Saying ‘no’ at work

Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, recommends extreme selectivity as a check on your desire to always be accommodating. McKeown likes to ask people to imagine they have no to-do list, no inbox, no schedule of appointments. "If you didn't have any of that, and you could do one thing right now that would help get you to the next level of contribution, what would you do?" he asks. "Maybe all the stuff you're doing should be questioned. Start from zero every day. What would be essential?" People require space and clarity to identify what matters, McKeown explains, and what matters should dictate what you say yes to.

Although it feels good to say yes, be disciplined about the time you give to others. Employees and partners need your help, but mostly they need you to concentrate on what matters.

Leigh Buchanan writing in Inc.

Articles of Interest - May 13

***JOURNALISM

The White House revoked my press pass: It's not just me  Washington Post 

The do’s and don'ts of religion reporting  The GroundTruth Project 

How one reporter got the Sandra Bland cell phone video  Columbia Journalism Review

Trump-Russia is too complex to report. We need a new kind of journalism (opinion)  The Guardian 

It’s more common for white, older, more-educated Americans to have spoken with local journalists  Pew Research Center

Teaching Journalism in the Age of Trump  Inside Higher Ed

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

The Last Family-Owned Daily in Mississippi  The Atlantic 

***FAKE NEWS

'Fake news victims' meet with Twitter and Facebook  Wired

Trump’s New Favorite Network Embraces Russian Propaganda  The Daily Beast

Facebook is inadvertently making use of propaganda by militant groups  Associated Press 

These fact-checkers won $2 million to implement AI in their newsrooms Poynter

Confusing Facebook With the Internet is the Perfect Storm for Fake News  Monday Note 

RT America, a network known for sowing disinformation, has a new alarm: the coming ‘5G Apocalypse’  New York Times 

***TECHNOLOGY 

US military missile technology can make precise, single-kill strike without causing explosion and dealing collateral damage  ArsTechnica 

A new camera can photograph you from 45 kilometers away  MIT Tech Review  

***BIG DATA & AI  

Google's machine learning push is only getting started: It's "pouring resources into developing new chips/algorithms/platforms  ArsTechnica 

An infographic explaining big data  Daily Infographic   

Image detection algorithms remain susceptible to a class of problems called adversarial example: AI may not 'hallucinate' after all  Wired 

What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator  Curiosity 

Claim: creation of a light-based chip that can store and process information in a similar way to the human brain through a network of artificial neurons that works with light   Uni-muenster

Some examples of using AI to make “knowledge workers” more effective  Harvard Business Review 

Rushing into AI? “AI is an expensive and complex solution without evidence of direct ROI.” A warning for small business owners  Tech Republic 

“Data is great, but without designers to help make it come alive through visualizations UX Planet 

The US has lost control of key parts of its cybersecurity arsenal to Chinese Spies who are using the NSA’s hacking tools for attacks on the US  New York Times

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

10 Tools and tricks to verify Instagram posts  Fact Checking Day  

Instagram is an engagement powerhouse  Axios 

What content does well on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google  Axios

***FACEBOOK 

Facebook updates its video guidelines to promote original content, loyal and engaged viewership  TechCrunch 

These bogus quotes just won’t die on Facebook  Poynter 

The dark reason new mothers share photos of their kids on Facebook  Quartz 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY  

What Chrome’s browser changes mean for your privacy and security  Tech Crunch 

Inside China's massive surveillance operation  Wired  

***PRODUCING MEDIA

A tool to see what the media is covering  Tools for Reporters 

***INTERNET

A mysterious gut doctor is begging Americans to throw out “this vegetable” now. But, like, which? A journey through internet garbage Vox

Kentucky’s $1.5 Billion Information Highway to Nowhere  Propublica 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Encouraging children to think independently  Becoming (my blog)

The Peculiar Blindness of Experts  The Atlantic 

***WRITING & READING

Laundromats are playing an unlikely role in the effort to shrink America’s literacy gap  Quartz

How do you turn kids into bookworms? All 10 children's laureates share their tips  The Guardian 

How to Understand, Detect, and Avoid Plagiarism  Dermatologic Surgery Journal

Danielle Steel's surprising secret to success Quartz

Novels rule when it comes to e-book sales, children's books dominate print  Thinkum

What Is Writing and Does This Count as It?  The New Yorker 

***LANGUAGE

Are We Being Framed? How the linguistic trick of framing shapes meaning–and can lead to deception  Daily Jstor

U.S. Military Slashes Foreign-Language Training Foreign Policy

***LITERATURE 

What The Great Gatsby Reveals About The Jazz Age and the racist caricatures associated with it  Daily Jstor 

Was Shakespeare a Woman?  The Atlantic  

When an Argument Over Macbeth Incited a Bloody Riot  Daily Jstor

***GENDER   

When should a woman have children if she’s thinking about running for office?  Pew Research Center 

Google creates 53 gender-neutral emojis  Android Police

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The Disturbing Thing I Learned Studying White Privilege and Liberals  Vice

Cubs ban fan who used 'offensive' hand gesture  Chicago Tribune

Can the Racial Wealth Gap Be Closed Without Speaking of Race?  New York Times 

Turning Point USA Chapter President Booted After Declaring “White Power” in Viral Video  Vice News

***FREE SPEECH

 A reporter declined to reveal his source: Then police showed up at his front door with guns   Washington Post

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Does using a trademark as a hashtag create a false impression of association?  Technology  & Marketing Law Blog

Lawyers Are Uniquely Challenging Audience for Anti-Bias Training  Boomberg

Federal Judge Says Flashing Headlights To Warn Drivers Of Hidden Cops MIGHT Be Protected Speech  TechDirt

Paper wins contempt case over Parkland shooting suspect Washington Post

***RELIGION

Teaching Scripture in public schools  Washington Post

CT apologies for piece on Rachel Held Evans  Christianity Today

What Happens When Christian Movies Go Mainstream?  BuzzFeedNews

Muslim Children's beheading chant in video stirs city probe  Associated Press

Amazon re-trains employees who banned religious ads  Axios

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

Far-right US pastor becomes first person banned from Ireland under exclusion powers The Hill

