I too had lost track of TNR until I clicked through to read and remembered that they switched to that shitty screen font that I refuse to look at.
Is that just the graphic-design version of "the princess and the pea"? I find the front page annoying, but the articles don't seem appreciably out of the ordinary in terms of display.
Maybe it's just my browser settings, but some of the letters in that font almost disappear on the vertical stroke. I like my vertical strokes thicker IYKWIM. And some of the curved letters (o, e) have odd random bumps along the curves.
The good news is loneliness doesn't last long.
Maybe it's just my browser settings, but some of the letters in that font almost disappear on the vertical stroke.
Huh. That is not the case for me.
That article drove me a little crazy. First of all, it conflates lots of different things; Steve Suomi's macaque experiments are not about loneliness. Second of all, the author is something of a credulous stenographer for Naomi Eisenberger (PI on those Tylenol studies, the fMRI study showing dACC activation in physical and social pain). I know it's a lot to ask for, but I wish people would do science journalism more like (good) science, and instead of writing these features that string together findings, as if all these findings ought to treated like statements of fact, actually write about controversies, or include measured, balanced critiques of somewhat sensationalistic work (like Eisenberger's).
I love science journalism. Nuance and measured, balanced critiques are for boring losers. I want hyped up findings, hysteria, and clear, definitively-stated conclusions combined with anecdotes and some sciency seeming references you can skip over.
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A guy I went to college with and whom I primarily remember from his messy room and good music collection is one of the co-founders of Pinterest.
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earworm augh always with the earworms
No actually I don't mind that song I guess.
I seem to have "only the lonely" hooked up to "under the boardwalk": only the lonely / down by the sea, etc.
Has there been any discussion of this? (I might have missed it)
The Common Pain of Surrealism and Death
http://m.pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/23/0956797612464786
12 makes me want to go work on a study where I get to fuck with peoples' minds.
13: just as Halford and Urple suspected of you social scientist-types.
12: that study is stupid. Don't take my word for it!
I think I have posted about it before, yeah.
They just need a better way to operationalize existential dread. I'm thinking maybe bind somebody's arms and put them in a room full of toddlers with baseball bats.
what do you know, Google Plus has that font too now.
That's strange. In Chrome, TNR is quite readable here but G+ is now seriously awful to my aged eyes.
Aha! These instructions fixed both sites (Windows 7).
15:
Can we at least stipulate that Lynch's rabbits actually is a good stimulus for prompting "existential dread."
I'm not exactly sure what existential dread is, but "something surrealist art house movies with creepy soundtracks try to get you to feel" is pretty close the the focus of the semantic field for me. About the only way you could get closer might be to have subjects read Sartre's Nausea
The TNR website looks fine to me. It better be, with the new layout preventing anything from being printed.
TNR seems to have switched its priorities to being "The Atlantic Monthly Jr." and relying largely on freelancers. Better than having intense political convictions that are usually right but are always wrong when it counts.
I've always liked it though. Discovered TNR in my high school library. Often used the photocopier to save things from back issues of TNR, Esquire and New York Magazine.
I don't think I've seen a Lynch movie, unless you count Dune.
Which I suppose you should, but I still don't know about that whole throat-strapy-gun-wtf thing.
The study discussed in 12&15 seems totally inane, for lots of reasons, but the general idea that social pain triggers something just as deep and intense as physical pain doesn't seem off base. Social pain (ostracism, humiliation) can be absolutely excruciating. I have not however found it amenable to Tylenol.
My favorite part of the article is where it says 52% of loneliness comes from the environment. Fifty-two percent!
The link in 12 seems to be a particularly egregious violation of the analogy ban.
25: 52 percent is environmental, and 48 percent comes from being the kind of loser nobody would hang out with in any environment.
8: I don't remember him. If only I had spent more of college networking with future zillionaires.
At the moment I'm hungry. What part of my brain is lighting up, and how much of hunger is genetic?
Must be genetic, since all the local people here think you shouldn't eat dinner until 9 PM, and we probably don't have recent ancestors.
. Social pain (ostracism, humiliation) can be absolutely excruciating. I have not however found it amenable to Tylenol.
Alcohol, on the other hand...
Tylenol doesn't cure alcohol. Just makes the next day a bit more pleasant.
