#and while in english the digit separator also helps with reading large numbers

[tanadrin]

i think we should use a digit separator for decimals as well, and moreover that the first separator should come after two digits, like so:

0.00,1 (one thousandth, inverse of 1,000)

0.00,000,1 (one millionth, inverse of 1,000,000)

1,000.00,1 (one thousand and one thousandth)

it would be easier to read long decimals that way.

really there's a problem with visual asymmetry because of how we do decimals, but unless we put the decimal on both sides of the 1s column (e.g., 1,00.0.00,1) i think that is unsolvable. so just make the first fractional group of digits two digits, and three after that.

[cottonfreakz]

Everything you need to know about MANGA Plus by Shueisha

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If you’re an anime or manga fan, you’ve probably heard of Weekly Shonen Jump, published by Shueisha. The story behind the very first anime you ever watched may even have sprouted from the world’s most famous manga magazine. Over Weekly Shonen Jump‘s sprawling 50-year history, they’ve published some of the most globally successful manga ever, including Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto.

Weekly Shonen Jump may have reached its peak weekly circulation of 6.53 million copies in the 1990s, but the march of time and the decline of print media haven’t stopped the magazine from expanding its net of readers. Jump’s audience has steadily become more global, as Shueisha looks towards digital distribution as a means of ensuring that their titles remain accessible towards a wide audience.

In 2014, Shueisha first launched Shonen Jump+, an online platform in Japanese that sells e-book versions of Jump manga titles as well as a digital version of Weekly Shonen Jump that can be read on mobile devices. The site allows users to read a large sample of Jump manga for free, and also serializes a number of original titles separate from the print magazine, including ēlDLIVE and DARLING in the FRANXX.

Meanwhile, in North America, popular Jump titles like My Hero Academia consistently top best-selling lists for graphic novels. From 2013 to 2018, Viz Media published a digital version of Weekly Shonen Jump, releasing new English chapters simultaneously with the Japanese magazine, and last December they launched a new website giving subscribers access to over 70 catalog titles.

However, this will not be the only means through which the latest Jump chapters will be available digitally from now on. Shueisha is launching a global version of Shonen Jump+ on January 28, called MANGA Plus. Not only will the site and app provide simultaneous releases of popular serialized titles like One Piece, it will also be available in every country except China and South Korea. The app will also be completely free, like the Japanese version of Shonen Jump+ currently is.

To talk about this new venture in detail, we visited Shueisha‘s offices and talked to Shonen Jump+ editor Shuhei Hosono, who also oversees MANGA Plus. He explained everything to know about MANGA Plus upon launch.

When did you first get involved with the project? And what are your thoughts as team leader?

I’ve been with Shonen Jump+ since it started in 2014. I was also involved in the online Jump Book Store that launched in 2012. Through my work on those projects, I wanted as much manga to be available as possible. Just like in Japan, there are a lot of manga readers overseas. So I want to bring Shonen Jump+ to people all around the world.

How exactly does Shonen Jump+ work?

Through Shonen Jump+, you can purchase a digital version of each issue of Weekly Shonen Jump at the same time the print version comes out. You can also buy e-books of the tankobon versions of Jump titles. On top of that, there are original manga titles that are serialized exclusively through the service.

The service itself is completely free to use. The first chapters of every manga on Shonen Jump+ manga are available for any user to read. Also, the latest chapters that are serialized will also be available for anyone to read for a limited amount of time.

When did the idea of making a global version of Shonen Jump+ start?

We started talking about it in 2017, and we’ve been working at it right until launch.

What languages will the service be in?

For now, we just have an English and Spanish version planned. The Spanish version will launch around February/March, although it may have a different lineup from the English version. If there is enough demand, we may add more languages.

What is the difference between the Viz‘s Shonen Jump app and MANGA Plus?

Well, for starters, there will be more titles available through MANGA Plus. We plan to add as many titles as we can, even relatively minor ones that previously never had in English release.

Viz focuses mainly on Weekly Shonen Jump titles, while MANGA Plus will have titles from other Shueisha publications, like Jump Square and the Jump+ online manga.

MANGA Plus will also be available in more regions. It will available throughout the entire world except in China, South Korea, and Japan, as they already have their own separate services. Previously under-served regions like Southeast Asia will be able to read manga through this app. Up until now, Shueisha‘s titles have been distributed throughout North America, Europe, Asia etc., via local publishers or distribution lines. This marks the first time that Shueisha is expanding direct service globally.

Will every manga that is serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump be available through this service (and not just the popular ones)?

Yes. The starting lineup will be almost everything that’s currently being serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. There will be over 30 titles being released simultaneously with Japan.

As for titles that have concluded and are not currently being serialized in the magazine, such as Naruto, we plan to serialize them through the app from the beginning so that new readers can experience them, one chapter at a time. 10 of these serializations are already planned, and more will be added gradually over time.

The full starting lineup is below:

Ongoing series

ONE PIECE

The Promised Neverland

Jujutsu Kaisen – Sorcery Fight

My Hero Academia

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Haikyu!!

Black Clover

Chainsaw Man

Hinomaru Sumo

Food Wars: Shokugeki no Sōma

ne0;lation

I’m From Japan

Teenage Renaissance! David

BORUTO

We Never Learn

Dr. Stone

act-age

HUNTER×HUNTER (Suspended)

Hell Warden Higuma

Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign

Blue Exorcist

Platinum End

World Trigger

Dragon Ball Super

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V

Terra Formars

Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku

Summertime Render

Nano Hazard

The Sign of Abyss

Blue Flag

Abyss Rage

LAND ROCK

Soloist in A Cage

Curtain’s up, I’m off

Spotless Love: This Love Cannot Be Any More Beautiful.

Dricam!!

Moon Land

Completed Series

NARUTO

Bakuman.

Rosario+Vampire

Nisekoi

Claymore

Tokyo Ghoul

ONE PIECE Part 1

Assassination Classroom

DEATH NOTE

DRAGON BALL

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story

BLEACH

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Note that the lineup will be different in Taiwan.

For the titles that Viz shares with MANGA Plus, will the translation be the same?

Yes. As for other titles they handle, they may use different translators.

Will the interface be similar to Shonen Jump+?

Yes, it will be based on the existing app. On the home page, you’ll see the latest chapters to be uploaded underneath each day. You’ll also be able to access the full list of titles available through a drop menu.

Do you think manga itself is changing as the medium becomes more global?

Yes, there are more readers from around the world, and more manga is being born overseas. These days, the quality of manga from around the world is incredibly high. Although we at Shueisha make manga primarily to appeal to a Japanese audience, we hope that the stories can have a global appeal too. It’s one of the many things that editors take into consideration when we think about what kind of manga to publish next.

However, at the core of it, manga is always about telling interesting stories, and no matter how much time passes, that side of manga has never changed.

As the artist behind Dragon Ball Super, do you get a lot of feedback from overseas fans? How would you characterize that feedback?

When I have been to overseas events, people have spoken to me. The way people overseas perceive and evaluate my work is very different from Japan, so it’s been very helpful to me as reference for creating the story.

How important would you say the international audience is for the success of Dragon Ball Super?

Because Dragon Ball is loved throughout the entire world, I think that the sequel Dragon Ball Super must also be loved in the same way.

Are you personally excited that your overseas fans can now catch up and read your new chapters at the same time as Japan?

I am very grateful that there is no time lag for the release of the manga. If the information from Japan is conveyed in a fragmentary manner, then readers won’t be able to taste the initial emotions and surprise. I am very excited about the simultaneous release.

Masashi Kishimoto, creator of Naruto, also left a message: “Jump’s manga will now be available at the same time all over the world! Now that it’s an official service, there will be a lot to read! Wonderful!”

[hamminnam]

Moving to Da Nang Part 2 (Finally...)

Subtitle: Finding an apartment.

The next step in moving to Da Nang overlapped a bit with the first. While I was staying in the hotel, I enlisted the help of my girlfriend (Hà) in aprtment hunting. Thus, this post is about FINDING AN ADEQUATE PLACE TO CALL MY HOME. I think maybe I can offer some useful advice in this one, so listen carefully.

Before returning to Vietnam I had done some casual apartment hunting in Danang. Well, more like apartment stalking. Find a place you like, obsess over it for a while, stare at it on Google Maps, imagine what it would be like to live there, then move on with your life. In my snoop-searches, I had seen some incredibly nice (seeming) mostly 2 or 3-bedroom places for about 400$ or $450 Canadian. It stood to reason that a 1 bedroom or a simple studio would set me back 1/3 or 1/2 that.

After my last experience in Vietnam, I had some basic requirements. Some such requirements were: not live in a hotel, live in a quietish area, have a large-ish fridge in an actual kitchen. Sure, being near the beach would be great. Yes, a brand new, modern building would be good. Of course I’d love an extensive kitchen, no kidding that I’d love to be as far removed from any mot-hai-ba-yo’ing as possible, but as long as I had the basics.

My approach to finding an apartment was simple: go on the apartment websites, open tabs with all of them that seemed acceptable and met my basic criteria, then call and set up appointments early the next day. Well, actually, it was Hà’s job to call and arrange. So, that’s what we did. We (she) began calling all the locations (easily 30 or more) I had highlighted. Now, I do recall a certain someone saying “Derek, you don’t need so many. Just choose a few you like”. Well, it turns out, that as we (she) called, certain trends began developing. Either:

1.       The place had been rented already

2.       That place was simply an example of what’s (supposedly) available

3.       The agent who listed it didn’t work for that company anymore

4.       The ad was actually for a different place

Of course, something can be said about each of these (if you’re new to my blog, you’ll quickly realize that something can be said about everything…). For #1, well, the question is, did it ever exist in the first place? The fact that it had been posted no more than hours before our phone call had me wondering if it were ever available at all. The matter-of-fact way the receiver of our phone call acted when nonchalantly expressing that an apartment posting not even up long to have been visited had been rented seemed a bit odd. Indeed, the rabbit hole is deep on this one.

For #2, this is a bit of a stretch. These may have been examples, but not of what is available, but more like examples of what is not available. So, these agents just posted things onto the web as a fun activity, perhaps. Maybe they just posted pictures of a home they liked, then fielded calls, telling people it wasn’t available. Does sound fun.

For #3, the follow up question was naturally “how can I get a hold of the person who does work there still. The answer of course was “I don’t know”. The next question was “do you have any other listings, maybe at a new job”, and their response was that they had left the industry. At this point, I hardly blame them.

#4 was quite interesting. In fact, the more we looked at apartments, the more we saw the same photos for different ads. Same kitchen, same living room, same balcony: different location, different phone number, different price. This, as you can imagine, became problematic. If you see photos, you would like to rent the place that match those photos. Perhaps this is wishful thinking. Perhaps my standards are too high in this digital age, but this is how I feel.

Nonetheless, I made some appointments. Out of the thirty, we got about 3 or 4 and a couple tentative ones. The first one or two were awful or were nothing like what had been advertised. Funny what selective photo taking can do to beef up an ad. There were a couple that were okay, but out of my price range. Some stated ‘kitchen’ but took the term very loosely. A dirty old sink in the corner of the bedroom does not a kitchen make. One place showed us what they were building, and what they hoped would be ready in a few months. We saw them laying the bricks and the plan of the apartment. Was I interested? If you read about my hotel, maybe you know.

Nothing was really going my way, and I was beginning to become despondent. Just the same, we kept calling any lead we could get. Hà would hear about a place and a guy who knew a guy who might be renting a place. She would then direct me, the driver, to go to this part of town or that part of town, while she was fielding more calls and taking notes. It was like a mobile office behind me. Quite impressive really. I think it could be the premise of a successful legal drama: Hà’s Mobile Law it would be called, and I would drive her around on a scooter while she solved court cases. (NBC, if you need to get in touch, just DM me…)

Against all odds we found not one, but two places that I might be willing to call home. One night I found a good one (apartment A) on a quiet street, though a bit far from the beach. I decided I would sleep on it. We found another the next morning (apartment B), on another quiet street, this one closer to the bridge, and a bit smaller. We went for lunch and discussed which I would prefer. I decided on apartment B and we called the landlord back. No response. We had our afternoon coffee and called again. Nothing. While Hà remained unconcerned, I was starting to get worried. What had happened? I wanted to rent it. Why wouldn’t they answer. Had somebody offered more? At Hà’s advice, I got the damage deposit and we went there to deliver the cash in hand, after all, money talks.

Upon arrival at the apartment, we saw an interesting sight. There was an agent – a separate agent from the one who had led us there initially – sitting with the owners and another foreigner, a young South African woman. Strange indeed. I realized that Hà had the best English in the group, so I decided to find out what the young woman was doing, by speaking faster than anybody else, outside of Hà, could understand. Well, she was there to see the apartment we had been trying to rent. She was interested. That’s odd. I explained to her what we had been up to, and she also agreed it was odd. “How much are they charging you” I asked, thinking for sure my fears of being outbid were coming true. Well, actually she was offered it for about a million less than us. Come again? I was underbid. I didn’t really know what to say or do in this situation, but the woman didn’t want to get in the way, so she backed out and instead of her, I proceeded to sign the contract, for the price she was going to pay. It had worked out after all.

Now, the main drawback in this place is that the main front window opens up to the lobby, not to the outside, and as such, there is no balcony, like the other suites. It’s a bit awkward, but tolerable. On multiple occasions I told them that should something above me become available, I want it. Come to me first. Well, something did come about, and about a few weeks later, my South African peer moved in upstairs. I guess I didn’t make the cut.

My first night at my new place was spectacular. I was just happy to be out of the hotel. In my own place. On a quiet street, away from traffic noise, bars, and karao- wait….what’s that? My very first night had wall-shaking karaoke for 3 hours. Right. Next. Door. I guess you just can’t win.

*The events depicted above occurred in the month of April, and there have been some developments since then. The karaoke house was torn down. That was fun. (By fun, I mean loud). It has yet to be replaced, but I’m in constant fear of the construction noises that will occur when it is. I am also waiting to move up apartments. There was somebody moving out in August. Perfect: I am away in July, and so I can move in then. Well, turns out that was a piece of misinformation. He is indeed extending. Fortunately, during our meeting about extending, the owners informed me that the English bloke on the top floor is on his way out. During that time, he appeared and I conferred with him about this. Not true. So, there’s that. Looks like another few months on the bottom floor. Let’s just hope there’s no construction starting up!

(*UPDATE to the updat: It has taken me so long to post this that I have now moved up a couple of floors. Typical Hamminnaming.)

[socialjusticeartshare]

First She Was Separated From Her Family, Now She’s Separated From School

A refugee child, once separated from her mother at the border by Trump, now struggles with online school.

Every weekday morning, a 12-year-old refugee named Génnezys logs into her seventh grade online classroom. She sits at a tiny table in a corner of her cluttered living room. Before logging in, she tapes her phone to a chair and dials my number on FaceTime. Once we’re connected, I peer into the screen of a laptop lent to her by her public middle school. For hours, I observe coronavirus pandemic-era education for Génnezys and about 20 other children of multiple races, nationalities, and economic circumstances. What I see is both heroic and tragic.

Génnezys is one of the thousands of immigrant children who were torn from their parents in 2018 by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. I wrote about the desperate efforts of Cruz, her incarcerated mother, to find her 10-year-old daughter. They were reunited after about six weeks. Cruz later borrowed $6,000 from a friend for a coyote to smuggle her three-year-old daughter into the U.S. The child was detained for a few days then released to Cruz.

I asked Génnezys to invent a pseudonym to protect her family from U.S. government reprisal, and she came up with a fanciful one based on the Spanish pronunciation — HEH-neh-sees — of the first book in the Old Testament.

Today the family resides in a small Southern city. Cruz works as a janitor, earning a bit less than $10 an hour. They live in a small apartment with one bedroom, which Cruz and the girls share with her boyfriend. He is also an immigrant, and he pays half the rent. He’s employed in construction, and he leaves for work very early in the morning. Cruz goes to work after taking her four-year-old daughter, whom I’ll call Bety, by bus to a daycare center. With school strictly online now because of Covid-19, Génnezys stays in the apartment all by herself from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., often supervising an 8-year-old girl who has her own school computer with headphones. This child’s Latina immigrant mother works, too, so Génnezys acts as babysitter. Before online school started in September, she worried intensely that being without an adult in the home would be lonely and scary. I live hundreds of miles away, so I volunteered to sit with her via FaceTime. She says that she feels much better when I’m with her.

During the first two days of remote school, the teachers, all young or middle-aged white women, cycled though a dither of confusion and kind but mostly fruitless efforts to actually see and hear their students. One problem was that the online platforms were glitchy. The class links often crashed, leaving the students, including Génnezys, with blank screens. But by week’s end, the kinks were worked out — yet the students remained silent phantoms.

“Know that I see you. I hear you. I’m with you,” one young teacher intoned to the kids right after introducing herself. They had names like Hassan, Rasheeda, Yennifer, and Travis. “Black Lives Matter,” the teacher added. She was met by silence from her new students, and she could not see their reactions either. She asked them to turn on their mics and cameras, but getting them to comply was harder than pulling their teeth. “What did you do all summer? How did you deal with Covid? Talk about your family!”

