Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin's JournalTraditional TV 'past the point of no return' as viewership hits record low
Traditional TV viewing is falling off a cliff.
According to the latest data from Nielsen, linear TV viewership fell below 50% in July for the first time. Broadcast and cable each hit a new low of 20% and 29.6% of total TV usage, respectively, to combine for a linear television total of 49.6%.
Time spent streaming (via a television) increased 2.9% in July compared with June, according to the data, to reach a record of 38.7% of total TV usage. YouTube (GOOGL), Netflix (NFLX), and Amazon Prime Video (AMZN) all saw month-over-month viewership increases of 5.6%, 4.2%, and 5%, respectively, in July.
"Linear TV [is] past the point of no return," Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen wrote in a note to clients on Monday, adding the revenue line for cable and satellite operators is "probably permanently negative" as pricing fails to drive upside while TV advertising growth stalls.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/traditional-tv-past-the-point-of-no-return-as-viewership-hits-record-low-191100458.html
I'm going to cancel cable soon and go to streaming service as soon as I get my internet speed upped.
Starbucks nears rollout of time-saving 'Siren System' in stores
Starbucks Corp. (Nasdaq: SBUX) is getting closer to debuting its Siren System, the back-of-house technologies aimed at reducing time it takes to brew drinks and prepare food.
First debuted at the company's investor day in September, the time- and labor-saving system is the main piece of the Seattle coffee giant's $450 million effort to streamline store operations. It is set to begin rolling out to U.S. coffee shops in the third quarter of 2023, head of North America operations Sara Trilling said during Tuesday's call with investors.
"These stations have already shown measurable impact on both productivity as well as throughput," Trilling said. "We're quite bullish on them."
Tuesday's call was led for the first time by new CEO Laxman Narasimhan. The longtime consultant and former Reckitt CEO emphasized efficiency, pledging to drive profit margins by streamlining operations, from simplifying the types of cups and lids Starbucks buys to the way it brews coffee.
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2023/05/02/laxman-first-earnings-call-siren-system.html
So now that things are more efficient can you start paying your employees a decent wage?
Biden administration suspends oil and gas leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Source: Washington Post
The Biden administration Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, overturning one of President Donald Trump’s most significant environmental acts during his last days in office.
The move by the Interior Department, which could spark a major legal battle, aims to unwind nearly a dozen leases in the heart of a pristine expanse in Alaska that Republicans and Democrats have fought over for four decades. The Trump administration auctioned off the right to drill in the refuge’s coastal plain — home to hundreds of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl as well as the southern Beaufort Sea’s remaining polar bears — just two weeks before President Biden was inaugurated.
In Tuesday’s Interior Department order, Secretary Deb Haaland said that a review of the Trump administration’s leasing program in the wildlife refuge found “multiple legal deficiencies” including “insufficient analysis” required by environmental laws and a failure to assess other alternatives. Haaland’s order calls for a temporary moratorium on all activities related to those leases in order to conduct “a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.”
-snip-
The Jan. 6 sale of 11 tracts in the refuge on just over 550,000 acres netted roughly $14 million, a tiny fraction of what Republicans initially predicted it would yield. Only two of the bids were competitive, so nearly all of the drilling rights on the land sold for the minimum price of $25 an acre.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/01/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/
So it was basically a give away to the oil companies.
Democratic Voters' Second Choices Show How Fluid The 2020 Primary Race Is
If I had to pick one word to describe the Democratic presidential primary, it would be “fluid.” The field of candidates is sprawling, and almost a year remains before the first nominating contest. In primaries, voters are more prone to changing their minds than they are in general elections, so Democratic voters’ preferences will likely change several times between now and next spring.
It can therefore be useful in early polls to know not only which candidate is a voter’s first choice, but also who her backup is. In its weekly tracking poll of the 2020 Democratic presidential field, the pollster Morning Consult has been asking voters just that. And while the results might not be too surprising — former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders are consistently voters’ second choices, just like they are voters’ first choices in almost every other national poll — they do highlight the limitations in how the media (including FiveThirtyEight) analyzes presidential primaries. Namely, the blocs/corners/lanes/circles we try to fit candidates and voters into are a lot messier in real life than we sometimes imagine.
FIRST CHOICE BIDEN (30%) SANDERS (21%) HARRIS (11%) WARREN (8%) O’ROURKE (7%)
SECOND CHOICE Sanders (24%) Biden (26%) Biden (19%) Sanders (22%) Biden (20%)
SECOND CHOICE Harris (11%) Warren (16%) Warren (13%) Biden (18%) Sanders (18%)
SECOND CHOICE Warren (10%) O’Rourke (6%) Sanders (11%) Harris (13%) Harris (13%)
The first lesson from this table is that early primary polls are, in large part, driven by name recognition. At this stage, voters may have only heard of a few of these candidates, and chances are two of them are Biden and Sanders (who are the two best-known candidates in the field). So of course they are a respondent’s second or third choice (if not his first).
