Calling the coronavirus the 'Chinese virus' matters – research connects the label with racist bias


Brad Bushman, Professor of Communication and Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication, The Ohio State University
Fri, February 18, 2022,

Asian Americans have been targeted with hate crimes during the pandemic. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

No one wants their geographic region to be associated with a deadly disease. Unfortunately, this has happened in the past with diseases such as “German measles,” “Spanish flu” and “Asiatic cholera.”

It happens today, too, even though the World Health Organization advises against naming pathogens for places to “minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people.” By Feb. 11, 2020, the WHO had announced that the official name for the novel coronavirus just starting its spread around the world would be severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 – or SARS-CoV-2. The illness it caused would be called COVID-19, short for Coronavirus Disease of 2019.

Yet some politicians, conservative journalists and others persisted in calling the COVID-19 virus the “Chinese virus,” or some variant of this term, such as the “China virus,” “Wuhan virus” (after the Chinese city that first reported the virus), “Chinese flu” and “Kung flu.”

Does it matter?

Hateful behavior against Asians in the U.S. and many other countries rose after the start of the pandemic. According to the FBI, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 73% in 2020.

Social scientists like me are investigating the kinds of repercussions racialized framing – like calling the coronavirus “Chinese” – can have.
Reading just one article had an impact

The way media frame, depict and describe events can have a profound influence on the public’s perception of those events. Researchers have found that audiences are prone to interpret media stories in the context of their biases, especially in relation to racial groups.

My colleagues Lanier Frush Holt, Sophie Kjærvik and I found that simply reading one media article calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” made people more likely to blame China for the pandemic.

We randomly split a diverse sample of 614 American adults into two groups. One read a fabricated news article that labeled the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.” The other read an identical article except for labeling the coronavirus as the “COVID-19 virus.”

There were important differences in how the articles were perceived. For instance, Democrats and more liberal individuals judged the “Chinese virus” article much more negatively than did Republicans and more conservative individuals. But overall, we found that participants who read the “Chinese virus” article were 8.5% more likely to agree with the statement “China is responsible for the current global pandemic” than were those who read the “COVID-19 virus” article.

The effect of reading that one article with “Chinese virus” language was not huge, and we wouldn’t expect it to be. The attitudes and beliefs that people brought with them before they read the story had a greater influence on their likelihood to blame China for the pandemic than did the framing language. But the fact that reading a single “Chinese virus” article did have an impact on readers with a range of political leanings shows the power of labeling a disease for a geographic region.
Naming does the framing

Other researchers have also found connections between the “Chinese virus” label and anti-Asian sentiments.

One study linked then-president Donald Trump’s tweet on March 16, 2020, that referred to “the Chinese Virus” with a rise in anti-Asian hashtags.

When pressed on his repeated use of the term “Chinese virus,” Trump told reporters at a news briefing: “It’s not racist at all. … It’s from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.”

When researchers studied 1.2 million hashtags on Twitter in March 2020, they found that approximately 1 in 5 hashtags used in tweets along with #covid19 were anti-Asian, whereas half of the hashtags used alongside #chinesevirus were. “Chinese virus” wasn’t just an innocent statement of reality, as Trump seemed to contend. It was often paired with racist sentiment.

As racially stigmatizing language like “Chinese virus” increased in the media in March 2020, so did the belief that Asian Americans are less “American” than their white counterparts.

Another study found that exposure to conspiracy theories and misinformation linking China to the spread and creation of the coronavirus was correlated with an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment and xenophobia.

Use of terms like “Chinese virus” by the media and political leaders is unlikely to change a person’s beliefs or attitudes. But it can trigger negative stereotypes that can heighten prejudice and possibly even incite incidents of hate.

Just as biomedical researchers try to understand how pathogens spread through a population, social scientists are working to understand the spread of hate and prejudice. Unfortunately, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Asian bias, only a brief exposure to racially charged language can have negative impacts.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Brad Bushman, The Ohio State University.

Read more:

Calling COVID-19 a ‘Chinese virus’ is wrong and dangerous – the pandemic is global

The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority’ to the ‘Chinese virus’

White House slams Gov. Kristi Noem for saying she doesn't know why LGBTQ people in South Dakota have high rates of depression

Oma Seddiq

Fri, February 18, 2022, 

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signs a bill Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, at the state Capitol in Pierre, S.D., that will ban transgender women and girls from playing in school sports leagues that match their gender identity.AP Photo/Stephen Groves

• The White House slammed Noem for saying she didn't know why South Dakota's LGBTQ people have a high depression rate.

• "That makes me sad, and we should figure it out," Noem said.

• Noem signed a bill into law banning transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams.

The White House on Friday derided Republican Gov. Kristi Noem because she was unable to answer a question about the high depression rate within South Dakota's LGBTQ communities.