A boy with an Arabic name turned on his mic just long enough to say that he had a baby sister. Indeed, the loud wailing of an infant could be heard. The teacher skipped a beat, then the boy’s mic went dead. No other students turned on their microphones. Not even Génnezys, who had earlier proved she was not shy. When the teacher mispronounced her name on the first day of school, Génnezys politely but firmly corrected her. She is a brilliant girl who knew no English whatsoever two years ago yet speaks it almost perfectly now, and who scrolls through the internet on her own initiative for details about the accident that crippled Frida Kahlo.

Though she has defended her name and sometimes has been the only student to answer her teachers’ questions about math, Génnezys remains strenuously silent about most of the details of her life. The family all got sick in late May, with many days of fever, coughing, muscle aches, nausea, dizziness, and diarrhea, as well as loss of appetite, taste, and smell. They recovered, but Cruz is suffering now from hair loss — a condition just recently recognized as a complication of Covid-19.

When Cruz got sick, she was employed in housekeeping at an upscale chain hotel. She said she fell ill after being ordered to enter and clean a room occupied by a woman who was coughing. She was not given PPE for the job.

Cruz estimates that in her building complex of a few dozen apartments, about 20 other people came down with Covid-19. “No one died, but some were carried off to hospitals in ambulances,” she said, adding that all were immigrants from Latin America.

Latinos comprise fewer than one in five residents in the county. But they make up about half of the people in Cruz’s census tract, while just across a main thoroughfare almost everyone is white and owns a house.  In Cruz’s tract, many of the Latinos live in cramped little rental apartments.

During the outbreak and their own illnesses, Cruz and her children were never tested for Covid-19. Nor did she contact me, though she instructed her preteen daughter to call me for help if she took a turn for the worse. The family just stuck it out, but Cruz was fired by the hotel because of her sickness and missed work. She got the janitorial job just as soon as she felt better. She couldn’t self-quarantine: She had rent to pay, kids to feed. None of this is something Génnezys wants to talk about in online seventh grade.

She doesn’t turn on her camera either.

It’s hard to know exactly why the students as a group refuse to show themselves to their teachers or to each other. Middle school is the empire of peer pressure — pressure not to stand out, even in normal times, when rows of children are looking at and breathing with each other, along with a teacher in a real room. But the kids’ reluctance now seems at least partly due to how dispirited and disconnected their virtual classrooms feel. Génnesyz’s teachers practically stand on their heads coaxing interactions with the students, but the teachers’ energy seems TV-ish, abstract.

The kids are alone. They have no books. The only class that resembles normal school is math. As in times past, the teacher writes figures on a board and explains what they mean. The other classes are a mishmash of hyperactive YouTube science videos with men who speak too fast, and a woman with a white coat and test tubes performing experiments — work the students normally would be absorbed with in a classroom lab, but which they can only stare at now from afar, wall-eyed. An art class features hip-hop music, whose teaching intention is muddled, and digital choose-and-drag stickers and emojis. Strange, sci-fi cartoon people in Génnezys’s American History class purport to recount the high points of the antebellum human bondage, the Civil War, and the Black Codes. After that lesson, I asked Génnezys if she understood what a slave was. She still didn’t know — though she did remember the cartoon guy saying that a man named Frederick Douglass had been forcibly separated from his mother. She knew what that meant, from firsthand experience, but didn’t mention it in class. With me, she minimized her experience. She’d learned that Frederick Douglass was an infant when he was taken. “But, um, I was 10 when it happened,” she said. “I was a big kid, not a little kid.”

One teacher conducted a lesson about why students should participate in small- group, online “breakout” chat rooms. “Because they help us get to know each other?” said Génnezys, daring to speak.

“Very good! Thank you for that, Génnezys!” chimed the teacher, saying all the syllables correctly. Then she warned the students that they must use “appropriate language” in the chat rooms, and that their language was being watched.

This teacher also held a “correct answer” contest, with her pupils silently checking T’s and F’s on their screens. “True or false: If you fight at a school bus stop, you will be punished as severely as if you’d fought a school. True! Right, Brian! Brian gets a point! He’s pulling ahead of Corinne! Next question. True or false: If you touch the private body part of someone else at school, whether on purpose or by accident, you will be punished the same, either way. Yay, Corinne! She’s back in play!”

But there are no school bus stops now. There are no “someone else”s at school.

Génnezys has another reason not to turn on her camera: She is ashamed of her clothes. She fits a girl’s 14 now, but her wardrobe dates from a year ago, when she was size 10 and 12. Her shirts are too tight for her rapidly developing body. In the morning she puts on her mother’s dresses. They are several sizes too large.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants

Cruz can’t afford to take her daughter shopping. She just lost another week of work, and wages, due to Covid-19. Two co-workers at her janitorial job tested positive and one is in the hospital. Because Cruz worked closely with both infected women, she was quarantined for 14 days. She had no proof that she had already contracted Covid-19. She had to stay home, along with Bety, who ran around the apartment laughing, yelling, and rifling Génnezys’s little desk while her sister tried to pay attention to online class.

An employee from the county health department came by to deliver some onions and pieces of fruit. Cruz finally got a negative test result but still had to finish the quarantine. Génnezys did not tell her teachers what was happening.

Génnezys also avoids the camera because of what Cruz calls “her obsession.” On the second day of school, a teacher asked, “What is your favorite thing to do?” Amid the mass silence, Génnezys activated her mic and bravely answered: “Play with slime,” she said.

“Slime?” said the teacher, nonplussed.

“Yeah. Slime.”

“Ah. OK. Yeah. Slime. Well, that sounds relaxing!”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Slime” is a faddish kid product that’s been around since the 1970s. Back then, it was valued by boys for its gross-out appeal. Now it’s prettier, smells nice, and is all the rage among preteen and teen girls. Many make it from a home recipe involving glue, borax, food coloring, and plastic beads from craft stores like Michael’s.

Génnezys was already into slime by age 10, back in Central America. Cruz’s partner there, an extremely violent man who was neither of the girls’ fathers, was terrorizing and assaulting Cruz and the children, threatening them with death. The girls witnessed the violence. Cruz made plans to hide Bety with her sister and flee to the U.S. with Génnezys. Meanwhile, Génnezys discovered slime. “In my country,” she remembered, “it was called moco,” which is Spanish for snot. She pushed it, pulled it, rolled and wrapped it, over and over and over. It calmed her, Cruz remembers.

After a grueling trip north, including a stay in a filthy, crowded stash house, things got worse at the border when the Trump administration took Génnezys from Cruz and shipped her 2,000 miles away to a child detention center. There, she was warehoused with mostly older Central American girls who’d come to the U.S. by themselves, pregnant or already with babies.

After spending six weeks with these young women, according to Cruz, 10-year-old Génnezys was using racy language and discussing sex. After she was reunited with her mother, she experienced night terrors and walked in her sleep for three months. She had three sessions with a psychologist. Then, said Cruz, “She entered a new phase of her life: adolescence,” and “she hardly talked about what happened.” Even so, Cruz added, “Two weeks ago, after Génnezys had an eye exam that showed a problem with one of her eyes, she mentioned to me that an older girl in the detention center hit her hard in that eye with a ball. That was two years ago. She’d never told me till now. Sometimes I worry about what’s in her head.”

Outside of her head is slime: jars and jars of it in all colors and textures, from shiny and glistening to rough and frothy. “I love YouTube slime videos,” Génnezys told me. The site has a plethora of young girls extolling their slime collections, as well productions with sexy women’s voices doing ASMR routines, and images of long, manicured fingernails digging languorously into the goo.

“I worry about it,” said Cruz. “It’s such a waste of money. But she would rather have slime, even, than clothes that fit her.”

If Génnezys were to activate her camera for her classmates and teachers, they might see her furiously and endlessly twisting, pulling, and punching her strange doughs as she fidgets at the computer and tries hard to do her schoolwork. A few months ago, Wired magazine interviewed a neuroscientist and psychologist who suggested that people might be gravitating toward slime during the Covid-19 crisis to simulate the feeling of touching actual people.

As a Central American refugee child, Génnezys has been traumatized by murderous violence, forced family separation, poverty, and plague. More and more, however, nonrefugee children in America are joining her in the grief and fear of being apart and alone. How many of these kids are scrunched over their own computers, secretly toying with slime?

“I don’t know,” Génnezys said when I asked her that question. “Maybe I’m the only one. Before the virus, I didn’t play with it in school because school was good. Now, I don’t think I could do school if I didn’t have slime. Without it I’d be dying.

“Dying of what?”

“Boredom.”

Article Source

[glopratchet]

economy

everything prices, production and distribution of goods with an iron fist While it's not officially called fascism the people riot, rebel and kick their oppressors out as soon as they get the chance Many thought this would never occur When you next wake up, you hear shouts going through the streets You walk outside to listen It seems now that the time to rebel has truly come You quickly make your way to the lower dock areas where you think you can sneak aboard a ship bound for the republic "The Eternals are fall'!" " toppled the council!" You've only heard about the Eternal council, there were always whispers that they were still alive due to prophecies and would be enemies of a future rebellion The nation of Galilee consists of several islands, which are separated by underwater ridges making travel between them in early developmental periods very dangerous Due to the abundance of wetland and marine environments early fishing communities thrived Once tool making skills advanced, early humans began to venture onto the surrounding islands These early people were very dependent on fish, seafood, plants and wild game for food sources; thus they had to be sure their own population numbers did not outstrip those resources private individuals who have licenses allowing them to catch a certain amount per year, as long as they do not exceed it they may do whatever they wish with their alligators Selling the meat is lucrative business and many of the units of measurement are colloquialisms still in existence today, such as; "Two fat ladies laying side by side" which equals approximately 1 foot "Scalp Dances" in honor of the Native Americans scalping English intruders "Penny newspapers" and traveling rat catching "Mechanic Companies" eventually lead to a revolutionary mindset amongst the working class people and the foremost Labour leaders meeting to discuss how best to bring about meaningful change Most notable of these groups is the "Knights of Labor", an organization demanding health and safety regulations, a limitation on the work day, a minimum wage as well as profit sharing policies this day, as do many others Demanding women's suffrage, an end to child labor practices Many other changes are demanded such as ending monopolies and protecting the environment obtaining more than one skill are able to gain employ as undercover detectives They are charged with ferreting out union organizers, safety committees, sympathizers and other agitators often posing as workers themselves, they are commonly called "The Unions' Varied Devilance" or "Devilants " obtaining more than one skill are able to gain employ as undercover detectives They are charged with ferreting out union organizers, safety committees, sympathizers and other agitators often posing as workers themselves, they are commonly called "The Unions' Varied Devilance" or "Devilants " is evolving with the times Whilst the use of gaff hooks, butchering soon after death and mechanical livestock lift are still used; Knifes, pistols designed for ranch usage, Rope and other tool are becoming more common tools for the Hunting guide Also a new innovation by some companies is starting to gain favor, hooks connected to air hoses which making hiding difficult as you can shoot them out of hiding places sometimes multiple with 1 blast due to industrial accidents in the past To join the guild of hunting guides one faces stiff entrance exams involving a written test, field test and an interview with a guild official While the government licenses hunters, hunting guides must be guild members and the guild is strict about maintaining its quality In some locations, firearms are banned to the general public, making hunting trips more dangerous than their quests for glory, survival or vengeance the states, with regulations usually depending on habitat and season They are legal to harvest year round everywhere, although limits apply and licenses are restricted in some areas, with rules differing from state to state a union called the "Steely-J" They are charged with keeping up employment in areas where alligator hunting is used to soak up unemployment and underpaid, undervalued work depends on skill Mastering field chopping is a job in and of itself, for instance types often take months to become skilled enough to employ themselves at the barbaric trade Play the numbers game and get stinking rich it doesn't matter what era your in, it's still all about having a refined skill that is both rare and valuable that you can turn a coin with in your region To all other forms of hunting coin is standard, however as the Guild assesses what to value what type of hunting certain areas and types based on rarity, difficulty, danger of animal ,zeal required, equipment used skill level required etc Given that even in a bustling city setting game is still far from extinct in certain areas, contrary to popular opinion not all lands were tamed by men The wilderness always encroaches no matter how much we build your lands but is decided upon by the guild as stated Types of hunting areas There are generally recognized areas for hunting employed guides The standard types are based on terrain, animal preferences and multiple other factors, although your region has a few unique types at work This in no way negates that a smart alligator harvester can track and hunt their prey in hostile zones providing its not Lost Ground (in which case they wouldn't last If someone is desperate or insane enough they can try and hunt without a guide in Lost Ground, but its likely they'll be found dead if not by maddened wildlife then by Lost Ground Trap death of the standard payment for a alligator hunt just to make sure they can always afford their way home regardless of how successful they are on their hunt, although a few in dire necessity will opt to hunt with less in the hopes of made up loss in treasure if they find it skutes, named after an old trade currency from the lost civilization of Atalon adapted by the guild to help with easy calculation of vales in a quick fashion The various Guild Associations charge for their memberships each year, these range from basic dues to equipment loans Some types of quest exceptions to Guild Policies exist as well as legally allowed unsanctioned hunting it too, without the alligator hunting industry in your lands there would far too many of the beasts because they're the main large preditor in those areas otherwise Thankfully advances in technology to accelerate the growth of crops means meat hungry bipeds no longer have to be killed in mass for food and leather 1: Equipment guides Most items can be hired from the guild using coin at a reasonable price, some rare and more specialized items may require actual coin instead and are more expensive, also there rare items that are guild only The guides on offer at the local guild hall give a list of equipment recommendations to allow for alligator hunting in your area This equipment guide also exists in digital form online Alligators are susceptible to alot of ailments that would normally kill humans but they seem to shrug off It takes a human with similar weight to drop the average alligator with a single gunshot to the forehead When chopping at an alligator with an axe you need to split their armour first, going for scales just dull your weapon Its possible to shoot them in the eyes as well for an instant kill, but somewhat difficult this They need to be between 16-20, healthy and of a reasonable height and weight Nocriminal records They also need to work around the harvest camps for 1-3 years usually offering help without prompting and proving their reliability along the way During this time they cannot easily leave as their absence would arouse suspicion of slacking off, or worse, imitation of dangerous work routines that they had access to write a letter or go in person to the nearest alligator hunting guild hall and request a guide mission Guild halls situated are in lakeside settlements usually, and not in every single one but enough exist that reaching one isn't a issue assuming one is close enough Most guides will just hand you one of the guides, they can be found with the rest of the paperwork though a few are kept under the counter and you'll need to describe your situation to them handing over your guide to a guild employee who will then take it from there, you'll need to wait around a bit before being brought into a smaller side room In the side room you will find yourself facing your future employer which depending on the number of guides supplied will be one of the following types Your guider, and two militia in casual clothing obviously there to keep everything friendly and avoid accusations of thuggery The reason why these groups appear is simple your future employer to hand you a contract which will then give you two weeks to read and learn it by heart, and then another week of grace in which to get your affairs in order After that week you'll find a message on where and when to be for you The location will always the same small house on the edge of town which serves as ones of it's many drop offs and pick ups you enter the house and find a man in a semi-formal suit inside, it's too dark to make out any details but he will turn on the light and demand you sit down before speaking "Welcome " The man says "Who are you?" You ask He chuckles and responds "I think that can wait until after you've read this " At this point the man slides forward a small piece of card toward you which you pick up after reading the card word for word you are hooked and need to say the word "Stargazers" outloud at which point the man smiles and opens up the sliding door behind him He repeats "Stargazers " then leads you through as the sliding door closes behind you things such as map reading and navigation, camp management and drovery, establishing temporary camps and fibre lashings Things which you should have learned at your schools vocational classes in order to qualify you for employment in the field So here you all are in a class run by a man who holds no certification or formal education out and you all oblige, needing around two hours of education the man has you practice securing a bundle of wood to three large fallen trees and moving it with hooks and lines You all manage to take it in turns to do this under his watchful eye until he is content you all understand the basic skill of moving impermanent camps around with great items harvested from land laid out for you your duration than anything else, being diagnosed early with GSW (Green Sickness Warning) and pulled out of the camps for testing and quarantine can avoid many an issue later in life The standards are high for those who get to continue on in the profession as they age ages they recruit from each year You never knew that, but no doubt you'll find out when your test results come in in it's waters can all be found within a folder that can be downloaded from the link below with your profile information New Folder! Are you ready to find out what the future holds for you? Oh and now there are two doors before you Get back into the elevator and choose a Category for this "Room" to change, or explore the Maze of identical rooms until you find another story Get Back to the House of Rooms! in it's waters can all be found within a folder that can be downloaded from the link below with your profile information New Folder! Are you ready to find out what the future holds for you? Oh and now there are two doors before you Get back into the elevator and choose a Category for this "Room" to change, or explore the Maze of identical rooms until you find another story Get Back to the House of Rooms! Some laws on the books related to alligator harvesting are What type of hook is also different depending on body of water regulations in which part of the water you are operating under what rules, for example with Fresh Water alligators the belly line marking applies from when the kayak or boat enters the freshwater to when it leaves education rules, these more militaristic rules applying to open water apply here: water crafts on waterways and are codified in documents that all ship workers must be familiar with They also affect the ability to protect ones self with firearms while on a watercraft so because rules here are different , in which category does it fit? in freshwater result in some changes in laws that seem timely given that These developing technologies and the push for expansion makes someone realize that Categories: Alligator Snapping Turtle , Black Bear, Coyote, Gar, Goliath Tiger Prawn, King Brown, Leopard, Orca, Pythons Saltwater Crocodile, Sharks! air boating for the title of most dangerous line of work, this has lead to laws putting certain types of beams onto air boats to decrease speed to prevent water craft collisions as well as target clearing qualification tests so that accidents along these lines don't happen At the age of 18 with parental permission it is legal to operate any water craft in a harvesting capacity alone or with a group Laws also protect one from repercussions when harvesting in the traditional public waterways as supposed to claimed private waterways without permission the need set up traps and snares, freeing up more time to harvest rather than preparing the environment On private property one has full permission to hunt these creatures at any time even if the proper licenses aren't acquired, although this can obviously backfire since authorities will be quick to note whether you have fulfilled your annual harvest requirements and the amount of alligators in an area can multiply quickly if left unchecked and destroy a native population that relies on that habitat snares lead to official stipulations that limited only this particular trap in shall only be used on private property, top of the food chain predators quickly become scarce when harvest quotas need to come first Besides, it creates miserable living conditions for those indirectly involved in trading business with those using these traps as they often times are prone to get their fingers stuck or even lose entire limbs to an opportunistic alligator waiting underwater co comes to rise as an all-inclusive term for the business of gator trapping by anyone new to the industry, abbreviated as AGH One must start somewhere in this business so most start out employed by a warehouse or otherwise as hired hands like yourself for example, proceeds from work go to these upper management types who pay out what they must and keep the rest, a bit more involved than picking fruit but well worth it if one can last long enough as a whole better than working on farms underground or in factories so theirs less Likely for any labor strikes in the not so distant future just because there aren't large enough communities of them hitting the streets to push for any demands While it's uncommon for them to do it some AGH can resort to hiring themselves out as a mercenary force for land development for sums that would make your eyes water several medium-sized corprations for harvesting purposes only and sent in to primary alligator breeding rivers, peniches, and wetlands to in the quarantee that one will be shipped and delivered supplies no matter where they are as long as the medium sized corperation from which one aquires their harvesting license still supports them You've heard stories of lone alligator hunters stranded out on a island who through making a good deal wound up with an entire armada of ships waiting for their return To this day the only time an official execution is actually executed is in your business where lone hunters must prove their harvest amount before noon or face extinction by declaration of on on-site and very present witnesses mutual destruction all the time and there's rarely anything authorities need concern themselves with when it happens, same goes for vigilante action, most of the time someone wrecks justice on a accused traitor themselves before anywone can even form a mob and governments, and are quite capable of pulling out of any region or place that no longer proves profitable for their own business, such as a entire country if they must In the scheme of things most regions are considered safe for trade operation Others where either unknown hostile forces rule with an iron fist or no government at all, others where warring factions slaughter eachother on a regular basis, these tend to be riskier could constitute a naval threat were they ever to unite in a common cause and aim for sovereignty, thankfully this has yet to happen thus far Still you shake off these thoughts for now and leave them to worry about these things at a higher pay grade than yourself After acquiring all the relevant information from your pilot trainer its time to look into possible cargo drops runs almost entirely on a barter system, pre-fabricated cheap guns mostly imported from industrious chop-shop operations in sinks for those who want them are apparently one of the only exceptions But how to whose flights you not necessarily going ot be reputable enough to get onto with a landing zone about your size, and enough commercial traffic that your town should be able to send up at least one load before the trader moves on Apollo-Negros: Your previous trading partner from last year, they specialize in cash crops of all kinds and usually have a good amount of disposable capital to throw around on the less reputable goods either selling entire catch or selling prime cuts to large agencies who then process and distribute cheaper cuts down to local towns in need of food the big problem with this set up however is finding a distributor, In addition to being a wholly owned subsidiary of one of the trading organizations their distributors are ruthlessly exclusive, none of your townspeople will have ever have recieved prime cutless from them before so you don't even know if you'll be able to reach them , although they'd never say so in public, and it is in your interest to keep a good trading relationship with them Time to visit Zuri and see what that camp has to say about the situation now , and it is in your best interest to stay on good terms with the nation in addition to building airships they also produce high-end weapons and vehicles for military and police use you're convinced with your newfound leverage you should be able to at least get a small discount for gaskets and such screws, gaskets, wiring, and other parts necessary for airships of its nature if you can get a good deal the steel itself is cheap considering large purchases can be paid for in meat shipments alone --deal with alligator harvesters-- You trek off to the usual place, this time by yourself without one of the pilots as guide You do remember how to find it however (thank goodness for maps), and make it there by lunchtime for whatever reason, some times it just doesn't hurt to have extra meat in the back Today though is whatever reason, you've got a prime spot under one of their canopies despite it only being 10 in the morning Perhaps the harvesters that were suppose to do it got slaugthered or something, either way you're making good progress when "AAAAHHHH WHAT THE HELL MAN WAHHH GET OFF!" and testing ways to make it more efficient apparently just arrived it is now 12pm, you've got a dozen pallets to go through and you are finishing the last one --Author: Dilan to play-- "Let's hear it for our newest harvester, folks!" Hurrahs erupt from the workers as you enter the cafeteria, flinging the door open with panache have lately been in a slump, with the council itself even getting involved on the heavy side New ideas are always accepted, and often bring interesting results Having gotten through most of the stacks, you scroll through your contacts thinking who to tell about the new discovery One name in particular leaps out, so you call him up Today, at last, Zuzu has given the whole company a break by single-handedly deciding to reorganize the effort almost always an underground process, in fact that is how Zuzu was introduced to it himself Whacko Jacko's is a small time operation, but within the Republic it has almost complete dominance A lot of the workers are already from outside the Republic too, so organized crime as a whole seized on it easily actually banned by the nation of Galilee, however you prefer not to cross them in regards to shadow groups The Whitecrowns are obviously out for whatever reason, ignoring them is generally a good policy You could also try one of the bigger ones the raaigs gang is currently the largest skutepiracy outfit in the galaxy, having absorbed or wiped out most of the others with the complacency of the USSRC, who technically owns and operates all transportation ships It mainly happens because Councilor Stark wants a big standing navy so pirates are human bait The raaigs often act as coastal pirates themselves in fact whenever they feel like irritating Stark The other major player is the Black Hooks, an underworld organization with much greater resources than you might guess from their name

