TheConversationUS

TheConversationUS, 9 months ago to mastodon

We passed 20,000 followers in this week on #mastodon!

In less than a year, we've accumulated 29% of the followers we got in 9 years of regular posting on the #birdsite, and we get far, far more engagement with our content here.

Thank you.

We will continue to post regularly here because we have found it is a community that values our kind of thoughtful journalism, written by experts for the public.

If you know folks who haven't discovered us yet, we'd really appreciate a boost #Newstodon

TheConversationUS, 1 year ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

We've been on Mastodon for 9 months now!

Time for a re-#introduction to the new folks here:
We are a trustworthy, nonprofit #News source, sharing the knowledge of academic experts on many topics.

Our team of editors identifies researchers studying topics that are timely, important or just plain interesting, and helps them write understandably for the public.

We give away all this #journalism for free.

If you know new people here who'd be interested, please boost.
https://theconversation.com/us/10-ways-we-are-different

TheConversationUS, 7 months ago to news

We've been on Mastodon for a year now! 🍰

Thank you to all of our followers who have made engaging on this platform so much more rewarding and civil than that other place!

The Conversation exists to inform you, to feed your curiosity and to bring you knowledge to help you understand the world.

If you know folks here who you think would find value in our work, please give this post a boost.

https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are
#News #Newstodon

🧵 of some of our most popular posts from the past year:

TheConversationUS, 8 months ago to history

Largely forgotten until now, between 1933 and 1945 hundreds and hundreds of Jewish women and men performed individual acts of resistance in Nazi Germany.

Jews of all ages destroyed Nazi symbols, protested in public, disobeyed Nazi laws and defended themselves against insults and physical attacks.

Pictured: Lizi Rosenfeld, a Jewish woman, sits on a park bench bearing a sign that reads, ‘Only for Aryans,’ in August 1938 in Vienna ⬇️

https://theconversation.com/how-individual-ordinary-jews-fought-nazi-persecution-a-new-view-of-history-210337
#history #histodons #protest

TheConversationUS, 7 months ago to tech

An Israeli technology company has developed the means of delivering spyware via online ad networks. There’s no defense against the spyware and the Israeli government has given the company approval to sell the technology.

For now, take comfort in the fact that it’s a hefty $6.4 million price tag for a single ad infection.

https://theconversation.com/spyware-can-infect-your-phone-or-computer-via-the-ads-you-see-online-report-213685

#tech #technology #cybersecurity

TheConversationUS, 2 months ago to Health

Birth control pills will be found on retail shelves in the US for the first time in a few weeks.

#Opill is 98% effective, quite affordable and is a progestin-only pills, which carries a very minimal risk of blood clots.

Quick explainer from a pharmacy professor:
https://theconversation.com/opill-the-first-over-the-counter-birth-control-pill-will-be-on-shelves-soon-here-are-some-key-things-to-know-225245
#birthcontrol #health

TheConversationUS, 3 months ago to news

Hugely profitable ExxonMobil has received $580 million in property tax breaks in Louisiana since 2000, much of which would otherwise have gone into public school budgets.

It’s part of a nationwide pattern that starves school budgets to deliver tax breaks to businesses.

Poorer neighborhoods pay the price of substandard schools.

Our investigative unit worked with 3 of the leading academic experts on this issue to uncover the full scope:

https://theconversation.com/students-lose-out-as-cities-and-states-give-billions-in-property-tax-breaks-to-businesses-draining-school-budgets-and-especially-hurting-the-poorest-students-222940
#News #USPolitics

TheConversationUS, 4 months ago to history

If history had taken another path, bar codes would look dramatically different today. Pictured: Here’s some of the options that were being considered, and the bull’s-eye was a favorite ⬇️

“Even in their wildest dreams, [the committee members] could not have imagined how consequential their decision ended up being,” writes Jordan Frith of Clemson University.
https://theconversation.com/how-we-almost-ended-up-with-a-bulls-eye-bar-code-219194
@histodons #histodons #history #technology

TheConversationUS, 11 months ago to USpolitics

This #FourthofJuly weekend, stop using #nationalism and #patriotism as synonyms.

🇺🇸Patriotism encompasses devotion to the country as a whole – including all the people who live within it.

