Hey everyone, I'm Josh, Teen Services Librarian from the Billy Jean King Main Library. And I'm Julianne, the Youth Services Supervisor also at the Billy Jean King Main Library. And welcome to the first episode of REDIA, the Long Beach Public Library's monthly conversation that highlights new books from our teen collections, airing the third Wednesday of every month. For this month, we're going to be looking at Latinx authors and characters as part of our Vida Latina program. All of these books and more are available for check out from the Long Beach Public Library. All you have to do is go to our catalog, that's encore.lbpl.org and search REDIA920, R-E-A-D-Y-A920. So without further ado, let's jump right into it. Sounds good. So I'm going to start with one I'm actually pretty excited about. It's the New David Espinosa by Freda Seviz. So this is following up his highly regarded first novel, The Closest Have Come. And the second novel is an intense but much needed take on a young man's struggle with body dysmorphia, steroid abuse, and toxic masculinity. After David becomes infamous for a viral video in which he gets beaten up, he joins a gym and decides to bulk up in hopes of defending himself and impressing his friends. We soon see that David's social life is rapidly deteriorating. Things are falling apart as he becomes consumed by this desire to seek out this ideal body. The New David Espinosa explores the silent epidemic that affects a lot of young men today, and it's something that I don't think is talked about enough. And it's done very carefully because Seviz actually also suffered with body dysmorphia as a team. So really, really good timely novel. Thanks for sharing that. I actually hadn't heard of that one. I want to talk about one you may not have heard of because it didn't get as much buzz as I had hoped it would. It's called Tigers Not Daughters by Samantha Maverick. And it's about the four Torah sisters and they dream of escape from their smothering and tyrannical widowed father from their San Antonio neighborhood full of old San Antonio families and from all of the traditions and expectations that go along with both. The summer after their senior year on, the oldest plans to do just that escape. But instead, she falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister's memory, and their dreams of leaving Southtown now seem completely out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house. Mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Anna's actually haunting them, trying to send them a message. And if so, what exactly she's trying to say? This book is deeply atmospheric and it's been described as a ghostly Latina little woman. So I'm pretty excited about this one. I want to talk a little bit about the authors since, you know, we're talking about specifically about Latinx authors from all different, all different areas of Latin America or the states with very different backgrounds. Samantha Mabry, her name might not sound Latina, but she is, was born and raised in Dallas and lives there still, teaching, writing and Latinx literature at a community college. She recently tweeted for Latin American Heritage Month. You too are hashtag Latinx, even if you have a super white sounding last name like Mabry, and we mile ability to speak Spanish. And if you don't find those books featuring people who share your background or experience, write those books. That's what I try to do. And Mabry has a couple of other books out and I've tagged them in the catalog for everyone. That's great. It's always good to get a nice wide perspective of what the Latinx experience is like. A lot of times what people think Latinx is, is really narrow and it's really a wide spectrum of experiences. It is. And there's a huge amount of intersectionality in there. But for this next one, I'm going to take us to a galaxy far, far away with Zorida Cordova's Star Wars, A Crash of Fate. So this is an expanded universe novel. It's part of the galaxies edge series, which is was made to promote the Disneyland park. Of course, you got to do it. So it's sure to please all Star Wars fans looking for more. It stars Izzy and Jules, two friends living on the planet Bantu. It's their idyllic childhood home, but it comes all to a crash and halt when Izzy's parents are found dead.  