Time Shift 🙌🏻
Noise Reduction will now be published on Thursdays, so you've plenty of time to read / listen and engage before the weekend.
It’s been a strange week. I got pinged by the Unite Against Covid-19 app here in New Zealand, telling me that I was a close contact of someone that had gone on to be confirmed as infected with Covid-19. They traced me because I had the bluetooth function on my phone switched on, meaning it was exchanging information with others near me who had done the same. The strange thing was that I was contacted via the app 8 days after my exposure. And this exposure looked like it was when I landed back in New Zealand - most likely on my domestic flight from Auckland to Wellington, or in the hour-long queue that snaked back and forth before the security check to board this flight. The advice was to monitor for symptoms for 10 days, and test if any arose. No isolation was necessary. I felt fine, but tested for the next few days just to be as sure as possible. All clear, every day. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way. However, I do get the sense that I am now seemingly in the minority of people who have avoided infection since Omicron appeared.
Am I alone in this perception?
As an experiment, I’m opening this post up for comment and likes - please engage in a civil manner. I want this to be a safe space.
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Are we seeing the ‘Brazilianization’ of the world?
Before Covid hit, the dominant talk was how much of the global west seemed to be following the path of Japan - an environment of low interest rates and further wage and price deflation. All has changed. Not only are we living through a moment where the infrastructure and institutions facilitating globalisation are breaking down (arguably for years now), but we are also seeing supply chains under pressure resulting in increased prices, wage inflation to try to retain workers in short supply, a fragmentation and polarisation of communities encouraged to engage in culture wars fuelled by algorithms looking for clicks and eyeballs for advertising revenue, actual war in Europe, and decreased trust in our politics.
This excellent essay in the American Affairs Journal lays out a cold hypothesis of The Brazilianization of the World. It’s a compelling read - but brace yourself - it’s not exactly upbeat.
The West’s involution finds its mirror image in the original country of the future, the nation doomed forever to remain the country of the future, the one that never reaches its destination: Brazil. The Brazilianization of the world is our encounter with a future denied, and in which this frustration has become constitutive of our social reality. While the closing of historical horizons has often been a leftist, indeed Marxist, concern, the sense that things don’t work as they should is now widely shared across the political spectrum.
Welcome to Brazil. Here the only people satisfied with their situation are financial elites and venal politicians. Everyone complains, but everyone shrugs their shoulders. This slow degradation of society is not so much a runaway train, but more of a jittery rollercoaster, occasionally holding out promise of ascent, yet never breaking free from the tracks. We always come back to where we started, shaken and disoriented, haunted by what might have been. - Alex Hochuli
How gun violence affects our mental health
I noticed that the article from last week about not reading the news as a way of coping with modern life was the most popular in that edition of Noise Reduction.
Not only are we exposed to reports of mass shootings at a seemingly ever-increasing pace from the USA, but we are also hearing and watching about harrowing encounters from the War in Ukraine. All this takes a toll on us - even through these vicarious means.
Following the news about these types of events can have very real effects on us. Read more here with tips on what you can do to help manage this for yourself and your loved ones too.
For survivors, victims’ families and those who live near the location of a shooting, the psychological effects can be intense and prolonged. They may include post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, self-harm and major depressive disorders.
But even among those who do not frequently experience gun violence or who have never been directly affected by a mass shooting, feelings of fear, anger or helplessness can arise. And studies have found that continually consuming news media after a tragedy can lead to acute stress.
How to students recover from pandemic stress
Through focused on the US, this article offers much for those in similar places where children have fallen behind in social skills and struggling with emotional health.
The article is packed full of tips and links to help students process their experiences over the past 2+ years, and to help them adapt and catch up on some of the skills they may be behind in developing.
For example, many counselors said they had begun doing schoolwide lessons on issues that have become more severe during the pandemic, like managing anxiety or improving planning and strategic thinking skills (aka executive functioning). Some therapists suggested sessions that encouraged children to use art or storytelling to process their experiences of the pandemic.
“Students have responded very positively to opportunities to use art to express and process their feelings of the last two years and current feelings of anxiety and worry. I have relied on the work of local nonprofit OKYou.org for curriculum and training.” Jess Firestone, Buckman Elementary School, Portland, Ore.
