https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-44914919/wave-of-plastic-hits-dominican-republic
The law can address this situation properly given a wary enough Supreme Court, where this will end up, but it’s not likely to matter anymore than the laws already against illegal gun ownership. The real issue, and cause, for gun violence past, present, and still to come, through DIY means, is what it’s also been. The proclivity of certain human beings, mostly men, and mostly mentally damaged from childhood, violent influences, warped localized cultures, and preexisting derangement, is the root of violence and paranoia towards our fellow man. Cody Wilson, followed by his enabling lawyers and founders, is a poster child example of how disturbed a person can be to take his poisonous vision to an endpoint of such nihilistic proportions.
Five years ago, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun. When, to his relief, his plastic invention fired a .380-caliber bullet into a berm of dirt without jamming or exploding in his hands, he drove back to Austin and uploaded the blueprints for the pistol to his website, Defcad.com.
He’d launched the site months earlier along with an anarchist video manifesto, declaring that gun control would never be the same in an era when anyone can download and print their own firearm with a few clicks. In the days after that first test-firing, his gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Wilson made the decision to go all in on the project, dropping out of law school at the University of Texas, as if to confirm his belief that technology supersedes law.
Definitive, preventative action from responsible parties, should not be postponed because there is not a direct connections proven.
Open eyes see the way teens, already behave – necks bent, preoccupied checking their phones, bizarrely concerned with every post on social media, or checking their scores from online gaming.
Common sense is losing ground.
July 17, 201812:25 PM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Most teens today own a smartphone and go online every day, and about a quarter of them use the internet “almost constantly,” according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center.
Now a study published Tuesday in JAMA suggests that such frequent use of digital media by adolescents might increase their odds of developing symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“It’s one of the first studies to look at modern digital media and ADHD risk,” says psychologist Adam Leventhal, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and an author of the study.
When considered with previous research showing that greater social media use is associated with depression in teens, the new study suggests that “excessive digital media use doesn’t seem to be great for [their] mental health,” he adds.
Previous research has shown that watching television or playing video games on a console put teenagers at a slightly higher risk of developing ADHD behaviors. But less is known about the impact of computers, tablets and smartphones.
Because these tools have evolved very rapidly, there’s been little research into the impact of these new technologies on us, says Jenny Radesky, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan, who wrote an editorial about the new study for JAMA.
Each new platform reaches millions of people worldwide in a matter of days or weeks, she says. “Angry Birds reached 50 million users within 35 days. Pokémon Go reached the same number in 19 days.”
Research into their effects hasn’t been able to keep pace with the technological evolution, she adds.
“So it’s nice to finally to have some evidence on longer term impact that [these technologies are] having on children,” says Radesky.”I think it shows that something is going on, that there is an association, even if small, between these type[s] of media use habits throughout the day with emerging inattention, trouble with focusing, resisting distraction, controlling your impulses.”
The study followed 2,587 10th graders in schools in Los Angeles county over two years. The teens showed no symptoms of ADHD at the beginning of the study. By the end, teens with more frequent digital media use were more likely to have symptoms of ADHD.
The researchers assessed the students using a standardized questionnaire for ADHD symptoms, including nine symptoms each for inattention and hyperactivity. Students with six or more symptoms in either category were counted as having symptoms of the disorder, based on criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders.
During the two years of the study, the researchers surveyed the teens every six months and asked them about the frequency of their participation in 14 different kinds of online activities such as texting, sharing on social media and streaming videos or music.
About half of the students said they check social media sites and text many times every day.
“These results show that teens are really attached to their [digital] technologies, throughout the day,” says Radesky, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “It really captured the pervasive design that so many of these mobile technologies have taken on.”
By and large, students who frequently used six or more activities had a higher likelihood of developing ADHD symptoms.
For instance, among the 51 students who frequently did all 14 online activities, 10.5 percent showed ADHD symptoms over the course of the study. And of the 114 teens who frequently did seven digital activities, 9.5 showed symptoms. In contrast, only 4.6 percent of the 495 kids who didn’t do any of the activities frequently had new ADHD symptoms over the two-year period.
In other words, teens who were high frequency users of seven or 14 digital media platforms were more than twice as likely to develop ADHD symptoms than teens who did not use any media platform at a high frequency rate, notes Leventhal.
He and his colleagues statistically controlled for other potential confounding factors like family income level, race/ethnicity and pre-existing mental health conditions.Leventhal is quick to caution that his study does not prove that being plugged into their devices caused ADHD among teens. “We don’t know that,” he says.
Showing ADHD symptoms is not the same as ADHD diagnosis,which is a multi-step process that involves a clinician in addition to the questionnaire. The study did not diagnose any of the kids with ADHD.
The study doesn’t prove causation — it finds an association. Still, because the study involved students who did not show symptoms in the beginning, the results give some cause for concern, Leventhal says. “To have 10-ish percent [of the high frequency media users] have the occurrence of new symptoms is fairly high,” he says.
Starting the study with kids who did not have ADHD at baseline was “a smart choice.” notes Radesky. “It helps reduce the chicken and egg situation.”
One of the strengths of the study is that it included a large number of teens from a diverse backgrounds, because “sociodemographic diversity has been a limitation of prior studies on digital media,” she writes in the JAMA editorial.
While the study doesn’t show that all children are at risk of developing problems with attention and hyperactivity, “there is probably a sub-sample of kids who are more vulnerable,” notes Radesky.
For example, the study found that children with mental health problems were more likely to develop these symptoms.
“That’s important because those are the kids who are doing their emotional expression online,” says Radesky. “They might be getting into more drama online, getting into more cyber bullying. And that can definitely be dysregulating and affect your ability to focus on things.”
However, the study did have some limitations, she notes.
