👓 Scandal after scandal focuses scrutiny on USC leadership, culture | LA Times

Read Scandal after scandal focuses scrutiny on USC leadership, culture by Paul Pringle, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini, and Harriet Ryan (latimes.com)
How USC handled the case of a campus gynecologist allowed to practice for years despite complaints of misconduct has sparked outrage and demands for change in the university’s leadership and management culture. To some, it is part of a troubling pattern.
If I were a journalist, I would just start tracking people leaving posts and then dig into what the scandal must surely be. USC is definitely stinking from the head and needs to begin digging itself out of an ever-deepening hole.

👓 Electric Scooter Charger Culture Is Out of Control | The Atlantic

Read Electric Scooter Charger Culture Is Out of Control (The Atlantic)
“Bird hunting” has become a pastime and a side hustle for teens and young professionals, but for some it’s a cutthroat business.

👓 Columbia Law professor who coined ‘net neutrality’ term mulling run for attorney general | NY Daily News

Read Columbia Law professor who coined 'net neutrality' term mulling run for attorney general (NY Daily News)
Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor credited with coining the term "net neutrality," is considering a run for state attorney general.

👓 How to Join Our Podcast Club | New York Times

Read How to Join Our Podcast Club by Samantha HenigSamantha Henig (nytimes.com)
It’s like a book club, but for on-demand audio.
This ironic quote from the piece sticks out to me:

Podcast listening can be harder to crack. There are so many shows! How do you find the ones you’ll like? And once you’ve found a show, where do you start: with the most recent episode? At the beginning? Some specific gem of an episode buried deep in the back catalog?

Perhaps the New York Times could simply start with making the RSS feeds for their podcasts easily discover-able?! Why are they hiding this simple piece of functionality? I just spent 20 minutes doing some reasonably serious web gymnastics to extract the RSS feed for Caliphate out of the iTunes feed using a JSON request tactic. Why can’t the podcast’s main page have or advertise the raw RSS feed?!

Corey Doctorow complained of this type of growing issue on the web recently in a short tweetstorm as well:

How hard is it to add the following simple line to the header of their generally beautiful and functional Caliphate page?
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Caliphate" href="https://rss.art19.com/caliphate” />
They’ve got so many advanced resources, yet somehow they’re missing some of the simplest and best supported web technology that goes back more than a decade.

By the way, that link https://rss.art19.com/caliphate is the correct one for the RSS feed of the show by the way, in case others are searching for it.

If anyone needs a one-click button to subscribe to the series in their favorite feed reader, I’ve set up a SubToMe button on the follow post I made for the podcast.

👓 What Communities Are We Building? A Discussion With Drs. Jessie Daniels and David Golumbia | Tressie McMillan Cottom

Read What Communities Are We Building? A Discussion With Drs. Jessie Daniels and David Golumbia by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Medium)
This semester our sociology honor society, Alpha Kappa Delta, had the great fortune to hear from Dr. Jessie Daniels. Jessie is a…
Sadly, like the prior article I read, there just isn’t much here in the way of content.

👓 Whose Speech? More From Our Chat With Jessie Daniels | Tressie McMillan Cottom

Read Whose Speech? More From Our Chat With Jessie Daniels by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Medium)
As previously mentioned, the Sociology students at VCU recently benefitted from a chance to hear from Jessie Daniels. Our informal…
This post was so sparse in information I’m not quite sure what Dr. Cottom was trying to communicate here. The post does have some well produced (and very short) snippets from the talk, but other than knowing that a talk occurred and vaguely what it was about, all the value stemming from it seems to be missing to me in this post.

👓 GOP lawmaker says rocks falling into ocean to blame for rising sea levels | TheHill

Read GOP lawmaker says rocks falling into ocean to blame for rising sea levels (TheHill)
A Republican lawmaker on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee said Thursday that rocks from the White Cliffs of Dover and the California coastline, as well as silt from rivers tumbling into the ocean, are contributing to high sea levels globally. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) made the comment during a hearing on technology and the changing climate, which largely turned into a Q&A on the basics of climate research.
The headline was just so sadly painful to me that I couldn’t resist reading. Unfortunately, reading didn’t help things…

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Gina Haspel and the Shadow of Torture | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Gina Haspel and the Shadow of Torture by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

The Central Intelligence Agency is waging an unusual campaign to make Gina Haspel its next leader, despite her polarizing past. Why do officers see her most controversial quality as her greatest asset?

