe work practices (which is technically a type of administrative control), refer to employer practices, policies and procedures, such as making hand sanitizer available to employees and providing disinfecting products so employees can clean their work surfaces.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is an additional level of protection employers can provide employees and refers to things like masks, gloves, hard hats, eye protection and respirators.

Depending on the risk of exposure to the coronavirus, employers may be required to provide PPE to employees. An example might be a nurse working triage in a hospitals emergency room.

The second major topic discussed in OSHAs recently released guidance is the classification of worker risk when it comes to potential exposure to the coronavirus.

The guidance described four levels of risk:

Very high exposure risk would be a situation where an employee comes into contact with known or suspected sources of the coronavirus and has a high risk of exposure to the virus. This would include a health care professional who not only has to treat a patient who might have the coronavirus, but needs to induce them to cough.

High risk exposure risk refers to a situation where an employee may come into contact with someone carrying the coronavirus, but the infected person is not as likely to spread it to the employee. An example might be a doctor entering the room of a coronavirus patient.

Medium exposure risk deals with employees who could come into close contact with someone who might be infected with the coronavirus. The typical teacher or retail worker would likely fall into this category.

Lower exposure risk applies to workers who arent required to be in contact with those who might have the coronavirus or arent frequently in close contact with members of the general public.

Most workers will fall into the lower or medium exposure risk categories. According to the OSHA guidance, for lower-risk employees, the employer doesnt have to do much more than what it was doing before the coronavirus outbreak, and providing PPE isnt required.

For employees that fall under medium exposure risk, employers should install basic engineering controls, such as sneeze guards, consider offering face masks to sick employees who are in the process of leaving the work premises, limit worksite access to the public, reducing travel and thinking about ways to minimize face-to-face contact among employees. In some situations, providing basic PPE (like goggles, a face mask, goggles or a gown) to certain employees may be necessary.

For most employers, the OSH Act wont impose many more additional requirements because of the coronavirus pandemic. Looking at the complaints from some of the Amazon workers, its possible that Amazon is in compliance with the OSH Act.

If an employee believes they are being placed in danger at work in violation of the OSH Act, they can file a complaint with OSHA. If such a complaint is filed, the employee will enjoy protection from retaliation under Section 11(c) of the OSH Act.

Government Action

With most employers legally required to do fairly little for employees to protect them from the coronavirus, there has been some government action to help employees.

For example, President Trump just signed into law the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which will provide paid sick leave to some employees to deal with the coronavirus and related reasons. Its far from perfect, and the final version is a slightly watered-down version of what the House of Representatives originally passed. But it makes it financially easier for some workers to stay home from work to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.

At the state level, at least 12 states and Washington, D.C. already require employers to provide paid sick leave to employees. And at least one state may go a bit further.

The Minnesota Legislature has pending legislation that would require employers to allow qualified employees to work from home if they are under isolation or quarantine, as long as it is reasonable to do so and wont impose an undue hardship on the employer.

The Bottom Line

Under the current regulatory framework, many employers arent legally required to do that much to keep their employees safe from a coronavirus infection.

There is pending or newly enacted legislation at the state and federal level, but they still wont make it easy for employees to be as safe as possible, whether it be at work or by staying home.

Read this article:
What Duties Do Employers Have To Protect Employees From The Coronavirus? - Forbes

Human Behavior

How To Stay Resilient And Mentally Healthy During The Coronavirus Outbreak – WYSO

Editors Note:This hour discusses anxiety and other mental health issues.If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact theNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineat 1-800-273-8255 (En Espaol: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or theCrisis Text Lineby texting 741741.

Coronavirus and collective stress around the world. Why is this moment so anxiety-producing and how can we stay resilient in the face of it?

Jonathan Kanter, director of the Center for the Science of Social Connection at the University of Washington. (@UWPsychology)

Elissa Epel, stress scientist and psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco. (@Dr_Epel)

Shutdowns. Social and physical isolation. Quarantines.

Were living in stressful and unprecedented times, forced to change our daily lives in isolating and anxiety-producing ways.

Many different fears right now are converging all at once on people in a way that is really overwhelming, and confusing and hard to sort out,Jonathan Kanter,director of the Center for the Science of Social Connection at the University of Washington, told On Points Meghna Chakrabarti.

And its not just the coronavirus were afraid of. Its also the changes the coronavirus is causing, Kanter says.

The fears of being confined, being isolated, of being alone, of losing our routines, of losing our normal sources of social contact, he says.

Its a lot. But there are ways for us to deal with our stressors. Dr. Elissa Epel has some tips.

