Proactive Language

There’s nothing I can do.. Let’s look at our alternatives.
That’s just the way I am.. I can choose a different approach.
He makes me so mad.. I control my own feelings.
They won’t allow that.. I can create an effective presentation.
I have to do that..I will choose an appropriate response.
I can’t..I choose.
I must.. I prefer.
If only.. I will.

A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces - other people, circumstances, even the stars - for their own situation.

Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

The goal in marriage

The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together. -Robert C. Dodds

Death Ground

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressures. Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources – if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through. Place yourself on “death ground,” where you back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive. 

Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Grace arrives

Grace arrives, unannounced, in lives that least expect or deserve it. - Andrew Sullivan

Articles of Interest - August 5

***JOURNALISM

Women Rewriting the Rules of Reporting in the Arab World  The New York Times

What newsrooms need to know about Americans’ news habits  RTDNA

Investigative journalism students play a key role in overturning a conviction  Harvard’s Nieman Report

I’ve Seen the Limits of Journalism  The Atlantic  

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Dying Gasp of One Local Newspaper  The New York Times 

A Future without a Front Page  The New York Times

***FAKE NEWS 

He Was The Face Of A Bike-A-Thon To Fight Cancer. He Was Also A Fake  The New York Times

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

10 facts about Americans and Twitter  Pew Research 

The 2019 Instagram Rich List — Who Earns The Most From Sponsored Posts?  Hopper HQ 

TikTok, The Internet's Hottest Meme Breeding Ground, Turns 1  NPR

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA: FACEBOOK 

Facebook is funding brain experiments to create a device that reads your mind  MIT Tech Review  

EU ruling says sites could be liable for user-tracking Facebook Like buttons  The Verge

Why doesn’t Facebook help after your account gets hacked?  Digitsal Trends 

Facebook says it dismantles covert influence campaign tied to Saudi Arabia  Reuters

***BIG DATA & AI 

Chaos Computing: What it is and why we should care about it?  Medium  

These studies offer clues about the early universe and the arrow of time and “hope that we can describe even these very messy, complicated systems with simple patterns”  Quanta Magazine

MIT Debuts language designed for Bayesian stats and machine learning: great for tracking objects in space, estimating 3D, the structure of a time series  Infoq

National Reconnaissance Office product Sentient: “an omnivorous analysis tool…pointing satellites toward the most interesting parts of that future” making “things simpler downstream for human analysts” The Verge 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Capital One Says Hacker Breached Accounts Of 100 Million People; Ex-Amazon Employee Arrested  Forbes  

Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US  The Guardian

Kids at the center of facial recognition  Axios 

Internet of Things Cybersecurity Tips Offered by Science Agency  Bloomberg

***PRODUCING MEDIA

PR’s Journalistic Roots Help Brands Transition to Digital  Story Hunter

***INTERNET

People forged judges’ signatures to trick Google into changing results  ArsTechnica

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Tech giants crush other media despite looming threats  Axios 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Motivated Reasoning  Becoming (my blog)

The trick that makes you overspend  BBC  

***GRAMMAR

The Birth of the Semicolon  The Paris Review 

Grammar rules are an invention: It’s time to stop taking them so seriously NBC News

A Defense of the Semicolon and Other Adventures in the English Language New York Times

***WRITING & READING

Dallas bodycam footage released showing moments before death of unarmed man  NBC News 

Authors Guild Hides Jokes In Their Copyright Notices  Tech Dirt

***LANGUAGE

Because Internet,' A Guide To Our Changing Language, LOL  NPR

Is the English language better because of the Internet? This linguist thinks so  CTV 

***LITERATURE 

From every teen to annoying: are today's young readers turning on The Catcher in the Rye?  The Guardian 

A School Librarian's Philosophy of Lost Books  School Library 

How Japan's modern literature came under Nietzsche's spell Japan Times

***BORDER ISSUES

Border Patrol Detained a 9-Year-Old American Girl on Her Way to School for 32 Hours  GQ

California professors install seesaws along U.S.-Mexico border wall  NBC News

***POETRY

I’m ditching social media for poetry books this summer  The Times

Opera inspired Walt Whitman; now his poetry is doing the same for musicians  Star Tribune 

The place of poetry and the poetry of place  SMH

***GENDER   

Transgender treatment: Puberty blockers study under investigation  BBC 

This Journal's Future Is Female  Inside Higher Ed

Craving Freedom, Japan's Women Opt Out Of Marriage  The New York Times

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

How white nationalists have co-opted fan fiction  Wired 

‘It was terrifying’: Black Chadds Ford couple left shaken by white Pa. trooper’s alleged misconduct  Philadelphia Inquirer 

***CRIME & COURTS

Man calls cops on himself asking for help: Body cams show cops making jokes after they'd restrained him and he'd gone limp  Dallas News 

Amazon Ring alerts often tie up police with false alarms  Cent 

No Immunity For Cops Who Arrested A Man For Creating A Facebook Page Mocking The Police Department  Tech Dirt 

Court warns reporters to be careful publishing reports from police logs  Universal Hub 

***RELIGIION

Early Christian 'Church of the Apostles' Possibly Unearthed Near Sea of Galilee  Live Science 

The Story Behind John Allen Chau, An American Missionary Who Was Killed While Working  NPR

Evangelical Publisher’s Africa-Themed Bible School Kit Had Kids Pretending To Be Slaves  Huff Post 

What did church teach white students posing with guns in front of Emmett Till marker?  Religion in the News

Radical Baptist church preaches LGBTQ hate just miles from California’s Capitol  LA Times

Evangelicals’ Civility  Religion in Public 

U.S. Jews know a lot about religion – but other Americans know little about Judaism  Pew Research 

Christian group warns against rise of 'Christian nationalism'  The Hill

***GOOD NEWS

Nurse helps save driver who crashed into her home  Fox 35

***REALLY?!

Texas Man Caught With Missile Launcher In Checked Baggage At BWI Airport  CBS Baltimore  

The runner who makes elaborate artwork with his feet and a map  The Guardian

Will Hitler HQ makeover create a Nazi theme park?  BBC

***ART & DESIGN

Thousands of Miniature Mirrors Dazzle and Refract in Multi-Media Sculptures by Lee Bul  The is Colossal  

Where Does Major American Art Come From? Mapping the Whitney Biennial  The New York Times 

Fine and Street Art Aesthetics Merge in Anthony Lister’s Expressive Murals  The is Colossal

Yulia Brodskaya Reveals Her Process of ‘Painting With Paper’ in a New Book  The is Colossal

Meticulous Portraits of Young Women by Ozabu Are Eerily Fused with Plants and Feathers  The is Colossal 

An Artist Crochets a Life-Size, Anatomically-Correct Skeleton, Complete with Organs  in Art, Biology, Creativity, Science Open Culture

***MUSIC 

Why the Katy Perry/Flame lawsuit makes no sense (video)  

Showtime's four part docuseries on Rick Rubin  Showtime 

The Wizard of Oz vs Lil Nas X (video)  Lewis Wake Memes

***ARTICLES ABOUT JOBS

Journalism career advice  Twitter threat   

This Google Executive Reviewed More Than 20,000 Resumes--He Found These 5 Stunning Mistakes Over and Over  Inc

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT  

Ohio State’s troubled sexual assault center failed to report 57 potential felonies, audit finds  Dispatch

Students accused of sexual harassment sue California universities LA Times

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

The Invention of Money  New Yorker 

***ENVIRONMENT 

Trails of Wind (visualization)  

