The chances of California returning to normal water conditions is like a snowball’s chance in, well, California. The picture is not a good one. River beds are dry, farms are parched and boats sit idle throughout the state.
If one thing has grown from this mega-drought, it’s the perseverance amongst many of the state’s residents. At least that’s the story Los Angeles Times reporter Diana Marcum and photographer Robert Gauthier kept running into during their three-week, 1,600-mile road trip through the Golden State’s drylands.
Accompanied by Murphy, Marcum’s four-year-old labrador retriever, the pair live tweeted, blogged and Instagrammed their findings along the way and have curated all of it, including the paper’s coverage of the drought, into their Flipboard Magazine called #DrylandsCA.
The project is a follow-up to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series Marcum penned in 2014 that profiled Californians most affected by the drought. We spoke with Marcum and Gauthier about the planning of their trip, what surprised them and what they would tell others about the drought based on their experience.
Where did the idea of a road trip come?
DIANA MARCUM: I’d already written about the center of the drought from this dustbowl aspect last year. It was almost this “Steinbeckian” thing that was happening in the Central Valley and I was really curious about the state as a whole. I really wanted to just see it for myself, hear people talk, know what was out there and just kind of get that sense of reality when you hit the road.
LA Times Reporter Diana Marcum’s four-year-old labrador retriever Murphy shakes himself off at Kelly’s Beach, a family owned campground on the Kinsburg River. Photo by Robert Gauthier
The previous project was very much in that “Grapes of Wrath” vein: that project focused on people fighting for their lives. This is more “Travels with Charley“—getting out and talking with people. It was amazing how much people who didn’t have their whole lives at stake were affected.
How did you plan your road trip?
ROBERT GAUTHIER: Over the years I had talked with my editors about doing a photoplay of life along the waterways that explained where our waters came from—but more so about who lives along those waterways and how that water affects them. And then the drought came up.
So we focused on the sources of water and based our travels along those lines.
What did you find?
DM: We kept joking that we had to trust the journalism gods. I think we’re both people who usually plan carefully and this project was just the opposite. Whatever happened that day, whoever we ran into, we just ran into these real-life moments.
For example, we pulled over to shoot one thing and we’re trying to get somewhere else and then we see a man who was watering his roses with dishwater trying to keep the roses alive that he planted with his wife who had died.
It was a short conversation, but it was a heartfelt conversation; it is really like being on a road trip in real life—you meet these people and you meet them in the moment—they’re not somebody that you spend a great deal of time with but they make an impression with you that sticks and resonates with so many other things back in your life.
How did you approach your style of photography for this project?
Joey Caniday, vacationing from Southern California, prepares to kayak on Blue Lake. Photo by Robert Gauthier
RG: The immediacy of everything made it challenging. For a photographer to really tell their story, they need to spend some time with the subject. Sometimes we had no more than 23 minutes with some people, so it was hard to try and avoid taking artful snapshots. I just had to take what was in front of me and do the best and find the meaning of what was there and go to the next place.
As for the aesthetic, I was really trying to represent our time now. I didn’t want the pictures to evoke anything from the Dustbowl era or the Works Progress Administration days, anything from the past that people might’ve seen. I wanted to shoot the here and now.
What were you surprised by?
Fourth of July revelers find seats among a row of now-dry boat docks near the shore of Bass Lake. Photo by Robert Gauthier
DM: We started this whole trip around the Fourth of July at Bass Lake, which is close to where I live. So I know what it’s supposed to look like when there’s water and understand what it looks like now. The docks were over weeds; there was no water and there were going to be no fireworks because the fire danger was so high. The crowd size was just a fraction of what it usually is, but it turned out to be a beautiful evening.
Fire dancers perform at Bass Lake. Photo by Robert Gauthier
We made friends with these fire dancers because people figured if you can’t have fireworks, you’d have some kind of flames and so here are these human beings sitting around fire with four firetrucks standing nearby. And instead of fireworks, there was a laser show. In some ways, it can be viewed as pathetic, lame and sad. But my God, look at the resilience—everybody is still here, they’re still dancing, eating ice cream, still sitting out on the docks looking at nothing and sitting over weeds. That set the tone for the rest of the trip.
RG: What surprised me the most was how the drought was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. We were going out on the road and heading to very tiny, remote places, where people don’t read newspapers or watch the news everyday, really just people who are just living their lives—and everyone we met was ready to talk about the drought in one form or another even without prompting it.
This being a road trip and all, what music did you listen to?
RG: When we had FM reception, we would always listen to country. When we didn’t, we listened to my playlist on my iPod.
DM: The one that always came up was Bruce Springsteen’s “Drive All Night.” And when I had a moment alone, pretty much every night before I went to sleep, I listened to Wilco’s “California Stars.”
And what did you guys eat?
