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01/04/2025

How to prevent social media doomscrolling from controlling you

What do modern social media users have in common with American soldiers who decided not to return to the United States after being held as prisoners of war in North Korea? More than you might think, according to one professor.

We’re all potential victims of mind control, according to Rebecca Lemov, a historian of science at Harvard University and author of the new book “The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion.”

Those shown more positive posts seemed happier, and those who saw more negative posts seemed less happy.

“The more time is spent on social media, the less time is spent in social groups.”

Being lonely is terrible for a person’s mental health. One study conducted during Covid-19 lockdowns found loneliness was heavily associated with greater depression and thoughts of su***de.

What to do about it: To combat what former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called an epidemic of loneliness, Lemov recommended challenging yourself to join groups that meet offline to socialize, whether it’s a book club, a walking group, card game night, ultimate frisbee (or name your fun activity here).

It doesn’t even have to be that organized all the time. I like to remind my students that they can put their phones away and talk to the people next to them on the bus, at lunch and at social events. Then they’ll have an opportunity to strike up conversations and sometimes true friendships.

Lemov recommended social media users work on what’s called good sleep hygiene.

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/31/health/social-media-mind-control-wellness/index.html

After decades of studying brainwashing, author Rebecca Lemov concludes we all can be manipulated, especially when it comes to social media. Here’s what to do about it.

26/03/2025

From the Yorkshire Moors in England to the South African wilderness, star bathing is emerging as a transformative wellness trend – offering awe, calm and a cosmic reset.

A growing number of spas and retreats around the world offer star bathing packages.

Perhaps it doesn't matter how many stars I can see. As Westmoquette says: "Even if you can only see one star – that light's been travelling across the universe for hundreds and hundreds of years to hit your eyeball at that precise moment. Against all the odds, you're seeing that ray of light. That means something.

Whisperer Robren Show: The Secret of Everything

Read more. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250324-star-bathing-the-next-big-thing-in-travel

From the Yorkshire Moors in England to the South African wilderness, star bathing is emerging as a transformative wellness trend – offering awe, calm and a cosmic reset.

26/03/2025

Why are a growing number of airlines banning power banks on flights?

Starting in April, Singapore Airlines is banning passengers from using power banks to charge phones and personal devices in-flight. Power banks are also not allowed to be charged using aircraft USB ports.

Customers may bring power banks with a capacity of up to 100Wh, while those between 100Wh (27,000 mAh)and 160Wh require airline approval. The same rules apply on Scoot, its subsidiary, low-cost carrier.

Low-cost carrier Air Asia said it will require passengers to store power banks under the seat or in the seat pocket, and prohibit charging portable electronic devices throughout the flight.

The Robren Show: Expert advice you can trust.

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/26/travel/airline-power-bank-rules-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html

Several airlines in Asia are tightening rules on carrying lithium batteries on planes following a series of overheating and fire incidents on board.

20/03/2025

World’s 20 happiest countries in 2025
1. Finland
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Sweden
5. Netherlands
6. Costa Rica
7. Norway
8. Israel
9. Luxembourg
10. Mexico
11. Australia
12. New Zealand
13. Switzerland
14. Belgium
15. Ireland
16. Lithuania
17. Austria
18. Canada
19. Slovenia
20. Czech Republic
24. USA

Asia is absent in the Top 20 rankings.

At the bottom of the list
Afghanistan (No. 147) is once again last on the list. Sierra Leone (No. 146), Lebanon (No. 145), Malawi (No. 144) and Zimbabwe (No. 143) make up the rest of the bottom five for happiness.

Read more:

The world’s happiest country has managed to keep its No. 1 ranking for eight years running. The picture in the United States isn’t so rosy.

08/03/2025

Happy International Women's Day 2025

I celebrate and salute my 94 years old mother taking care of her mentally challenged son Jimmy for 73 years.

Whisperer Robren Show: The Secret of Everything

08/03/2025

The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube's algorithm.

Among the findings the researchers estimate that the median video has been watched just 41 times; posts with more than 130 views are actually in the top third of the service's most popular content. In other words, the vast majority of YouTube is practically invisible.

There's a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm – and it’s nothing like what you know. The vast majority of YouTube's estimated 14.8 billion videos have almost never been seen. Until now.

Most of these videos aren't meant for us to see. They exist because people need a digital attic to store their memories. It's an internet unshaped by the pressures of clicks and algorithms – a glimpse into a place where content doesn't have to perform, where it can simply exist.

