@Flipboard@flipboard.social
"There's a lot out there to leak," writes Laura Hazard Owen of the chaos that surrounds the Trump administration. She writes for NiemanLab about how news organizations are changing their tactics to attract tipsters (have you heard of an app called Signal?) and explains how to leak information to a journalist as safely as possible.
Yale researchers at the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) were looking for 35,000 missing Ukrainian children, until DOGE cut off their funding. Mariana Lastovyria and Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko write for @timkmak’s Counteroffensive about what will happen now.
www.counteroffensiv...
#Ukraine #UkraineRussia #Trump #TrumpAdministration #DOGE #ElonMusk #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Are we humans allocating our collective “genius” effectively, @Daojoan wonders? “Because when I look around at our vaunted technological progress, I can't help but notice that we're drowning in slightly better stuff while the rudiments of human flourishing remain stagnant or deteriorate and decay. There's progress here, but it's not science fiction. It's barely even science,” she writes in this essay that also covers how and why we’re trapped in a cycle of over-consumption.
#Technology #Tech #Innovation #JoanWestenberg Consumption #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Women have been playing baseball in the U.S. for 150 years, with the first professional team, the Dolly Vardens, being formed in 1867. @TheConversationUS takes a look at how girls were gradually funnelled towards softball — seen as more suitable for the “weaker” female body — and why a new era in women’s baseball may be about to begin.
#Sport #Sports #Baseball #Women #WomensHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Oh goodie — it’s election season in the U.S. again. @bolts’s @taniel breaks down the 20 races to watch in April, from the high-profile Wisconsin supreme court election to the congressional specials in Florida.
#USPolitics #Wisconsin #Florida #DownBallotRaces #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
There are lots of clues to suggest that Mars once had liquid water on it. @KnowableMag talked to planetary scientist Bruce Jakosky about the hunt for H2O on the red planet.
#Astronomy #PlanetaryScience #Mars #Science #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Times are hard in Sweetwater, a town of about 10,000 people in Texas’ Central Plains. Drug abuse is rife, work is limited, and mental healthcare is scarce and stigmatized. Here’s @TexasObserver’s story on the crisis in Sweetwater — one which is replicated in rural towns across the country.
#Health #Healthcare #MentalHealth #USA #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The Massachusetts State House has one of the oldest public art collections in the country with more than 300 works — of which only 20 depict women. Here’s @gbhnews’s story on how Senate President Karen Spilka is trying to change that.
#WomensHistoryMonth #WomensHistory #Boston #Massachusetts #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Who could have predicted this? Really, a lot of people. @404mediaco’s @jasonkoebler reports on how 23andMe’s bankruptcy has led to more than 50 class-action and state court lawsuits from around 35,000 people who are worried about what will now happen to their genetic data.
#Science #Research #DataSecurity #InfoSec #23andMe #Bankruptcy #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
“Is legacy media dead?” asks @parkermolloy for @damemagazine. She looks at how, with newspaper owners interfering in the work of their reporters, independent media sources are the ones holding power to account. “What independent journalism offers that legacy media increasingly doesn’t is transparency about where it’s coming from. There’s no pretense of objectivity that masks institutional biases and billionaire influence,” she writes. “Readers know what they’re getting, which paradoxically can build more trust than false neutrality.”
#Media #Journalism #LegacyMedia #WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
The word friends used to describe convenience store worker and part-time DJ Matthew Allison: Goofy. This @ProPublica report explains how he was also a key figure in Terrorgram, a network of white supremacist chat groups and channels. He was arrested last year; prosecutors say he used the Telegram platform to solicit attacks on government infrastructure, encourage the assassination of politicians and distribute instructions for making bombs.
#Telegram #Terrorgram #Terrorism #Extremism #WhiteSupremacists #NeoNazis #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
It’s #NewstodonFriday once again, and as always, we have a great selection of stories from independent newsrooms. This week’s highlights include @ProPublica’s story about a DJ turned white supremacist influencer, @parkermolloy writing for @damemagazine about the death of legacy media, and @bolts’s @taniel on —yikes — another round of U.S. elections. Please check out these stories and all the others in this thread, comment, like, follow their accounts and give them your money. ⤵️
#Media #Journalism #News #Newstodon #MastodonMigration #FollowFriday
Mass layoffs have begun at Voice of America (VOA), the U.S.'s government-funded media network. The move came after Trump signed an executive order to effectively eliminate the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which supervises VOA, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and six other federal agencies. Here's more from Al Jazeera. At the second link, find a @CNN story about how the news of VOA's dismantling has been received in China.
#VoiceOfAmerica #Journalism #Media #News #TrumpAdministration
Utah was one of only a few red states to allow universal vote-by-mail, but not anymore. @bolts’s Alex Burness writes about how the Republican-controlled legislature is about to get rid of the practice, which has been in place since 2019, and is imposing new restrictions on absentee voting too.
#USPolitics #Voting #Utah #USNews #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
When Spanish colonizers established a town in the mountains of Bolivia in the 1500s, they might have expected to expand their communities by having babies, but they could not. While Indigenous folks raised families, not a single child of European descent was born for decades. It was all down to the lack of oxygen at altitude, which the settlers were not genetically adapted to deal with. @KnowableMag reports on how scientists are now studying this to see if they can help pregnant people whose bodies are struggling to provide enough oxygen to their fetuses, at any altitude.
#Science #Biology #Health #Medicine #Pregnancy #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
School vouchers sure are good for someone — but it’s not necessarily kids. Here’s @TexasObserver on how in the Lone Star state, the push for school choice could provide a huge payday for private contractors. These certified educational assistance organizations (CEAO) will act as middlemen between the state, parents and private schools — for a fee, of course.
