Human Behavior

Is Carb Addiction Real? All You Need to Know – Healthline

Arguments surrounding carbs and their role in optimal health have dominated discussions of the human diet for nearly 5 decades.

Mainstream diet fads and recommendations have continued to change rapidly year after year.

At the same time, researchers continue to discover new information about how your body digests and responds to carbs.

Therefore, you may still be wondering how to include carbs in a healthy diet, or what makes some carbs so hard to say no to at times.

This article reviews the current research on whether carbs are addictive, and what that means for their role in the human diet.

Carbohydrates are one of the main macronutrients your body needs.

In fact, of all the macronutrients, carbs are arguably the most important source of energy for your bodys cells, tissues, and organs. Not only do carbs produce energy, but they also help store it (1).

Still, serving as a good source of energy isnt their only function. Carbs also serve as a precursor to ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), transport molecular data, and aid cell signaling processes (2).

When you think of carbs, often the first types of foods that come to mind are refined carbs like cakes, cookies, pastries, white bread, pasta, and rice.

Their chemical makeup includes three primary elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

However, many healthy foods are also carbs, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole-grain breads, pasta, and rice.

Carbs are one of the main macronutrients required by your body. Theyre needed for many functions, including producing and storing energy.

You may have noticed that it can be hard to resist junk food at times, especially carbs that are high in refined sugar, salt, and fat.

Many people have wondered if this is a matter of willpower, behavioral or psychological traits, or even brain chemistry.

Some people have even begun to question whether carbs could be addictive in the same way that other substances or behaviors can be (3, 4).

One major study revealed strong evidence that high-carb meals stimulate regions of the brain that are associated with cravings and rewards (5).

This study found that men with obesity or excess weight displayed higher brain activity and greater reported hunger after eating a high-GI meal, compared with a low-GI meal (5).

GI stands for glycemic index, a measure of how the carbs in a meal affect blood sugar levels. A food with a high GI increases blood sugar levels more dramatically than a food with a low GI.

This suggests that the human urge for refined carbs could have much more to do with brain chemistry than initially believed.

Additional research has continued to support these findings.

Some researchers have gone so far as to suggest that refined carbs in the form of fructose have addictive properties that closely resemble those of alcohol. Fructose is a simple sugar found in fruits, vegetables, and honey.

These scientists found that, like alcohol, fructose promotes insulin resistance, abnormal fat levels in your blood, and liver inflammation. Plus, it stimulates your brains hedonic pathway (6).

This pathway triggers appetite and influences food intake through a system of pleasure and reward rather than being based on true physical hunger or actual energy needs.

Not only do insulin resistance, inflammation, and abnormal fat levels increase your risk of chronic disease, but repeated stimulation of the hedonic pathway may reset the level of fat mass your body wants to preserve, contributing to increased body weight (7, 8, 9).

High-GI carbs that promote rapid changes to insulin and blood sugar levels also appear to affect dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in your brain that sends messages between cells and influences the way you feel pleasure, reward, and even motivation (10).

Furthermore, some research in rats shows that granting periodic access to sugar and chow food mix may produce behavior that closely mirrors the dependency often seen with drug abuse (11).

A second study used a similar model, allowing rats periodic access to a 10% sugar solution and a chow food mix followed by a period of fasting. During and after the fast, the rats displayed anxiety-like behaviors and a reduction in dopamine (12).

Its important to note that most of the experimental research conducted thus far on carbs and addiction has taken place in animals. Therefore, additional and more rigorous human studies are needed (13, 14).

In one study, women ages 18 to 45 who were prone to emotional eating episodes were more likely to choose a carb-rich drink over a protein-rich one after being induced into a sad mood even when blinded from which drink was which (15).

The connection between carb-rich foods and mood is just one theory as to carbs may sometimes be addictive (16).

On the other hand, some researchers are not convinced that carbs are truly addictive (17).

They argue that there are not enough human studies and believe that most of the research in animals suggests addiction-like behaviors from sugar only in the context of periodic access to sugar specifically rather than from the neurochemical effect of carbs in general (18).

Other researchers conducted a study in 1,495 university students in which they assessed the students for signs of food addiction. They concluded that total calories in a food and unique eating experiences were more influential on calorie intake than sugar alone (19).

Further, some have argued that many of the tools used to evaluate addictive-like eating behaviors rely on self-assessment and reports from people participating in the study, which leaves too much room for subjective misunderstandings (20).

Some evidence suggests that high-carbs meals may stimulate different types of brain activity than low-carb meals. Particularly, carbs appear to affect the areas of the brain related to pleasure and reward.

In 2009, researchers at Yale developed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) to provide a validated measurement tool to assess addictive eating behaviors (21, 22).

In 2015, researchers from the University of Michigan and the New York Obesity Research Center used the YFAS scale to measure addiction-like eating behaviors in students. They concluded high-GI, high fat, and processed foods were most associated with food addiction (23).

The chart below shows some of the most problematic foods for addictive eating and their glycemic load (GL) (23).

GL is a measure that considers both the GI of a food as well as its portion size. When compared to GI, GL is typically a more accurate measure of how a food impacts blood sugar levels.

With the exception of cheese, each of the top 10 most addictive foods according to the YFAS scale contains significant amounts of carbs. While most cheese still provides some carbs, it isnt as carb-heavy as the other items on the list.

Moreover, many of these foods are not only high in carbs but also refined sugar, salt, and fat. Plus, theyre often eaten in highly processed forms.

Therefore, there may still be much more to uncover about the relationship between these types of foods, the human brain, and addictive-like eating behaviors.

The most addictive types of carbs are highly processed, as well as high in fat, sugar, and salt. They also typically have a high glycemic load.

Even though research shows that carbs display some addictive properties, there are many techniques you can use to overcome cravings for carbs and other junk foods.

One of the most powerful steps you can take to stop carb cravings is simply to plan for them ahead of time.

Having an action plan in mind for those moments when cravings hit may help you feel prepared and empowered to pass up carb-laden junk foods and make a healthier choice instead.

As far as what your action plan should entail, keep in mind that there is no right or wrong answer. Different techniques may work better or worse for different people.

Here are a few ideas you can try:

Various techniques may help fight off carbs cravings. These include physical activity, staying hydrated, familiarizing yourself with trigger foods, and filling up on healthy fruits, vegetables, and proteins.

Carbs are your bodys primary source of energy.

Some carbs, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are very healthy. Other carbs can be very processed and high in salt, sugar, and fat.

Early research on carbs does suggest that they might display addictive-like properties. They appear to stimulate certain parts of the brain and even influence the types and amounts of chemicals your brain releases.

However, more rigorous research in humans is needed to uncover exactly how these mechanisms in the brain are affected by carbs.

Some of the most addictive carbs appear to be highly processed junk foods like pizza, chips, cakes, and candies.

However, there are various techniques you can try to combat carb cravings. Consider testing out a few to learn what works best for you.

Read more here:
Is Carb Addiction Real? All You Need to Know - Healthline

Human Behavior

Biased AI Is Another Sign We Need to Solve the Cybersecurity Diversity Problem – Security Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) excels at finding patterns like unusual human behavior or abnormal incidents. It can also reflect human flaws and inconsistencies, including 180 known types of bias. Biased AI is everywhere, and like humans, it can discriminate against gender, race, age, disability and ideology.

AI bias has enormous potential to negatively affect women, minorities, the disabled, the elderly and other groups. Computer vision has more issues with false-positive facial identification for women and people of color, according to research by MIT and Stanford University. A recent ACLU experiment discovered that nearly 17 percent of professional athlete photos were falsely matched to mugshots in an arrest database.

Biased algorithms are linked to discrimination in hiring practices, performance management and mortgage lending. Consumer AI products frequently contain microinequities that create barriers for users based on gender, age, language, culture and other factors.

Sixty-three percent of organizations will deploy artificial intelligence in at least one area of cybersecurity this year, according to Capgemini. AI can scale security and augment human skills, but it can also create risks. Cybersecurity AI requires diverse data and context to act effectively, which is only possible with diverse cyber teams who recognize subtle examples of bias in security algorithms. The cybersecurity diversity problem isnt new, but its about to create huge issues with biased cybersecurity AI if left unchecked.

Put simply, AI has the same vulnerabilities as people do, wrote Greg Freiherr for Imaging Technology News. Algorithms are built on sets of business logic rules written by humans. AI can be developed to perpetuate deliberate bias or, more often, it mirrors unconscious human assumptions about security risks.

Everyone has unconscious biases that inform judgment and decision-making, including AI developers. Humans tend to have a shallow understanding of other demographics and cultural groups, and the resulting prejudices can shape AI logic for security in many areas, including traffic filtering and user authentication. Language biases can shape natural language processing (NLP) rules, including spam filtering.

Business logic is a permanent part of an AIs DNA, no matter how much training data is used. Even machine learning (ML) algorithms built for deep learning cant escape built-in biases. Biased rules within algorithms inevitably generate biased outcomes, wrote IBM Security VP Aarti Borkar for Fast Company.

An AIs decision-making abilities are only as effective as its training data. Data is neutral until it is filtered through human bias. By the time data reaches an algorithm, there are usually strong traces of human prejudice. Bias can be created by preprocessing teams through a variety of factors, such as data classifiers, sampling decisions and the weight assigned to training data.

Biased training data can corrupt security outcomes. Anti-biased preprocessing is necessary to ensure adequate sampling, classification and representation.