[vsplusonline]

Hong Kong reports no new COVID-19 cases as India, Singapore see spike in infections

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/hong-kong-reports-no-new-covid-19-cases-as-india-singapore-see-spike-in-infections/

Hong Kong reports no new COVID-19 cases as India, Singapore see spike in infections

India and Singapore announced their biggest single-day spikes in new coronavirus cases on Monday, as the crisis intensifies in parts of Asia.

India’s spike came after the government eased one of the world’s strictest lockdowns to allow some manufacturing and agricultural activity to resume.

An additional 1,553 cases were reported over 24 hours in India, raising the national total past 17,000. At least 543 people have died in the country from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and epidemiologists forecast the peak may not be reached before June.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Tensions mount as people seek to resume work, play amid lockdowns

The shelter-in-place orders imposed in India on March 24 halted all but essential services, sparking an exodus of migrant workers and people who survive on daily wages out of India’s cities to villages in rural areas. Authorities picked up travellers in a fleet of buses and quarantined many of them in empty schools and other public buildings for 14 days.

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Starting Monday, limited industry and farming were allowed to resume where employers could meet social distancing and hygiene norms, and migrant workers were allowed to travel within states to factories, farms and other work sites.

Meanwhile, Singapore’s confirmed cases shot up to nearly 8,000 after 1,426 infections were reported Monday, a single-day high for the tiny Southeast Asian city-state.

2:02 Trump condemned for freezing funding to WHO

Trump condemned for freezing funding to WHO

Singapore now has the highest number of cases in Southeast Asia at 7,984, a massive surge from just 200 on March 15. Authorities say most of the new cases were again linked to foreign workers.

More than 200,000 low-wage workers from Asia live in tightly packed dormitories that became virus hotspots after they were overlooked earlier by the government. Officials have said that cases are expected to rise as testing continues at the dorms, but are hoping that a partial lockdown until May 4, mandatory wearing of masks and strict social distancing measures will help curb the spread of the virus.

[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]

In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:

No new cases in Hong Kong

Hong Kong reported no new cases on Monday for the first time in nearly seven weeks. Prior to Monday, the city had seen eight consecutive days of single-digit infections, dwindling from a surge in cases in March as residents overseas flocked to return amid the U.S. and Europe outbreaks. Hong Kong’s current tally stands at 1,026 cases, including four deaths.

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Sri Lanka partially lifts curfew

Sri Lanka’s government has partially lifted a monthlong curfew, with the country’s top health official declaring that COVID-19 is “under control” in the Indian Ocean island nation. Sri Lanka had been under a 24-hour curfew since March 20. It was lifted during daytime hours in more than two thirds of the country Monday and will continue in the remaining districts including the capital, Colombo, until Wednesday. The curfew will remain in effect from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. until further notice. Sri Lanka had confirmed 271 cases and seven deaths as of Sunday.

READ MORE: Live updates: Coronavirus in Canada

New Zealand’s lockdown extended

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that New Zealand’s lockdown will last another week. For nearly four weeks, nonessential workers have been able to leave their homes only to buy groceries or to exercise. Starting next week, construction and manufacturing can resume, and some schools will reopen, although home-learning will be encouraged.

South Korea’s infections wane

South Korea reported 13 new virus cases Monday as infections continue to wane in the hardest-hit city of Daegu. The new figures brought the national totals to 10,674 cases and 236 deaths. With its caseload slowing, South Korea has relaxed some of its social distancing guidelines, including lifting administrative orders that advised churches, gyms and bars to close.

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1:47 Coronavirus outbreak: WHO says evidence suggests herd immunity hasn’t been achieved

Coronavirus outbreak: WHO says evidence suggests herd immunity hasn’t been achieved

Japanese exports sink

Japanese exports sank 11.7 per cent in March as the pandemic slammed auto shipments to the U.S. The Finance Ministry said exports to the U.S. fell 16.5 per cent, while those to China declined 8.7 per cent. Trade has slowed precipitously, and the International Monetary Fund forecasts that the world economy is heading into its worst slowdown since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Japan tulips razed

Tens of thousands of tulips in full bloom were razed at a Japanese park to prevent crowds from gathering. The flowers were the centerpiece of a popular annual festival in Sakura city, east of Tokyo, that was cancelled this year. People still gathered to admire the flowers, however, making social distancing difficult. “We, of course, wish for many people to see our flowers, but this situation is now about human life. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but we had to do it,” said Takahiro Kogo, a city official overseeing the park.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Iran begins to reopen despite COVID-19 fears

Bangkok extends alcohol ban

Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, has extended a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages to the end of April as efforts continue to contain the coronavirus. A ban was originally imposed for April 10-20, when Thais would normally celebrate the Songkran New Year festival with drink-fueled merrymaking at large public gatherings. Celebrations of the holiday were also postponed. Alcohol sales bans were separately ordered in all 76 of Thailand’s provinces, which are likely to be extended. A Bangkok official said people with alcohol dependency problems could be treated for free at the city’s medical facilities.

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Australian soap opera resumes

1:32 Coronavirus outbreak: UN agency says at least 300,000 Africans expected to die due to virus

Coronavirus outbreak: UN agency says at least 300,000 Africans expected to die due to virus

The long-running Australian soap opera “Neighbours” returned from a three-week production break on Monday and plans to resume full production next week with new coronavirus safeguards. “Neighbours” production company Fremantle Australia said it is one of the few TV dramas in the English-speaking world to resume production during the pandemic. “Neighbours” first screened in 1985. It has been sold to more than 60 countries and has a larger following in Britain than Australia. Its Melbourne studio will be separated into three scene areas with no crews allowed to cross between the areas, Fremantle said.

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[thisdaynews]

Bernie's first big test of 2020 arrives

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/bernies-first-big-test-of-2020-arrives/

Bernie's first big test of 2020 arrives

Sen. Bernie Sanders. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

LAS VEGAS — Free tacos. Agua de jamaica. A futbol tourney.

Bernie Sanders’ “Unidos con Bernie” event Monday was unlike any other hosted by his rivals in Nevada, where polls indicate he’s leading among Latino voters.

Most of the kids playing were too young to participate in state’s caucuses on Saturday. But Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser and point man for Sanders’ aggressive courtship of Latino voters in the state, said that was beside the point.

“I can’t guarantee that every young man out there is old enough to vote, but every young man out there knows that we’ve been in this community for eight months,” Rocha told POLITICO on the sidelines. “And they’ll be talking to their friends who can go vote, and go home to their parents and talk about Bernie Sanders buying everybody food while we played soccer [and] watch[ed] over their children while they were here in this park.”

Nevada presents the first test of Sanders ability to turn out Latinos. If he does well among the key demographic — which could account for 20 percent of caucus-goers — it could provide a recipe for continued success among Latinos on Super Tuesday, in states such as California, Texas, and North Carolina.

The campaign says it’s spent millions on Latino outreach in Nevada. Of the 250 staffers in the state, more than 100 of them are people of color and 76 are Latinos. Sanders is targeting Latinos on digital platforms like YouTube, Hulu, and Pandora; with mailers, TV ads, phone calls, and texting; and via old-fashioned door-knocking and community events. The campaign has held 35 of those in Spanish.

Polling backs up Sanders advisers’ confidence that the efforts — crafted with the knowledge of their 2016 missteps in mind — will pay off in the first nominating contest with a diverse voting population.

In a pair of polls released Tuesday, Sanders and Joe Biden placed first and second among Latinos. A Univision poll conducted Feb. 9-14 had Sanders ahead, with 33 percent support among Latinos compared to 22 percent for Biden. A Telemundo poll conducted Feb. 10 – 12 showed Biden at 34 percent among Latinos vs. 31 percent for Sanders — although the pollster believes Sanders is now ahead because of the bounce he got from winning New Hampshire.

“He’s put in the work,” Laura Martin, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said of Sanders. Martin said she was stunned by the number of people Sanders’ campaign was busing to early voting locations last weekend. Martin also credtied the Sanders campaign work in securing endorsements from national progressive Latino groups that have helped bolster his ground game in states like Nevada.

Sanders has been on Spanish-language TV for the past six weeks, spending more than $130,000 in the final month. Only billionaire Tom Steyer has invested more, dropping more than $200,000 during that span. Steyer also went up with ads earlier in December.

Biden, whose campaign is predicting a second-place finish in Nevada, is the only candidate who is not on Spanish-language TV in the final stretch. According to a campaign source with knowledge of Biden’s paid communication strategy, Biden’s Latino supporters in Nevada primarily speak English as their first language and are older than 40, while his percentage of Spanish-speaking supporters ranks in the mid-single digits.

“Latino voters are paying attention and Bernie got a bounce from New Hampshire,” said Brad Coker, who conducted the Telemundo/Mason-Dixon poll. “Biden’s going to need to win two-thirds of Latino voters to win Nevada, anyway. And he doesn’t have that.”

Biden’s campaign and surrogates deny they’re ceding the Latino vote.

Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) canvassed for Biden over the weekend in minority neighborhoods around Las Vegas. He said he’s sensing “overwhelming support for Biden” among Latinos 40 and over, based on his conversations with voters.

Also, some pollsters question the depth of Sanders’ support among Latinos in Nevada and elsewhere.

Stephanie Valencia of the Latino-focused Equis Labs, said it remains to be seen whether it’s Sanders “the candidate” or the broader “movement” he’s leading that attracts Latinos. Her polling reflects Sanders’ strength among the demographic, especially young Latinas.

“Do people who are Latino Bernie supporters feel so strongly about him that they’re going to show up and caucus for him?” Valencia said. “Because it’s one thing to show up and vote for somebody, it’s another thing to go and caucus for somebody.”

But Sanders’ campaign is acutely aware that his polling strength among young Latinos won’t necessarily translate in a caucus state like Nevada, given the time and effort required of voters. Young voters, regardless of race, are historically the least likely group to turn out.

That’s why his campaign said starting early was crucial. In 2016, his advisers didn’t realize Sanders’ potential with Latinos until late, said Rocha. Everything was “moving so fast, we never had time to go build our relationships in that community,” he said.

“We wanted to start the campaign where we left off, so we started in the Latino neighborhoods,” Rocha said. The first of 11 field offices it opened in Nevada was in the largely Latino East Las Vegas. And the first TV ads Sanders purchased in the state were in Spanish. “We’re blowing people out organizing-wise,” Rocha said.

