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Important Items
Researchers recommend masks, vaccines, vigilance to prevent reinfection #CovidIsNotOver
https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-covid-19-infections-increase-risk-of-organ-failure-death/
Four states could ban transition care into young adulthood. Lawmakers in several others want to restrict drag shows in ways that could affect transgender performers broadly. It’s part of a long-term plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/us/politics/transgender-laws-republicans.html
Rand Corporation surveyed over 8,000 educators from across the country. It asked whether officials had passed policies limiting the teaching of topics related to race and gender and, if so, how those rules had impacted their instructional decisions. Nearly 1 in 4 said they have altered their curricula so parents and officials won’t find their teachings controversial. Teachers said they had to skip over classic texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and avoid historical figures like famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass out of concern for parental complaints and possible legal blowback. One high school science teacher who the study quoted anonymously described an atmosphere of “fear and paranoia” around simply covering the content laid out within state standards.
https://www.the74million.org/article/national-study-reveals-1-in-4-teachers-altering-lesson-plans-due-to-anti-critical-race-theory-laws/
The Oscars failed to nominate any women for directing this year, following two consecutive years of women winning the category. The Academy Award nominations, announced on Tuesday, did not include women filmmakers such as Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”), Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), Maria Schrader (“She Said”) and Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”) in the best director lineup.
https://variety.com/2023/awards/awards/no-women-directors-nominated-oscars-1235496819/
According to the 25th annual The Celluloid Ceiling report, the percentage of women in these principal creative jobs still has not risen higher than 25% for the 250 top-grossing theatrically released movies each year at the U.S. box office.
https://womensmediacenter.com/news-features/new-research-shows-persistent-limitations-on-womens-opportunities-on-big-films
Innovation
Microsoft confirmed that they were extending the partnership with OpenAI, the maker of the revolutionary ChatGPT tool. AI has the potential to change the landscape when it comes to how tech giants compete with each other. Some experts believe there will be a competitive AI landscape as companies seek ways to optimize business operations with machine learning. #Microsoft #AI
https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2023/01/27/microsoft-confirms-its-10-billion-investment-into-chatgpt-changing-how-microsoft-competes-with-google-apple-and-other-tech-giants/
While OpenAI has captured the public’s imagination with ChatGPT, ultimately the technology may not change the balance of power among the tech giants.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90839649/google-not-openai-has-the-most-to-gain-from-generative-ai
Customers of Shutterstock’s Creative Flow online design platform will now be able to create images based on text prompts, powered by OpenAI and Dall-E 2. Key to the feature is that Shutterstock says the images are “ready for licensing” right after they’re made. This is significant given that one of Shutterstock’s big competitors, Getty Images, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI—maker of another generative AI service called Stable Diffusion—over using its images to train its AI without permission from Getty or rightsholders. #AI #copyright
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/25/after-inking-its-openai-deal-shutterstock-rolls-out-a-generative-ai-toolkit-to-create-images-based-on-text-prompts/
The tool could let teachers spot plagiarism or help social media platforms fight disinformation bots.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/27/1067338/a-watermark-for-chatbots-can-spot-text-written-by-an-ai/
ICYMI “Millions of yrs of evolution increased humans’ chances of survival. Replicating this natural selection in code would create an intelligence that could learn about its body & function no matter what body looked like or function was.” #robots
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/science/robots-artificial-intelligence-consciousness.html
Technology
Along with an ever-increasing number of creators, listenership is rising, and every media platform is looking to get into the distribution game—including visual media. In the past few months alone, YouTube released a podcast homepage and TikTok is rumored to be launching a new podcast app. What do these businesses know that others don’t, and how do advertisers capitalize on this momentum? #podcasting
https://www.adweek.com/partner-articles/visual-podcasting-is-now-a-thing-and-heres-what-advertisers-should-know/
https://hbr.org/2023/01/where-is-tech-going-in-2023
