Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Does the internet think you have ADHD, anxiety, or autism? – Vox.com

When I first downloaded TikTok, in the fall of 2018, it only took a few days for my algorithm to figure out that I have ADHD. To be fair, this isnt all that impressive, as TikTok and the rest of the internet make it extremely difficult to focus on a single thing for more than five seconds there is simply so much stuff to look at! and its certainly possible to argue that anyone who spends enough time online may experience some of the symptoms that help psychologists diagnose patients.

Videos would show up on my For You page with captions like Hidden signs youre ADHD and what my ADHD brain feels like, and Id roll my eyes because I knew what was coming: Theyd reference common attributes of the modern mind difficulty focusing and difficulty switching tasks, difficulty completing boring tasks and difficulty completing difficult tasks and finish by saying, If you relate to this, congrats! You probably have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The nebulous definition of ADHD, and Big Pharmas push to diagnose and treat it, has made the disorders very existence the subject of intense cultural debate since before I was born. Were we overdiagnosing neurotypical brain functions? Were we overmedicating children who were simply acting like children? Was it all the health care industrys fault? This line of questioning is a touchy subject for plenty of people who have found meaning and identity and medical help from their diagnosis. It has also turned discussions around ADHD and psychological conditions with similar symptoms generalized anxiety disorder, depression, autism spectrum disorder into land mines, capable of turning a good-faith debate into an endless back-and-forth of ad hominem attacks.

But in the past decade, as social media has forced billions of us to virtually bump into people we never would have otherwise, many of us have also found the need to categorize people into recognizable boxes. One way to do so is by seizing on common human behaviors to name gaslighting, emotional labor, trauma, parasocial relationships, empath as a noun then disseminating them until they cease to mean much at all. We end up treating mental illness like a subculture, complete with its own vocabulary that only those in the know can use and weaponize.

It often looks like this: On August 26, a woman posted a TikTok suggesting that excessive reading in childhood was considered a dissociative behavior. In the video, she turns to the camera and shakes her head as if having a sudden, life-altering realization that explains the trajectory of her life; the comments are flooded with people experiencing the same aha moment. 12th grade reading level in 5th grade you say? Damn #trauma, wrote one. At this point all the character traits I have are just my neurodivergence [atypical mental function], wrote another. (This wasnt even the first time this discourse happened.)

The responses were not quite as kind once the discussion moved over to Twitter, after writer Jeanna Kadlec tweeted about how she related to the TikTok. Quote tweets ranged from frustrated (yall are still absolutely battering any kind of meaning out of the word dissociation i see) to darkly satirical (oh, you read? that actually means you are mentally ill and abused. i have a huge brain.) to earnest (TikTok has pathologized every single behavior and personality trait, which perhaps has done less to destigmatize mental illness and more to dilute it to meaninglessness).

Consume too much of the mental health internet and it becomes difficult to even understand what anyone is saying. There is no strict frontier between what is pathological and what is not, explains Jol Billieux, a professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Its the way people live them [mental health conditions] and the meaning they give to them, which could result in psychological suffering or difficulties.

At the risk of, well, over-pathologizing, it basically seems like there are two types of people: those who tend to appreciate and identify with this kind of internet diagnosis [X] behavior is actually a trauma response! does legitimately make sense for some people and helps them live a happier life and those who find it not just annoying but potentially harmful, stigmatizing, and unscientific. Nowhere on the internet at least nowhere that I have come across have those two types of people ever found much common ground, thereby making such discussions highly unpleasant and unproductive. Its a terrible loop that we seem destined to replay forever. Is it doing us any good?

It sucks is the prevailing theory about the internet now, and this is not wrong. There are all kinds of guesses as to why it might be: According to legal scholar and coiner of the phrase net neutrality Tim Wu, its because of media consolidation and chumboxes; according to author Roxane Gay, its because of our tendency to presume the worst in others. Tech journalist Charlie Warzel says its because of platform-enabled context collapse, while Atlantic columnist Caitlin Flanagan blames Twitter. Perhaps its the never-ending mudslide of algorithmically generated content that leaves individuals stuck under a pile of hatred and extremism, or the Like button, or maybe its Congresss fault.

All of these things are likely true to some extent, but the theory Ive been thinking about lately is what the writer P.E. Moskowitz calls the BuzzFeedification of mental health and which Id argue can also be widened to the BuzzFeedification of identity (no shade to BuzzFeed or its quizzes, of course, which provide a great service to the procrastinating).

The internet is basically a categorization machine, so part of me thinks its inherent to the internet, or at least inherent to corporate social media, where we all feel so overwhelmed by the vastness of the space and the number of people we interact with that we must whittle ourselves down into categories, Moskowitz told me over email. ADHD, bipolar, whatever it may be, become micro communities we can find safety and meaning in.

Self-selective processes are natural for human beings, and they can obviously be quite useful on the internet, where some amount of gatekeeping is necessary to foster a certain environment. Groups for people whom society often marginalizes like, say, those with mental illness or who share a common history of trauma must enforce an element of exclusivity in order to be useful. The trouble starts when, Moskowitz argues, these identity markers are used as a rhetorical tool.

Moskowitz was the subject of this sort of vitriol in early August, when they posted a photo of their Tetris-like parallel parking job. The photo went viral on Twitter, with dozens of people quote-tweeting and replying that Moskowitz was ableist for failing to consider the cars that now might have a difficult time exiting their spot. They were also called a malignant narcissist (not an actual term psychologists would use) by someone who explained that they knew a malignant narcissist when they saw one because, they said, theyd been raised by a malignant narcissist.

I see it most when people want to win arguments they pathologize themselves to give themselves authority (I have XYZ disorder therefore you must listen to me or You are being XYZ horrible thing racist, classist, narcissist, whatever therefore youre wrong), Moskowitz says. The categorization allows for a flattening of nuance. You cant argue with someone calling you a sexist or a sociopath or whatever, and you cant argue with someone who bases the entirety of their argument in their personal experience.

This instinct has only intensified over the past 18 months. Amanda Brennan, an internet trend expert at XX Artists, has observed the ways that, after sitting with themselves and reflecting during the isolation of the pandemic, many people have come to monumental realizations about their gender, sexuality, mental health, and identity. It feels good to say, Heres a set of predetermined things that I can try on like a hat, and if it fits, it fits, she says. Its like the closet scene in Clueless: You try it on and see how it feels. (My favorite example of this: a TikTok that reads when it was supposed to just be 2 weeks on Zoom but now youre bisexual.)

One place that Brennan sees it take on some rather unhelpful forms is in fandom discourse for instance, in May, when Vice journalist Gita Jackson made an offhand tweet about the Harry Potter character Hermione Granger being annoying and a know-it-all and was then accused of being ableist because some of them felt that Hermione is coded as autistic. As the comics news website CBR pointed out, Jackson is neurodivergent, and the people accusing them of ableism on Twitter seemed to care more about defending a supposedly neurodivergent fictional character than respecting the real neurodivergent person they were talking to.

Yet it can be an extremely human reaction to defend our own worldviews. When people are really involved in a fandom, theyre going to see these heavy things from their life in the things that they love because they want to feel more connected to it, explains Brennan. But sometimes it starts to become, Well, my headcanon [an individuals belief about a fictional text that is not canonical to the story] is what matters most, so Im going to argue that XYZ is X-coded. Its almost like, I want to be seen by this thing that I love, so Im going to read it this way, and no one else can fight me on it.

What were talking about here is the problem of being, as its often called, chronically online. Whats the most chronically online take youve ever seen on the internet? begins an immensely popular TikTok audio where users can respond and give their own examples. The most common are almost exclusively instances of pathologizing unremarkable behavior: a Reddit comment that suggested a woman was grooming her boyfriend because they started dating when she was 19 and he was 18; a video where cakegender was given its own pride flag meant to represent people who feel light and fluffy.

Its difficult to talk about this sort of discursive overreach without sounding like a far-right reactionary; indeed, criticisms of over-pathologization have come from conservatives who argue that, to generalize, its all just a bunch of self-obsessed liberal snowflake eggheads. One of the biggest problems is that the far right has correctly identified that this is happening that the discourse and identity policing has gotten out of control, Moskowitz tells me, to the point where it becomes hard for others to push back against it without sounding as though youre siding with an ideology they dont adhere to. There needs to be a strong, leftist stance of were not going to do this identity-pathology policing thing anymore, but that doesnt make us reactionaries.