"Here's a start for you, Governor," White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted in response to a clip of Noem. "1. Don't advance policies that attack trans youth, 2. Don't fund ads attacking LGBT youth, 3. support @POTUS' agenda to enhance support for youth mental health needs, with funding made available through the American Rescue Plan."

Around 87% of LGBTQ residents in the state reported experiencing feelings of depression, the highest rate in the country, according to a recent national study by HelpAdvisor. The clip in Jean-Pierre's tweet shows a reporter asking Noem about the issue at a news conference on Thursday.

"Why do you think that is?" the reporter asked Noem.

"I don't know," Noem replied. "That makes me sad, and we should figure it out."

Noem made national headlines earlier this month after she signed a bill into law banning transgender girls and college-aged women from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity. South Dakota is the first state to do so this year, and the 10th nationwide.

"This bill is about fairness," Noem said at the time. "It's about allowing biological females in their sex to compete fairly in a level playing field that gives them opportunities for success."

Prior to the bill's passage, Noem released an advertisement highlighting the legislation.

"In South Dakota, only girls play girls' sports," the ad says. "Why? Because of Governor Kristi Noem's leadership."

Opponents have condemned the GOP-led bans as discriminatory and dehumanizing toward LGBTQ youth. Many of the bills have faced legal challenges, as could South Dakota's.

More than 85% of transgender and non-binary youth reported that the news of such restrictions have negatively impacted their mental health, according to a survey by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth.

Preparing for our climate future requires building better now

Noah Millman, Columnist

THE HILL
Fri, February 18, 2022

Climate change. Illustrated | iStock

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released a new report this week predicting a sea level rise of roughly one foot within the next 30 years. The consequences for coastal communities could be quite severe: Damaging floods would be 10 times as common as they are today, and would reach much further inland. The rising waters won't stop there. Just based on emissions to date, the report predicts sea levels rising at least another foot by the century's end; if emissions aren't curbed, that number could be as much as five feet higher.

Decarbonizing is essential to preventing the latter scenario. But even a rise of a foot or two more would put major coastal cities in danger. Over the next couple of decades, therefore, we're going to need to invest huge sums of money simply to preserve what we have. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year was only a small downpayment on what is going to be required.

There's an alternative way to think about it, though, a complement to the foregoing, not a contradiction. Climate change is going to accelerate the depreciation of a host of very large and expensive assets. It's going to cost more and more money to keep those assets viable — to protect coastal cities from storm surges, to protect arid areas from water shortages, and so forth. In some cases, no amount of money will suffice: If snowmelt dries up, power from a hydroelectric plant run by that meltwater will dry up too.


As markets start to factor that reality into their valuations of those assets, we should expect to see a shift, in some cases, from building back better to abandoning and moving on — not only from particular dams and roads but from entire cities and regions.

How will our political system adapt in turn? It's hard to know for sure, but the safe way to bet is that our government will be more reactive than proactive. That is to say, it will be more responsive to powerful local constituencies that demand relief and protection from climate-related disasters than it will to calls for a more thoroughgoing restructuring, even if the latter would be more valuable in the long run. Politicians representing Tampa, Houston, or New York City will naturally lobby for funds to defend those cities, and will likely be more successful than not. It would be against their parochial interest, after all, to make it easier for their constituents to move to Minneapolis.

It's important, for that reason, that we recognize the risks of that parochialism. We absolutely need to invest in protecting our existing infrastructure and communities. But we also need to facilitate the construction of new infrastructure and communities in places that will naturally be much more resilient. Indeed, that kind of investment could prove even more valuable down the line.

From an international perspective, countries with more opportunity and ability to build right the first time are going to have a significant competitive advantage over countries with a lot of vulnerable assets to protect. This is a phenomenon already familiar from technological transitions. Countries that never built wireline phone systems, for example, were able to leapfrog directly to cellular phones and achieve widespread connectivity at a much lower cost. Countries today with large and growing power needs have the opportunity to meet them with green energy technologies that are much cheaper than they were only a decade ago, and thereby avoid some of the transition costs of decarbonization.

The same is likely true for climate adaptation. China has engaged in a historically unprecedented building boom over the past generation, constructing entire new cities along with massive transportation and power-generation projects. To the extent that they ignored the prospect of climate change in their plans, that was an enormous missed opportunity that, had they made the opposite choice, could have contributed massively to their future economic competitiveness. Countries like India and Nigeria, which will face enormous infrastructure needs in the future even without climate change due to the combination of demographic expansion, economic growth, and rapid urbanization should not make the same mistakes.

Small countries face opportunities as well, and not just risks. The small Caribbean island of Dominica has been a recent leader in climate adaptation, recognizing that they risk repeated destruction from hurricanes like Maria, which caused damage equivalent to over twice their annual GDP. Rebuilding successfully in a way that makes the island more resilient will not only make it a more attractive investment destination compared to its peers. In the best case, it could give it expertise that could become a services export industry.

