As I begin my tenure in the Corner, I offer a few thoughts on the craft we practice in these pages.

Journalism is a threatened species. The primacy of social media marginalizes and handicaps real journalists as objective reporting offers little seduction in a world where Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram are considered reliable sources. Even the most — allegedly — reliable arbiters of complex matters are inclined to sell their wares with a dash of sensation or dollop of “give them what they want.” It is not hard to find a writer’s or editor’s implicit bias in a supposedly “objective” news story, even in the venerable The New York Times. In this corner, there will be no implicit bias. The bias will be quite explicit, as befits opinion writing.

One aspect of the surrender to commercial pressure is bending over backward to appear “objective,” thereby aiding and abetting a culture of false equivalence. The most absurd recent stumble was the 5-day reign of Ronna (Romney) McDaniel as a contributor to NBC News. This opportunistic Republican operative was so deep in Trump’s pocket that I’m surprised the NBC execs found her at all. You may wonder, “What were they thinking?” The answer is: “They weren’t.” The New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and other purported “liberal” outlets hire conservative opinion writers to appear balanced. In rare cases, the efforts are useful but more often are contrived. As Stephen Colbert quipped at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Despite reality’s liberal bias, I recognize the dangers of claiming the exclusive “truth.” In many complex matters, a variety of thoughtful perspectives can be illuminating. Good citizenship is cultivated through honest debate. But when you spend too much time bending over backward, falls like the McDaniel debacle are inevitable. Professor Walter Kotschnig offered cautionary advice in 1940 when he urged Mount Holyoke College students to keep their minds open — “but not so open that your brains fall out.”

The most rankling iterations of progressive surrender are found in the sad capitulation to the culture war barrages from the right flank. Take this paragraph from a recent New York Times op-ed by columnist Pamela Paul about Threads, the Meta version of Twitter/X:

“If progressives and liberals were provoked by Trumpers and Breitbart types on Twitter, on Threads they have the opportunity to be wounded by their own kind.

Threads’ algorithm seems precision-tweaked to confront the user with posts devoted to whichever progressive position is slightly lefter-than-thou. It knows, for example, exactly where — on the left, bien sûr — you stand with regard to the Middle East, gender ideology, D.E.I., body positivity, neurodivergence, Covid …”

The Middle East “standing” she apparently references is that of objections to the indiscriminate slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. At least in that matter, the historic plight of Jews and the inhumanity of Hamas offer a plausible realm for discussion. But “gender ideology”? What precisely is that? Do she and others believe that gender identity is just a political gimmick on the left — a belief that should be balanced by good old heteronormative religious hokum? Or the nearly universal disdain for D.E.I, as though the acronym itself presents a clear danger to civilization? Or, heaven forbid, that women, in particular, should refrain from positive regard toward their own natural shape? Or “neurodivergence,” which, perhaps to Ms. Paul, is better expressed by “weird” or “disabled”? And what on earth is an oppressively progressive view on COVID-19?

The right wing and its morality goon squad have successfully marginalized or reversed much of the hard-won social progress of my lifetime. They have Stone-Aged women’s rights, outlawed anti-racism and the teaching of real history, burned books that exude a whiff of gayness, scrapped affirmative action, replaced bibliographies with Bibles, and demonized the most vulnerable in society. Protesting venomous speakers is recast as “cancel culture.” Sensitivity to the vulnerability of Black and other college students in the minority is ridiculed as “snowflake safe spaces.”

It is exceedingly disappointing to find that so many so-called liberals jump right on that apologetic bandwagon, often postulating that progressive “overreach” will cost elections. The best defense is a good offense. Liberals, Democrats, and Progressives (aka sane and humane people) should fight like hell for women, racial equity, the protection of the most vulnerable, and the need for social, judicial, and legislative efforts to those ends.

I expect to continue fighting like hell. I hope you’re in my corner.

Always happy to hear from you: stevehutnelson@gmail.com.

The post Nelson’s Corner | April 2024 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

This is Part 5 of a multi-part series that explores the ongoing impacts of the Marshall Fire through interviews with survivors and analysis of the role of climate change and alternatives to recovery such as mutual aid.

