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The Kids are Alright: An Interview with Eugene Wei and Julie Young (Gift Culture, Part 4)
Welcome to the fourth and final segment in this series on Gift Culture at the Online Frontier. If you missed any of the first three, you can catch up here:
Gift Culture, Part 1: Homesteading the Twittersphere
Gift Culture, Part 2: The SE Suite, An interview with Julie Young
Gift Culture, Part 3: Scarcity Status versus Abundance Status
Today Julie is back with us to help close things out, along with our second very special guest, coming in to bat cleanup: Eugene Wei.
If you've spent any time on Tech Twitter (or even just reading this newsletter), you've found Eugene's Tweets, writing and exquisite insight everywhere. (You can read his essays here.) Eugene has worked at the intersection of tech and media at Amazon, Hulu, Flipboard, Oculus, and spent a year in the middle of it in film school. He recently wrote a notable essay on internet status and social networks that helped inspire this series:
Status as a Service | Eugene Wei
Please enjoy as Eugene and Julie chat about the early internet, forums and newgroups, the path to today's social networks, social status and gift culture, and how teenagers always show us the way.
Alex: I want to start by asking both of you a question, and this is a question where every time I ask it always ends up revealing something fascinating and interesting. The question is: Where was the first place you Posted?
Eugene: My very very first post was on some BBS a friend of my cousin's ran when I was in high school. We used these BBS's to trade shareware or ripped games to play on our PCs. The first time I chatted live with someone was on a BBS, it was as magical as Alexander Graham Bell making the first phone call.
But perhaps my first real public post was in some newsgroup, it may have been rec.arts.comics.misc when I was a junior or senior at Stanford. This was before Mosaic had come out so newsgroups were like the only online communities to hang out in.
The internet population was tiny compared to what it is today, and these communities felt cozy and intimate. A lot of the people who were in these groups were accessing them as students at universities or workers at government agencies. It was a geeky crowd but everything felt more civil.
Julie: I first posted on Xanga (hell yeah), but it wasn't until I got a Myspace in 6th or 7th grade that I really got into "social networking." I can remember learning how to copy/paste HTML into my page so I could have a cool background. I spent HOURS looking for the perfect emo song (remember when our profiles could have SONGS?) that would cryptically convey my deep, complicated 7th grade self.
AIM profiles weirdly played a big role in middle school social networking, too. I can remember obsessing over reading through all of my classmates' AIM profiles. It was the first thing that got updated whenever someone had a new bf/gf lol. It was also really cool when someone made a shout-out to you in there. It was a way to show off that you were friends with someone. I can VIVIDLY remember feeling lame because I didn't have enough friends to shout out in my profile so I actually MADE SOME UP ("you don't know them, they go to a different school"). 😂
Alex: Yeah, AIM. AIM was honestly the whole world. I'm floored that no modern messaging service has brought back away messages. For me, though, the first place I ever really posted posted was the Wizards of the Coast online MTG forums, back around 2001-2003. It looks like WotC shut them down several years ago, which is a bummer, although understandable since I'm sure a lot of it had naturally migrated over to Reddit and Tumblr by then.
Still, there's something to be said for those intensely domain-specific newsgroups and forums and the real sense of community they created.
Eugene: A year or two out of college, I really got into the X-Files, but only after two seasons of the show had already aired. DVDs hadn't launched yet, and those episodes weren't in syndication, I didn't know how to find them. So I went on some X-Files newsgroup and asked if anyone had taped the first two seasons and would be willing to transfer them to VHS tapes for me. Someone responded that they would if I sent them enough blank VHS tapes.
I mailed this total stranger a box of blank VHS tapes and a few weeks later the box came back, with every episode taped and labeled. Back then, to transfer episodes, you had to record each one in linear time. At 24 episodes per season, that person had to run two VHS machines for 33 to 34 hours straight. It still might be one of the kindest things any stranger online has ever done for me.
Subreddits are like emergent newsgroups, but the general tone online is higher variance now. There are still acts of kindness and generosity, but also the possibility of much more random violence and trolling.
Alex: Eugene, you became initiated with the internet in a different time than Julie or I did, but I bet if we went back in time we'd recognize that a lot of the internet culture – so like the words we use for things, the speech patterns, the internet poster shorthand, which since grown and evolved and meme-fied – is pretty much the same. I'm curious what you think are the core tenets of internet posting culture, and internet "abundance culture" if you want to call it that, which we basically figured out early on and have since endured.
Eugene: That's a really kind way to say, "Eugene, you are an old geezer." Haha! At least I'm not a boomer.
Yes, I like to think of the early internet as the Wild West in early America, but even emptier, with no native population, and even more expansive. Just vast open spaces waiting to be built upon and claimed. Recall that this was a time when the leading search engine was Yahoo, with a hand-curated directory of all the sites worth visiting. We joke now about sometimes browsing online for so long that you reach the end of the internet, but back then there actually were days when I felt like I'd visited every website on the planet, waiting to see what Yahoo's Site of the Day to be announced the next day.
There was no identity graph like Facebook back then, often all you had on someone was their email address. And while you might find a scant few nuggets of information by running their email address through a WHOIS, for the most part the internet consisted entirely of strangers.
So in a low-trust environment with total strangers, communicating predominantly via text, people quickly started inventing workarounds for the limitations of text. For example, one thing we've long known is that text often does a poor job conveying tone, especially subtle modes of expression like sarcasm or irony or jest. It took just a few instances of misunderstandings and bruised feelings before people invented emoticons. A well placed =) after what sounded like an insult would turn it into a friendly jibe.
But, more to your point, we did see a lot of the early signs of the gift culture you identify as characteristic of spheres of abundance. In fact, even minus an explicit identity graph, even minus explicit mechanisms of feedback and status like the "like button" or "upvotes" and leaderboards, you already saw, in newsgroups, an explosion of activity fueled by nothing more than intangible rewards like reputation.
In many newsgroups, volunteers would write and maintain an extensive FAQ, a convention borrowed from mailing lists. The more you contributed, the more you could make your reputation as a valuable member of a newsgroup. There were no usernames back then but some people adopted one for their posts and became known for those pseudonyms. All the motivational dynamics that would later allow for the building of something like Wikipedia from the community existed in forums back then.
Alex: Really reminds me of a line from ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar on why open-source software communities produce such great documentation, even though writing documentation is the last thing that hackers themselves wanted to be doing:
Many people (especially those who politically distrust free markets) would expect a culture of self-directed egoists to be fragmented, territorial, wasteful, secretive, and hostile. But this expectation is clearly falsified by (to give just one example) the stunning variety, quality and depth of Linux documentation.It is a hallowed given that programmers hate documenting; how is it, then, that Linux hackers generate so much of it? Evidently Linux's free market in [gift culture] works better to produce virtuous, other-directed behavior than the massively-funded documentation shops of commercial software producers.
Eugene: I do think we've seen a big shift in the internet abundance culture thanks to the commodification of interaction. In the early days of the internet, and even in the blog era, there were no simple one-click feedback mechanisms such as like buttons. To give feedback, to even exist, you had to post something. Even if it was typing out "Thx!" in response to someone's post on a forum.
In the blog era, there were attempts to build out more systematic connective social tissue, like trackbacks, webrings, things like that, but these were completely trampled by social networks like Facebook which built from the social graph out, rather than from the content out. They built out social feedback mechanisms of unparalleled scale and simplicity.
But classic economic theory predicts that the costliest signals are the strongest signals, and something about just mashing like buttons as the basic unit of interaction in this attention economy cheapens the connections. You end up with a social graph of very weak ties.
