#But it's deeply frustrating to see something marketed as inclusive while *knowing* that it's been made that much *less* accessible to me! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bruhmityblight · 9 months

Text

Getting this out of the way.. barbie is a gorgeous gorgeous movie and is a deeply funny comedy I laughed at the whole way through!!

I think what intrigued me and confounds me I guess is what the barbie movies take on feminism and gender is... The film is very particular about exploring all of these ways that barbie the doll the brand intersect with feminism. The ideal of barbie is apparently this feminist utopia where women can "be who you wanna be"™ and the kid says the mainline critiques of barbie, they critique Mattel having an all guy board and leadership and pretending to be feminist and it's all kinda interesting but the film ends with it all being kinda... Accepted? And unresolved? Mattel still presumably is run by all men, and the only change in either society is that Barbies are now aware of the horrors of real world patriarchy.

Which... The way it was repackaged at the end kinda felt to me like a... Marketing stunt? I know this whole movie is at the end of the day a toy commercial, but I love the Lego movie a lot, and while it was definitely like you should buy Legos it never felt to me like a rebrand the way the barbie movie did? Like this isn't your mom's barbie, this is metamodern barbie... Which may be because barbie as a brand has a lot more baggage than Lego does, that it has a lot more complexity that needed to be explored. It left me after I exited the theater conflicted. Did I like it's representation of womanhood? Did I feel included?

Barbies main critique as an overall brand, something the child mentions when she calls barbie capitalist and fascistic, is that it isn't inclusive, that it promotes an unrealistic ideal of a specific womanhood. The movie has a lot of barbies in it, including a trans woman but honestly, they felt like cameo identities rather than an exploration of the deep variety of "womanhood". And having them all get "bimbofied" kinda defeated the point of them as any sort of celebration of diversity? The kid calls out prime barbie for being a "white savior" but like.... She kinda was? And a lot of the main roles in the movie that I felt were the most fun were... The guys? Alan was a standout, but what happened to Midge? She was a one off joke. The kens get a whole musical number that felt like the climax of the movie, while the Barbies don't?? I guess I was frustrated because I was excited about the idea of seeing myself in the many Barbies of barbie world and none of them really got explored other than weird barbie and of course main barbie.

This may seem really harsh and like I said, I had such a blast with the film and I will definitely watch it again. I loved the queerness of the kens and Allan, the cock ring ken cameo, the beauty and creativity of the world, they style, it's all just so gorgeous. Another thing is I'm kinda frustrated that none of the Barbies could be openly queer... But the kens could? Kens always been queer coded by the general public but why can ken be kissed by two dudes but none of the Barbies except for weird barbie? Going more into the queer coding aspect of it, I found the sort of beyond the ken barbie binary stuff so fascinating! I don't know if it's the intention of greta gerwig and I know it's not the intention of Mattel but like.. the fact that this whole world is binary, Barbies and kens, and then there are a couple of people who don't fit the binary and they're all so queer coded is so so interesting to me. I kinda wish they like addressed that deeper with the ending? Cause they spearheaded saving everybody but they didn't have a super satisfying conclusion beyond president barbie saying sorry to weird barbie. They're still outcasts, still on the outside.

And I think in the end that's what weirded me out about barbie. As a trans woman, definitely one who passes far less than hari nef, I feel like I'm always gonna be so far from the barbie that "stereotypical" barbie is, and see myself more in the weird Barbies and Allan's and midges, and to see them sort of still be sidelined was troubling to me. And that may be looking too much into a joke or whatever but I do genuinely feel like Greta gerwig had something to say with this one.

#barbie movie #barbie spoilers

10 notes · View notes

yournameoneverypage · 3 years

Text

Moon Over Miami

Anon request; Shawn Mendes x (y/n).

~3.1k

Warnings: Language.

~ * ~

You scowled at your overflowing carry on. You really didn’t want to bring something bigger, because that would mean baggage check and waiting at luggage carousels and that was just a headache waiting to happen.

Shawn was stretched across your bed on his back, tossing a tennis ball in the air and catching it again. “(Y/n), it’s Miami and we’re only going to be there for four days,” he chuckled. “You do not need to pack so many clothes.”

“Yes, I do. You’re a boy; you don’t understand.”

“First off, I am not a boy. I am a man, and a very attractive one at that.”

You rolled your eyes. Even if you wholeheartedly agreed, you were not going to stroke his ego.

“At the very least, lose most of the makeup. You’ll just sweat it off anyway. And you know I like you better without all that gunk on your face.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t like, now does it?” you snarked.

He sat up and leaned back against the pillows at the headboard. “I just meant that you’re already so pretty, naturally.”

Shawn was always finding little ways to compliment you and, secretly, you loved it, even if it made you blush, even if it was hard to believe some days.

“Fine.” You threw your hands up in the air in frustration. “You pack for me then.”

“Fine. I will.” He stood from the bed and poked your side. “So dramatic,” he teased, dancing his fingertips from ribcage to hip.

You gave him a small shove, and quickly moved out of tickling range (he knew where your most sensitive spots were). You stuck your tongue out at him.

“Don’t stick it out unless you intend to use it,” he smirked.

“Ha! You wish,” you giggled.

~ * ~

You and Shawn.

It was...confusing.

You had first met him five months ago and had become a regular fixture in his life over the past three. You were friends, good friends. Good friends who spent a ridiculous amount of time together. Good friends who flirted. A lot.

There were feelings, definitely on your side, growing stronger every day you spent together, and you were starting to believe there were deeper feelings on his side as well.

Other than outright pressing your lips to his, and you had never really been that forward with anyone, you weren’t sure what to do to tip the scales from friendship and flirtation to more.

You could simply tell him you were falling for him and that you wanted to take your relationship to the next level, but that scared you even more than the thought of kissing him.

~ * ~

Fifteen minutes later, Shawn stood smugly beside you. Your bag was packed neatly, and you were happy with everything he chose (not that you would admit that to him), which showed you he knew you better than you thought he did. There was even enough room left over for accessories.

It shouldn’t have surprised you; he was pretty adept at packing, having been on tour so often.

“Shut up,” you mumbled.

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“But you want to.”

Shawn laughed.

You only added two things, just to prove a point.

~ * ~

You may as well have been in Florida with only Brian and Connor for as often as Shawn had been around the first two days.

The trip had started out incredibly.

You took a redeye from LA to Miami. Shawn held your hand during takeoff and landing. It was your first time flying first class; you didn’t care that you slept through most of it.

Shawn had rented a 3-bedroom beachfront bungalow for the long weekend and had ordered a breakfast basket to be waiting for you when you got there. Everyone ate their fill of croissants and muffins and fresh fruit while you sipped your tea and coffee. Afterward you all agreed that a morning nap poolside sounded ideal.

Shawn claimed the double lounger for the two of you. You curled up beside him and he threw a light blanket over both his and your legs. You laid your head on his shoulder and were asleep within minutes.

When you opened your eyes again, after the best nap you may have ever had in your life thus far, Shawn was no longer beside you. You could see him just inside the back door, talking on his phone.

“Hey,” he announced, returning to the patio, after seeing that you, Brian, and Connor had all awoken. “I’m going to catch up with Camila. I’ll text you after lunch; see where you are.”

~ * ~

You didn’t see Shawn again that first day until you were making plans to spend the evening in South Beach for sunset drinks, dinner, and then a pub crawl for even more drinking.

