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And to place even more pressure on Twitter, Facebook will be reporting its earnings first. If Facebook reports a significant growth in MAUs, Twitter shareholders will obviously want to see the same type of user increase.
The TWTR stock price is trading lower today, and it could fall even further after earnings if MAU growth continues to disappoint.
The Bottom Line: The departure of four more executives is driving the TWTR stock price lower today. CEO Jack Dorsey's plans apparently aren't working, and executives' fleeing indicates that they don't believe his plans will work. TWTR stock is down 43.03% in the last three months, and it has further to fall if Twitter reports stagnant MAU growth for Q4 2015.
World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board chairperson David North called January 16 for the formation of an international coalition of socialist and anti-war websites and journalists to counter Internet censorship.
North issued the call during a livestreamed webinar with journalist Chris Hedges, Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship. The webinar attracted a substantial global audience and was viewed more than 15,000 times on Facebook and YouTube in the 24 hours after it aired. A statement from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange supporting the event was read during the broadcast.
The discussion between North and Hedges explored the political context of the efforts to censor the Internet and abolish net neutrality, including the historic levels of social inequality. Both North and Hedges stressed the inseparable connection between war and the destruction of democratic rights, including free speech.
North and Hedges also examined the pretexts used to justify the suppression of free speech and discussed political strategies to defend democratic rights, including the need for any such movement to be independent of the Democratic Party.
In the course of the event, North reviewed the WSWS’s campaign against censorship of left-wing and anti-war websites, which began last year after the WSWS noted a significant decline in its own referrals from Google search results.
This decline was not the accidental outcome of an algorithm update, North explained, but was an intentional effort to block access to websites that published anti-war and anti-capitalist content. Out of 150 top search terms that previously directed Google users to the WSWS, including “socialism,” “Trotskyism,” and “Russian Revolution,” by June, 145 no longer did so.
The discussion drew messages of support from Assange, documentarian John Pilger and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan which were read out during the broadcast.
Assange, who has been trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for five and a half years, said he “commended the WSWS” for the event. He noted the danger that the Internet poses to the ruling elite, while warning about their efforts to control the expression of ideas online.
Sheehan’s statement explained that the ruling class was attempting to silence oppositional voices online in order to stampede the American population into supporting war.
Go to endcensorship.org to view the full discussion and join the fight against Internet censorship.
These are worrisome words for anyone who puts their faith in the power of science to solve and prevent problems. It also indicates that Pruitt doesn’t think the media and the American public are capable of considering both short and long-term perspectives.
Scientists are clear that the number and severity of hurricanes is directly related to warming ocean waters, a consequence of climate change. That’s an important variable in thinking about how to prepare coastal cities for rising sea levels and severe storms.
Pruitt, who wears his climate-change skepticism on his sleeve, seems to believe it’s best to keep information about the environment under wraps.
The Senate Committee asked Pruitt to take a number of steps to “promote transparency,” such as requiring that top agency officials create paper trails of their actions, including posting public calendars of meetings and logging phone calls.
In fact, it was the EPA that was missing in action. The Houston Chronicle reported that EPA staff cuts had left the agency ill-prepared to monitor and protect against toxin spills.
The EPA has been offering buyouts to staff, prompting 400 people to leave their posts with the agency since the end of August.
Things will likely get worse. The EPA has been offering buyouts to staff, prompting 400 people to leave their posts with the agency since the end of August, according to The Wall Street Journal. The agency could be facing its smallest operating staff since the late 1980s.
And additional buyouts are likely, a fact that has Pruitt gleeful. “We’re proud to report that we’re reducing the size of government, protecting taxpayer dollars and staying true to our core mission of protecting the environment and American jobs,” he said in a statement.
Despite Pruitt’s determination to not talk about or deal with climate change, the problem is not going away. But there’s no need to tell that to the people in Texas and Florida.
CHERYL has returned to music with her new single and music video, Love Made Me Do It.
The former Girls Aloud star is seen flaunting her famous dancing skills in the clip, which debuted at midnight.
