These are the top maybe-not headlines from the past 36-hours presented by The Conversation Project from raw engagement data from our social media to the headlines posted over the past day.
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The 8 topics that our followers ranked as the most conversational are:
SPOTIFY REVEALS THE DECADE’S BIGGEST SONGS AND ARTISTS
As the decade draws to a close, streaming giant Spotify has announced the songs and artists that dominated the past 10 years. Named artist of the year a record three times since 2010, it may not come as a surprise that Drake brought home the crown for the most-streamed artist of the decade. The hip-hop sensation garnered an impressive 28 billion streams from 2010 to 2019, with his most popular hit, “One Dance,” featuring Kyla and WizKid, played 1.7 billion times alone. Completing the decade’s top five most-streamed artists among Spotify’s more than 100 million subscribers are Ed Sheeran, Post Malone, Ariana Grande and Eminem. The platform’s roundup saw “thank u, next” singer Ariana Grande lead the pack for the most-streamed female artist of the 2010s, followed by Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Sia and Beyoncé.
[SOURCE: cbsnews.com]
OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN, SCHOOL SHOOTING LEAVES STUDENT AND OFFICER INJURED
An armed 16-year-old Wisconsin high school student confronted a school resource officer Tuesday morning, leading to an officer-involved shooting. The incident happened around 9:12 a.m. at Oshkosh West High School in Winnebago County, about 75 miles northwest of Milwaukee. Oshkosh police chief Dean Smith said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon that the teen stabbed the resource officer following a confrontation in an office. The officer opened fire, striking the student. The student and the officer were both injured and taken to local hospitals, the Oshkosh Police Department said in a Facebook post. Smith said he does not believe their injuries are life-threatening. The school, which has about 1,700 students, was kept on lockdown and parents were told they could pick up their children at a local middle school. Classes for all Oshkosh area schools will be canceled Wednesday, said Vickie Cartwright, the superintendent of schools.
[SOURCE: nbcnews.com]
DISNEY PARKS TO LIVESTREAM STAR WARS: RISE OF THE RESISTANCE DEDICATION CEREMONY AT DISNEY’S HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS ON DECEMBER 4TH
This Thursday, December 5th marks the official grand opening of the Rise of the Resistance attraction at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Select members of the media are invited to a special preview event on December 4th, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to miss out. Disney Parks will be live streaming the attraction’s dedication ceremony on YouTube for all to see. The dedication ceremony for the attraction is set to take place at 6:55 PM (EST). A placeholder is already live on YouTube, complete with a countdown. It is during this dedication ceremony that we expect to see the highly-anticipated X-wing drones (and possibly more) fly over the land as part of the grand opening spectacular. Cast Member parking lot closures tied to the X-wing drone project are scheduled to take place on the 5th and 6th of December as well, indicating that these may fly a second or third time throughout the attraction’s opening week.
[SOURCE: wdwnt.com]
COMIC NISH KUMAR BOOED OFF STAGE AT CHARITY BASH
Comedian Nish Kumar was booed off stage after making Brexit jokes at a charity event on Monday night. Kumar, who hosts the BBC’s Mash Report, was performing at the Lord’s Taverners annual charity cricket lunch. “You are the only audience in my entire 13-year history of performing that have actually thrown something at me,” Kumar said, after a bread roll hit the stage. Radio 1 DJ and Taverners’ ambassador Greg James said the behaviour of some of the crowd was “appalling”. James added he was “embarrassed to be there”. The event, at London’s Grosvenor House, was raising money to give vulnerable children a start in life through sport.
[SOURCE: bbc.co.uk]
GETTING ENOUGH VITAMIN K IS IMPORTANT FOR AGE-RELATED CONCERNS INCLUDING COGNITIVE FUNCTION, HEART HEALTH, MOBILITY
When you think about vitamins that are important for health, there’s one that might not come to mind but should. “Older adults — particularly older men — are the age group that consume the least amount of vitamin K,” says Sarah Booth, director of the Vitamin K Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. Research has shown that too little vitamin K is associated with age-related concerns, such as cognitive function, heart health and mobility. For example, in one study this year by Booth and her colleagues, older people with low blood levels of the vitamin were more likely to have difficulty being physically active than those with higher levels. And a 2015 study of people 65 and older, published in the journal Nutrients, found that those who consumed more vitamin K (207 micrograms or more per day from foods) performed better on cognition tests than their peers who ate less.
[SOURCE: washingtonpost.com]
KAMALA HARRIS ENDS PRESIDENTIAL BID
Kamala Harris is ending her presidential bid and suspending her campaign, she announced Tuesday. In a statement, the Democratic senator from California explained she did not have enough funding to continue her run for the White House. Calling it “one of the hardest decisions of my life,” and one she had made over the last few days, Harris said her campaign “simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.” “I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign,” she said. “And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.” She continued, “In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do. So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.”
[SOURCE: cbsnews.com]
GOOGLE CO-FOUNDERS LARRY PAGE AND SERGEY BRIN RELINQUISH CONTROL OF ALPHABET TO CEO SUNDAR PICHAI
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have mostly stayed out of the spotlight since restructuring their company four years ago, are relinquishing control of parent company Alphabet to current Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the duo announced today in a joint letter published to Google’s public blog. The two men will remain employees of Alphabet and retain their seats on the board, but they will no longer oversee the company’s sprawling, almost trillion-dollar empire they created while at Stanford University more than 20 years ago. “With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure. We’ve never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there’s a better way to run the company. And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet,” Page and Brin wrote.
[SOURCE: theverge.com]
ELON MUSK ‘PEDO GUY’ DEFAMATION TRIAL BEGINS
Tesla boss Elon Musk is due to take the stand in a Los Angeles court and face the British diving specialist he accused of being a paedophile. Vern Unsworth was among the team credited with co-ordinating the July 2018 rescue of 12 boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. Mr Musk, in a now-deleted tweet, described Mr Unsworth as a “pedo guy”. The entrepreneur gave no evidence to support the comment. He is being sued for defamation. Lawyers representing Mr Unsworth have described Mr Musk’s tweets as “vile and false”. The British diver is seeking punitive and compensatory damages. The outburst last year appeared to be in response to comments made by Mr Unsworth in an interview on CNN, in which he criticised Mr Musk’s decision to send a purpose-built mini-submarine to the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai Province to help with rescue efforts. Mr Unsworth described it as a “PR stunt”, later adding that Mr Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts”. Taking to Twitter, Mr Musk said: “Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”
[SOURCE: bbc.com]
Eight Things To Talk About uses the raw engagement data from the social media engagement from The Conversation Project to generate the top-ranking headlines over the course of a weekend.
A full weeks’ data (from Friday to Friday) is compiled, weighed, and sorted to produce the content for the Wrap-Up Show with J Cleveland Payne, published every Saturday as a podcast available at ThisIsTheConversation.com or wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
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