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☆ Democrats win control of Pennsylvania House, end GOP rule in competitive swing state
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Reading, PA - May 10: Pennsylvania State Rep and Democratic Leader Joanna E. McClinton speaks in front of Reading City Hall. Democrats won control of the Pennsylvania House in special elections Tuesday, wresting partial power from Republicans for the first time in a dozen years in the competitive swing state. Three of those Democratic seats quickly became vacant, casting uncertainty over who actually controlled the chamber. Democrats had been expected to win Tuesday's special elections, because they had easily won the same seats last fall. That's because Republican Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver won a special election Jan. 31 to fill a vacant state Senate seat.

☆ Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +17 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting DumberWalter Mosley is best known as one of contemporary literature’s pre-eminent crime novelists, but he’s actually four or five different writers rolled into one. You have to tell stories about real people experiencing it and not real people with a Ph.D. People who are not stupid but ignorant, who don’t know things about the world. There are people who don’t know how to spell, they don’t know how to think. You have these people coming out into the world, and they don’t know what to do. That’s going to happen.

☆ TikTok-based HR conversations are coming for a new generation of workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-04 | by ( Mikaela Cohen | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

"Content on TikTok accesses the younger generation in a direct way, so HR teams can set up space to communicate things like, 'How do we deal with discrimination?'" "That's just not how the younger generations communicate," Folan said. This also helps HR teams facilitate an open dialogue with employees in a faster way. It might even benefit an HR team to carve out an entire position, or even allow existing employees to dedicate time solely to TikTok content creation. Folan said HR teams, and any team within a company, stands to benefit from having younger workers to level up their internal communication methods and branch into spaces, like TikTok creation.

☆ Fact Check-Meme about CNN adjusting brightness on photos of Memphis police officers shows a fabricated image
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

A meme shared by social media users shows a screenshot of a fabricated CNN report with altered photographs of the Memphis police officers charged with the murder of Tyre Nichols. The photographs have been altered to dramatically increase the brightness, making the officers’ skin look lighter. A representative for CNN told Reuters via email that the image is fabricated. The screenshot was created using a meme template used for a variety of other satirical news reports, as seen (here ). The screenshot purporting to show a CNN segment was created as a meme.

☆ You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +12 min

Photo illustration by Bráulio Amado Talk You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction“People feel a kind of longing for a belonging to the natural world,” says the author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. I am deeply aware of the fact that my view of the natural world is colored by my home place. But I don’t think that’s the same as romanticizing nature. Of course the natural world is full of forces that are so-called destructive. The story that we have to illuminate is that we don’t have to be complicit with destruction.

☆ The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You Down
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +15 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You DownWe’ve been given no shortage of digital tools that should, in theory, help us work better, with more focus and efficiency, and connect us more easily with our colleagues. Your brain can’t have your inbox open next to the memo you’re writing while you’re also on the phone. The only way to get out of that suboptimal equilibrium is to completely change the way the organization collaborates. You can’t have a small number of executives figure out the right way to do the work and then dispense it. But zoom out to John McPhee’s career, and you’re like, you’re one of the most productive and impactful writers of all time.

☆ Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Draymond Green Sets Us Straight on the Real N.B.A. Celtics have a die-hard fan base that’s going to root hard for the Celtics. But when I’ve listened to it, it’s not as if you’re saying things that are all that far away from what pundits or analysts are saying. I don’t think it affected who I was, who I am, because my mom never allowed it to. So when I say what he said is irrelevant, I’m saying that from the standpoint of, Let me not deflect.

☆ Iggy Pop Isn’t About to Whitewash His Past
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +18 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Iggy Pop Isn’t About to Whitewash His PastIggy Pop’s life and work constitute one of music’s most remarkable survival stories. Iggy and the Stooges around 1969 — from left, Scott Asheton, Ron Asheton, Dave Alexander and Iggy Pop. But if you quietly say it to some sepulchral music, that’s a different thing, because you’re facing darkness once you hit 50. I don’t think that I was really thinking about anything. My doctor tells me I have a strong immune system, but I don’t think that’ll do it for you.

☆ An A.I. Pioneer on What We Should Really Fear
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +13 min

Pioneer on What We Should Really FearArtificial intelligence stirs our highest ambitions and deepest fears like few other technologies. Can you explain what “common sense” means in the context of teaching it to A.I.? A way of describing it is that common sense is the dark matter of intelligence. I don’t know what “solving” should look like, but what I mean to say for the purpose of this conversation is that A.I. It’s common sense not to kill all the plants in order to preserve human lives; it’s common sense not to go with extreme, degenerative solutions.

