5 things the media does to manufacture outrage. 5 things the media does to manufacture outrage. People are so sensitive these days! People are just offended by every little thing! Millennials, amirite?! Is the world more easily “outraged” than it used to be? I think maybe the media is just getting better at making us all feel like the world is little more than a collection of 7 billion whining people-organism-things. The media’s always manipulated the public, and while sometimes that’s used for large things (see: presidential campaigns), more often manipulation is just a way to find content from one day to the next (between the large things). Here’s a story about something that happened to me, and the 5 steps involved in going from innocuous comment to an “outrage narrative” providing us all with content for days to come. 1. And oh man, it’s usually something extraordinarily stupid. Earlier this year, Kayla and I were hanging out at the Sephora near the North & Clyborn red line station. So, what can we conclude? 2. 3. 4. “So, NO. 5.
Charge Your Phone With A Plant - Creative Phone Chargers Normal outlets are a tad 2015, wouldn't you say? Particularly now that there is a greener alternative to giving your cell's battery level a boost (in case you're not already charging your phone with a coffee mug). Barcelona-based firm Arkyne Technologies has created a pot called Bioo Lite, that produces electricity from a plant's natural process of photosytnehsis (cue the oohs and aahs). Don't mistake this for an 8th-grade science experiment — the technology is sophisticated and involves fancy things like organic molecular decomposition, active anaerobic microorganisms, and biological nanowires (once again: ooh, aah). Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Here's how it works: Photosynthesis uses sunshine to swap C02 and water into oxygen and organic compounds. Courtesy of Bioo The system collects electricity throughout the day and night, which Bioo Lite says it can use to charge your phone or tablet up to three times a day. Check out Bioo Lite below. h/t: Design Taxi
Fake news. It's complicated. - First Draft News This article is available also in Deutsch, Español, Français and العربية By now we’ve all agreed the term “fake news” is unhelpful, but without an alternative, we’re left awkwardly using air quotes whenever we utter the phrase. The reason we’re struggling with a replacement is because this is about more than news, it’s about the entire information ecosystem. To understand the current information ecosystem, we need to break down three elements: The different types of content that are being created and sharedThe motivations of those who create this contentThe ways this content is being disseminated This matters. This is far more worrying than fake news sites created by profit driven Macedonian teenagers. The Different Types of Mis and Disinformation Back in November, I wrote about the different types of problematic information I saw circulate during the US election. Why is this type of content being created? Dissemination Mechanisms What can we do? We all play a crucial part in this ecosystem.
Thank you for ad blocking | a botlab.io initiative Social media is protecting men from periods, breast milk and body hair | Jessica Valenti | Opinion There’s a predictable social media formula for what women’s pictures online should look like. Breasts in barely-there bikinis are good (thumbs-up emoji, even), but breasts with babies attached them are questionable. Women wearing next to nothing is commonplace, but if you’re over a size 10 your account may be banned. And now, in a controversy that once again brings together technology, art, feminism and sex, Instagram is under fire for removing a self-portrait from artist Rupi Kaur that showed a small amount of her menstrual blood. The broader message to women couldn’t be clearer: SeXXXy images are appropriate, but images of women’s bodies doing normal women body things are not. As Kaur pointed out on her Tumblr account, Instagram is filled with pictures of underage girls who are “objectified” and “pornified.” “I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak,” she wrote.
amazon How did the news go ‘fake’? When the media went social The Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2017 is, disappointingly, “fake news”. We say disappointingly, because the ubiquity of that phrase among journalists, academics and policymakers is partly why the debate around this issue is so simplistic. The phrase is grossly inadequate to explain the nature and scale of the problem. (Were those Russian ads displayed at the congressional hearings last week news, for example?) But what’s more troubling, and the reason that we simply cannot use the phrase any more, is that it is being used by politicians around the world as a weapon against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech. Definitions matter. Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances. The social networks are engineered so that we are constantly assessing others – and being assessed ourselves. We grudgingly accept these public performances when it comes to our travels, shopping, dating, and dining.
How to: Install and Update drivers in Windows 10 Windows 10 continues the tradition of hardware compatibility by providing support for a vast collection of devices available within the Windows ecosystem. Hardware detection in particular is an important part of the out of the box experience. Driver software which makes this happen, allows your hardware to function by communicating with the operating system. I recently installed Windows 10 on an HP Elitebook to see how well the most recent Windows 10 build performs. Apart from this, I had wi-fi ready, which mean, I could connect to the Internet right away. Installing drivers through Windows Update Windows Update is the premier starting point to resolve most common driver issues you might experience immediately after installing Windows 10. Simply launch it from Start > Settings > Update and Recovery and click Check for Updates or Press Windows key + R Type: ms-settings:windowsupdate Hit Enter Click Check for updates (make sure you have an active Internet connection). Press Windows key + X
The tricks propagandists use to beat science Back in the 1950s, health professionals became concerned that smoking was causing cancer. Then, in 1952, the popular magazine Reader’s Digest published “Cancer by the Carton,” an article about the increasing body of evidence that proved it. The article caused widespread shock and media coverage. Today the health dangers of smoking are clear and unambiguous. And yet smoking bans have been slow to come into force, most having appeared some 40 years or more after the Reader’s Digest article. The reason for this sluggishness is easy to see in hindsight and described in detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt. Together, tobacco companies and the PR firm created and funded an organization called the Tobacco Industry Research Committee to produce results and opinions that contradicted the view that smoking kills. The approach was hugely successful for the tobacco industry at the time. The original tobacco strategy involved several lines of attack.
Protecting your privacy online: How to manage what you reveal Even if you only downloaded a handful of apps last year, do you remember what permissions you granted to each? CBC's Marketplace recently tested how much personal information we can unknowingly hand over to apps. The start of new year is a time to reset — and the perfect time to unlearn all of the bad privacy habits you may have picked up. Here are a few tips to get you started. Review your privacy settings Both Android and iPhone have a settings page where you can see which apps have access to everything from your heart rate to your home's lighting system. Apple even offers an option to reset all of your phone's privacy and security settings at once, so that the next time you open an app that needs access to your microphone, camera, or other data, it will ask for your permission as if you were just using the app for the first time. In terms of what apps can do, there are some differences between Android phones and iPhones to keep in mind. Stick to app stores Get yourself a password manager
'The most dangerous US company you have never heard of": Sinclair, a rightwing media giant | Media Most Americans don’t know it exists. Primetime US news refers to it as an “under-the-radar company”. Unlike Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, virtually no one outside of business circles could name its CEO. And yet, Sinclair Media Group is the owner of the largest number of TV stations in America. “Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top US broadcast regulator. John Oliver – host of HBO’s weekly satirical show Last Week Tonight – used a similar line when he introduced an 18-minute segment on Sinclair last month by referring to it as “maybe the most influential media company you never heard of”. But that is beginning to change. The New York Times refers to the group as a “conservative giant” that, since the Bush presidency, has used its 173 television stations “to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda”. Since you’re here …
The best password manager (and why you need one) Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you know that online security is important. You know you need to have strong passwords and change them regularly, but knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to do it. Passwords are just so hard — one of the primary pain points in our modern digital existence. Free Productivity Guide: Download our simple guide to productivity to help you improve your workflows and be more focused with your time and attention. Background The problem of digital identity has been with us since the beginning of the web. So far, the best tool for online verification we have is passwords. Why you need a password manager So we not only need great passwords, but we need to keep changing them because they keep slipping our grasp. Yet — for most people — being secure on the Internet is dependent on one single fail point: the human brain. The second predicament people end up in is slightly better, but not by much. Why 1Password is the solution 1Password Basics Extra Vaults