The Secrets to Success
/There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. - Colin Powell.
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Courage
/Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement, 2005
Little Negatives
/I began to analyze my own conversational habits and was shocked by what I found. I discovered that I was making such statements as “I am afraid I'll be late” or “I wonder if I'll have a flat tire” or “I don't think I can do that” or “I'll never get through this job. There's so much to do.” If something turned out badly, I might say “Oh, that's just what I expected.” Or, again, I might observe a few clouds in the sky and gloomily state, “I know was going to rain.” These are ‘little negatives” to be sure, and a big thought is of course more powerful than a little one, but it must never be forgotten that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow,” and if a mass of “little negatives” clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in force, and presently, before you know it, they will grow into “big negatives.”
Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
Seven Free Webinars This Week on media law, AI literacy, reporting & numbers, quantum computing, exiled journalists, & press freedom
/Mon, May 1 - 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 to members
Sponsor: Deadline Club of New York
Wed, May 3 – World Press Freedom Index
What: An early look at this year’s findings from the annual assessment of Reporters Without Borders about the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories, conversations with top journalists and an exclusive interview with the secretary of state about the state of global press freedom.
Who: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Jason Rezaian Global Opinions Writer, The Washington Post; Yeganeh Rezaian Senior Researcher, The Committee to Protect Journalists; Paul Beckett Washington Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal; Clayton Weimers Executive Director, U.S. Bureau, Reporters Without Borders; Adefemi Akinsanya International Correspondent & Anchor, Arise News; Hanna Liubakova Nonresident Fellow, Atlantic Council; Danny Fenster Editor-at-Large, Frontier Myanmar
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to members
Sponsor: The Washington Post & Reporters Without Borders
Wed, May 3 - Making numbers count
What: PBS has put together a guidebook for journalists on best practices for reporting with numbers--in headlines, stories, or graphics.
Who: Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, who directs the media research and partnerships at Knology; Travis Daub is the PBS NewsHour’s Director of Digital; Erica Hendry is the PBS NewsHour’s Managing Editor for Digital;
Patti Parson is Managing Producer PBS NewsHour and the PI for “Meaningful Math”; Laura Santhanam, who leads the NewsHour’s reporting on the Marist Poll; John Voiklis, who directs behavioral research at Knology; Miles O’Brien is PBS NewsHour’s lead science correspondent.
When: 11 am, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: PBS Newshour
Thu, May 4 - Quantum Computing and Machine Learning
What: In this seminar, we will cover the current state and future prospects of machine learning with quantum computers. This includes algorithms and models such as quantum kernel estimation, variational quantum classifiers, quantum neural networks, and quantum generative-adversarial networks
Who: Sean Wagner is a Research Scientist and a Quantum Technical Ambassador at IBM;
When: 2:30, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Big Data University
Thu, May 4 - Journalists in Exile: How foreign reporters are coping after their work pushed them from home
What: This online panel discussion will highlight just a few of the cases of exiled journalists from around the world and hear what life has been like since they made the decision to pursue life and freedom abroad.
Who: María Lilly Delgado Co-founder, Traces of Impunity, Muhamadjon Kabirov EIC, Azda TV; Sonny Swe Co-founder, Frontier Myanmar; Masrat Zahra Photojournalist; Preethi Nallu (moderator) Global director, Report for the World
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Press Club
Thu, May 4 – Artificial Intelligence Literacy
What: We will explore some of the AI impacts and issues relating to media literacy. Many of us are educators who strive to inform others about the aspects of media literacy. In this session we will explore together what it means to be literate about AI and what should be a part of a media literacy curriculum to build this literacy.
Who: Pamela Morris is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Indiana University who specializes in media studies and new media; Scott Moss is a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s Educational Leadership Program who works as an Instructional Technology Outreach Coordinator at the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
When: 4 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Education Lab
Fri, May 5 - Arrested on the Job: Press freedom trends & advice for journalists working in the field
What: A discussion about concerns for journalists working in the U.S, featuring firsthand accounts from journalists who have been arrested or mistreated for simply doing their jobs. Participants will gain an understanding of their legal rights when faced with threats and advice on preparing for work in the field.