Whether doctors over-pathologize certain normal human behaviors has been a subject of great interest in the medical field; when the DSM-V, the standard classification of mental disorders, was published in 2013, many psychiatrists argued that it medicalized typical behavioral patterns and moods, possibly as a result of the pharmaceutical industrys influence. (One common example here is the potential to misclassify grief over the loss of a loved one as major depressive disorder.)

Billieux has studied gambling and gaming addictions extensively, and warns against the instinct to diagnose every symptom. The idea of being able to categorize mental illness like youre categorizing insects, for example, is something that is very complicated and probably is not valid in the context of psychiatric disorders and psychological suffering, he explains. These labels are very reductive in terms of defining the psychology of someone, and they tend to ignore individual differences. He cites studies showing that anywhere between 5 and 30 percent of the general population experience auditory or visual hallucinations which are stereotypically attributed to mental illness at some point in their lives without any other issues.

Whos to say, though, that reflecting on ones own mental state and seeking help is a bad thing? The American medical system already discourages us from receiving care its unknowably expensive, infuriatingly confusing, and inaccessible to the people who need it most. There is a treatment gap, which means that there are people suffering who cannot access or dont want to access psychologists and they should, Billieux says. That doesnt mean that choosing a specific label will help you to overcome this difficulty, or be beneficial at all.

Take, for instance, generalized anxiety disorder (which I have also been diagnosed with), which hinges on what a patient or doctor decides is an excessive amount of a fundamental human emotion. Diagnoses like this are left relatively vague to account for individuals ability to function in society and the amount of suffering their anxiety causes, but online, they can sometimes be used as throwaway terms. For some people, especially when youre young, there is a bit of a pull to join a group. And the group of people with social anxiety or depression feels like one you can easily join, Natasha Tracy, author of the book Lost Marbles, on her experience with bipolar disorder, told Mashable.

Many people do benefit from finding the language to describe their psychological experience its the reason group therapy often greatly helps people, explains Inna Kanevsky, a psychology professor at San Diego Community College who uses TikTok to debunk viral myths about mental illness. But she argues that labels arent necessarily an instant solution. Once people start using science-y terms and labeling things, [they believe] theyre contributing to solving the problem, but it doesnt exactly explain very much. Its like, what are we going to do? She uses the example of the online ADHD community to point out that diagnoses can be blurrier than wed like to think. Generally, ADHD coping strategies can be helpful for anybody, she explains. You dont need to label yourself to use the advice.

It can feel special, understandably, to adopt a label around which to frame ones identity, if not outright cool. And the internet rewards it: Whereas a therapist might question the usefulness of identifying oneself as permanently aligned with whatever struggle one is experiencing, engagement-driven platforms help frame conditions as points of identity, badges of honor, explains Isabel Munson in a piece on Real Life. People in our own lives may reward it, too: As writer and TikToker Rayne Fisher-Quann pointed out, friends and family tend to be much more forgiving and understanding when you can excuse behavior using a label, as opposed to trying to articulate the complexities of the human mind at any particular moment.

Treating mental illness like subculture, though, can have unintended consequences. Just a few days ago, I was served a TikTok ad for a direct-to-consumer startup centered on delivering cutely branded ADHD medicine to your door. Was this an ad targeted to me based on what TikTok assumes? Or was this sent out to the general public, implying that there are enough people on TikTok who have or think they have ADHD to make the ad a worthwhile investment?

In a story on internet pathologization for i-D, James Greig writes that easily categorizable people are also easy to market to. While there is genuine support out there and a lot of good intentions, its worth bearing in mind that some of the people involved in pushing these diagnoses have a vested interest in doing so, he writes. (Consider the zillions of products that claim to quell anxiety, a market thats exploded over the past decade.)

Perhaps the solution to this sort of categorization and grouping is to redefine the terms. To me, we should start seeing identities more as things you do rather than descriptors of who you are, says Moskowitz. I am trans because I care about trans life, because I commune with other trans people, because I donate my money to other trans people. Its all well and good if you want to claim an identity, but I think every identity comes with responsibility to the communities it represents, to the histories that made those identities possible. If that makes me a gatekeeper, so be it.

An overreliance on specific labels to characterize oneself as infallible and others as morally suspect only serves to divide us further, making it more difficult for everyone to get proper support. Is it helpful to dismiss someone because you believe they have borderline personality disorder (itself a somewhat controversial diagnosis), or, on the other hand, is it helpful for someone with BPD to excuse the harm they may cause others based on their own diagnosis? Is it helpful to accuse someone of being ableist for, say, being attracted to himbos, or are we expending our anger, our frustration, our cynicism at the state of things on whoever happens to tweet something we didnt like that day?

Diagnosing issues in each other may feel like progress; it may feel like identifying problems that are solvable. Perhaps we feel that as long as there are enough commenters telling someone their video failed to incorporate every single human experience that things could change for the better. But the main change its made so far is creating a cycle of bad-faith name-calling (Youre being classist! followed by Go touch grass!) and mutual resentment.

I hate internet pathologization for the same reason I hate the concept of generations or niche left-wing political posturing: They needlessly divide people who desperately need each other to further their goals. To use a very banal example, memes like ok boomer are funny, but divorced from context they ignore the conditions of low-income older adults whove been screwed over by the same forces as young folks. Internet pathologizing is an individualist exercise, basically. As a technically neurodivergent person (another term that often feels unproductive to me), Id much rather connect with other people over the aspects of modern life that everyone, neurodivergent or not, can benefit from: access to medical care, therapy, and child care; higher-paying and flexible work opportunities; community support; and a stronger social safety net.

That stuff is hard, though. Its a lot easier to scroll TikTok and Twitter, whiplashing between outrage over a hastily written tweet and electrifying realizations that perhaps every aspect of your identity could be explained by a single diagnosis. Either way, were sitting around, thinking about ourselves. And that, ultimately, is what it is to be a person not someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

Your weekly guide to what we buy, why we buy it, and why it all matters.

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Does the internet think you have ADHD, anxiety, or autism? - Vox.com

Human Behavior

Facebook Whistleblower Who Shared Docs With Wall Street Journal Goes on ’60 Minutes’ to Spill More Dirt – SFist

Facebook's season of bad-press storms never really seems to end, and the latest came via a September expos series in the Wall Street Journal that revealed internal documents showing how Facebook conducted its own internal research into the platform's ill effects, but did nothing to fix the problems.

On Sunday, the whistleblower behind the bombshell pieces which already prompted a new round of congressional hearings that kicked off last week revealed herself in an interview on 60 Minutes, and discussed her reasons for coming forward. She is former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, and she says she joined the company in 2019 and asked to be on the team that fights misinformation after seeing a friend get drawn in and brainwashed by conspiracy theories.

"Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety," Haugen said, per the Associated Press, and re-explained the issue that has been ever-present and clear with the company for years.

"The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," Haugen said. And she explained that a 2018 change in how Facebook's newsfeed algorithm works contributed greatly to the amplification of divisive and anger-inducing content which in turn heightened engagement and positively impacted the company's bottom line.

In her role at the company, Haugen was tasked with conducting some of the research that the company would never be eager for the public to see research confirming critics' longstanding attacks on the platform for the way it manipulates human behavior and emotion through its algorithm. She worked in the Civic Integrity division at the company, focused specifically on election misinformation and one of her biggest bombshells is that Facebook dissolved the Civic Integrity division as soon as the election was over, prematurely, she says, because this may have led directly to the January 6th riot. And she says that controls that were turned on before the election to tamp down rage and the most divisive content were almost immediately switched back off so that engagement numbers were not depressed.

Haugen, 37, previously worked at Google and Pinterest, and she left Facebook in May, taking with her a trove of these internal documents.

"I've seen a bunch social networks," Haugen said in the interview, "and things are substantially worse at Facebook than anything else I've seen."

One of the first revelations reported in the Journal's series, titled "The Facebook Files," was that Facebook research understood the negative impacts Instagram was having, especially on teenage girls. But the company was nonetheless forging ahead with its highly controversial plan to release an Instagram Kids app.

