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Elon Musk Hates Ads. Twitter Needs Them. That May Be a Problem. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...elon-musk-twitter-ads.html ads new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Since he started pursuing his $44 billion purchase of Twitter — and for years before that — the world’s richest man has made clear that advertising is not a priority.
  • Ads account for roughly 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue.
  • They have cited a litany of complaints, including that the company cannot target ads nearly as well as competitors like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
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  • Now, numerous advertising executives say they’re willing to move their money elsewhere, especially if Mr. Musk eliminates the safeguards that allowed Twitter to remove racist rants and conspiracy theories.
  • “At the end of the day, it’s not the brands who need to be concerned, because they’ll just spend their budgets elsewhere — it’s Twitter that needs to be concerned,” said David Jones
  • On Wednesday night, at Twitter’s annual NewFronts presentation for advertisers at Pier 17 in New York, company representatives stressed Twitter’s value for marketers: as a top destination for people to gather and discuss major cultural moments like sporting events or the Met Gala, increasingly through video posts.
  • Twitter differs from Facebook, whose millions of small and midsize advertisers generate the bulk of the company’s revenue and depend on its enormous size and targeting abilities to reach customers. Twitter’s clientele is heavily weighted with large, mainstream companies, which tend to be wary of their ads appearing alongside problematic content.
  • Twitter earns the vast majority of its ad revenue from brand awareness campaigns, whose effectiveness is much harder to evaluate than ads that target users based on their interests or that push for a direct response, such as clicking through to a website.
  • Twitter’s reach is also narrower than many rivals, with 229 million users who see ads, compared with 830 million users on LinkedIn and 1.96 billion daily users on Facebook.
  • “Even the likes of LinkedIn have eclipsed the ability for us to target consumers beyond what Twitter is providing,” he said. “We’re going to go where the results are, and with a lot of our clients, we haven’t seen the performance on Twitter from an ad perspective that we have with other platforms.”
  • “Twitter’s done a better job than many platforms at building trust with advertisers — they’ve been more progressive, more responsive and more humble about initiating ways to learn,” said Mark Read
  • On Twitter, he has criticized ads as “manipulating public opinion” and discussed his refusal to “pay famous people to fake endorse.”
  • “There’s a fork in the road, where Path A leads to an unfiltered place with the worst of human behavior and no brands want to go anywhere near it,” said Mr. Jones of Brandtech. “And Path B has one of the world’s genius entrepreneurs, who knows a lot about running companies, unleashing a wave of innovation that has people looking back in a few years and saying, ‘Remember when everyone was worried about Musk coming in?’”
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In 'Singing With Elephants," Margarita Engle explores being an outsider : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...tsider-in-singing-with-elephan npr
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Cuban American author Margarita Engle explores what it's like to be an outsider in her new middle-grade novel Singing with Elephants.
  • Engle tells Morning Edition she wanted to imagine how it would feel for a child to live near an accomplished poet and to wonder if she could write poetry too. Singing with Elephants is told in verse.
  • Ten years ago, publishers put the Spanish in italics so people didn't really think of it as bilingual in the same way, because the Spanish was kind of separated by the italics.
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  • They communicated without knowing the same language but as my mother learned English, she had a very heavy accent and still does to this day at the age of 91.
  • There are children in every classroom learning a language — whether it's English or not. Everywhere in the world with refugees dispersed, people are learning new languages and adapting to new homes.
  • As we mature and then go to school and encounter people from all different backgrounds, it's kind of a shock for anybody in any language to seek a sense of belonging with people who aren't from your family, people you don't know. And yet there are these universal languages, like poetry, which is musical and is rooted in emotions. And I feel like that's a refuge.
  • For me, when I think of where have I ever had a sense of belonging, I have a sense of belonging on the page.
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Ukrainians see their culture being erased as Russia hits beloved sites - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...a-hits-beloved-sites-rcna29972 culture russia
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • “This was intentional. It was a prepared plan. They knew that this legacy was here,” Micay said, wading through the scorched remains, pointing to where paintings, sculptures and books had filled the rooms during her nearly 30 years as the museum director.