Who: Matilda Bliss and Veronica Coit, two journalists with the citizen journalism publication Asheville Blade who were arrested on trespassing charges while documenting a sweep of a homeless camp in 2021; Dion Rabouin, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained while doing a routine person-on-the-street interview outside of a bank in Phoenix; Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, which oversees the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker; Steve Reilly, a Washington, D.C.-based investigative reporter for The Messenger, will moderate the discussion.
When: 10:30 am, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: National Press Club
Fame: The Social Currency
/Merit doesn’t drive celebrity. A good story does. It gives us a common topic to feed our hunger for connection. That’s why, according to a couple of studies, some people are famous for just being famous.
Researchers at Stanford University compared baseball players (since there are clear measures of their abilities). Even if players were well past their prime, fame drove conversations, not achievement.
There are applications here to business and other corners of society. One of the researchers says, “It is critical to remember that the most prominent people in your organization are not always the ones producing the highest-quality work; they might just be better at selling themselves."
Read more about the study here.
Stephen Goforth
33 Data Science & AI articles from April 2023
/A pitch for using cultural consensus theory to mitigate large language model bias
An inside look at geospatial intelligence with the CEO of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation
The base rate fallacy and its impact on data science
Some examples of how AI is advancing current space efforts
We might see as many as 65,000 satellites in orbit by 2030
“The disruptive nature of the 4IR, which brings both complex risks and unprecedented opportunities”
How many satellites are orbiting around earth?
The core topics you need to focus on to become an AI Data Scientist
Launch providers must make tricky decisions on how to ramp up capacity as the space economy expands
An overview of some the most influential Deep Learning papers of the last decade
KD Nuggets offers predictions for AI in the next decade
The 10 most innovative space companies of 2023
An advanced satellite surveillance imagery system—the LAPIS time-series video
60 ChatGPT prompts for data science with ratings
“The new DoD satellite acquisition model favors a spiral development timeline”
When data scientists are working with sparse data, there are several machine learning models to help
“A national scarcity of geodesists could threaten critical intelligence community missions”
“Geodesy is an essentially nonexistent expertise in the US”
China’s military aims to launch 13K satellites in the race for low-earth orbit dominance
Why you don’t need big data to train machine learning
The Top 19 skills you need to know in 2023 to be a data scientist
Why the chances of being able to fully explain AI may become impossible for humans to comprehend
Can neural networks be optimized for certain tasks? MIT researchers think so
How rapid growth in drone use and EU Regulations will accelerate demand for satellite connectivity
How to Use ChatGPT to Improve Your Data Science Skills
A short video explanation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) in simple terms
Managing Yourself
/If you understand how you think and work, you have more control over who you will become. Abilities can improve as you understand how your mind works.
Creative and critically thinking people open a conversation with themselves that allows them to understand, control, and improve their own minds and work.
Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do
The Potential of AI using Liquid Neural Networks
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Large language models like ChatGPT and Dall-E have billions of parameters, and each improved model increases in size and complexity. Researchers at an MIT lab believe artificial intelligence can make a leap forward by going smaller. Their experiments show liquid neural networks beat other systems when navigating in unknown environments. “Liquid neural networks could generalize to scenarios that they had never seen, without any fine-tuning, and could perform this task seamlessly and reliably.” They also open the proverbial black box of the system’s decision-making process, which could help to root out bias and other undesirable elements in an AI model. The results have immediate implications for robotics, navigation systems, smart mobility, and beyond toward predicting financial and medical events. Read more here.
When resting means death
/Two climbers died in a weekend snowstorm on Mount Rainier. The men carried warm clothes, sleeping bags, tents, and other items. They had everything they needed to save their lives. But instead of using what they had brought with them to survive, they first sat down to rest—where they died of exposure.
The climb can be tough. In those desperate moments when exhaustion overwhelms us, we have to use the tools at our disposal so our rest will not be in vain.