Russian Evangelicals Penalized Most Under Anti-Evangelism Law  Christianity Today

European countries that have mandatory church taxes are about as religious as their neighbors that don’t  Pew Research Center 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Trump's white evangelical support softer than you think, report says  The Christian Post

***GOOD NEWS

Video: Austin police save 3 women, dog from rushing flood waters before car swept away (start video at 4 minutes in)   My San Antonio 

Girl saves best friend from choking one day after learning Heimlich maneuver  CBS-LA 

Sons encourage their mother to attend college with them to fulfill her lifelong dream  Tallahassee Democrat 

NYC pizzeria waiter returns half-million dollar cashier’s check to retired social worker who failed to tip him  NY Daily News

***ART & DESIGN

How Instagram Is Changing Life For Artists  NPR 

Why Do Facebook, Google, And Pinterest All Have Such Similar Logos?  Fast Company 

Students paint "rain poetry" on Florence streets--it's visible when wet  SC Now

I wrote the book on user-friendly design: What I see today horrifies me  Fast Company  

 ***MUSIC 

Child yells ‘wow’ at end of moving Mozart concert in Symphony Hall and now the orchestra wants to know who he is  MassLive 

Tangled Up in Blue: Deciphering a Bob Dylan Masterpiece Open Culture

***FILM

Review: 'Tolkien' Is A Tale Of Tweed And Trees  NPR

Nicholas Hoult On Becoming J.R.R. Tolkien  NPR  

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

BuzzFeed’s video strategy moves to more TV-like digital shows tied to verticals  Digiday

A New-Look TV Industry Descends on Madison Avenue (sub. req’ed)  Wall Street Journal

Upfront 2019: TV Advertising Isn’t Dead (Yet)  Variety

***JOBS/FELLOWSHIPS

Portfolio Advice  Freelancer Sonia Weiser

Career advice from journalists on entering the professional media industry Medium

Senior Multi Media Producer  Kaiser Permanente, Oakland

Investigations reporter  BuzzFeed News (Remote)

 ***FREELANCE WRITING

Advice Thread on Freelancing  Mariko Lochridge

Freelance Workshop: How to Send an Effective Email Pitch  AAJA (Los Angeles)

Story or op-ed ideas  High Country News 

Story Pitches  The Texas Observer 

Freelance Writing Submissions  Heated  

Election-related stories  This Magazine  

Rural, urban, and suburban communities in Indiana  Belt Magazine 

Pitches related to working for public radio & TV  Current 

Music-related pitches  Gadget Hacks is seeking

Audio Fiction about Relationships  Dipsea 

Freelance copy editor  Axios, Remote

***FREELANCE WRITING: FOOD & DRINK 

Sonoma County food stories Made Local Magazine 

Stories about vices like drinking, smoking, sex, gambling  Forbes Vices 

Food-focused Pitches  Mark Bittman’s Medium publication 

Pitches about The Life of Sobriety  The Temper 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

A football player raped her: She blames William Jewell College for not preventing it  The Kansas City Star

Professor admits sharing photos, denies grades for sex allegations The News-Gazette 

Pope Francis Issues New Rules On Reporting Sexual Abuse  NPR  

Indiana Law Prof Ian Samuel Resigns After Misconduct Probe  Law.com

***SOCIAL ISSUES  

Is There a Connection Between Undocumented Immigrants and Crime?  New York Times

Digital divide persists even as lower-income Americans make gains in tech adoption  Pew Research Center 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia: Now They Say It Was a Fraud  New York Times

***ENVIRONMENT

The evidence is strong: air pollution seems to cause dementia  Wired 

The climate crisis is a story for every Journalism beat  Columbia Journalism Review 

Innovative method using cores drilled from coral to produce a world first 400-year long seasonal record of El Niño events  Eureka Alert

Climate Change effects Surfing Waves  Axios

Mariana Trench: Deepest-ever sub dive finds plastic bag BBC

***HEALTH

The Problem With Supplements  Elemental  

Genetically Modified Viruses Help Save A Patient With A 'Superbug' Infection  NPR

Rural Areas Drive Increases in Global Obesity  Scientific American

Placebos May Be A Powerful Tool That Medicine Has Overlooked  NPR

100 Rural Hospitals have shut down in the last decade  Washington Post

America’s health care costs are scaring patients away from the ER  Vox

The Right Way to Wear Sunscreen  Consumer Reports 

Disease that can be transferred from dog to human confirmed in Iowa, officials say  USA Today

Experimental brain implants studied as opioid deaths rise Associated Press

***VACCINES 

A new study ranks the risks in U.S. counties by the numbers of unvaccinated children  New York Times 

A Teenager Sued His School for Banning Unvaccinated Students. Now He Has Chickenpox TIME 

Instagram is still trying to get vaccine misinformation under control  CNN  

RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines Politico

Teaching anti-vax parents to trust science and the MMR vaccine  CBS News

Anti-vaxxers are attacking vocal pro-immunization doctors by smearing them with derogatory online reviews   Boston Globe 

***TRAVEL 

The Best Weekend Getaways in the United States Afar  

The 18 Best City Parks in America  Thrillist

***FOOD & DRINK

SoCal shop brews $75 cups of coffee ABC-7

***FAMILY

Teaching kids to be independent thinkers  Wired 

Led by Baby Boomers, divorce rates climb for America’s 50+ population  Pew Research Center 

U.S. Government Bars Gay Couple's 2-Year-Old from Citizenship MSNBC

***MOTHERS

6 facts about U.S. moms  Pew Research Center 

Psychology behind why your mom may be the mother of all heroes  The Conversation

***NEUROSCIENCE  

If you grew up playing Pokémon games, there's something quite different with your brain  Science  

