This week’s news has been dominated by the hideous shameful murder of Renee Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis by an ICE officer. The shooting and its aftermath have been covered wall-to-wall by news outlets and social media, so I don’t feel the need to include any of it here. I’m as outraged and saddened as everybody else and am heartened by seeing the largely peaceful protests across the country. Most of these pieces were gathered before the shooting.
I Believe in Science
I read a lot of science related articles. All my algorithms are accustomed to my interests and keep my recommendations well stocked and if that weren’t enough, I subscribe to several science-related email lists. So, a week of science articles was bound to happen.
Autism News: Object Personification
The title of this article just cracks me up, Object personification in autism: This paper will be very sad if you don’t read it. Then again, my super power is being easily amused. However, a good part of that easy amusement came from immediate recognition of myself in the title. I KNEW the article would be sad if I didn’t read it, even if I really didn’t believe it. Maybe it’s more that I believed it even if I knew it wasn’t true. Something like that. You know what I mean. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be sad and that it wouldn’t hurt to read the article just be sure that the article wasn’t sad.
That nagging sense that something probably isn’t true, but just might be, so why not just be sure, really sounds like OCD to me. There are clear links — including genetic links — between mood disorders (especially bipolar, anxiety, and OCD), ADHD, autism, and schizophrenia. Don’t quote me on that because I could be conflating findings read while bouncing around in the back of a bus on my phone.
As a child, I was really bad about it. I literally personified everything and felt tremendous guilt if objects weren’t treated fairly or one was somehow singled out or criticized or was found wanting. I also found it greatly comforting. It was like they were friends or I was understood and accepted by them or something. It served a constructive purpose, too. As a teenager and young adult, I was able to transfer some of that empathy to real live human beings.
I thought I was the only one and was ashamed of it. Turns out, #ScienceFact, it is a “common” autistic trait and tends to continue later in life in autistic people than it does in the neuroconvergent. Who knew? Apparently, no one until now.
Detecting Personality Disorders
Since Trump blunder into all of our lives, understanding personality disorders has become something of a necessity, so articles about personality disorders catch my interest. I used to teach a personality psychology unit based on Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling. It was fun, my students turned into Sherlock Holmes and wrote up a personality profile of a teacher by examining the conditions of their desk and personal areas of the classroom. The upshot is that almost anything you do unconsciously will reveal personality characteristics; the trick is understanding the correlation.
These good folks have examined text and verbal communications from thousands of people and found correlations between negative and self-referential language use and personality disorders. Ranging from everything from increased uses of “I” and “me” to more obscenities and angry and negative emotional words.
Of course, as we watch our democracy backslide into autocracy and Trump lead us down the path of wanton destruction of the climate and western liberal democracy world order, a little more anger and negative emotions are bound to slip into all of our communications, so there’s a word of caution for you.
The Way You Speak Can Signal Hidden Personality Disorders, Research Shows
Stingless Bees Are People, Too
At least in Peru, the stingless bee is a person. Okay, in some small parts of Peru — two municipalities, Satipo and Nauta in the Avireri Vraem Biosphere reserve — they have been given the right to exist and thrive in an environment that meets their needs free of pollution. In addition, the stingless bee has been named as an indigenous species to Peru that allows it specific protections there.
Stingless bee honey has amazing compounds such as antibacterial, antiviral, anti fungal, and anticancer applications. It has been used extensively by the indigenous human population.
I have a soft spot for social insects. They are amazing creatures.
Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world first
Living Beings Emit Light, but not Auras
The experiments were on mice and leaves from two different plants, but there were undeniable findings of distinct measurable electromagnetic emissions. The emissions stopped when the mice were euthanized but their body temperature maintained. This light is too weak to be detected by the naked eye. Obv, right?
They’re calling it bio photons, but they don’t know how they’re made or why, so stay tuned.
We Emit a Visible Light That Vanishes When We Die, Surprising Study Says
In Politics: Gerrymandering
The GOP and Trump have made no secret that they want to choose their voters and everyone else’s, too, in order to win elections. The Supreme Court has sided with them by saying that political gerrymanders are okay and racial ones aren’t. Now, Republicans are saying that their racial gerrymanders aren’t really racial because of the correlation between Democratic voters and People of Color. It’s just a happy coincidence that political gerrymanders result in radically lower chances of electing People of Color.
