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misformarvel · 6 years

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Three: the “ship” monster.

Tom x reader x Harrison

A/N: I’m bac y’all. Don’t judge me.

Warnings: language, bad writing, mentions of sex.

I can´t make a summary. This is too much for me.

part II link

“Y/N! Harrison! Please here! Smiles on us, please!” Flashing cameras all along the way, crazy crowds screaming their names, journalists waiting for making the interviews before Harrison Osterfield and Y/N/L/N get into the theater for the release of their latest movie. They feel happy and lucky to share this moment.

“Guys! What a night to be young and beautiful!” the reporter greeted the movie stars making an opportune reference to the upcoming movie’s title. Y/N looked beautiful in her burgundy dress and by the way she walked through the red carpet it was easy to see that she knew it. Haz looked dashing in his all-black outfit, but to be completely honest, when wasn’t he just gorgeous?

“We’re so glad to be told we’re young and beautiful. You know, this morning I found Y/N has some grey hairs” Haz teased following the cheeky attitude of the reporter. Y/N gasped and throw a little punch to his nearest arm. He pouted and she just stayed staring.

“Wow, so much chemistry! Tell me some of this is reflected on the big screen!”.

“Sure. I mean, when you have to play a role like ours, where you need to recreate such a special and tight bond, I think the best thing that could ever happen is to do it with someone you already have something special. For me, to be in this movie with my best friend is amazing, a wonderful experience”. Y/N was nervous but she could handle this scenario as a true professional. Harrison proudly nodded at every single word of her little speech.

“Guys, seriously, look at you, this can’t be just a friendship” the reporter was supposed to make questions about the movie and the feelings Y/N and Harrison had about the premiere, a huge event with a lot of important guests and fans all over the place. Instead of it, the woman was getting intrusive about their private lives. Not just that, she was feeding the “shipping monster”.

It was something inevitable. They knew it from the start. More precisely, Tom knew it from the start.

It was Tom, Y/N, and Harrison. Rising and shining, living the dream. In their early 20’s they have accomplished almost every goal they had in their lives. All young, beautiful, successful and with some money on their bank accounts. At least more money than they’ve ever thought. Tom was born for it, he always knew he’d be a famous actor, an artist. Is in his blood and nothing could stop him from reaching the top. Y/N was kind of forced to do it. Since she was a little girl, her mum put a lot of pressure on her shoulders. She must be “the best, the most beautiful, the most talented, the most beloved”. And she grew up being all that. Sometimes it was hard, sometimes the fame and people’s expectations on her were too much to handle. Sometimes Y/N crumbled, but there she has got Tom and Haz, to prevent her falling and help her to rise again, stronger and better than before. Haz was alright doing his thing. Performing was his passion and his most sacred dream, but he was alright as long as he could keep his friends close and his family proud. Is not like he wasn’t ambitious, he just felt he wasn’t ready to sacrifice his life as he knew it for something unknown and -as he knew in his deepest thoughts- as corruptive as the fame.

When Haz saw it with his own eyes something broke inside of him. He loved Tom as a brother and trusted him his life. And Y/N was always his weakness and his strength. All the time, every day since they met on Drama School. Tom played it cool, dated a lot, even tried to get his sister. Nothing really bothered Harrison. Not until Tom started flirting with Y/N. And it’s not like in almost ten years of friendship it never happened, but this time was different. This time Tom meant it, he didn’t want just to bed her. Haz worst fear was becoming a real thing because her flirtations were serious and intended. She cried so many times for Tom, but now she had the power to make him beg, and she wouldn’t waste that chance. So when Haz saw Tom and Y/N making out, it was hard, yes, but he was more concerned about how it would affect their friendship. He was sure Tom was going to get it and then made up a lame excuse to avoid any sort of commitment, and Y/N would be overdramatic for a couple of months but then she’ll start dating her next co-star and forgive Tom, as usual.

But Harrison ignored Tom was getting older. His younger brothers were married, Sam and his wife even had a little boy in the way. Even Paddy had a “serious” girlfriend. Tom was getting older and loner, and he didn’t like it. Yes, being a playboy was quite fun all of these years but he needed some stability, and the right person to settle down with was Y/N. His best friend. The only female that -apart from his own mother- has always been there to provide him affection and forgiveness when he needed it the most. She was home, and Tom knew it. So when all of his efforts to woo Y/N succeed, Tom decided to made it clear: he was all in. He wanted her, he loved and needed her. If he had to tell the world, he would.

So, the first person to be notified of their new relationship status was Haz. It wasn’t unexpected, after all, he was both Tom and Y/N’s best mate. They were a real thing. Tom was in love with her and this time he was determined to do not fuck things up. She never seemed to be happier. But then something strange happened. No one else knew it. For some absurdly ridiculous reason, Tom and Y/N made Harrison participate of their secret, not being allowed to discuss the fact his best friends were not just shagging but being in a “monogamous relationship”.

