December7, 20207 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Within the broad world of human behavior we know that there is a tendency to see more of the negative than the positive in situations. Our brain processes about 60,000 thoughts a day. Many of them are negative, absurd, or repetitive. More than 90% are repeated and around 80 to 90% are negative, with the consequences that this represents in the reality of that person: negativity, judgments, disappointment, frustration, fear, stagnation, unhappiness.

The psychologist Martin Seligman, promoter of the so-called positive psychology, affirms in his book " Authentic happiness " that for every one hundred articles that talk about sadness, only one is published about happiness. A proportion similar to what happens with the news shown by most of the media.

There is a valuable tool as individuals and also for companies and teams, called appreciative inquiry , which allows focusing on the contributory aspects of the issues to be managed, instead of focusing exclusively on those that remain in the search for solutions.

To be clear: it is not a question of denying reality and what is lived, but of resignifying it and highlighting the aspects that do help to resolve it.

In the business world it is very common to use the SWOT matrix (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats; also known as SWOT) to analyze different aspects to solve.

Applying a similar model, here aimed at improving decision-making and enhancing human behavior, the appreciative inquiry process invites us to practice the FOAR method, consisting of the review of Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results.

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Appreciative inquiry draws on the contributions of Professor David Cooperrider from Case Western University in the United States, and defines it as the 4D's of appreciation: Discover, Dream ( Dream in English), Design and Plan ( Deliver in English) ). And we cannot change them, because the opportunity presents itself as it is and when it appears; although you do have the power to accept or reject it.

Let's review each of the aspects of the FOAR matrix:

It is the starting point, discovering the tools you have. Everything that is already good and that contributes to the success of the objective is detailed; even when applied to solve challenges.

To focus, it is important to use triggers, for example, what skills do you have, how much do you know about yourself or the topic to be addressed, what values influence your strengths; and also what contributory beliefs -those that we know as positive-, in addition to asking In what do I recognize that I have or have a lot of talent?

This quadrant of FOAR contemplates open-mindedness and the change of internal models to expand beyond the known. There are internal opportunities , for example, the permission you give yourself to experience the new, the predisposition, the encouragement and the enthusiasm to face your process of personal and professional improvement; and also external , where you learn to detect everything that the environment offers as opportunities for improvement - such as taking a course, accessing a contact to resolve a situation, a book that triggered a lateral thinking that you had not considered.

In this area of opportunities, imagination, creativity and innovation become strategic allies to be able to expand your power of perception to solve the different issues that previously concerned you and today you are sitting on them from new perspectives.

Everything that you cannot see yet does not mean that it cannot happen in the future. That is why the FOAR model relies on the world of possibilities .

Possibility is born from internal openness and predisposition for good things to happen. Everything that you aspire to, dream of, want to discover, and yearn to achieve, can find a way of realization through the opportunities you are visualizing, no matter how distant they may seem at the moment.

To determine your aspirations and those of a team, it is necessary to review the strengths and opportunities and specifically establish the goals you want to achieve. As triggering questions: What is really important and what am I passionate about? Where do I or do we want to go? How do I concretely envision the future? (Create a mental image as if it were in HD) How will the successful result of these aspirations be in the concrete? What emotions will be present?

There is an interesting exercise that I would like to propose: make a positive portrait of yourself, and you can also propose it to your team: take a photograph of your face -and it can also be of each member of a team- , and begin to write with a firm hand qualities in different places in that photo. For example, qualities related to vision where you want to go in the eye area; those of communication, in the area of the mouth; that of creativity, on the forehead; empathy and listening skills, in the ears, and so on, you will associate spaces in your photo with qualities that help in appreciative inquiry. You will be surprised by the result. If you need to develop any of these aspects further, view the photo for several weeks in a row daily for a few moments, and let your subconscious mind do the rest.

This is the final consequence of the actions you have taken to reach the goal. It is the concrete effect of an event activated in time.

In this quadrant of FOAR you will define the tangible and measurable indicators of what you want to obtain. Achieving the sale of a certain number of units of a product, opening a new business in a certain strategic location, successfully overcoming a challenge that can empower the person or company, or the conclusion of a negotiation, are some practical examples and concrete.

To achieve the results, it is necessary to draw up the action plan, establish goals using specific methodologies, develop the strategy, determine those responsible and the time in which this point will be reached, and measure partial progress.

It is known to all that results are not obtained without focused action, available energy and clarity to activate everything that is necessary to achieve it. Because just dreaming or imagining it, and even simply having it in a plane of aspiration without action, will not be enough to make them happen.

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Discipline, clarity and permanent focus, adjusting deviations and correcting in a positive sense, will be other indispensable tools to achieve this.

Taking into account the structure of the FOAR model, you will be able to enhance the aspects that will help you move forward, and possibilities will arise that perhaps were not taken into account in the traditional SWOT model.

The invitation is to observe, always and permanently, the positive and contributory aspects in all situations. What will happen if you do? You will positively modify your mental model, turning towards one focused directly on what brings you closer to the results you want to obtain, in a more overcoming way, versus that old pattern of having the focus on what you lack or the obstacles.

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From SWOT to FOAR: Teaching Your Brain to See the Positives - Entrepreneur

Human Behavior

This Pro-Trading Secret Could Have Caught the 2020 Crash – DailyWealth

December 9, 2020 medical

"I'll give you $1,000 if you burn that book right now."

I was 22. Sitting at my desk, I had been lost in my reading studying for my Chartered Financial Analyst ("CFA") exam.

I had started at the hedge fund just a few weeks before. My boss had trained under a trading legend. It was a huge opportunity to work with him. I was excited, but aware of the pressure. I wanted to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible.

But I was startled when my boss walked up and told me to burn my books. What the heck was he talking about?

It turned out this would be the beginning of an obsession. This boss would lead me down an entirely different path than I had imagined. And I never did end up getting that CFA certification...

Today, I want to share the path I chose instead. It taught me an entirely different way of looking at the markets. And once you understand this, you can start learning to trade like the pros do...

Let me first tell you what my boss said next that day (I'm paraphrasing a bit)...

Look, if you want to understand risk, if you want to understand trading, if you want to understand portfolio management... you can't just focus on fundamentals. It's not that fundamentals don't matter. But to get really high returns and really exceptional trading results, you have to understand... how markets move and what markets move, and the psychology behind why markets do what they do.

