#Key Metrics Reporting

[dhallblogs]

Public Sector Banks to Match Private Sector on Key Metrics, Reports S&P Global.

Mumbai: According to a recent report by S&P Global, public sector banks (PSBs) in India are poised to close the gap with private sector banks on several key financial metrics. The government’s move to merge smaller public sector banks with poor performance indicators with larger state-owned lenders resulted in improved economies of scale. Simultaneously, the central bank’s focus on improving asset quality across the banking industry helped state-owned banks improve their performance in criteria such as problem loans, profitability, and return on assets, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

ALSO READ MORE- https://apacnewsnetwork.com/2024/07/public-sector-banks-to-match-private-sector-on-key-metrics-reports-sp-global/

[crystlianajohn]

What are the steps of social media analytics?

Explore the essential steps of social media analytics to harness valuable insights and optimize your online presence.

www.quickmetrix.com

[probablyasocialecologist]

A German court handed Elon Musk’s X a legal defeat, ruling that the platform must immediately provide researchers with access to data on politically related content ahead of the country’s Feb. 23 election. The court decision, seen by POLITICO, was issued Thursday and marks one of the first major judicial tests of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), raising fresh questions about X’s compliance with European regulations ahead of Germany’s federal election. The lawsuit, brought earlier this week by Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and the Society for Civil Rights (GFF), accused X of blocking efforts to track potential election interference by not granting them access to key engagement data — including likes, shares and visibility metrics — that other platforms made available to researchers.

7 February 2025

[coachs-locker-room]

I think you suck at your job, are there any openings to become YOUR coach

I could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. Sitting in front of me - at the very desk that I called my own - the smug face of the suited young man would hardly look at me while he tapped away at my keyboard, looking through the gym’s accounts and printing off content for his report.

“Who even are you? There must be some mistake here...” I tried to protest as I threw my own kit bag down on the chair.

“I’m from corporate. You would have known if you showed up on time - but instead, your front desk key has recorded that you usually arrive around midday.” He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. “Metrics and reports don’t lie.”

I slumped into the ‘interview chair’ while he proceeded to give a tedious and gruelling reminder of all company policy - most of which was never adhered to in the first place.

“... lastly, it is quite clear that you’ve slipped from our updated franchisee guidelines which means that the only logical resolution will be a total restart.” I heard as I zoned back in.

“Excuse me?” Before I even had a chance to realize what was being said, the auditor turned the monitor around to face me. The document displayed had the company logo, followed by a strange pulsating pattern on the background that I couldn’t quite place. The smug smile once again hidden behind the screen, he continued hitting the presentation with the space bar as my eyes locked on the content... it all looked.. so familiar, almost like I remember seeing the document before... a long, long time ago...

…

SLIDE 5: PROFILE

Our records show that the current generation is 285% more responsive to Coaches with the following attributes:

- Fit, Healthy and a visible reflection of the Gym culture

- Motivated, forthcoming and persuasive

- Closer in age to the average attendee (18 - 30 demographic)

...

SLIDE 16: FUNCTION

You will showcase all that the facility can offer. You will be personally responsible for inductions, checking the progress and encouraging new recruits to achieve their goals to the best of their abilities - and also through the company’s resources.

...

SLIDE 105: UNIFORM

Good Coaches need to set an example. You need to showcase optimum routine and form. Never forget that you are their motivator - wear it with pride.

“I will set an example… I will display optimum performance…. will wear my uniform with pride…”

Something tells me that the gym won’t be visited by corporate in a long while.

—

If you enjoyed this tf, you can send me a tip on Ko-Fi and for more tf locker room posts and to request your own, follow @coachs-locker-room

Corporate representative: @suiteddaily / Post TF: Rodrigo Rodríguez

[vague-humanoid]

California-based engineer and scientist Patrick Vaughan made a troubling discovery July 10. Dozens of facilities providing COVID-19 wastewater data went offline, seemingly overnight. 

Vaughan had been following WastewaterSCAN, a national program that monitors wastewater for diseases. He noticed that 42 of the previously reporting 194 facilities suddenly displayed small blue triangles with the message “data is no longer collected from this site.” The development came just as people across the U.S. scrambled for information during a summer COVID wave that even infected President Joe Biden.

“This is a major blow to our COVID wastewater tracking abilities,” Vaughan told his followers in a video he posted the same day.

Wastewater, which comes from processes such as laundry or toilet flushing, has emerged as a key indicator for the prevalence of COVID-19 in the general population since testing rates plummeted in 2022. State and federal governments have also unraveled many of the other metrics used to track the virus. For example, as of May 1, U.S. hospitals are no longer required to report key COVID data to the government. Several states have also stopped tracking COVID-19 infection rates altogether.

Still, wastewater surveillance is plagued by the same inconsistencies and lack of resources that other metrics have suffered from in the past, and the data isn’t easy for the average person to interpret.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

"Just a cold" that changes the structure and mass of your brain

By Nikhil Prasad

Medical News: A groundbreaking study from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)-USA has shed light on how Long COVID is linked to structural changes in the brain caused by SARS-CoV-2. By using advanced imaging techniques, the team discovered structural changes in the brains of individuals with Long COVID, including increased cortical thickness and gray matter volume in specific regions. This Medical News report will explore the study's key findings, its implications for understanding Long COVID, and what it means for patients suffering from this persistent condition.

Understanding the Research Approach The study involved participants from the UCLA hospital and broader Los Angeles community, with 36 individuals ranging in age from 20 to 67. Among them, 15 had Long COVID symptoms, while others were used as healthy controls. Researchers utilized structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare brain differences between these groups. The study focused on specific brain regions, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and the cingulate gyrus, which are known to be involved in cognitive and emotional processes. These areas were chosen because they are susceptible to inflammation and have been linked to neuropsychiatric symptoms.