  • “This was done so Russia can say that there is no Ukrainian culture, that Ukrainian identity does not exist.”
  • Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of intentionally attacking hundreds of cultural sites, which is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention.
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  • Russian troops burned down a museum in the town of Ivankiv that housed a collection of paintings by the renowned Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, who was an inspiration to Pablo Picasso. The House of Culture in Lozova was razed by a Russian missile. Other theaters, churches, monuments and libraries have been destroyed. 
  • Ukraine’s Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said his office has recorded more than 350 “Russian war crimes against cultural heritage” as of May 19.
  • Attacks on cultural property are not uncommon during wartime, said Richard Kurin, a cultural anthropologist and the founder of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative.
  • “In conflict, you get situations where people want to erase someone else’s culture,” Kurin said. 
  • “It’s demoralizing to people because people’s culture is highly symbolic and it gives them a sense of identity and morale,” Kurin said. “If you think about what the Ukrainians are fighting for, a lot of it has to do with their being Ukrainian.”
  • “The majority of damage to cultural property has been through collateral damage and the way that the Russian Federation is fighting the conflict,”
  • But whether the attacks are indiscriminate or targeted, Stone said Ukraine was at risk of losing irreplaceable cultural sites and artifacts that make up the fabric of Ukrainian identity.
  • “The Kharkiv legacy is in danger,” he said. “This is all part of Russia’s genocide of Ukrainian culture and national identity.”
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Facebook-parent Meta to share more details with researchers about political ad targetin... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html cnn meta
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • (CNN Business)Facebook-parent Meta on Monday said it would soon offer more transparency and information to researchers about how political and social ads are targeted to users on the platform, months before the US midterm elections.
  • The effort, dubbed the Facebook Open Research and Transparency project, was created to help qualified academic researchers study social media's impact on society with measures included to protect users' privacy, according to the company.
  • The data provided to researchers will include information such as the interest categories, which can include everything from "environmentalism" to "frequent travelers," chosen to help target each individual ad.
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  • we hope to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies
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Should kids be allowed to use smartphones in the classroom? - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...phones-school-safety
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The commonly recommended age for a first cellphone is 13 years old. Most kids that age are in the eighth grade, getting ready to learn algebra. The desperate phone calls to 911 coming from inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., where 21 people were killed last month, were placed by children younger than that.
  • In the aftermath of another school shooting, concerned parents are weighing whether phones are a distraction or a potential lifeline for their children.
  • Phone ownership already is widespread among younger children, with 43 percent of 8-to-12-year-olds owning their own smartphone
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  • The devices have become part of many students’ daily lives, despite various attempts over the years by state legislatures and cities to keep them out of classrooms.
  • Despite any emotional benefits for adults or educational use for children, screen-time and security experts don’t recommend taking smartphones to class, at least not without some ground rules and guidance on how to use them in a worst-case scenario.
  • A phone can make unwanted noises, and in a silent lockdown, even a vibration could be too loud. Depending on their age, kids might also be tempted to post about an ongoing incident to social media, which Trump said could both inspire other potential gunmen seeking fame or reveal details about their location. Even the ability to call 911 isn’t a good reason, because an entire school full of people calling at once could overload a switchboard.
  • She said it’s a distraction, and she worries it could replace in-person social interactions and knows she can’t have oversight over many conversations or posts that might happen via smartphone.
  • She’s also worried about misinformation that her daughter could see or read.
  • “Phones are not going to stop school shootings. Gun control might,” Twenge said.
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Wikipedia acts as a check on Putin's false view of history - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...wikipedia-hitler-putin-lavrov wikipedia putin history
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Whether to call Hitler gravely immoral or evil is one of literally hundreds of discussions about this article, which is among the most viewed ever on the site — more than 125 million times over the last 15 years, twice as many as Jesus’s total and in the neighborhood of the number for the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo.
  • Setting the record straight matters because historical misinformation walks hand in hand with current disinformation.
  • Just look at the rhetoric around Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin has described as a battle to “de-Nazify” the leadership of Ukraine.