In a way, the more costly signals required in the early gift culture economy of the internet allowed it to feel more harmonious despite being a low trust environment. Modern social networks are at a much larger scale. One might expect that with the more developed identity layer of today's internet that trust would be higher. However, our largest modern social networks are built around public feeds where many strangers collide, and these companies haven't solved the interactions between those people with low trust and often divergent viewpoints.
Another critical change from then to now is the rise of the machine learning algorithms that selectively amplify the distribution of certain posts. It's difficult to describe how different the pre-turbocharged algorithmically determined feed internet felt compared to today's hyper-accelerated information environment. Back then forums felt like cozy rural communes, today's social media driven environment is like the urban jungle. To the extent that the feed algorithm is accurate, it feels meritocratic, but a lot of the content that gets amplified today is just clickbait or outrage fodder. This contributes to the sense of living in a high inequality information environment.
Users have so many repetitions on social media, they learn what the algorithms rewards very quickly. The rise of fortune cookie Twitter is in large part because posting pithy if somewhat trite aphorisms really works, many get hundreds of likes. Clickbait titles are commonplace now because they also work.
This is not to just be a "things were better in the old days" rant. But I do think in the era of growth teams running wild with machine learning algorithms, we accelerated distribution incentives to drive engagement before we really knew what incentives were being created in the internet economy. And now the larger social networks are grappling with some of the unintended consequences.
One of the refreshing things about TikTok is that its algorithm ends up being pretty harsh. Many creators may have one video that gets the TikTok FYP algorithmic boost, but then you browse their profile and see all their other videos have only a tiny number of views. These are like one-hit wonders in music. Even if you have one breakout video, if TikTok screens your next video to an initial test audience and they don't respond, they will drastically reduce its FYP airplay. It's harder to "game" the TikTok algorithm and that makes it feel like a more meritocratic attention economy.
Alex: When I think about where on the internet gift culture really hit its stride, and found a really resonant form factor for self-expression, the two places that come to mind for me are Tumblr and Snap.
With Tumblr especially, I feel like there's an Almost-Fortune-Cookie level sound byte like, "In the year 2060 all of human culture will have descended from Tumblr." Was Tumblr the very beginning of "post-internet scarcity?" It felt that way sometimes. It was the wackiest place, and yet there were rules, there was a highly evolved culture, that felt, as ESR put it, like "an adaptation to abundance rather than to scarcity."
Eugene: I know so many people who'd still tell you that Tumblr is their favorite social network and that they miss its heyday dearly. In music, you might say that digital sampling and remixing mark the modern era in some ways. Tumblr was remixing brought to social media and does predict much of today's meme-heavy internet.
Tumbling felt like surfing the mental preoccupations of very online people, their brain cells connected in a cultural mesh where text, images, videos, and ideas raced from one Tumblr to the next, mutating and recombining with every hop.
Perhaps because it grew up in an era of abundance, Tumblr was characterized by a deep well of generosity. It was expected that you might grab something from someone and remix it and pass it along for others to play with.
The closest replication of Tumblr's creative network effects today is on TikTok where every video and meme can be remixed in multiple ways. Still, the bar for creation, despite TikTok's really powerful camera editing tools, is higher than on Tumblr.
I miss Tumblr, though I suspect some of its spirit will continue to come back in different forms on our way to living in the metaverse, when sheer digitization of so much of our reality removes some of the last forms of real-world scarcity left.
Alex: Snap, also, just instinctively feels to me like a company that would get "new scarcity" right. Snap streaks and scores and Best Friends and all that were just really on-the-nose correct intuitions about what is scarce to us, or at least to teenagers. But the product has also continued to evolve, and still feel really fresh.
Julie: One thing I have always loved about Snap is that so much of the product mirrors the question, "What would this exchange be like if we were IRL?" In real life, pretty much all of our conversations are ephemeral, just like they are on Snap.
It's also noteworthy that Snap group chats seem to encourage presence above all else. I mean, this is a multibillion dollar company that decided to send a freaking push notification when "someone is typing" lmao – who does that? It's so ridiculous but also so core to what Snapchat is. I know from experience that it really incentivizes me to have real-time communications with someone.
When I speak to teenagers about Snapchat, a lot of them will say things like, "I add everyone on Snap – I only have someone's phone number if we are REALLY close." They'll also say things like "Snapping someone is very casual. IMessage is very formal." I'm not sure what exactly Snapchat is capturing here, but it feels scarce. While so many of the other social platforms are permanent and feel like a destination, Snapchat is more of a living, changing thing.
I do think it's true that Snap streaks and Best Friends are correct intuitions about what is scarce to teenagers, but it also feels like these things are kind of antithetical to Snapchat. I don't know why Best Friends got removed, but I'm guessing it was because it incentivized really thirsty behavior. I loved it, but it was honestly so annoying lol. I can remember sending and receiving so many pointless snaps in college just to make it onto people's Best Friends, stalking people to see who they were chatting with, etc. Just a lot of really unnatural, unhealthy behavior – kind of like Myspace Top 8, except on a device that you have with you literally all the time for 100% of your communication haha.
Streaks are better because they aren't a public leaderboard, but they're still pretty unnatural. A lot of people maintain streaks just for the psychological satisfaction of seeing the number go up, not because they have a strong, long-standing relationship with someone. (People would lose their minds if streaks were removed though. My younger cousin has multiple streaks in the 1000's – when she doesn't have access to Wifi for some reason (ex: going on a plane), she will give her login to a friend so that she can log in and keep her streaks for her lol.) I truly wonder how this will end for that generation – I felt SO RELIEVED when I lost my one and only long-running streak. Maybe they will, too.
Alex: Would you say that Gift Culture is a part of how Snap works, or how many of these newer social platforms work, particularly TikTok? There's definitely an element to it that you earn status by doing the work and giving it away, but with a very sophisticated expectation of reciprocation and returns to social status.
Julie: For the typical user, Snapchat feels more like a messaging platform than anything else. It's not really designed for giving things away and getting status on a macro-level like Twitter or Tik Tok.
There're definitely some more micro elements of Gift Culture, especially within group chats. When you capture a particularly funny moment perfectly within a Snap and send it to the group, you are rewarded with "saves" and "screenshots." It makes you feel special and appreciated. Is this really Gift Culture though? Maybe it's just what it feels like to have great friends. It's sort of the digital equivalent to telling a funny story during Wine Night and being rewarded with laughter. There is some status to be obtained, but the cumulative effects are minimal.
Alex: See, to me that's exactly what I mean by "it's gift culture that's found its stride." Gift culture doesn't have to be these big grand gestures. It's the small, little things, like posting something funny and getting screenshots. Screenshotting someone's snap is like an acknowledgement, "that was really good". There's more, though, I'm sure.
Julie: Ah okay, I see what you mean – I guess it's just the status part that feels less scalable on Snap. Another thing that prompts some interesting discussions about Gift Culture is the Explore Tab under the lens carousel. There is an entire world of lens creators who put in time and effort to create cool lenses for Snapchat users. These lenses are accessible to anyone on the platform and can be added to snaps as a more immersive layer of expression. The Lens Studio platform requires some work to figure out how to use, but it is not an insurmountably difficult tool to work with. Lens creators are rewarded for their creativity and effort primarily with status. They aren't paid outright through Snap, but a lot of brands will commission the most established creators for promotions and things like that.
This takes the concept of a "digital economy" to a more explicitly "metaverse-looking" level. It will be cool to see how it grows and matures over time.