Humans and technology have become cybersecurity collaborators. Cybersecurity contributors train AI to create better security outcomes through a lens of personal knowledge and experience, but humans can quickly contribute to algorithm bias, especially in teams with poor diversity. Varied perspectives are needed to leverage cybersecurity AI in fair, balanced ways.

Diverse teams can recognize the specific risks of biased AI and minimize its impact. Cognitive diversity can contribute to the production of fair algorithms, help curate balanced training data and enable the supervision of secure AI.

CISOs need to create more internal diversity, but getting there isnt going to be easy. Its time to collaborate on the issues that perpetuate biased security culture and flawed AI. The problem is too complex for one person or strategy to solve alone.

Hiring and internal promotions dont guarantee cognitive diversity. Security leaders need to create an inclusive workplace culture. Getting newly hired talent up-to-speed on AI can require training and likely a reevaluation of existing learning strategies as well. Microinequities are prevalent in corporate learning programs, so maintaining an equal playing field means implementing accommodations for learners with varied languages, cultures, ages and levels of dependency on assistive technologies.

Once newly hired or promoted talent is trained, its time to figure out how to retain women, minorities and other candidates, as well as how to remove any barriers to their success. Women in security are disproportionately likely to feel stressed at work and leave the industry, and both women and minorities receive lower wages and fewer promotions.

Biased performance management practices are part of the problem, as workplace cultures and policies can be especially detrimental to women and minorities. For example, an absence of flex-time policies can disproportionately hurt women.

Equal pay and equal opportunity are needed to retain and engage with diverse perspectives. The security industry desperately needs to double-down on creating a culture of self-care and inclusion. Removing barriers can improve anti-bias efforts and produce other positive effects as well. After analyzing 4,000 companies data, researcher Katica Roy discovered organizations that move the needle closer to gender equity even experience an increase in revenue.

Women in cybersecurity are dramatically underrepresented, especially in light of their overall workforce participation. However, true cognitive diversity may require significant changes around policy and culture. CISOs face the dual challenge of fixing cyber team culture and starting cross-functional conversations about equity. Collaboration between security, HR, risk, IT and other functions can create ripples of change that lead to more inclusive hiring, performance management and policies.

Bias is nothing new. Humans [have bias] all of the time, AI strategist Colin Priest, vice president of AI Strategy at DataRobot, told Information Week. The difference with AI is that it happens at a bigger scale and its measurable.

Its probably impossible to create artificial intelligence without any biases. A risk-based approach to governing AI bias is the most practical solution. The first step is to create a clear framework of whats fair, which shouldnt be filtered through a narrow lens of experience. Individuals with diverse perspectives on AI, technology, data, ethics and diversity need to collaborate on governance.

Remember, minimize is not the same as remove. A risk-based framework is the only pragmatic way to put AI governance into practice. Resources should be directed toward mitigating biases in artificial intelligence with the greatest potential impact on security, reputation and users.

Priest recommends creating a job description for AI to assess risks. This isnt a sign that robots are coming for human jobs. Rather, position descriptions are a solid baseline for understanding the purpose of cybersecurity AI and creating performance metrics. Measurement against KPIs is an important part of any governance strategy. Monitoring AI can prevent biases that slowly degrade the performance of cyber algorithms.

Checking personal biases is rarely comfortable. Industry leaders have a biased perspective on AI innovation, especially compared to regulators and researchers who focus on safety. True cognitive diversity can create uncomfortable friction between competing values and perspectives. However, a truly balanced solution to AI bias is going to require collaboration between industries, academia and the government.

IBM Chair and CEO Ginni Rometty recently called for precision regulation and better collaboration between AI stakeholders on CNBC. For example, legislation could determine how the technology is used instead of AI capabilities or characteristics.

You want to have innovation flourish and youve got to balance that with [AI] security, said Rometty.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai recently expressed a similar point of view, asking European regulators to consider a proportionate approach.

Creating more effective frameworks for AI anti-bias and safety means being open to conflicting ideas. Security leaders should prepare for productive friction, and more importantly, join global efforts to create better frameworks. Industry perspectives are critical to supporting the IEEE, the European Commission and others in their efforts to create suitable frameworks.

Third-party data can be a valuable tool for cybersecurity AI, but its not risk-free. Your organization could be absorbing the risk of third-party biases embedded in training data.

Organizations will be held responsible for what their AIs do, like they are responsible for what their employees do, wrote Lisa Morgan for Information Week. Knowing your data vendors methodology and efforts to mitigate training data bias is crucial. Anti-bias governance must include oversight into third-party data sources and partnerships.

Its officially time to target the talent pipeline and cybersecurity diversity. Women are dramatically underrepresented in cybersecurity. According to UNESCO, gender diversity rates drop even lower among cyber leadership and roles at the forefront of technology, such as those in cybersecurity AI. Minorities have fewer opportunities for equal pay and opportunities.

The opportunity gap starts early. According to UNESCO, girls have 25 percent fewer basic tech skills than their male peers. Creating a fair future for artificial intelligence and a diverse talent pipeline requires that everyone pitch in, including industry security leaders. Everyone benefits from efforts to create a more skilled, confident pipeline of diverse cyber talent. Nonprofits, schools and educational groups need help closing the STEM skill and interest gap.

Creating more diverse cyber teams isnt a goal that can be accomplished overnight. In the meantime, security teams can gain diverse new perspectives by collaborating with nonprofits like Women in Identity, CyberReach and WiCys.

Frameworks, tools and third-party experts can help minimize bias as organizations work toward better talent diversity. Open-source libraries like AI Fairness 360 can identify, measure and limit the business impact of biased algorithms. AI implementation experts can also provide experience and context for more balanced security AI.

Last fall, Emily Ackerman almost collided with a grocery delivery robot at her graduate school campus. She survived, but she had to force her wheelchair off a ramp and onto a curb. AI developers hadnt taught the robot to avoid wheelchairs, which put disabled people on the line as collateral.

Designing something thats universal is an extremely difficult task, said Ackerman.But, getting the shorter end of the stick isnt a fun experience.

Sometimes, AI bias can even reinforce harmful stereotypes. According to UNESCO research, until recently, a mobile voice assistant didnt get offended by vicious, gender-based insults. Instead of pushing back, she said, Id blush if I could! In more extreme instances of bias like Ackermans experience, AI can be life-threatening.

Cognitive diversity can create better security. Diverse teams have diverse ideas and broad understandings of risk, and varied security perspectives can balance AI bias and improve security posture. Investing in artificial intelligence alone isnt enough to solve sophisticated machine learning attacks or nation-state threat actors diverse human perspectives are the only way to prepare for the security challenges of today and tomorrow.

See the article here:
Biased AI Is Another Sign We Need to Solve the Cybersecurity Diversity Problem - Security Intelligence

Human Behavior

From Animals to Human Society: What We Learn When Women Lead – Discover Magazine

Theres something amiss with The Lion King aside from talking, singing animals. Disneys smash hit of stage and screen tells the tale of young male lion Simbas rise to power. But, in the real circle of life, lionesses lead.

Related females band together for life, as the primary hunters and warriors. Transient males join to mate but contribute little else to a prides success.

The lion queens, however, are an exception. Among mammal species that live in social groups, only about 10 percent have strong female leaders. They include another fierce predator, killer whales, as well as bonobos, famous for their peaceful promiscuity.

Humans, on the other hand, are part of the mammal majority: Our leaders are mostly male. Less than 7 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are female. Worldwide, fewer than two dozen women are heads of state or government, including Germanys Angela Merkel and New Zealands Jacinda Ardern. In about 90 percent of nonindustrial societies studied by anthropologists, only men hold political posts.

Its undeniable that males have more sway across institutions, societies and mammal species. But what explains those lionesses, literal and figurative the females who lead? A multidisciplinary movement to study these outliers is gaining momentum. From hyena clans to corporate hiring culture, researchers are charting the pathways and barriers to female power among mammals, including our own species.

Bullies, warriors and wise matriarchsIn the dry, thorny forests of Madagascar, Verreauxs sifaka lemurs leap between trees with gravity-defying ease. For these primates, theres no question which sex is dominant.

Females beat up the males, says anthropologist Rebecca Lewis of the University of Texas at Austin. To avoid smacks to the face and bites, males call out submissively when females approach a chattering chi chi chi chi, which is the equivalent of bowing down, says Lewis. At trees laden with edible fruit, its ladies first: If a male climbs up, the feasting female may aggressively lunge or glare, and hell often retreat to the ground.

(Credit: Monika Hrdinova/Shutterstock)

But tensions escalate during the dry season, when food is so scarce the animals lose up to 20 percent of their weight. Theyre just really suffering during this time, says Lewis, who leads a wildlife research station in Madagascar.

One source of sustenance is the fatty baobab fruit. Its thick shell takes sifakas a half-hour to gouge open with their teeth. As a female works to free her own meal, she keeps an eye on nearby males. When one of them breaks open the shell, she claims the fruit like a schoolyard bully, slapping him to surrender.

He might even hold onto the fruit while shes eating just crying the whole time because he doesnt want to lose it, says Lewis.

Eventually he goes on to crack another. She takes that one, too.

During the dry season in Madagascar, baobab trees provide a crucial source of sustenance for Verreauxs sifaka lemurs: thick-shelled fruit. (Credit: Maxwell De Araujo Rodrigues/Dreamstime)

Few mammal females attain this degree of dominance defined by biologists as an animals ability to subordinate another through force or threat. Among the roughly 5,400 mammal species, in just a couple of dozen do females routinely outrank males during dominance contests. These include spotted hyenas and two types of naked mole rat, but lemur species make up the bulk of the list. For more than 20 species of lemurs, including Verreauxs sifaka, female rule is the rule, not the exception.

