If you think about the state of humanity and our future on the planet, there’s just one adjective that tidily sums it all up. That word is “toxic,” and the Oxford Dictionary has chosen it as the word of the year. This year, you could apply the word to the environment, the political debate, the discourse over masculinity, the rise of overt racism, office culture, dog food, almost anything, really.
Meanwhile, Dictionary.com chose an equally apt word, “misinformation,” which it defines as “false information that is spread, regardless of whether there is intent to mislead.” In other words, that favorite new expletive, Fake News!
Not to be outdone, Merriam-Webster opted for a word that is both slightly more hopeful and incredibly frustrating: “justice.” The dictionary claims it was one of the most looked-up words throughout the year, marking a 74% rise in people looking to define the word compared to 2017. Were those people wondering about justice while watching Christine Blasey Ford testify against now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh?
Or hoping for a particular outcome in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election? Or Colin Kaepernick being ousted from the NFL for a silent protest? Or the investigation into the police officer who walked into the wrong apartment and killed a man sitting in his own home? Or the thousands of children (almost 15,000 at last count) taken from their parents and shoved into camps by the U.S. border patrol?
Sadly, “toxic justice” pretty much sums up 2018. Let’s hope the world—and the dictionaries—has something better in store for 2019.
A new report prepared for the Senate Intelligence committee shows that Instagram, not Facebook, was the most effective tool used by the Russian government-backed Internet Research Agency to swing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.
While the IRA’s social media campaign touched more users on Facebook, its posts on Instagram got far more engagement. The IRA’s ads and posts reached 126 million people on Facebook versus “at least” 20 million users on Instagram, the report states. But as the below chart shows, Instagram users interacted with IRA content far more than Facebook users did. Posts on Instagram got more than four times the likes that Facebook posts did.
[Image: courtesy of New Knowledge]The new information comes from a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee by the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, with help from researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research.
The study found that the main thrusts of the IRA campaign was to convince Democratic voters–especially black voters–that their vote did not matter and that they shouldn’t bother going to the polls. This tactic of voter suppression has also been touted by Trump campaign digital guru Brad Parscale, who will also guide the Trump 2020 campaign’s online efforts.
The New Knowledge Study says the Russian effort to promote Trump and suppress voters is still underway today.
The authors of the report point out that Facebook’s executives made no mention of the importance and effectiveness of Instagram in their remarks in front of Congress this summer. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion.
[Image: courtesy of New Knowledge]The IRA also showed content to 1.4 million Twitter users, and uploaded more than 1,000 videos to YouTube, the study shows. Department of Justice indictments have revealed that the IRA’s campaign to influence the 2016 election may have cost as much as $25 million.
The scale and tactics of the IRA, revealed in the new report, could light a fire under legislators to establish rules around the use of social networks in elections. Here’s Senate Intel Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) responding to the report:
“These reports demonstrate the extent to which the Russians exploited the fault lines of our society to divide Americans in an attempt to undermine and manipulate our democracy. These attacks against our country were much more comprehensive, calculating, and widespread than previously revealed. This should stand as a wake-up call to us all that none of us are immune from this threat, and it is time to get serious in addressing this challenge. That is going to require some much-needed and long-overdue guardrails when it comes to social media. I hope these reports will spur legislative action in the Congress and provide additional clarity to the American public about Russia’s assault on our democracy.”
The Indiana Pacers just made history, but not on the basketball court–on the sidelines. They just hired former WNBA executive Kelly Krauskopf as the first female assistant general manager in NBA history. Welcome to 2018, NBA.
Like many women trying to get hired for a “man’s job,” Krauskopf is probably over-qualified. She was the president and chief operating officer of Indiana’s WNBA team, Fever, from their inception in 2000 through the 2017 season, when she left that franchise to take over the Pacers’ esports team in the NBA2K League. As ESPN notes, during her tenure with the Fever, the team made 12 playoff appearances, won three conference titles, and the WNBA championship in 2012. She’s also helped select the players for USA Basketball’s women’s national team, which went on to win gold medal victories at the Olympics.
While this is a first for the NBA (which has promoted women as assistant coaches), Major League Baseball paved the way, with the Boston Red Sox promoting its first female assistant GM, Elaine Weddington Steward, back in 1990. Then the New York Yankees hired Jean Afterman and the Los Angeles Dodgers brought on Kim Ng as assistant GMs. Ng has reportedly been interviewed for five general manager jobs, all of which ultimately went to men.
In the world of football, four women have broken into the ranks of coaching: Kathryn Smith with the Buffalo Bills, Jen Welter with the Arizona Cardinals; Collette Smith with the New York Jets; and San Francisco 49ers Katie Sowers. No managers yet, though.
In U.S. professional sports, there are no female head coaches, and this is unlikely to change soon due to both misogyny and stereotypes, but also, as The Guardian notes, because ironically, Title IX has limited the number of women coaching at the college level, where many coaches earn their stripes. Before Title IX passed, 90% of women’s college teams were coached by women,” The New York Times reports. “Today that number sits at 40%.” The Guardian also notes that “while 60% of women’s NCAA teams are coached by men, only 2-3% of NCAA men’s teams are coached by a woman.”
There are also very few women coaching youth sports. According to the Aspen Institute, in 2017 only 28% of youth sports coaches were women. It’s hard to break what SB Nation called the “Glass Sideline” when you can’t even get off the bench.
In case Facebook was hoping it could make it to the end of the year without any more bad press, Walt Mossberg had a surprise for it. Mossberg, who recently retired as one of the most respected technology journalists around, announced to his 266,185 followers that he is deactivating his Facebook account.
“I am doing this — after being on Facebook for nearly 12 years — because my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I’m no longer comfortable here,” the former Wall Street Journal, Verge, and Recode writer wrote in his Facebook post. He also announced he was leaving Messenger and had deleted the Instagram app, which, as you may recall, is owned by Facebook. He is, however, remaining on Twitter and invited followers to direct-message him there.