I think Discord could be another company right now that is building around these ideas in the right way. Users can start servers and script user-driven processes within them. Status is explicitly determined by your ranking/categorization on the right side of the screen. Ex – there are huge singing discords where kids organize these huge singing competitions in the voice chat (complete with judges, song requests, etc.). The better you do in the contests, the more you (literally) move up the rankings in the server.
Alex: Do you think teenagers understand and experience gift culture differently than adults do?
Eugene: I certainly think teenagers more correctly value digital or intangible goods. I've written before about how unlike adults, most children don't have other easy sources of status like a job, a house, a car, those types of assets. They are more time rich and thus will look to how they can earn status with that time most efficiently.
That's always been true, but today's teenagers are growing up with a much more fully developed virtual economy that they can participate in from the moment they are allowed a smartphone or access to a gaming device. Thus the ability to exchange that time for status is much better than previously. In another era, maybe you were the cool kid at your high school. Today, maybe you become Charli D'Amelio with tens of millions of followers on TikTok.
I can't find this study anymore, maybe someone out there knows what I'm referring to, but there was this study done on Reddit where the payout could be in cash, an Amazon gift card, or Reddit Karma. And by a wide margin, users opted for the Karma, because they recognized it was way more valuable than the other two forms of currency because it had to be earned through a very specific type of exchange in the Reddit economy.
Alex: How would you describe the power that cool teenagers have? It's like, they have power because they are able to give away something that no one, not even the richest or most powerful grownups, are able to give away. What is that though? Maybe it's something so simple as they have time to spare, but it's more than that I think. Maybe cool isn't it, because the not cool kids have it too, a lot of them just don't know it.
Eugene: I love that speech by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, when he tells the protagonist, William, "That's because we're uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter."
And everyone who is or has been a teenager immediately understands just what he means. The teenage economy of cool is a savage yet intricately structured marketplace where humans have to work out how to survive in an open tribal landscape. There's a reason so much YA fiction is dystopic and horrifying like The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner.
Why is it that cool is so often associated with teenagers? I suspect it's because teens live at a very particular juncture in life. They're old enough to be conscious of the dynamics of cool and social status, their tastes are developed enough to have a more refined quality filter on things like music and fashion and other consumer products, but they're not so old that their tastes have ossified or that they've become captive to years of conditioning from the advanced marketing apparatus of capitalism or the sophisticated social conformity pressures of adult society. So we ascribe a more intuitive valence to their judgements of what is cool, what is not.
Since that confluence of conditions is restricted to that particular era in one's life, it comes with built-in scarcity. It's just tough to match that with another form of scarcity. Not impossible, just difficult.
Teenage cool also comes with a somewhat unique overtone of violence. We…errr, maybe I should say I (since I won't speak for either of you, both of you may have been much cooler than I was in high school) certainly felt the sharp end of exclusion from the cool kids group at some points of my childhood. Teenage cool is equal parts love and hate. Late in life, people tend to embrace the things they love, but it's your teenage years when the choice of what is cool to you also draws a sharp line around what is uncool. It's equal parts embrace and negation.
I tend to associate teenage cool with a quality of nihilism. That mix of rebelling against your parents while fighting for survival in the social jungle that is high school while also grappling with the hormonal soup that is your body can give you an edge that is hard to sustain throughout life. At the same time, if you choose to dub something cool despite having to fight through a sustained fog of anger at the world, that is a real gift.
Alex: I was definitely never cool, although my teenage years were probably the local minimum of my relative awareness and social understanding of how the social economy worked, rather than the maximum as it is for many people. Still, you know who the alpha kids were; everyone did. From around age 10-18, between different schools and friend groups, I remained in more or less the same place: I wasn't cool, and my group of close friends wasn't either, but I was always close with one or two actually high-status people.
Mostly I feel like the popular kids then would've been the popular kids now, and the ones with social gifts and graces then would be the same now. But with one caveat. I wonder whether there's been a change in how people perceive "trying", if that makes sense. It used to be that you didn't want to be seen striving too much. And I wonder if the internet and today's social media, which is so performance-y, has changed that.
Julie: The fact that Gen Z grew up with such a mature digital economy makes them so much more skilled at working within it. We laugh about the fact that the most common career aspiration among young kids today is "YouTuber" – but it makes a ton of sense. That kind of career allows you to make content doing what you love, build a company, own your time, and (hopefully) earn a great living while doing it. The younger generation understands this and validates it more so than any generation before it. The concept of a "sell out" doesn't exist for them – making content and monetizing what you've built are all indicators of success that give them status (rather than taking it away).
When thinking about generational differences, I like to think back to the pyramid you mentioned in Part 3. On the bottom of the pyramid, you have self expression (Snapchat), then status (Instagram), and then talent (TikTok). Millennials grew up with a dual expectation of both needing to obtain status online, but also needing to fit into the traditional professional world created by GenX/Boomers. We grew up "rolling our eyes" at the Kardashians' ability to "be famous for being famous" but also loving to regularly tune in to the show.
Ultimately, I think forces like this made it so that millennials have trouble differentiating between the middle and the bottom of the pyramid. The average millennial does not see a difference between an Instagram story and a Snap story or a Snap group chat. (This is why we saw so many reporters writing stories about how Snapchat was dead when it wasn't!) The average millennial sees almost all social media as a way to broadcast. When we "posted on someone's wall" as a "message," we pretended like we were "messaging" even though we knew that the "message" was really a broadcast to be seen and consumed by others — it was a way to gain status.
Gen Z has a higher bullshit detector, presumably because they grew up with the more mature digital ecosystem Eugene mentioned. They have a much clearer understanding of the difference between messaging someone on Snapchat versus broadcasting on your story. On top of that, it's well-understood that you will lose status if you confuse the two (after all, that's what the olds are doing on The Facebook Dot Com!).
This more agile understanding of the digital economy helps explain why Gen Z is so much more prone to Internet entrepreneurship. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are incredible tools for broadcast – and for building a business around that broadcast content. When it comes to messaging friends and expressing themselves, they'll go to Snapchat, iMessage, Discord, and Instagram DMs.
Alex: As tempting as it is to go on for pages more, I think we're going to call it a wrap here – thank you so much Eugene and Julie for taking the time to share all of this with us! I had such a great time getting this together and I'm sure our readers will have an equally good time tuning in.
You can read more from Eugene here, and more from Julie here.
Scarcity Status versus Abundance Status (Gift Culture, Part 3)
Are Founders Allowed to Lie?


There are total 13 letters in Cardiological, Starting with C and ending with L.
Cardiological is a scrabble word? Yes (19 Points) Cardiological has worth 19 Scrabble points.
In Cardiological C is 3rd, A is 1st, R is 18th, D is 4th, I is 9th, O is 15th, L is 12th, G is 7th letters in Alphabet Series.


S: Afghan Immigrants in the U.S.
1: Life in Afghanistan has many disadvantages. The country is very poor, the food is low quality and expensive, and there is a lack of education, health care, jobs and homes. Also, in Afghanistan, capital punishment including cruel ways of execution is legal. | So, it is only natural that the people of Afghanistan would want to move to a place where they could better themselves and improve their way of life.
2: This is where California comes in! Many Afghans made the decision to move to Northern California communities such as Fremont. Within the last 40 years, this community has grown with many diverse populations, mostly Afghans. Fremont is the holder of the largest community of Afghans in the United States.
3: Some Afghans living in Northern California are very successful in the political aspect of American life, but most don't really have a say, because they haven't fully adopted U.S. culture. For example, there are no members of Congress, senators, mayors, or even school board members in Northern California that are part of the Afghan community. The politically isolated community does have "spokesmen," but they speak among themselves about political issues within their own community.