Ethiopia Plants 350 Million Trees in One Day to Combat Drought  Bloomberg

***HEALTH

Babies get critical gut bacteria from their mother at birth, not from placenta, study suggests  Science Mag

Instagram’s ‘clean eating’ culture is everywhere. It could be giving rise to a little-known eating disorder  The Lily 

Where People Don't Get Enough Sleep, Mapped  Digg  

Dark mode isn't as good for your eyes as you believe  Wired

High levels of oestrogen in the womb linked to autism  University of Cambridge  

***TRAVEL

Following a similar move at Pittsburgh airport, friends and family will now be able to greet passengers at their gate in Tampa  Afar 

***FOOD

Krispy Kreme is redesigning its stores for the first time in a decade and making its menu even more sugar  CNN 

Is it unsafe or just unsightly? There’s an art to assessing produce  Washington Post 

America's Most Popular Burger Places, Visualized  Digg 

The first guacamole recipe written in English came from a British pirate  Vox

***CHILDREN 

Why Kids Invent Imaginary Friends  The Atlantic 

Behind gender-reveal party fouls, a parenting truth  Washington Post 

Kids See Bearded Men As Strong — But Unattractive, Study Finds  NPR

Dying Dad Writes 'I Love You Like...' Book for Young Son   MSN 

Japanese park encourages kids to play with saws, light bonfires for learning experiences   SoraNews24

***ANIMALS 

Pit bull grabs baby by diaper, saves her from fire  ABC-13

Meet he’e the octopus  The Guardian

***SCIENCE

A scientific Ponzi scheme  University of Pittsburg 

The Milky Way is warped around the edges, new star map confirms  National Geographic 

Japanese Scientists Plan to Create Human-Mouse Hybrids: Here's How  Live Science 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Should Psychology Journals Adopt Specialized Statistical Review?  Sage Journals

Paths to Treating Mental Illness (opinion)  The New York Times

Neural correlates of weighted reward prediction error during reinforcement learning classify response to cognitive behavioral therapy in depression  Science Mag 

How expectation influences perception MIT Tech Review 

The Psychiatric 'Wonder Drug' That Almost No One Is Using VICE

***NEUROSCIENCE  

A cold case team is searching for who betrayed Anne Frank  National Geographic  

Neuroscientists find brain activity patterns that indicate how expectation influences perception MIT 

UCSF Researchers Synthesize Speech From Brain Waves MIT Tech Review

***RESEARCH  

Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual transgressions  The New York Times

Fudged research results erode people’s trust in experts  The Conversation 

Why we shouldn’t take peer review as the gold standard  Washington Post  

Joint position statement on predatory publishing  Taylor & Francis Online

***HIGHER ED

Wealthy Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid  Propublica

Tribal Colleges Struggle to Connect  Diverse Educaiton  

Major Universities are launching cannabis degrees and courses  Quartz

Federal panel on accreditation will study how regional agencies should monitor politicians' influence over public colleges  Inside Higher Ed 

“The $300 textbook is dead,” says the CEO of textbook maker Pearson  Vox

Some Colleges Collect More From Their Students Than They Spend Actually Teaching Forbes  

Grandson of NNU Founder Passes Away   Northwest Nazarene University

***TEACHING 

Author discusses approaches that work to get students to the finish line  Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Are New Graduates Happier Making More Money or Having More Time?  Harvard Business Review

Millennials say dating has gotten 'way too expensive,' 30% can't even afford love  USA Today  

A Fraternity Member Who Had "A Fascination With Death" Allegedly Encouraged Five People To Kill Themselves  BuzzFeed News

New data on the first three jobs held by graduates of six popular majors show career pathways are a swirl rather than a straight line  Inside Higher Ed 

22 percent of millennials say they have “no friends”  Vox 

Almost 70 percent of college students favor banning assault-style weapons  Newsweek 

Why is the teen birth rate falling?  Pew Research

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Major study led by a lifelong Republican finds no evidence that professors are discriminating against conservative students  Pacific Standard

For academics, what matters more: journal prestige or readership?  Science Mag

Academic freedom, scholarly responsibility and the new gender wars  University Affairs  

College faculty have become more racially and ethnically diverse, but remain far less so than students  Pew Research

Motivated Reasoning

When we identify too strongly with a deeply held belief, idea, or outcome, a plethora of cognitive biases can rear their ugly heads. Take confirmation bias, for example. This is our inclination to eagerly accept any information that confirms our opinion, and undervalue anything that contradicts it. It’s remarkably easy to spot in other people (especially those you don’t agree with politically), but extremely hard to spot in ourselves because the biasing happens unconsciously. But it’s always there. 

Criminal cases where jurors unconsciously ignore exonerating evidence and send an innocent person to jail because of a bad experience with someone of the defendant’s demographic. The growing inability to hear alternative arguments in good faith from other parts of the political spectrum. Conspiracy theorists swallowing any unconventional belief they can get their hands 

We all have some deeply held belief that immediately puts us on the defensive. Defensiveness doesn’t mean that belief is actually incorrect. But it does mean we’re vulnerable to bad reasoning around it. And if you can learn to identify the emotional warning signs in yourself, you stand a better chance of evaluating the other side’s evidence or arguments more objectively.

Liv Boeree writing in Vox    

Frantic Orthodoxy

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure. 

-Reinhold Niebuhr

Dreams & Reality

Abundance makes us rich in dreams, for in dreams there are no limits. But it makes us poor in reality. It makes us soft and decadent, bored with what we have and in need of constant shocks to remind us that we are alive. In life you must be a warrior, and war requires realism.

While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. They look for the perfect economy of motion and gesture – the way to give their blows the greatest force with the least expenditure of effort. Their awareness that their days are numbered – that they could die at any time- grounds them in reality.

There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renews, to retrench, to outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

Walking a Tightrope

“We like to think that maturation is based a lot on experience, but even in adolescence we also have to recognize that learning may not count as much so much until the underlying brain structures are in place,” Peter Jensen, a former head of child and adolescent research at the National Institutes of Mental Health says.

While waiting for those structures to develop- and perhaps helping them get set up right in the first place- Jensen says parents of teenagers often have to “walk a tightrope.” On the one hand, they have to respect and encourage their teenagers’ need for autonomy because, in adolescence, “that’s where the action is.” But sometimes they also need to step in, offer a road map, and help those teenagers point their size ten feet down the right path.

To do that effectively, he says, parents might take tips from some of the ways psychiatrists, through the years, have found to deal with teenagers. Parents, says Jensen, might try acting a bit like the psychiatrist played by Judd Hirsch in the movie Ordinary People, talking through possibilities and options. They have to function like a surrogate set of frontal lobes, as “auxiliary problem solver.”

“With little kids you can tell them what the best thing to do is and then offer them a reward.. But with tennagers that’s not often a productive approach. If you just flat out tell a teenager what to do, you can lose that kid. You have to cut them some slack, but you can’t just leave them there, you also have to to help them figure out things themselves. You can say, ‘What do you think the consequences will be if you act a certain way?’ for instance, or ‘What will happen if you are rejected by your peers if you reject drugs?”

