your choice
/You make what seems a simple choice: Choose a man or a job or a neighborhood—and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life. -Jessamyn West
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Your coworkers are better at rating some parts of your personality
/Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance. As a social scientist, if I want to get a read on your personality, I could ask you to fill out a survey on how stable, dependable, friendly, outgoing, and curious you are. But I would be much better off asking your coworkers to rate you on those same traits: They’re often more than twice as accurate. They can see things that you can’t or won’t—and these studies reveal that whatever you know about yourself that your coworkers don’t is basically irrelevant to your job performance.
Adam Grant writing in the Atlantic
what to do with the towel
/You have a choice. You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off of your face.
Articles of Interest - May 7
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
Lifefaker.com makes faking perfection easy (video)
Twitter Urges All 330 Million Users To Change Passwords After Bug Exposes Them Digg
Snap to Tweak Snapchat’s Redesign After Users Complain New York Times
Instagram quietly launches payments for commerce Tech Crunch
Facebook employee fired over bragging about access to user information Reuters
Facebook’s failed crackdown on fake accounts Washington Post
Despite Facebook News Feed algorithm changes, fake news still thrives Mashable
Facebook might be working on a secret internet satellite CNBC
***SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS
The rise of social media influencers CBS News
CGI Instagram ‘Influencers’ Like Lil Miquela Are About to Flood Your Feeds Wired
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
FCC Approves 100% Mexican Ownership of Radio Stations in California and Arizona Broadcast Law Blog
Declining share of Americans would find it very hard to give up TV Pew Research Center
***JOURNALISM
Facebook Has Begun To Rank News Organizations By Trust, Zuckerberg Says BuzzFeed
Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism The Atlantic
NowThis to launch breaking news channel on Snapchat Axios
How journalists can better cover neglected communities American Press Institute
Taking Visual Journalism Into the Sky With Drones New York Times
The Dangers Of Journalism In Afghanistan NPR
How to Use Twitter to Connect Online Students to News Media Shift
A Newspaper Is Sold, and Cambodians Fear the End of Press Freedom New York Times
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Alden Global Capital is making so much money wrecking local journalism it might not want to stop anytime soon Harvard’s Nieman Lab
4 ways managers can build a more inclusive newsroom for diverse new hires American Press Institute
How The Economist uses its 12-person data journalism team to drive subscriptions Digiday
The case for reimagining news as a finite product Poynter
***FAKE NEWS
Transparency is the Mother of Fake News New York Times
Streaming Services Have a Conspiracy Theory Problem Slate
People who are delusional, dogmatic, or religious fundamentalists are more likely to believe fake news Harvard’s Nieman Lab
People think she's a Parkland 'crisis actor' - conspiracy theorists and the dangers of actual fake news Washington Post
This study is all about what makes people bullshitters Poynter
***PRIVACY
Spy agency NSA triples collection of U.S. phone records: official report Reuters
Microsoft's Nadella says privacy is a human right that needs protecting Cnet
***PRODUCING MEDIA
Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube New York Times
***INTERNET
Free, open-source website-archiving tool Chronicle of Higher Ed
From The Internet Of Things To The Internet Of Thoughts Forbes
***BIG DATA & AI
Intelligence agencies try to take advantage of machine learning and AI c4isrnet
CERN’s attempt to use of machine learning to crunch particle physics data Tech Crunch
One of the next big things in geospatial intelligence is tiny black boxes aboard satellites Space News
The military exchanges have removed Chinese cellphones Military Times
Intelligence community, companies give out satellite imagery to motivate app developers Space News
R language resources to improve your data skills Computer WorldPentagon AI effort Project Maven mines drone live-video feeds using machine learning techniques Space News
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Our sleep habits both reveal and shape our loves Becoming (my blog)
Girls' Night In Readers' Toughest Questions on Self-Care in the Workplace, Answered Girls Night In Club
The Upside of Envy New York Times
***SAN DIEGO
Pedestrian Hit by Car on Rosecrans Street in Midway District Times of San Diego
***GRAMMAR
Mueller's former assistant says grammatical errors prove leaked questions came from Trump The Hill
One space or two between sentences? Washington Post
***WRITING & READING
62 of the World’s Best Independent Bookstores Atlas Obscura
The Right To Browse: A Library Puts Books Into Storage And Readers Cry Foul NPR
The digital age killed cursive. But it can’t kill the signature. Here’s why. Washington Post
Use a Placeholder in Your Writing to Keep From Getting Stuck Life Hacker
The ban on split infinitives is an idea whose time never came Economist