-”I’m ready to tell everyone Haz, but she’s not, and I respect that. So, if I’m her boyfriend and I can understand her, when it means “hiding” me, well, I think you should respect her decision too”.

Several times Harrison felt an urgent need to punch Thomas’ face but never like this one. It all sounded so fake to him. He was sure Y/N didn’t want to make their relationship public because deep inside she knew it wouldn’t work, or even worst, Tom would cheat on her and create a massive scandal, paparazzi following them everywhere.

-”Anyways we have to do something about, you know, your “ship monster”.

Harrison, as oblivious as someone can be of what his friend was talking about looked at Tom with the most confused gesture.

-”Yeah, I mean, I know we’ve always been very… how to say it, physically… well, uhm, demonstrative of our affection for Y/N”.

-”What the fuck are you talking about mate”.

-”Oh c’mon Haz. I mean, no more PDA with Y/N, none of us. No more holding hands in public, no more hugs and temple kisses, no more going with her everywhere…”.

-”Tom I’m sorry but you’re not gonna tell me how i’m gonna be with Y/N, she’s been my friend for so long and people know we’re just friends. Why are you so insecure about it?”.

-”Because I was her friend too, and have been the same way with her, and no one ever shipped us”.

-”Seriously Thomas?” How old are you? 14?”. -Haz rolled eyes at his dark-haired friend. -”You know what? Fine, I’m not gonna hug her in public anymore. What’s next? You’ll control her texts, I guess”.

-”You know what mate? Forget it. Anyways she has chosen.”

Deep inside Harrison knew everything was wrong, but he tried to convince himself that maybe Tom and Y/N could be happy together. Maybe Y/N could make Tom less of a dickhead, maybe he was ready to change for her.

It was 3:30 am. Another cold and muggy night in London. Tom was waiting for Y/N inside of his car. They arrived at the club together, along with Haz, but if they wanted to keep their relationship out of the spotlight, they couldn’t leave the place together without him. So Y/N was going to use the VIP exit and Tom would pick her up.

Harrison was standing by the bar, staring at Y/N while she said goodbye to some friends they met at the club. Friends was a nice way to call those fake dickheads that wanted to be around for the money and privileges of their positions.

The beautiful bartender handed him another tequila shot. It was the 10th, he could barely stand on his feet.

-“It’s about her, isn’t it? Don’t wanna play the creepy fangirl but I thought you guys were together”.

Harrison looked at her for the first time since he arrived. She was tall, not very thin, her auburn hair on a messy bun, but he could remember she had it untied, straight auburn hair long till her waist. She was all rosy cheeks and the dimple on her chin was just too adorable to be unnoticed. Soon some kind of excitement started growing in his stomach but it was killed instantly when his brain reminded the moment this girl said she thought he and Y/N were a thing.

-”Oh, I’ve fucked up, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I didn’t, I… I’m Maria, by the way”.

-”Nice to meet you, Maria. Hand me a beer and I’ll forgive you” Harrison made a weird gesture, like if he was a priest absolving her from her sins.

-”I don’t think you should keep drinking. Why don’t you call someone to pick you up, and we have a nice “bartender-drunk customer” chat till they come for you”.

Haz groaned while he rubbed his blurry eyes intensely. He wanted to cry, he wanted to shout his feelings out loud. He tried and he failed. He couldn’t stand their presence. Tom, all cocky, showing off she was his now, but never enough to others to notice. He flirted with her as he used to before but he also made a comment about the bartender’s hair and how it perfectly fall just above her fine ass, and that’s why his drowned-in-vodka-mind could remember it. And Y/N, Y/N was a fucking teaser, she was driving both men insane and she knew it, she enjoyed it. Maybe it was innocent. No, there was no way she was innocent. Harrison was too tired and too frustrated to even keep thinking about all of her advances through the night.

-”So… are you alright? Do you want me to call someone for you?”.

-”No, No. But can I stay here if I don’t buy you drinks?”

-”Sure, you’re Harrison Osterfield, you can stay wherever you want”. She laughed nervously as soon as she noticed how weird it sound, she just couldn’t help herself.

-”Ok, what was your name again? I’m awfully drunk, my apologies…”

-”Maria, I’m Maria”.

Clueless about the “new terms” of her friendship with Haz, Y/N start wondering if she did something wrong, something that could have made him upset. It was just another Friday night out. The three of them, nothing new. Except when her fingers brush against Harrison’s palm, inviting his touch to embrace hers, inviting his body to join hers on the dancefloor. He let go. He walked away and didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse. Of course, Tom’s arms wrapped around her waist almost instantly, dragging her close to him and dissipating all of her concerns. Y/N and her friends were dancing and drinking and having a blast, as every Friday night she was in town. It was a tradition, so Haz weird attitude wouldn’t stop her from having a good time.

-”What’s bothering you, love?” Tom asked while his free hand rubbed up and down her thigh.

-”Nothing, keep driving, wanna get home”. She mumbled against his neck, her sweet hot breath driving him eager, making him speed up the car.

