The Ed's Up #162

Why Online Allies Matter in Fighting Harassment

"By programming a variety of Twitter bots to respond to racist abuse against black users, he showed that a simple one-tweet rebuke can actually reduce online racism. “I like to read this as optimistic,” he says. “It is possible to change people’s behavior and not just for a short amount of time.” But there’s a catch: The rebukes only worked if they came from white people (or bots with white profile pictures) with lots of followers. “There’s a reason why higher-status members of these communities bear a larger share of the responsibility for speaking out against racist or bigoted speech,” says Betsy Levy Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University. (Image: Dado Ruvic) 
 

Who Will Advise Trump on Science?

"In 1976, President Gerald Ford appointed physicist H. Guyford Stever as the first Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Having previously advised the military during World War II, and directed the National Science Foundation for four years, Stever became the first of a long line of advisors who counseled the White House on matters of science and technology—everything from disease outbreaks to climate change to nanotechnology. His current counterpart John Holdren, formerly a professor of environmental policy at Harvard University, has performed the same service for Barack Obama since 2009, together with a 135-person team. And in a few short months, he will hand over his duties to someone else—a new appointee who will become President-elect Donald Trump’s scientific consigliere. Who will that person be?" (Image: Carlo Allegri) 
 

Scientists Stink at Reverse-Engineering Smells

"Light and sound are predictable. Smells are not. If you knew the wavelength of a beam of light, you could tell me what most people would see when they looked at it: 480 nanometers looks blue, and 650 nanometers looks red. If you knew the frequency of a musical note, you could name that note: 261 Hertz is middle C. But if you saw the chemical structure of a molecule, you wouldn’t know what it smelled like—or even if it smelled of anything at all. Unless you actually stick your nose over some benzaldehyde, you wouldn’t be able to predict that it smelled like almonds. If you saw dimethyl sulfide drawn on a page, you couldn’t foresee that it carried the scent of the sea. This is a longstanding problem, but one that a team of scientists—and a horde of volunteers and citizen scientists—have come a little closer to cracking."
 

More good reads

• We take a break from the continuing horror to bring you a soothing video of growing crystals
• Google does Pictionary
• The mystery of the pulsating spider. By Nicky Bay.
• Even in 2016, scientists can still stumble on large deep sea creatures that stump them. By Jennifer Frazer
• "Mostly, though, the herpes-carrying monkeys are “a hell of a lot less scary than climate change.” By Mariana Zapata
• Their brains had the telltale signs of Alzheimer’s. So why did they still have nimble minds? By Sharon Begley
• We can fix climate change, but only if we refuse to abandon hope. By Zoe Williams
• “In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving.” Man jumps into acidic Yellowstone pool.
• The most terrifying graph of 2016; (source)
• How casinos enable gambling addicts, costing people their jobs, families, and lives. By John Rosengren.
• We know about Theranos thanks to one brave whistleblower—the grand-son of one of the directors. By John Carreyrou
• The Japanese museum of rocks that look like faces. By Johnny Strategy.
• The kids suing the government over climate change are our best hope now. Eric Holthaus on a precedent-setting case
• Also fucked: coconuts. By Sarah Zhang
• The love song of Jeremy, the left-handed snail. By Veronique Greenwood

• Reflections
  • How viral fake election news outperformed real news on Facebook in the final months of the US election, by Craig Silverman. Also: confessions from a fake news writer.
  • This is Not Normal: Joshua Foust on resisting normalization. Related: A Time for Refusal, by Teju Cole, on “rhinoceritis” 
  • “Historical analogies are always flawed, but some moral principles shine eternal”, by Liel Liebowitz
  • “The left can win over rural America without compromising its values. But it will take time and building relationships”, by Todd VanDerWerff
  • “I’m a Coastal Elite From the Midwest: The Real Bubble is Rural America”, by Patrick Thornton
  • Donald Trump’s first alarming week as president-elect, by Ryan Lizza
• Consequences
  • Hate crimes since the election: stories, more stories, and numbers
  • After Trump win, New Yorkers volunteer to aid fearful commuters, by Alexandra King
  • Mars is still a priority under Trump; Earth, no so much, by Nadia Drake
  • How Trump's space policy could usher in a new dark age in the Earth sciences, by Ross Andersen.
  • Most people are wildly underestimating what Trump’s win will mean for the environment, by David Roberts and Brad Plumer.
  • The problems with abandoning the Paris agreement, by Robinson Meyer
• Actions
  • Various guides have been compiled for helping and protecting at-risk communities, including this, this, this, this, and this.
  • Tips for responding to everyday bigotry, and a list of anti-bigotry organizations.