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On October 24, 2024, tens of thousands of fans lined the streets of lower Manhattan to celebrate their latest hometown championship team, the New York Liberty. They gathered to cheer current players, including Finals MVP Jonquel Jones, and former legends whod taken the team to the brink of a title in five previous seasons. But the parades biggest draw may have been the teams mascot, Ellie the Elephant. As the parade made its way along the Canyon of Heroes, Ellie moved from float to float, pounding her feet in sync with the music, doing her signature dance move, the Ellie Stomp. The parade terminated at City Hall for the official ceremony, and shortly after Mayor Eric Adams delivered a perfunctory speech, Ellie surprised the crowd by taking the stage and cajoling Liberty player Kennedy Burke to join her in an impromptu dance-off. Ellie famously never utters a word but communicates with a lingua franca of expressive body language and gestures. Before the dancing started, Ellie casually handed her couture purse to the mayor. Kennedy Burke I was a little nervous, but Ellie calmed my nerves because she is so unapologetically herself. I was like, you know what? Shes going to have a good time. Im going to have a good time. I just kind of fangirled because I love Ellie. Liberty fan Ava Brock It was hilarious having Mayor Adams hold her purse. It was the kind of crowd-pleasing moment that has made Ellie a viral sensation. Liberty Chief Brand Officer Shana Stephenson The performer is from Brooklyn. They sing, they dance, they understand what it means to connect with an audience. Brock She is who she is. Walking up to you, kissing you with her trunk and everything. Thats how New York is. Take us or leave us. You can be who you wanna be and no ones looking at you crazy. Stephenson Ive seen Ellies impact on fans who are 70 years old and fans who are 7 years old. The LGBTQ+ community identifies with Ellie. Black women identify with Ellie. Youth identify with Ellie. The way that she dresses, the way that she dances. Burke She can do any dance in this world. Salsa. Hip-hop. Im pretty sure she can do some ballet. Her versatility is just out of this world. Liberty CEO Keia Clarke One of the secret touches of Ellie is that she wears real shoes. Ellie wears sneakers, not big mascot feet. [She wears custom Nike Sabrina 2 By Big Ellie shoes.] While the team closely guards the identity of the performer inside the elephant costume, theres no hiding the impact Ellie has had since her debut when the team moved to Brooklyns Barclays Center in 2021: Her more than 350,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram helped drive the teams social engagement up 665% last year, and 24 of the Libertys 51 sponsors are new, including 19 that have never before partnered with a WNBA franchise. Ellie has played a key role in the partnerships with Fenty, Essie, Away, Shake Shack, and Pinterest. Stephenson Shes helped accelerate our growth and our visibility. Ellie is allowing us to be innovative in how we approach our partnership relationships. Shes opening up new doors. Clarke We have Ellie activations included in a lot of our partnership deals. Stephenson Brooklyn is our home, so [that evening] we had a celebration at Barclays Center that included a performance by Fat Joe and Remy Ma. Lil Mama came out and surprised everyone. Ellie came onstage and did the Ellie Stomp. Clarke Elephants are strong and resilient. Elephants are matriarchal. Elephants have remarkable memories, and we didnt want to forget where we came from.
