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The 25 best colleges for a landing a high-paying job right out of school

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Berkeley graduationIt's great to land a job right out of college — but it's even more exciting when that job pays well. 

The Princeton Review recently compiled a list of the 25 colleges with the best career placement in the country, featured in the book "Colleges That Pay You Back: 2016 Edition," published in February, based on students' ratings of career services at their school. The ratings also took into account median starting and mid-career salaries for alumni, using data from PayScale.

Several of these schools, including the top three, focus strongly on engineering, technology, and other STEM-related fields, which typically earn higher than average salaries

Read on to see the 25 best colleges for landing a high-paying job right out of school.

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25. Tufts University

Location: Medford, Massachusetts

Median starting salary: $53,800

Median mid-career salary: $119,700

No matter what students hope to do after graduation, the Tufts career center wants to help them get there. The center partners with students to develop the skills and contacts needed to start their careers through LinkedIn seminars, internship workshops, and information on alternative types of jobs and career paths. 

 



24. University of California at Berkeley

Location: Berkeley, California

Median starting salary: $60,200

Median mid-career salary: $119,100

"Berkeley’s greatest strengths are the amount of resources and opportunities it provides to students not only to allow them to explore numerous academic fields but to engage them in the community, in the country, and in the world," one student told the Princeton Review.

Berkeley lives up to this standard through interactive online courses on résumé building and cover letter writing, mock interviews with employers, opportunities to network with Cal grads, and more

 



23. Lehigh University

Location: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Median starting salary: $61,000

Median mid-career salary: $108,800

Students cite Lehigh's extensive career services, which include internship, externship, and co-op programs that help students gain real-world experience, as a major factor that drew them to the school, according to the Princeton Review

The school's career services office offers industry-specific advice for finding jobs and internships, as well as helpful links and resources for every major at the university. 

 

 



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People in Asia are paying $24,000 a year to work out at these lavish gyms — here's what they look like inside

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Centuryon vanity

In Asia, people are paying as much as $24,000 a year for memberships at Centuryon, luxurious mega-fitness centers operated by a company called California Management Group

According to founder and CEO Randy Dobson, the gyms offer exclusivity and luxury to "a select few who posses the highest standards and demand nothing less than the very best."

With 24 locations in Vietnam, Centuryon memberships start at $8,000 and can go up to $24,000, depending on member benefits. There are no monthly fees, but the full annual fee is paid up front.

The company also has their California Fitness and Yoga clubs, which begin at about $1,000 a year and include Centuryon-only areas for VIP members. 

From golden amenities to a fully stocked styling area, here is what the lavish gyms look like inside. 

SEE ALSO: 14 gyms to work out at in your lifetime

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Areas that are for Centuryon members are accessible by biometric scans, offering members increased exclusivity.



They offer a variety of classes, including yoga, which is taught in stunning open spaces. Members can get advanced booking on all of the offered classes, as well as one-on-one yoga sessions.



The yoga lounge is where guests can go to enjoy tea either before or after classes. VIP members can also bring anyone they like to work out with them.



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The 'human chameleon' transforms his own body to become practically invisible

How Richard Branson gets fresh water on his private island

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Having your own private island is not just about the beautiful viewsthe privacy, and living the good life.

It's also about some of the more practical things, like figuring out the best way to get water and energy on the island.

Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island, which also functions as an exclusive resort, is part of the British Virgin Islands, but it is quite independent when it comes to producing the energy and fresh water that the island uses.

We spoke to Chief Engineer Adam Simmonds, who showed us how he and his team convert the salt water of the Caribbean Sea into as much as 65,000 gallons of usable water a day.

Originally published in October 2012. 

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Something disturbing happens to the brain when you pull all-nighters

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party dance photo

The average adult requires between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, according to the National Institute of Health

So it's no surprise that staying awake all night isn't healthy, but there's more to it than that.

An all-nighter actually alters the type of sleep our brains get.