To assess participants' cognitive and emotional health, tools like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the Hamilton Anxiety and Depression scales were used. The imaging data were processed using specialized software to measure cortical thickness and gray matter volume, providing a detailed look at the brain's structural changes.

Key Study Findings The study revealed several critical findings that deepen our understanding of Long COVID's impact on the brain. Participants with Long COVID showed:

-Increased Cortical Thickness: Regions such as the caudal anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and rostral middle frontal gyrus exhibited significantly higher cortical thickness compared to controls.

-Higher Gray Matter Volume: In areas like the posterior and isthmus cingulate gyri, Long COVID patients had greater gray matter volume.

Interestingly, these structural changes were associated with the severity of clinical symptoms. For example, higher thickness in the cingulate regions correlated with more severe chronic illness scores, while increased insular thickness was linked to anxiety levels.

Such changes suggest that Long COVID might lead to either swelling due to inflammation or compensatory mechanisms like neurogenesis to counteract damage.

How This Study Compares with Previous Research While most COVID-19-related brain studies have shown reductions in gray matter and cortical thickness, this research indicates an increase in these metrics for Long COVID pa tients. Prior studies focused on acute COVID cases often revealed brain shrinkage and cognitive decline. In contrast, this study highlights that Long COVID might involve unique mechanisms, such as prolonged inflammation or a compensatory response to earlier damage.

Implications for Patients and Healthcare Providers These findings are crucial for both patients and healthcare professionals. They suggest that the persistent symptoms of Long COVID, such as brain fog, fatigue, and anxiety, could have a physical basis in brain structure changes. Recognizing this connection can lead to better-targeted treatments and interventions.

The Future of Long COVID Research While this study offers valuable insights, it also leaves many questions unanswered. For example, are these brain changes reversible? Do they worsen over time? The researchers acknowledge the study's limitations, including its small sample size and lack of longitudinal data. Future studies should aim to include larger, more diverse populations and examine changes over time to build a clearer picture of Long COVID's effects.

Conclusions This research from UCLA represents a significant step forward in understanding the neurological impacts of Long COVID. The observed increases in cortical thickness and gray matter volume in certain brain regions provide strong evidence that Long COVID involves measurable structural brain changes. These findings offer hope that by identifying the physical manifestations of this condition, we can develop more effective treatments to alleviate its symptoms. However, the path forward requires continued research to uncover the full extent of these changes and their implications.

The study emphasizes the importance of addressing neuropsychiatric symptoms in Long COVID patients and highlights the need for comprehensive care that includes both physical and mental health support. As we move forward, it is vital to integrate these insights into public health strategies to help those affected by this debilitating condition.

The study findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal: Frontiers in Psychiatry. www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1412020/full

[justforbooks]

Are Trump’s tariffs for real or an AI hallucination? I’m afraid the answer is both

Amid claims that a chatbot helped shape the key calculations, the president is now off playing golf. He’ll find the world economy in a bunker

There’s a scene in the very first episode of Yellowstone where the casino-owning Native American chief explains the basic financial logic of all casinos to an uncomfortable politician: “The gamblers’ money is like a river – flowing one way. Our way.” Oh no, hang on, wait … Not all casinos. In fact, it could be that when all is said and done, the historians looking for that one key fact to illustrate the eventual legacy of Donald Trump will not go with his two stunning presidential election wins. Instead, they’ll point out that in the 90s, he literally managed to bankrupt casinos. To repeat: this is a man who somehow contrived to bankrupt multiple casinos. Is he the guy to reshape the entire global economic order of the past century? Let’s find out! Either way, only 45 months of his presidency left to go.

Anyway: tariffs. Rather than using actual tariff data, the United States of America this week appeared to have genuinely used a basic ChatGPT-style model to calculate the tariffs it would immediately impose on friends/foes/arctic wildlife. This was called either “liberation day”, or the “declaration of economic independence” (sadly not abbreviated – yet – to DEI).

It was hosted in the White House Rose Garden by ancient gameshow MC Donald Trump, who was accidentally wearing his indoors makeup outdoors. Like many, I’ve tried to mentally detach from the fact that we live in a time when the US defence secretary has a neck tattoo or whatever, but it makes me feel at least partially alive that the presidential paint job still occasionally retains the power to horrify. Trump leered his way through his tariff presentation while appearing to have been made up by the technique that provided the climax to Joe Wilkinson’s RNLI speech on Last One Laughing (If you saw it, you know). It’s not so much foundation any more as cosmetic bukkake.

Forgive me, back to the economics. We know that Trump has always been obsessed with starkly simple numbers. Network TV ratings. The overall trade balance in goods (not services). And – before this week – the stock market. But now, like Bruno, we don’t talk about the stock market, no no no … Certainly not since it dropped 1,679 points in one day alone (the day after Trump announced the tariffs). Although please enjoy the pure hilarious happenstance of scheduling which meant that that day’s opening bell to signal the start of trading on Wall Street had been rung by the staff of wingnut media outlet Newsmax and Rudy Giuliani. Ding, dong – now just watch those stocks crap the bed. Seriously, Rudy – everything you touch! Then again we do have to remember that it was Trump himself who last year declared that “stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history. This is not good!!!”

Is he still marking presidencies on the same metrics? Alas, reporters are going to need to shout that inquiry over the fairways, as Trump has now repaired to one of his Floridian golf courses to host the first domestic event of 2025 on the Saudi-owned LIV Golf tour. It’s called class: look it up. And no doubt it’ll be fun discussing falling oil prices with whoever is over from Riyadh for the event.