On staying positive

Dr. Elissa Epel:I think its so important for us to see our faces and see when we smile. Im on the phone every day about COVID coping calls for our university, our psychiatry department. And its very serious. And when someone makes a joke, its such a relief to see their face on Zoom, laughing. It makes me laugh. Its just instant relief. So the quick answer is use this science for good. Spread smiles when you can, spread calm when you can.

On going outside

Dr. Elissa Epel:My dog walk has become one of my most sacred times of the day. To get into green areas and just see dogs play. Luckily, we think dogs dont transmit it. And so, you know, seeing children play, really brings this joy and makes us laugh. So right now, Im really using puppy play.

On adapting to changes

Dr. Elissa Epel:Health behaviors, and amp them up if you can. Sleep will be disturbed for a bit. Try to not panic about that. We are all going through this together.

On breathing and meditation

Dr. Elissa Epel:You always have your breaths. And you can be with it. You can slow it. And it changes your mental state immediately. At UCSF, were going to be distributing links to these meditations apps. Many of these companies are making them free to us and they really do give our bodies a break. So I recommend that people try one.

And one last note of encouragement from Jonathan Kanter

Jonathan Kanter:We can find ways to notice our tendency to distrust others, sort of breathe into that gently and then instead do the opposite. Try to connect with people.

The San Francisco Chronicle: How to turn the coronavirus anxiety into something positive Most of us alive today are novices to experiencing global pandemics, so we could benefit from some insight through a science lens of human behavior under threat.

Theres a lot of controversy about just how much we should be anxious and panicking. Science has an answer. Anxiety is helpful, panic is damning: Anxiety drives us to mobilize together, stay clearheaded, and do what is needed for the common good.

Panic is highly contagious, throws us into irrational and catastrophic thinking, and drives us to toward lousy human behaviors that can exacerbate our crisis greed, excessive hoarding, stampeding. Panic is highly contagious and infects those around us. The difference between anxiety and panic is critical to understand, so we can strike the right balance.

The Conversation: Social distancing comes with social side effects heres how to stay connected To fight the spread of coronavirus, government officials have asked Americans to swallow a hard pill: Stay away from each other.

In times of societal stress, such a demand runs counter to what evolution has hard-wired people to do: Seek out and support each other as families, friends and communities. We yearn to huddle together. The warmth of our breath and bodies, of holding hands and hugging, of talking and listening, is a primary source of soothing. These connections are pivotal for responding to and maximizing our survival in times of stress.

Priority number one is to follow the recommended social distancing guidelines to control the virus. The cure is definitely not worse than the disease experts projections of disease spread and mortality without strong intervention make this clear.

Wired: Dont Go Down a Coronavirus Anxiety Spiral The past few days have made clear how serious the escalating coronavirus pandemic is for many people in the United States. Schools and workplaces across the country closed, major events were canceled, and testing delays made it impossible to confirm how many people were infected.

The stock market had its biggest decline in decades, Sarah Palin rapped to Baby Got Back dressed in a bear suitit feels like the world is unraveling. There is so much going on, and so much uncertainty, it is all too easy to get trapped watching cable news or scrolling through Twitter all day.

If all this news is making you feel stressed, youre far from alone. Many people are sharing their worries online; theres a whole subreddit devoted to coping with these feelings. Experts say overloading on information about events like the coronavirus outbreak can make you particularly anxious, especially if youre stuck inside with little to do but keep scrolling on Twitter and Facebook.

Seattle Times: A cough, and our hearts stop: Coping with coronavirus anxiety and fear We are you. We are mothers, daughters, students and teachers. Yet we are also clinical psychologists who spend our days researching and treating pathological anxiety and fear. With the near constant news of the spreading coronavirus and fatalities, our personal and professional identities have dramatically collided, forcing us to consciously live consistent with the scientific principles we know well.

This became very real for one of us on March 1, as two young children developed sudden, unexplained fevers. As they lay uncharacteristically quiet on the couch complaining of sore throats and headaches, fear set in. What followed was 24 hours of worry, internet searching, repeated calls to the pediatrician, and constant self-reassurance kids are unlikely to develop severe symptoms, coughing and breathing difficulties are primary symptoms but anxiety persisted.

In the end, the two kids were diagnosed with strep infections, and anxiety subsided. In Seattles elevated threat environment, anxiety processes are playing out in our daily lives.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Follow this link:
How To Stay Resilient And Mentally Healthy During The Coronavirus Outbreak - WYSO

Human Behavior

Viral TV: What to watch when you’ve seen everything else? – Monmouth Daily Review Atlas

The coronavirus crisis has us stuck at home (working from home, if you're lucky enough to have a job like that), socially distanced and stoically trapped. Everything's canceled, closed, kaput.

