Shane Shifflett

This year's election may be a Biden vs Trump rematch, but it's not the same electorate as four years ago. In a new Bloomberg News / Bloomberg Businessweek story out today (see gift link below), we estimate that at least 10% of most states' 2020 eligible voter population is gone and has been replaced with new potential voters. In some states that number is closer to 15%, including in key swing states like Arizona and Nevada. That level of churn easily dwarfs the 2020 presidential margin of victory in the seven battleground states we're watching. This analysis brings together a lot of government and private datasets to understand not only the impact of the Great American Migration of the last few years, but also the number of deaths (including from the Covid pandemic), those who've turned 18 since 2020, and newly naturalized US citizens. Many factors will likely shape the 2024 presidential result, but knowing how the electorate has changed and what that means for key demographic shifts will be crucial for any serious election watcher. As always, it takes a village: with graphics magic from Elena Mejía, reporting help from Gregory Korte and the work of editor trio Laura Bliss, gregory white and Chloe Whiteaker.

14

New from me: The House Judiciary Committee has been intensifying an antitrust probe into the Global Alliance of Responsible Media and its members, which includes major advertisers, agencies, and platforms. The Committee alleges GARM's members have been colluding to defund conservative media. While the ad industry insiders I spoke to felt the allegations were without merit, they are concerned about the chilling effect the probe -- and its numerous document and interview requests -- could have on GARM's work around brand safety and online misinformation. Read more over at Business Insider #garm #brandsafety #advertising #gop https://lnkd.in/ePpYBcRa

13

Some reporters have reached out to me over the past few weeks understandably to speak about misinformation, elections, AI etc. All of the below things have happened. It's very unprofessional. -Hounding me for an interview, and then paraphrasing my comments - Writing about my investigations but not hyperlinking the original article -Asking for other contacts and not saying even a simple ‘thank you’ -Using my interview as a story peg and then picking a completely different quote to attribute to me  -Promising to give playback of the quotes to be used in the story. Publishing the story without the playback - Censoring my remarks

33

2 Comments

One of the most important ways you can help @tradeoffs is by filling out our annual audience survey. If you have 5 minutes, please to tell us how we've impacted your work!

7

Interesting POV for all stakeholders interested in the information disorder ecosystem.

3

My next ChatGPT prompt: “Can you write an article describing why it is a terrible idea to rely on ChatGPT to write news articles?”

21

1 Comment

Don't know whether to laugh or cry :) Here's my newest video on how fake authors are tricking people with shady AI travel guides. I fact check six guides to see how they can get it very wrong --- and maybe even ruin our vacations! #travel #travelguides #artificialintelligence #cybersecurityawareness #books #authors #scamalert https://lnkd.in/gjZiWCWg

29

5 Comments

Rishi Shah Ad-Scam: Ad-scam, lavish lies, and a billion-dollar fraud: How Rishi Shah’s Outcome Health duped high-profile investors #RishiShah #Adscam #FraudAlert #newsupdatetoday #latestnewstoday #latestnewsupdate