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  • She showed that accounts of so-called “aces” — fighters said to have heroically held off much more powerful enemies with a single tank or plane — were based on propaganda.
  • In making these repairs, Coffman faced resistance from a group of editors who were mainly military buffs and wanted to write about battlefield valor without too much scrutiny. She, however, kept coming back to facts and sources — how do we know what we think we know? — and an insistence that Wikipedia not be swept up in mythology.
  • In a speech last year, Putin strolled through 1,000 years of battles and alliances to justify his claim of the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
  • Putin has two claims he says are backed by the historical record: that there has never been a separate Ukrainian nation, and that people who claim there is a separate nation must have another motive, whether personal gain or an ideological cause like Nazism.
  • Since the Russian invasion, the English Wikipedia articles about the historical figures and topics Putin invoked have been racking up pop-star numbers.
  • When it comes to allegations about Nazi collaboration by prominent Ukrainian nationalists like Bandera, Wikipedia has pulled no punches. Even as Putin has emphasized these Nazi ties as a reason for his invasion, Wikipedia has resisted attempts to water down this history.
  • When Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was asked how Ukraine could be in need of de-Nazification if its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish, Lavrov replied: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.” It was an appalling answer that, according to the Israeli government, Putin apologized for.
  • In an unusual step, the English Wikipedia article brings up this particular falsehood to explicitly refute it.
  • The Wikipedia project comes with a stubborn confidence that facts can guide us through the darkness. In Wikipedia’s 20-year history, this belief has never been asked to do more.
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Virtual meetings can crush creativity, new study finds - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html cnn
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • (CNN)Collaboration has been behind some of humanity's greatest achievements -- the Beatles' biggest hits, putting a man on the moon, the smartphone.
  • Yes, according to new research published Wednesday that found it's easier to come up with creative ideas in person.
  • "We initially started the project (in 2016) because we heard from managers and executives that innovation was one of the biggest challenges with video interaction. And I'll admit, I was initially skeptical," said Melanie Brucks
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  • "When we innovate, we have to depart from existing solutions and come up with new ideas by drawing broadly from our knowledge. Coming up with alternative ways to use known objects requires the same psychological process," she explained.
  • Researchers also used eye-tracking software, which found that virtual participants spent more time looking directly at their partner, as opposed to gazing around the room.
  • "This visual focus on the screen narrows cognition. In other words, people are more focused when interacting on video, which hurts the broad, expansive idea generation process," Brucks said.
  • "Objects in the room can prompt new associations easier than trying to generate them all internally,"
  • "The field study shows that the negative effects of videoconferencing on idea generation is not limited to simplistic tasks and can play out in more complicated and high-tech brainstorming sessions as well," she said.
  • The study found that videoconferencing didn't hinder all collaborative work
  • However, she said it was a mistake to conclude that creativity and videoconferencing are incompatible.
  • "Perhaps many of us make friends faster in person than over Zoom, and creativity flourishes when we're relaxed. But when Zooming from home, people are probably more relaxed than when in an experiment," she added.
  • "I wouldn't want to see a company double their in-person meetings hoping to improve their innovation, if this also means doubling the commute time resulting in less happy -- and perhaps less creative -- employees."
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Opinion: Want to keep your employees happy? Offer these 5 things - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • To attract workers in today's tight labor market, companies are touting better workplace amenities. Amazon is running ads about the company's pay and benefits. Levi Strauss is offering to cover travel costs for workers seeking abortions. Airbnb is allowing its employees to permanently work remotely. This is a workers' paradise in the making.
  • People crave predictability. Surprises make it harder for employees to plan their lives and have peace of mind. When constant change is inflicted on them, without a chance to anticipate it or participate in decisions about it, people get anxious and passive, and dream of escape.
  • Now, increasing numbers of people demand the ability to choose when, where and how to work.
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  • This made the employee feel like remote work was just another set of disempowering rules.
  • Workers clearly felt empowered by having more control over their own work life. Companies must give people choices that match their unique work and life needs.