In the post, Mossberg stressed that deactivating his account was a personal decision that wasn’t made to “spark some dump-Facebook movement” or publicly embarrass any Facebook employees or their work. In fact, he left open the possibility that he would return to Facebook someday in the future if it becomes “effectively regulated.” That said, he has “no current plans to do that as of now.” Mossberg is deactivating his account “around the end of the year,” so go ahead and un-friend him first, just to tell everyone you did.
If you want to get a glimpse into the future of work, LinkedIn has gazed into the crystal ball. That is, the professional networking platform did an analysis of the roles that companies are hiring for the quickest, the skills needed to get those jobs, and the positions that emerged over the last five years.
Here are the top five:
1. Blockchain Developer
Top Skills: Solidity, Blockchain, Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Node.js Where They Work: IBM, ConsenSys, Chainyard Top Industries: Information Technology & Services, Computer Software, Internet Cities Where Demand is High: San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta
2. Machine Learning Engineer
Top Skills: Deep Learning, Machine Learning, TensorFlow, Apache Spark, Natural Language Processing Where They Work: Apple, Intel, Nvidia Top Industries: Computer Software, Internet, Information Technology & Services Cities Where Demand is High: San Francisco, Denver, Austin
3. Application Sales Executive
Top Skills: Software as a Service, Cloud Applications, Human Capital Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Solution Selling Where They Work: Oracle, AT&T, Avaya Top Industries: Information Technology & Services, Telecommunications, Computer Software Cities Where Demand is High: Boston, Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul
4. Machine Learning Specialist
Top Skills: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, TensorFlow, Python, Artificial Intelligence Where They Work: Google, Amazon, Apple Top Industries: Computer Software, Higher Education, Internet Cities Where Demand is High: San Francisco, New York City, Madison
5. Professional Medical Representative
Top Skills: Pharmaceutical Sales, Sales Effectiveness, Product Launches, Medical Devices, Gastroenterology Where They Work: Exact Sciences, Taro Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Top Industries: Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Hospital & Healthcare Cities Where Demand is High: Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas/Fort Worth
While the surge of technical jobs is no surprise, LinkedIn’s chief economist Guy Berger found that the biggest skills gap isn’t in tech. “Soft skills–like oral communication, leadership, and time management–make up nearly half the list of skills with the largest skills gaps,” he says.
This report was created by analyzing LinkedIn’s Economic Graph data from 2014 to 2018, as well as data from LinkedIn Talent Insights. You can view the full list of jobs and skills here.
It’s the end of the year, and we all know what that means: 3:30 p.m. darkness, synchronized phone-staring with our entire family, and year-in-review lists. As interesting as it is to see which artist Pitchfork decides made the album of the year (Mitski, naturally), this is also the time of year when companies like Spotify and Instagram pull back the shroud to reveal some of the data they’ve collected on us all.
However, there’s only one company whose data is the most, shall we say, exciting, and they’ve just released the money shot.
Pornhub’s 2018 Year in Review insights takes us on a nightmare journey through the loamy loins of society’s collective id. First, there are the numbers. Pornhub’s daily visits now exceed 100 million, and contributors uploaded a hefty 115 years worth of new video onto the site. That is so much video! A staggering amount. We must really like porn–as in, 33.5-billion-visits-to-Pornhub like. And 92 million daily average visits, which is the equivalent of the populations of Canada, Poland, and Australia.
Aside from the sheer breadth of porn activity on the site, the Year in Review contains all sorts of data points about top searches, age and gender demographics, and time spent on the site. Here are some of the most fascinating things I learned just on a cursory look through all that data:
Stormy Daniels was the number one most-searched porn star of 2018
Fortnite was also searched for in huge numbers, proving I don’t know what exactly
Pornhub’s top four searches by volume remained the same from 2017 to 2018: “lesbian,” “hentai,” “milf,” and “stepmom”
Every single minute of the year, there were 55 views of Kim Kardashian’s sex tape
Once again, the U.S. is the country with the highest daily traffic to Pornhub. We’re #1! We’re #1!
Out of the 20 major markets, Russia spends the least time per visit on Pornhub, at an average of 7:48
The top gaining category of the year was “Romantic,” which suggests more women are watching porn
By far, the most searched-for term on Pornhub Gay was “Korean”
The most searched terms for women and men were “lesbian” and “Japanese,” respectively
The average age of a Pornhub user is youngest in India, at 29, and oldest in Italy, at 40. (U.S. is 38.)
71.6% of Pornhub’s traffic comes from phones. So think about that when handling a friend’s phone
UBI is an unconditional cash payment that either supplements or replaces existing social welfare systems. It is given to all members of a community on a regular basis. The big differentiator between it and similar initiatives is that unlike traditional programs, which include conditional factors like employment and means testing, UBI is unconditional and provides recipients with greater economic security and autonomy. Cash payments could satisfy those on the political left and right by providing a stronger social safety net and expanding liberty.
UBI is also scalable in cities as workforce challenges grow, and it shares some features with–and is complementary to–existing programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and Social Security.
[Source Image: graphicwithart/iStock]Individuals would be given the ability to choose their own destinies through personal responsibility, and could use the payments for anything from food or housing to seed money for a business or absolute rubbish—the choice would be in the individuals’ hands. UBI, after all, is not meant to be a “handout,” but rather a “hand up.”
In order to explore the possibility and utility of UBI, the National League of Cities (NLC) partnered with the Stanford Basic Income Lab (BIL) to release the first-ever report for piloting UBI in cities. The toolkit, Basic Income in Cities, serves as a guide for cities considering piloting UBI, highlights the history of UBI from the 18th century to present, and provides case studies and best practices from around the world.
UBI has been the subject of experimentation for decades. In the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon launched a series of negative income tax experiments in multiple states and cities–New Jersey; Gary, Indiana; Seattle; and Denver (overseen by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld). These experiments, while a good start, were ultimately discontinued and unfortunately were too short-lived to yield definitive results.
Canada also experimented with UBI during this period. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, together with the Manitoba premier, launched a large-scale UBI program in Manitoba called Mincome (“minimum income”). This effort demonstrated what a UBI at scale could look like, because it provided a guaranteed income to over 1,000 low-income families throughout the province. And one town, Dauphin, was a full saturation site where all residents could receive cash payments.