Trump did offer one last comment on the tariffs before donning his big-boy golf pants. “The operation is over,” he said. “The patient lived, and is healing. The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better and more resilient than ever before.” A speech I am positive I have heard delivered word-for-word on The Simpsons by ultra-shady physician Dr Nick. Meanwhile, in the back of shot, a Frankenfigure with a fish’s head grafted to a man’s body sits bolt upright, convulses wildly and dies within three foot of the operating table. Listen, you can’t save ‘em all.

Incidentally, Trump is not the only one reaching for medical metaphors. Take the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, who this morning observed mildly: “We often hear that when the US sneezes the global economy catches cold. This is not the US sneezing. This is the US cutting off its own arm. The self-inflicted economic cost naturally weakens the dollar.” Mm. One indication that an economic plan is going badly is that there’s no one responding to the above by going “ooh, but is cutting off your arm even a bad thing?”. Different circumstances, of course, but there was a similar mood in the air in the UK after Liz Truss’s “mini-budget”.

Speaking of Blighty, Keir Starmer seems to have continued his policy of not poking the bear, and indeed to pretend to really enjoy it when the bear pokes you really hard somewhere really painful. According to Trump, Starmer is “very happy” about the 10% tariff kick he just took up the UK’s backside.

Still, perhaps there are already signs of slight directional pivots in the West Wing. Having watched global markets tumble while the White House absolutely insisted that the tariffs were not lazy ChatGPT-assisted gambits to provoke immediate trade negotiations, it wasn’t too long before Trump’s son Eric was venturing on to X with a take. “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,” gibbered Trump minor. “The first to negotiate will win – the last will absolutely lose,” he continued. “I have seen this movie my entire life …” Weird, because I don’t remember this particular scene in the aforementioned Trump casino movie – or indeed several epic flops in the franchise.

Yet this was also a week where we were reminded that life is not just about the adult sons with whom we are saddled, but the adult sons we choose. Fire up the elegy muzak, then, for there is sadness in the air. Reports – hotly denied, which means nothing – suggest that Elon Musk will fairly soon be leaving his post at the “department of government efficiency” and returning to the private sector. Yeah, let that sink out. And then try to picture his Doge leaving party. “Sorry boys, tariffs mean we can only afford US beer. And, unfortunately, we eliminated spending on paper cups. On the plus side, the president’s makeup artist is just going to spray Bud Light in the general directions of your mouths, and she has a 30% accurate aim. Open wide, victors!”

All of which would seem to conclude this week’s look at Trump’s river, which a) is a river of effluent and b) only flows one way. Our way. What can I tell you? Buy shares in paddles today.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[arminreindl]

Gharial rescued from sea

Another instance of more recent croc news, a "giant" gharial was found in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Balsore, eastern India.

According to news articles, the animal, an adult Indian Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), meassured around 13 feet or in metric close to 4 meters in length while weighing some 118 kilos.

The gharial apparently got caught in a fishing net and was found by fishermen, who promptly reported their catch to the Forest Department. The department then handed the animal over to Nandankanan Zoological Park, where the crocodilian still resides.

That's all the information given to us by the article, which you can read here, but there's two key notes I wanna touch upon.

The first is size. At 4 meters, this gharial was decently large for sure and as someone who has seen a (stuffed) female of slightly greater proportions I can attest that it must have been an impressive animal. However, I think its worth mentioning that Indian gharials are capable of growing even larger. The female I just mentioned is accompanied by a stuffed male nearly 5 and a half meters in length, with some reports claiming sizes even greater than that.

Me and the Vienna gharials

The second point is the mysterious presence of a gharial this far out at sea. This is simultaneously unusual yet also very much reasonable from the point of view of paleontology.

On the one hand, Indian gharials are critically endangered. Their range today is incrediply spotty and isolated and to my knowledge they aren't found anywhere near the coast these days.

However when you look at how the range was meant to be like, then you see that they definitely reached the river deltas and coastal regions. So our image of gharials as this inland freshwater species is more based in circumstance than reality.

This becomes especially apparent once you begin to consider the paleobiogeography of gharials. Based on our current knowledge, gharials most likely originated somewhere in Eurasia or Africa, spreading from there across much of the eastern hemisphere and beyond (full disclosure I am not considering thoracosaurs to be gavialoids, more on that can of worms later maybe). Anywho, phylogenetic analysis and the fossil record both suggest that gharials then crossed oceans and settled South America sometime prior to or during the Miocene, where they diversified and gave rise to the gryposuchines. Some species even remained saltwater species, such as Piscogavialis, which lived in the coastal waters of Peru.

Although gryposuchines were once thought to be a distinct subfamily of gharial, recent research suggests that they were but an evolutionary stepping stone, with some South American form once again crossing the Pacific and settling down in Asia where the much more basal "tomistomines" or false gharials (a misnomer) still resided. And while the gryposuchines of South America went extinct, those that returned to Asia survived and eventually gave rise to the Indian Gharial of today.

Left: A cladogram showing the relationship between Gryposuchinae and modern gharials Right: Piscogavialis swimming overhead some marine sloths of the genus Thalassocnus by @knuppitalism-with-ue

So ultimately, seeing a gharial in saltwater is much less bizarre than one would initially think, its just that habitat destruction and overhunting have largely pushed these gorgeous reptiles further inland and to the brink of extinction.

