Monday Dose #7☕
Deleting TikTok, Socks that lower blood pressure, Psychopathy is not a mental disorder
Hey friends👋, welcome to the 7th edition of the Monday Dose…🚀
🤔Socks to lower blood pressure?
Boliav Therapeutic Socks claim to lower high blood pressure. Wait…
Socks? 🤦
Well...Let’s hear their claims
“Say good-bye to high blood pressure.”
“Experience the comfort and the benefits of foot reflexology with the Therapeutic Detox Foot Socks. Made with scattered nanometer sizes tourmaline particles that work as acupuncture proved its ability for healing benefits, particularly decreasing blood pressure on the spot.”
“It is a non-invasive method that helps to remove energy blockages and imbalances. This area points on foot are the best acupoint for lowering blood pressure.”😲
Reflexology, also known as zone therapy, is an alternative medical practice involving the application of pressure to specific points on the feet and/or hands.
Onto serious stuff…should we trust reflexology?
👨⚕️Stephen Barrett, MD in Quackwatch takes a closer look. He claims that reflexology is based on an absurd theory and has not been demonstrated to influence the course of any illness.
“Claims that reflexology is effective for diagnosing or treating disease should be ignored. Such claims could lead to delay of necessary medical care or to unnecessary medical testing of people who are worried about reflexology findings.”
🤔How customers are buying these products is something I find really hard to understand. There isn’t substantial evidence to back this technique whatsoever.
Is psychopathy a mental disorder? Maybe not!
Psychopathy has historically been conceptualized as a mental disorder but recent studies suggest it is an adaptation.
Despite a widespread belief among the scientific community that psychopathy is a mental disorder, “an alternative, evolution-minded perspective has been proposed: that psychopathy is instead a life history strategy of social exploitation maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection”
What is psychopathy? It is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
The etiology of mental disorders is not well understood but the researchers in the meta-analytic study suggest that perturbations affecting neurodevelopment is one likely contributor. They also suggest that nonright-handedness is a sign of such perturbations.
“If psychopathy is a mental disorder, psychopaths should show elevated rates of nonright-handedness. However, an adaptive strategy perspective expects psychopaths to be neurologically healthy and therefore predicts typical rates of nonright-handedness.”
They meta-analyzed 16 studies that investigated the association between psychopathy and handedness in various populations and there was no difference in the rates of nonright-handedness between community participants high and low in psychopathy.
They did not find any difference between psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders in rates of nonright-handedness, though there was a tendency for offenders scoring higher on the Interpersonal/Affective dimension of psychopathy to have lower rates of nonright-handedness, and for offenders scoring higher on the Behavioral dimension of psychopathy to have higher rates of nonright-handedness.
Furthermore, they did not find any differences in rates of nonright-handedness between psychopathic and nonpsychopathic mental health patients.
👀Therefore, their results failed to support the mental disorder model.
Here is the article link for those interested.
The ‘Tiktok war’
Before the Ukraine-Russia war started, I was a staunch TikTok fan. I would log into TikTok countless times a day. Nowadays I don’t use TikTok. As I write this, I am in the process of deleting the app. It has bored me to death.
Why?
Ukraine-related content has exploded on TikTok. No problem!
🚮Here is the problem…With that dramatic rise came an influx of misinformation and disinformation. Videos of unrelated explosions are being re-posted as if they were from Ukraine. Media uploaded from video games are passed off as footage of real-life events. Russian propaganda has gone viral before it could be removed.
Researchers attribute the problem to a number of features.
“On Tiktok, anyone can publish and republish any video, and stolen or reposted clips are displayed alongside original content. “
“Pseudonyms are popular on TikTok, making it harder to discern who a poster is, where they are, and whether their video content is original or real.”
“Factual information about TikTok videos – especially the dates and times of publication – are not clearly displayed for viewers on TikTok mobile app. “
“TikTok’s suite of built-in video editing tools allows users to manipulate video and audio in a misleading way. “
“Reposting and “dueting” with another user’s videos is common.”
“Memes, parody, and role-playing videos are all common genres on the platform, and viewers who aren't familiar with this specific form of comedy could mistake them as real.”
“TikTok pledges to label and remove misinformation, as well as take potential misinformation out of its recommendation algorithm, but as with other social media platforms, the application of this policy is inconsistent. “
“Comment sections become places for both debunks and misinformation.”
“TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t amplify videos displaying graphic violence or gore. “
“TikTok has a history of being used as a tool for documenting instances of political conflict or disasters.”
But what is TikTok doing to help curb this? I don’t know. What I know is that it hasn’t done enough.
I am optimistic that it will
But until then, count me out!
🔆Weekly bits
📱Tech- Heineken launches virtual beer in self-mocking metaverse 'joke'
🚀Science- NASA has rolled out its new giant Moon rocket for the first time. The vehicle, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), was taken to Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to conduct a dummy countdown.
🎞️Entertainment- Seven people have been charged after an armed robbery was staged last month on the French film set of hit Netflix series 'Lupin'. Around twenty hooded thieves attacked the film crew by launching fireworks at them, a Netflix spokesperson said.
⚕️Health- Multinational companies have halted some operations as China widens its Covid lockdowns - among its biggest since the start of the pandemic.
Toyota, Volkswagen and Apple supplier Foxconn are among the firms affected.
🔥NFTs- Premier League selects ConsenSys, Dapper Labs for NFTs.
Last month the Premier League selected four finalist contenders for its football collectible rights with bids ranging from £220 million ($300m) and £434 million ($590m) over the next four years. Given that the League has selected two companies, the total figure might be on the upper end of that sum.
🔥Tweet of the week
Zain has some good lessons on how to become a better leader. Highly recommend checking it out
Another one…why not?
Check out this thread by Sahil to gain important life lessons
🌟Quote of the week
The timing is never right. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time.
From The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
💡Thoughts: It is human nature to wait for the ‘right time’ to press the start button in life. The ‘right time’ to start a blog, the ‘right time’ to start a Youtube channel, the ‘right time’ to study and so on.
💡If it is important to you, and you want to do it eventually, just do it and you can correct yourself along the way.
📑Interesting reads
📥#Newsletter- Simple Letter🥳
Simple Letter is a simple newsletter that is a single link every other day to something interesting.
💡If you're a curious person like me then this newsletter will be perfect for you. It's a single link, with an extended quote from the article, so that you can see if it interests you.
It is through this newsletter that I discovered this interesting story where McDowell and Bjork lost all their savings on Amazon.
🧠#Article- How to grow your hippocampus
💡Dr Majid Fotuhi explains how you can grow your hippocampus and why it matters.
That is it for today. Hit me up in the comments for discussions.
Have a prosperous week, won’t you?
Dennis
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