  • But they also made clear that willingness to stay with the current employer is also a matter of whether their direct managers can deliver on five other factors beyond the paycheck that keep people happy, productive and on the team.
  • For instance, workers who get unexpected spot bonuses sometimes feel that they don't know what to count on when calculating their future compensation; they'd rather have a predictable total package.
  • People thrive when their value is acknowledged by getting more responsibility, recognition and stature, such as a bigger title.
  • Jobs that convey a sense of purpose and meaning are more likely to exercise an emotional hold on people. Whether or not the company overall thinks it stands for social responsibility, people want to see that chance to make a difference in their immediate work experience.
  • Conventional wisdom holds that the best way to improve employment circumstances is to get an offer from a new company. That shouldn't have to be the case. Managers who want to retain people should act as if they are just now hiring them.
  • The best labor pool could be the one companies already have. They should treat their people as a precious resource and give them what they want from work. Rewarding them will reward the business.
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Where Will We Be in 20 Years? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ture-society-demographics.html new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • “Demographics are destiny.”It is a phrase, often attributed to the French philosopher Auguste Comte, that suggests much of the future is preordained by the very simple trend lines of populations. Want to understand how the power dynamic between the United States and China will change over the next 20 years? An economist would tell you to look at the demographics of both countries. (China’s economy is likely to overtake the U.S. economy by 2028, but remain smaller on a per capita basis.)
  • About 70 percent of the world population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to data from the United Nations.
  • More people around the world had more disposable income and increasingly chose to live closer to cities with greater access to airports. That, married with the human condition that people like to be around other people, makes forecasting certain elements of the future almost mathematical.
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  • One aspect of the future that demographics can’t help predict are technological innovations.
  • Predicting the future may be a fool’s errand. But using demographic data to assess the opportunities and challenges of the next two decades is something that business and political leaders don’t do enough. We’re all too swept up in the here and now, the next quarter and the next year.
  • The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that the world will need about 28 percent more energy in 2040 than it did in 2015 based on the number of people in the country and consumption patterns; on our current trajectory, about 42 percent of electricity in the United States will come from renewable sources.
  • Technology has led us to expect that goods and services will be delivered at the push of a button, often within minutes.
  • Entrepreneurs, industry leaders and policymakers are already at work solving some of the problems that demographic data suggest are ahead of us, whether it’s figuring out how to incentivize farmers to sequester carbon, use insurance as a tool for reducing coal production, reinvent the motors that power heavy industry so they use less energy, or write laws that help govern code.
  • What about the metaverse? Or crypto technology? Or robots taking our jobs? Or A.I. taking over everything? Demographics can’t answer those questions. All of those things may happen, but life in 2041 may also look a lot like it does today — maybe with the exception of those flying cars.
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Donald Trump is pushing an insane conspiracy about the Georgia governor's race - CNNPol... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html CNN.com
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • (CNN)One week ago, Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp crushed former Sen. David Perdue by 52(!) points in a high-profile primary fight.
  • On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Perdue, suggested that something was fishy about that race.
  • So, because Trump's record of endorsements in 2022 is generally strong, the fact that he endorsed a bunch of candidates in Georgia who lost must mean that there were shenanigans happening.
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  • "Something stinks in Georgia," concludes Robinson. "The numbers are funny because many of these races were rigged."
  • According to Robinson, those numbers are "funny" and "rigged." Which is a pretty big claim to make without any evidence other than a month-old poll and suggestions that Trump's endorsement had mattered in other states and, therefore, had to matter more in Georgia.
  • Georgia Republicans are, yes, generally supportive of Trump. But there remains some lingering resentment that Trump's relentless focus on the 2020 election may have cost the GOP two Senate seats in January 2021 runoffs -- and, with them, the Senate majority. Therefore, backing candidates solely because they are willing to endorse Trump's baseless election claims may be less appealing to Georgia Republican voters than voters in other states where Trump's endorsement has mattered more.
  • That seems slightly more plausible than Robinson's fact-free suggestion of hundreds of thousands of votes being somehow manipulated to hurt Trump, right?