Love Made Me Do It is her first new material in four years, and marks the beginning of her fifth solo album era.
The tune has already soared into the Top 20 on the UK iTunes chart and is at the top end of the UK’s New Music Friday playlist on Spotify.
In the chorus, Cheryl sings: “I’m breaking all my rules but love made me do it / Should have used my head ‘cos my heart really blew it.
Guess which chart-topping popstar has ‘written Cheryl comeback single?
“Losing all my cool but love made me do it / Should have used my head ‘cos my heart really blew it.
“I was waiting this moment for 3 years and it's finally here!!! @CherylOfficial thank you for releasing this masterpiece!!! It was freaking amazing,” beamed another.
“Yay @CherylOfficial is back! Brilliant song,” wrote a third.
“Welcome back @CherylOfficial #LovemadeMeDoIt is incredible!” said yet another post.
The track will be performed on The X Factor on November 18, according to reports - and Cheryl will be at Jingle Bell Ball in December.
However, she told Jessie Ware’s podcast Table Manners that she hasn’t arranged a release date for the full album - because she’s unsure how the music will be received in the new streaming era.
"I haven't been around since streaming has been around," she said. "Literally as I left, it came. So I don't know really yet the way things are going to be received.
"I've got a body of work, but I haven't said, 'now I'm going to release the album'. I'm just going to go song by song."
She also denied that the track is about former partner Liam Payne, explaining: “Actually all the music and all the songs that I’ve done were done way before we split.
Cheryl has five solo chart-toppers to her name: Fight For This Love (2009), Promise This (2010), Call My Name (2012), Crazy Stupid Love (2014) and I Don't Care (2014).
She also hit the summit four times as a member of Girls Aloud, who rose to fame in 2002 via Popstars: The Rivals.
Love Made Me Do It by Cheryl is out now.
In the summer of 2005, Aphex Twin played a massive gig in Turin for a 15,000-strong crowd of Italian fans. Accompanied by live dancers and stage projections, he rocked and buffeted the audience for more than two hours - and this after sets by Brooklyn's Cocorosie and music video maestro Chris Cunningham (along with his creation Rubber Johnny). Not bad for a government-sponsored event.
Til now, the curious have had to make do with a small flickr set and the extensive blog-plus-photos courtesy of Flat-E. But a Richard D James fansite has now posted a video of the event - hi-res and 360 mb large - which you can go and download here. Put it on, turn it up, start flashing your living-room lights, and swallow the contents of your medicine cabinet.
Yes, that's Aphex in the little girl's dress.
Zakary Pelaccio, formerly the chef at Williamsburg’s super-eclectic and now defunct Chicken Bone Café, has worked his way into the meatpacking district, the land of moules frites and town cars. In an attempt to rise above the touristy mayhem at the cobblestone intersection of Gansevoort Street, Little West Twelfth Street, and Ninth Avenue, he now commands an entire town house. The interior is mid-nineteenth-century minimalist cool—stripped to the original bricks and beams but with floating concrete staircases.
It’s all about incentives. The richer the reward, the more willing you are to work hard and take risks, and the faster the economy will grow.
By this logic – elaborated by Mitt Romney’s former business partner Edward Conard in a recent New York Times profile – income inequality benefits us all.
Sloth and fear are singled out as economic sins that could condemn us to stagnation. Only the desire for more, more, more than anybody else can elicit the bold energy that economic growth requires. Only greed can redeem us.
Effort is never misdirected. Risk is never carried to excess. You should thank the Higher Power for rewarding talents at the top.
Before doing so, consider the empirical evidence that faith in this particular set of incentives is seriously misplaced.
The most recent global financial crisis showed that increasing the reward for risk can create temptations to conceal its dangers or offload it onto others.
Managerial efforts to increase short-term profits sometimes come at the expense of long-term profits and environmental sustainability. Big winnings in a competitive game can be spent on efforts to change the rules of that game: lobbying expenditures often offer a higher payoff than investments in new technology.