***LANGUAGE
Some of the word-formation processes involved in the coining of names for new media firestorms Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why Are Young People Trying to Talk Fancy? Chronicle of Higher Ed
What Are Your Exceptional Euphemisms This Spring? Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LITERATURE
How children’s literature became everybody’s literature Boston Globe
Novelist Ian McEwan's Kid Got a C+ on an Essay About Ian McEwan's Novel Jezebel
J.R.R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heartfelt Loathing” for Walt Disney and Refused to Let Disney Studios Adapt His Work Open Culture
The Fairytale Language of the Brothers Grimm Daily JSTOR
***GENDER
When Misogynists Become Terrorists (opinion) New York Times
Boy Scouts are dropping the word 'Boy' from flagship program; Girl Scouts shrug USA Today
Wall Street’s Big Gender Lawsuit Is 13 Years in the Making Bloomberg
Most GOP Voters Don’t Ever Want to See a Female President Care2
How does gender influence the academic publishing process? Biomed Central
He Makes a Joke in an Elevator and some are Demanding an Apology Chronicle of Higher Ed
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
America is more diverse than ever — but still segregated Washington Post
What The Uproar Over Kanye West Might Reveal About Black Voters NPR
Centre College students held a sit-in to demand that it deal with issues of racism and discrimination on campus The Advocate-Messager
Ranks of Notorious Hate Group Include Active-Duty Military ProPublica
US labor force participation rate, by race The Atlas
***FREE SPEECH
My Effing First Amendment This American Life
How a tiny protest at the U. of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LEGAL ISSUES
First Amendment Doesn’t Protect Encouraging Readers to Make Anti-Semetic Attacks Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Law school staffer arrested after faking being at work for over a year while hanging out at Hooters in Las Vegas Above the Law
***TECHNOLOGY
Google teams with NBC to build VR content for its TV shows Tech Crunch
The Future of Branding? Synthetic Voices that Sound Just Like Our Own Fast Company
China’s Tech Industry Wants Youth, Not Experience Bloomberg
Want to work for Ikea? Your next job interview could be conducted by a Russian robot Washington Post
What Is Blockchain? Three Videos Explain the New Technology That Promises to Change Our World Open Culture
***RELIGION
North Korea's Secret Christians The Atlantic
Same-sex marriage garners support among most American religious groups, study shows Religious News Service
How American Christians can break free from ‘slaveholder religion’ Religious News Service
Blacks more likely than others in U.S. to read the Bible regularly, see it as God’s word Pew Research Center
For Jehovah's Witnesses, an insular culture and archaic rules have created a "recipe for child abuse." Philadelphia Inquierer
***SOUTHERN BAPTISTS
The Scandal Tearing Apart America's Largest Protestant Denomination The Atlantic
Paige Patterson and Doing the Right Thing for the SBC, Again (opinion) Christianity Today
Southern Baptist leader’s advice to abused women sends leaders scrambling to respond Washington Post
Southern Baptist women want seminary president Paige Patterson fired for remarks News Observer
Baptist group ejects church for pastor's gay rights support WVNS-TV
***RELIGION AND POLITICS
Trump marks National Day of Prayer amid hush money scandal Associated Press
***GOOD NEWS
Volunteers rebuild ‘Field of Dreams’ after it was vandalized (video) NBC News
Billionaire NBA owner Glen Taylor visited a rural Iowa class. A shy kid raised his hand — and it changed his life De Moines Register
8 Feel-Good Stories Of Strangers Helping Someone They Didn’t Know Huffington Post
Newly adopted dog saves family from house fire Fox-7
96-Year-Old Secretary Quietly Amasses Fortune, Then Donates $8.2 Million New York Times
4-year-old superhero using his power to feed the homeless CBS News
***ART & DESIGN
Record Label Logos Reagan Ray
***MUSIC
Stream a Vinyl Album By Snapping a Pic of Its Cover Art With This App LifeHacker
Meet The Tech Company Disrupting The Music Industry (And It's Not Spotify) Forbes
***FILM
How Rotten Tomatoes Changed the Film Industry Daily Jstor
'Monkey Selfie' Film in the Works at Conde Nast Hollywood Reporter
***STUDENT MEDIA
Del Mar College administration reviewing newspaper article illustrated with sexual cartoons Kris TV
Did college newspaper break the law with graphic images in sex column? Sacramento Bee
College newspaper essential, valuable addition to LSU LSU now
Stanford Daily retracts article based on off-the-record event iMediaEthics
***STUDENT LIFE
Gamers are the new stars. Esports arenas are the new movie theaters New York Times
Millennials are struggling. Is it the fault of the baby boomers? The Guardian
More than a million Millennials are becoming moms each year Pew Research Center
Student sues neo-Nazi website publisher after 'troll storm' of harassment The Guardian
Millennials stand out for their technology use, but older generations also embrace digital life Pew Research Center
Four face charges in student government protest at Texas State Austin American Statesman
University of Florida Apologizes After Black Graduates Were Manhandled at Commencement TIME
***STUDENTS & FINANCES
Millennials Are Way Poorer Than Boomers Ever Were Vice
Babysitting Rates: How much should you pay your babysitter? UrbanSitter
Harvard University will collectively bargain with its newly formed graduate-student union The Crimson