#SchoolChoice #SchoolVouchers #Education #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
@gbhnews has a new podcast series, “Scratch & Win,” which is about the rise of America’s most successful lottery. Expect tales of organized crime, the FBI, and U.S. politics — just another day in America, in other words.
#Podcast #Massachusetts #Boston #Gambling #Lottery #Documentary #News #Media #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Speaking of drained brains and France, here’s a gentle reminder from our @CultureDesk of why America doesn’t actually have a Champagne business.
#Champagne #France #Tariffs #Food #Culture #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Last week, Aix Marseille University in France offered funding to American scientists who feel like their work is being censored. It’s already seeing great interest from researchers at NASA, Yale and Stanford, and the program may extend through more universities across Europe. “We are witnessing a new brain drain,” Éric Berton, Aix Marseille University’s president, said in a press release. Here’s more from @emanuelmaiberg for @404mediaco
#Science #Research #TrumpAdministration #France #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
If the first thing you do in the morning is check your phone and the second is wonder aloud, “What fresh hell is this?” trust us, you’re not alone. @damemagazine discusses the overwhelming fear Americans (and others) are experiencing right now, and how to mitigate it.
#Psychology #Fear #MentalHealth #USPolitics #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Leaked audio from a staff meeting at the U.S. Social Security Administration suggests the agency may be in peril. Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek, a career civil servant who was promoted to his current position by the Trump administration, told others at a closed-door meeting: “Are we going to break something?” referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data. “I don’t know.” Here's more from @ProPublica.
www.propublica.org/...
News continues to flow at breakneck speed and independent newsrooms continue to reveal and analyze what’s happening around the world. Highlights for us this week were @ProPublica's exposé on DOGE’s potential impact on social security, @KnowableMag's explainer on pregnancy at altitude, and a lovely interview by @thecontinent of the beloved Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed. Please check out these stories and all the others in this thread, comment, like, follow their accounts and give them your money. ⤵️
#Media #Journalism #News #Newstodon #MastodonMigration #FollowFriday
Former tech reporter Almar Latour is publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of its parent company, Dow Jones (itself part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp). @reckless1280 spoke to him for @theverge's Decoder podcast about AI, press freedom, news industry layoffs, and the future of the news industry. "I think we’ll see innovation in journalism and a lot of creativity — already and in years to come — where, undeniably, there’s this flood of information of mixed quality. There’s also, undeniably, a huge demand for reliable information. People are craving it more than ever before. In fact, the more noise there is, the more people are confused and the more they are asking, 'Hey, tell me what this means,'" says Latour.
#Journalism #Media #Tech #Technology #AI #News #DowJones #WallStreetJournal
American prisons run on forced labor. For @bolts, historian Robert Chase answered reader questions about the legal basis for paying incarcerated people below minimum wage, whether the Americans with Disabilities Act applies in these circumstances, who has the authority to stop prison labor, and more.
#Prison #PrisonLabor #ModernSlavery #USNews #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
50 years ago, Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo worked in the Oslo lab of the late neuroscientist Per Andersen, where they made a momentous discovery: the fact that when a neuron signals to another neuron frequently enough, the second one will later respond more strongly to new signals for hours afterwards. The phenomenon is called long-term potentiation (LTP) and it’s fundamental to how we learn and remember. @KnowableMag talked to Bliss and Lømo about their discovery, and to other neuroscientists about how they’re applying knowledge about LTP to their research about memory disorders, chronic pain and more.
#Science #Biology #Health #Medicine #Neuroscience #Medicine #MemoryLoss #ChronicPain #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “declaration of disaster,” on the border crisis, signed in 2021, allows him to ignore the usual protocol when handing out valuable contracts to private contractors and vendors. And it’s an expensive business: State agencies are paying for everything from zip ties and razor wire to helicopters and planes. Here’s @TexasObserver’s story on who have been the big winners, including some who have become Abbott’s campaign “patrons.”
#Immigration #GregAbbott #Border #Texas #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Japanese car makers have sent used cars to Zimbabwe for decades — tens of thousands a year. They often end up in a landfill, in particular the electric vehicles, because of a lack of specialized mechanics to get them back on the road or safely recycle them. Zimbabweans have had enough. “Our township landfills are filled with batteries and other sophisticated elements from discarded EV cars, spewing toxic chemicals, because we don’t know how to recycle their parts, nor have the machinery or skill to do so,” garage manager Amos Gwada says. @thexylom tells the full story.
#ClimateChange #Environment #EastAfrica #IlemiTriangle #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
You may not know the name Steve Berger, but the archconservative evangelical pastor has influence in Washington, D.C. — so much so that several Republican party lawmakers live at his nonprofit organization’s headquarters. Berger has said his goal is to “disciple” members of Congress so what “they learn is then translated into policy.” Past and present residents of his townhouse — described by @ProPublica as “what amounts to a group house for conservative lawmakers” include Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump ally Rep. Andy Ogles and Dan Bishop, a former Congressman.
#Politics #GOP #RepublicanParty #MikeJohnson #EvangelicalChristianity #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and you’re interested in the future of news, you might be interested in an event @SFPublicPress is hosting. On March 13, there’ll be a special screening of “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink,” a documentary by Academy Award-nominee Rick Goldsmith, about hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which has been gutting local papers across America.
#SanFrancisco #BayArea #SanFranciscoBayArea #SFBA #Film #Documentary #News #Media #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
Another day, another almighty AI error. This time, @samleecole reports for @404mediaco on what Google and Amazon AI are saying about “Mein Kampf.” “Readers describe the book as a true work of art,” apparently.
#Technology #Tech #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
