Meet the hackers who, this weekend, will try to commandeer an actual orbiter as part of a Defcon contest hosted by the Air Force and the Defense Digital Service.
from Wired https://ift.tt/31r1ZmQ
via Gabe's Musing's
Thursday, August 6, 2020
Manhattan apartment deals plunge 57%, suburban real estate surges
Apartment contracts in Manhattan fell by more than half in July, while deals in many New York suburbs more than doubled, showing a continued flight from the city over the summer.
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2DoFAOQ
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2DoFAOQ
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for tax on billionaires' gains during the pandemic
Senator Bernie Sanders (I—Vt.) tweeted Wednesday he will introduce legislation that will tax the wealth gains billionaires have made during the coronavirus pandemic. CNBC's "Squawk Box" crew discusses what the move could mean for the markets as well as the upcoming election.
from Wealth https://ift.tt/3fy8XeN
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
from Wealth https://ift.tt/3fy8XeN
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
Manhattan experiencing surplus of unsold apartments as sales contracts plunge
The Manhattan real estate market was supposed to rebound in July, but instead there's a glut of unsold apartments. CNBC's Robert Frank reports.
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2Pqu1sW
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2Pqu1sW
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
Wealth management is picking up momentum, boosting fee income: Analyst
Tay Wee Kuang of Phillip Securities Research tells CNBC's Street Signs that Singapore banks are starting to record loan losses into their reserves, adding that the wealth management sector is picking up the current momentum of economies reopening and boosting fee income.
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2Pv5e7i
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
from Wealth https://ift.tt/2Pv5e7i
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
The Best Linux Distributions for Old Machines
Do you have an old laptop that has gathered layers of dust over time and you don’t exactly what to do with it? A good place to start would be to install a Linux
from Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides https://ift.tt/33zXk4y
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
from Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides https://ift.tt/33zXk4y
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
When the chemical industry met modern architecture
Just months before starting her PhD, Jessica Varner and her partner bought a small house built in 1798. Located on tidal wetlands along Connecticut’s Patchogue River, the former residence of an ironworker had endured over two centuries of history and neglect.
As Varner began to slowly restore the house — discovering its nail-less construction and thin horsehair plaster walls, learning plumbing skills, and burning oyster shells to make lime wash — she discovered a deep connection between her work inside and outside academia.
For her dissertation in MIT’s History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art program, Varner had been investigating how the chemical industry wooed the building and construction industry with the promise of “invisible,” “new,” and “durable” synthetic materials at the turn of the 20th century. In the process, these companies helped transform modern architecture while also disregarding or actively obscuring the health and environmental risks posed by these materials. While researching the history of these dyes, additives, and foams, Varner was also considering the presence of similar synthetics in her own new home.
Coming into closer contact with these types of materials as a builder herself gave Varner a new perspective on the widespread implications of her research. “I think with my hands … and both projects began to inform each other,” she says. “Making and writing at the same time, I’m amazed how much this house is a part of the work.”
The reverse proved true as well. Next year Varner will launch the Black House Project, an interdisciplinary artist-in-residence space on the Connecticut property. Artists who participate will be asked to engage with a seasonal theme relating to the intersection of history, environment, and community. The inaugural theme will be, “building from the ashes,” with a focus on burning and invasive species.
A personal chemical history
The chemical industry has a longer history for Varner than she even initially understood: She comes from a long line of farming families in Nebraska, a state with a complex relationship with the agricultural-chemical industry.
“That was just our way of life and we never questioned it,” she says of the way farm life became entwined with the chemical necessities and economic hardships of American industrial agriculture. She recalls spraying herbicide, without a mask, on thistles on the farm after her family received government letters threatening daily fines if her family did not remove the plant. She also remembers how their farm, and much of the region, depended on seeds and other products from DeKalb.
“Coming from a place that depends so much on the economy of an industry, there are nuances and deeper layers to the story” of modern agriculture, she says, noting that the subsistence farming and often industrial farming go hand in hand.
At MIT, Varner has continued to probe beneath the surface of how chemical products are promoted and adopted. For her thesis, with the help of a Fulbright scholarship, she began digging through the chemical companies’ corporate archives. Her research has revealed how these companies generated research strategies, advertising, and publicity to transform the materials of the “modern interior and exterior.”