The boys teased you for being such a lightweight. You were blissfully buzzed, which made it easier for you to let your inhibitions go. Shawn was more intoxicated than you were, which made it a lot easier for you to tug him onto the dance floor.

Flush against him while you moved together to the music, fingertips grazing bare skin, it was too easy to forget that you had been upset with him at all.

Spending all afternoon at the Bayside Market in the hot Miami sun, followed by a night of drinking and dancing into the very early hours of the morning had finally caught up with you. By the time you made it back to the bungalow, you were piggyback on Shawn, your sandals dangling from his fingers by the straps.

~ * ~

Day 2 began with three boys nursing hangovers much worse than yours. You did little things to annoy them, on purpose, which was, admittedly, not very nice of you. You knew they’d had enough when they decided to throw you in the pool. When Shawn reached out, laughing, to help you out, you pulled him in instead.

He chased you into one of the corners of the deep end, trapping you between the pool wall and his hard, wet chest, his arms on either side of you. You had to hold onto his biceps to keep yourself afloat, which, from the look in his eyes, was exactly how and where he wanted you.

Your heart was telling you to use this position to your advantage, finally tip those scales, and you might have if it had been the night before when you were a little drunk. Regretfully, you were sober and when you were sober you tended to overthink things. Now that you were sober, he was too close.

You ducked underwater, under his arm, and quickly pulled yourself out of the pool.

~ * ~

Once you were dry and dressed, you dragged Shawn, Connor, and Brian to Wynwood to go on a golf cart tour of the Walls. They had all been to Miami before, more than once, so they had put you in charge of the itinerary.

From Wynwood you made your way to Little Havana.

After a string of late afternoon texts from Camila, Shawn asked if she could join the four of you for dinner. He wanted you to meet her.

They tried their best to be inclusive throughout dinner, and Camila was certainly nice enough, but still you felt like the fifth wheel, the spare, most of the time.

After dinner, Shawn and Camila wandered off together. When it became clear that Shawn wouldn’t be returning to the house with the rest of you, your heart sank. You stewed in your hurt until it became anger.

You understood that Camila was one of Shawn’s best friends, and he hadn’t seen her for a while. You could forgive him for the day before, but this was supposed to be your trip. You, Brian, Connor, and Shawn. D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers. If all Shawn had wanted to do was hang out with Camila, why had he bothered to invite you at all? You held no grudge against or felt any ill will toward Camila. It wasn’t her fault that Shawn was being a clueless dick.

~ * ~

You were laying on your side, looking out the window of which you forgot to close the blinds. The moon reflected off the still water of the pool that you could see from your room.

You heard the quietest clearing of someone’s throat. You rolled over to see Shawn leaning against the frame of the doorway, bare chested, in soft gray pajama bottoms.

“Couldn’t sleep?” you asked softly. You couldn’t sleep either, even though you were exhausted.

You really didn’t want to spend the remainder of your time in Miami being angry with him. There were still two days left. You patted the mattress on the empty side of your bed. That was all the invitation he needed.

Shawn crawled into bed beside you, tugged on the open collar of the other half of his pajamas, and chuckled, “Thief.”

“It’s so soft, and it smells like you,” you whispered.

Shawn laid his head on your stomach and you instinctively started to run your fingers through his hair, tugging gently on his curls. You heard him sigh deeply, contentedly, and the next thing you remembered was waking up to the bright morning sun.

~ * ~

You smiled and stretched languidly. Shawn must have made his way back to his own room during the night sometime. You didn’t hear anyone else up and about yet. You decided to surprise the boys by making breakfast.

Brian and Connor stumbled into the kitchen, following the smell of sizzling bacon and strong coffee.

“Is Shawn still sleeping?” you asked.

Connor and Brian exchanged a look. Connor cleared his throat and said, “Shawn isn’t here.”

You didn’t even have to ask where he had gone. Returning to your room you retrieved your phone on the nightstand. You hadn’t bothered to check it when you woke up.

There was a group text from Shawn that read:

Grabbing a workout and then a quick breakfast with Camila. Be back soon.

Brian and Connor were nearly finished eating when Shawn returned, oblivious to what he was walking into. He grabbed a few slices of bacon and sat down to join them at the kitchen island.

“Where’s (y/n)?”

Brian and Connor shook their heads at him. “You can be such a prick sometimes,” Brian said. Both he and Connor then stood and left the room.

Confused, Shawn glanced around and suddenly it all made sense. “Shit,” he said to himself, under his breath.

~ * ~

Shawn stood in your bedroom doorway like he had the night before.

“I’m sorry, (y/n).”

You refused to acknowledge him.

“I didn’t know you were going to make breakfast or I would have been back sooner.”

You wanted to bite at him that he shouldn’t have been gone at all.

You had just pulled on your swimsuit cover up when you turned to him. His eyes snapped from your ass to your eyes. You slipped on your sunglasses, grabbed your beach bag, and said, “Brian, Connor, and I will be on the beach, if you decide you want to join us.” You pushed past him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he replied.

~ * ~

You purposely chose to wear the smallest, sexiest bikini you had with you. It wasn’t one you yourself would have packed but since Shawn had been the one to pack your carry on he must have wanted to see you in it. The day you bought it was a day when you were feeling particularly confident in your body.

By the time Shawn made it down to the beach, he found you in conversation with two young men who weren’t Brian or Connor. You had removed your cover up and stood before them in your tiny white string bikini.

You were laughing at something one of them was saying. Shawn saw you reach out and briefly place your hand on his forearm.

Shawn was unprepared for the surge of violent irritation that nearly overtook him.

He saw you notice him. He bristled when you leaned in and said something in the other man's ear. He watched as you slid the temple tip of your sunglasses between your teeth. He saw you put your hand on your waist and slightly arch your back. He watched as you touched the small pendant of the necklace you were wearing and drew it away from the skin between your breasts.

Shawn hated the way the two men were looking at you. His stomach churned; his muscles tensed; his heart felt too tight in his chest. He couldn't take anymore.

Sidling up beside you, he wrapped his large hand around the nape of your neck, gently yet possessively.

“Oh, hi Shawn,” you said casually, shrugging out of his grip. “Meet my new friends, Chase and Evan.” You smiled at them, fluttering your eyelashes and biting softly on your lower lip.

“Boyfriend?” Chase asked.

“Oh no, Shawn and I are just friends.” You eased closer to Evan and reached out, meaning to touch the bracelet he was wearing, but before you could, Shawn grabbed your wrist.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he gritted through a fake smile, pulling you away.

“Let go of me,” you snapped. He did, immediately. He never had nor would he ever do anything to physically hurt you.

Brian and Connor, having seen more than enough, hurried toward you. They made you and Shawn take a step back.

“What the hell is going on?” Connor exclaimed.

“(Y/n) is being childish,” Shawn growled.

Maybe you were, but you were upset, goddamn it. “Me?! Look who’s talking! You’re acting like a jealous boyfriend! You have no claim on me!”

“You’re both being childish!” bit Brian. “And you’re starting to cause a scene. Get over yourselves and fucking talk like adults. If you can’t, walk away,” he admonished.

Shawn ran a hand through his hair and tugged frustratingly on his curls before storming off.

Brian gestured for Connor to stay with you and he followed after Shawn.

