America Is No Longer Attracting The Top Minds In Physics

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, America emerged at the pre-eminent place to be for physics research in the world. Of the 209 people to ever win the Nobel Prize in Physics, a whopping 93 of them claimed United States citizenship: triple that of Germany, the next-closest country. This was reflected not only at the highest levels of prestige and accomplishment in research, but also in education.

The United States of America became the most desired place in the world to study physics at the highest levels. From fewer than 20 PhDs a year in 1900 to around 500 per year in the 1950s, we now award nearly 2,000 PhDs in physics every year. Moreover, since the 1990s, international students, representing some of the best and brightest talent the world has to offer, represent almost half of those degrees.

Yet, according to the American Physical Society, the past year has seen an alarming, unprecedented drop in the number of international applications to physics PhD programs in the United States. In an extremely large survey of 49 of the largest physics departments in the country, representing 41% of all enrolled physics graduate students in the United States, an overall decrease of almost 12% in the number of international applicants was observed from 2017 to 2018.

This was a tremendous surprise, as no such study was even planned. The impetus for this study was prompted by a small number of American Physical Society members contacting the Office of Government Affairs to report a substantial decrease in the number of applications from international students. Upon completion of this survey, it was found that although some departments noted no decrease at all, many of the most prestigious institutions saw a drop of up to 40% in international applications. (...)

It is well understood that the best places in the world to learn and research physics and astronomy are the places that ought to attract the best students. But the converse is also true: the places that attract the top students from around the world also rise up to become the best places for education and research as well. As the president of the American Physical Society, Roger Falcone, recently said:

"Physics students want to come to the United States from all over the world because they know their educational and career opportunities here will be extraordinary. Our country's research, technology, and economy have been enormously strengthened by a positive attitude towards such immigration of students. We should continue to be a welcoming place, and to embrace open and global mobility for people."

Yet given the sudden severe drop, it is clear that the United States is at risk at no longer attracting the best and brightest minds in physics. (...)

The elephant in the room, of course, is the tremendous shift in United States politics and, specifically, the country's attitude towards foreigners and non-citizens since early 2017.

This policy shift has affected far more than just physics and astronomy, of course. "The current administration's 'America First' mantra is causing [international students] a great deal of anxiety and fear," said Earl Johnson of the University of Tulsa. Across the board, international enrollment is down across colleges and graduate schools in the United States, as the number of F-1 visas precipitously dropped by 17% last year. From 2016 to 2017, the United States saw a decrease of nearly 80,000 F-1 visas in a single year, with the largest drop coming from China and India. The government's tougher stance on issuing H-1B work visas, making it more difficult for international students to remain in the United States and find work, may play a role as well.

Furthermore, students from countries that are affected by the current administration's travel ban, such as Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia have seen historic lows in the number of visas issued to them. As Francis Slakey, the Chief Government Affairs Officer at the American Physical Society, bluntly stated, "The US is at high risk of no longer attracting the best minds in physics."

by Ethan Siegel, Forbes | Read more:
Image: NASA/JPL

What I've Learned About Men From Countless Hours of Tinder

In 2014, I started Tinder Live! – a comedy show exploring the crazy world of Tinder. This means that in the last five years, I’ve spent many, many hours browsing the app (so much so in fact that I am relieved there’s no way to know how many hours I lost on there).

Like many people, I’ve had multiple profile versions, and deleted and undeleted my profile countless times. It’s come to the point where I frequently see the same men and think, “You’ve come up like five times now buddy, what’s going on, are you OK?”

Through all this swiping, I like to think I’ve learned a lot about men. To be fair, “men” in this case can mean men I’ve never met but see a lot on Tinder, men I did meet on Tinder and men I talked to on Tinder but never went out with. Here’s what I learned, using an admittedly broad brush because it’s what dating apps push you to do: sense a pattern and then become upset by how persistent the pattern is, leading you to believe (usually falsely) that everyone is the same.