We must stop universities exploiting the unpaid labour of PhD students The Guardian
***INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
US colleges are enrolling fewer international students; visa data shows a 40% drop since 2015 Quartz
A University in Texas Promised Full Scholarships to Dozens of Nepalese Students. Months Later, It Revoked the Offer Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why Chinese Students Aren’t a Threat (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed
***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS
10 Things You Should Always Do On Your Last Day of Work Fairy God Boss
Unpaid interns: slaves who pay tuition Journo Terrorists
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
Woody Allen’s son helped bring down Harvey Weinstein The Sunday Times
Are you obligated to report sexual harassment at work? CNN
***SOCIAL ISSUES
How Criminals Steal $37 Billion a Year from America’s Elderly Bloomberg
Casting Aside Shame And Stigma, Adults Tackle Struggles With Literacy NPR
Americans are becoming more socially isolated, but they’re not feeling lonelier The Conversation
How Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials Got Their Names Mental Floss
***BUSINESS
Here's the Biggest Export From Each U.S. State Mental Floss
More Employers Avoid Legal Minefield By Not Asking About Pay History NPR
When Corporate Innovation Goes Bad — The 116 Biggest Product Failures Of All Time CB Insights
***ENVIRONMENT
2018’s Greenest States WalletHub
***HEALTH
She didn’t get treated at the ER. But she got a $5,751 bill anyway Vox
Printing body parts in hospital shows 3D tech's growing reach Reuters
9 out of 10 people worldwide breathe polluted air World Health Organization
EEG signals accurately predict autism as early as 3 months of age Science Daily
A state-by-state report measuring the quality of health care in the US Commonwealth Fund
Western Diet, With Its High-Fat Content, Linked To Arthritis Medical Daily
Controversial TV celebrity Dr. Oz appointed to Trump’s fitness and nutrition council New York Daily News
America is a health-care outlier in the developed world Economist
Tick & Mosquito Infections Spreading Rapidly, CDC Finds New York Times
***SCIENCE
Amazing Earth Facts To Blow Your Mind (video)
***PSYCHOLOGY
Americans Are A Lonely Lot, And Young People Bear The Heaviest Burden NPR
The Fascinating Science Behind Why We See 'Faces' In Objects Mental Floss
Loneliness is silent, invisible and as deadly as a smoking habit 1843 magazine
***NEUROSCIENCE
Questlove Aims To Save Your Brain: 'Creativity Might Be In Jeopardy' NPR
***PHILOSOPHY
China is paying for Karl Marx’s birthday party in Germany Quartz
***ETHICS
Alfie's story has too many shades of grey for it to be about the calculated application of the law The Telegraph
***RESEARCH
India culls 4,305 dubious journals from approved list Nature India Nature Asia
White papers, working papers, research articles: What’s the difference? Journalists Resource
Research Deluge: Are Researchers Writing More yet Contributing Less? The Scholarly Kitchen
Why are academics not paid royalties on published research papers in IEEE, ACM etc.? (opinion) Stack Overflow
Vague and varied retractions point to weakness in the scientific community Nature Index
Why is the replication crisis centered on social psychology? Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
***HIGHER ED
Court says schools can be liable for suicides but clears MIT Associated Press
Much of our work in Academia has no social value, and we hate doing it Chronicle of Higher Ed
A Stunning Ouster in Tennessee Gets Ugly and Feels Like Political Payback Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why Are States Spending Less on Higher-Ed? Chronicle of Higher Ed
American Higher Education Hits a Dangerous Milestone The Atlantic
State Support for Colleges Declines As Student Diversity Grows New York Magazine
Explosive Lawsuit Against Christian University President Inside Higher Ed
How Grand Canyon University became the world's largest Christian (sub. req’ed) The Business Journals
Catholic University plans to cut full-time faculty by 9 percent Washington Post
Christian colleges at odds with evolving values of students Minnesota Public Radio
Students launch coalition to counter "rampant" student media censorship at Christian universities Student Press Law Center
Small Christian College has a 37 BILLION dollar Endowment Bloomberg
***HUMANITIES
The study of the humanities should be defended for its deeper benefits, not for the jobs associated with the field (opinion) CUNY Academic Commons
***TEACHING
Your Students Learn by Doing, Not by Listening Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why We Must Stop Relying on Student Ratings of Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
In Defense (Sort of) of Student Evaluations of Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
The 5 Tips for Student Success That a Longtime Instructor Swears By Chronicle of Higher Ed
20 judgments a teacher makes in 1 minute and 28 seconds Hechinger Report
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Three Billboards Outside University College London: A case of approved plagiarism Robert M Chapple
Chinese Arts Professor Awarded With ‘Oscar’ of Design Caught Plagiarizing The Epoch Times
What are you willing to Give up Sleep for?
/Our sleep habits both reveal and shape our loves. A decent indicator of what we love is that for which we willingly give up sleep.