So years later, when they're both teens, they have a chance encounter back on planet Bantu and they find themselves joining forces looking to overcome their pasts and uncover these secrets that they've kept from each other and decide to go on the run. This book is a super fun mix of romance, adventure, sci-fi, and these swashbuckling adventures that you've come to expect from a Star Wars story. That sounds really interesting. I'm actually a Star Wars fan myself. So I'll have to check that out. Nice. So funny enough, I also have some Zoraida Cordova to talk to you about. I brought today her Brooklyn Brujas series, which starts with Labyrinth Lost. And this series is not your standard urban fantasy. There are no El's fairies, vampires, or other usual suspects. Instead, we're drawn into a world of African, Caribbean, and Mexican mysticism. Alejandra Alex is a young Bruja or witch from a big family of Brujas and Brujos. She's just about to come of age with the celebration of her death day, which is kind of like a quinceanera, which will activate her powers and allow her to control them. But Alex's biggest secret is that she already has her powers and she doesn't want them. So she decides that instead of embracing her powers, she'll do a spell to banish them. And guess what happens? Instead, she banishes her entire family into a different dimension. Now her family is in danger of being devoured, and that is with a capital D. And Alex will have to rescue them with the help of Nova. Boy, she doesn't know or trust. The second book, Bruja Born, which focuses on Lula, one of Alex's sisters, is also in our collection. And the final book, Wayward Witch, about Alex's other sister Rosa, should be in sometime next month. Zoraita Cordova was actually born in Gayaquil, Ecuador and moved to the States as a young girl. She identifies as Latina and is one of the co-founders of the Latinx and Kiddlet blog, which is a website-centering fellow Latinx authors. She wrote, are you ready for this? She wrote her debut novel, The Vicious Deep, as part of NaNoWriMo in 2010 when she was only 23. And it was bought by a publisher within a week of submission. So I've tagged all of Zoraita's books in our catalog, including The Vicious Deep series, which we don't have in print, but we do have an e-book format. Yeah, you got to use those e-books and audio books, too. I tagged a few of them. Absolutely. And actually, I should mention that most of what we're talking about here today is in multiple formats in our catalog. So my next one, we're going to go on the road, so to speak, with Patrick Flores-Scott's American road trip. This centers around Teodoro Avila and his family during the Great Recession back in 2008. So after his older brother, Manny, returns from serving in Iraq, Teodoro, Manny, and their sister, Xochitl, set out for a road trip. This is a humorous and often heart-wrenching story that follows the Avila siblings as they make their way down the West Coast and into New Mexico. And they're hoping to find a sort of catharsis for Manny, but also bring the family back together, because they've been separated for so long. It's a remarkable coming-of-age story that looks at mental illness, socioeconomic pressures, and the challenges that come with growing up. It's poignant and really nice, well-written. I really enjoyed it. So I actually listen to it in audio, speaking of which we don't have it on audio. But I just want to plug that it's like a really great format. It's also a valid way to consume your books. So I always try to put that out there when I can. Absolutely. And it allows you to multitask in a way that holding a book doesn't necessarily do. I've tried. I've tried reading and doing other things at the same time. It doesn't work out so well. So I'm going to jump on your theme of family and journeys and separation, and talk to you about When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. This novel in free first tells the story of two sisters who don't know that the other exists until their lives are forever changed by a plane crash. Camino lives in the Dominican Republic and can't wait for the day when her father, her puppy, arrives for his summer visit from New York. But when she gets to the airport to greet him, she finds instead a building full of grieving people. Yahaila is in the middle of a typical day at school in New York when she's called to the principal's office and met there by her mother, who tells her that her father, her hero, has died en route to his annual business trip. Each girl must not live in a world without her father, and nothing will ever be the same. And then their father's secrets are brought to light, the fact that he has two families. And the sisters find that there's someone who shares their grief in a way that no one else can. Elizabeth Acevedo, who is Dominican-American and identifies as Afro-Latina, we were talking about there being no one way to be Latinx, started writing poetry when she was 12, moved on to spoken word or slam poetry in her teens, and actually was a national poetry slam champion. The great thing about her novels is they're written in both poetry and prose, which is really lovely. We've got a couple of other titles by her that I've read, The Poet X and With the Fire on High, which, of course, I've tagged in the catalog. I loved The Poet X, and I'm really excited to read that one, so I'm looking forward to it. Going to continue this theme of dead parents because we would be without so many great stories without dead parents. Such a great trope. So we've got Teen Titans Raven by Cami Garcia and Gabriel Piccolo. So it's a more grounded take on the traditional superhero story that some of us might be a little tired of, I know I am, but I really enjoyed this, so I feel like if I can advocate for it, then it