Sociology professor Christopher T. Conner started looking into the QAnon movement four years ago, but his research soon broadened into all kinds of conspiracy theorists, from race scientists to New Age spiritualists. He writes for @TheConversationUS about why people are susceptible, how politicians and influential figures take advantage of them, and what could be done. Do you have conspiracy theorists in your life (if you don't know any, maybe it's you 👀)?
How Modern America Is Optimized for Loneliness, Misery and Poor Health by David Friedlander May 24, 2024
"...What do housing, transit and lifestyle statistics have to do with loneliness and unhappiness, you might ask. Well...separating people physically also leads to emotional and psychological separation. Moreover, the implements that make sprawl-induced physical separation work on a societal level — cars to contract long distances and digital media to ameliorate the effects of social isolation — deepen loneliness and unhappiness on the personal level. These implements also make people sedentary, directly relating to the fact that 73% of the total American population is overweight and 42% is obese, per the CDC.
One of the biggest issues is population density. At the risk of oversimplifying, it’s a lot harder to socially isolate when there are people around you..."
Feminism and the mythopoetic men's movement: Some shared concepts of gender
Helen Gremillion, 2011 Women's Studies J.
"certain strands of feminist thought, which have gained wide popularity in various forms, share constructs of gender with the MMM: namely, a tendency to represent gender as binary and to imagine gender as a stand alone variable of social life."
Understanding microfascism: reading Deleuze and Guattari alongside management guru texts
Sideeq Mohammed (2019) Culture and Organization
"the desire for fascism, power, conformity, and rule-following of which Deleuze and Guattari speak offers a productive way of understanding the success of the management guru and the broader allure of the management advice industry."
"‘Why did the masses desire fascism?’ ... Posed in the context of their attempts to develop a more robust conceptualization of ‘desire’ as a psychosocial force, they suggest that ‘only microfascism provides an answer to the global question: why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression?’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2005, 215)"
Can Music Make Your Food Taste Better? Spice up your meals with some sonic seasoning. by Andrew Coletti May 20, 2024
"...Sweet and sour were matched with high pitches, bitter and umami with low pitches. Brass instruments sounded bitter, while piano sounded sweet. In a follow-up study, subjects who sampled toffee while listening to custom tracks designed to enhance specific tastes reported an increase in the targeted flavors.
Sonic seasoning is still not well-understood, but some researchers connect it with synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon where one sense activates another..."
“Since the beginning of #Israel’s war on #Gaza, academics in fields including #politics, #sociology, Japanese #literature, public #health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East and African studies, #mathematics, #education, and more have been fired, suspended, or removed from the classroom for pro-#Palestine, anti-Israel speech.”
another one from The Hill, this one about RFK Jr now being demonized by Republicans as a threat to Trump.
can we agree he isn't so much a political threat but a cypher for the mental #health of USA's political class and the citizens who parasocially elect them?
Studies like this are an indictment against Republican policies to purposefully under-fund pre-k and schools in districts where the majority of residents are people of color, ethnic or religious minorities, or poor.
From the article:
Metacognitive abilities may be more influenced by environment than genetics by Eric W. Dolan, May 3, 2024 in Cognitive Science
"...Metacognition refers to the awareness and management of one’s own cognitive processes, such as learning and problem-solving, while mentalizing involves understanding and interpreting the mental states of oneself and others, crucial for effective social interaction.
...Contrary to the traditionally high heritability observed in general cognitive abilities like intelligence, the researchers found that metacognition and mentalizing are more strongly influenced by environmental factors than by genetic ones..."
This review, at a popular site for people interested in Japan, could serve as a guide to watching the new documentary about Japanese hostess bars. It's a new genre for me, although I have some background in journalism: https://japanned.hcommons.org/journalism
In this newly published study of Norwegian officers, Sine Vorland Holen shows how soldiers in the chaos of conflict must swiftly categorize violence in order to craft justifiable responses.
Soldiers classify violence as either war, crime, or cultural practice and invoke distinct logics to navigate these. These insights enrich our understanding of military decision-making.
A very interesting paper by Megan Stevenson which I am still reading. But it really piqued my interest since I have definitely harbored what she called an "engineer's view" that we can do sociological randomized control trials with people to test public policy.
I have a feeling this is going to trigger a lot of introspection on my thoughts about this until now...