I recently made friends with a new colleague who joined the university where I teach. The campus is at the back of beyond, and everything a normal, non-young adult might require is reachable only by car. So, if you're a visiting teacher, you end up being dependent on the kindness of colleagues, friends, and strangers. ET Year-end Special Reads Take That: The gamechanger weapon's India acquired in 2024 10 big-bang policy moves Modi government made in 2024 How governments tried to rein in the social media beast When M and his wife joined as permanent faculty, I was happy to discover we shared some tastes and interests. It was also helpful that my new friends have a car for our local adventures. Rapidly, they became part of the faculty fleet, which ranged out in various vehicles carrying owners and some of us grateful non-owners to different destinations around the area. Now, everybody drives differently. So, we have the Bio guy with the spanking new 4-wheel-drive SUV zipping down the narrow road between the paddy fields as though he's competing in the Paris-Dakar rally. We have the Lit lady who drives fine inside cities, but can't handle the highway too well. We have the Ceramic lady who has no such problems, deftly swatting aside trucks as she gets you to the nearest big metro in record time. And you have the newly married young couple, driving with whom you feel like you're a stowaway on a honeymoon trip. Among these, my new friend M is different. The first time we go out in his pristine-looking 1-year-old sedan, I wonder if there is something wrong with the car. Then I realise he's just driving slowly, much more slowly than normal. There's a group of us in the car, so I don't say anything. The next time his wife makes a good-natured joke about his slow driving . But we all agree that the rural road is inimical to the low suspension of the city car. 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As a driver myself, if I'm sitting next to a reckless driver, I often find my foot pressing down on a non-existent brake. Here, it's the absent accelerator for which my foot twitches. Even in town and market traffic, M lets the vehicle in front get far away, so far that two cars could get in between us and them-something that indeed happens regularly. Even in a crowded pedestrian-heavy gali, M doesn't honk; he waits for the people to part. When there's a 50-50 on a gap, to use a football term for two players going for the ball, M waits and always lets the other guy take the space. As a normally aggressive desi driver, my whole body starts to twitch after a while. We do our shopping and get back, having taken not too much longer than if somebody 'normal' had been driving. Outside the car, M is not a shy or self-effacing person. In an intellectual or political argument, he gives no undue ground. He is good and firm in his dealings with people, saying no whenever required. And yet, his driving.... After the latest trip, it occurs to me that perhaps it is millions of us 'normal' drivers who are crazy, and M who is sensible. A car is a vehicle for getting from A to B, not an instrument for emotional release. Slow is always safer in a country where most people are on foot, where most of the ones driving have been taught very badly. Over the last half a century, generations of Indian drivers have been conditioned to elbow and brawl for shrinking road space. In a slow-moving country, every pause in speedy road progress feels like you're going backwards, sending tempers soaring. Just as in life, so in traffic, we hate to yield because we are afraid of the damage this will cause us. And yet, if everyone yielded a bit more, perhaps things would move more smoothly. If everyone, especially the men, managed to drain down their aggression, perhaps India would be a happier place. Here's wishing everyone a slow, uneventful, and happy 2025.
. hen asked why he didn’t begin writing novels until his 30s, the celebrated Czech author Milan Kundera said he didn’t have the requisite experience when he was younger. “This jerk that I was, I wouldn’t like to see him,” he added. Many of us look back at our former selves and wince to recall our immaturity. We vary quite a lot in the degree to which we feel friendly toward, and connected to, both our former and our future selves. Psychologists call this trait self-continuity, and suggest that it carries enormous weight in determining our long-term well-being. In recent years, increasing research has shown that a sense of coherence between our past and present selves can bolster mental health and, particularly, . Our connection to our future selves, on the other hand, can sway on our future welfare, from to . Self-continuity, says Cornell University gerontologist Corinna Löckenhoff, who researches the trait, gives us “an understanding of where we came from and where we’re going. It gives us direction and purpose and identity.” The 19th-century psychologist William James compared human experience to being perched on a saddle “from which we look in two directions into time.” But modern researchers have found that the ability—or willingness—to look meaningfully in either direction varies from person to person, just like other psychological traits such as