Oh man. Witnessing loneliness just kills me. I don't actually get that lonely, even when I've had long stretches of solitude (not in the past couple years, really). But seeing other people being lonely is so awful.
Social pain (ostracism, humiliation) can be absolutely excruciating
I think we established long ago that Unfogged contains a high proportion of people who find humiliation scenes in comedy too painful to watch.
Did we? It is certainly true in my case. I still haven't seen the end of the episode of The Brady Bunch where Marsha has two dates.
One connection between various kinds of mental distress and physical problems is hormones-- cortisol especially.
I don't mind embarassment on TV, or really in person. British comedy in particular often ramps up the embrassment.
I just read Death and the Penguin and man did I feel like I didn't get the humor. I basically liked it, but was mystified at those times where I was supposed to be ROFL, I think.
35, 36: It's been discussed, here for example. I wouldn't say all such scenes are too painful to watch, but they bug me more than they bug most people, judging by how many comedies include them.
I'm noticing less of that these days than when I was a kid. I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting jaded or if I'm seeing it done in a way that I mind less. It still definitely bugs me sometimes.
I don't actually get that lonely, even when I've had long stretches of solitude
My immediate reaction to this is that you are using different definitions of "long" and "solitude". It's obviously unfair of me to question your experience and I don't mean to claim exclusive rights to the feeling. It's just that when I've been lonely, seemingly indefinite periods of knowing that I'm surrounded by but completely disconnected from social networks, the feeling has been so visceral it's hard for me to imagine someone not reacting the same way.
But maybe there's a disconnect in usage of "humiliation"-- Is this embarassing? What about Mitchell and Webb?
Or is it realistic depictions of social mortification that are unpleasant, where the one embarassed is a character rather than a performer playing a buffoon?
42 -- I would only use humiliation in the latter sense. The Office, not those singers. There's also a strain of reality TV that turns on humiliation, where the person is unknowingly playing the buffoon.
I don't actually get that lonely, even when I've had long stretches of solitude
The part of the article that I found most interesting was people trying to figure out operation definitions to distinguish loneliness from solitude. I definitely think of them as different experience. I thought the line at the beginning of the article was evocative, but not a useful definition:
"Real loneliness," as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the "shut-upness" and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is "real loneliness" the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure.
I wouldn't claim to have endured much solitude. All I was really getting at is that I can go a few days or intermittent weeks without other people around without getting lonely. Even then, I know I could still be connected if I made an effort.
And NickS gets my point across without being rude or overly dramatic. Maybe this is why I'm alone.
If rudeness and being overly dramatic take years off your life, so be it. I'll quit smoking but not that.
More seriously, since no one else has said it yet, the overall point of the article is critically important, and is exhibit 10458 in the endless series of "why libertarianism and (the current version of US) capitalism suck balls."
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
"I am alone, I am utterly alone..."
Since this was posted, I have had a Bobby Vinton earworm, with moments of Moodies "Solitary Man." I can't seem to remember the Orbison.
I generally appreciate other people in proportion to their ability and desire to be alone, because those folk don't fucking bother me.
People who need people...are needy people.
Weird, I could've sworn Megan's 45 wasn't there a minute ago.
I know I could still be connected if I made an effort.
I think this assurance is an important difference.
I'm sure you're right that it is an important difference.
Embarassment is becoming a more frequent theme in comedy and I do find it funny. I thought There's Something About Mary was a great and totally hilarious movie.
I wouldn't even know where to begin. This last decade is by far the most socially connected I have ever been.
I have never purchased a telephone or television. I have spent decades with a knock on my door being an unexpected and shocking event. I think my mom rejected me at age two.
For a while, good drugs required social intercourse.
It is like a job, when I become homo economicus, buying and selling, producing and consuming.
Such is socialization. "Don't be selfish. Join! Now here is what you can do for me, and then I will do for you, and then we'll share and we will be a local emotional economy and then part of the global social economy.
We will carry the account books in our heads, and I will always know the current balance of accounts, but I will always have given more than you. Trust me cause I care.
And we will call it good, and natural."
and (the current version of US) capitalism suck balls.
