interesting times.

futurejournalismproject: Gender Balance in News Open Gender...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:24:52 -0700

Gender Balance in News

Open Gender Tracking Project is a software program that collects digital content from news sources and analyzes gender balance within news organizations. The project was created by Irene Ros and Adam Hyland of Bocoup and Nathan Matias of the MIT Center for Civic Media.

The program collects data on who is writing the articles and who the articles are written about. It also measures audience response data directly associated with specific articles (like how many times a post is shared in social media). The goal of the program is to make news sources aware of content diversity (or lack thereof) so organizations can work toward maintaining a balanced set of voices.

For the most part, women are currently being underrepresented in digital media.

Can we blame climate change for the tornado that took out Moore, Okla.?

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:53:00 -0700

Can we blame climate change for the tornado that took out Moore, Okla.?:

Sometimes natural disasters are just that: natural.

sextsfrommarxists: hey girl, if the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:25:20 -0700

sextsfrommarxists:

hey girl,

if the entire regime, even your nonviolent thoughts, is governed by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passiveness serves no other purpose but to put you on the side of the oppressors.

so let’s get active.

"To be without money is to buy from a placeless netherworld and be told to take it or leave it, no..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:44:51 -0700

“To be without money is to buy from a placeless netherworld and be told to take it or leave it, no questions asked.”

- The hidden costs of buying on the cheap

"Hope and history are sisters: one looks forward and one looks back, and they make the world spacious..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:03:58 -0700

“Hope and history are sisters: one looks forward and one looks back, and they make the world spacious enough to move through freely. Obliviousness to the past and to the mutability of all things imprisons you in a shrunken present. Hopelessness often comes out of that amnesia, out of forgetting that everything is in motion, everything changes. We have a great deal of history of defeat, suffering, cruelty, and loss, and everyone should know it. But that’s not all we have.”

- Rebecca Solnit hopes.

jessie-duke: PIONEERS PRESS NEEDS YOUR HELP! Hey folks! We’re...

Sun, 19 May 2013 10:23:37 -0700

jessie-duke:

PIONEERS PRESS NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Hey folks! We’re still trying to recover financially and emotionally from our mega-bad breakup with Microcosm Publishing (you know how it goes, he got the house and the car, we got the hungry kids, the dog, and the therapist bills) and we’re having a hell of a time keeping the lights on here at the distro.

People have asked us how they can help besides ordering from us so we put together this list. Anything you can do would be hugely appreciated!

These folks really deserve the support. I have no doubt they got a raw deal in this — so go buy some cheap literature from some radical ethical business people!

politics-war: A topless FEMEN protester with an inscription on...

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:22:46 -0700

politics-war:

A topless FEMEN protester with an inscription on her body that reads “Life In Plastic Is Not Fantastic” holds up a burning cross with a Barbie doll attached to it outside the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience on May 16, 2013 in Berlin.

"Frank C. Havens was an Oakland developer who opened a mill and planted eight million eucalyptus..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:59:44 -0700

“Frank C. Havens was an Oakland developer who opened a mill and planted eight million eucalyptus trees in a 14-mile-long strip from Berkeley through Oakland. But when he came to sell the timber, it was found that the trees were too young to make suitable wood; the young wood had an irregular grain and it bent, cracked, and shrank when dried. It is true that eucalyptus trees from Australia could make good timber, but those trees were decades or sometimes centuries old. It was soon found that eucalyptus trees would need to be at least 75 or 100 years old for good lumber. The young wood didn’t even make useable fence posts or railroad track ties, both of which decayed rapidly. Havens closed shop.”

- How the eucalyptus came to California. Omfg, Frank C. Havens, you are so, so painfully Oakland.

"Of course, our crime stats are nothing on those in East Oakland or West Oakland. Here in the center,..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:45:09 -0700

“Of course, our crime stats are nothing on those in East Oakland or West Oakland. Here in the center, we have largely been given a pass on the gang violence that has continued. The random drive-bys happen somewhere else. But we need to think locally. Everybody wants safer neighborhoods.”

