Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

Oro Expeditions and Then Some… 05/19 by KDCL Media | Social Networking – BlogTalkRadio

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Back in 2012, we joined a group called Gold Prospectors Association of America while I was finishing up a 30-year trucking career. The Welcome pack they sent had, among other things, a "Mining Guide" which was a thick paperback book with the locations of all of their private gold claims and leases all over the country and my first gold pan. For the next few months, every trip I made came close to some of the leases in the southeast and I took full advantage of my weekends to catch up on some prospecting.

Due to a family situation, Expedition 17 was the last full season for us as we traveled to southeast Oregon to mine gold and be present on the "Path of Totality" for the full solar eclipse that summer.

On this show, we will be talking about that trip along with some history of KDCL Media and our time on the internet radio airwaves. Kick back in your comfy chair with your favorite beverage and join us for an hour of talk and fun.

Oro Expeditions

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Oro Expeditions and Then Some... 05/19 by KDCL Media | Social Networking - BlogTalkRadio

Girls’ safety and education at risk around the world due to coronavirus, Plan International warns – ABC News

While Australian girls are struggling with social disconnection and are more vulnerable to family violence under COVID-19 restrictions, research has shown many of their peers overseas have had their schooling severed by the pandemic.

Sydney student Mayela Dayeh knows all about the impact COVID-19 restrictions are having on her social life.

The 16-year-old experiences it every day.

"I've seen a lot of girls try to overcompensate with the loss of physical networking by using a lot of social media and trying to call as many people as possible to try and bridge that gap," she said.

Women aged 14-24 already spend nearly five hours more on social media a week than men in the same age group.

This pandemic may have seen that gap increase.

"I can see the mental health effect that has on a lot of girls," Ms Dayeh said.

For Laila Yaqoobi, a 19-year-old nursing student in Melbourne, the loss of face-to-face social networks has been a struggle.

"When this pandemic first broke out, it was pretty nerve-wracking," she said.

"I was really stressed and anxious everyone was panicking."

She said she really felt the loss of her supportive network of friends.

"To [not] be able to share your stories face-to-face, share your feelings. It just sets a barrier to your social life and deteriorates your mental health."

The loss of social networks is just one issue highlighted in a report from Plan International on the impact of COVID-19 on girls and young women around the world.

In Australia, as with previous natural disasters, the pandemic has led to an increased vulnerability to domestic violence.

"Where there's been disasters you do see this increase in the vulnerability of women to domestic violence," Professor Cathy Humphreys from the University of Melbourne said.

The recent bushfires revealed what could happen.

"The more intensely affected the bushfire area, the more the rate of domestic violence went up," Professor Humphreys said.

She said advocates monitoring the situation had reported six fatal acts of violence against women in the last two weeks about twice the average death rate.

"Isolation is so dangerous. We know that the more isolated a woman is when she's living with domestic violence, the more vulnerable she is."

In Australia, girls and young women are preparing to return to the classroom if they're not already back.

But in developing countries, many girls who have had their education disrupted during the pandemic may never return to school.

That was just one of the issues examined in the Living Under Lockdown: Girls and COVID-19 report that also looked at issues including gender-based violence and access to women's health.

Laila Yaqoobi is a former asylum seeker who spent much of her childhood in Pakistan and still speaks regularly to friends there.

"They mostly rely on their parents for their financial support," she said.

"Now that their parents are not working anymore, they can no longer go to school and pay their fees. Most of these girls won't go back to school."

"They will either fall into child marriages or teen pregnancies and it makes it impossible to continue their education."

According to the Plan International report, 743 million girls are currently out of school due to the pandemic, and they don't have the same level of access to online learning as boys.

"That's something me and my friends talked about, is whether they can continue their education after this pandemic. So they're really affected by this at the moment," she said.

Boys are 1.5 times more likely to own a phone than girls in low and middle-income countries and are 1.8 times more likely to own a smartphone that can access the internet.

Ms Yaqoobi's concerns about education are shared by 19-year-old Tino Munyanyiwa.

The Melbourne engineering student was born in Zimbabwe and has lots of family and friends there.

"Being a girl, you're already at a disadvantage. So having that education being limited and not being able to continuously focus on schooling is hard," she said.

With money tight, when the pandemic ends many families won't be able to afford to send all their children back to school, she said.