Wealthy countries with a great deal of land and an openness to immigration, like Canada, are in the best position of all to build out new infrastructure in locations likely to be most resilient to climate disruption, and thereby to grow economically and demographically even as they also spend what is necessary to make existing communities more resilient. The long-term relative trajectory of world power could be meaningfully shaped by which countries have those opportunities and choose to seize them, and which do not.

The struggle to decarbonize the world economy is an absolutely vital one. But the struggle to adjust to change that is already certain to accelerate is equally vital. Trillions are going to be spent on adapting to the reality of a warmer world. If we want to remain competitive, we need to make sure we get the biggest bang for the climate adaptation buck.

The great greenwashing scam: PR firms face reckoning after spinning for big oil

Amy Westervelt
Fri, February 18, 2022,

Photograph: Jessica Lutz/Reuters

This week a peer-reviewed study confirmed what many have suspected for years: major oil companies are not fully backing up their clean energy talk with action. Now the PR and advertising firms that have been creating the industry’s greenwashing strategies for decades face a reckoning over whether they will continue serving big oil.

Related: Yale, Stanford and MIT’s fossil fuel investments are illegal, students say

The study compared the rhetoric and actions on climate and clean energy from 2009 to 2020 from the world’s four largest oil companies – ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. Writing in the journal Plos One, researchers from Tohoku University and Kyoto University in Japan conclude that the companies are not, in fact, transitioning their business models to clean energy.

“The magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse,” they write. “Until actions and investment behavior are brought into alignment with discourse, accusations of greenwashing appear well-founded.”

Although this isn’t the first time that oil companies have been accused of overstating their climate bona fides, it has never been set out quite so comprehensively, according to environmental sociologist Dr Robert Brulle at Brown University. “This is the first robust, empirical, peer-reviewed analysis of the activities – of the speech, business plans, and the actual investment patterns – of the major oil companies regarding their support or opposition to the transition to a sustainable society,” he says.

Brulle says PR firms and advertising agencies that have created campaigns around the oil firms’ net-zero claims are now on notice. “There’s no plausible deniability that they are unaware of the activities of these companies after this paper has been published,” he says. “This paper clearly shows that these companies aren’t walking the talk.”

That forces the hand of PR firms such as Edelman – which made headlines late last year for making big climate pledges while also working for oil majors like Exxon and Shell – and trade groups such as the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which have a reputation for blocking climate policy. At a company meeting in December, the firm’s chief executive, Richard Edelman, told employees that the company would not walk away from fossil-fuel clients, but that it would “reject projects that delay progress toward a future with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. In the face of this week’s report, it would be hard to say that any oil major meets that standard.

Casey Norton, a spokesperson for Exxon, said: “ExxonMobil has long acknowledged that climate change is real and poses serious risks. In addition to our substantial investments in next generation technologies, ExxonMobil also advocates for responsible climate-related policies.”

“These claims of investments in clean energy are yet another case of words not matching actions,” Gregory Trencher, one of the study’s authors, says. Trencher notes that Exxon invested only 0.23% of its total capital expenditure in low-carbon energy production and development from 2010 to 2018, and that the company stated in an April 2021 energy and carbon summary report that it does not invest in renewables. As for acknowledging climate science, Trencher says that makes up “only a small part of our study – specifically, it is but one of 25 indicators studied”.

This paper clearly shows that these companies aren’t walking the talk 

Robert Brulle

Edelman did not reply to a request for comment by press time. Neither did the PR firm WPP, which has done extensive work for BP and Chevron. The New York Times’ T Brand Studio, which has created campaigns for both Exxon and Shell amplifying their net-zero claims, also declined to comment on how this study might play into that work. The Washington Post also declined to respond to questions about whether its WP Creative Group would continue to create campaigns for Chevron, Shell or the American Petroleum Institute, in light of such extensive documentation that previous campaigns were misleading.

According to Brulle, it’s unlikely that PR and advertising firms will be able to serve the fossil-fuel industry as they have in the past. “It doesn’t seem to me that they have the room to do that any more,” he said. “They would have to basically engage in bad-faith advertising and greenwashing to continue to support these organizations as actually engaging in climate action.”

The greenwashing study comes just a week after House Democrats Katie Porter and Raúl Grijalva sent letters to six PR firms asking for more details on their work for fossil fuel companies, particularly with respect to campaigns that misled the public on climate change. The House oversight committee has indicated that it will also question PR firms as part of its investigation into climate disinformation.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil is due back in court in Massachusetts early next month to fight charges that it defrauded residents of that state on climate. Similar fraud charges have been leveled at all of the oil majors via an ever-growing list of cases, including those filed in Minnesota, the District of Columbia, Delaware and Vermont.

