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.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE EMAIL NEWSLETTER | BECOME A SUPPORTER ON PATREON
The 8 topics that our followers ranked as the most conversational are:
MORE THAN 1,000 NEW YORK CITY POLICE OFFICERS HAVE THE CORONAVIRUS AS 911 CALLS HIT RECORD HIGHS
More than 1,400 NYPD employees, including more than 1,000 officers, have contracted COVID-19 as emergency calls in the city hit record highs, the police chief said Wednesday. Some 6,100 uniformed officers, or about 17% of the 36,000-strong workforce, called out sick Wednesday, Police Chief Terence Monahan said. A day earlier, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he was “worried” about “essential workers getting scared and not wanting to show up. “You know the number of police officers who are getting sick is going up,” Cuomo said Tuesday. New York Fire Department officials told NBC News on Tuesday that 282 members, including firefighters, EMTs and civilians, have tested positive for COVID-19. At the same time, 911 call volume is hitting record daily highs, the department said.
[SOURCE: cnbc.com]
ZOOM MEETINGS AREN’T END-TO-END ENCRYPTED, DESPITE MISLEADING MARKETING
Zoom, the video conferencing service whose use has spiked amid the Covid-19 pandemic, claims to implement end-to-end encryption, widely understood as the most private form of internet communication, protecting conversations from all outside parties. In fact, Zoom is using its own definition of the term, one that lets Zoom itself access unencrypted video and audio from meetings. With millions of people around the world working from home in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, business is booming for Zoom, bringing more attention on the company and its privacy practices, including a policy, later updated, that seemed to give the company permission to mine messages and files shared during meetings for the purpose of ad targeting. Still, Zoom offers reliability, ease of use, and at least one very important security assurance: As long as you make sure everyone in a Zoom meeting connects using “computer audio” instead of calling in on a phone, the meeting is secured with end-to-end encryption, at least according to Zoom’s website, its security white paper, and the user interface within the app. But despite this misleading marketing, the service actually does not support end-to-end encryption for video and audio content, at least as the term is commonly understood. Instead it offers what is usually called transport encryption.
[SOURCE: theintercept.com]
MEMPHIS IN MAY ANNOUNCES BEALE STREET MUSIC FESTIVAL WILL BE OCT. 16-18, 2020
The new dates have been set for the Beale Street Music Festival. Memphis in May organizers say the annual festival at Time Lee Park will now happen October 16th – 18th. And organizers say a majority of the previously announced line-up will be able to perform.
[SOURCE: bizjournals.com]
CHAPLAIN HOLDS CONFESSIONS IN PEORIA NOTRE DAME BASEBALL DUGOUT
Father Corey Krengiel, chaplain of the school and a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, wanted to bring back a valued service since the coronavirus pandemic forced the closing of schools and services. He posted a short video March 18 on Instagram announcing his plan to host the confessional in a baseball dugout on the field behind the high school. A bedsheet separated Father Krengiel from confessants on the bench, and solemn music played in the background so others couldn’t overhear the conversation. Catholics are encouraged to confess at least once during Lent. Priests around the country are having to get creative in order to perform an important sacrament at a time when close contact isn’t advisable. In Houma, Louisiana; Bowie, Maryland; Coral Gables, Florida; and other cities, local priests are offering drive-thru confession. For Father Krengiel, confessions are invaluable and necessary.
[SOURCE: usatoday.com]
101-YEAR-OLD SPANISH FLU AND WORLD WAR 2 SURVIVOR HAS NOW BEAT COVID-19 AS WELL
A 101-year-old man has been released from hospital confinement after recovering from COVID-19. This was reported by the Italian city of Rimini deputy mayor, Gloria Lisi. The old man, only identified as “Mr. P.,” was admitted last week to a Rimini hospital in northeast Italy, after he was tested positive for the pandemic the world is currently suffering from. He was released from confinement on Thursday. In addition, the mayor said, this was “truly extraordinary” and that such a recovery from a man, more than a hundred years old, would give “hope for the future.” The city head also expressed how an old man has instilled in people that “even at 101 years, the future is not written.” This old man was born in 1919, the same period of the Spanish Flu, the pandemic that killed approximately 30 to 50 million people globally. He grew up between World War I and WWII and now, he turned out to be the oldest patient to recover from COVID-19 in Italy. This was reported recently by the Italian media. Incidentally, this most recent pandemic is not new to Mr. P. As mentioned, he was born in 1919, the same period when the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was inflicting his town. During that time, the said pandemic took an approximated number of “600,000 Italian,” but he was spared.
[SOURCE: sciencetimes.com]
NFL OFFICIALLY EXPANDS PLAYOFF FIELD FROM 12 TEAMS TO 14 STARTING IN 2020 SEASON
The NFL’s postseason party will be a little bigger in the coming years. League owners on Tuesday voted to expand the playoff field from 12 teams to 14, making official a move that had been expected since the approval of the new collective bargaining agreement. The vote took place as a conference call after the league meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the new format, each conference will have an additional wild-card berth. Only the top seed from each conference will receive a bye, leaving the remaining six teams per side to face off in the wild-card round. Had the rule been in place for the past season, the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers would have made it into the postseason field.
[SOURCE: msn.com]
IRS ADDS TO CONFUSION ABOUT WHETHER SENIORS HAVE TO FILE TAX RETURNS TO GET STIMULUS CHECKS
Each year, about 64 million people collect Social Security benefits: about one family in four receives some kind of Social Security benefits. Of those, nearly 45 million are retired workers who receive, on average, $1,471 per month; another 3 million individuals receive benefits as spouses or children of retired workers. Social Security benefits represent about 33% of the income of the elderly. According to the Social Security Administration, among the elderly, half of married couples and 70% of unmarried persons receive 50% or more of their income from Social Security. Nearly 21% of married couples and about 45% of unmarried persons rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income. Compare those numbers to just 25,972,101 taxpayers over the age of 65 who filed in 2018 (according to the most recent IRS data available). That means more than 20 million taxpayers over the age of 65 do not file a federal income tax return each year – likely because their only source of income is Social Security benefits.
[SOURCE: forbes.com]
NICKELODEON TO SIMULCAST A PLAYOFF GAME WITH BROADCAST GEARED TO YOUNG VIEWERS
As part of the NFL’s announcement that this season’s playoffs will be expanded, the league is making an aggressive move to attract younger fans. One of those extra playoff games will be broadcast not only by CBS but also by Nickelodeon, with a separately produced telecast of the game tailored for a younger audience. There have been some concerns within the NFL in recent years that young kids aren’t as into football as kids were a generation or two ago. It’s clear that putting a game on Nickelodeon, and gearing the broadcast toward younger viewers, is an effort to change that. What’s unknown is how a Nickelodeon-produced game will differ from a typical NFL game. We won’t be seeing green slime dumped on the referee if he misses a call, but we might see a younger team of broadcasters, and a presentation that looks more like a video game. The Nickelodeon broadcast surely won’t draw an audience anything close to the size of the CBS audience, but if Nickelodeon can bring in even a small number of additional young viewers, the NFL will see value in that.
[SOURCE: sports.yahoo.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 the past day.
A full weeks’ data (from Friday to Friday) is compiled, weighed, and sorted to produce the content for the Weekly Wrap-Up with J Cleveland Payne, published every Saturday as a podcast available at ThisIsTheConversation.com or wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
To ‘participate’ in the rankings of the headlines for this newsletter or the podcast, follow the Conversation Project on social media and engage with the posts to give them more ‘votes.’ The Conversation Project can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Connect with us directly by emailing us at theconversationinbox@gmail.com or by simply visiting thisistheconversation.com.