“Why did you have to antagonize him?” Connor questioned.

You glared at him. “This is not my fault. Of course you’re on his side.”

“I am on no one’s side. You’re both at fault, and you fucking know it. Yeah, he’s kind of been an asshole, but you didn’t have to flirt with those guys so brazenly right in front of him.” Connor’s voice softened. “You know how he feels about you, (y/n). You should apologize.”

You were thoroughly abashed but still feeling stubborn. You turned on Connor and said, “I will when he does.”

You put your cover up back on, slipped into your sandals, and grabbed your clutch which held your wallet, your eReader, and your phone. You trusted Connor to bring everything else back to the bungalow for you.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“For a walk. I need to be alone.”

~ * ~

The sun was going down when you returned to the house.

When you walked in the door, Shawn, who had been sitting on the edge of the ottoman, stood, and approached you cautiously. He rubbed the back of his neck. “You were starting to worry us,” he said softly.

“I’m sorry. I needed some time to cool off and to think.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe.” His relief was palpable. He stepped even closer to you. “I’m sorry. For how I acted and what I said on the beach. It’s inexcusable.”

“I am, too. I should never have purposely tried to upset you.” You unconsciously reached out and ran your fingertips along the V of Shawn’s t-shirt. “That was the first time we’ve ever fought... I didn’t like it.”

He covered your hand with his, flattening your palm against his heart, which you could feel was beating quite quickly. “Come and have dinner. It’s time to stop thinking and start talking.”

He smirked and began walking backward, hand still over yours.

It was that smirk that set your heart thumping. You followed, curiously, anxiously.

On the back patio was a romantic table set for two, surrounded by tea lights and lit candles.

“Shawn? What’s going on?” you asked, breathlessly.

He crossed to the table and pulled one of the chairs out for you. “Sit, Love. Eat.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“What?” He felt as if his heart might break.

“Too many butterflies.” You softly bit your bottom lip.

“Oh,” he breathed.

“Can we talk first?”

“Of course.”

You walked over to and sat down on the outdoor sectional.

Shawn dropped down beside you with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, (y/n). I’ve been, well, an asshole seems to be the overall consensus. I shouldn’t have ditched you to spend so much time with Camila.”

“I know you’re close,” you said, “and I know it had been awhile since you’d seen her. I tried to be understanding.”

“No,” he interrupted, “this is on me. This was supposed to be our trip. You, Brian, Connor, and me.”

“D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers,” you said in unison and you both laughed.

Shawn leaned closer you. “Do you want to know the truth?” he asked, as if it was the greatest secret he held, which, to him, it was. “She was talking me through my feelings for you.” He tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. “She made it very clear to me that I was ‘estúpido’ for spending time with her instead of the person I should be, for talking through my feelings with her instead of with the one I really needed to talk with.”

“You have feelings for me?” you breathed, feeling your entire body flush, not just your cheeks.

Shawn laughed softly and took your hands in his, intertwining your fingers. “It’s not obvious? I was jealous of those other guys because I want to be the boyfriend. I want the right to call you mine... I’m falling in love with you, (y/n). Which is insane since we haven’t even kissed yet. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to; every time I see you I want to kiss you.”

Without warning, you pressed your lips to his. It took him not even a moment to respond, pulling you onto his lap and cupping your face. Kissing Shawn was even better than you had ever imagined it would be.

When finally you eased away from him, breathless, you confessed, “I’m falling in love with you too, Shawn. I want you to be mine. I want to be only yours.”

“Does that mean I can kiss you whenever I want to?” he whispered, grinning happily.

“Over and over and over again,” you breathed.

His lips once more met yours. Your hands encircled the nape of his neck. Tender and unhurried turned deep and delicious.

Your lips left his with an audible ‘aʘa’ and you giggled. “Can we eat now? I’m starving.”

Shawn’s answering laugh, rich and lightsome, was everything.

~ * ~

@mendesblurb @benito-mi-vida

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes oneshot #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fiction #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes x reader #shawn mendes x y/n #shawn mendes x you

192 notes · View notes

pogueman · 6 years

Text

Microsoft CEO talks about immigration, empathy, and cricket

yahoo

This past Sunday, “CBS Sunday Morning” aired my profile of Satya Nadella, who’d worked at Microsoft for 25 years before being chosen to become the third CEO in Microsoft’s history. (You can watch the CBS story here.)

Nadella’s thoughtful, gentle personal style could not be more different from the brash, aggressive approaches of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. So far, his style seems to be working: Microsoft’s (MSFT) stock has more than doubled in the three years he’s been at the helm.

I spent an entire day with Nadella, including some time in his home with his wife Anu and son Zain. As always, we had time for only pieces of the interview on TV — so here’s a more complete edited transcript.

Satya Nadella sat down for an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Pogue: In your book, “Hit Refresh,” you talk a lot about empathy and compassion. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, during their tenures here, had terrific strengths, but I’m not sure compassion would be the word that jumps out.

Nadella: In their own way, I feel that they have a lot of that, very deep. But when I think about empathy or compassion, pick your word, I just don’t think that this is a soft skill that’s nice. I think it’s a business essential.

And I’ll tell you why. We are in the business of meeting unmet, unarticulated needs of customers all over the world, long before even they can articulate it. If we can do that, then we will be successful. If we can’t, we won’t. It’s an essential skill, an essential attribute, for product creation.

Pogue: And yet at this time in America, compassion seems harder to come by than in other times.

Nadella: I’m a product of two amazingly unique American things. One is American technology reaching me where I was growing up, and making it possible for me to dream; the other is the enlightened American immigration policy, allowing me to come and live that dream.

When I sit here, as unlikely CEO of Microsoft, both of those come to mind. So I’m long-term optimistic. I always will say that in the U.S., the real currency is that ability to take differences and bring people together to make our society a stronger society.

Pogue: What is your relationship with the president?

Nadella: I’ve had a chance to meet him a couple times. Once before he was inaugurated, in Trump Tower, and once after, when he called all the tech leaders to meetings in the White House. Good conversations.

I mean, one of the core goals that the administration has is to modernize the government, the technology. And we obviously have longstanding relationships with all the government agencies, and it’s much needed.

Pogue: But what about this initiative, the DACA repeal? Sending home children of undocumented immigrants in this country? A number of them work here at Microsoft. You’ve publicly disagreed with that.

Nadella: Absolutely. Wherever there is any public policy that is not sympathetic to diversity and inclusion, foundational human values that we care deeply about, our employees care deeply about, we’re gonna be very principled in our opposition to it.

Pogue: And you have offered to do something for the employees of Microsoft who will be affected by this DACA repeal…

Nadella: We’ll fight on their behalf, in the courts. We will intervene wherever and however possible. Like we are in other areas, like privacy.

Pogue: Having read the book, you strike me as a kinder, gentler CEO. It seems you want people to get along. For example, you express frustration at the fiefdoms and bickering you inherited among Microsoft employees. You inherited lawsuits that had been dragging on in court, with Samsung and others, and you said, “Guys, guys, guys. Can’t we work it out?” And you raised a lot of eyebrows when you started writing Microsoft Office products for your direct competitors, like iPhones.

Is that a good characterization of your style?

Nadella: Yeah. It is. It’s not about viewing this as zero sum. It’s being able to face up to the realities. I like to describe this as courage in the face of reality.