[summerlinenss]

out of curiosity, if Max doesn’t release its metrics, then what metrics are you actually using to make these statements about the show’s popularity? what does “it’s currently in the 99.7th percentile of the comedy genre, meaning it’s in higher demand than 99.7% of all comedy series in the u.s.” even mean? How are you measuring what’s “in demand” - by who? Where? It’s bold to claim that this show was wildly popular (despite the fact that I never hear about it outside of tumblr, tho that’s a personal anecdote) but cancelled just for being queer, so I would be really interested to know where you’re getting all these numbers from. Thanks!

hey anon! first of all i am so sorry for the delayed response. i started typing something up and then i got distracted with something else and totally forgot about this in my drafts.

sure, i have no problem citing sources. i probably should’ve linked some in my original post, that’s absolutely fair.

this ended up way longer than i planned so bear with me, but a quick overview of what i’ll be going over:

1) what are the stats/where did they come from?

2) how is the show so popular?

3) was it really cancelled for being queer?

(also just a disclaimer that this will contain spoilers for the show)

1) first, the numbers

you’re right that hbo doesn’t release metrics to the public. in fact, ceo casey bloys tried to justify the cancellation to the hollywood reporter by saying “the numbers weren’t there,” despite refusing to say what exactly those numbers were or where they came from.

however, there are websites dedicated to researching/analyzing the data of different media. one of those is parrot analytics, who focus on industry insights like audience demand, competitive analysis, and content valuations. they’re trusted as a reliable source by forbes, the new york times, reuters, the wall street journal, and more.

this is what we can learn from them about our flag means death from a basic google search (note that all of this data is relevant to the last 30 days as of january 26 2024):

audience demand for our flag means death is now 33.6x greater than the average tv series in the united states. as explained in the “about demand distribution” section, this means it’s one of only 0.2% of all u.s. shows to fall in the “exceptional” performance range compared to the “average” demand benchmark of 64.1%.

the change in demand for ofmd in the u.s. has increased by 7.5% compared to the average tv series.

ofmd now actually ranks at the 99.8th percentile in the comedy genre in the u.s. i’m not a math person, but in basic terms, this is like a scale of measuring and comparing performances to create an average score. essentially, ofmd is performing at the very top of all comedy series in the u.s.

ofmd has 100% home market travelability. as it says above, the market of origin is always 100%, so in fairness i included the graph of international markets for comparison. some of these aren't super high, however (as explained by parrot analytics themselves) one of the key issues with the international market is accessibility to content, which has been an ongoing struggle for international fans. many people (i guess fittingly) have resorted to pirating ofmd because they don’t have access to max or affiliate streaming services in their country.

there are more stats i could have and wanted to go more in-depth into but it would make this even longer than it already is, so i’ll just leave some links you can check out if you’re interested and move on:

• comparison of ofmd's success to shows like ted lasso, euphoria, and peacemaker

• ofmd's placement as #1 most in-demand breakout series in the u.s. for 8 weeks

• ofmd's impressive 94% critics score and 95% audience score on rotten tomatoes

• how ofmd evolved from sleeper hit to a flagship series at max

• a list of ofmd's past and present award nominations/wins

• praise and recognition from news/entertainment sites: the atlantic (2022); the new york times (2023); tv guide (2023); vulture (2023); forbes (2023); the los angeles times (2022); vanity fair (2023)

2) so why haven’t you (or others) really heard of the show outside of tumblr despite all this success? likely because max did a terrible job marketing it.

ofmd first aired on hbo max (pre-merger before it was “max”) in march 2022. the entire season aired over one month, every thursday at 12am pst. season 2 followed a similar release schedule in october 2023.

season 1’s marketing was almost non-existent, pretty much relying on taika waititi’s name being attached. there was one teaser and one full-length trailer, as well as a few clips on youtube of taika and rhys darby answering pirate-themed trivia, all painting the show as a “silly pirate workplace/buddy comedy.” but hbo max didn’t put any real effort in because they didn’t care. david zaslav and the other higher-ups had no faith in the show and expected it to fail.

most people weren’t aware it was actually a romance due to the poor marketing, and although there were many romantically charged scenes between them, many were still wary to believe it wasn’t queerbaiting until ed & stede confessed their feelings and kissed.

showrunner david jenkins has said in interviews that he had no idea how deeply queerbaiting had hurt audiences and impacted their ability to trust what’s on screen without feeling like they’re being ridiculed, despite the fact that he was calling it a love story the whole time. it wasn’t until people realized they weren’t being queerbaited and that it was a funny, sincere show with a compelling plot that word-of-mouth began to spread. by the time the season 1 finale aired, there was a decent-sized fandom that continued to grow as it received more praise.

it was a fight to even get the show renewed for season 2, and david jenkins and the cast have majorly credited that renewal to the unexpected and massive fan response to the show, which basically forced hbo’s hand.

max didn’t bother trying to properly promote the series until season 2, when they begrudgingly accepted that it was one of their most profitable and successful shows. ofmd had huge billboards in times square, downtown los angeles, and on the side of hbo headquarters. they started accurately marketing the show as not just a workplace comedy at sea, but a heartfelt romcom. max began selling long-demanded merch (which became best sellers) and spent money on an FYC campaign.

i will emphasize, whether they liked it or not, they knew ofmd was their new moneymaker (especially with the recent end of succession, which was obviously a cash cow for hbo).

photo credit: @/bookishtheo

3) now if it was that successful, was it really cancelled just for being queer?

i mean, i can’t say that definitively. no one can. there are several potential factors at play that we may never know, and there have been a lot of rumours and speculation (many of which i don’t feel comfortable discussing in case they aren’t true) since the cancellation.

but do i believe the fact that it’s a queer romcom was one of those factors, especially since max has a history of cancelling and scrapping its most diverse projects? absolutely.

first and foremost, i can’t stress enough that this isn’t just a show with a few characters thrown in for token representation. ofmd is built on a diverse, intersectional cast and narratives, including:

• lgbtq+ representation: 5 main couples are explicitly queer (including mlm, wlw, nblm, and nblw relationships). multiple characters are implied to be poly, and there’s a polycule forming in season 2 that was hinted to be developed more in season 3. beyond relationships, it’s confirmed that (similarly to the way wwdits depicts all vampires as being pansexual) all of the pirates are somewhere on the queer spectrum.