Just another Friday night out. Another Saturday dawn lying in Tom’s bed, enjoying the warmth of his naked body pressed against hers. It was heaven and hell, all the same time. She was happy and satisfied but she knew it wouldn’t last. He was jealous and she knew it. But it was Haz, their best mate. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t publicly hug a friend or give him an innocent peck on the cheek without being romantically linked with him by the tabloids and the fans. It started so long ago, and it cost her and Haz so many relationships but they insisted on keep being friends. And Tom was responsible for it because he was the one telling them to don’t give a shit about what people say.

-”And now you can’t sleep. You’re getting me worried Y/N”. Tom raspy voice send shivers down her spine. She didn’t expect him to be awake, he always deeply falls asleep after sex.

-”Uhm, it’s nothing”. She turned around to face him. His features softened when her delicate fingers touched his face, tracing soft shapes on his cheeks and jaw. He looked so beautiful under the morning light coming through the window.

- “Lies” he murmured next to her ear, his strong arms rounded her as he snuggled trying to bury his face in her chest.

- “Okay, just because you’re my best friend. Not because you're trying to bribe me with sexual innuendos” his laugh as response encouraged her to open up. It was Tom after all. If someone could understand her it was Tom. “It’s Haz. I, I think he’s in love with me”.

Tom abruptly left the bed. Without a word he grabbed his pants and the first t-shirt he found on his way out of the bedroom. Shocked, Y/N wrapped herself in the sheets and jumped out of the bed to stopped him, confront him about his reaction.

She tried to find an answer in his eyes but they were darker than ever and filled with anger, making her feel little and miserable. In a single motion, Tom pushed Y/N away. Tears falling from her eyes, she tried to stop him from grabbing the keys, but Tom was implacable this time.

-”If you can’t stop thinking bout him not even when you’re naked in my bed after we’ve shagged, maybe you’re the one who’s in love with him”.

WOOOOO I don’t know when I’m gonna finish this but it’s obviously gonna have a part II.

Tagging nice people I love. I’m scared about this one, It’s been so long since last time I wrote and posted something. I’m literally so nervous ...

@tomhollandimangines @stephie-senpai @tomhollandxreader @spidergirlwanab @peeterparkr @lilyholland @fuckyou-imspiderman @hollanderheart @hollandharrison @arya-di-angelo @no-username9 @clairesrainbow @cringyholland @afilmbypeterparkr

#tom holland fic #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland smut #harrison osterfield x reader #harrison osterfield #harrison osterfield smut #harrison osterfield imagines #tom x reader x haz

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glenmenlow · 5 years

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Why Brand Stories Succeed Or Fail

Engaging an audience is vital. NASA learned about the importance of engaging teams in the hardest of ways. In 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia set off on its disastrous final flight. But, sadly, it didn’t have to be a disaster. As the shuttle lifted off, people on the ground observed a small piece of foam strike the wing. The mission was set for 16 days, which gave Boeing engineers plenty of time to come up with a risk assessment for the foam piece. They provided this in 28 utterly dreary PowerPoint slides. The information was compressed into bullet points. Headlines were incomprehensible.

A critical equation actually wrapped from one line to the next. As information design expert Edward Tufte later noted, all of the necessary information to understand the danger was there; it was just impossible to follow. One of the recommendations that came out of the investigation into the disaster was that NASA scientists should never again rely on PowerPoint alone to present important data and scientific information. In the business world, we do nothing all day but present gobs of data with PowerPoint. NASA forbids its use for that purpose.

Somehow, in business we feel compelled to bore the hell out of each other. Arguably, we live in the most exciting time in world history. Yet we’re addicted to overwhelming graphs and tables and somnolent presentations. Sometimes, this leads to failed pitches; other times, to things far worse.

Enter Storytelling

The solution to the problem turns out to be simple: stories. From an evolutionary standpoint we are not hardwired to process abstract data points. We are set up for storytelling. For about 2 million years, we were a fairly unimpressive species. Our only technology consisted of rocks, clubs and the occasional domesticated dog. Then, about 27,000 years ago, we started sharing experiences through painting, sculpture and written stories. Our capabilities then grew on an exponential curve. In the blink of an evolutionary eye we went on to create the printing press and, soon after, virtual reality goggles.

Of course, plenty of people in the industry have woken up to the power of stories. We talk a lot about storytelling. Over time, the concept has been overused and abused to the point that it often means nothing. Seriously, chefs now talk about their food telling a story. Yet, there’s a compelling reason why we should be talking about this topic. Storytelling, done right, works. Research demonstrates that stories affect us at a deep neurological level. Using fMRI technology, we’ve learned that when people tell a good story, the teller and listener synchronize so that key areas of their brains are activated at the same time. If the story is about favorite foods, both the teller’s and the listener’s sensory cortex light up. If it’s about a race car, both of their motor cortexes activate. Even more profound, regions of the listener’s brain sometimes fire before the same regions in the storyteller’s. This happens because the listener is anticipating what will happen in the story. While bad presentations cause the audience to look for the exit, a great story gets their brain to look forward to more information.