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Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial verdict - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html CNN.com
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • (CNN)A jury has found both Amber Heard and Johnny Depp liable for defamation in their lawsuits against each other.
  • Depp sued Heard, his ex-wife, for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in which she described herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse." Though Depp was not named in the article, he claims it cost him lucrative acting roles. Heard countersued her ex-husband for defamation over statements Depp's attorney made about her abuse claims.
  • Heard kept her eyes down as the verdict was read. Depp was not present in court, but released a statement that said, in part, "the jury gave me my life back."
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  • "From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me," he said. "I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that."
  • "The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I'm heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband," Heard said.
  • In her testimony, Heard said that Depp was verbally and physically abusive during their relationship. She also accused Depp of sexual violence.
  • Depp claimed multiple times on the stand that he has never struck a woman, denied Heard's allegation of sexual battery and called himself a victim of domestic abuse by Heard, which she denies.
  • Heard had notably fewer vocal supporters than Depp in the entertainment business and in and around the courthouse.
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How an Organized Republican Effort Punishes Companies for Climate Action - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...blicans-blackrock-climate.html companies climate action new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • In Texas, a new law bars the state’s retirement and investment funds from doing business with companies that the state comptroller says are boycotting fossil fuels.
  • Conservative lawmakers in 15 other states are promoting similar legislation.
  • Across the country, Republican lawmakers and their allies have launched a campaign to try to rein in what they see as activist companies trying to reduce the greenhouse gases that are dangerously heating the planet.
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  • In doing so, Mr. Moore and others have pushed climate change from the scientific realm into the political battles already raging over topics like voting rights, abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues.
  • “There is a coordinated effort to chill corporate engagement on these issues,” said Daniella Ballou-Aares
  • They have worked alongside a nonprofit organization that has run television ads, dispatched roaming billboard trucks and rented out a Times Square billboard criticizing BlackRock for championing what they call woke causes, including environmentalism.
  • That activism has often put companies at odds with the Republican Party, traditionally the ally of big business.
  • as pressure has grown from consumers and liberal groups to take action, corporations have warmed to the notion of using capital and markets to create a cleaner economy
  • When President Trump declared in 2017 that he would pull the United States from the Paris climate accord, more than 2,000 businesses and investors — including Apple, Amazon and Mars — signed a pledge to continue to work toward climate goals.
  • “Every company and every industry will be transformed by the transition to a net-zero world,” Mr. Fink wrote. “The question is, will you lead, or will you be led?”
  • And in January, Mr. Moore pulled about $20 million out of a fund managed by BlackRock because the firm has encouraged other companies to reduce emissions. BlackRock still manages several billion for West Virginia’s state retirement system. “We’re divesting from BlackRock because they’re divesting from us,” Mr. Moore said in an interview.
  • “These big banks are virtue signaling because they are woke,”
  • Mr. Fink of BlackRock has emerged as a main target of conservatives.
  • “We are perhaps the world’s largest investor in fossil fuel companies, and, as a long-term investor in these companies, we want to see these companies succeed and prosper,” BlackRock’s head of external affairs, Dalia Blass, wrote in a letter to Texas regulators in January.
  • “BlackRock is trying to have it all ways, acting like it is trying to please everyone.”
  • “ESG is a scam,” he said on Twitter on this month. “It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.” Shortly after that he shared a meme that declared an ESG score “determines how compliant your business is with the leftist agenda.”
  • “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about,” adding, “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years?”
  • That view is at odds with the findings of the world’s leading climate scientists. A major United Nations report warned last month that the world could reach a threshold by the end of this decade beyond which the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts and wildfires — will grow considerably. In 2021, there were 20 weather or climate-related disasters in the United States that each cost more than $1 billion in losses, according to the federal government.
  • “Our ambition is to be the leading bank supporting the global economy in the transition to net zero,” he said.