You probably know there are two schools of thought when it comes to looking at the market. There's fundamental analysis and technical analysis... And he wanted me to focus on the technicals.

The CFA exam and materials focus almost entirely on fundamental analysis. They go deep into the weeds of debt, profits, and management teams. And while all that is important... what my boss was trying to tell me was that he followed a different path.

I'm not saying that fundamental analysis doesn't matter... It does. Great businesses with a history of making money and paying good dividends through both good times and bad times are vital for "buy and hold" strategies. But when it comes to trading and understanding why price behaves the way it does, technical analysis rules the roost.

Technical analysis focuses on the price behavior of a stock or asset through various indicators and price patterns.

As my boss said... "Technical analysis focuses on now, fundamentals on what was."

To be clear, fundamental analysis works for a lot of people. But it's not how I invest...

I spent more than a decade on Wall Street trading multimillion-dollar portfolios across multiple asset classes.

Gold, crude oil, foreign exchange ("FX"), stocks, futures, options, copper... I traded all of it.

Within weeks of joining the hedge fund, as I told you about earlier, my boss taught me the greatest lesson of my career.

Eventually, after years of intense studying, and a formal examination in front of the board of Chartered Market Technicians, I received my "CMT" designation.

Technical trading became my bread and butter. And I realized that this approach to the markets helps the pros trade with one thing in mind... "History repeats itself."

The ups and downs of the market are nothing more than the graphic representation of human behavior... expressed on a chart of buyers and sellers. And this market behavior tends to repeat.

Here is a perfect example a type of technical analysis called "intermarket analysis." This served as a warning at the start of the financial crisis in 2007... And it repeated earlier this year, before the COVID-19 crash.

Intermarket analysis is based on correlations between asset classes... When one of these asset classes turns down, it may be a warning sign for other asset classes (stocks, in this case).

We know this because these chart patterns have shown up before... and other assets have fallen. Take a look...

The S&P 500 Index (blue line) and U.S. 30-year interest rates (black line) traded in tandem at the end of 2019. The "trade war" with China was calming down, and both asset classes were moving in the same direction. All was well.

But then, as you can see, the correlation broke down early this year.

Now, look at the red lines... See how stocks made new highs, while interest rates failed to do the same? That was a warning.

The "fundamentals" looked fine. But I could hear my boss's words in my head... The only thing that mattered was what prices were signaling.

This is an extreme example, given the crash that followed. But it was a warning... and one that worked well.

This is the essence of technical analysis understanding how history repeats in the markets. This concept is lost on many investors. They simply don't understand and aren't willing to put in the time and effort that's necessary. But pro traders know that you can use this approach to make outstanding returns.

That's why technical analysis is much more than trendlines and charts... It is understanding the past to profit in the future.

Good investing,

Greg Diamond, CMT

Editor's note:By following Greg's recommendations this year, you could've doubled your money nine different times without buying a single stock. And now, he's making another bold prediction. On December 23, Greg expects a huge move that could either hand you one of the biggest, fastest payouts of your life... or set your retirement back by years. Get the full story here.

Dobie: The willing suspension of disbelief – Newsday

December 9, 2020 medical

The suspension of disbelief is a powerful human behavior.

The concept dates at least to Aristotle, who saw it working its magic in the theatergoing experience. When faced with the surreal or the unreal, according to Aristotle and others who followed him, humans stop thinking critically and simply accept the otherworldliness to enjoy the experience.

Nowadays, we suspend disbelief when watching "The Matrix," "The Mandalorian" or a Marvel movie. We often engage in a similar exercise when rooting for our favorite sports underdog and we stop thinking critically to enjoy the fiction that our team has a chance to win the game. There seldom are any real consequences for these kinds of suspension of disbelief; the letdown you feel when the movie stinks or your team loses is not all that consequential.

Thats not the case when the suspension of disbelief crosses the thin line that separates it from delusion, as is happening with many of us with COVID-19.

The virus is certainly surreal. Invisible and silent, restive and relentless, it infects and kills. Combating it requires critical thinking about masks, about distancing, about the size of our groups, about being indoors or out. Yet many of us have stopped thinking critically about this surrealness and simply accepted it in order to enjoy the life weve been leading, even as the virus spreads around us.

What are we doing?

Remember the two Boeing 737 MAX passenger planes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that crashed five months apart in 2018 and 2019? They killed a total of 346 people, because of a malfunction in the flight control system, and within days of the second crash all 387 Boeing 737 MAX planes worldwide had been grounded.

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In the United States alone, were now losing the equivalent of 16 to 18 plane loads of people to COVID-19 every day and by not masking up its like were still getting on the darned planes.

We know better.

Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom knows better and he still went to a maskless indoor birthday party with more than 10 people at the exclusive French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. Steve Adler, the Democratic mayor of Austin, Texas, knows better but he flew to Mexico for his daughters wedding even as he was advising Texans not to travel to avoid getting or spreading the virus.

Republican Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knows better but hes inviting 900 people to one of several indoor holiday parties hes hosting even after the department sent a notice to employees advising them to change "any non-mission critical events" from in-person gatherings to virtual ones.

Republican President Donald Trump and White House officials know better but theyre planning to hold a string of indoors in-person holiday parties over the next three weeks, the first taking place last week, masks apparently optional.

We all know by now that the chances of getting the virus skyrocket when we engage in these behaviors, and we all know there are growing numbers of people in our communities, including on Long Island, who have the virus, and we all know that this clearly is a surreal situation, and still someone plans a party for hundreds of people in a mansion in Brookhaven, and hundreds of people protest the closing of a Staten Island bar that violated COVID-19 measures, and some maskless parents still stand in lines among other parents to pick up children after school.

We all should know by now that we cant get away with acting this way, and that suspending our disbelief about the consequences by failing to wear a mask and keep our distance is like continuing to board that plane.

Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday's editorial board.

Read more from the original source:
Dobie: The willing suspension of disbelief - Newsday

Human Behavior

Living Life Online: Adolescent Mental Health and Social Media – Psychiatry Advisor

December 9, 2020 medical

For many adolescents, more time at home during the ongoing coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown has meant more time glued to a screen. Social distancing and limitations on daily life during the pandemic have left social gaps to be filled by the constantly evolving offerings of the internet.1-2

Even before the pandemic, the starry-eyed optimism about social medias ability to connect people across space and time was beginning to wane, even among Silicon Valley insiders. A sense of exploration and possibility has been reduced to anxiety about our rising reliance on technology, especially its effects on child and adolescent development.