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Transportation policy and infrastructure are determined by what the most influential lobbyists spend their resources on. If one of the old investigative journalism shows was publishing a story on this topic, theyd probably call the segment “Power Play: How Lobbyists Shape Transportation Infrastructure.” The grandfatherly voice would open up with, The corridors of power are often unseen, but their impact is felt by all. Dun dun dun. Its kind of their thing to sound over-the-top, but lobbying certainly deserves that sort of big-voiced, you-wont-believe-what-comes-next vibe. Lobbyists collect money from clients in order to buy legislation. In the olden days, they would stand in the Capitol lobby like it was some kind of high-stakes trading post. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} Transportation lobbyists have long been players in the political arena. Road building contractors, truckers, civil engineers, and labor unionsthey all funnel substantial sums of money into political campaigns because they want access to decision-makers and key influencers so they can shape legislation to their advantage. How to buy a bill From leveraging personal relationships and funding political campaigns to offering miraculous investment advice, a lobbyists objective is to sway decisions in favor of their clients. Their reach extends to drafting legislation, providing input on regulations, and shaping the allocation of funds for infrastructure projects. Details about this stuff are accessible all over the internet. Here are the best places to start: OpenSecrets.org Center for Responsive Politics Lobbying Disclosure Database Lobbyists spent $267 million on issues related to ground transportation in 2021, making it the sixth-most lobbied sector in the United States; that amount helped the ground transportation lobbyists win 72% of the bills they were trying to get authorized. Think about that win ratethey get what they want three out of four times. Heres a sample of the top spenders in a single year: American Trucking Associations ($18.5 million) United States Chamber of Commerce ($16.5 million) National Automobile Dealers Association ($15.5 million) American Public Transportation Association ($14.5 million) Railway Supply Institute ($14 million) American Road & Transportation Builders Association ($13.5 million) FedEx ($12.5 million) Uber Technologies ($12 million) Lyft ($10 million) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ($10 million) When you hit #10, I hope you heard the sound of a record scratch. NHTSA, a government agency, is paid by the government to lobby the government. Theyre the agency responsible for safety regulations, including life-or-death issues like truck underride crash prevention and automaker recalls. You know, the issues that those top lobbyists dont ever want to see brought before Congress. The feds are paying NHTSA to push for policies that improve safety. And NHTSAs recommendations are heavily influenced (sometimes even drafted by) trucking and automotive lobbyists. I know, they dont teach about widespread corruption in the kids cartoon about how a bill is made. NHTSA isnt alone. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC) . . . name an industry, and theres a government agency that gets paid by the government to lobby the government. Is lobbying good or bad? Yes. Lobbying is the art of persuading and influencing policymakers to shape laws, regulations, and policies in favor of specific interests. Lobbyists act as intermediaries to policymakers. Their influence is measured in terms of financial contributions, personal relationships, and the nature of their expertise. But the thing that really matters is the legislation that gets passed or scrapped. The auto-oriented groups are by far the most funded, so they have the most influence. I have a bias for healthy neighborhoods. You know what it takes in modern America to abolish unhealthy policy that leads to junk infrastructure? Lobbying. I dont see how thats avoidable in the short term. Lobbying creates winners and losers. Winners are generally the large corporations and politicians. The percentage of congressional politicians who get into lobbying jumped from 3% to 50% just in my lifetime. When you include indirect policy-influencing jobs, the number is close to 60%. Its even more skewed in transportation, with close to 2,000 registered lobbyists, nearly 70% of whom previously worked in government. Losers are generally the people trying to reduce the number of Americans being injured or killed as a result of transportation policy. I dont know if money makes the entire world go round, but it definitely makes or breaks political careers. Campaign donations, super PACs (political action committees), and corporate-funded think tanks all play a role in greasing the wheels of influence. Its not a coincidence that public servants at the national level are able to live so lavishly. Theyre rewarded based on their votes. Lobbyists do provide valuable insights to policymakers, helping them make informed decisions. They write the tl;dr summaries for elected leaders. Its not all show me the money antics. Whether or not lobbying should exist at all is a worthwhile conversation. But for you and me, right now in todays environment, it helps to at least be aware of lobbyings purchasing power. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