Famously, Trump asked Texas Republicans to find him five more House seats similar to his ask of Georgia for 11,000 votes in 2020. Greg Abbott and the Texas legislature rushed to give him what he wanted. Then, Gavin Newsom, in California organized a referendum that would redistrict California so Democrats would net five seats nullifying Texas’ gains. Other states are considering gerrymandering their states to produce more seats for one party or the other.
Two gerrymandering cases made it to the Supreme Court. The Supremes overturned a lower court finding that found Texas’ gerrymandering was indeed racial and therefore illegal under Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They did it on the shadow docket in time for candidates to file under the new maps pretty much guaranteeing that the 2026 legislative elections would use those maps regardless of their legality.
Louisiana has a case before the Court that directly challenges Article 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Politico is of the opinion that they could rule on that case as early as today, Friday 9 January, or in June when they release their decisions as the end of the current session as they usually do. By releasing the decision in June, it will be too late to gerrymander legislative maps en masse.
The Court is likely to weaken if not gut the last vestige of the Voting Rights Act in June. Whatever happens, though, the gerrymandering of the maps before the 2026 elections will likely result in confusion and chaos in a variety of states, which is a feature of the plan, not a bug in the plan.
Image Attribution
This image was found on the USGS Bee Lab Flickr page using a Creative Commons search.
The Psy of Life 
Goslings’d book is great! Mostly, however, it’s another look at Social Psychology. There’s, for sure, a place for it in the riddle that is our different personalities, and why we do what we do.
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Howdy Mark!
I LOVED Goslinig’s book and his method. I still use it to this day. It is as close to being Sherlock Holmes as you can get. However, as a how-to guide — which it wasn’t — it was really lacking. It was confusing and repetitious. It took some work to extract a how-to guide for my students from it. But, that was my most favorite unit to teach. Kids were engaged and hustling to do it. It’s a good method and a good look at personality traits.
Huzzah!
Jack
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It strikes me that pre-diest or totemic thinking, seeing all natural creatures and objects as having spirit qualities and deserving of empathy, and identifying with them is/was that kind of personification, and possibly healthier than reserving such regard for humans (not necessarily all humans in some cases), and putting the spirit element into one or a few imaginary beings in the sky. So, of course bees are people.
Anything that can help warn us of sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists has to be useful.
May it come to pass that the current excesses of blatant gerrymandering pisses off enough even occasional voters that we can kill it off for at least a couple of generations.
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Howdy Bob!
I’ve been fascinated by the pro social behavior of the social insects for over a decade now. It is one of the most interesting areas of study that I’ve found. Of course, few others are that interested in it. But, because bees have such strong pro-social behaviors among them and are so necessary to maintaining a healthy ecosystem, they must be protected. That we can recognize the right of all living things to live happy productive lives free of pollution and in their proper environments is a necessity for ending the climate crisis.
The link between personification and totemic ideas and Jungian and other mystical esoteric psychologies and philosophies was not lost on me. As a young man, I engaged in a lot of Jungian pursuits and seriously considered attending the Jung Institute in Switzerland to become an analyst.
It’s been a helluva week, my friend. A really crappy week given all of brutal murder of Renee Good, Trump’s threats to destroy the world order by taking over Greenland, his comical bullying of oil companies to engage in economic idiocy in Venezuela. Putin must be very happy with everything he’s achieved through manipulating Trump.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Except on the subject of Ukraine, Putin hardly needs to manipulate anymore. He can just let Trump be Trump. But what happens if Trump finds a thing to do that even Putin thinks is too dangerous? I don’t know what that might be short of the complete collapse of the world industrial system. Russia is export dependent.
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I have said for years that SCOTUS is nothing but political hacks….time for a change. chuq
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The Republican appointees since Thomas have all been political hacks. Roberts has done more to damage our democracy than almost anyone else in the history of the country.
Jack
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AMEN to that….chuq
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