Underneath a veneer of technological innovation and promises of novelty, Varner argues, these companies carefully masked their supply chains, adjusted building codes, and created marketing teams knowns as “truth squads,” which monitored and reshaped conversations around these products and growing concerns about their environmental harms. The result, she writes in her dissertation, was “one of the most successful, and toxic, material transformations in modern history.”
Bridging activism and academia
Varner has a long-running interest in environmental activism, from the conservation and restoration efforts in her home state, to vegetarianism, to studying glaciers in Alaska, to her current conception of the Black House Project. “At every point I feel like my life has had environmental activism in it,” she says.
Environmental concerns have always been an integral part of her studies as well. After her undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska, Varner went on to study architecture and environmental design at Yale University, where she studied the debates between climate scientists and architects in the 1970s. Then she headed to Los Angeles as a practicing architect and professor.
Working with as a designer with Michael Maltzan Architecture while teaching seminars and studios on at the University of Southern California and Woodbury University, she realized her students had bigger, historical questions, such as about the origin of sustainability catchphrases like “passive cooling,” “circular economy,” and “net-zero.” “There were deeper questions behind what environmentalism was, how you can enact it, how you know what the rules of sustainability are, and I realized I didn’t have answers,” Varner says. “It was taken for granted.”
Those questions brought her to MIT, where she says the cross-cutting nature of her work benefitted from the Institute’s intersection with chemistry and engineering and history of technology. “The questions I was asking were interdisciplinary questions, so it was helpful to have those people around to bounce ideas off of,” she says.
This fall, Varner will return to MIT as a lecturer while also working with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. At EDGI, she is the assistant curator for the EPA Interviewing Working Group, an ongoing oral history project chronicling the inner workings of the EPA and the way the organization has been affected by the current administration.
“I’m excited to get back in the classroom,” she says, as well as finding a new way to take her academic interests into a more activist and policy-oriented sphere at EDGI. “I definitely think that’s what MIT brought to me in my education, other ways to carry your knowledge and your expertise to engage at different levels. It’s what I want to keep, going forward as a graduate.”
from MIT News https://ift.tt/33uREZx
via Gabe's Musing's
Issa Rae, HBO partner for Black TV history documentary
‘Seen & Heard‘ will explore the groundbreaking ‘but often unacknowledged’ contributions of Black artists and storytellers.
Issa Rae has been tapped by HBO to executive produce a two-part documentary about the history of Black television.
The project, titled Seen & Heard, will explore the groundbreaking “but often unacknowledged” contributions of Black artists and storytellers, Deadline reports.
“Black people have such a rich, but often unacknowledged history in Hollywood,” said Rae. “We have defined American culture and influenced generations time and time again across the globe. I’m honored to pair with Ark Media to center and celebrate the achievements of those who paved a way for so many of us to tell our stories on television.”
The doc is described as offering “cultural commentary about representation in black storytelling and feature interviews with actors, showrunners, writers, celebrities and other notable influencers as well as verité-driven segments and inventive use of archival material. The featured participants will reflect on their own experiences watching African Americans represented on television yesterday and today, while sharing insights into their current creative endeavors, personal experiences, and inspiration, providing a window into the larger evolution of Black storytellers across television history.”
Seen & Heard will be directed and produced by Phil Bertelsen, who helmed Netflix’s six-part doc series Who Killed Malcolm X?
Rae will serve as EP alongside Montrel McKay of Issa Rae Productions, Jonathan Berry and David Becky of 3 Arts Entertainment and Ark Media’s Rachel Dretzin and Esther Dere.
In related news, Issa Rae and Jordan Peele are teaming up to bring, “Sinkhole,” an original story by Leyna Krow, to movie screens, theGRIO previously reported.
Sara Scott, Universal Pictures’ Senior Vice President of Production, will oversee the development of this film.
According to Deadline, Universal studios offered a low-seven-figure deal to Rae and Peele for the screen rights to the short story. The company beat out more than 10 studio bidders and multiple talent and filmmaker packages for the opportunity.
Sinkhole was originally written by Krow in 2011 and centers on a couple’s purchase of a new home that has a strange sinkhole in the backyard.
