John Gable

Major new report on global trends in mental health, out today from Sapien Labs. Data from 2.5 million people across 85 countries. Some of the most important findings: 1) Young adults used to generally have good mental health, compared to older generations. But now, in ALL countries examined, they are doing badly compared to older generations in that country. 2) "Four key factors have emerged that together predict three quarters of this effect. These are diminished family bonds, diminished spirituality, smartphones at increasingly young age, and increasing consumption of ultra-processed food." 3) The decline of young people's mental health is "most pronounced in the wealthier and more developed countries." They note that it is in such countries that smartphones are given earliest, junk food is most heavily consumed, spirituality is most diminished, and family ties are looser and often weaker. 4) "A younger age of first smartphone ownership is associated with increased suicidal thoughts, aggression, and other problems in adulthood." 5) Here is their summary of findings on early smartphone ownership: "GenZ is the first generation to grow up with a smartphone. Among this group, the younger they acquired their first smartphone in childhood, the more likely they are to have struggles as adults. These struggles extend beyond sadness and anxiety to less discussed symptoms, such as a sense of being detached from reality, suicidal thoughts, and aggression towards others. The effects arise through disruption of sleep, increased risk of exposure to harmful online content, predators, and explicit material as well as increased probabilities of cyberbullying during crucial developmental years. Excessive time spent on smartphones also diminishes the development of social cognition that requires learned interpretation of facial expressions, body language, and group dynamics. The negative impacts are particularly sharp below age 13." The report is short, accessible, and important. Read it here: sapienlabs.org/global-mind-he…

An AllSides intern in PA first noticed Harris Google Ads that misrepresent the news. We reveal bias/ misinfo from left to right, this was huge. We shared our findings, now hot on @axios, @newrepublic @FoxNews @seanhannity @musk @timcast @Newsweek @nypost @DailyCaller @USATODAY

AllSides proudly broke the viral story about the Harris campaign rewriting news headlines on Google. @axios and other media across the spectrum picked it up. Here's how we uncovered it and shared it with the world 🧵

@threadreaderapp @threadreaderapp unroll

Our bot 🤖 unrolls these Twitter threads in a blog format so it's easier to read the whole story without any noise! Pretty cool right?

New to unrolling threads? Not sure how it works? You can practice here! Simply mention our name with the keyword "unroll" to any of the tweets in this thread so you can see how unrolling works!

@thefuturebyJC @ValueAnalyst1 @threadreaderapp unroll

These kinds of comments from people who are clearly accomplished and presumably brilliant in their own right really floor me. AFAIK Elon’s approach to risk is perfectly obvious. He starts at the end: 1. If this thing existed would it be inherently valuable? 2. Is it physically possible? 3. All things considered is solving it likely to be profitable. Yes, yes, yes - then allocate capital including top talent to it. This is not risk taking in any ordinary sense. While getting torpedoed mid-project is possible, success in the final outcome is the most certain thing about it.

Peter Thiel on Elon Musk 🔊 “You know, when Elon was building both Tesla and SpaceX in the 2000s, people thought he was just really, really crazy. I think even those of us who had worked with him at PayPal, I mean, there’s this PayPal book that David Sacks and I thought of writing, and the Elon chapter was titled something like, “The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk.” There are all these crazy Elon stories I could tell... If one of the two companies had succeeded, you would say, “Well, maybe he still got really lucky,” but when two out of two companies that people thought were completely harebrained in the 2000s, when they both succeed, man, you have to somehow reassess it, and somehow, the rest of us, somehow, are too risk averse, or there’s something about risk he knows that we don’t, or something like this.”

@elonmusk @lexfridman Journalists need feedback from a balanced group of Americans and bias experts. Our Media Bias Audits have helped newsrooms in LA and NYC go from Lean Left to Center biases in less than 2 years.

Study on polarization using AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ found: 👉the left uses more emojis 👉the left uses more language like sis/vibe/af/tbh 👉the right uses more political names & terms like constitution/border/taxpayer 👉where the left talks about birthdays & music, the right talks freedom, government, Biden...and about the left (a lot)

AllSides was reposted by Musk (again) showing how the bias of Google News. We are replying with a more complete picture that shows several news aggregators to help people avoid falling into either a left or right news bubble.

Whether it is just left news or right news, don't get sucked in or fooled into believing that aggregators aren't biased too. In order to think for ourselves and have a healthy, vibrant democratic society, we need to get out of these one-sided, heavily biased news bubbles.