Ironically, part of the campaign’s effectiveness among Latinos stems from the fact that it did not create a separate arm for courting Latinos, said Analilia Mejia, Sanders’ national political director. Instead, outreach to Latinos was integrated into every part of the organization. No matter the topic of a press release, Mejia said, a Latino staffer has looked at it before it goes out.

One of Sanders’ first messages to Latinos in Nevada came in an August mailer that told the senator’s family immigration story. That was followed by issue-specific mailers, including one in November prominently featuring progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Ocasio-Cortez held a town hall for Sanders in December entirely in Spanish, a rarity that drew widespread notice in the Latino community. Notably, Ocasio-Cortez is not scheduled to campaign for Sanders in Nevada in the final days before the caucuses.

Sanders’ final Spanish-language TV ad to Latinos this week was narrated, written and produced by Dreamers on his staff, according to the campaign.

Sanders’ rivals are trying to loosen his perceived grip on Latinos. Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar all joined Sanders and Steyer on Spanish-language airwaves in the past two weeks. Warren met with the Latino organizing group Mi Familia Vota and held an event with Culinary Union workers. She’s also been joined by Julián Castro, a top Latino endorser, throughout the week.

Buttigieg campaign co-chair Nelda Martinez, a Texas mayor, is scheduled to campaign in Nevada this week. Buttigieg, Steyer and Klobuchar sat down with Telemundo in Nevad for a presidential townhall last week as Sanders tele-conferenced in.

Sanders’ biggest vulnerability among Latinos and all Democrats — attacks on him by the state’s powerful Culinary Union — was likely mitigated by the union’s decision not to endorse another candidate.

“The fact that [Culinary Union] chose to stay neutral means they’re essentially allowing Latinos to make their own decision on their own,” said Andres Ramirez, a Nevada political consultant. “Had Culinary endorsed Biden or Klobuchar, then I think it would have made a big difference.”

Marc Caputo contributed to this report.

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[lodelss]

Danielle A. Jackson | Longreads | September 2019 | 16 minutes (4,184 words)

The late summer night Tupac died, I listened to All Eyez on Me at a record store in an East Memphis strip mall. The evening felt eerie and laden with meaning. It was early in the school year, 1996, and through the end of the decade, Adrienne, Jessica, Karida and I were a crew of girlfriends at our high school. We spent that night, and many weekend nights, at Adrienne’s house.

Our public school had been all white until a trickle of black students enrolled during the 1966–67 school year. That was 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education and six years after the local NAACP sued the school board for maintaining dual systems in spite of the ruling. In 1972, a federal district court ordered busing; more than 40,000 white students abandoned the school system by 1980. The board created specialized and accelerated courses in some of its schools, an “optional program,” in response. Students could enter the programs regardless of district lines if they met certain academic requirements. This kind of competition helped retain some white students, but also created two separate tracks within those institutions — a tenuous, half-won integration. It meant for me, two decades later, a “high-performing school” with a world of resources I knew to be grateful for, but at a cost. There were few black teachers. Black students in the accelerated program were scattered about, small groups of “onlies” in all their classes. Black students who weren’t in the accelerated program got rougher treatment from teachers and administrators. An acrid grimness hung in the air. It felt like being tolerated rather than embraced. 

My friends and I did share a lunch period. At our table, we traded CDs we’d gotten in the mail: Digable Planets’s Blowout Comb, D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, the Fugees’ The Score. An era of highly visible black innovation was happening alongside a growing awareness of my own social position. I didn’t have those words then, but I had my enthusiasms. At Maxwell’s concert one sweaty night on the Mississippi, we saw how ecstasy, freedom, and black music commingle and coalesce into a balm. We watched the films of the ’90s wave together, and while most had constraining gender politics, Love Jones, the Theodore Witcher–directed feature about a group of brainy young artists in Chicago, made us wish for a utopic city that could make room for all we would become. 

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We also loved to read the glossies — what ’90s girl didn’t? We especially salivated over every cover of Vibe. Adrienne and I were fledgling writers who experimented a lot and adored English class. In the ’90s, the canon was freshly expanding: We read T.S. Eliot alongside Kate Chopin and Chinua Achebe. Something similar was happening in magazines. Vibe’s mastheads and ad pages were full of black and brown people living, working, and loving together and out front — a multicultural ideal hip-hop had made possible. Its “new black aesthetic” meant articles were fresh and insightful but also hyper-literary art historical objects in their own rights. Writers were fluent in Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison as well as Biggie Smalls. By the time Tupac died, Kevin Powell had spent years contextualizing his life within the global struggle for black freedom. “There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest],” former editor Rob Kenner told Billboard in a Vibe oral history. He’s saying Vibe helped create Obama’s “coalition of the ascendent” — the black, Latinx, and young white voters who gave the Hawaii native two terms. For me, the pages reclaimed and retold the American story with fewer redactions than my history books. They created a vision of what a multiethnic nation could be.

* * *

“There was a time when journalism was flush,” Danyel Smith told me on a phone call from a summer retreat in Massachusetts. She became music editor at Vibe in 1994, and was editor in chief during the late ’90s and again from 2006 to 2008. The magazine, founded by Quincy Jones and Time, Inc. executives in 1992, was the “first true home of the culture we inhabit today,” according to Billboard. During Smith’s first stint as editor in chief, its circulation more than doubled. She wrote the story revealing R. Kelly’s marriage to then 15-year-old Aaliyah, as well as cover features on Janet Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Whitney Houston. Smith was at the helm when the magazine debuted its Obama covers in 2007 — Vibe was the first major publication to endorse the freshman senator. When she described journalism as “flush,” Smith was talking about the late ’80s, when she started out in the San Francisco Bay. “Large cities could support with advertising two, sometimes three, alternative news weeklies and dailies,” she said.

‘There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest].’

The industry has collapsed and remade itself many times since then. Pew reports that between 2008 and 2018, journalism jobs declined 25 percent, a net loss of about 28,000 positions. Business Insider reports losses at 3,200 jobs this year alone. Most reductions have been in newspapers. A swell in digital journalism has not offset the losses in print, and it’s also been volatile, with layoffs several times over the past few years, as outlets “pivot to video” or fail to sustain venture-backed growth. Many remaining outlets have contracted, converting staff positions into precarious freelance or “permalance” roles. In a May piece for The New Republic, Jacob Silverman wrote about the “yawning earnings gap between the top and bottom echelons” of journalism reflected in the stops and starts of his own career. After a decade of prestigious headlines and publishing a book, Silverman called his private education a “sunken cost” because he hadn’t yet won a coveted staff role. If he couldn’t make it with his advantageous beginnings, he seemed to say, the industry must be truly troubled. The prospect of “selling out” — of taking a corporate job or work in branded content — seemed more concerning to him than a loss of the ability to survive at all. For the freelance collective Study Hall, Kaila Philo wrote how the instability in journalism has made it particularly difficult for black women to break into the industry, or to continue working and developing if they do. The overall unemployment rate for African Americans has been twice that of whites since at least 1972, when the government started collecting the data by race. According to Pew, newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall. Philo’s report mentions the Women’s Media Center’s 2018 survey on women of color in U.S. news, which states that just 2.62 percent of all journalists are black women. In a write-up of the data, the WMC noted that fewer than half of newspapers and online-only newsrooms had even responded to the original questionnaire. 

* * *

According to the WMC, about 2.16 percent of newsroom leaders are black women. If writers are instrumental in cultivating our collective conceptions of history, editors are arguably more so. Their sensibilities influence which stories are accepted and produced. They shape and nurture the voices and careers of writers they work with. It means who isn’t there is noteworthy. “I think it’s part of the reason why journalism is dying,” Smith said. “It’s not serving the actual communities that exist.” In a July piece for The New Republic, Clio Chang called the push for organized labor among freelancers and staff writers at digital outlets like Vox and Buzzfeed, as well as at legacy print publications like The New Yorker, a sign of hope for the industry.  “In the most basic sense, that’s the first norm that organizing shatters — the isolation of workers from one another,” Chang wrote. Notably, Vox’s union negotiated a diversity initiative in their bargaining agreement, mandating 40 to 50 percent of applicants interviewed come from underrepresented backgrounds.

“Journalism is very busy trying to serve a monolithic imaginary white audience. And that just doesn’t exist anymore,” Smith told me. U.S. audiences haven’t ever been truly homogeneous. But the media institutions that serve us, like most facets of American life, have been deliberately segregated and reluctant to change. In this reality, alternatives sprouted. Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all. Greg Sandow, an editor at Entertainment Weekly at the time, told Billboard, “I’m summoned to this meeting on the 34th floor [at the Time, Inc. executive offices]. And here came some serious concerns. This dapper guy in a suit and beautifully polished shoes says, ‘We’re publishing this. Does that mean we have to put black people on the cover?’” Throughout the next two decades, many publications serving nonwhite audiences thrived. Vibe spun off, creating Vibe Vixen in 2004. The circulations of Ebony, JET, and Essence, legacy institutions founded in 1945, 1951, and 1970, remained robust — the New York Times reported in 2000 that the number of Essence subscribers “sits just below Vogue magazine’s 1.1 million and well above the 750,000 of Harper’s Bazaar.” One World and Giant Robot launched in 1994, Latina and TRACE in 1996. Honey’s preview issue, with Lauryn Hill on the cover, hit newsstands in 1999. Essence spun off to create Suede, a fashion and culture magazine aimed at a “polyglot audience,” in 2004. A Magazine ran from 1989 to 2001; Hyphen launched with two young reporters at the helm the following year. In a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Camille Bromley called Hyphen a celebration of “Asian culture without cheerleading” invested in humor, complication, and complexity, destroying the model minority myth. Between 1956 and 2008, the Chicago Defender, founded in 1905 and a noted, major catalyst for the Great Migration, published a daily print edition. During its flush years, the Baltimore Afro-American, founded in 1892, published separate editions in Philadelphia, Richmond, and Newark.

Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all.

The recent instability in journalism has been devastating for the black press. The Chicago Defender discontinued its print editions in July. Johnson Publications, Ebony and JET’s parent company, filed bankruptcy earlier this year after selling the magazines to a private equity firm in 2016. Then it put up for sale its photo archive — more than 4 million prints and negatives. Its record of black life throughout the 20th century includes images of Emmett Till’s funeral, in which the 14-year-old’s mutilated body lay in state, and Moneta Sleet Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize–winning image of Coretta Scott King mourning with her daughter, Bernice King. It includes casually elegant images of black celebrities at home and shots of everyday street scenes and citizens — the dentists and mid-level diplomats who made up the rank and file of the ascendant. John H. Johnson based Ebony and JET on LIFE, a large glossy heavy on photojournalism with a white, Norman Rockwell aesthetic and occasional dehumanizing renderings of black people. Johnson’s publications, like the elegantly attired stars of Motown, were meant as proof of black dignity and humanity. In late July, four large foundations formed an historic collective to buy the archive, shepherd its preservation, and make it available for public access.

The publications’ written stories are also important. Celebrity profiles offered candid, intimate views of famous, influential black figures and detailed accounts of everyday black accomplishment. Scores of skilled professionals ushered these pieces into being: Era Bell Thompson started out at the Chicago Defender and spent most of her career in Ebony’s editorial leadership. Tennessee native Lynn Norment worked for three decades as a writer and editor at the publication. André Leon Talley and Elaine Welteroth passed through Ebony for other jobs in the industry. Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Black, Latinx, and Asian American media are not included in the counts on race and gender WMC reports. They get their data from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), and Cristal Williams Chancellor, WMC’s director of communications, told me she hopes news organizations will be more “aggressive” in helping them “accurately indicate where women are in the newsroom.” While men dominate leadership roles in mainstream newsrooms, news wires, TV, and audio journalism, publications targeting multicultural audiences have also had a reputation for gender trouble, with a preponderance of male cover subjects, editorial leaders, and features writers. Kim Osorio, the first woman editor in chief at The Source, was fired from the magazine after filing a complaint about sexual harassment. Osorio won a settlement for wrongful termination in 2006 and went on to help launch BET.com and write a memoir before returning to The Source in 2012. Since then, she’s made a career writing for TV.  

* * *

This past June, Nieman Lab published an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic since 2016, and Adrienne LaFrance, the magazine’s executive editor. The venerable American magazine was founded in Boston in 1857. Among its early supporters were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It sought to promote an “American ideal,” a unified yet pluralistic theory of American aesthetics and politics. After more than a century and a half of existence, women writers are not yet published in proportion to women’s share of the country’s population. The Nieman piece focused on progress the magazine has made in recent years toward equitable hiring and promoting: “In 2016, women made up just 17 percent of editorial leadership at The Atlantic. Today, women account for 63 percent of newsroom leaders.” A few days after the piece’s publication, a Twitter user screen-capped a portion of the interview where Goldberg was candid about areas in which the magazine continues to struggle:

  GOLDBERG: We continue to have a problem with the print magazine cover stories — with the gender and race issues when it comes to cover story writing. [Of the 15 print issues The Atlantic has published since January 2018, 11 had cover stories written by men. — Ed.]

 It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males. What I have to do — and I haven’t done this enough yet — is again about experience versus potential. You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!

That’s one way to approach it, but the other way to approach it is, huh, you’re really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you’re 33 and you’re burning with ambition, and that’s great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000-word cover stories. It might not work. It often doesn’t. But we have to be very deliberate and efficient about creating the space for more women to develop that particular journalistic muscle.

My Twitter feed of writers, editors, and book publicists erupted, mostly at the excerpt’s thinly veiled statement on ability. Women in my timeline responded with lists of writers of longform — books, articles, and chapters — who happened to be women, or people of color, or some intersection therein. Goldberg initially said he’d been misquoted. When Laura Hazard Owen, the deputy editor at Nieman who’d conducted the interview, offered proof that Goldberg’s statements had been delivered as printed, he claimed he had misspoken. Hazard Owen told the L.A. Times she believes that The Atlantic is, overall, “doing good work in diversifying the staff there.”

Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Still, it’s a difficult statement for a woman writer of color to hear. “You literally are looking at me and all my colleagues, all my women colleagues and all my black colleagues, all my colleagues of color and saying, ‘You’re not really worthy of what we do over here.’ It’s mortifying,” Smith told me. Goldberg’s admission may have been a misstatement, but it mirrors the continued whiteness of mainstream mastheads. It checks out with the Women’s Media Center’s reports and the revealing fact of how much data is missing from even those important studies. It echoes the stories of black women who work or worked in journalism, who have difficulty finding mentors, or who burn out from the weight of wanting to serve the chronically underserved. It reflects my own experiences, in which I have been told multiple times in a single year that I am the only black woman editor that a writer has ever had. But it doesn’t corroborate my long experience as a reader. What happened to the writers and editors and multihyphenates from the era of the multicultural magazine, that brief flash in the 90’s and early aughts when storytellers seemed to reflect just how much people of color lead in creating American culture? Who should have formed a pipeline of leaders for mainstream publications when the industry began to contract?

* * *

In addition to her stints at Vibe, Smith also edited for Billboard, Time, Inc. publications, and published two novels. She was culture editor for ESPN’s digital magazine The Undefeated before going on book leave. Akiba Solomon is an author, editor of two books, and is currently senior editorial director at Colorlines, a digital news daily published by Race Forward. She started an internship at YSB in 1995 before going on to write and edit for Jane, Glamour, Essence, Vibe Vixen, and The Source. She told me that even at magazines without predominantly black staff, she’d worked with other black people, though not often directly. At black magazines, she was frequently edited by black women. “I’ve been edited by Robin Stone, Vanessa DeLuca [formerly editor-in-chief of Essence, currently running the Medium vertical ZORA], Ayana Byrd, Kierna Mayo, Cori Murray, and Michaela Angela Davis.” Solomon’s last magazine byline was last year, an Essence story on black women activists who organize in culturally relevant ways to fight and prevent sexual assault.

Solomon writes infrequently for publications now, worn down by conditions in journalism she believes are untenable. At the hip-hop magazines, the sexism was a deterrent, and later, “I was seeing a turn in who was getting the jobs writing about black music” when it became mainstream. “Once folks could divorce black music from black culture it was a wrap,” she said. At women’s magazines, Solomon felt stifled by “extremely narrow” storytelling. Publishing, in general, Solomon believes, places unsustainable demands on its workers. 

When we talk about the death of print, it is infrequent that we also talk about the conditions that make it ripe for obsolescence. The reluctant slowness with which mainstream media has integrated its mastheads (or kept them integrated) has meant the industry’s content has suffered. And the work environments have placed exorbitant burdens on the people of color who do break through. In Smith’s words:

You feel that you want to serve these people with good and quality content, with good and quality graphics, with good and quality leadership. And as a black person, as a black woman, regardless of whether you’re serving a mainstream audience, which I have at a Billboard and at Time, Inc., or a multicultural audience, which I have at Vibe, it is difficult. And it’s actually taken me a long time to admit that to myself. It does wear you down. And I ask myself why have I always, always stayed in a job two and a half to three years, especially when I’m editing? It’s because I’m tired by that time.