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Craig Nason : I survived the Columbine school shooting - then watched Uvalde ... - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...e-repeat-cycle-death-rcna31338 school shooting
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • In April 1999, I survived the Columbine shooting. At just 17 years old, I was forced to process the murder of my friends, the trauma of my community, and the unique attention the world paid to my experience. At the time, Columbine was considered a once-in-a-generation type of tragedy — one that few other people in our country would ever have to contend with. 
  • According to the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, the U.S. has experienced 274 mass shootings since 2009 alone. Thousands of survivors are now part of a club that nobody wants to join.
  • I think about how we vowed to “never forget” Columbine. How we would make sure the next generation would be safer. The opposite has happened.
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  • You likely have memories associated with some of these shootings. What you were doing when you heard. Who you were with. How it affected you. When the headlines break, I often hear from friends, family, and colleagues: “I’m so sorry you have to relive this again.” The truth is, we are all reliving it again on some level. The steady cadence of shock, grief and pain is our collective story.
  • So now that the “thoughts and prayers” have been shared, what can we do together? 
  • Politicians love to tell us not to “politicize these tragedies” following mass shootings.
  • Would you care if an earlier tragedy was politicized if it meant getting your son or daughter back? Of course not. Grief doesn’t have a political affiliation. 
  • Then, change the culture. It’s impossible to ignore the role white supremacy, misogyny and extremism plays in so many mass gun violence events. In many mass shootings, the shooter has exhibited dangerous warning signs before the shooting.
  • Because it’s about the guns. The United States has roughly 5 percent of the world’s population and over 30 percent of the world’s mass shootings.
  • And while politicians love to act like this is an impossibly polarizing issue, perhaps we’re not as divided as we think. The majority of Americans actually believe Congress should pass more extensive gun legislation. According to a 2015 Public Policy Polling survey, 83 percent of gun owners support expanded background checks.
  • A new generation has grown up since Columbine; 310,000 more students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence since that day in 1999 when I escaped with my life.
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Debunking 3 Viral Rumors About the Texas Shooting - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-shooting-misinformation.html rumors shooting new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Here are three of the most prominent rumors that have spread on online platforms such as Twitter, Gab, 4chan and Reddit.
  • Among their unfounded claims were that the shooting had been orchestrated to draw local law enforcement away from the border, allowing criminals and drugs to cross into the United States, and that gun-control advocates had organized the tragedy to stoke public outrage.
  • he conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones of Infowars has lied for years that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was staged by the federal government, with people pretending to be survivors and victims’ parents. Last year, Mr. Jones lost four defamation lawsuits filed by victims’ families, many of whom have been harassed by his believers.
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  • Hours after the attack, a post on the fringe online message board 4chan circulated claiming that the gunman was transgender.
  • where people falsely claimed that the shooting was a result of hormone therapy undertaken by the gunman.
  • “There is an overwhelming number of individuals who are posting images of this person, who was the shooter, and information about the nature of them being transgender,”
  • On Tuesday, a transgender artist said on Reddit that people online “just took my photos and used it to spread misinformation.”
  • False claims that the gunman was born outside the United States began to circulate within hours of the shooting. Spread largely on white nationalist Telegram channels and Gab accounts, the claims alleged that he was an undocumented immigrant in the United States, even after authorities including Roland Gutierrez, a Texas state senator, confirmed that the gunman was born in North Dakota.
  • “Did he cross the border illegally?” Code of Vets, a veterans organization, posted on Twitter. “Our nation has a serious national security crisis evolving.”
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It's Doom Times in Tech - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...doom-times-in-tech.html new york times tech
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The five biggest technology giants in the U.S. have collectively lost more than $2 trillion of stock market value this year.
  • Start-up founders who were turning away eager investors a few months ago now must make an effort to get more money. (Gasp.)
  • Every couple of years for the past decade, anytime there were some wobbles in technology or moments of doubt, smart people predicted that the growth of the tech economy since the Great Recession couldn’t possibly last.
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  • We haven’t seen this combination of economic anxiety and high inflation before. Economists are weighing the risks of a U.S. recession, and companies in many industries are worried that their businesses are slowing.
  • Fast growing start-ups in particular need the faith of investors, customers and employees to keep the momentum going.
