Mind Space – Page 34 – Things Are Good

Cats Actually Like Humans

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It might seem that your cat dosen’t care about you, but that’s not the case. After years of false allegations that cats don’t care about humans we know have empirical evidence that the opposite is true. Cats actually like humans!

Researchers at Oregon State University offered 38 cats a choice between food, a toy, an interesting smell (catnip, a gerbil) and attention from a human.

Thirty-seven percent preferred food to anything else. Eleven percent liked toys, and one cat was preoccupied with the smells of catnip and gerbils.

But 19 of them â€” half! â€” preferred the company of humans above all, choosing them over other entertainment possibilities.

New bank Account Morally Monitors Your Purchases

Aspiration financial firm is a B-corporatoin that wants to help people “vote with their wallets”. It’s incredibly hard for individuals to stay up to date on the damage that large organizations do despite that a lot of people care. Consumers want to punish companies for some of their actions from United kicking people off airplanes to Shell lying about climate change. This means there’s an opportunity for Aspiration to help people divert money from companies that make the world worse, and the company is growing as a result.

Called Aspiration Impact Measurement (AIM), the program analyzes not one, but thousands of data points to generate two scores for companies: The â€œPeopleâ€ score gauges how well companies treat their employees and communities, and the â€œPlanetâ€ score assesses companiesâ€™ sustainability and eco-friendly practices. Every time an Aspiration customer swipes the debit card associated with their account to make a payment toward a company, that companyâ€™s Planet and People scores are funneled into the customerâ€™s personalized AIM score, which reflects the positive (or negative) impact of where they shop.

â€œPeople have been hungering for this exact kind of information,â€ Cherny says. â€œWe see this in our customers, we see this in all these surveys that are coming out about how younger people especially, but consumers overall, are thinking about how a company behaves and how its products are created as they make decisions on where to buy. But until now, they havenâ€™t really had the information to be able to do so.â€

Get Rewarded for Supporting Civil Disobedience

If your idea to change the world is creative enough then you could get $250,000 from LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. Technically, it’ll be from MIT Media Lab with money from Hoffman. The Lab and Hoffman teamed up to ensure that creative civil resistance in the USA doesn’t die under the Trump presidency. With the increased pressure on American institutions to buckle under corporate influence right from the top (think Rex Tillerson) the need for people standing up is needed now more than ever before. This prize for civil disobedience is designed to get people engaged and thinking in new ways to stand up for human and legal rights.

â€œWe wanted to see if we could identify very creative and principled disobedience,â€ says Ito. â€œI talked to a lot of students, and some of them had started saying, this nonviolence stuff doesnâ€™t work anymore, or those days of Gandhi are over. And some people threatened to engage in disobedience that I felt was sort of reckless.â€

The aim of the award is to help someone make further progress. â€œMy hope is that we support a person in the middle of their career and help provide coaching, support, and visibility to help him or her be more effective,â€ says Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. â€œWe hope weâ€™re not just rewarding what theyâ€™ve already achieved.â€

Local Greenbelts can Reduce Depression and Obesity

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Living near green space will make your life better. New studies coming out of Europe point out that proximity to nature has an impact on levels of depression, as in there is less depression. If you have the option to keep local forests (or any green space) then you should keep it! Not only are nature areas good for the mind, they’re also good for the body. The same research has pointed out that obesity rates are lower in places where nature is accessible.

The benefits aren’t just for individuals because fitter, happier people is better for society at large.

Overall, nature is an under-recognised healer, the paper says, offering multiple health benefits from allergy reductions to increases in self-esteem and mental wellbeing.

A study team of 11 researchers at the Institute for European environmental policy (IEEP) spent a year reviewing more than 200 academic studies for the report, which is the most wide-ranging probe yet into the dynamics of health, nature and wellbeing.
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The report makes use of several studies that depict access to nature as being inextricably linked to wealth inequality, because deprived communities typically have fewer natural environments within easy reach.

2017 is the Year to Quit Your Job

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Until we get something like universal basic income everybody will need to work. But why should you work in a job you don’t want?

James Altucher argues that this year, more than any previous year, is the right time to quit your job. Why? Because the robots will make us all unemployed and that starting your company has never been easier. If you are thinking of quitting your job or are looking for a new adventure maybe now is the time.

H) YOU DONâ€™T NEED THE JOB TO BE HAPPY
Depression is highest in fully employed, first world countries. The two highest countries for depression? France and the United States.
We simply were not made to work 60 hours a week. Archaeologists figure that our paleo ancestors â€œworkedâ€ maybe 12 hours a week.
And then they would play, in order to keep up the skills needed to hunt and forage, etc.