You can see that the narratives public leaders share with their following have a massive impact in determining consequential behaviour. In the case of MAGA crusaders — it’s important to understand how earlier tactics of describing polls as a form of suppression led to a disgruntled fan base who started to believe that even the media are lying.
Trump spoke at the White House on the 6th of November, accusing “fake polls” of attempting to keep his voters at home. He called these polls “suppression polls”. …
In the fast-paced startup culture, Tony Hsieh stood out for his unique attitude and incredible values. He was a mentor to many young entrepreneurs and an internet icon for budding founders who wanted to embrace a unique purpose-driven life.
“The biggest (and hardest) lesson I’ve learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.” — Tony Hsieh
Hsieh had incredible success in LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998. Then as the CEO of Zappos until 2020. …
Last semester I was teaching negotiation to a room full of entrepreneurs. I asked them a simple question:
“Put your hand up if you think you are a good negotiator?”
At least 70% of them raised their hands.
“Keep your hand up if you think you are a master negotiator? As in — you could negotiate for hostages in a kidnapping.” About 40% of the founders identified as master negotiators.
As an entrepreneur, almost everything is a negotiation. From clients to partners, employees, services, infrastructure, investors, heck even with your own family. …
The birthrate in Japan has fallen to the lowest on record, with the government declaring a “birthrate crisis”. Due to the ageing population, Japan now has the highest proportion of people aged 65+ in the world. Combine these factors and you get a country with a shrinking population: the Japanese population has declined every year since 2007.
To combat this crisis, officials are seeking to boost Japan’s birth rate — and tax payers — by devoting a huge $19 million USD to the use of artificial intelligence to help match lonely hearts, an official said. …
In a zoom meeting at a national archaeological conference on Wednesday, Professor Schuyler interrupted a younger female academic by using the Nazi salute and phrase “Sieg heil to you”. Professor Schuyler confirmed that he used the salute and phrase.
The phrase “Sieg heil,” is a victory salute used originally by Nazis at political rallies. After World War II, white supremacists in North America adopted the phrase. You can watch the interaction in the youtube clip below (Schuyler speaks at 20 seconds in and does the salute at 1.36 min).
To contextualise the incident, University of York Ph.D. candidate Liz Quinlan was speaking about accessibility in the age of virtual conferences when Schuyler requested permission to speak. …
A mob of pro-Trump supports have broken through security into the Capitol building to oppose the counting of electoral votes.
Congress has been sent into lockdown in response to throngs of MAGA hat-wearing, pro-Trump flag-waving protesters. The proximity of these protests to the BLM protests earlier in 2020 provides an interesting opportunity to illustrate the differences in how police and security treat both groups.
The pro-Trump rioters greatly outnumbered Capitol security to the point where they were able to filter inside after breaking glass. These rioters weren’t unexpected, given Trump incited insurrection. …
I remember when I was a teenager and I got a new puppy. I took the puppy to a training school. The rambunctious little thing was yapping away. All the other puppies sat there silently, well behaved, making me look bad. I was petting the puppy. Trying to soothe her. Wanting her to shut up so the trainer would stop looking at me.
It didn’t work. The trainer singled me out.
“Stop patting your dog,” she said. “If you pat your dog when she is being naughty, you are giving her positive reinforcement for her misbehaviour”.
I stopped patting the dog. Her behaviour eventually improved. In my dog-owning naivety, I had exacerbated the problem through constant physical touch. …
An essential part of all of our relationships with others is in the interaction of our self, our identity, and others.
This is called “self-perception”. You know how you perceive others? Well, self-perception is similar, we learn things about ourselves in a similar way to learning things about others, from observing our own behavior.
For example, you might have blushed when you last spoke in front of your department, maybe you ‘learned’ that you are not a good public speaker (even if others think differently!).
So what are we learning about ourselves from our jobs? …
Since the summer in Denmark, thousands of mink have been killed in a bid to stop the mink to mink transmission of Covid-19. But on Wednesday the 23rd of October, the Danish government hosted a press conference and announced that the millions of mink in Denmark must all be killed.
This is due to a mutation of Covid in minks, which has now been transmitted from minks back to humans. The mutated Mink-Covid has now infected at least 12 people in Jutland, Denmark. Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said half the 783 human COVID-19 cases in northern Denmark “are related” to mink. “It is very, very serious,” PM Frederiksen said. …
Let’s play a game. I’ll give you two facts and one activity. Don’t scroll down the page to cheat!
Fact One: There is a facial expression analysis algorithm called Affectiva — it is a human perception AI which analyzes complex human states — based on a machine learning algorithm, it has analysed more than 9,258,714 faces.
Fact Two: This AI algorithm (which we will call face expression analysis) has been applied to three world leaders during their respective state of the nation addresses, which all three leaders made in the past week in regards to how their government will tackle Covid-19 in their respective countries. …
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