🇺🇸Nationalism refers to devotion to only one group or people over others.
https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-nationalism-and-patriotism-208170

Pictured ⬇️
A 1950 poster shows Superman – a refugee from another planet and a character created by two Jewish immigrants to the U.S. – teaching this lesson to school kids. #USPolitics #American #4thOfJuly

TheConversationUS, 6 months ago to climate

When science showed in the 70s that gas stoves produced harmful indoor air pollution, the industry reached for tobacco’s PR playbook by:

✖️ casting doubt on negative findings
✖️ funding its own biased research

There’s still plenty of debate about whether gas stoves belong in homes, but it’s important to know where the “evidence” comes from, and to expose the tactics that vested interest groups have used for years.

https://theconversation.com/when-science-showed-in-the-1970s-that-gas-stoves-produced-harmful-indoor-air-pollution-the-industry-reached-for-tobaccos-pr-playbook-216698

#Climate #ClimateJustice #EnergyTransition

TheConversationUS, 9 months ago to blackmastodon

"This is not the first period in U.S. history when white men have exercised control over women’s right to bear – or not bear – children, including during slavery. Then, it was a matter of numbers...White men controlled people’s reproductive rights during the 20th century, too, with the American eugenics movement."

#histodons #womensrights #abortionrights #blackmastodon @blackmastodon

https://theconversation.com/white-men-have-controlled-womens-reproductive-rights-throughout-american-history-the-post-dobbs-era-is-no-different-206706

TheConversationUS, 6 months ago to news

Henry #Kissinger is dead at the age of 100.

Here's one Cambodian's verdict
"I’m a scholar of the political economy of Cambodia who, as a child, escaped the brutal Khmer Rouge regime with four siblings...
In both a professional and personal sense, I am aware of the near 50-year impact Kissinger’s policies during the Vietnam War have had on the country of my birth."

That impact was destruction, death and trauma.

https://theconversation.com/henry-kissingers-bombing-campaign-likely-killed-hundreds-of-thousands-of-cambodians-and-set-path-for-the-ravages-of-the-khmer-rouge-209353
@histodons #News

TheConversationUS, 2 months ago to Health

The price of asthma medication has soared in the U.S. over the past decade and a half.

The pharmaceutical company Teva sells QVAR RediHaler, a corticosteroid inhaler, for $286 in the U.S.

In Germany, Teva sells that same inhaler for $9.

https://theconversation.com/asthma-meds-have-become-shockingly-unaffordable-but-relief-may-be-on-the-way-222858
#health

TheConversationUS, 6 months ago to blackmastodon

Research shows that written teacher comments about students vary depending on the students’ demographic backgrounds, and yes – you guessed it – teachers had more negative comments about Black boys than any other group.

“Boys also receive substantially more office discipline referrals than girls, and Black girls are more likely to receive office discipline referrals than white girls.”

More:
https://theconversation.com/we-analyzed-over-3-5-million-written-teacher-comments-about-students-and-found-racial-bias-215777

@blackmastodon #BlackMastodon

TheConversationUS, 9 months ago to ai

Google lards its search results with paid links.

Alexa won’t speak ill of Amazon.

Facebook and TikTok manipulate the content they show you.

It’s reasonable to expect that #AI assistants sold by these or other tech companies will steer you to the products and services that make the most profit for the tech companies.

And users have no way of knowing whose interests are being favored, or how they are being data-mined.

#ArtificialIntelligence #Privacy #ChatGPT
https://theconversation.com/can-you-trust-ai-heres-why-you-shouldnt-209283

TheConversationUS, 4 months ago to Health

Discrimination alters the brain.

Racial discrimination increases the activity of brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, involved in regulating emotions. The more brain energy a person uses to suppress, control or manage their feelings, the more energy they take away from the rest of the body.