On today’s episode:

• Adam Goldman, a reporter who covers the intelligence community for The Times.

• John Bennett, a former chief of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service who retired in 2013.

Background reading:

• Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee for C.I.A. director, is expected to face tough questions at a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday about her involvement in torture and secret prisons after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

• Ms. Haspel offered to withdraw her nomination last week amid concerns that her role in the brutal interrogation of a Qaeda suspect in Thailand would scuttle her confirmation.

Apparently there’s a broader story to be told about Haspel than the one that’s been circulating recently. Perhaps she’s not as pro-torture as previously indicated?

👓 What is “Critical Pedagogy”? | W. Ian O’Byrne

Read What is “Critical Pedagogy”? by W. Ian O'Byrne (W. Ian O'Byrne)
In an earlier post, I presented an overview of the literature on critical literacy and how it informs my perspectives on my work, research, and thinking. This was motivated by discussions in which colleagues and students indicate that they know/understand critical literacy, and then go on to equate it with critical evaluation. I think the two are linked, but to me critical literacy is much broader, and (IMHO) much more important.
The cynic in me sees the headline and wants to respond “All students’ reactions to their teachers.”

There is some interesting history and background to come back and read some references here.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Return of Rudy Giuliani | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Return of Rudy Giuliani by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

Since joining President Trump’s legal team, Rudolph W. Giuliani has repeatedly made attention-grabbing TV appearances in which he has antagonized Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. The strategy is reminiscent of one that Mr. Giuliani has used before — 30 years ago, as a prosecutor in New York City taking on the Mafia.


On today’s episode:

• Michael Winerip, who covered Mr. Giuliani’s rise as a Manhattan prosecutor in the 1980s for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• Mr. Giuliani’s revelation that President Trump reimbursed his personal lawyer for a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, may expose the president to new legal and political troubles.

• In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Giuliani suggested it was possible that other women had received hush money on behalf of Mr. Trump and that the president might invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying in the Russia investigation.

• Mr. Giuliani’s recent criticism of law enforcement has come as a surprise to those who have known him as one of its fiercest advocates.

So the implication here is not so much that Trump is bringing in someone who has been a champion for him, but that he’s brought in someone with experience prosecuting massive corruption and criminal enterprise similar to the mafia.

🎧 Caliphate – Chapter Three: The Arrival | New York Times

Listened to Caliphate - Chapter Three: The Arrival by Rukmini Callimachi, Andy Mills from nytimes.com

ISIS turns fantasy into reality for a new recruit.

👓 The platform patrons: How Facebook and Google became two of the biggest funders of journalism in the world | Columbia Journalism Review

Read The platform patrons: How Facebook and Google became two of the biggest funders of journalism in the world by Mathew Ingram (Columbia Journalism Review)

Taken together, Facebook and Google have now committed more than half a billion dollars to various journalistic programs and media partnerships over the past three years, not including the money spent internally on developing media-focused products like Facebook’s Instant Articles and Google’s competing AMP mobile project. The result: These mega-platforms are now two of the largest funders of journalism in the world.

The irony is hard to miss. The dismantling of the traditional advertising model—largely at the hands of the social networks, which have siphoned away the majority of industry ad revenue—has left many media companies and journalistic institutions in desperate need of a lifeline. Google and Facebook, meanwhile, are happy to oblige, flush with cash from their ongoing dominance of the digital ad market.

The result is a somewhat dysfunctional alliance. People in the media business (including some on the receiving end of the cash) see the tech donations as guilt money, something journalism deserves because Google and Facebook wrecked their business. The tech giants, meanwhile, are desperate for some good PR and maybe even a few friends in a journalistic community that—especially now—can seem openly antagonistic.

A stunning and relatively detailed overview of where we’ve been in the last several years on the journalism front with too many questions about where we may be going.

👓 Donald Trump’s Business Empire Is No Longer Growing | Mother Jones

Read Donald Trump’s Business Empire Is No Longer Growing by Russ Choma (Mother Jones)
The art of not making deals.
Hard to grow when so many begin hating you. And if suggestions of money laundering are true, then it’s even harder to grow while under such scrutiny.