It’s #NewstodonFriday, the day to celebrate and highlight newsrooms that are active in the fediverse. What do we want you to do with this thread? Boost the posts you enjoy, follow the publishers’ profiles, and subscribe or donate some money to help them continue their great work. And if there’s a newsroom that’s not on our radar, please share in the comments — or just say hello!
@ProPublica is doing some of the best investigative journalism in the country. This week, it has an update on one of its education stories. Shrub Oak International School in New York promises personalized assistance for autistic students with complex needs but ProPublica discovered neglect and abuse. As a result of their reporting, some states are now telling their public schools not to send pupils to the private, for-profit boarding school.
https://www.propublica.org/article/shrub-oak-international-school-lawsuit-washington-state-autism
Sad news this week about @hakaimagazine, which has announced it will shut down at the end of the year. For now, it’s still publishing brilliant science stories, like this beautifully illustrated one on the anatomy of seals.
https://hakaimagazine.com/news/for-seals-big-hearts-mean-big-dives/
The IOC is allowing 15 Russian athletes to compete at the Olympic Games under the Individual Neutral Athlete flag. But @timkmak’s Counteroffensive reports that many have expressed support for the war or taken part in propaganda events. Here’s more.
https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/investigation-supposedly-neutral
There’s a new presidential candidate in town, and @damemagazine says “We are so ready to elect Kamala Harris.” Maya Contreras believes she’s the perfect candidate — and breaks down why she thinks that.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2024/07/25/we-are-so-ready-to-elect-kamala-harris/
A new addition to our NewstodonFriday roster: @BaltimoreBanner. Here’s a sweet story from them about a Where’s Waldo scavenger hunt (it’s a national event, so there’s probably one happening in a town near you).
For @flaminghydra, Zito Madu writes about the joy of football (soccer), including playing for Palestine in a mock World Cup tournament in Michigan. “What stuck with me through that tournament and the aftermath was how light and joyful it all felt with them, how much we laughed and celebrated, and the feeling and experience of being exhausted on the benches, all in the sun together. It was more fun than I had had playing in all those years before.”
https://flaminghydra.com/football-in-palestine/
Two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, @TexasObserver shares this photo essay, featuring women who were denied abortions, plus Linda Coffee, who represented Jane Roe in the landmark case in 1973.
https://www.texasobserver.org/their-laws-our-bodies/
#Abortion #RoeVWade #ReproductiveRights #Newstodon #NewstodonFriday #FollowFriday
If you’re on Flipboard, you can now follow Texas Observer over there: https://flipboard.com/@texasobserver.
AI interview services say they eliminate bias. @restofworld looks at the experience of being interviewed by an AI avatar, what experts say about the issue of bias, and how some candidates are now turning to AI themselves.
https://restofworld.org/2024/ai-interview-software-hiring-practices/
Nigeria has the largest number of food-insecure people in the world. @thecontinent talked to young people who are learning how to farm — while continuing their educations in other fields — in order to be part of the solution.
https://continent.substack.com/p/remembering-the-past-to-feed-the
“From a single blade of eelgrass, life overflows,” writes Anushuya Thapa for @SFPublicPress in collaboration with Bay Nature. She reports on why it’s so important to protect this marine plant, how anchor-out boats in Richardson Bay in the Bay Area damage it, and the move to restore it.
Remember doing projects with drosophila (fruit flies) in high-school biology? These scientists are going a little beyond sorting the different phenotypes! In @thetransmitter’s story, Laura Dattaro writes about how researchers are mapping the neurons in the drosophila’s ventral nerve cord. Creating these “connectomes” could help them understand how to map the systems of more complicated organisms.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/connectome/new-connectomes-fly-beyond-the-brain/
And finally, a shameless plug for our local news project, where we’ve federated more than 64 publications. Here’s a story from Pew Research about how Americans get their politics, and a spreadsheet that includes all our federated titles, with a specific tab for local.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2024/07/24/how-americans-get-local-political-news/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iUFTo6rPvhqzCReLaM1c6-xUKRuBVqlZVStZl9Al-EU/edit