  • If within a few months, stock prices bounce back, investors start putting money into start-ups again and the market for initial public offerings unfreezes, the industry might be fine. But if investors stay skittish for many months or years, that could lead to a major shake-up.
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The Supreme Court vs. Social Media - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...upreme-court-social-media.html new york times supreme court social media
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court handed social media companies a win on Tuesday by blocking, for now, a Texas law that would have banned large apps including Facebook and Twitter from weeding out messages based on the views they expressed.
  • Do sites like Facebook have a First Amendment right to allow some material and not others, or an obligation to distribute almost anything?
  • The First Amendment restricts government censorship, but it doesn’t apply to decisions made by businesses.
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  • Conservative politicians have long complained that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies unfairly remove or demote some conservative viewpoints.
  • Associations of internet companies and some constitutional rights groups said that the Texas law violated the First Amendment because it allowed the state to tell private businesses what kinds of speech they could or could not distribute.
  • Texas countered that Facebook, Twitter and the like don’t have such First Amendment protections because they are more like old telegraphs, telephone companies and home internet providers.
  • A federal appeals court recently deemed unconstitutional a Florida law passed last year that similarly tried to restrict social media companies’ discretion over speech.
  • written by Justice Samuel Alito that said: “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.”
  • These cases force us to wrestle with a fundamental question about what kind of world we want to live in: Are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube so influential in our world that the government should restrain their decisions, or are they private companies that should have the freedom to set their own rules?
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Opinion | What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...anti-gun-ad-campaign.html guns new york times opinion
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s, a kid took in a fair number of public service messages.
  • Make guns less cool, less acceptable, less a part of the supposedly “American way of life.” Scare people. Gross them out. Even try humor.
  • But simple messages stick, and when done well — particularly when lives are at stake — have proven highly effective.
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  • Not only does this country have more guns than people, but over the last 30 years, Americans have grown less supportive of stricter gun laws. Astonishingly, in 1959, 60 percent of Americans favored a ban on handguns except those used by police officers and other authorized persons; today that figure is 19 percent.
  • Bearing in mind that the killers in Texas and Buffalo were both only 18, we could try to get through to the next generation.
  • Obviously, not everyone transformed into responsible citizens while imbibing these messages between doses of Sugar Pops and “Scooby-Doo.”
  • Or it could go personal, using a testimonial from a child who lost his sister in a school shooting or a teenager whose friend committed suicide at 14 using a weapon kept in the house by his own parents.
  • Public education and creative P.S.A.s helped reduce teenage cigarette use significantly. While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV. Those efforts are ongoing.
  • Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters
  • Through technology and schools, it could bring kids into creating and disseminating the message.
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Opinion | Elon Musk's Tesla Management Is a Bad Sign for Twitter - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...elon-musk-tesla-twitter.html tesla management new york times
shared by peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • His promises to preserve free speech, ban spam bots and dramatically boost revenue may have earned the blessing of the company’s founder, Jack Dorsey, but with Twitter’s stock falling well below his offer price, Mr. Musk appears to be reneging on a deal that has made even Wall Street grow skeptical.
  • The way that he has managed and marketed his businesses from Tesla’s early days reveals a dysfunction behind the automaker’s veneer of technofuturism and past stock market successes.
  • The way that he has managed and marketed his businesses from Tesla’s early days reveals a dysfunction behind the automaker’s veneer of technofuturism and past stock market successes.
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  • he forces his employees to bridge the enormous gap between technological reality and his dreams. This disconnect fosters a negligent and sometimes cruel workplace, to disastrous effect.
  • That fully self-driving announcement that so delighted his fans came as a far more jarring revelation to the project’s engineers, who found out about their staggering new mission when Mr. Musk tweeted about it.
  • This is the fundamental weakness of every organization run as a cult of personality: The dear leader can’t be everywhere or make every decision but often fails to provide the clear code of values that allows managers to independently shape their decisions around common goals.