They don’t want to be ‘just’ pen pals … but they also don’t want to meet

This blows my mind. So many men on Tinder will bemoan becoming pen pals, say they don’t want their time wasted and just want to meet already, but will also think that their saying “Hey” and asking you how your Sunday was, the end, should be enough conversation for you to invest $50 and two hours getting ready and traveling to a bar to see if they’re worth your night out.

I guess the idea here is to have no connection at all, and presume this guy is the total package, and to spend a few hours in person seeing if you’re wrong because, eh, what’s a waste of a night of your life? I don’t get this, I’ll never get this, and I hate it.

They might want casual sex, but aren’t willing to admit it

I’ve seen so many men try to find a cute, chill way to say in their bio that casual sex is fine I guess, but they’d prefer a connection lol no big deal or not haha whatever: here’s a quote from The Office. It’s such a bummer and so relatable. Because while men are busy trying to be coy about whether or not they want something more, so are women.

But what if, WHAT IF, we were both honest and both got what we truly wanted?

They seem super interested – then they ignore you

I don’t know if it’s in an effort to play it cool, but even men who “super like you” will not message you. They won’t message you first, leaping at the chance to because OMG you liked them back and they liked you so much! And they might not even message you back if you message them first.

Nope, they super liked you, just to let you know they’d … what? Super bang you? I have no idea, but it really bums me out.

They either really love online dating – or really hate it

I’m convinced the guys who match with you and never message you just love online dating because they like having a capsule full of women who would, in their minds, definitely sleep with them. Which is bizarre because when I swipe right, it’s because someone’s face – combined with my very vague idea of who they are – is enough to get me to the next level. I want to know how they speak, how they treat me, how their mind works, what jokes they tell, what they do, who they are, how they’d be to date. And then maybe, maybeI’ll meet them and see if I wanna meet them again.

I don’t think I’ve ever swiped right on someone and thought, “10/10 would fuck. I don’t even need to know if this guy has a brain, or if he hates gay people, or has a swastika tattoo. Nope, my vagina says yes!” But whatever you need to tell yourself, dudes.

And then there are the yellers. These are the guys whose profiles just say, “I’m on here to get off this app. Please don’t waste my time. If you can’t carry a conversation, swipe LEFT!!!”

I get it. Spend long periods of time on any dating app with the intention of finding even the most fleeting meaningful connection and you’re bound to get to a point where you’re tempted to make your profile, “OMG if you don’t want to meet someone on here swipe left, seriously, WTF I’m a good person!!!!!!!”

The yelling and aggression aside, it’s comforting for me to know that some men are as fed up as women are with the games and the flakiness and the waste of time that dating apps can be.

by Lane Morgan, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Katia Temkin

Quantum Political Scientists Hypothesize Country Headed In Both Right And Wrong Directions Simultaneously

PASADENA, CA—Upending the conventionally held assumption that the United States must exclusively be moving along a single good or bad path forward, quantum political scientists at the California Institute of Technology published a paper Thursday hypothesizing that the country is, in fact, headed in both the right and wrong directions simultaneously. “Rather than inhabiting a single reality where the nation’s future looks bright or an opposite one where Americans are struggling like never before, our research suggests that these two conditions actually exist concurrently in a state of superposition,” said lead researcher David Rimbaud, adding that, according to their analysis of quantum wave function and Gallup polls, the nation’s best days were found to lie, paradoxically, both ahead of and behind it. “In addition, our research has revealed for the first time that this country is currently changing beyond all recognition while at the same time remaining the same as it’s always been. Similarly, the United States was found to be both a beacon of freedom and hope in the world and an antagonist to those very same hopes and freedoms. Though seemingly contradictory, all of these scenarios are equally true.” Rimbaud added that in both divergent realities, China was still the world’s dominant economic force.

