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:
HUNDREDS SHOW UP FOR FUNERAL OF YOUNG NAVY SAILOR KILLED IN ATTACK ON FLORIDA BASE
A crowd of roughly 400 people showed up to mourn and celebrate the life of one of the young Navy sailors killed in the attack on a Florida base earlier this month, The Associated Press reports. Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, was among the three sailors killed in the Dec. 6 attack on Pensacola Naval Air Station. Walters’s father, Shane Walters, told the AP that his son had been standing watch at the building where a gunman opened fire. He had called his father hours before to celebrate that he had passed the exam qualifying him for the watchman job. On Monday, hundreds poured into a Savannah, Ga., church to remember him, including service members, friends, family and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who ordered all statewide buildings to lower their flags to half-staff in Walters’s honor. According to the AP, funeral-goers spent little time discussing the attack, and instead spent time remembering Walters and praising his work. The Navy posthumously awarded gold wings to Walters and the other two slain sailors, Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson and Airman Mohammed Shahed Haitham, who had all been training to earn the badge.
[SOURCE: thehill.com]
JOSH GORDON BANNED INDEFINITELY BY NFL FOR PEDS, SUBSTANCE ABUSE
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Josh Gordon has been suspended indefinitely for violating the NFL’s policies on performance-enhancing substances and substances of abuse. The league announced the suspension Monday, one day after Gordon appeared in his fifth game this season with the Seahawks. This marks his sixth suspension since the 2013 season and the fifth for some form of substance abuse, according to ESPN Stats & Information research. The Seahawks were told of Gordon’s suspension Monday. Gordon was aware a suspension could be coming, a source told ESPN. The Seahawks claimed the one-time Pro Bowler last month after he was released off injured reserve by New England. He had seven catches for 139 yards with Seattle, including a 58-yard reception during a 30-24 victory over the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. Gordon also threw an interception in that game on an ill-fated trick play. Seahawks Head Coach Pete Carroll said he saw no signs that Gordon, 28, had experienced a relapse.
[SOURCE: espn.com]
FYRE FEST TRUSTEE SUING AGENCIES TO RECOVER MILLIONS FROM BLINK-182, G.O.O.D. MUSIC, KENDALL JENNER AND MORE
The trustee handling the Fyre Festival bankruptcy has filed 14 lawsuits against a number of major talent agencies, transportation companies, management firms and celebrities like Kendall Jenner as it attempts to claw back $14.4 million paid out by Fyre Media and its founder Billy McFarland to stage the disastrous festival in Bahamas. McFarland is now serving a six-year federal prison sentence for bilking investors out of $26 million to stage the over the top festival with rapper Ja Rule and the promotional help of models and social media influencers who hyped the event on Instagram. Gregory Messer has been appointed as a trustee of the chapter seven bankruptcy for Fyre Media — the celebrity booking app company responsible for the Fyre Fest — and is working with New York attorney Fred Stevens to recover money owed to creditors and investors. Messer is suing United Talent Agency, Creative Artists Agency and International Creative Management as it attempts to recover money paid to artists represented by the firms, as well as $229,172.33 paid to American Express, $160,000 spent on private yachts and $238,550 spent with ticket broker ASC Tickets. Stevens also took a shot at Matte Productions, which co-produced a documentary on the festival for Netflix with Jerry Media. According to his suit, records show a transfer of “over $500,000 to the company that shot and edited Fyre Festival ads and Festival footage which ultimately used that footage to produce a profitable and popular documentary panning the Festival (without sharing any of the proceeds of that documentary with those victimized by McFarland).”
[SOURCE: billboard.com]
141-YEAR-OLD FRUITCAKE IS A MICHIGAN FAMILY’S HEIRLOOM
Some families pass down jewelry, watches or even recipes. But a Michigan family has its own heirloom: a 141-year-old fruitcake. “It’s a great thing,” said Julie Ruttinger, the great great granddaughter of Fidelia Ford, who baked the cake in 1878. “It was tradition. It’s a legacy.” The cake was initially preserved to honor Ford. She established a tradition of baking the cake and letting it age for a year before serving it during holiday seasons. Ford died at age 65 before her 1878 cake could be eaten, and by the time the holidays arrived, the family considered her handiwork a legacy, not food. Until his 2013 death, the cake was in the care of Ruttinger’s father, Morgan Ford, who was Fidelia Ford’s great-grandson. He had stored it in an antique glass dish on the top shelf of a china cabinet in his Tecumseh home — which is where it remains today. Guinness World Records doesn’t have an entry for the oldest fruitcake, but as for cakes in general, the Ford fruitcake is nowhere near the world’s oldest, The Detroit News reported. That honor goes to a 4,176-year-old cake that was found in an Egyptian tomb, according to the Guinness organization. It is on display in a food museum in Switzerland. During the 93 years that Morgan Ford held on to his family’s fruitcake, he showed it off at church and family gatherings and shared stories about its history with younger relatives. He even showcased the cake on “The Tonight Show” in December 2003, taking a bite with the host and saying it tasted like thrashed wheat.