Photo by Skinner Myers

Part 5 dives into the need for accurate, up-to-date information during disaster

It’s difficult to overestimate social media’s role in public safety during a disaster, particularly given the inadequacies of many government alert systems, which tend to operate on an opt-in basis. What’s more, in the case of the Marshall Fire, the system failed to provide notice to many who did subscribe. Almost no one I spoke with found out about the fire from an evacuation notice. Henry Wong’s household, for instance, learned of the evacuation order as they were already driving away to escape the smoke. 

It may be obvious that people today rely on social media to communicate and exchange support, but there are new details to unpack as the technology, and the climate, changes. Case in point: the recent acquisition and transformation of Twitter by an inexperienced billionaire with  — shall we say — questionable values shows the fragility and ephemerality of the profit-driven social media ecosystem.  Mutual aid can and does take shape on social media, but an entire platform can be transformed or ruined on a CEO’s whim.

What if these communications systems, which have the capacity to sustain global and local interaction, were publicly owned and operated, or even designed primarily for the purpose of mutual care? As researchers have demonstrated, and as people of color and other marginalized folks living in primarily white and well-off areas know all too well, apps like Nextdoor and Facebook support a range of activities, not all of them benign. 

During and after the fire social media became, for many, one thing only: a lifeline. Marshall survivor Fallon Voorheis-Mathews said, “the fire has brought us together as a community.” Without social media, this would not have happened to the same extent. It would have been very difficult to maintain the broad yet detailed communication people needed to accomplish these connections and help one another. 

Social media has been a pivotal source of emotional support as a space for sharing and processing. Kathe Perez said, “My postings on Facebook continued for some weeks. The public catharsis helped in ways that it’s difficult to describe.” 

Social media use among neighbors is always significant in Louisville and Superior even in the best of times. During the nearly two years since so many residents were dispersed by the fire, neighbors in Fallon’s part of Louisville have gotten to know each other quite well using preexisting social media networks. Their private Facebook group, “80027–OhOh27–The Original OhOh27,” existed long before the fire and probably predates the Nextdoor app as well.  The OhOh27 provides a place to talk about anything relevant to the neighborhood, such as comparing notes about noise from the airport, sharing advice and referrals, and posting photos of hiking — a favorite pastime in the area. One guy likes to contribute to the neighborhood vibe by posting jokes every day. When the fire arrived, many residents turned immediately to the OhOh27 for information and advice.

Such networks became essential in circulating information in the face of the exploitative insurance industry and FEMA’s scanty assistance. Fallon echoed the perspective shared by almost everyone I spoke with: “FEMA’s a joke. It doesn’t give anything to anyone who has insurance, even if they are underinsured.”  For those who qualify, FEMA provides up to $40,000, barely a year’s living wage for a single person in Boulder County. This is an example of why, according to Dean Spade, the “local and decentralized nature of mutual aid is essential, and we can see this in disaster response especially, where FEMA is generally useless on the ground, whereas local mutual aid projects made of people who know their neighbors and know the place are more effective. It is a mistake to characterize practices based in local knowledge and local control as ‘small scale’ when people are doing them all over and sharing knowledge and resources across large distances.” 

As of the overnight destruction brought by the Marshall Fire, many homeowners’ American dreams are now underwater, to borrow a common financial metaphor, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite every precaution, one underinsured survivor’s home shot immediately to minus $100,000 right after the fire. Currently, their house is valued at approximately minus $300,000 — and falling.

For Fallon, as for the many other homeowners who got burned on insurance, the fire was “a very humbling experience. I was doing pretty well, but I don’t have an extra three hundred grand lying around!”

There is little in place to regulate the price gouging. Many who lost their homes cannot afford to sell and must therefore rebuild, at high cost and very slowly. It also means that instead of using pockets of coverage available to replace furniture or other household items including clothing, they must spend it on construction. Out of necessity, many residents of Louisville now have professional-level expertise on insurance, because even though they had “done everything right” and updated every aspect of their policies before the fire, their coverage wasn’t even close to being enough. Social media has provided channels for circulating this hardbought knowledge for the benefit of others in the neighborhood. 

As the fire was burning, many residents learned more from one another through social media than they could from county systems and the news. It was through Facebook that Carole Billingham learned that the nearby Costco was being evacuated, and that’s when she and her husband realized that they should leave too. Once evacuated, Carole also kept in close contact with several neighboring households using a group chat. One of her neighbors on the circle had a webcam active, which was reassuring because as long as the camera was still receiving electricity, the houses were still standing. 