[Source Image: graphicwithart/iStock]This particular aspect of the experiment–its availability to all residents in Dauphin–gave researchers many years later the ability to more fully understand how UBI impacts people. Notably, Professor Evelyn Forget dug into this data trove just a few years ago and was able to show positive outcomes for participants, specifically surrounding continued worker participation, health indicators, and education.
And even now, there are a number of programs and experiments in progress. We have seen great success with the Alaska Permanent Fund, which has provided a cash payment to all permanent Alaska residents since 1982, based on dividends from the state’s natural resource wealth. While not a full-scale UBI, the similarities in program design demonstrate a comparable, widely implemented U.S. program that has proven incredibly popular and valuable for residents over the decades.
Stories abound of people utilizing it to pay their bills, go to school, or help others out in a pinch, and studies broadly show that it doesn’t disincentivize people from working. With the cash payment topping out at a little over $2,000 a year at its height, the Permanent Fund is meant to reduce poverty and supplement income rather than replace the need to work and earn an income.
Additionally, smaller, city-centered experiments are under way in the U.S. For example, Sam Altman, the wealthy cofounder of venture capital firm Y-Combinator–an early funder of AirBnB–spearheaded a multi-year experiment in Oakland between 2016 and 2017. The UBI pilot in Oakland provided approximately 100 participants with $1,000 to $1,500 a month. The experiment is now set to expand to two other states in 2019, span up to five years, and will include 3,000 participants; 1,000 of these participants will receive $1,000 a month, and 2,000 people will receive $50 a month.
The city of Stockton, California’s experiment—launching in 2019—will give 100 randomly selected low-income families in the city $500 a month over 18 months. This effort is made possible with a $1.2 million grant from the Economic Security Project, a foundation whose mission is to experiment with cash-based programs like UBI. The pilot will provide residents with a small income, and in turn, researchers will be able to gather information to better study and measure UBI’s impact on the local population.
No one policy mechanism is ever the panacea, but a great deal of research shows that cash-based programs create positive outcomes for people. As we near the 2020s, it is apparent that the nation will need a social welfare system built for this century and its specific challenges.
Ultimately, cities cannot do it on their own. A fully implemented national- or state-level UBI will need a large level of support from all levels of government. But from this research, it’s clear that cities are uniquely positioned to lead the country forward through innovation and ferocious experimentation.
By piloting—and implementing—bold solutions like UBI, cities will be able to show what works as work changes, and move the needle toward shared success.
Lifelong learning will help you be happier, earn more, and even stay healthier, experts say. Plus, plenty of the smartest names in business, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk, insist that the best way to get smarter is to read. So what do you do? You go out and buy books, lots of them.
But life is busy, and intentions are one thing, actions another. Soon you find your shelves (or e-reader) overflowing with titles you intend to read one day, or books you flipped through once but then abandoned. Is this a disaster for your project to become a smarter, wiser person?
If you never actually get around to reading any books, then yes. You might want to read up on tricks to squeeze more reading into your hectic life and why it pays to commit a few hours every week to learning. But if it’s simply that your book reading in no way keeps pace with your book buying, I have good news for you (and for me; I definitely fall into this category): Your overstuffed library isn’t a sign of failure or ignorance, it’s a badge of honor.
Why you need an “antilibrary”
That’s the argument author and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes in his bestseller The Black Swan. Perpetually fascinating blog Brain Pickings dug up and highlighted the section in a particularly lovely post. Taleb kicks off his musings with an anecdote about the legendary library of Italian writer Umberto Eco, which contained a jaw-dropping 30,000 volumes.
Did Eco actually read all those books? Of course not, but that wasn’t the point of surrounding himself with so much potential but as-yet-unrealized knowledge. By providing a constant reminder of all the things he didn’t know, Eco’s library kept him intellectually hungry and perpetually curious. An ever-growing collection of books you haven’t yet read can do the same for you, Taleb writes:
A private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
An antilibrary is a powerful reminder of your limitations — the vast quantity of things you don’t know, half-know, or will one day realize you’re wrong about. By living with that reminder daily you can nudge yourself toward the kind of intellectual humility that improves decision-making and drives learning.
“People don’t walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (it’s the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did,” Taleb claims.
Why? Perhaps because it is a well-known psychological fact that it’s the most incompetent who are the most confident of their abilities and the most intelligent who are full of doubt. (Really. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect.) It’s equally well established that the more readily you admit you don’t know things, the faster you learn.
So, stop beating yourself up for buying too many books or for having a to-read list that you could never get through in three lifetimes. All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people.
This article was originally published on our sister publication, Inc., and is republished here with permission.
For farmers, increasing weather volatility due to climate change is a source of serious concern. Across the world, shifting weather patterns and extreme conditions like drought and heavy rainfall have resulted in inconsistent yields, which in turn is already leading to spikes in hunger across the globe. And because unpredictability is at the very heart of these shifts, farmers have to prepare by either adjust their practices or move to protect their crops.
The Minnesota-based agricultural analytics company DTN, though, wants to make even the most extreme weather more predicable and manageable for farmers. Through a new partnership with the government of Kazakhstan–a country in which more than 18% of the population makes their living through agriculture–DTN will deploy over 3,000 hyperlocal weather monitoring stations across the rural parts of the country.
Previously farmers had to rely on unspecific and often out-of-date national data to predict weather patterns over their crops. Now, says DTN chief science officer and acting CEO Ron Sznaider, they’ll be able to access current, site-specific data. Each sensor covers only five kilometers, and collects accurate data on rainfall, temperature, wind strength and direction, and soil conditions every 15 minutes. In addition to delivering up-to-date weather predictions, DTN will also analyze the data over time to determine patterns and trends. This will help farmers better manage their crops. The technology, broadly applied, could work to stabilize the agriculture industry, which, Sznaider says, will have to ramp up production by 70% by 2050 to meet growing population demands.