DM: We tried to eat well when we could, but ironically it was a lot of nuts and raisins.
Having been on this trip, what’s one thing you’d like to tell people who know very little about the drought?
DM: We want El Niño to come—but one year of rain is not going to cure this drought.
RG: If you’re still looking for evidence of climate change, just stop and look around. The next big wars are going to be fought over water. This is kind of the peek into the future that we’re going to deal with.
You can find postings from the road trip, along with the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the drought here.
And don’t forget to take a look at The Shot, where our photo editors spotlight some of Gauthier’s selects from the trip along with the latest news from the photography world.
~NajibA is curating Some Media Noise
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The Daily Edition was filled with diverse stories this week, from the Ashley Madison hack, to the FDA‘s approval of “Female Viagra” and an increased spotlight on immigration. Read our top picks from the week that was.
1. 7 things we’ve learned from the Ashley Madison leak – MarketWatch, Priya Anand
Top line: “More than 36 million accounts have been exposed…Most of the aspiring cheaters are men…About 15,000 of the emails came from government addresses…But the emails could be fake.”
Topic to follow: Ashley Madison
2. Jihad and Girl Power: How ISIS Lured 3 London Teenagers – The New York Times, Katrin Bennhold
Top line: “An estimated 4,000 Westerners have traveled to Syria and Iraq, more than 550 of them women and girls, to join the Islamic State, according to a recent report by the institute, which helps manage the largest database of female travelers to the region.”
Topic to follow: Islamic State (ISIS)
3. Scientists suggest a way to lower your stroke risk: Shorten your workweek – The Los Angeles Times, Karen Kaplan
Top line: “In an analysis of more than half a million men and women from around the world, those who put in long hours at the office were 33% more likely to suffer a stroke than their colleagues who clocked out earlier. Even those who worked just over 40 hours per week saw a significant increase in stroke risk, according to results published online Wednesday in the journal Lancet.”
Topic to follow: Health Care
4. As women finish Ranger course, Army faces new pressure on gender barriers – The Washington Post, Dan Lamothe
Top line: “The historic achievement by the two women, who are expected to be awarded the prestigious Ranger Tab at a ceremony on Friday, comes amid a sweeping assessment at the Pentagon that is expected to lead to the removal of long-standing barriers to female soldiers across the armed services.”
Topic to follow: U.S. Army
5. How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election – Politico, Robert Epstein
Top line: Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.”
Topic to follow: 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
6. FDA Approves Controversial ‘Little Pink Pill’ But With Restrictions – NBC News, Maggie Fox
Top line: “The pill’s called flibanserin and will be marketed under the brand name Addyi. The FDA is asking its maker, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, to specially train doctors and pharmacists who dispense it and to keep track of any problems with women taking the drug. Only trained physicians will be allowed to write prescriptions for the pill.”
Topic to follow: FDA
7. Colorado Spill Heightens Debate Over Future of Old Mines – The New York Times, Julie Turkewitz
Top line: “On Saturday, at a spot on a dirt road just across from the Gold King, one of the mine’s former owners — Mr. Fearn, a longtime Silverton resident and engineer who is 71 — gazed out at the flow from the mine, which was still running at 600 gallons a minute, more than three times its typical rate.”
Topic to follow: Colorado
8. Love thy neighbour: the Texas town welcoming undocumented migrants – The Guardian, Lauren Hilgers
Top line: “In 2014, the number of people crossing the southern border into the US suddenly shot upwards: more than 130,000 refugees from Central America arrived; almost half were under 18, and travelling alone.”
Topic to follow: Immigration
9. Welcome to Maternity Hotel California – Rolling Stone, Benjamin Carlson
Top line: “While birth tourism has become extremely popular in China, no one knows exactly how many Chinese visit the U.S. each year to have a baby. In 2012, according to Chinese state media, there were some 10,000 tourist births from China; more recent estimates have put the number as high as 60,000 a year. Some of the boom is due to a 2012 crackdown by the government in Hong Kong, where an excellent education system, top-notch healthcare and the prospect of political freedom attracted expecting Chinese parents for years.”
Topic to follow: China
10. What is it like to have never felt an emotion? – BBC, David Robson
Top line: “In fact, Caleb claims not to feel almost any emotions – good, or bad. I meet him through an internet forum for people with “alexithymia” – a kind of emotional “colour-blindness” that prevents them from perceiving or expressing the many shades of feeling that normally embellish our lives. The condition is found in around 50% of people with autism, but many “alexes” (as they call themselves) such as Caleb do not show any other autistic traits such as compulsive or repetitive behaviour.”
Topic to follow: Emotions
Check out The Daily Edition throughout the week for your news updates.
~GabyS is reading Real Estate of the Stars
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President Barack Obama arrived in Kenya on Friday for a personally and internationally significant four-day trip. Officially, the 44th president is there to host the first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in sub-Saharan Africa and address global security and economic concerns. But it is also Obama’s first trip to his father’s country of birth, the connection to which he has often addressed, as president.