Traditionally, sleep starts with a period of non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep that consists of three phases: stages 1, 2, and 3.

Of the three, stage 3 is the most important for recovering and feeling rejuvenated the next morning. It's also the phase that's most affected by all-nighters because it's when slow-wave sleep sets in. 

Slow-wave sleep and REM sleep are the two sleep stages where you're likely to dream as well as store memories, which is important for learning new skills or remembering where you left the house keys the night before.

Pulling an all-nighter deprives the brain of these two critical sleep stages, and puts you in what experts call "sleep debt."

"In the setting of ... an acute sleep debt ... there's different bankers you're going to have to pay back," Timothy Morgenthaler, a Mayo Clinic professor of medicine and the former president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, told Business Insider. "There's the REM banker and the slow-wave sleep banker, and the first one you have to pay back is the slow wave sleep banker."

Normally, slow-wave sleep comprises about a quarter of a normal night's slumber — but a night that follows an all-nighter is not normal. By the time your head hits the pillow, you've wracked up a pretty significant sleep debt, and your sleep pattern will show it.

"People tend to get a little bit more slow wave sleep when they're recovering from an acute sleep loss," Morgenthaler said. "The result is that when your boyfriend [for example] has an all night shift and he falls asleep on the couch, and then you wake him up to go to bed he has no clue where he's at," Morgenthaler said. 

This confusion is a direct consequence of what experts call sleep inertia, which is also responsible for the grogginess you sometimes feel immediately after waking up.

Normally, the grogginess from sleep inertia lasts no more than 30 minutes after waking, but people who wake up out of slow-wave sleep tend to have more sleep inertia, which can take up to a few hours to completely diminish, Morgenthatler said.

Therefore, the effects of an all-nighter might stick with you even after you've gotten some well-needed rest.

READ MORE: A popular way of cooking broccoli is leeching potentially cancer-fighting compounds from it

SEE ALSO: Here's what you should do if you wake up before your alarm and don't want to feel tired all day

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6 benefits of being bored

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With our ever-growing to-do lists and so much technology at our fingertips to amuse ourselves with, boredom rarely seems like an option anymore.

Unfortunately for us, this may be a bad thing.

Research suggests that we could be missing out on a lot by not being bored. Here's why it's a good idea to unplug and get back to boredom for a while:

BI_Graphics_Benefits of being bored_02

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A Harvard psychologist says your success in any situation hinges on 3 things

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amy cuddy power posing

Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy is perhaps best known as the creator of the "power pose."

As she described in her 2012 TED Talk, power-posing is about taking advantage of the body-mind connection: You adopt the body language of powerful people so that you feel and act more confident.

But power posing is just one path to a state of calm self-confidence that will help you succeed in challenging situations. That state, which Cuddy calls "presence," is the subject of her new book by the same name.

Cuddy defines presence as being attuned to and able to express your full potential. When you're present, you approach challenges without a sense of threat.

Whether you're interviewing for a job or pitching your startup, people can tell right away if you're present, and they judge you more positively when you are.

In an interview with Business Insider, Cuddy said there are three things people see when you're present:

1. You believe your story

When you're present, you demonstrate conviction and passion so that other people come to believe your story, too.

In the book, Cuddy describes a yet-unpublished study she conducted, in which participants went through mock interviews. For five minutes, they had to persuade the interviewer that they were the best person for the job, while being completely honest. All the while, the interviewer held a completely neutral expression.

Three independent pairs of judges watched videos of the interviews, looking for presence, believability, and hireability. Sure enough, the interviewees who were rated more present were also rated more believable and more hireable.

Cuddy writes: "Presence mattered to the judges because it signaled authenticity, believability, and genuineness; it told the judges that they could trust the person, that what they were observing was real."

confident presentation public speaking

2. You're confident without being arrogant

In the book, Cuddy quotes a venture capitalist describing what turns him off during an entrepreneur's pitch: "They're too high energy and aggressive, maybe a little pushy. It seems defensive, I don't expect them to have all the answers. Actually, I don't want them to have all the answers."

