Incarceration as the educational business model. Medium

For obvious reasons, it’s difficult for researchers to know just how common the “smart drug” or “neuro-enhancing” lifestyle is. However, a few recent studies suggest cognition hacking is appealing to a growing number of people. A survey conducted in 2016 found that 15% of University of Oxford students were popping pills to stay competitive, a rate that mirrored findings from other national surveys of UK university students. In the US, a 2014 study found that 18% of sophomores, juniors, and seniors at Ivy League colleges had knowingly used a stimulant at least once during their academic career, and among those who had ever used uppers, 24% said they had popped a little helper on eight or more occasions.

The 15 most common smart drugs, and the science behind them — Quartz

When you ask me that question I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time? As you stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table: I have no interest in doing it.

Barney Frank, in response to questioner at a town-meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, broadcast on CNN (18 August 2009).

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Just last week, when faced with a report that its advertising numbers promised an American audience that, in certain demographics, well exceeded the number of such humans in existence, judging by U.S. Census Bureau numbers, Facebook told the Wall Street Journal that its numbers “are not designed to match population or census estimates. We are always working to improve our estimates.” Facebook’s intercourse with the public need not adhere to the so-called norms of so-called reality.

Make Mark Zuckerberg Testify

For some companies, that can mean specifically focusing on young people, as Ahmet Bozer, president of Coca-Cola International, described to investors in 2014. “Half the world’s population has not had a Coke in the last 30 days,” he said. “There’s 600 million teenagers who have not had a Coke in the last week. So the opportunity for that is huge.”

How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food – The New York Times

The developers can get away with such things, because student housing doesn’t officially classify as housing. It falls into the murky category of “sui generis” (Latin for “of its own kind”). As it falls outside a specific use class, it doesn’t have to adhere to the usual standards associated with dwellings (class C3). Local authorities differ in the their approaches, but student accommodation is usually either treated as a hotel (C1) or residential institution (C2), the same category as care homes, hospitals and boarding schools. Due to their limited occupation, these building types are immune from many of the codes that govern residential dwellings – from space standards to daylight and acoustics. At the same time, crucially, the developer is exempt from providing any contribution towards affordable housing.

Guardian

I was browsing through some old noes and came across this:

Third, we’re convinced that medical education and training must be reinvented to adapt to the changing health care paradigm. We think that AHCs should reexamine traditional beliefs and approaches to medical education, questioning its cost and duration. Should education shift toward using dedicated instructors, increased online instruction, simulation, even gaming? Can AHCs shorten training time by streamlining the educational continuum — for example, providing a focused 3-year medical school curriculum in primary care, plus a 2-to-3-year residency?

NEJM

It’s almost vanishingly rare that we pick a new device that we always have with us,” the historian of mobile technology Jon Agar says. “Clothes—a Paleolithic thing? Glasses? And a phone. The list is tiny.

In 2014, Wall Street analysts attempted to identify the world’s most profitable product, and the iPhone landed in the top slot—right above Marlboro cigarettes. The iPhone is more profitable than a relentlessly marketed drug that physically addicts its customers.

The One Device, Brian Merchant