You may remember Daryl Bem’s paper purporting to provide strong evidence for precognition, while hewing closely to the standard methodology at the time. The paper itself is a fascinating read, as are the many responses to it, and the entire crisis of confidence in peer-reviewed research that was partly triggered by the publication of Bem’s work.

But for most observers, at least the mainstream ones, the paper posed a very difficult dilemma. It was both methodologically sound and logically insane. Daryl Bem had seemed to prove that time can flow in two directions—that ESP is real. If you bought into those results, you’d be admitting that much of what you understood about the universe was wrong. If you rejected them, you’d be admitting something almost as momentous: that the standard methods of psychology cannot be trusted, and that much of what gets published in the field—and thus, much of what we think we understand about the mind—could be total bunk.

If one had to choose a single moment that set off the “replication crisis” in psychology—an event that nudged the discipline into its present and anarchic state, where even textbook findings have been cast in doubt—this might be it: the publication, in early 2011, of Daryl Bem’s experiments on second sight.

https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-proved-esp-is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html

💚💚💚

Situated in a clearing within an Italian forest, John Grade’s latest installation, Reservoir, appears like a chandelier glistening among the pine trees. Reservoir is featured in the Arte Sella Sculpture Park in Borgo Valsugana and is made up of five thousand clear droplets each of which is delicately attached to translucent nets, supported by tree trunks.

…

Reservoir is constructed from heat-formed plastic parts framed with steam-bent strips of Alaskan yellow cedar. Each droplet is attached to marine nets with fishing line which are then incorporated with stainless steel rings to maintain tensions and support the tree trunks above the structure. The shape of the translucent droplets are formed from casts of human hands cupped together. “We cast ten different people’s hands for variations in scale,” Grade explains.

When rain falls or snow lands the water accumulates within Reservoir’s clear pouches, giving them their droplet-like shape. In doing slow, the installation gets heavier and lowers, while in sunny, warm weather, it rises back into its original structure as the liquid evaporates. “The sculpture rises and falls with precipitation differently each time it rains or snows,” says Grade. Springs below the installation limit the vertical range of movement, so Reservoir always remains 10 feet above the forest floor.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/04/rainwater-collecting-installation/

As Brockell points out, nobody has ever asked for pregnancy and parenting ads to be turned on, yet we’re given so little control over turning them off. Once captured and stored by data brokers, the most personal details about our lives are sold with impunity and stalk you to every corner of the internet and beyond.

This lack of control, when you pause to think about it, is alarming. Short of throwing off the shackles of modern life and taking up a nomadic existence on the Great Steppe, keeping anything secret from the internet – or exercising any real control over how your personal data is used and abused – is nigh on impossible. For Brockell and the thousands of other people dealing with the loss of a child, that lack of control is hugely upsetting. For others, attempting to exert control over what happens to your data reveals the impossibility of our privacy predicament.

Opting out of tracking and targeting, it turns out, isn’t an option. There is no such thing as a purely transactional transaction. Every purchase I make and every website I visit is recorded, tracked and indelibly tagged to scores of profiles sold by data brokers I’ve never heard of to companies I’ve never heard of in an attempt to persuade me to spend £150 on a Chicco Next 2 Me Bedside Crib. Spoiler: I did.

None of this should come as a surprise, but being unable to keep a specific and emotionally charged life event away from online advertisers and data brokers is gut-wrenching. You have options, of course. Ditch Google for DuckDuckGo. Swap Chrome for Tor. Trade in your Android for an iPhone or an outdated feature phone. Make all purchases in physical stores using cash. Don’t send or receive a single email mentioning that you are expecting a child. Police the social media use of anyone who knows about the pregnancy and might inadvertently post about it.

It quickly becomes apparent that the cost of keeping a secret from the internet is too high.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-internet-hates-secrets

This analysis seems extremely plausible to me.

Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages. Contrast this with the late 1990s, the last time unemployment dipped close to where it is today, when the portion of national income going into wages was 3% points higher than it is today.

What’s going on? Simply put, the vast majority of American workers have lost just about all their bargaining power. The erosion of that bargaining power is one of the biggest economic stories of the past four decades, yet it’s less about supply and demand than about institutions and politics.

