May of 2019, I was accepted to the Eli Whitney student program at Yale University. At 52, I am the oldest freshman in the class of 2023. Before I was accepted, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had seen the infamous YouTube video of students screaming at a faculty member. I had seen the news stories regarding the admissions scandal and that Yale was included in that unfortunate business. I had also heard the students at Yale referred to as “snowflakes” in various social media dumpsters and occasionally I’d seen references to Ivy League students as snowflakes in a few news sources.I...…May of 2019, I was accepted to the Eli Whitney student program at Yale University. At 52, I am the oldest freshman in the class of 2023. Before I was accepted, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had seen the infamous YouTube video of students screaming at a faculty member. I had seen the news stories regarding the admissions scandal and that Yale was included in that unfortunate business. I had also heard the students at Yale referred to as “snowflakes” in various social media dumpsters and occasionally I’d seen references to Ivy League students as snowflakes in a few news sources.I...WW…

Every web developer inevitably runs into situations where they need to make visual design decisions, whether they like it or not.Maybe the company you work for doesn’t have a full-time designer and you need to implement the UI for a new feature on your own. Or maybe you’re hacking on a side-project and you want it to look better than yet-another-Bootstrap-site.It’s easy to throw your hands up and say, “I’ll never be able to make this look good, I’m not an artist!” but it turns out there are a ton of tricks you can use to level up your work that don’t require a background in graphic...…Every web developer inevitably runs into situations where they need to make visual design decisions, whether they like it or not.Maybe the company you work for doesn’t have a full-time designer and you need to implement the UI for a new feature on your own. Or maybe you’re hacking on a side-project and you want it to look better than yet-another-Bootstrap-site.It’s easy to throw your hands up and say, “I’ll never be able to make this look good, I’m not an artist!” but it turns out there are a ton of tricks you can use to level up your work that don’t require a background in graphic...WW…

Hey, news industry, you’re doing it wrong.As part of a USC Annenberg class looking at how to create new journalism products, I asked some of my fellow USC students what got in the way of their news consumption today. It was a pretty open question, but they had some common answers. Here’s a selection of some themes:“Whenever I try to search for anything that’s not immediately breaking, like if I wanted to learn more about Betsy DeVos, it’s hard to find backlog articles or archived pieces.”“I don’t find it super appealing all the time to sit down and read a huge article online, but you don’t...…Hey, news industry, you’re doing it wrong.As part of a USC Annenberg class looking at how to create new journalism products, I asked some of my fellow USC students what got in the way of their news consumption today. It was a pretty open question, but they had some common answers. Here’s a selection of some themes:“Whenever I try to search for anything that’s not immediately breaking, like if I wanted to learn more about Betsy DeVos, it’s hard to find backlog articles or archived pieces.”“I don’t find it super appealing all the time to sit down and read a huge article online, but you don’t...WW…

Her name was Hanako Abe. Raised in Fukushima, Japan, she lived through the devastating 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster and emigrated to America to attend university. After graduation in 2018, she settled in San Francisco and worked in commercial real estate. She posted a smiling selfie on Instagram Thursday, announcing her excitement for a new year she would not live to see. Shortly after 4 PM Thursday, she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking in the SOMA district of San Francisco, just 27 years old. Another woman, Elizabeth Platt, 60, was killed...…Her name was Hanako Abe. Raised in Fukushima, Japan, she lived through the devastating 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster and emigrated to America to attend university. After graduation in 2018, she settled in San Francisco and worked in commercial real estate. She posted a smiling selfie on Instagram Thursday, announcing her excitement for a new year she would not live to see. Shortly after 4 PM Thursday, she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking in the SOMA district of San Francisco, just 27 years old. Another woman, Elizabeth Platt, 60, was killed...WW…

Thought experiment. What if there was a company that owned a town. What if they owned the homes and the streets and the schools and the fire department? What if two and a half billion people moved into those homes, lived their lives, and built their businesses?I spent my youth reading books in which corporations became governments, it’s an old idea in science fiction. But then, , I looked up and realized that we were (or at least I was) already there.We are the first people to have dual citizenship in a democratic state and a corporate state. No one ever thought that the users of a social...…Thought experiment. What if there was a company that owned a town. What if they owned the homes and the streets and the schools and the fire department? What if two and a half billion people moved into those homes, lived their lives, and built their businesses?I spent my youth reading books in which corporations became governments, it’s an old idea in science fiction. But then, , I looked up and realized that we were (or at least I was) already there.We are the first people to have dual citizenship in a democratic state and a corporate state. No one ever thought that the users of a social...WW…