A DTN weather station in the United States. [Photo: DTN]
While large-scale agricultural work happens in rural parts of the world, “most weather observations are taken in metropolitan areas, or at airports,” Sznaider says. “We don’t have great weather records for where we’re growing our food.”
With the nonprofit and UN member organization International Informatization Academy, DTN launched the Climate Smart Initiative to close the smart weather monitoring gap for rural areas with the overarching goal of boosting food production and stabilizing the agricultural economy.
Kazakhstan wants to increase food production and exports 40% by 2020, and has also already begun an effort to digitize its agricultural sector: This year, the government launched an online information portal for farmers, which over 100,000 people regularly check. That, Sznaider says, made launching the Climate Smart Initiative in Kazakhstan very simple–the data that the DTN sensors collect can flow directly into the portal, where farmers can read updates in real time. The Kazakhstan government is also providing the majority of the funding for the program, Sznaider says, because access to this type of data “will likely create a substantial return on investment.”
While the partnership with Kazakhstan is the first countrywide effort that DTN has participated in so far, the company began testing the technology in the Midwestern part of the U.S. in 2012. “We were able to develop a system that collects data from the sensors every 15 minutes, every few kilometers,” Sznaider says. “Factors like temperature, humidity, and wind speed, interestingly, often predict crop diseases or pest outbreaks,” he adds, and the data from sensors has helped farmers in the Midwest proactively treat those conditions, and develop custom field management strategies before the onset of disease outbreaks or extreme weather. The sophisticated wind sensors also help farmers target when to spray their crops. A mistimed chemical spray can drift off-site into the surrounding environment, which is something farmers are trying to minimize. The approximately 5,500 sensors have boosted yields and helped farmers save money.
In Kazakhstan, DTN has already installed around 15 stations as a “proof of concept” for the Climate Smart Initiative. “We want to make sure communication and operations are up and running,” Sznaider says. DTN is also in the process of figuring out how to most effectively analyze data from the weather so it’s useful to farmers–they’re working on creating hyperlocal weather forecasts, along with recommendations for farmers in the areas around the stations, that farmers can access through the centralized agriculture information portal. “We really like the public-private partnership aspect of this–governments collaborating with the private sector is part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and we’re excited to show how this can work,” Sznaider says. Once that’s locked down, DTN will begin building more stations over the next few months, eventually getting up to 3,000.
While building out the Kazakhstan network is the priority for now, DTN has also deployed a handful of sensors in other agriculture-heavy countries like Russia and Iraq, and will eventually work to scale up climate monitoring there. “We absolutely see this approach scaling up over time, and in different geographies,” Sznaider says. While farming practices may adapt and change as the effects of climate change become even more urgent, the need to understand the weather is a constant, and the Climate Smart Initiative is one way to equip farmers to better withstand extreme shifts.
Fox News’s professionally angry propagandist began last Thursday’s show railing against immigrants in general, claiming that they make America “poorer, dirtier, and more divided.” Jordan Uhl, who works with MoveOn.org and has a large Twitter following, tweeted out a clip of the performance and tagged the financial agency Pacific Life, whose advertisement ran on Fox News immediately following the rant. Whether spurred on by Uhl’s specific, popular tweet or an overall online outcry, Pacific Life announced on Friday that it was pulling its ads from Carlson’s show to “reevaluate” this business relationship.
Pacific Life insurance, which has advertised on Tucker Carlson's show for a year, said they "strongly disagree" with his comments last night about immigration and are pausing their ads on his show for the next few weeks as they "reevaluate" relationship https://t.co/o4eL7v5LCA
Uhl and Sleeping Giants continued tweeting the clip of the show at other Carlson advertisers through the week to gauge whether they, too, perhaps felt uncomfortable supporting Carlson’s attack on immigrants.
On Monday afternoon, another advertiser, the job site Indeed, announced it had no plans to advertise on Carlson’s show in the future.
In the six days after Hannity’s comments about Roy Moore, at least 17 other advertisers either cut ties or distanced themselves from [Hannity’s] programs. Four weeks later, Moore lost the election; the social media outrage train chugged on to other destinations. And Dollar Shave Club? You may not have noticed: It went right back to advertising on Sean Hannity’s radio show.
It’s relatively easy during a moment of widespread, urgent outrage to use vague, non-binding language like Pacific Life and Indeed do to win some hero points from left-leaning observers. The difficult part is having the integrity to maintain your position on issues such as whether immigrants are people or whether child molesters should be shunned, once the outrage has died down. So far, Dollar Shave Club hasn’t done so. We’ll be watching Pacific Life and Indeed to see whether they stick to their guns on this one.
Citing rising suicide rates, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon known for his work around tech issues, asked the Federal Communications Commission Monday to set up a new three-digit phone number similar to 911 for people needing help with mental health and potential suicide issues.
“I believe that a 3-digit code number, similar to 9-1-1 for emergencies, would most easily come to mind for those in need of intervention services,” Wyden wrote. “A new designated 3 digit code, such as 6-1-1, which has been recommended by my friends from [crisis line provider] Oregon Lines for Life, would be best because we need a dedicated hotline for only this issue.”
In 2016, almost 45,000 suicides took place in the United States, up from about 30,000 in 1999, according to CDC data. Rates rose by more than 30% in half of all U.S. states since then, according to the CDC.
Having a single, easy-to-remember phone number for mental health issues could make it easier to remember in a crisis, similar to how people know to call 911 in an emergency. Other three-digit codes include 311, used for non-emergency government services, 411 for directory assistance, and 211, which many communities use for social services including mental health crisis support. The 611 number, which Wyden suggested, is currently used by many phone companies for technical support.
In addition to local and regional lines, a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is currently available at 1-800-273-TALK, or 1-800-273-8255.
Rebecca Sugar had a puzzle she needed to crack: Why did animated TV shows and films make her feel so alienated as a child?
All the fairytales and ponies marketed to her gender failed to spark any sense of magic or wonder. And that disconnect was something Sugar, now 31, still felt in her adulthood when she became a cartoonist and animator herself. So Sugar decided to channel those self-analytical questions into her art.