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
Loading the player...
The post Issa Rae, HBO partner for Black TV history documentary appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/30zg02F
via Gabe's Musing's
Iowa governor restores some ex-felons voting rights with executive order
Anyone currently serving a prison sentence for a felony conviction will not be able to vote.
Iowans with felony convictions who have served their sentences can now participate in the upcoming presidential election.
On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order granting most ex-cons who have completed their felony sentences the right to vote, CNN reports.
“When someone serves their sentence and pays the price our justice system has set for their crime, they should have their right to vote restored automatically, plain and simple,” said Reynolds at the state capitol in Des Moines.
Her order excludes felons convicted of first- and second-degree murder, attempted murder, fetal homicide and some sex crimes, according to the report. These individuals are still required to apply to the governor’s office to have their voting rights restored.
Read More: Despite virus threat, Black voters wary of voting by mail
According to the executive order, felons must “complete any prison probation, or parole, or special sentence” before they can register to vote. The order does not require them to make financial restitution to their victims.
“This is a cause on which so many Iowans have worked on,” Reynolds said Wednesday morning in her office, while flanked by local leaders and legislators.
Iowa was the last state with a lifetime ban on voting for convicted felons, unless they petitioned the governor for the restoration of their rights.
“We absolutely encourage people to take this day and register,” said Betty Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP. “Now our work is to make sure that people are registered and understand as of today they don’t need to do paperwork, they don’t need to do anything like that. As of today they are allowed to vote.”
Mark Stringer, the executive director of the ACLU of Iowa, praised Reynold’s order.
“Iowa no longer is the only state in the country to permanently and for life ban its citizens from voting following any felony conviction,” Stringer said in a news release. “We’re relieved that the Governor’s order does not make eligibility to vote dependent on how much money a person has, that is, it’s not contingent on paying off fees and fines or other associated debts.”
The order will reportedly restore the voting rights to an estimated 40,000 people.
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
The post Iowa governor restores some ex-felons voting rights with executive order appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2PvaVln
via Gabe's Musing's
NJ woman who broke elderly woman’s leg over mask request arrested
Surveillance video shows the woman assaulting the elderly lady, tossing her like a rag doll to the ground.
The New Jersey woman who was caught on surveillance camera assaulting an elderly woman over a face mask dispute has been arrested.
25-year-old Terri Thomas was arrested in Hackensack, NJ for aggravated assault after viral video was released showing her attack on a woman with a cane at a STAPLES. An earlier report on theGrio noted that Margot Kagan was using a copy machine when a woman with a mask pulled down below her mouth approached a machine next to her.
Kagan asked the woman to put on her mask. It is unclear what the response was, but the two exchange words.
Read More: Customer throws woman, breaks her leg after being told to wear mask
The interaction turns violent when Thomas assaults Dewitt, tossing her like a rag doll to the ground.
“The suspect became angry and yelled at the victim, who picked up her walking cane and pointed it directly at the suspect, coming within inches of the suspect’s chest. The woman then yelled at Kagan, violently threw her to the ground, and left the store,” said Capt. Darrin DeWitt from the Hackensack Police Department.
Kagan tells local media that she was asking Thomas to be responsible and was disheartened by the exchange.
“The woman on one side of the plastic dividers had a mask, but here, below her mouth,” Kagan said from a hospital bed at HUMC.
She insists that she only said, “You should really put a mask on.”
Kagan recently had a liver transplant, and the incident with Thomas reportedly left her with a fractured left tibia.
Over $4,000 has been raised on a GoFundMe to help Kagan cover medical expenses.
According to the campaign, “Ms. Kagan has school aged children in the district. We are hoping to raise money to help with any of her medical bills associated with this, and any additional help the Kagan family may need during this very difficult time.”
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
Loading the player...
The post NJ woman who broke elderly woman’s leg over mask request arrested appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2Xu6N9B
via Gabe's Musing's
Jurnee Smollett on Jussie, Hollywood and ‘no longer asking for a seat at the table’
The ‘Lovecraft County’ actress shared her experiences with inequal pay and sexual harassment
Now starring in HBO’s upcoming Lovecraft Country, veteran actress Jurnee Smollett is coming into her own as a Hollywood powerhouse who no longer feels the need to apologize.
