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Around the World, People Have Surprisingly Modest Notions of the Ideal Life
Rather than being “maximizers,” people seem to aspire to moderate ideal levels of traits, such as pleasure, intelligence, personal freedom, and longevity.
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The Dangers of Distracted Parenting
Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents. Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history.
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The Racist Trope That Won’t Die
The comedian Roseanne Barr resurrected one of the oldest and most profoundly racist slanders in American history when she referred to Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who served as an adviser to President Barack Obama, as the offspring of an ape. This depiction — promoted by slave traders, historians and practitioners of “scientific” racism — was used to justify slavery, lynching and the creation of the Jim Crow state. It made the leap to the silver screen in deeply noxious films like “The Birth of a Nation” and haunted American popular culture well into the 20th century. The toxically racist ape characterization has been pushed to the margins of the public square.
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100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it.
When pain settled into Blair Golson’s hands, it didn’t let go. What started off as light throbbing in one wrist 10 years ago quickly engulfed the other. The discomfort then spread, producing a pain much “like slapping your hands against a concrete wall,” he says. He was constantly stretching them, constantly shaking them, while looking for hot or cold surfaces to lay them on for relief. But worse was the deep sense of catastrophe that accompanied the pain. Working in tech-related startups, he depended on his hands to type.
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Chasing the ‘Holy Grail’ of Baseball Performance
In the final regular-season game for the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers, Dusty Baker hit a home run, giving him 30 for the season and making him the fourth Dodger to reach that milestone that year, a Major League Baseball record. As Baker rounded third, a rookie who had recently entered the game, Glenn Burke, approached the plate from the on-deck circle and, seized by joy, raised his hand high above his head. Baker was taken aback by the gesture and, in a mix of celebration and confusion, decided to smack Burke’s hand. Their high five was clumsy, but then again it had every right to be: Reportedly, it was the first one ever. Baseball has always been a strange mix of social and solo.
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Graphic Warning Labels Linked to Reduced Sugary Drink Purchases
Warning labels that include photos linking sugary drink consumption with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and tooth decay may reduce purchases of the drinks, a field study shows.
