Don’t do the job that you want to tell other people you do

Work is not a series of words on a LinkedIn profile. It’s a series of moments in the world. And if you don’t enjoy those moments, no sequence of honorifics will dispel your misery. 

Some people take jobs with long commutes not fully considering what it will do to their health. Or they take jobs that require lots of travel not fully intuiting what it will mean for their family life. Or they’ll take horribly difficult jobs for money they don’t need, or take high-status jobs for a dopamine rush with a half-life of about three days. If you want to be smarter about your beingness in time, either you can read a lot of impenetrable philosophy or you can listen to Jim. Don’t take the job you want to talk about at parties for a couple of minutes a month. Take the job you want to do for hundreds of hours a year.

Derek Thompson writing in The Atlantic

7 Webinars about Media in the Next Two Weeks

SEO for Nonprofits, Mobile Marketing, Student Press, Women in the Newsroom, Running a Newsroom during Wartime, & more

Wed, Nov 9 - Lobbying for the Student Press

What: Press censorship on college campuses is unfortunately alive and well—hear about how to advocate for increased statutory protections for college journalists.

Who: FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) Legislative and Policy Director Joe Cohn

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Student Press Freedom Initiative

More info

Thu, Nov 10 - Truth-Telling under Siege: The Perils of Journalists in Palestine and Mexico

What: This event explores this worldwide phenomenon of violence against journalists by focusing on two cases – Palestine and Mexico.  The event aims to promote a far-reaching and free ranging exploration of the forces working to suppress truth-telling in these two regions and beyond while situating the issue within a larger problem of free expression and the right to free speech.

Who: Nancy Postero, Moderator, UCSD Human Rights and Migration Program

Amanda Batarseh, UCSD, Department of Literature

Farid Abdel Nour, SDSU, Dept of Political Science

Celeste González de Bustamante, University of Texas, School of Journalism & Media

Marco Werman, Host of PRI’s The World

When: 5 pm, Pacific

Where: Zoom and in person

Cost: Free

Sponsor: UC San Diego Democracy Lab

More info

Thu, Nov 10 - Mobile Marketing Tips for Every Generation

What: 4 reasons why your website needs to look great on a smartphone. How each generation responds to marketing (and how to optimize your efforts). 5 tips for planning your mobile marketing strategy. Discover why mobile marketing is so important and get valuable tips on how to market to each generation.

Who: Molly Coke, chief client experience officer of Firespring

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Firespring

More info

Tue, Nov 15 - Phenomenal Women: Newsroom confidential with journalists Margaret Sullivan and Eileen McNamara

What: Two legendary journalists talk about their decades in journalism, where they have battled sexism, broken glass ceilings and witnessed the decline of trust in the news media. They will offer their thoughts on how to regain that trust.

Who: Moderator: Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing;

Eileen McNamara is a Boston Globe columnist who has won many national awards

Margaret Sullivan is a former media columnist for the Washington Post and author of the new book “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-stained Life.”

When: 6:30 pm, Eastern 

Where: Zoom and in-person

Cost: $5

Sponsor: WBUR radio Boston

More info

Wed, Nov 16 - Be Found: The Secrets of SEO for Nonprofits

What: In this session, learn from nonprofits who are experts at search engine optimization and driving traffic to their websites, plus review the SEO tools and techniques that maximize your findability. We’ll cover what SEO is and how it works, why search engines like Google matter and outline the six steps to mastering SEO: Keyword research Website optimization Link building Fresh content Landing pages Analytics.

Who: Jay Wilkinson is the founder and CEO of Firespring

When: 2 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Firespring

More info

Fri, Nov 18 - Leading An Investigative Newsroom in Wartime

What: In this webinar, our guests will talk about how they are adapting their follow-the-money techniques to document crimes and illuminate overlooked angles of the war in Ukraine; how they are making the editorial, humanitarian, and ethical decisions they face daily as the war unfolds; and how they are supporting their teams as Russian and Ukrainian journalists confront personal and societal trauma.