In a July story for Politico, black journalists from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked about how a sophisticated understanding of race is critical to ethically and thoroughly covering the current political moment. After the August 3 massacre in El Paso, Lulu Garcia-Navarro wrote how the absence of Latinx journalists in newsrooms has created a vacuum that allows hateful words from the president to ring unchallenged. Lacking the necessary capacity, many organizations cover race related topics, often matters of life and death, without context or depth. As outlets miss the mark, journalists of color may take on the added work of acting as the “the black public editor of our newsrooms,” Astead Herndon from the Times said on a Buzzfeed panel. Elaine Welteroth wrote about the physical exhaustion she experienced during her tenure as editor in chief at Teen Vogue in her memoir More Than Enough. She was the second African American editor in chief in parent company Condé Nast’s 110 year history:

I was too busy to sleep, too frazzled to eat, and TMI: I had developed a bizarre condition where I felt the urge to pee — all the time. It was so disruptive that I went to see a doctor, thinking it may have been a bladder infection.

Instead, I found myself standing on a scale in my doctor’s office being chastised for accidentally dropping nine more pounds. These were precious pounds that my naturally thin frame could not afford to lose without leaving me with the kind of bony body only fashion people complimented.

Condé Nast shuttered Teen Vogue’s print edition in 2017, despite record-breaking circulation, increased political coverage, and an expanded presence on the internet during Welteroth’s tenure. Welteroth left the company to write her book and pursue other ventures.

Mitzi Miller was editor in chief of JET when it ran the 2012 cover story on Jordan Davis, a Florida teenager shot and killed by a white vigilante over his loud music. “At the time, very few news outlets were covering the story because it occurred over a holiday weekend,” she said. To write the story, Miller hired Denene Millner, an author of more than 20 books. With interviews from Jordan’s parents, Ron Davis and Lucy McBath, the piece went viral and was one of many stories that galvanized the contemporary American movement against police brutality.

Miller started working in magazines in 2000, and came up through Honey and Jane before taking the helm at JET then Ebony in 2014. She edits for the black website theGrio when she can and writes an occasional piece for a print magazine roughly once a year. Shrinking wages have made it increasingly difficult to make a life in journalism, she told me. After working at a number of dream publications, Miller moved on to film and TV development. 

Both Miller and Solomon noted how print publications have been slow to evolve. “It’s hard to imagine now, particularly to digital native folks, but print was all about a particular format. It was about putting the same ideas into slightly different buckets,” Solomon said. On the podcast Hear to Slay, Vanessa DeLuca spoke about how reluctant evolution may have imperiled black media. “Black media have not always … looked forward in terms of how to build a brand across multiple platforms.” Some at legacy print institutions still seem to hold internet writing in lower esteem (“You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!” were Goldberg’s words to Nieman Lab). Often, pay structures reflect this hierarchy. Certainly, the internet’s speed and accessibility have lowered barriers to entry and made it such that rigor is not always a requirement for publication. But it’s also changed information consumption patterns and exploded the possibilities of storytelling.

Michael Gonzales, a frequent contributor to this site and a writer I’ve worked with as an editor, started in magazines in the 1980s as a freelancer. He wrote for The Source and Vibe during a time that overlapped with Smith’s and Solomon’s tenures, the years now called “the golden era of rap writing.” The years correspond to those moments I spent reading magazines with my high school friends. At black publications, he worked with black women editors all the time, but “with the exception of the Village Voice, none of the mainstream magazines employed black editors.” Despite the upheaval of the past several years (“the money is less than back in the day,” he said), Gonzales seems pleased with where his career has landed, “I’ve transformed from music critic/journalist to an essayist.” He went on to talk about how now, with the proliferation of digital magazines:

I feel like we’re living in an interesting writer time where there are a number of quality sites looking for quality writing, especially in essay form. There are a few that sometimes get too self-indulgent, but for the most part, especially in the cultural space (books, movies, theater, music, etc.), there is a lot of wonderful writing happening. Unfortunately you are the only black woman editor I have, although a few years back I did work with Kierna Mayo at Ebony.

  * * *

Danielle A. Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

Editor: Sari Botton

Fact checker: Steven Cohen

Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

[cdnsolution]

Android Q Vs iOS 13: Worth Reading For Developers

In this tech world, a lot of alike things are going on along with which comes comparison debate just like us humans who are the same but with different opinions. Here we are talking about Android and iOS battle of user-friendly and innovative features. Both these operating systems are the game changers for the mobile industry. They are the world’s most widely used mobile platforms and consumers from all over the world are keen to know about their new software upgrades, models, features, and launches.

Apple recently announces iOS latest features  iOS 13 for iPhones  at its annual WWDC event. Now, It comes with a number of notable features that not just improve the performance of the iPhone but also brings a bunch of improvements to the built-in apps. The feature set of iOS 13 is going to amaze all the iPhone users. Its latest software upgrades such as enhanced privacy settings and systemic dark mode. The company has promised to make its iPhones, even better, secure, and easier to use.

On the contrary, Google’s Android Q is also getting popularity, brings some amazing and attractive features including dark mode, AI and privacy enhancements.

If you are a developer, here’s a list of features and functionality of both the operating systems: Android Q and iOS 13 in detail. So, you can compare and select the best fit for the solution you’re about to develop

Let’s first have a look at Android Q features:

Foldable Phone Support:

There’s no end to technological advancement and therefore it keeps on getting things better. Same is the case with improvements in the mobile operating system which was first recognized by Google. Google announced the potential foldable phones in the future. And let me know you that one of the best features that Android Q has is the support for large screens and foldable UI.

Multi-Resume Screens:

This feature complements multiple windows functionality. Android Q brought this feature allowing more than one app to run simultaneously, without pausing. Yes, it’s true that with Google’s multi-window, apps in the background will neither pause nor stop. Because with Android Q, apps in the background will also function normally while you focus on the primary app.

Bubbles as Seamless Notification:

It’s a preview feature in Q developer preview. It’s an alternative to system alert window which would enable you to smoothly multitask from anywhere on a compatible device. These bubbles float on the top of the app and can be expanded as well as collapsed accordingly. And when the phone is locked, it appears like any other notification. This notification in Android Q will not fade until they are opened or dismissed.

Pixel Smart Lock:

With Android Q from now on, smart lock functionality will also be available in android devices which were up till now present only in Pixel devices. What’s different in this smart lock? This lock enables frictionless and speedy unlocking whenever the device is placed in a trusted location, connected to a known Bluetooth device, or when the device can identify the user’s face, voice, and body.

Playback Capture and Screen Recording:

Android Q comes with pretty refreshing additions. It includes new Audio Playback Capture API and Screen Recorder for Videos. As both their name suggests, Playback Capture API will record audio playing in the app and Screen Recorder will record video screens. Moreover, you can also use a voice-over functionality to speak while you capture the screen.

Focus on Voice Assistance

Siri was the first ever voice assistant in the market. With awesome features and update. But, Google Assistant steals the show here. They are not even comparable. Siri is still robotic, somewhat, while Google Assistant sounds natural.

Most of all, Google Assistant is extremely good with deciphering commands and matching search results while Apple still lags behind. Without a doubt, the award goes to Google!

Improved Sharing API:

Android Q comes with Sharing Shortcuts API replacing the Direct Share API, making hassle-free delivery experience. This new feature sets targets in advance instead of waiting for retrieving the result only when requested. You can even switch applications to share media files.

Dark Theme:

This is the most talked feature of Android Q making UI appealing and intuitive. Let’s first learn about what’s Dark Theme. It’s nothing else but as the name suggests a dark screen. Yes, this mode turns the bright white screen into a dark black screen with only a few pixels light up. This also serves the following benefits: It decreases power consumption, offers better visibility to those who can’t bear bright light, and can be used in a low light environment.

Now, let’s have a look at the iOS 13 features too

Overhauled Photos App:

With the introduction of iOS 13, Apple has raised the bar for photo and video editing by offering new possibilities of creativity and control. Its powerful photo editing tool has a user-friendly interface. This intelligent tool simplifies browsing, organizing, and fine-tuning of photos using contrast, highlights, shadows, and sharpness. IOS 13 also enables videographers to add filters, and crop & rotate footage.

Location Data sharing :

New location controls have been introduced in iOS 13 that limits location data sharing with applications. It includes a brand-new option called one-time location which will allow apps to access location just one time. This feature will also notify you whenever an app running in the background uses your location data. Apple iOS 13 is rebuilding maps to include better information and graphical representation of roads, pedestrian, and precise addresses

Find My

As the name suggests, Apple’s Find My allows its users to find their devices even when it’s not connected to the internet. iOS 13 comes with this Find My which is the result of the merger of two app- Find My Friends and Find My iPhone. So, now with iOS 13 Find My, you can trace your phone as well as friends using the same app even when you are offline.

Siri with a New Voice

Siri’s new voice now sounds more organic and less robotic. Additionally, Suggested Automations are now supported by Siri Shortcuts so users can create personalized shortcuts anytime. This apart, Siri is all up for Live Radio support tuned in to iHeartRadio, radio.com, and TuneIn.

It can further read incoming messages with AirPods the moment they arrive from any messaging app that’s SiriKit-enabled. Along with this, it also comes with a speech recognition technology which makes Voice Control more accurate and powerful.

To add to that, Apple is planning to set up an Indian English Voice support for its India users

Quick Path

After years of competing platforms offering a similar experience, Apple finally added a new swipe keyboard option with iOS 13. With iOS 13 comes Quick Path, which makes typing super easy. iOS is now to recognize your swipes, offer suggestions through the QuickType bar, and help you auto-complete your sentences. The new feature called Swipe Typing which enables one-hand typing where you can swipe through letters to form a word.

Focus on Privacy

With the introduction of iOS 13, Apple also shows its concern towards privacy. iOS 13 has a feature that automatically silences calls from unknown people. Also, its Sign-In With Apple feature protects your identity and takes care of your privacy by authenticating your identity via Touch or face ID.

Reminders

Apple revamped its reminder app in iOS 13. The app will have a feature to add new categories so that you can separate your task based on urgency. It also has an interesting and helpful feature which will remind you about your task at the time for when you planned to do it.

Dark Mode

As learned earlier, Dark Mode is similar to Dark Theme. This feature was first introduced in Android Q and now is an anticipated feature of iOS 13 as wells. The dark mode is applicable from wallpaper, widgets, and notifications to Calendar to Messages. Therefore, this point goes to iOS.

Now, It’s time to announce the winner

Features like gaming, swipey keyboards, editing, and sharing photos are worth noticeable on both the operating systems. When it comes to security and privacy settings, iOS always comes on the number one position. With the above-listed features and functionalities, it’s clear that both the operating systems can redefine the future of mobile devices. Now, it’s up to you whose features are useful for you at the moment. Because it completely depends upon what you are looking for.

As this blog contains the best features on Google’s Android Q and iOS 13, as it does not cover every feature that Google and Apple is announced. But in this digital era every mobile app development company wants to develop mobile apps with this amazing feature. CDN Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd  also has an expertise team of mobile app developers who are proficient in delievering enterprise mobility solutions with those amazing features.

Let’s connect to our business via contact@cdnsol.com or call us at  +1(602)626-7419 or get a free quote HERE.

[newstfionline]

Finding It Hard to Focus? Maybe It’s Not Your Fault

By Casey Schwartz, NY Times, Aug. 14, 2018

It was the big tech equivalent of “drink responsibly” or the gambling industry’s “safer play”; the latest milestone in Silicon Valley’s year of apology. Earlier this month, Facebook and Instagram announced new tools for users to set time limits on their platforms, and a dashboard to monitor one’s daily use, following Google’s introduction of Digital Well Being features.

In doing so the companies seemed to suggest that spending time on the internet is not a desirable, healthy habit, but a pleasurable vice: one that if left uncontrolled may slip into unappealing addiction.

Having secured our attention more completely than ever dreamed, they now are carefully admitting it’s time to give some of it back, so we can meet our children’s eyes unfiltered by Clarendon or Lark; go see a movie in a theater; or contra Apple’s ad for its watch, even go surfing without--heaven forfend--“checking in.”

“The liberation of human attention may be the defining moral and political struggle of our time,” writes James Williams, a technologist turned philosopher and the author of a new book, “Stand Out of Our Light.”

Mr. Williams, 36, should know. During a decade-long tenure at Google, he worked on search advertising, helping perfect a powerful, data-driven advertising model. Gradually, he began to feel that his life story as he knew it was coming unglued, “as though the floor was crumbling under my feet,” he writes.

Mr. Williams compares the current design of our technology to “an entire army of jets and tanks” aimed at capturing and keeping our attention. And the army is winning. We spend the day transfixed by our screens, thumb twitching in the subways and elevators, glancing at traffic lights.

We flaunt and then regret the habit of so-called second screening, when just one at a time isn’t enough, scrolling through our phones’ latest dispatches while watching TV, say.

One study, commissioned by Nokia, found that, as of 2013, we were checking our phones on average 150 times a day. But we touch our phones about 2,617 times, according to a separate 2016 study, conducted by Dscout, a research firm.

Apple has confirmed that users unlock their iPhones an average of 80 times per day. Screens have been inserted where no screens ever were before: over individual tables at McDonald’s; in dressing rooms when one is most exposed; on the backs of taxi seats. For only $12.99, one can purchase an iPhone holster for one’s baby stroller … or (shudder) two.

This is us: eyes glazed, mouth open, neck crooked, trapped in dopamine loops and filter bubbles. Our attention is sold to advertisers, along with our data, and handed back to us tattered and piecemeal.

Mr. Williams, 36, was speaking on Skype from his home in Moscow, where his wife, who works for the United Nations, has been posted for the year.

Originally from Abilene, Tex., he had arrived to work at Google in what could still be called the early days, when the company, in its idealism, was resistant to the age-old advertising model. He left Google in 2013 to conduct doctoral research at Oxford on the philosophy and ethics of attention persuasion in design.

Mr. Williams is now concerned with overwired individuals losing their life purpose.

“In the same way that you pull out a phone to do something and you get distracted, and 30 minutes later you find that you’ve done 10 other things except the thing that you pulled out the phone to do--there’s fragmentation and distraction at that level,” he said. “But I felt like there’s something on a longer-term level that’s harder to keep in view: that longitudinal sense of what you’re about.”

He knew that among that his colleagues, he wasn’t the only one feeling this way. Speaking at a technology conference in Amsterdam last year, Mr. Williams asked the designers in the room, some 250 of them, “How many of you guys want to live in the world that you’re creating? In a world where technology is competing for our attention?”

“Not a single hand went up,” he said.

Mr. Williams is also far from the only example of a former soldier of big tech (to continue the army metaphor) now working to expose its cultural dangers.

In late June, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist for Google, took the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival to warn the crowd that what we are facing is no less than an “existential threat” from our very own gadgets.

Red-haired and slight, Mr. Harris, 34, has been playing the role of whistle-blower since he quit Google five years ago. He started the Center for Humane Technology in San Francisco and travels the country, appearing on influential shows and podcasts like “60 Minutes” and “Waking Up,” as well as at glamorous conferences like Aspen, to describe how technology is designed to be irresistible.

He likes a chess analogy. When Facebook or Google points their “supercomputers” toward our minds, he said, “it’s checkmate.”

Back in the more innocent days of 2013, when Mr. Williams and Mr. Harris both still worked at Google, they’d meet in conference rooms and sketch out their thoughts on whiteboards: a concerned club of two at the epicenter of the attention economy.

Since then, both men’s messages have grown in scope and urgency. The constant pull on our attention from technology is no longer just about losing too many hours of our so-called real lives to the diversions of the web. Now, they are telling us, we are at risk of fundamentally losing our moral purpose.

“It’s changing our ability to make sense of what’s true, so we have less and less idea of a shared fabric of truth, of a shared narrative that we all subscribe to,” Mr. Harris said, the day after his Aspen talk. “Without shared truth or shared facts, you get chaos--and people can take control.”

They can also profit, of course, in ways large and small. Indeed, a whole industry has sprung up to combat tech creep. Once-free pleasures like napping are now being monetized by the hour. Those who used to relax with monthly magazines now download guided-meditation apps like Headspace ($399.99 for a lifetime subscription).

HabitLab, developed at Stanford, stages aggressive interventions whenever you enter one of your self-declared danger zones of internet consumption. Having a problem with Reddit sucking away your afternoons? Choose between the “one-minute assassin,” which puts you on a strict 60-second egg timer, and the “scroll freezer,” which creates a bottom in your bottomless scroll--and logs you out once you’ve hit it.

Like Moment, an app that monitors screen time and sends you or loved ones embarrassing notifications detailing exactly how much time has been frittered away on Instagram today, HabitLab gets to know your patterns uncomfortably well in order to do its job. Apparently, we now need our phones to save us from our phones.

Researchers have known for years that there’s a difference between “top-down” attention (the voluntary, effortful decisions we make to pay attention to something of our choice) and “bottom-up” attention, which is when our attention is involuntarily captured by whatever is going on around us: a thunderclap, gunshot or merely the inviting bleep that announces another Twitter notification.