The fact that females are socially so powerful in [lemur] societies shows us that more traditional division of sex roles is not some inevitable destiny of mammalian biology, says Peter Kappeler, a zoologist at the University of Gttingen in Germany. That gives rise to all kinds of questions, why that might be the case, why lemurs are so different.

One obvious consideration is what Kappeler and others call the lemur syndrome: Females have traits that are typical of males in other mammal species. Their external genitalia are elongated, appearing more penislike, and their bodies are the same size or slightly larger than a males. With a mass difference of less than 10 percent, both sexes would belong to the same weight class in boxing. Lady lemurs also display so-called masculine behaviors: play tussling, marking territory with scent glands and intimidating subordinates with feigned or real cuffs and bites.

A similar pattern is found in African spotted hyenas: Females are larger and stronger, with masculinized vaginas and clitorises that resemble scrotums and penises. High-ranking females keep order in clans of up to 130 members, and comprise the front lines during wars against rival hyena clans or lions.

Not every social mammal species led by females has the same structure. For spotted hyenas, females are warriors that take on rival clans and lions. (Credit: S100apm/Dreamstime)

But body size and pseudo-penises arent enough to explain power dynamics in these species. Nor are hormones: Although pregnant hyenas and lemurs show elevated testosterone levels, most of the time adult females have lower concentrations than males a puzzling finding scientists are investigating.

A 2019 Nature Ecology and Evolution paper on spotted hyenas suggests that disproportionate social clout, rather than physical strength, fuels female dominance. Its authors analyzed 4,133 encounters between mixed or same-sex hyenas, which ended with one animal exerting dominance and the other retreating, cowering or otherwise signaling defeat. Over 75 percent of the time in all matchups, victory went to whichever animal had more potential allies close enough to call for backup. And, in spotted hyena society, high-ranking females have the most allies.

Another 2019 study, published in the International Journal of Primatology, looked at several hundred dominance contests between sifaka lemurs of varying ages. Although adult males bow down with the deferential chi chi chi chi to adult females, males of all ages get into conflicts with juvenile females. The researchers found juvenile females won about a quarter of the bouts and adolescents about half, regardless of body size. Adult females who had offspring past weaning age triumphed nearly 100 percent of the time. Sexual maturity and successful motherhood give these females status.

The findings challenge the idea that malelike traits gave rise to female dominance in these species. Perhaps female power, attained through social support or reproductive outcomes, led to lemur syndrome and its hyena equivalent.

Female orcas are among the few mammals that live decades past menopause, often leading their pods, especially in times of scarcity. (Credit: Ivkovich/Dreamstime)

Lewis, a co-author of the 2019 lemur study, has pushed researchers to look beyond physical dominance when investigating power relations. In her other articles, she contends that power ones ability to make another creature do something can be reached by alternate means or expressed in other ways.

Leadership is a special kind of power: influence over the entire group. Dominant animals can be leaders, capable of directing collective action. Or they may just be lone bullies at the baobab tree.

Strong female leadership is even more rare than female dominance among mammals. A 2018 study in Leadership Quarterly reviewed 76 social species in four decision-making contexts: collective travel, foraging and conflicts within or between groups. Defining leaders as individuals that routinely called the shots in at least two of these realms, the researchers identified eight species run by females: ruffed and ring-tailed lemurs, spotted hyenas, killer whales, African lions, bonobos and two types of elephant.

It looks like there are these independent evolutionary events where the set of circumstances gave rise to strong female leaders, says lead author Jennifer Smith, a biologist at Mills College.

For spotted hyenas and two lemur species, dominance certainly plays a role. But the other five species took different pathways to leadership. Female elephants and killer whales can live into their 80s in matrilineal societies, comprising up to four generations of mothers and offspring. With the most accumulated wisdom about local resources and dangers, female elders lead group movement and food pursuits. It makes so much incredible sense, says Smith. These long-lived females with great knowledge of course they should be the leaders.

In contrast to some species where physical dominance is the rule, peaceful bonobos form alliances. (Credit: Andrey Gudkov/Dreamstime)

Killer whales, or orcas, are also one of the few species in which females live decades past menopause. Orca communities especially follow these grandmothers (or great-grandmothers) during hard times, like when salmon prey are scarce, according to a 2015 study in Current Biology.

Meanwhile, female lions and bonobos derive strength from numbers. In both species, allied females fend off bigger, stronger males. Kinship unites the lionesses, but bonobos form coalitions of nonrelatives, which groom and fondle each other. Females of this chimpanzee species, through their cooperative social alliances, are in a way civically larger and more influential than one male, Smith explains.

Bias, biology and breaking through

Inthe 1970s, a review of historical descriptions of 93 nonindustrial societies found only about 10 percent permitted women to hold political posts and women were generally less powerful than male counterparts. Contemporary scholars attribute this in part to the mentality of past researchers: Ethnographers predominately men from Western patriarchies documented leadership in male-dominated domains like war, and overlooked female authority in economic, domestic and other spheres.

But even in more recent, less-biased research, it hits you in the face how disparately represented men and women are in positions of leadership, particularly more overt political leadership, says Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist at the University of Richmonds Jepson School of Leadership Studies.

Consider the Tsimane, indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon, who subsist on wild foods and garden-scale farming. Although Tsimane lack formal leaders, certain individuals have a greater voice in village affairs. In a 2018 Evolution and Human Behavior paper, von Rueden and colleagues found that, at community meetings, less than 10 percent of comments came from women. And when Tsimane ranked fellow villagers based on their ability to influence debates and manage projects, the average male score was higher than the scores of 89 percent of the women.

Among the Tsimane people of the Bolivian Amazon, political leadership is predominately, but not exclusively, male. Physical size, level of education and number of allies are factors in predicting political sway, and women do occasionally emerge as leaders in this nonindustrial society. (Credit: National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy)

And yet, consistent with global surveys, Tsimane political leadership is predominately but not exclusively male. Some women leaders exist among them.

Probing the data further, von Ruedens team found factors beyond a Y chromosome that predicted political sway, including a persons size, education and number of allies. The authors concluded that these qualities, rather than gender per se, elevated individuals to become leaders. It just so happens that Tsimane men generally place higher on those metrics than do women. For example, the female participants received, on average, 3.9 years of formal schooling, compared with 5.8 years for men. While physical differences are essentially set, gaps in education and social capital are not. Indeed, in another study of a more remote Tsimane village, the third-highest leader was a well-educated woman who had studied in a larger town.

Through his research, von Rueden seeks to explain how the evolution of sex differences affect access to leadership across human societies a topic fraught with potential land mines, he admits. Evolutionary anthropologists, including von Rueden, think the answer lies at the intersection of biological sex differences and the particular history, customs and environment of any given society.

Thanks to our mammalian roots, women bear and nurse babies. Men are generally larger and stronger just considering upper-body strength, 99 percent of women have less arm muscle mass than the average man. These biological realities set the stage for sexual division of labor, common across cultures. Men tended to take on riskier endeavors, like battles and big-game hunts, which require coalitions and hierarchical coordination. Tethered to children and homes, women assumed a greater share of domestic responsibilities, forming fewer but more intimate social ties.

From this evolutionary background, sex-based stereotypes emerged, which then became amplified or dampened by the particularities of a given society. For example, its been proposed that the invention of the plow deepened gender divisions because its use requires substantially more upper-body strength than hoe or stick tilling. This relegated men to fields and women to household labor. According to a 2013 Quarterly Journal of Economics study, the plows effects persist. The authors compared farming styles of more than 1,200 nonindustrial societies with gender beliefs of their modern descendants. The analysis found that descendants of plow-farmers have fewer women in the workforce and politics, and less-favorable views about gender equality. For example, in Pakistan, where earlier societies relied on the plow, only 16 percent of agricultural workers are women, compared with 90 percent in Burundi, which had traditional hoe tilling.

Understanding the evolution of male-skewed leadership, says von Rueden, puts us in a better position to act on behalf of putting more women in positions of power.

Theres a lot of catching up to do. In the U.S., while women make up half the entry-level workforce, their presence dwindles on each step of the corporate ladder, comprising just a quarter of senior managers, 11 percent of top earners and 5 percent of CEOs in S&P 500 companies, according to a 2019 report by Catalyst, a womens leadership nonprofit.

Based on metrics like wage gap, share of labor force and percentage of women working, gender equality rose beginning in the 1960s, peaked in the 90s and then stagnated for the past two decades.

Siri Chilazi, a fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University, says company policies and structures are part of the problem as are individual biases. For example, results of an experiment published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that investors preferred entrepreneurial pitches from men, rating their presentations as more persuasive, logical, and fact-based than those from women. The catch: The content was identical, word for word.

Decades ago, major American symphonies changed their systems to blind auditions and saw significant increases in the number of women hired. (Credit: Stokkete/Dreamstime)

A now-classic analysis, published in 2000, underscores such biases. In the 1970s and 80s, major U.S. symphonies changed their auditions so musicians played behind a curtain that concealed their identity. Prior to the policy shift, less than 10 percent of new hires were women. Afterward, the number of female musicians in all orchestras increased exponentially most drastically for the New York Philharmonic, where, following the change, about 50 percent of new hires were women.

As Chilazi sees it, research has a clear message for organizations trying to level out gender ratios in leadership: Company policies are much easier to change and much easier to de-bias than our human brains.

