When attempts to improve the treatment of women fail

“You’re not the only one,” he says through gritted teeth. “My twelve-year-old sister died in my arms. She choked to death on her own blood. And there was nothing I could do. It makes me sick, the way you act as if the worst disaster in human history somehow revolves around you. You’re not the only one who’s lost everything—not the only one who thinks they’ve found the one thing that makes any of this shit make sense. You have your promise to Sammy, and I have you.” 

― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave    

Praha of Alfons Mucha:

Lorca thought being from Granada helped him understand Gypsies, blacks, and Jews. But adopting poetic forms from stigmatized groups is a complicated business  

Women’s wages and employment at the top of the art world

In a new blog post, Anna Bull talks about the paucity of women orchestra conductors, noting only 1.4% of working conductors in the UK are women, and riffing on this statement by award-winning (male) conductor ... read more

What can we learn from a tell-all on literary women of the 1970s? That gossip is gold, and that the literary world is naturally mean, sad, and predatory

Soul of a Woman

Thank you for distracting everyone from my shit-show of a government, May tells Meghan Daily Mash

Walcott, Brodsky, Heaney. Three great poets, at the height of their powers, converged on Boston. The result: Rabelaisian  gusto  

When attempts to improve the treatment of women fail

The recent spotlight on sexual harassment in the workplace has led employers from Hollywood to Westminster to think about how they treat women. This, alongside the introduction of the new requirement for employers to report their Gender Pay Gap, means it is a good time to ask the question: what do we know about what […]

Show us the money! Why are novelists reluctant to write about hard cash?Guardian (J-LS).

Making the Opioid Epidemic VisibleThe New Republic (Re Silc).

The future of America’s suburbs looks infinite The Orange County Register (Re Silc). The photo that accompanies the article is of Santa Clarita. In the high desert. Re Silc: “The first time i was in la was 1959. Last week i was there. This cannot be sustainable.”

Perfectly normal Nature

Is It Females Who Decide What Is Beauty?

"The view has long been that males, in their sexual communication, are saying something important about themselves, and it’s up to the females to figure out what that is, to figure out which males are truly attractive and which are not. I argue the other side of the coin. Females aren’t trying to figure out what males are saying. When they mate with a male, by definition, that male is attractive. So females are the deciders. Over evolutionary time, it seems males are trying out a lot of different courtship traits. A bright orange here, a bright blue there, rub your wings together and make a sound, or jump up and do a dance. They are trying to do these things to tickle females’ preferences. But it’s really the females calling the shots. It’s the female’s brain that sets the bar for what … [Read More]

Fact-checking in Zimbabwe 

ZimFact, a project from the Swedish Fojo Media Institute, is looking to launch in early December. But amid ongoing political turmoil in Zimbabwe following President Robert Mugabe's resignation this week, the initiative's future is still up in the air. Poynter's Daniel Funke reports from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Quote of the week
"This makes for a dangerous mix: a company that reaches most of the country every day and has the most detailed set of personal data ever assembled, but has no incentive to prevent abuse. Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data.”  — Former Facebook operations manager Sandy Parakilas in The New York Times.

How to avoid a political fight at Thanksgiving dinner
For our friends in the United States, happy Thanksgiving! PolitiFact has a cheat sheet for you to fact-check claims at the inevitable politics discussion at dinner today. It includes key facts on everything from Trump and the economy to Hillary Clinton and Obamacare.

Fact-checkers convene in South Africa
Journalists from 21 countries and four continents met in Johannesburg last week for the first annual Africa Facts conference, hosted by Africa Check. Among the topics discussed include access to data and how to cultivate a younger audience — both key issues on the continent. Africa Check also gave out fact-checking awards.



Don't put too much hope in the EU
The government body's efforts to legislate against fake news probably won't work. That's according to several experts, who say the EU's governance problems and legal restrictions in the region will likely hamper attempts to take action against online misinformation.

Want to increase reader trust? Try this
A report published this week by First Draft News found that when fact-checkers explain how rumors are verified, readers trust them more. That's just one of the key findings of the report, which measures the impact of First Draft's CrossCheck initiative on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Pinterest isn't just for recipes anymore
It also has plenty of conspiracy theories. Mike Caufield, director of the Digital Polarization Initiative, explains in a YouTube video.



The problem with Google's top search results
In response to many queries, the tech giant displays a single answer at the top of search results — but it's often wrong. The Wall Street Journal reports that those secret algorithms give Google even more power to shape public opinion.

Nationalism and clickbait converge in Italy
One of the country's biggest alternative media operations has been publishing anti-immigrant misinformation on Facebook. BuzzFeed reports the network of sites, which exhibit the same hyperpartisan tendencies as their U.S. counterparts, is owned by a Rome entrepreneur and cover everything from news to celebrity gossip.

9 quick fact-checking links
(1) In Southeast Asia, fake news on Facebook has life and death consequences. (2) Full Fact has created a live fact-checking prototype. (3) A new documentary traces what contributed to Trump's presidential victory, including the impact of fake news. (4) United Arab Emirates officials addressed misinformation in Dubai this week. (5) The IFCN made an appearance at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Johannesburg last week. (7) Facebook is telling users if they follow accounts sponsored by Russia, but the company won't say what posts people saw (h/t Mathew Ingram). (8) The Data & Society Research Center is getting $250,000 of Knight Foundation funding to launch a lab focused on fake news. (9) The prime minister of Cambodia is reportedly using fake news to maintain power. 

via Daniel, Jane, and Alexios 

Top 50 Growth Industries
Lists the revenue and growth rate for the last 12 months for the 50 fastest growing industries