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What to Expect When You Reconnect With Friends in Person
Ready to see your friends again? The process may be more complicated than you think. Many of us haven’t seen even our closest friends for more than a year. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and it can be overwhelming to think about where to start. While we’re excited about these reunions, it helps to manage our expectations: Some friends may have had a harder year than we knew and may need support just as we’re ready to move on from the pandemic. We need to brace ourselves for conversations that may take significant mental energy, at a time when our emotional bandwidth is already running low. And we should be ready to address hurt feelings—“Where were you?”—on either side.
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It Might Be Time to Break Up Your Pandemic Pod
You’ve been vaccinated. You’ve joyfully ripped off your mask when outdoors. Now it’s time to pop your quarantine bubble, right? But finding a good moment to break up the pandemic pod can be tricky. Do you call a meeting? Send a group text to the “quaranteam”? Ceremoniously rip up a contract? Is it possible to ghost someone when they’re practically living in your house? It may get intense. The quarantine, said Margaret Clark, a psychology professor and director of the Clark Relationship Science Laboratory at Yale University, seemed to have served as a relationship magnifier. “If your relationships were already fraught, the quarantine made them more fraught.” ...
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You Don’t Have to Start Young to Be a Great Musician
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began his musical training at the tender age of three. By age five, he had already composed his first piece of music. As a child, he mastered the piano, along with several other instruments including the violin, organ and harpsichord. By all accounts, he was a child prodigy. But he was far from the only composer to have a head start: Ludwig van Beethoven, Martha Argerich, Vincenzo Bellini, Claudio Arrau, and many of history’s greatest musicians all began their training in early childhood and went on to wow the world. The success of these musicians raises the question: Do you need to start early to be great?
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Autism and the Social Mind
Since the modern era of research on autism began in the 1980s, questions about social cognition and social brain development have been of central interest to researchers. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), and it is evident in this year’s meeting that the growth of social-cognitive neuroscience over the past two decades has significantly enriched autism science. For those unfamiliar with the term, social-cognitive neuroscience is the study of the brain systems that are involved in the causes and effects of social behaviors and social interaction.
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Police Reports Are Biased. What Can Journalists Do To Better Cover Policing?
The way the Minneapolis Police first described George Floyd's murder — "Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction" — didn't mention that an officer held his knee on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. It did mention that Floyd physically resisted officers, a detail which former officer Derek Chauvin's defense team leaned on during the murder trial — although Chauvin was ultimately found guilty. For decades, journalists have treated official police reports and statements as trusted primary sources. Now, some are questioning the reports' reliability and objectivity as part of a reckoning in the media spurred by George Floyd's murder.
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Teens, Tech and Mental Health: Oxford Study Finds No Link
There remains "little association" between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10 to 15-year-olds suggests. The Oxford Internet Institute compared TV viewing, social-media and device use with feelings of depression, suicidal tendencies and behavioural problems. It found a small drop in association between depression and social-media use and TV viewing, from 1991 to 2019, There was a small rise in that between emotional issues and social-media use. Happy people "We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019," study co-author Prof Andrew Przybylski. said.