So NOW you're interested in what the TV critic has to say. I see how this works.

What else, after all, can physically distance us from each other more effectively than television, while keeping us together as a culture? There is so much of it now that this sense of belonging is fading we are rarely all watching the same thing.

We don't even watch the same way. Of the many frantic pleas I've received in the past few days seeking advice for what to watch, someone wanted me to recommend a show she could watch on one screen, while doing her job on the other. Bleh. It's tempting to have something playing at all times: cable news all day, snatches of YouTube while you dawdle, your umpteenth cycle through every season of "The Office."

For your own sanity, however, my first and best advice is to try to keep the television off, especially while you're working or trying to learn. In ordinary times, I am platform- and consumption-agnostic; in these very unordinary times, I urge you to "watch TV" on something other than the laptop, smartphone or desktop PC that dictates your workday. For some of you, this may mean buying an actual TV, and why not? You can always donate it to charity when the CDC gives the all-clear.

The goal here is to treat TV as your day's only figurative getaway destination that "third place" status we usually grant to cafes, bars, gyms, theaters, museums, parks, sports arenas and retail stores. TV must now be regarded as a retreat from a day spent in confinement.

When people ask me for a TV recommendation, I usually turn the tables, and ask them what they've recently liked, what they usually watch and why. That's how I've approached this list grouping hypothetical viewers by type.

I hope this helps get you through these long days and nights.

- TV for people who ignored my list of 2019's best shows

It's been only a few months since I gave careful thought to last year's many outstanding shows and ranked the 10 best. If you still haven't watched all of these, then our work here is done there's enough to last you several weeks.

At the top of that list is HBO's "Watchmen," a stunningly realized drama about race and vigilante justice in a fictional America suffering from a peculiar sort of superhero complex. You don't have to be a comic-book fan to enjoy it; Regina King's performance alone will quickly convince you.

The rest of that list: "When They See Us" (Netflix); "Unbelievable" (Netflix); "Succession" (HBO, Seasons 1 and 2); "Gentleman Jack" (HBO);"Fleabag" (Amazon Prime, Seasons 1 and 2);"This Is Us" (NBC, currently in Season 4); "Chernobyl" (HBO); "Dead to Me" (Netflix); and "Leaving Neverland" (HBO).

- TV for people who think they've watched everything already

I'll bet you haven't not even close. You've watched all the amazing previous seasons of FX's "Better Things" and are up to date on the current season? Then you, too, share my belief that Sam Fox (Pamela Adlon) would be the ideal person to quarantine with. (Have you noticed all her delicious cooking?)

What about HBO's "Insecure," which returns April 12? Are you ready for that? What about all of Netflix's "BoJack Horseman?"(And "Big Mouth?") You've watched "Ramy" on Hulu? "Dickinson" on Apple TV Plus?

Now that you can access FX's entire catalogue on Hulu, I'm sure you've watched both seasons of "Pose." (Right? And "Fosse/Verdon?") You found time to figure out what the producers were trying to tell us in last summer's "Euphoria" on HBO? You've considered the beguiling meanings and extreme creativity in Showtime's "Kidding," including this current season? You're deep into FX on Hulu's"Devs,"Silicon Valley's answer to "Killing Eve?"

The point is, we only think we've watched everything, but it's not possible. Right now, I'm committed to enjoying the second chapter of HBO's masterfully envisioned Italian drama "My Brilliant Friend," which premiered Monday. I really blew it in 2018, deciding to pass on writing a review of the first chapter because I was too busy. Now it's back, like a mesmerizing gift.

- TV for people trying not to have an existential crisis

If official reasurrances have failed to convince you that the end isn't near or you're just spooked in general about your own mortality, the absurdity of existence, the meaning of moral goodness and the notion of a final judgment, well, you're primed and ready for TV's brightest, wittiest and most thorough exploration of life's big philosophical concepts. I'm talking, of course, about NBC's "The Good Place," which wrapped in January.

Maybe you tried to watch it before and found it too clever by half. Try again. It's a reassuring primer for understanding human behavior, which might come in handy as you gird yourself for your next trip through that apocalyptic hellscape once known as Whole Foods.

- TV for people who've watched every pandemic movie or show they could find

Yes, but have you watched "The Strain?" Lighter and more conclusive than the redundant socio-horror slog that is AMC's "The Walking Dead," Guillermo del Toro's FX series (available now on Hulu) about a viral vampire pandemic aired from 2014 to 2017, and I always admired the way it tapped into modern anxieties while honoring old-school horror techniques, which ought to be fun rather than torturous. Great ensemble cast, too, including Corey Stoll as an epidemiologist struggling with alcoholism and a really uncooperative tweenage son.