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In The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI, the futurist Ray Kurzweil imagines the point in 2045 when rapid technological progress crosses a threshold as humans merge with machines, an event he calls the singularity. Although Kurzweils predictions may sound more like science fiction than fact-based forecasting, his brand of thinking goes well beyond the usual sci-fi crowd. It has provided inspiration for American technology industry elites for some time, chief among them Elon Musk. With Neuralink, his company that is developing computer interfaces implanted in peoples brains, Musk says he intends to unlock new dimensions of human potential. This fusion of human and machine echoes Kurzweils singularity. Musk also cites apocalyptic scenarios and points to transformative technologies that can save humanity. Ideas like those of Kurzweil and Musk, among others, can seem as if they are charting paths into a brave new world. But as a humanities scholar who studies utopianism and dystopianism, Ive encountered this type of thinking in the futurist and techno-utopian art and writings of the early 20th century. Techno-utopianisms origins Techno-utopianism emerged in its modern form in the 1800s, when the Industrial Revolution ushered in a set of popular ideas that combined technological progress with social reform or transformation. Kurzweils singularity parallels ideas from Italian and Russian futurists amid the electrical and mechanical revolutions that took place at the turn of the 20th century. Enthralled by inventions like the telephone, automobile, airplane, and rocket, those futurists found inspiration in the concept of a New Human, a being who they imagined would be transformed by speed, power, and energy. A century ahead of Musk, Italian futurists imagined the destruction of one world, so that it might be replaced by a new one, reflecting a common Western techno-utopian belief in a coming apocalypse that would be followed by the rebirth of a changed society. One especially influential figure of the time was Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 Founding and Manifesto of Futurism offered a nationalistic vision of a modern, urban Italy. It glorified the tumultuous transformation caused by the Industrial Revolution. The document describes workers becoming one with their fiery machines. It encourages aggressive action coupled with an eternal speed designed to break things and bring about a new world order. The overtly patriarchal text glorifies war as hygiene and promotes scorn for woman. The manifesto also calls for the destruction of museums, libraries, and universities and supports the power of the rioting crowd. Marinettis vision later drove him to support and even influence the early fascism of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. However, the relationship between the futurism movement and Mussolinis increasingly anti-modern regime was an uneasy one, as Italian studies scholar Katia Pizzi wrote in Italian Futurism and the Machine. Further east, the Russian revolutionaries of 1917 adopted a utopian faith in material progress and science. They combined a belief in the ease with which culture could be destroyed with the benefits of spreading scientific ideas to the masses of Russia, historian Richard Stites wrote in Revolutionary Dreams. For the Russian left, an immediate and complete remaking of the soul was taking place. This new proletarian culture was personified in the ideal of the New Soviet Man. This master of nature by means of machines and tools received a polytechnical education instead of the traditional middle-class pursuit of the liberal arts, humanities scholar George Young wrote in The Russian Cosmists. The first Soviet Peoples Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, supported these movements. Although their political ideologies took different forms, these 20th-century futurists all focused their efforts on technological advancement as an ultimate objective. Techno-utopians were convinced that the dirt and pollution of real-world factories would automatically lead to a future of perfect cleanliness, efficiency, quiet, and harmony, historian Howard Segal wrote in Technology and Utopia. Myths of efficiency and everyday tech Despite the remarkable technological advances of that time, and since, the vision of those techno-utopians largely has not come to pass. In the 21st century, it can seem as if we live in a world of near-perfect efficiency and plenitude thanks to the rapid development of technology and the proliferation of global supply chains. But the toll that these systems take on the natural environmentand on the people whose labor ensures their successpresents a dramatically different picture. Today, some of the people who espouse techno-utopian and apocalyptic visions have amassed the power to influence, if not determine, the future. At the start of 2025, through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk introduced a fast-paced, tech-driven approach to government that has led to major cutbacks in federal agencies. Hes also influenced the administrations huge investments in artificial intelligence , a class of technological tools that public officials are only beginning to understand. The futurists of the 20th century influenced the political sphere, but their movements were ultimately artistic and literary. By contrast, contemporary techno-futurists like Musk lead powerful multinational corporations hat influence economies and cultures across the globe. Does this make Musks dreams of human transformation and societal apocalypse more likely to become reality? If not, these elements of Musks project are likely to remain more theoretical, just as the dreams of last centurys techno-utopians did. Sonja Fritzsche is a senior associate dean and professor of German studies at Michigan State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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You are constantly getting feedback from others about your performance at work. A client may be happy with their interaction. A colleague may walk away from a meeting upset. You get comments on a report you have written, an email discussing a presentation, or thoughts on the way you interact with colleagues. In the best of worlds, the feedback you get is clear and easy to understand. Good feedback has three characteristics. It specifies the behavior you engaged in. It provides a clear and accurate assessment of the consequences of that behavior. It suggests actions you may take in the future that would be better suited to the occasion. The further that the feedback you get deviates from this formulation, the harder it may be to understand the feedback or to recognize how it applies to you and what you should do about it. When you get feedback you dont understand, it is often valuable to get more information in order to ensure that you are able to learn from the experience and improve. Ill dig into how to address the three components of good feedback in a moment, but first a word about asking questions related to feedback. It is important to start any questions by pointing out that you are asking for clarification. Do not argue that the feedback wasnt warranted. There is no easier way to ensure you never get feedback again than spending your time trying to convince someone that you did nothing wrong in the first place. 