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Key Takeaways From The 2018 Midterms (The Onion)]

The scent of green papaya (1993) dir. by Trần Anh Hùng

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I Voted in the Last Frontier

Alaska wins election stickers race
[ed. Cute, but look where the votes went. Even salmon lost (ADN).]

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Robert Riggs, Zoot Suit 1947
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Mobile Laundry for the Homeless Goes International

A mobile laundry and shower service for the homeless has begun international expansion after being inundated with requests from struggling cities around the globe.

Four years ago two young Australian men saw a gap in the market and fitted out a van with a washer and dryer, driving it to parks, churches and drop-in centres in a bid to bring hygiene services to the homeless community on their own turf.

Lucas Patchett, co-founder of Orange Sky, said washing was initially viewed as a low priority for the community, and there was widespread scepticism about the plan.

“When we dreamed this up it was a world first, and we had a lot of practical issues to overcome. How would we power the machines, where would we dispose of the waste water?” says Patchett.

“But we strongly believed that access to hygiene was a basic human right.”

There are more than 100,000 homeless Australians, and the population has complex needs. Patchett says Orange Sky has been able to forge bonds with the community by bringing the vans to its doorstep, and because it has no agenda besides the straightforward, free services it offers.

Health benefits of the mobile laundry include halting the spread of mould, scabies and bed bugs, but Patchett says it is the mental health boost that is most significant.

“We’re not preaching anything, or teaching anything or pushing anything. But it does take an hour to wash and dry someone’s clothes and during that time people tend to hang around. That’s when the conversations start.

“Ninety-nine percent of the day, these people are walked past and ignored and not even looked at, and that can have a huge impact on psyche and sense of self-worth. So we just say g’day and offer something really practical that makes people immediately feel more confident to engage with the broader society.”

There are now 27 Orange Sky laundry and shower vans operating in Australia, using generators and solar power to run the machines. Operated by volunteers, they do around 15-20 laundry loads and showers each day.

A number of other mobile laundry services have launched around the world, including in several US states, Brighton in the UK and Athens, Greece, where 20,000 people are homeless. Orange Sky has also been asked to provide services to Singapore, Hong Kong and other British cities.

According to Auckland council, at least 1,000 people sleep rough in New Zealand’s biggest city every night, and Orange Sky’s expansion has been welcomed by those caring for the community, saying the service has been embraced.

The New Zealand housing and urban development minister, Phil Twyford, said Orange Sky offered rough sleepers something many New Zealanders took for granted, and was one part of giving them back their dignity and self-respect.

“While superficially the service is about clean clothes and showers, the main benefits are the social interactions,” said Twyford.

by Eleanor Ainge Roy, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Orange Sky Laundry

Of America and the Rise of the Stupefied Plutocrat

Of America and the Rise of the Stupefied Plutocrat (LitHub)
Image: 'Mash' via

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R.E.M.

TSA to Test New Scanning Technology

The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead to test technology that is designed to screen multiple airport passengers at the same time from a distance of up to 25 feet away.

The technology, described as “passive terahertz” screening, is one of several advances that the TSA and airlines hope will help U.S. airports handle the growing demand for air travel that is already creating bottlenecks and frustration at airports across the country.

The TSA has purchased several terahertz screening devices from Britain-based Thruvision to test in a TSA facility near Arlington, Va. If the devices pass the initial tests, they may be used on a trial basis at U.S. airports, said Kevin Gramer, vice president of Thruvision Americas.

The screening device, which is about the size of an old-fashioned PC computer tower and weighs about 50 pounds, reads the outline of people to reveal firearms and explosives hidden under their clothes.

Unlike the TSA’s existing full-body scanners that bounce millimeter waves off of passengers to spot objects hidden under their clothes, Gramer said, the passive terahertz technology reads the energy emitted by a person, similar to thermal imaging used in night-vision goggles.

“It’s 100% passive. There is no radiation coming out of our device,” he said. “You don’t have to stand directly in front of the device.”