What Haugen said was the most "tragic" about the Instagram research is that when teen girls are depressed, it leads them to use the app more, and get stuck in a cycle in which the app continues to make them hate their bodies more.

The company has responded by saying that the Journal cherry-picked documents to cast the company in the worst possible light, but the PR storm has nonetheless caused Facebook to indefinitely halt the Instagram Kids project as of last week.

But Haugen said she was determined to blow the whistle on Facebook's internal research because of what she sees as the company's role in tearing the fabric of society apart, and in helping spur atrocities across the globe.

Haugen and her attorneys have used the documents to file eight complaints against Facebook at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC may launch its own investigation, which could present trouble for Facebook down the line.

Facebook's head comms guy, Nick Clegg, was on CNN on Sunday doing damage control ahead of the 60 Minutes interview.

"Even with the most sophisticated technology, which I believe we deploy, even with the tens of thousands of people that we employ to try and maintain safety and integrity on our platform, were never going to be absolutely on top of this 100% of the time, Clegg said on CNN. Still, he added, "I think we do more than any reasonable person can expect to."

One of the documents Haugen shared showed the company being aware that it was only catching about 3% to 5% of hate speech on the platform, and only a fraction of a percent of content that incites violence.

Facebook has tried to downplay the research itself, calling it "limited and imprecise," but that has caused an uproar among Facebook's own internal researchers, as the New York Times reports. "They are making a mockery of the research," wrote one of them on an internal message board.

Haugen is also scheduled to be testifying before the same Senate committee on Tuesday that heard from Facebook's global head of safety, Antigone Davis.

"Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out," wrote Clegg in a memo to all company employees on Friday, per the AP. "But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization."

Related: Facebook Seemingly Still Monkeying With Algorithm to Limit Right-Wing Agitprop

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Facebook Whistleblower Who Shared Docs With Wall Street Journal Goes on '60 Minutes' to Spill More Dirt - SFist

Human Behavior

The Bears Are Back in Town, and Some People Say CT Should Take Action – NBC Connecticut

Wait until you see this bear video! Its a phrase we have been saying more and more.

Your photos and videos keep coming into our newsroom, and we thank you for sharing.

Our increasing familiarity with bears in Connecticut has continued to raise questions about how safe this all is, as we receive more reports of bear encounters, in more suburban, and even urban settings in our state.

Chief Investigative Reporter Len Besthoff examined this issue three years ago and learned a lot has changed.

With a combination of fear and amusement, the Serkosky family of Farmington got an inches away view to start their day.

The first thing was just oh my I can't believe he's hanging off of our window, Serkosky said.

They got to see the cubs claws up close and personal too.

The Serkoskys live not even a mile from I-84, and Westfarms mall. This sighting is not a surprise to University of Connecticut professor Dr. Tracy Rittenhouse, based on her research.

We looked at the movements of GPS collared bears in neighborhoods with different housing densities, and we showed that in neighborhoods with lots of houses, bears were more likely to walk closer to houses and farther from roads, than in places with lower housing densities, Rittenhouse explained.

The Serkoskys know the bear they nicknamed Licorice came to their home attracted by bird food, even though its discouraged this time of yearwhen bears are fattening up for winter

We're used to seeing them in the area, but not hanging off our house, Serkosky added.

We asked Serkosky if she could give up her bird feeding until late fall when bears are less active. She said she wasnt quite ready to take that step, but might have to if she gets another visit to her window.

Down the road in Simsbury, the unofficial bear capital of Connecticut, Penelope Sanborn told us about a close call between her family dog and a bear, all caught on their security camera!

Eight year old boxer Leo ended up scaring the bear off.

It was a close call. And it was. It was a few moments of my heart racing he acted like a normal animal. You know, just protecting his garage, and the bear acted like a normal animal and just was like, whoa, Im out of here," Sanborn said.

Its not just about the amount of bear sightings in Connecticut, its also where they are being called in. For example there have been a bunch of them in urban Stamford, Connecticut just this summer they had a call down this street which is only a few miles from downtown.

Head Animal Control Officer Tilford Cobb cannot say for certain Stamford is the new frontier on bears southwestward expansion. But it may be.

A lot of times these bears that are coming through are looking for new territory. So we believe this bear may have been in this area trying to find a new home. Ended up venturing further north. But yeah, he was downtown and he was in backyards near homes, he ended up moving on, Cobb said.

Right now the state Department of Energy And Environmental Protection (DEEP) estimates our state has a population of roughly 1000 to 1200 bears, up at least 25% since 2018.

Plus, DEEP reports in 2020 the state recorded more than 3500 human/bear conflicts, almost tripling the previous record from 2018.

Jenny Dickson, director of DEEPs wildlife division, told NBC Connecticut Investigates that those numbers are all going up and our bear population is very reproductively successful. They're having you know, several cubs per litter and the cubs' survival rates are very high. So you know, those are all indicators of a growing population.

Meriden Record-Journal Woods and Water outdoors columnist Mike Roberts believes the upswing in human-bear interactions increases the potential for dangerous, even fatal encounters in Connecticut.

He favors a limited bear hunt to keep the population manageable.

My biggest fear is that one these days, there's going to be a human incident. And it's not going to be nice. And then what we're gonna do just say we're sorry?, Roberts said.

Roberts position is shared in part by DEEP, which said a bear hunt should be one of many tools in its toolbox to better manage bears.

DEEPs Wildlife Division director Jenny Dickson cautioned, It's not a one stop solution. So we just have to see how that fits with everything else and what it looks like in terms of proposal.

State legislators introduced bear hunt legislation 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. Next year is not expected to be any different.

Darien-based Friends of Animals however, said it will be first in line to oppose it, insisting bear hunts are not necessarily effective, and the issue really has to do with humans refusing to do things like getting bear-resistant garbage cans, and putting bird feeders away except for winter.

The problem is not, you know that there's too many bears or that all of a sudden they're getting bolder like out of some horror movie, It's for the safety of people and bears that people have to start modifying their behavior and behaving if they live in bear territory, said the Friends of Animals Director of Media/Government Relations Nicole Rivard.

Some towns have now in fact, getting more aggressive when it comes to changing human behavior. At least six Connecticut communities have adopted ordinances penalizing people who leave bird feeders, garbage cans, and other bear attractants outside during their active season.

Rittenhouse said that probably wont have much of an impact unless restrictions like that are statewide and not just a patchwork of towns.

Bears don't see town boundaries; it doesn't stop their movements. So, they're going to move back and forth between different towns. If you have towns that have very, very different ordinances, and very different levels of food availability to bears, the bears are going to just move back and forth.

Sanborn does not have a problem with towns trying to curb people feeding bears.

She believes if people just act responsibly, they can co-exist with the bearsand theres no need for a hunt.

Once you move to Connecticut, you embrace Connecticut, and you embrace everything that all the wildlife and beauty that this country burb we live in, has to offer, Sanborn said.

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The Bears Are Back in Town, and Some People Say CT Should Take Action - NBC Connecticut

Human Behavior

How can philanthropy be more effective in environmental grant making? (commentary) – Mongabay.com

How can we maximize the effectiveness of grant-making in the international conservation field?

This article is based on my experience in international environmental conservation, both as head of implementing nonprofits for 35 years, and as a foundation grant officer supporting in-country organizations for 15 years. I have witnessed both very effectiveand ineffectivegrant making practices, and would like to share my perspectives on best practices.

I have tried to make my comments generally relevant to non-profit grantmaking, but note that some of the lessons I outline are especially relevant to the international environmental conservation field.

For one, international grantmaking is cross-cultural, which gives greater importance to the need for grant makers expertise and direct experience in the cultural and political aspects of the recipients country.

Another is that conservation grantmaking typically tries to accomplish something contrary to the market forces that dictate much of human behavior, and so is more difficult to undertake successfully than most grantmaking, placing greater emphasis on the need for donor expertise, rapid responses, and flexibility.

Finally, grantee organizations in the developing world sometimes exist in an environment without laws supporting the social sector, or a tradition of non-profit giving, making it increasingly important for donors to value their time and administrative costs.

These are my seven key takeaways from nearly four decades of experience.