But at the same time, looking back at our history has been helpful. The number of billion-dollar franchises that were built on Windows is far greater than any other platform. So I said, “Okay. Let’s start viewing today’s world with what made us good in the first place.” So when it comes down to, “hey, there are a billion smartphones!”, it only makes business sense for us to make sure our customers can use our applications and our cloud services on them.

Pogue: Your new strategy is “Cloud first, mobile first.”

Nadella: Actually, we’ve updated that.

There is more technology in our life, not less, with each passing day. We started with mainframes, and then to PCs, which we had on our desks. Now we have smartphones in our pockets. Now we have sensors that go beyond the pocket — on your wrist, or holographic or mixed reality computing, where what you see is a mix of the analog and the digital world.

Microsoft’s Alex Kipman shows me his team’s Hololens, an augmented-reality visor.

So we are in the secular march to more and more computing in our lives. So what technological paradigm makes all this possible? That’s what we describe as the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge. We’re evolving to more of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge, which means that you’re going to have many, many devices.

Pogue: So the cloud is, in super simple terms, the control center that’s on the internet; what’s the “edge”?

Nadella: All the devices, and the application experiences that span all the devices.

Pogue: That’s where the edge of the cloud meets the real world?

Nadella: That’s correct. That’s a great way to describe it.

You will go from device to device, whether it’s in a conference room, your work, or in your home. You’re gonna have thermostats, TVs, speakers, PCs, phones, and your app is going to be spread across all of it. The experience is going to be spread across all of it. It’s enabling you to be mobile, as opposed to the device being mobile — that’s the architecture that we’re moving towards.

Pogue: Microsoft famously missed the boat on smartphones. I actually liked Windows 10 on the phone a lot — why did it fail?

Nadella: Sometimes these digital ecosystems have real “network effects.” The first one to the market shapes it, and then there’s always room for the second one. But whenever it comes down to third or fourth ecosystems, they’re hard.

The lesson I learned from our own obsession of PC being “the hub for all things, for all time to come,” is that there’s no such thing as one device that’s going to be the hub for all things for all time to come! Everybody thinks that the current devices is the last device you’ll ever need — until it’s not.

And so the question is then, what is the constant here? The constant is the person. And so if you start building useful services to them, that span all their devices… Whether it’s a phone, a PC, a large screen in my office, a speaker — all of them are Office 365 devices.

Pogue: Cloud services has been a big push of yours, right? Where you provide other companies with these gigantic data farms that are too expensive and technical to run themselves?

Nadella: Absolutely. This is a push that actually Steve got started, and while working for Steve, I started some of our infrastructure side.

These are fast-growth businesses. We now have in excess of $20 billion run rate — and growing at a very, very fast clip. And so it requires both a significant amount of capital investment, and great innovation in software. And we’re excited about the future. For example, one of the big, new things that we are doing is, how do we infuse into all of our cloud services artificial intelligence?

You can now use PowerPoint, and while you’re presenting, automatically translate what you are saying into 60-plus languages simultaneously. That’s AI in action. But every app developer on Azure [Microsoft’s suite of cloud services] has access to that same capability, and that’s really what’s on our agenda.

Pogue: You’re really doubling down on Microsoft’s investments in AI. But some experts, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, are deeply concerned about our rush into artificial intelligence. They’re saying, “Slam on the brakes,” not slam on the accelerator.

Nadella: The way I come at it is perhaps a little more pragmatic.

The rate of progress in AI is stunning, there’s no question. But anything like AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, we are some ways away. That’s where the machine is as good as a human being in everything.

Think about humans. We can be put in a new environment. We’ll learn. We’ll adapt. But the roadmap to achieving something like that in AI is a long ways away. We are very, very early on.

But to your point, we as creators of AI have a real responsibility to make some design decisions. We should build AI that we can be accountable. I don’t want us to abdicate. “Oh, we created some program that learns. We don’t know how it learns.” That’s just not a way for us to proceed.

Pogue: In your book, you write movingly about the birth of your son, Zain, who’s quadriplegic; there’s an implication that that event changed you.

Nadella: Yeah. There have been a few moments where, in my personal life, there were really these “hit refresh” moments, and Zain’s birth clearly was one such. A few hours before Zain was born, if somebody had asked me, “What are the things that you are thinking about?”, I would have been mostly thinking about, “How will our weekends change?” And childcare, and what have you.

Obviously, after he was born, our life drastically changed. My wife Anu had to drop out of the workforce to take care of him fulltime. To be able to see the world through his eyes, and then recognize my responsibility towards him, has shaped a lot of who I am today, and shaped even how I show up in other places, whether it’s at work or with my other children.

Satya and Anu Nadella met in India when they were in elementary school.

Pogue: So that empathy has even changed how you lead?

Nadella: When you lead, there’s no way you can motivate anyone if you can’t see the world through their eyes.

There’s no way you can get people to bring their A game if you can’t create an environment in which they can contribute. But creating that environment requires you to be in touch with, what are they seeking? What motivates them? What drives them? What are their needs?

And, of course, the fact that you practice empathy at work will only make you a better parent, a better partner, and a better person all around.

Pogue: Well, I know one thing you probably miss, having moved to America. You have no one to talk to about cricket.

Nadella: Well, I mean, it’s no longer true! Because in this connected world of ours — one of my subscriptions is for a TV channel. And so I’m watching cricket all the time.

Pogue: All right, we have about 10 seconds left. Explain to me the rules of cricket.

Nadella: No. (laughs)

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can sign up to get his stuff by email, here.

#_uuid:74d0da62-8d25-3fb5-90f2-241e105bd82a #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #$MSFT #_author:David Pogue

2 notes · View notes

ace-muslim · 7 years

Text

Asexual Muslim resistance, activism, and self care: Creating Change 2017 and me

This post is for the February Carnival of Aces.

Author note: I originally intended to write this post soon after I got back from Creating Change a month ago. However, thanks to the start of my spring term Arabic classes the week after my return, to the emotional stresses of #MuslimBan that hit right after that, and to the need to get caught up on my other responsibilities while all this was going on, it’s taken me rather longer than I expected to actually get this post out!

I attended the Creating Change conference in Philadelphia from January 18 to January 22, 2017. I had several different goals for the conference, reflecting different facets of my identity and work:

connect in person with other aces

connect in person with other queer Muslims

attend anti-racism workshops to further my volunteer work with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC)

attend organization building workshops relevant to the needs of MuslimARC

attend sessions on spirituality and self-care to help me in coping with burnout

The fact that I could further my interests in so many different areas of my life is why I was so excited to attend the conference. MuslimARC is not an ace or queer organization but since I have access to the resources that Creating Change offers due to my own ace and queer identity, I figured I might as well take advantage of it.

To my delight, I was able to attain all of my goals for the conference and benefit in each of these areas of my life.

Due to the way my asexuality, my being a Muslim convert, and my accessibility limitations intersect, I have difficult in connecting with groups in my local area. The Muslim spaces nearby that I am able to get to are usually not welcoming to me and not places where I fit in at all. I have been making efforts for the last several years to show up anyway because I hoped that even a flawed space would be better than nothing, which is what I have otherwise and what I had for most of the time since I converted.

