Ig Nobel Prize winner Bolsonaro Announces New Medical Insights

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who in 2020 co-won an Ig Nobel Prize for his teachings about the Covid-19 pandemic, is yet again pushing public health discussions into new and perhaps unimagined territory. The Washington Post reports: SAO PAULO, Brazil — Facebook removed a video in which Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro falsely associated coronavirus vaccines with […]

Disruptive technology: Twitter and marital breakups, maybe

If you enjoy fun, conceivably-partly-true tales about disruptive technologies (as some people do — see, for example, Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen‘s tidy tales of disruption), then pay heed to the scholarly studies from Russell B. Clayton. Clayton, at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has a new study about Twitter and marital breakups: “The Third Wheel: The Impact of Twitter Use on […]

Worrying about what other people might think of you, if you haven’t worried about what other people might think about you

A new study suggests that Facebook users who haven’t worried about what other people might think about them might worry about what other people think about them. The study also suggests that this is more true of some people than of others. (Thanks to investigator Erwin Kompanje for bringing this to our attention.)  The study is: “Awkward […]

Use Rollercoaster to Counteract Facebook

Combining two recent reports in medical journals, one realizes that rollercoaster rides can be used to counteract the effects of Facebook, in the case of asthma sufferers, sometimes maybe. A 2006 report in the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy tells how rollercoaster rides were used to treat symptoms of asthma. (The Dutch authors of that […]