What Makes A Story Effective?

The answer lies in the understanding that stories are about managing threats. A while ago, our industry didn’t have as strong of a need for storytelling. When the creative canvas was clearly defined with one-page print and 30-second TV ads, it was relatively easy to get teams to believe in creative ideas. The executive team already knew what they were buying, and we knew what we were selling.

Now that’s been upended. We live in a world where digital technology spreads information at light speed, so bad ideas are a threat to our careers. Whenever a person hears one, their brain instantly determines what dangers it poses. Will it threaten her job? Impact her ability to eat? Feed her children? Maintain her social status? Pay her healthcare bills?

Unfortunately, most people presenting an idea respond to this challenge with rational appeals. This is understandable. Business decisions should be rational. They should be made with the rational decision-making area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. However, as logical as this may seem, it doesn’t actually work. It turns out that getting information to the audience’s prefrontal cortex is not a straightforward process.

Humans have areas of their brains that filter out information before it gets to their prefrontal cortex. The human brain takes up 2 percent of our body weight but uses 20 percent of the body’s energy. Anything that requires it to fire more than 2 percent of its neurons makes us pass out cold. Since we make 35,000 decisions a day, we rely on systems to reduce our cognitive load. This happens in the limbic system, which includes our old friend the amygdala, as well as the hippocampus and the thalamus. Together, they work as a filtration system, helping the brain prioritize information.

When presented with new information, the limbic system quickly analyzes it to make sure it’s not a threat. Once it approves of the information, it passes it along. But it only passes along information that is engaging at an emotional level because that’s the language of the limbic system. It manages human emotions. Ideas don’t get to the rational prefrontal cortex unless they pass through the limbic system. We can’t simply make rational arguments and expect the audience to consider our ideas. We must first emotionally engage to have cognitive permission to rationally engage.

Why Do Stories Fail To Resonate?

As an industry, we tend to do the exact opposite. When we try to show how smart we are with giant PowerPoint decks containing tons of data points, detailed charts and cutting-edge analytics, we create a threat. It’s not emotionally engaging, and it requires the listener’s brain to inefficiently process extensive information.

That’s what is happening when the audience looks at their mobile devices. They’re not just bored. They’re threatened at a subconscious level. They don’t want to spend their rapidly waning levels of glucose in their brain listening to you; they look for more important threats in their mobile device. At that moment, their physiological makeup changes. They create neural pathways to process other information, and their hormonal structure changes when faced with outside threats. The chances of recapturing their attention is close to zero.

If our goal is to do breakthrough work that creates passion brands, we need to get our teams to rally around unprecedented ideas. Research and data are a necessary part of the ideation process. But that’s not enough to build internal alignment and excitement. In fact, great ideas are not enough. We need to tell compelling stories that make an emotional connection during our presentations.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg, excerpted from their book Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption, published by powerHouse Books.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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joejstrickl · 5 years

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Why Brand Stories Succeed Or Fail

Enter Storytelling

What Makes A Story Effective?

Why Do Stories Fail To Resonate?

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg, excerpted from their book Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption, published by powerHouse Books.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

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cashcounts · 6 years

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Can AI Learn to Understand Emotions?

Growing up in Egypt in the 1980s, Rana el Kaliouby was fascinated by hidden languages—the rapid-fire blinks of 1s and 0s computers use to transform electricity into commands and the infinitely more complicated nonverbal cues that teenagers use to transmit volumes of hormone-laden information to each other.

Culture and social stigma discouraged girls like el Kaliouby in the Middle East from hacking either code, but she wasn’t deterred. When her father brought home an Atari video game console and challenged the three el Kaliouby sisters to figure out how it worked, Rana gleefully did. When she wasn’t allowed to date, el Kaliouby studied her peers the same way that she did the Atari.

Rana el Kaliouby, who grew up hacking Ataris, is now helping AI understand human emotion.

“I was always the first one to say ‘Oh, he has a crush on her’ because of all of the gestures and the eye contact,” she says.

Following in the footsteps of her parents, both computer scientists, el Kaliouby knew that her knowledge of programming languages would be a foundational skill for her career. But it wasn’t until graduate school that she discovered that her interest in decoding human behavior would be equally important. In 1998, while looking for topics for her Master’s thesis at the American University in Cairo, el Kaliouby stumbled upon a book by MIT researcher Rosalind Picard. It argued that, since emotions play a large role in human decision-making, machines will require emotional intelligence if they are to truly understand human needs. El Kaliouby was captivated by the idea that feelings could be measured, analyzed, and used to design systems that can genuinely connect with people. The book, called Affective Computing, would change her career. So would its author.

