http://www.openculture.com/2018/03/how-much-money-do-you-need-to-be-happy-a-new-study-gives-us-some-exact-figures.html

Hypothetical windfalls aside, the question of how much is enough is an urgent one for many people: as in, how much to feed a family, supply life’s necessities, purchase just enough leisure for some small degree of personal fulfilment?

https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/autonomous-vehicles-how-will-they-challenge-law-enforcement

Many questions need an answer before AVs arrive. Some examples provide a starting point.

Is an AV involved in breaking traffic laws malfunctioning or “violating”? Should officers stop these vehicles, or should a technical system identify when one malfunctions and violates established rules of the road?
How will officers know if a human or an autonomous system operates a vehicle involved in a violation? Does it matter in terms of
justification for a traffic stop?
Should speed limits, stop signs, traffic lights, and highway markings apply to AVs?
How will officers stop an AV with no human driver behind the wheel? A complex system of cameras, sensors, and computer software control these vehicles. Without a human operator, safely conducting a traffic stop—for whatever reason—could prove challenging.
What rights do passengers in an AV have when stopped by the police? How will AVs impact drug and other criminal interdiction efforts? Will police agencies deploy AVs in some way? How?

https://pudding.cool/2018/01/chyrons/

Here’s what this all comes down to: no matter how you slice it, whether by overall coverage, coverage over time, or context, two people who watch different channels could come away with vastly different ideas of key issues in the news.

This isn’t just a hypothetical concern. Studies show that a person’s choice in cable network can be predicted based on their political persuasion, and that cable news can help reinforce people’s beliefs.

Even if people continue to “cut the cord”, political polarization in news comsumption will still be an issue. The best thing you can do? Look to multiple sources for your news and be aware of how the editorial decisions of the sources you choose might be shaping your views.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/

A new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults finds that the social media landscape in early 2018 is defined by a mix of long-standing trends and newly emerging narratives.

Facebook and YouTube dominate this landscape, as notable majorities of U.S. adults use each of these sites. At the same time, younger Americans (especially those ages 18 to 24) stand out for embracing a variety of platforms and using them frequently. Some 78% of 18- to 24-year-olds use Snapchat, and a sizeable majority of these users (71%) visit the platform multiple times per day. Similarly, 71% of Americans in this age group now use Instagram and close to half (45%) are Twitter users.

As has been the case since the Center began surveying about the use of different social media in 2012, Facebook remains the primary platform for most Americans. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) now report that they are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of those users access Facebook on a daily basis. With the exception of those 65 and older, a majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups now use Facebook.

http://theconversation.com/if-you-want-to-know-how-to-stop-school-shootings-ask-the-secret-service-92333

The team studied 37 school shootings involving 41 attackers that took place from December 1974 through May 2000. Data included investigative, school, court and mental health records. In addition, 10 school shooters were interviewed to gain their perspectives from “conceptualization to execution” of the attacks. A series of findings emerged

https://daily.jstor.org/what-the-history-of-food-stamps-reveals/

The Food Stamp Act of 1964 expanded the program. Much of its support came from farm state senators, including George McGovern, a South Dakota Democrat, and Robert Dole, a Republican from Kansas.
Then-Senator Robert Kennedy took highly-publicized tours of the Mississippi Delta to shed light on the plight of America’s hungry. In 1968, a study titled Hunger USA generated public concern.

The biggest expansion in the food stamps program came during the Nixon administration. In his first message to Congress, Nixon argued that he was determined “to put an end to hunger in America for all time.” By 1971, commodity distribution was largely abandoned in favor of food stamps, which allowed the poor themselves to make decisions about the food they purchased. By the end of Nixon’s term, the program had expanded. But media accounts of college students relying on the subsidies to feed themselves and other accounts of apparent abuses emerged. In 1974, the program was expanded to all the counties in the United States and the

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gun-science-proves-arming-untrained-citizens-bad-idea/

Another myth to fall to the facts is that gun-control laws disarm good people and leave the crooks with weapons. Not so, say the Johns Hopkins authors: “Strong regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers—defined as having a state law that required state or local licensing of retail firearm sellers, mandatory record keeping by those sellers, law enforcement access to records for inspection, regular inspections of gun dealers, and mandated reporting of theft of loss of firearms—was associated with 64 percent less diversion of guns to criminals by in-state gun dealers.”

https://theconversation.com/why-is-there-so-little-research-on-guns-in-the-us-6-questions-answered-92163

5. Has gun research stopped?The lack of funding has discouraged firearms research. Many researchers are employed within academia. In this publish-or-perish environment, researchers are under pressure to publish their work in academic journals and fund it through sources beyond their home institution. Without outside funding, their research often isn’t possible. Leading firearms researcher Wintemute says “no more than a dozen active, experienced investigators in the United States have focused their careers primarily on firearm violence.”

https://aeon.co/essays/writing-essays-by-formula-teaches-students-how-to-not-think

The Rule of Five spells out issues that need to be addressed in any piece of analytical writing: argument, frame, evidence, analysis, conclusion. If you don’t address these issues, then you are not doing an effective job of presenting your work. But by addressing them only in this order, and confining each function of the argument to a hermetically sealed location within the paper, you turn a useful set of guidelines into an iron cage. It’s dysfunctional – to say nothing of off-putting, infantilising and intellectually arid. But, then again, it makes life easier for all concerned. So it’s not going away soon.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/02/15/voter-files-study-qa/

Since the rise of modern survey research three-quarters of a century ago, much of what we know about voter attitudes has been based on interviews with random samples of voters, sometimes combined with tallies of actual votes and the characteristics of voters in particular locations. But relatively new technologies and public policy changes have given pollsters, academics and other researchers – not to mention candidates and political professionals – a potentially powerful new tool for probing the electorate: digital databases that claim to cover most of the U.S. adult population.

Despite their widespread use, these national databases (commonly called “voter files”) are little known by the general public and haven’t received much scholarly attention. Pew Research Center’s Ruth Igielnik, a research associate, and Senior Survey Advisor Scott Keeter recently released an extensive study of the completeness and accuracy of commercially available voter files, which they assessed by matching participants from the Ce