Creating Change offered a chance to participate in spaces that are more inclusive of my identities. These spaces were limited - just one panel and one official gathering for each of my core identities (the ace inclusivity panel and ace caucus on the one hand and the Islamophobia panel and jumu’a prayer service on the other) - or on the margins (the unofficial ace hospitality suite and the unofficial queer Muslim caucus) but they did exist. While I could see ways these groups might fall short of providing all the support I need on an ongoing basis, within the context of the conference just the fact that they were there at all was enough.

Beyond just finding community spaces where I could meet others who share identities with me, I was able to have deep conversations with David Jay and with queer Muslim activist leaders Imam Tynan Power and Palmer Shepherd telling them my personal story and the issues I experience and even advocating for greater inclusion of asexual Muslims. The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD), which both Ty and Palmer are actively involved with, has not made any efforts so far to reach out to asexual Muslims or even acknowledge in their public materials that we exist and I emphasized to Ty and Palmer how important it is to mention aces by name because otherwise we will assume that we are not welcome. Meanwhile, I gave DJ a reference to my Asexuality and Islam website and a printout of asexual Muslim data gleaned from the ace census, so that he can amplify these resources.

The most valuable thing about these three talks was that although each group represents only half of my identity by itself, I was able to share all of myself with them. These were probably the most deeply validating experiences of the whole conference for me. And while there is still no actual asexual Muslim community (a continuing frustration of mine), I hope that my work in these conversations can help other asexual Muslims as individuals find the same validation I did.

Meanwhile, as I attended the Racial Justice Institute and a session on building sustainable funding for nonprofit organizations, I found that I was able to reference MuslimARC frequently, contribute usefully to the conversations based on my experiences volunteering there, and learn some tools and frameworks that will be useful to MuslimARC’s work. I even decided it would be useful to list MuslimARC as my organizational affiliation at future Creating Change conferences to continue building in this area. This was a pleasant surprise.

Two other workshops I attended with a racial justice focus, the Police Violence Institute and the alternatives to law enforcement session, gave me something I hadn’t expected - an insight into how Creating Change can be useful to connect ace youth, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, to LGBTQ resources that already exist to help address the larger systemic issues they face. I was able to talk with the head of an LGBTQ center in Colorado about asexuality, discover that they are already seeing ace youth seeking out their resources, and connect them with Asexual Outreach to get information and resources on asexuality. The opportunities for networking at Creating Change are amazing and next year I might print out some resources from Asexual Outreach to be able to give to people!

On the spiritual front, I made use of the Many Paths Spiritual Gathering Place as a prayer room - with five daily prayers, the logistics of being Muslim at a busy conference can be tricky and having that dedicated space out of the crowds made things a lot easier. I got to know the spiritual care team there and through the centering care workshop and the session on building an authentic spiritual path. Because of the limited space provided for Muslims specifically at the conference, and because Ty is only one person, the spiritual care team ended up providing me with a lot of support and friendship I didn’t expect to receive. Beyond this, some of the practices and ideas I gained from these sessions are things I am slowly working to implement in my life back home with links to both queer spirituality and anti-racist self-work.

Speaking of the unexpected, the conference pushed me way out of my comfort zone in multiple ways. I was initially very anxious about wearing both hijab and obvious ace gear at an LGBTQ conference where I wasn’t sure either identity would be fully welcome - but I spent five days as a very visible asexual Muslim and most people hardly blinked.

I did experience a few microaggressions, all related to being Muslim (none were related to being ace). While I was attending the Police Violence Institute a white woman acted to me in a way that I found rather tokenizing (”I’ve never seen a queer Muslim before! Can I have your business card?”) and I had to spend several minutes educating her about effective allyship (build relationships with the affected community and learn what they need you to do, then do that).

Also, at the end of the ace caucus, a white ace came up and asked me if I was a nun (yes, I consider this a microaggression). I also got this question from a random stranger while I was buying food in Reading Terminal Market one afternoon. Still, I was expecting a lot worse than this and I was really very pleasantly surprised by how unfazed most attendees were by me. Shout-out to the hijabis who have attended past conferences and paved the way for me.

Besides wearing hijab and ace gear all the time, I ended up on stage during the opening plenary session (me? shy Laura?) and even attended the lesbian caucus. I wasn’t forced to come out as anything (except as Muslim because I was wearing hijab) since there was just a large group discussion I listened to but didn’t take part in. But this was the first time I had made a public connection for myself between being homoplatonic and lesbian identity. I’m still hesitant to identify as an asexual lesbian specifically, but I took a baby step that evening and I’m proud of myself for that.

As if all this wasn’t enough, I participated in the Philadelphia Women’s March draped in an ace pride flag (and wearing an ace pride hijab) and shouting slogans like “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re fabulous, don’t fuck with us” alongside Mary and Brian, which was pretty freaking awesome. Between that and being at a session on combatting Islamophobia and then at a queer Muslim prayer service during Trump’s inauguration, I figure I put a distinctively asexual Muslim stamp on my resistance that I plan to continue.

Creating Change 2017 was a life-changing experience that for the first time brought my whole self together in a single activist space. I’m still struggling every day with burnout but this was just the self-care I needed to help me get through a very tough time.

#carnival of aces submission #resistance activism and self-care #creating change conference #creating change 2017 #cc17 #ace-muslim's adventures in activism

36 notes · View notes

lodelss · 4 years

Link

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | January 2020 | 10 minutes (2,378 words)

It’s taken two years for #MeToo to wake up France, but at least it did. The country appears to finally see the men it has created, which is more than can be said of North America, trapped in the cancel culture stage, calling out everyone except itself. That lack of self-awareness is easy to miss, though. There’s a lot of wokeness floating around these parts — we even have a “woke” princess, although Meghan Markle’s self-appointed royal defection alone could never really loosen the monarchy’s grip on Britain. And for all the hand-wringing by Hollywood stars over diversity, there is once again an established structure above them that resists the change they represent, one that inevitably rears its head in heavily white male awards seasons. France appears to know this now, but only because it was told so by a woman it nearly destroyed.

“I’m really angry, but the issue isn’t so much me, how I survive this or not,” French actress Adèle Haenel told Mediapart in November. “I want to talk about an abuse which is unfortunately commonplace, and attack the system of silence and collusion behind it which makes it possible.” The 31-year-old Portrait of a Lady on Fire star was talking about her alleged abuse from the ages of 12 to 15 at the hands of her first film director, Christophe Ruggia, who was in his 30s at the time. In a follow-up sit-down interview with the same site, Haenel emphasized that she wasn’t canceling anyone; this wasn’t about censoring individuals, but about calling attention to an entrenched society-wide ill and the culture that upholds it. It was this depersonalization that seemed to free up France to reflect, something still largely missing from U.S. conversations — from #MeToo to inclusivity in entertainment to royal affairs — that are all rooted in a foundational hierarchy the entire population is complicit in preserving. “When we come up against the control of the patriarchy,” explained Haenel, “we talk about it as though it were from the outside, whereas it’s from the inside.”

* * *

Barely a week into the new year, two of the most celebrated members of the most prestigious institution in the U.K. turned their backs on it. On January 8, the Sussex Instagram account dropped a shot of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with 195 words that defied centuries of British tradition. “After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,” it read. “We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent.” The announcement, which also stated the couple plans to split its time between the U.K. and North America, came not long after the airing of an emotional ITV documentary in which Markle admitted, “I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair.” Anyone who watched her say that, who saw the same defeat in her face that they saw in Princess Diana’s decades prior, who saw Harry’s frustration at the thought that it could all happen again, who saw the royal family barely ripple in response to Prince Andrew’s association with a registered sex offender, would not only understand this separation, but expect nothing less. How else to exercise your opposition to a patriarchal empire than to forsake its number one emblem?