• bipoc representation: the majority of the main cast are people of colour. this includes david fane, joel fry, leslie jones, samson kayo, vico ortiz, anapela polataivao, madeleine sami, samba schutte, ruibo qian, and taika waititi, as well as many guest actors (like rachel house, simone kessell, and maaka pohatu) and extras.

• disability representation: multiple characters have physical disabilities, most notably amputated/prosthetic limbs and visual impairment. a lot (actually most) of the characters also deal with mental health issues, particularly coping with severe trauma and suicidal ideation/behaviour.

• the show has been praised for addressing difficult and serious themes like toxic masculinity, colonialism, and self-discovery, all while still managing to be a witty comedy and not come across as “preachy.”

• the diversity also extends off-screen, with a team of directors, writers, and additional crew comprised of numerous bipoc, women, queer people, and trans/non-binary people.

my point isn’t just the quantity of representation, but the quality. they take great care and respect into every marginalized group depicted on-screen. the actors would often be consulted about their characters’ costumes, hair, tattoos, and the kind of language they use. it’s not a world where discrimination magically doesn’t exist, they just have zero tolerance for it. if a character does something homophobic or racist, you can guarantee they’ll quickly (and often violently) be punished.

so okay, sure, it’s got great representation. what does that have to do max cancelling it?

because they’ve been interfering with production from the start.

i already mentioned the marketing issues so i won’t get into that. it was also revealed in interviews with david jenkins after season 2 that hbo cut their budget by 40%, which is why they had to do everything they could to save money. this included letting go of some of the original cast (and even still having episodes where some of them don’t appear at all) and moving the entire production to AoNZ. the budget cuts also meant two less episodes, so they had to rush to fit an entire season’s worth of plot into eight half-hour long episodes.

but one of the biggest frustrations is hbo’s (alleged) censorship of the show. samba schutte revealed that the entire plot of episode 2x06 was completely different in the original script. before it was rewritten as “calypso’s birthday,” the episode took place during lucius & pete’s wedding and focused on the crew getting sick of the sexual tension between ed & stede and trying to get them to hook up (this aligned with lucius & pete getting engaged and ed & stede deciding to take things slow in the previous episode).

vico ortiz and writer jes tom have also commented that many scenes between jim, oluwande, and archie establishing them as a polycule were cut, including one of the three of them emerging from a bedroom in their underwear. jes has mentioned other elements of season 2 that had to be cut out or rewritten, like the implication of other poly dynamics between the crew and more sexually explicit scenarios and jokes.

considering that ofmd is an extremely sex-positive show that isn’t afraid to be raunchy or taboo, it’s clear that either higher-ups at hbo forced them to cut these things out or they had no choice but to cut them out due to tight budget/time restraints.

in addition to this, a recent article citing an “anonymous insider” has alleged that hbo was uncomfortable with and was unsure how to market the “shock violence” in the show (the same network that aired game of thrones), which david jenkins outright called out as being bullshit. ofmd is rated TV-MA and the posters and trailers all show the audience that it contains violent content. there is literally nothing more graphic in ofmd than any other pirate show — it’s probably a lot tamer than most of them, actually.

violence on the show is most frequently used in a comedic context, in the sense that it’s not meant to be seen as scary or taken seriously. the few instances of serious graphic imagery on the show are meant to invoke a mood shift, like ed’s transformation into the kraken or ned low’s murder. it should also be noted that some of the most graphic deaths are reserved for bigots, like ed snapping the neck of a colonizer who was ridiculing stede’s love letter.

it’s also most often used in a sexual context — not sexual violence, but violence as a sexual metaphor. more specifically the act of stabbing as a metaphor for penetration, as seen with both ed & stede and anne & mary. bearing all this in mind, it seems like the real issue here isn’t executives struggling to market explicit violence to a mainstream audience, but rather explicit gay content.

as much as we joke and affectionately call it the “gay pirate show,” ofmd has always been nothing more than an opportunity for rainbow capitalism for hbo (e.g. the fact that they waited three months to announce season 2 just so they could do it on the first day of pride month). like other cancelled queer media, ofmd was a way for hbo executives to show how “inclusive” and “accepting” they are when it was convenient (aka profitable) for them, but they never actually respected the show or us as a community.

it’s impossible to be certain of what the exact reasoning for cancellation was, especially when they won’t give us a clear answer themselves. and maybe it had nothing to do with ofmd being a queer romcom at all. maybe that’s all a horrible coincidence. but for hbo/max to axe a critically acclaimed and beautifully inclusive show that’s successful by every metric, with an extremely devoted fanbase, especially after casey bloys just had the nerve to ask “gay twitter” to hype up the gilded age? it doesn’t exactly put them in the best light regardless.

in summary, i’ll leave you with this editorial, which details how the campaign to save ofmd isn’t just about one show, but a fight to save the future of all queer art.

[mariacallous]

As the dust continues to settle after the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which were meant to destroy Tehran’s ability to build nuclear weapons but did not apparently succeed entirely, one question looms above all: What did the United States gain from walking away from the nuclear deal with Iran seven years ago?

