Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Soldier On - Media and communications resources and information: a quick guide 

Incredible footage shows man being hit by bus before dusting himself off, walking into pub


Will Macron’s Marchers take power? Le blog de Thomas Piketty, Le Monde 


Robert Gottliebsen. It sounds incredible, but the government is providing a carrot to encourage people to stop working in their late 50. 'Absolutely bizarre': Government provides incentive to stop working

Census 2016 results are out, but can we trust the data?

This census was dogged by an online debacle that embarrassed the government, inconvenienced millions of Australians and even earned ...

Rise and rise of of violent extremism trying to create religious echo chambersi



“For our third annual roundup of the most influential people on the Internet, TIME sized up contenders by looking at their global impact on social media and their overall ability to drive news…Here’s who made this year’s unranked list


UNEXPECTEDLY: Every now and then, a small news item will restore your faith in the decency of people. This is one of those. “Video shows a teen falling off a Six Flags ride — and a crowd gathering to catch her.” Spare yourself the navel gazing about amusement parks, and watch the embedded video.image



That leaving is so difficult, however, may in part explain the desire to leave. In the most sophisticated cases for Brexit, there is no acceptable resolution to the negotiating dilemmas. Rather many Brexiteers think their nation’s culture and legal system need to take their own courses. For better or worse, they think England in particular simply can’t become that much more “continental.” What appeared to be a wonderful deal — free trade but no euro — actually was viewed as a Trojan horse for the disappearance of British uniqueness. Over time the encroachments of EU law and governance will clash more and more with the underlying institutions and culture of the U.K., and something will have to give. Law and culture eventually must prove congruent, but EU legal and bureaucratic powers will inevitably grow, ultimately clashing with the notion of Britain as an idiosyncratic and independent nation. Culture and law cannot remain so separate forever.
I have myself been strongly pro-Remain, but I don’t dismiss the Leavers as a bunch of ill-informed voters or hapless victims of globalization. Counterintuitively, it is the supposedly undereducated Leavers who have the more theoretical and historical perspective. It doesn’t help that they initially were promised a much weaker set of ties with the EU, and so mistrust makes all of the complaints more potent.
On top of all this, many Brexiteers suspect there won’t be any better time to leave than now, and so “Remain” is for them an impossible stance over the longer run. Returning to history, ejecting James II seemed risky and destabilizing at the time, but for the most part the decision wasn’t regretted and it was better not to have hesitated.


England and Second Glorious Revolution




Girl With the Dragon Tattoo star Michael Nyqvist dies, aged 56


industries Industries--Technological innovations Big dataBroad Subject Area(s):  Culture Economics ... up to paybig bucks to the US-based academic-entrepreneur. “Being creative” had become an almost ... See Also Big Data links




Ray, Abhishek and Ghasemkhani, Hossein and Kannan, Karthik Natarajan, Ad-Blockers: Extortionists or Digital Age Robin Hoods? (June 23, 2017). Available at SSRN:https://ssrn.com/abstract=2991805

“As an answer to mitigating the impact of intrusive online advertising on users, ad-blockers have risen in prominence over the past few years. Initially dismissed by the online advertising industry as inconsequential, ad-blockers have evolved from a mere plugin tool on browsers to full-fledged platforms that derive benefit from certifying quality of advertisers and reducing disutility of the users. However, the rise of ad-blocking has prompted discussions on the validity of its price structure and its impact on quality of advertising online. Many term the business model of ad-blockers as an extortion based businesses, built on fleecing advertisers. Still others question whether ad-blocking will actually benefit online advertising quality. In this paper, we investigate these issues using a game-theoretic model consisting of three agents – advertisers, users and an ad-blocker. Through our model, we provide answers to questions related to price structure of ad-blocker platforms, platform membership trends and implications on advertising quality online.”




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