But Christine Arena, a former Edelman vice-president who now runs her own social impact production company Generous Films, says climate fraud can’t happen without the help of the PR and advertising industry.

“PR and ad firms are central players in what we look at as the influence industry,” she says. “There’s a lot of money spent, and emphasis on external facing advertising, marketing, and promotion that helps prop up the fossil fuel industry’s social license to operate and give the world a sense that, to quote API, ‘We’re on it.’ We don’t need regulation. We’re good corporate actors.”

Brulle says the media should also take note of this study, especially when an oil company chief executive makes a claim around their company’s climate commitments. “Good, critical reporting would have to challenge the statements of these fossil fuel companies,” he says.

Texas Massively Undercounted 2021 Freeze Deaths, Analysis Finds


Joe Carroll
Fri, February 18, 2022, 8:53 AM·1 min read

(Bloomberg) -- The death toll from Texas’s historic February 2021 freeze may have been four times higher than the state’s official count, according to a new analysis by the Houston Chronicle.

The Lone Star state tallied more than 1,000 deaths during the week-long storm that couldn’t be explained by Covid-19 or historical patterns, the newspaper found. That compares with the state health department’s official count of 246 deaths directly and indirectly attributable to the storm.

The Arctic weather system that swept across Texas a year ago this week disrupted heat, power and water to millions of homes, and paralyzed transport and emergency services for days. The performance of government officials and agencies before, during and in the aftermath of the disaster has become a key electoral issue.

“It’s clear something is going on there,” Dr. Bob Anderson, chief of mortality for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Chronicle. “That’s a pretty big jump in February that seems to correlate with the blackout. It’s theoretically possible that something else could be driving that, but it seems pretty compelling.”

AMLO in Juárez: Mexico president questioned about slain journalists during security tour


Lauren Villagran, El Paso Times
Fri, February 18, 2022, 3:12 PM·4 min read

The unsolved murders of journalists in Mexico overshadowed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's tour of border cities this week that sought to tout his public security and anti-corruption initiatives.

Five journalists have been killed in Mexico in fewer than six weeks this year. The back-to-back murders in Tijuana of photographer Margarito Martínez and journalist Lourdes Maldonado López in January galvanized Mexico's beleaguered press corps to protest the dangerous conditions they work under in Mexico.

More: Juárez journalists join national protests for three colleagues slain in January 2022

López Obrador is fond of berating the press, claiming the country's most popular television journalists and largest newspapers are tools of a conservative opposition that is against him. In the president's morning news conference on Friday, Juárez journalists pressed for an accounting of the investigations into their colleagues' deaths.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gives a news conference in Juárez on Friday. The Mexican president was visiting several cities on the northern border of Mexico to address security issues and economic development.

At different intervals in the 2½ hour conference, López Obrador said the murders would be investigated, then he attacked leading journalists in Mexico as wealthy and overpaid.

"I have friends who say, 'Stop talking about the media. Turn the page,' " he said. "No, no, no, no. It's a dangerous political matter. What do they want? That people come to the conclusion that we're all equal? No, we're not equal. We're in a struggle."

More: Juárez journalists join national protests for three colleagues slain in January 2022

More: Mexican journalist Lourdes Maldonado López murdered in Tijuana, 2nd in a week

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called out López Obrador's government on the Senate floor this week and said in a Twitter post on Wednesday that "the accelerating breakdown of Mexican institutions and the rule of law under López Obrador is a threat to U.S. national security."

Cruz pointed to the unsolved murders of journalists as evidence of that breakdown.



López Obrador dismissed Cruz's comments on Friday, saying that the verbal attack on his government "is to be expected" coming from someone who doesn't agree with his politics and "who doesn't appreciate the contributions of Mexicans in the United States."

Mexico is the deadliest country for journalists in the Western Hemisphere, according to the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mexican journalists ask questions of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a news conference in Juárez on Friday. The Mexican president was visiting several cities on the northern border of Mexico to address security issues and economic development.

In addition to the Tijuana journalists, three others have been killed in 2022: Heber López Vásquez in Oaxaca, José Luis Gamboa in Veracruz and Roberto Toledo in Michoacán.

The Mexican president visited Baja California and Sonora before arriving in Juárez as part of a tour this week highlighting a security strategy designed to focus enforcement on 50 cities and counties in Mexico where homicides were on the rise — Juárez and Tijuana among them.

Homicides are down in Chihuahua state, according to a presentation by Mexico Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval González on Friday. Murders fell to 2,056 in 2021 from a six-year peak of 2,294 in 2020, according to data collected by Mexico's national public security agency.

More: Mexican military, helicopter part of new Juárez anti-crime operation after arson rampage

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves a military base after giving a news conference in Juárez on Friday. The Mexican president was visiting several cities on the northern border of Mexico to address security issues and economic development.

