Equipment donation scam
All they had to do was send some money for packaging and shipping.
Archiving and curation
When we stare at paradoxes long enough, they can sometimes lose their mystery. When this happens to me, I take it as evidence that I know a little something about the topic. Managing security on teams, for example, used to feel paradoxical. I wanted everyone to be able to collaborate and have access to all…
Guidelines on using a pie chart
This is a question that comes up from time to time regarding knowledge transfer in reports and presentations. When should we use pie charts? Generally, don’t. However, if you’re committed to pie charts, here’s a guide. Figure 1. How often should I be using a pie chart?
Fresh approaches to skepticism
The skeptic social movement has been a big part of my social and intellectual world. In a world full of bullshit and liars I appreciate the posture of “show me the evidence.” But sometimes skepticism can be alienating, abnoxious, and toxic. Especially when white cis men are the ones doing it. Many famous skeptics have…
Journalism is a variety of public relations
Journalists complain about the rise and impact of public relations. It’s the “dark side”. Public relations (PR) “exerts a pressure” on journalism. It has a “distorting influence”. Journalists find themselves “at odds” with PR pros and “resist flacks”. This is the story told by journalists about PR and it positions public relations as outside of…
Masturbation: A Short History of a Great Taboo
Epic short film, Magical Caresses.
Reality testing: measuring the long term impact of journalism
When Margaret Wente was getting busted repeatedly for plagiarizing, her publisher, The Globe and Mail, more or less defended her. Critical commentators’ noted that no one spins harder or better than a newspaper team defending one of their key assets. The thing is, journalists are trained story tellers. They’re fast. They’re persuasive. They’re wordsmithy. They…
Cognition trick: the Google Effect
We’ve developed a habit of forgetting, or declining to remember, the information that is readily available online.
The stickiness of so-called “reverse racism”
When an idea is “intuitive” but also steeped in a culture war we have a heightened duty to examine it.
The state of hyperlinking in journalism, a case study
From time to time I like to check in on how news orgs are doing with their online publishing practices. In particular, I like to review how they handle reports and science articles. So when Oxfam published their inequality report this year, I was keen to see how journalists and their editors are doing. Hyperlinking,…
How to stop increasing the reach and impact of hate (and misinformation) on Twitter
Some thoughts on how not to amplify hate accounts on Twitter.
Twitter, hate, harm, and misinformation
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ambient misogyny and racism (and more) that floats around my Twitter communities. It’s ambient in the sense that it’s pervasive, and also that we don’t have to follow an antagonist to see their tweets or have them engage us directly. It’s an ecology of violence. And misinformation….
Music, music history, and generational waves of white supremacy
The more generations that pass by, the more obscured women’s lives are, by waves of patriarchal interests. It’s a kind of entropy fuelled by misogyny and whiteness.
White supremacy, doing journalism, and the explanatory comma
This particular Code Switch episode on the explanatory comma is itself a kind of extended explanatory comma, or perhaps an interrogatory comma.
Trudi Lynn Smith is the best
Sunday was coffee with a luminous being studying to be an even more powerful jedi. Art and anthropology Trudi Smith Counselling
Headlines, cognitive processing, and problematic information
Headlines matter. Publishers know it. Good headlines help with the understanding, reach, and impact of a story. Headlines frame articles, shaping the information in the article that follows, and alter reader comprehension. Headlines can induce positive priming effects in readers.1 Headlines are efficient at doing this. They play a significant role in readers’ memories, inferential…
How to unregister from Signal if you no longer use it as your texting app
Recently I encountered an issue while trying to text a colleague who no longer uses Signal. This app is popular for its range of features including encryption, wifi-enabled texting and encrypted phone calls. So it didn’t surprise to me to learn that they were a user. But they were a lapsed user, and this was…
Style guides, notes on “jihad”
https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-islamophobia-edition/ Guardian Reuters
Three unforgettable moments in [my] hockey history
Where I grew up in Northern Alberta, hockey was a big deal. My big brother played hockey. And my dad, who was not a great skater, played hockey in a community league. Everyone had a team, or pretended to. Everyone talked about the “game last night”. Neighbours, mostly men, watched televised games together. They sat…
Idea: Journalism is a convenience store
I like to imagine different metaphors for journalism. Consider that the press is a giant inertia machine, for example.1 I like to imagine different metaphors as a way to resist, and make evident, the dominant ones. The dominant frames are so common, so worn, they become invisible. One worn metaphor for journalism is food: it…
Journalism is the business of influence
Good journalists do what they do because they care. They have interests. The organizations that employ journalists also are guided by interests. They have purpose. The Washington Post wears their mission on their sleeve. Their tagline is “Democracy dies in darkness.” This stated vision is shared by many in journalism. If true, journalism has a…