Stephen Goforth
Loneliness and Giving
/Most of us, driven by our own aching needs and voids, address life and other people in the stance of seekers. We become what CS Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, calls “..those pathetic people who simply want friends and can never make any. The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends.”
Most of us know our need to be loved and try to seek the love that we need from others. But the paradox remains uncompromised; if we seek the love which we need, we will never find it. We are lost.
Love can effect the solution of our problems but we must face the fact that to be loved, we must become loveable. When a person orients his life towards the satisfaction of his own needs, when he goes out of seek the love which he needs, no matter how we try to soften our judgments of him, he is self-centered. He is not lovable, even if he does deserve our compassion, He is concentrating on himself, and as long as he continues to concentrate on himself, his ability to love will always remain stunted and he will himself remain a perennial infant.
If, however, a person seeks not to receive love, but rather to give it, he will become lovable and he will most certainly be loved in the end. This is the immutable law under which we live: concern for ourselves and convergence upon self can only isolate self and induce an even deeper and more torturous loneliness. It is a vicious and terrible cycle that closes in on us when loneliness, seeking to be relieved through the love of others, only increases. The only way we can break this cycle formed by our lusting egos is to stop being concerned with ourselves and to being to be concerned with others.
John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Love?
Adobe’s ‘Firefly’ Joins the Generative AI Fireworks Show
/Adobe’s generative AI model Firefly will create a combination of new images, text effects, and video from user descriptions. The program borrows from other Adobe programs: Express, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Similar to DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, Adobe hopes to avoid some of the legal entailments by using its own collection of images as a data set from which the AI is trained (Adobe Stock). The company hasn’t indicated how much it will cost to use Firefly and, for the moment, it remains free and in Beta. Text-based video editing is also being integrated into Adobe Premiere Pro,
Sabotaging Yourself
/From time to time a project will come along that seems so big and challenging you start to question your ability to succeed. It could be as epic as writing a book or directing major motion picture or it could be something more pedestrian like passing a final exam or delivering an important speech to your corporate boss. Naturally, some doubts will float through your mind when ever failures possible.
Sometimes, when the fear of failure is strong, you use a technique psychologist call self-handicapping to change the course of your future emotional state. Self-handicapping behaviors are investments in a future reality in which you can blame your failure on something other than your ability.
You might wear inappropriate clothes to a job interview, or… or stay up all night drinking before work – you are very resourceful when it comes to setting yourself up to fail. If you succeed, you can say you did so despite terrible odds. If you fall short, you can blame the events leading up to the failure instead of your own incompetence or inadequacy.
When you see your performance in the outside world as an integral part of your personality, you are more likely to self-handicap. Psychologist Phillip Zombardo told the New York Times in 1984, “Some people stake their whole identity on their acts. They take the attitude that ‘if you criticize anything I do, you criticize me.’ Their egocentricity means they can’t risk a failure because it’s a devastating blow to their ego.”
David McRaney, You are Not so Smart
The Base Rate Fallacy can get you in trouble
/The Base Rate Fallacy comes into play when someone comes to a conclusion without considering all the relevant information. There’s a tendency to over-estimate the value of new information out of context. Consider also, an accurate test is not necessarily a very predictive test. And some facts are provably true but nevertheless can feel false when phrased a certain way. These factors can lead someone to hold misconceptions about medical tests and other data actually mean.
A healthy balance between model building and data gathering
/Too much theory without data, and speculations run amok. We get lost in a fog of models and idealizations that seldom have much to say about the world we live in. The maps invent all sorts of worlds and tell us very little about the world we live in, leaving us to get lost in fantasy. With too much data and no theory, though, we drown in confusion. We don’t know how to tell the story we are supposed to tell. We hear all sorts of tales about what is out there in the wilderness, but we don’t know how to chart the best path to reach our destination. The better the balance between speculative thinking and data gathering, the healthier the science that comes out.