"We tend to assume the reason to use social media is to try to be an influencer, either you're Joe Rogan or you're a failure. But that's the wrong way to think about it," says Ethan Zuckerman, who leads the YouTube research as the director of the University of Massachusetts' Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure.

YouTube tells the BBC it's incorrect to say the platform doesn't let you see videos with low views or content from small channels. The algorithm's job is to help people find the videos they want to watch and that will give them value, YouTube says, and sometimes that does include videos with a small number of views.

"The magic of YouTube is that whether a video has 60 views or six million, people are able to find community, learn a new skill, be entertained, or share their voice with the world," says Boot Bullwinkle, a YouTube spokesperson. "Every channel starts from the same blank slate, from which they can build an audience and grow a business."

Most of YouTube comes from outside of the US, in fact. Zuckerman's lab has estimated that over 70% of YouTube videos are in languages other than English.

People playing video games seems to make up almost 20% of YouTube.

"I don't get a big audience a lot of the time… I just do it because of the joy it brings me" – Bill "WoofDriver" Hellman. He's posted more than 2,400 YouTube videos in the last 14 years, but for all the effort, his channel often gets little traction. Many videos have views in the low double digits. Hellman says. "Maybe it'll inspire someone to take better care of their dogs, but really, I use YouTube like the cloud, so I have a place to document my adventures." YouTube doesn't pay the bills, and the WoofDriver isn't selling anything.

Some videos are heartrending. There was a moving tribute to a departed cat from her owner, Tyler. "Kiko didn't make it," he says, holding back tears. "It's so darn quiet without her here."

Research suggests YouTube's algorithm amplifies negativity, reinforces stereotypes and gives users little control over the content they don't want to see. Over the years, YouTube has faced increasing criticism over concerns about hate speech, political extremism and misinformation. Along with other social media platforms, YouTube has been utilised by drug cartels and harnessed by terrorists as a tool for promotion and recruitment.

YouTube says that the company has employed a set of community guidelines since its earliest days to establish what's allowed on the platform. The company says it has redoubled efforts to address its responsibilities. One way YouTube measures its success is through its "violative view rate".

In 2017, for every 10,000 views on YouTube, 63-72 views came from content that violated YouTube policies, but today that number has fallen to eight to nine views, according to the company.

YouTube says it gives users several ways to manage YouTube recommendations and search results, such as deleting your Watch History.

The YouTube we talk about – the one full of celebrities, scandals and manufactured virality – only tells part of the story. The majority exists in quiet moments, in shaky camera work and voices meant for no one in particular. I watched hundreds of these videos.

Everything one of them is public, but it's also clear that most people didn't upload this content for strangers. It was like being let in on a secret, a sprawling, uncurated documentary of human life. But watching it also felt like work compared to the doomscroll-inducing entertainment you get from the algorithm. Eventually, I closed my tabs and headed back to the YouTube homepage, back to the polished world of the corporate internet.

Whisperer Robren Show: The Secret of Everything - including YouTube.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250306-inside-youtubes-hidden-world-of-forgotten-videos

There's a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm – and it’s nothing like what you know.

07/03/2025

The Law of Attraction is a powerful tool that can be used to attract anything into your life, including your soulmate. However, it is important to remember that the Law of Attraction is not a magic wand. It takes time and effort to manifest your desires.

You can attract your Soulmates for love, business partnerships, spiritual purpose, calling, and for any purpose.

Here are seven ways to attract your soulmate using the Law of Attraction:

Read full article: https://spiri.community/how-to-attract-your-soulmates.html
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03/03/2025

The YouTube videos that changed the way we think about ourselves

In 2006, Time Magazine named its annual Person of the Year: you. "Yes you," the magazine read. "You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world." Its cover featured a mirror to reflect reader's image – emblazoned on a computer screen tuned to a site modelled after YouTube. It was just a year after YouTube's launch, but already, it had shifted our understanding of the role we would play in the coming era.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of YouTube. It's gone from a novel tool to an unshakable pillar of technological infrastructure. Some 2.5 billion people log on every month. The company says people who watch YouTube on their TVs consume a billion hours of video a day, to say nothing of time spent on the app and website. But as much as YouTube changed how we use the internet, it's had an equally significant impact on our offline lives.