My willingness to sacrifice sleep reveals less noble loves. I stay up late later than I should, drowsy, collapsed, on the couch, vaguely surfing the internet, watching cute puppy videos. Or I stay up trying to squeeze more activity into the day to pack it with as much productivity as possible. My disordered sleep reveals a disordered love, idols of entertainment or productivity.
My willingness to sacrifice much-needed rest and my prioritizing amusement or work over the basic needs of my body and the people around me reveal of that these good things—entertainment and work—have taken a place of ascendancy in my life.
Tish Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary
pretending
/You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. - Sacha Guitry
The Phone Trade-Off
/Smartphone photography isn’t making us dumber. It’s shifting the way our minds work, refocusing our attention.
Alixandra Barasch is a cognitive scientist at NYU. In her work, she finds that, yes, incessant smartphone camera use can lead to lapses in memory. But, more importantly, she finds a wrinkle: Cameras can also focus our attention to enhance memory.
She’s run similar studies to the one at Stanford, where participants either take photos or don’t take photos while on a museum tour. When instructed to take photos of an exhibit, her participants were more likely to remember visual aspects of their experience (the art and artifacts they saw) than if they didn’t take photos. But there’s a trade-off: The participants snapping photos were less likely to remember information they heard.
Brian Resnick writing in Vox
except for two things
/You are the same today as you will be five years from now except for two things . . . the people you meet and the books you read. -Charles E. Jones
What Causes Technological Adoption
/Popular culture presents consumer technology as a never-ending upward progression that continuously makes things better for everybody. In reality, new tech products usually involve a set of tradeoffs where improvements in areas like usability or design come along with weaknesses in areas like privacy & security. Sometimes new tech is better for one community while making things worse for others. Most importantly, just because a particular technology is “better” in some way doesn’t guarantee it will be widely adopted, or that it will cause other, more popular technologies to improve.
In reality, technological advances are a lot like evolution in the biological world: there are all kinds of dead-ends or regressions or uneven tradeoffs along the way, even if we see broad progress over time.
Anil Dash writing in Medium
Winners must have..
/Winners must have two things: definite goals and a burning desire to achieve them.
Articles of Interest - April 30
/***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Here’s who owns everything in Big Media today Recode
E-sports evolved from a hobby into an obsession, into a business — and now it is a full-fledged entertainment industry Strategy-Business
***JOURNALISM
A bomber posing as a cameraman killed 10 journalists and 21 others in Afghanistan as they reported on a terror attack The Guardian
Do people really want to watch a Netflix show about BuzzFeed journalism? Columbia Journalism Review
Collaborative journalism: keys to success for transnational projects in Latin America, according to Connectas Knight Center
Why Americans Are Afraid to Talk to Reporters: They Fear Backlash From Their Neighbors, and Are Wary the Media Will Exploit Them Zocal Public Square
How much of what local TV stations post to Facebook is actually local? For many, right around half Harvard’s Nieman Lab
The Pulitzer-laden researcher embedded in the Post newsroom Poynter
Here are eleven amazing data journalism projects. Which one is your favourite? Medium
Explainers are tedious. Fact-checks can feel partisan. Is there a third way? Harvard’s Nieman Lab
How to get notified when audiences post your work to Reddit Poynter
How To Engage In The Comments: A Journalist’s Guide The Coral Project
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
To get to 10 million subscribers, The New York Times is focusing on churn Digiday
Mic faces an uncertain future in a post-Facebook world Digiday
New documentary about the New York Times: The Fourth Estate Media Post
***FAKE NEWS
We’re underestimating the mind-warping potential of fake video Vox
Wikipedia Founder Says Internet Users Are Adrift In The 'Fake News' Era New England Public Radio
Is it satire or fake news? Depends on who you ask Poynter
Rain of terror: Egypt to crack down on 'fake' weather reports The Guardian
***SOCIAL MEDIA
What the internet’s biggest mistakes can teach us about the future: A talk with LinkedIn’s CEO Axios
Snapchat will allow users to buy products via augmented reality Axios
WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum resigns from Facebook after clashes over user data Quartz
Social Media ads are a bad deal for small businesses and individuals BongBong
Everything You Need To Know About Reddit Daily Infographic
Is the importance of audience engagement largely anecdotal and abstract? Harvard’s Nieman Lab
Animal influencers: How popular pets on Instagram launch careers CBS News
Everything We Know About the Feud Between These Two Computer-Generated Instagram Influencers The Cut
Fake it till you make it: meet the wolves of Instagram The Guardian
***TECHNOLOGY
The WIRED Guide to Crispr WIRED