The statistics don't reflect high-profile attacks in Juárez this year, including the murder and dismemberment of two women in January, a deadly shootout at the Viejo Oeste bar and the killing of six people, including a child, at a funeral this week.

López Obrador’s security strategy has not included confronting drug-related violence with force. He has preferred to focus on the root causes of poverty and on social programs.

Chihuahua Gov. Maria Eugenia "Maru" Campos, who participated in the Friday news conference, attributed the recent violence to a fight between unnamed organized crime groups for control of la plaza, or the right to control lucrative drug trafficking and distribution routes in Juárez.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves a military base after a news conference in Juárez on Friday. He was visiting several cities on the northern border of Mexico to address security issues and economic development.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Mexico president faces questions in Juárez about murdered journalists

Mexico to Sen. Cruz: At least our candidates accept defeat


Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, followed by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., leaves a policy luncheon, Thursday, Feb., 17, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Marti


Fri, February 18, 2022, 1:58 PM·2 min read

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Sen. Ted Cruz has accused Mexico of “undermining the rule of law,” and Mexico's government shot back on Friday, saying at least candidates in Mexico concede defeat when they lose elections.

The exchange came after the Republican from Texas claimed earlier this week there was “deepening civil unrest in Mexico and the breakdown there of civil society, the breakdown of the rule of law.” Cruz was referring to recent killings of journalists and politicians in Mexico.

Responding in a letter to Cruz late Thursday, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States wrote, “I invite you to look at what happened in our national election."

“Without exception, all of the political parties accepted the results and got on with the task of strengthening our democracy and freedom of expression,” Ambassador Esteban Moctezuma wrote.

That was a clear reference to Sen. Cruz's actions after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that left several people dead in the immediate aftermath, hundreds facing charges and millions of dollars in property damage.

Cruz was one of a handful of GOP senators who continued to champion former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud even after the riot, and court rejections of repeated challenges. Cruz voted against certifying the election results that night and said he has no second thoughts about that vote.

Cruz is no stranger to controversies involving Mexico.

Cruz was criticized for taking his family to the Mexican resort of Cancun in February 2021 while millions of Texans shivered in unheated homes after severe winter weather battered his state.

He cut short the Cancun trip after images circulated of him waiting at a Houston airport for his flight to the resort town. Millions of Texans had lost heat and running water and at least 40 people in Texas died as a result of the storm. Cruz later said the trip was a mistake.

Mexico's President Andés Manuel López Obrador, himself hasn't always accepted official results.

When official vote counts showed he lost the presidency in 2006 — albeit by a vastly narrower margin than did Trump in 2020 — he rallied supporters to block a major Mexico City boulevard for weeks and staged an inauguration of himself as “legitimate president.”

He accepted a clearer loss in 2012 and won the presidency by a wide margin in 2018.

López Obrador brushed off Cruz's criticism Friday, saying “it is to be expected” given the political differences between the two.

“If he praised me, I might start thinking we weren't doing things right,” López Obrador said. “But if he says we are wrong, well that for me is something to be proud of.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Ponzi scheme behind patriotic vodka, once featured on ‘Fox & Friends,’ scammed investors out of $900,000 to pay IRS and Amex bills, prosecutors say

Ponzi scheme behind patriotic vodka, once featured on ‘Fox & Friends,’ scammed investors out of $900,000 to pay IRS and Amex bills, prosecutors say

Lukas I. Alpert

Sat, February 19, 2022, 

A Connecticut businessman has pleaded guilty to operating an unpatriotic Ponzi scheme that pocketed $900,000 from investors looking to buy a pro-veteran vodka company. Brian Hughes, 57, of Madison, Conn., admitted raising money to buy Salute American Vodka and then expand it, then going on to use much of the money to pay his own credit-card debt and tax bill. Hughes also admitted cheating investors by purportedly raising money on behalf of another liquor company to which he had no connection.

Ponzi scheme behind patriotic vodka, once featured on ‘Fox & Friends,’ scammed investors out of $900,000 to pay IRS and Amex bills, prosecutors say - MarketWatch

This detail about Meta’s headquarters shows its blindness: Frances Haugen

Daniel Howley

·Technology Editor

Sat, February 19, 2022, 

Facebook parent company Meta’s (FB) Menlo Park, California, headquarters features the world’s largest open floor plan. It’s a massive single room where employees, or Metamates as CEO Mark Zuckerberg now calls them, build the apps that billions of people use.

But according to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, it’s not practical. And that impracticality reflects Meta’s inability to notice its own blindspots, she says — especially when it comes to figuring out how to address flaws like hate speech and its impact on teen users.

“Facebook's campus is a physical manifestation of their obsession with flatness, the idea that we are all on the same level,” Haugen told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer during an exclusive interview.

“But when you don't acknowledge that power differentials exist, you actually reinforce those power dynamics,” Haugen said. “A situation where flatness is obsessed over means there's actually not a lot of space for single leaders to come forward to say there is a problem, or we need to make a short term sacrifice for a long-term gain.”