Who: Roman Anin, founder of the independent Russian outlet iStories, and Anna Babinets, editor-in-chief of Ukrainian investigative newsroom Slidstvo.info

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pulitzer Center

More info

Wed, Nov 23 - Marshalling the troops: how Ukraine's biggest newsroom stayed afloat in the war

Who: Sevgil Musaieva is a Ukrainian journalist from Crimea, editor-in-chief of Ukranian newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, recipient of 2022 International Press Freedom Award,  and featured in TIME’s Top 100 people of 2022.  

When: 1 pm, London

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Reuter’s Institute

More info

Coping strategies

Psychologists like to group coping strategies into two main types: emotion-focused and problem-focused. Emotion-focused strategies change the way we feel, like distracting ourselves, getting support from friends, or looking at the situation from a different perspective. Problem-focused strategies, on the other hand, involve taking action to solve the problem directly.  No one strategy works all the time, and you’ll often see people get stuck in their favorite way of coping.  If you tend toward distraction and denial, you might avoid dealing with a problem that you actually could have solved; if you’re an inveterate problem-solver, you might feel helpless and angry when confronting a problem—or a loved one’s—that has no solution, when all that’s really needed is support and connection.   

Kira M. Newman writing for Greater Good Magazine

Futurity

Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment “as to the Lord.” It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The Cost

The cost of a thing is the amount of life that must be exchanged for it. -Henry David Thoreau

Powerful Words

Words have profound suggestive power, and there is healing in the very saying of them. Utter a series of panicky words and your mind will immediately go into a mild state of nervousness. You will perhaps feel a sinking in the pit of your stomach that will affect your entire physical mechanism. If, on the contrary, you speak peaceful, quieting words, you mind will react in a peaceful manner.

Use such a word as “tranquility.” Repeat that word slowly several times. Tranquility is one of the most beautiful and melodic of all English words, and the mere saying of it tends to induce a tranquil state.

Another healing word is “serenity.” Picturize serenity as you say it. Repeat it slowly and in the mood of which the word is a symbol. Words such as these have a healing potency when used in this manner.

It is also helpful to use lines from poetry or passages from the Scriptures. The words of the Bible have a particularly strong therapeutic value. Drop them into your mind, allowing them to “dissolve” in consciousness, and they will spread a healing balm over your entire mental structure. This is one of the simplest processes to perform and also one of the most effective in attaining peace of mind.

Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking

Digital Distractions

Our brains are designed to pick up on what’s new or changing around us. In the digital world, things are changing and being posted every few seconds. News sites and social media are also – and purposefully – designed in an easily digestible way that draws us in. It’s no wonder so many of us have butterfly brains.

A well functioning brain should wander every few minutes. It makes us more creative and stops our brain from burning out. So don’t resist it. However, the mistake many of us are now making is when we take a break from ‘work information’ we replace it with an endless stream of information from social media or the news or whatever else is online. Digital breaks don’t have an end point – you can spend hours flitting around and then you feel overloaded. Or you can stay up late, mindlessly browsing, even when you’re exhausted.

Think about it. If you click on a news story about a war that’s heartbreaking, then a political leader you feel frustrated by, then a social media photo that makes you feel inadequate, no wonder you feel spent and stressed.

Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute in New York and author of new book Two Awesome Hours, quoted in the Telegraph

10 Free Journalism & Media webinars on social media, writing, storytelling & more

Thu, Nov 3 - 2023 Social Media Trends

What: Why “personas” are over and communities are the new focus  How social commerce will rise and fall, and why customer experience will get even more social  Ways that predictive social analytics will disrupt marketing.

Who: Natanya Anderson GM, Strategic Services for Khoros; David Low Global CMO for Talkwalker; Dan Rucolas Lead, Marketing Reporting for Kraft Heinz                           

When: Noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: AdWeek, Talkwalker 

More info

Thu, Nov 3 - Protecting the Rights of High School Student Journalists

What: A discussion of the issues student journalists are facing in schools, what rights they have, and where they can get help.

Who: Adriana Chavira: Teacher/Journalism Advisor,

Daniel Pearl Magnet HS 

Nathalie Miranda: Former Student Editor, Peal Post 

Mike Hiestand: Student Press Law Center 

Susan Seager: Adjunct Law Professor, UC Irvine Press Freedom Project 

Moderated by Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor, Broadcast & Digital Journalism, Cal State Northridge

When: 8 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists, LA Chapter

More info

Mon, Nov 7 – Media Law Office Hours

What: Allows journalists with legal questions to help find answers. 

