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Americans Are Becoming Less Racist and Homophobic, According to New Research
The resurgence of openly racist attitudes in the Trump era has led many observers to question whether the apparent reduction in prejudice in recent years was an illusion. New research provides a reassuring answer. Researchers find that both conscious and unconscious bias regarding race and sexual orientation declined significantly between 2007 and 2016. For racial attitudes, this change was largely generational, whereas the more relaxed attitudes toward sexuality were found in the population as a whole. That said, Americans are hardly ready to give up all our prejudices.
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Artificial intelligence thinks your face is full of data. Could it actually unmask you?
Each January, some 4,500 companies descend upon Las Vegas for the psychological marathon known as the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. The 2019 festivities were much like any other. Companies oversold their ideas. Attendees tweeted out the craziest products, and Instagrammed the endless miles of convention space. Trend-spotting was the name of the game, and this year’s trends ran the gamut: drones, voice-activated home assistants, something called “8K” television. But the most provocative robots were those that claimed to “read” humans faces, revealing our emotions and physical health in a single image.
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Got Anger? Try Naming It To Tame It
Over the past three years, I've had one major goal in my personal life: To stop being so angry. Anger has been my emotional currency. I grew up in an angry home. Door slamming and phone throwing were basic means of communication. I brought these skills to my 20-year marriage. "Why are you yelling?" my husband would say. "I'm not," I'd retort. Oh wait. On second thought: "You're right. I am yelling." Then three years ago, an earthquake hit our home: We had a baby girl. And all I wanted was the opposite. I wanted her to grow up in a peaceful environment — to learn other ways of handling uncomfortable situations. So I went to therapy. I kept cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets.
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Go to bed! Brain researchers warn that lack of sleep is a public health crisis.
In the screen-lit bustle of modern life, sleep is expendable. There are television shows to binge-watch, work emails to answer, homework to finish, social media posts to scroll through. We’ll catch up on shut-eye later, so the thinking goes — right after we click down one last digital rabbit hole. Brain research, which has pushed back hard against this nonchalant attitude, is now expanding rapidly, reaching beyond the laboratory and delving into exactly how sleep works in disease and in normal cognitive functions such as memory. The growing consensus is that casual disregard for sleep is wrongheaded — even downright dangerous.
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Is It Just Me, or Does Duolingo Not Work?
A few years ago, about six months before a trip (my first) to Paris, I downloaded Duolingo in an attempt to “learn French.” I put that in quotation marks because I did not, of course, expect to become fluent or even mildly conversant in a foreign language over such a short time frame, and especially not using an app. But I did expect to learn something — anything — useful. I hoped to learn how to say “Where is the bathroom?” or “How much does this cost?” or “I want that one,” the sort of purely transactional but useful phrases a tourist needs to get around town at least somewhat politely.
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A Simple Way to Better Remember Things: Draw a Picture
If you have a pen and paper handy, let’s do a little experiment. Picture a cashew. Now pick up your pen and draw a little sketch of one, then put the drawing face down somewhere you can’t see it. We’ll come back to it later. Yes, this is a weird way to start your week, I know. But there is a reason, I promise! You’ve probably guessed by now that we’re playing a little ad hoc memory game.