But many of the biggest questions remain unanswered. At the top of that list, no smaller a mystery remains than “the relationship between attention and our conscious experience of the world,” said Jesse Rissman, a neuroscientist whose lab at U.C.L.A. studies attention and memory.

Also unclear: the consequence of all that screen time on our bedraggled neurons. “We don’t understand how modern technology and changes in our culture impact our ability to sustain our attention on our goals,” Dr. Rissman said.

Britt Anderson, a neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, went so far as to write a 2011 paper titled “There Is No Such Thing as Attention.”

Dr. Anderson argued that researchers have used the word to apply to so many different behaviors--attention span, attention deficit, selective attention and spatial attention, to name a few--that it has become essentially meaningless, even at the very moment when it’s more relevant than ever.

Despite attention’s possible lack of existence, though, many among us mourn its passing.

Katherine Hayles, an English professor at U.C.L.A., has written about the change she sees in students as one from “deep attention,” a state of single-minded absorption that can last for hours, to one of “hyper attention,” which jumps from target to target, preferring to skim the surface of lots of different things than to probe the depths of just one.

At Columbia University, where every student is required to pass a core curriculum with an average of 200 to 300 pages of reading each week, professors have been discussing how to deal with the conspicuous change in students’ ability to get through their assignments. The curriculum has more or less stayed in place, but “we’re constantly thinking about how we’re teaching when attention spans have changed since 50 years ago,” said Lisa Hollibaugh, a dean of academic planning at Columbia.

In the 1990s, 3 to 5 percent of American school-aged children were thought to have what is now called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By 2013, that number was 11 percent, and rising, according to data from the National Survey of Children’s Health.

At Tufts University, Nick Seaver, an anthropology professor, just finished his second year of teaching a class he designed called How to Pay Attention. But rather than offering tips for focusing, as one might expect, he set out to train his students to look at attention as a cultural phenomenon--“the way people talk about attention,” Dr. Seaver said, with topics like the “attention economy” or “attention and politics.”

As part of their homework for the “economy” week, Dr. Seaver told his students to analyze how an app or website “captures” their attention and then profits from it.

Morgan Griffiths, 22, chose YouTube. “A lot of the media I consume has to do with ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’” Mr. Griffiths said. “And when a lot of those videos end, RuPaul himself pops up at the very end and says, ‘Hey friends, when one video ends, just open the next one, it’s called binge viewing, go ahead, I encourage you.’”

A classmate, Jake Rochford, who chose Tinder, noted the extreme stickiness of a new “super-like” button. “Once the super-like button came into play, I noticed all of the functions as strategies for keeping the app open, instead of strategies for helping me find love,” Mr. Rochford, 21, said. After completing that week’s assignment, he disabled his account.

But Dr. Seaver, 32, is no Luddite.

“Information overload is something that always feels very new but is actually very old,” he said. “Like: ‘It is the 16th century, and there are so many books.’ Or: ‘It is late antiquity and there is so much writing.’

“It can’t be that there are too many things to pay attention to: That doesn’t follow,” he said. “But it could be that there are more things that are trying to actively demand your attention.”

And there is not only the attention we pay to consider, but also the attention we receive.

Sherry Turkle, the M.I.T. sociologist and psychologist, has been writing about our relationship with our technology for decades. Devices that come with us everywhere we go, she argues, introduce a brand new dynamic: Rather than compete with their siblings for their parents’ attention, children are up against iPhones and iPads, Siri and Alexa, Apple watches and computer screens.

Every moment they spend with their parents, they are also spending with their parents’ need to be constantly connected. It is the first generation to be so affected--now 14 to 21 years old--that Dr. Turkle describes in detail in her most recent book, “Reclaiming Conversation.”

“A generation has grown up that has lived a very unsatisfying youth and really does not associate their phones with any kind of glamour, but rather with a sense of deprivation,” she said.

And yet Dr. Turkle is cautiously optimistic. “We’re starting to see people inching their way toward ‘time well spent,’ Apple inching its way toward a mea culpa,” she said. “And the culture itself turning toward a recognition that this can’t go on.”

[lewisgabriel84z31]

Clearing Up the Segwit2x Hard Fork Confusion

Clearing Up the Segwit2x Hard Fork Confusion

Clearing Up the Segwit2x Hard Fork Confusion Yet another Segwit2x Hard Fork Guide

With approximately 9 days to go, the price of Bitcoin has been surging to new all-time highs. Most people are expecting the windfall of getting the same amount of the Segwit2x coin as they hold in Bitcoin. However, many do not understand what the Segwit2x hard fork actually means. To help everyone better understand what is actually going on, as well as make sure everybody knows that there are risks involved, issues that have not been resolved, many unanswered questions and a whole host of other things that make this upcoming hard fork something to watch with extreme caution. Some important things to consider, each point will be expounded upon in greater detail:

A hard fork is simply a change in the rules that govern the Bitcoin network.

The Segwit2x hard fork is not related to the SegWit implementation that occurred earlier this summer.

org, representative of the Bitcoin Core Development team has denounced Segwit2x.

The upcoming hard fork may or may not result in the creation of a new cryptocurrency.

The adoption and implementation of the new Segwit2x software by Bitcoin miners will be the primary factor in determining the state of Bitcoin after the hard fork occurs.

The Segwit2x hard fork will occur with the confirmation of block 494,784, which is going to occur on or around November 16, 2017 at 5:14 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time -EST).

Segwit2x being implemented to increase the block capacity size from 1 MB to 2 MB.

There are currently enough supporters and opponents to make the upcoming hard fork unpredictable at best.

There are large companies using deceptive methods regarding the Segwit2x hard fork.

In the interim, Bitcoin prices along with Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin Gold prices are surging to new all-time highs.

Understanding What the Segwit2x Hard Fork Is

Defining “Hard Fork” The technical definition of a hard fork, according to Investopedia.com is: “… a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions are valid parentheses or vice versa), and as such requires all motor users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software.”

In plain English, a hard fork is in upgrade or change to the currently running software that will implement changes that are significant enough that if all of the computational power (miners) that are running that software do not agree to the changes, the result is that you have some running the old version and some running the new version. This creates two separate and independent blockchains, thereby creating a brand-new cryptocurrency coin in the process. The way that the network can agree to the changes is by each individual miner, simply installing and running the new software. In order for the new software to take effect in hard fork to actually occur a certain percentage of the people who mine Bitcoin or “Bitcoin Miners” must implement and run the new software, and effectively mind Bitcoin using the new protocols.

Segwit2x Hard Fork: United We Stand, Divided We Fall

For this implementation to take place without a hard fork occurring would mean that 100% of all the mining power within the Bitcoin network would implement the change and run the new software. If any number of Bitcoin miners, with even on minimal amount of mining power, decide not to implement the new software and continue running the old software, you get the creation of a separate Blockchain in which is an exact clone of the original. At the moment where there split, they now become two separate Blockchains with the exact same histories.

Since Bitcoin is an open source project, it means that anyone who knows how to write programming languages can suggest changes, upgrades or ideas to improve or radically change how the software works. Obviously, if the changes being proposed are whimsical or not feasible, the community simply ignores them, and the changes will never take effect. The same thing that makes Bitcoin able to function as a decentralized cryptocurrency so successfully is the same thing that upholds the business practices from a software perspective.

However, every once in a while, someone who has some clout or that has an idea, that a good portion of the Bitcoin community agrees would be beneficial, comes a long and there is enough support that the changes are seriously considered. This usually involves a whole lot of bickering, arguing, debating, discussion, etc.… culminating in some sort of agreement and then the code is either implemented or thrown out. When the bickering does not stop, the debating does not get anywhere, and all discussions end with two sides still unwilling to come to some sort of an agreement, you get a hard fork. This is the case with the Segwit2x hard fork. There are two sides; those for Segwit2x and those opposed to it.

Segwit2x Hard Fork Pros and Cons

Segwit2x is a software upgrade that will change the size of the data blocks from their current limit of 1MB and increase it to 2MB, thereby doubling it and allowing up to double the transactions to be processed in a single block, hence the “2x”. Unlike Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold, both of which were always intended to create a new cryptocurrency and brand-new network, Segwit2x is aiming to keep bitcoin the same, all on one network, with increased block sizes. They do not wish to create a new cryptocurrency, but rather, upgrade the current one to better serve its users.

At the time it was proposed, three possible outcomes became available, and still remain the same as of today:

100% of the mining power (or close enough to it) agrees and adopts the new software. Bitcoin continues on, nobody really notices anything accept lower transaction fees and faster confirmation times due to the extra room in each block.

A significant number of the total mining power decides to reject the software upgrade and continue running the old software, thus creating two separate blockchains and two separate cryptocurrencies.

100% of the total mining power (or close enough to it) decides to reject the new software and no changes are made at all.

Drama from Start ’til End of the Segwit2x Hard Fork

It became apparent, within the first 72 hours after the proposal was put forth that option ‘C’ above was no longer an option. There was major support from the very beginning. However, option ‘B’ above did not get taken out of the equation because there was major opposition to it from the very beginning, as well. As time has moved forward and the day of reckoning has drawn closer and closer, it appears that option ‘A’ is now out of the game, leaving option ‘B’: 2 blockchains and 2 cryptocurrencies.

As it stands now, it appears that we will have two separate cryptocurrency coins as at least 2 major mining pools, representing 17% of the total mining power of Bitcoin on the network has decided not to implement changes. And furthermore, even the major mining pools that have agree to implement the changes have only agree to implement the changes by offering Segwit2x as a choice to their miners, leaving the ultimate decision on which software to run up to the individual miner. So, in all reality, we may see as much as 25 to 30% realistically, who choose to not implement the new software.

Why is everyone so split on the Segwit2x Hard Fork?

There are actually 3 camps in this debate:

Supporters of the Segwit2x Software Upgrade

Protesters of the Segwit2x Software Upgrade

Opportunists looking to capitalize on the situation, no matter who wins.

The Supporters

The major support of the Segwit2x hard fork comes from those who would profit the most by increasing the block sizes:

Bitcoin Miners who receive rewards for their mining operations. (not all miners are supporters)

Startups and other businesses who make a profit by providing bitcoin related services to their users.

Those who support the Segwit2x upgrade argue that Bitcoin should be treated as digital money, and therefore, it should compete with the US Dollar for supremacy in the financial world and Forex markets. They also note that Bitcoin’s lack of transaction block size is allowing other digital currencies to gain traction and will eventually outpace Bitcoin because of it. They also say that other ideas, such as the August code implementation, is just not bringing the upgrades needed and feel that they need something new and they need it now.

The Protestors

The major protestors of Segwit2x include:

Bitcoin Core developers. The people who have worked on Bitcoin the longest, on a volunteer basis because of the ideals for which it stands.

Node operators, who host the entire Bitcoin transaction history on their computers, allowing the network to function in a way that allows it to be so great. They argue that increased block size means increased storage capacity that they will need to pay for.

Those who are protesting the Segwit2x hard fork say that Bitcoin is not a digital currency, was not designed to be a digital currency and should not be treated as such. They say that technological advances would see Bitcoin as a digital currency in the near future, but it is not ready for that status yet. They call it a “Store of value”. They also fear that if this implementation should fail and Bitcoin should possibly “Break”, that it would cause a sharp decline in interest, undermining the entire project, as a whole. Finally, and the biggest concern is that the Segwit2x hard fork will give miners and businesses too much power over Bitcoin, which goes against the very concepts that Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned when creating Bitcoin.

The Opportunists: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

First, something that is important to note: Opportunists are not necessarily bad people. In fact, reading this article, and the many more that have been written on the subject is a good example of opportunists who are not necessarily “Bad” for profiting from the situation. I am referring to myself and the other journalists, authors, bloggers, etc.… who write about the topic. The writing is not being done for free, meaning that the situation has created an opportunity. While personally, authors may be supporters or protestors of the Segwit2x hard fork, in most situations, you wouldn’t be able to tell just by reading their articles on the subject. This article is meant to give the reader information in an understandable way so that they may decide on their own which side they support and in no way, should my personal views sway you; rather, the information you receive should allow you to make a decision, or at the very least, help you to understand the situation so that you can find the additional information you need to come to your own conclusion.

Other opportunists include day-traders and market-makers. The price of Bitcoin surges before hard forks traditionally, and this upcoming Segwit2x hard fork has seen bitcoin hit new all-time highs and looks to see even more before the day of reckoning arrives. The situation has caused an opportunity for those in the currency trading industry.

There Are Always Some Bad Apples

Those are two examples of “Not Bad” opportunists. Of course, the world being the way that it is, unfortunately there are those who seek to maliciously scam or con people and are willing to use any excuse they can to achieve this goal. An opportunity to do this when it involves currency, Bitcoin to be exact is prime time for these types of opportunists. They may use fear of the upcoming hard fork, or even the greatness that it will bring to lure people into their various traps and pitfalls.

The one thing that all opportunists have in common is that whether they Are a supporter or protestor, whichever side wins in the end, it will not affect them in any way, when it comes to the opportunity it created. Either way, I have articles and news pieces to write, day-traders are doing quite well and the scammers… well, they are unfortunately probably doing better than anybody.

Segwit2x Hard Fork: There Came a Peace Treaty and an Agreement Was Signed

After heated arguing, name calling and even several hacking attempts, an agreement was finally reached. Called the “New York Agreement”, it was an agreement reached by a significant group of international Bitcoin companies and released in May 2017, just prior to the “Consensus 2017” conference in New York City.

The two opposing sides came to the table. They agreed to adopt the Bitcoin Core original idea, called Segregated Witness, or SegWit for short. The compromise was that the opposing side would get their increased block size 3 months later. Everything went off without a hitch. The only issue was that Bitcoin Core was not a part of this agreement. SegWit may have been the idea of one of bitcoin Core’s developers, but it was those who supported SegWit that finally came to an agreement with those who opposed it. And in exchange, they gave up something that Bitcoin Core had always, traditionally, rejected: a hard fork.

Who? What? Where? When? I am So Confused About the Segwit2x Hard Fork!

At first, Miners from the major mining pools began signaling their acceptance of the New York Agreement. 95% of miners (View the Charts) signaled that they would agree to it and adopt the new software. It seemed as if the bickering, the division and the uncertainty within the Bitcoin community had finally come to an end. Of course, many people, for reasons still not totally known (Whether it was deliberate misinformation, or just assumptions made is debatable.), assumed that Bitcoin Core was involved and on-board. They were not.

The length of time that it took for it to become clear that Bitcoin core was not on-board and totally against SegWit2x is somewhat disturbing. It is disturbing not because of Bitcoin Core’s lack of enthusiasm for standing against Segwit2x, which is the way it appeared, but rather it was the fact that the people who support Segwit2x went to great lengths to confuse the general public about Segwit2x, what it meant, what it would do and even spent a good deal of time convincing people it was not an option, but a requirement; a simple software upgrade. 1 The most telling of these confusion tactics is the name: Segwit2x; What average, everyday person would not assume that Segwit2x was directly related to SegWit? Hell, what tech savvy person who has daily business dealings in cryptocurrencies would not assume the same thing. Yet, there is no relationship between SegWit and Segwit2x.

Well Respected & Trusted Isn’t So Trustworthy

In August, BitPay, a leader in bitcoin innovation lost most of the reputation that they had built up with one single blog post that urged users to upgrade their software to ensure they wouldn’t lose their bitcoin. The only issue is that they told their users to upgrade to the Segwit2x software without ever telling them that it was different from Bitcoin. The community was not pleased at all, as was apparent in thousands of social media threads, one of which you can read here. This prompted Bitcoin.org to remove BitPay from their website. It also caused Jeff Garzik, the developer responsible for Segwit2x to be permanently expelled from the bitcoin Repositories on GitHub.

Segwit2x Hard Fork Takes a Hard Uppercut to The Jaw

The biggest and most impactful blow to the ”Peace” came from Bitcoin Core themselves. On October 5, 2017 (5 October 2017), Bitcoin.org, the core development team responsible for maintaining Bitcoin as we know it, officially denounced the Segwit2x hard fork. While they never even hinted at support for Segwit2x, and even had previously stated they were against it, it never seemed anything more than a “Policy”..

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[tortuga-aak]

The best keyboards you can buy

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

The Insider Pick:

Because voice recognition software is still prone to embarrassing errors, typing remains the best way to enter information into a computer. If you want the most comfortable and efficient keyboard, the Das Keyboard 4 Professional keyboard is for you. It’s durable with great tactile feedback and has many specialized control keys. 

If you dislike typing, you’ve probably been waiting … and waiting … and waiting for voice recognition software to finally live up to the hype. But after seeing the voice recognition software turn statements like “call Aunt Sally” into “small ants rally” or “touchdown pass” into “much clown gas,” you realize your keyboard isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Since you’re going to have to live with that keyboard for the foreseeable future, maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade. If you’re tired of your keyboard not having a numeric keypad, not providing enough tactile feedback, or not having a J keycap anymore, we have collected a list of some of the best keyboards you can buy.

Whether you’re a typist with perfect form — thanks to Miss Jarvis in sixth grade and the thousands of times she emphasized the home position — or you’re a hunt-and-peck typist, having a great keyboard can at least make the job more enjoyable and more comfortable.