- In which a Chronicle writer dispenses with any caring about high crime in poor areas with less than a dozen lazy words. We need to think locally! Everybody wants safer neighborhoods! We need to think selfishly! Everybody wants private security cameras! Everybody wants hired guards!

What do you do when the federal government won’t let you plant a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:11:37 -0700

What do you do when the federal government won’t let you plant a sustainable, super-useful crop on your own land? Well, if you’re Ryan Loflin, you do it anyway.

Heady Colorado farmers are plowing ahead with hemp - Grist

52 hurts.

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:18:12 -0700

52 hurts.

jcstearns: New Yorker Launches New Whistleblower Submission...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:38:20 -0700

jcstearns:

New Yorker Launches New Whistleblower Submission System, With Code Written by the Late Aaron Swartz

(via Introducing Strongbox, a Tool for Anonymous Document-Sharing : The New Yorker)

new mantra

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:44:50 -0700

Every school in Japan has a motto. This one cracks me up- so reserved. American schools would go for the superlatives twitter.com/LindseyChrist/…
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) May 14, 2013

These cartoon bears care more about the environment than you do.

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:23:41 -0700

These cartoon bears care more about the environment than you do.

"I’m putting, like, a recycled aluminum-foil crown on her head. And that’s what I had to..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 06:48:02 -0700

“I’m putting, like, a recycled aluminum-foil crown on her head. And that’s what I had to learn to do myself. No one taught me how to do that except my friends and, like, my dog and the birds and the clear water from the mountain. I spent a lot of my life being afraid of things that did and didn’t exist. I realized how foolish I was — now I’m not afraid.”

- <3 that crazy Chan Marshall

"But what do all of these things really say about who we are? There’s a danger in conflating work..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:55:10 -0700

“

But what do all of these things really say about who we are? There’s a danger in conflating work with self, even if work has consumed everything we do. In Sebastian Junger’s recent documentary on the late photographer and documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington, Which Way to the Front Line?, Junger chronicles Hetherington’s work in West Africa, Afghanistan, and Misrata, Libya, where he was eventually killed. Hetherington did extremely important work, and in his documentary, Diary, he explores the tension between his life at home and his life in the field. Just before he left for Libya, he expressed reservations about continuing to work in conflict zones. It had cannibalized other parts of his life. He wanted to pursue a long-term relationship with his girlfriend. He wanted a family. He wanted to explore doing different kinds of work. But he decided to go back into the field one last time and didn’t come back.

It would be disingenuous to argue that Hetherington’s work wasn’t part of who he was, but as Junger’s documentary so beautifully illustrates, it wasn’t all there was of Tim Hetherington.

”

- Elizabeth Spiers at Medium

The Lunny family, which owns the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, has...

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:36:51 -0700

The Lunny family, which owns the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, has been fighting for years to stay put — the family’s appeal is due to be heard in court this week. But recently, this dispute has gotten caught up in national environmental battles, including the fight over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Members of Congress and national green groups have weighed in. And what ultimately amounts to just two square miles of “potential wilderness” have split the environmental movement right down the middle, locally and nationally.

The battle for this estuary has become far more than a fight about an oyster farm — it’s become a flashpoint in the debate over what we want out of the natural world, and what we can afford. At a time of both economic and ecological crisis, how much sense does it make to put a fence up around nature? How much sense does it make to let business interests capitalize off public lands? And who gets to decide?

The battle for Drakes Bay, me for Grist

explore-blog: Don’t tell us that it’s impossible and that...

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:33:07 -0700

explore-blog:

Don’t tell us that it’s impossible and that there is no budget for glitter. Give us a wheel to reinvent. … We are more than the sum of our parts. We get presidents elected.

Wonderful manifesto for the creative class, a term coined by Richard Florida in his 2002 modern classic The Rise of the Creative Class.

Jesus this is gross.

I was the court illustrator for the legal-themed Oakland...

Sun, 12 May 2013 11:33:00 -0700

I was the court illustrator for the legal-themed Oakland Nights… Live! last night, which got “a little city council” at a few points.

"You got no fear of the underdog That’s why you will not survive"

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:29:47 -0700

“You got no fear of the underdog
That’s why you will not survive”