Note: This is Part III in a series of stories about issues that The Salt Lake Tribune has faced.On July 29, 2016, Terry Orme was fired as the Salt Lake Tribune editor. He had overseen work that would win a Pulitzer Prize. On April 13, 2016, the first article in a series of stories was published that won the award.Taking Orme’s place was Jennifer Napier-Pearce, who had relatively recently left the Tribune for a position with a political institute.Citing numerous reasons, former Tribune reporter Tom Harvey has said that Napier-Pearce is “inexperienced” for her position and “just the wrong...…Note: This is Part III in a series of stories about issues that The Salt Lake Tribune has faced.On July 29, 2016, Terry Orme was fired as the Salt Lake Tribune editor. He had overseen work that would win a Pulitzer Prize. On April 13, 2016, the first article in a series of stories was published that won the award.Taking Orme’s place was Jennifer Napier-Pearce, who had relatively recently left the Tribune for a position with a political institute.Citing numerous reasons, former Tribune reporter Tom Harvey has said that Napier-Pearce is “inexperienced” for her position and “just the wrong...WW…

Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and mainstream media are falling all over themselves with censorship and spin jobs to get the narrative back under control as mass protests continue to sweep across America.In 2017, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” the representatives were told by cold warrior think tank denizen Clint Watts. “America’s war with itself...…Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and mainstream media are falling all over themselves with censorship and spin jobs to get the narrative back under control as mass protests continue to sweep across America.In 2017, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” the representatives were told by cold warrior think tank denizen Clint Watts. “America’s war with itself...WW…

Let’s take a deep-dive into the minimum wage in America — its intentions, its effects, and ultimately a better policy.In this article, I’ll make three points:In the United States, the first minimum wage laws were passed as the and as part of the . Perhaps by extension of that legislation’s language, the minimum wage has since been used as a litmus for income equality and political representation. Increases in the minimum wage are associated with happy feelings of mutual prosperity. The for the minimum wage is to prevent nefarious employers from exploiting readily available labor by...…Let’s take a deep-dive into the minimum wage in America — its intentions, its effects, and ultimately a better policy.In this article, I’ll make three points:In the United States, the first minimum wage laws were passed as the and as part of the . Perhaps by extension of that legislation’s language, the minimum wage has since been used as a litmus for income equality and political representation. Increases in the minimum wage are associated with happy feelings of mutual prosperity. The for the minimum wage is to prevent nefarious employers from exploiting readily available labor by...WW…

In 2018, yet another year that India was the top remittance recipient country in the world, I, an Indian immigrant twice over, had finished my Master in International Development at the same university as the sitting French President, gone onto securing a freelance position at a top tier event communications agency, produced live digital content for aforementioned President among other Heads of State and Government, moved into one of the most affluent of Paris’s 20 arrondissements, and had a month long vacation in Spain.That same year, in Pune, not very far from Mumbai, one person died from...…In 2018, yet another year that India was the top remittance recipient country in the world, I, an Indian immigrant twice over, had finished my Master in International Development at the same university as the sitting French President, gone onto securing a freelance position at a top tier event communications agency, produced live digital content for aforementioned President among other Heads of State and Government, moved into one of the most affluent of Paris’s 20 arrondissements, and had a month long vacation in Spain.That same year, in Pune, not very far from Mumbai, one person died from...WW…

Israel had reason to approach the Covid-19 crisis with a certain amount of optimism. For one, it is a small country with less than 10 million citizens. It is also a youthful country, with a median citizen age of . Israel is also vastly experienced in emergencies. It has a public health system, despite a number of doctors, nurses, and beds.It is an island — not geographically, but practically — mostly surrounded by countries that hold no diplomatic relations with it and offer no form of passage. Israel’s only entrance gate is one international airport: Ben-Gurion in Tel-Aviv. This one...…Israel had reason to approach the Covid-19 crisis with a certain amount of optimism. For one, it is a small country with less than 10 million citizens. It is also a youthful country, with a median citizen age of . Israel is also vastly experienced in emergencies. It has a public health system, despite a number of doctors, nurses, and beds.It is an island — not geographically, but practically — mostly surrounded by countries that hold no diplomatic relations with it and offer no form of passage. Israel’s only entrance gate is one international airport: Ben-Gurion in Tel-Aviv. This one...WW…