Being open to feedback is key, Cuddy told Business Insider. The more you shut down other people and their perspectives, the less appealing you become. That's because it can seem like you're trying to cover up a sense of uncertainty.

"A truly confident person does not require arrogance, which is nothing more than a smoke screen for insecurity," Cuddy writes. "A confident person can be present to others, hear their perspectives, and integrate those views in ways that create value for everyone."

3. Your verbal and nonverbal communication is in sync

When we're being inauthentic — or when we're intentionally deceiving someone — Cuddy said our verbal and nonverbal communication is incongruent.

In the book, she explains that's because you're constantly trying to adjust what you're saying and doing to create the impression you think others want to see.

On the other hand, when we're present, our verbal and nonverbal behavior matches. People aren't distracted trying to figure out why something feels "off," and they're more likely to put their trust in you.

Ultimately, if you're confident in yourself, other people will be more likely to be confident in you, too. It doesn't necessarily mean you'll get the job or the investor's money, but you'll walk away knowing that you did the best you could — and the right opportunity for you is out there.

SEE ALSO: A Harvard psychologist says there's a personality trait that's just as important as charisma and is easier to develop

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There's a gorgeous Spanish town that's built into a rock

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Setenil de las Bodegas is a small town in Spain that sits along a gorge in the Rio Trejo. Rather than working around this topography, many of the buildings are built directly into the rock face. Only 3,000 people live there, but it has become a tourist destination because of its unique architecture.

Story by Tony Manfred and editing by Kristen Griffin

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5 unbelievable feats of superhuman endurance

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Youth Kids Children Water Summer Cooling

The human body is surprisingly fragile, but there are those who enjoy pushing it to the limits.

From these daredevils, we learn how the body can miraculously compensate for starvation or oxygen deprivation to stay alive for as long as possible.

Here are five incredible feats of superhuman endurance:

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Without sleep: 11 days.

In 1965, then 17-year-old Randy Gardner set the world record by staying awake for 264.4 hours, or 11 days and 24 minutes.

Why you shouldn't try this at home:Sleep is essential for building memory and skills as well as feeling more alert the next day.



Without breathing: 22 minutes.

The longest any human ever went without breathing took place in 2012, when Danish free diver Stig Severinsen held his breath underwater for 22 minutes.

Why you shouldn't try this at home:Without oxygen, the human brain will die after about four minutes. Severinsen cheated death by breathing in pure oxygen for about 19 minutes beforehand, which saturated his body so it could continue to keep his brain functioning while he was underwater.



Without food and water: 18 days.

In 1979, Andreas Mihavecz — then 18 — was left, forgotten, in a basement prison cell until he was accidentally discovered 18 days later. This was not a stunt, but an act of negligence on the authorities' part. It took Mihavecz several weeks to recover.

Why you shouldn't try this at home:Of the two, water is more critical to replenish than food. An adult is made up of about 60% water, using it to lubricate joints, flush waste, and regulate body temperature.



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Uber says it's had 'fewer than 170 complaints' of sexual assaults involving rides in 3 years

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uber

Uber has had five claims of rape and "less than 170" cases of sexual assault reported to its customer-service database concerning Uber rides between December 2012 and August 2015, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

Uber was responding to an investigation by Buzzfeed into reported sexual assaults involving the ride-sharing service.

Buzzfeed says that employees had shared data with Buzzfeed about reported rapes and sexual assaults from its customer-service databases numbering in the thousands.

Searches for those terms revealed around 6,000 tickets, which Buzzfeed published as screenshots on its site. As Buzzfeed reports:

The screenshots obtained by BuzzFeed News show at least nine complaint tickets with the subject line of “sexual assault” and at least nine results out of 382 with subjects for “sexually assaulted,” including “uber driver sexually assaulted me,” “sexually assaulted by Uber driver in SF,” “Uber driver sexually assaulted my girlfriend,” and “my daughter sexually assaulted by drive”.