Rebecca Sugar [Photo: courtesy of Cartoon Network]“I’ve always liked to start projects around something I didn’t fully understand about myself yet,” Sugar says in a recent interview with Fast Company. “I felt a huge amount of guilt for liking cartoons for boys. I’d never really been able to connect to cartoons that were supposed to be for girls, and I wanted to unpack that.”
That process led Sugar to create Steven Universe. Since its premiere in 2013, Steven Universe has become one of Cartoon Network’s most critically acclaimed series, earning three Emmy nominations. From January to September of this year, the series’ five seasons have attracted nearly 230 million viewers across linear TV and all of Cartoon Network’s platforms. The show has also spawned a New York Times bestselling children’s book and a Billboard chart-topping soundtrack. Steven Universe‘s popularity has pushed Sugar to define her voice as a showrunner and songwriter–even if it means getting “dangerously personal.”
Steven Universe is an emotionally nuanced action-adventure-musical animated series that follows its titular character, a Pollyannaish teen who’s sworn to protect his idyllic hometown from a militant group of aliens bent on sucking Earth of its resources. Steven lives and fights alongside the Crystal Gems, a group of aliens who defected and settled on Earth eons ago after an intergalactic civil war. Steven Universe hits on classic themes for animated kids shows, including the importance of teamwork and friendship. But it also goes much deeper than that, exploring and deconstructing gender norms.
Since the Gems are aliens, they have no human gender constructs. But they’re all female-presenting and use “her” and “she” pronouns, which creates several scenarios of same-sex relationships. One of the most touching story arcs involves Ruby and Sapphire, two Gems who accidentally fuse together on their native planet, Homeworld, and become a new Gem called Garnet. Until then, fusion was unheard of and deemed an abomination, which forced Ruby and Sapphire to flee to Earth. Knowing they’re meant to be together, they join the growing resistance of other expat Gems who’ve banded together against Homeworld’s oppressive regime. Their relationship culminates in a wedding in season five.
In addition to its Emmy nominations, Steven Universe has also received two GLAAD Media Award nominations, sparked a global partnership with Dove to promote inclusivity and empowerment, and helped earn Sugar recognition in Variety‘s 2017 Inclusion Impact Report. However, the accolades came after Sugar drew her lines in the sand with network execs who initially expressed concerns about the show’s subject matter.
“It’s the hill you’re willing to die on. My hill was Ruby and Sapphire. I would compromise on a lot of details, but I would never compromise on love,” she says. “And that kept me very focused through everything. In general, it’s the nature of the job. When you care about something, you have to fight for it.”
Part of the reason Sugar cared so much was the fact that she was coming to terms with her own sexuality, coming out as bisexual two years ago. When she thought about that puzzle she needed to crack–the alienated feeling she had watching cartoons as a kid–she realized while developing Steven Universe that the stories from her childhood didn’t resonate because they didn’t feel authentic to her.
“When you think of Disney princess movies, when you think of classic animation for girls, women weren’t making them,” Sugar says. “We see a lot of stories about marginalized people but not by them. And when they start to be by them, it’s going to be very different. It’s going to be about the experience of feeling pushed to the margins. And it’s going to be about wanting to express yourself.”
Sugar started figuring out how much of herself she was comfortable expressing in her work when she was a writer and storyboard artists for another wildly popular Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time, the fantasy-adventure series about a teenage boy fighting evil alongside his magical pet dog.There, through the encouragement of the show’s creators, she learned how to translate parts of her personal life into a mainstream kids show, primarily through one of the breakout characters, Marceline, an edgy vampire queen with a passion for playing the bass and a very complicated relationship with her dad.
“I was writing on was the [first] Marceline episode and I really connected with her,” Sugar says. “She deals with a lot of self-doubt and a lot of self-hate. The first time I saw her as a character, I thought, Nobody this cool isn’t suffering. And I wanted to explore that. I started doing things that were a lot more personal within Adventure Time.”
“Seeing that I could do that in this medium and that it was reaching people around the world, it was amazing,” she continues. “And when I got my own show, I felt like I couldn’t back down. All of the characters in StevenUniverse are dangerously personal to me.”
Marceline in Adventure Time [Image: courtesy of Cartoon Network]With Steven Universe, Sugar wanted to explore not only gender and identity, but also emotional sensitivity for boys. So she drew from her own childhood–specifically her relationship with her younger brother, Steven. “I really believe in having a conversation about feminism with young boys, and I don’t appreciate that it’s always directed solely at girls,” she says. Sugar embodied aspects of herself as a big sister in the three main Crystal Gems who are Steven’s mentors: Pearl (the know-it-all), Amethyst (the recklessly fun one), and Garnet (the leader and role model).
By tapping into her personal life, Sugar was able unpack her own issues and create a series that has resonated with millions of kids and adults.
“I honestly didn’t know that the show would be received and understood in the way that it was. I feel very seen and it’s the most wonderful and the most terrifying thing that I’ve ever experienced,” Sugar says. “But I’ve realized over the course of working on the show that I have something very different to say and I don’t want to be afraid of that anymore.”
New episodes of Steven Universe air December 17 on Cartoon Network.
“The only thing worse than looking for work,” one of my best friends once told me, “is finding it.” He was, of course, gainfully employed at the time, and his cynicism seemed like an indulgence I couldn’t afford as the bills continued to pile up on my kitchen counter.
Technology is supposed to make finding a job easier–a million opportunities just a few clicks away on LinkedIn or Indeed, Dice, or Stack Overflow. And yet sometimes it feels like digital tools have only made the whole process more agonizing: You can see the job listings–you can read the description for that perfect job right there on your phone!–and you can even identify the relevant hiring manager. But good luck traversing the digital moat to connect directly with an actual human being.
Channing Dungey, the former head of ABC Entertainment who stepped down in November, is joining Netflix, where she will oversee original TV series alongside Cindy Holland, the company’s longtime head of originals.