But the media took it personally — it was a door slammed and shut tight in the face of their badgering, which had become as much of a presence as the royals themselves, a constant reminder of British society’s supplication at the feet of an outdated overlord. Piers Morgan expressed his preference for the old prince, the fratty drunk who cosplayed a Nazi, amid reports that Madame Tussaud’s had swiftly relocated the royal couple’s wax figures from its esteemed collection. The local response reeked of personal injury, as though the duo had turned its nose up at the greatest gift the country had to offer, rather than what they actually did: kicked off a long-awaited internal confrontation with the colonial inheritance of a populace that insists on running on its fumes. As Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, told NPR, “Instead of taking this as an opportunity for introspection as to what is it about the upper strata of British society that is hostile for a person of color like Meghan Markle, what we’re seeing now is the British media just lashing out again and blaming everyone except themselves.” “Everyone” being “non-aristocratic, non-white interlopers,” which is to say, the people who actually populate Britain.

If Prince Harry is the future, Prince William is the past, and it’s fitting that he not only presides over the kingdom (or will, one day) but its version of the Oscars. The day before his brother’s adios, the BAFTAs announced that for the seventh year in a row, no women were nominated for best director, and in addition, all 20 of the acting nominees were white. In an internal letter, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ chief executive Amanda Berry and film committee chair Marc Samuelson called the lack of diversity “frustrating and deeply disappointing,” as though it were entirely out of their hands. Yet the 8,000-member committee is chaired by Pippa Harris, who cofounded a production company with Sam Mendes nearly two decades ago, which may explain why 1917, the war epic Mendes directed and coproduced with Harris, was the only nominee for both best film and best British film. This sort of insularity may be unspoken but it is not inactive, it has repercussions for which films are funded and how they are marketed and ultimately rewarded.

“BAFTA can’t tell the studios and the production companies who they should hire and whose stories should get told,” Samuelson told Variety, deflecting the blame. But the academy’s site claims it discovers and nurtures new talent and has a mission that includes diversity and inclusion, so why does its most recent Breakthrough Brits list appear to be three quarters white? As former BAFTA winner Steve McQueen observed, there were plenty of British women and people of color who did exceptional work in film this year — in movies like In Fabric, The Souvenir, Queen & Slim, and Us — and were nonetheless overlooked, implying a more deeply ingrained exclusion, the sort that permeates British society beyond its film industry and keeps the country from actually perceiving non-white, non-male stories as legitimate art. Snubbed Harriet star Cynthia Erivo confessed to Extra TV that she actually turned down an invitation to sing at the BAFTAs, evoking Markle’s absences from a growing number of royal engagements. “It felt like it was calling on me as an entertainer,” Erivo said, “as opposed to a person who was a part of the world of film.”

Awards as a whole are representative of industry-wide limitations, which, as ever, are tied to the dominance of a particular group in the larger society. The Oscars, dating back to the ’20s and established to garner positive publicity for Hollywood (while extinguishing its unions), seem to persist in the belief that that is tied to white male supremacy. I probably don’t have to tell you the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just elected another middle-aged white man as its head (David Rubin) and has a member base that is 84 percent white and 68 percent male. And that’s an improvement after April Reign’s viral 2016 #OscarsSoWhite outcry. “It’s not about saying who is snubbed and who should have been nominated,” Reign told The Huffington Post at the time, “it’s about opening the discussion more on how the decisions were made, who was cast and who tells the story behind the camera.” And yet the response, as always, has been tokenism — one black nominee here, an Asian one there, a one-for-one reaction to cancel culture which provides momentary relief but no real evolution. The individual successes of Moonlight and Black Panther and BlacKkKlansman and even Parasite, not to mention Spike Lee being named the first ever black Cannes jury head, can’t ultimately undo more than 100 years of white male paternalism. The Oscar nominations this year, dominated by four movies that are very pale and very violent — Joker, 1917, The Irishman, and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood — encapsulate the real soul of Hollywood and the society in which it was forged. It is no mistake that, as The Atlantic outlined, the ceremony neglects “domestic narratives, and stories told by women and people of color.” Harvey Weinstein, who turned awards campaigning into a brutalist art form while allegedly brutalizing women behind the scenes, may no longer be the Oscars’ figurehead, but his imprint endures.

À propos, Les Misérables, a gritty drama about a bunch of men facing off with a bunch of other men (oh, and some boys too) in a poor neighborhood in Paris, was the French submission to this year’s Oscars instead of Haenel’s critically preferred film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a lush period romance about two women in love. It was that film’s director, Céline Sciamma, for whom Haenel returned to acting in 2007 with White Lilies (and with whom she had a romance off-camera) years after her experience with Ruggia drove her from the industry. Though she opened up to Sciamma about being sexually abused, Haenel didn’t go public until she was firmly established with two Césars (the French Academy Award equivalent) to bolster her legitimacy — she knew that otherwise society, French and otherwise, sides with men. “Even if it is difficult to fight against the balance of power set out from early adolescence, and against the man-woman relationship of dominance, the social balance of power has been inversed,” Haenel told Mediapart in November. “I am today socially powerful, whereas [Ruggia] has simply become diminished.” This was a crucial but deemphasised aspect of the shift in America which took place after a slew of A-list white actresses — women who were held up by society and thus listened to — accused Weinstein of abuse, a shift which did not take place after a slew of lesser known women, many of them women of color, accused Bill Cosby. (That the latter is black no doubt also played into the country’s lingering racist belief that all black men are latent criminals, so obviously he was a predator, right?) With none of these longstanding prejudices addressed, however, they risk being repeated, as the system which permitted these men to abuse their power prevails.

“What do we all have as collective responsibility for that to happen. That’s what we’re talking about,” Haenel said in her sit-down interview. “Monsters don’t exist. It’s our society, it’s us, it’s our friends, it’s our fathers. We’re not here to eliminate them, we’re here to change them.” This approach is in direct opposition to how #MeToo has been unraveling in the U.S., where names of accused men — Woody Allen, Michael Jackson, Matt Lauer, R. Kelly, Louis C.K., Weinstein — loom so large on the marquees that they conveniently block out reality: that they were shaped by America, a place that gives golden handshakes to abusers, barely takes them to trial for their alleged actions, and sometimes even cheers them on. It’s not that women here have not been saying the same thing as Haenel, it just seems to be that their message is lost in the cacophony of proliferating high-profile cases themselves. Haenel’s resonance sources from not only the relative anomaly of a French woman of her stature making such claims, but also the fact that she is so much more famous than her alleged perpetrator and that her age at the time makes it a clear instance of abuse. Perhaps it also has to do with her disclosure coming amidst the ongoing yellow vests movement, which has primed France’s citizens to call for all manner of accountability.