Smollett has been acting since she was a child, starring in Full House, Eve’s Bayou, Friday Night Lights, Birds of Prey and WGN’s groundbreaking show Underground. Despite her success, the 33-year-old has considered leaving Hollywood because the glittery façade doesn’t match up to reality.
“This business can be maddening,” she says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Read More: Jussie Smollett is willing to ‘fight or die’ to be cleared of hoax charges
“For all its liberalism, I’ve been in these spaces where these very powerful people do the fundraisers and write the checks for the Black or brown kids’ scholarships, and then I know for a fact they go back into their staff meetings and they’re all white.”
She says those efforts are often performative and do little to change attitudes or practices.
“If you do that, you’re a hypocrite, and you’re not actually anti-racist,” Smollett maintains.
She had no use for posting Black squares in solidarity for Black Lives Matter after the tragic deaths of African Americans, especially George Floyd.
“Oh, the rage,” she declares, “the rage I feel in my body.”
Read More: Hollywood still struggling to diversify in writers’ rooms
Smollett is also angry that her brother Jussie, the former Empire star, is still viewed with suspicion. He says he did not stage the now-infamous 2019 racist and homophobic attack that caused a media furor and she believes him.
“It’s been f**king painful,” she says.
“One of the most painful things my family’s ever experienced — to love someone as much as we love my brother, and to watch someone who you love that much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating. I was already in a very dark space for a number of reasons, and I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic. But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother.”
During that time, she was separating from her husband of almost a decade, musician Josiah Bell, with whom she shares a 3-year-old son, Hunter.
Read More: Tiffany Boone, Simone Missick and other Black women in Hollywood perform ‘A Black Woman Speaks’
Her family name may have been mired in scandal and she may have been dealing with heartache but fortunately, none of it affected her professionally.
Lovecraft Country, a horror, sci-fi, period mashup set during the Jim Crow era from Jordan Peele, J.J. Abrams and Underground‘s Misha Green, debuts on HBO on Aug. 16.
“We’re telling the story of heroes that go on a quest to disrupt white supremacy, and it’s maddening that in the year 2020 it’s still relevant,” she says.
Before she started the project, the actress reached out to showrunners to make sure she was paid her value after learning she was paid less than her co-star, Aldis Hodge, on Underground even though they were both leads on the WGN show.
The slight reminded her of an executive questioning how she styled her hair for the role.
“This was a project about enslaved people. There’d be no way for me to straighten my hair, which is what he was suggesting — a hot comb didn’t exist,” she says. “There are just so many ways in which this industry will try, subliminally or overtly, to erase your Blackness.”
Smollett is now very vocal in how she expects to be treated.
“And I don’t apologize,” she says. “I’ll be like, ‘Listen, this fake-ass sexual harassment meeting that we’re having, I’m going to raise my hand now and let you guys know that the standards that they’re setting are bare minimum.'”
This is the confidence she didn’t possess in her twenties. Lovecraft Country is the first set where she says she has not felt sexually harassed or undermined. After all the years she’s put in, Smollett is grateful that change is coming to the industry.
“And we’re no longer asking for a seat at the table,” says Smollett. “We’re building our own motherf**king table.”
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
Loading the player...
The post Jurnee Smollett on Jussie, Hollywood and ‘no longer asking for a seat at the table’ appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3fwNzqm
via Gabe's Musing's
Trump calls Obama’s eulogy at John Lewis funeral ‘terrible’ and ‘angry’
The former president condemned the GOP’s repeated false claims that voting by mail will lead to mass voter fraud.
*During his appearance on Fox News on Wednesday, President Donald Trump slammed Barack Obama’s eulogy for civil rights icon John Lewis, calling it “terrible” and “angry.”
“I thought it was a terrible speech. It was an angry speech,” Trump said when asked if he thought the eulogy seemed like a campaign speech, The Hill reports. “I thought that speech was very inappropriate, very bad,” he added.
In the eulogy at Ebenezer Baptist Church last week, Obama cited challenges to voting, police brutality and the need for protest, theGrio previously reported. He urged people to be “more like John” and get into “good trouble.”