I had a conversation with a friend this week about how we all become captured by culture wars. We can call it The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle. Here is how it goes: 1. Some woke news story hits the press. -“Cats suffer from racial discrimination or screwing in lightbulbs needs to be recognised as a valid sexual kink or something.” 2. The Right Wing antibody response activates. -“Look at how insane these people are. *Matt Walsh quote tweets the article and calls it obnoxious* This is the problem with our convenient, decadent, TikTok society.” 3. This reaction causes the story to gain infinitely more traction than it ever would have done by signal boosting the original fringe-scenario into a much bigger event. ​ 4. The Left Wing counter-response activates. -“Right wingers lose their minds over one woman with a particularly dark cat. The Daily Wire has meltdown over insignificant troll article.” -In times where the original story is less insane, this includes a defence of the original article too. “Cats actually CAN experience trauma, minimising this is the REAL problem.” 5. The Right Wing re-reaction kicks into gear. -“Apparently I’m insane for pushing back against Cat Trauma. See this is the problem, if we don’t stand our ground, these blue haired idiots will take over the country.” 6. Finally, the Touch Grass Meta-Reactionaries steam in. -“The real issue is people talking about this issue. Look at how silly this whole thing is. It’s time to check out of the culture war. We should reconnect with what really matters. You should move onto the ranch next to Ryan Holiday and hammer fence posts into the ground for the rest of time.” This cycle is banal. It’s excruciatingly repetitive. So why does it sustain our attention if basically every discussion follows the same cycle? Because each story is sprinkled with just enough novelty to give it the illusion that this is a new, different event. Which legitimates the pushback… “We’ve not seen THIS Trans Flag with People Who Suffer From A Gluten Intolerance included in it before.” It’s like a 20th season of Lost where they’re back on an island for the 7th time and need to escape, but THIS TIME IT’S WINTER. The Culture War’s Shiny Object Cycle does my head in. It does my head in because I get captured by it. I see a bank rewriting classic fairy tales into a boss-bitch remake called Fairer Tales: Princesses Doing It For Themselves and think “this is fucking dumb, where’s Douglas Murray, I need him to decimate this idea with me.” It’s cathartic. Calling out insane ideas written by idiots is so compelling and fun and easy to do that it’s like being a cocaine addict with Pablo Escobar as a next door neighbour. The memes of production are whirring at maximum RPM and we’re all caught in the vortex. It was Douglas who reminded me why I’m getting so exasperated with this cycle. It is a distraction. A distraction from our attention being focussed on things which are actually meaningful. Not just meaningful in a “will you remember this when you’re dead”-way. But in a “there’s other issues that are more important to talk about”-way too. There’s entire American cities with fentanyl epidemics. 80% of suicides of people aged 18 to 24 are men. I want to hear Peterson talk about dealing with finding meaning in a world stripped of all its guard rails. I want Taleb to be writing about applying complex maths to simple life problems. Many of the smartest people on the planet have had their attention captured arguing about whether men are men and women are women or not over the last few years. And even more of the normal ones too. All of our collective minds are held hostage by an endless cycle of shiny objects that aggravate both sides and makes them feel righteous for standing their ground. I think this is a bottomless pit. I don’t think it’s going to stop. I will almost certainly bring up stories like these in future. But I’m gonna try hard to focus more on stuff that matters in 50 years, not just in 50 minutes. And probably so should you.

@Timcast Most are addicted to a broken click-bait biz model that kills their credibility as they abandon balanced news in favor of partisan bias to thrill their audience, agenda or their own egos. So people look for alternatives like AllSides.com or trusted X leaders.

Google is rigging the 2024 election

Caitlin - thanks for your commentary. We understand there is much more to bias than left vs right - there is also authoritarian to libertarian, establishment to anti-establishment, East to West, and so on. US media is overly focused on left to right, and generally biased toward the US worldview. Note that AllSides is not BothSides. Our mission is to free people from filter bubbles, including US-centric bubbles, and we are confident in our bias ratings within that scope. We are currently working internally on how to effectively evaluate bias systematically worldwide. We appreciate your accurate concerns about the biases of and beyond US media at large and hope to offer more resources for media literacy in this area soon. --> More info on what we do and how we do it: allsides.com/about/editoria…

@lexfridman Thanks for sharing! Here’s the latest version of our chart, with updated ratings for NPR, Newsweek, USA Today and more. allsides.com/media-bias/med…

Cool to see @elonmusk retweet this post of @AllSidesNow media bias chart. We use patented systems to reflect the average judgments of all Americans from left to right, not just an elite few, by having people across the country look only at the content (not knowing the brand).

@rajmathai CEO from AllSides balanced news service here. FYI your guest politics expert was wrong - Reagan was not the last elected GOP Gov - she forgot Wilson and Deukmeijan. Hard to catch those mistakes live - good luck!

Happy #WorkaholicsDay! Work hard & play hard! Large format bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon ready for your inscription or ready to ship. 📲707-400-9280 #workaholicsday #workaholic #playaholic #gobigorgohome #livinglarge #bigbottles #napacabernet

Time to visit wine country! Be sure to see Veraison!

@winewankers @Cultivar_SF Haha!

You can't buy happiness but you can buy #wine

I'm discussing “(Dis)Misinformation and What We Can(t) Do About It” with @Sammiesark, @lisagable, @danihaberman, and Remarkable Minds. Tomorrow, Jul 2 at 1:00 PM EDT on @clubhouse. Join us! clubhouse.com/event/M4Lgg8jJ