As a result, Thruvision boasts that its technology can screen up to 2,000 people an hour and detect a concealed device at a distance of up to 25 feet. Initially, the system can be used in addition to the existing full-body scanners already deployed at airports, but Gramer said the device can eventually replace parts of the TSA’s security screening system.

by Hugo Martin, LA Times |  Read more:

Image: via
[ed. If you can't trust TSA, who can you trust. See also: How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA (MIT Technology Review)]

The New Canon

What's the most influencial book of the last 20 years?

Each year, more than 15,000 academic books are published in North America. A scant few will reach beyond their core audience of disciplinary specialists. Fewer still will enter the public consciousness.

We invited scholars from across the academy to tell us what they saw as the most influential book published in the past 20 years. (Some respondents named books slightly outside our time frame, but we included them anyway.) We asked them to select books — academic or not, but written by scholars — from within or outside their own fields. It was up to our respondents to define “influential,” but we asked them to explain why they chose the books they did. Here are their answers.

Paul Bloom | Eric Klinenberg | Peniel Joseph | Johanna Hanink | Jackson Lears| Leon Botstein | Sheena Iyengar | Noliwe M. Rooks | G. Gabrielle Starr | Amy J. Binder | Susan J. Douglas | Mari Matsuda | Steven Shapin | Mark Greif | Ashley Farmer | Nakul Krishna | Richard Delgado | Jonathan Holloway | John L. Jackson | Deborah Tannen | Amitava Kumar

The Case for a Better World

To be taken seriously as the “most influential book” written by an academic, a work has to transform the way many of us make sense of the world, and so has to have influence beyond a narrow circle of scholars. If the average reader of The Chronicle Review has never heard of a book, it shouldn’t be a contender. Ideally, then, the candidates would be like On the Origin of Species or Das Kapital or The Interpretation of Dreams. But those books were written more than 100 years ago, and none by an academic. Moving down a tier, there is Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures and Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. Superb and influential books, but written many decades ago.

Maybe influential books of this sort don’t exist anymore. Or maybe we can identify only those books that really have had a major influence after enough time has elapsed; if you’re interested in 1998-2018, ask again in 50 years.

by Paul Bloom, Chronicle of Higher Education |  Read more:

Image: Lincoln Agnew

[ed. One shocking omission: The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.]

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order

WASHINGTON—Saying his latest executive order was legal due to an “underutilized but totally feasible workaround,” President Trump claimed Tuesday that he could overrule the U.S. Constitution by means of the relatively obscure “no one will stop me” loophole. “My critics say a constitutional amendment or at least an act of Congress is necessary to end birthright citizenship, but what they don’t realize is that a seldom-evoked administrative guideline ensures I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, because zero people will stand in my way,” said Trump, adding that the largely unheard-of clause allows him to circumvent normal legal proceedings because it’s not like anyone in any branch of government remains effective enough to prevent him from doing so. “Though few modern presidents have made use of it, this loophole has always given the nation’s chief executive unilateral power over the Constitution. Its provisions dictate that the president can sidestep any checks and balances on his power once he has abused his authority so many times that no one can keep track anymore.” Trump added that while his opponents may try to challenge his executive order in court, the loophole also states that by then he will have achieved his immediate political aims.

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: Stock photo
[ed. See also: here and here (Current Affairs)

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How to Buy a Used Phone Without Getting Fleeced

Apple, Samsung and Google have all launched their new phones. Everyone in the world is itching to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but not you. You’re a deal hunter, and while everyone else is paying $1,000 or more for a shiny new device, you’re buying a used version of last year’s almost-as-good model for a fraction of the cost. Here’s how to get a deal without getting scammed.

Make sure the phone isn’t blacklisted

Unfortunately, buying a used phone is tricky, said Ben Edwards, chief executive of used-tech marketplace Swappa. “Phones are unique in that their value relies on being able to connect to a cellular network, and their usability can change over time,” Mr. Edwards said. “If you buy a bike on Craigslist, it’s not like the seller can do something a month later that makes the bike not work. But if you buy a used phone, and it’s later reported as stolen, it’ll be blacklisted.”