Jennifer Ho, a professor in ethnic studies at CU Boulder, emphasized that she was aided by social media every step of the way toward safety: “One of the things I fear and mourn about Twitter’s potential demise is the way that I and others in emergency situations and crises have been able to get information — in many cases that can be lifesaving. The day of the Marshall Fire I took a photo from my deck of the smoke I could see in the West and posted it to Twitter. I then followed others tweeting and eventually followed the hashtag #MarshallFire. As the smoke plume grew bigger and as I was seeing tweets from people in Louisville post about evacuating.”  

She continued: “I mused on Twitter whether I should pack a go bag. The response I got was a unanimous YES — this was 30 minutes before my husband came home and told me that Clinica [his work] had evacuated and we should consider doing the same. People on Twitter also advised what we should pack and to take a video of everything in our home in case our house did burn. And as we worried whether we should evacuate, it was Twitter that made us realize it was better to leave before we received an evacuation order telling us to leave, because we could see the tweets from others who were caught in traffic trying to flee or who had lost electricity and were panicking in their garages not sure how to manually open their garage doors. I learned all of this on Twitter by following the hashtag and seeing peoples’ tweets about the fire and evacuation.” 

As for official systems, Ho’s household “never received a text or email warning us about the fire or whether we were in the evacuation zone. We didn’t learn anything about packing a go bag or documenting what was in our home from any public agency. It was only Twitter that helped me learn about these things—and that kept me informed about the path of the fire and the traffic (and we learned where traffic was bottlenecked through Twitter and so when we evacuated we were able to avoid the worst areas).”

Ho also pointed out that “it’s chilling to imagine how many more lives might have been lost if Twitter had changed hands in late 2021 rather than 2022.”

Unfortunately, most of the popular socials are privately owned and, in most cases, optimized for profit-seeking based on relentless controversy. They can be just as unreliable and insufficient as some of our present government-supported systems have been, and they can foster an atmosphere that is too toxic for sharing psychological support — make that double failure of neoliberalism a triple, then a quadruple. The likely collapse of a dominant platform like Twitter is a serious threat to public safety.

The post A Wildfire Sheds Light: Social Media, Infrastructure for Mutual Aid appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo by the Paul Wilkinson Law Firm

[LOCAL]

• Online marijuana sales began on August 7th. Someone should really start a pizza + weed delivery combo.
• Fort Lupton police officer found guilty for leaving a woman in his patrol cruiser that was struck by a train. The officer parked his car on the train tracks after taking her into custody. She survived but was severely injured.
• Newly implemented law in Colorado to raise age to buy a firearm to 21 has been blocked by Federal Judge.
• Nearly a quarter of a million dollars worth of bikes have been stolen in Boulder this year according to the Stolen Bikes dashboard
• Mike Johnson is inaugurated as Denver’s Mayor after beating Kelly Brough earlier this summer.

[NATIONAL]

• Florida tries to ban AP Psychology in their growing fight against being educated.
• Two attorneys associated with Colorado, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, are indicted alongside Trump, this time simply for attempting to overthrow our government and end democracy as we know it.
• The State of Georgia also indicts Trump over his tampering with election results. Pardons in Georgia particularly hard to come by.
• Entire Colorado River Basin faces massive drought mainly due to decrease in snowmelt from shifting climate patterns.
• Mitch McConnell apparently freezes on live TV in a scary incident, prompting questions of his health and fitness for office.
• Twitter rebrands to “X” begging the question: why?

[INTERNATIONAL]

• Sinead O’Connor passes away at 56. Thank you for speaking up against Papal abuse when no one else would.
• U.S. soldier who was about to be disciplined sprinted across the North Korean border, defecting to the brutal regime.
• Over 1,000 Russians and Belarussians are stripped of their permanent resident status in Lithuania after being deemed “threats to national security”.
• Heading to Europe next year? Make sure to apply for a Visa, something previously unrequired.
• Group of West African nations say they will intervene in Niger’s ongoing coup if it is not soon resolved diplomatically.