The Trump administration insists that the strikes, including 14 massive “bunker-buster” bombs dropped on three key installations, completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. Yet a preliminary assessment by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the attacks did little lasting damage to the Iranian facilities and set the nuclear program back by only a few months. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reiterated the “flawless” nature of the unprecedented operation and reaffirmed that the attacks rendered inoperable Iran’s main underground nuclear facility at Fordow. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, like some Israeli sources, also stressed that fresh assessments of the attack indicate that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by years.

But the Trump administration has acknowledged that it does not know where Iran’s large stockpile of almost half a metric ton of highly enriched uranium is—reports and satellite imagery suggest that Iran may have moved the cache before last weekend’s airstrikes. That pile of uranium is enriched to 60 percent purity, which in enrichment terms is very close to the 90 percent purity referred to as weapons-grade. The administration, like the rest of the international community, is also in the dark about how many advanced centrifuges Iran has or where they are or how many additional ones Tehran can build. All the building blocks, in other words, for an Iranian bomb appear to remain in place, but now Iran has more reason than ever to scramble to put those pieces together. 

On balance then, seven years after the first Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, the net result has been a sharp and sustained increase in Iranian nuclear enrichment over several years, followed by a few weeks of desultory diplomacy and capped by historic airstrikes that may have left the Iranian nuclear program reeling but still functioning.

“We have to judge by where we were in 2018 and where we are today. And I think today is a lot more dangerous and Iran is closer to getting a bomb,” said Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists who worked on nonproliferation for the Obama administration.

The U.S. strikes, a complement to almost two weeks of lower-intensity Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and regime nerve centers, were the capstone of U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran that began in his first term. The throughline is a determination that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon or even the building blocks for it, such as any enriched uranium. That helped drive Trump’s decision to walk away from the Obama-era 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which established agreed-on limits to Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for relief from crushing economic sanctions. 

Many U.S. Republicans and Iran hawks faulted the JCPOA because they argued it offered Tehran too much economic relief, only provided a partial and time-limited constraint on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and did nothing to address either Iran’s regional destabilization efforts or its sweeping advances in ballistic missiles, which have become a serious security threat for Israel.

But the nuclear deal, for all its flaws, did put a cap on Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, limiting it to the extremely low levels used in civilian nuclear reactors. The deal also limited Iran’s ability to install more advanced centrifuges that could enrich more uranium more quickly. And, perhaps most importantly, the deal established a robust monitoring and verification regime granting international atomic inspectors unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The deal, with which Iran was in compliance at the time of Trump’s withdrawal in 2018, had promised to put Iran’s nuclear program in a well-watched cage for at least a decade. 

“Now, we are having a debate about whether Fordow was set back by a few weeks or a few months. Under JCPOA, Fordow was neutered for 15 years. So it is a simple math problem. The diplomatic solution was durable and very viable,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group who was involved in the JCPOA negotiations.

Dueling assessments over the strikes’ efficacy continue. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday that the shocks of the heavy U.S. ordnance appear to have knocked out the advanced centrifuges at Fordow, even as Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described the nuclear impact of U.S. strikes as insignificant in his first remarks since the weekend attacks. But what seems clear is that Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium remains unaccounted for, and that is enough fissile material to assemble nine bombs.

“If we didn’t actually incapacitate the highly enriched uranium, then the threat remains out there,” said Richard Nephew, another former Obama national security official now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

While uranium at 60 percent enrichment would be enough for a crude bomb, Iran would need to enrich it to 90 percent purity to develop a more sophisticated weapon. The fastest way to do that would be with advanced centrifuges, especially the so-called IR-6, the most advanced centrifuges that Iran has installed in operational cascades. Since 2021, international inspectors have had no visibility into Iran’s production of new centrifuges, and they don’t know how many Iran has or how many more it could build and install in order to accelerate the final enrichment it needs to sprint for a bomb. Manufacturing centrifuges requires some special materials, such as carbon fiber and very specialized steel, but that’s already likely in the warehouse somewhere underground.

“It is highly likely that they have been storing precursors for centrifuges, and they already said they had a new underground facility,” Wolfsthal said. “It’s entirely possible they are enriching uranium and we don’t know it.”

The combination of U.S. strikes and what appears to be at least a partial survival of the Iranian nuclear program and its constituent components means that Iran may be closer to a bomb than it ever was before or during the years of the JCPOA, when the so-called breakout time for a bomb was assessed at about a year. The U.S. intelligence community concluded as recently as this March that Iran was not actively seeking to weaponize nuclear material, but those calculations may be out the window now that Khamenei has invoked the specter of “Iran’s surrender.” Now the breakout is breakneck.

“If Iran still has more than 400 kilos and a bunch of IR-6 centrifuges, the sneakout option is available more than ever before,” Vaez said.

Looking back, the United States (and Israel) would likely have been in a better position to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions by maintaining the negotiated limits on its ability to enrich uranium. But since 2018, and especially in the past few years, Iran has taken advantage of the lack of restraint to make advances that cannot be undone even by a new diplomatic deal. There is no way to put the advances in nuclear know-how, or the accumulation of many more advanced centrifuges, back in the bottle.

“You cannot make a good-faith argument that we are better off without the JCPOA,” Nephew said.

On Wednesday, Trump said the United States and Iran would resume their indirect talks aimed at resolving the nuclear impasse next week. Five rounds have already foundered on familiar red lines, including Iran’s insistence that it has a right to domestic enrichment, and a sixth was canceled following the Israeli bombardment. Further talks, Vaez noted, are an implicit U.S. acknowledgement that the mission was not entirely accomplished.