Barbara Strauch, The Primal Teen

Remember

Remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford (born July 30, 1863)

Articles of interest - July 29

***TECHNOLOGY 

This website uses AI to turn your selfies into haunted classical portraits  The Verge

Brain-computer interface Neuralink is state of the art, but still has a long way to go  MIT Tech Review 

A distinguished centenarian scientist prophesies the future: Cyborgs will save humanity Economist 

A new tool uses AI to spot text written by AI  MIT Technology Review

***BIG DATA & AI 

Attacking satellites is increasingly attractive—and dangerous (a missile hitting a satellite creates a huge amount of space shrapnel)  Economist 

“I’m a data scientist who is skeptical about data”  Quartz 

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Teen Love for Snapchat Is Keeping Snap Afloat  Wired 

Women are getting jaw shots to look like their Instagram filters New York Post  

***MOBILE 

Mobile Spend Takes More Than Half Of Search Budgets  Media Post  

AP Explains: What T-Mobile takeover of Sprint means for you  Associated Press

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

‘Death of A Salesman’ Playing Out at TV Networks  Broadcasting & Cable

***JOURNALISM

A journalist's guide to open-source tools Media news  Journalism.co

Tools and tips for digging into Facebook from two investigative journalists  The GroundTruth Project 

Whose stories get told? Why media diversity matters  The Hill 

How to cover 11,250 elections at once: Here’s how The Washington Post’s new computational journalism lab will tackle 2020  Nieman Journalism Lab

What multimedia journalists say makes a good news director  RTDNA

The Washington Post is hiring not one but two reporters to cover the videogame industry  JournoTerrorist 

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

5 key takeaways about the state of the news media in 2018  Pew Research Center

The next media mega-merger  Axios 

I was owed about $5,000 from late-paying publications. I tried to hold them all accountable  Wudan Yan Blog

Digital news platform Patch pivots away from advertising to payments  Axios 

Shady Online Marketers Are Selling Links In Articles On The New York Times, BBC, CNN, And Other News Sites  BuzzFeed News

***FAKE NEWS 

Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may set you up for life  BBC 

5 Things to Know About Military Romance Scams on Facebook New York Times

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Go claim your $125 from Equifax’s data breach settlement  Slate

Researchers spotlight the lie of ‘anonymous’ data  Tech Crunch  

Chicago police have for years compiled profiles on every citizen who spoke at public meetings of the city’s police disciplinary panel  Chicago Tribune 

Apple contractors 'regularly hear confidential details' on Siri recordings  The Guardian

53% of IT security managers don't know whether the cybersecurity products they use actually work as promised  Axios

Why Facebook’s new ‘privacy cop’ is doomed to fail (opinion)  The Conversation

Louisiana declares state of emergency in response to ransomware attack ArsTechnica

Libraries push back against Linkedin learning over data privacy  eLearning 

***INTERNET

About three-in-ten U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online  Pew Research Center

The Census Could Undercount People Who Don’t Have Internet Access  Slate

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The Good Samaritan Experiment  Becoming

The science of regrettable decisions  Vox

A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he?  The Cut

What's the difference between a lame excuse and good one? A philosopher thinks she has the answer  NBC News

Junky TV is actually making people dumber — and more likely to support populist politicians  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***WRITING & READING

Don’t steal, don’t lift: Thoughts on the consequences of plagiarism  Robert M Chapple 

How to Use a Thesaurus to Actually Improve Your Writing (video)  Big Think 

The Jane Austen Fiction Manuscript Archive Is Online: Explore Handwritten Drafts of Persuasion, The Watsons & More  Open Culture 

True crime book for every US state  New York Times 

***LANGUAGE 

Can Artificial Intelligence Decipher Lost Languages? Researchers Attempt to Decode 3500-Year-Old Ancient Languages  Open Culture 

Is the internet killing language? LOL, no  Vox  

Animal Sounds Around the World  Scholarly Kitchen

***LITERATURE

Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie among 13 authors longlisted for Booker Prize, the UK's most prestigious literary award  Publisher’s Weekly 

Takeaways from the revealing new Toni Morrison documentary  CBC 

Born 200 years ago, Herman Melville was globalisation’s first great bard  Economist

Behind the Myths of Scott and Zelda's Epic Romance  Literary Hub

Rudyard Kipling and the American imagination  Economist 

10 Surprising Facts About Pride and Prejudice  Mental Floss

***POETRY

Port Kembla couple explain poetry is on the rise thanks to Instagram and slam nights Illawrra Mercury 

At age 101, this woman released her first collection of poems  Washington Post 

The heartbreaking poetry a 17-year-old wrote before he was shot to death Washington Post  

The Way I Begin Poems: Edaki Timothy  Medium 

Was the poet John Keats a graverobber? BBC

***GENDER   

Another Major Error Found in a Peer-Reviewed Paper Used to Support the IAAF Regulations of Female Athletes  Roger Pielke Jr Blog

Why half the scientists in some eastern European countries are women  Economist

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The Problem With Diversity Questions  Inside Higher Ed 

They look white but say they're black: a tiny town in Ohio wrestles with race  The Guardian

New Study Says White Police Officers Are Not More Likely To Shoot Minority Suspects  NPR

Critics of Peer Review Ask How ‘Race Science’ Still Manages to Slip Through Undark

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there  Economist

California Bar 'Inadvertently' Reveals Essay Topics Days Before Exam  Law.com

***LEGAL ISSUES & THE MEDIA

Reporters Committee, AP continue fight against FBI’s FOIA non-compliance  RCFP  

Judge dismisses Sandmann lawsuit against the Washington Post CNN

Appeals court rules Baltimore police mandatory non-disclosure agreements unconstitutional  RCFP 

***BORDER ISSUES 

Migrant children camps: Thousands of unaccompanied migrant children could be detained indefinitely  CBS News

No shower for 23 days: U.S. citizen says conditions were so bad that he almost self-deported  Dallas News

***RELIGION

In U2's 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For,' A Restless Search For Meaning  NPR 

6 facts about what Americans know about religion  Pew Research Center

What happens when a leader in the purity movement gets a divorce?  Big Think

Tennessee man says his sexual orientation stands between church & father's funeral plans  WTVC 

For some in America, religious freedom has limits A personal and political account of discrimination against Muslims  Economist

Europe experienced a surge in government restrictions on religious activity over the last decade  Pew Research Center

What Americans Know About Religion — And What They Don’t  FiveThirtyEight 

Joshua Harris' separation from wife and faith is 'hard to hear', says megachurch he used to pastor  Christianity Today 

Video links Beth Moore, Russell Moore, James Merritt to ‘Trojan horse of social justice’  Religious News Service

***MEGACHURCHES

The Village Church sued for more than $1 million over alleged abuse at church camp  Religious News Service

Crystal Cathedral, the original evangelical megachurch, has a conversion to Catholicism  LA Times 

Willow Creek plans reconciliation service to move on; Hybels not involved  Religious News Service  

Chinese megachurch pastor imprisoned for faith in Jesus hit with more charges 7 months after arrest Christian Post 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Small church makes big news with ‘America, love it or leave it’ sign  Baptist News 

Netflix Docu concerns secret Christian organization in Washington  People 

***GOOD NEWS

Sisters read bedtime stories on Facebook Live so kids can fall asleep to a story each night  ABC

Human chain forms to save swimmers caught in rip current during Tropical Storm Barry Washington Post 

Google Glass helps kids with autism read facial expressions   Stanford

‘It wasn’t in his job description’: Metro police officer escorts a mom and her tantruming autistic child home Washington Post

Recovering Veterans Help Injured Sea Lions Return to the Ocean  NBC-LA  

A 6-year-old was swept out to sea, and a group of brothers dove in after her  Washington Post 

Hair stylist carries her red salon chair to the homeless  KARE-11 

73-year-old, his dogs rescued after 4 days in remote Oregon by long-distance mountain biker  ABC

A boy with one hand met a soccer player with the same limb difference, and the photo went viral  Washington Post   

Beachgoers form human chain to rescue swimmer from rip currents at Panama City Beach  Associated Press 