4: On October 10th, 2011, the Afghans in their Californian community walked the streets of Fremont to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the war going on in their homeland against the United States. The people were calling out for peace among countries and when asked if the U.S. should leave Afghanistan, one resident stated, "No, it is not the time to leave. I worry about what would happen to the U.S. if they were to leave Afghanistan." This shows that although it is their mother country, Afghans living in the Fremont community and all over America care about this country and it's well being.
5: In conclusion, there are many Afghans living in Northern California today. Although their way of life is different here and they make it a point to hold on to their mother country's background and its ideas, some Afghans adopt and take part in American culture.


Teaching your young child to read is one of the most satisfying things of all for parents to do with their child. In addition to the pleasure in seeing a little one as they take their first steps to becoming a reader, there are lots of advantages for the child who is given a head-start. It is during these first years that most of the connections in the brain are formed and learning to reading encourages and stimulates that growth. Reading itself expands vocabulary, comprehension and knowledge, opening up a whole new world of learning.
The BRI reading programme makes learning to read just as easy and effortless as possible. It is a thoroughly researched programme that begins with tiny steps and dovetails with the phonics instruction that your child will receive from Reception onwards. What makes BRI books particularly appealing to parents is the combination of child-friendly stories and no-fuss instruction. The simple and precise instruction is readily taken on board in minutes. After this, the first steps in learning to read can begin. It is hard to be prescriptive about when to start but for many children roundabout their fourth birthday is a good time for this. And sticking to bite-size sessions – no more than 5-15 minutes daily – while keeping 'reading time' free from pressure, is important.
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Nun'Álvares Pereira | Article about Nun'Álvares Pereira by The Free Dictionary
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Nun%27%c3%81lvares+Pereira
Nun'Álvares Pereira
Nun'Álvares Pereira:
see Pereira, Nun'ÁlvaresPereira, Nun'Álvares
, 1360–1431, Portuguese hero, called the Great Constable. He was the friend, counselor, and general of John I of Portugal. As a leader of the popular revolt against Castilian domination, he helped John to gain the throne and was the hero of the
Pereira, Nun'Álvares
(no͞on'äl`vərĭsh pərā`rä), 1360–1431, Portuguese hero, called the Great Constable. He was the friend, counselor, and general of John IJohn I
(John the Great), 1357?–1433, king of Portugal (1385–1433), illegitimate son of Peter I. He was made (1364) grand master of the Knights of Aviz and exercised his influence in opposition to Leonor Teles, the queen of his half-brother, Ferdinand I.
..... Click the link for more information. of Portugal. As a leader of the popular revolt against Castilian domination, he helped John to gain the throne and was the hero of the decisive Portuguese victory (1385) at Aljubarrota. In 1415 he took part in the conquest of CeutaCeuta
, city (1994 pop. 71,926), c.7 sq mi (18 sq km), NW Africa, a possession of Spain, on the Strait of Gibraltar. An enclave in Morocco, Ceuta is administered directly by the Spanish government.
..... Click the link for more information. in N Africa. An astute statesman and able strategist, Nun'Álvares was also noted for his religious devotion and for his personal virtue. He ended his years as a monk in a Carmelite monastery that he founded in Lisbon and was beatified by Pope Benedict XV in 1918; his feast is Nov. 6. His daughter Beatriz married Alfonso, an illegitimate son of John I; from this union came the house of BraganzaBraganza
, royal house that ruled Portugal from 1640 to 1910 and Brazil from 1822 to 1889. It took its name from the castle of Braganza or Bragança. The line was descended from Alfonso, the natural son of John I of Portugal, who became the duke of Braganza in 1442.
See biography by E. Battaglia (tr. 1962).
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Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services
Nunavut Act

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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The Forward Delegitimizes Pro-Israel Activism
By: Karen Bekker August 13, 2018
On August 2, the Forward published the first of what is now a series of two articles about "covert tactics targeting Israel's critics," by Josh Nathan-Kazis. ("A New Wave Of Hardline Anti-BDS Tactics Are Targeting Students, And No One Knows Who's Behind It.") This article mainly discusses the work of the Israel on Campus Coalition, both generally and with respect to a BDS resolution at George Washington University this past spring – even though the author tacitly admits that he can't be sure that ICC was even connected to the anti-BDS effort at GWU.
Much of the information about ICC is poorly sourced from "a Jewish communal official who asked not to be named." A bigger issue, however, is the overall tone of the article. It suffers from an apparently deliberate choice to portray this information in such a way as to make it sound like ICC is engaged in a shady conspiracy. For example,
After three years of development, shadowy pro-Israel actors are rolling out a suite of new tactics to oppose the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that are more aggressive, more sophisticated, and more secretive than anything before. …
The people behind these new tactics are going to great lengths to hide their identities, though they seem to be working in concert with each other. They are conducting surveillance on BDS activists. They are creating anonymous pop-up websites that attack activists and student government representatives. They are hiring top-level political strategists and opposition researchers. And in Canary Mission, they are running a long-term campaign to blacklist student activists. (Emphasis added.)
All political movements monitor those working at cross-purposes, but the Forward claims that pro-Israel groups are "conducting surveillance." Exposing people's actual actions is termed "blacklisting," even though Canary Mission does not advocate taking any particular action against the BDS activists — who in fact advocate to blacklist others. Calling such groups "shadowy" is simply a gratuitous slur.
The right to anonymous political speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution. And, of course, Israel's enemies on campus also act in secret, as Nathan-Kazis only briefly acknowledges: "the [GWU BDS] resolution passed by secret ballot on April 23." Yet BDS's tactics are of no importance to him.
The Forward continues, "someone is ramping up a secret, sophisticated campaign against college activists. What's more, they appear to be doing it from somewhere deep inside the American Jewish pro-Israel apparatus." (Emphasis added.)
The overall implication so far is one of a cabal, an impression that is furthered later when Nathan-Kazis tells us that "as the new anti-BDS forces began to get organized, Netanyahu sent a clear signal about how they should fight their battles. … [when he] traveled to Washington, D.C., to address the U.S. Congress." (Emphasis added.) Never mind that the speech in question had nothing to do with BDS, college campuses or the Palestinians; Netanyahu, he implies, controls Jewish American college students.
The pattern continues with the claim that, "the ICC also paid $171,000 that year to Jeff Berkowitz, former research director for the Republican National Committee and one of Washington's most proficient opposition researchers, a renowned expert in the dark art of digging dirt on political opponents." (Emphasis added.)
After a shout-out to CAMERA as part of a "bafflingly long" list of organizations (proudly!) doing pro-Israel work on campuses, the Forward tells us, "the total amount of American Jewish and Israeli government funds flooding the anti-BDS effort is easily in the tens of millions of dollars each year."
Unmentioned by the Forward is the assistance that pro-BDS campus groups get from American Muslims for Palestine. As CAMERA has noted before, "'AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called 'Apartheid Wall,' and grants to SJP activists.' … AMP also has extensive ties to Hamas-linked 'charities,' including the now-defunct Holy Land Foundations (HLF)." HLF and five of its leaders were prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice and convicted of providing material support to terrorists. Similarly, Nathan-Kazis obscures the true nature of BDS and the threat that pro-Israel students are up against. He describes BDS groups merely as "Israel's critics," when the true goal of BDS is to destroy Israel.
