Monday, July 27, 2020

Congress Soars to New Heights on Social Media

When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.
— Eric Hoffer, born in 1902
 


Democratic lawmakers post more content on Twitter, while the median Republican member now averages more audience engagement than the median Democrat across platforms – “As social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become ingrained in political and popular culture, a new Pew Research Center analysis of every tweet and Facebook post from members of Congress since 2015 finds that the congressional social media landscape has undergone vast changes in recent years. These shifts have been especially pronounced on Twitter. Compared with a similar time period in 2016, the typical member of Congress now tweets nearly twice as often (81% more), has nearly three times as many followers and receives more than six times as many retweets on their average post. On Facebook, the typical member of Congress produces 48% more posts and has increased their total number of followers and average shares by half. Social media use by members of Congress – and the online audience’s response to those communications – fluctuates in real time and varies based on the issues and events of the day. But underlying this constant churn, there have been notable changes in how lawmakers of each party use social media and interact with the Twitter and Facebook audiences more broadly. Today, Democratic members tend to post more often and have more followers on Twitter. Relative to the typical (median) Republican member of Congress, the typical Democratic member has over 17,000 more followers on Twitter and posts nearly twice as many tweets in a typical month (130 vs. 73), differences that have grown substantially in the last four years. On Facebook, the typical member of each party has a similar number of followers and much smaller differences in posting volume…”




Gone With the Wind star Olivia de Havilland dies at 104

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Slate – Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflects on her nine female classmates at Harvard Law School and the divergent paths their lives all took from there. “When we started this project, our goal was to talk to as many of the women in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Harvard Law School class as possible.


The neuroscience of nostalgia. How can we miss things we’ve never experienced firsthand? Science  offers a clue  


Animals Sense Earthquakes Before They Happen. Can They Help Us Predict Disasters? Discover


Earliest evidence for humans in the Americas BBC 


Top Scientists Just Ruled Out Best-Case Global Warming Scenarios Bloomberg 


First active leak of sea-bed methane discovered in Antarctica Guardian


Renewable Energy Is Seizing Market Share During The Pandemic OilPrice

OpenAI’s new language generator GPT-3 is shockingly good—and completely mindless MIT Technology Review