Research runs thin when it comes to what is arguably the ultimate glass ceiling: elected national leadership. Starting in 1960 with Sri Lankas Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, 115 women have served as president, prime minister or chancellor of 75 countries, from Brazil to Bangladesh. But, as in the business world, gender gains rose steeply through the 1990s and then recently reversed course.

The small number of women who have led their nations include Sri Lankas Sirimavo Bandaranaike (left) and Germanys Angela Merkel (right). (Credit: Elpisterra/Shutterstock; Everett Collection Historical/Alamy)

Oklahoma State University political scientist Farida Jalalzais research shows female executives tend to serve in systems with both a president and prime minister, often holding the weaker of the posts. Rather than popular vote, most are appointed by legislatures or winning parties, and into unstable posts that can be challenged. (Recall the no-confidence votes Theresa May faced in the U.K. Parliament.) Another factor: The majority hail from political families often the wives or daughters of former leaders.

Jalalzai notes that, while 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former president, fit this profile, the U.S.s presidency is a single, powerful head of state, rather than part of a power-sharing dual leadership system. The Oval Office is a tough glass ceiling to crack.

According to Jalalzai, although Clinton failed to win the presidency, the campaign may have shifted perceptions about who can assume the office. A record number of women entered the 2020 Democratic primary, for example. People didnt take her loss as the lesson that women shouldnt be competing for this, she says. It showed us, really, the opposite.

Jalalzai found similar effects globally, looking at public opinion surveys taken by 62,000 individuals from over 40 countries. In the 11 nations with female executives during the 2018 studys time frame, people were more accepting of female leaders, interested in politics and likely to vote, especially female respondents.

Other researchers have focused on local elections with corroborating results. In a 2018 Leadership Quarterly paper, researchers found that after the election of female mayors, those municipalities saw more women assuming top- and middle-management positions in public organizations. A study published in 2012 in Science considered the consequences of a 1993 Indian law that mandated that a random third of West Bengal villages reserve their chief councilor seat for an elected woman. Based on more than 8,400 surveys conducted in 495 villages, the researchers found that having a woman councilor for two election cycles improved aspirations for girls to pursue higher education and politics. The girls also spent more years in school and fewer minutes per day on domestic chores.

The studies suggest that, while gender equality does not beget female leaders, the reverse may be true: Women in high offices promote gender equality, either directly through policies and appointments, or indirectly by acting as a prominent reminder that women can lead.

Read the original post:
From Animals to Human Society: What We Learn When Women Lead - Discover Magazine

Human Behavior

Cybersecurity AI is ready for prime time: why the skeptics are wrong – fifthdomain.com

Federal leaders looking at artificial intelligence offerings to strengthen the cybersecurity of their systems are often met with a confusing array of hype that leads to misunderstanding and all too often to inertia. And, as government decision-makers are well aware, cyber threats against public sector systems are increasing daily and growing in sophistication.

Unfortunately, overhype about artificial intelligence in cybersecurity only reinforces our human tendency to resist change. Remember how government IT leaders were slow to see the real benefits of cloud technology?

In just the same way, some federal agency IT experts, even in the face of rising threats to their systems, remain reluctant to examine the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications using AI at scale.

Perhaps a brief review of what cybersecurity AI is and is not will be helpful. For starters, confusion (and often inadvertent misinformation) is centered on descriptions about how AI is used.

Cyber AI is not big data alone. Machine learning is not possible using deficient data sets. With consumer-facing AI-based tools such as voice-activated home assistants like Amazons Alexa, the Google Assistant or Apples Siri, we see how large data sets of consumer behavior - Alexa, tell me an apple pie recipe - leverage forms of AI known as deep machine learning or artificial narrow intelligence.

Similarly, for cyber AI, training the data set is essential. Ideally these are solutions that can learn, train, and reliably identify constantly moving threats like complex malware and other file-less attack patterns that are increasingly more common . Its critical to remember that AI is not a panacea yes, effectively training AI algorithms at scale can prevent future attacks, but the human element is still necessary to thwart cyber actors.

Cyber AI also is not laboratory AI alone. One of the clearest distinctions between cyber and other types of AI is whether its functionality can be accomplished in the real world outside the perfect conditions of the laboratory setting. For instance, claims about accuracy and false positive rates should always be interrogated in light of sample sizes. As an example, an AI model that learns only about breach attempts in the financial sector cannot be adequately applied to the intricacies of guarding protected health information in hospitals.

A solution is only as good as the data

Get the top Cyber headlines in your inbox every weekday morning.

(please select a country) United States United Kingdom Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, The Democratic Republic of The Cook Islands Costa Rica Cote D'ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and The Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States United States Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe

Subscribe

By giving us your email, you are opting in to the Daily Brief.

For cybersecurity AI to meet the challenges facing federal IT leaders, the data must be relevant to the evolutionary nature of the of threatscape, the increasing demands that the agencys mission is placing on its systems and the risks posed by the human element from within the agencys walls.

For example, it is well understood that many cyber breaches result from human error. A good cyber AI solution can analyze human behavior to anticipate mistakes and correct them proactively as part of the scanning and response functions. To that end, data must be constantly refreshed in order to keep pace with the agencys requirements - addressing both the internal environment along with changes in the external threat conditions.

Our experience tells us that the power of cyber AI is unleashed by:

The Need for Speed

Equally important, as we found in our 2019 Global Threat Report, is the importance of speed.

The report identified that breakout times (the time it takes an adversary to move beyond their initial foothold within a network to when they successfully gain broader access) of the most dangerous groups targeting U.S. government agencies have continued to shrink year over year. Russian-identified hacker groups led the way with a breakout time of less than 19 minutes.

These shrinking attack windows bolster the case for the 1-10-60 Rule: One minute to detect an incident or intrusion; 10 minutes to determine if the incident is legitimate and determine next steps (containment, remediation, etc.); and 60 minutes to eject the intruder and clean up the network.

Taking cybersecurity to the next level, as described in this perhaps deceptively simple rule is possible. The cybersecurity AI solutions that can help to accomplish this objective must utilize the power of vast data sets in a shared cloud environment, set up to collect, analyze and interpret events in real time. No overhype just the right data, smart vision, and a mission to stop breaches faster.

James Yeager is vice president for public sector and healthcare at CrowdStrike.

Originally posted here:
Cybersecurity AI is ready for prime time: why the skeptics are wrong - fifthdomain.com

Human Behavior

Neoliberalism and the Coronavirus – CounterPunch

Photograph Source: Studio Incendo CC BY 2.0

In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein notes that the TV sets owned by Americans were manufactured in China with the energy input from coal-burning. Those carbon emissions are logged in Chinas ledger. The trucking to bring the TV to your towns big box outlet is logged in the U.S.s ledger. However, the transoceanic shipping that brought the set from Shenzhen to Los Angeles is not logged under any countrys ledger.

Americans may point fingers at China for burning coal, but who is watching that TV? Not the migrant worker who mined that coal. Not the laborer in the Congo who mined the rare earth elements for the electronics. Not the steelworker in the foundry in Wuhan. Not the factory worker who sorted transistors into sockets. Not the Filipino merchant seaman on the cargo ship. Not the Sikh driver of the 18-wheeler. Not the grandma who greets you at the entrance of the big box outlet. Not the Chinese worker whose cough from the air pollution keeps him up at night. Now, whats this? A fever, too?

We mention ledgers because capitalism is all about externalizing costs. Some people (because corporations are legally people) dont take responsibility for their carbon footprint. Some people scrape the surface off the earth to get at their lithium. Some polluters dont take responsibility for the health costs of their effluent. The shorthand definition of neoliberalism is capitalism on steroids. No longer does capital have to exploit workers in its own country. It can scour the world for the cheapest, most exploitable labor. Just pay them shit, since they live in shithole countries anyway. No longer does capital have to fret about environmental regulations in its own country. Just manufacture those goods someplace where the government says air that you cant see through, or water that is green from algae is A-OK. Those goods end up a continent away, but as long as the shipping costs are cheap (burn, baby, burn), it makes more profit than employing local people for what they think is a livable wage.

Klein notes that in the decades since the 1997 Kyoto protocol, global carbon emissions have continued to grow. Rather, with free market globalization, reflective of the dominant neoliberal ideology and enacted through investor rights agreements the basis of the world economy has become predicated on greater and greater fossil fuel combustion as capital seeks less expensive labor, goods are shipped in ever increasing volume between continents, and the cost of environmental destruction is externalized.

Paul Krugman notes that over a quarter of the manufacturing in the world takes place in China. China is the workshop of the world. That means coal-burning air pollution and lots of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer at a young age for the Chinese. As China continues to burn coal for energy, millions more of its citizens will die prematurely of respiratory diseases. An estimated 366,000 deathswere attributedto coal-burning in 2013.

In sum, the strategy of wringing every last dollar out of child, prison, and slave labor for the sake of private profit is nearing the point of diminishing returns. Unleashing a fatal virus from bats into humans is a negative return. By wrecking the neoliberal-driven global economy, 2019-nCoV may just push the world into embodying that final section of the post-climate catastrophe, post-Ebola, post-rat fever world of David Mitchells The Bone Clocks. The question is, do you find the final section pessimistic or optimistic?

Much has been made of how the novel coronavirus made the host species jump from its probable natural reservoir in bats to humans. The clustering of many of the early cases among workers at a market that sold wildlife for food is indicative. The cross-species jump is indicative of the further encroachment of humans on the remaining pockets of nature.

