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☆ My parents attended Big Ten universities, but I chose a smaller, lesser-known one. They often chastised me for that choice.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-21 | by ( Amy Abbott | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

I was not interested in my dad's college, Purdue, because it lacked a humanities focus. I asked to visit Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, because I had heard good things about the midsize college. AdvertisementI was irritated and surprised but still wanted to visit Ball State. Ball State lacked the national ratings of the other schools but was renowned for several programs, including one that interested me. I fell in love with Ball StateI attended a summer high school journalism workshop at Ball State, which clinched the deal for me.

Persons: —, impatiently, Aren't, we've, Amy, David, Dorothy, Oz, Tom K, Ryan, Jim Davis, Garfield, I'm, I've Organizations: Service, Business, Purdue, Indiana University, Ball State University, Big Ten, Ball State, Ball, Indiana Locations: Minnesota, mater, Muncie , Indiana

☆ How Instagram got its mojo back
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-19 | by ( Katie Notopoulos | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

AdvertisementSensor Tower shows that Instagram downloads were up 20% in 2023 compared to 2022, in contrast to TikTok's 4% year-over-year growth. Instagram beat TikTok not only in growth, but sheer volume of app downloads in 2023: Instagram had 767 million while TikTok had 733 million. One reason is Threads, the newly launched Twitter competitor, which requires an Instagram account and may have prompted some people who were curious about Threads to re-download Instagram. AdvertisementTikTok is getting oldAt the same time, TikTok, once the main existential crisis for Instagram (well, probably still is), is faltering. In 2014, that same age group (which we are trying not to refer to as middle-aged) accounted for only about 20% of Instagram users.

Persons: Instagram, TikTok, —, I've, aren't, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Adam Mosseri, Instagram hasn't, Ryan Broderick, Pew, You'd, let's, ByteDance, I'm Organizations: Service, The New York Times, Meta, The, Schools, Boston Globe Locations: Europe, Valencia, Massachusetts

☆ It’s Been All Tumbleweeds, All the Time, in Utah and Beyond
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Delger Erdenesanaa | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

On Saturday morning, residents of South Jordan, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City, woke up to an astonishing sight. Thousands of tumbleweeds had blown into town and piled up against people’s homes overnight. In some cases, the tumbleweed jumbles reached the rooflines or upstairs balconies of people’s homes, said Rachael Van Cleave, the city’s public information officer. “It was quite a sight to see,” she said. Tumbleweeds also blew en masse into South Jordan’s neighbor city of Eagle Mountain, and across stretches of open land and highways in Nevada and western Utah.

Persons: jumbles, Rachael Van Cleave, ”, “, Tumbleweeds Locations: South Jordan , Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, South Jordan’s, Eagle, Nevada

☆ Life at Sea passengers call for criminal investigation into cruise company as they try to claw back $16 million in refunds
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Lloyd Lee | Brittany Chang | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Miray Cruises ultimately did not purchase a vessel that could accommodate more than a thousand passengers for three years. A spokesperson for Lapointe's office and Miray Cruises did not immediately return a request for comment. For many, Life at Sea Cruises initially proposed an alluring offer: Travel around the world for three years for as low as around $38,500 a year. "Miray is not such a big company to afford to pay 40-50 million for a ship," Miray Cruises CEO Vedat Ugurlu said in a memo. AdvertisementManagement issues also plagued the company months before the voyage, culminating with Life at Sea and Miray Cruises severing ties in May.

Persons: —, they're, Markenzy Lapointe, Miray, Lapointe, Keri Whitman, Vedat Ugurlu, Weeks, Ugurlu, Kimberly Arizzi, David Purcell, Adam Pers, Adam Organizations: Service, Sea Cruises, Business, Southern, Southern District of, Miray Cruises, The New York Times, Times, The Times, Miray, Management Locations: Southern District, Southern District of Florida, The, Cincinnati, Bristol

☆ Are office buildings the next 'Big Short' or the next widow-maker trade? The trader behind the ubersuccessful mall short shares his playbook for making money without flaming out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

Dan McNamara's Polpo Capital is shorting office real estate, a risky move that could be lucrative. If you're looking for a doomsday vision of commercial real estate, you can find it there. "I don't think this is the 'Big Short,'" McNamara told me. This doesn't mean he doesn't have a game plan to make money off cultural shifts that could forever change the state of commercial real estate. Lucas Jackson/ReutersWhere he's going longOne risk of shorting real estate is that it's more susceptible to what's known in real-estate circles as "extend and pretend."