Possibly the overarching point I would emphasize concerns how a donor views their relationship with the implementing organization. The proper way, that achieves the best results, is to view the donee (not the donor) as the client. As without the donees effective work, a donor cannot accomplish anything; and the more the donee can accomplish, the more does the donor.

However, I have found that only about 20% of donors or foundation officers share this point of view and treat their donees time and resources with the value they deserve. Most foundations treat themselves as the client, i.e. they get to set the rules of the relationship to address primarily their own needs, timeframes and requirements. This fundamental rule permeates many of the following points.

One of the most important things donors can do is to be acutely aware of the transactional and administrative costs it imposes on the donee in applications and reporting, and to reduce these to the greatest extent possible. If one is treating the donee as the client, it becomes more important to save the donees time collectively than it does to save your time as the grantor. While donors need to request adequate information in order to make good decisions and comply with legal requirements, they should develop application formats and reporting procedures that minimize the donees costs in time and expenses to the extent possible.

This is especially important when funding implementing organizations based in the developing world, as they operate in countries without favorable laws to nonprofits, and have limited funding sources. In particular, they have few opportunities to raise unrestricted funding that can support their administrative and fundraising costs, and so imposing unnecessary process costs on them weakens their ability to raise funds or purse the very mission you want to fund. As these organizations cannot support a large fundraising department, one is also often using up the time of the lead people of the these donee organizations in the application and reporting process, which takes their valuable time away from accomplishing the mission.

Some items to consider are:

One of the reasons to have flexible application and reporting requirements is that conservation projects are typically trying to do something difficult, like create a new protected area, change laws or policies, or convince a population to do something differently, i.e. more sustainably. This requires deep involvement with the social and political issues of a place that are changeable, and mean that project goals, strategies and methods may have to continuously evolve in an adaptive management space. If you have chosen your donees wisely, they will know a lot more than you will about how to spend the budgeted funds to achieve the mission objectives, especially as circumstances change. Putting the donee in a straitjacket reduces program effectiveness.

In my experience I have not found that a lot of added detail in the application process has led to better results in field implementation. The likelihood of success of a conservation grant has a lot more to do with the people involved and the character of the organization, and how will they deal with the politics and communities involved in the developing country. For that, a foundation needs good staff who can identify the right grantees, not detailed descriptions of what the applicant hopes to do. There is actually something of an inverse relationship between implementing organizations who are effective on the ground and those that can write good proposals, as the truly effective organizations spend their extra money on program, not fundraising staff.

Also, the more expertise a donor has, especially the program staff, the more confidence they have that the chosen donee organization cares about the results as much as you do, and will handle the money wisely.

With donees with whom one has experience and trust, consider programmatic grants that set out broad goals and objectives in a defined program. This ensures that you are getting what you want while allowing grantees much more flexibility in how to achieve it. If you have picked the right grantees, they will be able to do a lot more with your money than with highly specific project grants.

My organization once received a multi-year grant to support a general program to create regional protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon. This allowed my organization to allocate resources to the highest priority areas, create the long-term relationships with communities that are needed for lasting conservation results, and allowed us to both jump on new opportunities or quickly shift priorities when politics changed, so as to maximize results. I estimate this flexibility resulted in 50% more programmatic results than we could have achieved with a more restrictive grant structure.

The speed in which a grant is made can be a huge factor in grant effectiveness, but very few foundations pay adequate attention to the need to make a fairly rapid response. The ability of a foundation to act quickly can significantly increase the effectiveness of its grant making, sometimes manyfold.

Especially in the international conservation field, the best projects arise when there is an alignment of social or political factors that allows a project to move forward (i.e. a president, mayor or community decides to do something), or an opportunity emerges to protect a natural area or species (i.e. a new program is launched or a landowner wants to sell a key parcel). These are transient, and will exist for only a limited amount of time. The good implementing organizations can identify these opportunities, and foundations need to be able to respond in a matter of 3-6 months if they are to truly to maximize the benefit of their dollars in helping the implementing organization succeed in realizing them.

To take advantage of these kinds of circumstances, one needs to provide funding within 3 to 6 months of grant initiation, which is vastly different from the 18-month typical process cycle for most foundations. This relates to the concept of who is the client. If the foundation regards itself as the client, it costs it nothing to go through a long procedure that dots all the is and crosses all the ts; but externally, in terms of mission accomplishment, it can cost everything, as the opportunity can be gone in the 18 months it takes to process a normal grant.

One-year grants are rarely adequate to achieve an effective result in the international conservation field. Two to three-year grants are more appropriate for most conservation projects, and its better if they can be renewed to last for four to eight years. There are a number of reasons for this, some internal to the implementing organization, and others external or programmatic.

Internally, its difficult to hire and maintain staff based on one-year project funding, and having capable long-term staff is the essence of success for an implementing organization. This is especially true for tropical conservation projects, as implementing organizations in developing countries have very little opportunity to raise unrestricted funding, so project grants tend to sustain their activities. It is almost impossible for them to survive with one-year short-term project grants, given the vagaries of project funding and the proposal process, and donors need to be aware of this in providing longer grant terms that allow the NGOs to maintain good staff.

Externally, most conservation projects require working with communities or political actors to achieve results, where one needs to first build trust with the community or administration and then implement project actions, which may take several years. In fact, many conservation projects may require a commitment of four to eight years by the implementing origination to build trust with the communities or local actors, implement the project, and then develop the capacity in the local actors to sustain the project into the future. Donors should orient their funding around this reality.

Donors absolutely need to fund the legitimate indirect costs (overhead) of implementing organizations, or else they weaken instead of strengthen that organization. All organizations have legitimate overhead costs that support their financial operations and accountability, proper administration, and the leadership and general costs that cannot be avoided. It is essential that donors pay these as a proportion of their grants, especially in developing countries where organizations have very limited alternative sources for these funds.

Note that I am talking about indirect costs in the range of 10 to 15% of budget, to pay for the essential operating functions of an organization. Many large NGOs in developed countries now have much greater indirect costs, sometimes exceeding 25%, to support their major fundraising and outreach efforts. I am not suggesting paying for these, Im just noting the necessity of donors to pay for the basic indirect costs that allow an organization to function.

Larger donors such as foundations are far more effective if their program staff has significant knowledge and experience in the subject matter for which they are granting. For one, how well the donee can write a proposal can have little to do with how well they can execute on the ground. Also, achieving many conservation projects typically involve a complex interaction between biological, economic and social factors. Having experienced staff is therefore essential for a foundation to make good judgements regarding a projects inherent worth, probability of success, and relative cost.

In the international conservation context, there are added requirements for donor expertise, as working cross-culturally places even more reliance on the donors ability to understand the culture, economics and social mores of the country in which it is acting. In my experience, this kind of understanding can only be achieved by program staff who speak the language of the subject country and have spent several years working on and ideally living in the region.

I would like to take note of two tendencies that I think are counter-productive. One is a tendency for foundations to require more process the less expertise there is in its program staff, as if additional detail will make up for a lack of ability in judgement. The problem is that there are a lot of NGOs that are adept at writing good proposals, but not at achieving on-the-ground results, so one really needs people with experience to distinguish between great-sounding proposals that will achieve little, with those that will be effective.

The other is a tendency in some foundations to hire people from the for-profit sector to work in a non-profit donor or implementing organization; this is rarely effective. For one, in any field, the more experience and knowledge one has, the better one can execute programs. And, the two fields are fundamentally different, in particular the need to focus on mission accomplishment instead of revenue generation, the need to be collaborative instead of competitive, and to hire internally motivated staff instead of externally motivated. The recent trend of putting for-profit people in management positions of nonprofit foundations organizations is especially damaging, and has led many of the larger groups to be fundamentally less effective than they once were.

To summarize, my advice to grant-making institutions working in the international conservation field is to treat the donee as the client, fund programmatically, create grants for an adequate amount of time to achieve program goals, and provide grantees with a relatively rapid response.

In the international field especially, developing program staff that have deep experience in the grant-relevant circumstances and cultures of the countries in which you fund is especially important. Its also important and relatively easy for donors to simplify the application and reporting process.

If the donor views the donee is the client, it will be acutely aware of the benefits or costs of each of these elements to the donee, and it will internalize these to create a balanced relationship that takes into account the legitimate requirements of both donor and donee.

