Your Inner Voice Can Mislead You

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It’s very disturbing when you realize that our brains are a fiction-making machine. We make up all kinds of crazy things to help us feel better and to justify the decisions that we’ve made. The inner voice is the one who arbitrates a lot of that maneuvering around the truth, so we have to be very careful. It’s a master storyteller and far more important than you may realize.

Jim Loehr, performance psychologist and cofounder of the Human Performance Institute, quoted in Fast Company

7 iPhone Tricks Worth Knowing

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Emotionally intelligent leader are consistently authentic

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An emotionally intelligent leader is always clear about their intentions and where they are coming from. This means employees don’t have to worry about deciphering messages from leadership and keeps them best informed about the organization’s goals and motives. 

Authentic emotionally intelligent leaders share as much as they are able to with their people at all times and expect the same from others in their circle. They don’t feel the need to hide things from others, cover up their mistakes, or play favorites in their workplace. They treat everyone the same, regardless of their position or station in life.  

Harvey Deutschendorf writing in Fast Company

How Generative AI could spawn a new generation of Disinformation  

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There is reason to believe that AI could really be the new variant of disinformation that makes lies about future elections, protests, or mass shootings both more contagious and immune-resistant. Consider, for example, the raging bird-flu outbreak, which has not yet begun spreading from human to human. A political operative—or a simple conspiracist—could use programs similar to ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 to easily generate and publish a huge number of stories about Chinese, World Health Organization, or Pentagon labs tinkering with the virus, backdated to various points in the past and complete with fake “leaked” documents, audio and video recordings, and expert commentary. A synthetic history in which a government-weaponized bird flu would be ready to go if avian flu ever began circulating among humans. A propagandist could simply connect the news to their entirely fabricated—but fully formed and seemingly well-documented—backstory seeded across the internet, spreading a fiction that could consume the nation’s politics and public-health response. The power of AI-generated histories, Horvitz told me, lies in “deepfakes on a timeline intermixed with real events to build a story.”

Matteo Wong writing in The Atlantic

5 Free Webinars this week on storytelling, augmented reality, media careers, & more

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Wed, March 7 – Storytelling for Impact

What:  Tips, techniques and tools to help the modern marketer tell better and more impactful stories to activate their audiences around ideas and actions.

Who: Kiersten Hill Director of Nonprofit Solutions for FireSpring

When: 2 pm, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: FireSpring

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Thu, March 8 - Will AR and VR change war reporting forever?

What: A discussion of how augmented reality and virtual reality will affect war coverage.

Who: Khalil Ashawi and Hail Khalaf, co-founders of Frontline in Focus. Khalil Ashawi, based in Istanbul, is an award-winning photojournalist with 10 years' experience in conflict zones. Hail Khalaf recently won a Google News Initiative award.

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Reuters Institute

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Thu, March 9 – Online News Association Career Day

What: Job, higher ed and fellowship opportunity seekers are welcome to attend this event at no cost to make valuable connections and participate in career-focused learning and networking. Share your resume with recruiters and program representatives.

When: 12-5 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Online News Association

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Fri, March 10 - A master class in copyediting from the author of Dreyer’s English

What: Dreyer will share his tips and tools for writing before taking questions.

Who: Benjamin Dreyer, Random House executive managing editor

When: 11:30, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Journalism Institute of the National Press Club

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Fri, March 10- How to Pitch a Story

What: By attending this class, you'll learn:  Why pitching a story is a critical skill for journalists of all backgrounds and employment status. How to develop relationships with those who will be considering your pitch. How to craft and deliver the most effective pitch for your stories.

Who: Maggie Mulvihill, associate professor of the practice of computational journalism at Boston University

When: Noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: New England First Amendment Coalition

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We mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today

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You’ve had an awful day—the cat peed on the rug, the dog peed on the cat, the washing machine is busted, World Wrestling has been preempted by Masterpiece Theatre—and you naturally feel out of sorts.