When a carrier blacklists a device — which can happen if the device is reported as lost or stolen, or if someone sells it while it’s still on a payment plan — it can’t be activated on any carrier. That means you’ll be stuck with a $400 paperweight.

So instead of buying a phone with cash, use a form of payment that comes with some sort of buyer protection. For example, PayPal — which processes payments on eBay, Swappa, Gazelle and many other online marketplaces — provides 180 days of purchase protection, so you can return the device if the phone gets blacklisted within the first few months.

Even then, it’s a good idea to first verify the phone’s status if you can. Swappa does this (among other quality checks) for every phone listed on their site, but if you’re buying on a site with looser restrictions, likeeBay, ask the seller for the IMEI (international mobile equipment identity) number or MEID (mobile equipment identifier). Here’s how to find the IMEI of an iPhone, and here’s how to do so on Android.

Then, punch the number into your carrier’s website (Here are the pages for Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) — you can also enter it into Swappa’s all-in-one checker here. It will let you know if the device has been reported as lost or stolen, and if it’s eligible for activation. It will not tell you if a phone is currently under financing, though Mr. Edwards said Swappa performs this check manually for every phone listed on the site, and if a phone is still under financing, the seller won’t be able to list it.

Some sellers may prefer to keep the IMEI private, and that’s fine — as long as you have a return policy and buyer protection, you can check the IMEI after receiving the phone. You’ll just have to go through the hassle of returning it if something goes wrong.

If you’d rather buy locally and hold the device before handing over your hard-earned cash, Mr. Edwards recommends checking the IMEI in person. “When I was buying phones on Craigslist, I would always insist on meeting in a carrier store for the transaction,” he said. “Then the carrier can check to see if it’s blacklisted.”

Again, none of this is foolproof since a phone can be reported lost, stolen or unpaid-for after you’ve purchased it, but it’s a good thing to check before you do.

Buy the right model for your carrier

These days, many phones are compatible with multiple networks. But there are two caveats: You need to make sure the device isn’t software-locked to another carrier, and you need to make sure its hardware is optimized for your carrier.

When you buy a phone directly from Verizon, AT&T or another carrier, it usually comes “carrier locked.” That means that phone will only be usable on Verizon, AT&T or whatever carrier you bought it from unless you ask them to unlock it.

If you’re buying a used phone, you want to make sure it isn’t locked to a carrier other than your own. If you’re on AT&T, you can’t buy a phone that’s locked to Verizon. You’ll either want an AT&T-branded phone or a phone that’s listed as “unlocked” by the seller.

In addition, “some phones have a few different numeric models that work better on some carriers than others,” Mr. Edwards said. “For full and optimal compatibility, you need to pay attention to the specifics.”

That means you shouldn’t just search for “iPhone 7” and buy the cheapest listing that pops up. The iPhone 7 A1660 may look nearly identical to the A1778, but the former works on all carriers, while the latter lacks support for some of the technologies used on Verizon and Sprint. In other cases, you may run into “international” models, which can lack support for certain features (like Samsung Pay, in the case of the international version of the Galaxy S7).

When you punch the IMEI into your carrier’s website, it will tell you if a phone is generally compatible with their network, but it will not tell you if it is optimal for their network. If a certain model is compatible with Sprint’s network but doesn’t support all of its LTE bands, your carrier’s IMEI checker will not tell you — and you may not get the best possible speeds.

If you aren’t sure which model numbers are compatible with your network, check on the manufacturer’s website, or Google around to find out which model your carrier sells; then, search for that on your marketplace of choice.

by Whitson Gordon, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Dmitry Kostyukov

CBD is Everywhere. But is It a Scam?

The coffee shop in my Brooklyn neighborhood has a chalkboard outside. It usually reads something like, “Our soup of the day is coffee.” Recently, though, it’s had a marijuana leaf on it, drawn in green chalk.