Obama plans to spend time with members of his father’s family in Kenya, where he will also meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, hold an event young leaders and deliver a speech before traveling to Ethiopia, where he will meet with the African Union about trade and security.
Although this is the president’s third trip to Kenya, the stakes are particularly high this time given the rise of terror in Kenya and across the globe, and because of his dwindling time in office.
“There’s huge excitement in Kenya and perhaps excessive expectations of what this trip might deliver,” said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
A focus on Islamist extremism is expected given the Somali extremist group, the Shabab, is responsible for some 400 deaths in Kenya since 2011. The visit is also an opportunity to rebuild the troubled relationship between Kenya and the United States, and shore up the potential for economic collaboration.
Obama’s trip also shines a larger spotlight on Africa and the developing world. He has received criticism for doing less for Africa than former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But during this trip Obama is expected to highlight the programs he launched more recently, including the 2013 electricity initiative, Power Africa.
Obama addressed the significant expectations he faced in regard to Africa during a 2006 interview.
“Kenya is not my country. It’s the country of my father,” he told the Chicago Tribune of Barack Obama Sr., whom he met once at age 10. “I feel a connection, but ultimately, it’s not going to be me. It’s going to be them who are climbing a path to improving new lives.”
Use Flipboard to follow President Obama, news from Africa and the developing world.
Africa Today! by The Active Screen: Keep up with news from sub-Saharan Africa.
Kenya Business News by Boaz Nyaranga: Follow business news out of Kenya, on which the president will focus much of his energy during this trip.
Africa 2020 by AfricaOracle: Read cultural, sports and business stories from across the continent.
Gender by World Bank Group: The World Bank Group looks at evolving gender roles around the world, including in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya.
Africa in Transition by Nadine: See how Africa is changing from a social and environmental standpoint.
Let No Child Die of Hunger by UNICEF USA: UNICEF USA looks at the state of the “war on hunger” and the children impacted most.
~GabyS is reading the “International Relations” topic tag.
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I’ve mentioned it before: I love Flipboard. (And no, I don’t work for them.) It’s a little app that gives me a sleek interface to view all the articles, pictures, and links that I gather from around the web. Sure, it won’t replace the efficiency of a good RSS reader — and if you find one, I want to know what it is — but it does the job of collecting information that you want to read in one neat package. And since I gather links like a house gathers dust, it takes a great UI for me to go back and actually read my massive collection of digitalia.
From the curator’s perspective however, there’s another interesting angle to Flipboard — namely, the many different ways people in various industries are using the app to promote their business. Below are some creative ideas and unique examples that you might want to try for your own projects or organization.
1. Use Flipboard as a Product Catalog or Brochure
If you have a large number of physical products or product lines, why not create product catalogs for your customers? Take a peek at the Nostalgic Gift Catalog with its links to Etsy items, the 2015 Aquascape Water Gardening Catalog that lists its various product lines for aquarium care, or even the Patriots Catalog that showcases merchandise for Patriots and Boston sports fans. Considering how drab many corporate websites look, it may just be more visually appealing to send a customer a link to a Flipboard magazine listing your various products.
2. Use Flipboard to Cover Your Industry’s News
What better way to show that your company is on top of its own niche than to collect relevant news items and articles relating to your industry? For example, you can follow magazines on the mobile industry, the design industry, the real estate industry, and loads more. If you can’t find a magazine for your industry, then you should start one right away. But just because there are others doesn’t mean you should step back. Join the fray! Just think of a more exciting name so you stand out from all the similar magazines surrounding yours in search results.
3. Use Flipboard for Internal Market Research
Put together a private magazine that collates all the latest articles from your competitors as market research, creating a snapshot in time of how they are positioning themselves.
4. Use Flipboard as a Press Kit
Prepare a Flipboard magazine that does nothing but collect all your press releases and press briefings, giving reporters a quick way to skim your most recent coverage.
5. Use Flipboard as a Photo Album
You’re not limited to just news stories, blog posts, and articles — you can also flip photos. So why not create a magazine to show off images of your corporate culture? For example create a magazine for: the daily office photo, what people wear for your Costumed Fridays, what’s being served at the office cafeteria, who attended the weekly Happy Hour, and more.
6. Use Flipboard to Document Special Events
In the same vein, you could use Flipboard to put together magazines for the year-end Sales Kickoff event, or your annual holiday party, or your semi-annual team outing, or even for the day when your startup files for IPO.
7. Use Flipboard to Create a Company History / Timeline
Another way to use Flipboard is to string together a timeline of critical events in your company’s history. Thus you get coverage of the founding, the organization’s early days, perhaps a smattering of press, and readers can enjoy it almost like a curated museum exhibit.