must be a pretty strong graphic novel. So it's written by Cami Garcia, as I mentioned, who you might know as the co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series and an upcoming Brazilian artist by the name of Gabriel Piccolo. So Teen Titans Raven introduces Rachel Roth, who is our main character, and she is involved in a car accident, and it gives her amnesia and also kills her adoptive mother. And so at which point she has to move to New Orleans and move back in with her adoptive mother's sister. And in the meantime, kind of put together the pieces of her life. On top of all this, she has to deal with a new school, these powers that seem to be manifesting, and of course, what a high school experience is without demons, both real and imagined.  And also be on the lookout for the follow-up, which is going to be focusing on Beast Boy coming this fall, also by the same writing pair. So keep an eye out for it. We should have it probably in the upcoming months. Awesome. We will have it in the upcoming months. I saw the order go through. So I don't think there are any dead parents in my next books. So I guess I'm gonna do a little bit of a 180 because there's no superpowers necessarily. But I'm gonna talk to you about a dystopian duology by Taylor K. Mahia, starting with, we set the dark on fire. And in Medial, upper-class girls are trained for one of two roles in their polarized society. They either get to run a husband's household or they get to raise his children. And both of these roles are promised a life of comfort and luxury because everything's kind of a political mess with lots of uprisings from the lower-class outside of that world. Danny is the top student in her class, but her future depends on nobody learning her darkest secret, right? There's always a secret. Her pedigree is a lie. Her parents sacrificed everything to get forged documents so she could rise above her station. And now she's about to marry the son of an important family. So she has to keep the truth hidden or be sent back to the fringes of society where famine and poverty are the everyday reality. On her graduation night though, nothing can prepare Danny for the choices she must make as events unfold, especially when she is asked to spy for a resistance group desperately fighting to bring equality to Medial. Can she give up everything that she's worked so hard for and ignore this massive sacrifice that her parents have made in order to achieve freedom for all of Medial and maybe even to have a chance at a forbidden love? These questions are more answered in this book and in the sequel, which is, We Unleash the Merciless Storm. Taylor is biracial Mexican-American, born and raised in Oregon where she still lives. And she feels really passionate about the representation of Latinx in media and the oppression the community faces.  We get so used to saying Latinx that when it's gendered, my tongue gets a little tied. I apologize. Taylor hasn't written any other books right now that are in the young adult collection, although she's in a couple of short story collections, but she does have a middle grade out. And of course I didn't write the name down, but it's about a girl dealing with La Llorona. So that one looks pretty exciting. It's part of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint, which is actually centering a lot of BIPOC protagonists. So I really like where he's going with that. Yeah, I really like that it's exploring that wider mythology, because I think when people think of mythology, they think of Western canon mythology, which I find very boring. So the next book I'm gonna be talking about, I'm gonna go back to graphic novels and talk about photographic, The Life of Graciela Iturbide, it's written by Isabel Quintero, and the art is by Zeke Pina. So you might recognize Isabel from her previous kind of more famous novel, Gabby a Girl in Pieces. This one is more biographical and grounded, and it's tracing the life and work of a Mexican photographer. So after a fateful turn of events, this young woman turns to photography as an outlet for her pain. This beautiful narrative we used to be through this journey across Mexico and eventually the world. As she becomes a world renowned photographer, it mixes real images of her photography in the comic next to Pena's bold black and white art and Quintero's beautiful prose. It's a really, really great book. I really enjoyed it. I like narrative nonfiction. I also like graphic novels. So I think the mixture of the two is really well done. And I love sharing stories about individuals in the past that you aren't necessarily told about in history class. So this is just my bread and butter. It's a great novel. Great, thank you for sharing that with me. I definitely hadn't heard of that one. I wanna talk to you next about Dear Haiti Love Alain, which is basically a love letter to the Haiti written by Maika and Maritza Moulit. Moulit, so many people have a really singular image of Haiti in their mind. And Haiti is so much more than what we think of it as. And that's