Types of computer keyboards

When purchasing a new keyboard, think about how you’ll use it. Some people just want a new basic keyboard to plug into a desktop computer that doesn’t have so many crumbs inside it that every other keystroke sticks. But others will want a keyboard that can perform a specific function.

Gaming: A gaming keyboard will have fast response times, recording multiple keystrokes quickly. They also have pleasing aesthetics and use lighting to enhance the experience, as Tom’s Guide explains. They may offer extra keys you can program for certain gaming needs.

Mechanical: A mechanical keyboard is popular, as it has great tactile feedback, while also providing that satisfying “clack” noise that clearly identifies a successful keystroke. If you type fast with a light touch, mechanical keyboards will record those keystrokes well, according to Engadget.

Mobile: Keyboards designed to be used with tablets or smartphones will be thinner and smaller than a standard keyboard to make them easier to carry. They may even fold for transport.

Music: If you often play music on your computer, having a keyboard that includes special buttons for volume control and track skipping is a smart idea, according to Lifewire.

Specialty: Many types of keyboards exist that will perform specific functions, such as for software coding or with certain types of language layouts.

Standard: A standard keyboard is exactly what you’d expect it to be, a general type of keyboard with all of the keys you’d expect to find. It will work well in a multitude of situations, giving it plenty of flexibility, and it usually doesn’t cost very much.

Key features of keyboards

The features found in the keyboard play an important role in how you’ll be able to use it. We’ve collected some other important features to consider as listed below.

Backlight: Some keyboards will be lit from underneath the keys, which makes it easier to see the keys and the labels on the keys when working in a dark room. Some keyboard makers will use a backlight to improve the look of the keyboard, too.

Connection options: Some keyboards can connect to your computer or mobile device in multiple ways, as PC Mag discusses. However, USB is the most common type of connection, as this method works easily and provides power to the keyboard. Wireless keyboards work over a Bluetooth or RF connection, giving them the advantage of being used anywhere, but they will need batteries to provide power.

Ergonomics: If you find yourself with tired wrists and forearms after spending a lot of time typing, an ergonomically designed keyboard can help. It forces you to hold your arms and wrists in the position for proper typing techniques, as The Wirecutter shows. Some keyboards use padded wrist rests to accomplish this, while others have odd-looking designs with split or curved keyboards.

Keystroke response: Different interior parts in the keys will yield different response times. Some key designs will respond more quickly to light keystroke touches. The tactile feel of the keys will play a big role in your enjoyment of the keyboard.

Layout of keys: Nearly all English-language keyboards use the traditional QWERTY layout, although you can find other layouts for special tasks, according to Lifehacker. Some keyboards have a 10-key numeric pad on the right side, which is great for entering a lot of numbers into a spreadsheet quickly. Some contain function keys across the top, providing quick access to commands. Some have dedicated arrow keys. And some keyboards even have unassigned extra keys, allowing you to program them for any function you need.

Size of keys: Some keyboard makers will make use of smaller sized keys, especially when designing keyboards for laptops or for mobile applications. Smaller keyboards are convenient to carry, but they can be difficult for typing, because you may strike more than one key inadvertently.

With all these tips in mind, read on to see which of our keyboard picks is best for your needs. We've included, mechanical, wireless, mobile, and gaming keyboards to suit different peoples' needs.

Although the Das Keyboard 4 Professional is our top keyboard pick, for the reasons laid out in the slides below, you should also consider the Corsair Gaming K70, the Logitech Wireless Wave Combo MK550, the Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480, the AbleNet Keys U See Large Print USB Wired, the Qwerkywriter Typewriter Wireless Mechanical, the Logitech Washable K310, and the iClever Portable Folding keyboards.

The best keyboard overall

Das Keyboard

Why you'll love it:  If you want a top-end keyboard with plenty of dedicated control keys, the Das Keyboard 4 Professional is a strong all-around keyboard with excellent tactile feedback.

For those who spend the majority of the workday typing, the comfortable and durable Das Keyboard 4 Professional is a great option. This keyboard has an excellent feel for those who appreciate tactile feedback. It has dedicated media keys, dedicated directional keys, and a separate numeric keypad.

The company redesigned the Das Keyboard to make it perform better than previous versions. In its review, Macworld says the improvements are well worth buying this model over older keyboards from Das Keyboard.

A common theme among reviewers and buyers is the excellent tactile feedback that the high-quality Cherry MX key design provides. PC Gamer says it's a great addition. You can get the Das Keyboard in a few different versions. The soft tactile/brown style of keys on this keyboard work especially well for gamers. There’s also a clicky/blue design for better keystroke feedback, as well as different versions for PC and Macintosh computer formats.

The Das Keyboard 4 Professional is an expensive keyboard, as PC Mag’s review points out, but it offers one of the best typing experiences in the market. If you type a lot every day, it's worth the cost.

One Amazon customer was especially impressed with the durability and build quality of this keyboard, which ensures it will last a long time. A few Amazon reviewers were disappointed with poor tactile feedback when pressing the space bar, though.

Pros: Excellent tactile feedback with most keys, large keyboard with comfortable key sizes, plenty of dedicated keys for different functions, significant upgrades from company’s previous keyboard models

Cons: High price, keyboard takes up a lot of desk space

Buy the Das Keyboard 4 Professional on Amazon for $149.99 (originally $169) 

The best gaming keyboard

Corsair

Why you'll love it: Gaming keyboards need to look cool, provide fast feedback, and have extra keys that certain games need. The Corsair Gaming K70 keyboard checks all of the boxes, so you’ll be killing aliens faster than ever.

Those who are rough on gaming keyboards will appreciate the durability of the Corsair Gaming K70 mechanical gaming keyboard. The keyboard enhances your gaming environment with multiple LED backlight options, including red, blue, or red/blue/green options.

The Corsair K70 keyboard includes a brushed aluminum frame, making it one of the most durable options on the market and making it easier to clean, as IGN points out in its review.

The keyboard features gold contacts in the key switches, too, ensuring rapid responses to keystrokes. By using different combinations in its red/green/blue backlight, the K70 RGB keyboard version can create any of 16.8 million colors.

In its review, Digital Trends likes the fact that the Corsair Gaming K70 includes several dedicated media keys, including a volume wheel, as well as dedicated directional keys and a numeric keypad.

One Amazon reviewer appreciates that the K70 offers a comfortable feel and a design that isn’t garish like many gaming keyboards. A few Amazon buyers say the keyboard’s software did not work with their computer setup, though.

Pros: Impressive backlighting option for creating a fun gaming environment, dedicated keys for media control, outstanding build quality with aluminum frame, fast keystroke responses for high-end gaming

Cons: Some compatibility problems with certain computer setups, price is a little high

Buy the Corsair Gaming K70 on Amazon for $138.99 (originally $169.99) 

The best ergonomic keyboard

Logitech

Why you'll love it: If typing has become a torturous chore for you because of stiff wrists and forearms, the Logitech Wireless Wave Combo MK550 includes a curved key layout and a wrist rest for comfortable keyboarding.

It’s almost impossible to avoid the need to type in today’s data-driven world. So if you have to spend a lot of the day typing on a keyboard, you might as well do so in the healthiest manner possible by selecting a great ergonomic keyboard, like the Logitech Wireless Wave Combo MK550.

You’ll appreciate that the MK550 is actually a combination set, featuring the K350 keyboard and M510 mouse. This gives you a nice combination of ergonomic input devices that’ll keep you from suffering fatigue while working on your computer whether you have a PC or a Mac, according to one Amazon reviewer.

In its review, Tom’s Guide says the Logitech ergonomic keyboard’s wave design makes it a natural keyboard for typing. The keyboard’s claim of three years of battery life is also impressive.

High Tech Society's review highlights the keyboard’s design, too. The reviewer especially likes the wrist/palm rest, which is filled with gel and feels comfortable, even while typing for a long time.

The biggest problem Amazon buyers report with the MK550 is longevity, because of failures with the keyboard.

Pros: Includes both an ergonomic keyboard and mouse in this combination kit, nicely sized wrist/palm rest, long battery life, wireless connection is convenient, works with both PC and Mac formats

Cons: Longevity is a question mark, some people won’t like the feel of the curved key layout

Buy the Logitech Wireless Wave Combo on Amazon for $44.99

See the rest of the story at Business Insider from Feedburner http://ift.tt/2yP7iQH

[jeniferdlanceau]

10 architecture studios reveal the stories behind their bizarre names

Naming your studio after the directors' surnames is so last century. Today's architects go under weird and wonderful monikers such as Design, Bitches, 5468796 Architecture and G///bang. We asked some of the most oddly named studios how they got their names.

Design, Bitches' projects include an LA restaurant filled with retro video games

Design, Bitches

In 2010, architects Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph entered an AIALA competition questioning the nature of the profession during the depths of the recession. It called for young architects to answer the question 'Architecture is... ?'.

Johnson and Rudolph responded with 'It's Design, Bitches'. The pair told Dezeen that, although it was never intended as a name, Design, Bitches stuck.

"It proves a good conversation starter, and it's memorable," the Los Angeles-based duo said. "The response to our name is very good, most people get a kick out of it and find it unusual for an architecture firm."

G///bang's projects include a bright red psychiatric centre in Spain

G///bang

The name of Spanish architecture studio G///bang combines the initial of the founder's surname, G, with an onomatopoeia, bang. Founder José Javier Gallardo Ortega then chose three slashes as a "graphic tool" to separate the two parts.

"Bang is an onomatopoeia which is very common in comics read by children," said founder Gallardo Ortega. "We wanted to transmit the idea that in order to perform architecture, one has to be a thug kid and at the same time, a responsible one."

Gallardo Ortega told Dezeen that he has never put G///bang in the category of unusual names, but believes it just creates curiosity. "To my mind, people interpret the name as something between sexy and strange," he added.

5468796 Architecture designed an apartment building covered in reflective panels in their hometown of Winnipeg

5468796 Architecture

The founders of this Winnipeg-based practice left their branding largely to chance. The office is named after the seven-digit corporation number issued when it registered as a new company, while the logo was created by dropping the number into an online barcode generator.

"In the beginning many people strongly suggested that we should change it," co-founders Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic told Dezeen.

"A client of ours – a branding company CEO – said once that the name is absolutely abysmal and against all rules of brand recognition. However, given the fact that people continue to talk about it after almost 10 years of business, he concluded that it must be working."

The architects said some people take pride in memorising the whole number, while "others call it barcode, a numbered company, or 546 for short".

Now renamed MOS Architects, the studio's latest projects include a floating lake house in Canada

!@#?

In 2003, architects Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith set up a studio under the name !@#?. They quickly realised that not only was !@#? impossible to pronounce but it was impossible to get a web address, and instead they reverted to a more conventional name – MOS Architects.

"Eventually, we drifted towards MOS – an acronym of our names and reflection of a shared desire to be horizontal and fuzzy, as opposed to tall and shiny," said the architects.

Atelier Bow-Wow worked with Dertien 12 to design the Canal Swimmer's Club on Bruges waterway

Atelier Bow-Wow

When asked about the name Atelier Bow-Wow, Momoyo Kaijima – co-founder of the Japanese studio – responded to the question with simply "We like a dog."

FREAKS Architecture's projects include several Parisian apartment renovations

FREAKS Architecture

Architects Cyril Gauthier, Guillaume Aubry and Yves Pasquet believe "an architecture practice is more based on the design spirit rather than the people." So rather than working under their own initials, they chose the name FREAKS Architecture.

"FREAKS in itself has no meaning," the Paris-based architects told Dezeen. "We just found that the word sounded good and that it would hopefully excite people. People now call us 'the Freaks', which we quite like, even though we find ourselves just as average as anybody else on a freakishness scale."

The name also acts as a filter to potential clients, the architects said: "The phone calls we do receive are from people who actually share with us some freakishness. It's a rather constructive optimisation of our projects' prospection."

Ninkipen! designed a Japanese house with a metal surface that appears to be peeling up

Ninkipen!

Japanese architect Yasuo Imazu works under the name Ninkipen! – a firm favourite amongst the Dezeen team. Imazu told Dezeen that, despite being Japanese, he wanted a studio name that was stateless.

"Ninkipen! is a coined word in which 人気 in Japanese and 'pen' in English are connected," Imazu told Dezeen."人気 is written 'ninki' in English and means popular."

"I designed at the lab in a university under the name 'pen' as we students have only a pen," he added. "So I wanted to develop the name when I opened my studio and I placed 'ninki' in front of 'pen'."

Atelier YokYok's recent works include an installation of string tunnels in the cloister garden of a French cathedral

Atelier YokYok

Paris studio Atelier YokYok is named after the main character from a children's TV show and series of books, who wears a large red triangular bouffant hat.

"YokYok is a tiny man with a big hat in a whole world populated by big creatures," studio founders Steven Fuhrman, Samson Lacoste and Luc Pinsard told Dezeen.

"The concept of a character exploring a strange world, and relationships between body and environment, is our purpose. So this fantasy and the nice sounds evoked by this name were the starting points."

The architects said people like the name and it has helped them to create their universe and hand-drawn graphic identity.

"Most times people remember it," they said. "But sometimes an unusual name can be forgotten easily, or mispronounced – it's a risk to take!"

P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S' projects include an apartment building in Rosario, Argentina

P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S

Marcelo Spina, co-founder of Los Angeles-based P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, told Dezeen his studio's name wasn't originally broken up by hyphens, but these were added in when he was setting up their website.

"The domain we wanted was taken and somehow the introduction of lines between the letters seemed right so I went for it," he told Dezeen.

"Some colleagues did complain though, and hated the first few times they had to type it," he added. "Sure it takes a few more key punches, but architecture is never easy."

Swimming Pool Studio has designed several restaurants and bars, as well as a cafe in Shanghai

Swimming Pool Studio

Despite its name, Shanghai-based Swimming Pool Studio does not specialise in swimming pools.

"Our company name in Chinese is 三也, and when you put two words together it become 池, which means swimming pool in English," the studio's Lu He told Dezeen.

He added that "clients don't think we're boring, and that we can create something fun and interesting, but I do think they imagine we have a swimming pool in our office..."

The post 10 architecture studios reveal the stories behind their bizarre names appeared first on Dezeen.

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[lodelss]

When American Media Was (Briefly) Diverse

Danielle A. Jackson | Longreads | September 2019 | 16 minutes (4,184 words)

The late summer night Tupac died, I listened to All Eyez on Me at a record store in an East Memphis strip mall. The evening felt eerie and laden with meaning. It was early in the school year, 1996, and through the end of the decade, Adrienne, Jessica, Karida and I were a crew of girlfriends at our high school. We spent that night, and many weekend nights, at Adrienne’s house.

Our public school had been all white until a trickle of black students enrolled during the 1966–67 school year. That was 12 years after Brown v. Board of Education and six years after the local NAACP sued the school board for maintaining dual systems in spite of the ruling. In 1972, a federal district court ordered busing; more than 40,000 white students abandoned the school system by 1980. The board created specialized and accelerated courses in some of its schools, an “optional program,” in response. Students could enter the programs regardless of district lines if they met certain academic requirements. This kind of competition helped retain some white students, but also created two separate tracks within those institutions — a tenuous, half-won integration. It meant for me, two decades later, a “high-performing school” with a world of resources I knew to be grateful for, but at a cost. There were few black teachers. Black students in the accelerated program were scattered about, small groups of “onlies” in all their classes. Black students who weren’t in the accelerated program got rougher treatment from teachers and administrators. An acrid grimness hung in the air. It felt like being tolerated rather than embraced. 

My friends and I did share a lunch period. At our table, we traded CDs we’d gotten in the mail: Digable Planets’s Blowout Comb, D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, the Fugees’ The Score. An era of highly visible black innovation was happening alongside a growing awareness of my own social position. I didn’t have those words then, but I had my enthusiasms. At Maxwell’s concert one sweaty night on the Mississippi, we saw how ecstasy, freedom, and black music commingle and coalesce into a balm. We watched the films of the ’90s wave together, and while most had constraining gender politics, Love Jones, the Theodore Witcher–directed feature about a group of brainy young artists in Chicago, made us wish for a utopic city that could make room for all we would become. 

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We also loved to read the glossies — what ’90s girl didn’t? We especially salivated over every cover of Vibe. Adrienne and I were fledgling writers who experimented a lot and adored English class. In the ’90s, the canon was freshly expanding: We read T.S. Eliot alongside Kate Chopin and Chinua Achebe. Something similar was happening in magazines. Vibe’s mastheads and ad pages were full of black and brown people living, working, and loving together and out front — a multicultural ideal hip-hop had made possible. Its “new black aesthetic” meant articles were fresh and insightful but also hyper-literary art historical objects in their own rights. Writers were fluent in Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison as well as Biggie Smalls. By the time Tupac died, Kevin Powell had spent years contextualizing his life within the global struggle for black freedom. “There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest],” former editor Rob Kenner told Billboard in a Vibe oral history. He’s saying Vibe helped create Obama’s “coalition of the ascendent” — the black, Latinx, and young white voters who gave the Hawaii native two terms. For me, the pages reclaimed and retold the American story with fewer redactions than my history books. They created a vision of what a multiethnic nation could be.