Many of the ideas expressed in this article are in line with the principles of trust-based philanthropy, which advocates less emphasis on process and more on developing a relationship through evaluating the character, expertise and achievements of the donee organization. This relates to an essential point I made earlier: How do donors exercise the power relationship in which they have the fundingby regarding themselves as the client, or the donee? Because donee organization is going to be the one that does the work, donors should place the donees foremost.

Byron Swift serves as Senior Advisor for wildlands at Re:wild. Over his career he headed Nature and Culture International, Rainforest Trust and IUCN-US, and worked as a private foundation officer.

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How can philanthropy be more effective in environmental grant making? (commentary) - Mongabay.com

Human Behavior

Exclusive: I Went to the Nike Innovation Center To Train Like an AthleteHeres How High Tech It Gets – Well+Good

The ethos behind Nike's innovation is simple: Never accept the status quo. In the 50-plus years since the brand's inception, it has pushed the boundaries of the sporting world to develop products that incentivize every athletewhether they're an Olympic sprinter or a weekend sweaterto perform at their best.

In the last few years, the brand has brought us innovation galore: the sneaker that helped Eliud Kipchoge break the first two-hour marathon in history, the brand's first-ever hands-free workout shoe, and the first sports bras ever included in a World Cup kit. Time and time again, Nike's products have set the industry standard for what's possible, and it all starts at the Nike Sports Research Lab in Portland, Oregon.

In the latest episode ofWhat the Wellness,Ella Dove, Well+Good's Director of Creative Development, paid a visit to Nike HQ to find out whatreally goes into making some of the brand's latest and greatest tech. Andspoiler alertthe answer is: a lot.The lab is equipped with technology to gather holistic intel on athletes, ranging from their run pace to their motivation, and that intel is then used to help inform the products they develop.

"We use science as our tool to objectively understand every single athlete, regardless of their background and ability, to help them reach their potential and be more motivated, and ultimately positively influence human behavior," says Matthew Nurse, VP of Nike Sport Research Lab. "It allows us to understand athlete performance, behavior, risk of injury, and we use that information to make better products and services, not just for Nike but for the athletes that we serve."

To see what goes into the gear beloved by pro athletes and weekend warriors alikeand why Nike continues to be the best of the best in the sportswear worldcheck out the video above.

Oh hi! You look like someone who loves free workouts, discounts for cutting-edge wellness brands, and exclusive Well+Good content. Sign up for Well+, our online community of wellness insiders, and unlock your rewards instantly.

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Exclusive: I Went to the Nike Innovation Center To Train Like an AthleteHeres How High Tech It Gets - Well+Good

Human Behavior

Meet the Pastors Fighting Back Against QAnon – VICE

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Bruce Gerencser was raised in an evangelical household, was educated in an evangelical school, married the daughter of an evangelical Baptist minister, and soon became a fundamentalist Baptist preacher himself.

He freely admits that the gospel he preached, at times, was extreme.

Our beliefs were quite fundamentalist. We were young Earth creationistsyou know, the Earth was 6,000 years old, Gerencser told VICE News. We had a long list of rules and standards that govern human behavior, everything from premarital sex and adultery. We were certainly homophobic, or at least I was personally homophobic. Everything was strictly controlled.

But in 2005, after 25 years as a pastor, Gerencser gave it all up. Three years later, he renounced Christianity and became an atheist and a humanist, after becoming disillusioned with the churchs lurch to the right.

Now in his mid-60s, Bruce lives with his wife of 43 years just outside the small town of Bryan, Ohio, and he spends his time fighting back against the ills he sees within the church. Most recently that fight has seen him highlight and take on those spreading the gospel of QAnon.

What he didnt expect was that one of the people hed be up against was his own son.

Gerencser describes his adult son, whom he didnt want to name, as a good kid, polite kid and an awesome son, but he recalls that in January 2020 something changed, and soon he was having discussions about apocalyptic forces of evil and a coming storm.

Next thing I know, he's buying a large number of firearms and ammunition and a bulletproof vest and warning that hes preparing for what's coming next, Gerencser said. And, you know, and I would say that what's coming next, what we're going to have open warfare in the middle of Bryan, Ohio.

Like many whove fallen into QAnon conspiracy theories, Gerencsers son has also embraced even more violent extremist groups, joining the Three Percenters militia group and espousing support for the leader of the Proud Boys.

But aside from the guns and militias, what shocked Gerencser the most was when his son one day turned around and said hed returned to the church, joining a local Southern Baptist congregation.

When Gerencser asked his son why hed rejoined the church, his son told him: Because that pastor believes the same things I do.

Gerencser is part of a small but dedicated group of current and former pastors attempting to counter the threat posed by the spread of QAnon within the evangelical community, something thats happening from the pulpit and in congregations. While the number of pastors and churches openly embracing QAnon is limited, the conspiracy is spreading silently and quickly within the community, taking hold at a time when the church is hemorrhaging parishioners. Despite the dangers posed by QAnon within the church, very few are speaking up about the threat, preferring to bury their heads in the sand and hope the danger passes.

The danger in my mind is existential: This is the most serious problem within Protestant Christianity that I've seen in my lifetime, Pastor Derek Kubilius, vicar of Uniontown United Methodist Church in Uniontown, Ohio, and the host of Crossover Q, a podcast that aims to prevent the spread of QAnon conspiracies within the Christian community, told VICE News.

QAnon likes to portray itself as non-political, non-racist, nonviolent, and non-denominational, but even a cursory look at its tenets and beliefs will quickly shatter that illusion.

QAnon is a movement targeted at conservative, white, Republican evangelicals, and anyone else who comes along for the ride is welcome but unnecessary, said a prominent QAnon researcher who uses the name Dapper Gander, a pseudonym designed to protect his family from harassment.

Its trappings are the trappings of Christian dominionism, assuring followers that God wins and predicting that a series of events will unfold that are eerily similar to many of the events of the prophesied end-times in the Bible.

Apocalypticism has always been present in American Christianity, and its popularity has waxed and waned over the years. But the rise of Donald Trump and his embrace of QAnon conspiracies has intensified these feelings of good versus evil, of dark powers at work, that the end of time is nearing. Add in the pandemic, and youve got a perfect environment for QAnon conspiracies to take hold in the church.

When you look at the numbers of white Christians that have been sucked into this conspiracy theory, it's really a sort of heresy, Rev. Jennifer Butler, the CEO of Faith in Public Life, told VICE News.

It's wrong Church teaching. It's a misunderstanding of the Bible, but it's something QAnon built atop decades of bad theology, wrong belief, propaganda, in which people have been mistaught what Christianity actually is.

The embrace of QAnon in the evangelical church can be traced back to the rise of the American religious right in the 1980s, with pastors such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who brought politics into the church and embraced culture war issues like abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.

They also embraced Christian nationalism, the belief that the United States is fundamentally a Christian country whose laws should be informed by the teachings of the Bible. And it was this, more than anything, that paved the way for QAnon to take hold.

When QAnon came around, it just lined up so well with everything that a lot of Christians were already thinking and talking about, Kubilius said.

QAnon is a conspiracy theory that claims a secret group of elites is running a global child sex trafficking ring, and that former president Trump will someday soon expose these criminals and somehow return to the White House.

The conspiracy cult seeks to recruit an army of digital soldiers into a war between good and evil, where Trump represents the good while the Democrats and Hollywood elite who are supposedly involved in the sex trafficking ring represents the evil.

Such a narrative would be recognizable to many of those in the evangelical community.

Being religious sort of predisposes you to believe in certain fantastical things, and QAnon is one of those fantastical ideas, Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, told VICE News. Burge is the author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, a book documenting the increasing number of Americans who say they are not religious, and a pastor in the First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon in Illinois.

While pastors openly promoting QAnon conspiracies from the pulpit is still relatively rare in evangelical circles, that doesnt mean those conspiracies arent taking hold in the community.

A recent VICE News investigation found that pastors on YouTube were using the secret codewords of the QAnon conspiracy to spread these lies while avoiding being banned from the platform.

The evangelical church is made up of tens of thousands of churches across the country. While some of them are part of larger groups, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, in most cases, pastors are independent and operate without oversight from a bishop or other religious leader.