Wuhan, generally cited to have 11 million residents, served as a large population in which the virus could transmit before breaking out for the rest of China. Many of its large contingent of migrant workers and students left for their home towns before the Lunar New Year holiday (scheduled for Dec 24-30). The mayor of Wuhan, presumably referring to the larger metropolitan area, noted that 5 million had left Wuhan prior to the imposition of quarantine on Dec 23, leaving a population of 9 million. While China is known to closely surveil its individual citizens, many migrant workers who are registered in their home provinces cannot be tracked so closely.

Since it infects the respiratory tract, the novel coronavirus is presumably spread by droplet coughing, sneezing. Most viral respiratory infections are also spread by personal contact: shaking hands with an infected person, then touching your face. Is it spread by fomites (touching a surface touched by an infected person)? We dont know yet.

The definitive work on The Origins of AIDS (2012), by Jacques Pepin, draws upon viral genomics, primatology, tropical medicine, and the history of colonialism and postcolonialism. Pepin carefully reconstructs how a zoonotic virus entered the human population and how it was amplified into a global pandemic by large-scale social and political economic forces. He outlines how human behavior abetted the evolutionary success of HIV, defined (from the perspective of the virus) as spreading to an increasingly larger number of hosts. HIV is not very contagious. It can only be transmitted through sexual contact and sharing of blood (injection drug use, transfusions). Its initial symptoms are minor, however, and the long period in which it lies dormant (on the order of a decade) before manifesting as opportunistic infections or cancers, allows it to be unknowingly transmitted to others. By incorporating itself into the genome of human cells and mutating constantly, HIV makes itself difficult to cure.

The novel coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in late 2019 has a different strategy to infect a large number of hosts. Firstly, it is pretty contagious. Early studies from China indicate that each infected individual is infecting more than two other people. The virus likes crowded places, like China.Thus far, it appears to be less deadly than its coronavirus cousins, SARS-CoV (which caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) with 23% mortality, or MERS-CoV (which causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) with 10% mortality. So far, the novel coronavirus appears to have approximately a 2% mortality, though this rate will likely be lowered as more patients with minimal or perhaps no symptoms are identified. From the viruss perspective, it doesnt help your cause if youre too deadly because you then kill your host before your person gives the virus the virus to another person. A 2% mortality rate is quite worrisome, though. Most influenza pandemics have a mortality rate of <0.1%. The Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, which had an estimated mortality rate of < 2.5%, killed 50-100 million worldwide.

So, we now have new virus exploiting the vulnerabilities that humans set up for themselves by buying into the neoliberal program. Viruses are barely even a life form. They dont thrive or propagate unless they take over the cells of their hosts. Who invited them to infect us humans anyway? Those people that eat weird food like bats? Wait, who invited those strange people anyway? Those slant-eyes, those carriers of the virus? Wait until we get white supremacy bound up with keeping out them foreigners. Wait, theyre there already.

But if we think about it Im afraid that slant-eye or round-eye, short- or long-nose, light- or dark-skin, its us watching that TV.

Continue reading here:
Neoliberalism and the Coronavirus - CounterPunch

Human Behavior

Michigan and Jim Harbaugh Are Riding a Concorde Right Into the Sun | Eleven Warriors – Eleven Warriors

When I was a kid, I always wanted to ride on the Concorde.

The Concorde, for those not familiar with it, was a supersonic badass Passenger Plane Of The Future tested and built in the 1960's and operated through the early 2000's. It had a cruising altitude nearly twice that of normal airliners, could complete long distance routes over twice as quickly as any other passenger jet on the planet, and hadthis sweet retro-futurist sci-fi pulpy look to it that wouldn't look out of place on a Fantastic Four cover from 1962.

It was cool and new and also an utterly stupid waste of time and money aggressively subsidized by the British and French governments for way, way too long.

The thing simply cost far too much money to operate; it turns out that flying half empty planes from New York to London once or twice a week wasn't a great business model, particularly when round trip tickets on the Concordewere three or four times more expensive than a comparable ticket on a normal flight. I'm sure that for a while there it was super dope for Pierre and Jeeves to take pictures on top of the Eiffel Tower after lunch and enjoy front row seats at Showtime at the Apollo a few hours later, but after a while dropping the 2020 equivalent of 15 grand round trip probably wore a little thin.

And as I mentioned, the same probably held true for the countries that propped it up via subsidies. France the United Kingdom spent the equivalent ofliterally tens of billions of 2020 dollars jointly developing the Concorde project, and you would think that once they realized the thing was a bust sometime in the early 1970's, they wouldn't continue throwing money at it for another three decades.

But they did!

Economists and other observers of human behavior sometimes call this mentality"sunk cost" or the "escalation of commitment."

It's a trick of psychologythat casinos and arcade games and shifty playing card scammers wearingfingerless gloves exploitto help them scam people into giving up all of the nickels in their piggy banks. It's simple to explain: people are often inclined to allocate increasing amounts of their own time or money into a hopeless cause because they feel the need to justify their current level of investment.

In other words, if you already spent five dollars trying to get that adorable Pitt the Elder plushie out of a crooked crane game at Cedar Point, what's another five bucks? After all, you have to get something out of it, right? And then, of course, 30 dollars later the guy working the counter feels bad for you and just opens up the machine and gives you one.

That generosity won't happen in Ann Arbor.

Jim Harbaugh will take as much money as Michigan will give him.

I can't pretend to have a perfect bead on the inner workings of the brains of Michigan's administration, but I have to believe that at this point the chief reason why they're currently thinking about a long-term extension for Harbaugh's contract is that they're caught in the throes of a logical fallacy.

Jim Harbaugh's current contract looks like this (courtesy of MLive.com):

[In] December 2014, [Harbaugh] inked his original deal for a $500,000-a-year salary and $4.5 million in additional compensation.

Michigan tacked on an annual life-insurance policy in August 2016 that included a $2 million premium advance, to be paid to Harbaugh each year through the balance of his contract. Factor in a contract-stipulated 10 percent raise for Harbaugh in January 2018 and you arrive at the $7.5 million figure thats widely cited these days.

In 2020 that figure will be over $8 million, and the reason why there's more than a little hand-wringing in Ann Arbor is that Harbaugh's contract expires in 2021. This meansthat right about now is around the time when Michigan would potentially settle on an extension (or not) for their khaki-clad football man.

So will they?

I dunno! It depends on how comfortable Michigan fans are with having the third-highest paid coach in football win nine games every season but lose 75% of the tough ones, especially since the No. 1,2, and 4guys have all won national championships.

Seems like they're fairly comfortable! For all the crowing about "Harbaugh killing Dantonio" from the internet Michigan crowd the last few days, it says something that they've managed to hype themselves up over a 3-2 record versus Michigan State as opposed to their record against other traditional powersin the Big Ten (they're a combined 5-10 against Wisconsin, Penn State, and Ohio State since Harbaugh took over).

Add that to a 2-11 overall record against top 10 opponents and four straight bowl losses and suddenly a rational human being starts asking Wolfram Alpha how long it'd take to physically burn $8 million dollars.

But sports fans and sports administratorsare not always rational human beings. It's hard to cut bait on a coach that is demonstrably (if marginally) better than his predecessors, and it is especially hard to cut bait on a coach if you feel that the amount already invested in the guy demands you keep him on the hook.If Harbaugh is extended, and recent chatter suggests that he will be, Michigan will undoubtedly have to give him a contract of at least three more seasons at a minimum of $8 million per year.

To me, this whole process is fascinating in part because Ohio State doesn't have to engage in any of this psychic angst. Ryan Day is going to make $4.5 million dollars a year through 2023, and the only way that'll change is if his performances dictates it; if Day kicks ass and wins a natty or maybe another Big Ten title or two, Ohio State will be happy to renegotiate at a higher salary to keep him around longer. If he ends up being a one-season fluke, well, you can always either fire the guy or not renew his contract.

Either way, what Ohio State's coaching outlook is going forward will be decided by how well the team performs on the field, and Ryan Day has already set expectations sky-high.

Michigan doesn't have that luxury. Instead, they're stuck with a generally competent but not great coach who has set expectations so low that, among other barely-impressive accomplishments,winning three of five against a secondary rival is seen as reason enough to pay the dude $8 million dollars a year. And as long as Harbaugh can guarantee nine wins per season and gosh, I don't know, another Citrus Bowl win, U of M will pretty much have to pay him even more for even longer.

The Concorde finally shut down service in 2003after a fatal crash, the severe downturn of the aircraft industry after September 11th, and people getting sick of paying a premium price to get somewhere a few hours earlier. An experiment that spanned five decades and cost tens of billions of dollars in unreturned investment eventually amounted to nothing because the British and French governments just couldn't stop themselves from throwing money at an unsolvable problem.

From SI.com:

In the meantime, Michigan understands how important it is to set Harbaugh up for success both in the short term, with the 2021 class, and the long term, with the 2022-24 classes.

"Just think how bad it would look if he beats Ohio State this year and goes to the Big Ten title game and he has one year left on his contract about 10 days from a 2021 Signing Day and we're missing out on in-state kids because there was uncertainty about Jim's future here," one of the officials said.

Okay, sure, we can ask that: what if Harbaugh goes ahead and does both of those extremely improbablethings in one season that he hasn't been able to accomplish even once in five?

Or maybe this is a betterquestion:What's it going to take for Michigan to get rid of Jim Harbaugh?