“If the U.S. were sure they had obliterated the nuclear program, there would be nothing to negotiate about. But because of that outstanding question, they are keen to get back to the table,” he said.

He hopes that both sides can soften their red lines, with Iran perhaps pausing its enrichment while the United States musters an international coalition for regional uranium enrichment that would allow all sides to save face and avoid the ultimate showdown. 

“The mistrust is deeper than it has ever been, but it must always be measured against the alternatives,” Vaez said. “Iran is very vulnerable—they are in dire economic straits, their air defenses have been decimated, their proxies are on their knees. So even if they don’t trust the Trump administration, there is not a better option for them now.”

[darkmaga-returns]

While politicians celebrate near-record-low unemployment rates, millions of Americans are drowning in financial despair. A shocking report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) reveals that nearly 1 in 4 workers are "functionally unemployed" — stuck in part-time gigs, poverty-wage jobs or outright joblessness. The official unemployment rate of 4.2% is a cruel illusion, masking the brutal reality of economic instability gripping working-class families.

Key points:

The true unemployment rate (LISEP’s TRU metric) hit 24.3% in April — far higher than the government’s misleading 4.2% figure.

Millions are counted as "employed" despite working just one hour in two weeks, living in tents, or earning below-poverty wages.

Inflation, soaring housing costs stagnant wages stagnant wages have pushed 70% of Americans to their worst financial stress ever.

Racial disparities persist: 28.6% of women, 28% of Hispanic workers, and 27% of Black workers are functionally unemployed.

The middle class is vanishing — families earning $38,000 a year actually need at least $67,000 just to afford basic living standards.

[subdee]

Hi FedNews,

I’m posting to remind every public servant that speaking up matters and you’re not alone. You should feel empowered. Transparency is key.

What happened at a high level.

* Noticed some odd metrics

* Gathered data and built reports

* Reported internally

* Escalated chain of command

* Disclosed to Congress

I chose to attach my name because I stand behind my actions and welcome open debate. You don’t have to; there are secure, anonymous avenues.

Each of us entered public service to uphold the Constitution and serve millions who may never know our names. That duty runs deeper than politics or fear. We all know the difference between right and wrong. If something at your agency keeps you up at night, don’t hope the storm passes and keep your head down. Gather the facts, protect yourself, and speak up. Duty is hardest when it matters most, which is exactly why it matters most.

- Dan

DMs open for resource recommendations or questions. Stay safe and keep the lights on.

***

Here's the write up in ars technica:

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Truthout:

In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to begin negotiating a legally binding treaty between 175 countries that will determine how the world deals with such plastic pollution. The fifth and final negotiating session is now set to start in late November this year. Recognizing the scope and severity of the crisis, delegates for the 14 Pacific Island countries have been at the forefront of the international plastic treaty talks, advocating for strict limits on plastic production and the need to set tangible goals for waste management.

Other countries, including Rwanda, Peru and European Union nations, have also pushed for ambitious goals and plastic production caps. But the United States, alongside oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, has historically opposed these proposals. The oil and gas industry wants delegates to carve out a treaty that focuses on things like plastic tracking and recycling rather than decreasing production — even though, for decades, plastics companies knew that recycling was an overwhelming failure.

But in August, in what could be a major breakthrough for the future of the planet, President Joe Biden’s administration indicated it would support plastic production limits and increased controls on the toxic chemicals that are used in the plastic production process.

Environmental groups praised the announcement, while industry groups like the American Chemistry Council — which has spent nearly $10 million in lobbying efforts so far this year — lambasted the administration for “caving” to environmentalists’ wishes and “betray[ing] U.S. manufacturing.”

While the Biden administration’s announcement gained little attention in a crowded news cycle, this shift in approach carries urgent importance. Less than 10 percent of plastic waste is currently recycled globally; the rest winds up dumped or incinerated, harming communities and polluting the Earth. If the years of negotiations yield a treaty that focuses on recycling — not production caps — as a solution to the crisis, then the world will be digging itself into an even deeper plastic pollution hole. And it would take a huge amount of additional international coordination to climb back out.

Plastic, which is derived from fossil fuels, is toxic throughout every stage of its life cycle, from production to disposal. The extraction and refinement of fossil fuels for plastic production emits hundreds of millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, heating up the atmosphere and fueling the climate crisis. Research from the Center for International Environmental Law emphasized that the global plastics treaty needs “to incorporate ambitious obligations that specifically target global plastic production” if we are going to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold.

Plastics also contain a slew of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, which are released during production at facilities that, in the United States, are often placed in low-income communities and communities of color. In January, a report by Amnesty International found that the Houston Ship Channel — a major hub for fossil fuels in the United States — is a racial “sacrifice zone,” where an immense and disproportionate burden of pollution is placed on people of color by fossil fuel companies. The report noted that the scale of harmful pollution amounts to a human rights violation.

At the end of plastics’ life cycle, wealthy nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, frequently export their waste to poorer nations in a phenomenon that has been dubbed “waste colonialism.” Often, these countries have fewer resources to manage and tame the vast amounts of trash than the rich countries that are sending it. The term was coined as far back as 1989, when several African nations expressed concerns at the United Nations Environmental Program Basel Convention that wealthy countries were using countries in Africa as dumping grounds for hazardous waste.