***REALLY?!

Utah boy advertises 'Ice Cold Beer' at root beer stand  Associated Press 

Australian women freed after complimenting kidnapper's flowers  NDTV  

***ART & DESIGN

Melancholy Creatures Explore Imagined Worlds in Wistful Murals by Hayley Welsh  The is Colossal 

The winners of the 2019 iPhone Photo contest  Diyphotography

***MUSIC  

Pop Songs Are Sung So Quickly These Days—Why?  GQ

How big stars maximize their take from tours  Economist

Kanye West’s choir covers two Nirvana songs (video)  

 ***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT  

Suit Seeks to Protect Students Accused of Sexual Assault  Inside Higher Ed

Professors discuss federal laws and institutional policy around consent, and what colleges get wrong  Inside Higher Ed

The evidence is clear and convincing: universities’ approaches to Title IX are broken  The FIRE

Do Title IX Protections Discriminate Against Fraternity Members?  Inside Higher Ed

***SOCIAL ISSUES  

How Peppa Pig became an LGBTQ icon  Vox  

Television producers need to stop encouraging teen drinking – here’s how they can The Conversation

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

China has now reached parity with the U.S. on the 2019 Fortune Global 500—a signifier of the profound rivalries reshaping business today  Fortune

Why is the U.S. facing a federal firefighter shortage?  PS Mag 

Many consumers neither read nor understand the contracts they sign  Economist

Brutally Honest Advertising Slogans  Sad & Useless

***BUSINESS OUTSIDE THE U.S.

Sweden is going cashless  CBS News 

Chinese and Taiwanese companies combine to outnumber US companies for first time  Fortune

***ENVIRONMENT 

America's dirtiest beaches are prone to unsafe bacteria, report shows  USA Today 

Putting ecocide on a par with genocide  The Guardian

***HEALTH

Microfluidics device helps diagnose sepsis in minutes  MIT News

Wonder where generic drug names come from? Two women in Chicago, that's where Los Angeles Times   

Weird New Kinds Of Cocaine Could Start A “Hidden Epidemic” Of Health Threats BuzzFeed News

***HEALTH: LIFESTYLE 

Healthy lifestyle may offset genetic risk of dementia  Science Daily

How Atkins Became Keto  Medium 

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment  Vox

***MEDICAL RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

New embryo-inspired bandage that speeds wound-healing developed; material automatically contracts on contact with skin  Harvard 

Liver transplants could be redundant with discovery of new liver cell  Science Daily 

Doctors In The U.S. Use CRISPR Technique To Treat A Genetic Disorder For The 1st Time NPR

***TRAVEL

Older drivers are more likely to be distracted by tech while driving, AAA report  USA Today

***SPORTS & GAMES 

Baseball card collecting world rocked by fraud scandal, FBI investigation  Axios 

Teenager becomes Fortnite's first-ever solo world champion  CNN

***ANIMALS  

Officials Investigate Award-Winning Lamb for Performance-Enhancing Drugs  Geek.com

Looking to declaw your cat? Don’t look in New York anymore  Associated Press

Police Department Lets People Pay Parking Tickets with Donations for Shelter Cats  My Modern Met

How to Make Quicksand Like an Octopus  Daily Jstor

Two dogs save the life of their 87-year-old owner when he got stuck in knee-high mud  Daily Mail  

11 Fierce Facts About Tigers  Mental Floss

***PSYCHOLOGY 

How well the brain ejects waste may affect disease susceptibility  Axios

5 Toxic Subtypes of Narcissism  Psychology Today

***PHILOSOPHY

In our Universe, time seems to go from past to future, not in reverse. But what if time doesn’t even have a direction?  Aeon 

***HISTORY 

The unsung hero of WWII who volunteered to go to Auschwitz and told the world about its horrors--or, he tried to  Economist

***POLITICS

Pro-Trump Republican aiming to unseat Ilhan Omar charged with felony theft  The Guardian

Georgia election officials accused of destroying evidence  Associated Press

***RESEARCH 

How a data detective exposed suspicious medical trials  Nature 

Our data “reveals the scale of scientific misconduct in Australia, although senior scientists claim it is just the tip of the iceberg”  BMJ Journals 

Satirical contributions in toxicology  Springer

What’s published in the journal isn’t what the researchers actually did  Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science 

How One Researcher Is Looking to Improve Peer Review  Wiley 

New Guidelines for Statistical Reporting: a requirement to replace P values  New England Journal of Medicine  

Predatory journals are infiltrating citation databases  Springer 

***HIGHER ED

Growing Number of San Diego Community College Students Transferring to 4-Year Institutions  Times of San Diego   

Has College Gotten Too Easy?  The Atlantic

The Most Expensive Public Colleges And Universities In The United States, Visualized  Digg  

Armed Ole Miss Students Posed With an Emmett Till Memorial Sign. They Went Unpunished by the University  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Chegg's alternative data may be showing cracks in the textbook retailer's engagement  Thinknum

University Fires 9 Police officers for offensive comments Washington Post  

***HUMANITIES 

Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may set you up for life  BBC

Addressing Homelessness and Housing Insecurity in Higher Education  Inside Higher Ed

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

Liberty University's "culture of fear" where Jerry Falwell Jr. "silences students and professors who reject his pro-Trump politics..."  Washington Post 

Firing of Nazarene Professor Over Novel Threatens Academic, Artistic Freedom (press release)

Nonprofit defends LGBTQ students from their universities Religious News Service

***TEACHING 

Want to Reach  All of Your Students?  Here’s How to Make  Your Teaching More Inclusive  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA  

The Dead or Dying State of Student Journalism at Independent Schools Medium

In landmark victory for student press rights, Ninth Circuit rebukes UCSD’s censorship of satirical student newspaper  The FIRE

The Dead or Dying State of High School Student Journalism at Independent Schools Medium

***STUDENT LIFE

Millennials use PowerPoint to help friends score dates New York Post

Famous Birthdays Is Wikipedia for Gen Z  The Atlantic  

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Wall Street Journal op-ed on faculty work and pay irks academics  Inside Higher Ed

I'm a College Professor Who Faked Dissertation Data on the Side  Vice

The Good Samaritan Experiment

In 1973, the research duo of John Darley and Daniel Batson asked Princeton Theological Seminary students to visit a group of children across campus to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

The researchers told some of the future pastors, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over.” They told others, “You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. You’d better get moving.”

While proceeding across campus, each subject passed a man slumped in a doorway, moaning and coughing. 

Imagine yourself in this situation: A classroom of children awaits you but, along the way, you encounter a man who’s clearly in distress. Is there any doubt what you do? Or what religiously attuned students would do? No matter the circumstances, we’d expect everyone to help. However, only 10 percent of the “hurried” students stopped to offer assistance. 

The best explanation for this behavior is that, amid the anxiety of running late, most of the students experienced a perceptual shift that caused them not to see the man or recognize his distress.

Robert Pearl writing in Vox

An easy fix

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -H. L. Mencken

studying religion

Few study religion to learn how to live – many search it for justification for the way they already live.