Haenel’s alleged abuser has since been charged with sexual aggression against a minor, though she initially refused to go through the justice system, which she saw as part of a deeper systemic bias that resulted in her abuse. UniFrance, which promotes French films internationally, has openly backed the actress and is in the process of creating a charter to protect actors, and, in a historic move, the French Society of Film Directors dropped Ruggia, its former copresident. Meanwhile, Gabriel Matzneff is also being investigated following the publication of a memoir by Vanessa Springora in which the publishing head describes her teen sexual encounters with the then-50-something-year-old French writer who has always been open about his affinity for underage girls and boys. And the same country that supported Roman Polanski in the aftermath of child sexual assault allegations several years ago is now protesting him in the wake of Haenel’s disclosure. As she said when asked about the Oscar-winning filmmaker on Mediapart, “the debate around Polanski is not limited to Polanski and his monstrosity, but implicates the whole of society.” The French media calls Haenel’s #MeToo story a turning point, one which highlights not the individual — even she expressed regret that it fell on one man — but on a society which believes victimization is in any way excusable.

* * *

“It’s possible for society to act differently,” Haenel said. “It’s better for everyone, firstly for the victims but even for the torturers to look themselves in the face. That’s what being human is. It’s not about crushing people and trying to gain power, it’s about questioning yourself and accepting the multi-dimensional side of what a human being is. That’s how we build high society.” Up until this point we have been primarily concerned with identifying the bad seeds and having them punished and even removed, without really wrestling with the environment in which they have grown — doing that means facing ourselves as well. We name names and call out institutions — like Hollywood awards and the British royal family — and then what? What remains is the same system that produced these individuals, these same individuals simply establishing new institutions with the same foundations. Identifying what’s wrong doesn’t tell us what’s right. It wasn’t until Haenel was introduced to a filmmaking crew that was entirely female, that listened to her and supported her, that she could identify not just what shouldn’t be, but what should. “What society do we want?” she asked. “It’s about that too.”

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

ladystylestores · 4 years

Text

Edtech is surging, and parents have some notes – TechCrunch

Unlike most sectors, edtech has been booming over the last few months. Flashcards startup Quizlet is now a unicorn, digital textbook company Top Hat is finding unprecedented surges in usage and student success business Edsights raised nearly $2 million from high-profile investors, all from inbound interest. Investors are so confident that homeschooling might become a trend that they just invested $3.7 million in Primer, which creates a “full-stack infrastructure” to help parents get started.

But as tired parents juggle work, family and sanity all day, nearly every day, they say edtech is not a remedy for all education gaps right now.

Parents across all income groups are struggling with homeschooling.

“Our mental health is like whack-a-mole,” said Lisa Walker, the vice president of brand and corporate marketing at Fuze. Walker, who lives in Boston but has relocated to Vermont for the pandemic, has two kids, ages 10 and 13. “One person is having a good day. One person is having a bad day, and we’re just going throughout the family to see who needs help.”

Socioeconomically disadvantaged families have it even worse because resources are strapped and parents often have to work multiple jobs to afford food to put on the table.

One major issue for parents is balancing a decrease in live learning with an uptick in “do it at your own pace” learning.

Walker says she is frustrated by the limited amount of live interaction that her 10-year-old has with teachers and classmates each day. Once the one hour of live learning is done, the rest of the school day looks like him sitting in front of a computer. Think pre-recorded videos, followed up by an online quiz, capped with doing homework on a Google doc.

Asynchronous learning is complicated because, while it is not interactive, it is more inclusive of all socioeconomic backgrounds, Walker said. If all learning material is pre-recorded, households that have more kids than computers are less stressed to make the 8 a.m. science class, and can fit in lessons by taking turns.

“Even though I know there’s a lot of video fatigue out there, I would love there to be more live learning,” Walker said. “Tech is both part of the problem and part of the solution.”

TraLiza King, a single mother living in Atlanta who works full time as a senior tax manager for PWC, points out the downside of live video instruction when it comes to working with younger children.

One challenge is overseeing her four-year-old’s Zoom calls. King needs to be available to help her daughter, Zoe, use the platform, which isn’t intuitive for kids at that age. She helps Zoe log on and off and mute when appropriate so instruction can go on interrupted, ironically enough.

Her 18-year-old college freshman could supervise the four-year-old’s learning, but King doesn’t want her older daughter to feel responsible for teaching. It leaves King to play the role of Zoom tech support, and teacher, in addition to mom and full-time employee.

“This has been a double-edged sword; there’s beauty in it that I get to see what my girls are learning and be a part of their everyday,” she said. “But I am not a preschool teacher.”

Some parents are finding success in pretending it is business as normal. The moment that Roger Roman, the founder of Los Angeles-based Rythm Labs, and his wife saw that there was a shutdown, they scrambled to create a schedule for the children. Breakfast at 6 a.m., physical education right after, and then workbook time and homework time. If their five-year-old checks all the boxes, he can “earn” 30 minutes of screen time.

The Roman family’s schedule for their child.

Technology definitely helps. Roman says he relies on a few apps like Khan Academy Kids and Leapfrog to give him some time to take work calls or meetings. But he says those have been more like supplements instead of replacements. In fact, he says one big solution he found is a bit more low-tech.

“Printers have been a godsend,” he said

The kids being at home has also given the Roman family an opportunity to address the racial violence and police brutality in our country. The existing school curriculums around history have been scrutinized for lacking a comprehensive and accurate account of slavery and Black leaders. Now, with parents at home, those disparities are even more clear. Depending on the household, the gaps around education on slavery can either inspire a difficult conversation on inequality in the country, or leave the talk tabled for schools to reopen.

Roman says he doesn’t remember a time where he wasn’t aware of racism and injustice, and assumes the same will be true for his sons.

“The murders of Ahmaud, Breonna, and George have forced my wife and me to be brutally honest with my five-year-old about this country’s long, dark history of white supremacy and racial oppression,” he said. “We didn’t expect to have these discussions so soon with him, but he’s had a lot of questions about the images he’s been seeing, and we’ve confronted them head-on.”

Roman used books to help illustrate racism to his sons. Edtech platforms have largely been silent on how they’re addressing anti-racism in their platforms, but Quizlet says it is “pulling together programming that can make a real impact.”

What’s next for remote learning?

In light of the struggles parents and educators alike are seeing with the current set of online learning tools and their inability to inspire young learners, new edtech startups are thinking about how the future of remote learning might look.

Zak Ringelstein, the co-founder of Zigazoo, is launching a platform he describes as a “TikTok for kids.” The app is for children from preschool to middle school, and invites users to post short-form videos in response to project-based prompts. Exercises could look like science experiments — like building a baking soda volcano or recreating the solar system from household items — and the app is controlled by parents.

The first users are Ringlestein’s kids. He says they became disengaged with learning when it was just blind staring at screens, leading him to conclude that interaction is key. Down the road, Zigazoo plans to forge partnerships with entertainment companies to have characters act as “brand ambassadors” and feature in the short-form video content. Think “Sesame Street” characters starting a TikTok trend to help kids learn what photosynthesis is all about.

A preview of Zigazoo, a “TikTok for kids” and its video-based prompts“As an educator, I’ve been surprised at how little content exists for parents that is not just entertaining but is actually educational,” he said.

Lingumi is a platform that teaches toddlers critical skills, like learning English. The company began because preschool classes are packed with so many students that teachers can’t give one on one feedback during the “sponge-like years.” Lingumi uses another startup, SoapBox, and its voice tech to listen and understand children, assess how they are pronouncing words and judge fluency.

“Edtech products were designed to work in the classroom and a teacher was supposed to be in the mix somewhere,” said Dr. Patricia Scanlon, the CEO of SoapBox. “Now, the teacher can’t be with the kids individually and this is a technology that gives updates on children’s progress.”