Small Talk

“Tragically, young people are getting their hands on guns all too easily and putting them to terrible use against others — and with serious consequences for their own lives.” – DA Michael Doughtery on recent youth gun violence

“The fire was just traveling too fast, and too hot and next thing you know Lahaina town is gone, literally gone.” – Mark Stefle, Maui Fire survivor

“While I appreciate the need for transparency, it is important to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation regarding the law enforcement officers’ use of force.” – Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons on Sheriff’s records request denial regarding the shooting of Charlie Foster

“Now, more than nine months have passed, no evidence has been revealed and it has become even clearer that the impact of the dean’s actions has been irreparable and far-reaching.” – Letter signed by more than 300 academics protesting firing of CU Boulder professor Patty Limerick from the Center of the American West

By the Numbers

22% – Increase in abortions performed by Colorado clinics following harsh restrictions like those in Texas
$1 Billion – Barbie Movie revenue, highest ever for a female director
13% – Number of Colorado families who will receive free full time preschool, not the promised 50%
110° / 31 Days – Phoenix experiences an entire month of daily temperatures over 100°
60% – Increase in water bills after a sudden water rate hike for Lafayette residents
17 – People shot and killed by Colorado law enforcement in 2023 so far

The post Month in Review | August 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

[NATIONAL]

• NPR quits Twitter after the Musk-led company slapped on a false label of “State Media” to the account.
• National Guardsman is arrested over a massive leak of Pentagon secrets, one of the largest security breaches in decades.
• DeSantis continues his clash with Disney in his latest culture wars brawl, with the company filing a lawsuit against the governor claiming he used his political power to hurt Disney.
• Buzzfeed shuts down its news division and cuts staff by 15% showing it’s more important than ever to support real journalism.
• Tucker Carlson loses his show on Fox News, a blow to disinformation and white supremacy dog whistles everywhere.
• Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony charges in the campaign finance case regarding payments to Stormy Daniels.
• Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence has been secretly accepting luxurious vacations and other donations over the years without properly reporting them raising questions over the Court’s biases.

[LOCAL]

• Boulder City Council removes Lisa Sweeney-Miran from the Police Oversight Panel sparking debate over the panel’s effectiveness and independence.
• Governor Polis signs several gun control bills into law including raising the minimum age to buy a weapon to 21 and imposing a waiting period.
• Dacono sets a June 27th date for the recall election of council members stemming from their surprise removal of long time city manager A.J. Euckert.
• False report of a pipe bomb in Erie at the King Sooper’s market sparks fear and highlights the growing threat of false gun and bomb reports.
• Erie Home Rule Commission completed its draft of a Home Rule Charter after four months of meeting and deliberation on the issue.

Small Talk:

“There’s so much excitement and optimism. How can you not feel good in the midst of everything else? … Our city is hungry for a new kind of leadership in these times and we’re already hard at work.” – Yemi Mobolade, on his candidacy for Mayor of Colorado Springs. He will be the city’s first Black mayor.

“I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are. The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.” – Joe Biden announcing his bid for reelection in 2024

“Our phones should be blowing off the hook, which they are, but they should be blowing off the hook even more.” – Charles Graves, Assistant Veterans Service Officer with the El Paso County Veterans Services on new compensation program for toxic exposure

“These defendants put many lives at risk during what should have been a normal lunch hour on campus.” – CO District Attorney John Kellner on sentencing two teens in 2021 Hinkley High School shooting

“Juul lit a nationwide public health crisis by putting addictive products in the hands of minors and convincing them that it’s harmless.” – Letitia James, New York Attorney General, on $462 million settlement that includes Colorado and other states

By the Numbers:

50% – 1 out of every 2 transgender individuals experience sexual violence according to statistics by MESA

72% – Reduction in plastic bag use after Louisville passes bag tax program

4+ per week – Average number of Americans killed in mass shootings this year, a record pace so far

$38.5 Billion – Proposed total state budget sent to Governor Polis

6 Weeks – New Florida bill would ban abortion following six weeks of pregnancy in the most recent attack on reproductive rights 

$6 Billion – NFL Team Washington Commanders sell for a record amount. Why does building these stadiums need public funding again?

The post Month in Review | May 2023 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

All my friends are on Facebook. All my customers are on Instagram.

All my peers are moving over to the Post. Twitter is for rubber-necking these days.

TikTok is cool, even though I have no account.

Reddit is great for getting the real scoop.

LinkedIn is for business. YouTube for learning and entertainment.