Family members amble through the front door with more gifts, so the kids form a gift-opening assembly line that starts from youngest to oldest. Oh, the gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts! I can’t control what others give my kids, but I can control our understanding of material objects and values. Often, on these boisterous multigenerational family holiday celebrations, the conversation inevitably turns toward nostalgia. “Remember when even buying bones was a special treat for our family?” my mom says with eyes twinkling.

☆ UK retail sales fall as cost-of-living crisis bites
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Andy Bruce | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Summary Retail sales volumes slip 0.4% m/m in NovemberData underlines tough times for UK consumersConsumer confidence ticks up, but still near record lowLONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - British retail sales slid unexpectedly in November, despite the soccer World Cup and the Black Friday sales promotions, a potential indication of the stress felt by many households as the cost-of-living crisis eats into their finances. Retail sales volumes dropped by 0.4% in November after a 0.9% rise in October which had represented a bounce from September when sales were affected by a one-off public holiday to mark the funeral of Queen Elizabeth. Retail sales volumes fell to 1.5% below their 2019 level. Earlier, market research firm GfK said British consumer confidence crept up this month but was still close to all-time low levels. Compared with a year earlier, retail sales in November were 5.9% lower, the ONS said, a slightly steeper fall than forecast in the Reuters poll.

☆ Bond investors expect smaller Fed rate hike but brace for inflation shocks
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Davide Barbuscia | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The less aggressive stance - which followed better-than-expected consumer price data in October - fueled a bond rally over the past month. Fresh data on inflation will come with the release of the November Consumer Price Index on Tuesday, one day before the Fed's policy decision will be announced. Fed funds futures traders on Friday were pricing in a 93% probability of a 50 basis points rate hike this month, which would bring the Fed's policy rate to a 4.25%-4.5% range. As of September, Fed's policymakers saw the fed funds rate ending 2023 at 4.6%. Therefore, I have to believe that 10-year Treasury yields are probably too low," he said.

☆ Do Humans Owe Animals Equal Rights? Martha Nussbaum Thinks So.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +15 min

Photo illustration by Bráulio Amado Talk Do Humans Owe Animals Equal Rights? But does it then follow that we think of animals’ lives as being equal in value to humans’? That would lead to redoubling our efforts to make sure animals don’t perish in the future. Just think: Women are often raped, and that has been so all throughout human history. Now, as an incrementalist I want to be cautious here because I don’t think that predatory animals are doing anything wrong.

☆ Tom Stoppard Fears the Virus of Antisemitism Has Been Reactivated
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

I don’t think that it’s an equal participant in some kind of debate. I don’t think so. If you’re sitting there enjoying the structure, then I don’t think that’s entirely good news for the writer. I don’t know that I would actually pursue the subject as a playwright. You know, I’m told there is such a thing as the long view.

☆ Reporters are seething over being shut out of Naomi Biden’s wedding, which drew inspiration from Time magazine images of past White House nuptials
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Nicole Gaudiano | Kimberly Leonard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Naomi Biden and Peter Neal's White House wedding was closed to the news media. The White House says no media outlets were granted access to the events on Saturday. But her White House wedding to Peter Neal was closed to the news media, frustrating White House reporters whose complaints grew louder on Tuesday when Vogue magazine's exclusive pre-wedding coverage was posted online. But she said the Biden White House has waived Post reporters off correct reporting on his Supreme Court pick, attendees in private meetings and his Egypt trip. Naomi Biden is the daughter of Hunter Biden and Kathleen Buhle, who divorced in 2017.

☆ Biden’s granddaughter Naomi ties knot in White House wedding
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

It’s the first White House wedding with a president’s granddaughter as the bride, and the first one ever on the South Lawn. Naomi Biden walks to the White House in Washington, D.C. with first lady Jill Biden and President Joe Biden on Oct. 11, 2021. The couple, who have been living at the White House, was set up by a mutual friend about four years ago in New York City and have been together ever since, the White House said. The White House announced the wedding in a statement following the small, private wedding in the Rose Garden. The White House Correspondents Association, which advocates for press access to the White House and the president, said it was “deeply disappointed” that the White House declined its request for press coverage of Naomi Biden’s wedding.

☆ Brian Eno Reveals the Hidden Purpose of All Art
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

I think I’m still answering it. I’m absolutely fascinated by this question, because I think I have an answer, and I don’t think it has ever been well answered. Since we’re talking about how things work: How do you want your new album to work for people? You have to take that on board as being one of the things that’s happening in culture and quite different from the story that we’re generally hearing. I don’t think many people take that as seriously as I do.