Another app, Make Music Count, was started by Marcus Blackwell to help students use a digital keyboard to solve math equations. It serves 50,000 students in more than 200 schools, and recently landed a partnership with Cartoon Network and Motown records to use content as lessons for followers. If you log onto the app, you are presented with a math problem that, once solved, tells you which key to play. Once you solve all the math problems in the set, the keys you played line up to play popular songs from artists like Ariana Grande and Rihanna.

youtube

The app is using a well-known strategy called gamification to engage its younger users. Gamification of learning has long been effective in engaging and contextualizing studies for students, especially younger ones. Add a sense of accomplishment, like a song or a final product, and kids get the positive feedback they’re looking for. The strategy is found in the underpinnings of some of the most successful education companies we see today, from Quizlet to Duolingo.

But in Make Music Count’s case, it’s forgoing gamification’s usual trappings, like points, badges and other in-app rewards to instead deliver something far more fun than virtual items: music that kids enjoy and often seek out on their own.

Gamification, much like technology more broadly, is not all-encompassing of the deeply personal and hands-on aspects of school. Yet that is what parents need right now. We’re left with a reminder that technology can only help so much in a remote-only world, and that education has always been more than just comprehension and test-taking.

The missing piece to edtech: School isn’t just learning, it’s childcare

At the end of the day, if the future of work is remote, parents will need more support with childcare assistants. Some startups trying to help that include Cleo, a parenting benefits startup that recently partnered with on-demand childcare service UrbanSitter.

“As working moms desperate for a solution to the crisis facing parents today, we were focused on developing a solution that didn’t just work for our members and enterprise clients, but also one that we’d use ourselves. After experimenting and trying everything from virtual care to scheduling shifts to looking for new caregivers ourselves, we realized the only solution that would work for families would require a new model of childcare designed for the unique issues COVID-19 has created,” Cleo CEO Sarahjane Sacchetti told TechCrunch in May.

Sara Mauskopf, the co-founder of childcare marketplace Winnie, said that tech companies trying to help remote learning need to remember that “it’s not just the education aspect that has to be solved for.”

“School is a form of childcare,” she said.

“The thing that irks me is that I see these tweets all the time that ‘more people are going to homeschool than ever before,” Mauskopf said. “But no one is going to feed my toddler mac and cheese or change their diaper.”

Source link

قالب وردپرس

from World Wide News https://ift.tt/2YgZ0fe

#World Wide News

0 notes

hypertagmaster · 7 years

Text

2017 Content Excellence Challenge: The April Prompts

It’s April! Don’t ask me where March went, because I have no idea. But it’s time once again for a pair of Content Excellence Challenge prompts.

Each month this year, we’ll give you two prompts — one intended to make you a better writer and one intended to make you a more productive one.

This month’s prompts both share a creative dimension and an ultra pragmatic one. Because creativity and pragmatism are like air and water — you need both of them to make it.

Ready or not, here we go:

The April Creativity Prompt

Remember last month’s creative challenge to find keywords?

(If you did that one, drop a note in the comments and gloat over the lesser mortals who didn’t quite get around to it. You know you want to.)

This month we’re approaching the same critter, but with a different net.

Starting today, every day until the next Content Challenge post, go to a social media site and copy some phrases written by your target audience.

Let’s face it; you’re already hanging out there anyway. And while we all definitely want to know what you think about Bulletproof Coffee, you might as well use that time to do some listening, too.

Write down, word for word, what people are saying about your topic. You might find a phrase, a sentence, or a full paragraph … you never know what’s going to show up on a given day.

You’re looking for:

Frustrations

Rants

Questions

Irritations

Failures

Embarrassments

Triumphs

Important: Make sure you label these as someone else’s words when you copy them down. You can use something crazy like quotation marks and the name of the person who originally wrote it. Date each entry, with a note about where you found it.

You don’t want to come back to this in six months, think you wrote these phrases, and accidentally plagiarize someone else’s wording.

What you’re mining for are scraps. Word choices. Conceptual frameworks. Mindsets. Approaches.

These words and phrases are idea seeds for your content — seeds you can grow into blog posts, podcast scripts, and maybe even entire products and services.

Now let’s talk about a productivity tool to help you find those again when you need them.

The April Productivity Prompt

You may have noticed that there’s been something of a resurgence in journaling lately. If you’re ever on Instagram, Pinterest, or YouTube, you may have seen people who keep “bullet journals” — Ryder Carroll’s name for an originally simple set of ways to keep lists and notes.

Some people’s bullet journals are Instagram masterpieces, with color-coded tracking systems, calligraphy flourishes for every day, and “spreads” showing impeccably illustrated weekly grocery lists.

I’m going to propose something a little less curated than that.

This month, if you don’t have one yet, start a creative journal. I suggest that great creative journals tend to have three qualities: They are Messy, Private, and Inclusive.

In my experience, creative people need journals. They’re the greenhouses where we grow ideas. And the laboratories where we practice fiendish experiments.

Journals should be messy. An impeccable, Instagram-ready journal is something different. It’s a creative output … a finished piece of art. But you need a journal for creative process and input.

Creative journals should have false starts, rabbit holes, ugly drawings, stupid sentences, bad ideas, and other embarrassments.

Journals should be private. Because a good creative journal is embarrassing, it’s a great idea to keep it private.

There might be something cool in there that you do want to share. There often is. Go ahead and share it … selectively.

But a creative journal is mostly about private exploration, not public showing off.

Journals should be inclusive. Most of my life I’ve balanced piles of notebooks — maybe one for sketching, one for work, one for to-do lists, one for creative ideas, one for quotes.

I’m coming around to the benefit of dumping the whole mess into one bucket.

My (very ugly) bullet journal has to-do lists, project notes, content plans for the blog and the podcast, thoughts about habits, thoughts about my business, quotes, doodles, sketches, workout notes, the recurring script for my podcast intro, product ideas, call notes, grand ideas for the future, and all manner of lists.

No one wants to see a YouTube video of my bullet journal.

If you keep a journal like this digitally, and you haven’t tried paper for a while … allow me to suggest that you try it out. There’s something deeply creatively satisfying about an actual object stuffed with ideas — a collection of digital notes just doesn’t spark the same excitement.

A creative journal is a place to capture the sparks that float past. It’s a space to experiment, plan, or just goof around. It’s a home for random thoughts and interesting brainworms. It’s where you store dreams that scare you a little.

Flip through your journal sometimes. (You’ll find yourself doing that automatically when you need a content idea or think of a use for that reference note.)

Those social media phrases you’re finding from our first prompt? Copying them into a blank book would be a great way to kick off a new journal.

A final word on keeping a journal: We might need a word for the folks who keep them, but that word is not journalist. I know I am old-fashioned, but I’m clinging to that one for my friends and colleagues who went to journalism school, have put their time in for lousy pay under intense deadlines, and who have the job of defending democracy from charlatans and lunatics.

What do you think?

Journals are, by nature, intensely personal … and you might have strong opinions about them that conflict with my strong opinions about them. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Let us know in the comments — do you keep a journal? Ever try a bullet journal? What works well for you to wrangle your ideas and find them when you need them?

The post 2017 Content Excellence Challenge: The April Prompts appeared first on Copyblogger.