Mapping Emotions in the Body: A Finnish Neuroscience Study Reveals Where We Feel Emotions in Our Bodies  Open Culture

Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next  Quanta 

***CRITICAL THINKING 

3 Simple Habits to Improve Your Critical Thinking  Harvard Business Review

That illusion where you think the other side is united and your side is diverse  Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

***PHILOSOPHY

Against cheerfulness  Aeon

How the dualism of Descartes ruined our mental health  Aeon

Publication Ethics in Philosophy 

***PRODUCTIVITY

Adam Savage on lists, more lists, and the power of checkboxes  Wired

Just thinking about coffee can improve your focus, researchers say Quartz

***HISTORY 

What was Leonardo da Vinci doing at your age? CNN

Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction?  New York Times 

***RESEARCH 

Not Reporting Results of a Clinical Trial Is Academic Misconduct  Annals of Internal Medicine 

The “condensation revolution” begins as a journal mandates “a new, two-word title format”  Collectively Unconscious

New Report Examines Reproducibility and Replicability in Science, Recommends Ways to Improve Transparency and Rigor in Research  U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine

Early-career researchers commonly ghostwrite peer reviews: That’s a problem Science Mag

***HIGHER ED

Elaborate phishing scams increasingly target universities  WHYY

Stratford University shutting down three Virginia campuses  Richmond Times Dispatch

College Admissions Scandal to become Limited TV Series  Variety  

I Ran a College Cheating Business Out of My Frat Vice

Colleges Are Getting Smarter About Student Evaluations: Here’s How  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

Northwest Christian University professor awarded $127,000 in racial discrimination case against university Oregon Live

Trump fixer Cohen says he helped Falwell handle racy photos  Reuters 

Vice President Mike Pence talks Christian values, job market at Liberty Graduation WSET  

***HUMANITIES

Humanities are crucial for technological innovation  San Francisco Chronicle

***TEACHING

3 Cool Tech Tools to Consider for the Digital Classroom  Faculty Focus

This Is What It Sounds Like Hiding In A Dark Classroom During A School Shooting  BuzzFeed News

A new twist on end of semester evaluations  Faculty Focus 

Are Students Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear?  Daily Jstor 

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Future of Transylvania student news site in doubt after school stops payments   Lexington Herald-Leader

Student Newspaper Outlines Administration attempts to  Undermine its operation  Transylvania Rambler 

UGA grad student cleared after racially-charged campus speech dispute  Atlanta Journal-Constitution

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Just thinking about coffee can improve your focus, researchers say Quartz  

Encouraging Independent Thinking

Students often don’t know why they’re learning something. Asking why is so important to kids and they deserve a better answer than “because it will be on the test.” By the time kids reach middle school, they give up asking and focus on getting a good grade. To in- crease curiosity, it is important to address the “why” questions. Why are we reading Hamlet? Why are we solving quadratic equations? When teachers answer these questions, it prompts kids to think more deeply about the implications of what they’re learning.

Parents can elicit curiosity in their children through similar methods. We don’t need to have the right answers all the time, but we need to encourage kids to ask the right questions. If we don’t know the answer, we can say, “Let’s find out. Do some research on Google, and we can go from there.”  

When we support curiosity, what we’re really developing is a child’s imagination. Which brings me to creativity, a wonderful by-product of independence and curiosity.

Esther Wojcicki, How to Raise Successful People

What you don't become

It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts. -Oscar Levant 

Career Success is Not Enough

Success spares you from the shame you might experience if you feel yourself a failure, but career success alone does not provide positive peace or fulfillment. If you build your life around it, your ambitions will always race out in front of what you’ve achieved, leaving you anxious and dissatisfied.

David Brooks writing in The New York Times

Invention

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. -Mary Shelley

The Root of Your Procrastination

People envision outcomes so outstanding that their expectations become more intimidating than inspirational. "It's like you're practicing the high jump, and when you set the bar too high, you look at it, and you walk away," says John Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford. "Perfectionists aren't people who do something perfectly. Perfectionists are people who fantasize about doing something perfectly."  

At its core, procrastination represents shoddy treatment of the one person who should matter most to you: the future you. Resolving not to do some odious task today makes procrastinators feel good. Then they predict they'll feel just as good tomorrow, which will make the task easier. Of course, the next day they feel worse, which makes the task harder and the stress greater. Homer Simpson summed it up neatly: "That's a problem for future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy."   

Leigh Buchanan writing in Inc.

Changes to the Associated Press style guide

Accent marks: Accent marks can now be used with people’s names when they ask for it, are known to use them or if quoting from a language that uses them.

Casualties: Avoid the word because it is vague and can refer to either injuries or deaths. Instead, be specific.

Cocktail: Don’t use in reference to a mixture of drugs. Instead, use "drug combination" or simply drugs or medications.

Data: Now takes a singular verb and pronoun except in academic and scientific papers. In data journalism contexts: The data is sound. However, in scientific and academic writing, plural verbs and pronouns are preferred.

Hyphens: No longer use hyphens for African American, Filipino American, and compounds as “third-grade teacher” and “chocolate-chip cookie.” When using compound adjectives formed with “well” (suspensive hyphenation) such as well known, well fed, well dressed, hyphenate before the noun but not after. Do not use a hyphen with double-“E” combinations such as “preelection,” “preeminent,” “preempt,” “reenter,” etc.  

Latinx: The use of gender-neutral Latinx “should be confined to quotations, names of organizations or descriptions of individuals who request it and should be accompanied by a short explanation.

Marijuana: Pot or cannabis is OK on the second reference.  Dispensary employees are budtenders.  

Percentage: The percentage sign is OK to use with a numeral (no space between) instead of writing out “percent” or “percentage.” Example: “His mortgage rate is 4.75%.” For amounts less than 1%, precede the decimal with a zero: Example: “The cost of living rose 0.6%.” 