If and when you finish that, I insist you get some other obsession. For starters, PBS has added an encore presentation of Ken Burns' 1994 epic documentary "Baseball" free on any PBS platform. Sure, it's meant to soothe baseball fans who are going to suffer withdrawal pangs this spring, but it's also a fine metaphorical history lesson about a fever that spread across America and still keeps many in its grip.

- TV for people who can't take any more stress right now

Even during relatively peaceful times, I hear from readers who insist that TV offer escape and only that. They can't handle intense dramas. They have a common list of triggers (violence, crime, sexual situations, horror ... one reader once told me she can't stand any shows where people raise their voices at one another).

I often can't recommend much more than "Jeopardy!" to them, but here's my best attempt to offer some ideas that are either somewhat gentle, escapist, purely funny or some combination of the three.

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"on Amazon Prime is a reliable pick-me-up. (If she annoyed you before, perhaps now her frantic shenanigans as an up-and-coming female comic in late-1950s New York will ease the monotony of cabin fever.) "Little America" on Apple TV Plus tells melancholy yet ultimately upbeat stories of the immigration experience. And the ever-resilient PBS drama "Call the Midwife" always delivers (no pun intended) an inspiring moment. (It returns March 29.) And I'm still a huge fan of Hulu's "Pen15," a hilarious and moving account of two girls in middle school, circa 2000.

On Disney Plus, "The Mandalorian" sort of flattens out the Star Wars experience, but if you haven't yet seen Baby Yoda in action, you're missing out. And who couldn't draw some comfort right now from the leadership of Patrick Stewart's iconic Starfleet admiral, Jean-Luc Picard? You can engage "Star Trek: Picard" on CBS All Access.

- TV for people who would like a little fresh-cracked anxiety on top of their anxiety

Yes! Wallow in it. It's called adrenaline and it will keep you on your toes. The current, final season of Showtime's "Homeland" is coping frenetically with a story line involving a helicopter carrying the president (Beau Bridges) that was shot down by the Taliban. And Claire Danes is good at stoking one's jangled nerves.

David Simon and Ed Burns' just-launched HBO miniseries "The Plot Against America" is a faithful adaptation of Philip Roth's what-if novel that imagines a 1940s United States run by Nazi sympathizers a disturbing reminder that things always could have been (and still can be!) worse.

Parents who love anxiety can't do much better than Apple TV Plus's morosely absorbing "Servant," a sort of haunted-house story with baby monitors.

On a different but also domestically unsettling note, Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere"just premiered with the first three episodes. It runs deep with unkindness between moms and neighbors (Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington), which makes it an even guiltier pleasure right now.

Of course, if you love awful and uptight people, Larry David has delivered what I think is the best season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" we've had in a long time, currently airing on HBO. I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about the hoarding of hand sanitizer in fact, I assume he has quite a stash himself.

- TV for people who always try to read "Moby Dick" on vacation

I know your type. At long last, you (mistakenly) think, here is the time and space you always needed to tackle the towering classics of TV's new golden age: "Breaking Bad,""Mad Men," etc. You're finally going to watch "Game of Thrones" from start to finish, arn'cha?

I don't recommend this approach, simply because I'm hoping against hope that this crisis doesn't last nearly that long. But if this is the route you've chosen climbing the Grand Tetons when a pleasant nature hike would suffice please do me a favor, and at least make it "The Americans."

- TV about real people

I'm still waiting for a scripted drama in 2020 to draw me in as thoroughly as Netflix's six-part docuseries"Cheer" did in January.

Have you not watched it because you think you aren't interested in competitive collegiate cheerleading? Let Jerry and the gang work their motivational magic on you. By the end, you'll be pumped and ready for ... another day at home.

Read the original here:
Viral TV: What to watch when you've seen everything else? - Monmouth Daily Review Atlas

Human Behavior

The seven year striving of a black male social worker – AustinTalks

I need to know if there is still resolve in this union between me and the field of social work.

Fatigue eventually sets in, especially during these trying times.

Sometimes I desire to just work with my hands to get an honest days pay for an honest days work as my grandfather, uncle and countless other men in my family before me. I long for a commercial drivers license to travel and own my time, to leave the nuances of the struggle to professors and students with more vigor.

The other day was one of the better days.

I worked my shift at Cook County Hospital, had a delightful conversation with a co-worker and even got to joke with two of my favorite nurses. There was the occasional call for ambulance setup; a family had questions about disability benefits; and a homeless man needed assistance getting to a shelter. I even helped a friend in crisis through Facebook messenger.