The second lesson is that “lane” analysis, or the idea that candidates are competing for support within different wings of the party (e.g., the “establishment lane”), can be overrated. This isn’t meant as shade — FiveThirtyEight has classified its own wings of the party, too. It’s just important to remember that this kind of analysis has its flaws and limitations, particularly this early out. Other than both being white men, Biden and Sanders are about as different as Democrats in 2020 can get: one is establishment to the bone with a less-than-purely liberal record, while the other is a grassroots-backed insurgent who identifies as a socialist. And yet more than a quarter of Biden supporters say Sanders is their second choice, and more than a quarter of Sanders supporters say Biden is their second choice.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-there-really-lanes-in-the-2020-democratic-primary/
The numbers I show were copied from morning consultant poll not the 538 article. There seems to be a slight discrepancy is the numbers.
https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Political-Intelligence-2.19.19.pdf
Trump and Putin discuss coordinating on ISIS and Syria, Kremlin says
Source: Washington Post
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had their first official phone conversation Saturday, agreeing to partner in the fight against terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict and to forge stronger economic and political ties between their two countries, the Kremlin said.
At a moment of badly strained relations between the United States and Russia, Trump has hoped to cultivate “a great relationship” with Putin despite domestic pressures to maintain sanctions against Moscow.
Trump’s call with Putin was one in a series of conversations he had Saturday with world leaders as he seeks to develop a personal rapport with the heads of such traditional U.S. allies as France, Germany and Japan.
His conversation with Putin comes during a period of tension for the two countries brought by Russia’s role in the Ukrainian crisis and the war in Syria, as well as the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Putin ordered systematic hacking of Democratic emails to tip the presidential election in Trump’s favor.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-holds-calls-with-putin-leaders-from-europe-and-asia/2017/01/28/42728948-e574-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.40f9031bf4c4&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-world%252Bnation#comments
Harrop: Taking leave of Facebooks fake news, echo chambers
Dear Facebook friends:
If you don’t see me gushing over the pix of your Thanksgiving pies, take no offense. It’s not that your pie is a bore (though, frankly, it is). And it’s not because I unfriended you. It’s because Facebook has become a platform for the sort of fake news stories that helped elect Donald Trump. In doing so, Facebook undermines our civic culture — its creepy smile floating overhead.
I’m so out of there. I’ve wanted to quit for a long time, having wearied of friends’ pictorials of their idyllic family and personal lives. I know for a fact that some of the most glowing portrayals come (mostly) from women who couldn’t make it to noon without a fistful of meds. I still love them, and if they wish to connect, they have my number.
Though hyper-partisan fake news stories have come from both the left and the right, Facebook entrepreneurs know that the money is in plowing the Trumpian fields. And for all the patriotic memes, foreigners are behind much of the manipulation of the American public.
Kids in a town in Macedonia (that’s near Greece) created more than 100 pro-Trump websites, spreading phony reports such as FBI plans to indict Hillary Clinton. The Make America Great page outsources the writing of fraudulent news to a couple in the Philippines.
http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/harrop-taking-leave-of-facebooks-fake-news-echo-chambers/
I tend to concur with this editorial. Since the election I doubt I've spent more than ten minutes a day on Facebook
Letter from a teacher - 10 REASONS I’M WALKING OUT
My sister who teaches at the Quincy school district shared this on Facebook.
10 REASONS I’M WALKING OUT
That have nothing to do with teacher pay
By Jon McClintick, National Board Certified Teacher
Othello High School
The news has been reporting about local teacher unions staging one-day walkouts due to “funding.” The reports generally explain that teachers want more pay from the state legislator, right before moving to Steve with the weather.
The problem is, there is so much wrong right now with Washington State Public Education that the legislature in Olympia has caused, that to even bring up teacher pay misses the point! Our schools are in need, and pay is only a small part of the equation!
I could write a book about all the problems we are facing, but I’m walking out next week, so who has the time? So here are 10 reasons why I will be demonstrating with my local union - and Olympia can fix each of them without sending me another dollar.
1: Cut the focus on High-Stakes Tests - The SBAC exam is the newest flavor of high stakes test. At the start of this school year, I had not read a single SBAC test question, because most of them had not been written. Yet by November, we were told that our students would have to pass this brand new test in order to graduate!
I try to focus on teaching reading and writing every day, so I avoid test prep whenever I can. With my minimum focus, my 11th grade English class lost 18 days due to practice tests and the actual exam. That’s 10% of the the academic year! And the best part: 11th grade students didn’t need the test to graduate. The state mandated that they take it so we could have baseline data about student scores. 10% of my class time lost, so Olympia could “checkup” on us. Please, Olympia, stop rushing these new tests, and just let me teach.
2: Bring back Arts and History: This fall, no one in my advanced English 11 course could tell me why 1776 was an important year. Why? Because our school is judged on how well it performs in Math, Science, Reading and Writing. Those subjects determine if we are a failing or passing school. I shudder at the gutting of art, history, music, PE, and recess, in the name of raising our score.
It’s not just vital history that suffers. The “test and drill” mantra has killed the love of reading for most of my students, so that every year I hear multiple students in my class admit, “This is the first book I’ve ever bothered to read.” Olympia sees my school and my students as numbers, not as people - and that kills the humanity within the humanities.
3: Stop Demonizing Vocations: The word from OSPI is that to succeed, a student must attend college. The state calls it a, “13th year plan.” The problem is that this mindset tells students that “to be important they must go to a university. Armed services are for losers. worthwhile vocational careers like plumbers, electricians, construction workers, mechanics, or machinists are not worthwhile.” I’ve seen too many students heed the call of college, take out thousands in loans, and then fail out due to lack of support or understanding of college culture. We once had an auto shop; now we have student loan debt.
-more-
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uAwP_veGaBQTnbSzZX1dmYBkn_b5SiErfoSiTljNmSU/edit?pli=1
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