8. Use Flipboard to Brainstorm Ideas
Because you can easily invite contributors to a magazine, you can use Flipboard as a collaboration tool. Each member can quickly contribute ideas for anything from website design to holiday party themes.
9. Use Flipboard as a Newsletter for Your Customers and Fans
Because it’s a collection of links that your customers and fans may find useful, why not supplement your regular nurturing emails with a link to a newsletter-type magazine tailored specifically to your audience?
10. Use Flipboard to Showcase Customer’s Successes
You can use Flipboard to collect articles and blog posts that mention your customers using your product. Think of it almost like an external customer testimonial page. The benefits are twofold: you put the spotlight on your customers, and you highlight articles where they talk about your organization/service/product. Best of both worlds!
Need More Ideas? Start By Following These Magazines
Need more ideas about how to use Flipboard? Start by checking out the awesome and yet unofficial community of Flipboard curators, Flipboard Club. Then follow some good Flipboard magazines! Here are seven to start you off. These are the ones we curate for our company, Wrike. Check them out:
Productivity Works! for tips on getting things done.
Social Project Management, for project management tips in the age of the social enterprise.
Startup Spark Up for entrepreneurial advice, and startup culture.
Marketing Speak for all things digital marketing.
Work Humor, for a lighter, funnier take on this thing we do called work.
The Work Management Roundup, a weekly collection of must-reads regarding productivity, efficiency, and managing your work.
Wrike Culture, documenting what it’s like to work in Wrike — using photos!
Lionel Valdellon is a content marketer for work management software Wrike. At night he produces electronic downtempo music. He can found here on Twitter.
This post originally appeared on Medium on July 9, 2016, and is reprinted here with permission.
Image Credit: Flipboard by Johan Larsson on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
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The summer continues to heat up, and the campaigns now running on Flipboard are doing the same. For your consideration: a trio of new advertisers, each taking advantage of Flipboard’s unique advertising offerings.
Apple Music
Let’s start with Apple, and the launch of Apple Music, its new music streaming service. Apple chose to integrate its creative within our music coverage in two ways: 1) by maintaining a significant presence in Flipboard’s Music interest channel around major tentpoles such as Pitchfork’s Music Festival in Chicago on July 17-19, and 2) by securing placement across the platform on Tuesdays (the day of the week when albums are typically released) throughout the month. This ensures that Apple Music will be top of mind for consumers prone to want to groove to its sounds.
Million Dollar Listing
Another new campaign comes from TV network Bravo, for its Million Dollar Listing franchise, which premiered in a San Francisco locale this month. To connect with viewers and promote the SF edition, Bravo and Flipboard partnered on the Million Dollar Living brand magazine, “a collection of outrageous real estate, unique design/decor and luxury lifestyle.” In addition to using Flipboard’s full-screen ads to promote the magazine, Bravo is cross-promoting it via social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Meanwhile, Flipboard hosted a red couch interview with broker Justin Fichelson from the show.
Emirates Be There
Emirates, our third advertiser in the spotlight this month, is making its Flipboard debut with a campaign focused on raising awareness for its “Be There Challenge.” The program features seven “globalista” adventurers exploring exotic locations and competing in challenges along the way. The journey is being captured through various pieces of multimedia content, with the goal of inspiring like-minded readers to go forth and explore the planet. Flipboard’s interest targeting capabilities (in this case to followers of the adventure travel topic) is a proven solution to align with a desired audience.
Stay tuned next month for our August roundup of Campaigns Worth Knowing.
~ChristineC is following Glossy
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Much has been discussed on the brands here on the French Riviera. We wanted to share Cannes Lions creativity through the eyes of our publishing partners:
- Google Cardboard won the Cannes Lions award for mobile innovation, so our partner CBS Interactive quickly took the opportunity to preview the first virtual reality comedy film, Our Reality Is Virtual, starring Kenan Thompson. Christy Tanner of CBSi launched the project with the creative agency The Uprising Group. After the preview, CBSi hosted a panel discussion with Kenan, Uprising and Weaver (who stitched together the VR). A great discussion ensued and included the point that the industry needs a more consumer-friendly term; they felt ‘VR’ is alienating and means so many different things.
- Fast Company brought creativity to real-world issues by hosting three sessions in partnership with Microsoft. ‘Create good‘ was the theme of their program bringing together causes and creative thinkers to provide missions statements, logos and branding statements for three non-profits. The sessions were great to witness and had good collaboration from creatives and executives at the festival. Projects included the rainforest partnership and a funding project for Haitian schools.
- Celebrities continue to be a key feature at Cannes Lions, as was obvious by speaker guests like Pharrell, but also via iHeartRadio‘s Ryan Seacrest, who not only moderated a discussion in the Palais but also mixed it up with iHeart clients. AOL brought Mary J. Blige to perform for their guests Tuesday night. Original programming and star power are clearly center stage for digital media partners.