Just as the claim that the IDF commits murder, terrorism, and atrocities is an attempt to limit the ability of Jews to defend ourselves physically, the claims that all groups that defend Israel or fight antisemitism are "right-wing" or somehow shady, engaging in immoral tactics, is an attempt to limit the Jews' ability to defend ourselves rhetorically. That this attack was delivered in the Forward should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with that publication, and tells us more about the Forward's depravity than about the organizations on which it is reporting. The false assertion that Jews are behind an international conspiracy to control the world is the focus of the notorious antisemitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and many similar antisemitic smears. Sadly, here it rears its ugly head in the pages of a putatively Jewish publication.
Vox: Explaining the News, Improvising on the Facts
Los Angeles Times Corrects: Gazans Launched Dozens of Flaming Kites, Balloons — Daily
Karen Bekker Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director of CAMERA's Media Response Team. Prior to joining CAMERA, she practiced law for nine years as a commercial litigator.
Josh Nathan-Kazis Forward
Anti-Israel Activism
Anti-Israel Allegations and Libels
Apartheid Canard, BDS and Delegitimization
Israel/Jewish Lobby


Welcome to Amy Kao's (高艾玫) Website!
On the Katie Couric Show in New York City! The Katie Show featured Scholarship America recipients!
Follow Amy's Journey as Miss Connecticut US International 2016!
Amy represented New Haven and was crowned Miss Connecticut US International. Her platform is raising awareness for the special needs community through music.
Blog Highlight: HOLA from Darien, Panama!!
Yes...I am in a tree house (except this is ACTUALLY home sweet home to the indigenous Embera tribe...cool, right?!). This past week was just absolutely AMAZING - We were able to provide sustainable solutions the local NGO Fundación Pro Niños de la Calle, I.A.P., connect the rural communities with alternative water filtration devices to access clean water, and help them with their fundraising strategies for maximum impact.
I am reminded every day of how lucky I am to live the life I live and have the family and friends I have. Life every day is so "busy" in the States, but here in Darien - I have taken a step back and gained an appreciation of the beauty that can be seen through life's simplicity. People here may not have access to the many opportunities or material possessions that we may be privy to, but they are some of the most happy and brilliant people I have met.
Amy Kao is currently Co-Fouonder and Chief Marketing Officer of RxAll. an AI hyderspectral platform for authenticating medicines. She formerly served as a Strategy Consultant for Deloitte and Google. Amy received her MBA from the Yale School of Management and her Bachelors of Science degree from Carnegie Mellon University. An avid pianist and violist, Amy co-founded the International Music and Arts Society (IMAS) in 2010 with the mission of advancing musical and cultural relationships between teachers and students all over the world.
As an experienced emcee and show host, Amy has graced both local and global stages to bring shows alive for her audience. She is currently very involved with emceeings concerts and shows for Ice Pn Television, a global television network for Asian Americans. In the past, Amy has hosted in Italy and China for the International Music Culture Festival. Recently, Amy hosted concert for Li Chuan Yun, a globally acclaimed violinist.
Passionate about contributing to positive change through social impact, she has volunteered on educational and community development projects in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, China, Italy, France, and Taiwan.
An active member of her community, Amy serves as a spokesperson for the developmentally disabled in New Jersey, and currently sits on the board for two non-profits: Musicopia and We Are Impacting Communities (WAICO). She also serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for SimplyHelp Foundation, and has represented the NGO at the CSW conference at the United Nations.
In her spare time, Amy enjoy modeling for commercial print and being a runway model for New York Fashion Week and LA Fashion Week. She is humbled to grace the cover of Fashion Avenue News December 2015 issue.
Amy finished her first 100 mile bike tour in October to raise money for the MS Foundation.
NEW: The Muisc Leadership Inclusion initiative has been successfully launched at the YuChen Children Disability Foundation in Taiwan!
Interested in booking Amy for an appearance?


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By Kaisa Amaral on 15 Dec 2019
MADRID 15 DECEMBER 2019 Governments at the UN climate talks (COP 25) postponed decisions on future carbon market rules after no agreement was reached on the most contentious issues such as the fate of old credits and measures to avoid double-counting. Carbon Market Watch commends countries who defended strong carbon market rules and calls on…
MADRID/BRUSSELS 11 December 2019. The European Green Deal, presented today by the EU Commission, must lead to short-term action and a rapid introduction of a 65% emission reduction target for 2030. Carbon Market Watch welcomes the proposals to include the shipping sector under the EU carbon market and to reduce free allocation for the aviation…
MADRID 10th December 2019. The UN carbon market talks are at a crossroads in Madrid as ministers take over today. Carbon Market Watch calls on governments to only accept a deal that bans old Kyoto credits, includes rules to avoid double-counting, and to ensure that markets reduce emissions, and include strong environmental and social safeguards….
Markets must increase climate action, not undermine it
Carbon Market Watch priorities at the COP25 in Madrid BRUSSELS 27 November 2019. The next round of UN climate talks takes place in Madrid from 2 to 13 December. The future of carbon markets could be a make or break element for climate action as some countries attempt to cash-in on badly designed mechanisms. While…
Over 2 billion surplus pollution permits could flood Europe's carbon market by 2030 – analysis
BRUSSELS 20 September 2019. The EU carbon market is currently unfit to accommodate national coal phase-outs scheduled in Europe. EU policymakers should combine coal plant closures with the cancellation of pollution permits and strengthen the market stability reserve to absorb more surplus pollution permits off the market. Failing this, the market will be flooded with…
By Agnese Ruggiero on 4 Jul 2019
Do Europe's powerful and clean live up to the expectations to lead on climate?
Following the publication of the European Commission's recommendations on EU countries' draft energy and climate plans, LIFE PlanUp has analysed the plans of Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Germany and France. While the plans include ambitious goals, they lack concrete policies and measures to deliver on the promises. On 18 June 2019, the European Commission released its…
European Commission finds a lack of details, concrete measures in draft national energy and climate plans
BRUSSELS 18 June 2019. Today, the European Commission published its analysis and country-specific recommendations for the EU Member States on their draft National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). Largely confirming findings by LIFE PlanUp, the Commission urges governments to strengthen their plans in order to bridge the gap between the EU climate targets and what the Member…


My Tho. Ben Tre. Cai Rang.
These are names of places in the Mekong Delta that meant nothing to me before this trip and now they are forever embedded in my memory (it helps that I did take over 1000 photographs).
Over the span of one and a half days, Mom, Wee Scotch and I covered a lot of ground (or should I say water!) in the "rice bowl" of Vietnam.
We toured new and interesting places, got dumped on the side of a road (more on that in my next post), tasted new exotic fruits, discovered even more ways of the bang trang, and witnessed a slice of life so so different from our own.
Due to the difficulties of understanding my guide through the terrible tour bus speaker system, I wasn't sure where I was most of the time.
But as my son always says these days, "That's okay, Mama." I was more than fine with the not-knowing as by the time we toured the Mekong, it was during my final two days of a month-long adventure in Vietnam and I was just leisurely enjoying the last moments of one of the best experiences of my life.
Except for the fact that it was hot hot hot! Children generally have a higher metabolism than adults so poor Wee Scotch seemed to always have a sweaty head (or "Heed" in Scottish).
I took precautions with him and slathered him in sunscreen plus he always had a cold drink available (thank you Thermos Funtainer!). And the Vietnamese love children so he was always well looked after spoiled by others.
We arrived at the floating markets of Cai Rang (in the city of Can Tho) around 8 am which I think was quite late in the day for them already. We were probably just at the tail end of the market day.
It was amazing to see first-hand the sheer size of the market and how so many day-to-day activities were done on the water.
We even witnessed a funeral procession making their way up the river with the casket in a boat.