I explain Blockchain to my 6-year-old brother Medium
Have We Reached The Tipping Point For Digital? Hello Sign
China's behavior monitoring system bars some from travel, purchasing property CBS News
Snapchat Debuts New Spectacles. We Try Them on for Size WIRED
China is using brain-scanning hats to track workers’ emotions Daily Dot
***BIG DATA & AI
What is explainable AI and why does the U.S. military need It? Medium
An Introduction to Hashing in the Era of Machine Learning Bradfields
No One Is Sure How Good, or Bad, AI Will Get (video)
We need not just privacy law, but consumer protection law for the age of big data The Hill
***PRIVACY
People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family Miami Herald
Cambridge University rejected Facebook study over 'deceptive' privacy standards The Guardian
Tactics Used To Find Golden State Killer Raise Privacy And Legal Questions NPR
How to Wrestle Your Data From Data Brokers, Silicon Valley — and Cambridge Analytica ProPublica
Dealing with the privacy paradox Monday Note
***INTERNET
Gmail Is Getting a Long-Overdue Upgrade WIRED
Sounding The Alarm About A New Russian Cyber Threat NPR
What the internet’s biggest mistakes can teach us about the future Axios
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Empathy is always a risk Becoming (my blog)
How to Say ‘No’ to Others and ‘Yes’ to Yourself GirlsNightinClub
The App That Reminds You You’re Going to Die The Atlantic
***LANGUAGE
A visit to Europe reveals the omnipresence of English — and the danger of making assumptions about its universality Chronicle of Higher Ed
Can genes change the way languages evolve? Quartz
***WRITING & READING
Rethinking How Students With Dyslexia Are Taught To Read NPR
Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write Monday Note
***LITERATURE
Best Fiction Books — Spring 2018 Medium
10 Book Designers Discuss the Book Covers They Rejected, And Why Electric Literature
Nobel prize in literature may be cancelled in 2018 amid sexual abuse scandal The Guardian
Jane Austen, authority on relationship intricacies, has been cited in 27 legal decisions Vox
***GENDER
This calculator puts a dollar value on the invisible, unpaid work done by women Quartz
The Top Jobs Where Women Are Outnumbered by Men Named John New York Times
Women scarce at top of U.S. business – and in the jobs that lead there Pew Research Center
The Forgotten Gender Nonconformists of the Old West Daily Jstor
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
A new lynching memorial highlights America’s grim legacy of racial terrorism Vox
Race gap narrowing in prescription opioid use Journalists Resources
***LEGAL ISSUES
The Supreme Court ruled that the Patent Office can not only issue patents, but can also retract them Tom’s Hardware
Can Handwriting Be Copyrighted? Scholarly Kitchen
***RELIGION
California Bill Wouldn’t Ban the Bible Fact Check
Southern Baptist leader pushes back after comments leak urging abused women to pray and avoid divorce Washington Post
Key findings about Americans’ belief in God Pew Research
NBA Star Stephen Curry Scores Film and TV Pact With Sony Hollywood Reporter
Black Americans are more likely than overall public to be Christian, Protestant Pew Research Center
Arizona Megachurch Pastor resigns from after sex abuse allegations KTAR-TV
Key findings about Americans’ belief in God Pew Research Center
Most Americans believe in a higher power, but not always in the God of the Bible: 72 percent believe in a higher power of some kind Washington Post
How The Megachurch Phenomenon Has Unintentionally Isolated Small Churches Christianity Today
***RELIGION AND POLITICS
Ryan's Dismissal Of House Chaplain Sparks Outrage And Suspicion NPR
***GOOD NEWS
Canada's oldest blood donor Beatrice Janyk, 95, still pumped about giving Vancouver Sun
This mom never went to her prom. Her teenage son just fixed that Washington Post
50 Ways The World is Getting Better A Wealth of Common Sense
The 50 Best Podcasts to Listen to Right Now TIME
***ART & DESIGN
Elements of Typographic Style Kevin Kelly Blog
An AI can realistically “paint in” missing areas of photographs Kottke
***MUSIC
Spotify Redesigns Its Free Tier, With Hopes Of Grabbing Even More Users NPR
***STUDENT MEDIA
A survey of College Media Assoc. Members about student print, broadcast and web media operations College Media
Alumni effort to keep SMU's student newspaper independent is quashed Dallas Morning News
***STUDENT LIFE
Millennials blame boomers for ruining their lives Axios
Student’s death leads to investigation of possible cheating at George Mason Washington Post
Why ‘the Coed’ Vanished From Campus Language Chronicle of Higher Ed
This college professor gives her students extra credit for going on dates Washington Post
Schools are removing analogue clocks from exam halls as teenagers 'cannot tell the time' Telegraph
Some Teens Enter Rehab for Social Media Addiction News on 6
***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS
How To Calculate Your Freelance Hourly Rate Daily Infographic
High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University NPR
You’ve Graduated, Now What? Advice for Broadcast News Grads RTDNA
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths About Consent The Atlantic
10 Pieces You Need to Read About Sexual Assault and the Church Sojourners
***SOCIAL ISSUES
ProPublica’s news game about seeking asylum ProPublica