1. Ask about what went wrong Sometimes the feedback you get is difficult to process because it is not clear about what you did wrong. That can happen because someone assumes you already know. More often, though, it happens because someone criticizes your motivation rather than your actions. They will talk about your attitude or intent. Typically, when people try to assess your motivation or intent, they get it wrong, and so the description of the feedback doesnt ring true for you. Rather than arguing about your motivation or the situation, ask for a clearer description of what you did. To the extent that you believe your motivation or intent was different than what was described to you, it is okay to clarify your motivation, but you should start with a phrase like, I can see how you would think I was trying to . . . when discussing your motivation, so that youre not trying to make the other person feel like they completely misread the situation. 2. Ask about the impact At timesparticularly early in your careerunderstanding the consequences of an action can be the most important part of the feedback you get. You may have done something that you thought was going to lead to a different outcome, but you are getting feedback that was clearly not the case. In addition to understanding the consequences of your action, if youre talking to a more knowledgeable colleague, it can also be helpful to get their sense of why the action had the impact it did. In order to get better at predicting the impact of your actions, it is important to understand the relationship between what you do and what happens next. 3. Ask about the future You may have a clear sense of what you did and what happened as a result, and still feel like the feedback has not given you knowledge of what you should have done instead. Sometimes the person giving feedback simply hasnt been clear about their recommendations for future actions. Other times, the person giving you feedback also does not know what should have been done instead. When you are confused about what you should do differently in the future, you may go back to the person who gave you feedback for advice. However, you might also find a trusted mentor to review the situation and help you walk through other ways that you could have handled it. Often, someone further removed from the specifics (and perhaps someone with more experience than the individual who gave you feedback) can give you clearer advice on better alternatives for the future.
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Pharma stocks took a fresh hit on Friday following a report in The Washington Post that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reportedly plans to link COVID-19 vaccines with the deaths of 25 minors. Moderna shares fell 7.4% Friday to their lowest level since March 2020. The drop brought the drugmakers year-to-date slump to more than 44%. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company is one of two manufacturers of approved mRNA coronavirus vaccines. The other mRNA COVID-19 vaccine maker, Pfizer, saw its own shares fall 3.9% on Friday. Shares of its partner on the shot, BioNTech, tumbled 7.3%, while stocks in another vaccine maker, Novavax, were down 3.6%. The pharma companies stock slump stands in contrast to the market as a whole, with the S&P 500 rising more than 12% this year. FDA officials reportedly plan to present the data at an upcoming vaccine advisory panel meeting, according to the Post. The panel makes recommendations to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as it sets vaccine schedules and guidance, and its recommendations have historically guided insurance coverage for vaccines and state policy. The data is apparently based on self-reported adverse events collected in a federal database called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The database contains unverified reports and is not designed to conclude that a vaccine caused a death. The FDA didnt immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment. Vaccine policy in U.S. shifting under new administration U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all of the members of the vaccine advisory panel, which is known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Kennedy installed seven new members who have criticized vaccines in the past. Kennedy is reportedly considering appointing seven more members to the committee who share his skepticism of COVID vaccines or the pharmaceutical industry, Politico reported. And last month, the FDA imposed new eligibility restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines that critics say has severely limited who can get the shot. ACIP is due to meet on September 18 and September 19, and the committee is expected to discuss vaccines for COVID-19, as well as hold votes on recommendations for vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) and hepatitis B, as well as COVID-19. Pharma companies criticize restrictions on shots Modernas CEO Stéphane Bancel said at a WIRED health summit that recent changes in U.S. vaccine policy represented a step backward. Moderna, in a statement to Barrons on Friday, noted that the safety of its COVID-19 vaccine is rigorously monitored by the company, the FDA, and regulators in more than 90 countries. Those safety systems have not identified any new or undisclosed safety concerns in children or in pregnant women, the company said. And in a statement to Bloomberg, Pfizer said that extensive data supports the safety and effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine, and cited its successful administration to more than one billion adults, adolescents, and children. Both drugmakers didnt immediately respond to requests for comment from Fast Company.
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