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National
Facebook Helped Decimate The
Model Slick Woods Reveals She Almost Died From An 'Unexpected' Seizure
Media Industry But Wants
Journalists To Do Its Job
Model Slick Woods has revealed she almost died after suffering a seizure while sleeping — but is now home from the hospital recovering.
The 23-year-old shared an Instagram Monday showing herself in a hospital bed smil- ing and waving at the cam- era.
'Now that I’m feeling a mil- lion times better and walking again thanks @cheyalli for saving my life during an un- expected seizure in the mid- dle of the night, man there’s
It was Woods' friend pho- tographer Cheyenne Ceasar who found her while she was seizing and helped her, the model revealed.
The model told followers back in November she was diagnosed stage three melanoma cancer, a type of skin cancer. To treat the can- cer, Woods was undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
She implored followers on Instagram that same month to 'stop treating me like a vic- tim' because of her diagnosis.
Mark Zuckerberg has faced fiery, pervasive criticism for not wanting his social net- work to decide what is true, at least when it comes to politics. On Thursday, as the 2020 presi- dential campaign hurtled toward the first primaries and caucuses, Facebook doubled down on that policy.
Rob Leathern, the com- pany’s director of product man- agement, wrote, “We have based [our policies] on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in pub- lic.”
But what Facebook defines as newsworthy may be different than how journalists, tasked with reporting facts, do so. And whether reporters can even keep pace with the sheer volume of political speech on such a sprawling platform in a time of industry consolidation, job cuts, and widespread disinformation is far from certain.
“Newsworthiness is an edito- rial decision. Journalists decide it by finding and verifying infor- mation that their readers can trust is accurate,” said Ryan Thomas, associate professor of journalism studies at the Uni- versity of Missouri. “Facebook is not playing that role. It’s taking a
FACEBOOK
hands-off approach. But the ab- sence of fact-checking is an edi- torial decision. Newsworthy information can’t be any old lie.”
“The idea that there are enough journalists out there to fact check all the false claims on Facebook is naive,” Thomas added.
After all, 2019 was not kind to the ranks of employed journal- ists in America. Newsroom em- ployment in the U. S. declined an historic 25 percent over the year, according to the Columbia Journalism Review—3,160 jour- nalists, editors, and newsroom staffers lost their jobs. Critics often blame Facebook and Google, particularly the former for its errors in measuring the video views many publishers spent scant resources chasing with a now-comical series of “pivots to video.”
“Facebook’s influence on jour- nalism has been disastrous. By extension, so has its influence on democracy,” Thomas said.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
SLICK WOODS
so many people through way worse #stay- goofy,' she wrote in her cap- tion.
Forbes: Make No Mistake: Cannabis Equity Can’t Wait
In 2020, states with legal adult-use and medical cannabis laws are flooding with cash, from Nevada and Massachusetts to Illinois. They’re also troublingly be- hind on quality, consumer access, and especially their social equity.
As state leaders like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo prepare to launch new cannabis platforms of their own, industry and com- munity members warn that, without acknowledging the drug war’s harms but also the history of U. S. cannabis use generally, regulators and pri- vate industry will still be missing the big picture, and inevitably pay the price.
In short, experts say, social and racial equity must be- come foundations rather than buzzwords in cannabis — and be treated as complex
A customer pays for cannabis products at Essence Vegas Cannabis Dispensary
processes, needing patience and investment — if this en- tire industry is going to suc- ceed. A key reason is that our nation’s giant cannabis in- dustry is a patchwork of un- derground and state-level or municipally legal sources, with a long history of mostly being innovated and (liter- ally) cultivated by, and weaponized against, people of color.
Yet most legal adult-use
and medicinal cannabis oper- ations are still quite new, and mostly aren’t being led by members of those Black and Brown communities (who’ve been criminalized for their cannabis work and use for over a century), nor by legacy operators, medical patients, women, or members of other historically significant groups in cannabis. The same is often true in cannabis law- making.
As a result, cannabis reg- ulations, business models, and even social equity pro- grams often don’t account for critical factors that will con- tinue to impact whether these groups can join the legal in- dustry at all — and whether U. S. cannabis users, sud- denly faced with soaring prices, geographical limits, and an unfamiliar culture, will bother to shop there.
going
Mother Of Atatiana Jefferson, The Woman Killed By Texas Police Officer In Her Home, Has Died
The mother of a woman who was shot and killed by a Fort Worth police officer died Thursday in the same home where her daughter was killed. Yolanda Carr died Thursday morning, according to Lee Merritt, the family’s attorney.
In October 2019, an officer shot her daughter Atatiana Jefferson, 28, through a win- dow after responding to an early morning report of an open door at the home.
Body camera footage
YOLANDA CARR AND ATATIANA JEFFERSON
showed the officer did not identify himself before shoot- ing into the house. That officer, Aaron Dean, resigned and has been charged with murder.
Lee said the cause of death for Carr was unknown, but she had been hospitalized and receiving treatment for con- gestive heart failure in recent months.
Jefferson had recently moved into Carr’s home to act as a caregiver for her mother before she was shot.
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