7 demographic trends shaping the U.S. and the world in 2018 Pew Research Center
***ENVIRONMENT
Earth Day was April 22, but people seem to be losing interest Quartz
New satellite to spot planet-warming industrial methane leaks The Guardian
***HEALTH
It’s not your imagination. Allergy season gets worse every year Vox
For Faulting a Chinese Tonic, He Got 3 Months in Jail. Then Cheers The New York Times
Why being a night owl may lead to earlier death Vox
Five things you might be surprised affect weight BBC
How salad became a major source of food poisoning in the US Vox
Science Explores Benefits Of Probiotics NPR
***FAMILY
About one-third of U.S. children are living with an unmarried parent Pew Research Center
Juvenile delinquents: Boys with hostile fathers commit more crime Journalists Resources
***SCIENCE
Scientists reported the discovery of a new DNA structure inside human cells New Atlas
To argue with flat earthers, use philosophy not science Quartz
New animal study connects brain's smell center with fear response and breathing patterns University of Colorado
***PSYCHOLOGY
Mental Health Facts That Most People Get Wrong Cracked
Psychologists on the Radio Daily Jstor
***PHILOSOPHY
Nobel prize in literature may be cancelled in 2018 amid sexual abuse scandal The Guardian
Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the great 20th-century philosophers. He also invented the emoji Quartz
***PRODUCTIVITY
4 Weekend Habits That Can Save Time and Boost Your Productivity Next Week Inc.
***ETHICS
Tiny Lab-Grown 'Brains' Raise Big Ethical Questions NPR
***RESEARCH
Advocating for publishing peer review ASAPbio
Workloads influence when authors submit papers to journals Nature
Publish or Perish: Perceived Benefits versus Unintended Consequences The London School of Economics and Political Science
***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
Liberty University is no longer the largest Christian university Religious News Service
Falwell: By Liberty University’s definition, it’s still the largest Christian university Religious News Service
Christian College student newspaper wins top award Salem News
Lawsuit by Northwest Christian University instructor alleges racial discrimination The Register Guard
***TEACHING
Why We Must Stop Relying on Student Ratings of Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
The Semester’s Ending. Time to Worry About Our Flawed Course Evaluations Chronicle of Higher Ed
How We Can Help Students Survive in an Age of Anxiety (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Want to Be a 'Volunteer Adjunct'? Southern Illinois U. Is Hiring Chronicle of Higher Ed
the more you take
/The world says the more you take, the more you have. Christ says the more you give, the more you are. -Frederick Buechner
you are finished
/You are not finished when you are defeated. You’re finished when you quit.
Tech history is poorly documented and poorly understood
/It’s often near impossible to know why certain technologies flourished, or what happened to the ones that didn’t. While we’re still early enough in the computing revolution that many of its pioneers are still alive and working to create technology today, it’s common to find that tech history as recent as a few years ago has already been erased. Why did your favorite app succeed when others didn’t? What failed attempts were made to create such apps before? What problems did those apps encounter — or what problems did they cause? Which creators or innovators got erased from the stories when we created the myths around today’s biggest tech titans?
All of those questions get glossed over, silenced, or sometimes deliberately answered incorrectly, in favor of building a story of sleek, seamless, inevitable progress in the tech world. Now, that’s hardly unique to technology — nearly every industry can point to similar issues. But that ahistorical view of the tech world can have serious consequences when today’s tech creators are unable to learn from those who came before them, even if they want to.
Anil Dash writing in Medium
regrets
/Will anyone lying on their deathbed wish they had had the chance to go to more church meetings? -Christopher Levan
The Indecision Cycle
/No-brainer decisions, like jumping in a pool to rescue a drowning child, are driven by a very fast-thinking part of the brain (known as the prefrontal cortex). When you jump in to save a theoretical child in need, you’re driven by that emotional part of your brain — and you don’t spend time analyzing how deep the water is, how to best approach the rescue, etc.
Most tasks, however, utilize rational parts of our brain. Unfortunately, these are the same parts of our minds that helped us avoid danger in primitive times. As a result, we approach an Excel spreadsheet the same way we foraged for food as cavemen — by looking at all the possible dangers behind it, and constantly analyzing the best approach. It’s a slow and inefficient process that causes procrastination, and stress only makes it worse.
The key here is to end the indecision cycle by to activating the proper parts of your brain.
While you cannot immediately flush out procrastination out of your system, you can start by conditioning your mind into focusing on what is important and knowing that you can do it (or at least take a crack at it) during the 5-second window.
Elle Kaplan writing in Medium
When God closes a door..
/When God closes a door, he opens a window... And then pushes you right out.