☆ ‘Here comes the bride’: White House to host its 19th wedding
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-13 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

WASHINGTON — “Here Comes the Bride” will be heard at the White House very soon. Stewart McLaurin, president of the historical association, said special occasions at the White House aren’t soon forgotten. “It’s like being part of the American fabric.”A White House wedding is no guarantee of a lasting marriage. Lynda Johnson Robb said she never thought about a White House wedding, but circumstances practically dictated that she and Marine Capt. Red is her signature color and December nuptials meant the White House was already decorated for Christmas.

☆ Stephen King slams Elon Musk again, saying he preferred Twitter before the billionaire took over: 'Less controversy, more fun.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Stephen King has continued his feud with Elon Musk, saying he preferred Twitter in "pre-Musk days." King said the platform was "more fun" and had "less controversy" before the takeover. The novelist has been sparring with Musk on social media over some of his changes to the platform. The novelist and billionaire have been sparring on social media since Musk's Twitter takeover. King also took to the platform to compare Musk with a fictional character who cons his friends.

☆ Elon Musk says he would pay $8 a month for Twitter subscription amid controversy from celebrities and lawmakers over the blue tick fee
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk said he would pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue, which gives users a blue verified tick. Musk has doubled down on Twitter's plans to charge $8 to users who want to have a blue tick. The phrase was in fact the reply, which Musk sent to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she slammed his plans to charge Twitter users $8 for blue ticks. A verified Twitter user commented on Musk's photo of the t-shirt on Monday, saying "are you going to pay the $8, elon?" The New York Times reported that Twitter was delaying the launch of its paid verification plan until after the midterm elections.

☆ Mark Cuban tells Elon Musk 'your business, your decision' after his suggestion that only certain users should pay the $8 verification fee was bluntly rejected
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Mark Cuban told Elon Musk that Twitter was "his business," following an exchange between the pair. Elon Musk replied to Cuban, saying: "$8 for all." Cuban wrote in the tweet. Musk replied to Cuban, saying: "$8 for all." Your decision," Cuban wrote in a quote-tweet to Musk.

☆ Twitter is already rolling out Elon Musk's divisive $7.99 blue check paid verification subscription
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-05 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

According to an updated description of the Twitter app in the Apple App store, a blue check mark will cost $7.99. According to an updated description of the Twitter app that appeared on the Apple App store Saturday afternoon, the company is adding new features to Twitter Blue "starting today." "Starting today, we're adding great new features to Twitter Blue, and have more on the way soon," the app description reads. "Get Twitter Blue for $7.99/month if you sign up now. "Far too many legacy 'verified' checkmarks were handed out, often arbitrarily, so in reality they are *not* verified," Musk wrote.

An earlier study in adults showed that the drug did indeed help with weight loss. “We’ve entered the phase where we are seeing the kind of weight loss where teens come to us in tears. In addition to the weight loss, the drug reduced some cardiovascular risk factors, including waist circumference and bad cholesterol. As it turns out, even when people get weight loss surgery, “three years out, there is significant weight gain,” Li said. When a weight loss drug like this is prescribed to patients, that shouldn’t be the end of things, Li said.

☆ Celebrities including Lynda Carter and Josh Gad are criticizing Elon Musk for saying he would make Twitter users pay for a blue tick
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter would introduce an $8 monthly verification fee for users who want to keep their blue tick. Elon Musk’s Twitter account is displayed on the screen of an iPhone on April 26, 2022 in Paris, France. Chesnot/Getty ImagesDespite criticism, Musk has doubled down on his plans to charge users who want to remain verified on the platform. The $8 subscription fee is cheaper than what The Verge reported, which was $20 monthly. Users who pay for the subscription will not only get the blue tick, but also the ability to long-form videos, fewer ads, and priority in search, according to Musk.

☆ 22 candidates have together pumped more than $435 million (and counting) of their own money into 2022 midterm races
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Brent D. Griffiths | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Together, 22 self-funding candidates have spent more than the GDP of some small countries. JB Pritzker, a hotel heir, easily leads the group, followed by US Senate candidate Mehmet Oz. A hotel heir, a former TV doctor, a construction magnate, a former US ambassador, and the sons of two top-tier professional sports owners. Put another way: self-funding candidates have spent more money than the nation of Palau's most recent GDP or just enough to buy Colorado's Major League Soccer team. An heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, the incumbent Democrat has spent over $152 million on his 2022 reelection campaign alone.

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