1

The greatest journalists are anticipators. Their focus is always on what’s coming down the pipe. Elections happening 🗳 Laws introduced 🏛 Summits kicking off 🧑🏼‍💼 Products or services launching 🚀 And they have a knack for predicting how an evolving story is likely to play out. Where does this info come from? Newswires were my (not so) secret weapon when I was an editor. It’s basically a feed of future news events. Most papers report what’s happening today. A newswire contains stuff that’s about to break. Perhaps this might help entrepreneurs and creatives here. Every week on Monday (or every now and then) I’ll do a little look-ahead. It’s a few things that might be useful for creative entrepreneurs. To inspire and inform. Lifted from newswires. Happening this week. Here goes. 1. Well burger me 🍔 Residents of the US can look forward to National Hamburger Day tomorrow. In an ironic scheduling clash, it happens to coincide with World Hunger Day. Anyone suffering from over-indulgence will be relieved by the arrival of World Digestive Health Day on the Wednesday. (28th May) 2. Changing the world for good? 🤖 The AI for Good Global Summit is an event in Geneva organised by the UN. It’s a platform intended to promote AI to advance health, climate, gender, inclusive prosperity, sustainable infrastructure, and other global development priorities. When the world seems divided into zealots and fear-mongers, a pragmatic take on how AI could improve life sounds like a sensible idea. A good one, even. (30th – 31st May) 3. Manhattanhenge 🌆 Inner cities don’t usually play host to sublime natural phenomena. But this week, New Yorkers will be able to view Manhattanhenge. It’s an evening when the sun is in perfect alignment with the city’s streets, which run from East to West. (29th May) 4. Trailer crash 🎬 The Golden Trailer Awards is a celebration of brevity. The event prizes the creators of trailers and teasers for feature films and gaming titles. It’s been dubbed, “the awards ceremony for the short attention span”. (30th May) 5. Reimagine that 🧱 The London Festival of Architecture, LFA 2024, celebrates its 20th year. It’s a whole month of events about the built environment. Head to the city’s leading cultural institutions for installations, talks and edifying experiences. The theme is “reimagine”. (1st June onwards) 6. Venice bans groups 🚣‍♀️ Venice is to ban loudspeakers and tourist groups of more than 25 people, in a bid to ease the impact of mass tourism on the Italian city. The new rules will come into effect from June. Residents will be grateful for a (slightly) quieter canal-side. (1st June) Is this useful? If so I'll do it again next Monday. #theweekahead #news #events #futurenews

7

It's expensive to come back from the dead. And who knows what inflation will look like hundreds of years from now?   These costs have led people who plan to freeze themselves with the hopes of revival to stockpile money in trusts. I spoke with estate attorneys attempting to create trust agreements that need to span centuries and answer questions straight out of a philosophy class.   Can money, assuming it still exists, live indefinitely? Are you dead if your body is cryonically preserved? Are you considered revived if you only have your brain?   And if you're revived, are you the same person? My story on Bloomberg Tax: https://lnkd.in/eZ9fFbyZ

12

1 Comment

Eric Idle interview: ahead of an Australian tour, the Monty Python co-founding writer, performer and musician reflects on comedy, genius, libido and facing life’s final curtain with a bow. Q: Do you have any strategies for lifting yourself out of a funk, when you become sad? A: You have to face life as a privilege every day. It’s not going to last. George Harrison told me all about that: you can have the most money in the world, you can be the most famous person in the world, but you’re still gonna have to die. And that is, of course, the great equaliser for all of us. We spend a lot of our time in denial. I worked out you only have 30,000 sunsets if you live to be over 80. That’s a good thing to remember, I think. Because we tend to forget that we’re on a planet, and we’re going round, and we’re buzzing through space – and all of this is going on while we worry about whether the mail has arrived (laughs), or whether our TV’s working. We tend to forget where we are in the larger view of things. To remember (that) is to just consider how amazingly unlikely it is that we are here, and able to communicate and think, and actually see photographs of the beginning of the universe, which was about 13.5 billion years ago. I find all that very exciting. Q: I’m 36. Have you found an upside to growing older that might surprise me? A: Yes, I think so. I think your dick drops out of controlling you. That’s always a good idea – eventually, about 50 or 60 – you stop being led around by your dick. Men, in particular (laughs). There are very many consolations with age. It’s not the end of the world, quite – but it’s close (laughs). I mean, I’m 81 and I look forward to being 82. That becomes the big achievement. Read the full interview (~16 minute read) at The Australian: https://lnkd.in/gewngc54 #ericidle #alwayslookonthebrightsideoflife #montypython #montypythonsflyingcircus #theaustralian