Today, el Kaliouby is the CEO of Affectiva, a company that’s building the type of emotionally intelligent AI systems Picard envisioned two decades ago. Affectiva’s software measures a user’s emotional response through algorithms that identify key facial landmarks and analyze pixels in those regions to classify facial expressions. Combinations of those facial expressions are then mapped to any of seven different emotions as well as some complex cognitive states such as drowsiness and distraction. Separate algorithms also analyze voice patterns and inflections.

Rosalind Picard pioneered the field of affective computing.

Affectiva’s software allows market researchers to gauge a response to ads and TV shows. It powers furry social robots that help children stay engaged in learning. And, in the near future, it will allow cars to detect when drivers are dozing off.

By creating AI systems that incorporate emotion data, el Kaliouby and others in the affective computing field envision a world where technologies respond to user frustration, boredom, or even help alleviate human suffering.

“I see that our emotional AI technology can be a core component of online learning systems, health wearables even,” el Kaliouby says. “Imagine if your Fitbit was smart about when it told you to go to sleep or when you needed to get snacks. It could say, ‘Oh, I see that today is going to be a really busy day for you and you’re going to be stressed. How about you take three minutes to meditate?’ ”

Calculating Emotion

Analyzing emotions in real time is a mathematical problem of astronomical proportions—an equation our brains solve in microseconds over and over and over again throughout the day.

“If you take chess or Go—these games in AI that people think are so hard to solve—those are nothing to compared to what can happen in a few minutes in facial expressions,” says Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab.

By conservative estimates, one single chess game can have up to 10120 possible moves, presenting a colossal challenge for artificial intelligence systems at the time. AI is more sophisticated today—last year Google’s AlphaZero algorithm taught itself the game and defeated a world champion chess program called Stockfish in just four hours—but analyzing metrics like facial expression in real time “isn’t even in the same league” Picard says.

Humans start an interaction with any of 10,000 possible combinations of facial muscle movements that can create a facial expression. Each expression is created through a combination of more than 40 distinct muscle movements ranging from eyebrow furrowing to nose wrinkling to lip puckering. Those expressions are often accompanied by any of roughly 400 possible aspects of vocal inflections along with several thousand potential hand and body gestures. These face-voice-hand permutations change continuously throughout a single conversation, creating an ocean of data that zips from one person to another instantaneously. While our brains subconsciously process complex emotions and their intensities, teaching an artificial neural network to wade through that tsunami of data is an extraordinary technological challenge, one that’s further complicated by the fact that nonverbal communication varies between cultures.

How does today’s artificial intelligence actually work—and is it truly intelligent? Watch “Can We Build a Brain?” Wednesday, May 16 at 9/8c on PBS.

Despite the challenges, artificial emotional intelligence is a technological brass ring for a growing number of companies and researchers. While the field is in many ways still in its infancy, serious resources are being devoted to developing tools that can analyze and predict emotional response. These emerging tools include apps that forecast when students will be stressed out, vocal analysis software that helps diagnose mania and schizophrenia, and programs that predict suicide risk based on social media posts. These tools come with serious privacy and ethical questions that haven’t yet been answered as well as significant technical challenges.

“There’s just a huge, huge amount of data and research that has to happen before it’s going to be something that our computers are smart about,” Picard says.

Making the Field of Feelings

While el Kaliouby was fighting to be taken seriously as a computer scientist in Egypt, Rosalind “Roz” Picard was in Boston waging a somewhat similar war. Picard spent her early days at the MIT Media Lab building mathematical models that emulate how the brain detects patterns from data it collects from the outside world. Emotions, she discovered, have more to do with it than one might suspect.

“As I learned more and more about the role of feelings I went, ‘Oh shoot. This looks really important for AI and computer intelligence, and I sure don’t want to do it,�� ” Picard says. “This would totally destroy my career as a woman. Who wants to be associated with emotion?”

Picard tried to recruit male researchers, but no one bit. She began to do it herself, testing ways to capture data on genuine, spontaneous emotions and applying the same machine learning techniques she had used in previous research. Her first papers were rejected and criticized, with one reviewer writing that one article about engineering emotional intelligence was perhaps best suited for an in-flight magazine.

Like el Kaliouby, Picard persisted, turning what began as a small collection of academic papers into her groundbreaking book, Affective Computing, which was first published in 1997.

Seven years later, Picard met a starstruck el Kaliouby, then a Ph.D. student who was designing facial analysis software that could recognize emotional states. The system, called MindReader, was trained using video footage from the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. It featured actors making hundreds of different facial expressions—a sort of library originally compiled to teach children on the autism spectrum how to read nonverbal cues. El Kaliouby was planning to return to her husband and home country after finishing school. Instead, Picard offered to collaborate with her in Boston.

“I was like ‘I would love that. That would be a dream come true; however, I’m married. I have to go back,’ ” el Kaliouby recounts. “She actually said, ‘Commute from Cairo.’ It was insane.”

