People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well – The Atlantic

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People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well – The Atlantic

Whether it’s in trying to land a job or impress a date, people spend a staggering amount of time making claims about themselves. It makes sense: You’re the only person on Earth who has direct knowledge of every thought, feeling, and experience you’ve ever had. Who could possibly know you better than you? But your backstage access to your own mind sometimes makes you the last person on Earth others should trust about it. Think of it like owning a car: Just because you’ve driven it for years doesn’t mean you can pinpoint when and why the engine broke down.

Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re often more than twice as accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t—and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.

People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well – The Atlantic – Pocket

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People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well – The Atlantic – Pocket

Whether it’s in trying to land a job or impress a date, people spend a staggering amount of time making claims about themselves. It makes sense: You’re the only person on Earth who has direct knowledge of every thought, feeling, and experience you’ve ever had. Who could possibly know you better than you? But your backstage access to your own mind sometimes makes you the last person on Earth others should trust about it. Think of it like owning a car: Just because you’ve driven it for years doesn’t mean you can pinpoint when and why the engine broke down.

Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re often more than twice as accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t—and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.

Trump Urges Americans to Boycott Chinese Goods and Just Buy Things at Walmart | The New Yorker

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Trump Urges Americans to Boycott Chinese Goods and Just Buy Things at Walmart | The New Yorker

Asking for their solidarity in his trade war with China, Donald Trump is urging Americans to boycott Chinese goods and “just buy things at Walmart.” Trump made his request via Twitter, where he told his fellow-citizens that it was their “patriotic duty” to punish China by buying as many goods at Walmart as possible. “If you go to a GREAT AMERICAN STORE like Walmart, you’ll find lots of cheap sportswear, shoes, and other items for you and your family to enjoy,” he tweeted. “What better way to show China that we don’t need their DUMB STUFF!”

We built the cities, but we don’t necessarily rule them. — Furbearer Conservation

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We built the cities, but we don’t necessarily rule them. — Furbearer Conservation

Raccoons are synonymous with urban life. Known throughout North America’s hunting and trapping community as a staple fur-bearing resource for their fur (and in some cases, meat), these furry masked bandits continue to adapt and thrive in the suburban-sprawl of human civilization. As a newly released video report from Tech Insider suggests, the raccoon (Procyon lotor) continues to keep the wildlife control industry busy in almost every major city in North America.

May 14, 2019 Morning

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Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Six weeks to Primary Day 🗳️. With the state’s paid time off to vote law, I’ll have an excuse to get to a work late after voting at the library. Here’s a shocker, cloudy, damp and 42 degrees ☁ in the land of socialist Elsmere. The organic kale socialism type, the kind widely used embraced as long as it doesn’t involve higher taxes on the upper middle class. There is a north-northeast breeze at 5 mph. 🍃. The skies will clear tomorrow around 7 am.

I have to fix up the Save the Pine Bush display 🌲for the Lupine Festival this weekend. Yeap that’s happening this weekend and it should be a good event. Hopefully we will have lots of volunteers to join me so I won’t be sitting at the table all alone all day. I’m gathering up photos now, I’ll run off materials for the booth later on this week.

Today will rain, mainly after 3pm. 🌧 High of 49 degrees at 5pm. 20 degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 27th. Northeast wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Almost didn’t bring an umbrella but I knew that to be foolish. 💦 New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with some clearing in the afternoon. The high last year was 77 degrees. The record high of 93 was set in 1900.

The sun will set at 8:10 pm with dusk around 8:42 pm, which is one minute and 3 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain showers 🌧 and temperatures around 47 degrees. There will be a north-northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 14 hours and 36 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 6 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers likely, mainly before 8pm. Cloudy 🌧, with a low of 42 degrees at 6am. Five degrees below normal, which is similar to a typical night around April 30th. Northwest wind around 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies. It became sticky as the night progressed. It got down to 56 degrees. The record low of 31 occurred back in 1977.

Looking forward to Memorial Day Weekend 😎 especially if it looks like it will be warm and sunny. We might break out of the current pattern by then but who knows. A some point summer will be here. I was thinking that the Gas Up antique tractor festival 🚜 in Gallupville is only about a month away at this point. Might be fun to do that and then hammock camp ⛺ in the wilderness.

One month 📅 from now will be Flag Day 🇺🇸 when the sun will be setting at 8:34 pm with dusk at 9:09 pm. I’ll have to get my big flag out. Hopefully the sun will shine by then.

Swamp and House

How to Trick People Into Saving Money – The Atlantic – Pocket

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How to Trick People Into Saving Money – The Atlantic – Pocket

Americans’ difficulty saving, Daniel Eckert told me recently, is a textbook example of how brains wired to reckon with short-term threats and opportunities struggle to think about long-term consequences—and struggle even harder to take current action to stave off future disaster. Eckert, who oversees Walmart’s financial-services businesses, became interested in behavioral economics while earning his M.B.A. at the University of Chicago in the early 2000s.

Take a walk through a retail store—a Walmart, let’s say. You’ll pass heaps of products in every category, big signs advertising prices that seem too good to pass up, TV screens touting bargains galore. I shop at Walmart frequently, and somewhere in the long walk from the dog-biscuit aisle to the yogurt case I am at the very least tempted to buy something I didn’t know I needed when I arrived.