Questionable data, gross food, missed pitches, and more noteworthy fuckups
Oh yes, you've come to the right free newsletter
If you get something out of this newsletter or the Depresh Mode podcast, I would appreciate your financial support. Go here, pick a level that works for you, then select DEPRESH MODE from the list of shows. And thank you.
300 Scientists want Facebook’s data
Earlier this fall, a Facebook whistleblower leaked to the Wall Street Journal about research by the company showing that one in three girls said using Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies. Instagram is owned by Facebook. It appears that Facebook had reached this conclusion and then sat on it because it would be bad for business (whereas keeping it secret is merely bad for girls, parents, and society).
Now a bunch of actual scientific researchers want access to that data because they have concerns about how the information was gathered and analyzed. They’re not saying the conclusions are wrong, just that the subject is too important to be handled in secrecy.
An Open Letter to Mr. Mark Zuckerberg: A Global Call to Act Now on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Science
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
We are a global coalition of scholars with expertise at the intersection of psychology, online technology, and health. Recently, we have been following news reports about research within your companies on the mental health of child and adolescent users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Unfortunately, that research is happening behind closed doors and without independent oversight. Therefore, we have only a fragmented picture of the studies your companies are conducting. We do not believe that the methodologies seen so far meet the high scientific standards required to responsibly investigate the mental health of children and adolescents. Although nothing in the leaks suggests that social media causes suicide, self-harm, or mental illness, these are serious research topics. This work, and the tools you are using should not be developed without independent oversight. Sound science must come before firm conclusions are drawn or new tools are launched. You and your organisations have an ethical and moral obligation to align your internal research on children and adolescents with established standards for evidence in mental health science.
Facebook enjoys the ubiquity of being a de facto global public utility and profits off that but refuses to take the responsibility that such a position entails.
December: the perfect time to talk about baseball!
I am nothing if not timely. Thus, I am nothing.
But I did watch an interesting documentary the other day about Rick Ankiel, the former major league baseball player. Ankiel was a 20-year-old phenom when he rocketed up through the St. Louis Cardinals system as a pitcher. He was so good that he was on the mound for game one of the playoffs in 2000, at which point he more or less fell apart. Wild pitch after wild pitch, way over the catcher’s head or bouncing in the dirt.
There was nothing physically wrong with him. It was a case of what’s called “the yips”, where mental obstacles form a kind of roadblock around physical performance. It’s happened a lot in baseball but in other sports as well.
The documentary does a good job of explaining that the yips are not exclusive to sports. When you meet a person you find attractive and want to ask them out but you get all tongue-tied? That’s the yips. Life is full of the yips. And even though you might be extraordinarily gifted as an athlete, you might work hard at it and love doing it, if you’re twenty years old and put on the hill while the world watches to pitch in the playoffs? Yep: yips.
The makers of the doc were a little more vague about the connection of trauma in Ankiel’s case. He talks about the abuse his father dished out, especially against his mother. He describes her screams that sounded different than any other scream. It’s painful for him to recall it and painful to watch. And there’s some talk about how someone growing up in a home like that has a hard time ever feeling safe. But the connection between Ankiel’s trauma and his yips is never explicitly made. His fragility as a result of his trauma, his cracking under pressure being a logical result of that, is never spelled out.
And that’s probably deliberate. It’s a hard thing to prove, certainly that A necessarily led to B. But trauma has been clearly linked to the yips before, as in the case of Mackey Sasser.
The good news about Ankiel is that he had tremendous success and a long career in baseball by quitting pitching and becoming an outfielder. That’s what all of us should do when faced with anxiety issues: become a major league outfielder.
New definition of “terrible meal” just dropped
This article, about a disastrous and expensive and complicated meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant, was hard to get to yesterday because so many people were trying to read it. Hopefully the server is more stable.
Part of it is about servers, in the restaurant sense, being unstable.
This kind of brilliant writing about a joyfully awful experience, makes me glad we have the internet.
It’s as though someone had read about food and restaurants, but had never experienced either, and this was their attempt to recreate it.
What followed was a 27-course meal (note that “course” and “meal” and “27” are being used liberally here) which spanned 4.5 hours and made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel. Because — I cannot impart this enough — there was nothing even close to an actual meal served. Some “courses” were slivers of edible paper. Some were shot glasses of vinegar. Everything tasted like fish, even the non-fish courses. And nearly everything, including these noodles, which was by far the most substantial dish we had, was served cold.
The course everyone is pointing to most is … this… thing….
Another course – a citrus foam – was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth. Absent utensils, we were told to lick it out of the chef’s mouth in a scene that I’m pretty sure was stolen from an eastern European horror film.
Good photography too:
None of this is about mental health, I guess, but I think you’d agree that the mouth thing is CRAZY.
Here is a conversation I had this week with a client for whom I may do soundie podcastie things
I’m paraphrasing all of it.
ME: Something we could do is a very complicated thing involving multiple people, complex permissions, and having to explain the concept a lot.
THEM: We were thinking of this other very simple idea.
ME: Oh. Yes. That’s a much better idea. I could do that and make it sound great and we’d all have a pleasant time.
THEM: Hooray then.
ME: Yes, hooray.
I always forget that not doing everything all the time at 200% is a viable option.
It is noon
As I’m writing this, I mean. Just turned noon. I try to get five items in each of these. Not sure why. Seems to add value for this… uh… free… newsletter.
But it’s noon and I’m wearing the sweatpants I threw on when I got out of bed this morning.
I think I should go for a walk instead of a nap. In real pants. In hard pants.
And I get more coffee on the walk and maybe food.
It’s up to 35 fahrenheit right now. That’s minus 30 in celsius. We’re supposed to get 5 to 10 inches of snow tomorrow. Three meters.
Think I need some fresh air.