Recreational marijuana is not legal in New York state. What the coffee shop is selling is CBD-infused lattes; CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, is a non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant. Out of curiosity, I bought one. It cost $9 and tasted like a latte with that hint of marijuana herbiness you get from a weed cookie. Google research informed me I would not get high but would be calmer, less anxious, maybe a little sleepy. I have no idea if I felt anything at all. Mostly, I felt like I just spent $9 on coffee.

My coffee shop is not unusual in selling CBD products. In New York, and all over the country, you can find CBD oil in convenience stores, CBD vapes in smoke shops, and CBD tinctures and topical creams in beauty stores. You can buy CBD dog treats in Chicago, a $700 CBD couples massage in Philadelphia, and CBD chocolate chip cookies in Miami. CBD is also being combined with ice cream, savory snacks, and cocktails. Even Coca-Cola is reportedly working on a CBD-infused beverage.

CBD exists at the confluence of three huge consumer trends. The first is the herbal supplement boom, a $49 billion-a-year industry that has seen rapid expansion since about 2010. The second is the rise of the anxiety economy, in which all sorts of products, from fidget spinners to weighted blankets, are pitched as reducers of the mild panic of everyday life. And the third is the near-overnight creation of a legitimate cannabis industry, thanks to the spread of marijuana legalization. (...)

Despite this, CBD is something nobody knows much about, and certainly nobody is monitoring it properly. CBD is widely marketed as a supplement, despite the Food and Drug Administration saying it does not qualify as such (this is because it is an active ingredient in drugs which are either approved or under investigation to be approved). CBD goes largely unregulated by the agency; on the FDA’s FAQ page, a vague answer maintains there are “many factors in deciding whether or not to initiate an enforcement action.” The Department of Agriculture handles research grants and pilot programs for hemp, but that’s where its involvement ends.

Research and regulation of cannabis in general is decades behind other crops and drugs because of its long prohibition. We’re in the early stages of a chaos period that will last a decade at minimum — a substance has to be legal in order for scientists to figure out how it works and for the government to figure out how to ensure it’s safe. Clinical trials take years to complete and will have to build on each other to create a competent understanding. Coupled with modern technology’s ability to disseminate truths, half-truths, and complete lies, this means we’re in a phase ripe for scams, intentional and not.

Both researchers who work with CBD and professionals who actually grow the raw material — those who best understand this compound and how it interacts with the human body, the people with the most investment in and knowledge about it — are skeptical to the point of scornful about consumer CBD products.

Esther Blessing is a professor and researcher at NYU who performs and reviews clinical trials on CBD’s effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress, anxiety, substance addiction, and other conditions. Speaking about widely available and unregulated CBD oils, she says, “This is the main scam, snake oil thing going on out there now.”

CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.

by Dan Nosowitz , Vox | Read more:
Image:AFP/Getty Images

Tabaka Isson
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Facebook Groups as Therapy

It was Christopher’s therapist who suggested he look for help online. His wife had cheated on him, and he had been struggling since their divorce, but the $25 copays were adding up. His therapist proposed an online support group—free, discreet, available 24/7.

So he went, naturally, to Facebook, where a search turned up multiple private groups for people dealing with a partner’s infidelity. (Christopher had divorced his wife after finding out that their daughter was not his biological child. When I interviewed him, he asked that we withhold his real name.) From there, he got invitations to other support groups on Facebook, more targeted and even more specific: a group for families dealing with misattributed paternity, a group for children learning the same from DNA tests.

The support groups Christopher stumbled into are just a tiny corner of the vast ecosystem of private Facebook groups. Over the past year, the company has been consciously emphasizing groups—part of an effort, per Mark Zuckerberg, to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” These groups cover interests ranging as widely as the human imagination. Many are “closed,” which in Facebook terminology means they are findable, but only members can see their content. Some are “secret” and unsearchable, and membership is by invitation only.