See original here:
Michigan and Jim Harbaugh Are Riding a Concorde Right Into the Sun | Eleven Warriors - Eleven Warriors

Human Behavior

Can We Share a World Beyond Representation? – Journal #106 February 2020 – E-Flux

Rootlessness, violence, the shattering and loss of all traditions, loneliness, mental decay, and illnessthis is the inheritance from modernity in the West and in Westernized territories throughout the globe. Hannah Arendts work reflects on these forms of modern alienation, which she poses as direct threats to the Lebenswelt: the world of common human experience and interpretation. The Lebenswelt, literally life-world, or world in common as Arendt defines it, is the framework from which both understanding and political judgment (from the point of view of the political actor and/or spectator) can arise.1 The world in common is where speech, thought, and action take place, thus possessing unquestionable meaningfulness, and enabling common existence. According to Arendt, modernity, propelled by the destruction of all tradition, is characterized by the irretrievable loss of the experience of shared meaning, which was previously created by talking to and making sense with one another. This loss is accompanied by the disappearance of a space for arguing, reasoning, argumentation: the space of politics, comprised of speech and action.2 As a result, men and women are deprived of their place in the world. As Gilles Deleuze put it, the link between man and the world has been broken. Modernity also means the replacement of society and community by mass society. For Arendt, mass society is characterized by isolation and a lack of normal social relationships; as a result, consciousness of a common interest is absent. Modern alienation has led to what Flix Guattari described in the 1980s as a crisis of relationality. In his view, this crisis is happening because

kinship networks tend to be reduced to a bare minimum; domestic life is being poisoned by the gangrene of mass-media consumption; family and married life are frequently ossified by a sort of standardization of behaviour; and neighbourhood relations are generally reduced to their meanest expression It is the relationship between subjectivity and its exterioritybe it social, animal,vegetable or Cosmicthat is compromised in this way, in a sort of general movement of implosion and regressive infantalization.3

Under globalization, absolute capitalism, and the digitalization of communication, the lack of a world in common has led to the pervasive feeling, as Franco Bifo Berardi recently wrote, that entropy is expanding, vision is blurring, and private meaning is clouding and obstructing any possible path of escape from the current crisis of relationality, debt, automation, mental illness, and environmental devastation.4 It is only now becoming evident that the systematic undoing of the social foundations of human relationships (or the world in common) occurs in parallel with the degradation of nervous cells, and that the destruction of the social tissue is inseparable from environmental damage. Climate change is in fact intimately tied to collective psychic collapse. In this context, politicization has also fallen prey to privatization: an array of disparate voices proliferates through the infosphere, each seeking recognition and issuing ethical demands not from the perspective of a world in common, but rather from the perspective of my world.

For Hannah Arendt, the expansion of authoritarianism in Europe in the twentieth century stemmed from the alienation and loneliness brought about by the degradation of the world in common. In the twenty-first century, the continuing loss of a world in common and the crisis of relationality help explain the resurgence of fascisms and fundamentalisms across the world. Nowadays, the main ruling instruments in neofascist states like the US, Brazil, and India are polarization, fear, and the mass sentiment that something (like our means of subsistence or the networks of safety materialized in the welfare state) has been taken away from useither by the 1 percent on the one hand (a historic left position), or immigrants on the other (a historic right position). The corporate state manages mass mood swings by immersing itself within the masses, wielding the totalitarian discourse of taking back what has been stolen from us (at any cost). In this neofascist (or in some places like Mexico, neopopulist) phase of neoliberalism, the power of capitalism works by selecting, excluding, and disseminating events that structure the present which each one of us perceives. For each user/citizen/consumer, the digital neoliberal capitalist order offers an individualized, tailor-made reality. This process occurs and repeats to the point that our normal now consists of living in a world in which we all have the right to retreat to our own private worlds of meaning, tailored by the algorithms of digital interfaces that constantly adapt to each users individual needs. The possibility of a world in common has been replaced by myriad niches for the private consumption of digitalized content. Clearly, representationthe dispositif that, via speech and action, enables appearance in the world in common, and also the human capacity for the creation and dissemination of shared meaning and traditionshas been hijacked by capitalism, authoritarianism, democracy, the internet, and spectacle.

In the nineteenth-century, when the modern political imagination first began to take shape, nations aimed to produce a representative form of social cohesion. They did this by constructing and disseminating a world of shared meaning that expressed the alleged essence of an imagined community: shared cultural history, iconography, language, food, and dress.5 In this context, art and critical thought were the utmost expression of a communitys values and had the avant-garde role of announcing a visionary and emancipatory future for all. Premised on a separation between action and appearance, avant-garde art operated in a separate realm than politics and action (enacting what we know as the autonomy of art). Artists adhered to the tradition of the revolutionary takeover as the primary path for universal emancipation. In their rebellion, avant-garde artists made a tactical, temporary, local, contrived, problematic, and idealistic alliance with the working class and the marginalized (Im thinking here of artists like Courbet, Dziga Vertov, and Tarsila do Amaral, among others). This attempted alliance was based on representativity: an invisible social contract in which artists imagined themselves to be mandated by humanity to address humanity in the name of universal values, grounded in a conflict between the individual (artist) and societal structures.6

In the 1960s (the era of high modernism), artists abandoned representation and dismissed representativity as totalitarian structures, as vehicles for a bland, sexist, and racist humanism and a trite universalism. Artists replaced the invisible social contract from early modernity that had enabled them to speak on behalf of all of humanity with a new one, in which they spoke from the point of view of their own gender, ethnic origin, political struggle, or sexual orientation, as colonized peoples, minorities, workers, etc. Paradoxically, in the 1980s and 90s, representativity came back with a vengeance through identity politics and consciousness-raising activism (specifically during the AIDS epidemic). Its return, however, was no longer as a concept subject to criticism and deconstruction, but rather as a positive, affirmative concept. A new, invisible social contract was drawn up in which individuals would now only speak on behalf of themselves as representatives of their own personal experiences of ethnic, political, or gendered specificities, with the mandate to address everyone and to secure recognition of my ordeal. Equality came to mean equal access to visibility through self-representation. As a result, a new kind of multicultural universalism flourished, one that celebrated difference even as it ignored real-world contradictions and conflictsfor instance, the unresolved and ongoing history of colonialism.

The return of representativity at the end of the twentieth century coincided with the rise of neoliberal globalization. Globalization meant the dismantling of the referential economy of political and aesthetic modernity and the exhaustion of the social contract that had assigned artists universal representativity. Under globalization, art is disseminated to a globalized mass society through an internationalized culture industry. Governments and corporations monopolize this culture industry for the purpose of managing the dissent and antagonism produced by the neoliberal order. In other words, states and corporations instrumentalize art as a showcase for global democracy; they point to art that expresses dissent as proof of how democratic and tolerant the neoliberal order is.

Along with being an index of democracy, art is also a lucrative niche for the global entertainment business. Art has thus become a form of consumable merchandise, destined to be used up. In this situation (diagnosed by Arendt and others in the 1960s7), artists have either embraced this quality of art as merchandise (Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst), or rejected it in the name of politicization and criticality (Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, Hito Steyerl). With globalization, critical artists have been summoned to become useful by surrendering arts (always partial) autonomy8 and taking up the task of restoring what has been broken by the system. So they denounce globalizations collateral damage and contemporary arts woeful conditions of production. They imagine a more just future, produce political imaginaries, disseminate counter-information, restore social links, gather and archive documents and traces for the duty of memory, etc. Perhaps, then, the prior role of the artist as a cultural vanguard has given way to a mandate to cultivate a feeling of political responsibility in spectators, in the name of self-representation and the representation of Enlightenment values.

The main problem with artworks that speak on behalf of the struggle of others, or that seek recognition for my private ordeal, is that they inhabit a moralizing realm of non-shared meaning. Such forms of address lead to a codependent politics of appearance based on a melancholic restoration of singular worlds, devoid of the possibility of speech and action and thus of common meaning (which, according to Arendt, is the condition for politics). The codependent politics of appearance demands a form of despotic empathy generated by situating oneself, or others on whose behalf one speaks, in the place of the martyr or scapegoat seeking recognition and visibility. Furthermore, the modern practice of looking at the pain of others has created a form of reified subjectivity that enables a spectacularized, uncommitted, and post-political position vis--vis the world. This means that from the perspective of reified subjectivity, as Anita Chari argues, the economy exists as a domain that is separate from human activity, blinding the subject to the extent of her involvement in the capitalist processes in which we are all complicit.9 As a pathology, reified subjectivity leaves room only for despotic empathy, which in turn forecloses the possibility of seeing actual power relations that divide the world between the wretched of the screen and spectators living in privileged enclaves with access to cultural commodities. In the late 1970s, Colombian filmmakers Carlos Ospina and Luis Mayolo articulated this problem as pornomiseria. They devised the term in the context of politicized films in Latin America that denounced the structural effects of colonialism on marginalized, non-modernized, underdeveloped populations throughout the continent.10

If we think about the codependent politics of appearance in Hannah Arendts terms, it means that the world of appearances is constituted by a moralizing Manichean perspective: that of communities formed around subjugation and worldlessness, versus communities of morally concerned spectators. This singular perspective is a sign of the disappearance of the common world and the domination of radical isolation, breeding conflict and polarization. Two consequences of being imprisoned in our own singular experiences are the mass inability to hear or see others, and the shaping of our reality by appearance alone, instead of by the kinds of actions, speech, and relationships that make up Arendts world in common.