Articles of Interest - April 23, 2018
/***TECHNOLOGY
Chinese man caught by facial recognition at pop concert BBC
An Elaborate Hack Shows How Much Damage IoT Bugs Can Do WIRED
This wearable device can respond to your thoughts The Verge
Style Is an Algorithm Racked
***BIG DATA & AI
Machine learning meets Chaos Theory—and artificial-intelligence algorithms can apparently predict the future of chaotic systems Quanta Magazine
The intersection of Artificial Intelligence and the practice of law—the tech tools now available to lawyers Big Law Business
The TSA will soon start incorporating machine learning into scanners at airport security checkpoints GNC
How to create “deep fake” videos and the implications Hackernoon
***SOCIAL MEDIA
17 Ways Your Friends Are Lying To You On Social Media Cracked
Two things people get wrong about Snapchat, and two things Snap got wrong building its business Recode
Q&A: How Pew Research Center identified bots on Twitter Pew Research Center
What's Not Included in Facebook's 'Download Your Data' WIRED
***PRIVACY
Palantir Knows Everything About You Bloomberg
Four U.S. senators seek details on unusual cellular surveillance in DC area CNBC
Facebook Is Steering Users Away From Privacy Protections Wired
***PRODUCING MEDIA
The BBC is letting you download more than 16,000 free sound effect samples from its archive Music Radar
Phew, we’ve apparently solved 97% of the podcast measurement problem — everybody relax Nieman Lab
A Complete Guide to Video Production Management Story Hunter
***INTERNET
The Internet has serious health problems, Mozilla Foundation report finds Ars Technica
Web's inventor discusses digital monopolies, privacy threats Associated Press
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
State of the Media: Audio Today 2018 Nielsen
***JOURNALISM
How to build a story out of “no comment” comments Dynamics of Writing
Lawyers: Journalist was detained by ICE because of reporting Associated Press
How a Web marketer sneaked her pseudonym into U.S. News New York Times
The Field Guide to Security Training in the Newsroom
In many communities, the best local journalism is not coming from print Poynter
Meet the journalism student who found out she won a Pulitzer in class Columbia Journalism Review
Why Do Russian Journalists Keep Falling? NPR
China wages war on apps offering news and jokes Economist
The Importance of Journalism in the Age of "Fake News" U-Mass Media
Digital media research: The most interesting studies of early 2018 Journalism Resources
Journalists, it's unethical to ignore your online security Poynter
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Report for America Supports seeks to install 1,000 journalists where Cutbacks Hit Hard New York Times
Why Are Newspaper Websites So Horrible? CityLab
Local media struggle to hold Sinclair accountable The Conversation
Reinventing Local TV News Harvard’s Nieman Reports
***FAKE NEWS
A PSA About Fake News From Barack Obama - It’s Not What It Appears (video)
Just the Facts – an interview with Brooke Binkowski of Snopes.com Mile O’Brien blog
Americans Favor Protecting Information Freedoms Over Government Steps to Restrict False News Online Journalism.org
Dis/misinformation: less talking, more doing Medium
Fake news flourishes when partisan audiences crave it Economist
Documentary in the Time of Fake News at The 21st Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Filmmaker Magazine
Ted Koppel delivers a brief history of fake news to the Stanford community Stanford
Asian countries launch phoney assaults on fake news Economist
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Lessons from The Victorian Internet Becoming (my blog)
Why BAD Photographers THINK They're Good (video) Jamie Windsor
***WRITING & READING
Culture Shapes the Brain: How Reading Changes the Way we Think Medical Express
The surprising benefits of a read-aloud reading group The Research Whisperer
***LANGUAGE
Can You Explain What a Shibboleth Is? Chronicle of Higher Ed
The Race to Save the World's Disappearing Languages National Geographic
How to Teach the Rhythm of Language: Stop Counting Syllables! Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LITERATURE
How Stories have Shaped the World BBC
If Henry David Thoreau were alive today, he would be pissed NBC News
***GENDER
''Time's' 2018 Most Influential People list has record number of women, people under 40 USA Today
When Will the Gender Gap in Science Disappear? The Atlantic
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
Mayor responds after Tennessee lawmakers punish Memphis for removing Confederate statues WREG-TV
A Lesson In How To Overcome Implicit Bias NPR
In a Proudly Diverse Australia, White People Still Run Almost Everything New York Times
How American Racism Influenced Hitler The New Yorker
***FREE SPEECH
Joliet Junior College settles ‘free speech zone’ lawsuit Chicago Sun-Times
***LEGAL ISSUES
Q&A: Lawyer behind Hannity revelation at Cohen hearing speaks Columbia Journalism Review
Too often juries comprise 12 confused men (and women) Economist
Supreme Court Preview: Immigrants' Rights And Notice To Appear NPR
New Hampshire Court Dismisses Defamation suit filed by a patent owner unhappy that it had been called a “patent troll” Electronic Frontier Foundation
Court sides with human in copyright fight over monkey selfie Washington Post