Buzzfeed also reported on Uber's system for escalating such incident reports in which customer-service reps discuss if these complaints will involve reports to law enforcement or the media.

When Business Insider contacted Uber and asked for more information or a statement about Uber and sexual-assault data, the company sent us their full response to the Buzzfeed article, published below. Uber also published it on Medium.

Uber says that:

Our analysis for all of these results shows five tickets that allege an actual rape occurred (0.0000009% of rides in the three years from December 2012 to August 2015) and 170 tickets with a legitimate claim of sexual assault (1 in every 3.3 million trips). Bear in mind that when serious incidents occur, people often report them directly to law enforcement. Therefore, those incidents may not be reflected in the numbers above.

And it explains that thousands of tickets can use the word "rape" as a typo for the word "rate," or if it's included in a name like "Draper" or is used as a metaphor, for example, "you raped my wallet."

Uber also said that because of those problems it does "manual audits of every ticket sent to Uber, not audits of key words."

travis kalanick

Buzzfeed's article also indicated that Uber had tried to discover the employees who had been working with Buzzfeed by looking for employees who had recently searched for keywords like rape and sexual assault.

Uber freely admitted that it did try and discover those employees.

Ride-sharing company Uber has come under increasing pressure over the safety of its services. Last month, an Uber driver with a high customer-satisfaction rating who had reportedly passed a background check allegedly opened fire on eight people in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Still, these are big allegations about how many sexual assaults have been reported to Uber regarding its ride-sharing service, and Uber's response indicates that it is taking such questions seriously.

Here's the Uber's full response:

Safety at Uber

Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Buzzfeed News
Mat Honan, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, Buzzfeed News
John Paczkowski, Managing Editor, Buzzfeed News

Dear Ben, John and Mat,

We have worked with your team over the last week to answer questions about safety at Uber, but the story you have just posted fails to take into account the many facts we have provided to Buzzfeed. Given that our business depends on accountability and transparency, we are now sharing that information publicly so that our riders and drivers have the facts and can judge for themselves.

Getting people from point A to B safely and reliably is the single most important thing Uber does. It’s why we have a dedicated Trust and Safety team, overseen by Joe Sullivan (whose entire career has been focused in this field, first as a federal prosecutor and then at eBay, Facebook, and now Uber) and run by Phil Cardenas (the former head of Trust and Safety at Airbnb).

This team exists to reduce safety incidents, and its success is judged on that one metric. Because even one incident is too many. It’s why Uber has invested heavily in technology to improve safety for everyone before, during, and after each ride. Every Uber trip is GPS-tracked and passengers can share their route in real time with family or friends, as well as rate their drivers at the end of each trip (and vice versa). This is on top of a robust system of background checks.

Sadly, no means of transportation is 100 percent safe today. Accidents and incidents do happen. It’s why we are working to build an exceptional customer support team that can handle problems when they occur, including working with law enforcement.

You asked about screenshots in your possession (and since published) showing that if a customer service representative types “rape” or “sexual assault” into our database, they will see more than 5,800 results (i.e. customer support tickets) for rape and 6,160 for sexual assault over a period of three years. These results are highly misleading because:

  • Riders routinely misspell “rate” (as in the fare) as “rape”, or use the word “rape” in another context. For example, “you raped my wallet”;
  • Any email address or rider/driver last name that contains the letters R, A, P, E consecutively (for example, Don Draper) are included. After analyzing the data, we found more than 11,000 rider names and 17,500 rider emails with the letters “rape”;
  • The results also showed tickets from passengers who got into cars not on the Uber platform, or who were discussing unsubstantiated media reports of sexual assaults.