In the early part of the 20th century, a common rendering was “per cent.,” two words with a period after the “cent,” possibly because it was abbreviating the Italian “per cento.” The first formal AP stylebook, in 1953, called for “per cent,” and that stuck at least through the 1970 stylebook. By 1977, though, it had come together as “percent.” That’s common in the United States, though British English leans towards “per cent.”

            Merrill Perlman writing in the Columbia Journalism Review 

Race: Whether a subject is black or white need not be reported unless it’s pertinent to the story. Avoid calling someone “a black” or “a white.” Limit the use of the terms “blacks” and “whites” as plurals. Black and white are acceptable as adjectives when relevant.

Racism: OK to use “racist” or “racism” instead of euphemisms like "racially charged."

(sic): Do not use (sic) to show that quoted material or person’s words include a misspelling, incorrect grammar or peculiar usage. If it has to be explained, explain it outside the quotation, or just paraphrase the quotation.

Split infinitives: OK to use. Avoid awkward constructions (to leave, to help, etc.) or compound forms (had left, are found out, etc.).

Suspect: Avoid when talking about a person of unknown identity who committed a crime. Correct: Police said the robber stole 14 diamond rings; the thief ran away. Incorrect: Police said the suspect stole 14 diamond rings; the suspect ran away. Correct: Police arrested the suspect the next day. Incorrect: Police arrested the robber the next day.

More info:

A full list of the changes here.

AP Stylebook adds new umbrella entry for race-related coverage, issues new hyphen guidance and other changes ACES

Previewing a new edition of the AP Stylebook

Dropped Hyphens, Split Infinitives, and Other Thrilling Developments from the 2019 American Copy Editors Society Conference New Yorker

AP Stylebook update: It’s OK to call something racist when it’s racist Poynter

AP says the percentage sign now OK when used with a numeral (that’s shift+5) Poynter

Articles of Interest - May 6

***JOURNALISM

Remembering Nellie Bly, Rabblerouser and Pioneer of Investigative Journalism  Mental Floss  

40 Years After 'Star Wars' Error, Newspaper Apologizes To Wookiee Community  NPR

How German journalists are using Snapchat to teach teens about the Holocaust  Washington Post

***PRESS FREEDOM DAY 

On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, yet another journalist is killed in Mexico  Washington Post

World Press Freedom Day Interview with Laura Ling  StoryHunter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

“We’re drinking now”: The oldest newspaper in New Orleans just fired its entire staff  Vice  

Public Relations Jobs Boom as Buffett Sees Newspapers Dying  Bloomberg

***FAKE NEWS

The existential crisis plaguing online extremism researchers  Wired

Why we are addicted to conspiracy theories  The Guardian 

***STUDENT MEDIA  

On Their Last Day, Student Newspaper Editors Cover a Shooting on Their Campus  Charlotte Magazine 

Profile of student porn worker allowed to run in Stockton high school newspaper  LA Times

***TECHNOLOGY

The 25 Most Absurd Job Titles In Tech  CBI Insights 

Editing Genes To Change Human Traits Is A Tall Order  NPR

How a Google Street View image of your house predicts your risk of a car accident  MIT Tech Review

***BIG DATA & AI 

Rocket Lab launches 3 experimental military satellites into space for the Defense Department  Axios 

A company scammed NASA for nearly two decades and cost them two satellites  Bloomberg

Looking at how machine learning and artificial intelligence are affecting IT  Tech Republic

A new realm of legal exposure for writing code  Wired 

The basic differences between artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science  Code Mentor

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Inside The AOC Meme Machine: fans and enemies alike are inventing a new kind of politics  BuzzFeed News

Twitter now lets you add GIFs to retweets  Cnet

Hundreds Have Died In Selfie-Related Deaths Since 2011  NPR

***FACEBOOK

Facebook debuts new look and features to help move past 'old issues'  CNN

Facebook's AI problems  Wired 

Facebook bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and others from its platforms as 'dangerous'  CNN

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Your phone isn’t really spying on your conversations—the truth might be even creepier  Quartz

 7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Digital Privacy  New York Times 

***INTERNET

Putin signs law to create an independent Russian internet  CNN  

How to stay productive when there's no internet  Popular Science 

The dark web is smaller, and may be less dangerous, than we think  Tech Republic

 ***PERSONAL GROWTH 

How to Grieve  Becoming (my blog)

***GRAMMAR 

Credit card fraud suspects nabbed over careless typo  New York Post 

Microsoft debuts Ideas in Word, a grammar and style suggestions tool powered by AI  Venture Beat 

5 sites for checking your grammar  Komando 

***WRITING & READING

University of Tennessee journalism professor accused of plagiarism in a report for a conservative advocacy group  Knox News  

“Are there cross-cultural differences in plagiarism  SSRN

***LITERATURE

How SparkNotes' social media accounts mastered the art of meme-ing literature  Mashable

Four books by Asian American authors republished as Penguin Classics  NBC News

Classic Children’s Books Now Digitized and Put Online  Smithsonian  

Wikipedia edit-a-thon wants to fill in the gaps in Asian American literature  NBC News

Young adult literature lacks diverse authors  The Signal  

***POETRY 

Poetry Saved my Life: Indiana Poets are healing and connecting with their communities  Indy Star 

2019 Poetry Out Loud National Champion: Isabella Callery  National Endowment for the Arts 

Google's poetry algorithm automates teen angst Engadget

***GENDER    

Some States Still Shield Spouses From Prosecution When They Rape Their Partners  NPR

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

Sociologist who studies whiteness is again in trouble for his comments about race  Inside Higher Ed

The gap between the number of blacks and whites in prison is shrinking  Pew Research Center

She’s Asian and female: But she’s not me  The Washington Post

Senseless hate': the far right's deep roots in southern California  The Guardian

Expelled in 1956, Black Woman Gets Doctorate At U of Alabama  Afro

Colorism in High Fashion  Pudding

Doane U suspends library director over exhibit that included 1920s-era students in blackface Inside Higher Ed