Articles of Interest - July 22

 ***JOURNALISM

Working Across Disciplines: A Manifesto for Happy Newsrooms  Nieman Reports Harvard’s Nieman Reports  

Judge quashes SFPD warrant used to search journalist’s phone  San Francisco Chronicle

Show your work: The new terms for trust in journalism  PressThink

Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist  Daily Beast 

Trust in News is Correlated to Distribution Modes  Monday Note

10 tips for covering white supremacy and far-right extremists  Journalists Resources 

***PRODUCING MEDIA

App for journalists: Voice Record Pro, for transcribing audio interviews  Journalism .co 

The best free screen recorders of 2019  Digital Trends 

Facebook Video Best Practices Checklist Social Media Today 

Twitter’s Head of Content Shares What Video Ads Work Best  Story Hunter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

How a GateHouse-Gannett merger would work  Poynter 

To Slow Decline, Newspaper Print Editions Should Act Their Age (opinion)  Editor & Publisher

***FAKE NEWS

The Guy Who Started the Area 51 Madness Did It as a Joke — and Now He’s Freaking Out  Vice  

Man punched by Buzz Aldrin still says moon landing was fake  USA Today 

Deepfakes Pose Increasing Legal and Ethical Issues for Hollywood  Hollywood Reporter

When It Comes To Vaccines And Autism, Why Is It Hard To Refute Misinformation?  NPR  

Deepfake videos pose a threat, but ‘dumbfakes’ may be worse Associated Press

Send a Flat Earth Believer off the edge!  Go Fund Me

Anti-extremism software to be used to tackle vaccine disinformation The Guardian

***TECHNOLOGY

Kids Think A TV Is An iPad, Don't Understand Why It Doesn't Pause  Digg  

Flame-throwing drone  The Verge 

The Navy spent $30B and 16 years to fight Iran with a littoral combat ship that doesn't work  NBC News 

***BIG DATA & AI  

P-values are inherently confusing for many people but can be an important part of data scientist decision-making (just don’t rely too heavily on them)  Medium 

P-values are a bit like medical needles: they’re intended for personal use and it’s dangerous to share them Toward Data Science

How quickly can AI solve a Rubik’s Cube? In less time than it took you to read this sentence  Washington Post

This AI seamlessly removes moving objects from videos  The Next Web

30 intro psych textbooks: the vast majority defined or explained statistical significance inaccurately  Psychological Science 

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Seven ways journalists can up their social media game  European Journalism Observatory

Instagram Slowly Tests Hiding The Number Of Likes On A Post  NPR   

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Your Greater Goal  Becoming (my blog)

***WRITING & READING

The Art Of Writing Bad Ads  Medium  

What If MFA Programs Turn Good Writers Into Bad Ones?  The Walrus 

***LANGUAGE

Google Translate’s camera can now automatically detect languages  Venturebeat  

He said, ze said: Faith Salie on preferred gender pronouns  CBS News 

The internet is changing language less than curmudgeons fear  Economist

***LITERATURE 

Buchi Emecheta: Google Doodle celebrates British-Nigerian writer of 20 novels about race and gender  Independent 

Rediscovering Natalia Ginzburg  The New Yorker 

***POETRY

Tiger Poets: ‘It’s about … being able to see what you have went through, and what you overcame’   WHYY  

How poetry can transform your school  Tes  

The moon as metaphor and the poetry of Apollo 11  Tampa Bay Times  

Modern poetry’s sentimentality problem  New Statesman

Why Read Poetry? Poetry sections in major bookshops are shrinking – and is anything really being lost  Cherwell 

If people can’t express anguish with poetry, then what’s the country coming to: Harsh Mander on Miya poets  National Herald India  

How Poetry Can Help Communicate Science  Scientific American 

'Offensive' poem about Condoleezza Rice stokes New Hampshire verse rift  The Guardian

Science and Poetry: More Similar Than You Think  WGBH

***POETS 

Audre Lorde’s Berlin  The New York Times

'I will never hear my father's voice': Ilya Kaminsky on deafness and escaping the Soviet Union  The Guardian  

Omar Sakr and the poetry of displacement and dispossession  SMH 

Twenty-Four Poems in 24 Hours: A writer’s crazy journey into the depths of poetic inspiration  Mauitime

A look at Mary Pat Shely’s poetry  Winchester Sun

A conversation with FSU graduate and poet Dorothy Chan about 'Revenge of the Asian Woman'  Tallahassee Democrat   

Poet finds higher spirit, sensuality in nature and relays that impact through her work  CBC 

***GENDER    

Second Mississippi gubernatorial candidate says he will not be alone with a woman who is not his wife  CNN

The disagreement over scholarly debate about gender identity rages on  Inside Higher Ed 

Martina Navratilova on Megan Rapinoe and the Trajectory of Gay Women in Sports  The New Yorker 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

13 Philadelphia officers to be fired over racist, offensive Facebook posts  NBC  

The Rise of the Chinese-American Right  National Review

Trump's Remarks Against Congresswomen Are Not The Only Example Of The 'Go Back' Taunt  NPR 

In a recently resurfaced recording, Trump proposed a white-versus-black-contestant season of 'The Apprentice' Business Insider

***FREE SPEECH 

HBO Gets to Argue Michael Jackson Estate Is Violating First Amendment  Hollywood Reporter

1st Amendment Challenge Over DMCA's Anti-Circumvention Provisions Can Move Forward  Tech Dirt 

This article could be illegal in Arkansas  Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Gigi Hadid Beats Instagram Post Copyright Lawsuit  Hollywood Reporter

Verizon Not Liable for Employee Theft of Customer’s Nude Photos  Bloomberg

Court rules Andy Warhol's Prince Portraits are fair use  The 1709 Blog

Marvel Finally Beats a Lawsuit Over the 'Iron Man 3' Poster  Hollywood Reporter

***CRIME & COURTS

The Village Where Every Cop Has Been Convicted of Domestic Violence  ProPublica

Simulators teach police and their critics when to shoot  The Economist  

Why Don’t Police Catch Serial Rapists?  The Atlantic

***BORDER ISSUES

A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children  Propublica

Marine Corps veteran denied entry to US for citizenship interview  The Hill

New Asylum Rule Leaves Migrants In Tijuana Confused And Desperate  KPBS

If We All Left to “Go Back Where We Came From”  Flowing Data 

A restaurant in the North Carolina city where Trump held his rally is donating to aid immigrants   CNN

Immigration Police Detain, Free 3 young girls who are US Citizens after holding them for 12 hours in an attempt to force their parents to  Chicago Sun-Times

***EMOJIS 

The 🙃Emoji Is The Breezy, Nihilist Face Of 2019  Buzzfeed News 

Emoji Mashup Bot gives life to unidentifiable emotions  Daily Doot

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Google and Facebook Are Quietly Tracking You On Porn Websites  New York Times

How Americans — Some Knowingly, Some Unwittingly — Helped China's Surveillance Grow  NPR

Here's The Most Complete Map So Far Of Amazon's Ring Camera Surveillance Partnerships With Local Police  BuzzFeed News

Google Chrome Update Will Close 'Loophole' That Tipped Sites Off to Your Incognito Mode  Gizmodo

Data Leak Warning Issued To Millions Of Google Chrome And Firefox Users  Forbes 

***RELIGION

A Closer Look at How Religious Restrictions Have Risen Around the World  Pew Research Center

The Dark Reality Of Celebrity Endorsed Mega-Churches  Refinery29  

Church And Clergy Have Fallen Out Of Favor, New Polls Show  NPR  

Why does God need public records? In Alabama, that’s a real question  AL.com  

Evangelical author who wrote a controversial book on abstinence and 'purity' in marriage announces he has split from his wife  Daily Mail 

***GOOD NEWS

Thieves stole $9 from a girl's lemonade stand for charity. Police and neighbors rallied to give her more than $300  CNN  

Student walks 20 miles to new job – so CEO gifts him a car  New York Post

96-year-old WWII veteran drives into Chick-fil-A with flat tire nearly in tears: manager springs into action  NBC 

A carpenter from Iowa who only owned two pairs of jeans and a rusty old truck saved up $3 million to pay the college tuition of 33 strangers  Fox 35

Wedding photographer remakes album for couple who lost everything in Camp Fire  KCRA