Research in behavioral economics offers a variety of reasons that economic incentives can backfire, including perverse effects on moral commitments.
High-stakes competition in educational testing contributes to increased cheating among both students and teachers. High-stakes competition in many sports contributes to use of performance-enhancing substances.
Recent investigative reporting on the horse racing industry showed that higher purses were leading many owners to push unfit horses onto the track, increasing the likelihood of dangerous injuries to riders as well as their mounts.
Differences in rewards can certainly offer incentive high performance. But if they become too extreme, negative effects kick in.
Consider first the impact of reward on effort. As the economist Robert Frank emphasizes in his new book, “The Darwin Economy,” most people care less about their absolute income than how they compare with others. Winner-take-all dynamics can lead to an arms race in which the size of top prizes gets larger and larger, and we pay more and more to elicit the same amount of effort.
For instance, the ratio of executive pay to that of average workers in the United States has grown by almost a factor of 10 since 1980. Analysis of pay-setting practices suggests that corporate boards try to pay their own chief executives more than those at comparable companies, creating a ratchet effect that has more to do with relative status than actual effort.
Shareholders at Citigroup recently voted against an executive pay package they considered overly generous.
Second, consider the effect of effort on performance. Additional effort tends to have a positive effect but with diminishing returns. When people are already trying as hard as they can, extravagant rewards either go to waste or, worse, encourage cheating.
Finally, consider the effect of performance on success. In a competitive game, people are not likely to put forth much effort unless they perceive some likelihood of winning. Yet unequal rewards often accumulate over lifetimes and are perpetuated within family dynasties, creating barriers to competition.
Recent research suggests that the United States, with comparatively high levels of income inequality, is also characterized by lower levels of income mobility than many other affluent countries.
Good incentives are always a good idea. But it’s not as easy to design them as it might seem, because they should discourage a host of economic sins — not just sloth and fear, but also cruelty and greed.
What Would Improve Job Prospects for Young Workers?
Ukrainian nationalists protesting in front of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv during the December 2005 gas war (epa) PRAGUE, October 24, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- International energy experts at the Prague Energy Forum have been pondering where and under what conditions the next "gas war" could occur.
Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steve Pifer set the framework for the debate at the Prague forum, which was organized by RFE/RL in partnership with the Warsaw-based Institute for Eastern Studies and held on October 23-24. In his conference presentation, Pifer envisaged three scenarios for disputes involving countries that supply, transport, or consume natural gas.
Pifer listed first the possibility of further political trouble between Georgia and Russia. He noted the steeply rising tensions between the two countries in recent months.
The latest incidents are Georgia's brief arrest of four Russian military officers as spies, which led Russia to round up and summarily expel hundreds of Georgian nationals and to cut off mail and transportation links between the two countries.
Pifer noted that nearly all Georgian natural-gas supplies come from Russia. This could make a tempting target for cuts if Russia wants to ratchet up the pressure on Georgia, which is becoming too friendly to NATO and the West for Moscow's comfort.
A Warmer Winter For Ukraine?
The second scenario envisages another clash between Ukraine and Russia, which last winter argued about pricing, leading Russia to cut off gas supplies. This led to a reduction in gas volume reaching Western Europe, igniting controversy in Europe about how far one can trust Russia.
Pifer said he personally finds another "gas war" in this part of the world rather unlikely.
"As the gas price in Ukraine moves toward global levels, I think that reduced the prospect for another Russian-Ukrainian gas war, but when you look at the problems you have in the current gas market, namely the lack of full transparency, the questions of whether the Kremlin sees energy as a political tool, there is always that prospect," Pifer told the conference.
Fellow conference participant David Preiher, of the National Institute for International Security Problems in Ukraine, says Russia does not hold all the cards. Ukraine is a major transit country for Russian gas, and thus is in a position to exert leverage on Moscow.
Preiher also noted Ukraine has vast gas-storage facilities, which could supply Europe with gas all winter without being refilled. This gives Kyiv a bit more breathing space in the event of an attempt by Russia to close the gas taps.
