“When you go to sleep at night, know that the world outside your window isn’t nearly as dangerous or violent as the world inside your TV.”

Definitely worth watching.

humansofnewyork:

In October I gave a TEDx talk at Columbia College. It just came online today. Essence of the talk is how our worldview is negatively affected by good stories. 

On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.
(…)
Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.
Angelina Jolie, My Medical Choice, NYT

Getting Organized

I just watched the alarming video What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a total stranger about my many neglected interests (specifically, playing the saxophone). Between the two, I ended up thinking up the many ways I waste/lose time throughout the day.

Cutting to the chase: I feel increasingly frustrated with the way I consume news and information. I’m so disorganized - casually scrolling my twitter and facebook feeds, consuming random articles, then feeling annoyed that I didn’t read something more substantial.

This post is about establishing areas of interest and corresponding news sources. Rather than consume whatever the internet throws my way, my goal is to set aside time each day to read the news from a trusted group of writers and publications.

Here’s my list, by topic. 

General News, Politics

  • NPR (by default - I listen on my commute)
  • New York Times (goal: read the daily front page)

Environment

Race, Racial Justice

Florida

To be honest, there is no way I have time to read through all of these sites on a daily basis. I’ll consider covering 1-2 topics each day a success. The other aspect of this challenge is to waste less of my down time with mindless scrolling (tumblr, that includes you!)

I’ll report back in a few weeks on how this goes.

Hallway of trees (at Killens Pond State Park)

Hallway of trees (at Killens Pond State Park)

But what feels like celebration can also carry with it the undertone of condescension. Amid the hood backdrop — the gnarled teeth, the dirty white tee, the slang, the shout-out to McDonald’s — we miss the fact that Charles Ramsey is perfectly lucid and intelligent.

—-Gene Demby, Are We Laughing with Charles Ramsay?, NPR

Demby makes excellent points. This really hit home for me in reference to black Internet celebrities like Ramsey and Antoine Dodds: “They’re actually not the type of people we’re used to seeing or hearing at all.” And that is not a good thing.

[h/t theSmithian]

Over the weekend, I attended the Sunlight Foundation’s Transparency Camp, an annual un-conference of assorted political, legal and data people. My experience working in the Florida Legislature in 2011 was what originally spurred my interest in government transparency.

I came to Tcamp13 ready to talk and think about improving public awareness of governmental issues, finding ways to decrease corruption, etc.

What I wasn’t as prepared for was the world of open data. This video is a helpful summary of an awesome group of people: tech people who know how to code/hack/whatever, and put their skills to use by publicizing and analyzing huge sets of data from the government.

Tcamp13 was an amazing learning experience - I met lots of smart people who are trying to solve important problems. I was also introduced to some cool new tools that I can apply to my own work. Definitely planning to be back next year!

—-

P.S. At the closing session of the conference, people passed around the mic and made commitments to data projects they were going to join or start as a result of Tcamp. I didn’t actually grab a mic, but in my mind I had an idea. After a session on Money in Politics and a long conversation with a guy from Followthemoney.org, I came away with the goal of creating a website dedicated to tracking political money in Florida. I think if financial campaign data was presented in a way that’s easy to visualize, voters would use it as a resource when making political decisions. Anyways, I’m putting this in writing now with the hope that I will reread this blog post and hold myself accountable!

History made in #Delaware! The scene on the Senate floor after passing same-sex marriage. #netDE #DE4M @EqualityDE (at Delaware Capitol Building • Legislative Hall)

History made in #Delaware! The scene on the Senate floor after passing same-sex marriage. #netDE #DE4M @EqualityDE (at Delaware Capitol Building • Legislative Hall)

NPR’s Planet Money has launched a Kickstarter project. For $25, you can receive a custom t-shirt that tells the story of its own creation. The Planet Money team is following every little detail of fabric production, sewing, shipping, and whatever else goes into a t-shirt. As you can see, the shirt design has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I think my favorite part of the project is this explanation: We thought about the design of our t-shirt like an apparel company would. What feelings, we asked ourselves, do we want the design to evoke? Well, we answered ourselves, as journalists we’re always striving to cover the potentially frightening world of finance and economics in an accessible and fun way. And so we want our t-shirt to feel accessible and fun as well. What, we concluded, is more accessible and fun than a squirrel hoisting a martini glass! Also, it’s a visual pun — a reference to the phrase “animal spirits” made famous by the economist John Maynard Keynes. In the 1930s, Keynes wrote that most of our decisions “can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”

NPR’s Planet Money has launched a Kickstarter project. For $25, you can receive a custom t-shirt that tells the story of its own creation. The Planet Money team is following every little detail of fabric production, sewing, shipping, and whatever else goes into a t-shirt.

As you can see, the shirt design has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I think my favorite part of the project is this explanation:

We thought about the design of our t-shirt like an apparel company would. What feelings, we asked ourselves, do we want the design to evoke? Well, we answered ourselves, as journalists we’re always striving to cover the potentially frightening world of finance and economics in an accessible and fun way. And so we want our t-shirt to feel accessible and fun as well. What, we concluded, is more accessible and fun than a squirrel hoisting a martini glass!

Also, it’s a visual pun — a reference to the phrase “animal spirits” made famous by the economist John Maynard Keynes.

In the 1930s, Keynes wrote that most of our decisions “can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.”

The International Women’s Health Coalition launched a 50-day online advocacy campaign calling on John Kerry, the State Department and the White House to continue to make women’s empowerment a U.S. foreign policy priority. While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a vocal advocate for the rights of women and girls worldwide, and we need to maintain that strong level of advocacy. It looks like they are asking individuals to tweet with the hashtags #usa4girls and #usa4women. There are focus themes for each week - check out a calendar and sample tweets here. I’m sure John Kerry cares about this issue, but Hillary Clinton was such an awesome voice for women’s empowerment. I think it’s really important that he takes notice and carries on the fight.

The International Women’s Health Coalition launched a 50-day online advocacy campaign calling on John Kerry, the State Department and the White House to continue to make women’s empowerment a U.S. foreign policy priority. While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a vocal advocate for the rights of women and girls worldwide, and we need to maintain that strong level of advocacy.

It looks like they are asking individuals to tweet with the hashtags #usa4girls and #usa4women. There are focus themes for each week - check out a calendar and sample tweets here.

I’m sure John Kerry cares about this issue, but Hillary Clinton was such an awesome voice for women’s empowerment. I think it’s really important that he takes notice and carries on the fight.

Notes on “Pipelines, Pulitzers and Independent Online Journalism”

Last week, Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin hosted a Google hangout with the Inside Climate News team, who won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. ICN’s winning project is titled The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of, and it chronicles a 2010 spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, along with the broader issues of pipeline regulation in the United States.

I watched the hangout during a lunch break and (embarrassingly) forgot about it, until I just now uncovered a piece of paper with my notes. These are the moments that stood out to me from the discussion:

Susan White, ICN Executive Editor:

We operate with the same journalistic standards I learned in college…You do not have an agenda, you stick to the facts…There is no difference, except we are online.

There is technology available to make pipelines much safer - why not do it?

David Sassoon, ICN Founder & Publisher:

It’s a question of what impact journalism can have on serving the public interest.

Lisa Song, ICN Reporter:

When I talked to some environmental groups about [the Dilbit spill], they didn’t seem interested. They are focused on getting Obama to reject the Keystone XL. 

Obviously a lot of ground was covered. If you’ve got 40 minutes, watching the whole discussion is well worth it.