The move was anticipated within the industry and reunites Dungey with two of her former showrunners, Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal) and Kenya Barris (Black-ish), both of whom decamped from ABC to Netflix earlier this year. At Netflix, Channing will also oversee other high-profile producers, such as the Obamas, who have a producing deal at the company; Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black, Glow) and Marti Noxon; as well half of the originals executive team. The other half will report to Holland.
Interestingly, sources toldThe Hollywood Reporter that Dungey, a TV veteran who had been at ABC since 2004, will also have a direct line of communication with Netflix’s content chief Ted Sarandos. Like other executives whom Netflix has poached from traditional entertainment companies, such as Scott Stuber, who heads Netflix’s original film division, Dungey brings experience working with talent and nurturing projects as the company invests more heavily in its own content–and begins to operate more like a traditional studio. In contrast, Holland was promoted to oversee originals in 2012, when Netflix first began making its own shows. She started at the company in DVD acquisitions and then took over domestic TV licensing.
Dungey’s exit from ABC came as its parent company, the Walt Disney Company, was preparing to merge with 21st Century Fox. The new arrangement would have united Dungey with her formal rival at Fox, Dana Walden, who was named in October as incoming Disney TV Studios chairman. Her departure also marked the end of a dramatic year at ABC. After green-lighting a remake of Roseanne that became one of the network’s biggest hits, Dungey swiftly fired the show’s star, Roseanne Barr, after she made a racist slur on Twitter. The show continued production as a spin-off (The Conners) without Barr, but has faired less spectacularly in the ratings.
Dungey became a star of sorts in her own right over the Barr firing. She has also gained attention for being the first African-American head of a major network. This role will be an asset at Netflix, which has been struggling with diversity issues. Over the summer, former head of communications Jonathan Friedland was fired after making racist remarks, including using the “N” word.” Netflix then hired an exec to oversee “inclusion strategy.”
In an interview earlier this year with Fast Company, Dungey discussed the creative challenges of working at a broadcast network, giving signs that like Rhimes and Barris–who both said they left ABC in order to stretch their creative muscles–she was growing weary of corporate limitations.
“You do have some very real limitations, right?” she said. “We have to adhere to FCC regulations and broadcast standards and practices. And there are other things that we hold to, you know. ABC is part of the Walt Disney Company, so we’re very against smoking on television, for example. I recognize that we have to kind of play within all those rules. So I want to give latitude [to creatives] where we can, but then there are other points where you feel like you have to step in.”
Yet she also spoke glowingly of the network model, and when she was asked specifically about competing with Netflix she said it was “an apples and oranges conversation.”
“These are two different [kinds of] businesses, and they serve two different needs. For us it’s not about competing with Netflix. Streaming is something you do for you, which is why Netflix has your profile, your husband’s profile, your kid’s profile. Broadcast is something people tend to do together, wether it’s families watching comedies or friends who watch The Bachelor and drink wine and talk to the screen. I’ve made the decision in this role to look for shows that can be watched together. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to bring American Idol back: It hit that sweet spot of something that you can watch live, you can watch as a family, and that you can [turn into events] with live shows.”
Stock markets continued to fall on Monday, bringing the S&P 500 index to its lowest close for the year after a 2% drop to 2,545.94, CNBC reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 507.53 points to 23,592.98, and the Nasdaq fell 2.2% to close at 6,753.73. The Dow has lost more than 1,000 points in two days.
The Dow and S&P 500 are both technically in a correction, meaning values have fallen at least 10% since recent peaks. The drops come as investors worry about continuing trade tensions, a court ruling declaring Obamacare unconstitutional, the potential partial government shutdown, the unresolved Brexit issue, and a rising backlash against big tech companies.
Microsoft and Amazon both saw their stocks drop Monday, as did a number of healthcare companies potentially affected by the court ruling, which likely won’t go into effect until after several rounds of appeals.
President Donald Trump, who previously touted stock market gains during his presidency, has publicly urged the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates, which can slow economic growth.
It is incredible that with a very strong dollar and virtually no inflation, the outside world blowing up around us, Paris is burning and China way down, the Fed is even considering yet another interest rate hike. Take the Victory!
Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, made a bit of a recovery, with bitcoin up more than 8% to about $3,539.33 and Ethereum up more than 10% to $95.09 in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. That’s still a far cry from where the digital currencies stood just a year ago, when bitcoin hit a record high of $20,000.
There’s another Dark Web beyond sites dealing in illegal goods and conspiracy theories. Even without a Tor browser, you can access a so-called Intellectual Dark Web of controversial authors, speakers, and interviewers–on the right and left. Neuroscientist, author, and podcaster Sam Harris is part of that list, and is also one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse (with Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens). But Harris is no longer part of Patreon, the crowdfunding service that had allowed listeners to contribute to his podcast Waking Up.
On Sunday night, Harris announced his departure from Patreon, where he was one of the top-ranked creators, because the service has expelled several people with whom he does not agree. Among them: feminism and “identity politics” critic Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad), former Students for Trump adviser James Allsup, and all-around political bomb thrower Milo Yiannopoulos.
“Although I don’t share the politics of the banned members, I consider it no longer tenable to expose any part of my podcast funding to the whims of Patreon’s ‘Trust and Safety’ committee,” wrote Harris, who’s now raising money on his own site.
Over the years, Harris has ticked off both conservatives and liberals with his critique of religion and readiness to speak with almost anyone, regardless of how offensive their views may be. This famously included an interview with political scientist Charles Murray, author of the The Bell Curve, which probes a racial basis for differences in intelligence. Other episodes spawned criticism that Harris gives a platform to Islamophobes and white nationalists. However, Harris has famously refused to speak with alt-right icon Richard Spencer, so as not to give him a platform.
As deplatforming—both voluntary and involuntary—continues on social media, funding networks, and other online communities (such as Tumblr), the classic American struggles and arguments over free expression and tolerance show no sign of abating.
If you live in a heavily trafficked area, there’s a good chance you’ve fallen prey to the Amazon thief–the person who sees a package on your doorstep and steals it. Engineer Mark Rober has experienced this, too. In a YouTube video he uploaded yesterday, he showed us his form of revenge.