Haugen, a former Facebook employee, became one of Meta’s most dangerous detractors when, in 2021, she provided thousands of internal Facebook documents to news organizations and politicians in the U.S. and abroad. The trove of papers included instances of Meta employees openly acknowledging their inability to police the social media giant’s platforms.

In October, Haugen testified to the Senate’s consumer protection subcommittee that the divisiveness and hate speech spread on Meta’s platforms would only get worse.

Meta has repeatedly pushed back against Haugen’s claims, saying that she doesn’t understand the documents, and that surveys included in the files don’t reflect its actual user base.

For her part, Haugen says that Meta’s turmoil stems from its failure to foster leadership as evidenced by its obsession with keeping everyone on the same level.

That obsession, she says, is made clear in the form of the company’s headquarters, which she says is so massive it makes doing work more difficult than it would in a normal, taller structure.

“The space is so large that I would regularly walk 15 minutes…to go to a 30 minute meeting,” Haugen said. “And so that level of absurdity, that it is more important for the building to be flat than to be functional for us to go to our meetings, just kind of shows you the blindness of that religion.”

Meta has more problems to contend with than just Haugen, though. The company’s shares have plummeted since it issued an abysmal Q4 earnings report earlier this month. Stagnating user numbers and Apple’s iOS privacy changes crushing its advertising business have sent investors fleeing the stock.

Meta stock price has fallen from $323 per share to $209. Its market cap, meanwhile, has been slashed from nearly $1 trillion to $584 million.

And if Meta can’t see its blindspots, it will have a hard time making a comeback.

Locals fret as Colombia to declare hippos invasive species







A hippo floats in the lagoon at Hacienda Napoles Park, once the private estate of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar who decades ago imported three female hippos and one male in Puerto Triunfo, Colombia, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. Colombia's Environment Ministry announced in early Feb. that hippos are an invasive species, in response to a lawsuit against the government over whether to kill or sterilize the hippos that were imported illegally by the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, and whose numbers are growing at a fast pace and pose a threat to biodiversity.

 (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

MARKO ÁLVAREZ and ASTRID SUÁREZ
Fri, February 18, 2022, 

PUERTO TRIUNFO, Colombia (AP) — Álvaro Molina has had his run-ins with the burly bunch of neighbors with disreputable contacts who showed up about a decade ago along the river in front of his house in Colombia's Antioquia province. But he's learned to live with them and says he is worried about a government plan he fears could harm them.

People around Puerto Triunfo have grown accustomed to the herd of hippopotamuses descended from a few that were imported illegally from Africa in the 1980s by flamboyant drug lord Pablo Escobar, whose former ranch is nearby.

Molina, 57, says he supports the hippos even though he is one of the few Colombians to have been attacked by one. He was out fishing one day when he felt a movement beneath his canoe that spilled him into the water.

“The female attacked me once — the first pair that arrived — because she had recently given birth,” he said.

Within weeks, Colombia's government plans to sign a document declaring the hippos an exotic invasive species, according to Environment Minister Carlos Eduardo Correa. This means coming up with a plan for how to control their population, which has reached 130 and is projected hit 400 in eight years if nothing is done as they flourish in Colombia's rivers.

Correa said many strategies are being discussed but no decisions have been made. Local communities will be consulted about any plan to control the hippos' population, he added.

“They talk of castration, sterilization, taking the life of some hippopotamuses," he said. “What is important is the scientific and technical rigor with which the decisions are made.”

Most people interviewed in Puerto Triunfo, some 200 kilometers (120 miles) of the capital, Bogota, say they can get along with the hippos and many oppose even sterilization — let alone killing some.

“They make laws from a distance. We live with the hippopotamuses here and we have never thought of killing them," said Isabel Romero Jerez, a local conservationist. "The hippopotamuses aren't African now; they are Colombians.”

Escobar’s Hacienda Nápoles — and the hippos — have become a sort of local tourist attraction in the years since the kingpin was killed by police in 1993. When his ranch was abandoned the hippos survived and reproduced in local rivers and favorable climatic conditions. They began showing up around Puerto Triunfo a decade ago.

Scientists warn the hippos do not have a natural predator in Colombia and are a potential problem for biodiversity since their feces change the composition of the rivers and could impact the habitat of manatees and capybaras.

An analysis by the Alexander Von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute said that climate change and “an increase in equatorial conditions, the ideal climate for the species” could increase the hippopotamus' dispersion across Colombia, potentially “overlapping with the geographic and ecological niches of native species, increasing the risk of possible competition for resources.”

Hippopotamuses can also cause damage to crops because they are mainly herbivores and seek food in large quantities at night.

While hippos are considered one of the most dangerous animals for humans in Africa, there have been only a few injuries recorded so far in these parts.