Marcelo Gleiser writing in BigThink
12 Media Webinars this week about ChatGPT, Canva, VR, fact-checking, the environment, objectivity, student mentoring, etc.
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Mon, April 24 - How to Manage and Collaborate With Different Generations
What: You’ll learn how to separate generational stereotypes from reality, create more opportunities for creative problem solving, connect with employees from a different generation.
Who: Treva D. Smith, Deputy Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence College; Patrick Malone, Director and Executive in Residence Department of Public Administration and Policy, American University
When: 4 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: GovLoop
Tues, April 25 – Student Mentoring
What: This is a mentoring and career-information event featuring professionals from various journalism backgrounds including TV, radio, print and more. This is a great opportunity to get your resume, cover letter and reel looked at, as well as ask questions about the industry and network!
Who: Guest mentors include Kay Williams, Publicist and PR professional; Cerise Castle, digital journalist for Knock LA, VICE News and NPR; Jacob Gonzalez, technical director and multi-award winning producer.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists, LA Chapter
Tues, April 25 - What is ChatGPT & Will it Replace my Job?
What: Learn about the new artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT and how it will impact our jobs.
Who: Michelle Egan, APR, Fellow PRSA, Chief Communications Officer at Alyeska Pipeline and Chair, PRSA National; Heather Cavanaugh, APR, Senior Director, External Affairs at Alaska Communications
When: 3pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free to members, $10 for nonmembers
Sponsor: Public Relations Society of America, Alaska chapter
Tues, April 25 - The Future of VR in Communications
What: How communicators can leverage virtual reality (VR) storytelling to create new realities for all communities.
Who: Candace Parrish, Assistant Professor at Penn State University
When: 3 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Institute for Public Relations
Wed, April 26 – Trust, Truth, & SPJ
What: A discussion on multiple efforts to restore the public’s trust in real journalism, and how SPJ has been an inspiration and now a partner in these efforts.
Who: Sally Lehrman, an SPJ Wells Memorial Key winner, founded and is CEO of the Trust Project; Beth Potter, U.S. regional manager of the Journalism Trust Initiative; Lynn Walsh, the 2016-17 national president of SPJ, is assistant director of Trusting News; Fred Brown is a former SPJ national president and Wells Memorial Key winner who currently heads SPJ’s Professional Standards and Ethics Committee.
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists
Wed, April 26 - What’s Really Going On in Artificial Intelligence: Top Trends From Stanford’s AI Index
What: You’ll find out what AI can and can't do right now, and its relevance to your role, investment trends in AI, the types of firms using AI and how they're applying it
Who: Nestor Maslej, Research Manager at Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence; Bill Valle, Senior Director of Strategic Growth for NetBase Quid; Niraj Sharma, Director, Product Marketing NetBase Quid
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Ad Week
Wed, April 26 - Getting set up for success with Canva
What: This session is tailored for journalists already using Canva, who wish to triple-check their account is set up for success. How to get your team set up on Canva, how to share designs and collaborate in real time, how to make your content accessible, and automation hacks. The masterclass will include hands-on exercises, examples and case studies.
Who: Jonathan Harley, Global Head of Strategic Partnerships at Canva; Diana Abeleven, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Canva
When: 9 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The Walkley Foundation
Wed, April 26 - How Fact-Checking Works
What: With the digital deluge of misinformation, it’s getting more difficult to know what to trust. A number of fact-checking organizations have emerged and have debunked some of the most viral false images and videos springing up on social media. We’ll learn about the work professional fact-checkers do and skills we can use to do our own fact-checking.
Who: Dan Evon who debunks viral rumors for NLP’s RumorGuard platform; Rafael Olavarria was a multimedia journalist with Univisión, where he won 11 Southeast Emmy Awards.
When: 3 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: News Literacy Project
Wed, April 26 - Beyond Objectivity: Do Journalists Need a New Standard for Trustworthy News?