[high-potential]

ABC ANNOUNCES FALL 2025 PRIMETIME SCHEDULE

TUESDAY’S STAR POWER RETURNS WITH ‘DANCING WITH THE STARS’ AND ‘HIGH POTENTIAL’ 

ABC announced its fall 2025 primetime schedule today following a highly successful season as the No. 1 multiplatform network. In the first full broadcast season where Nielsen reported on competitive multiplatform ratings, the network outperformed its competition dominating cross-platform rankings and earning all top 5 programs in the 2024/2025 broadcast season across Adults 18-49: “High Potential” (No. 1), “Abbott Elementary” (No. 2), “The Rookie” (No. 3), “9-1-1” (No. 4) and “Shifting Gears” (No. 5). The network also boasts nine of the top 20 programs in the demo across platforms adding “Will Trent” (No. 10), “Grey’s Anatomy” (No. 11), “Dancing with the Stars” (No. 14) and “The Bachelor” (No. 17).*

“ABC dominated this season in multiplatform ratings, which are the most relevant metrics that reflect how audiences are consuming television today,” said Craig Erwich, president, Disney Television Group. “We are meeting viewers where they are, and this achievement really highlights our strategic approach and commitment to creative excellence. Looking ahead, we’re all about maintaining stability, delivering quality, and driving innovation, with new shows and returning favorites from some of the industry’s top creators and biggest stars.”

After a record-breaking season where it ranked as the No. 1 entertainment series in Adults 18-49 in Live+Same Day ratings for the first time in its history, “Dancing with the Stars” returns to the ballroom on Tuesdays followed by the sophomore season of the No. 1 broadcast series of 2025, “High Potential.” The drama was ABC’s most-watched new series in seven years and was the most-streamed broadcast series of the season, more than doubling its nearest competition in both the key 18-49 demo and Total Viewers.

Source: ABC

[reasonandempathy]

A brief summary of how Education fails Boys

I saw people sincerely questioning and minimizing the current struggles boys face in education.

So, I wanted to collect some relevant information, with sources. All of these are from the past couple of years, from 2021 onward.

Girls have more difficulty accessing education and are more likely than boys to be out of school at primary level. However, boys are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to progress and complete their education, and not learning while in school. Globally, 128 million boys are out of school. That’s more than half of the global out-of-school youth population and more than the 122 million girls who are also out of school. The Leave no child behind: Global report on boys’ disengagement from education shows that boys are increasingly left behind in education. They are at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to progress and complete their education, and not learning while in school. While previously boys’ disengagement and dropout were concerns mainly in high-income countries, several low- and middle-income countries have seen a reversal in gender gaps, with boys now lagging behind girls in enrolment, completion and learning outcomes. Boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades in 130 countries, and more likely to not have an upper secondary education in 73 countries. At tertiary level, globally only 88 men are enrolled for every 100 women. 

In 1970, women only made up 42 percent of the college population. Today, the roles have essentially reversed. The U.S. Department of Education estimates men to make up 43 percent of enrolled individuals in college. And this crisis impacts minority populations even more: only 36 percent of Black and 40 percent of Hispanic bachelor degree recipients are male. 

This is not an issue of colleges neglecting to admit men at an equal rate. Rather, colleges are receiving fewer applications from men than women. In 2010, only 44 percent of college applications were from men and that number has been steadily declining since. The decrease in male applicants is a sign that men are discouraged from pursuing higher education at a disproportionately high rate. 

These statistics point to a larger, systemic problem. The American education system perpetuates a series of gender norms that cause significant harm to children; boys are impacted by these expectations in a way that tends to be overlooked. The stereotype that boys have a higher propensity to misbehave has led to the over-punishment of boys in the classroom.        

Boys are facing key challenges in school. Inside the effort to support their success

An APA task force is spotlighting the specific issues and recommending evidence-based ways to enact swift change At school, by almost every metric, boys of all ages are doing worse than girls. They are disciplined and diagnosed with learning disabilities at higher rates, their grades and test scores are lower, and they’re less likely to graduate from high school (Owens, J., Sociology of Education, Vol. 89, No. 3, 2016; Voyer, D., & Voyer, S. D., Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 140, No. 4, 2014; “The unreported gender gap in high school graduation rates,” Brookings, 2021). These disparities persist at the university level, where female enrollment now outpaces male enrollment by 16% (Undergraduate Enrollment, National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). “The gap between boys and girls is apparent from very early on,” said developmental psychologist Ioakim Boutakidis, PhD, a professor of child and adolescent studies at California State University, Fullerton. “The disparities not only exist across the board—from kindergarten all the way to college—but they are growing over time.” For boys of color, that gap is even larger. They face suspension and expulsion from school at almost five times the rate of their White male classmates and are even less likely to finish high school or college (“Exploring Boys’ (Mis)Behavior,” Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities, 2022 [PDF, 261KB]). The implications of these disparities are huge. Doing poorly at school is strongly associated with major challenges later in life, including addiction, mental and physical health problems, and involvement with the criminal justice system—problems that also have ripple effects on society at large. In the United States, getting at least a college degree may be the one remaining, relatively stable ticket to a decent life, Boutakidis said.

In a recent New York Times essay, “It’s Become Increasingly Hard for Them to Feel Good About Themselves,” Thomas Edsall reviews a variety of research studies highlighting the plight of young men in the United States. As a front-line educator who has worked in boys’ schools for 30 years and served as the head of a boys’ school for the past 20 years, I’ve been an unhappy witness to this dilemma. Data supports the claim that boys are falling behind, and dramatically so. For example, there is a growing gender gap in high school graduation rates. According to the Brooking Institution, in 2018, about 88% of girls graduated on time, compared with 82% of boys. For college enrollment, the gender gap is even more striking, with men now trailing women in higher education at record levels. Last year, women made up 60% of college students while men accounted for only 40%, according to statistics from the National Student Clearinghouse. College enrollment in the United States has declined by 1.5 million students over the past five years, with men accounting for 71% of that drop.