Random Thoughts

[Nanny]

Unsee please

[Angrboda]

New psychology research identifies a key factor behind support for harsh leaders

New research from Columbia Business School suggests that people’s personal worldviews shape how they judge antagonistic leaders. Across seven studies, researchers found that individuals who view the world as a competitive jungle are more likely to see antagonistic behavior as effective, even praiseworthy, in leaders. In contrast, those who believe the world is cooperative tend to view such leaders more negatively.

The authors behind the new study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, sought to better understand why people react so differently to leaders who behave in harsh, abrasive, or critical ways. The authors point to a viral incident involving a restaurant manager at an Olive Garden who issued a strict ultimatum to employees calling off work. Some saw the message as a sign of poor leadership, while others praised the manager’s tough stance as necessary.

“We were struck by how differently people react to the same leadership behavior—especially when it’s particularly mean or forceful or disagreeable,” explained the researchers, Christine Nguyen, a PhD student, and Daniel Ames, a social psychologist and professor of management.

“There have been signs from some corners in recent years of sympathy for more antagonistic bosses in the workplace. We’ve seen commentary that ‘assholery’ and ‘bossism’ is essential for getting things done and for overall success. And there has been some debate that we observed between a perspective that supports empathy and a perspective that supports ‘getting tough’ and ‘being a dick.'”

“We wondered why people might have such different views of how leaders should act. When people see a leader behaving aggressively, some people see the harshness as a sign of incompetence, while others see it as a case of savvy leadership. We suspected that divergence might be not only about the leaders, but also about the people evaluating them, and the lenses through which those people view the social world. That’s what led us to focus on worldview as a lens that might be driving these different evaluations. Past literature had largely considered the main effects of aggressive or affiliative behavior, but hadn’t considered how people’s worldviews might shape how they interpret the same behavior.”

[Angrboda]

123,000 idiots liked RFK, Jr's X post. The right wing is too stupid for words.

[awty]

That was fun. We were without power for nearly three hours. The best part was looking at the local FB pages and seeing how many people felt the need to state they were without power and Internet. They should get themselves one of them thar gas powered routers. smh

Found out that Quinn is just as frightened of power outages as he is of thunder...which there is none of as it is not storming, raining, threatening to rain, or anything close to a weather event.

[Angrboda]

You don't know how to get up until after you've fallen down.

[Rev. Rye]

If my grandma said this to me, I would immediately hug her and tell her that was the most badass thing she’s ever said about me:

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If my grandma said this to me, I would immediately hug her and tell her that was the most badass thing she’s ever said about me:

If my granny had said that to me, I'd have run like a scalded dog.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Since the dawn of human history, our species has been besieged by terrible viruses and deadly plagues. Smallpox, a viral disease defined by a rash of painful pustules across the body, has been one of the most lethal of all, claiming an estimated 300 million lives over the 20th century alone.

The disease killed about one-third of those it infected. Of those who survived, one-third were left blind. Almost all were scarred for life. Neither riches nor geography were shields against the disease. Among its victims were Emperor Joseph I of Austria, King Louis I of Spain, Queen Mary II of England, King Louis XV of France and Tsar Peter II of Russia. By the 1800s, smallpox was killing more than 400,000 people a year around the world.

And so, when UK doctor Edward Jenner developed the first version of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, he was hopeful that he might change history. He had observed that milkmaids were curiously immune to smallpox, likely because of their prior infection by cowpox – a related, but much less dangerous, virus. To test the idea that he could confer smallpox immunity this way, he took material from a milkmaid's cowpox sore and injected it into the arm of an eight-year-old child – an experiment that would be unacceptable by the standards of modern medical ethics. The boy proved immune to smallpox infection. Jenner named the procedure after the Latin for cow, vacca – and the first vaccine was born.

"The annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice," Jenner wrote in 1801. And he would be proved right. In 1980, after a decades-long public health campaign that included widespread vaccination, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared smallpox had been eradicated. It remains the only infectious disease where this has been achieved.

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Back in the early 1800s, a series of controlled experiments by Jenner and other doctors quickly showed inoculation to be extremely effective, granting immunity against smallpox in well over 95% of those vaccinated. Public health authorities worldwide took action to roll it out. In the UK, a series of Vaccination Acts, passed in 1840, 1853 and 1871, made immunisation for children first free, then compulsory.

But almost immediately, another challenge emerged: a spate of anti-vaccination leagues sprung up around the country.

They produced pamphlets with provocative and fittingly Victorian gothic titles, like Vaccination, a Curse and Horrors of Vaccination, anti-vaccination tracts, books and even periodicals, including The Anti-Vaccinator (1869) and The Vaccination Inquirer (1879).

Think of the "anti-vaccination movement", and you might envision the public protests, court cases or inflammatory claims about the Covid-19 vaccine. But there is a long history of protests against them, including anti-vaccine riots in 1850s England, 1880s Canada and 1890s America. In 1905 in Boston, US, vaccination opposition led to widespread protests and a Supreme Court case, which would go on to deem vaccine mandates constitutional.

The strange history of the anti-vaccine movement

[Angrboda]

[Angrboda]

Sunday was the funeral for Fletcher Merkel, an 8-year-old who died in the mass shooting last month at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. Fletcher’s family asked attendees not to wear black. Instead, they encouraged mourners to wear bright colors. His father, Jesse Merkel, has said the family wants Fletcher to be remembered for who he was and not how he died.

Children's Minnesota released Lydia Kaiser, its last Annunciation shooting victim, from its hospital on Saturday. She was injured while protecting a younger student. Still one child, 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, remains hospitalized in critical condition at HCMC as of Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, on blocks stretching out from Annunciation Catholic Church and School, trees and light posts are being hugged by blue and green ribbons. Just days after the shooting, volunteers took action to literally wrap support around the grieving community.