OU graduate suing university over gender discrimination  News-9

Research on Iowa counties that swung from Obama to Trump indicates that GOP success was driven far more by sexism and racism than by economic anxiety  PS Mag

***RELIGION

 Rachel Held Evans, popular Christian writer, dies at 37  CNN

Died: Warren Wiersbe, Preachers’ Favorite Bible Commentator  Christianity Today

'Hail Satan?' review: Taking on the Christian nation, the devil's way  Chicago Tribune   

Landlord ordered to pay $675,000 for refusing to lease to Muslims  KCBD

With high levels of prayer, U.S. is an outlier among wealthy nations  Pew Research Center

Harvest Bible Chapel says no tithes or severance will go to former senior pastor who was fired  Chicago Tribune 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS 

Pete Buttigieg went to Jimmy Carter's Sunday school class and the former president invited him to read from the Bible  Business Insider

U.S. Jews are more likely than Christians to say Trump favors the Israelis too much  Pew Research Center 

***GOOD NEWS

Waving great-granny gets Valentine's Day surprise from Comox Valley teens  CBC News     

Chicagoan pulled over to help at an accident scene—ends up saving lives by getting donated organs to the hospital  Chicago Tribune

***ART & DESIGN 

Type in the digital era is a mess  Fast Company 

The best of National Geographic's 2019 Travel Photo Contest (so far)   The Atlantic 

What Is Performance Art?: We Explain It with Video Introductions and Classic Performances  Open Culture

The Insane History of Natural Pigments  Daily Infographic 

***MUSIC 

2019 Billboard Music Awards Winners: The Complete List  Billboard

Elizabeth Cotten Wrote “Freight Train” at 11, Won a Grammy at 90, and Changed American Music In-Between  Open Culture 

***FILM

Spoilers have been infuriating people since Victorian Times  Quartz

The Absolute Best Documentaries on Netflix  Thrillist

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Broadcasting giant Sinclair to buy 21 regional sports stations from Disney for $10B  CNBC

***STUDENT LIFE

Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry  New York Times

Predatory Journals Can Wreak Havoc a Student’s Wallet and Tarnish their Professional Reputation  The Runner

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

In lopsided vote, U.S. science academy backs move to eject sexual harassers  Science Mag

2 Swarthmore fraternities will disband after documents reveal references to 'rape attic' and racist behavior CNN 

Sexual Assault Within Military Is On The Rise  NPR  

Want to know how to handle a Me Too-related incident and related public relations snafu? Don't ask the Society for American Archaeology  Inside Higher Ed

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Alabama Abortion Law Could Become Most Restrictive In The Country  NPR  

What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right  Washingtonian  

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

A 'miracle' healing gel, a cult-like following, and a fiercely protected empire  The Guardian

Where U.S. Housing Costs Hurt the Most  CityLab 

The big business of loneliness  Vox 

What the Science Says about Meeting Agendas  Linkedin

Australian company bans working on Wednesdays  BBC 

How Slack is ruining work  Vox

***CHINA 

Manspreading on the Beijing subway could give you bad social credit  Abacus News 

Chinese Noodle feast wins top prize for Food Photographer of the Year 2019  BBC 

China Detains Hundreds Of Thousands Of Muslims In 'Training Centers'  NPR

***ENVIRONMENT

Rural Students To Join In Classroom Walkout Over Climate Change  NPR

An autistic teenager from Sweden is trying to shame adults into action on climate change  The Week

Maine becomes the first state to ban Styrofoam  CNN 

Faceless Killer: The Invisible Threat of Air Pollution (book review)  Undark 

***HEALTH

Scientists Identify New Type of Brain Degeneration That Mimics Alzheimer's  TIME

Stanford discovery validates chronic fatigue syndrome  San Francisco Chronicle

Popular e-cigarette products contaminated with bacterial and fungal toxins, study finds  NBC News 

For Patients With Memory Loss, Working Towards Better Diagnosis  Undark

In major advancement for the 3-D printing of replacement organs, researchers demonstrate the printing of intricate blood vessel networks using living tissue  Rice 

***HEALTH: PREVENTATIVE 

Unscreen chemicals soak all the way into your bloodstream  Wired

Why some doctors are prescribing a day in the park or a walk on the beach for good health The Conversation

Is Conference Room Air Making You Dumber?  New York Times 

***VACCINES

Dengue Vaccine Controversy In The Philippines  NPR

Amid Measles Outbreaks, States Consider Revoking Religious Vaccine Exemptions  NPR

***TRAVEL

Romano Tours  SNL

Thousands of Fireflies Will Create a Spectacular Light Show in the Great Smoky Mountains  Afar  

How to Avoid Getting Bumped From a Flight   Life Hacker 

***SPORTS & GAMES

'Uno' wants you to stop pulling this illegal, but diabolical move  Mashable

***FOOD 

Eating More Rice Could Help Fight Obesity, Study Suggests  Bloomberg  

The 31 best Mexican restaurants in America  Thrillist 

***ANIMALS 

Teen cat whisperer recognized for clocking nearly 1,900 hours of dedication to feline friends  WBAL-TV

Why Are There So Many Books About Dogs?  New York Times 

***SCIENCE 

Side-By-Side ‘Genetic Portraits’ Of Family Members Show Just How Strong Family DNA Is  Bored Panda 

An immersive game in which teams solve science puzzles to unlock a mystery  New York Times 

***NEUROSCIENCE  

How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything  Open Culture 

What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About the Mascots We Love and Hate  Adweek

***PRODUCTIVITY

How Exercise Affects Our Memory  New York Times 

The 6 best productivity podcasts for women  The Ladders 

***RESEARCH 

The Great Science Publishing Scandal (podcast)  BBC 

It is ever appropriate to use immorally acquired medical and scientific  Science Direct  