“There are other things changing over time that might explain the results you’re seeing,” she says. “In this case, they did not collect data on teenagers’ sleep. They didn’t have information on what the family dynamics were like at home, you know how involved were the parents? … How much media is being used at home by the parents?”
Previous studies have shown that social media use is associated with disturbed sleep, which could itself affect children’s ability to focus in school and that might manifest in ADHD-like symptoms.
Similarly, “the more parents are on their phone, the more teens are likely to be as well,” adds Radesky.
Radesky, who co-wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics’ media use guidelines, says that she recommends parents and their children pause and reflect on how they use media, so children can understand the benefits and pitfalls of their online habits.
“I’d really like teenagers to develop a sense of tech savviness … so they don’t all feel this pressure to be online constantly in order to feel social relevance or acceptance,” she says.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/17/629517464/more-screen-time-for-teens-may-fuel-adhd-symptoms?sc=17&f=1001&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app
Twitter says users may see a drop in their followers as it begins removing suspicious accounts it has locked.
This is exactly what Facebook should be doing…constantly. It’s also why I spend so very little time on either of these social media platforms, and in fact, sadly, am very suspicious of all social media now that is based on accruing followers, click-like buttons, anonymous comments etc.
I publish my blog, in my control, respond to known or verified contacts, and generally just hope for the best that readers find my content useful to their lives.
Twitter has begun removing millions of locked accounts from users’ lists of followers, in an attempt to crack down further on social media fraud.
The move will eliminate tens of millions of frozen accounts Twitter has deemed suspicious and reduce the total combined follower count on the platform by about 6 percent.
“Most people will see a change of four followers or fewer; others with larger follower counts will experience a more significant drop,” wrote Twitter’s legal, policy and trust and safety lead Vijaya Gadde in a corporate blog post. “We understand this may be hard for some, but we believe accuracy and transparency make Twitter a more trusted service for public conversation.”
In May of this year Twitter announced that it was locking almost 10 million suspicious accounts per week and removing many for anti-spam policies. “Due to technology and process improvements during the past year, we are now removing 214% more accounts for violating our spam policies on a year-on-year basis,” Twitter said in a company blog post.
Twitter has come under criticism for allowing hate speech and has also been used as a tool for Russian influence. NPR’s Tim Mak and Libby Berry reported that Russia’s “information attack against the United States” during the 2016 campaign included Russians posing as American social media users and creating fake Twitter accounts that purported to be local newspapers.
“NPR has reviewed information connected with the investigation and found 48 such accounts. They have names such as @ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post.
” ‘A not-insignificant amount of those had some sort of variation on what appeared to be a homegrown local news site,’ said Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks Russian influence operations and first noticed this trend.
“Another example: The Internet Research Agency created an account that looks like it is the Chicago Daily News. That newspaper shuttered in 1978.”
Mak reports these fake Twitter accounts distributed genuine news, building trust with readers, possibly for “some future, unforeseen effort.”
“Another twist: These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.
” ‘They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story,’ Schafer told NPR. ‘But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history.’ “
Mak reports Twitter suspended these fake accounts, which were created in Russia.
Twitter says its continued crackdown on fraudulent accounts will not impact its total number of users. CFO Ned Segal said in a tweet that “most accounts we remove are not included in our reported metrics as they have not been active on the platform for 30 days or more, or we catch them at sign up and they are never counted.”
Earlier this week a Washington Post report that Twitter had suspended 70 million users in May and June caused the social media platform’s stock price to fall about 9 percent. Thursday, Twitter’s stock price remained stable, and some advertisers have praised Twitter for its decision.
In a statement, Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, said, “Our digital ecosystem is being polluted by a growing number of fake user accounts, so Twitter’s commitment to cleaning up the digital space should be welcomed wholeheartedly by everyone, from users of the platforms, to creators and advertisers. People having an artificially-inflated follower count made up of bots and redundant accounts is at best deceiving and at worst, fraud. It serves no one and undermines trust in the entire system.”
“Greater transparency leads to greater authenticity, which in turn builds trust,” Weed continued. “This is a big step for the industry and I hope others will follow suit.”
Mumbai’s Juhu beach is strewn with trash at low tide during monsoon season. Floodwaters flush garbage out of the city and into the Arabian Sea. As tides ebb, beaches are blanketed in trash, much of it plastic. (Lauren Frayer/NPR)
Heard on Morning Edition, Via NPR
From June to September, monsoon rains fall on Mumbai, India’s largest city, delivering relief from stifling heat and vital nourishment to surrounding farmland. But they also bring an unwelcome visitor: Tons of garbage wash up on the city’s shores.
When Mumbai floods, the water flushes waste out of city streets, storm drains and slums and sends it to the Arabian Sea. Then the tides ebb and blanket the beaches in that trash — most of it, plastic.
And now the government is taking action with a ban on plastics.
It’s easy to see the scope of the problem. Joggers, fishermen and families out for a weekend stroll on the waterfront have to clear a path through ankle-deep garbage.
Volunteers and some municipal workers carry buckets of trash to a bulldozer on Mumbai’s Versova Beach. Three years ago, a lawyer who lives near the beach, Afroz Shah, started a cleanup campaign on Facebook and Twitter. (Lauren Frayer/NPR)
Three years ago, a lawyer who lives near Mumbai’s Versova Beach decided he’d had enough.
“The culture of using and throwing away is dangerous. For example, plastic straws. You don’t need plastic straws in your life! They create havoc in a marine environment,” says lawyer Afroz Shah, who launched a cleanup campaign on Facebook and Twitter
I visited Versova Beach last week and saw about 50 volunteers picking up trash – at 7 a.m. on a weekday, in the rain. Among the items raked up and deposited into idling dump trucks: plastic soda bottles, empty chip bags, old sandals, toothpaste tubes, plastic bags — and many, many plastic straws.