All in a Sundays worth of work.

I feel good.

I was told never to make decisions on bad days, no matter how long the stretch. I was advised to wait until I had a good day to evaluate this journey.

Here it goes.

Two internships, five hospitals, a hospice company, two nursing homes and two out-patient dialysis centers later Ive concluded the field of social work only works properly for the affluent, upper-middle class with generational wealth.

It makes ordering durable medical equipment a breeze. It allows for the swift placement to an outpatient dialysis center in a patients zip code almost as easy as ordering a car sharing service. The doctors are more available to these populations than to some of the lower socioeconomic populations and the undocumented.

Departmental meetings are often composed of seven Jodie Fosters, four Katy Perrys, an Angelina Jolie and maybe a couple of Whoopi Goldbergs. Black men were absent in my experiences.

Even in this professional environment of cultural competency I became bequeathed with the mission of explaining the anger of traditionally marginalized black and brown people. I became the decoder of systemic mistrust by highlighting the tales of the Tuskegee Experiment, demonization of an opioid crisis that pre-dates gangster rap and President Obamas Administration.

I was thestarring role in a production of how black men get treated in nurturingprofessions from the trailer of graduate school.

This social work journey started in the spring of 2011. I first learned about it on the sixth floor conference room of Loretto Hospital. I decided to apply to Loyola University Chicago to pursue a masters in social work.

I was scared as hell. My sister and I talked about this. Its free to apply, right? my sister asked.

Yep!

Do it.

I did.

I couldnt believe the same block, seven miles east from where I spent a considerable time of my life, I would be working toward a masters degree. I felt inspired all over again.

I was late to orientation due to the CTA running behind schedule. I asked the person at the front desk the Water Tower campus where the class was. He pointed me to the elevator. By the time I reached the right classroom, the teacher was talking to students already.

I peeredinto the room and noticed something very peculiar.

There were no black people.

This would stay with me the rest of my studies and into my career. I would find more black people, still disproportionate, but they would occasional spring out of the well of obscurity. Im pretty sure they were also relieved to see me in those classes as well, as evidenced by the subtle head nod black people give each other in a sea of white folks.

The uneasy feeling was a constant companion through the graduation ceremony on May 8, 2014.I didnt get the memo reading the higher you go in education as a minority, the fewer of you there will be.

Theeducation I received would become priceless compared to the price tag, though Idread looking at my monthly student loan statements.

My love for the education at Loyola extended to the LGBTQ community and those living with HIV, AIDS and other chronic illnesses. My favorite professor pushed me beyond the confines of situational thinking into the mezzo intersectionality of marginalized people without race. It brought memories of my sister coming out to me.

The winters of discourse with white classmates often triggered a feeling of otherness described in writings of W.E.B. Du Bois. These classmates exacerbated my anger during discussions of the perils ofblack people from their perspective of privilege and pity. Historical context of redlining and financial disinvestment was all but negated.

I began to draw correlations between the Black Panther Party and neighborhood clinics. I discovered the modern-day WIC program is a replica of their efforts.

Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, Paul J. Adams III and countless other trailblazers who could be classified as social workers were omitted from my education in social work.

I refuse to believe that my classmates were malicious in any way. They encouraged my input. At times they sensed my hesitation in disputing a textbook or another peers perspective, yet they still yearned for my contribution. I hold dear that one summer day when classmates brought cupcakes to a Sunday study session the day before my birthday.

I absolutely enjoyed my time as Loyola Rambler. I grew in thought, intellect, interpersonal skills and network. Those years were the most challenging and rewarding days of my life.

I tie my professional experience to an education that seldom ventured into a sociological phenomenon, where the lack of educators reflecting the subject matter remained sparse. It concerns me in this millennium we still argue the worth or contributions of black, brown and LGTQ lives.

It remains the responsibility of an institution of higher learning especially one that carries the sacred Jesuit title to be leaders in inspiring and encouraging culturally specific conversations that will one lead to good and just policies.

As I found myself searching for a purpose, I explored that school of social work. Stories of strife, mental illness, hopelessness and the prison industrial complex were already kin to me. I knew about social struggles that rarely get told.

I learned that policy analysis and human behavior was essential to the strivings of black folk in America through my own journey as a social worker. I sat in classrooms viewing these experiences from the lens of the other.

I became aware of white privilege and privilege of my own.

I love you, social work. Please tell me what the mile markers are for a practitioner such as myself?

See original here:
The seven year striving of a black male social worker - AustinTalks