In Denver, Defunding the Police Resulted in a Better City

- Adam Clare
love

The city of Denver was already planning to limit the scope of the police before the calls for defunding gained momentum the start of this year. Denver accelerated their plans though, and the results are already so promising that other cities should start copying what Denver has done. Instead of sending out armed forces to help people cope with mental issues, the city is sending out mental health workers. This means that the people who need help are getting it, and the police can do something else.

Since its launch June 1, the STAR van has responded to more than 350 calls, replacing police in matters that don’t threaten public safety and are often connected to unmet mental or physical needs. The goal is to connect people who pose no danger with services and resources while freeing up police to respond to other calls. The team, which is not armed, has not called police for backup, Sailon said.

“We’re really trying to create true alternatives to us using police and jails,” said Vinnie Cervantes with Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, one of the organizations that helped start the program.

Though it had been years in the making, the program launched just four days after protests erupted in Denver calling for transformational changes to policing in response to the death of George Floyd.

“It really kind of proves that we’ve been working for the right thing, and that these ideas are getting the recognition they should,” Cervantes said.

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Lack of Demand for Dead Whales Will End Whaling

- Adam Clare

ocean shore

Undoubtedly, whaling is bad for whales, nature, and even geopolitical reactions. Demand for whale meat and byproducts has been decreasing due to ongoing pressure from consumers and activists. Countries that permit whaling are frowned upon by other nations for conitrnuig the practice. The good news for whales is that due to COVID-19 the demand for whale meat has decreased to the point that Iceland may finally shutdown their whaling operations.

Another issue for Loftsson is that public opinion on whaling has changed, says Árni Finnsson, chairman of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association. “What has changed is that the fishing industry is not willing to support him anymore. They feel that Iceland needs to be able to export fish to the U.S. market, and they don’t want to continue defending whaling. I think he’s done.”

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What Fiction We Read Matters Politically

- Adam Clare
maps

The fictional worlds we engage with can change how we think about politics and how we justify our political beliefs. According to a study published in the Cambridge University Press people who read dystopian fiction are more likely to support extreme political reactions to things. The point? Read something that is good for you, go read some classic literature and try to avoid overly-dystopian worlds (or at least read them knowing the impact they may have on you).

Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radical—especially violent—forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fiction’s effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously.

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Americans: Go Vote!

- Adam Clare

vote sign

vote

Americans: please go vote if you haven’t already.

Not an American? Here, go enjoy pure internet click bait.

I have nothing good to say about the last four years of the Republican rule in the USA. Sure, good things have come out of America over the years and we’ve covered that here. Efforts to undo damage to the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions have happened in the states, but that’s all happened at the state and city level.

It’s time that Americans remove politicians that block positive progress from office.

Let’s hope that we get good news from this election.

No matter the outcome, I’m sure that cities in the states will keep fighting climate change and trying to help their local populace.

If you’re in the states you can find out how to vote from the official government webpage.

Learn Faster by Knowing Less

- Adam Clare

tape and tool

People learn when they can experiment with whatever they are working with, be it something physical like carpentry or something mental like philosophy. Teachers can even encourage faster learning by letting students essentially play with what they have and stepping back. Providing too much instruction means students don’t need to create a process for themselves so they learn to cope, instead they learn to follow the instructions. A recent study showed demonstrated that how make choices as learners impacts how quickly we learn.

This observation means the brain is primed to learn with a bias that is pegged to our freely chosen actions. Choice tips the balance of learning: for the same action and outcome, the brain learns differently and more quickly from free choices than forced ones. This skew may seem like a cognitive flaw, but in computer models, Palminteri’s team found that choice-confirmation bias offered an advantage: it produced stabler learning over a wide range of simulated conditions than unbiased learning did. So even if this tendency occasionally results in bad decisions or beliefs, in the long run, choice-confirmation bias may sensitize the brain to learn from the outcomes of chosen actions—which likely represent what is most important to a given person.

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