“I don’t consider them a threat, but there are difficulties with them. In the municipality, we have had reports of three attacks on the civilian population,” said Carmen Montaño, an official with Puerto Triunfo's Municipal Agricultural Technical Assistance Unit.

Locals say the hippos sometimes come out of the water and walk through the streets of the town. When that happens, traffic stops and people keep out of their way.

“The human animal is the one that invades their territory, that is why they feel threatened and attack," said Romero Jerez. “Human beings should be prudent, respectful and keep their distance.”

Scientists warn that hippos are territorial and weigh up to three tons.

Daniel Cadena, a biologist and dean of sciences at the Universidad de Los Andes, said they are aggressive animals and not as gentle as people imagine.

”There are estimates in Africa that hippos kill more people each year than lions, hyenas and crocodiles combined," he said.

When the document declaring them an invasive species in Colombia is signed, hippopotamuses will join species such as the giant African snail, coqui frog, black tilapia and lionfish. The declaration will allow the government to allocate resources to control the hippo population, one of the main obstacles.

There is currently an experimental program of immuno-castration with a drug donated by the United States. Surgically sterilizing them requires sedating them, transporting them to a safe place and cutting through their thick skin.

“Hippopotamuses do not have what is called obvious sexual dimorphism, it is difficult to know if an animal is male ... the genitals are internal,” Cadena said.

Any population control process promises to be costly and complex because it requires finding the hippos scattered along the mighty Magdalena River.

—-

Suárez reported from Bogota.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink confirms monkeys died during experiments, deny animal cruelty allegations

Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News
Fri, February 18, 2022

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a startup dedicated to linking computers and brains through chip implants, acknowledged that monkeys have died during experiments and tests, but pushed back on the allegations of abuse recently brought by a nonprofit group.

The brain-computer interface company responded in a blog post this week to the claims recently raised by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It alleged Neuralink, along with researchers at the University of California, Davis Primate Center mistreated and harmed animals by anchoring an implant “approximately the size of a quarter” on their skulls.

More than 20 macaque monkeys at the UC Davis Primate Center were used for research from 2017 to 2020.

Pager, a 9-year-old primate, had a Neuralink chip placed on each side of his brain which allowed him to play the game, Pong, using just his brainwaves. Musk has previously said he hopes the tech will be able to help treat and cure debilitating brain disorders with its chips.

“Recent articles have raised questions around Neuralink’s use of research animals at the University of California, Davis Primate Center,” Neuralink said. “It is important to note that these accusations come from people who oppose any use of animals in research.”

The startup also noted “all novel medical devices and treatments must be tested in animals before they can be ethically trialed in humans” and that it has yet to receive a single citation from the Food and Drug Administration over its treatment of animals.

In a document spanning more than 700 pages, the PCRM said Neuralink’s experiments reflect a “pattern of extreme suffering and staff negligence,” citing hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents released after the committee filed an initial public records lawsuit in 2021.

In another public records lawsuit filed last week, the committee has requested the university release videos and photographs of the monkeys, CNN reported. PCRM further alleges in the court documents that university staff “removed pieces of the skulls of rhesus macaque monkeys and inserted electrodes into the animals’ brains.”

It further claimed the animals went without veterinary care and that the monkeys were subjects for an “unapproved substance” known as BioGlue that “killed monkeys by destroying portions of their brains.”

Stressed Kentucky health care workers "scared to death of the future"

CBS News
Fri, February 18, 2022, 10:04 AM·2 min read


Across rural Kentucky, life has largely gone back to normal but the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic still rages inside health care facilities—even in the small town of Owingsville.

"The only thing that seems comparable and not even close is, you know, like a battlefield and we have been fighting now for two years," Dr. Aaron Parker Banks told CBS News' Kris Van Cleave.

Banks is a family medicine doctor who sees about 40 patients a day. One-third of those patients are seen for COVID. Being a health care worker during the pandemic has taken an emotional toll on Banks.

"Whenever I am at home, I try not to talk about what was going on. At any moment, if I start thinking about it, I cry. Um, thirty-five individuals in both counties here are no longer here," he said.

Banks has lost friends and family members to COVID—something he keeps in the back of his mind.

"One of my mentors growing up who was like a mom to me, she lost her battle," Banks said.

St. Claire Health Care Doctor William Melahn said it's been all hands on deck for two years. The toll on health care workers means there are fewer hands to help lift the load and he's finding it hard to replace nurses and other medical staff.

"Well, you can't replace experience, so you have to rebuild," Melahn said. "Every nurse is a critical frontline provider."

Nurse Courtney Hollingsworth said balancing burnout is now just part of the job. She is determined to still make a difference, but she is worried there will not be enough health care workers to take care of patients.

"I'm scared to death of the future. Before COVID started we needed more people to go into health care, there was not enough. But it is so scary," Hollingsworth said.