being extroverted or introverted. “Some people feel a great degree of overlap and continuity with their future selves, and some people don’t even think about that self, and it feels almost like a stranger,” says psychologist Hal Hershfield of the University of California, Los Angeles. Most studies of self-continuity look to the future, not the past. Researchers typically measure future self-continuity by asking people how similar they feel to an imagined future self. In a 2009 study of 164 people, for example, Hershfield and his team employed a series of Venn diagrams, with two circles overlapping to various degrees. Participants were asked to pick the circle pair best describing . People’s responses ranged from almost no overlap to almost complete overlap. The differences between people depend on a hodgepodge of factors, in addition to basic influences of nature and nurture. Studies have reported that , whose expected time horizons are shorter, tend to have a greater sense of self-continuity, as do members of , which, as some scholars speculate, tend to have a more holistic, connected world view. But researchers have found that people struggling with , tend to feel less connected to their future selves. The degree of coherence we feel with ourselves over time can support or sabotage us. People with a sturdier connection with their future selves may be more likely to pay for future benefits, and vice versa. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld illustrates the conflict in his riff about how Morning Guy always suffers for the carpe-diem antics of Night Guy: “You get up in the morning, your alarm, you’re exhausted and groggy,” he says. “Oh, I hate that Night Guy! See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. ...” The same tension is evident in the broader and more serious failure by many Americans to save for retirement. In a 2022 survey of more than 1,100 retirees, 70 percent said . Hershfield says this emerging crisis is what drew him to focus his research on self-continuity and its behavioral consequences. He and others have found that people with more self-continuity are more likely to engage in behaviors that deliver future benefits, including not only saving for retirement but also taking better care of their health in the present. People with stronger self-continuity are also more likely to behave ethically and responsibly, Hershfield’s research suggests. In a 2012 study, he and colleagues measured the self-continuity of 85 Northwestern University students, then followed up with a test to assess their ethical conduct. Only 50 percent of those who scored low in self-continuity showed up for the follow-up, they found, compared with 73 percent of those who scored high. What’s more, of the low scorers who did show up, 77 percent were willing to lie to an anonymous partner to earn more money when tested with a “ ,” while only 36 percent of the high scorers would do so. A stronger sense of connection with one’s future self may also push people toward environmentally responsible behavior. In a 2022 study, researchers recruited 175 undergraduate students at an unnamed United States public university, randomly assigning them into three groups: one that was encouraged to visualize themselves at age 60, and the others told to visualize themselves, or another person, at the present time. Afterward, all of the students played a game where they could take simulated fish from a pool. The students who focused on their future selves limited the number of fish they took each round , the experiment revealed, while those who focused on the present were more likely to quickly exhaust the pool. For more than a decade, scientists have searched for ways to manipulate self-continuity in study participants to try to get them to behave more prudently. They have reported success with a variety of approaches, including having people interact with a of themselves, sometimes with the help of . Most recently, a new program called developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offers young people a chance to chat with an online, AI-generated simulation of themselves at age 60. A recent found that users who interacted with their future selves reported “increased future self-continuity” and, perhaps as a consequence, significantly less anxiety, compared with those who did not. Future You is a high-tech version of a technique long practiced by high school teachers and counselors who encourage students to write letters to their future selves, as if writing to a pen pal. In a pilot study of high school students in Japan, social psychologist Anne E. Wilson, at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, took the exercise one step further. She and her colleague Yuta Chishima instructed students who had written the letter to their future selves to respond to it as they imagined their future selves might. Writing a letter back from the future made the students feel , the researchers found. A month later, students who had written back from their future self’s perspective reported “more intensive career planning and a greater willingness to study hard at school even when temptations beckon,” compared with students who wrote only the single letter, . To be sure, there are times when a shorter horizon may be useful, researchers from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom note in the 2023 . For example, too strong a sense of continuity with one’s past self might hamper efforts in the present to abandon “sunk costs”—investments already made in a doomed plan or project—they report. The same may apply to quitting a such as . “A bad past could be like an anchor for someone,” says Wilson. “Like, ‘If I’ve failed at this in the past, it means I’m going to fail at this in the future.’ “On the other hand,” adds Wilson, “a bad past could be something that we learn from and then figure out different strategies for the future, so we don’t keep making the same mistakes.” Perhaps like Milan Kundera, who so forcefully repudiated the man he was in his 20s, and died at 94 in 2023, after a long and celebrated writing career. Posted on is a journalist and author and co-author of 12 nonfiction books, including the ADHD family memoir, . Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.College attendance in the U.S. has increased from under 10% to over 60% in the last century. Yet, according to a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, despite the change in attendance rates, most students at elite universities come from wealthy families. The researchers assembled a dataset of records from 2.5 million students at 65 elite colleges over the past hundred years. They found in the 1920s, 8% of college students were from families at the bottom 20% of the income distribution. A hundred years later, 13% of male college students and 20% of female college students were from the bottom 20% of the income distribution. However, for Harvard University and Yale University, only 5% of students came from the bottom 20% of the income distribution, and this has not changed over the past hundred years. This pattern also held true for the other Ivy League universities, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Duke University. However, public universities have seen an increase. The University of California, Berkeley, for example, increased its number of low-income students from 3% in the 1920s to 10% by the early 2000s. | The researchers did find that upper-income student enrollment at elite colleges decreased after World War II (WWII), but has surged again since the 1980s. Before WWII, 70% of the student body at private elite institutions (and 55% at public elite institutions) were from families in the top 20% of the income distribution. After WWII, this fell to 50% for private institutions and 40% for public. However, during the 1980s, this bounced back to pre-WWII levels and has stayed there ever since. The researchers pointed out that since the proportion of low-income students at Ivy League schools has stayed the same, this increase comes at the expense of middle-income student enrollment. Finally, while economic diversity has not increased, racial and geographic diversity has increased. Before the 1960s, the student body was almost entirely white. Since the Civil Rights Moment, Black student enrollment has increased to about 7% of the student body population and held steady. Interestingly, for elite public schools, Black enrollment has dropped since the early 2000s, but it has held steady at elite private schools. In addition, international student enrollment has increased from under 5% before the 1950s to about 15% in private colleges. Meanwhile, prior to the 1950s, only 30% of students were from outside their college’s geographic region, but this has since increased to about 60%. In conclusion, the researchers wrote, “Two major policy changes in the history of American higher education, namely the G.I. Bill after World War II and the introduction of standardized tests for admissions, had little success in increasing the representation of lower- and middle-income students at elite colleges.” The application deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is Friday, December 6, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
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Even if Black Friday itself has now ended, Walmart is continuing to roll out some serious discounts. Whether it's Black Friday weekend or the upcoming Cyber Monday, there are still plenty of opportunities to score big with CNET's shopping experts scouring all of the savings to save you time and money. You can expect to find the best bargains on Apple products , TVs , laptops , small appliances and games on this page. You'll even find deals on workout gear and home goods. Walmart itself is running its Black Friday sale right up until Dec. 1. before Cyber Monday takes over. Both of which are one of, if not the best times of the year to save hundreds or even thousands on products. It's always worth remembering that popular products and big price cuts can disappear quickly. If you come across something you want, this is the time to act. With that in mind, make sure to check back regularly throughout Black Friday weekend and the Cyber Monday sales event, as we’ll keep this page updated with the best Walmart deals. Best Walmart Black Friday deals Size: 42, 46mm | Colors: Black, rose gold, silver One of Apple's latest wearables and our overall