When the Narcissist Fails | Psychology Today

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When the Narcissist Fails | Psychology Today

Not without cause, malignant narcissism is one of the most searched for topics on the internet in part because seemingly there are so many people that appear to have those toxic traits that negatively impact on us. These individuals are notorious because they destabilize our lives, make us feel insecure, undervalued, disparaged, or inconsequential, and as I noted in my book, Dangerous Personalities (Rodale/Penguin), they can victimize us emotionally, as well as physically, even financially. They come into our lives as family members, friends, lovers, spouses, colleagues at work, bosses, or worst as national leaders. Once they enter our orbit, no matter how distant, toxicity is what they have in common and they always leave a debris field of human suffering behind them.

Erie Canal and Mohawk River

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Driving back from the Adirondacks last weekend, I got thinking about disruptive the Erie Canal must be on the ecology of the Mohawk River. The river is dammed up into long pools for a good portion of the summer, raising the levels much higher then normal, pushing water into what once was just the flood plain in the river. Come the winter months, they raise the damns, leaving high and dry shorelines, and only a narrow path for the river except after heavy rains and spring-time flooding.

Mohawk River

The Polls Weren’t Great. But That’s Pretty Normal. | FiveThirtyEight

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The Polls Weren’t Great. But That’s Pretty Normal. | FiveThirtyEight

I’m not a pollster, although I’m often misidentified as one on TV. I wanted to get that out of the way because while, in practice, our lives probably get easier in a year where the polls are spot-on, FiveThirtyEight’s mission is really to take the polls as they are — for better or worse — and understand the sources of error and uncertainty behind them. This is true for both the probabilistic forecasts that we build and the reporting that we do. We’re also interested in how polls are perceived by the media and the public and how that sometimes conflicts with the way we think polls should be viewed.

Goats and Soda : NPR

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China Is Vaccinating Thousands Against COVID-19 With Unapproved Vaccines : Goats and Soda : NPR

One early November morning, a Peking duck cook, several construction workers and a software engineer patiently lined up outside a Beijing vaccine facility, awaiting their turn to be injected with a coronavirus vaccine still awaiting regulatory approval.

As countries around the world race to develop the first viable coronavirus vaccine, China's two biggest vaccine firms have already begun inoculating hundreds of thousands of mostly state workers in a bid to get a head start. But deploying unproven vaccines carries huge risks – both for those receiving the vaccination and epidemic control efforts. The major worry is that vaccinations will give people who've had them a sense of invincibility that is not warranted – and that could help spread the virus.