[1] Canon Rock: The dawn of online collaboration
[2] lonelygirl15: What is Reality?
[3] Coming out videos: Our authentic selves
[4] 'WHY I REALLY AM QUITTING SOCIAL MEDIA': When enough is enough
[5] YouTube Rewind 2018: Why do we love to hate?

Robren Show: The Secret of Everything

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250228-5-youtube-videos-that-changed-the-way-we-think-about-ourselves

As YouTube turns 20 years old, the platform's content has fundamentally altered the way we think and feel about each other, and ourselves.

03/03/2025

Hong Kong aims to cut spending by slashing 10,000 civil service jobs in an effort to rein in a rising deficit, and plans a big AI push as it navigates headwinds from global economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and a weak property market.

Chan said 10,000 civil servant jobs would be cut by April 2027, representing a reduction of 2 per cent of the civil service in each of the coming two years. Public sector salaries will also be frozen this year.

Separately, in line with China's growing push to develop self-reliance in AI and other high technology sectors including robotics, Chan said Hong Kong would "leverage its strength as an international platform for stepping up the development of the AI industry". The city has earmarked HK$1 billion for an AI Research and development institute.

Hong Kong's finances have been hurt in the last three years by plunging revenues from land premiums - which developers pay for land use - as home prices tumbled nearly 30 per cent.

Land sales have traditionally been a main source of income for the government, contributing more than 20 per cent to coffers, a figure that has now slipped to around 5 per cent. Hong Kong's fiscal reserves are now around HK$647.3 billion.

Robren Show: The Secret of Everything

Read more: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/hong-kong-annual-budget-2025-spending-cut-ai-push-4960766

HONG KONG: Hong Kong aims to cut spending by slashing 10,000 civil service jobs in an effort to rein in a rising deficit, and plans a big AI push as it navigates headwinds from global economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and a weak property market. "It gives us a clear pathway towards the

26/02/2025

Major Asia bank to cut 4,000 roles as AI replaces humans

The move will affect temporary and contract staff, a bank spokesperson said, with the reduction in the workforce coming from "natural attrition" as projects are completed.

Permanent staff are not affected by the cuts. The bank's outgoing chief executive Piyush Gupta also said it expected to create around 1,000 new AI-related jobs.

It makes DBS one of the first major banks to offer details on how AI will affect its operations. The ongoing proliferation of AI technology has put its benefits and risks under the spotlight, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying in 2024 that it is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs worldwide.

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, told the BBC last year that AI will not be a "mass destroyer of jobs" and human workers will learn to work with new technologies.

International AI Association: Expert advice you can trust.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7xn9y64po

It makes DBS one of the first major banks to offer details on how AI will affect its operations.

25/02/2025

Artists release silent album in protest at AI copyright proposals

More than 1,000 musicians - including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush - are to release a silent album in protest at the UK government's planned changes to copyright law, which they say would make it easier for AI companies to train models using copyrighted work without a licence.

The artists hope This What We Want?, which is released on Tuesday, will draw attention to the potential impact on livelihoods and the UK music industry.

Music stars including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn say law changes would damage people's livelihoods.

24/02/2025

The qualities that make us stand out the most, and the main reasons that people find us attractive, can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes our most appealing traits can become a reason for a breakup.

"The ick" was one of the more unusual words to be added to the Cambridge Dictionary in 2024. The phrase describes the feeling of suddenly seeing something about a partner in a new light, and finding it so unattractive it can't be unseen. Once you have the ick, it is unfortunately incurable.

While the phrase might be intended in a lighthearted manner, it shows that there can be unattractive qualities about a partner that are not immediately obvious. In fact, we might have found those qualities really attractive earlier in the relationship.

This is called "fatal attraction" – when a person comes to dislike aspects of a partner that they were initially attracted to. "It doesn't mean fatal in the sense of deadly, but fatal as in the sense of prophetic," says Diane Felmlee, a social psychologist from Penn State University in the US.

"I like to think of it as having 'too much' of an attractive quality," she says. "Disenchantment with a partner can occur even when people get what they want, and perhaps because they get what they want."

People in unhappy relationships have poorer physical health, higher blood pressure, are at higher risk of poor mental health and have worse work-life balance, among many other problems.

Whisperer Robren Show: The Secret of Everything - including relationships

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250221-fatal-attraction-why-your-most-attractive-qualities-can-become-a-turn-off

The qualities that make us stand out the most, and the main reasons that people find us attractive, can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes they can become a reason for a breakup.