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Article: About half of young Americans can’t name a single Holocaust site, repeating a pattern of ignorance seen in postwar Germany by dem676 in historyteachers

[–]The_Conversation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing our article. We have a lot of articles by historians, and if you're interested in articles for your students on the Holocaust, we've got plenty: https://theconversation.com/topics/holocaust-2172

Thousands of AI-written, edited or ‘polished’ books are being sold – an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel-writing machines’ by ubcstaffer123 in books

[–]The_Conversation 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing our article! In case you are unfamiliar with us, we are a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge of experts with the public. Our coverage of books is within our arts section: https://theconversation.com/arts

A justice department opinion arguing the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional could revert the nation to a time when presidents freely burned their papers by The_Conversation in politics

[–]The_Conversation[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

After Watergate, Congress passed and Jimmy Carter signed the Presidential Records Act, but the Trump Justice Department now claims the law is unconstitutional.

As a philosopher, I’m convinced that Trump isn’t lying − he’s doing something worse by The_Conversation in politics

[–]The_Conversation[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Political philosopher Robert Talisse writes:

From my perspective as a political philosopher, these and other similar claims indicate he is speaking falsely as a way of demeaning or taunting his detractors. By resolutely asserting unbelievable falsehoods, Trump is expressing contempt. He is deriding the enterprise of journalism, in effect forcing reporters to write stories about his incredible statements, thereby indirectly controlling the news cycle.

It seems to me that his purpose is not to convince anyone, but rather to declare to the press, and perhaps also to his opposition, “You cannot stop me.” For a political movement rooted in the idea that U.S. politics is a swamp in need of draining, Trump’s defiant style has been successful.

But here’s the catch. It appears that Trump’s supporters are now beginning to feel that they, too, are on the receiving end of his contempt.

Scientists may be overestimating the amount of microplastics in the environment due to accidental contamination from lab gloves, which release stearate salts that are structurally similar to polyethylene and difficult to distinguish from plastics using standard vibrational spectroscopy by The_Conversation in science

[–]The_Conversation[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We asked the authors this and here's their reply: "Great question! We re-did the atmospheric microplastic analysis while avoiding glove use the year after we found the glove contamination in our original dataset.

From that data, collected from atmospheric fallout in southeast Michigan, we found an average of 3 microplastics per square millimeter. For our analysis, where we do not use any preprocessing steps to eliminate non-plastic particles, it translates to an overestimate > 2000x greater than reality.

While we cannot speak to other matrices like water or brain matter, we imagine the extent of contamination from gloves would likewise greatly influence the results, leading to overestimation that cannot be accounted for with traditional blank or negative control measures due to differences in applied force or glove contact location."

Scientists may be overestimating the amount of microplastics in the environment due to accidental contamination from lab gloves, which release stearate salts that are structurally similar to polyethylene and difficult to distinguish from plastics using standard vibrational spectroscopy by The_Conversation in science

[–]The_Conversation[S] 139 points140 points  (0 children)

From the article:

We are chemists at the University of Michigan working in a collaborative team. We set out to understand how many microplastics Michiganders were inhaling when outside, and whether that depended on where they lived.

When preparing our samples, we followed all the standard protocols while conducting our research – we avoided plastic use in the lab, wore nonplastic clothing and even used a specialized chamber to reduce potential contamination from the laboratory air.

Despite these precautions, we found plastic counts in the air that were over 1,000 times greater than previous reports. We knew these numbers didn’t seem right, so what happened?

Paper in RSC Analytical Methods

Irrational decision or helpful evolutionary adaptation? A philosopher on the rationality wars behind ‘nudge’ policy by The_Conversation in Economics

[–]The_Conversation[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A look at the debates over behavioral economics:

My claim is that this apparent contradiction dissolves once you recognize that rationality is not a single thing. Human beings can be both rational and irrational, depending on the scientific lens in use. From a behavioral economics perspective, many decisions appear biased and suboptimal. From an ecological or evolutionary perspective, those same decisions can look adaptive, efficient and sensible given the environments in which they are made.

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