It’s not surprising, then, that Facebook has turned into a gathering place for strangers sharing their deepest secrets. Emotional-support groups have sprung up around topics broad and narrow: diabetes, addiction, egg donation, a specific birth-control device now pulled from the U.S. market, parenting children who might grow up to be psychopaths, rare diseases that affect only a few dozen patients in the whole world. The internet has always promised to connect people by common interest rather than geography, and with its 2-billion-user base, Facebook is where those connections are often being made. “For people searching for support, [Facebook] is a one-stop shop,” says Andrea Downing, a moderator for BRCA Sisterhood, a support group for women who have tested positive for breast-cancer mutations.

Downing carries a mutation for BRCA1, which can raise the risk of breast cancer to more than 70 percent. Finding that out was devastating. “I did not know anybody who was going through the same experience,” she says. “When you can’t even talk to your own friends and family about what you’re going through, just living with that is really hard.” She eventually found out about BRCA Sisterhood on Facebook, where she suddenly found a few hundred women who understood exactly what she was going through. The women, she says, were a “lifeline.” They divulged their anxieties. They shared the latest research. They posted photos of their preventive mastectomies. BRCA Sisterhood has now grown to 10,000 members. (...)

Since Facebook has pivoted to groups, it has added several tools for group admins, including ways to filter membership requests and delete content from banned members. Most important, perhaps, it made the membership of closed groups private. Until earlier this year, nonmembers could see who had joined a group even if they could not see the posts inside. (Secret groups are unsearchable, and their membership lists have always been private.)

This had created obvious problems for support groups, which want to be findable but don’t want to broadcast their members’ private lives. Last year, Catherine St Clair decided to start a support group for people whose DNA tests revealed unexpected biological parents, after meeting another woman in the same situation on Facebook. St Clair created a closed group because she wanted other people to find it. And, of course, she invited the other woman. This was before Facebook made the change, and her membership quickly became public. “When she realized that, she dropped out real fast,” says St Clair. (...)

Anyone can start a Facebook group—including people trying to profit off one. While many founders of support groups are people simply trying to find others like themselves, some have used the groups as extensions of their business. In November 2017, The Verge investigated a prominent group called Affected by Addiction, whose founder was even invited to speak at Facebook’s first Communities Summit earlier that year. The founder, it turns out, was also a marketer for treatment centers that mined the group for potential patients, according to The Verge. The ties had not been disclosed.

Other groups are more up front about selling services. For example, the Infidelity Support Group—20,000 members strong—is run by Bob Huizenga, whose pinned post urges users to sign up for his “FREE Introductory Level of the Infidelity Recovery Center” before pushing additional services that cost as much as $915.

For patient-led groups, money is also a tense topic. Some have entirely banned fund-raising, even for a good cause. “Once it happens, everybody jumps on the bandwagon,” says Downing of BRCA Sisterhood. “We have purposely and carefully kept it out of the group.” Facebook support groups, after all, are full of emotionally vulnerable people trusting strangers on the internet. It’s the kind of access scammers dream of.

by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: Prostock-Studio/Shutterstock

True Stories: How David Byrne Learned to Stop Worrying and Love America

David Byrne is all about cautious optimism these days. Recently, that’s taken the form of an interactive lecture series entitled “Reasons to be Cheerful,” in which Byrne catalogs and champions examples of public policy triumphs large and small from communities around the world. It’s also led to American Utopia, Byrne’s first solo record in 14 years and his artistic reaction to the political and existential fears that radiate daily from the Trump Administration.

In addition to highlighting stories of Paris’ groundbreaking bike-share system, Portugal’s successful drug-decriminalization policies, and investments in clean energy happening in a deep-red Texas suburb, the project also stands as the latest involving one of Byrne’s longest-standing fascinations: how to make America (and the lives of Americans) better.

