read | Chris Aldrich

🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Cosby Verdict and #MeToo | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Cosby Verdict and #MeToo by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Bill Cosby has been convicted of sexual assault following years of accusations from dozens of women. What changed between the first trial, which ended in a hung jury, and this one?

On today’s episode:

• Graham Bowley, an investigative reporter at The Times, joins us from Norristown, Pa., where he has been covering the Cosby proceedings.

• Lili Bernard, a former guest star on “The Cosby Show” and one of more than 50 women who have spoken out against the entertainer, describes her experience attending the trial.

Background reading:

• In one of the first high-profile court cases of the #MeToo era, a jury convicted Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, a former Temple University staff member who had looked up to him as a mentor.

• We also look at the timeline of events in the Cosby case, and at reactions to the verdict.

A stunning and well-deserved victory. I’m glad to see depraved predators caught and put away.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Travel Ban Goes to the Supreme Court | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Travel Ban Goes to the Supreme Court by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

After being blocked for months by lower courts, President Trump’s executive orders that restricted travel from several predominantly Muslim nations have finally reached the Supreme Court. The justices seem focused on one question: Should the president’s authority have anything to do with his personal beliefs?

On today’s episode:

• Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to defer to the president’s national security judgments and discount his campaign promises to impose a “Muslim ban.”

• Read annotated excerpts from the arguments before the Supreme Court on the travel ban.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Allegations Against Ronny Jackson | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Allegations Against Ronny Jackson by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

The nomination of Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, President Trump’s personal doctor, as the next head of Veterans Affairs has come to an abrupt stop. Now, Congress is beginning to examine several alarming allegations from unidentified whistle-blowers that derailed the doctor’s Senate confirmation process.

On today’s episode:

• Michael D. Shear, a White House correspondent for The Times.

Background reading:

• President Trump hinted at a midday news conference that Dr. Jackson might soon withdraw from consideration for the role of Veterans Affairs secretary. By the evening, however, the White House moved to aggressively defend the doctor, calling his record “impeccable.”

🎧 Hunger and Malnutrition | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Hunger and malnutrition by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast

One week jam, the next global hunger and malnutrition. That’s the joy of Eat This Podcast; I get to present what interests me, in the hope that it interests you too. It also means I sometimes get to talk to my friends about how they see the big picture around food. Dr Jessica Fanzo, Assistant Professor of Nutrition at Columbia University’s Insitute of Human Nutrition, Special Advisor on Nutrition Policy at the Earth Institute’s Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development, also at Columbia, and much else besides, is one such friend. She was in Rome recently for a preparatory meeting for a big UN conference on nutrition next year, so I took the opportunity to catch up, and to ask some very basic questions about global hunger.

I confess, I have very little time for the global talk shops that meet so that, somehow, magically, the poor can eat. And having attended a few, there does seem to be a dearth of people who have studied malnutrition and hunger first hand, and made a difference. Jess Fanzo has been promoting the idea of nutrition-sensitive agriculture as a way to make a difference locally, while recognizing that there can be no simple, global solutions. You have to see what works in one place, and then adapt it to your own circumstances. There are no simple global solutions. The primary point – that governments have some responsibility for ensuring that their citizens at least have the opportunity to be well-nourished – seems often to be lost in the din of governments talking about other things. And interfering busybodies declaring war on hunger don’t seem to have much luck either. I don’t have any solutions.

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Notes

Check out Dr Fanzo’s credentials at the Institute of Human Nutrition and the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development.

She was also the first winner of the Premio Daniel Carasso; there’s a videoabout that too.

She’s written about her fieldwork and how it informs her global view. (And, as an aside, how come big-shot bloggers don’t care about spam? Come on, people. Your negligence makes life worse for everybody.)

The Integration of Nutrition into Extension and Advisory Services: A Synthesis of Experiences, Lessons, and Recommendations reports on ways to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture. And the research extends to social media.

The paper I mentioned, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, is Comparative impact of climatic and nonclimatic factors on global terrestrial carbon and water cycles.

Photo of Jess Fanzo in Timor Leste by Nick Appleby.

I love plumbing the archives of this podcast and relistening to old episodes. This is easily my second time around on this episode.

👓 This Is How a Newspaper Dies | Politico

Read This Is How a Newspaper Dies by Jack Shafer (POLITICO Magazine)

It’s with a spasm of profits.

This article outlines an intriguing method for plundering the carcass of a dying business to reap as much profit from it as it dies as one can. I suppose that if one is sure a segment is on its way out, one may as well exploit its customers to turn a profit.

I wonder how long it will take for traditional television and cable related businesses to begin using this model as more and more people cut the cord.

👓 GDPR will pop the adtech bubble | Doc Searls

Read GDPR will pop the adtech bubble by

Doc Searls (Doc Searls Weblog)

Since tracking people took off in the late ’00s, adtech has grown to become a four-dimensional shell game played by hundreds (or, if you include martech, thousands) of companies, none of which can see the whole mess, or can control the fraud, malware and other forms of bad acting that thrive in the midst of it.
And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it.
Without adtech, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) would never have happened. But the GDPR did happen, and as a result websites all over the world are suddenly posting notices about their changed privacy policies, use of cookies, and opt-in choices for “relevant” or “interest-based” (translation: tracking-based) advertising. Email lists are doing the same kinds of things.

Some interesting thought and analysis here on the pending death of adtech with the dawn of GDPR in the EU. I’m hoping that this might help bring about a more humanistic internet as a result.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but it looks like some tremendously valuable links and resources embedded in this article as well. I’ll have to circle back around to both re-read this and delve more deeply in to these pointers.

📺 Harry and Meghan: Royal Rebels | Lifetime

Watched Harry and Meghan: Royal Rebels from Lifetime

A look at the history and rules of British Royal Weddings and which traditions have been updated for the ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

A relatively straight up effort for the Lifetime network. It was nice to have a general theme of rebel to highlight the narrative thread of the piece, though several points they kept making were about how they weren’t rebels at all. It would have been nice to have more Harry history here to balance out the excess of Meghan presented, particularly in relation to the several other shows that are almost equivalent to this one.