"When you have to choose between a girl child or a boy child returning back to school, obviously a boy child would end up returning."

Ms Munyanyiwa said she was also worried about the increased dangers of sex trafficking in countries such as Zimbabwe, where international organisations have halted operations due to COVID-19.

"It would become more prevalent because organisations that focus on stopping that are not able to focus on that. They're not able to do their job," she said.

"Obviously that's going to make it easier for those that are on the bad side and wanting for that to happen."

Breaking down the latest news and research to understand how the world is living through an epidemic, this is the ABC's Coronacast podcast.

Plan International's Susanne Legena said this pandemic was a perfect storm when it came to sexual exploitation.

"Girls are saying to us if you're hungry and you're in lockdown and you're asking people for help nothing's given for nothing. And you're really vulnerable to exploitation," Ms Legena said.

Ms Legena said as the world emerged from this pandemic, Governments should not make the same mistakes as in the past.

"We have the lessons from previous crises to help guide us," she said.

"Let's think about what can we do in this time that will set it up on the other side for a more equal, fairer, better society."

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Girls' safety and education at risk around the world due to coronavirus, Plan International warns - ABC News

When will flight services resume? Aviation minister says when the states are ready – Livemint

Domestic flight operations in India will resume once the state governments are ready to open airports, civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri has clarified. The Centre alone can not make a decision in this regard, he said.

"It is not upto @MoCA_GoI or centre alone to decide on resuming domestic flights. In the spirit of cooperative federalism, the govt of states where these flights will take off & land should be ready to allow civil aviation operations," said Puri on social-networking platform Twitter.

Commercial flight operations in the country have been suspended since March 25 when the government first imposed a nationwide lockdown. India has since extended the lockdown thrice. The fourth phase of lockdown will remain in force till May 31 to mitigate the spread of the virus. The Centre on Sunday allowed interstate travel and local transport during the lockdown 4.0. Most of the states have permitted taxis, auto-rickshaw and buses to ply on roads. However, flight services will remain prohibited till the month end. Cargo, medical evacuation, and special flights have been operating during the lockdown.

The Airports Authority of India has issued guidelines for the resumption of flights in a graded manner". Passengers will need to follow stringent social distancing norms like maintaining at least four-feet distance from other co-passengers once the operation resumes. Masks will be mandatory for all.

The civil aviation minister said airport operations are likely to open only in a graded manner with nearly 25-30% of capacity initially. A number of airlines have started accepting bookings from passengers for domestic flights from June onwards. Private carriers like IndiGo and Vistara said they were taking bookings for domestic flights. Earlier, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had pulled up airlines for selling tickets even as the lockdown remained in force.

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When will flight services resume? Aviation minister says when the states are ready - Livemint

This billion-dollar startup helps neighbors and local businesses stay connected and help each other during the COVID-19 lockdown – Business Insider

captionNextdoor allows neighbors to help each other through social distancing.sourceFertnig/Getty Images

In times of crises, our network is our first port of call: our family, our friends, our colleagues.

Increasingly, as a society, knocking on our neighbors door has become a last resort.

In Bowling Alone written in 1995 but what may prove to be seminal theory in the post COVID-19 world the political scientist Robert Putnam describes how the chaos of modern life: longer working hours, staring into screens, and driving everywhere has made us residents of, rather than active participants in, our communities.

He talks about the damaging decline of social capital deeply rooted civic relationships, rather than pages full of so-called friends we only interact with online in modern American life.

Founded in 2011, Nextdoor is the worlds largest private network for neighbors, currently in 11 countries and 260,000 neighborhoods and with plans to expand globally.

At its core, its a place where someone can ask for help finding a local plumber or selling a bike.

Increasingly, its becoming a hub for local government and trade, where agencies can post area specific information and businesses in the area can advertise discounts.

Over the last few weeks of the global COVID-19 lockdown, more people are at home, confined to exercise, shopping, and interactions in their locality only, and so neighbors have become a lifeline.This should be Nextdoors moment.

Prakash Janakiraman, the cofounder of Nextdoor, agrees. Engagement picked up at the end of February and then skyrocketed from March. Usage is up 80% in most neighborhoods, he said.

We need to know that we can still function day to day, individually, and as a household if we have dependents. We also need a bit of reassurance when so much is out of our control.

Nextdoor is founded on trust and utility. We have a friction-full verification process, so we are sure every resident is who they say they are and lives at the address given, said Prakash. This makes it a safe environment for people to reach out for and offer help.

There has been a 262% increase in conversations around help on the platform, and in response, Nextdoor added a Help Map feature.

This allows users to mark their location and list what errands they can run or support they can give. This is in addition to Nextdoor Groups, which are formed around a mix of needs and interests, from parent groups to book clubs.

Prakash is proud that local government, police, and fire departments trust the platform as a space to get information out to residents.

To ensure visibility, the company has put public agency information at the top of the feed during the lockdown period. We have seen a tripling in the number of public agencies posting in recent weeks but we expect them to continue to engage after this is all over, he said.

Although a private social network, Nextdoor is very much a public chat room where agencies, businesses and neighbors share information. This will always carry a certain level of risk; Facebook and Twitter learned the importance of content moderation the hard way.

We have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. A kindness reminder pops up when it detects text that has been flagged as inappropriate in the past; this makes people step back and think again before posting. Our content teams are also constantly monitoring activity across the platform, he said.

While being neighborly might be at the center of Nextdoors mission, as its user base grows, theres opportunity to strengthen its relationship with businesses and to cash in on big advertising dollars.

At the end of 2019, it launched Local Deals, where businesses could target direct marketing only to people living near their premises. Door-to-door mailing is time- and labor-intensive for a small business, and many inboxes are already packed with promotional mail.

The idea is that the members on Nextdoor have already signed up to be a part of the local conversation and are more likely to want to support the shops and restaurants down the street.

As well as teaming with local businesses, contracts with big corporations are very much part of the growth plan. In April, at the height of the global lockdown, it launched Neighbors Helping Neighbors with Walmart a service that connects elderly or less-able members with other members willing to get groceries for them. This has obviously been a critical service during the COVID-19 lockdown but we expect it will continue and grow, said Prakash.

Having raised $170 million in its last funding round, Nextdoor is comfortably in unicorn territory with a current valuation of $2.17 billion. It was well capitalized to strengthen communities across the world before COVID-19.

In fact, as citizens get ready to head out into the world beyond our zip code and reflect on the lockdown period, we may ask ourselves why we dodged our neighbors for so long.

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This billion-dollar startup helps neighbors and local businesses stay connected and help each other during the COVID-19 lockdown - Business Insider

Bolton’s rivals Tranmere call for League One relegation to be scrapped – The Bolton News

TRANMERE chairman Mark Palios has called for relegation to be scrapped if League Ones fixtures cannot be completed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The former Football Association chief executive believes deciding placings in the table based on a points-per-game basis would be unfair and has called on the EFL to void the season if it cannot be resumed.

It now means that both of the teams alongside Wanderers in the relegation zone have now called publicly for the season to be scrapped completely, with Southend chairman Ron Martin declaring his stance several weeks ago.

Rovers sit in the bottom four, three points off safety albeit having played a game less than 20th-placed AFC Wimbledon.

League Two clubs last week voted to curtail their campaign, agreeing a PPG system and promotions but no relegation to the National League.

Clubs in the third tier seemingly remain at odds over whether to resume competitive football or not but are likely to be presented with options by the league by the end of the week.

Palios said on Tranmere's official website: "In a sporting competition, you set the rules at the start of a competition and everybody's happy, understands the rules and the consequences of success and failure - you don't change the rules of the league mid-season.

"If the decision is made that we will not play the season out then I think it's quite clear that the season should be voided, rather than deciding on what is a mid-season change of rules and a fairly arbitrary decision as regards how we deal with promotion and relegation.

"In order to find an acceptable compromise, it has to be just: a compromise that is fair.

"Our suggested solution follows on from what League Two voted in favour of last week and while that's not a binding vote, it's indicative of where their intentions were and that is promotions, without relegation."

Palios added that PPG is "flawed as a mechanism" before writing on Twitter: "If you want to change the regs in mid-season then do so but don't penalise teams as a result so no relegations. Use PPG with a margin for error."

Palios' wife and Tranmere's vice-chairman, Nicola, then wrote on the social networking site: "If PPG had been used to determine the outcome last season, at the same point in the season, 3 out of the 4 teams who would have been relegated were not in fact relegated. Those who argue it is the "fairest" way are factually wrong."

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Bolton's rivals Tranmere call for League One relegation to be scrapped - The Bolton News