Persons: Dan McNamara's, McNamara, it's, It's, shorting, Carl Icahn, Jim Chanos, Brendan McDermid, Dan McNamara, McNamara's, Braver Stern, Dan McNamara McNamara's, suede loafers, McNamara didn't, Josh Nester, Polpo, he's, Morgan Stanley, Kamil Sadik, Lucas Jackson, Manus Clancy, You've, David Tepper's, Trepp's Clancy, Clancy, David Tepper Organizations: Central Park, New, Polpo, New York University, Columbia, Kynikos Associates, Enron, Asset Management, Reuters, UBS, Co, Societe Generale, Securitized Credit Partners, Credit Suisse, MP, Fund, Bloomberg, of America, Simon Property, Federal Locations: Manhattan, Sixth, Central, New York City, New York, MatlinPatterson, America, China, Italy, Westchester , New York, Tribeca, York, Westchester, Waterford , Connecticut, Baltimore, San Francisco

☆ After Midnight at the N.B.A. Draft, Dreams Still Come True
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Sopan Deb | Hiroko Masuike | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Mark Tatum, the deputy commissioner of the N.B.A., had an important job — though not a glamorous one — on Thursday night. Shortly after 11 p.m., Tatum clocked in to begin announcing the names of the players who had been selected in the second round of the N.B.A. By then, the crowd had thinned, leaving just dozens of scattered fans — and sharply dressed but tired family members — as his audience. There might have been tumbleweeds somewhere. Commissioner Adam Silver had received prime billing at 8 p.m., calling the names and shaking the hands of the most-hyped prospects in the first round, such as Victor Wembanyama, Brandon Miller and Scoot Henderson — the top three picks.

Persons: Mark Tatum, Tatum, —, Adam Silver, Victor Wembanyama, Brandon Miller, Scoot Henderson Organizations: Barclays Center

☆ Inside Elon Musk's first day as leader of Twitter: Cancelled meetings, fake layoffs, orders to print out code, and a team of Musk advisers camped out in a separate part of the company's HQ.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Twitter employees predicted chaos after Elon Musk took over the company. Musk entered Twitter's San Francisco HQ carrying a bathroom sink, a joke about his ownership "sinking in." Meanwhile, engineers from Tesla were in Twitter's San Francisco office, some meeting individually with Twitter engineers, asking them about their work and some technical aspects of the platform. Musk worked on Friday at Twitter's San Francisco HQ with a small team he brought in to assist him in taking over the operations, people familiar with the matter said. Later in the day, he said "comedy is now legal on Twitter" and then separately tweeted an apparent joke about the two men who faked being laid off Twitter engineers.

☆ Anxious Twitter users find few alternatives to platform after Musk deal closes
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Jennifer Korn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

But with few obvious alternatives, Twitter users may be left with nowhere else to go. Other platforms, like Mastodon, have promised a more decentralized social media experience. “Excited to see what you accomplish here,” retired basketball star Shaquille O’Neill tweeted at Musk on Wednesday ahead of the deal closing. Musk has said he would restore Trump’s Twitter account, though Trump has previously said he would remain on Truth Social. By unbanning users and unwinding content moderation efforts, Musk could make Twitter less palatable for its most vulnerable users, typically women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of color, according to safety experts.

☆ The US never banned asbestos. These workers are paying the price.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-23 | by ( Kathleen Mcgrory | Neil Bedi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +39 min

But protocols failed to match reality at the Niagara Falls plant, according to more than a dozen workers. In addition to those signature diseases, which are rare even among asbestos workers, the tiny strands can harm the body in other ways. In the 15 years that followed, congressional attempts to ban asbestos would continue to fall short. OSHA declined to make an official available for an on-the-record interview or comment on ProPublica's findings at the Niagara Falls plant. At the OxyChem plant in Wichita, union president Keith Peacock said he was comfortable with the way asbestos was handled.

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