Dr. X's Free Associations

Yeah, um, that's really not okay to say,

and if people in Youngstown are saying it, someone should tell them it's not okay.

Tim Ryan, for those without a political scorecard, is an Ohio Democrat who launched an unsuccessful bid to replace Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi as house minority leader. I wonder if her heritage brought that word to mind?

Not that I expect it to really inconvenience him,

but this fellow is now banned from flying on Delta Airlines for the rest of his life.

Story.

The President Elect of the United States Continues His Tirade on Twitter

"@sdcritic: @HighonHillcrest @jeffzeleny @CNN There is NO QUESTION THAT #voterfraud did take place, and in favor of #CorruptHillary !"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

Just before that he retweeted a 16-year-old from Beverly Hills. (see @FiIibuster 's bio):

"@FiIibuster: @jeffzeleny Pathetic - you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

It doesn't surprise me that an inarticulate 16-year-old might tweet a logical fallacy, but I really expect something a bit more elevated from the President Elect of the United States.

There were other tweets in the tirade, but I'll just give you one more.

"@HighonHillcrest: @jeffzeleny what PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalist? Do your job! @CNN"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

If you're keeping track, Trump is in Day 2 of a major meltdown on twitter. The tweets are coming in reaction to Jill Stein's recount requests and the Clinton campaign announcement that they will participate. It's important to note what happens to Trump's self-control and thinking when he's distressed. He sounds more like a distraught child than a man who will assume what is arguably the most powerful public office on earth in less than two months.

Former Republican strategist and cable news commentator Ana Navarro offers Trump some advice.

.@ananavarro  @realDonaldTrump "" https://t.co/WZflCxLRzA

— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) November 29, 2016

Another Trump Voter Meltdown

This customer meltdown happened in a Chicago store I know well. I wouldn't say that Trump's victory was the prompt for the meltdown, but for some reason the woman had to announce that she voted for Trump, and she threw a Trump rant into the middle of her 1/2 hour meltdown.

According to this story in Chicago Patch, a black cashier offered to sell the customer a reusable bag at checkout, and the customer decided that charging for a bag was based on racial discrimination because she's white and the cashier is black, and something about voting for Trump, and the last person who made it known that they voted for Trump got beaten up. The store manager, who is also black, tried to reason with the customer, but the manager was also deemed a racial discriminator.

About that bag. For the past year, Chicago and some communities near the city have regulated use of plastic bags by retail stores. Some but not all stores in the area now sell bags at checkout, so I'm not sure why the customer interpreted the offer of the bag as an act of discrimination. Also, typical customers in the store are white, so it would be weird to single out this particular customer for racial discrimination. According to the Patch account, numerous customers waited in the store until the woman left because they wanted to support the employees in the event that the angry customer files a complaint, as she said she would. Chicago police were called, but by the time they arrived, the woman was gone.

The neighborhood (East Lakeview) is mostly white, gentrified in the 1980s, with expensive homes, mostly prosperous residents and a lot of younger families. The customer looks rather typical for the neighborhood. She actually looks familiar, but I can't place her.

While her Trump rant isn't really explained, she's definitely got a thing about being a Trump voter and a thing about race, which are interconnected themes in many of the Trump voter meltdown videos.

Morrocan TV Shares Make-up Tips For Domestic Violence Victims

Story

Conspiracy Theories

This week I did some reading on personality and the tendency to believe conspiracy theories. Take a look at this abstract: from an article entitled Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.

Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.

Just wanted to show you the highlighted part.

What the?

Sunday night in Russia.

pic.twitter.com/XxVRn6GeIV

— Yashar (@yashar) November 27, 2016

The woman is 2006 Olympic gold winner, Tatyana Navka. She is the wife of Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. I guess Russian Holocaust sensibilities are a little different?

Old post cited in a recent research paper

In an old post, I discussed code-switching, a phenomenon in which bilinguals switch languages, often repeatedly within conversations with other bilinguals. My interest in this subject arises from growing up in a family of code-switchers. As a child it drove me a little crazy because I didn't understand why people would switch languages constantly, within the same conversation or even within a single sentence. Sometimes I would ask my mom why she did this, and not only couldn't she explain why she did it, she wasn't even aware of doing it.

At some point in my training as a psychologist, I took an interest in understanding the psychological/neurological bases for code-switching. Was it an accident of wiring? Did it serve some adaptive function? I wrote about my questions in 2011, and when I wrote about it, I also raised a question about bilinguals with Asperger's. Specifically, would a bilingual person with AS be less likely to code-switch? The reason I had that question is explained in the post.

I was wondering about my question again today, after I heard a couple of Mexican guys code-switching. So I googled. I came across a recent paper that indicates that people with AS can code-switch. It's based on case studies, so it doesn't answer my question about whether they code-switch less frequently, but they aren't incapable. More interesting is the finding that the cognitive effort involved might improve certain AS-related cognitive limitations in bilinguals with autism. While I was reading the paper, I thought that there was a part that sounded bizarrely similar to what I had written (I was thinking plagiarism), but then checking the references, I discovered that the author referenced my post.

Fake News

Fake news is in the news. NPR has a good story on it.

Film Recommendations

No films to pan today. Here are three good ones.

In The Edge of Seventeen, a socially awkward teen girl has loads of problems, especially after her beloved father dies, and her only friend begins a romantic relationship with her brother. She regards her brother as a shallow and narcissistic jerk, but in her pain and loneliness, she is perhaps more self-absorbed and indifferent to the feelings of others. We understand why she's bitter, angry and tormented, but she can't find a measure of relief until she realizes that she's taken much for granted about the kindness of others, and has been superficial in her own judgements. Not a perfect film, but a solid film at 88/100.

Arrival tells the story of aliens visiting earth from a different dimension where neither time nor communication are linear, with the former giving rise the latter. This film is mind-bending and, in the end, emotionally complex. It leaves you with the question: If you could see your entire life, past present and future, all at once, would you change anything to avert terrible suffering that you know will come your way? Can you even change the future if everything is really now? Even if you believe you would make changes, Arrival compellingly invites you to think twice about what your decision would be. 93 out of 100.

The best of the three films I'm recommending today is Manchester By The Sea, starring Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler and Michelle Williams. Affleck turns in a perfect performance in a moving film, showing that emotional recovery from traumatic tragedy is not always possible, and when it's possible, caveats and limitations may apply. I won't reveal the specifics because this one is best seen without plot reveals. Just now checking Rotten Tomatoes to create the link above, I see that both critics and audience rate this film on a scale of 1 to 100, exactly as I rate it. 97/100 See. This. Movie.