Byrne’s transformation into pop music’s hippest cultural-critic-cum-philosophy-professor wasn’t a given. As Rob Tannenbaum of The New York Times noted in a recent feature, “At the start of his career, when Mr. Byrne was the singer in Talking Heads, fans turned to him for alienation, not hope.“

Breakthrough records like Talking Heads: 77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food introduced listeners to a very different Byrne, one whose eccentric delivery, autobiographical elusiveness, and obsession with the mundanities of everyday life, allowed him to slip into the role of the bewildered outsider, one who found himself equal parts frustrated and fascinated by the customs of the world where he loved to visit but didn’t want to live.

The songs that made Byrne and the Talking Heads famous during these years dealt directly with this disorientation; their most famous single is anchored by Byrne literally asking, “How did I get here?” On those early records, everything was a possible threat: love was an impossible riddle (“I’m Not in Love”), paradise was a boring trick (“Heaven”), and the comforts of modern society led nowhere but brain death (“Don’t Worry About the Government”). Redemption, when it came at all, did so through art and self-expression, and other people’s problems were theirs alone to solve (“No Compassion”).

However, that kind of paranoid post-punk Byrne wouldn’t remain an impartial (and overly anxious) observer for long. By the mid-’80s, his artistic and lyrical concerns would undergo an evolution and expansion that still informs his work today. As we approach Byrne’s latest reckoning with American culture, it feels important to revisit the place where that reckoning began in earnest.

Perhaps the best document to capture the turning point in Byrne’s innate sense of apartness isn’t an album but a film. Released in 1986, True Stories took Byrne from New York to Texas for his first foray in moviemaking. Taking cues from Errol Morris’ oddball documentary Vernon, Florida, the film explores the inner lives and outer quirks of residents from the fictional town of Virgil, where microchip manufacturer Vericorp is king and the sesquicentennial “Celebration of Specialness” is imminent.

As the film’s nameless narrator and tour guide (as well as its writer and director), Byrne blows into town in a red Chrysler convertible and soon finds himself palling around with all sorts of weirdos, from a woman who refuses to leave her bed and her voodoo-practicing butler to Louis Fyne, a Vericorp employee so desperate to find a wife that he records a television commercial complete with hotline number. In between these meetups, viewers are treated to interludes inspired by the mundane settings of high capitalism; everyday people stage an absurdist mall fashion show set to the haunting “Dream Operator”, a field sobriety test turns into a balletic movement piece, and a nameless security guard sings an operatic solo to no one on the half-built stage he’s tasked with protecting.

Had True Stories been made by Byrne in the ’70s, its promo inspiration (in, what else, an interview with himself, Byrne described his movie as “a project with songs based on true stories from tabloid newspapers” and “60 Minutes on acid”) might’ve resulted in another scathing takedown of quotidian suburban living. After all, this was the same guy who, on More Songs About Buildings and Food standout “The Big Country”, reacted to the everyday goings-on of flyover country with a dismissive “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.”

Eight years later, things were different. Far from being a backhanded compliment, the film’s “Celebration of Specialness” actually feels like, well, a celebration. True Stories goes out of its way to express the (sometimes conflicted) positives at the heart of even the most nondescript town. There are rich inner lives inside each of the Vericorp drones (especially Fyne, whose quest for love is played out with circus-bear sympathy by John Goodman). The mall combines the town square with air conditioning. The prefab metal buildings that line the outskirts of town represent economic growth rather than unchecked sprawl. “Who can say it isn’t beautiful?” Byrne asks over a shot of an unfinished subdivision, thinking more of the lives about to unfold in each empty room rather than the cul-de-sacs on the edge of scrubland.

Most of these cues come from Byrne’s narrator who, instead of collapsing from the tension of being an outsider, replaces ironic distance or jaded worry with curious acceptance. He may not believe that “economics has become a spiritual thing” or that freeways are “the cathedrals of our time,” but he can understand the people who do.

by Tyler Clark, Consequence of Sound |  Read more:

Image: True Stories

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