[SOURCE: apnews.com]
BREAST CANCER RISK FROM MENOPAUSE HORMONES MAY LAST DECADES
Women who use certain types of hormones after menopause still have an increased risk of developing breast cancer nearly two decades after they stop taking the pills, long-term results from a big federal study suggest. Although the risk is very small, doctors say a new generation of women entering menopause now may not be aware of landmark findings from 2002 that tied higher breast cancer rates to hormone pills combining estrogen and progestin. “The message is probably not clear” that even short-term use may have lasting effects, said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California. He discussed the new results Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The results are from the Women’s Health Initiative, a federally funded study that tested pills that doctors long thought would help prevent heart disease, bone loss and other problems in women after menopause. More than 16,000 women ages 50 to 70 were given combination hormone or dummy pills for five to six years. The main part of the study was stopped in 2002 when researchers surprisingly saw more heart problems and breast cancers among hormone users. Women were advised to stop treatment but doctors have continued to study them and have information on about two-thirds. With roughly 19 years of followup, 572 breast cancers have occurred in women on hormones versus 431 among those on dummy pills. That worked out to a 29% greater risk of developing the disease for hormone takers. Still, it was a difference of just 141 cases over many years, so women with severe hot flashes and other menopause symptoms may decide that the benefits of the pills outweigh their risks, doctors say. The advice remains to use the lowest possible dose for the shortest time.
[SOURCE: wkbn.com]
BOEING TO SUSPEND PRODUCTION OF 737 MAX PLANE IN JANUARY
Boeing said Monday that it is suspending production of its troubled 737 Max airplanes next month. Production of the planes, which were grounded after two crashes killed 346 people, will remain on hiatus until regulators determine when they can be certified and returned to service, Boeing said in a statement. The 737 Max was grounded on March 13, three days after an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed en route to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board. Another 737 Max, Lion Air Flight 610, had crashed off the coast of Indonesia on Oct. 29, 2018, killing 189 people. The company said Monday that it continued to build planes after the program was halted and that about 400 are now in storage. Boeing said it would prioritize delivering those planes instead of focusing on more production. Boeing has said automated anti-stall software contributed to the crashes, but a former Boeing manager recently told NBC News that he alerted the company to problems at its main factory in Washington state in the months before. The former manager, Ed Pierson, said a push to increase production of the planes had created a “factory in chaos.” No evidence links the crashes to the conditions that Pierson, a former Navy squadron commander, said he saw at the plant in Renton, Washington, although his observations have raised new questions about Boeing’s hectic push to manufacture the plane.
[SOURCE: nbcnews.com]
OBAMACARE ENROLLMENT PERIOD EXTENDED UNTIL DECEMBER 18
The open enrollment period for Obamacare has been extended until December 18 for those who couldn’t sign up on Sunday, the original deadline, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Monday. In a statement, CMS said that out of “an abundance of caution, to accommodate consumers who attempted to enroll in coverage during the final hours of Open Enrollment but who may have experienced issues” the deadline is being extended until 3 a.m. ET Wednesday to “give consumers the opportunity to come back and complete their enrollment for January 1 coverage.” The extension follows weeks of weak enrollment reports for 2020 Obamacare plans. In a statement last week, CMS said nearly 3.9 million people had signed up on the federal exchange, Healthcare.gov, between November 1 — when the enrollment period began — and December 7. That’s down about 3.5% on an average daily basis. The days just before the deadline, which had been December 15 in most states, are the most crucial as Americans typically wait until the last minute to sign up. Get America Covered, an advocacy group that promotes enrollment in the Affordable Care Act and had called for an extension due to “significant outages and increased wait times on the final day of enrollment,” called the announcement “a step in the right direction.”
[SOURCE: cnn.com]
ORLANDO JONES SAYS HE WAS FIRED FROM ‘AMERICAN GODS’ BECAUSE HIS CHARACTER SENT ‘THE WRONG MESSAGE FOR BLACK AMERICA’
Orlando Jones isn’t holding back regarding his split from his Starz show American Gods. Taking to Twitter Saturday morning (December 14), the actor claims he was fired from the series’ third season, alleging new showrunner Charles Eglee decided his character Mr. Nancy sends “the wrong message for Black America.” According to Jones, who was a large part of season 2’s writing and producing contributions after the departure of original showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, he was fired back in September. “There will be no more Mr. Nancy. Don’t let these m****rf*****s tell you they love Mr. Nancy. They don’t,” Jones says in the selfie video. “I’m not going to name names but the new season 3 showrunner [Eglee] is Connecticut born and Yale-educated, so he’s very smart and he thinks that Mr. Nancy’s angry, get s**t done, is the wrong message for Black America. That’s right. This white man sits in that decision-making chair and I’m sure he has many Black bffs who are his advisors and made it clear to him that if he did not get rid of that angry god, Mr. Nancy, he’d start a Denmark Vesey uprising in this country. I mean, what else could it be?” Entertainment Weekly reached out to representatives for Starz, Fremantle, who produces American Gods, and Eglee, and according to the outlet, they have not received a comment.
[SOURCE: bet.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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