- Speaking of celebrity, we were very fortunate to have joined an impromptu panel discussion moderated by Wenda Harris Millard and Joni Evans, with the amazing Mary Wells Lawrence who was in town supporting Pure Wow. Mary was sharing anecdotes, such as highs and lows of her spectacular career, including how she convinced Alka Seltzer to market two tablets instead of one (when two is needed to have the medical effect required) thus doubling their sales. She also helped transform the airline industry by getting Braniff Airlines to introduce fun into flying, adding color to planes and lounges, among other things that we take for granted today in the world of JetBlue and Virgin.
- Seizing on all vast amounts of talent speaking here in Cannes, The Guardian was again hosting the entry to the Speakers Lounge. This created a relaxed and informal environment to capture the attention of the speakers. In the room, they highlighting many of their key audience stats, editorial successes and readership numbers.
~LucyG and ChristineC are reading “How-to: Cannes Lions”
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Nine lives were lost this week during a shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The most important story in The Daily Edition this week is the first on this list – the one that pays tribute to the those who were taken.
1. Charleston victims: 9 lives lost to family and community – CNN, Don Melvin, Steve Almasy and Greg Botelho
Top line: “They gathered at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to study the Bible — a small group, 13 people. Many were familiar faces. One was a stranger. But it was unfathomable that this stranger was a killer lying in wait, a man who would kill nine churchgoers and church leaders in cold blood. Police say Dylann Roof went to the church in Charleston, South Carolina, two hours from his home, and shot dead the pastor, other ministers and people who had come Wednesday to learn more about the Word of God.
Topics to follow: Charleston Shooting
2. Black like her: Is racial identity a state of mind? – The Washington Post, Amy Ellis Nutt
Top line: “Given that our brains are continually being re-shaped by experience,it should come as no surprise that cultural habits and behaviors can shape brain pathways. In a number of experiments researchers have found that in people who believe that individuals are judged by God, the part of the brain associated with self-judgment decreases in activity while the part associated with taking someone else’s point of view, increases in activity…No one knows at this point why Dolezal needed to say she was black, but certainly her early experiences with African-American siblings may have led to a closer identification with them than her white parents.”
Topics to follow: Race & Ethnicity, Identity
3. New York prison escape puts staff-inmate relationships in the spotlight – CNN, Jethro Mullen and Dan Simon
Top line: “Hundreds of consensual sexual relationships between guards and inmates are documented each year in U.S. prisons, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. More than half of all substantiated incidents of staff sexual misconduct in U.S. prisons and jails were committed by female members of staff, according to a study by the bureau released last year.”
Topics to follow: Prison Breaks, Prison Reform
4. Golden State Warriors Win NBA Finals: By the Numbers – CBS Sports, Matt Moore
Top line: “641 3-pointers: The Warriors set an NBA record for most 3-point attempts in the playoffs, the most made 3-pointers in the playoffs, and the most makes and attempts in the Finals. Nothing proves that the league has changed more than this. The 3-pointer is not a gimmick. It is not a trick. It is not something you die by, it is something you live by and something you die without. The Warriors shot 3’s and shot a ton of them, and made a huge amount of them and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them.”
Topics to follow: NBA Playoffs, Golden State Warriors
5. The Pope’s Moral Case for Taking On Climate Change – The Atlantic, Emma Green
Top line: “Though Church leaders have long spoken up for the environment, Francis has made environmental issues a priority of his papacy. This is the first encyclical that is fully his, and the Catholic Church’s first-ever dedicated entirely to this topic. The pope is offering the world a moral vocabulary for talking about climate change, shifting global attention from the macro solutions of policy summits to the personal ethics of environmental stewardship. In the book of Luke, Jesus looks at the birds and says, ‘Not one of them is forgotten before God.’ In writing Laudato Si, Francis has taken this parable and turned it back on humankind: Policymakers and scientists may try to stop the warming of the earth, but ultimately, we are each responsible for the destruction of creation.”
Topics to follow: Pope Francis, Climate Change
6. Woman’s face will be added to $10 bill in 2020, Treasury says – Chicago Tribune, Tiffany Hsu
Top line: “One lucky lady — yet to be chosen — will become the first woman in more than a century to join an esteemed coterie of dead presidents and statesmen featured on American paper currency, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said. The new note will be issued in 2020 during the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote.”
Topics to follow: U.S. Treasury, Women Leaders
7. Jeb Bush Seeks a Bigger Tent a Campaign Launch – Time, Philip Elliott
Top line: “‘I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching and staying true to what I believe,’ Bush said at a kickoff event that was stage-managed with a finesse typically reserved for incumbent Presidents. It perhaps came naturally to a candidate who is the son of one President and brother to another.