The Mekong Delta is known as the "rice bowl" and is famous as a large rice growing area, producing three harvests per year and half of the total of Vietnam's rice output. Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice (Thailand is the first).
We paid a visit to a small village that makes rice vermicelli (thin rice noodles). I always thought they were dried from fresh noodles but that was so not the case.
Mom volunteering to be the first to taste honey…straight out of the honeycomb!
Mom tasting honey off a beehive – yum!
At the end of our stroll through the garden, we were able to buy some of the fruits to snack on and Mom bought our small group this yellow-orange fruit whose name I can't remember but I'm sure my mom will Skype and tell me when she reads this post.
The flavor was rather subtle and the texture kind of chalky.
And no organized tour would be complete without the obligatory "bathroom stop" at a government-run souvenir shop where physical- and mentally-challenged workers huddle over their own hand-crafted one-of-a-kind artwork.
This souvenir stop specialized in artwork created with mother-of-pearl and eggshells.
I hope you enjoyed this Photo Tour of the Mekong Delta. As I mentioned earlier, I did take over 1000 photographs in less than 2 days and to narrow them down to just a handful to share on this post was quite challenging.
There are so many more photos I'd like to share with you – of the orchard garden, of the coconut candy-making, of the market – that I have uploaded them to an album on my Facebook page.
Shameless plug to please like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter if you haven't already 🙂 .
Woooo…. love that bridge photo!
Just glad I didn't lose my footing!
This really does look like the holiday of a lifetime Sandy. Really brave of you to cross that bridge with Wee Scotch on your back!! Haeding over to your FB page to check out more pics!
Only thing missing in this trip was my dad and husband… otherwise would have been perfect.


I am following Jesus by trying to get the most possible out every single day, every moment. Life is a precious gift that God has given us, and I believe we should serve him, by getting all that we can out of it. I try to enjoy God's unending love, and to share it to everyone that I meet.
My fellow Dunker Punks can help me by living their lives to the fullest. This includes setting aside a parts of every day to just BE with God. Be joyful in God's eternal love, and do all you can to share that love with others.


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Home Features Blogs COVID-19, lockdowns and food production
COVID-19, lockdowns and food production
Without knocking, a novel virus entered the lives of Ghanaians – and others the world over – at the beginning of the year, just as farmers were getting ready to celebrate the end of harmattan and begin their crop production plans. Unlike other countries, the Ghana Government was proactive in leveraging available science to develop and implement policies that have so far, knock on wood, prevented Ghana from experiencing the devastating human tragedy seen elsewhere.
Although farmers and others in the food supply chain were excluded from the mandatory stay-in-place policy (lockdown), the risks of infection have caused many actors in the food supply chain to voluntarily curtail their activities. When market women from Accra or Kumasi do not go to Techiman or Mankesim to purchase food products, not only is this a direct loss to farmers, but the livelihoods of the market women, the drivers, the porters, and all who contribute to getting that food to consumers in markets in our cities.
Scientists rightly tell us that until there is a COVID-19 vaccine, it is prudent to reduce infections by enforcing social distancing. An alternative to social distancing is testing everyone, and isolating those who test positive. Unfortunately, this is too expensive, grossly impractical and utterly ineffective. Testing negative today does not mean you will not test positive tomorrow or the day after. Given this reality, people must assume they are susceptible to being infected, and everyone they encounter outside their immediate household is infected. When we live by this assumption, social distancing is not an imposition by the government, it is self-preservation and common sense.
The question arising in farming communities is how crop production is going to be done this year given COVID. First, farmers are not included in the mandatory lockdown policy. So, that is not where the problem is. The problem is getting workers to help with land preparation and planting, while ensuring their safety as well as the farmer's.
The recommended safe distance is six feet (two meters). Farmers planning on using non-family members for labor this planting season need to have this in mind for their own safety and that of their workers. They should start with identifying how many workers they need based on their land area. Next, they should rethink how they organize their hired labor to prepare the land and plant seeds with safety from COVID in mind.
When weeding, farmers may place workers at least six feet from each other, and instruct them to move in a single direction, maintaining six feet between each other at all times. That means, they should weed from right to left (only because most people are right-handed) and move forward in a way that ensures they are six feet from each other at all times. In large plots, it may be more effective to organize the workers into small groups of two or three and assign them a plot area to work in ways that maintains their six feet separation. Once they get to the point where they have less area to clear than can accommodate more than one person with six feet separation, all workers but one leave, and the last worker finishes the remaining area. The same approach is used when seeding. Usually, someone is making holes, and another is putting the seeds or plantlet in them. Using the six feet separation rule, the person making holes starts ahead of the person seeding, and maintains at least six feet distance from each other.
When it comes to refreshments, each worker should be provided their own water in any format practical for the farmer hiring them. The important thing to think about is ensuring people are not sharing cups or touching the same containers. The farmer should provide a hand washing station, with soap and water and paper napkins for workers to wash and dry their hands. Meals should be served and placed such that there is no contact between the server and the recipient. And people may eat together, as long as they are sitting at least six feet from each other.
The suggested processes challenge our normal communal encounters, but these are not normal times. Staying healthy and alive allows us to return to our normal lives later. Granted, doing these will increase labor cost, but this will be less than the cost of one or more workers falling sick. Let us call it the cost of self-preservation.
We recommend using this approach throughout the season, from weeding and fertilizing, through to harvesting. Once a vaccine has been found and community members have been vaccinated, life can return to normal. The good news is farmers will know when to return to normal when they have been vaccinated. At that time, they can confirm people they are hiring have also been vaccinated, and use this to complete their hiring to minimize potential seed of the but risks.
The foregoing is what farmers can do to protect themselves, their workers, and their community. What can the government do? With the major seed distributors in cities under lockdown, government should ensure adequate seeds are available at seed centers around the country. Additionally, fertilisers and chemicals, cutlasses and hoes, and others inputs must be made available as close as possible to farmers, and in so reducing travel-related risks. Extension services may use local radio to provide information on crop production during this COVID period. Without knowing when a vaccine will be available, government must start planning and putting resources aside to purchase not only grains, but roots, fruits and vegetables that are produced this year in case lockdowns are still in force when these crops are harvested. This could provide the opportunity to invest in effective storage and processing facilities to ensure the viability of farmers during the unfolding hard times, and into the future.
COVID is going to change how we farm in one form or another. The primary focus now should be on life and its preservation through minimizing infection risk. The ideas presented here are aimed at contributing to this primary objective. They are the first steps towards ensuring COVID does not limit Ghanaian farmers' continued contributions to the country's food security and the wellbeing of its rural communities.
[1] Janet A.Y. Tiah is a Research Associate at USAID-METSS, and Vincent Amanor-Boadu is an agribusiness economics and management professor at Kansas State University and principal investigator of USAID-METSS.
Disclaimer: The institutions we work for do not necessarily share the opinions expressed in this paper and the authors are wholly responsible for all errors and omissions.
VIAJanet Awopole Yepakeh TIAH and Vincent AMANOR-BOADU
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Europe gripped by worst ever bird flu outbreak
Poultry Bird Flu
Europe has been gripped by its "most devastating" ever outbreak of bird flu in the past year, European health authorities said on Tuesday as experts study the feasibility of vaccinations.
Between October 2021 and September 2022, around 2,500 outbreaks of bird flu were detected on farms in 37 European countries, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the EU said.
In that time "some 50 million birds were slaughtered" on affected farms, the EFSA reported.
The toll did not include preventive culls of chickens, ducks and turkeys that were carried out alongside the outbreaks, the health agency told AFP.
The EFSA said that "for the first time" there had been no marked separation between two epidemic waves, as the virus was not brought under control in the summer.