“We need more opportunities for kids to talk about the pandemic and how it impacted them. Not all students had a horrible experience, and that shouldn’t be minimized either. All students need the opportunity to unload about their pandemic experiences.” Helen Everitt, Davis Drive Middle School, Cary, N.C.
Unlocked and made free for you to read through my New York Times subscription.
Not too hot and not too cold
Getting the balance right between home and the office for hybrid working is going to be tricky.
Before Covid came to America in January 2020, only 5% of the U.S. labor force worked remotely all the time. Within a few months of the pandemic setting in, however, nearly every American who could work from home was doing so. Today remote work is a white-collar norm.
“If you take the U.S. as a whole,” says Edward Glaeser, chairman of Harvard’s economics department, office attendance is “down about 19%, relative to pre-pandemic levels.” That average masks some startling variations among major cities. While Houston sits squarely on the mean at 19% and Los Angeles is “looking pretty good” at 21%, New York and Boston are both down 32%.
There’s a case for pushing younger people more towards the office (safely) than they may initially be up for. Find the opinion article in the Wall Street Journal here.
“The sort of young people who don’t want to come back to the office,” he says, “don’t really know what they’ve missed.” They think that the experience of “working from a Starbucks is all there is, and that they’re having just as much career development as they would have if they were surrounded by mentors.” They aren’t. He cites a study that finds remote workers face “a 50% reduction in their probability of being promoted.”
The never-ending quantification of our lives
From ancient Egyptian cubits to fitness tracker apps, humankind has long been seeking ever more ways to measure the world – and ourselves. But what is this doing to us?
The underlying principle – that any human endeavour can be usefully reduced to a set of statistics – has become one of the dominant paradigms of the 21st century. The historian of capitalism Jerry Z Muller calls it “metric fixation”, a ubiquitous concept that pervades not only the private sector, but also the less-quantifiable activities of the state, such as healthcare and policing.
This essay / extract from a book called Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement by James Vincent is fascinating. The book is out on June 2.
Got Tech Neck?
I’m forever telling our 11-year old daughter to stop hunching over when she is using her iPad. This is what she looks like.
I’m probably guilty of this myself, but it seems particularly exaggerated when I see her doing it. Sounds familiar? And it all seems to have got worse since the onset of the pandemic too.
The posture problem is easy to correct. You can do a simple stretch, where you interlock your fingers behind your head and hold your elbows against a wall.
More here.
How to take back all the information you’ve given away to social media platforms
You’ve been on the platforms for years. Just thinking about leaving gives you a sinking feeling.
Well, you’re right - it will take some time, and you’ll need to prepare to download some big files. But where do you even start? If you’ve decided that not only do you want to know what the platforms know about you, but you perhaps want to manage or even delete some of your data or your online presence, then this guide steers you in the right direction. It covers many of the major platforms of today, and even goes back to MySpace too (remember that?)
Mercury on Earth already?
Although we haven’t yet landed on Mercury and brought back samples to earth, shards of this strange planet may already be here.
New research explains how meteorites called aubrites may actually be shattered pieces of the planet closest to the sun from the early days of the solar system.
If true, it would mean that we have had pieces of Mercury — albeit a much more ancient version of the planet — hiding in drawers and display cases for more than 150 years.
Finally, a lovely little review of my book - a highlight of my week. Please share a highlight from your week in the comments too.
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Hi Sarb, I'm not sure if it's a minority, but if it is I'm there with you. A couple of weeks ago I met with a group of six people and only one of that group had had Covid. While a lot of people have had it, a big number that is part of a much bigger number (5M) is still a small proportion. Just guessing on that one, but I'm Covid free and hoping to stay that way.
Thank you for this Sarb. I, and a number of my colleagues, have been discussing this recently. We also seem to be in a minority of those not having had COVID. I wonder if future research will show why some have a level of immunity? We all work at a hospital & have gone to work every day since the start of the pandemic- maybe some immunity from persistent low level exposure? Some have suggested it’s to do with age &/or having had smallpox vaccination in our younger years. I look forward to more on this.