When despotic forms of empathy prevail, action and speech are reduced to sheer appearance. Speech without actionsuch as speech that merely demands recognitionfails to disclose the position that the speaking human occupies in relation to others and the world, beyond simple identitarian or subjective categories. In the opposite casewhen we have gestures without speechthese gestures take the form of brute physical action without verbal accompaniment and are thus meaningless (like terrorist attacks or massacres in schools and public spaces). For Arendt, actions are only made relevant by the spoken word, which identifies the speaker as the actor announcing what she is doing, thereby giving meaning to her actions, but only in relation to others. In other words, no other human behavior is in greater need of speech than action. This being with is neither for or against others, but rather in sheer human togetherness.

Despotic empathy destroys the in-between of the world in common that enables and contains speech and action. The world we have in common is usually seen from an infinite number of different points of view. Through speech and action, we not only learn to understand each other as individual persons, but also to see the same world from one anothers (sometimes opposing) standpoints. In this context, universality means that while everyone sees and hears from a different position, some people have the capacity to multiply their own point of view.11 But from a decolonial standpoint, the acknowledgment of difference is not enough; one must also recognize positions of dominance and oppression, which are not based on differences, but are incommensurable.12 This is why it is incommensurability that must exist in between people. Acknowledging incommensurability means, for instance, listening and attempting to understand the indigenous demand for the repatriation of land, and learning where you yourself are situated with regards to this demand. Incommensurability also means, for example, acknowledging that while Europeans and descendants of Europeans in North America and in the Global South may not be on the receiving end of oppressive relations, colonial violence in fact impacts everyone insofar as privilege is hierarchical and racialized.13 Bringing incommensurability into the space in between humans would also mean acknowledging interdependence beyond detachment or codependent empathy.

Thus, to resist the present, I propose: First, to take up the urgent task of producing horizons of hope from the point of view of incommensurability by creating a new relationship between creativity and critique.14 Second, we must do away with representation, recognition, and difference and replace them with frames for relationality and reciprocity. Third, perhaps before we embark on this search for relationality we need to flee the infosphere. Lastly, we should not confuse the Lebenswelt or the world in common with the public sphere; nor should we confuse relationality with relational aesthetics. We need to put relationality before aesthetics (not as aesthetics). In relationality, alterity is encountered without mediation or instrumentalization. Reciprocity changes the focus from mediation to comprehending the concrete effects of our actions on others and the world. An emphasis on the relational rather than on the moral would enable transformative encounters defined by exposure, availability, and vulnerability. Relationality and reciprocity also mean acknowledging that our medium-term survival depends not on the help of strangers or foreign aid, but on mutual aid. This means rejecting individual self-interest for an enlarged concern with the well-being of a community, including ones territorial or nonhuman connections. We must embrace our duty to look after each other and ourselves. Instead of waiting for capitalism to fall apart around us, and in spite of us, we need to begin to act, taking our existence in our hands, inhabiting territories autonomously, but most of all: giving primacy to the power of togetherness. In this sense, we do not know yet what art made within a relational life-frame would look like: it has yet to be invented.

All images by Montserrat Pazos.

Irmgard Emmelhainz is an independent translator, writer, researcher, and lecturer based in Mexico City. Her writings on film, the Palestine Question, art, cinema, culture, and neoliberalism have been translated into several languages and presented at an array of international venues, including the Graduate School of Design at Harvard (2014); the Walter Benjamin in Palestine Conference (2015); the New School and the Americas Society (2016); SBC Gallery, Montreal (2016); the Curatorial Summit at the School of Visual Arts, New York (2017); and the Munch Museum, Oslo (2018). Her book Jean-Luc Godard's Political Filmmaking was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2019.

2020 e-flux and the author

Read more:
Can We Share a World Beyond Representation? - Journal #106 February 2020 - E-Flux

Human Behavior

In Honeyland, One of Europe’s Last Wild Beekeepers Fights Environmental and Economic Hardships – Hyperallergic

From Honeyland (all images courtesy Neon)

The documentary Honeyland premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, where it was the most awarded film, winning the Grand Jury Prize, Special Jury Award for Impact for Change, and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography in the World Cinema Documentary competition. Since then, directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska have taken the film around the world, from Europe to India to Siberia to the South Pacific. Theyve also flown their lead subject, Macedonian beekeeper Hatidze Muratova, to screenings, including one in New York City where she sang to a delighted audience. Originally commissioned by an environmental group, the film evolved into something entirely different when the directors discovered Muratova, who lived in a rural village that had been essentially abandoned by the government, lacking electricity or running water. They followed Muratova for three years, working two or three days at a time until their camera batteries ran out.

Honeyland is now nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language Film). Documentaries have been nominated for Best International Feature only a handful of times before, and this is the first time ever that one film has been nominated for both these awards. We spoke with Stefanov, Kotevska, and Fejmi Daut, one of the films two cinematographers, the day after Honeyland was awarded Best Nonfiction Feature at the New York Film Critics Circle ceremony. This interview has been edited and condensed.

***

Hyperallergic: Your documentary premiered at Sundance last January. What has the year been like for you?

Tamara Kotevska: How can you plan for this? Its like were in the army.

Ljubomir Stefanov: Our main income this year is from festival awards. We share this money equally. We chose festivals because, for example, we wanted to see India. Sometimes we could combine flights, so we could go from a festival in St. Petersburg to one in Irkutsk.

TK: The festival in New Caledonia, thats the time we were both crying.

LS: It was in a village north of the islands main city. The screenings were in a sort of communal space where they all cook and eat together.

TK: The festival organizer, who was half-French and half-indigenous, was telling us how there are 28 local languages for every tribe, and in none of them is there the word I. Doesnt exist. They always speak with us or we. We heard that and turned to each other and were both crying. I think this is how they understood our film so well, because its about sharing and equal responsibilities.

LS: Traveling the world was one thing. Its different in America. Since July, weve been here six or seven times, and its exhausting because youre going from one screening to another all the time. We had a screening in Woodstock for one person.

TK: They took us in the morning in a big black limo, made that one voter happy.

H: Do people often ask why you didnt help Hatidze?

LS: Yes, a lot of questions like that. Our answer is: You need to make a decision. Are you going to be a humanitarian organization or a filmmaker? We decided to be filmmakers, but also help them later. We changed Hatidzes life.

H: Did she feel betrayed when Hussein and his family moved into the village? She tried to help them and they took advantage of her, in fact threatened her livelihood.

TK: Just now they are settling their conflict. They finally signed a contract that they will not hurt each other anymore.

LS: It was a contract of mutual respect. We helped them prepare it.

TK: If Hatidze and her neighboring family let you into their way of life, that means both are okay with the way they live. They dont feel bad about their lives. Whats fascinating is that you cant even explain to Hussein that what hes doing might be wrong. He will just laugh at you.

LS: The way the other family accepts life is very different from how people think here. You may have heard that on the day of our premiere at Sundance, the mother gave birth to her eighth child. Now there are rumors that shes pregnant again. But theyre not bad guys, its just their way of life. The audience is perceiving them as bad guys.

TK: In the US, standards for human behavior are different. For other nationalities, what happened to Hatidze might be easier to understand, because theyve seen similar behavior all around them.

LS: Were from the Balkans, and in my opinion, your sense of community is even stronger than ours.

TK: In the Balkans, everything is just Do it for me.

H: Whats it like facing so many question-and-answer sessions?

TK: Its great, because you can see the mindsets of different kinds of people. But when journalists ask questions, its like they want to make you look different from who you are. So we might seem like arrogant people to them.

LS: Because we dont want to talk. We dont give interviews. Especially in our country.

Fejmi Daut: The stupidest questions we got were in our own country. We had a screening in our film school, and the students couldnt come up with one question. The dean was trying to get them to ask something.

TK: My two favorite questions from Macedonia, one was from a film student. He said, Okay, I understand why other people, other festivals in the world, like this film. But I just dont understand. There are so many movies about bees. Why didnt you, for example, do a film about ants?

And there was a very, very, very old lady at another screening, sitting in the back. She had a battle with an old guy in the front, they were testing each other. She got up first and said, Its so good that you found Hatidze. But did you ever think about making a film about the last traditional Kosovo flute player?

LS: Because we won three awards at Sundance, we had to keep giving speeches. In one of them, our editor made a political point about the weather, about pollution and climate change. And so back in Macedonia, the first journalist says, You are sending a message about air pollution.

TK: Thats why they think were arrogant.

H: They must have wanted to know about how you shot it.

FD: It was very difficult for us. In Hatizdes house it was very tight, maybe from this table to the wall [about eight feet]. We didnt have much space for the camera, no electricity, so everything was natural light. We thought about using artificial light, but it would destroy the ambiance. Thats why we used candles.

H: Did it seem like you were competing against the same people and films at festivals last year?

TK: More or less. I wouldnt say competing, because the documentary community is very supportive. Everyone we met, they are very down to earth people, very devoted and very supportive. Because they know what weve been through. We learned a lot.

LS: For example, how to position yourself in terms of distribution.

H: Do you feel comfortable with that aspect of the industry?

TK: Its too early to say. Well know with our next films whether were being exploited.

LS: Things are definitely different now. Im preparing a long-term project. The wider context of the work is still unknown to me, there are many possible approaches I can take. Im also working on an animated feature. Tamara is working on a fiction feature.

FD: This year Ill be working in Nigeria with one of the directors of One Child Nation.

TK: Still, I dont enjoy this life of festivals and screenings. We enjoy doing things for ourselves, preparing our own meals. When we got to go home for a month, it was the best time of the year.