In many cases, pastors dont even need a physical location to start a ministry.

It's very decentralized, Burge told VICE News. People can sort of start their own ministry that doesn't even physically exist. It's mostly just them online with a webcam and a YouTube channel and a Facebook page.

Kubilius says he knows of pastors in his own denomination who are guilty of spreading QAnon conspiracies, but he said steps are being taken to address those problems in-house.

Groups like the United Methodist Church have a strict set of boundaries determining what can and cant be preached, and there is a regimented hierarchy where pastors are appointed to churches by bishops, rather than being allowed to simply establish a new church wherever they like.

That's one of the reasons why some of that extremist ideology is not as likely to be found in main-line denominations as it is in specifically evangelical churches.

Most evangelical churches are fighting to maintain their numbers, struggling with an aging congregation, and having difficulty attracting new members.

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found a dramatic drop in the number of white Americans who identify as evangelical Christians, from 23 percent of the population in 2006 to just 14 percent in 2020.

The survey also found that white evangelical Protestants are the oldest religious group in the U.S., with a median age of 56, compared to the median age in the country of 47.

Dwindling numbers of people in the pews means less money for pastors who rely solely on their congregations contributions to make a living.

Asses in the seats equal dollars in the plate, Gerencser said. There's a direct connection between those: The more people you have, the more money you have.

And so, as congregations dwindle, pastors in certain parts of the country have figured out that if they make their churches explicitly pro-Trump and are happy to accept or even preach about QAnon conspiracies, they're going to attract more people, and specifically men, whove been abandoning the church in recent years.

For a lot of pastors, this is an untapped market. And if I want to grow a church quickly, this might be a way to do it, Burge said.

And Burge warns that while actively promoting QAnon inside churches is still rare within the Christian community, speaking out against QAnon is equally rare.

The pandemic was a boon for QAnon, allowing it to flourish on mainstream social media platforms throughout 2020 at a time when a lot more people were stuck at home with more time on their hands to do their own research.

Kubilius says that since launching his podcast, hes spoken to several pastors across the country dealing with this problem, and he says one pastor told him that when his congregation finally returned to in-person services, many of them had been radicalized into QAnon.

Eventually he had to leave his church because this thing had been growing under his nose and he didn't even realize it, Kubilius said.

It's kind of baffled me, why the likes of the National Association of Evangelicals, for example, the largest umbrella group for evangelicals, or some of these megachurch pastors who pastor 10[000] or 20,000 people and should take a firm stand on these things, but they don't, Gerencser said.

When asked about the issue, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) told VICE News to speak to Ed Setzer, a member of their board of directors.

Setzer wrote an article in USA Today a year ago warning that evangelicals need to deal with the QAnon horrors in their midst. I found that a whole lot of people got mad at me for that, saying, This is not an issue; you're just exaggerating. And then on January 6th, those people stopped saying I was exaggerating, Setzer told VICE News.

But other major groups within the evangelical movement seem even less inclined to address the issue.

When the Southern Baptist Convention appointed Ed Litton as its new president this past summer, he was asked about how he plans to address the issue of QAnon within the evangelical movement. Litton dismissed it as a fringe problem."

While Kubilius podcast and Gerencsers website reach large numbers of people, neither has the reach of a national organization like the NAE. However, there are some groups attempting to put a more structured system in place.

One of those is Faith in Public Life, a multifaith political lobby group, whose CEO Jennifer Butler is well aware of the scale of the problem in the church.

I lead a network of 20,000 religious leaders, and what I'm hearing is that everybody is grappling either with how to talk to their congregants about QAnon or to help their congregants talk to friends and family members. A lot of people are very distraught at seeing family members and the country get pulled into this, Butler said.

The group is currently working with experts in the field of cults and conspiracy theories to put in place a training program that would equip pastors with the skills necessary to fight the spread of QAnon.

We see congregations as being really watering holes of democracy, and truth, and we're trying to train folks to be able to handle this in a compassionate pastoral way but to also really equip their congregants to be able to stand up against conspiracy theories on a personal level while also helping them dismantle these erroneous beliefs, Butler said.

But QAnon is a unique conspiracy that entices followers with the lure of secret knowledge, convincing them that theyll be part of a great battle between good and evil, that they will be a digital soldier fighting on the front lines and saving the children. Its alluring, and difficult to let go of.

Its very hard for these people to give up, even the ones who know its complete hogwash, because what it does is it injects a kind of purpose and meaning in peoples lives, Kubilius said.

It turns people into heroes; it convinces them that they are soldiers in a digital war for the soul of America. Its very difficult to leave something like that behind.

Originally posted here:
Meet the Pastors Fighting Back Against QAnon - VICE

Human Behavior

The gospel according to the late Bishop John Shelby Spong – The Daily Post-Athenian

Bishop John Shelby Spong of Newark, New Jersey, never stuck Why Christianity Must Change or Die on the doors of Canterbury Cathedral, since it was easier to post a talking-points version of his manifesto on the internet.

Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead, he proclaimed in 1998. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity.

Lacking a personal God, it was logical to add: Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

Spongs 12-point take on post-theism faith emerged after spending years on the road, giving hundreds of speeches and appearing on broadcasts such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live.

By the time of his death at the age of 90 on Sept. 12 at his home in Richmond, Virginia Spong had seen many of his once-heretical beliefs especially on sex and marriage normalized in most Episcopal pulpits and institutions. However, his doctrinal approach was too blunt for many in the mainline establishment, where a quieter spiritual but not religious approach has become the norm.

Spong called himself a doubting believer and said he had no problem reciting traditional rites and creeds because, in his own mind, he had already redefined the words and images to fit his own doctrines. He also knew when to be cautious, such as during a Denver visit in the late 1980s an era in which the Diocese of Colorado remained a center for evangelical and charismatic Episcopalians.

After a lecture at the liberal St. Thomas Episcopal Church, I asked Spong if he believed the resurrection of Jesus was a historic event that took place in real time.

I dont think that I can say what the disciples believed they experienced. Ill have to think about that some more, he said, moving on to another question.

The bishop answered a decade later, in his memo calling for a new Reformation: Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

Frequently, Spong floated doctrinal test balloons in The Voice, his diocesan newspaper. Here are some other famous quotations.

On scripture: The Gospels portray Jesus as believing that David wrote the Psalms, Solomon the Proverbs and Moses the Torah a position which any graduate from any accredited seminary would today quickly dismiss.

On the Virgin Mary: The Mary I see in church history is a de-sexed woman. ... Her humanity has been taken away from her, and I think (Mary) makes a very poor symbol.

On science: We have practiced our enormous scientific and technical skills to open doors to aspects of life that once we assigned only to the gods. ... The power of divinity is more and more our own power.

Spong argued that churches that didnt embrace modernity were doomed. Nevertheless, during his era, Episcopal Church membership fell from 3.4 million in the 1960s to 1.6 million in 2019, according to official statistics. During Spongs tenure as bishop (1976-2000), Newark diocese membership declined from 62,732 to 36,674. That number was down to 23,045 in 2019.

When Jesus said, Come unto me all ye, he did not add, so long as you are not divorced or gay or a woman bishop or a doubter, he wrote. This church of ours may never be the church of the masses; it will never satisfy the emotional needs of the religiously insecure.

Speaking at Drew Theological School in New Jersey, the bishop also urged believers not to worry about eternity.

Nobody knows what the afterlife is all about; nobody even knows if there is one, Spong said in 2010. All of these images of bliss and punishment, heaven and hell, are not about the afterlife at all. Theyre about controlling human behavior with fear and guilt. ...

We dont need a savior. If Jesus died for your sins, you are one wretched human being. I dont think thats good news.

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

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The gospel according to the late Bishop John Shelby Spong - The Daily Post-Athenian

Human Behavior

COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths Fell Significantly in September – Reason

Finally, some good news. The past month may have felt like we were still locked in an unwavering delta variant surge, what with some major cities imposing new restrictions, an array of alarming news coverage, and vaccinated people still seeming to catch a lot of breakthrough infections. But September actually saw some very good news on the COVID-19 front.

In the U.S., new daily cases have dropped by about 35 percent since September 1, according to data from The New York Times.