Our analysis for all of these results shows five tickets that allege an actual rape occurred (0.0000009% of rides in the three years from December 2012 to August 2015) and 170 tickets with a legitimate claim of sexual assault (1 in every 3.3 million trips). Bear in mind that when serious incidents occur, people often report them directly to law enforcement. Therefore, those incidents may not be reflected in the numbers above.

When serious incidents are reported to us, we always reach out to the person who filed the report and, where appropriate, engage with law enforcement. We also temporarily suspend the driver or rider (if it is a question of violence by a passenger) during the investigation.

You asked to have one of your reporters sit with Uber’s customer service team so they could review these types of tickets and validate our numbers. It is entirely fair to ask questions of Uber — it is the purpose of a free press. But it is unfair to suggest that you cannot trust the veracity of the numbers Uber has provided without personally verifying them, which would be a serious breach of our riders’ and drivers’ privacy.

In addition, you have asked if this is the first time we have audited the data behind the screenshots in your possession. Because of the flaws highlighted above, we do manual audits of every ticket sent to Uber, not audits of key words. It’s why it took us more than two days to answer your questions in detail. It is entirely untrue to conclude that we do not audit safety on our platform. We do, regularly. As we said earlier, our Trust and Safety team is measured internally on one metric: whether it has cut safety incidents on our platform.

Finally, you asked yesterday if Uber had contacted customer service representatives who had recently queried the terms “rape” and “sexual assault” in our database. The answer is yes. We are unsurprisingly concerned that sensitive, personal and confidential data has been shared with people outside Uber. We believe that any company in a similar situation would do exactly the same.

Uber is a relatively young company and we’re the first to admit that we haven’t always gotten things right. But we are working hard to ensure passengers everywhere can get a safe, reliable ride, as well as to provide great customer service when things go wrong. It’s a shame that your article does not reflect much of the substance we have provided.

Sincerely,

Joe Sullivan, Chief Safety Officer
Jill Hazelbaker, Vice President, Communications & Public Policy
Tim Collins, Vice President, Global Support

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A popular way of cooking broccoli is leeching cancer-fighting compounds from it

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broccoli

Broccoli is one of America's favorite vegetables, which is great for our health — but only if we prepare it right.

A common method of preparation is boiling. This process is notorious for leeching water-soluble vitamins, like Vitamin C and B, from vegetables, including broccoli.

But there's more to this story that researchers have only just begun to discover.

It turns out, the nutritional damage from boiling goes deeper than just water-soluble vitamins:

It hinders the body's ability to absorb a class of compounds called glucosinolates, which a growing body of scientific research suggests could play a role in reducing the risk of lung and colorectal cancer.

Broccoli, supplements, and boiling

thai curry dinnerIn a 2011 paper, researchers compared the level of certain cancer-fighting glucosinolates in humans who ate broccoli versus those who took broccoli supplements, made from broccoli sprout extract.

They discovered that the vegetable contains a key protein that helps our bodies break glucosinolates down for absorption while supplements lack this protein.

The result was that subjects who took supplements had up to eight times fewer glucosinolates in their blood and urine than those who ate the vegetable.

Moreover, the lead researcher of the study said that intensive cooking, like boiling, severely reduces the level of this enzyme in broccoli, so you get about as much nutrition from boiled broccoli as you do from broccoli supplements, which isn't much.

Luckily, there is a way to combat the disadvantages of boiling: Preserve the boiling water for later consumption.

Broccoli water (but there's a better way)

broccoliBroccoli water isn't a new concept. In fact, the 1999 Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide suggested that you store broccoli water to later use in soups, sauces, or even gravy, LiveStrong reported.

One concern with broccoli water, however, is pesticides. In addition to leeching nutrients from broccoli, boiling water can also absorb pesticides that farmers use to avoid rot, weeds, and insects during the growing process. One way to avoid pesticides is to buy organic.

However, if you want to avoid the extra cost of organic produce, just steam your broccoli instead, said Guy Crosby, who teaches a food science course at Harvard School of Public Health and is the editor for America's Test Kitchen.