‘I will take nothing and no one for granted,; Bush continued, anticipating questions over whether the country needs a third Bush as President. ‘I will run with heart. I will run to win.'”
Topics to follow: Jeb Bush, 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
8. Philae and the Rosetta mission: everything you need to know about the quest to catch a comet – The Telegraph, Sarah Knapton
Top line: “When it reached the crucial speed in July 2011 the spacecraft was put into deep-space hibernation for the coldest, most distant leg of the journey as it travelled some 497 million miles from the Sun, close to the orbit of Jupiter as the comet headed into outer Solar System…In January 2014 the spacecraft was woken up by an internal alarm clock when it was within 214 million miles of the Sun. It finally reached the comet on August 6 2014. The lander Philae was set down on November 12 2014.”
Topics to follow: Comets, Space
9. Pentagon’s YouTube war with Russia – Politico, Philip Ewing
Top line: “Defense officials have concluded it’s no longer enough to lodge formal complaints when Russian bombers probe U.S. air defenses off Alaska, fighters barrel-roll around American reconnaissance aircraft over Eastern Europe, or attack jets buzz American warships at sea — especially since Russia’s state-funded media commonly claims the moves are justified. So in recent weeks the U.S. military, which tends to be judicious about releasing video of military operations in the air or at sea, has taken to social media in an effort to shape international public opinion.”
Topics to follow: US Department of Defense, Russia
10. The strange expertise of burglars – BBC, David Robson
Top line: “‘In the past, people thought of offenders as impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic – they didn’t think they were very clever because they usually aren’t well educated,’ she [Claire Nee, a forensic psychologist at the University of Portsmouth] says. And that has been a mistake. Nee has found that burglars have a complex cognitive toolbox of advanced, automatic skills – much like a chess player or tennis star. If we are to prevent future crimes, we’ve got to appreciate that expertise.”
Topics to follow: Burglary, Psychology
Check out The Daily Edition throughout the week for your news updates.
~GabyS is curating “The Finest Opinions”
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This week kicked off with Apple’s annual WWDC conference and ended with the ongoing search for two New York prison escapees and a defeating vote for President Barack Obama on trade. Follow these stories and more of our top picks from this week’s Daily Edition.
1. From power tools to helicopters: Amazing prison escapes – CNN, Holly Yan
Top line: “Most recently, two convicted killers used power tools to break out of a prison in New York state. The inmates cut open a steel wall and worked their way through a labyrinth of pipes and shafts before escaping through a manhole. But theirs isn’t the only astonishing escape.
Topics to follow: Prison Escape, Crime
2. Dems deal Obama huge defeat on trade – Politico, Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Lauren French
Top line: “Lawmakers easily defeated a measure to help workers displaced by free trade known as Trade Adjustment Assistance. The aid package needed to pass in order to enact companion legislation that would give Obama fast-track trade authority to complete the sweeping, 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.”
Topics to follow: Free Trade, U.S. Congress
3. How Isis crippled al-Qaida – The Guardian, Shiv Malik, Ali Younes, Spencer Ackerman and Mustafa Khalili
Top line: “Isis has not simply eclipsed al-Qaida on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, and in the competition for funding and new recruits. According to a series of exclusive interviews with senior jihadi ideologues, Isis has successfully launched “a coup” against al-Qaida to destroy it from within. As a consequence, they now admit, al-Qaida – as an idea and an organisation – is now on the verge of collapse.”
Topics to follow: Islamic State (ISIS), Terrorism
4. Why Is MERS So Contagious? – The Atlantic, Adrienne Lafrance
Top line: “MERS has only been observed in humans since 2012, and the recent cases in South Korea represent the largest outbreak of the virus ever outside of Saudi Arabia, where it originated in camels before jumping to humans. ‘For dromedary camels, [MERS is] very much like what we get in a common cold,’ [Vincent] Munster [chief of Virus Ecology Unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease] said. ‘But if it comes into humans, it moves into the lower respiratory tract where it can cause some harm. If you are relatively healthy, you probably don’t get too sick from this virus. But if you have co-morbidities—let’s say a heart condition, diabetes, or obesity, maybe all three—the outcome for you if you get this virus is increasingly worse.'”
Topics to follow: Mers, Disease
5. Everything Apple announced at WWDC 2015 in one handy list – The Next Web, Natt Garun
Top line: “New features [for OS X 10.11: El Capitan] headed this way include new gestures, such as shake to enlarge mouse cursor, and a new way to pin websites on Safari. The browser will also add a speaker icon on the URL bar to mute music coming from any tab opened. Spotlight is also getting more contextual. Instead of looking for files by name, you can now describe what you’re looking for, such as ‘Files I worked on last June’ to bring up documents last edited at that time.”