Meta is paying BuzzFeed to help generate creator content for Facebook and Instagram and to train creators as part of a ~$10M deal reached in 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-pays-buzzfeed-millions-to-generate-creator-content-for-facebook-and-instagram-11674693687
They didn’t fact check? CNET issued corrections on 41 of the 77 stories the outlet published that were written using an AI tool. Staff sometimes didn’t know if content was written by a machine or a human co-worker. The AI-written articles are designed to game Google searches with SEO-friendly keywords so lucrative affiliate ads can be plastered on the pages. CNET’s parent company, Red Ventures, which also owns publications like Bankrate, The Points Guy, and CreditCards.com, stands to benefit every time a reader signs up for a credit card from one of the highly trafficked articles. #AI
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/25/23571082/cnet-ai-written-stories-errors-corrections-red-ventures
Fake bylines. Content farming. Affiliate fees. What happens when private equity takes over a storied news site and milks it for clicks?https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-stories-red-ventures-seo-marketing
An impressive new AI system from Google, MusicLM, can generate music in any genre given a text description. Its songs, remarkably, sound something like a human artist might compose, albeit not necessarily as inventive or musically cohesive. It’s hard to overstate just how good the samples sound, given that there aren’t musicians or instrumentalists in the loop. However, during an experiment, they found that about 1% of the music the system generated was directly replicated from the songs on which it trained—a threshold apparently high enough to discourage them from releasing MusicLM in its current state.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/27/google-created-an-ai-that-can-generate-music-from-text-descriptions-but-wont-release-it/
About 130,000 people have been dismissed from their jobs at large tech and media companies in the past 12 months. Why?https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/what-the-tech-and-media-layoffs-are-really-telling-us-about-the-economy/672791/
Amazon RxPass is a subscription that allows shoppers to choose from among 50 different generic medications treating roughly 80 common conditions. They can fill as many prescriptions as they like for a $5 monthly fee. The list covers many of the most widely-used drugs, from statins to antibiotics to antidepressants to Viagra. Why so low? The service may boost revenue in other areas: People looking to Amazon for cheap medication may buy other goods or opt for their more expensive brand-name drugs via their Amazon Pharmacy service, which sells a wider variety of drugs. The fine print: Owing to the low cost of the service, RxPass won’t accept insurance; Medicare or Medicaid recipients aren’t eligible to sign up, either. You also need to be an Amazon Prime member to use the prescription feature. And they won’t deliver to California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, or Washington—at least not yet.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/amazon-prime-prescription-drug-subscription
A crisis has shaken the core of the State Department: a mandated font switch from Times New Roman to Calibri. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is changing the font for high-level internal documents to be more readable for those with low vision (at the suggestion of the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion). This was not well received within the State Department, with employees complaining about the inconvenience of the change and the un-aesthetic font choice. One Foreign Service officer said that casual discussion on the font mandate took up “half the day.” Another employee said they expect an “internal revolt.” One officer even went so far as to say the switch is “sacrilege.”
https://mashable.com/article/us-government-font-change
RT @neilperkin How Netflix uses ML and computer vision to help their creatives design promotional artwork that optimises people selecting and watching particular shows. #ML #design
https://netflixtechblog.medium.com/causal-machine-learning-for-creative-insights-4b0ce22a8a96
Publishing & Media
ICYMI HT @BISG Lockdowns were good news for book trade as people read more and sought out bookshops when they reopened #bookstores
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/06/indie-bookshop-numbers-hit-10-year-high-in-2022-defying-brutal-uk-retail-year
HT @jafurtado In 2022, @BookNet_Canada surveyed a total of 10,840 Canadians — 18% were book buyers. Canadian book buyers bought an average of 2.6 books a month last year—1.6 print books, 0.8 ebooks, and 0.3 audiobooks. All told, 73% of books purchased by Canadian book buyers in 2022 were print books, 17% were ebooks, and 6% were audiobooks.
https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/research/2023/1/27/the-book-buying-behaviours-of-canadians-in-2022
RT @BookRiot “Boxes will be shipped to volunteer stewards for free and will come with two sets of books, one centering Indigenous people and one of other BIPOC voices.”