Who: Attorney Matthew Leish

When: 5 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free 

Sponsor: Deadline Club of New York

RSVP

Mon, Nov 7 - The First Amendment Lives On

What: MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey discusses with editor Stuart N. Brotman his book "The First Amendment Lives On", a collection of conversations with First Amendment scholars and advocates.

Who: Stuart Brotman, John Palfrey

When: 6 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: American Writers Museum

More info

Wed, Nov 9 – The Art of Longform Storytelling

What: We want to dig into some key questions like: How do you find a narrative structure that works for your story? What are editors looking for in long-form features? And essentially — how do you take a mountain of reporting and turn it into an engaging piece of journalism?

Who: Katherine Bagley is the executive editor of Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future; Tom Huang is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives at The Dallas Morning News; Sandi Villarreal is Deputy Editor, Digital at Texas Monthly. 

When: 4 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Uproot Project, a network for journalists of color covering environmental issues, as well as students and others aspiring to cover this beat.

More info

 

Thu, Nov 10 - Uncover the Social Media Metrics That Actually Matter

What: Tips for uncovering insights about your brand and industry that can help strengthen consumer engagement  The best metrics to use to analyze your competition and key benchmarking metrics to help grow your business  The vital role social and media channels play in ensuring your content resonates with your target audience

Who: Mike Baglietto, Global Head of Market Insights at NetBase Quid

When: Noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: AdWeek

More info

Tue, Nov 15 – Covering Campus Crime

What: How to cover crime at their college — public or private — and how to get around potential roadblocks thrown up by admins and campus police.

Who: Lindsie Rank, a graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Law, Media and Communication dual-degree program, through which she earned a juris doctorate and a master’s in mass communication with a focus on First Amendment law.   

When: 1 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: College Media Association

More info

Wed, Nov 16 – Writing Tips You’ll Use Every Day

What: A discussion of structure, making stories flow, crafting anecdotes and much more.

Who: Steve Padilla, a nationally recognized writing coach and longtime editor with the Los Angeles Times

When: 6pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free for members

Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists and Google News Lab

More info

Wed Nov 16 – Pinpoint Training

What: Learn about Google’s newest tool, Pinpoint, explicitly built with journalists in mind. We’ll explore public collections, as well as learn how to upload document sets to examine through powerful search functionality, including searching handwriting and text within images. And we’ll show you how to use Pinpoint to transcribe audio and video files, such as interviews and meetings. We’ll also review some case studies and see how U.S. newsrooms have used Pinpoint in their work.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Journalism & Women Symposium

More info

Tue, Dec 6 - Top Mobile Trends for 2022

What: Join leaders from IHOP, Wavemaker, Horizon Media and T-Mobile Advertising Solutions for a look at how media and creative strategies are keeping pace with these mobile ad changes. You'll find out:  Which mobile consumption trends are most compelling for agencies and brands  Why app install campaigns are still so popular, and why marketers need to move beyond the download  How brands and agencies are responding to signal loss.

Who: Delphine Fabre-Hernoux Chief Data & Analytics  Officer, North America Wavemaker; Laura McElhinney EVP, Chief Data Officer Horizon Media; Nathan Casey Executive Director, CRM,  Loyalty, Digital, Ecommerce IHOP; Mike Peralta VP & GM  T-Mobile Advertising  Solutions   

When: Noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: AdWeek

More info 

Many paths lead to awe

Once you step outside, pick a random number between 1 and 100. Take that number of steps, and look beneath your feet. If you look around to find something inspiring, odds are you will.

Paul Piff quoted in the Washington Post

Model the behavior you expect from employees

Employees look to leaders for guidance on culture, but they tend to discount lofty statements about abstract values. Instead, they closely observe what leaders do for signals about what behavior is encouraged, expected, and tolerated.

There is no correlation between what companies aspire to and how employees assess them on corporate core values. When leaders act consistently with core values, however, it is one of the most powerful predictors of how positively employees rate their corporate culture.