LS: So things are more in our hands. Now its about finding the time.

Honeyland is available to stream on Hulu and other platforms.

Read the rest here:
In Honeyland, One of Europe's Last Wild Beekeepers Fights Environmental and Economic Hardships - Hyperallergic

Human Behavior

The humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet – The International Examiner

In 2015, U.C. Santa Cruz anthropology professor Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing wrote The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Not her first, nor to-be-sure her last book. To her credit she has also penned, among others: Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2004) and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-Of-The-Way Place (1993).

With a B.A. from Yale and M.A./Ph.D from Stanford, Tsings scholarly works have been highly lauded and lavished with numerous awards, including: a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010); the Society for Humanistic Anthropology Victor Turner Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing (2016); the Society for Cultural Anthropology Gregory Bateson Prize (2016) he, a former husband of cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead; the Royal Anthropological Institute Huxley Memorial Medal (2018); and the lollapalooza prize of all a Niels Bohr Professorship at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark.

Before turning up collective noses at this seemingly obscure educational institution and its lofty recognition for Tsings contribution to interdisciplinary work in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, social sciences and the arts, know this: Aarhus University (the second largest research university in Denmark) also anointed the 68-year-old scholar with the directorship of the universitys AURA (Aurus University Research on the Anthropocene) Project and presented her with an eye-popping sum of FIVE million dollars! Impressed, now? I was.

What in Samantha Hill (an equity opportunity exclamation) is going on here? Mushrooms? MUSHROOMS?!! Aside from their preordained place on steaks and in omelets, I draw a blinking blank with regard to their worth. So, sue me.

Legend has it that after the bombing of Hiroshima during WWII, the first living thing to emerge from the devastated land was a mushroom: the Matsutake (pine) mushroom, which grows in forests across the northern hemisphere. Considered a special delicacy, according to the American Mushroom Institute, Matsutake (rare and highly valued) is the third most expensive edible mushroom in the world, and can command, depending on size and condition, an astronomical $1,000 $2,000 per pound.

A mushroom is the reproductive organ of a fungus. Described by some as the most poorly understood and underappreciated kingdom of life on earth, it is also recognized, by those in-the-know, as indispensable to the health of the planet. What we have come to know as a mushroom is just the portion that appears above the ground in which it grows. But the majority of the fungal organism exists below ground in the form of mycelia white cobweb-like filaments (hyphae) that weave their way through the soil, creating a vast neurological network beneath the earth, interacting with the roots of trees, and forming combined structures of fungus and root called mycorrhiza. Mycorrhizal webs connect not just root and fungus, but also by way of fungal filaments unite trees with surrounding trees, creating immense forest entanglements. This seemingly boundless matrix links many species over enormous distances. So far-reaching is this system, that it forms the largest organism on earth. The Honey fungus mushrooms complex web, for example, is 2.4 miles wide.

Likened to a fungal iceberg, the mushrooms enormous subterranean structure, concealed within the earth, are largely ignored. Attention is given, instead, to its more visual stem, cap and gills, the parts of the mushroom that appear above ground. According to mycologists (mushroom scientists), much can be learned regarding continuing life on earth through judicious attention paid to the secretive undercover life of mushrooms. Unfortunately, more energy is paid on culinary examinations of the upper part of the mushroom, concentrating on how best to devour a fungal dish: roasted, grilled, baked or fried? Tsings probing study seeks to reverse this direction.

Fungal mycelia play a critical role on planet earth. By secreting enzymes into the soil around them, they digest organic material (including rocks), absorbing and releasing nutrients in the process. The discharged nutrients become available for trees and other plants, which are then used to produce more food for themselves and the network. The rampantly migrating web navigates maze-like territory in search of food. Not only does it feed and link trees in forests (root to root), but it also conveys information regarding environmental threats to the woodland trees.

Mycelia also play a critical role in forming soils, recycling organic matter, and keeping plants and animals in good health. Devoid of mushrooms, the earth would be, mycologists claim, a vast, uninhabitable waste heap of dead, undecomposed plants and animals.

Tsings ethnographic account of the Matsutakes complex commodity chain contributes to the field of anthropology in her study of multi-species collaborative interactions using a non-human subject to learn more about the Homo sapien world. In addition, her research relative to the field of ecology addresses the interrelationship of organisms and how their environment is re-shaped by human interference. Tsings monograph delivers a clear message that contrasts the mushrooms interactions within the earth synergetic, reciprocal and nurturing with those of humans on earth mindless destructive acts of pollution, ruination and exploitation.

Making worlds, states Tsing, is not limited to humans. The Mushroom at the End of the World is a treatise based on observations of the hidden underground life of the mushroom. From its little known but remarkable pattern of growth and beneficial contributions, to its global culinary commercial star power, the author advances theoretical ideas regarding how the biology and life of mushrooms can be used to revise our current adulation of a long-reigning socioeconomic industrial complex whose pursuit of its own capitalistic profit motives have led to the overall detriment of societal needs and the planet on which we live. Tsing postulates that the humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet by taking note of mushroom behavior and adopting some of its ways.

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing will talk about the history of the matsutake mushroom and her book, The Mushroom at the End of the World when she delivers the Solomon Katz Distinguished Lecture on Feb. 25, 2020 at 7 PM at Kane Hall 220 on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington. Presented by the Simpson Center For The Humanities. For details, go to uwalum.com/golectures or call 206-543-0540.

Read more here:
The humble mushroom provides a key to unlocking how humans might better their lives and the planet - The International Examiner

Human Behavior

Talking Connections: Intimacy and its impact on relationships – Iowa State Daily

Intimacy can be a big part of relationships, romantic and otherwise, and intimacy or the lack thereof can impact people in different ways. Aspects of a relationship like trust and communication can play into what that intimacy looks like.

Editors note: This is part two in our weekly relationship series Talking Connections. Sensitive content may follow.

Intimacy can be a big part of relationships, romantic and otherwise, and intimacy or the lack thereof can impact people in different ways.

David Wahl, graduate sociology student, studies human sexuality, sex and gender.

Intimacy means something different to everyone, Wahl said. To some people, intimacy is a sexual relationship, for some people, its another person that they know is always going to be there for them, that they can talk to about anything, it could be that platonic friendship between two people.

Intimacy can look different for various people and scenarios can vary with the type of relationship such as friendships, long-term and short-term romantic or sexual relationships.

Additionally, intimacy can be expressed in many ways, such as physically and emotionally. Emotionally, people can share personal information with their romantic partner or friend and allow themselves to be real and honest with them.

Some people may experience a fear or avoidance of being intimate with others and sometimes theres a specific instance that led them to have that fear and want to avoid it. People may also have a fear of intimacy because it gives them feelings of anxiety.

If two people trust one another and somewhere in the timeline of their relationship, that trust is broken, it can result in hard feelings and maybe even the end of the relationship.

This lack of emotional support, giving and receiving, can lead to less satisfying relationships, said Kristi Costabile, assistant professor of psychology. However, it is important to note that emotional support patterns develop as a result of our experiences, so having positive, trusting, supportive relationships can lead people to be more willing to seek and provide support; and having negative relationships characterized by mistrust can lead people to be less willing to seek out and provide support.

Being intimate with a romantic partner can be an intimidating thing. Components of the relationship like trust, length of relationship and more can go into how intimacy is expressed and progresses.

Either way its all about communication, everything is about communication when it comes to intimacy, Wahl said. But with a sexual partner, its about are you able to open yourself up fully to be satisfied the same way youre expecting your partner to be satisfied. Are you able to talk about what you want and what you dont want.

The sex education young people receive could also contribute into the lack of communication about intimate subjects. Wahl said in his research he found most people had abstinence based sex education.

I want to write a whole book on sex education in America, Wahl said. Its the single biggest problem because it feeds into this stigmatizing society that we have. It feeds into not talking when were talking about intimate issues. It feeds into all those things that are negative and it tells you to shut up about this stuff, its not appropriate talk. If the sex educators arent talking about it, then their students arent going to want to talk about it.

To effectively communicate, there needs to be some level of trust between partners, which can be difficult for those with trust issues. Another reason someone might refrain from opening up to their partner is the fear of rejection or being labeled as not normal.

Theres different reasons that people dont feel theyre able to open themselves up to another person, in this case sexually, because we live in a society of sexual scripts what you can and cannot do, what you should and should not do which builds into our sexual normativity, Wahl said. And people are judged harshly if they fall outside of what is considered appropriate sexual behavior, which leads to people being stigmatized, people being shamed, we have a problem with slut shaming.

These sexual norms can sometimes influence people to hold themselves to strict expectations. Todays society can be quick to judge someone based off of what they do with a sexual partner or how they dress and act.

Someone may feel uncomfortable with being intimate with a partner because theyre afraid of their partners reaction. It can be hard to know how someone will react to their partner telling them something personal like a fetish they may have, a sexual act theyre not interested in or their insecurities.

Wahl said the number one question he gets from those who seek his advice is Is this normal?

Theyre afraid to ask anyone because theyre afraid of being stigmatized because they find out oh, its not normal, Wahl said. And the answer is 100 percent of the time, yes it is normal. Youre not the only one that has this proclivity. But thats what most people worry about, Im feeling this way, is it normal to feel this way?

Those struggling with communicating and being intimate with a partner may want to seek some sort of counseling. Couples therapy is another resource that could potentially aid in opening up the conversation.

Here is the original post:
Talking Connections: Intimacy and its impact on relationships - Iowa State Daily