Speaking of capitalism, I just spent the last couple hours in a suit being undercover muscle at the Union Pacific shareholder's meeting. It took me a bit to figure out how I knew the name Tom Donohue but I did manage to recognize Andrew Card, the man who had the temerity to interrupt My Pet Goat.
Did you remember to wear office-type shoes? Cop shoes might look sort of obvious.
52 percent is environmental, and 48 percent comes from being the kind of loser nobody would hang out with in any environment.
I'll do the honors--the obligatory link to "Study: Depression hits losers hardest."
I suppose the shareholders won't beat you if the make you for a cop.
37: Yes, alcohol and Advil will help with the lonely. The ER people and the ICU people keep up constant chatter when one is bleeding out from some hole in your GI system.
You need a specially-built crossbow that shoots golden spikes through the hearts of badguys/shareholder activists. "You just reached the terminus, motherfucker."
Did you remember to wear office-type shoes? Cop shoes might look sort of obvious.
No one seemed to be looking but yeah, it they looked they'd notice I'm wearing these.
"You just reached the terminus, motherfucker."
I want to look more like this when I point my gun at people.
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OT: does anybody want to take a stab at reading the tea leaves from this article in which Ezra Klein imagines what Obama might say if he felt no obligation to be polite or politic.
Is this actually what Ezra Klein would say if he was venting? Doesn't it seem risky to try to put words in Obama's mouth like that -- even if he's completely correct about Obama's frustrations? Is it wrong that I take it somewhat seriously, whereas, I'd completely ignore it if, say, Maureen Dowd, wrote a column with the same premise?
But let me be clear, you are taking a side. You're taking the side of this town not working again. You're taking the side of the media backing off of its role as a neutral arbiter and becoming an enabler of whatever irresponsible political strategy one party or the other happens to pick that week. You're taking the side of what's easy for you over what your readers and listeners need you to do.
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Is this actually what Ezra Klein would say if he was venting?
Given that Ezra Klein did say it (albeit putting it in Obama's mouth), probably yes.
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OT: If you have a gmail account, email my address here, and you might find five dollars.
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I'm pretty sure mit.edu is a spam site.
Dear sirs: We have come into possession of $5 from the reserves of Saddam Hussein and would appreciate your assistance in repatriating these funds. Please email your details to the address herein.
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NMM to felony charges against teenage chemist Kier/a Wil/mot
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Ezra Klein's greatest utility is as an conduit for Obama administration's unofficial positions. That is a large part of his job, and his power.
That doesn't mean what he says is "true," only that it is what his sources want you to believe they believe.
69: the #thingsIblewup (sp) tag was nearly as good as #overlyhonestresearchmethods.
Diana Wynne Jones was particularly good on loneliness and solitude and shame (while being a comforting children's author, not an auteur of existential dread). There's a line about public embarrassment being like having bleach poured over one that I remember every so often while experiencing the prickling burn. Indeed, many of her villains manipulate shame as part of their villainy.
Also, have we discussed the weathering hypothesis? Makes perfect sense to me, both w.r.t. timing motherhood and in general, but I hear it's Controversial. I wonder if that's just Politically Inconvenient.
Wow, it really was like finding $5.
OT: I dearly hope this is the off-topic thread, because this is too marvelous for words:
Men who are strong are more likely to take a right-wing stance, while weaker men support the welfare state, researchers claim.
Their study discovered a link between a man's upper-body strength and their political views.
Scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark collected data on bicep size, socio-economic status and support for economic redistribution from hundreds in America, Argentina and Denmark. The figures revealed that men with higher upper-body strength were less likely to support left-wing policies on the redistribution of wealth.
The figures revealed that men with higher upper-body strength were less likely to support left-wing policies on the redistribution of wealth.
Sorry I linked to the Daily Mail.
[One of the study's authors said] 'This is among the first studies to show that political views may be rational in another sense, in that they're designed by natural selection to function in the conditions recurrent over human evolutionary history.'
So this is an evolutionary psychology, um, defense -- backed by science! -- of, um, something. I find myself stuttering.
For all I know this thing has already been linked here.
74:Testosterone Aggression and Criminality ...and related to muscle mass. Fairly inconclusive or with minimal effects. Maybe. It's early in the studies.