Get the most out of your broccoli by steaming it

broccoliCrosby called preserving broccoli water from non-organic broccoli a "balancing act":

"If you're concerned about the level of pesticides — some of them are water soluble and will be separated out in the cooking water, which would offset consuming the cooking water for the nutrients that are leeched out, so it's a balancing act," Crosby told Business Insider.

The bottom line: Ditch the acrobatics and just steam your vegetables. It will benefit you in the long run.

In a paper published last November, Crosby and his colleague at Harvard, Adriana D.T. Fabbri, reviewed the literature on how different cooking methods affected the nutritional value of certain legumes and vegetables, including broccoli. They reported that:

"The total content of glucosinolates of fresh broccoli increased by steaming methods," the two stated in their paper adding that "Steam cooking: best procedure to preserve and enhance nutritional quality of fresh broccoli."

There you have it: If you want to get the most out of your broccoli, just steam it.

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A psychology professor explains how to stay calm on public transit during a crisis

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subway d train

Since the beginning of this year, there have been at least nine slashings on the New York City subway.

This spate—up from three during the same time frame in 2015—is an “aberration,” according to the police commissioner, William J. Bratton. The attacks have been random, tied to no particular location, targeted at no particular type of person. The perpetrators have acted independently, on unclear motives.

Nevertheless, the MTA and the NYPD are ramping up preventative efforts. The Police Department will put additional teams of uniformed officers on patrol throughout the subway and has asked the transit authority to ban career criminals from public transportation—a motion that the MTA has previously resisted due to the questionable constitutionality of such a broad restriction.

Across the city, transit riders are nervous. Especially when such events arelabeled a “trend,” it’s natural to think of them as inevitable and set oneself on edge. But is it productive?

No, says the Hunter College psychology professor Jason Young. “If you begin to worry, and keep that worry salient, it works to your own undoing because you can no longer function,” he says.

The question becomes: “How can you strike the balance between not being too freaked out, and being vigilant enough?” he adds.

Subway train crowded

From a statistical perspective, attacks like the subway slashings tend to be over-dramatized, Young tells CityLab. But their inherently arbitrary nature makes them a tricky threat for residents to respond to. “People are the single most unpredictable element in a crowded places,” Young says.

Around 6 million people ride the subway every day; for those who live in urban settings, public transit is often an essential part of everyday life. It’s also an aspect of existence over which one has remarkably little control. The confined space of a subway car “creates a highly sensitized environment,” Young says. During a spike in crime, people tend to feel trapped, and emotions like fear can transmit quickly.

The best way to “modulate anxiety” in such a situation, Young says, originates from the same place as the worry itself: one’s mind.

The psychological element of public safety is something that the MTA has already explored. In 2007, the New York transit system launched its “if you see something, say something” campaign in an effort to engage the community in crime awareness and reporting. InCorporate Risk and National Security Redefined, Karen Lund Petersen argues that this initiative serves another, more abstract purpose:

Visibility creates public safety. It does so in in at least two ways. First, it is assumed that the visibility of access control mechanism makes people aware that something is done and thereby makes them feel safer. There is a clear link between visibility and the management of fear. Second, visibility is also making people participate in the identification of danger. And that is important because, as the director of the Port Authority argued, “When you start to participate as a public, you begin to all own the issue” (Port Authority 2010).

subwayThis campaign, Young says, touches on the two crucial tenets of the psychologist Ronald W. Rogers’s “protective motivation theory”: response efficacy and self-efficacy. Response efficacy outlines a set of specific preventative behaviors to follow in the event of a threat; self-efficacy is a person’s confidence in their ability to perform those procedures.

Mentally rehearsing a calm reaction to a crime or a threat, Young says, will go a long way toward managing your fear while commuting. And crucially, when passengers exude a sense of ease and competency, it sets the tone for everyone riding in the car.