Concerns about social media have been infused with a growing sense of unease and vulnerability brought on by the pandemic with the Centers for Disease Control promoting both breaks from social media to reduce stress and using social media to connect with others.3 Early studies from China appeared to show links between social media exposure and poor mental health, including depression and anxiety.4-5 Studies based on social media posts have allowed researchers to identify elevated psychosocial and support seeking expressions online this year compared to the preceding year.6 However, this finding could point to either increased use of social media to convey personal feelings or rising rates of psychological distress.

A recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation noted that adolescents may be at a higher risk for poor mental health outcomes during the pandemic due to increased loneliness and isolation, as well as a lack of access to mental health resources while schools are closed.7 Being stuck at home could compound parental stress and lead to confrontation.

Vicki Harrison, MSW, Program Director, Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, stated in an interview, Many activities that are good for mental health are difficult to engage in under shelter-in-place orders, such as spending time with family and friends, milestones and celebrations, engaging in extracurricular interests, exercising, and interacting with nature.

She also noted, While young people are resilient and adaptable as a whole, their wellbeing is somewhat dependent on the circumstances of their family life and who they are engaging with during the shutdown. In other words, some adolescents may escape negative experiences at school, whereas others may be forced into difficult situations at home.

During the pandemic, social media may provide a healthy substitute for regular social interactions and a break from home confinement. Furthermore, it may be difficult to separate the effects of social media from the multitude of stressors related to COVID-19, from loss of life to economic decline.8 Adolescents are likely to spend more time online as a result of COVID-19, and coming to terms with societys reliance on online platforms during this time may help parents, adolescents, and others use them in more healthy ways.

A Sisyphean Struggle?

Social media can be a double-edged sword, and concerns about social media may in fact reveal how little we know about emerging platforms of social connection and the inventive ways that young people use them.2,8-10

The relationship between social media use and poor mental health may have been more robust in the 1990s and early 2000s, when less adolescents used them, according to Candice Odgers, PhD, a developmental psychologist at Duke University and the University of California-Irvine. As these platforms have become ubiquitous, findings have become more modest, pointing to little or no negative effects with moderate use.9-10

Amy Orben, DPhil, of Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, refers to recurring societal anxieties about adolescent social media use and mental health as the Sisyphean cycle of technology panics and argues that psychology plays an integral role in fostering them.11 By analyzing historical responses to other forms of media, Dr Orben noted that panics often lack an overarching theoretical paradigm, recommending that researchers transform their approach to focus on styles of use particular to certain technological modalities, as well as effect sizes and their directionality.11 This new methodological framework would be less reactive and prone to paranoia about the activities of teenagers.

In a similar vein, Dr Odgers promotes looking at transition periods, when adolescents start using social media regularly. She noted that finding control groups may be difficult, as few adolescents are offline, and behavior may change while abstaining for short periods to facilitate studies.10

Online But Not Nave

Although adolescents are often portrayed as unwitting participants in a dangerous social process, they frequently understand the risks of using social media and play an important role in shaping how emerging platforms are used and constructed. Studies based on the perspectives of adolescents reveal that teens are often consciously aware of social media as a potential threat to mental wellbeing, including through cyberbullying and smartphone addiction.12-13

Harrison noted that adolescents are often frustrated by the negative aspects of social media, including hate speech and bad behavior, emphasis on highly curated images and narrow standards of beauty, notifications, ads, triggering content, and design features promoting endless scrolls and viewing. She adds, Many older adolescents have adopted strategies to manage their mental health and balance their usage, whether by taking social media breaks, changing their settings, or avoiding certain apps.

In some cases, life online can offer adolescents healthy opportunities to engage with each other about their mental health. Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and principal investigator for the iCHASM research team, stated in an interview, Online communities do help teens vent and network with others anonymously, which can be very important, especially when communicating about highly stigmatized topics including mental illness.

In a paper, Dr Cavazos-Rehg performed a content analysis of depression-related tweets and found that supportive or helpful tweets were highly common, followed by tweets disclosing depressive symptoms.14 These expressions of poor mental wellbeing may open the door to treatment or facilitate links to care, either through formal resources or online communities.

Online spaces create many exciting opportunities for youth to experiment with creativity, self-expression, and play, said Harrison, They can also be places to find support for mental health, including connecting with others who share similar struggles and experiences affording anonymity.

During the pandemic, social media may offer adolescents a place to discuss their challenges, and openness about mental health online is better than bottling their distress. In these challenging and stressful times, Dr Cavazos-Rehg noted that social media can be fun and distracting.

However, Dr Cavazos-Rehg also harbors some concerns, acknowledging that it can be easy for young people to engage with potentially harmful content and/or to immerse oneself in distracting and time-consuming online activities that could lower emotional wellbeing, including excessive engagement, avoidant coping strategies, and compulsive checking. During a critical neurodevelopmental period, Harrison noted, adolescents may be vulnerable to risk taking, impulse control, fluctuating self-esteem, and peer pressure.

A Mentalizing Approach to Adolescent Struggles Online

Mentalizing, a multidimensional concept rooted in attachment theory and the psychoanalytical work of Peter Fonagy, OBE, PhD, Chief Executive of the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in London, United Kingdom, may offer some insights into understanding life online. Briefly, mentalizing involves the perception and interpretation of behavior based on intentional mental activity, an imaginative capacity that determines how we relate to others as well as ourselves.15-16

According to Dr Fonagy, poor mentalizers often focus on the surface and lack curiosity. They cannot conceptualize the thoughts, feelings, and desires that underpin another persons communication. In social interactions, they may take something seriously that others would discard or perceive as a mild joke. Social media offers considerable opportunities for misunderstanding and a lack of insight into others motivations and true meanings.

On the whole, with any media including social media, if you are a vulnerable individual, you are much more likely to be negatively affected by it, Dr Fonagy stated in a Zoom call. If you have mental health problems before using it, you will suffer from it. If you have no mental health problems, it may affect you less.

Joint attention and epistemic trust lie at the heart of Dr Fonagys notion of mentalizing. Social media often provides highly individualized content that fractures users collective experiences, and online platforms draw users attention in unique ways.