Scientific journal snubs academic over Sleeping Beauty metaphor  The Guardian

Facebook gives social scientists unprecedented access to its user data  Nature

***HIGHER ED

Esteemed judge to investigate claims against ASU economics department  KTAR

Five Staff Resign Without Discipline after Violating Title IX Policy  The Triton

An Expensive Startup Journey comes to an end: Wiley to Acquire Knewton’s Assets  Edsurge

Mike Pence stirs controversy over plans for commencement speech at Christian university in Indiana  USA Today

TD Jakes launches nonaccredited divinity school  Christian Post 

***LEARNING OUTCOMES 

Study of student learning outcomes  Inside Higher Ed

Study Analyzes Student Learning Outcome Statements and Assessments  Diverse Education

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

13 Yale Professors Threatened to Resign From Ethnic Studies: The University Listened  The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Contrary to received wisdom graduates from prestigious institutions aren’t more productive Chemistry World  

Former Dean Files $25 Million Defamation Lawsuit in Rankings Dispute  Inside Higher Ed

How to Grieve

There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You’re on your own for that.

Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday   

to live totally

In order to live totally, we must face death totally. -Eugene Peterson

Yes, but

“We all know the phrase ‘Yes, but’ really means ‘No, and here’s why you’re wrong’,” says Rob Kendall, author of Workstorming. A conversation expert, Kendall sits in on other people’s meetings as an observer. The phrase “Yes, but” is one of the classic warning signs that you’re in an unwinnable conversation, he says. “If you hear it three or more times in one discussion, it’s a sign that you’re going nowhere.”  Kendall advises shifting the conversation by asking the other person “What’s needed here?” or, even better, “What do you need?” “It takes you from what I call ‘blamestorming’ to a solution-focused outcome.”  

Rosie Ifould writing in The Guardian 

Impending death

Impending death gives permission to feel, to let go, to recognize what’s important. 

A Good Life

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life.

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

(Born April 30, 1945)

Articles of Interest - April 29

***TECHNOLOGY 

The Machine That Reads Your Mind (Kinda) and Talks (Sorta)  Wired 

Tiny robots powered by magnetic fields could help drug-delivery nanoparticles reach their Targets  MIT

In 1983, This Bell Labs Computer Was the First Machine to Become a Chess Master  IEEE Spectrum 

Amazon is testing a Spanish Language Alexa Experience  Tech Crunch 

***BIG DATA & AI 

Consider the system that integrates humans and machines – not as artificial intelligence but extended intelligence  Wired

Neuroscientists use artificial intelligence to develop speech-decoding device capable of translating brain signals into speech  Nature  

Startups are racing to commercialize DeepFakes’s powerful, internet-breaking AI  Fast Company 

3 startups commercializing Deepfakes media manipulation tech  Fast Company 

How to prepare for a career in machine learning and artificial intelligence  Tech Republic

Artificial Intelligence VS Machine Learning VS Data Science  Code Mentor

Media group says it has created a tool that uses machine learning to identify articles evoking positive feelings  Digiday  

How to hide from everyday surveillance cameras in the AI surveillance state  MIT Tech Review

Walmart takes a deep dive into artificial intelligence in its physical store  Associated Press 

The Nat Nuclear Sec Admin is making a play to save a scientific advisory group of elite scientists that the Pentagon is looking to shut down  Defense News 

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

CIA is officially on Instagram  ABC News  

TikTok's quirky videos can nab you your 15 seconds of fame  Cnet  

Kidfluencers’ are earning millions on social media, but who owns that money?  The Guardian

How Americans use Twitter: Key takeaways from our new study  Pew Research Center 

LA’s plan to reboot its bus system—using cell phone data  Wired 

***FACEBOOK

Facebook never delivered its "Clear History" feature BoingBoing 

How Fox News dominates Facebook in the Trump era  Vice

The rise and fall of Facebook’s memory economy  Wired 

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Sinclair plots national expansion  Axios

Vice Media Restructures, Folds 'Noisy,' 'Broadly,' 'Tonic' Into Flagship Site  MediaPost  

Media group says it has created a tool that uses machine learning to identify articles evoking positive feelings  Digiday 

***JOURNALISM 

27 incredibly useful things you didn’t know Google Sheets could do  Fast Company

Study: Journalists need help covering misinformation  Poynter 

Counteracting Health Misinformation: A Role for Medical Journals?  JAMA Network

Reporters Committee, NBC 7 San Diego sue U.S. immigration agencies for violating FOIA  Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press

A 101 on machine learning in the newsroom  Columbia Journalism Review 

Andrew Yang, the most meme-able 2020 candidate, also wants to save journalism  Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

A doorbell company owned by Amazon wants to start producing “crime news”  Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Smart Speaker Use Is Growing. Will News Grow With It?  Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

***FAKE NEWS  

Students Fall for Misinformation Online: Is Teaching Them to Read Like Fact Checkers the Solution?  Chronicle of Higher Education 

6 Conspiracy Theories Promoted By OANN, Trump’s New Favorite ‘News’ Outlet  Hill Reporter

After Trump calls media "fakers," WHCA president slams "unpresidential" rhetoric  Axios

Fake Video: World Leaders Sing Imagine   YouTube

***PRIVACY & SECURITY  

Millions using 123456 as password, security study finds  BBC

How Big Tech’s cozy relationship with Ireland threatens data privacy around the world  Politico  

Google knows everywhere you go — here's how to stop it from tracking you and delete the logs  CNBC 

***PRODUCING MEDIA 

A new startup helps podcasts get promoted on other podcasts  The Verge

Overcast Podcast Player Gains Audio and Video Clip-Sharing Feature  Mac Rumors

***INTERNET 

How healthy is the internet?  Mozilla

Google Inbox’s co-creator wants to fix Gmail with a new Chrome extension  The Verge

This map showing the fastest and slowest internet speeds in the US could predict the path of a Silicon Valley startup exodus  Business Insider 

The 4 Questions to Ask before You Unplug  Jstor 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

When Are You Really an Adult?  Becoming (my blog) 