What: Should journalism be "objective"? News consumers say they want unbiased reporting; fair, accurate journalism has never been more important for the health of our democracy; and trust in news organizations has eroded badly. Yet the traditional standard of "objectivity" is under attack from increasingly diverse newsrooms, saying it has excluded too many young journalists, the people they serve, and the issues they care about from a monochromatic picture of reality.
Who: Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor, The Washington Post; Andrew Heyward, former president, CBS News.
When: 8 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists
Wed, April 26 - Is the Earth Sacred? Hearing from Young, Religious Americans on Environmental Issues
What: Why do some religious people embrace the issue of climate change, while others remain skeptical that it’s a real problem or that humans are the cause? At bottom, is the difference in these views theological? Or political? Or a matter of education and sources of information? Will disagreements over climate change prompt more young people to leave religion and join the growing ranks of the “nones”?
Who: Tori Goebel, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, Raphaela Gold, Princeton University student, and others.Moderated by: Leah Schade, Lexington Theological Seminary.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Pew Research Center & the Society of Environmental Journalists
Thu, April 27 - Friend or Foe? What Generative AI means For Journalists and Journalism
What: A panel of experts will discuss how generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT and DALLE-E, can be used by journalists to assist in news gathering and production, while examining the potential pitfalls.
Who: Aimee Reinhart is local news AI program manager for The Associated Press; Joe Amditis is assistant director of products and events at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University; Eric Wishart is standards and ethics editor of the AFP news agency
When: 7 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists
Fri, April 28 - ChatGPT: What Could Go Wrong? or Right?
What: AI technology that can produce researched, literate work products, but sometimes fabricates falsehoods can create ethical dilemmas for journalism and democracy.
Who: Alex Mahadevan Director·MediaWise/Poynter Institute; Samantha Sunne Author of Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting; James Goodwin Senior Policy Analyst·Center for Progressive Reform; Celia Wexler Moderator/SPJDC Board Member
When: 1 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Washington Society of Professional Journalists
When Habits Imprison Us
/Like the professor who sticks to a daily routine of a quiet supper, an evening walk, and early to bed, we all need space in our lives where unthinking habits relieve us of deciding simple tasks. By finding comfort in his sedentary home life, the professor provides thinking room to explore creative ideas in his field.
When we do the same, these daily habits can be critical in providing us with needed balance and continuity. However, when the routine becomes an end in itself, maintaining our cherished inconsequential details can become a way to avoid life's bigger issues as we neglect the needs of others. The box we build (and hide within) keeps us away from the things that refresh our spirits and give our lives meaning.
Stephen Goforth
Stumbling blocks and stepping stones
/The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.
11 Newer Social Media Networks of Note
/Artifact - discuss news stories.
BeReal - photo-sharing app.
Bluesky - a decentralized Twitter alternative (Android and invite only for now)
Discord - for playing video games with fellow gamers.
Gobo - switch between networks in the app, developed by the MIT Media Lab (May 2023).
Letterboxd - an app for film enthusiasts to share their opinions.
Mastodon - a Twitter clone sliced into communities.
Minus - users make only 100 posts on their timeline for life.
Nextdoor - for neighbors to talk about crime & potholes.
Nostr - focused on giving people content control and the communities they engage with.
Truth Social - a social network for conservatives started by Trump.
Why you make terrible life choices
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You seek evidence that confirms your beliefs because being wrong sucks. Being wrong means you’re not as smart as you thought. So you end up seeking information that confirms what you already know.
When you walk into every interaction trying to prove yourself right, you’re going to succumb to confirmation bias-the human tendency to seek, interpret and remember information that confirms your own pre-existing beliefs.
Researchers studied two groups of children in school. The first group avoided challenging problems because it came with a high risk of being wrong. The second group actively sought out challenging problems for the learning opportunity, even though they might be wrong. They found that the second group consistently outperformed the first.
Focus less on being right and more on experiencing life with curiosity and wonder. When you’re willing to be wrong, you open yourself up to new insights.
Genuine beginnings
/Genuine beginnings depend upon inner realignment rather than on external shifts, for it is when we are aligned with deep longings that we become powerfully motivated. -William Bridges