By Howard Bloom There is a sudden movement in the Western World to take smartphones away from kids. It started in the summer of 2022 when social psychologist Jonathan Haidt at New York University, the father of two adolescents, was writing a book about what he called “the pervasive negative effects of the internet and
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By Howard Bloom The current crisis over Joe Biden’s frailty has twisted Democrats like me in knots. Wednesday morning, July 10, actor George Clooney published an opinion piece in the New York Times calling for Joe Biden to leave the presidential race and make room for a younger candidate. Clooney joined seven other celebrities asking
By Howard Bloom We are living in a radically different America than the one we lived in last week. On Monday, July 1st, the Supreme Court rewrote the constitution to say that a president who commits criminal acts while in office may be immune from prosecution. Meanwhile, for years, the right has said that Joe
By Howard Bloom The headline in a CNN story that appeared a little after noon on Wednesday, June 26th, was brutal: “Children are dying of starvation in their parents’ arms as famine spreads through Gaza.” The details were heartbreaking. One nine year old boy, said CNN, is “clearly wasted from severe malnutrition and suffering from
by Howard Bloom On Wednesday June 12th something frightening happened. The Russian Northern Fleet naval group completed “precision missile weapons” drills East of the Florida Keys, within easy nuclear missile distance of the United States. Then the four ships of mass destruction sailed to Cuba, only 106 miles from the beaches of Florida, anchored at Havana
By Howard Bloom In the wake of Covid, are Americans losing their minds? Sort of. We are going crazy for animal stories. Why? It could be because stories of insanity among humans are just too hard for us to take. In the Associated Press’s list of the 31 oddest stories of the week, fully 16—more than
by Howard Bloom Hamas’ strategy of using civilians as human shields is working. The biggest stories in Gaza War news in the last few days have centered on two purported Israeli strikes in Rafah killing civilians. On Sunday May 26th Israel dropped two small 37-pound bombs to kill two Hamas leaders. These pinpoint bombs killed precisely the
By Howard Bloom The Internet has been under constant attack for the last 20 years as the source of all of our emotional woes, from depression, cyberbullying, and suicide to negative body image. The anti-Internet attack has been so fierce that nine states have tried to ban social media access for kids under sixteen or
By Howard Bloom On Wednesday, April 24th, the Senate passed a TikTok bill. And Joe Biden signed it into law. The new law says that ByteDance, the company that founded and owns TikTok, must sell TikTok to an American purchaser within nine months or TikTok will be banished from the Apple and Google app stores
By Howard Bloom We have reached a dire moment. At 2 am Sunday morning, March 14, Iran launched a swarm of between 300 and 350 suicide drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles at Israel. Israel’s Stunner missiles, Arrow missiles, and Iron Dome missiles, with help from the French and Americans, knocked 99% of these weapons out
by Howard Bloom What started as a marketing gimmick may have revealed something important about your happiness. True Lemon is a product created in Baltimore in 2003 to put the flavor of a lemon slice into a powder that you can pour into your drink. True Lemon is what its creator, David Schleider, calls a
by Howard Bloom The TikTok issue is one of the biggest damned if you do, damned if you don’t problems on America’s agenda. On April 14, 2023, nearly a year ago, Montana became the first state to try to ban TikTok, but a US District Judge put a temporary halt to the ban, saying it
By Howard Bloom Nikki Haley competed against Donald Trump in primaries in 29 states and territories over the last five months and won only in two—Vermont and Washington, DC. So, Wednesday morning, March 6th, Haley gave a speech suspending her campaign. Haley’s words mark a profound change in the Republican party and in America’s kind of
There is a fight in America between those who want Russia to win its loathsome war in Ukraine and those who want Russia to lose. The top cheer leader for a Russian victory is former President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump controls the Republicans in Congress. A bill to give $38 billion to Ukraine has passed
By Howard Bloom On Tuesday, February 20, at 1:54 pm, an American Airlines flight took off from Albuquerque’s International Sunport headed for Chicago, a three-hour flight away. Roughly half an hour into the flight, a passenger, Emma Ritz, says that a man whose seat was next to the emergency exit “cracked open the window that
Autonomous Taxis By Howard Bloom There have been a series of accidents over the last few months that can easily make you leery of autonomous cars, self-driving automobiles controlled by artificial intelligence. Waymo is a self-driving car company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet. CNN reported on Wednesday, February 14th, that sometime at the end of