If what the video details is real (which, in this world, who knows!), Rober built a very elaborate booby trap to entice package thieves, which then surprised them with two of the world’s the most annoying elements. The small package contained a reserve of glitter, which, when opened, exploded everywhere. It also had a can of “fart spray” that was deployed every 30 seconds. Meanwhile, the box was built to record everything, using four smartphone cameras.
Rober, in the video, says he spent months developing it. And he seems like just kind of guy who would do this. His YouTube channel is filled with Rube Goldberg-like projects that use engineering and science–including mousetrap propelled cars and the alleged world’s largest super soaker. Not only that, but Rober worked at NASA for nearly a decade and helped build the Curiosity rover, which ultimately rocketed to Mars. So if any person had the credentials to build such a device, it would be this guy.
While revenge against petty thieves isn’t quite the same as literal rocket science, there is definitely a similar payoff. In the video, you see more than a few people take the package and then instantly regret it as their life is covered with glitter and fart scent.
Which is to say: It’s definitely satisfying to watch, and you can see it below. Let’s just hope Rober doesn’t get milkshake ducked.
That shocking statistic comes from a study conducted by Amnesty International and AI software startup Element AI. In the study, called Troll Patrol, Amnesty International and Element AI looked at data from 288,000 tweets sent to 778 female politicians and journalists in the U.S. and U.K. in 2017. Using machine learning on the data, the group then extrapolated just how wide-ranging abuse toward women is on Twitter. The result: 1.1 million abusive or problematic tweets were sent to the women in the study during the year–that’s one abusive or problematic tweet every 30 seconds.
And it’s even worse for women of color–and especially black women–who were targeted more frequently than white women. As Milena Marin, senior advisor for tactical research at Amnesty International, explained in a blog post:
“Troll Patrol means we have the data to back up what women have long been telling us – that Twitter is a place where racism, misogyny and homophobia are allowed to flourish basically unchecked. We found that, although abuse is targeted at women across the political spectrum, women of color were much more likely to be impacted, and black women are disproportionately targeted. Twitter’s failure to crack down on this problem means it is contributing to the silencing of already marginalized voices.”
And it didn’t even matter what side of the political spectrum women sat on, as the findings revealed that of the female journalists included in the study, they all faced the same level of abuse despite writing for ideologically opposed publications including the Daily Mail, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sun, Gal-Dem, PinkNews, and Breitbart. Other key findings from the study:
Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets. One in ten tweets mentioning black women was abusive or problematic, compared to one in fifteen for white women.
7.1% of tweets sent to the women in the study were problematic or abusive. This amounts to 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, or one every 30 seconds.
Women of color, (black, Asian, Latinx and mixed-race women) were 34% more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women.
Online abuse against women cuts across the political spectrum. Politicians and journalists faced similar levels of online abuse and we observed both liberals and conservatives alike, as well as left and right leaning media organizations, were affected.
We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment about Amnesty’s report and will update this post when we hear back.
Update: We’ve been provided with some extracts from Vijaya Gadde’s response to Amnesty on December 12. Gadde is Twitter’s Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Global Lead. Gadde highlighted how Twitter monitors and handles abusive tweets deemed to be in violation of its abusive behavior policy. Other extracts from Gadde’s response to Amnesty:
“Twitter has publicly committed to improving the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation on our service. Twitter’s health is measured by how we help encourage more healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking. Conversely, abuse, malicious automation, and manipulation detract from the health of Twitter. We are committed to holding ourselves publicly accountable towards progress in this regard…
“With regard to your forthcoming report, I would note that the concept of “problematic” content for the purposes of classifying content is one that warrants further discussion. It is unclear how you have defined or categorized such content, or if you are suggesting it should be removed from Twitter. We work hard to build globally enforceable rules and have begun consulting the public as part of the process — a new approach within the industry…
“As numerous civil society groups have highlighted, it is important for companies to carefully define the scope of their policies for purposes of users being clear what content is and is not permitted. We would welcome further discussion about how you have defined “problematic” as part of this research in accordance with the need to protect free expression and ensure policies are clearly and narrowly drafted.”
If a typography walking tour your idea of a dream vacation, then a.) I feel for your significant other and b.) you should apply for InVision’s inaugural Design Exchange.
InVision, the design software company recently valued at $1.9 billion, is announcing a program to send designers to inspiring cities around the world next year for free to “learn with, and from, their design peers,” according to a blog post on InVision’s site. Think of it as study abroad for the T-square set.
The program is open to professional designers, with each trip lasting a week. Itineraries are expected to include design workshops, visits to prominent design firms and design-led companies, and tours of art museums and other cultural institutions. InVision plans to host four trips in 2019, starting with Sydney in February, then Copenhagen and Singapore later in the year. The fourth destination has not been announced.
For InVision, the Design Exchange is an obvious marketing play. InVision has long positioned itself as an advocate of designers–its primary users–in hopes of winning their loyalty and better competing against Adobe and other design software makers. “Helping designers advance within their companies advances the broader design ecosystem,” an InVision spokesperson says–which means more potential customers for InVision.
[Photo: InVision]
The company recently tested the Design Exchange in Munich with designers from tech heavyweights Google, Pinterest, Airbnb, Indeed, and Automattic (the company behind WordPress). Participants explored the Museum of Contemporary Art and toured IBM’s Watson IoT Center. They had dinners with local designers, and yes, they took a type tour of the city. “This program impacted me by really rooting me back into design culture,” says Benjamin Evans, inclusive design lead at Airbnb. “It’s all too easy to forget that design is something you can do just for fun.”
Learning from different cultures is never a bad thing, no matter what your profession. But digital designers stand to benefit, perhaps more than most, from unshackling themselves from their computers and venturing out into the world. Many of today’s designers create products and services that influence the behavior of millions, if not billions, of users around the globe. Yet they often work at just a clutch of companies confined to rarified regions like Silicon Valley and New York City. The result is a kind of unintended myopia that can have disastrous consequences.