  • Lawsuits by workers and California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing allege that Black workers were tasked with menial physical labor in parts of the factory nicknamed “the plantation,” where they were subjected to racist slurs and graffiti.
  • He ultimately gave up and cobbled together a manual-labor-intensive production line in an open-air tent.
  • Female workers have sued, alleging a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and groping by supervisors. Mr. Musk was indifferent, emailing workers who experienced abuse that “it is important to be thick-skinned.”
  • lantatio
  • Mr. Musk’s reliance on hype is especially jarring.
  • By moving to buy Twitter, Mr. Musk has not only added another distraction to his long list but has also already shown the same drive to announce sweeping decisions in public.
  • Ultimately Mr. Musk’s goals for Twitter, as they are for Tesla, are not about making the right decisions for his companies or the people who make them possible.
  • They are about playing to the crowd and burnishing the legend that keeps fresh bodies and minds moving through the businesses that chew them up and spit them out.
  • peterconnelly on 01 Jun 22
     
    Elon Musk's management at Tesla and his buying of Twitter
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Writing History: An Introductory Guide to How History Is Produced | AHA - 0 views

www.historians.org/...ide-to-how-history-is-produced
shared by criscimagnael on 30 May 22 - No Cached
  • In fact, history is NOT a "collection of facts about the past." History consists of making arguments about what happened in the past on the basis of what people recorded (in written documents, cultural artifacts, or oral traditions) at the time.
  • The problem is complicated for major events that produce "winners" and "losers," since we are more likely to have sources written by the "winners," designed to show why they were heroic in their victories.
  • There is no interpretation. There is no explanation of why the Mexicas lost.
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  • Many individuals believe that history is about telling stories, but most historians also want answers to questions like why did the Mexicas lose?
  • Unfortunately, in the case of the conquest of Mexico, there is only one genuine primary source written from 1519-1521. This primary source consists of the letters Cortés wrote and sent to Spain.
  • Ideally, under each of these "thesis statements," that is, each of these arguments about why the Mexicas were defeated, the authors will give some examples of information that backs up their "thesis." To write effective history and history essays, in fact to write successfully in any area, you should begin your essay with the "thesis" or argument you want to prove with concrete examples that support your thesis.
  • To become a critical reader, to empower yourself to "own your own history," you should think carefully about whether the evidence the authors provide does in fact support their theses. 
  • Or, if your professor has said something in class that you are not sure about, find material to disprove it—the "trash the prof" approach (and, yes, it is really okay if you have the evidence).
  • If one analyzes omens in the conquest, will it change the theses or interpretations presented in the textbook?
  • One way to think about the primary sources is to ask the questions: (1) when was the source written, (2) who is the intended audience of the source, (3) what are the similarities between the accounts, (4) what are the differences between the accounts, (5) what pieces of information in the accounts will support your thesis, and (6) what information in the sources are totally irrelevant to the thesis or argument you want to make.
    • criscimagnael
      criscimagnael on 30 May 22
       
      OPCVL!
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Understanding Science: An overview - 0 views

undsci.berkeley.edu/...intro_01
shared by criscimagnael on 30 May 22 - No Cached
  • Science is, in one sense, our knowledge of all that — all the stuff that is in the universe
  • But just as importantly, science is also a reliable process by which we learn about all that stuff in the universe. However, science is different from many other ways of learning because of the way it is done. Science relies on testing ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world.
  • Science helps satisfy the natural curiosity with which we are all born: why is the sky blue, how did the leopard get its spots, what is a solar eclipse? With science, we can answer such questions without resorting to magical explanations.
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  • Without science, the modern world would not be modern at all, and we still have much to learn.
  • does not deal with supernatural explanations.
  • it is a path to understanding.
  • all science relies on testing ideas by figuring out what expectations are generated by an idea and making observations to find out whether those expectations hold true.
  • Accepted scientific ideas are reliable because they have been subjected to rigorous testing,
  • It relies on a system of checks and balances, which helps ensure that science moves in the direction of greater accuracy and understanding. This system is facilitated by diversity within the scientific community, which offers a broad range of perspectives on scientific ideas.
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