Books and magazines are for reading and escaping them all.  

And the Rocky Mountains for exploring.

There is a real dilemma of being tracked, monitored, and manipulated by the tech industry, as the dire warnings in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma portrays. It doesn’t change the fact that we will continue to use social media no matter how many chips they follow us with.

Being the manager for all of Yellow Scene Magazine’s (YS) social media, I have often found myself in the dilemma of how many accounts I can actually run and which ones do I really need.

I do not like to work on my phone. I use my laptop for almost everything. I like having  20 open tabs at my fingertips. Plus, I have fat fingers and am super hyper, so I hate texting. There are days I think, “dump it all,” but of course, that is not a reality for a local publisher. Why don’t I hire someone to handle social media for us? I did say we are an independent, hyper-local print and digital publication still adhering to journalism standards, right? In other words, not in the budget.

Let’s see, there is Facebook (FB). It’s the oldest social media account I have, and most of my friends are still on it. It is the place to connect to the local community and friends far more than any other platform – at least in my life. I manage both the YS account and my personal account. However, all of Facebook’s manipulations have rendered it almost useless for local businesses these days. I used to get a lot more exposure and engagement on my business page, but now you have to pay for a “boost” to be seen. However, even boosting is becoming out of reach for local businesses as FB is increasingly requiring more and more money just to be seen. Active Groups are solid on Facebook, so that still gives a local business some opportunity to connect to the community, and they are also nice for connecting with neighbors as a resident. My personal page is quite active, but while I have a fairly large friend circle, my personal account is locked down to only them. I really get to connect with my friends on FB, so that original purpose is still applicable, no matter how much FB is trying to f*ck that up. 

Surprisingly, NextDoor (ND) has actually gotten better and is quickly becoming one of the places to connect with neighbors, which was the original intention. It went off the rails with trolling, but ever since they added more moderators, it’s improved dramatically. ND has typically not been a space for deep discussions, but it is a good space for sharing local information. With the new moderation component, it looks promising for engaging in local dialogue. It is not the space for memes. I also do not have a business account on ND in spite of how pushy they are about making one. They even made one for me, which I requested be disabled. ND does not seem like the space to have a brand account, at least for this hyper-local, Indie.

I like Instagram (IG) now, I hated it at first. I think much of my resistance was around having to add one more god-damn social media platform to my list. Why did I need Instagram? Doesn’t Facebook do the same thing and more? While it is true many people moved to IG, I question if it is really reaching the numbers people think. I’ve heard a lot of business owners quip, “it’s where all the young people are.” Sure, maybe before Facebook bought it and before TikTok, but in my view, it is also where a LOT of the businesses are. I even had a shoe store tell me, “you gotta be on Insta.” I enjoy the more positive nature that Instagram delivers. I have not gotten into Reels because I still suck at video editing. I often scroll on mute because the constant noise can be overwhelming. I don’t know if this makes me old and cranky or if constantly shoving Reels at us is simply not necessary, no matter how much Instagram wants to keep up with TikTok. I have a business account on IG, but I do not use the personal one FB/IG also made for me. I should probably delete it.

While I enjoy all the fun videos from TikTok, I simply can not add it as another platform to manage. I have resigned myself to enjoying TikTok when shared but not diving in myself. I appreciate there is a lot of subculture action on it, but I don’t think I would be talking to my community there. YS is a hyper-local resource that covers politics and culture. While we do take on a lot of national topics, our focus is on how these topics impact us locally. I don’t see how the TikTok crowd is going to connect me to the area enough to spend my already stretched resources there. Plus, since I really suck at editing videos, I guess I have to forego my cool factor on that one.

I know a few associates who are using LinkedIn for business connections and sharing news stories, but they tend to be more national businesses. However, it is a good resource for making professional connections. I do share articles as I can, but it often sits forgotten because I only have so much time. (Sorry, Alignable, I clearly have no time for you either.)

I am not a Redditor, but I do love Reddit. They could even be cooler than TikTok. It’s also a great source for reaching many subcultures and is absolutely bomb for getting the inside scoop on what people are saying. I have never had the bandwidth to Reddit myself, although my son is a Redditor.

Twitter is nothing more than a shitshow at this point. Our account was never big, it was grossly ignored by us for the first 14 years and quite possibly shadow-banned based on the number of views. It was fun to follow “my people” when I did finally get active in 2020. The newsmakers, journalists, politicians, and activists ensured it was up-to-the-second news. It is quite amazing to watch how in just six weeks, one person has been able to destroy it. After Musk took over, we just trolled for a couple of weeks. Our Yellow Scene account lost over 100 followers, and for a small account, that was a lot. It seemed pointless even to try and tweet sincerely. But trolling got boring quickly. I admire the folks still in there fighting the disinformation hub that Twitter has become, but I only have the energy to poke in a couple of times a day. I had a personal account that was even smaller than our YS account, but I disabled it when he took over. I have left the Yellow Scene account active at this time. It’s like watching a train wreck, I suppose. 

This leads me to the Post and Mastadon. I have not created a Mastadon account yet because I established one in the Post. You can guess why, I don’t think I can manage adding two new platforms at the same time. It’s a lot of work to build an account, actually. Besides, I am really getting into the Post. I can get lost for hours reading in there. 

I am struggling with identity, though. I probably should make a personal profile as the publisher, but in our 22 years, I have never branded myself. I have never wanted to be a public “persona” in spite of “knowing everyone in town.” I used to tell my staff, “people don’t know me, they know the magazine,” to which they would scoff. I have lived here for 32 years and had YS for going on 23 now, so I do know a lot of people. I have only put my picture in the magazine two times. I would rather be behind the camera than in front of it. I love talking to everyone, but the spotlight is not for me. This can be difficult because, in spite of my denial, I am the damn publisher. My only desire is to create a space for writers to publish important stories. It’s not me they are reading, it’s YS, so why do I have to do all this personal branding shit?

The social dilemma I am experiencing as the voice behind our social media is that I can’t keep adding more accounts. This adds a layer of complexity while engaging with others on social media. Do I speak in ‘we’ or ‘I’? Is it possible to be both a person and a business? (After all, corporations are people.) Can a magazine platform still engage in dank memes?

Where does all this “analysis” take us? How do you choose? As soon as we build our audience on one, it dies. I understand the pain people are feeling watching Twitter be demolished by an egotistical, greedy billionaire. I have watched newspapers be gutted for 30 years by Hedge Funds. Who knows, by the time I finally learn Reels, they might just be passe by that point. 

The best advice I have after three + decades in print media (and now digital as well) is: Content is King, and the Audience matters. 

But the truly time-tested tactic for reaching the local community that never fails? Feet-on-the-street. 

On that note, I am headed outside to enjoy the Colorado Rocky Mountain life and meet with my client face-to-face because it’s the deadline, and we have a magazine to print.

The post The “Other” Social Dilemma; What to do when there are too many social media? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo: Judi Morell

• On November 15, Former President Trump announced his plan to run for President again in 2024 amid continued investigations into his criminal activities including the events of January 6th, 2020 and the discovery of stolen classified documents at his Mar-a-lago resort.
• A blast killed two people in Poland on November 16. According to NATO and the Polish government, the blast likely resulted from a stray Ukrainian defense missile responding to an incoming Russian barrage.
• On November 16, NASA successfully launched its first rocket in its Artemis project. The unmanned flight will go around the moon and is a test meant to be the first step in returning astronauts to the moon after decades of missions aimed at low-Earth orbit.
• On November 16, the US Senate advanced legislation to protect same-sex marriage. In a 62-37 vote, 12 Republicans voted with all Democrats to move forward with the bill. It is expected to pass where it will then move to the House for approval.
• On November 16, it was announced that Republicans had flipped the House back in their favor. Although a so-called “red wave” was predicted by Republicans, the majority is extremely slim and took nearly a week of vote-counting for it to be clear that the party had won the majority.
• In the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Michigan, California and Vermont voters all approved sweeping amendments to their states’ constitutions guaranteeing the right to abortion and other reproductive health services. This comes after it was announced that Kentucky voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment meant to insulate a state abortion ban.
• On November 4, Elon Musk assumed his position as CEO of social media company Twitter after his acquisition of the company. He immediately laid off half the company’s staff and implemented certain content bans as to what users could post, contradictory to his promises that his acquisition would create greater opportunities for free speech.
• Aaron Carter, who became a beloved teen-sensation in the early 2000’s, was found dead at age 34 at his home on November 5th.
• Colorado Governor Jared Polis won another term over his opponent Heidi Ganahl.
• After a neck-and-neck race, it was announced that Lauren Boebert, the controversial representative of Colorado’s 3rd district, had beaten her opponent, Adam Frisch, by 0.2% of votes. The race result will undergo a mandatory recount.
• Colorado voters voted to legalize psilocybin and psychedelic therapy, becoming the second state to do so after Oregon did in 2020. Similarly to Oregon, Colorado voters also approved Proposition 122 which will decriminalize the growing, use, and possession of psychedelic mushrooms.
• Nathaniel Stark, a 27 year old Boulder man, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for second-degree sexual assault. Stark had previously pleaded guilty to the abuse of his former girlfriend’s pet cats and dog and is serving a 3 year sentence for animal abuse concurrently with the 12 year second-degree sexual assault sentence. The courts have labeled Stark as a “violent sexual offender,” a designation given to sexual offenders deemed likely to reoffend.
• On November 18, Colorado Open Lands granted permanent protection to the Tucker Open Space outside of Nederland. The 323-acre space was privately owned until it was purchased in 2020 by Boulder County.

Small Talk

“We are willing to look at it operationally. There are things we can do. I think as you suggested — off hours (on) Saturdays — we may be able to come to some agreements on that at an operational level. I think it’s something that through the negotiation, I think we were pretty consistent that the school district was not willing to accept that.”

– Boulder Valley Senior Planner Glen Segrue in regards to the negotiations surrounding the controversial proposal for Boulder Valley School District to annex 48 acres at 6500 Arapahoe Rd. in Boulder for its Education Center property and a modular home factory for students to build homes for Habitat for Humanity.

“It’s quite a bit busier. Everyone working together to keep the clients safe and warm helps us not burn ourselves out, which is kind of our goal this winter.”

– Larry Jacobs, a professor of political history, elections and voting behavior at the University of Minnesota, in regards to election deniers reportedly increasing efforts to sabotage upcoming elections.

“We are excited to announce our ice rink is back for passengers and community members to enjoy.”

– Denver International Airport CEO Phil Washington in regard to the return of its ice rink to its outdoor plaza which has been shut down since 2020 due to COVID.

“I’ve been processing flowers and sweeping floors since I was little. I’ve been around the business for a really long time, but the transition from being around the business to being intimately involved with the business is pretty big.”

– Nate Golter, new owner of Longmont Florist, a 53-year town staple. Golter inherited the business from his grandfather, Gary.

By The Numbers

The post Month in Review | November 2022 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

During the Ferguson trial, the social media buzz kept growing. Twitter became a medium where citizens could voice their First Amendment Rights of free speech. Many Twitter users have been able to help educate and update citizens on breaking news such as the Ferguson trial.D

The Twitter buzz was fueled by protestors and angry citizens wanting to voice their opinions of the trial and the happenings throughout the Ferguson case. Three activists were actually able to use Twitter to voice their opinions and fund their way to Missouri to protest the trials.

Johnetta Elzie, DeRay McKesson, and Zellie Imani had all read the many of the posts on Twitter about the trail after the shooting in Ferguson.

After reading about the occurrence Elzie began tweeting and drove to Ferguson. She now has more than 57,000 followers on Twitter.

Mr. Mckesson had scrolled through Twitter during the August protests. He then became a full-time protestor and reports on the happenings of trial to keep up other followers up to date on whats happening. He now has 200,000 followers.

The 30-year-old math teach Mr. Imani made a GoFundMe account trying to raise money to fly out to Missouri and protest the trail. Since 2014 when he first made the account he has been to Ferguson five times, with three of them being financed by crowd funding. He now has 50,000 Twitter followers and has been helping to organize NJShutitdown, which is a group that protests police brutality in New Jersey.

The post Tweeting about Ferguson appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Yesterday, we learned how Twitter, when used properly, can make even politicians look cool. Today, we have a lesson in how Twitter—when used carelessly and with little thought to the fact that one’s tweets can be read by practically anyone with an Internet connection—can make you look like an appalling moron. And jeopardize your college career to boot.

The latest case study is Yuri Wright, a high school football phenom from New Jersey who was courted by Michigan, Rutgers, Notre Dame and CU. Michigan, which the Daily Camera reports was Wright’s dream school, offered him a scholarship.

But then he was expelled from high school last week for posting an ongoing stream of thuggish and misogynistic tweets. The Camera reports that Wright ignored months of warnings from school officials to clean up his Twitter feed (which was protected, but he’d approved more than 1,600 followers). It was only after he was kicked out of school—and saw his Michigan scholarship offer withdrawn over concerns about his character—that he closed his account.

Wright committed to CU on Tuesday and told ESPN that he was “very grateful” that coach Jon Embree was still willing to have him in a Buffs uniform.

Not many of Wright’s tweets are fit for publication (but ChatSports.com, a sports news website, managed to snatch some before the account vanished and posted samples here), but it can be diplomatically said that he enjoys the company of women and, in one post, is intrigued by whether certain sexual reactions in women amount to “organisms.” His posts are littered with the N-word and numerous explicit references to sexual acts and anatomy. In one of the few tweets lacking in profanity or strong language, he wrote about how his “pops” drove by “some jewish lady” and splashed her with water.

It’s one thing to post a boneheaded tweet once in awhile (one of the forgiving things about the medium is that Twitter-memory can be short), but some of the tweets posted by ChatSports are dated in July.

Sports Illustrated reasonably points out that locker room vulgarity is nothing new with male athletes. The difference is that in the past it was confined to the locker room.

Wright “made a mistake common among the members of his generation,” wrote columnist Andy Staples. “He thought something 1,600 people could read was private.”

The short discussion on the #yuriwright Twitter thread displays a variety of opinions, ranging from “Glad my boy #YuriWright found a college that doesn’t care if you’re illiterate” and “Pleasantly surprised that schools still have standards” to “Leave #yuriwright alone! Our twitters/ facebooks are our personal. School is School our home life is our home life. Like wtf.”

For his part, Wright told ESPN that he’s sworn off Twitter and learned his lesson.

“I made a huge mistake,” he told writer Greg Biggins. “I definitely learned a valuable lesson, and I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.”

The post Yuri Wright commits to CU after Twitter-versy appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Boulder Rep. Jared Polis was singled out last week by ColoradoPols for something that’s all too rare in politics—a refreshingly savvy voice in his online musings, from his Twitter feed to a recent “Ask me anything” appearance on Reddit, where ColoradoPols’ ProgressiveCowgirl gave him props for giving “answers like a real person, not a conglomerate produced by a communications team.”

You bet he’s a real person and he’s never been afraid to let you know it. Consider this exchange between Polis, who is an avid gamer, and one of the Reddit folks:

Taehoong: My friend does not like League of Legends, but she has said that she will play the game if she plays with a congressman. Will you play with us, please?

jaredpolis: only if u are constituents of mine ;-p Also, not sure I want to play with noobs like your friend…

hobbsface2000: You sir, are awesome.

Arvald: my god a politician that is actually a real person, this guy is awesome.

Awesome barely covers it. What other elected official can be both nerdy enough to know that a Twitter reference to him as a “hoopy frood” is a compliment from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and proud enough to retweet it with a hashtag? He’s even telling the media how to use social media, when generally it’s the other way around with congressmen, as in this tweet to the Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels:

@lynn_bartels lynn when you tweet my name use @jaredpolis rather than Jared Polis

Yeah, Lynn! This is 2012, baby!

But we all know that even the wittiest of tweeters can have an off day and apparently Polis was either too riveted or too bored with the State of the Union address to properly summon his 140-character muse while tweeting last night. The New York Times was keeping an eye on Congress’s Twitter feeds during the speech, posting selected messages to the front page of its website to provide some ongoing commentary from the peanut gallery. And what did our self-described “gay, Jewish, gamer, nerd, baseball fan, retired florist, alfalfa farmer, numismatist, tarot reader, new father, beekeeper” Representative have to say?

@jaredpolis: On the House floor for State of the Union, sitting w my CO colleagues R & D

Oh #yawn, really? Who knows … maybe it was witty compared to what others were posting. OK, so it’s cool that our rep was retweeted by the Times, but what a missed opportunity to show the rest of the Twittersphere that our 2^nd Congressional District representative is no noob when it comes to social media.

We expect more, sir, from a hoopy frood such as yourself.

(Tip ‘o the hat to ProgressiveCowgirl at ColoradoPols)

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