How to Actually, Truly Focus on What You’re Doing  New York Times

***GRAMMAR

Dropped Hyphens, Split Infinitives, and Other Thrilling Developments from the 2019 American Copy Editors Society Conference  New Yorker  

Merriam-Webster adds 640 new words to its English dictionary  Merriam-Webster

***WRITING & READING 

Routine Over Talent: The Interesting Habits Of 11 Famous Writers  Minutes Magazine  

The story of handwriting in 12 objects  BBC 

The Numbers on Romance novels  Quartz

***LANGUAGE

Foreign languages ought to be an asset for politicians—not a liability  Economist  

Over 400 languages spoken today may have originated in northern China New Scientist

***LITERATURE

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in Vintage Recordings from the Early 1950s  Open Culture 

White nationalists interrupt Antiracist Book Festival at Politics and Prose  WTOP

Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition Has Just Been Released: Answer 600 Questions Based on the Life & Works of William Shakespeare  Open Culture

Harper Lee, true crime writer  CBS News 

***GENDER   

‘I Want What My Male Colleague Has, and That Will Cost a Few Million Dollars’  New York Times 

Wife-tracking apps are one sign of Saudi Arabia’s vile regime  The Guardian 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The racial bias built into photography  New York Times 

Is there a trade-off between racial diversity and academic excellence in gifted classrooms?  Hechinger Report

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Chalking tires to enforce parking rules is unconstitutional, court finds  NBC News

Quest for food stamp data lands newspaper at Supreme Court  Associated Press 

Roy Moore Is Still Fighting In Court With Sacha Baron Cohen As He Eyes Another Senate Run  BuzzFeed News

***LEGAL ISSUES: COPYRIGHT

A US photographer could lose some or all of a $450,000 jury award   Bloomberg Law 

Court reverses misguided fair use ruling  Photo District News 

Photographer Sues for Failure to Provide Creative Commons-Required Attribution Technology & Marketing Law Blog 

***CRIME  

We found 85,000 cops who’ve been investigated for misconduct: Now you can read their records  USA Today 

Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes  New York Times

***RELIGION

United Methodist Court Keeps Core of New LGBT Legislation  Christianity Today 

God, Guns, and Country: The Evangelical Fight Over Firearms  New Yorker

Half of Americans Say Evangelicals Are Discriminated Against  Christianity Today  

BYU speaker comes out during commencement speech  The Salt Lake Tribune

‘Hail Satan?’ examines the rise of the satanic temple  World Religion News  

India Proposes Controversial Bill Making Religion a Criteria for Refugee Citizenship  NPR

***CHURCHES

Churchgoing: The US is on a path towards secularism  Economist 

Places Of Worship Are Increasingly Becoming Targets Of Extremist Violence  NPR

Megachurch terminated from national accreditation group because of former senior pastor's 'discretionary account'  Chicago Tribune  

Evangelical churches can become 'seedbeds for rape culture,' seminary professor says  Christian Post 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

2020 Election Revives Debate: Should Religious Faith Guide One's Voting?  NPR 

Franklin Graham rails against Buttigieg for calling himself 'gay Christian'  The Hill 

Franklin Graham Tells Buttigieg to ‘Repent’ Being Gay  Washington Post

2020 Democrats Invited To Iowa Evangelical Forum 'To Dig Deeper'  NPR  

How Trump has changed white evangelicals’ views about morality  Washington Post

2020 Democratic Candidates Are Reaching Out To Religious Voters  NPR

***POLITICS

Meet the Woman Behind the Buttigieg Media Frenzy  Politico

Jared Diamond explores how countries respond to crises  Economist 

How The New Movements, Not The Old Media, Are Driving Politics  BuzzFeed News   

In many countries, dissatisfaction with democracy is tied to views about economic conditions, personal rights  Pew Research Center 

***GOOD NEWS

Photo of 3 Alabama men who kept widow company at restaurant goes viral  Fox News

Cop Saves An Elderly, Hearing-Impaired Man From An Oncoming Train  Digg

Police officer drives Illinois man to job interview after pulling him over  KSDK-TV   

Teen learned CPR at high school: Two weeks later, he used it to save his dad  The Wichita Eagle

He ran out of sick days to stay with his cancer-stricken daughter, so teachers donated their sick days  CNN

***ART & DESIGN

London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert  The Guardian

Frida Kahlo: The unapologetic artist  CBS News 

***MUSIC 

The Luck Reunion is the anti-Coachella  Fast Company  

Why Do Sad People Like to Listen to Sad Music? Psychologists Answer the Question in Two Studies  Open Culture 

***FILM

55 details you may have missed in 'Avengers: Endgame'  This is Insider

'Gosh!' An oral history of 'Napoleon Dynamite'  Desert News

***STUDENT MEDIA  

‘Free speech isn’t free, is it?’: A story on a teen porn worker could cost a high school journalism teacher her job  Washington Post

Student journalists are breaking big stories  Axios 

The Student Journalists of Stoneman Douglas High Earned a Rare Honor at This Year’s Pulitzers  Mother Jones

***STUDENT LIFE

Charges dropped for University of Arizona students who protested Border Patrol  AZ Central  

The story of a man running a cult out of his daughter’s dorm room  The Cut  

 ***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

More than 12,000 Boy Scout members were victims of sexual abuse  ABC News

The shocking rape trial that galvanised Spain’s feminists – and the far right  The Guardian 

Man who pleaded guilty to raping 14-year-old girl gets no jail time  WKYT  

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Rehab programs turn into form of cheap labor:  They worked in sweltering heat for Exxon, Shell and Walmart and didn’t get paid a dime  Reveal News  

Half Of Americans Think The Smell Of Weed In Public Is A Real Problem  BuzzFeed News  

Americans' Stress, Worry and Anger Intensified in 2018  Gallup

By 2045, the U.S. as a whole is projected to become majority minority  Axios 

***IMMIGRATION 

Judge gives US 6 months to identify children split at border  Assoiciated Press  

Asylum in America  The Week

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Can Your Employer Fire You After You Quit?  Life Hacker 