El Kaliouby finished her Ph.D. and embarked on a three-year stint at the MIT Media Lab, flying between Egypt to Boston while creating the next iteration of MindReader. Picard, in the meantime, had already developed several new tools for capturing emotions in data computers could read, including a set of hair scrunchies embedded with sensors to measure skin conductance. Worn on the palm of the hand, the sensors picked up changes in electrical conductivity that happen when someone becomes psychologically aroused and begins to sweat. Believing that MindReader and the biometric sensors could be used to help children on the autism spectrum learn to navigate social situations and control their emotional responses, el Kaliouby and Picard began a multi-year study.

As the project progressed, the pair demonstrated both technologies for corporate sponsors visiting the Media Lab. They were overwhelmed by how many organizations in industries ranging from retail to banking to robotics were interested in real-time data on their target audience’s emotional states. In 2008, they asked then Media Lab director Frank Moss to expand their research team. He refused, but offered a different proposition: Form a company. Reluctantly, Affectiva was born.

Affectiva’s software maps a person’s face and uses a series of neural networks to judge their emotion.

Nearly a decade later, neuroscientist Dr. Ned T. Sahin is using Affectiva software to fulfill Roz and Rana’s early dreams of using the technology to help people on the autism spectrum. Sahin is the founder of Brain Power, a company that makes wearable life coaching technologies for people with brain and cognitive challenges. Sahin’s team has developed a suite of Google Glass augmented reality applications, some of which are powered by Affectiva algorithms, and many of which were originally designed for children but have applications for wider audiences.

One game, called Emotion Charades, prompts a partner sitting across from the user to make a specific facial expression. Affectiva algorithms identifies the emotion and shows the user one augmented reality emoji representing that feeling and another that doesn’t. Users earn points by picking the correct emotion while prompts encourage players to discuss how they experience that feeling in their lives.

Like all Brain Power apps, Emotion Charades is designed to be used in short, daily spurts, just enough for users to practice skills they can use in their everyday lives.

“It’s like training wheels on a bike that then get removed,” Sahin says.

El Kaliouby and Picard agree that affective computing should focus on human needs. People should be able to decide whether and when to use the technology, understand how their data is being used, and maintain a level of privacy. Affectiva’s licensing agreement prohibits the software from being used in security or surveillance, and it requires partner organizations to obtain explicit consent from users before deployment.

But as the field expands, potential for misuse ratchets up. Groups like the IEEE Standards Association have issued guidelines for affective design that include calls for explicit consent and data transparency policies. When a system is likely to elicit an emotional response, it should be easily modifiable in case its misunderstood or if it unexpectedly hurts or upsets. Whether and how organizations will implement those guidelines is still up in the air.

Automating Mental Health

Answering those questions now is crucial, says Munmun De Choudhury, an assistant professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech. Back in 2010, while completing her dissertation, De Choudhury unexpectedly lost her father. As she processed her shock and grief, she began thinking about the loss from a more scientific perspective—how do users change their social media behaviors when a major life event happens?

De Choudhury began analyzing how and what new mothers post on Twitter after they’ve had a baby. She expected to see shifts in positive social media activity, but her data also revealed that some new moms were expressing negative emotions, too, and posting less often than they were during pregnancy. Suspecting that these might be indicators of postpartum depression, De Choudhury, then working at Microsoft Research, conducted a separate study that compared data from Facebook posts to interviews with mothers before and after their children were born. She found that data from social media posts could not only detect when a user had postpartum depression, but it could also predict which users would become depressed after giving birth.

Since then, De Choudhury has used social media to identify mental illness risk, including psychosis symptoms among patients with schizophrenia, while other researchers have created algorithms that detect signs of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Another team at Vanderbilt has built algorithms to predict suicide risk and is currently seeking ways to translate them into medical practice. Late last year, Facebook rolled out several suicide prevention tools, including an artificial intelligence program that scans posts and comments for words related to suicide or self-injury.

“Social data can be helpful to clinicians and psychiatrists as well as public health workers because it gives them a sense of where are the risks,” De Choudhury says. But, she adds, “currently the landscape is really, for lack of a better word, ‘primitive,’ in how algorithmic inferences can be incorporated into interventions.”

Chris Danforth, co-director of the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab, believes that conversations around when and how to deploy predictive mental health algorithms are especially important as opaque organizations like Facebook move further into the field. Danforth has designed one proof of concept computational model that can predict whether users are depressed by observing their Twitter feed and another from their Instagram photos.

Rosalind Picard is also focused on mental health. She left Affective in 2013 and has since concentrated on several health-minded projects, including work with MIT research scientist Akane Sano to build predictive models of mood, stress, and depression using data from wearable sensors. The goal is to create models that anticipate changes in mood and physical health and to help users make evidence-based decisions to stay happier and healthier, she says. Picard has also launched Empatica, a start-up that makes wearable devices for medical research. Earlier this year, Empatica received FDA clearance for the Embrace smartwatch, a device that uses skin conductance and other metrics combined with AI to monitor for seizures.