6. DNA Deciphers Roots of Modern Europeans – The New York Times, Carl Zimmer
Top line: “Both studies indicate that today’s Europeans descend from three groups who moved into Europe at different stages of history. The first were hunter-gatherers who arrived some 45,000 years ago in Europe. Then came farmers who arrived from the Near East about 8,000 years ago. Finally, a group of nomadic sheepherders from western Russia called the Yamnaya arrived about 4,500 years ago. The authors of the new studies also suggest that the Yamnaya language may have given rise to many of the languages spoken in Europe today.”
Topics to follow: DNA, Human Evolution
7. America’s Largest Mental Hospital Is a Jail – The Atlantic, Matt Ford
Top Line: “At Cook County Jail, an estimated one in three inmates has some form of mental illness. At least 400,000 inmates currently behind bars in the United States suffer from some type of mental illness—a population larger than the cities of Cleveland, New Orleans, or St. Louis—according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI estimates that between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives.”
Topics to follow: Mental Health, Incarceration
8. Why Gossip Can Save Your Life – The Daily Beast, Tim Teeman
Top line: “The better gossips, said [Robin] Dunbar [professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University], keep a benevolent but informative eye on their social networks and feed information to its other members, keeping the whole organism ticking away. ‘This is a form of social grooming,’ he said. ‘Someone keeps an eye on who’s with who, who’s shacked up with who. That kind of gossip is a kind of information exchange.'”
Topics to follow: Social Networking, Information Age
9. A better night’s sleep is all in your head – CNN, Sandee LaMotte
Top line: “According to the Centers for Disease Control, an estimated 50 million to 70 million American adults have a sleep or wakefulness disorder that can affect their lives in serious ways. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, cancer and obesity are linked to poor sleep, as are car accidents, industrial disasters, occupational and medical errors as well as reduced quality of life and productivity. It’s so bad that the CDC has pegged insufficient sleep as an American public health epidemic.”
Topics to follow: Sleep, Centers for Disease Control
10. 10 Things You’ll Need to Remember About ‘OITNB’ Before You Watch Season 3 – Marie Claire, Lauren Hoffman
Top line: “Before you dive back in, here are 10 of the season two’s key moments. Refresh your memory, stock up on energy drinks, and go into the summer’s best bing-watch prepared.”
Topics to follow: Orange Is The New Black, TV
Check out The Daily Edition throughout the week for your news updates.
~GabyS is reading “Putin’s Rules“
The Week in Review: Caitlyn Jenner Announcement Kicks Off LGBT Pride Monthhttps://in-id.about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/the-week-in-review-caitlyn-jenner-announcement-kicks-off-lgbt-pride-month
Monday, June 1, marked the beginning of LGBT Pride Month. On the same day, Olympian and reality show star Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce, graced the cover of Vanity Fair to announce her new name.
Jenner publicly came out as transgender in an April episode of 20/20 with Diane Sawyer and will be featured in an eight-episode docu-series on the E! network titled I Am Cait in July. She will also be honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPY Awards in July.
Jenner’s announcement was met with mostly positive reactions, and she even amassed over 1 million Twitter followers in four hours. But the news was also greeted with some opposition, including a change.org petition calling on the International Olympic Committee to retroactively revoke her gold medal from the 1976 Olympics.
Jenner’s announcement, along with high profile voices and new TV shows like Amazon’s Transparent, has shed a larger spotlight on issues regarding gender identity. The reaction to Caitlyn’s cover within the trans community has also been somewhat tempered, with some claiming that, due to her considerable wealth and resources, hers does not represent the “experience of most trans women, especially of color.”
Recent statistics show that, within a sample of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming study participants, 15 percent reported a household income of under $10,000 and 64 percent were the victims of sexual assault.
Still, there is widespread agreement that Jenner is now in a prominent position to do more for transgender activism. Keep learning about the issues surrounding identity and discrimination on Flipboard during this Pride Month.
Gender in the Media by The Representation Project: The different ways gender is represented in the media.
Equality Now by Christel van der Boom: Read about current news regarding the fight for LGBT equality, curated by a Flipboard employee.
Racism, Homophobia & Discrimination by dozzam: A look at different forms of discrimination from this MagMaker’s perspective.
Immigration & Equality by anditosan: Issues surrounding the relationship between immigration reform and gay rights.
~Nabeel is reading “Writing & Wordcraft”
On the Red Couch with The Daily Beast Columnist Arthur Chuhttps://in-id.about.flipboard.com/inside-flipboard/on-the-red-couch-with-the-daily-beast-columnist-contestant-arthur-chu
Arthur Chu came to fame in 2014 after winning Jeopardy 11 times in a row, becoming the fourth highest-earning winner in the game show’s history. But it wasn’t his brains that made him into a cultural icon—it was his big mouth.