* * *

“There was a time when journalism was flush,” Danyel Smith told me on a phone call from a summer retreat in Massachusetts. She became music editor at Vibe in 1994, and was editor in chief during the late ’90s and again from 2006 to 2008. The magazine, founded by Quincy Jones and Time, Inc. executives in 1992, was the “first true home of the culture we inhabit today,” according to Billboard. During Smith’s first stint as editor in chief, its circulation more than doubled. She wrote the story revealing R. Kelly’s marriage to then 15-year-old Aaliyah, as well as cover features on Janet Jackson, Wesley Snipes, and Whitney Houston. Smith was at the helm when the magazine debuted its Obama covers in 2007 — Vibe was the first major publication to endorse the freshman senator. When she described journalism as “flush,” Smith was talking about the late ’80s, when she started out in the San Francisco Bay. “Large cities could support with advertising two, sometimes three, alternative news weeklies and dailies,” she said.

‘There is a direct line from Tupac in a straitjacket [on the popular February 1994 cover] to ‘It’s Obama Time’ [the September 2007 cover, one of the then senator’s earliest].’

The industry has collapsed and remade itself many times since then. Pew reports that between 2008 and 2018, journalism jobs declined 25 percent, a net loss of about 28,000 positions. Business Insider reports losses at 3,200 jobs this year alone. Most reductions have been in newspapers. A swell in digital journalism has not offset the losses in print, and it’s also been volatile, with layoffs several times over the past few years, as outlets “pivot to video” or fail to sustain venture-backed growth. Many remaining outlets have contracted, converting staff positions into precarious freelance or “permalance” roles. In a May piece for The New Republic, Jacob Silverman wrote about the “yawning earnings gap between the top and bottom echelons” of journalism reflected in the stops and starts of his own career. After a decade of prestigious headlines and publishing a book, Silverman called his private education a “sunken cost” because he hadn’t yet won a coveted staff role. If he couldn’t make it with his advantageous beginnings, he seemed to say, the industry must be truly troubled. The prospect of “selling out” — of taking a corporate job or work in branded content — seemed more concerning to him than a loss of the ability to survive at all. For the freelance collective Study Hall, Kaila Philo wrote how the instability in journalism has made it particularly difficult for black women to break into the industry, or to continue working and developing if they do. The overall unemployment rate for African Americans has been twice that of whites since at least 1972, when the government started collecting the data by race. According to Pew, newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than U.S. workers overall. Philo’s report mentions the Women’s Media Center’s 2018 survey on women of color in U.S. news, which states that just 2.62 percent of all journalists are black women. In a write-up of the data, the WMC noted that fewer than half of newspapers and online-only newsrooms had even responded to the original questionnaire. 

* * *

According to the WMC, about 2.16 percent of newsroom leaders are black women. If writers are instrumental in cultivating our collective conceptions of history, editors are arguably more so. Their sensibilities influence which stories are accepted and produced. They shape and nurture the voices and careers of writers they work with. It means who isn’t there is noteworthy. “I think it’s part of the reason why journalism is dying,” Smith said. “It’s not serving the actual communities that exist.” In a July piece for The New Republic, Clio Chang called the push for organized labor among freelancers and staff writers at digital outlets like Vox and Buzzfeed, as well as at legacy print publications like The New Yorker, a sign of hope for the industry.  “In the most basic sense, that’s the first norm that organizing shatters — the isolation of workers from one another,” Chang wrote. Notably, Vox’s union negotiated a diversity initiative in their bargaining agreement, mandating 40 to 50 percent of applicants interviewed come from underrepresented backgrounds.

“Journalism is very busy trying to serve a monolithic imaginary white audience. And that just doesn’t exist anymore,” Smith told me. U.S. audiences haven’t ever been truly homogeneous. But the media institutions that serve us, like most facets of American life, have been deliberately segregated and reluctant to change. In this reality, alternatives sprouted. Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all. Greg Sandow, an editor at Entertainment Weekly at the time, told Billboard, “I’m summoned to this meeting on the 34th floor [at the Time, Inc. executive offices]. And here came some serious concerns. This dapper guy in a suit and beautifully polished shoes says, ‘We’re publishing this. Does that mean we have to put black people on the cover?’” Throughout the next two decades, many publications serving nonwhite audiences thrived. Vibe spun off, creating Vibe Vixen in 2004. The circulations of Ebony, JET, and Essence, legacy institutions founded in 1945, 1951, and 1970, remained robust — the New York Times reported in 2000 that the number of Essence subscribers “sits just below Vogue magazine’s 1.1 million and well above the 750,000 of Harper’s Bazaar.” One World and Giant Robot launched in 1994, Latina and TRACE in 1996. Honey’s preview issue, with Lauryn Hill on the cover, hit newsstands in 1999. Essence spun off to create Suede, a fashion and culture magazine aimed at a “polyglot audience,” in 2004. A Magazine ran from 1989 to 2001; Hyphen launched with two young reporters at the helm the following year. In a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Camille Bromley called Hyphen a celebration of “Asian culture without cheerleading” invested in humor, complication, and complexity, destroying the model minority myth. Between 1956 and 2008, the Chicago Defender, founded in 1905 and a noted, major catalyst for the Great Migration, published a daily print edition. During its flush years, the Baltimore Afro-American, founded in 1892, published separate editions in Philadelphia, Richmond, and Newark.

Before Vibe’s launch, Time, Inc. executives wondered whether a magazine focused on black and brown youth culture would have any audience at all.

The recent instability in journalism has been devastating for the black press. The Chicago Defender discontinued its print editions in July. Johnson Publications, Ebony and JET’s parent company, filed bankruptcy earlier this year after selling the magazines to a private equity firm in 2016. Then it put up for sale its photo archive — more than 4 million prints and negatives. Its record of black life throughout the 20th century includes images of Emmett Till’s funeral, in which the 14-year-old’s mutilated body lay in state, and Moneta Sleet Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize–winning image of Coretta Scott King mourning with her daughter, Bernice King. It includes casually elegant images of black celebrities at home and shots of everyday street scenes and citizens — the dentists and mid-level diplomats who made up the rank and file of the ascendant. John H. Johnson based Ebony and JET on LIFE, a large glossy heavy on photojournalism with a white, Norman Rockwell aesthetic and occasional dehumanizing renderings of black people. Johnson’s publications, like the elegantly attired stars of Motown, were meant as proof of black dignity and humanity. In late July, four large foundations formed an historic collective to buy the archive, shepherd its preservation, and make it available for public access.

The publications’ written stories are also important. Celebrity profiles offered candid, intimate views of famous, influential black figures and detailed accounts of everyday black accomplishment. Scores of skilled professionals ushered these pieces into being: Era Bell Thompson started out at the Chicago Defender and spent most of her career in Ebony’s editorial leadership. Tennessee native Lynn Norment worked for three decades as a writer and editor at the publication. André Leon Talley and Elaine Welteroth passed through Ebony for other jobs in the industry. Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Black, Latinx, and Asian American media are not included in the counts on race and gender WMC reports. They get their data from the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), and Cristal Williams Chancellor, WMC’s director of communications, told me she hopes news organizations will be more “aggressive” in helping them “accurately indicate where women are in the newsroom.” While men dominate leadership roles in mainstream newsrooms, news wires, TV, and audio journalism, publications targeting multicultural audiences have also had a reputation for gender trouble, with a preponderance of male cover subjects, editorial leaders, and features writers. Kim Osorio, the first woman editor in chief at The Source, was fired from the magazine after filing a complaint about sexual harassment. Osorio won a settlement for wrongful termination in 2006 and went on to help launch BET.com and write a memoir before returning to The Source in 2012. Since then, she’s made a career writing for TV.  

* * *

This past June, Nieman Lab published an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic since 2016, and Adrienne LaFrance, the magazine’s executive editor. The venerable American magazine was founded in Boston in 1857. Among its early supporters were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It sought to promote an “American ideal,” a unified yet pluralistic theory of American aesthetics and politics. After more than a century and a half of existence, women writers are not yet published in proportion to women’s share of the country’s population. The Nieman piece focused on progress the magazine has made in recent years toward equitable hiring and promoting: “In 2016, women made up just 17 percent of editorial leadership at The Atlantic. Today, women account for 63 percent of newsroom leaders.” A few days after the piece’s publication, a Twitter user screen-capped a portion of the interview where Goldberg was candid about areas in which the magazine continues to struggle:

  GOLDBERG: We continue to have a problem with the print magazine cover stories — with the gender and race issues when it comes to cover story writing. [Of the 15 print issues The Atlantic has published since January 2018, 11 had cover stories written by men. — Ed.]

 It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males. What I have to do — and I haven’t done this enough yet — is again about experience versus potential. You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!

That’s one way to approach it, but the other way to approach it is, huh, you’re really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you’re 33 and you’re burning with ambition, and that’s great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000-word cover stories. It might not work. It often doesn’t. But we have to be very deliberate and efficient about creating the space for more women to develop that particular journalistic muscle.

My Twitter feed of writers, editors, and book publicists erupted, mostly at the excerpt’s thinly veiled statement on ability. Women in my timeline responded with lists of writers of longform — books, articles, and chapters — who happened to be women, or people of color, or some intersection therein. Goldberg initially said he’d been misquoted. When Laura Hazard Owen, the deputy editor at Nieman who’d conducted the interview, offered proof that Goldberg’s statements had been delivered as printed, he claimed he had misspoken. Hazard Owen told the L.A. Times she believes that The Atlantic is, overall, “doing good work in diversifying the staff there.”

Taken together, their labor was a massive scholarly project, a written history of a people deemed outside of it.

Still, it’s a difficult statement for a woman writer of color to hear. “You literally are looking at me and all my colleagues, all my women colleagues and all my black colleagues, all my colleagues of color and saying, ‘You’re not really worthy of what we do over here.’ It’s mortifying,” Smith told me. Goldberg’s admission may have been a misstatement, but it mirrors the continued whiteness of mainstream mastheads. It checks out with the Women’s Media Center’s reports and the revealing fact of how much data is missing from even those important studies. It echoes the stories of black women who work or worked in journalism, who have difficulty finding mentors, or who burn out from the weight of wanting to serve the chronically underserved. It reflects my own experiences, in which I have been told multiple times in a single year that I am the only black woman editor that a writer has ever had. But it doesn’t corroborate my long experience as a reader. What happened to the writers and editors and multihyphenates from the era of the multicultural magazine, that brief flash in the 90’s and early aughts when storytellers seemed to reflect just how much people of color lead in creating American culture? Who should have formed a pipeline of leaders for mainstream publications when the industry began to contract?

* * *

In addition to her stints at Vibe, Smith also edited for Billboard, Time, Inc. publications, and published two novels. She was culture editor for ESPN’s digital magazine The Undefeated before going on book leave. Akiba Solomon is an author, editor of two books, and is currently senior editorial director at Colorlines, a digital news daily published by Race Forward. She started an internship at YSB in 1995 before going on to write and edit for Jane, Glamour, Essence, Vibe Vixen, and The Source. She told me that even at magazines without predominantly black staff, she’d worked with other black people, though not often directly. At black magazines, she was frequently edited by black women. “I’ve been edited by Robin Stone, Vanessa DeLuca [formerly editor-in-chief of Essence, currently running the Medium vertical ZORA], Ayana Byrd, Kierna Mayo, Cori Murray, and Michaela Angela Davis.” Solomon’s last magazine byline was last year, an Essence story on black women activists who organize in culturally relevant ways to fight and prevent sexual assault.

Solomon writes infrequently for publications now, worn down by conditions in journalism she believes are untenable. At the hip-hop magazines, the sexism was a deterrent, and later, “I was seeing a turn in who was getting the jobs writing about black music” when it became mainstream. “Once folks could divorce black music from black culture it was a wrap,” she said. At women’s magazines, Solomon felt stifled by “extremely narrow” storytelling. Publishing, in general, Solomon believes, places unsustainable demands on its workers. 

When we talk about the death of print, it is infrequent that we also talk about the conditions that make it ripe for obsolescence. The reluctant slowness with which mainstream media has integrated its mastheads (or kept them integrated) has meant the industry’s content has suffered. And the work environments have placed exorbitant burdens on the people of color who do break through. In Smith’s words:

You feel that you want to serve these people with good and quality content, with good and quality graphics, with good and quality leadership. And as a black person, as a black woman, regardless of whether you’re serving a mainstream audience, which I have at a Billboard and at Time, Inc., or a multicultural audience, which I have at Vibe, it is difficult. And it’s actually taken me a long time to admit that to myself. It does wear you down. And I ask myself why have I always, always stayed in a job two and a half to three years, especially when I’m editing? It’s because I’m tired by that time.

In a July story for Politico, black journalists from The New York Times and the Associated Press talked about how a sophisticated understanding of race is critical to ethically and thoroughly covering the current political moment. After the August 3 massacre in El Paso, Lulu Garcia-Navarro wrote how the absence of Latinx journalists in newsrooms has created a vacuum that allows hateful words from the president to ring unchallenged. Lacking the necessary capacity, many organizations cover race related topics, often matters of life and death, without context or depth. As outlets miss the mark, journalists of color may take on the added work of acting as the “the black public editor of our newsrooms,” Astead Herndon from the Times said on a Buzzfeed panel. Elaine Welteroth wrote about the physical exhaustion she experienced during her tenure as editor in chief at Teen Vogue in her memoir More Than Enough. She was the second African American editor in chief in parent company Condé Nast’s 110 year history:

I was too busy to sleep, too frazzled to eat, and TMI: I had developed a bizarre condition where I felt the urge to pee — all the time. It was so disruptive that I went to see a doctor, thinking it may have been a bladder infection.

Instead, I found myself standing on a scale in my doctor’s office being chastised for accidentally dropping nine more pounds. These were precious pounds that my naturally thin frame could not afford to lose without leaving me with the kind of bony body only fashion people complimented.

Condé Nast shuttered Teen Vogue’s print edition in 2017, despite record-breaking circulation, increased political coverage, and an expanded presence on the internet during Welteroth’s tenure. Welteroth left the company to write her book and pursue other ventures.

Mitzi Miller was editor in chief of JET when it ran the 2012 cover story on Jordan Davis, a Florida teenager shot and killed by a white vigilante over his loud music. “At the time, very few news outlets were covering the story because it occurred over a holiday weekend,” she said. To write the story, Miller hired Denene Millner, an author of more than 20 books. With interviews from Jordan’s parents, Ron Davis and Lucy McBath, the piece went viral and was one of many stories that galvanized the contemporary American movement against police brutality.

Miller started working in magazines in 2000, and came up through Honey and Jane before taking the helm at JET then Ebony in 2014. She edits for the black website theGrio when she can and writes an occasional piece for a print magazine roughly once a year. Shrinking wages have made it increasingly difficult to make a life in journalism, she told me. After working at a number of dream publications, Miller moved on to film and TV development. 

Both Miller and Solomon noted how print publications have been slow to evolve. “It’s hard to imagine now, particularly to digital native folks, but print was all about a particular format. It was about putting the same ideas into slightly different buckets,” Solomon said. On the podcast Hear to Slay, Vanessa DeLuca spoke about how reluctant evolution may have imperiled black media. “Black media have not always … looked forward in terms of how to build a brand across multiple platforms.” Some at legacy print institutions still seem to hold internet writing in lower esteem (“You can look at people and be like, well, your experience is writing 1,200-word pieces for the web and you’re great at it, so good going!” were Goldberg’s words to Nieman Lab). Often, pay structures reflect this hierarchy. Certainly, the internet’s speed and accessibility have lowered barriers to entry and made it such that rigor is not always a requirement for publication. But it’s also changed information consumption patterns and exploded the possibilities of storytelling.

Michael Gonzales, a frequent contributor to this site and a writer I’ve worked with as an editor, started in magazines in the 1980s as a freelancer. He wrote for The Source and Vibe during a time that overlapped with Smith’s and Solomon’s tenures, the years now called “the golden era of rap writing.” The years correspond to those moments I spent reading magazines with my high school friends. At black publications, he worked with black women editors all the time, but “with the exception of the Village Voice, none of the mainstream magazines employed black editors.” Despite the upheaval of the past several years (“the money is less than back in the day,” he said), Gonzales seems pleased with where his career has landed, “I’ve transformed from music critic/journalist to an essayist.” He went on to talk about how now, with the proliferation of digital magazines:

I feel like we’re living in an interesting writer time where there are a number of quality sites looking for quality writing, especially in essay form. There are a few that sometimes get too self-indulgent, but for the most part, especially in the cultural space (books, movies, theater, music, etc.), there is a lot of wonderful writing happening. Unfortunately you are the only black woman editor I have, although a few years back I did work with Kierna Mayo at Ebony.

  * * *

Danielle A. Jackson is a contributing editor at Longreads.

Editor: Sari Botton

Fact checker: Steven Cohen

Copy editor: Jacob Z. Gross

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