***RELIGION
More women are coming forward with accusations of inappropriate encounters with Megachurch pastor Bill Hybels Christianity Today
Criticism of Christians and Chick-fil-A Has Troubling Roots Bloomberg
What is hell? The Conversation
***RELIGION AND POLITICS
Church of The DonaldNever mind Fox. Trump’s most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV Politico
Dozens of evangelical leaders meet to discuss how Trump era has unleashed ‘grotesque caricature’ of their faith (opinion) Washington Post
Political Dealing: The Crisis of Evangelicalism Fuller
White evangelical support for Donald Trump at all-time high BongBong
There’s a ‘red evangelicalism and a blue evangelicalism’: Faith leaders gather to discuss their common future Religious News Service
***ART & DESIGN
The long, incredibly tortuous, and fascinating process of creating a Chinese font Quartz
Sound-Wave Tattoo Digg
***MUSIC
Personality predicts musical preference Economist
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
University has refused to release names of students found to have committed sexual misconduct Western Washington University
School warns student not to speak out on sexual assault case-without legal justification The Breese (James Madison University’s student-run newspaper)
Vice Media is sued after employee is assaulted on assignment NBC News
Alaska Man's Revelation Shine A Light On Sex Abuse In The State NPR
What Happens When A Community Tries To Address Its Own Sexual Harassment Issues NPR
***BUSINESS
10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings The Conversation
Bike-share companies are transforming US cities – and they’re just getting started The Conversation
***ENVIRONMENT
Scientists stumbled upon a plastic-eating bacterium—then accidentally made it stronger PopSci
Americans waste 150,000 tons of food each day – equal to a pound per person The Guardian
Climate change schism: Evangelical Christians divided on human role in global warming NBC News
***HEALTH
Some mutations tied to autism may be passed down from fathers Spectrum News
Antidepressants in pregnancy tied to changes in babies' brains Reuters
Home Testing Kit Will Check For Sexually Transmitted Diseases NPR
The vaccine dilemma: how experts weigh benefits for many against risks for a few Stat News
***PSYCHOLOGY
Mariah Carey says she has bipolar disorder; a psychiatrist explains what that is The Conversation
This is what love does to your Brain: It's really an Addiction Vox
***NEUROSCIENCE
Brain scans may help diagnose neurological, psychiatric disorders Science Daily
Do adult human brains renew their neurons? Economist
***PHILOSOPHY
Why I Left Academic Philosophy Medium
***RESEARCH
A Remedy for Broken Science, Or an Attempt to Undercut It? Undark
Paper Accepted…Unless the Letter Was Forged The Scholarly Kitchen
***HIGHER ED
IoT Applications in Education KD Nuggets
For-profit colleges lose when two-year colleges offer B.A. degrees Hechinger Report
Opinion: It’s Time to Reconsider The Role And Future of Community Colleges Times of San Diego
Nonprofits poised to unseat U of Phoenix as the largest online Inside Higher Ed
How Liberty University Built a Billion-Dollar Empire Online New York Times
***HUMANITIES / STEM
Forget coding. It’s the soft skills, stupid. And that’s what schools should be teaching (opinion) Washington Post
***TEACHING
How to Turn Your Exams Into Learning Opportunities Chronicle of Higher Ed
How Trauma Can Alter Your Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Who Doesn’t Get Overtime Pay? Online Instructors, for One Chronicle of Higher Ed
As pay and benefits stagnate, nontenured faculty and graduate students in Illinois, Chicago look to unions Chicago Tribune
Language of Ph.D Defenses Chronicle of Higher Ed
***STUDENT MEDIA
SGA president who threatened college newspaper gets impeached College Media Matters
Berkeley Student paper reports on Squirrel Candidacy to Student Senate The Daily Californian
***STUDENT LIFE
A majority of U.S. teens fear a shooting could happen at their school, and most parents share their concern Pew Research
Most colleges say applicants' social media profiles are 'fair game,' survey says Cleveland.com
When Disadvantaged Students Overlook Elite Colleges The Atlantic
University of Portland Boots Tennis Player From Roster After “Violent, Misogynistic” Remarks Willamette Week
Poll: Majority of millennials are in debt, hitting pause on major life events NBC News
Boston College Philosophy Professor Offers Students Extra Credit for Going on First Date Daily Signal
The Victorian Internet
/Tom Standage writes in his book The Victorian Internet, “That the telegraph was so widely seen as a panacea is perhaps understandable. The fact that we are still making the same mistake today is less so. The irony is that even though it failed to live up to the utopian claims made by about it, the telegraph really did transform the world.”
The Internet, like the telegraph, offers tremendous potential for altering the world in a positive way. But we would be wise to temper our enthusiasm.
As Standage suggests, “Better communication does not necessarily lead to a wider understanding of other points of view: the potential of new technologies to change things for the better is invariably overstated, while the ways in which they will make things worse are usually unforeseen.”
Stephen Goforth
new horizons
/Where there is passion and desire, there will always be new horizons.