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Category: Society

Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic

Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic

The Washington Post reports: Early in the pandemic, Joo Park noticed a worrisome shift at the market he manages near downtown Washington: At least once a day, he’d spot someone slipping a package of meat, a bag of rice or other food into a shirt or under a jacket. Diapers, shampoo and laundry detergent began disappearing in bigger numbers, too. Since then, he said, thefts have more than doubled at Capitol Supermarket — even though he now stations more employees…

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In 2020, normal became exceptional

In 2020, normal became exceptional

BuzzFeed reports: Helped by geographic isolation or governmental response or both, infections are low to nonexistent in several countries, particularly in the Asia Pacific, where life looks practically normal. Some people even occasionally forget there’s a pandemic going on. “I feel like there were days I forgot there was a pandemic, especially on days I wasn’t going out so much, just staying in my area,” said Jade Dhangwattanotai, a 25-year-old software developer in Bangkok. “In my day-to-day life, yes, I…

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The data economy is facing a social reckoning

The data economy is facing a social reckoning

MIT Technology Review reports: Each innovation challenges the norms, codes, and values of the society in which it is embedded. The industrial revolution unleashed new forces of productivity but at the cost of inhumane working conditions, leading to the creation of unions, labor laws, and the foundations of the political party structures of modern democracies. Fossil fuels powered a special century of growth before pushing governments, companies, and civil society to phase them out to protect our health, ecology, and…

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Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

MIT Technology Review reports: On the evening of Wednesday, December 2, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, announced via Twitter that the company had forced her out. Gebru, a widely respected leader in AI ethics research, is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. She also cofounded the Black in AI affinity group,…

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Sociology’s race problem

Sociology’s race problem

Robyn Autry writes: With Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests spreading across the globe this year, this ought to be a moment when sociologists cast valuable light on how racist thinking affects everyday life. Sociology is, after all, deeply invested in its Others; racial others, gendered others, economic others, indeed every other other, is at the focal point of the discipline, even if too narrow a lens is applied when studying some of these social others. Sociology should matter now more…

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Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Rev. William J. Barber II: Healing the soul of the nation will take more than a return to ‘normal’

Adam Harris writes: On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a “long national nightmare.” And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trump’s supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss. “I understand the disappointment tonight,” Biden said. “I’ve lost a couple of times myself. But now let’s give each other…

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Doctors and nurses in the fight against Covid are suffering combat fatigue

Doctors and nurses in the fight against Covid are suffering combat fatigue

The New York Times reports: About 2 a.m. on a sweltering summer night, Dr. Orlando Garner awoke to the sound of a thud next to his baby daughter’s crib. He leapt out of bed to find his wife, Gabriela, passed out, her forehead hot with the same fever that had stricken him and his son, Orlando Jr., then 3, just hours before. Two days later, it would hit their infant daughter, Veronica. Nearly five months later, Dr. Garner, a critical…

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A growing number of Americans are going hungry

A growing number of Americans are going hungry

The Washington Post reports: More Americans are going hungry now than at any point during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, according to a Post analysis of new federal data — a problem created by an economic downturn that has tightened its grip on millions of Americans and compounded by government relief programs that expired or will terminate at the end of the year. Experts say it is likely that there’s more hunger in the United States today than at any point…

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We are two countries, and neither of them is going to be conquered or disappear anytime soon

We are two countries, and neither of them is going to be conquered or disappear anytime soon

George Packer writes: We don’t yet know the outcome of the election, but its meaning is already clear. We are two countries, and neither of them is going to be conquered or disappear anytime soon. The outcome of the 2016 election was not a historical fluke or result of foreign subversion, but a pretty accurate reflection of the American electorate. The much-discussed Democratic majority that’s been emerging since the turn of the millennium is still in a state of emergence…

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Make America healthy again by paying more attention to nutrition

Make America healthy again by paying more attention to nutrition

Vanita Rahman and Matthew Rees write: Health care and health care policy were centerpieces of the 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns. It’s a shame that neither party focused on the underlying issue: the poor health of the American people, largely attributed to poor nutrition. By many measures, the population of the United States is the unhealthiest of any high-income country despite spending much more money, as a share of the economy, on health care. The incidence of chronic disease is…

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Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

Undocumented immigrants may actually make American communities safer – not more dangerous – new study finds

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that undocumented immigrants cause more crime, but new research suggests the opposite might be true. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images By Robert M. Adelman, University at Buffalo and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Undocumented immigration does not increase the violent crime rate in U.S. metropolitan areas. In fact, it may reduce property crime rates. These are the key findings from…

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

Dirk Philipsen writes: A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We – young and old, citizen and immigrant – do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have…

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The real divide in America is between political junkies and everyone else

The real divide in America is between political junkies and everyone else

Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan write: The common view of American politics today is of a clamorous divide between Democrats and Republicans, an unyielding, inevitable clash of harsh partisan polarization. But that focus obscures another, enormous gulf — the gap between those who follow politics closely and those who don’t. Call it the “attention divide.” What we found is that most Americans — upward of 80 percent to 85 percent — follow politics casually or not at all. Just…

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Hannah Arendt saw totalitarianism rooted in loneliness

Hannah Arendt saw totalitarianism rooted in loneliness

Samantha Rose Hill writes: What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience … – From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt ‘Please write regularly, or otherwise I am going to die out here.’ Hannah Arendt didn’t usually begin letters to her husband this way, but in the spring of 1955 she found…

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As quality of life has risen across most of the world over the last decade, it has fallen in the U.S.

As quality of life has risen across most of the world over the last decade, it has fallen in the U.S.

Nicholas Kristof writes: This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward. The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary…

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America’s complexity deficit has trapped us in a pandemic spiral

America’s complexity deficit has trapped us in a pandemic spiral

Ed Yong writes: Army ants will sometimes walk in circles until they die. The workers navigate by smelling the pheromone trails of workers in front of them, while laying down pheromones for others to follow. If these trails accidentally loop back on themselves, the ants are trapped. They become a thick, swirling vortex of bodies that resembles a hurricane as viewed from space. They march endlessly until they’re felled by exhaustion or dehydration. The ants can sense no picture bigger…

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