Donald Sull and Charles Sull writing for the MIT Sloan Management Review

29 Data Science Articles from Oct 2022

“The Pentagon needs an intelligent decision support system to assist with analyzing all the data available without causing information overload for the analyst while detecting nuances and subtleties an analyst may not observe.” Read more.

Russia's anti-satellite threat tests laws of war in space

The Space Force & US Space Command could see action if Russia follows through on threats to target commercial satellites assisting Ukraine’s defense of its homeland. Read more.

SpaceX Amazon & FCC discuss satellite spectrum rulemaking

Senior Russian foreign ministry warns that the commercial satellites used by the US & its allies could become "legitimate" targets for retaliatory action by Russia. Read more.

Understanding graph neural networks & how they “apply the predictive power of deep learning to rich data structures that depict objects and their relationships as points connected by lines in a graph.” Read more.

How linear regression is used in machine learning

Linguists believed that learning language is impossible without a built-in grammar template. New AI models prove otherwise. Read more.

The value of imaginary numbers in quantum ideas to describe the hidden shape of the universe. Read more.

NSA cybersecurity director's 6 takeaways from the war in Ukraine 

Artificial intelligence explainability according to MIT: “the ability to manage AI initiatives in ways that ensure models are value-generating, compliant, representative, and reliable” Read more.

Military research groups are buying advanced US software products & selling them on, boosting China’s hypersonic missile program—despite export controls designed to prevent resales to foreign entities. Read more.

FCC tightens rules on space junk: the five-year limit for getting rid of dead satellites could slow the growing orbital litter problem—if companies will abide by it. Read more.

Surprise discovery of radio signals could help track space junk and limit global security risks

The future of military satellite communications starts now

Ukraine Lessons for Naval Intelligence's Next War

Russia launches three satellite deployment missions in one week

An update on the space race matching smartphones with low-orbit satellites

Radiation from outer space could affect the computers on satellites

The charge required to corrupt data is getting smaller all the time, meaning it is actually getting easier for cosmic rays to have this effect. Read more. 

3 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your Python Code

“Sweeping change is coming to the U.S. Army’s fleet of fixed-wing intelligence-gathering aircraft over the next several years.” Read more.

10 Data Science Cheat Sheets

The war in Ukraine has underlined the growing importance of space to armies on the ground

“For serious software development, the no-code/low-code approach doesn’t work when you need to develop mission critical software. It is even more far-fetched, then, to have only citizen data scientists running your AI/ML.” Read more.  

What will happen to the space debris in orbit?

10 things journalists should know About AI

The NRO is “redefining how it works with the US Space Force and the US Space Command” to “expand the NRO’s space-based intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance” as it faces a “more complex near-peer adversary environment.” Read more.

How to create satellite imagery datasets and how to apply a classification model to them based on convolutional neural networks. Read more.  

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The Four False Idols

As Arthur Brooks sees it, our brains mislead us into chasing things that feel good but don’t result in sustained happiness. Those things are often what he calls the four false idols: money, power, pleasure, and fame. Like drugs, they tickle our dopamine receptors, but unlike drugs they’re socially acceptable because they’re all markers of success. Yet a success addiction, like a drug addiction, will still leave you unhappy in the long run. “Nobody is ever like, ‘Dude, you did five grams of cocaine today, congratulations on that, that’s a preternaturally high dose!’” Brooks tells me, with gusto. “But ‘You made a billion dollars!’ is sort of the same thing.”

Instead of chasing those idols, Brooks advises that we focus on what he calls the four pillars of our “happiness portfolio”: faith, family, friends, and work. The happiest people, according to Brooks, adhere to a belief system that helps them transcend their narrow perspective and “understand life’s bigger than the boring sitcom that is me, me, me.” They have deep family ties and strong friendships. And they do work that serves others and allows them to earn their success. 

Clay Skipper writing in GQ

See people

See people for who they are turning into. The way God sees us. -Bob Goff

the color of virtue

Blushing is the color of virtue.  -Diogenes

The biggest

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. -Thomas Merton

AI Shows Linguistic Experience essential for Language Skills—Not Grammar Knowledge

“Children should be seen, not heard” goes the old saying, but the latest AI language models suggest that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, children need to be engaged in the back-and-forth of conversation as much as possible to help them develop their language skills. Linguistic experience—not grammar—is key to becoming a competent language user.