Over time, and without prolonged periods of rest, relief and restoration, this can lead to other #health problems.

https://theconversation.com/racism-produces-subtle-brain-changes-that-lead-to-increased-disease-risk-in-black-populations-214053
@blackmastodon #blackmastodon #psychology

TheConversationUS, 7 months ago to internet

“Meta officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram – the social media platform most used by adolescents after TikTok – is harmful to teen girls’ body image and well-being. But the company swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a Sept. 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report.”
These charges have reemerged in a lawsuit filed by 41 states and the District of Columbia.
https://theconversation.com/states-sue-meta-for-knowingly-hurting-teens-with-facebook-and-instagram-here-are-the-harms-researchers-have-documented-168043
#SocialMedia @psychology

TheConversationUS, 10 months ago to history

When the KKK tried to steal the 1872 presidential election by killing and intimidating Black voters, federal troops swept in and arrested hundreds of Klansmen, and the new Department of Justice secured convictions in 140 cases.

That same law is now being used to prosecute #Trump, as the basis of the 4th count of special counsel Jack Smith's indictment

https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-ku-klux-klan-acts-1870s-laws-to-protect-black-voters-ignored-for-decades-now-being-used-against-trump-202923

#History #Histodons @histodons #whitesupremacy

TheConversationUS, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to TikTok

Forcing a Chinese company to sell TikTok won’t solve the biggest problem with #TikTok: the fact that so people get their “#news” from platforms that are designed to hijack attention for commercial gain, not to deliver reliable information.

If China wants information on Americans, it can buy data from companies since there are no effective #privacy laws.

And American-owned Facebook and X have shown themselves to be as bad or worse as TikTok at spreading #misinformation.

https://theconversation.com/tiktok-fears-point-to-larger-problem-poor-media-literacy-in-the-social-media-age-226667

TheConversationUS, 7 months ago to movies

'Killers of the Flower Moon' delves into racial and family dynamics that rocked Oklahoma to the core when oil was discovered on Osage lands. White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it. But from a historical perspective, this crime is just the tip of the iceberg.

Pictured ⬇️An Osage delegation with President Coolidge at the White House in 1924:
https://theconversation.com/gangsters-are-the-villains-in-killers-of-the-flower-moon-but-the-biggest-thief-of-native-american-wealth-was-the-us-government-207700
#Indigenous #Movies #Histodons @histodons

TheConversationUS, 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago) to history

Today is the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history – and one that continues to haunt Americans.

One of them is Gregory Fairchild, whose grandfather was caught up in it, and whose family history personally inspires his work.

(From 2021): https://theconversation.com/100-years-after-the-tulsa-race-massacre-lessons-from-my-grandfather-161391

#BlackMastodon @blackmastodon #Histodons @histodons

TheConversationUS, 1 month ago to news

In 1942, Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps because of hyped up fears of ‘disloyalty’.
In 1944, thousands of young Japanese American men were drafted out of those camps and sent to fight for democracy.
Despite this, they fought gallantly, earning more than 14,000 medals.
Then veterans faced more prejudice when they returned home
https://theconversation.com/japanese-american-soldiers-in-world-war-ii-fought-the-axis-abroad-and-racial-prejudice-at-home-158512
#News #AAPIHeritageMonth #history @histodons

TheConversationUS, 7 months ago to USpolitics

A court for Christians:
Recent decisions by SCOTUS don’t protect the freedoms of all Americans, but instead represent “the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians … to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove.”

Analysis by two political scientists:
https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-is-increasingly-putting-christians-first-amendment-rights-ahead-of-others-dignity-and-rights-to-equal-protection-210220
#USpolitics

TheConversationUS, 3 months ago to journalism

Billionaire media owners can’t save #journalism.

Philanthropists can’t save #journalism.

A strong, accessible media system that serves the public interest will ultimately require significant public funding.

https://theconversation.com/saving-the-news-media-means-moving-beyond-the-benevolence-of-billionaires-222677
#News #Newstodon (by @victorpickard and Rodney Benson)

TheConversationUS, 2 months ago to academicchatter

“It’s not just the beating me down that is hard,” one Black woman PhD candidate told a researcher. “It is the fact that it feels like I’m villainized and made out to be the problem for trying to advocate for myself.”

Women interviewed for the study report feeling isolated, abused and overworked. One said she had been tricked into handling a two- to four-person job entirely by herself.

https://theconversation.com/the-hostility-black-women-face-in-higher-education-carries-dire-consequences-224319
#DEI #Inclusion @blackmastodon #BlackMastodon
@academicchatter