Worldwide, new daily case numbers have fallen by 30 percent since late August.

In addition, the number of people hospitalized in the U.S. with COVID-19 has dropped by a quarter over the past month.

Hospitalizations "are still at levels not seen since the winter, before vaccines were widely available," notes The Washington Post.

However, they've been on a downward trend for weeks.

The way hospitalization data are trending may see at odds with constant (and ongoing) news reports that medical facilities in various areas are overcrowded. But these reports may warp American perceptions, giving the impression that the country as a whole is seeing a prolonged period of surging COVID-19 hospitalizations when it's really select placesone after anotherdealing with short-term increases.

And, with a decrease in case counts and hospitalizations has come a decrease in COVID-19 deaths, as well.

"Daily deaths which typically change direction a few weeks after cases and hospitalizations have fallen 10 percent since Sept. 20," notes The New York Times' David Leonhardt this morning. "It is the first sustained decline in deaths since the early summer."

These decreases are part of a pattern that Leonhardt calls "Covid's mysterious two-month cycle":

Since the Covid virus began spreading in late 2019 cases have often surged for about two months sometimes because of a variant, like Delta and then declined for about two months.

Epidemiologists do not understand why. Many popular explanations, like seasonality or the ebbs and flows of social distancing, are clearly insufficient, if not wrong. The two-month cycle has occurred during different seasons of the year and occurred even when human behavior was not changing in obvious ways.

The most plausible explanations involve some combination of virus biology and social networks. Perhaps each virus variant is especially likely to infect some people but not others and once many of the most vulnerable have been exposed, the virus recedes. And perhaps a variant needs about two months to circulate through an average-sized community.

Human behavior does play a role, with people often becoming more careful once caseloads begin to rise. But social distancing is not as important as public discussion of the virus often imagines. "We've ascribed far too much human authority over the virus," as Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota, has told me.

The two-month cycle can be seen in countries around the world and in states around the U.S. For instance, the delta variant started surging in many Southern states in June, then began retreating in August. In July, the delta variant started tearing through more states outside the Souththen gradually began getting better in September.

Across the U.S., there were 210,995 new cases of COVID-19 recorded on September 1, according to the Times data. The seven-day average number of new cases then was 166,105.

On October 1, there were 125,860 new cases of COVID-19 reported, with a seven-day average of 109,192 new cases.

Who's to blame for extreme partisanship? Conservative writers David French and Jonah Goldberg both tackle this question in their latest newsletters. French's column is pegged to a recent poll showing high percentages of Trump voters and Biden voters are itching for civil war:

Why would they even contemplate taking such a drastic step? Well, the poll provides the answers, and they're not surprising. Competing partisans loathe each other and view the opposition as an existential threat. This also isn't new. It's been tracked in poll after poll for year after year. This one found that a "strong majority" of Trump supporters falsely believe there is no real difference between Democrats and socialists. A majority of Biden voters falsely see no real difference between Republicans and fascists.

What this poll tracked better than many others is that the mutual loathing is based more on emotion than policy. In fact, the poll found that majorities of Trump voters expressed support for most elements of the Biden infrastructure and reconciliation plan. Even the least popular plank (supporting unions by banning state "right to work" laws) garnered 42 percent support from those who voted for Trump.

Yet broad consensus on the most important legislation now pending in Washington didn't stop 80 percent of Biden voters and 84 percent of Trump voters from viewing the opposing party as a "clear and present threat to American democracy."

We've seen it time and again. The combination of malice and misinformation is driving American polarization to a fever pitch. While there are real differences between the political parties, a fundamental reality of American politics is that voters hate or fear the opposing side in part because they have mistaken beliefs about their opponents. They think the divide is greater than it is.

Whole thing here.

"The bases of both parties, each in their own ways, crave dumbed down 'solutions.' Our elites are indulging them," writes Goldberg, pointing to exceedingly stupid recent comments from Sen. Marco Rubio (RFla.) and from U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

Authoritarian, totalitarian, monarchical, and even anarchical societies have elites. And so do democracies. Among the ranks of elites in America are these people called "senators." Rubio is a member of this elite club. J.D. Vance is already a member of one faction of the elitehe's a rich and famous former private equity guy and author. He wants to join Rubio's club. But he goes around campaigning against elites and elitism while, in effect, arguing he should be promoted to a higher rung of the elite.

What does this have to do with idiocy?

Simply this: Our elites are actively cultivating idiocy, both in the Greek sense and in the modern moronic sense. The bases of both parties, each in their own ways, crave dumbed down "solutions" swathed in the gossamer of gobbledygook and rationalized by irrationalism. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is only figuratively talking out of her ass when she mumbles magic incantations inspired by the mumbo-jumbo of modern monetary theory. But she gets closer to literalism when she joins other elites at the Met Gala with "tax the rich" scrawled on her backside. I get that "tax the rich" is just a sloganbut it's an idiotic one given that we do, in fact, tax the rich. But if you're an idiot in the Greek sense, someone who doesn't know much about politics or public finance, you might take that slogan literally and think we don't.

When conservatives say we shouldn't add trillions to the national debt, progressives respond, "You didn't care about the debt when you were in charge." And they're right! But this response is sophomoric: You were horribly irresponsible with the credit card, so now it's our turn to be horribly irresponsible!

The politiciansin both partieswho are the thirstiest for social media virality sound like Bart Simpson running for class president against Martin Prince. "He says there are no easy answers! I say he's not looking hard enough!"

Read the whole thing at The Dispatch.

Biden's comptroller pick yearns for the USSR. Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden's nominee for comptroller of the currency, "graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Thirty years later, she still believes the Soviet economic system was superior, and that U.S. banking should be remade in the Gosbank's image," notes The Wall Street Journal:

"Until I came to the US, I couldn't imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today's world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn't always 'know best,'" she tweeted in 2019. After Twitter users criticized her ignorance, she added a caveat: "I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people's salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!"

Sure, there was a Gulag, and no private property, but maternity benefits!

A new trove of leaked documents being called the Pandora Papers reveals private financial information about powerful people from around the world. "Based upon the most expansive leak of tax haven files in history, the investigation reveals the secret deals and hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and high-level public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, including 35 country leaders," says the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. "Ambassadors, mayors and ministers, presidential advisers, generals and a central bank governor appear in the files."

Former President Donald Trump is still fighting in court to get his Twitter account back. "[By] de-platforming the presumptive head and most popular member of the Republican Party, cutting him off from the most effective and direct forms of communication with potential voters, [Twitter] is threatening irreparable damage to the Republican Party's prospects in the 2022 and 2024 elections," said Trump's lawyers in a motion filed Friday.

Photographer Chris Arnade has a new newsletter. "What I hope to do is use it to get back to doing what I used to do, which is wander around (this time all over the world, not just the US) talking to people. Then turning that it into a mix of interviews, photographs, punditing, and whatever else," he writes.

A positive drug test can't be used as the basis for a drug possession charge, rules the Ohio Supreme Court.

A "simple way to expand access to health care"? Fix the medical residency system.

The Biden administration's antitrust lawsuit against JetBlue and American Airlines "is likely to fail under the prevailing consumer benefit standard," posits TheWall Street Journal editorial board. "But other businesses are now on notice that antitrust will be wielded as a regulatory weapon no matter the evidence."

Continued here:
COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths Fell Significantly in September - Reason

Human Behavior

Enhancing communications with AI to move beyond the ‘Contact Center’ – AMEinfo

An AMEinfo exclusive

CSA technology understands, analyzes, and automates voice conversations in real-time, including transcription of calls, in-call agent coaching, automation of after-call work, and more.

Uniphore, a leadingConversational Service Automation (CSA) company, recently released survey results revealing UAE consumer perspectives on the challenges and opportunities forvideo conversations especially that 56% of them reported they spent significantly more time on video last year than in prior years.

The survey highlighted that over the past 18+ months, UAE consumers experienced both appreciation and frustration for what video conversations have to offer.

However, the survey also served to announce Uniphores expansion of its CSA capabilities and offerings, combiningAI-based voice and video automation technology.

Commenting on the research findings, Umesh Sachdev, CEO and co-founder of Uniphore said: Through AI and automation technology, companies and business leaders can create better experiences for customers, pick up on nonverbal cues that they may have missed, and provide insights using data that is decipherable and actionable.