Morten Christiansen & Pablo Contreras Kallens writing in Fast Company

Tuesday Tech Tools: 34 Design Tools

Adobe Indesign
Adobe product that is the industry standard for page layouts and design (posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books). For professionals and high end projects but for personal or smaller projects, there are other programs with a lower learning curve.

Adobe Pagemaker
While not on the level of Adobe InDesign, it is an effective page layout program for the non-professional. Includes predesigned templates that can be modified.

Adobe Color (formally Adobe Kuler)
Find complementary color palettes using a color wheel.

Axure
For UX design. A wireframing prototyping software tool. No coding needed. Aimed at web and desktop applications.

Balsamiq
Design software, a quick starter for wireframing tool. 

Beautiful.ai
Quickly make beautful slides with these graphic tools. Slightly different workflow than PowerPoint so it takes a little time getting used to but more fun. Free.

Butterick's Practical Typography
Everything font-related including kerning, spacing, formatting, and more.

Color Me
Visualize hex colors.

Commarts
"Inspiration for graphic designers, art directors, design firms, corporate design departments, advertising agencies, interactive designers, illustrators and photographers—everyone involved in visual communication."

Design Thinking
Blog by Tim Brown about Design issues. Brown is author of Change by Design.

DesignEvo 
Create logos. Easy to use but the free version allows only limited sizes and only paid accounts get trademark options. The paid accounts are somewhat expensive.  

Florish*
A data visualization tool that makes it easy to create both standard charts and a mobile-friendly animated charts. Some customization available. Examples.

FontJoy
This site will generates font pairings for your design project whether you are aiming to create balance, tension or set off content. Free.

FontPair
Helps you pick font combinations for your resume, website, poster, etc. so your creation stands out from the typical Times New Roman on other material.

Font Shop
This link takes you to the design section of the website where you can "improve your design skills with typography tips and tutorials. FontShop Education docs are formatted for easy downloading and printing, perfect for the classroom or studio."  There's also a healthy glossary section, among other things.  

How Design
This site seeks to meet the "business, creativity and technology needs of graphic designers."

Idea Mag
Japanese design magazine.

Indesign
See Adobe Indesign.

Kartograph
Simple to use data visualization tool if you know some Python or Javascript. Free.

Keynotopia
UI design templates.

QuarkXpress
Page layouts for Mac or PC.Alternative to Adobe InDesign.

Marq (formally Lucid Press)
Page layouts for the non-professional to design flyers, newsletters, etc.

MockPlus
Prototyping tool for Mobile app design. Drop and drag. No coding needed.

MyFonts
Large selection of professional fonts.

OmniGraffle
Design software. Industry standard.

Page Stream
Page layouts for the non-professional to design flyers, newsletters, etc.

Principle
Popular UI prototyping tools for designing mobile apps. Especially useful for creating animation. No coding skill needed. $129.

Print Mag
Design tips, education, resources from Print Magazine, a bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design.

SassMe
Colum vizualize color functions by inserting Hex codes.

Society for News Design
Columns and tips on design, workshop schedule, membership database and more.

Society of Publication Designers

Scribus
Page layouts. Alternative to Adobe InDesign.

UXPin
Prototyping tool for Mobile app design. Simple setup with drop and drag.

What the Font
Figures out what font you are looking at. 

WordStream
Upload your comma-delimited file with time and text columns and you get a chart. Adjust sizes and the metrics. Free.

More Tech Tools

Science has been in a “replication crisis” for a decade

In an attempt to test just how rigorous scientific research is, some researchers have undertaken the task of replicating research that’s been published in a whole range of fields. And as more and more of those attempted replications have come back, the results have been striking — it is not uncommon to find that many, many published studies cannot be replicated.

A decade of talking about the replication crisis hasn’t translated into a scientific process that’s much less vulnerable to it. Bad science is still frequently published, including in top journals.

Kelsey Piper writing in Vox

Historically redlined areas disproportionately receive slow internet speeds

An investigation found AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other parts of town -Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin writing for The Markup

More about redlining and Critical Race Theory

Transcending the Present

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.

Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic