If, like us, you’re donning your holiday gear (it’s sweatpants!) and bidding farewell to work till 2025, then here’s a collection of stories to entertain you through the fortnight. And if you’re deskbound, well, hopefully this #NewstodonFriday thread offers some distraction from the humdrum. All the newsrooms featured here are independent and have their own active fediverse accounts. Please follow them, click on the stories, boost them, subscribe, donate and otherwise support if you can. We’ll be around through the festive season but taking a break from Newstodon — and hopefully, the news. Happy holidays, and tidings of comfort and joy.
For more than a century, the Wanamaker Organ, which sits at the heart of a seven-store department store, has been a key part of Philadelphians’ holiday celebrations. @TheConversationUS looks at the glorious past and uncertain future of this local treasure.
Everyone in the U.S. who is pregnant or who is close to a pregnant person should read @ProPublica’s story, which was written in consultation with doctors and gives essential information on medical procedures, terminology and more.
Last year, “Barbie” was everywhere as audiences embraced the idea of an all-female Supreme Court and the closure of the Mojo Dojo Casa House. Canadian publication @thetyee says that these days, movies from the U.S. hit different — even classics from the past.
Of COURSE people are trying to laser drones out of the New Jersey skies — how else would 2024 end? @jasonkoebler of @404mediaco says the pilots of at least 11 commercial planes flying into NYC-area airports have reported lasers being shone into their cockpits due to the hysteria over mysterious objects in the skies. [Story may be paywalled]
Until recently, Latin America’s most viewed figure on YouTube was then president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. His press conferences were watched for 49 million hours in 2023 alone. A slew of creators built reputations, audiences, and careers on covering those press conferences. Now, López Obrador is out of office — and the YouTubers are trying to figure out how to stay relevant.
https://restofworld.org/2024/amlo-youtubers-mexico-president/
Kenya has about 40,000 “shadow scholars” who are paid by university students in Western countries to write their essays. @thecontinent reviews a new documentary, “The Shadow Scholars,” about this industry, which is directed by Eloïse King in collaboration with Oxford scholar Patricia Kingori. “Kingori’s scholarship is interested in teasing out how power dynamics shape the past, present and future of the global order. In this case, she is appalled by how easily the efforts of these young Kenyans are erased as they go uncredited for their intellectual output – an erasure with loud echoes in history,” writes Wilfred Okiche
https://continent.substack.com/p/review-outsourcing-academia
We have so many renewable sources of energy now, we don’t know what to do with it — literally. @KnowableMag looks at the storage technology engineers are developing, from batteries to systems that harness air pressure, to see us through days when wind turbines are quiet and the sun slips behind clouds.
“Carol of the Bells” is actually a Ukrainian song called “Shchedryk.” Oksana Ostapchuk and Myroslava Tanska-Vikulova of @timkmak’s Counteroffensive explain the history of the song, and its significance to one American who’s volunteering in Kyiv.
https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-ukrainian-history-of-your-favorite
Documentary photographer Alan Pogue has been contributing to @TexasObserver for decades. Here’s a selection of some of his greatest work for the magazine, which is coming to the end of its 70th anniversary year.
https://www.texasobserver.org/alan-pogue-photo-essay-observer-seventieth-anniversary/
Yes, we have been tooting our own horn about this for the past few days but honestly, we’re pretty proud. Flipboard has opened a beta for @surf, a new app for building custom feeds and surfing the open social web. @theverge liked it — you can read more here and sign up for the waitlist at the second link.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/18/24323903/flipboard-surf-fediverse-social-web-app
And finally, to our @ScienceDesk, which shared this story from @ScienceAlert about the best way to cook broccoli — and also referred to it as “our most polarizing vegetable,” to which we would respond, “you misspelled Brussels sprouts.”
@Flipboard @thecontinent
Genuine concern