Meanwhile, el Kaliouby spends much of her time developing Affectiva tech. Since launching the software development kit in 2014, the company has licensed its software to organizations in healthcare, gaming, education, market research, and retail, to name a few. The company is currently focused on automotive applications as well as incorporating voice analysis into its “Emotion AI” software. Last year, Affectiva also joined the Partnership on AI—a technology consortium developing ethics and education protocols for AI systems—and el Kaliouby is currently working with the World Economic Forum to design an ethics curriculum for schools. She envisions a future where machines are tuned into our feelings enough to make our lives happier, healthier, maybe even more human.

“I just have this deep conviction that we’re building a new paradigm of how we communicate with computers,” el Kaliouby says. “That’s been the driving factor of my work. We are changing how humans connect with one another.”

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liberallifeblog · 7 years

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How To Get Out Of The Cycle Of Outrage In A Trump World

Have you heard about the latest outrage? Can you believe what the administration just did? I’m not actually talking about anything specific, but between the time I’m writing this and the time you’re reading it, there will no doubt have been plenty of examples. Your inbox and notifications are likely full of them. Your friends are probably texting you about them. You may well be talking about them at dinner tonight, before settling in to watch outraged pundits rehash them. Then there’s one last check for late-breaking outrages before a night of restless, fitful sleep. In the morning, with a check on the accumulation of whatever new outrages rained down overnight, the cycle starts all over again.

Trump has brought many new things to our lives. And one of them is this state of perpetual outrage (Trumprage? Trumpdignation?) provoked in reaction to the state of perpetual chaos his administration seems to generate on a daily, even hourly basis.

This is no way to live. Literally. We’re only 17 days in, and people are already exhausted by it. Trump hasn’t invaded any countries (yet), but he’s certainly invaded our minds and hearts. As Kevin Baker wrote in Politico, “thanks to social media, and to the nature of our new president and his administration, politics is suddenly with us always, in every aspect of our lives, including wherever we may look for diversion.”

And that’s not healthy. There is — as our president might say — a tremendous mountain that shows that when we live in an ongoing state of outrage, anxiety, fear and stress, it wreaks an awful toll on our physical and mental health. It’s not sustainable. And there is another way.

It’s not that the outrage is unwarranted. Trump’s executive order on refugees, his endless petty feuds — with allies, with judges, with Arnold Schwarzenegger — his constant stream of up-is-down and down-is-up fabrications is outrageous. Any president’s actions have real consequences in real people’s lives. This is high stakes and it really matters. But that’s precisely why it’s so important to take back control of how we react. Because only then will we be able to mitigate the effects of those presidential actions on the lives of people most vulnerable to them.

So we need to go back to the truth that helped the country recover after 9/11: if we are consumed by fear, the terrorists win. If we live in a perpetual state of outrage, Trump wins. Because when we become depleted and exhausted, and sapped of our energy, we’re not as resourceful, creative, or effective. The goal of any true resistance is to affect outcomes, not just to vent. And the only way to affect outcomes and thrive in our lives, is to find the eye in the hurricane, and act from that place of inner strength.

It’s the centered place Archimedes described when he said “give me a place to stand and I shall move the world.” It’s the place from which I imagine Judge James Robart issued his historic order to reverse Trump’s executive order on refugees. And it’s the place from which Viktor Frankl, who lost his pregnant wife, parents and brother in the Holocaust and spent 3 years in concentration camps, could write, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom.”

When we are robbed of our inner freedom, we feel like victims — victims of our circumstances, of Trump’s outrages, policies and chaos. If we want one more reason not to live in a state of victimhood and perpetual outrage, think of this: that’s the world Trump lives in. He wakes up feeling victimized by the media, he goes to sleep outraged at Alec Baldwin’s portrayal on SNL, and then he wakes up outraged at Judge Robart’s decision. And it’s from that place that he reacts and lashes out with language his administration has to spend news cycles explaining — like the “so-called” judge.

So whatever you do, don’t just let yourself get stuck in the outrage storm — that particular weather pattern is likely to be here for a long time. Remember, you have the power to step out of the storm, think carefully about how best to channel your valuable energy, and then take action. And there are so many ways to do that.

Laura Moser is a freelance writer and mother in Washington, D.C. After the election, she found she couldn’t disengage. So to channel her energy, and that of others as well, she created Daily Action, a daily text people can sign up for that gives them one concrete and specific action to take. In just a matter of weeks, she’s amassed over 100,000 subscribers. One is Aaron Becker, an author from Massachusetts. “People are feeling fatigue,” he told the Washington Post . “We are not really designed as human beings to take on the responsibility of everything at once.” But since channeling his energy in a specific way, he’s gotten a measure of control back in his life. “Now I feel like I can turn off my browser window and do some work,” he said.

And there are plenty of other groups doing a similar thing — making it easy to channel that outrage in productive ways that can change outcomes.

• 5 Calls gives you five calls that you can make in five minutes.

• The Resistance Manual is an open source guide to taking action on a range of issues, from incarceration to immigration.