The same survey results showed 85% of UAE respondents are open to using automation or AI tools to improve video conversations.

To find out more about the move beyond the contact center, AMEinfo conducted an exclusive interview withRavi Saraogi, Co-founder & President APAC, Uniphore.

Expanding the Uniphore offering

When looking at AI in communications, the Uniphore application has traditionally been focused on the contact center, assisting agents with real-time support, doing post-call reporting, and so on. But the company has been keen on extending this outside of the contact center.

Uniphore has been focused on disrupting a $500 billion enterprise AI and automation market with unique capabilities that analyze and interpret the customer experience (CX) at the contact center where the majority of conversations take place and derive better engagement and productivity solutions, Ravi started.

Over the last couple of years, Uniphore has empowered its platform with capabilities around AI and NLP technology, but it complimented this with major acquisitions.

In October 2020, the company acquired a third-party license for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology from NTT DATA to automate the front office for modern contact centers.

In January 2021, Uniphore also acquired Emotions Research lab, a Spain-based AI company that analyses human behavior through facial recognition of emotions, and combined it with its CSA solution to enhance its offerings.

In July 2021, Uniphore announced its agreement to acquireJacada, a CX pioneer having the industrys leading low-code no-code platform for contact center automation allowing to solve complex contact center challenges and empowering the design and implementation of transformational CX quickly and easily.

We can now offer a comprehensive platform where business users can realize state-of-the-art digital transformation via robust AI-led CX solutions, resulting in significant ROI, Ravi assured.

How reliable is AI in CX?

Ravi agrees that it is very difficult for machines to depict 100% what a human can do, what they are fthinking or feeling.

The idea is to bring productivity into play. Even if the system is 70-80% accurate, you can bring about 70-80% productivity improvement in the contact center or in conversations that organizations are having, thus generating tremendous business gains, Ravi offered.

We dont have lie detectors, but, for corporate entities, there are particular ways to check if the call went according to script or if the delivery was as anticipated by the consumer. Similarly, education organizations can verify if school children were alert enough, if teachers put enough markers in place to create attentiveness or asked the right questions or not, and if students were responsive.

The Uniphore system puts enough parameters in place which AI tracks while providing real-time guidance to users be it to improvesales or enhance educational performances.

Uniphores conversational automation platform

Conversation service automation using AI has multiple different aspects, including speech recognition to understand what the person is saying, how, and why.

Uniphore uses voice biometrics to authenticate the person using his voice, detect and understand his/her emotions by the way they speak, and use NLP to understand the intent of the caller, Ravi explained.

Uniphore Acquisitions that extend this functionality

RPA Technology from NTT Data automates processes in the contact center. For example, if the customer wants to change their address, the bot can do this in the background, allowing the agent to focus more intently on the softer human side of the call.

Emotion Research Lab uses AI and ML to identify emotion and engagement levels in real-time over video-based interactions.

Jacada uses low-code, no-code technology that now integrates with the RPA capabilities so enterprise customers can quickly and easily create workflows in the contact center to streamline and automate processes.

Using bots, Uniphore has unique capabilities to automate certain actions that agents or speakers on the phone or video call need not take anymore. This allows quicker tech deployment for enterprise customers but also with partners across the ecosystem who can now launch a low-code no-code platform across different use cases, Ravi explained.

Using virtual agents, customers need not wait a long time to get answers for their queries or for someone to show up on a call. Repetitive responses like verifying fund transfers or address changes are done by our system which is interpreting the right intent, and ensuring accurate delivery is driven across all the systems and elements.

B2B use cases

When multiple individuals are on a call, its hard for humans to keep track of everyone. Uniphore uses AI to help read facial queues and judge interests and address sentiments. This can then be used to generate alerts to participants or tips, during the call, to help better engage with their audiences.

It can have an immediate impact on generating better sales for retail-based organizations as well as creating more effective communications and levels of engagements in audio formats or over video.

In educational institutions, teachers can verify if students are being attentive. With remote work video conferencing, be it with staff or clients, AI can help keep engagement levels between stakeholders high.

Finally, AI can verify if the participants have discussed points meant to be discussed, or tabulate if all the is were dotted and the Ts were crossed.

Gauging sentiment and giving coverage of that to areas around marketing, sales, and internal company collaboration are areas we cover globally, Ravi said.

In the region, we have clients in contact centers using our technology, but we are at a stage where we just acquired video AI capabilities, are integrating it in our platform, and working out use case scenarios that can create impact across enterprises in this region.

Can privacy issues arise from this technology?

It is not unthinkable to assume that when a conversation is taking place, with AI being present to track words said and actions taken, the caller might have concerns about privacy issues.

When we started around contact center practices, the intent was to keep the agent as a focal point. All the technologies were created around the agents to really uplift their productivity. For video communication, we are not trying to create a sense that someone is watching, but rather uplift the existing communication and bring about benefits to all stakeholders on the call, Ravi explained.

Ravi went on to say that different countries have different laws around privacy. Before we start a conversation, we take the callers consent by announcing that the call is being recorded, and we ask Are you ok with it?, Ravi said.

Whats more important is that Uniphore is not recording conversations but rather streaming live ones while giving real-time guidance. Its only in the event organizations need post conversation analysis that a recording is initiated by consent.

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Enhancing communications with AI to move beyond the 'Contact Center' - AMEinfo

Human Behavior

Pandemic Bird-Watching Created a Data Boomand a Conundrum – WIRED

On a morning in late September, Kestin Thomas stood next to the towering glass facade of the Time Warner building in Manhattan holding a dead bird. The small body was still warm in his hand, but he couldnt feel the flutter of a heartbeat or the soft puff of breath escaping. He recorded the death on a data sheet, marking the time, day, and location. Then he put the bird in a plastic bag and took it home, leaving it in the freezer for a day before finally dropping the body off at the New York City Audubon Society.

It was heartbreaking, he says.

Thomas is one of many people who took up birding during the pandemic, inspired by the sparrows he saw on his daily walks. I realized how adorable they are and that theyre living in the city amongst us and thriving, he says. He started taking pictures and sound recordings, identifying the birds with the help of apps like Merlin and eBird. Those entries add information to databases that scientists use to study migration and behavior. All of those observations that people are submitting, they go into very advanced modeling to create distribution maps for species, to look at trends of their populations, says Andrew Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology which maintains both apps.

Now Thomas is also a volunteer with the Audubon Societys Project Safe Flight, which is collecting a different kind of data. The group enlists people to monitor New York City buildings during the fall and spring migration seasons to record the number of birds killed or injured by flying into windows.

Bird-watching has boomed during the pandemic, and all that extra interest has translated into citizen science initiatives seeing a huge swell in participation. With the fall migration now in full swing, this army of avid birders is amassing a wealth of data about how weather, human movements, artificial lights, and city infrastructure can affect birds as they travel. Farnsworth notes that while both Cornell projects have grown every year since their inception over a decade ago, the increase in users, downloads, and data over the past 18 months was unprecedented. Pandemic time was really off the charts, he says.

eBird, which allows birders to note which species theyve spottedand wherehad a more than 40 percent increase in sightings in April 2020 over the previous year. Thats more than double the apps normal annual growth, according to data provided by Farnsworth. This February, 140,000 users logged on, to date the greatest number of users in a single month and a 50 percent increase over last February. Now, there are over a billion entries.

The same is true for Merlin, which helps birders make identifications through pictures, audio recordings, or descriptions of the birds color, size, and location. This February, the app was installed on 200,000 new devicesa 175 percent increase over the previous yearand it had more than 611,000 active users, double the number recorded in February 2020.

eBird was already an immensely useful database that scientists have used to study the bald eagle population, examine the effect of extreme weather on birds, and show changes in species songs. Now pandemic-era entries are helping them understand how human activityor the lack thereofaffects birds. One study published this month in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Manitoba used eBird data from the United States and Canada to examine bird behavior in areas that normally have lots of people, like cities, airports, and major roads. The researchers reported that during lockdown, bird activity increased for more than 80 percent of the species they studied, including hummingbirds, bald eagles, and barn swallows.

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Pandemic Bird-Watching Created a Data Boomand a Conundrum - WIRED