This autumn, the epidemic was more virulent than last year at the same time, with the number of infected farms 35 percent higher.
Between September 2 and December 10, 2022, around 400 outbreaks were recorded on farms in 18 European countries. The virus has also been detected more than 600 times in wild birds, notably ducks and swans, which the report said may have contributed to the spread of the virus between farms.
Health authorities are studying the possibility of using vaccinations to arrest the spread of the virus.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the risk of infection in humans was low, and "low to medium" for people working in contact with birds and poultry.
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Empathy has been held up as the gold standard for social emotional learning for as long as I can remember. We try, from the youngest ages to build empathy for our students, for our own children, and for ourselves. This is valuable and it is an excellent starting point for social emotional learning. Or, it could be a significant reason why social emotional learning stagnates. The difference, is the ending point.
So how could teaching empathy create stagnant development in social emotional learning? If we fail to go beyond empathy by addressing how we respond to those frequently occurring situations in which we have no reference point for empathy, we leave massive gaps in our ability to socially accept and interact with others. If a specific experience creates feelings in me based upon my frame of the world, yet creates different feelings for you, my attempting to empathize with you could often create a social conflict.
For specific examples just check your social media feeds after a political speech, a major trial, or a shooting. You will find that many people react differently, their feelings and understanding of the situation starts with relating it to their own experiences. When I don't have similar experiences to you, my empathizing doesn't make sense. At best, I am making an assumption about what you should be feeling based upon what I know about you and your experiences. At worst, I am marginalizing your feelings by projecting my own onto you. Either way, I have left the door open to the possibility of major social conflict.
How do we overcome that gap? Along with teaching empathy as a relational thinking skill, we must also teach that it often falls short. All of us must also learn appreciation, acceptance*** and understanding. Those social emotional learning skills are critical to closing the social loophole created by different experiences.
The greatest path toward this is through listening. Too often people (I am frequently guilty of this) listen with the intent of responding to direct the conversation toward ourselves. Listening is not simply the act of taking in information to process it for a response, but also, taking in information from others that allows us to reframe our thoughts.
After last week's post on Empathy, Sherri Spelic and her apt twitter handle (@edifiedlistener) responded by talking specifically about generating understanding through listening. Her ideas fit well within the discussion and I thank her for sharing them and allowing me to share them with you. She suggests that listening with an open mind means "withholding judgment in the moment and setting aside our drive toward emotional reactivity" and requires "letting the other person be in the spotlight without interruption." Think to yourself: how often have I been listening with the simple intent of waiting to respond?
Listening is a skill, it can and should be taught. Sherri went on to outline some basic ideas for listening skill that I could not possibly explain any better in that we can train ourselves to be more inviting as a listener by starting questions with a paraphrased statement of "you said" and that our questions should "invite the speaker to share more rather than shutting them down." These are things we can and should be teaching beyond empathy.
Empathy is an excellent starting point, but the social emotional learning should only grow and improve. By teaching acceptance, understanding, appreciation of differences, and most importantly quality listening, we can curb potential for great social misunderstandings and improve social emotional learning for everyone.
Today I saw a graphic, it was a small part of a much longer and generally well written blog post about mindfulness and empathy. The graphic claimed empathy was seeing through someone's eyes, hearing through someone's ears, and feeling with the heart of another. The quote, originally attributed Alfred Adler, is one that concerns me greatly. If this is to be our definition of Empathy, how can ANYONE truly develop and experience empathy?
Each of us experiences the world in our own unique way. We view the world through our lens, one that is shaped by our experiences. These experiences are uniquely our own. I cannot truly understand how you experience the world unless I related to something that I have also experienced. Regardless of whether or not I can relate to your experiences, I certainly cannot share in them in a way that mirrors how you experience them.
The residual quote that comes to mind is, "you can't judge someone till you walk a mile in their shoes" (insert all jokes about shoe stealing here). The truth is, even if you wear their shoes, you don't have their feet! Empathy is important in helping kids develop a sense of what is right. How then do we define empathy and, how do we work to instill that value to help our kids develop a strong understanding of virtue? Why is this important?
Empathy should be defined as being able to relate the presumed feelings of someone else to feelings of your own given any relevant information. I don't like getting my foot stepped on, I know it doesn't feel good for me, thus I won't step on other feet because I won't want to cause that feeling in others. Empathy is an understanding that I feel a certain way when something happens, and thus I do not want to make you feel that way as well.
Why is this an important distinction? It is important for several reasons. First, in teaching and developing empathy for our kids. If the idea is to relate your experiences to someone else's, you need to have a wide variety of experiences to draw upon. We build empathy by making the connections frequently. We model those connections with kids, parents, and staff members, we have those discussions out loud, we help kids make connections between theoretically similar experiences. By doing that we generate the potential understanding of empathy.
What if kids don't seem to have or develop empathy? If kids don't have the relevant experiences to relate to others, they are going to have a hard time developing empathy. I see a clear connection between lack of empathy and lack of experiencing something similar. The question that follows then, is, what do we do if we cannot have the experience base to develop empathy?
The higher level education of empathy needs to include an understanding that I simply cannot have similar experiences to all people. I cannot be empathetic to someone who experiences certain things, racism, sexism, the death of a child for some examples. I have nothing within my personal experiences that comes close to those experiences. The best I can do is recognize that I do not understand those experiences, that they are in many ways beyond me. We should be teaching kids to relate to others on this higher level. I cannot be empathetic to people who experience certain things based on my limitations and experiences. I can however accept those limitations, accept that other people have feelings and experiences that are alien from my own, and that I can accept them without qualification. No matter how much I read about, talk to, or even witness these experiences, they will never relate closely to my own. I will never be empathetic, but I can be accepting and supportive. I can listen and allow others to have such feelings/experiences without projecting myself on them, because I know they are not my own.
Ultimately empathy is a great starting point, but often we talk about empathy as if it were the gold standard in social interaction. The reality is empathy is very limited. It is a great starting point in many ways, but we need to teach far beyond empathy. We need to teach kids to accept others, to recognized and respect differences, and appreciate when a lack of empathy is not only normal, but appropriate. Only then will kids take a serious step into higher levels of social understanding and acceptance. All of this starts with an understanding of what Empathy really is, and what it is not.
I have a two great fears when ever I add in my ideas, opinions, and experiences: either my ideas will be ignored as contrarian, or even worse, they will go unchallenged. They are not fears that cause me to keep me from sharing. I question many things. Questioning is my way of digging into an idea and developing my learning. In person this is simple because I can continue the line of questioning until I understand the reasoning or premise behind a decision. During more asynchronous conversations that arise on social media I find myself with the worry of being misunderstood.
Today on two separate occasions, I heard people thank me for pushing back. I despise the echo chamber where everyone says how fantastic everything is rather than question what is being said. There is a place for the, "I completely agree" but not at the expense of learning, improving, and developing growth. Hearing the kind words of appreciation for pushing back and offering potentially different perspectives reminded me of how important it is to find alternate viewpoints.
Education is a field in which we are constantly making decisions. We base those decisions on research, experience, and a relatively quick judgement of all the relevant factors. Thus, hearing from a variety of voices, from people who identify viewpoints other than your own, creates a greater understanding of the issue and leads to a better solution to most problems. You may not decide that the person's viewpoint is correct, but it provides you with a potential to improve your own position. Learning is not generally a point A to point B endeavor, but one that takes many detours and rarely has an end point. For all of the people who push back, who challenge me to strengthen my own learning and ideas, thank you. I appreciate the pushback!


QUE REPORTAJE MÁS BIEN REALIZADO, QUÉ BUEN GUSTO DEMOSTRADO Y CON LA SERIEDAD Y EL CARIÑO QUE SE MERECEN NUESTRAS FIESTAS. ME HA ENCANTADO. GRACIAS,JÓSE, POR COLGARLO PARA QUE MUCHOS LO PODAMOS DISFRUTAR.UN SALUDO. MARA.
viernes, mayo 23, 2008 12:43:00 p. m.


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Home Current-Affairs-Daily-Basis SEP19-Current-Affairs 21 September 2019 - Daily Current Affairs
21 September 2019 - Daily Current Affairs
IBTSINDIA.COM - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 Current-Affairs-Daily-Basis, SEP19-Current-Affairs,
1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarks on 7-day visit to the United States
Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a 7-day visit to the United states.
During his visit, Mr. Modi will be in Houston & New York and address the United Nations General Assembly on 27th of this month.
On 22nd September, Prime Minister Modi will address the Indian community at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas at 8.30 pm (India Standard Time) and President Donald Trump will also be there.
Around 50,000 people are expected to attend the event Howdy, Modi!'.
"Howdy", short for 'How do you do?' is a friendly greeting commonly used in the south-western US.
On 23rd September, PM Modi will participate in a leaders' dialogue on the issue of terrorism, hosted by the King of Jordan.
On 24th September, India will organize an event to commemorate the 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi in the UN
PM Modi will be joined by heads of some countries including President of South Korea, Prime Ministers of Singapore, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Jamaica as well as the UN Secretary-General.
During the visit, Mr. Modi will also be honoured with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Goalkeeper's Award for his leadership in the field of sanitation through Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
Source: AIR News
2. 38th Sharjah Intl. Book Fair to be organized from 30th Oct to 9th of Nov
The 38th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) will be organized from 30th October to 9th November 2019.
The book fair will be held at the 'Expo Center' in Sharjah, with the participation of selected writers, novelists and artists from around the world.
Authors, publishers, intellectuals and artists worldwide will bring their experiences and expertise to this prominent event and partake in a vibrant cultural programme.
UNESCO has named Sharjah as the World Book Capital City for the year 2019 in recognition of the city's continuous efforts in promoting books and literacy.
Aligning itself with the title of the World Book Capital, the SIBF will be organized under the theme 'Open Books, Open Minds'.
It will be an exceptional edition of the book fair, where the events and discussions will all shine a spotlight on the book's ability to ignite peoples' minds, appreciate cultural differences and bring them closer.
3. Algeria to hold Presidential election on 12th December
Algeria will hold the Presidential election on 12th December this year.
Abdelkader Bensalah, the interim successor of ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who resigned in April following mass protests.
Mr Bensalah in a televised address, he has decided that the date of the presidential election.
The announcement comes after Army chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah insisted that polls be held by the end of this year, despite ongoing protests demanding the creation of new institutions ahead of any elections.
Algeria is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa.
Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia, to the east by Libya, to the west by Morocco, to the southwest by the Western Saharan territory, Mauritania, and Mali, to the southeast by Niger, and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea.
The country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 48 provinces and 1,541 communes (counties).
4. International Day of Peace observed today
The International Day of Peace is observed around the world annually on 21st September.
It is dedicated to world peace and specifically the absence of war & violence such as might be occasioned by a temporary ceasefire in a combat zone for humanitarian aid access.
The theme for 2019 is "Climate Action for Peace".
The theme draws attention to the importance of combatting climate change as a way to protect and promote peace throughout the world
In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had designated 21st September as the International Day of Peace.
5. 21st Sep: World Alzheimer's Day
World Alzheimer's Day is observed every year on 21st September to raise awareness about Alzheimer's and dementia.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, a group of disorders that impairs mental functioning.
Some of the most common signs of Alzheimer's Disease include memory loss, problems with language, difficulty performing familiar tasks, changes in personality and difficulty keeping track of things.
6. RBS picks the first woman to lead major UK bank
Britain's bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has appointed long-serving banker 'Alison Rose' as chief executive, making her the first female boss of a major UK lender.
Currently, Rose is deputy head of the group's NatWest Holdings retail business and its commercial and private banking division.
She will replace Ross McEwan on 1st November.
Alison Rose will become the only woman to have lead one of Britain's so-called "Big Four" banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS).
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, together with NatWest and Ulster Bank.
The Royal Bank of Scotland was established in 1724 to provide a bank with strong Hanoverian and Whig ties.
Honour & Awards
7. Raghu Rai chosen as the first recipient of international photography award
Noted Indian photographer Raghu Rai (77-years) has been chosen as the first recipient of the inaugural edition of the Acadmie des beaux-arts Photography Award 'William Klein'.
The award is in honour of the celebrated American-born French photographer and filmmaker William Klein, best known for his unusual photography techniques.
As a consecration award, the prize is intended to reward a photographer for their entire career and commitment to photography.
It rewards one photographer of all nationalities and ages.
Know about Raghu Rai:
Raghu Rai was born in the village of Jhang, Punjab, British India (now in Pakistan).
He is known for his books, Raghu Rai's India: Reflections in Colour and Reflections in Black and White.
8. Govt allows SAIL to sell 25% of iron ore output
Ministry of Mines has allowed Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) to offload in a year up to a quantity equivalent to maximum 25% of total iron ore production in the previous year.
It will be subject to clearance from the respective State Governments, where the mines are located, after following due procedure.
It is valid for a period of 2 years.
Around 7 million tonnes of iron ore, produced at its different mines in the States of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chattisgarh, can be offloaded by SAIL to the domestic market after getting necessary clearance from the State Governments.
This will enable SAIL to not only fulfil its own requirement but also to partially cater to a shortfall in domestic iron ore requirement.
9. Kerala govt inks MoU with the Maldives on cancer care
Kerala inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Maldives to strengthen cancer care in the island nation.
Maldives has also sought RCC's support to create a cancer registry in that country.
The MOU was signed between Abdulla Ameen (Maldivian Minister) and K K Shylaja (Kerala Health Minister) in the presence of the state Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
10. First Jammu International Film Festival to be held in Jammu
The first-ever "Jammu International Film Festival" will be held in Jammu.
37 short films and documentaries from 11 countries will be screened at the inaugural edition of Jammu International Film Festival.
The festival will also present an annual 'Inspiring Icon Award', which will be given to a person, who hails from the region and has made it big in the film industry.
Source: DD News
Honour & Award
11. Anand Kumar felicitated with Education Excellence Award 2019
Noted mathematician Anand Kumar (Super 30 founder) has been felicitated in the US with a prestigious Education Excellence Award 2019.
The Foundation For Excellence (FFE) awarded him on the occasion of the organisation's 25th anniversary gala in San Jose, California.
Anand has been running a highly innovative Super 30 programme for the last 18 years to mentor 30 student free of cost through year-long residential coaching for India's premier IIT-JEE.
12. 2020 Women's FIFA U-17 World Cup to be held from Nov 2-21
The FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup (7th edition) will be held from 2nd to 21st November 2020 in India.
It will mark the first time that India has hosted a FIFA women's football tournament.
The tournament is held in even-numbered years, starting in 2008.
Spain is the defending champions, having won the title of the biennial tournament in 2018.
On 27th August, Kalinga Stadium (in Bhubaneswar, Odisha) got provisional clearance as the first venue for the 2020 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup
Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Goa and Navi Mumbai are the five venues that were inspected by the FIFA team for the tournament.
The FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup is an international association football tournament for female players under the age of 17.
It is organized by the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA).
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