Dr Fonagy noted that skilled teachers can develop epistemic trust, and social media masquerades as if it is a teacher that recognizes you; that recognition of individual agency opens your mind, allowing you to be influenced. This phenomenon leads to an abuse of epistemic trust, and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to social influences, according to Dr Fonagy.

These concepts not only allow for an understanding of online life on a larger level, but also for successful interventions in clinical settings. Adolescents psychological challenges are increasingly entangled with their experiences online and virtual interactions with their peers on social media. As a result, providers need to take into account the unique aspects of these interactions and online adolescent culture.

I see a lot of people who have problems associated with social media, Dr Fonagy stated. People that I see are massively bothered at the extreme by cyberbullying. And,at the minor level, by not getting enough likes.

To alleviate these problems, Dr Fonagy deploys a mentalizing approach to develop better epistemic trust and discernment, which can involve stopping automatic thinking and getting a more reflective stance, a balance of cognition and emotion. For adolescents concerned about a lack of likes or a friend not responding to their messages, a mentalizing approach can help them think about what motivates other people. Could the friend be busy doing something else and still care about the relationship? Should I determine my self-worth based on likes? Why do I jump to conclusions about not getting positive attention?

An important starting point involves validating adolescents perspectives, even if they are flawed, to develop clinician-patient trust. For example, a provider can validate that interactions online can be upsetting in a sincere way and that peers may be acting in an unfair manner. Then, by clarifying and getting into the details, Dr Fonagy said, You gradually help them recover a more sophisticated mentalizing stance.

Immediately offering a contrary perspective can result in adolescents pushing back and building up a barrier. However, as Dr Fonagy stated, Once they feel comfortable that you can see the world how they see it, then you can take a different perspective on board. Then, clinicians can demonstrate that anxieties or judgments about others behavior may be a projection of the patients insecurities and assumptions.

Conclusion

Providers should be aware of the multitude of stressors that their adolescent patients are currently facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and social media may play a relatively minor role overall. Given the literature linking problematic social media use to suicidal behavior, self-harm, psychological distress, and psychiatric disorders, providers should also pay attention to potential warning signs.17-19 However, they ought to consider that their adolescent patients are equally cognizant and concerned about these problems.12

Moving forward, developing a culture of healthy social media use requires more than self-awareness on the part of adolescents or restrictions by watchful parents. Harrison believes that much more focus needs to be placed on minimizing harm on platforms and it should not be left up to users or the conscience of platforms to figure this out and manage it. She added, As a society, we need to demand that positive impacts on mental health and wellbeing be a driving force behind design and growth within the technology sector.

Participating in this wider social conversation, however, should not play into technology panics or reactive fears.10-11 Problems experienced online are often experienced offline as well, and the impacts of technology are not equally distributed, with some adolescents being more affected than others.10,20 To explore the multifaceted relationship between social media and adolescent mental health, researchers should design better studies that move beyond mere correlations and analyze how technologies are actually experienced.

References

1. Fischer S. Social media use spikes during pandemic. Axios. https://www.axios.com/social-media-overuse-spikes-in-coronavirus-pandemic-764b384d-a0ee-4787-bd19-7e7297f6d6ec.html. Published online April 24, 2020. Accessed November 16, 2020.

2. Ghaffary S. The pandemic is raising concerns about how teens use technology. But theres still a lot we dont know Vox Recode. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/29/21346005/technology-social-media-impact-teenagers-research-common-sense-report. Published online July 29, 2020. Accessed November 16, 2020.

3. Centers for Disease Control. Coping with stress. CDC Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Your Health. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html. Last updated July 1, 2020. Accessed November 16, 2020.

4. Zhong B, Huang Y, Liu G. Mental health toll from the coronavirus: social media usage reveals Wuhan residents depression and secondary trauma in the COVID-19 outbreak [published online August 15, 2020]. Comput Human Behav. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2020.106524

5. Gao J, Zheng P, Jia Y, et al. Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak (published online April 16, 2020). PLoS One. 2020;15(4):e0231924.

6. Saha K, Torous J, Caine ED, Choudhury MD. Social media reveals psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic [published online August 11, 2020]. medRxiv. doi: 10.1101/2020.08.07.20170548

7. Panchal N, Kamal R, Orgera K, et al. The implications of COVID-19 for mental health and substance use. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/. Published online August 21, 2020. Accessed November 16, 2020.

8. Orben A, Tomova L, Blakemore SJ. The effects of social deprivation on adolescent development and mental health. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020;4:634-40.

9. Orben A, Przybylski AK. The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use [published online January 14, 2019]. Nature Human Behavior. doi: 10.1038/s41562-018-0506-1

10. Odgers C. Smartphones are bad for some teens, not all [published online February 21, 2018]. Nature. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02109-8

11. Orben A. The Sisyphean cycle of technology panics. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2020;15(5):1143-1157.

12. OReilly M, Dogra N, Whiteman N, Hughes J, Eruyar S, Reilly P. Is social media bad for mental health and wellbeing? Exploring the perspectives of adolescents. Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2018;23(4):601-613.

13. Barry CT, Sidoti CL, Briggs SM, Reiter SR, Lindsey RA. Adolescent social media use and mental health from adolescent and parent perspectives. J Adolesc. 2017;61:1-11.

14. Cavazos-Rehg PA, Krauss MJ, Sowles S, et al. A content analysis of depression-related tweets. Comput Human Behav. 2016;54:351-357.

15. Bateman AW, Fonagy, P. In: Handbook of Mentalizing in Mental Health Practice. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2019.

16. Fonagy P, Luyten P, Allison E, Campbell C. Mentalizing, epistemic trust and the phenomenology of psychotherapy. Psychopathol. 2019;52(2):94-103.

17. Marchant A, Hawton K, Stewart A, et al. A systematic review of the relationship between internet use, self-harm and suicidal behaviour in young people: The good, the bad and the unknown [published online August 16, 2017]. PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181722

18. Marino C, Gianluca G, Vieno A, Spada MM. The associations between problematic Facebook use, psychological distress and well-being among adolescents and young adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis [published online January 15, 2018]. J Affect Disord. 2018;226:274-281

19. Andreassen CS, Billieux J, Griffiths MD, et al. The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders: A large scale cross sectional study. Psychol Addict Behav. 2016;30(2):252-62.