'Refused to let warrior be buried alone': Hundreds attend Vietnam veteran's funeral in Niles  South Bend Tribune

Italian Olympic swimming champ saves drowning tourist New York Daily News

***REALLY?! 

City hopes ‘Baby Shark’ song will drive homeless away  Miami Herald

Nebraska woman claims Spider-Man sculpture is ‘a hate crime against the church’  WQAD

A Florida woman was fined $100,000 for a dirty pool and overgrown grass  USA Today 

Canadian Police Accidentally Livestream Double Homicide Press Conference Using Facebook's Cat Filter  TIME

***ART & DESIGN 

Mind-Bending Optical Illusion Murals Turn Buildings into 3D Abstractions  My Modern Met

The 50 Ugliest College Campuses Complex

***MUSIC 

An Iowa agency director emailed Tupac lyrics to 4,300 employees. He was asked to resign  USA Today   

Wedding photographer remakes album for couple who lost everything in Camp Fire  KCRA 

Beatles Songs Re-Imagined as Vintage Book Covers  Open Culture 

From Beyoncé to Bob Dylan, why music docs are all over our screens The Guardian  

Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation  The Week 

***FILM

When Harry Met Sally' and the 'High-Maintenance' Woman  The Atlantic

Tom Cruise’s leather jacket in the ‘Top Gun’ sequel shows just how crucial China is as a movie market  CNBC 

Why China’s best-known artist — and director of the acclaimed 2017 film Human Flow — returned to the subject of migration for The Rest

***FREELANCE OPPORTUNITIES 

Freelance Pitches  LAist Studios 

Freelance pitches  Medium's Zora magazine  

Freelance writers  A well-funded L.A. startup  

Freelance pitches   The Cut

Freelance culture stories  Texas Monthly

Media-related freelance pitches  Columbia Journalism Review

Mandarin freelance writer  Culture Trip, L.A. 

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

The global business supply chain relies on 16 million slaves  Quartz

Record 70.8 Million People Forcibly Displaced Globally Last Year  Bloomberg 

Most Americans See American Dream as Achievable  Gallup

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

A 40-Year Scientific Study Reveals the Richest People Are Never the Most Talented (and Why That's a Really Good Thing) Inc 

Toilet paper disruption  Vo

What your spending habits say about who you are  CBS News 

He Built A $1 Billion Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely Forbes

***ENVIRONMENT

Visualizing Just How Much Hotter Climate Change Will Make Your City  Digg 

Restoring forests may be one of our most powerful weapons in fighting climate change Vox

***HEALTH

Opioid Distribution And Sales Data Release Sheds Light On Opioid Prescribing  NPR  

When it comes to Sunscreens, the SPF isn’t as critical as you think  Curiosity 

There Is No Such Thing as a Sugar Rush  Elemental

Vast Majority Of Dietary Supplements Don’t Improve Heart Health or Put Off Death  Hopkins Medicine 

Drug Overdose Deaths Drop in U.S. for First Time Since 1990  New York Times

The future of fitness is together but alone  The Verge

2 Nurses In Tennessee Preach 'Diabetes Reversal'  NPR   

Christian publisher changes name after cannabis confusion  The Guardian 

Can gut infection trigger Parkinson’s disease?  Nouvelles

***TRAVEL 

A Series of Maps Reveals the Difference in How Cities are Perceived by Tourists and Locals  Arch Daily 

Airlines are finally fixing the middle seat  Fast Company 

5 Themed Road Trips You Can Take This Summer  Mental Floss

 ***FOOD

The Apple ready to disrupt the industry  California Sunday

The Top 10 Cities with the Most Ice Cream Shops Per Capita  Yahoo News 

Nestle Creates New Chocolate—With No Added Sugar  Bloomberg

Arkansas is the latest state to ban calling veggie burgers “veggie burgers” Vox

Restaurants Under Strain As Price Of Avocados Nearly Triples  NPR  

***FAMILY 

Surprising New Names Top 2019’s Popularity List  Nameberry 

***ANIMALS 

Goats can distinguish emotions from each other's calls  The Guardian 

12-year-old boy designs bow ties to help pets get adopted  NBC 

Scientists discover Snowball the cockatoo has 14 distinct dance moves (video)  The Guardian

***SCIENCE

A material way to make Mars habitable  Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences  Harvard 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Who Invented the Therapy in Those Joseph Nicolosi Books Banned by Amazon?  Throckmorton Blog 

New bill allows Oregon students to take 'mental health days' NBC News 

The mysterious case of the man who draws in his sleep  BBC 

***PHILOSOPHY 

Millennials, moral relativism and Iris Murdoch  Religious News Service 

***ETHICS

The lost art of ethical decision making  Tech Republic   

Microsoft joins project on ethical artificial intelligence  Phys.org

***CHINA 

China’s economic growth slides — and that could be bad news for U.S.  LA Times   

***POLITICS

An escalation in America’s slide toward fascism  Huffington Post

How Political Science Became Irrelevant  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***RESEARCH 

The F-word, or how to fight fires in the research literature  AHRECS

Why are there more and more retractions?  RTS (Swiss Radio)

Journal criticised for study claiming sun is causing global warming  New Science

100 rules for publishing in top journals  Nature Index

Why it’s so hard to reform peer review  Mind Matters 

***RESEARCH: THE REPLICATION CRISIS 

Fixing health care’s replication crisis is important for researchers and patients  Stat News  

Reproducibility fix: Easy in principle, hard in practice  Bio World

***HIGHER ED

Education publisher Pearson to phase out print textbooks  BBC

Hackers breach 62 US colleges by exploiting ERP vulnerability ZDnet

A Legendary Scientist Sounds Off on the Trouble With STEM Chronicle of Higher Ed

The value of education is not what you think (opinion)  The Week 

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

The Jonas Brothers’ Dad is working with Liberty University  Huffington Post 

Annie Wright of George Fox University wins 2019 Ad Rutschman Girls Small College Athlete of the Year  NBC News 

Biola president makes $559K  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***TEACHING

A New Interactive Visualization of the 165,000 Most-Frequently Assigned Texts in College Courses  Open Culture 

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Steven Pinker's aid in Jeffrey Epstein's legal defense renews criticism of an increasingly divisive public intellectual  Inside Higher Ed 

Prof quits after allegations of cocaine binges and out-of-control parties  New York Post  

University Of Pennsylvania Defends Professor Who Said ‘Our Country Will Be Better Off With More Whites And Fewer Non-Whites’  CBS Philly

Students Seek Ouster of Penn Law Professor Over Race Uproar  Bloomberg

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Ethical concerns surround candidate for Student Media director position  The Crimson White 

After 65 years, Oregon student newspaper moves to online format  The Bulletin

***STUDENT LIFE

American kids would much rather be YouTubers than astronauts  Ars Technica

 It's been millennials vs boomers for too long: it's time to start blaming Generation X  The Guardian

'I'm Drowning': Those Hit Hardest By Student Loan Debt Never Finished College  NPR

Univ of Michigan student stripped of Miss Michigan World America title  Detroit Free Press   

Work & Play

Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, to work at their play, and to play at their worship. As a result, their meanings and values are distorted. Their relationships disintegrate faster than they can keep them in repair, and their life-styles resemble a cast of characters in search of a plot.