“I think a part of me going viral was that I was very talkative—much more talkative than Jeopardy expected me to be,” the 31-year-old says with a laugh. While on the show, Chu took to Twitter and engaged with enraged fans seething over his seemingly unorthodox playing style, jumping from category to category. For his part, Chu, the victim of childhood bullying, relished any opportunity to play the villain.
Though his streak came to an end in March 2014, the world hadn’t heard the last of Chu. Aware that he’d struck some kind of cultural nerve, he wondered how to maximize his newfound celebrity. Realizing his words—not his “game theorizing”—resonated with lots of people, he fashioned himself into a professional cultural critic. Today Chu writes a column on the confluence of three worlds—pop culture, Asian-American identity and nerdom—for The Daily Beast (which is available on Flipboard).
We spoke with him about being the villain, how nerds became cool and why you should argue with people on Facebook.
You were vilified for having an “unorthodox strategy” on Jeopardy. What was it?
I didn’t have an unorthodox strategy at first. I knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I wondered how I could make the most of it.
I found out about the Forrest Bounce, a method that began back in season 2 of Jeopardy. Chuck Forrest made headlines as a “Jeopardy celebrity” for doing very well on the show. His style was to bounce around from category to category.
I looked at the arguments in favor of and against that method. The argument against it boiled down to making the game harder for you. The argument for it is that other players don’t know what’s coming next.
I thought that if you had the capacity to do it, you should.
So the negative reaction couldn’t have surprised you, right?
I was surprised by the intensity of it. The third winningest Jeopardy player in history, David Madden, didn’t get that much bad feedback because social media wasn’t a player. But he did end up retreating from the public eye.
I was prepared for how relentless negativity can be when it becomes an online sport. It’s like a meme: it takes on a life of its own.
After becoming semi-famous and winning hundreds of thousands of dollars, you could have done a lot of things. Why write?
A weird thing happens when you go viral—people have this self-reinforcing notion of you, and I had this reputation for being controversial. If I was some universally beloved icon, it would be hard for me to speak up about controversial things. It’s almost lucky that it happened this way.
I was commenting on things outside of myself, and people were taking stuff that I wrote and publishing it. The Guardian offered to publish my interview responses as an op-ed, and The A.V. Club printed an unedited copy of an interview with me. The Cleveland Plain Dealer then reprinted that interview.
I realized I have a voice. Then Sujay Kumar from The Daily Beast asked if I wanted to write for their website. I said yes.
You and I are about the same age, and grew up in a time when being a “nerd” was decidedly uncool. As the unofficial “nerd columnist” for The Daily Beast, can you explain the rise of the nerds?
When we were younger, I didn’t identify as a nerd—I got identified as one. I can understand why people get upset that the term has been extended to just mean “enthusiast.”
I think it does speak to a world in which technology has fragmented our culture and created narrow subcultures. We used to identify the term “nerd” as being somehow abnormal.
I wrote about this for The Guardian. It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s no illusion of a “normal person.” And with information being much more widely available, it’s easier to pursue passions.
So we’re all nerds now.
You’re Asian-American, a group who also started receiving some attention from mainstream culture. Yet it’s still just a handful of Asian-Americans in the pop culture spotlight, you being one of them. Do you feel any pressure?
I’d spent a lot of time as a kid wanting to say, “I’m not a member of this culture—I want to be an American.”
Here’s something weird: I intentionally spent time trying to learn about mainstream pop culture to gain acceptance. It’s been a recent thing for me to develop this Asian-American consciousness, and developing it with the understanding that the label—Asian—has been put on us by society. It’s not a fact about me, but a fact about the world.
There must have been this hunger for representation. Because why would a guy on Jeopardy be that important? Why was Jeremy Lin such a big deal? It’s that he’s one of us—a Chinese- or Taiwanese-American who had to grow up in this context with slurs and stereotypes, and still achieved success.
After spending more time the Asian-American community, I’ve developed a new perspective: it’s not about saying Asian-Americans have a specific set of cultures, it’s about saying the history of how we divide people into boxes is an intrinsic part of this country and we have to deal with it.
Your self-assurance is interesting because you’ve been marginalized throughout your life in one way or another. And then you kick ass on this game show, and people try and discredit you, and you hold firm. How?
I’ve been a very outspoken person for a long time. A big part of who I was growing up was to feel like the smartest person in the room. A lot of people my age start out thinking we’re celebrities, which is the narcissism of our time. We start out thinking we might go viral.
I’ve had my arguing muscles honed by the Internet. When you’re involved in an argument on Facebook, it can feel like the biggest news in the world to you.
I also spent time building up my confidence by taking classes in acting and improv, [the latter of] which is like being thrown into the deep end of the pool: you have to be entertaining without a script and rely on your natural instincts, and own however people seem you, and just be that person.
You can read Chu’s writing in The Daily Beast here.
~ShonaS is curating “Compulsive & Conscious”
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