November 7, 2020
Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.
 
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Time to Reboot
While many in the MIT community participated in the U.S. election, the compounding of pandemic, family, school, work, societal, and election stresses has caused quite a few of us to feel exhausted and overwhelmed. In the aftermath of Election Day, the community has come together, virtually, to listen to and take care of one another. This weekend, MIT Reboot, a series of restorative events for students, faculty and staff, continues online.
Learn more→
Top Headlines
Using machine learning to track the pandemic’s impact on mental health
Textual analysis of social media posts finds users’ anxiety and suicide-risk levels are rising, among other negative trends.
Full story via MIT News →
 MIT Heat Island
Democracy in distress?
Experts analyze a global trend: democratic governments that collapse from within while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.
Full story via MIT News →
Activist and scholar Angela Davis addresses racism in MIT webcast
Davis, in conversation with Senior Associate Dean Blanche Staton, fields questions from the MIT community about the current moment of racial reckoning.
Full story via MIT News →
 MIT Heat Island
A storyteller dedicated to environmental justice
Exploring her identity through writing has clarified senior Mimi Wahid’s desire to serve rural Southern communities like her hometown.
Full story via MIT News →
 MIT Heat Island
Covid-19 “super-spreading” events play an outsized role in overall disease transmission
Mathematical analysis suggests curbing large gatherings could significantly reduce Covid-19 infection rates.
Full story via MIT News →
 MIT Heat Island
#ThisisMIT
Follow @mitstudents on Instagram→
In the Media
MIT develops a battery-free method for navigating underwater that could transform ocean exploration // TechCrunch
“Ultimately, the system and future versions that are based on the same technology could enable future robotic submarine explorers to better map the ocean floor, and perform all kinds of automated monitoring and sub-sea navigation.”
Full story via TechCrunch→
Can AI tell us when to use AI and when not to? // Forbes
MIT CSAIL researchers have developed a machine learning system that can “assess a task and identify whether it’s one that would be best performed by a human expert or technology.”
Full story via Forbes→
Charlie Baker nominates Argaez Wendlandt for Supreme Judicial Court // WBUR
“Engineering requires you to look at the data and follow it where it goes, and to roll up your sleeves when there’s a problem that looks like it’s unsolvable,” says Argaez Wendlandt SM ’93. “For me the law is very similar, especially when you do high-end legal work. Often, the answer is not clear, but if you’re confident in your skills, you roll up your sleeves, you bring out the big guns and you just do your job.”
Full story via WBUR→
The complicated history of voting technology // Marketplace
“Voting would be very different in the United States without the use of computing technologies,” says Professor Charles Stewart III, “much like all of public policy, and actually all of our commercial lives, would be very different without the use of information technology to create the networks to do all of the transactions and allow us to do almost everything we do hundreds of times every day.”
Full story via Marketplace→
MIT Votes
Along with tens of millions of others across the nation, many MIT community members voted this election cycle, either in person or by absentee ballot. For some, voting has been a time-honored tradition, while others exercised their civic right for the first time this year. Thank you to everyone who voted!
 
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Today is an anxious day: regardless of their political persuasion, almost everyone agrees that the stakes are high, and the outcome undetermined. But I am proud of the energy and commitment that our students have shown toward determining it democratically, in all senses; helping to build, with the slow and steady strength of many hands, the world they want to live in, today and in all the days yet to come.
—Chris Peterson, assistant director of MIT Admissions, on the election through the lens of an applied civic education at the Institute
Full essay via the MIT Admissions Blog→
Blue Moon
To end a very long week, let’s consider our cosmic neighbors. Dan Dill sent us his fantastic shot of the blue moon (second full moon in a calendar month), rising last weekend over MIT. And for those in the Northern Hemisphere, have you noticed brilliant Mars in the eastern skies just after dark? Have a restful weekend, everyone.
 
This edition of the MIT Weekly was brought to you by voting with rice. 🍚

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