Two fundamental forces have changed the structure of the US economy, directly altering the balance of power between business and labor. The first is the increasing difficulty for workers of joining together in trade unions. The second is the growing ease by which corporations can join together in oligopolies or to form monopolies.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/us-economy-workers-paycheck-robert-reich

Interesting points from Scott Sumner:

Whenever I speak with non-economists, they almost always seem more enthusiastic when the discussion comes around to behavioral economics. “That’s what economists should focus on!” They all seem to think that economists assume too much rationality, and that we should switch to a more behavioral approach. But here’s the problem. Non-economists also tend to reject the central ideas of basic economics, and for reasons that are not well justified. For the economics profession, our “value added” comes not from spoon feeding behavioral theories that the public is already inclined to accept, rather it is in teaching well-established basic principles of which the public is highly skeptical. Thus we should try to discourage people from believing in the following popular myths:

1. People don’t respond very strongly to economic incentives. (I.e., the demand for life-saving drugs is very inelastic.)

2. Imported goods, immigrant labor, and automation all tend to increase the unemployment rate.

3. Most companies have a lot of control over prices. (I.e. oil companies set prices, not “the market”.)

4. Policy disputes over taxes and regulations are best thought of in terms of who gains and who loses.

5. Experts are smarter than the crowd.

6. Speculators make market prices more unstable.

7. Price gouging hurts consumers.

8. Rent controls help tenants.

These myths are all widely believed by the general public. Teaching behavioral economics is not a good way to get people to “think like an economist”, indeed it gets in the way. Our primary goal should not be to add new information, it should be to have people unlearn false ideasabout the world. I’m not knowledgeable enough to have a good overview of the utility of behavioral economics. But even if it is useful it doesn’t really belong in a principles of economics course, except as a way of briefly acknowledging that the rational choice model is a useful fiction and not a perfect description of human behavior. We first need to teach basic economic principles.

https://www.econlib.org/lets-not-emphasize-behavioral-economics/

I really love these <3

Amsterdam-based artist Diana Scherer investigates the desire for humans to control nature through her series Exercises in Root System Domestication. The project combines design, craft, and science to manipulate plants’ subterranean systems into forming mesmerizing interlocking patterns that are unlike what is found organically. To “train” the roots to grow in such complex patterns, Scherer develops underground geometric templates that the roots grow along and merge with as they grow.

This intelligent behavior of plants below ground, away from humanity’s watchful eye, is another inspiration for Scherer’s work. “Darwin discovered that plants are a lot more intelligent than everybody thought,” she explains on her website. “For contemporary botanists, this buried matter is still a wondrous land. There is a global investigation to discover this hidden world. I also want to explore it and apply the ‘intelligence’ of plants in my work.” You can view more of her root explorations on her website and on Facebook.

Domesticated Root Systems by Diana Scherer Form Twisting and Repetitive Patterns in Patches of Earth | Colossal

Worth keeping an eye on…

Instagram memers have had enough.

They generate the engagement that helps keep Instagram growing—but, they argue, the multibillion-dollar platform doesn’t pay them for their work, or give them any control. So they’re fighting back. And before you write off IG Meme Union Local 69-420 as a joke, the organizers of the collective would like you to know that they are very serious.

“Solidarity actions with memers. Memers of the world unite,” the Instagram page for the union reads, encouraging followers to “seize the memes of production.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/instagram-memers-are-unionizing/587308/

This is from December, but I missed it when it came out. One of my favorite contemporary writers and artists, James Bridle, on democracy by sortition, in ancient Athens and today:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/25/break-brexit-deadlock-ancient-athens-sortition

Social insects are so weird….

Each of these aphids is a white bead, just half a millimeter across. In large numbers, they can compel Japanese trees to form large, hollow spheres called galls—roomy mansions in which hundreds or thousands of them can live. Like ants, bees, and termites, aphids divide their labor: Adults reproduce, while immature nymphs act as both workers and soldiers. If moth caterpillars tunnel their way into the galls, the nymphs stab these intruders to death, using the sharp mouthparts that they normally use to suck sap from trees. That deals with the caterpillar, but what about the huge hole that it leaves in the gall?

The aphid’s solution, discovered in 2003, is dramatic. Dozens or hundreds of the young soldiers will gather around a hole and discharge fluid from a pair of tubes on their backsides. This isn’t a gentle leak but a violent eruption, which drains the nymphs so thoroughly that they shrivel down to just a third of their initial volume. As they dry and die, they also use their legs to mix the fluids over the holes. These harden within an hour, sealing the gap and sometimes entombing the suicide plasterers.

Aphids Fix Holes in Their Home by Suicidally Erupting – The Atlantic

I love these.

Los Angeles-based artist Andrew Hem paints stylized scenes of solitary figures caught in moments of motion, introspection, and reverence. While integrated into their surroundings through carefully modulated color palettes, the figures’ floating poses and distant expressions suggest a dreamlike state. In an artist statement, Hem cites an early interest in graffiti as informing his current narrative style, which he creates with a combination of gouache, oil, and acrylic paint.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/04/andrew-hem-paintings/