20. George MJ, Odgers CL. Seven fears and the science of how mobile technologies may be influencing adolescents in the digital age. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2015;10(6):832-851. doi: 10.1177/1745691615596788

Original post:
Living Life Online: Adolescent Mental Health and Social Media - Psychiatry Advisor

Human Behavior

Glue takes its virtual collaboration platform to the next level with AI-powered customizable avatars – PRNewswire

December 9, 2020 medical

HELSINKI, Dec. 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Glue Collaboration, the leader in collaborative, real-time VR software services, today announced a major new release of Glue that enables greater immersion and frictionless interaction for remote teams as they co-create, learn, plan and share.

"Available to all our users today, this is our most significant release so far," said Jussi Havu, CEO, Glue Collaboration. "Alongside a new operating system with speech-to-text capabilities, we're introducing our ground-breaking new avatars. Everything adds up to our most immersive VR meetings yet, providing a space for remote workers to effectively collaborate even when they're thousands of miles apart."

Glue provides shared virtual environments where dispersed participants can come together as if they were face to face in a real physical space. Appealing to people's visual, haptic and auditory senses, Glue provides a level of immersion in remote meetings simply not possible with conventional video conferencing software.

Super expressive avatarsIn the latest update, Glue introduces its most expressive avatars yet. These leverage artificial intelligence and advanced graphics capabilities to more closely mimic people's behavior and features. The enhancements are designed to make communication feel as natural as it does in the real world, ensuring users focus on their meeting agenda rather than worrying about adjusting their camera.

To develop the new avatars, Glue integrated new AI-powered facial animation technology. For this, it turned to Edinburgh-based Rapport, a pioneer in facial animation and lip syncing technology that works with some of the world's leading animation and gaming studios.

"We worked with Glue to enable facial animation that looks as natural as possible and is generated in real-time from audio input alone," said Gregor Hofer, CEO and Founder at Rapport. "We're especially delighted with the new Glue avatars as they exhibit a level of expressiveness that makes them highly engaging and compelling."

Using the new built-in avatar configurator, users can also create their own avatar, adjusting face shape and features, hair and clothing as well as customizing colors. Millions of permutations are possible.

"We let our users choose their own appearance, as Glue is a place where everyone can be themselves," said Sami Syrj, Head of Design, Glue. "We have deliberately chosen to use expressive, animated avatars rather than lifelike virtual representations of ourselves. This prevents `uncanny valley', the eerie sensation people experience if a digital representation imperfectly resembles human behavior."

New features, including speech-to-text input

Running on a new operating system, the new release of Glue comes with a beautiful look and feel as well as a host of new features. New speech-to-text technology lets users say what they want to type. There is a new whiteboard for ideation, now also accessible to non-VR Glue users, as well as a camera that zooms and shoots in the resolution users choose. Glue has also made improvements to the way users manage their teams, files and spaces.

A new virtual space for creative workshops

Glue is expanding the library of ready and customizable spaces that teams can use with a new one called Mont Matiz. This hill-top, open-air space provides users with a relaxing, uncompromising setting for their creative workshops and large events like employee town halls.

More enterprises choosing Glue for virtual collaboration

Axel Springer

Axel Springer National Media & Tech, a unit of media company Axel Springer SE, has been testing immersive virtual meetings with teams in Berlin and Hamburg.

"Glue was benchmarked against other players in the market in several categories, such as avatars, user experience, pricing, business features and how well it would integrate with existing tools," said Chris Krau, Senior Product Manager for Immersive Technologies at Axel Springer National Media & Tech GmbH. "We decided to work with Glue for, among other things, its smooth rendering, which helped users feel the most comfortable in virtual space."

Read more about Axel Springer's experiences here.

BCG Platinion

BCG Platinion, a division of The Boston Consulting Group, used Glue for the first time in late October, bringing 50 people together in a virtual space for its Coding Digital Strategies hackathon. The group, which included outside designers, software developers and engineers from several European countries, used Oculus Quest headsets to work in a range of customized, branded Glue spaces for the successful two-day event.

"Glue as a virtual collaboration platform provides us an efficient way to host virtual events with distributed teams," said Sebastian Ley, Associate Director at BCG Platinion."

T-Systems Multimedia Solutions

T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, a subsidiary of T-Systems International and Deutsche Telekom, has been experimenting with Glue in the areas of agile team collaboration and design review processes that are usually done on 2D screens, turning them into interactive 3D meetings.

"Some things work even better in virtual space than in the real world," said Rafaela Sieber, Team Lead for AR/VR at T-Systems Multimedia Solutions. "We have been testing the potential of virtual reality for collaboration with avatars for some time now. In scrum or team meetings with up to 20 people, we are now replacing classic telephone conferences. Virtual reality helps to build human closeness and thus communication and trust."

Maillefer

Maillefer, the global leader in wire, cable, pipe and tube production technologies, wanted an efficient way of demonstrating its latest technology to customers. The company now has a set of interactive Glue virtual spaces that provide a cost-efficient and unique setting for its executives and engineers to present technology concepts and production lines and have conversations with customers.

Other enterprises using Glue include Air France-KLM, Fazer, Microsoft and Patria.

Want to experience Glue? You can book a demo here.

Media assetsImagery and video showing the new Glue available for download here.

Media enquiries [emailprotected]

About GlueGlue Collaboration (Helsinki, Finland) helps teams around the world to collaborate remotely in more productive and sustainable ways using a cloud-based virtual collaboration platform. Glue provides a true feeling of presence and access to a full set of tools for effective live collaboration in persistent, real-time and fully customizable virtual environments complete with 3D spatialized audio. Our journey began 15 years ago as an award-winning animation, XR and gaming studio and now we are leveraging our renowned Finnish digital craftsmanship to take remote collaboration to the next level.

To learn more, visit http://www.glue.work.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

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Glue takes its virtual collaboration platform to the next level with AI-powered customizable avatars - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

Using New Techniques, Caltech Professor Gains Insight on the Human Mind Through the Brains of Animals – Pasadena Now

December 9, 2020 medical

Professor David J. Anderson (Credit: Caltech)

A Caltech biology professor says scientists are increasing their understanding of the human mind by studying the brains of animals in new ways using new techniques which may lead to applications in human psychiatry.

Medical researchers and biologists have long depended on experimentation on animals, such as mice, to glean knowledge about how similar systems in humans work.