Gordon Dahl, Work, Play, and Worship in a Leisure-Oriented Society

Faith & Doubt

Faith does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace. -Michael Gerson 

Articles of interest - week of July 16

***TECHNOLOGY 

Amazon Alexa Calls Police On Man Who Was Allegedly Beating His Girlfriend  WILM 

VIDEO: Move Objects With Your Mind? We're Getting There, With The Help Of An Armband  NPR

A Canadian bioethicist says a plan to edit human embryos to prevent deafness is "offensive"  CBC

Will California’s New Bot Law Strengthen Democracy?  The New Yorker 

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA  

I Was Banned From Twitter for Threatening to Kill Mr. Peanut  Vice

Here’s How To Stop Data Brokers From Advertising To You On Facebook  Buzzfeed News 

Conservatives pretending to be suppressed by social media dominated social media  Vox

Here’s how you can go back to the old Twitter layout   

The Hidden Costs of Free Social Media  Foundation for Economic Education 

***MOBILE 

Chinese app downloads surge in US  Axios 

Kids are spending over 30 hours a week on phones, survey finds  Cnet 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

I’m a hacker, and here’s how your social media posts help me break into your company  Fast Company  

Google admits leaked private voice conversations  CNBC 

EFF Hits AT&T With Class Action Lawsuit for Selling Customers’ Location to Bounty Hunters  Vice 

***PRODUCING MEDIA 

Podcast events are making a killing  Axios 

Facebook struggles to lure video creators amid intense competition  Economic Times

Facebook's war to win over creators  Axios

How to shoot stellar slow-motion video on your phone  Wired  

***INTERNET

Craigslist's Craig Newmark: 'Outrage is profitable. Most online outrage is faked for profit  The Guardian

How to fix the internet, according to its pioneers  Quartz 

***JOURNALISM

Tools and tips for digging into Facebook from two investigative journalists  The Ground Truth

Why Journalists Should Care About Collective Wisdom  Immerse  

ProPublica and NBC show how righteous media serve democracy  Baltimore Sun

‘We’re Almost Extinct’: China’s Investigative Journalists Are Silenced Under Xi  New York Times

A Nellie Bly Memorial Is Being Planned for New York City’s Roosevelt Island  Mental Floss  

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM 

Starbucks will stop selling newspapers come September 1  New York Post 

Here’s how some for-profit local news outlets are building subscriptions  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***FAKE NEWS

A digital breadcrumb trail for deepfakes  Axios

Deepfakes have YouTubers worried: Vidcon offers a way to push back  Cnet

People Tell Us How QAnon Destroyed Their Relationships  Vice

We tell ourselves conspiracy theories in order to live  The Outline  

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Let Go of it  Becoming (my blog)

What makes people change their lives entirely and how can we best become our true selves  The Guardian 

It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done  New York Times 

***GRAMMAR

What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old?  MEL Magazine

It Might Be Time to Update the Old ‘Alfa-Bravo-Charlie’ Spelling Alphabet  Atlas Obcura

***WRITING & READING 

The Power of a Good Sentence Why writing one isn't as easy as you think  The Walrus 

The Cost of Reading: the uneven burden taken by women writers in literary citizenship  Longreads 

***LITERATURE

New L.A. book festival LitLit announces talks by poets Yesika Salgado, Vickie Vertiz and more  LA Times

***GENDER   

Mississippi Politician Refuses To Let Female Reporter Travel Alone With Him  NPR 

The Women’s World Cup showed what women’s sports should be: This is what happens when women athletes don’t have to fight for relevance  SB Nation 

Robert Foster, GOP governor candidate, denies woman reporter access because of her gender  Mississippi Today 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The Dominance of the White Male Critic  New York Times

You All Look Alike to Me’ is hard-wired in us  UC Riverside 

Hate Crime Divides School  Washington Post

Aziz Ansari thinks white people are trying too hard with 'Crazy Rich Asians'  CNN

Georgia landlords evicted white woman for having black guests, ACLU lawsuit alleges  NBC News 

How news outlets are dealing with the 'moral dimension' of covering Trump and his racist tweets  CNN

'Go Back Where You Came From': The Long Rhetorical Roots Of Trump's Racist Tweets  NPR

A Detroit festival charged white people $20 and black people $10, then they got hit with backlash  CNN

***LEGAL ISSUES / CRIME

Does including “in my opinion” protect me from a libel or defamation suit? Student Press Law Center 

DOJ Says Local Governments Need To Prepare For Ransomware Attacks  NPR

A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say: One lost custody of his daughter  MSNBC 

 ***RELIGION

Growth and Decline in American Religion over the Last Decade  Religion in Public 

The decline of the Christian bookstore  Slate 

Christian speaker removed from conference over church’s views on women, gays  Baptist News  

Behold, The Millennial Nuns  HuffPost  

US man accused of sex abuse at Kenyan orphanage he founded  Associated Press 

State Department Conference Aims To Identify Victims Of Religious Persecution  NPR

How religious restrictions around the world have changed over a decade  Pew Research Center

Researcher Identifies 'Oldest Handwriting of a Christian' In Ancient Papyrus Letter From Roman Egypt Newsweek

After 2016 Bible Slip, Trump Lashed Out at ‘So-Called Christians,’ Book Says  New York Times

***RELIGION AND BORDER ISSUES

Dr. Dobson’s visit to the border  Dobson Newsletter  

James Dobson's anti-immigrant rhetoric is dangerous  Sojourners 

***GOOD NEWS

Rejected from culinary school because she is deaf, woman goes on to launch her own pizza empire  The Week  

After final cancer treatment, little girl donates birthday gifts to sick kids  NBC News 

Strangers come together on Twitter to find dress for girl with autism  The Week  

Three young brothers started a candle company to buy themselves toys. Now they donate $500 a month to the homeless  Washington Post 

Athlete, 66, Has Run 45 Marathons with People Who Have Disabilities: 'It's Like Their Super Bowl'  People

A dying woman raised money for her own funeral: Strangers donated so much, she’s now giving away the surplus  Washington Post

***REALLY?!

Drunk Yoga: fun night out or workout disaster?  New York Post 

Worker falls into 8-foot tank filled with liquid chocolate, paramedics find him covered from 'head-to-toe'  Fox News

Metal drinking straw impales UK woman’s brain, killing her New York Post 

Illinois mother accused of driving with kids on top of SUV in inflatable pool  USA Today 

NY father and daughter charged with armed robbery WCAX  

Family Saves Octopus Stranded: Surprised by what it does the next day  The Epoch Times 

Man breaks into King Co. Sheriff’s Office, brings donuts, wants jail to avoid roommate  Q-13

***MUSIC  

Lennon or McCartney? Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence to Figure Out Who Wrote Iconic Beatles Songs  Open Culture

What TikTok's Explosion Could Mean For Music  NPR

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Battle for the future of Spanish-language TV  Axios

***FREELANCE OPPORTUNITIES  

Pitches on "Stranger Things" and other shows   Bitch Media

Pitches for "Building Bridges"  YES! Magazine

Long travel and design-focused stories  Apartment Therapy

Pitches for beverage alcohol industry stories  SevenFifty Daily

Freelance tech pieces  The Daily Beast  

Pitches for culture stories and features  The Outline

How much money can you make on Amazon Mechanical Turk?  The Hustle 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them  The Atlantic 

Harvard suspends star economics prof after sexual harassment claims  New York Times

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Odds Are, Your Doctorate Will Not Prepare You for a Profession Outside Academe  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Teachers Sue U.S. Over Student Loans That Weren't Forgiven  NPR

***BORDER ISSUES  

Immigration Officials Use Secretive Gang Databases to Deny Migrant Asylum Claims  Propublica  

Concern Grows Over Plan To Scale Back Program That Protects Military Families From Deportation  NPR

Border crisis conditions for migrants, according to a lawyer who’s volunteered there for years  Slate 

