Hasta La Gadget!

The G Pen Elite was already one of the best vaporizers for the money at $170, but today only, you can get it for $50 off. I assume for some kind of special occasion?

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Most full-size SUVs tend to fall into one of two design categories: forgettable family blobs, or frighteningly massive hunks of truck-based steel. The 2017 Ford Flex, however, proves that you can package exceptional practicality in something that’s been styled to be distinctly different from the vast majority of its people-moving brethren. Even more impressive? The Flex manages to stand tall … Continue reading

Did Apple’s augmented reality prototype accidentally injure one employee’s eyes? That’s one potential explanation being juggled for a mysterious incident report at the iPhone company, after a cache of such filings were inadvertently leaked. The handiwork of an Environment Health and Safety contractor, the document was presumably intended for internal eyes only, but was mistakenly distributed first among employees and … Continue reading

When Fox News failed to hold former anchor Bill O’ Reilly accountable for his prejudicial banter on the network, Color Of Change (COC), a racial justice advocacy group, decided to organize against O’Reilly and his plaftform. 

The organization, which dedicates itself to issues of racial inequality, took issue with O’Reilly’s ongoing race-baiting. In 2006, several former colleagues said he lied when he claimed he was attacked during the LA riots.

So in March 2015, COC began an advertising boycott urging companies to pull ads airing during “The O’Reilly Factor.” The campaign, which fluctuated in momentum throughout its first two years, gained traction last month after O’Reilly inappropriately remarked that Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ hair looked like a wig that the late James Brown would sport.

But months prior to O’Reilly’s comments on Waters, a wave of allegations that he sexually harassed former Fox employees began to make headlines. After these allegations were made public, a former black Fox employee came forward alleging that O’Reilly would “grunt” at her “like a wild boar” and addressed her as “hot chocolate.”

With the added momentum, the campaign became even more effective in persuading companies to pull their advertisements from the program. Just two weeks ago, Nutrisystem told COC that they had no plans to buy ad time during “The O’Reilly Factor” after corresponding with the organization. 

The organization’s executive director Rashad Robinson told The Huffington Post on Wednesday that O’Reilly’s belittlement of Waters and the allegations of sexual harassment “signified a new moment” for the campaign. 

“In many ways, it was just one more example of the dehumanizing way that he treats women and black people,” Robinson told HuffPost. “You have a person who does these types of things off-air and then goes on-air and talks about people who don’t work.”

Despite the first instance of O’Reilly’s alleged sexual predation being bought to the company’s attention in 2002, he remained on-air. But O’Reilly’s knack for prejudicial rhetoric wasn’t an off-air matter. 

As the members of the organization worked on behalf of issues of racial injustice across the country, Robinson said they couldn’t ignore O’Reilly’s problematic nature because of the sheer ubiquity of Fox programming.

“The thing about Fox News is it’s such a powerful and visible platform,” he said. “It’s not just something that people have to sort of seek out, but it’s on when you’re in the airport in some places, it’s on at the gym…”

Which, Robinson said, is exactly why O’Reilly’s rhetoric was so dangerous. 

“What people see and hear in the media has a tremendous effect on what they do every day as well as what’s accessible and allowed in the media space sends a powerful message about the rules of our society,” Robinson continued. 

Robinson said that before mobilizing against corporations, they first reach out to company executives through phone and email to urge that they act with accountability. When this effort failed with Fox, they realized they’d have to force the Murdoch family (who founded Fox) to make a choice between O’Reilly and the company’s profits.

“It says a lot about Fox that they end up on the wrong side of this and [we] sort of have to pay special attention [to them] because unfortunately they are engaged in a set of practice and policies at the time that put people in harm’s way,” Robinson said. 

But this isn’t the first time Fox placed themselves on COC’s radar. Not only did they drive “Cops” ― another Fox program ― off the air after 25 years, the organization also played a key role in getting Glenn Beck’s program pushed out of the station. After Beck said Barack Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” COC launched an advertising boycott. 