If at that moment you try to imagine how much you would enjoy playing cards with your buddies the next evening, you may mistakenly attribute feelings that are due to the misbehavior of real pets and real appliances ("I feel annoyed") to your imaginary companions ("I don't think I'll go because Nick always ticks me off").

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of depression is that when depressed people think about future events, they cannot imagine liking them very much.

Vacation? Romance? A night on the town? No thanks, I'll just sit here in the dark.

Their friends get tired of seeing them flail about in a thick blue funk, and they tell them that this too shall pass, that it is always darkest before the dawn, that every dog has its day, and several other important cliches. But from the depressed person's point of view, all the flailing makes perfectly good sense because when she imagines the future, she finds it difficult to feel happy today and thus difficult to believe that she will feel happy tomorrow.

We cannot feel good about an imaginary future when we are busy feeling bad about an actual present. But rather than recognizing that this is the inevitable result of the Reality First policy, we mistakenly assume that the future event is the cause of the unhappiness we feel when we think about it.

Our confusion seems terribly obvious to those who are standing on the sidelines, saying things like "You're feeling low right now because Pa got drunk and fell off the porch, Ma went to jail for whupping Pa, and your pickup truck got repossessed—but everything will seem different next week and you'll really wish you'd decided to go with us to the opera."

At some level we recognize that our friends are probably right. Nonetheless, when we try to overlook, ignore, or set aside our current gloomy state and make a forecast about how we will feel tomorrow, we find that it's a lot like trying to imagine the taste of marshmallow while chewing liver. It is only natural that we should imagine the future and then consider how doing so makes us feel, but because our brains are hell-bent on responding to current events, we mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Open People

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By virtue of the fact that their maps are continually being challenged, open people are continually growing people. Because they never speak falsely they can be secure and proud in the knowledge that they have done nothing to contribute to the confusion of the world, but have served as sources of illuminations and clarification.

Finally, they are totally free to be. They are not burdened by any need to hide. They do not have to slink around in the shadows. They do not have to construct new lies to hide old ones. They need waste no effort covering tracks or maintaining disguise. And ultimately they find that the energy required for the self-discipline of honesty is far less than the energy required for secretiveness.

The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.

M Scott Peck
The Road Less Traveled

Cruelty wears justice as a disguise

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The “No one to blame but themselves” rule “implies that once someone breaks a rule, you can do whatever you want to them and you cannot be blamed. We need that one mortal sin which will let us revoke a person's status as a human worthy of dignity, respect, empathy or anything else.

I think the reason so many racists could pass an ‘Are you a racist?’ polygraph test is that they don't think minorities are inhuman due to their color, but rather their supposed criminality. The single hint of a single minor crime meant absolutely anything done in response is justified. They all think their daily cruelty is in response to some extreme provocation.

If cruelty wears justice as a disguise, then anyone who believes in justice is at risk.”

David Wong writing for Cracked

20 Data Science articles from February 2023

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Five statistical paradoxes that data scientists should be aware of in order to do accurate analysis

What Pentagon leaders say they have learned from a year of battle in Ukraine:"The power of information is winning”

Software to sow doubts as you meta-analyze  

Machine learning is vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks. How the adversary can disrupt model training and even introduce backdoors

How Pandas alternatives—Polars, DuckDB, Vaex, and Modin—stack up to one of the most popular libraries in Python

Six of the most important types of machine learning algorithm 

“Big Data is real, but most people may not need to worry about it”

The ChatGPT prompts any data scientist must use

No, chatbots aren’t sentient. Here’s how their underlying technology works

5 Common Data Analytics Types Explained in Laymen’s Terms

Using the metaverse to virtually assemble and test AI war machines for the US military

Researchers discover a more flexible approach to machine learning—liquid neural nets

The evolving role of the data engineer

Top Predictive Analytics Trends in 2023

Even the pentagon Is using ChatGPT—the DoD’s used it to write a press release about a new counter-drone task force

How NGA Is integrating commercial analytic services into agency workflows

Python string matching without complex RegEx Syntax

Six python libraries especially useful to data engineers and natural language processing

Can ChatGPT write better code than Data Scientist? 