The other key to fearless commuting, Young says, is maintaining an awareness of the statistical improbability of such an attack. People tend to overestimate or exaggerate their incidence rates, but “all of these things tend to have a very low likelihood,” he says.

Even so, an official response to events like the New York subway slashings is necessary, and the city is providing one: in addition to the extra security measures initiated by the MTA and the NYPD, police officers are now waking sleeping passengers to prevent them from becoming crime victims, reports the New York Daily News.

Yet it’s also important, Young says, for people to reassert a sense of control over their situation by meeting institutional measures halfway—like the passengers who have taken matters into their own hands and independently ditched their habit of dozing off on the train.

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How this up-and-coming rock group plans to be 'the biggest band in the f---ing country'

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The Wild Feathers 1“We want to be the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band in the f---ing country.”

So says Taylor Burns, one-third of the harmonic powerhouse fronting the up-and-coming American rock band The Wild Feathers, when I ask him what he wants for his band.

Many musicians talk about the privilege of simply playing for a living, but Burns offers the unvarnished truth: “We’re not afraid of success. We don’t want to sacrifice integrity to get there, but I think there’s a void in rock music today that needs to be filled... I’m not saying we’re the answer, but we’re a f---ing step in the right direction.”

As Burns describes it, though, it’s not about money or fame for fame’s sake: “I want to affect change or evoke emotion or some sort of feeling in everyone, and the more people that hear it, the more chance you have to do that,” he told Business Insider. “That’s what writing music is all about... If we fail, we fail, but at least we f---ing went for it.”

The Wild Feathers Taylor BurnsYou’d be forgiven for thinking his statements smack of arrogance, but that's not the feeling you get around the band. It's clear Burns and his fellow band leaders, Ricky Young and Joel King, love playing with each other, and they’re going to enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.

“We’re a band in the true definition,” Young said. “We’re a band of brothers.”

 

Joel King Wild FeathersPrior to The Wild Feathers, all three vocalists were band leaders in their own right. Young and King met on what they call “the backstage hangout circuit” in Nashville, Tennessee. As King describes it, “Everyone’s drinking and talking about being in bands more than actually being in bands.”

That wasn't the case for King and Young, who were eager to start something. But before they became The Wild Feathers, the two went to Austin, Texas, for what they call “a crazy weekend.”

“Joel was looking for weed... of course,” Burns jumps in to help tell the story.

Young and King were also looking for a third voice to add to the nascent band, and their friends told them, “Same guy... call Taylor.”

From there, the three jumped into the studio to start demoing tracks together.

“Singing is an intimate thing. Not all people’s voices blend,” Burns said. “Even though we had to work at it, I’d say it was natural right off the bat."

The vocal fit immediately becomes clear on their forthcoming sophomore album, "Lonely Is a Lifetime," out March 11. Their sound has hardened from the first album, and has far less of their previous Americana or country-tinged work.

“We want to be an evolving rock band… The last thing we wanted to do was be an alt-country band forever,” Young said.

Whatever genre it falls under, the new album is clearly arranged, recorded, and mixed as a complete musical thought as opposed to a ragtag collection of singles. “Goodbye Song” is a courageous rock odyssey clearly born on stage, and the final song carries that live curiosity and exploration through into the studio version.

“Happy Again,” a standout, sounds upbeat, but the lyrics are tortured and tragic — a statement about drugs' dark and beautiful duality. That theme crops up on both of the band's albums.

“I think it’d be disingenuous not to sing about drugs when everybody we know does drugs… We’re singing about what we know, about our environment,” King said.

“We’re all chasing some sort of high,” Burns added. “Whether it’s prescription pills, or going to work out, or whatever it is you’re looking for in life... We’re all chasing a high, and we like to sing about it.”

"In my opinion, no one really sings about real s--- any more. At least not in the mainstream,” Young said. “All of our heroes write about really dark s---."

It's one more way that The Wild Feathers aren't afraid to be bigger.

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