Thursday, June 09, 2022

It’s Time To Clean Up Your Social Media Profiles

 It’s Time To Clean Up Your Social Media Profiles - Gizmodo: “Make sure the information on your profiles is consistent and up to date. You might well spend a lot of time scrolling through social media feeds—but have you checked the state of your own profile pages lately? From Twitter to Slack, these profiles tell the rest of the world (or the office) about you, and it’s important that they’re consistent, up to date, and showing you in your best light.

 Here we’ll take you through the steps needed to update your profiles on most of the major social networks, and guide you through the options that are available—some of which you may not be aware of. We’re going to concentrate on the web interfaces, where there’s more room to operate on a bigger screen, but these options are available on mobile too. Grab a headshot you like and let’s get going…”




Oxfam: “The amount of money needed for UN humanitarian appeals involving extreme weather events like floods or drought is now eight times higher than 20 years ago — and donors are failing to keep up, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. For every $2 needed for UN weather-related appeals, donor countries are only providing $1. 

Average annual extreme weather-related humanitarian funding appeals for 2000-2002 were at least $1.6 billion and rose to an average $15.5 billion in 2019-2021, an 819 percent increase.  Rich countries responsible for most of today’s climate change impacts have met only an estimated 54 percent of these appeals since 2017, leaving a shortfall of up to $33 billion. The countries with the most recurring appeals against extreme weather crises — over 10 each — include Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. The report, “Footing the Bill, says that the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events due to climate change is putting more pressure on an already over-stretched and underfunded humanitarian system. The costs of the destruction from these storms, droughts and floods are also increasing inequality; people in poorer communities and low-income countries are the worst hit yet they lack the systems and funding that wealthier countries have to cope with the effects.

 The richest one percent of people on Earth are emitting twice as much carbon pollution as the poorest half of humanity. The UN appeals focus on the most urgent humanitarian needs, but that barely scratches the surface of the real costs in loss and damage that climate change is now wreaking on countries’ economies.  The economic cost of extreme weather events in 2021 alone was estimated to be $329 billion globally, the third highest year on record. This is nearly double the total aid given by rich nations to the developing world that year…”


Did you know that today is International Archives Day,

Archives (especially the ABCs) are precious public assets, crucial building blocks of our national memory. They need specialist staff in order to remain useful and accessible for all



ABC to abolish 58 librarian and archivist jobs with journalists to do archival work

The Guardian: “…Archivists and librarians at the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] are in shock after management unveiled plans to abolish 58 positions and make journalists research and archive their own stories. Reporters and producers working on breaking news, news programs and daily programs like 7.30 will have to search for archival material themselves and will be expected to log the metadata of any new material into the system. 

Sources told Guardian Australia there are a further 17 contract positions in archives that will be abolished and that some of the archive staff affected are based outside the major capital cities. The research library staff will continue to help investigative programs like Four Corners and Background Briefing, but will not be available to assist daily news or ABC co-productions. Sound libraries will no longer add new commercial music releases to the music bank and producers must access music for programs themselves. 

“After thoroughly assessing and considering all aspects of this organisational change, we have determined that work being performed by some of our ABC archives team members is no longer required, has evolved, or can be combined with other roles that fit into our plans for the future state of ABC archives,” staff were told. The ABC section of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which held meetings for affected staff on Wednesday, said the move was “devastating news for many ABC staff and has come as a shock to teams across the country”…”