Testosterone is fascinating. The whole page is interesting. T levels rise in women during sexual arousal? That's one I didn't know.
Two more quotes from 75
"Resistance training increases testosterone levels"
A 2009 study of 25 male subjects found that men with artificially raised testosterone were 27% less generous while playing a test game than they were at their normal testosterone level. The authors concluded that "What we have found is that T[estosterone] appears to play a role inducing men to change from being selfless to being selfish."
Okay, one more
"Sexual thoughts also change the level of testosterone but not level of cortisol in the female body, and hormonal contraceptives may have an impact on the variation in testosterone response to sexual thoughts"
Can you dirty-think your way to bigger biceps?
63. Klein evidently forgets Hannan Swaffer's maxim: "Freedom of the press [in Britain] is freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertiser's won't object to."
69 is genuinely great news. I wasn't taking it for granted.
Sorry about the apostrophe. Idly copy/pasting.
69: On condition that she complete a diversion program. It's not as bad as felony charges (though those remain possible if she falls to complete the diversion), but it's still bullshit and injustice.
76: in my real life where I'm normal I never particularly noticed this, but now that I'm cronked with stupid stupid lyrica and my ladyparts are broken, I do note an increased desire to have sex/actual ability to have an orgasm at the times when there's the most testosterone in my system, particularly right before my period starts (technically the last days of the menstrual cycle.)
69, 83, 84:
Of course, now some fraction of the liberal science establishment has conveniently published confessions of illegalizable activity. That will be useful to someone when the military has exercised its right to control civil disturbances. (Did I hallucinate that news? Creepy creepy.)
84: Yeah, I just feel obligated to push back against any suggestion of that it's all good now. I would like to see some summer science program offer her a slot and then we could all contribute to the kickstarter to fund her tuition. The story just makes me mad.
87: I thought I'd read somewhere that pretty much this had happened -- that she had a scholarship to some science summer camp.
87: I love that idea.
88: Oh. I hope you're right.
You'd think the makers of toilet clean and aluminum foil would do it just for all the free advertising she's given them.
Ah, but we don't need more youngsters fed with false hope and shunted into the bulging bottle-explosion-science pipeline.
I don't know about the kids, but I know that Mentos has had a good run based entirely on exploding soda bottles. I assume nobody is actually eating them.
Be happy. Excellently, the scholarship is from Homer Hickam, the guy who wrote Rocket Boys (memoir about being a poor kid in a coalmining town building rockets right after Sputnik.)
Um, I guess by not commenting regularly, I forgot how to hyperlink. http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2013/05/former-nasa-engineer-awards-kiera-wilmot-scholarship-to-space-academy/
Come to think, I should locate our copy of that for the kids to read.
At last, a happy ending to a story in the news!
By itself, 69 wasn't bringing a happy ending.
And you know, it's a horrific injustice that the felony charges were even suggested, but once it's all resolved like this I wouldn't be surprised if it's a net positive life-effect for her. She's got a good college essay story, and she's seen people pile in on her side in an unjust situation.
On condition that she complete a diversion program.
I find it hard to comprehend the pettiness it requires for the prosecutors to think this sort of compromise is better than complete surrender. Do they imagine they've saved face?
By itself, 69 wasn't bringing a happy ending.
Story of my life...
"Social pain (ostracism, humiliation) can be absolutely excruciating
I think we established long ago that Unfogged contains a high proportion of people who find humiliation scenes ... too painful to watch."
dont maybe flatter yourselves on non-existent qualities among you
It's a thing where you pretend to be sorry and they pretend that you aren't being asked to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of community service and sitting in group therapy for half a day.
Maybe Unfogged should offer a diversion program.
I don't know in detail in this case, but it's some kind of 'complete this therapy/counseling program, and we'll retroactively drop the charges'. I usually think of it as drug-treatment programs, but in this case probably some kind of anger-management or being-a-good-citizen counseling.
Does it mean that if they ask on a job application if you have been arrested, you get to say no?
The space camp thing is awesome, but it's not clear from the reports whether she'll be able to go back to her old school and finish up, or what. She sounds completely freaked out here. I hope the summer program revives her confidence a bit, but also that she gets the message that even future musicologists are entitled to make stuff blow up in high school without getting expelled and put in jail.