FBI director addresses efforts by China to steal academic research and technology  Inside Higher Ed  

***ENVIRONMENT

The soothing, hypnotic colors of tulip season, seen from above  Quartz 

Climate change being fuelled by soil damage   BBC 

***HEALTH 

35 Years Of American Death  FiveThirtyEight 

The Unseen Crisis of Drug Shortages  Bloomberg 

Measles outbreak over 700: Continues Unabated  New York Times

A pill that tells doctors whether you’ve taken it  Washington Post

How to give voice to the speechless: Listen to, and translate, their brainwaves  Economist

Why Your Doctor’s White Coat Can Be a Threat to Your Health  New York Times 

Screening for lung cancer is a controversial idea But the evidence now suggests it can work  Economist

***VACCINES 

What anti-vaxxers are actually afraid of (it's not all about autism)   BigThink

'Brady Bunch' Episode Fuels Campaigns Against Vaccines And Marcia's Miffed  NPR

***TRAVEL

Sri Lanka was Lonely Planet's No. 1 travel destination for 2019. The attacks are ‘a big blow’  LA Times 

***SPORTS & GAMES

‘Jeopardy!’ Quiz: The Questions James Holzhauer Got Wrong  Vulture

How hard a golf hole is does not depend solely on how hard it is Economist  

***FOOD

The Raisin Industry  New York Times

How Technology is Changing the Food Industry Forbes

***FAMILY

Getting married in your 30s is the new normal  Quartz 

U.N. recommends no screen time for babies; only 1 hour for kids under 5  NBC News

Participation in the arts raises kids' self-esteem  Pacific Standard 

What’s the point of marriage? (opinion)  the Week 

***ANIMALS 

Rescue dog helps owner pick up trash across Arizona  NBC News 

Ape uses Smartphone 

Loyal dog stays by body of his master for two day until it is found  Daily Mail Online

How to Pay for Your Pet's Healthcare  Life Hacker  

***SCIENCE

The universe is expanding faster than previously thought  Johns Hopkins 

Dark Matter Gets a Reprieve in New Analysis  Quantam Magazine 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they’re talking about  Washington Post 

Minnesota moves toward banning 'conversion therapy' but it's still legal in many states  CNN  

***NEUROSCIENCE  

Many defendants turn to brain science  NBC News 

Brains of blind people adapt to sharpen sense of hearing, study shows  University of Washington

***PHILOSOPHY 

A Harvard Professor Explains What the Avengers Can Teach Us About Philosophy  Wired

***RESEARCH 

21 Dos and Don’ts for Journal Writers and Reviewers  Chronicle of Higher Education

It's 2019: Academic Papers Should Be Free  Undark 

Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility  Nature 

Should we introduce a dislike button for academic articles?  Journal of the Assocn for Information Science and Tech

USDA orders scientists to say published research is ‘preliminary’  The Washington Post

***HIGHER ED

Student slated to attend Western Michigan University beheaded in Saudi Arabia for ties to democracy  Detroit Free Press

Michigan adopts new policy after controversy over students turned down for letters of recommendation  Inside Higher Ed  

Palomar College board considers live-stream meetings  The Coast News  

Using AI to Make Knowledge Workers More Effective  Harvard Business Review 

Stanford Moves to Stop Supporting Its University Press  Inside Higher Ed  

They Complained About Their Office: Then Kean U. Took Their Jobs Away  Chronicle of Higher Education

***ONLINE SCHOOLS

An online school, wants to teach nursing  Economist  

National American University is latest for-profit chain to face financial turmoil Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

How One Professor Mines Student Comments to Improve Her Teaching  Chronicle of Higher Education 

When Are You Really an Adult?

What adulthood means in a society is an ocean fed by too many rivers to count. It can be legislated, but not completely. Science can advance understanding of maturity, but it can’t get us all the way there. Social norms change, people opt out of traditional roles, or are forced to take them on way too soon. You can track the trends, but trends have little bearing on what one person wants and values. Society can only define a life stage so far; individuals still have to do a lot of the defining themselves. Adulthood altogether is an Impressionist painting—if you stand far enough away, you can see a blurry picture, but if you press your nose to it, it’s millions of tiny strokes. Imperfect, irregular, but indubitably part of a greater whole.

Julie Beck writing in The Atlantic 

the spirit of your generation

If you marry the spirit of your generation, you will be a widow in the next. -William Inge

Time Pressure at Work

The typical form of time pressure in organizations today is what we call “being on a treadmill” – running all day to keep up with many different (often unrelated) demands, but getting nowhere on your most important work. That’s an absolute killer for creativity. Generally, low-to-moderate time pressure is optimal for creativity. But we did find some instances in which people were terrifically creative under high time pressure. Almost invariably, it was quite different from being on a treadmill. Rather, people felt like they were “on a mission”— working hard to meet a truly urgent deadline on an important project, and protected from all other demands.

Teresa Amabile talking about her book The Progress Principle  

in five years

If you kept going the way you are now, WHO would you be in five years? Instead of focusing on WHAT you’ll become, in terms of work and social success, think about what you are learning and what kind of person you are turning into.

Lies our Culture Tells Us

College mental health facilities are swamped, suicide rates are spiking, the president’s repulsive behavior is tolerated or even celebrated by tens of millions of Americans. At the root of it all is the following problem: We’ve created a culture based on lies.    

(Among them:) Rich and successful people are worth more than poorer and less successful people. We pretend we don’t tell this lie, but our whole meritocracy points to it. The message of the meritocracy is that you are what you accomplish. The false promise of the meritocracy is that you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love — that if you perform well, people will love you.      

No wonder it’s so hard to be a young adult today. No wonder our society is fragmenting. We’ve taken the lies of hyper-individualism and we’ve made them the unspoken assumptions that govern how we live.

David Brooks writing in The New York Times