Researchers say ChatGPT can “weed out errors with sample code and fix it better than existing programs designed to do the same.”

7 Free Media Webinars this Week on ChatGPT, Reporting from Ukraine, Sports Marketing & More

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Tuesday, Feb 28 - Breaking Down Breaking News

What: This session is designed to provide insights on covering breaking news from the perspectives of the reporter, an editor and a news director. Learn how to create content when news suddenly happens and the clock is ticking. ‎

Who: John Walton; news director WVLA/WGMB; Gary Estwick breaking news editor The Tennessean.  

When: 12 noon, Central

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor:  College Media Association

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Wed, March 1 - ChatGPT & DALL-E: What Generative AI means for journalism

What: Tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E are a wake-up call for newsrooms about the rewards and risks of artificial intelligence capabilities. Please join us as we explain the technology behind these tools, how newsrooms might take advantage of them and what to look out for as the industry begins to grapple with the emerging potential around Generative AI.

Who: Moderator - AP’s Local News AI Program Manager Aimee Rinehart; Nicholas Diakopoulos, professor at Northwestern University; Yifan Hu, tech designer at Schibsted; Claire Leibowicz, head of AI and Media Integrity at Partnership on AI; Miranda Marcus, head of BBC News Labs; Hank Sims, editor at Lost Coast Communications Inc.; Edward Tian, GPTZero author, journalist and Princeton University student

When: Noon, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Associated Press

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Wed, March 1 – When the Story is You

What: Singular first-person journalism.

Who: Sabrina Imbler, a staff writer at Defector and previously a reporting fellow on the science and health desk of The New York Times; Helen Santoro, a freelance reporter on the brain and health, she has written for publication such as Scientific American, Slate, Smithsonian, and WIRED.

When: 6:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute

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Wed, March 1 – Student Press Briefing: Impacts of School Surveillance

What: College and high school student journalists are invited to this briefing on potential stories on school surveillance, student privacy, and free expression on- and off-campus. We’ll discuss the issues raised by software widely adopted by K-12 schools across the country that monitors students’ activity online, and online surveillance tools being used by colleges and universities. These tools increase the risk of discrimination, chill free expression, and threaten privacy.

Who: CDT experts

When: 7:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Center for Democracy & Technology

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Thu, March 2 – The State of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship: A Data-Driven Review of Top Activations

What: The impact that different sports, leagues, events and athletes have on fan engagement across social and why that matters. Which brands are getting the most bang for their marketing bucks. How video is being used to create sponsorship value. Actionable tactics marketers can apply right away to their sponsorship efforts and activations.

Who:  Scott Tilton EVP, Brand Sponsorship Analytics; RJ Kraus Head of Social for KORE                                                  

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Ad Week

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Thu, March 2 - Living Under Threat: Ukraine, Russian journalists share struggles of wartime reporting

What: A discussion of the ongoing challenges to covering the war in Ukraine.

Who: Russian and Ukrainian journalists, including: Elizaveta Kirpanova of the Russian independent newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”; Olga Rudenko, the editor in chief of The Kyiv Independent; Anastasia Tishchenko, a human rights reporter and news presenter with Radio Svoboda; Jessica Jerreat, who leads Voice of America’s press freedom coverage, will moderate the discussion.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute

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Thu, March 2 - Community Engagement Journalism: Exploring What it Means in the Newsroom and in the Field

What: Hear from community engagement reporters themselves on how they approach this trailblazing work. Community engagement journalists help newsrooms better understand and locate information voids–spaces that are also vulnerable to disinformation–and fill them. They break down barriers, both imagined and real, between communities and those who report on them, which builds the trust necessary to freeze out disinformation.

Who: Annie Z. Yu is Politico’s director of engagement; Derrick Cain, Director of Community Engagement at Resolve Philly; María Méndez, a reporter focused on connecting with Texans to help them navigate politics and public policy; Lauren Aguirre of Votebeat will moderate.

When: 2 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pen America

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