In a survey, last fall, as many as one in four Kentucky nurses said they were thinking about quitting within three months. Across the state, ICU beds are more than 87 percent full, even as cases are finally dropping.

There's more than snow making winter sports so white. This UVM professor explored why.


Lilly St. Angelo, Burlington Free Press
Sat, February 19, 2022, 

The lack of diversity in outdoor recreation and fine arts can be obvious to the naked eye. Just 9.2% of people who participated in winter sports in 2019 and 2020 were Black, according to a Snowsports Industries America study.

But the reasons behind people of color not being in these spaces is less obvious.

Daniel H. Krymkowski, University of Vermont professor of sociology, recently released a book, "The Color of Culture," about why African Americans are underrepresented in activities including golf, hiking, hunting and fishing, water sports, winter sports, classical music, painting and sculpture, ballet and theater.

Spoiler alert: Krymkowski says it's because of systemic racism.

More specifically, Krymkowski explores in his book how underrepresentation is due to lack of opportunity, not a lack of desire from African Americans to participate in outdoor recreation and fine arts. The lack of opportunity stems from socio-economic differences along racial and ethnic lines as well as big and small acts of discrimination in the past and the present in outdoor and fine arts spaces.

Gondolas carry skiers and snowboarders Jan. 20, 2022 at Spruce Peak in Stowe

"The lack of opportunity to participate in such cultural forms deprives African Americans of aesthetic experiences that are central to the human condition, and it has implications for both health and the accumulation of cultural and social capital," the book description on its publishing site reads.

As many found solace and fun in the outdoors during the pandemic, an outsized proportion of the people who stayed more indoors than usual during the pandemic were people of color, according to a recent Penn State study.

More: More Americans than ever enjoying outdoor health benefits. But racial inequities persist.

Krymkowski also writes about efforts to increase African American representation in outdoor spaces and the fine arts and why this is beneficial.

One such group in Vermont is Unlikely Riders, a group of skiers and riders who encourage Black, indigenous and people of color to connect with nature through winter sports.

Their site reads: "Fostering outdoor play is our act of resistance."

Contact Urban Change Reporter Lilly St. Angelo at lstangelo@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @lilly_st_ang

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: UVM research: Why outdoor spaces and fine arts lack diversity

CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's past support of the 'huge' investment opportunity in space resurfaced after the company's Super Bowl ad mocked Elon Musk and Mars exploration

Grace Kay

Mon, February 14, 2022

Marc BenioffNICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images

• Salesforce took a dig at the billionaire space race in its Super Bowl commercial on Sunday.

• Following the ad, a video resurfaced of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff saying "space is a huge category we should invest in."

• While the ad pokes fun at Elon Musk for investing in space, Benioff has been supportive of space exploration.

A video of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff saying that "space is a huge category we should invest in" resurfaced after the software company took a dig at the billionaire space race and Elon Musk's plans for colonizing Mars in its Super Bowl ad.

In Salesforce's 60-second commercial that aired on Sunday and during the Olympics, actor Matthew McConaughey floats through space in a hot air balloon and waxes philosophical on the future of life on Earth. In the video, he says "the new frontier" isn't "rocket science," taking a jab at entrepreneurs like Musk and Jeff Bezos and their preoccupation with building a future in outer space.

"It's not time to escape. It's time to engage," McConaughey said in the video. "So while the others look to the metaverse and Mars, let's stay here and restore ours," he added.

The ad echoed the criticism of many public figures, including Bill Gates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who called the billionaires to task for "joyriding into space while millions go hungry on Earth."

Yet Salesforce CEO Benioff was far from critical when Bezos announced his plans to spend $5.5 billion on 3 minutes in outer space. Benioff noted that it's an area where Time Ventures, his venture capital arm, is active and has invested in several space companies, including SpaceX, Astra, Swarm, and Planet Labs.

"I actually think that space is a huge category that we should invest in," Benioff said in an interview with CNBC, following Bezos' announcement. "I think those companies are amazing in the work they're doing and the entrepreneurs."

The CEO has also praised Musk for his work with SpaceX, calling his work "visionary leadership" on Twitter in 2020, as SpaceX prepared to launch astronauts into space.

Oscar winner McConaughey told Variety he would love to discuss the issues presented in the commercial with Bezos, Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.

"Our campaign is not anti-technology. It's not anti-pioneering space," McConaughey told the publication "It's saying, 'Hey, we have to not be so ready to quit on our home team; our home planet. We got a home field advantage, let's take care of it.' If and when we do get to space — or if the day comes when there is a great migration or immigration or travel to space — I bet Elon, Mark and Jeff would like to export a more valuable society there with people that didn't take all the problems and angst and fear that we got right now."

Salesforce did not respond to a request for comment from Insider. Take a look at the

 company's Super Bowl ad below.