Read More: Trump evades paying respect to John Lewis: ‘He didn’t come to my inauguration’
Obama also said Lewis needed to be honored by revitalizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and called for Election Day to become a national holiday.
“If politicians want to honor John,” he said, “there’s a better way than a statement calling him a hero.”
Obama added, “Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for.
The former president also condemned Trump’s repeated false claims that voting by mail will lead to mass voter fraud.
“Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision,” Obama said. “John Lewis devoted his time on this Earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what’s best in America that we are seeing circulate right now.”
Trump told Fox News that Obama’s speech highlighted the angry side of his persona that people don’t get to see.
“He lost control and he’s been really hit very hard by both sides for that speech,” Trump said. “That speech was ridiculous.”
Read More: Trump says he may suspend evictions with executive order
Lewis died last month at age 80 after a battle with cancer.
In 2011, Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the two highest honors that can be given to a civilian.
Obama was not the only former president in attendance for the televised goodbye to the civil rights icon. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were on hand to pay their final respects.
Trump did not attend the funeral, and he noted during a recent Axios interview that Lewis “didn’t come to my inauguration.”
“He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches,” Trump added. “And that’s OK. That’s his right. And, again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have.”
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
Loading the player...
The post Trump calls Obama’s eulogy at John Lewis funeral ‘terrible’ and ‘angry’ appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2Dsfv1k
via Gabe's Musing's
The Census Bureau Says Less Than 9% of US Companies are Using AI! Really?
Summary: Less than 9%? What this study really shows and what we should take away from it.
Wow. Less than 9%! Can this be true? Well according to a large scale survey study conducted by the US Census Bureau it’s actually a little worse than that since the 9% applies to a basket of advanced technologies some of which don’t involve AI, like RFIDs. So what’s the story?
Turns out the Census Bureau has a mandate to survey US businesses about their use of technology. This report of their most current work was presented in July at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference. There are several twists to this story but the main one is how do we reconcile this result with the many other surveys we all read that say that between 20% and 33% are implementing AI ‘at scale’ and that a much larger percentage are right behind. Even that estimate dates back to surveys conducted in 2018 and based on current literature you’d have to believe adoption is much, much higher.
About the Census Survey
The “2018 Annual Business Survey (ABS)” (survey data from 2017) sought to answer the degree to which US companies were adopting advanced technologies. They first queried about ‘digitization’ figuring that was a precursor to all advanced technologies, then about ‘cloud computing’, and finally about a basket of ‘advanced technologies’ some of which relate to AI and some which don’t.
The advantage the Census has over other surveys we’ve seen is that response is legally required. They mailed out about 850,000 surveys and received 583,000 responses or almost 69%. That’s much better than the 20% or 30% response rates of large business surveys we’ve reported in the past. This actually lets them project out over the entire US business population with some statistical accuracy without the curse of respondent bias.
The first twist, and it’s unclear why they elected this, is that the survey includes only “all private, non-agricultural sectors of the economy”. So the exclusion of public companies immediately excludes at least the largest 4,000 or 5,000 US companies, who logically, are leaders in AI adoption.
So the results of this survey are a kind of trickle down story about what the rest of us are doing, with most responses from very small companies.
- 1 to 9 employees 75%
- 10 to 49 employees 20%
- 50 to 249 employees 4%
- 250+ employees 1%
Unfortunately without access to the raw data we can’t further refine their findings to look at least at the largest of this group.
And the findings about ‘advanced technologies’ relate to these categories which fall within AI:
- Machine Learning 8%
- Voice Recognition 5%
- Machine Vision 7%
- Robotics 3%
- Natural Language 2%
- Automated Vehicles 8%
Versus these categories which don’t relate to AI according to the definitions given with the survey:
- Touchscreens 9%
- RFID 1%
- Augmented Reality 8%
If you’ve been quick to add these up, you’ll see the AI category totals a little over 10% but this includes overlaps. The real answer to utilization of AI is likely much smaller and more like 6% across this group.
Do Survey Respondents Even Recognize AI?
We’ve written in the past about how difficult it is to measure adoption. There’s no end of organizations conducting surveys. If a large company has implemented a chatbot in one operation do we give them credit for adoption (as many surveys do)? Do the folks who respond to these surveys know what’s going on in other parts of their companies if those organizations are large and dispersed?