But when it comes to studying the human mind and treating psychiatric conditions, animal studies have major limitations, Professor David J. Anderson explained.

Theres ongoing debate about whether those are the right sort of models to use for testing drugs to treat emotional disorders, Anderson said. And part of the reason for that is that people cant even agree on whether animals have emotions or not.

But using new techniques, including optagenetics and calcium imaging, scientists are working to better understand the inner working of animal brains, rather than relying on merely studying their behavior.

The hope was that bringing some hard-nosed basic neuroscience to this problem could help bridge the gap between psychology, which studies how humans think and feel, and ethology, which is the science of animal behavior that studies what animals do, but doesnt really pay much attention to whats going on inside their brains, Anderson said.

As it stands, Theres still a lot of debate about whether the rodent brain, and particularly the part that deals with emotion, is close enough to the human brain to make it a viable test system, he said. And thats been reinforced by the fact that there hasnt been a fundamentally new drug for treating any kind of psychiatric disorder in the last 50 years, with the possible exception of ketamine, and thats because most of the new drugs that have been tested in animal models for psychiatric disorders have failed in the clinic when theyve then been tested in humans.

Through optagenetics, researchers are able to manipulate the activity of neurons inside animals brains, and with calcium imaging, brain activity can be measured in detail never possible before.

These are both invasive techniques, meaning you have to put things into the brain to be able to use them, so they cant be used in human studies, according to Anderson. But theyre very powerful.

Using the tools, Anderson said his goal is to better understand the brain states that are activated when animals are engaged in behaviors that are associated with emotions in humans, like aggression or fear or mating behavior, he said. Patterns of activity underlying similar emotional states in a rat or a mouse and a human might be similar, even if the behavior isnt, for example.

When a mouse is threatened, it will rattle its tail, Anderson said. You cant test the ability of a drug to block tail rattling in humans because we dont have tales to rattle, but it could be that the same groups of neurons, or similar neurons in similar brain regions, are affected by a threat in an animal and in a human.

And that if we found a drug that could block the change in brain activity that causes the stress that produces the tail rattle in rodents, we could test humans to see if the drug similarly affected patterns of brain activity associated with fear and stress in a human, he said. So that we would be comparing sort of the signal inside the brain, rather than the external behavior of the animals of the humans.

Anderson will discuss these new developments in a presentation Wednesday evening.

The Inner Life of the Brain: Fear, Sex, and Violence, will be held at 5 p.m. via Zoom, according to Caltech.

Anderson is Caltechs Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology. He also serves as Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience Leadership chair; investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and director of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience.

Pre-registration for the Zoom presentation is required and can be completed online at caltech.edu/campus-life-events/master-calendar/watson-lecture-2020-12. A recording is scheduled to be uploaded to Caltechs YouTube page at youtube.com/user/caltech at 8 p.m.

Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.

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Using New Techniques, Caltech Professor Gains Insight on the Human Mind Through the Brains of Animals - Pasadena Now

Human Behavior

Bad behavior? How to be civil – and stay safe – online – Reuters

December 9, 2020 medical

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Justin Davis, chief executive and co-founder of Spectrum Labs, learned his first lesson on civility as a 14-year-old working at a grocery store. The shop was a meeting point for just about everyone in Lucama, North Carolina - with a population of about 1,000.

Justin Davis, CEO and co-founder of Spectrum Labs, poses in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 8, 2020. SPECTRUM LABS/Handout via REUTERS

The folks that would come in there were from all walks of life, from farmers to business people or people passing through that small town to get to the bigger towns, and they would stop in there and just talk, said Davis, 37, whose San Francisco-based firm helps companies protect their brands online.

No matter how different everyone was, you learned how similar we all are at the center of it, Davis added. Being exposed to a whole bunch of people was very formative in those early years in shaping how I thought how people should be treated.

Davis chatted with Reuters about how to thrive in challenging times as well as strategies to combat bad behavior online. Edited excerpts are below.

Q. What has been your biggest challenge in 2020?

A. Burnout. Now, theres no separation between church and state, home and work. You do all the same things in the same 800-square-foot (70-square-meter) apartment, and its really difficult to get those things separated.

Q. Whats your strategy for managing burnout while working from home?

A. Any exercise or weightlifting for me is good, but also a mindfulness about my time. If I have 10 minutes between two calls, theres no point in me using that time to read something or work. Ill spend that time doing nothing. I dont look at anything, I dont think of anything. I just sit in silence and reset. Thats done wonders.

Q. Whats the piece of job advice you always give?

A. Dont be a turkey, and just work harder than the next person beside you. If youre nice to people and are generally nice to work with, you typically will set yourself apart from most of the people out there.

It has nothing to do with how smart or how talented you are. If you do those two things, that will get you pretty far in life.

Q. What is your work-from-home setup?

A. I go back and forth between my kitchen counter and my couch, which is the worst ergonomic setup you could possibly have.

But Ive never been one to be pinned down. Even when I worked in large companies, you would never find me at my desk. I would sit in different lounge areas with my laptop, cross-legged.

Im a pacer. I pace in the same laps around my apartment. So if Im on a call Im constantly just walking around. It keeps me energetic, the juices going.

Q. Why do you think toxic online behavior has exacerbated in recent years?

A. More and more people are coming online and getting comfortable with expressing opinions. In the last four years, theres been a rise in overall racism and hate speech and misogynistic behaviors online. Coming out of the 2016 election, it became pretty clear that the internet was on fire, and we were going to need a whole lot of solutions to address this.

Q. Why is it important for companies to address this issue?

A. A lot of the places that we like to go to build community online are struggling from a lack of safety, and theres real harm that can evolve. People can be harassed or doxed or abused or threatened. People want to use these services without fear of being scammed, defrauded or harassed.

There are always going to be toxic elements on the internet. All social platforms of all types have started to stand up and recognize that what they were going in the past, whether its chat filtering or filtering out profanity, is not enough to detect terrorism or human trafficking or malicious cases of hate speech.

Editing by Lauren Young; editing by Jonathan Oatis

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Bad behavior? How to be civil - and stay safe - online - Reuters

Human Behavior

The possibility of new restrictions – Newsday

December 9, 2020 medical

Cuomo: If hospitals overwhelmed, NY regions will shut down

The threat of potential shutdowns by region looms if the hospital capacity "becomes critical," Cuomo said Monday at a press briefing. He was joined by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, via videoconference.

