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Noteworthy Information

[Intermediate] Google Podcasts: How the Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives (1:13 hours)

Ownership is simple, right? Something is either yours or it isn’t. Case closed. But who owns the space behind your airplane seat, the results of the DNA you took online, the Netflix password you got from your cousin’s roommate? The jury's still out, according to law professors Michael Heller and James Salzman. That’s because ownership isn’t binary or static: it’s a storytelling exercise, and we rely on just six stories to claim everything we own. In this revelatory conversation, Michael and James explain how those stories work, how you can use them to your advantage, and why they might be key to dismantling income inequality and arresting climate change.

Business & Government Simple read

Judge says: Privacy law applies to Google results

A federal judge says the results of Google searches are covered by the law governing how companies handle personal information, a victory for people seeking a digital "right to be forgotten."

[Advanced] Theory of Change

Hivos values working with Theory of Change (ToC) as an appropriate approach to guide its strategic thinking and action, as well as its collaborative action with others. The use of a ToC approach fosters critical questioning of all aspects of change interventions and supports adaptive planning and management in response to diverse and quickly changing contexts. It contributes to the quality and transparency of strategic thinking, and therefore to personal, organisational and social learning. Use of a ToC approach should make Hivos more effective in achieving its goals, and enable it to understand better why and under which conditions specific strategies might work for specific groups in society.

[Intermediate] Inside Facebook's Data Wars

Executives at the social network have clashed over CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data tool that revealed users’ high engagement levels with right-wing media sources.

[Intermediate] The Worst Data Breaches of 2021

Every six months, we compile a list of the worst data breaches that occurred during that period in order to learn from them. So far this year, the causes of the worst data breaches have shifted from human error and credential based attacks that we saw at the end of last year to ransomware, third-party vulnerabilities, and undetected security gaps.

[Simple] The One Number You Need to Grow

If growth is what you’re after, you won’t learn much from complex measurements of customer satisfaction or retention. You simply need to know what your customers tell their friends about you.

[Simple] Why vaccine-shy French are suddenly rushing to get jabbed

The government’s decision to allow only the fully vaccinated to enter restaurants, bars, trains and other spaces has caused a spike in inoculations.


Questions Asked

Individuals Intermediate read

Because of Social Media, Are We Reading Fewer Books?

A user wrote:

"Twitter did something that I would not have thought possible: It stole reading from me," argues a former New Yorker writer (who was once nominated for the Pulitzer Prize). In a new piece in the Atlantic this week, they argue that Twitter "hacked itself so deep into my circuitry that it interrupted the very formation of my thoughts..."

I'm still haunted by a free 37-minute documentary I saw two years ago on YouTube called Bookstores: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. It followed Max Joseph, the former host of the TV show Catfish (and the documentary's director) as he spoke to several reading experts (including a speed reader) about how he could form better habits. But at one point he calculates he was spending 20 minutes a day just on news, plus another 30 minutes a day on social media — which adds up to 304 hours a year that could've been spent reading books. (Enough time to read 30 books a year.)

Are we reading fewer books because of social media?

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