3

Lots of folks, from journalistic outlets to political campaigns to people trying to sell stuff, would like to better understand how teenagers and young adults think about what they see online. Turns out that a Google subsidiary called Jigsaw has been doing its own research into the information-consumption habits of Generation Z ... and as I write in Business Insider today, they're pretty interesting! As concerned with the social context of information as they are with its veracity, more interested in passing time online with friends than whether what they're reading is true or useful, Gen Z has a whole new approach to news and knowledge. And it isn't necessarily bad! They check the comments first to see if a headline is "fake news" or AI-generated slop, sure, but then again science-minded folks always check citation numbers. Same kind of social contextualizing. Whomst is to say? (Though I'll grant that a whole generation that prefers to get news filtered through aggregating, like-minded Influencers on TikTok is not great for the economics of my chosen profession.) https://lnkd.in/gxjd2DAA

20

5 Comments

AI systems routinely outperform humans, affirms the Stanford AI Index Report 2024; Should we be worried? There's hardly a day that goes by without someone speculating if AI systems like GPT-4, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3, and now LLaMA 3 are becoming sentient, the fear being that AI's intelligence, what we better know as artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial super intelligence (ASI), will exceed that of the most intelligent humans, making it a sort of Alpha Intelligence that may eventually even enslave humans. While #Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang proposed that AGI would emerge within five years, and Ben Goertzel foresees it happening in just three years, Elon Musk predicts that by the end of 2025 or early 2026, AI will be smarter than any single human, and probably smarter than all humans combined by 2029. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, too, has announced that his company is entering the race to make an AGI but did not provide any timeline. These are all credible voices and we must pay attention. But one also needs to pay heed to equally-accomplished voices like those of Yann LeCun, Andrew Ng, and Gary Marcus, who have begged to differ and have consistently tempered expectations in the context of AGI. Early this month, even Stanford University's seventh edition of the AI Index report weighed in on the same topic, insisting that AI systems like GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude 3 are "impressively multimodal" and "routinely exceed human performance on standard benchmarks". The report, however, qualifies that current AI technology continues to have limitations and cannot reliably deal with facts, perform complex reasoning, or explain its conclusions. What do you think? LiveMint https://lnkd.in/g8VmStwv

28

Heroic characters, swoon-worthy romance and supernatural beings? You get all this and more in a paranormal romance book. Plus, there's the obvious: “Vampires are hot,” BookTok influencer Niah Freed told me. Welcome to "Paranormal Romance 101." We're breaking down key tropes and the best books to start with: https://lnkd.in/evMFbmDs

5

Peace, Poetry & Spirituality:

3

While there is fear of job displacement due to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn highlights that AI is not replacing jobs but transforming them. The catch, however, is that many people’s next job might be a role that doesn’t yet exist.

46

I always say my “secret weapon” is the old fashioned phone call. Well, thanks to Matthew Boyle, my secret’s out! Of course, this only works when you have a really strong pitch. Also, he has a lot more to share in the original post, so be sure to check it out. But back to the phone call… The general “I hate to talk on the phone” crowd excluded, I think a lot of PR folks’ phone call hesitation stems from days when higher-ups demanded we pitch a story that wasn’t exactly newsworthy. Whatever the case, if you’re new to calling reporters, here are some tips to help you prepare: 1) Identify yourself and why you’re calling. Ask if they have a couple minutes for a quick pitch. This is common courtesy :) 2) Be extremely confident in what you’re pitching. Like, feel so good about it being the perfect fit for the reporter, their beat and the outlet/its audience that you genuinely believe they must have missed your original emailed pitch. 3) Have a written version of the pitch in front of you when you call, so you don’t forget details or lose the flow of conversation. (You’re calling a busy person and they need to know why, and fast!) And if you haven’t already sent it to the reporter, you’ll be prepared to do so immediately if they ask you to send more info. 4) Finally, know who they can interview. Have your experts identified ahead of the phone call. Know their availability, if possible. There are probably ten more tips, but these will get you out of the gate. And listen, not everybody wants to talk to you on the phone. Hearing “no thanks” is okay, and you’ll survive. But sometimes a busy reporter would rather hear it fast in two minutes than get one more cold pitch in their inbox! #prtips #mediarelations #pitching

8

1 Comment