If hospitalization rates don't stabilize over a five-day period, he said he would order restaurants on Long Island and elsewhere to reduce indoor dining to 25% of their capacity and New York City to stop indoor dining completely. He also ordered hospitals to increase capacity immediately by 25% amid surging cases.

The decision will be made on a region-by-region basis. Cuomo said it's possible hospitalization rates stabilize this week, but he said he had doubts.

"Right now it is increasing," he said of the rates, and "I expect it to continue to do [so], unless people change their behavior."

Cuomo also called on retired doctors and nurses "to return to service."

The level of daily confirmed cases on Long Island is now on par with many of the days in April, when the pandemic peaked.

Meanwhile in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday welcomed back to school thousands of students after almost three weeks of halted in-person learning.

The number of new positives reported today: 534 in Nassau, 748 in Suffolk, 2,765 in New York City and 7,302 statewide.

The chart below shows the number of new daily cases reported each day on Long Island during the past month.

Search a map of new cases and view more charts showing the latest local trends in testing, hospitalizations, deaths and more.

On COVID-19 vaccines: A Stony Brook University webinar last week brought together three experts to explain and weve compiled their answers to some commonly asked questions.

Even as the number of cases rises, many Long Islanders are eager to gather or travel. And some are choosing to take COVID-19 tests as a preventive measure so they can see friends and family.

But experts say thats a risky strategy.

Dr. Mark Jarrett, deputy chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Northwell Health, said too many think they're protected from the virus because of a negative test, but results may not detect people in the early stages of the illness and it provides no safeguards for the days after the test.

Dr. Aaron Glatt, chair of medicine and infectious disease at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside, says: "If people rely upon a negative test and not practice appropriate COVID prevention, it's going to lead to an increase in cases, not a decrease in cases."

The pandemic has forced many Long Island small businesses to close permanently, and many others are on the verge of shutting down.

At least 128 businesses vacated Main Street storefronts by early November, upending livelihoods and reshaping landscapes, a survey of 33 downtown business districts by the group Vision Long Island revealed. Eric Alexander, Visions director, warned the number of closures could grow if a state moratorium on commercial evictions and foreclosures is allowed to expire next year.

"When that hits, itll expose the real economic pain," Alexander said.

For some businesses here, the decision to close was heart-wrenching and disrupted not just personal finances, but relationships built over years with employees and customers. Read and watch video of some of their stories.

Each day since March, 90-year-old Edith Mishkin looks out the window of her room at Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Commack to see her special guests: daughters Elise and Barbara.

Its a tradition the daughters started after COVID-19 forced nursing homes to stop allowing visitors, leaving some residents to live in isolation, away from family.

"We are lucky she has a ground-floor room. Otherwise, it would be much more difficult to see her in person," said Elise Rubin of Commack.

Many Long Island nursing homes cant have visitors because of a state mandate that a facility must go 14 days without a patient or staff member testing positive for COVID-19.

Families have been struggling with isolation from loved ones even though they acknowledge the restrictions have lowered nursing home outbreaks.

Long Island parents and instructors of students with special needs say they learned a powerful lesson after kids were pulled from schools in March: They need to be in school.

Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for the virus, President Donald Trump said Sunday.

State guidance for high-risk high school winter sports is on hold, officials said last week.

Major League Baseball and all 30 of its teams are suing insurance providers, citing billions in losses during a season played almost entirely without fans.

MSC Industrial Direct Co. is shrinking its Melville headquarters by 85% because of the success it's had with a home-based workforce, executives said.

R&B singer Jeremih has been released from a Chicago hospital after a monthlong battle with COVID-19.

Safe (and warm) dining in a greenhouse. Restoration Kitchen & Cocktails in Lindenhurst is using greenhouse technology to keep up with outdoor dining this season. A 72-by-34-foot greenhouse with 14 outdoor tables recently opened to warm diners and keep a ventilation system to pump fresh air in and out for safety.

Holiday fun without leaving your car. Long Island has plenty of light shows and events to celebrate this season, and some of them perfectly allow for social distancing. Check out these holiday shows and events.

Where you can donate toys for LI kids. It's been a tough year, and sites around Long Island are collecting toy donations to distribute to kids this season. Here are seven places that are seeking new, unwrapped toys for those in need.

Turning to crystals during a crazy year. Three new crystal stores have opened on Long Island in recent months, and some are noting a surge in interest and sales. "Each crystal has a purpose and its own healing property to assist you in what you need," says Michele Accardi, who opened The Wishing Crystal in Lindenhurst last month. Find out more.

Plus: Watch out for text messages that look like they're from government agencies about grants, tax refunds, pandemic relief or unemployment insurance chances are they're fake.

The willing suspension of disbelief. Michael Dobie writes in his latest Newsday Opinion column: The suspension of disbelief is a powerful human behavior.

Thats not the case when the suspension of disbelief crosses the thin line that separates it from delusion, as is happening with many of us with COVID-19.

What are we doing? Keep reading.

Erin Serpico is an assistant web producer who joined Newsday in November 2018. Originally from New Jersey, she now covers community events and produces local content for newsday.com while also helping run the homepage.

Human Behavior

The mask and the rule – Richmond County Daily Journal

December 9, 2020 medical

Earlier this year, using some artistic license, I wrote a song entitled The Covid Blues. I based the song on an experience of the time. Here are some of its lyrics, in paragraph form:

He touched his mask, before he strode inside, our local Food Lion Store; six-foot six, three hundred pounds maybe even more. Touched his shower cap with a black-gloved hand, then his Foster Grants, and when he saw his unprotected-shoes, took a bottle from his scrub-suit pants.

Squirted sanitizer on both his shoes, bagged them with propylene, looked in my direction, stood straight up again.

A man like that, cant be sick, I said, has he got the Covid blues?

Reckon he might hurt someone? Gotta see what he will do.

Watched him walk on down to the high-priced steaks, picked up five kept two chose the fifth bag of potatoes, said Gotta get a case of brew. Pulled a Bud Light out from way in the back, said Im ready to go home, checked his list through the plastic bag, that covered his cell phone.

Then he saw Corona, in colors gold and blue; No-ooo, he cried, threw down his phone, and ran the whole store through.

And when he could not find the door, he made one of his own; We went out to look for him, but the Big Guy he was gone.