favorite smartwatch of 2024 , the Apple Watch Series 10 is currently on sale for the first time since it hit shelves in September. It has a vibrant OLED display, an 18-hour battery life and advanced health monitors like an ECG function. Both the 42mm and 46mm models are currently discounted. Storage: 1TB | Resolution: 4K (2160p) | Frame rate: 120fps Don't miss this rare opportunity to snag Microsoft's next-gen console at a discount. It supports 4K visuals at 120 frames per second and has 1TB of storage. Note that this deal applies only to the white digital-only version. Weight: 6.1 pounds | Mesh filter for blocking hair/dust | HEPA filter | Colors: Gray and silver We named the Tinceo Pure One S11 the overall best cordless vacuum of 2024 . It has 130 watts of suction power, is equipped with a four-stage HEPA filter and weighs in at just over 6 pounds, so it's easy to maneuver. Walmart Black Friday tech deals Size: 45x4.5x3.4 inches | Color: Black and white | Connectivity technology: Wi-Fi This incredible all-in-one soundbar is a great addition to any home. It rarely goes on sale, especially at this great of a discount. Walmart Black Friday TV deals The TCL QM8 earned the top spot on our best TV list this year, and this deal makes it an even better purchase. It's packed with premium features, including a gorgeous, extra-bright mini-LED screen, AI optimization, Dolby Vision IQ support, all the HDMI ports you need and much more. Resolution: 4K UHD | Display Type: Mini-LED QLED | Screen size: 65 inch | Refresh rate: 120 Hz You won't want to miss the best Walmart Black Friday TV sales going on right now. Whether for better resolution or those bumpin' speakers, it's a great time to upgrade your old TV. Walmart Black Friday gaming deals The Nintendo Switch rarely goes on sale, so if you've been eyeing one, now is the time. Enjoy your favorite games at home or on the go with one convenient device. This deal also includes a copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so you'll have a fun game to start playing right out the box. Dimensions: 3.93x8.25x10.22 inches | Weight: 0.71 pounds without controllers and 0.93 pounds with controllers Right now you can save big on games, controllers, cases and consoles from top brands like Nintendo or PlayStation . Walmart Black Friday laptop deals If you're looking for a business laptop, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better deal than this Lenovo laptop with 16GB of RAM and a 15.6-inch screen. Screen size: 15.6 inches | Color: Black | RAM: 8GB and 16GB Owner of a lagging laptop? Now's the perfect time to upgrade, with the best Black Friday laptop sales . Whether you're looking for a new laptop, Chromebook or Mac , there's a deal for you. Walmart Black Friday kitchen and appliance deals Ninja's 4-quart air fryer is our favorite air fryer of 2024. It's the perfect size, comes in multiple colors to match any kitchen style, and impressed us through several rounds of testing. The Ninja air fryer is small but powerful, and at this price, it's hard to beat. Color: Red, blue and white | Capacity: 4 quarts | Material: Metal Black Friday is the perfect time to revamp your kitchen essentials. From coffee makers to pan sets, we're seeing huge Black Friday kitchen deals . For more deals, check out our best Black Friday deals under $100 . Walmart Black Friday smart home deals This 50- by 60-inch heated throw blanket is a must-have for the cold winter nights ahead. Colors: Blue and brown | Size: 50x60 inches | Material: Flannel and sherpa | Heat source: Electric Need a new bed ? Or maybe a cozy blanket ? Don't miss your chance to save hundreds on home essentials with the best Black Friday deals. Walmart Black Friday headphone deals This is the most affordable pair of Apple earbuds on the market right now. These are great if you're on a budget or if you just love the original look and feel of Apple's popular buds. There are plenty of headphones on sale this Black Friday, from top brands like Apple , Sony and Bose . Now's a great time to take your music experience to the next level. Walmart Black Friday fitness deals This four-in-one portable weight set lets you change between a dumbbell, barbell and kettlebell. Weight: 4 to 60 pounds | Colors: Black and red | Dimensions: 6x4x12 inches | Material: Steel Have you been thinking about upgrading your home gym? The best Black Friday fitness deals will save you big on your next wellness additions. When is Walmart's Black Friday sale? Walmart's 2024 Black Friday sale is happening right now with deals running throughout the entire weekend, but it's not the only sale the retail giant is promoting during this shopping event. There will also be a new collection of deals available for Cyber Monday on Dec. 2, which will start at 5 p.m. ET for Walmart Plus members and 8 p.m. for everyone else. Are Walmart Black Friday deals available both in store and online? Yes, Walmart offered in-store savings for Black Friday but the dates differed compared to the online sales. The first wave of in-person deals kicked off on Nov. 15, with a second wave then following on Nov. 29. Black Friday weekend sales are now taking place online with Walmart's Cyber Monday deals being exclusively available online too.