https://bookriot.com/little-free-library-to-launch-an-indigenous-library-program/
RT @IsabethKahlo Producers + Podcasters, what do y’all have on deck? Let us know by pitching to editors at Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasters.apple.com/market (scroll all the ways down to “Get featured on Apple Podcasts”)
https://podcasters.apple.com/market
Via @lutzfernandez: I’ve been very worried about the current wave of book bans. I haven’t been worried enough. As state after state and town after town has made moves in recent years to over-regulate books, the issue has received a lot of media coverage. Alarmed, I’ve written about it. Still, until now, I haven’t allowed myself to become as alarmed as I should be. Frog-in-pot syndrome is one reason. Another may be that too much false comfort is swaddling the discussion. I want to strip away some of that here.
https://annelutzfernandez.substack.com/p/book-banning-is-getting-worse
School teachers in Florida’s Manatee county are removing books from their classrooms or physically covering them up after a new bill went into effect that prohibited material unless deemed appropriate by a librarian, or “certified media specialist.” If a teacher is found in violation of these guidelines, they could face felony charges.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/florida-manatee-county-books-certified-media-specialist
Last year, Brooklyn Public Library asked kids to write about censorship in their schools and libraries. The results were both sobering and hopeful. #BookBans #libraries
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qp3b/i-helped-thousands-of-teens-impacted-by-book-bans-heres-what-they-had-to-say
RT @thatkristen I wrote about my district’s library materials policy, with insight from @jonfreadom from @PENamerica here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/09/book-bans-parents-advice/
Resources & Opportunities
Scholastic’s 2023 World Read Aloud Day program has a new format, in which authors read aloud through the Storyvoice app and at events throughout the world.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/scholastic-and-litworld-a-24-hour-world-read-aloud-day-event/
Las Hermanas is a selection-based mentorship program for traditionally unpublished Latinx kidlit writers and illustrators. It will connect unpublished creatives with current Madrinas. Mentees will benefit from the craft and industry experience of their mentor and will have the opportunity to ask for publishing/marketing related advice and/or receive help with a specific manuscript.
https://www.lasmusasbooks.com/hermanas.html
The Renée Watson Scholarship annually supports a week-long independent writing retreat for a Black woman writer.
https://www.highlightsfoundation.org/renee-watson-scholarship/
Tin House actually offers 21 scholarships! RT @Tin_House We are excited to partner w/ @ShieldsPrize in offering a #THSW Scholarship for Indigenous Female and Non-Binary Fiction Authors. This award covers tuition/room & board/and travel. There is no application fee, with a deadline of 1/31.
https://tinhouse.com/workshop/summer-workshop-2/
RT @SustainableArts get ready! our application opens Friday 1/27 at noon PT and is FEE FREE for the first week https://apply.sustainableartsfoundation.org #grantsforwriters #grantsforartists #writerparent #artistparent
https://apply.sustainableartsfoundation.org
MT @NYWICI The 2023 NYWICI Scholarship Program is open! Students planning a career in any field of communications can apply, but don’t wait, the deadline to apply is February 28.
https://nywici.org/advance/students/
FREE, virtual program -> RT @PENamerica PEN America, @englishpen and @PENCanada invite you to join us online Feb 9 to celebrate @SalmanRushdie‘s new novel #VictoryCity. @EricaWgnr will chair a discussion between @neilhimself and @MargaretAtwood. With readings by Sarita Choudhury.
https://pen.org/event/celebrating-salman-rushdies-victory-city/
To confront threats to journalists, the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project have launched Reporters Shield, a legal support program and defense fund for investigative journalists and newsrooms. The program has $9 million in initial funding from USAID with a further $2 million in private support secured. The program is designed to help shield investigative journalists from defamation, libel, and other vexatious lawsuits by covering the costs of lawyers, providing training on how to handle legal complaints, and offering pre-publication review.
https://gijn.org/2023/01/25/reporters-shield-fight-legal-harassment-journalism/
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