Border Patrol Agents Are Passing Around A Commemorative Coin Mocking Care for Migrant Kids Propublica 

3-Year-Old Asked To Pick Parent In Attempted Family Separation, Her Parents Say  NPR

The US is quietly opening shelters for babies and young kids: One has 12 children and no mothers  Reveal News 

California Set To Expand Medicaid To Undocumented Young Adults  NPR

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Branding has a moral responsibility  Fast Company   

Digital Tax Passed In France Is Aimed At U.S. Tech Giants  NPR  

The future of work in America  McKinsey

How much money can you make on Amazon Mechanical Turk?  The Hustle 

***ENVIRONMENT 

Trees emit a surprisingly large amount of methane  Wired 

These rare blue clouds could be headed your way  PopSci

Radioactivity in parts of the Marshall Islands is far higher than Chernobyl, study says  Wired

***HEALTH 

The meat-allergy tick also carries a mystery killer virus  Wired 

Urinary Tract Infections Affect Millions: The Cures Are Faltering New York Times

Is my insomnia all in my head? Why my brain might be sleeping without me knowing  Telegraph  

In US 1st, baby is born from dead donor’s transplanted womb  Associated Press

***TRAVEL

How to Fall Asleep on a Plane  Life Hacker  

Attendance falling at American Landmarks  Politico 

How to Get Through Airport Security Faster  Life Hacker

***SPORTS & GAMES

Why Do Sports Fans Watch, and Rewatch, Injury Footage?  New York Times

Robot umpires: MLB is testing technology in Atlantic League  Washington Post

Poker Bot Beats The Professionals At 6-Player Texas Hold 'Em  NPR

Chess Grandmaster Igors Rausis Caught Cheating  Bleacher Report 

We Watched 906 Foul Balls To Find Out Where The Most Dangerous Ones Land  FiveThirtyEight  

***FOOD

Hershey’s Co. sued over 'misleading' White Reese’s packaging  Fox News  

When Natural Disasters Strike, Operation BBQ Swoops In With Relief — And Ribs  NPR

***ANIMALS 

Heroic dog saves sleeping deputy constable from Montgomery County house fire  ABC-13

Drunk man sends injured baby bird to wildlife rescue center in an Uber  WFSB   

Why Dogs Now Play a Big Role in Human Cancer Research  Wired

Tourists Plays Around With An Octopus, Don't Realize It's One Of Australia's Most Venomous Species  Digg 

***SCIENCE 

Why we see the colors of faces differently than other things  Wired

NASA drops insane map of 4,000 planets outside our solar system  CNET

We Have The First-Ever Images of Molecules Changing Their Charge State  Science Alert

***PSYCHOLOGY & NEUROSCIENCE

30 intro psych textbooks: the vast majority defined or explained statistical significance inaccurately  Psychological Science  

REM sleep silences the siren of the brain  NIN 

***CHINA 

Google Working On AI In China Has Billionaire Peter Thiel, Others Raising Major Concerns  Media Post  

China Box Office Drops in First Half Despite 14.5 Percent Jump in Hollywood Revenue  Hollywood Reporter 

***POLITICS 

Trump campaign uses stock video pretending it portrays supporters  Associated Press 

Kantar Forecasts $6 Billion in Political Ad Spending for 2019-2020 Election Cycle  Kantar Media

Huge Turnout Is Expected in 2020. So Which Party Would Benefit?  New York Times

***RESEARCH 

Here’s how to deal with failure, say senior scientists  Nature Index

Scandal-weary Swedish government takes over research-fraud investigations  Nature 

The risk of embarrassing, high-profile retractions also prevents data from being published that could correct the published literature  Wiley 

Research publications: does piling them high sell them short?  Times Higher Education 

Replicator Degrees of Freedom Allow Publication of Misleading 'Failures to Replicate'  SSRN

Reproducibility crisis, the scientific method, and the quality of published studies: Untangling the knot   Wiley 

Rules to stamp out export of unethical research practices to poorer countries  gaining momentum  Times Higher Education 

Inside a “Fake” Conference: A Journey Into Predatory Science  Technology Networks

The greatest threat to medical science is not fabrication of results but ‘presentational fraud'”  BMJ

***HIGHER ED 

Bachelor’s Degree Movers  FlowingData 

Univ of Texas will give full scholarships for tuition and fees to in-state students with household incomes of $65,000 or less  Statesman 

Hackers Demand $2 Million From Monroe College  Inside Higher Ed 

Colleges Are Shutting Down, and Yankton Was a Precursor  The Atlantic

More Latinx Students, Stagnant Latinx President  Inside Higher Ed

Sorry, Headhunters, but the Healthiest Presidential Searches Are Open  The Chronicle of Higher Ed  

In the U.K., a Surge in Chinese Applicants  Inside Higher Ed

Accreditor approves Ashford U's nonprofit conversion  Education Dive 

The Downside of Reduced Student Borrowing  Inside Higher Ed

2 Indiana virtual schools received lots of public money: Now, the state wants $40 million of it back Washington Post

5 Years Later, Grand Valley Resolves Federal Complaint  Inside Higher Ed  

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS  

Michael W. Smith, Kevin Jonas to start music center, label at Liberty University  Religious News Service

He was hired to teach at Olivet Nazarene University: And then someone read his book Chicago Tribune 

PLNU students serve children in Philippines  Church of the Nazarene

***TEACHING

Survey shows nearly half of students distracted by technology  Inside Higher Ed

5 Key Aspects of Teaching Innovation In 2019  Entrepreneur

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Virginia school district orders high school student journalists to delete a video report documenting the school's poor conditions  Pilot Online 

Study: Millennials Worry About Media's Impact On Democracy  Media Post  

***STUDENT LIFE

Amazon fined a college student $3,800 for returning a rented textbook 4 days late  Business Insider 

Teens are abandoning hyper-produced personalities for people who seem just like them  The Atlantic  

Student Loans Are The Hardest On These Borrowers  NPR

Let Go of It

At some point, we must remind ourselves, any changes we make to a creation no longer make it better but just different (and sometimes worse). Recognizing that inflection point — the point at which our continuing to rework our work reaches a law of diminishing returns — is one of the hardest skills to learn, but also one of the most necessary. Sometimes our first attempt truly is best; sometimes it takes seventeen attempts to really nail it. But overworking something is just as bad as failing to polish it. 

When I'm immersed in the creative process, nothing feels more important to me at that moment than the thing which I'm creating. And though that sense of importance is what drives my passion and discipline (which in turn is what makes creating it possible at all), it also represents the source of the painful sense of urgency for the final result be perfect. Forcing myself, then, to recognize that in the grand scheme of life no one thing is so important to me or anyone else that failing to make it perfect will permanently impair my ability to be happy is what frees me from the need for it to be perfect. Freed then from the need to attain the unattainable, I can instead focus on enjoying the challenge of simply doing my best. Because if we allow ourselves to remain at the mercy of our desire for perfection, not only will the perfect elude us, so will the good.

Alex Lickerman writing in Psychology Today

Seizing the Initiative

Everything in this world conspires to put you on the defensive. At work, your superiors may want the glory for themselves and will discourage you from taking the imitative. People are constantly pushing and attacking you, keeping you in react mode. You are continually reminded of your limitations and what you cannot hope to accomplish. You are made to feel guilty for this and that. Such defensiveness on your part can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Before anything, you need to liberate yourself from this feeling. By acting boldly, before others are ready, by moving to seize the initiative, you create your own circumstances rather than simply waiting for what life brings you. Your initial push alters the situation, on your terms.

Robert Greene, 33 Strategies of War