Mykhailo Gonchar, deputy chairman of the board of Ukraine's Ukrtransnafta, said last year's dispute with Ukraine was enormously costly to Russia in terms of loss of client confidence, and Moscow will not repeat it.
The third possible scenario is for conflict between Russia and Central Asia, or between Central Asian states. Pifer sees the most likely disagreement as being between Russia and Turkmenistan.
"I do think there is a question, for instance, in Turkmenistan, about how much of the profit from selling gas to Europe should be divided between [Russia's] Gazprom and Turkmenistan," Pifer said. "And you already saw the pressure from Turkmenistan to raise its price from $65 per 1,000 cubic meters to $100; now, if Turkmenistan pushes higher, it could lead to a commercial conflict between Turkmenistan and Gazprom."
Gonchar added to the debate by referring to what he called Russia's "unstable production dynamics."
He said Russian gas output figures are uncertain. It's known that Western Siberia's production levels are dropping, and it's not clear whether Russia can deliver all the gas it is promising in its contracts with other countries.
STABILITY AND SECURITY: On October 23-24, RFE/RL and the Warsaw-based Economic forum cosponsored the Prague Energy Forum at RFE/RL's Prague broadcasting center. The Energy Forum brought together nearly 100 experts and policymakers from Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East to discuss key issues of energy supply and security in the years to come.
Is A Gas War Brewing?
Trains are delayed between Wakefield Westgate and Doncaster because of signalling problems.
The disruption is between South Elmsall and Fitzwilliam.
Trains between Doncaster and Wakefield Westgate may be delayed by up to 20 minutes to at least 6pm.
Journeys between Moorthorpe and Wakefield Westgate may be diverted, not calling at stations between Meadowhall and Wakefield Westgate.
A bus will run from Wakefield Westgate to Bolton-upon-Dearne, calling at all stations.
Why must the beloved Hobbit novel be stretched over three films? Must all of Hollywood be so greedy?
Sure, you can look at the latest news from The Shire from a purely cynical viewpoint—after all, the Lord of the Rings film franchise has grossed close to $3 billion worldwide. But just because J.R.R. Tolkien wrote one novel, and Peter Jackson is giving us three films, doesn't mean that the decision was solely about money.
In fact, fans who love The Hobbit book most are thrilled, and we're not talking about accountants or greedy dragons living under a mountain.
Yes, it has been confirmed that Peter Jackson's two-part Hobbit movie is now going to be three. It doesn't look like there will be any new footage shot, however. Apparently Jackson has captured three films' worth of footage, and he wants as much of it to be seen as possible.
Still, the announcement has spurred speculation that this is a money grab, at least, for the producers and distributors.
"Lots of pre-existing source material, plus a huge built in-and obsessed audience, divided by the cost savings in producing three films simultaneously, certainly equals more profit opportunity," talent manager and former Hollywood exec Marrissa O'Leary tells me.
But if you think this is just about money, you don't know the whole story.
"The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth," Jackson himself said on his Facebook page.
In other words, the director isn't just using the Hobbit novel as source material. He's also, apparently, using other tales that Tolkien wrote to tell a fuller tale. So, in a way, the trilogy we will see starting in December won't be based on just The Hobbit. It'll be based on a whole lot of other, more obscure Tolkien-ology—maybe even stuff you never knew existed.
"It's totally natural to be skeptical," says Corey Olsen, who teaches J.R.R. Tolkien and medieval literature at Washington College in Maryland. "But what people have to realize is that Tolkien did a lot more work on this tale in the decades that followed" the original novel release.
For example, much of what the wizard Gandalf sees or does takes place "off-screen" in the Hobbit novel, but it's revealed in other Tolkien writings. Ditto with the White Council, and if you're a dweeb like me, you know exactly what that is.
Either way, Jackson sure does, and that should be a comfort to any fan.
Take a peek at the new Hobbit poster!
"We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance," he said on his Facebook page.

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