While the boycotts played a crucial role in both Beck and O’Reilly’s campaigns, the latter utilized a number of other unique methods as well. 

COC created a petition that received 340,000 signatures over the course of the campaign and launched a 1-800 hotline to encourage other women who’ve experienced sexual harassment at Fox to come forward. They also created geo-targeted geared towards current and prospective Fox employees to ensure they were knowledgeable of the network’s disreputable culture.

But Robinson said COC’s initiatives to remove O’Reilly from the station isn’t something he solely credits the organization with. The org’s members made calls and wrote letters to advertisers and gave small-dollar donations to fund the geo-targeted ads. Partner organizations like the women’s rights group UltraViolet also played a significant role in the push for O’Reilly’s departure. Sexual assault survivors also gathered for protests at New York’s Fox News headquarters, demanding O’Reilly be fired. 

But Robinson knows COC’s work with Fox probably isn’t done yet. 

“To have these types of wins that force a set of behaviors off the table…that’s important,” he said. “But in many ways, it was just a speck. There is more work that has to be done and we don’t think this fully changes the culture at Fox.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

There could be an upside to those worries.

Brain imaging research suggests that being under stress may make you more compassionate to others who are struggling or in pain. That’s because stress may activate a part of the brain associated with empathy. 

How the study worked

An international team of researchers measured the brain activity of 80 male participants, some of whom were given a stress test while others acted as a control group with no intervention.

The stress test sounds hellish: Participants were instructed to solve difficult tasks under a deadline, all while receiving negative feedback on their performance. Researchers measured the participants’ anxiety during this exercise by measuring their levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.

Once sufficiently stressed, the study subjects looked at photos of strangers who were undergoing a painful medical procedure and were asked to imagine how the patient in each photograph felt. For some of the images, researchers told the participants that the patient in the photo had received anesthesia, indicating that the person didn’t feel pain during the procedure. Researchers did this so they could determine whether the study participants’ reactions were to the image of the procedure or were based in an understanding of the patient’s experience.

The control group also looked at the photos.

The study found that stressed participants displayed more empathy toward the photographed patients. Even when the individuals were informed that the patients weren’t in pain, they still had an empathetic reaction, according to scans done of the “empathy” neural center in the brain. 

Stress compels people to help others

The study also aimed to measure if stress not only helped people empathize with others who were struggling, but if it compelled them to act on that empathy.

After the participants were purposefully stressed out and looked at images of people in pain, researchers then had volunteers play a game designed to measure whether or not these emotions would make them more altruistic. The exercise, a behavioral economics game called “the dictator game,” required individuals to divide a sum of money between themselves and strangers in whatever ratio they chose to use.

The results showed the amount of neural activity a person had in the empathy network of the brain also correlated with how much money the participants gave away in the dictator game. The more empathetic a person was in the first test, the more money that person shared with others in this test.

What this all means

The results of the study indicate that people may have stronger emotional reactions when they’re under stress and may be more likely to behave altruistically. 

But this reaction may not always be beneficial: The researchers were surprised to find that the study participants felt pain on behalf of patients they were told were under anesthesia as well as those they were told were in pain. 

This suggests empathetic reactions under stress may “result in aid that is uncalled for or inappropriate,” study researcher Claus Lamm of the University of Vienna, said in a statement. For example, a stressed person may react with alarm when someone is crying out of joy. 

“[D]epending on the context and situation, stress can be either beneficial or detrimental in social situations,” Lamm added.

There are also some other caveats. The study sample was small, for one, and it was also only conducted on men. It’s difficult to say if these results can apply to the whole population.

That being said, as Science of Us pointed out last year, there’s a whole body of research that supports the notion that the jitters can help people succeed under pressure. A 2013 study found that reframing performance-related anxiety in the mind as excitement can help people do better in the task. Other research found that students who were told their anxiety over a test would help them get better scores actually ended up with better results on the exam than those who weren’t told their stress would help.

In other words, while stress might be uncomfortable, there are times where it can be a force for good. At least something positive can come from it, right?

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.