Even with his casinos, Trump wasn’t a gambler, either, saying he’d rather own slot machines than play them.
And yet, in a strange twist, Trump has ended up an addict.
.. Lanier, who met Trump a couple of times back in the real estate developer’s New York heyday, thinks the president’s addiction to tweeting is rewiring his brain in a negative way. As Trump picks up speed on Twitter, the Oval Office is becoming a Skinner box. Like other “behavior modification empires,” as Lanier calls social media sites, Twitter offers positive reinforcement for negativity.
.. “Twitter addicts take on this kind of nervous, paranoid, cranky quality, sort of itching for a fight,” Lanier said in an interview. “Trump used to be in on his own joke, and he no longer is. He’s just striking out every morning, fishing for somebody to harass or seeing who’s harassing him.
“I do think it creates a terrifying situation because somebody who is addicted is easy to manipulate. It’s easier for the North Koreans to lie to him than if he wasn’t an addict.”
.. I saw a report on PBS about a mother on the border who was reunited with her 14-month-old child after 85 days. “The child continued to cry when we got home and would hold on to my leg and would not let me go,” the mother wrote. “When I took off his clothes, he was full of dirt and lice. It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us.”
On the occasion of America’s 242nd birthday, we must ask who we are, if we can see accounts of infants snatched from their parents and returned covered in lice, and not worry about our country’s soul.
.. We have a president who is an addict running a country overflowing with opioid and social media addicts. (In an interview with The Times a few days ago, our tech reporter Nellie Bowles said she dealt with her smartphone addiction by graying out her screen, noting, “These phones are designed to look and work like slot machines — hit us with bright colors and little pings to activate and please,” and “we all have to figure out little hooks to pull back into the physical world.”).. hopes people will resume a sense of decorum when they realize “there’s very little long-term profit from a viral tweet.”.. He figured out how to dominate Twitter, not with the cool-kid arch style of making fun of someone, but by being school-yard-bully mean.
His tweets propel the story on cable news and shape the narrative for reporters — who are addicted to the First Addict.
Thank You for Asking
Young people are radically changing how we think about violence, consent
and gender. Antioch College is where much of the conversation started... When Alyssa Navarrette, a third-year student who is studying anthropology and art, came home for her first visit after starting college, she was taken by surprise when her mother hugged her.
.. “If you don’t want to be touched and your mom wants to hug you, you should be allowed to say no,” Ms. Navarrette said. “It’s about having autonomy over your own body.”
.. People introduce themselves with their preferred pronouns (“I’m Katie and I use ‘they/them/their’”).
.. In a lot of ways, Antioch College exists in a bubble. With a current enrollment of 135 students
.. it guaranteed free tuition to its first four enrolling classes.
.. He attended several sessions at orientation devoted to the policy, including one led by Planned Parenthood educators, another about the history of sexual relations.
.. “silence conveys a lack of affirmative consent.”
.. the school and the women who created the policy were portrayed as endemic of a politically correct culture run amok that was trying to desexualize sex.
.. it became the subject of a lot of media attention, including a blistering skit on “Saturday Night Live” in 1993 starring Shannen Doherty (“major in Victimization Studies”)
.. programming has included screenings of ethical pornography
.. The college’s administration sees this all as a big selling point for the school.
.. “There’s an idea that it has to be very unromantic and very contractual and that’s not true at all,”
.. “You can learn to ask in ways that are sexy and romantic and say, ‘Is this O.K.? You want to continue to do this? Can I touch you there?’ These are all thing that can enhance the experience instead of killing the buzz.”
.. “The challenge was, ‘How do you get consent in a situation where everyone is so nervous?’”
.. She thought the policy was too based in political correctness. “I was an eye roller,” she said.
.. “I have very little patience with the notion that something like this isn’t needed,”
.. “I’m also looking for it to help people get justice or get acknowledgments at least for microaggression,”