In this sense, the Design Exchange isn’t just about helping the careers of individual designers; it’s about making the design industry itself more empathic. “Our hope is that Design Exchange participants will take these experiences back to their teams to grow design’s influence at their companies and build the products that continue to shape entire industries,” InVision CEO and cofounder Clark Valberg says.
To qualify, you have to be a senior designer with six to eight years in the field. Read more and apply here.
When Molika Gupta immigrated to the U.S. in 2013, after marrying her husband who was already working in the states, she had no idea she would be unable to work. In India, she had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and worked in patent licensing—but once she came to the U.S., she found she could not work on the H-4 visa, which is given to immediate family members of an H-1B worker. (The H-1B is a temporary visa awarded to highly skilled foreign workers, to fill specialized jobs for which there aren’t enough qualified American workers. An H-4 visa allows immediate family members to legally accompany H-1B holders to the U.S. and study here, but it does not authorize them to work.) She decided to get a second master’s degree, which put her on a student visa, but two years later, she was forced to switch back to the H-4 after striking out with the H-1B lottery. (There’s a cap of 85,000 H-1B visas per year—a lottery system is now used to determine which petitions will be approved.)
“That’s when the darkness and depression and loneliness started,” she says. “I was not expecting something like this would happen to me.” When her H-4 work authorization was finally granted in 2017, employers were wary of hiring someone with a gap in their employment history. “Hiring managers couldn’t understand what happened because they’re not really aware of the immigration process,” she says. Now, she works as a freelancer—and advocates for other H-1B spouses in her situation.
“It’s just fundamentally wrong”
Gupta is one of about 100,000 women who could lose the ability to work if the Trump administration follows through on yet another anti-immigration measure, which would revoke work permits for H-1B spouses—more formally known as the employment authorization document (EAD). Since 2015, when President Obama introduced EAD, H-4 visa holders have had the ability to work without a green card. At the moment, the green card wait time for highly skilled Indian immigrants—who account for more than 75% of H-1B holders—is decades long, which means that without being granted work authorization, their spouses could be barred from working for the foreseeable future.
An overwhelming majority of those spouses are women, for whom the ability to work secures their economic independence—and helps bolster the U.S. economy. In a survey of 2,411 H-4 holders, the advocacy group Gupta works with (which started as a Facebook page, “Save H4EAD“) found that 94% of respondents were women. Nearly 60% of the people surveyed have postgraduate or professional degrees, and about 57% have lived in the U.S. for more than five years and have U.S.-born children. The women who could be affected don’t just work in the tech industry; they are teachers and nurses and architects.
“These are people who are on a path to becoming permanent citizens,” says Todd Schulte, the president of immigration advocacy group FWD.us. “It’s just fundamentally wrong.”
The Trump administration already cracked down on the H-1B visa last year, when he issued an executive order that led to a more stringent review of H-1B petitions as well as increased scrutiny of compensation and why the job in question requires a foreign worker. Immigration lawyers have reported a higher rate of denials and delays issuing visas. But the decision on H-4 work authorization—which was first proposed over a year ago—has been delayed for months, leaving H-4 holders in a state of fearful anticipation. The EAD work authorization was initially introduced through an executive order by Obama, and Trump could similarly revoke it by executive order, although it could potentially be challenged in court.
According to Schulte, the White House has not made a move to revoke H-4 work permits in part because they don’t have a good reason to do so. “Take a step back and think about how unprecedented this move is,” he says. “This is a successful program. There is nobody saying this is somehow bad for the economy and country who can back it up with economic stats. They don’t actually have economic justification for it.”
What it means for U.S. tech jobs
For tech companies, which have historically employed tens of thousands of H-1B workers, a decision to revoke work permits for spouses could compromise their ability to attract talent from countries like India and China. (Microsoft president Brad Smith has cautioned that the decision could force them to move jobs out of the U.S.) In Congress, there is bipartisan support for H-4 work authorization: Earlier this year, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mia Love (R-UT) penned a letter with the support of 130 bipartisan members of Congress, imploring Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to preserve the current regulation. Jayapal also has legislation drafted that can be introduced in the event of a decision.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to welcome one person to contribute their considerable skills to our economy, but tell their spouse that they have to stay home,” she says. “Everyone—regardless of gender—deserves to be able to use and enhance their skills, be financially self-sufficient, thrive mentally and physically, and pursue their dreams. Moreover, it hurts our ability to attract and retain workers. Many of our peers, like Canada and Australia, provide work authorization for accompanying spouses. It’s simply the right thing to do.”
Congressman Ro Khanna, whose district falls within Silicon Valley, says that while people in his town halls sometimes express concerns over the H-1B visa, nobody ever speaks out against the H-4 work permit. “I’ve never had a single constituent in my two years of Congress say that the spouses of H-1B visa holders should not be able to work,” he says. “I think people view that as inhumane or cruel.” That economic independence is particularly important, he says, given there is higher incidence of domestic abuse or violence when a spouse can’t work. And in places with a high cost of living—such as the Bay Area—Khanna says the loss of a second income could significantly impact the livelihood of many families.
The one upside of Trump’s rhetoric is that it has raised awareness and shed light on the plight of H-1B spouses, many of whom only realize they can’t work without the EAD after coming to the U.S. And some people have a “distorted” image of the women who carry the H-4 visa, according to Gupta. “It’s not like I was waiting for someone to appear as a knight in shining armor and take me to the U.S.,” Gupta says. “That’s not the case for many women out there.”
Gupta and other advocates—the Save H4-EAD group is led by a group of about 20 people—have drawn more attention to their cause by meeting with lawmakers to share their stories. Raising awareness in the U.S. has also enlightened many women in India who may have to move to the U.S. (Though Gupta adds, “Nobody should be forced to choose between their freedom to work and marriage.”) The group is also preparing for a commenting period if and when the Trump administration makes a decision on work permits.
But Gupta says there is little she can do to brace herself for what could be her new reality. “Nobody can prepare for a situation that they don’t deserve to be in,” Gupta says. “Fighting for your work rights in a country that is the most developed in the world is ironic. I don’t know what should be my next action.”