I wrote these lyrics in March, 2020, just before the Corona virus quarantine started, because I thought the Big Guy made himself a coward in his full-face mask, translucent shower cap, black nitrile gloves, sanitizer, and polypropylene-covered shoes. Without all his protective gear, the Big Guy would have commanded respect for his stature and his obvious good health. But his improvised hazmat suit, and overly-cautious mien, inspired only ridicule from me. The thing I disliked the most about his appearance was his mask.

My feelings did not change for several weeks, but then I began to wonder if my anti-mask stance could be justified. Because there was so much provisional and suspect information on Covid, I decided the Center for Disease Control would provide the best information. I got on their website to read that wearing cloth masks could help prevent the spread of Covid-19. CDCs actual words, as of September 20, 2020 were:

Wearing cloth masks can help prevent people infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 from spreading the virus.

The Big Guy seemed more concerned about catching the virus, than protecting anyone else. But the CDC implied that we should replace our concern for ourselves with concern for the other fellow, and stated that the best protection for the other fellow is for us to cover our mouth and nose with a mask.

The CDC seemed to be telling me that by refusing to wear a mask, I was violating the highest standard for all human behavior, which states Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. These eleven words make up the Golden Rule.

I just hate masks, I said. But Im going to have to wear one, if I want to protect the other fellow from me. Ill just have to put up with the inconvenience, if I want to keep from giving that virus to someone else.

Although wearing a mask must surely provide some protection to the wearer, the greatest defense against the virus is an around-your-elbow-to-get-to-your-thumb one: protect yourself by protecting your neighbor. So, that very day, I found some masks I had bought to protect me from irritants when cutting grass, and set them aside to protect the other fellow.

When I wrote The Covid Blues, I was irritated with the Big Guy for wearing a mask. Now, I become uncomfortable around anyone who is not wearing one. Because no one knows whos carrying the virus.I hope Im not, but I dont know. You hope youre not, but you dont know, either.

I have placed spare masks in all my vehicles, or at least I thought I had done so, until last night when I drove my old truck to town to get the slime washed off her. I reached for a mask, none on the seat, none in the pockets of the doors, none in the glove box.

So instead of waltzing around mask-less as I would have done before, I headed for the Western Store, then got out and held my jean-jacket over my mouth and nose as I asked the girl behind the counter for a bandana.

I chose one with white design over a blue background, paid her four bucks and four cents, including tax. Then I wore my jean-jacket mask to the car, to put on my new bandana one. Four and four, are a small price to pay for the assurance that I am not doing something that could hurt, or even kill my neighbor. This bandana makes a fashion statement at the same time.

I see my bandana-mask, and my paper and cloth ones as ways of showing that I care about my neighbor. I want to be rational and cautious about Covid: observing social distance, keeping my hands from my nose and mouth, and using sanitizer on my hands, so I wont be afraid for myself. I will wear my mask, so my neighbor wont need to be afraid, either.

I believe in both the mask and the rule. I began wearing the mask, because I love my neighbor. Hope you will too.

Excerpt from:
The mask and the rule - Richmond County Daily Journal

Human Behavior

Listen to this wild vinyl recording of a rogue psych professor and some early Moog employees – Boing Boing

December 9, 2020 medical

One of the best people I met during the time I lived in Ithaca, New York was John Lennon, an author, musician, and all around great dude whose books are published under the name J. Robert Lennon for what should be fairly obvious reasons.

John has a great weekly SubStack newsletter where he discusses the intersections of writing and music, mostly in terms of creative processes. And in this week's newsletter, John discusses a particularly bizarre vinyl recording he happened upon during the local library sale, created by a man named Dr. Noving Jumand in collaboration with some early Moog employees from nearby Trumansburg, NY:

Jumand was something of an Ithaca legend back when I first moved here in the nineties, though he's mostly forgotten now. He'd come to town for a Cornell PhD in psychology, and was teaching as a lecturer, when he got approval for a controversial study involving the effect of narrative on human behavior. A few of his subjectsstudents, getting paid five dollars an hourended up hospitalized, and one was (and perhaps still is) committed to a mental institution. This created all kinds of paranoid rumors about Jumand's narrativesthat they were in some way magical, or had been funded by the defense departmentbut it turned out that he'd given half of these students an experimental drug cocktail, derived from Phencyclidine, and this is what sent them on their dangerously dissociative journeys.

An investigation followed, during which it was revealed the the subjects knew they might be drugged and had signed release forms saying so; and the ones who were hospitalized already had histories of mental illness and drug addiction that could explain their reaction. As a result, no criminal charges were brought against Jumandbut the University cancelled his research and kicked him off campus.

[]

One extant artifact of his brief period of notoriety is a series of rare recordings of his narratives, made in collaboration with some former Moog employees he met at a swap meet in Trumansburg.

So to recap: there is a recording of the narratives by this wild academic who ran lots of weird and questionably ethical but undeniable legal psych experiments involving drugs and the impact of narrative on the human mind, recorded with assistance by some electronic music pioneers. And John found one of the rare extant copies of this gem, and decided to rip the audio and upload it to BandCamp:

If this is precisely the kind of wonderfully bizarre shit you're into, I highly recommend subscribing to John's newsletter. You can also check out some of his books Broken River is his most recent novel, though he has a new novel coming in April 2021, as well as a new short story collection.

Campfire Orb and Mailbox Ramble [J. Robert Lennon / Literambivalence]

More here:
Listen to this wild vinyl recording of a rogue psych professor and some early Moog employees - Boing Boing

Medical School

From SWOT to FOAR: Teaching Your Brain to See the Positives – Entrepreneur

This Pro-Trading Secret Could Have Caught the 2020 Crash – DailyWealth

Dobie: The willing suspension of disbelief – Newsday

Living Life Online: Adolescent Mental Health and Social Media – Psychiatry Advisor

Glue takes its virtual collaboration platform to the next level with AI-powered customizable avatars – PRNewswire

Using New Techniques, Caltech Professor Gains Insight on the Human Mind Through the Brains of Animals – Pasadena Now

Bad behavior? How to be civil – and stay safe – online – Reuters

The possibility of new restrictions – Newsday

The mask and the rule – Richmond County Daily Journal

Listen to this wild vinyl recording of a rogue psych professor and some early Moog employees – Boing Boing