• Run For Something is dedicated to helping young people get off the sidelines and into the leadership pipeline.

• No One Left Behind is dedicated to helping obtain special immigration visas for those — like translators and interpreters — who have helped U.S. soldiers abroad.

• The March for Science will be held on Earth Day, April 22nd. Showing up will be a way of demonstrating that we care about facts, data, science and what they tell us about climate change.

•The Indivisible guide bills itself as a “practical guide to resisting the Trump agenda,” and also shows you how to get involved with one of the over 4,500 local indivisible groups that have already been started.

When you fight a disease — and the Trump presidency is a disease, an assault on the health of our entire system — the most important thing is to give yourself the resources to allow your immune system to prevail over the disease. And that includes taking care of ourselves to strengthen our resilience — making sure we sleep, exercise, enjoy nature, eat healthily, take breaks from technology, and don’t start and end our day by going straight to the latest news before we’ve found that eye in the hurricane. As Marcus Aurelius, who spent nineteen years as the Emperor of Rome facing nearly constant war, a horrific plague, an attempt at the throne by one of his closest allies and an incompetent and greedy step-brother as co-emperor, wrote, “People look for retreats for themselves in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. ... So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

So how do you put this into action in your everyday life? How can we renew ourselves and thrive in the Age of Trump? Here are a few of our ideas. I hope you’ll add your own by telling me on social media at @ariannahuff on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook:

1) As they say on airplanes, put your own oxygen mask on first. Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

2) Take action. Once you’ve taken care of step one, you’ll be ready to put your outrage to work, and the list above is a great place to start.

3) Remember that humor has always been a great way to find light in dark times. So seek out ways to laugh. There are, of course, the usual sources: Bill Maher, SNL (and Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer!). But you can also lead the way, as did whoever thought of the fake vigils to honor the victims of the “Bowling Green Massacre” made up by Kellyanne Conway.

4) Get creative — as did those who started the viral hashtag #dresslikeawoman in response to Trump’s narrow (and antiquated) ideas of how women should dress in the White House.

5) Find your own Thrive Tribe — reach out to people, seek out encouragement and inspiration from friends and be there for those who need the same, including those most vulnerable to Trump’s decisions.

6) Don’t limit your reading to social media — read the Greats and surround yourself with their wisdom. Here are two of my favorite quotes that I’m keeping by my bed right now: “Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. The impediment to action advances actions, what stands in the way becomes the way.” That’s from Marcus Aurelius. The other is from Albert Schweitzer: “One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.”

8) Unplug. Calendar time in your day when you choose to separate yourself from your devices, from the news, from social media.

9) Breathe. Seriously. It’s good for your brain.

10) Trust: As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Remember: truth and justice ultimately always win.

This post was originally published on Thrive Global.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How To Get Out Of The Cycle Of Outrage In A Trump World posted first on http://ift.tt/2kDxLY4

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prohealths · 7 years

Text

How To Get Out Of The Cycle Of Outrage In A Trump World

And there are plenty of other groups doing a similar thing — making it easy to channel that outrage in productive ways that can change outcomes.

• 5 Calls gives you five calls that you can make in five minutes.

• The Resistance Manual is an open source guide to taking action on a range of issues, from incarceration to immigration.

• Run For Something is dedicated to helping young people get off the sidelines and into the leadership pipeline.

• No One Left Behind is dedicated to helping obtain special immigration visas for those — like translators and interpreters — who have helped U.S. soldiers abroad.

• The March for Science will be held on Earth Day, April 22nd. Showing up will be a way of demonstrating that we care about facts, data, science and what they tell us about climate change.

When you fight a disease — and the Trump presidency is a disease, an assault on the health of our entire system — the most important thing is to give yourself the resources to allow your immune system to prevail over the disease. And that includes taking care of ourselves to strengthen our resilience — making sure we sleep, exercise, enjoy nature, eat healthily, take breaks from technology, and don’t start and end our day by going straight to the latest news before we’ve found that eye in the hurricane. As Marcus Aurelius, who spent nineteen years as the Emperor of Rome facing nearly constant war, a horrific plague, an attempt at the throne by one of his closest allies and an incompetent and greedy step-brother as co-emperor, wrote, “People look for retreats for themselves in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. … So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.”

1) As they say on airplanes, put your own oxygen mask on first. Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

2) Take action. Once you’ve taken care of step one, you’ll be ready to put your outrage to work, and the list above is a great place to start.

4) Get creative — as did those who started the viral hashtag #dresslikeawoman in response to Trump’s narrow (and antiquated) ideas of how women should dress in the White House.

8) Unplug. Calendar time in your day when you choose to separate yourself from your devices, from the news, from social media.

9) Breathe. Seriously. It’s good for your brain.

10) Trust: As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Remember: truth and justice ultimately always win.

This post was originally published on Thrive Global.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How To Get Out Of The Cycle Of Outrage In A Trump World syndicated from http://ift.tt/2llz9hF

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yes-dal456 · 7 years