In smaller companies like those surveyed you’d expect them to know if, for example, their operation used a robot. However so much of AI is now buried in applications these companies may be using they may be completely unaware.
A further confounding factor is that the survey specifically asked the respondents about the use of these technologies in “the production of goods and services”. Were they sophisticated enough in their understanding to include or exclude the many types of AI found in support systems like HR and finance that heavily incorporate machine vision and NLP. Probably not.
What’s the Degree of Adoption?
The survey did allow the respondents to provide some information about the degree to which they had adopted these technologies expressed as percentage ranges over their entire company.
What’s the Takeaway?
There are several.
Despite AI companies wanting to know about market size and penetration, the traditional voluntary survey of large companies suffers from low response rates and respondent bias making any statistical conclusions no better than guesses.
In smaller companies respondents are unlikely to have sufficiently deep understanding of AI applications to actually spot all the places AI may already be at use in applications.
In large companies the specific respondents answering surveys are unlikely to be completely aware of all the AI applications planned or used throughout a large dispersed corporation.
Particularly in large companies, do we give credit for AI adoption if there is one chatbot in customer service or one ML model embedded in a purchased-in recommender. The real metric ought to be total spend, internal and external on AI.
Increasingly, AI is disappearing into the infrastructure of all sorts of applications we purchase where users may be completely unaware. Computer vision, chatbots, NLP, and even ML algos are increasingly embedded in all sorts of day-to-day applications. It’s no longer relevant to ask about AI on the assumption that there has been a specific in-house project to develop and deploy an application that has captured significant attention and development effort.
Finally, of real concern is what government policy makers may make of this. Focusing AI policy or allocating resources to this end of the market without understanding the shortcomings of the survey may seriously misallocate funding and efforts.
It’s too much to hope that we’ll see an end to these ‘AI Adoption’ surveys. AI is here. You may not recognize all the activities you undertake that use AI, but that’s a good thing. As a smaller private company it’s not necessary to make a conscious decision to adopt AI. The vendors who provide your apps and services will see to that.
Other articles by Bill Vorhies.
About the author: Bill is Contributing Editor for Data Science Central. Bill is also President & Chief Data Scientist at Data-Magnum and has practiced as a data scientist since 2001. His articles have been read more than 2.1 million times.
Bill@DataScienceCentral.com or Bill@Data-Magnum.com
from Featured Blog Posts - Data Science Central https://ift.tt/2PiKrUl
via Gabe's MusingsGabe's Musings
Chicago Public Schools reverse stance, will teach remotely in the fall
The school system decided to keep kids home instead of risking a coronavirus spike
This week, Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school system, has announced that the coming school year will be conducted entirely via remote learning for all students.
Read More: Nurse brawls with Chicago subway passenger who blames health care workers for coronavirus
According to a local NBC affiliate, Wednesday morning CPS CEO Janice Jackson and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the announcement at a news conference, stating the district had made the decision in efforts to mitigate risk to both students and faculty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The decision to begin the 2020-2021 CPS school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we’ve received from parents and families,” Lightfoot explained in a statement announcing the decision.
This came just hours after reports surfaced the night before that the district realized it would need to move away from its previously announced hybrid model.
READ MORE: Pence ‘wouldn’t hesitate’ to send his kids back to school amid COVID-19
“As a district, we value parent feedback and we cannot overlook that a large percentage of parents have indicated they do not feel comfortable sending their students to school under a hybrid model for the start of the school year,” Jackson conceded in a message of her own.
“I understand the uncertainty this pandemic has caused our parents, especially communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted. We are making every possible effort to provide a high-quality remote learning experience in the fall, utilizing live, virtual instruction for every student, every day, and we are committed to ongoing engagement and communication with parents.”
A source close to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) reported to CNN that the Chicago Teachers Union had planned to convene their House of Delegates early next week to discuss taking a strike vote to demand remote learning for Chicago Public Schools.
Read More: Newly promoted Chicago police chief dies by suicide in department facility
This latest development has most likely stopped plans of a possible strike from the CTU.
Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!
Loading the player...
The post Chicago Public Schools reverse stance, will teach remotely in the fall appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3fxlNKf
via Gabe's Musing's
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)