discovered by our protagonist in Dear Haiti, Love Alain. After an incident at school involving her, a Latin American history project and a desire to send her gossipy classmates a message, Alain is shipped off to Haiti, where she's expected to learn more about the history and traditions of her native land. As she uncovers things about her mother and the curse her family is said to have, Alain goes on a fantastical quest to help herself and to save all of her family. This novel is relayed through letters and journal entries, which is one of my favorite ways to read a novel. And it balances the sometimes gritty reality of life in Haiti with Alain's casual wit and sarcasm to present a nuanced view of the island nation from the perspective of someone who's both an outsider and also has deep connections to the people in the culture. The Afro-Latina Moulit sisters, who are two of the family of four daughters, are Miami natives whose parents are Haitian immigrants. They work together to create a story that at its heart is about a girl getting to know her mother, her culture, herself, but also to make it clear that black girls can go on hilarious, crazy, life-changing adventures too, which I really appreciate. Dear Haiti, which was the Moulit sisters' first novel came out last year and their second book, One of the Good Ones, should be out early next year, hopefully. Sounds really cool. And I think we've talked about this before, but that's a really nice book cover. I think we both agree that it's okay to judge books by their covers. Absolutely. I thought they're really, really, I was gonna say it's a beautiful cover. Okay, so for my last book, I'm talking about We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez. And so it focuses on La Bestia, which if you're not familiar with, it's this expanse of train track that migrants moving north from Central America have to face. It's a violent sort of grizzly stretch where migrants are faced with violence from other people. They're often horribly disfigured and dismembered by kind of jumping from train to train. It's a really brutal expanse. So We Are Not From Here focuses on three teams, three Guatemalan teams, as they traverse this treacherous passage. And it unflinchingly depicts this brutal, but unforgiving journey that they're facing as they set out for the Southern US border. Torres Sanchez balances these moments of danger and violence with the persistent feeling of hope and resilience and a realistic depiction of those who are forced to leave their home seeking safety and opportunity. Another one I hadn't heard of. You did a great job in pulling some books that were, I think, kind of off the beaten path. And I think that our patrons are really gonna appreciate that. I'm gonna turn a total 180 from where we just were and talk about a fairy tale adaptation, actually, called Dark and Deepest Red. Let me hold it so that you can see the title, Dark and Deepest Red by Annemarie Macklemore. In the summer of 1518, there's a strange sickness that sweeps through Strasbourg. And I forgot to mention, this is a dual timeline book. So it doesn't just set in the past. So the strange sickness is sweeping through Strasbourg. Women are dancing in the streets, some until they fall down dead. And of course, as it was back in 1518, rumors of witchcraft spread and suspicion turns towards Lavinia and her family. And Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone that she loves. Five centuries later, so if you do the math, that basically puts us around 2018 or 2020 right now. Five centuries later, Rosella puts on a pair of red shoes and they make her dance uncontrollably and won't come off. She's drawn to a boy who knows the dancing fever's history better than anyone, Aimeel, whose family was actually blamed for the fever hundreds of years ago. But there's more to what happened in 1518 than even Aimeel knows and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes or not. Annemarie, Annemarie Macklemore, the author, their official bio says they were born in the foothills of the St. Gabriel Mountains and taught by their family to hear La Llorona in the Santa Ana winds. At the time they began writing Deep in Darkest Red, they identified as a queer Latinx woman, but writing the story turned out to actually be a journey of further personal discovery for them. They say, I wrote this book not realizing that I was non-binary. And now they use the personal pronouns they and them and their husband is trans. Macklemore is actually really known for crafting stories filled with magical realism and fairy tale themes. She's got several others and of course you can find them tagged in our catalog. I think that kind of wraps us up for stories. Yeah, that was all of mine. That was also all of mine. We only had a limited amount of time today to talk, so we couldn't hit all of the authors that we might've wanted to, but there's several others. Daniel Jose Older, Lillian Rivera, Benjamin and Lyrae Sines, Erika L. Sanchez, Adam Silvera, Francis Gregg Stork and then many more than that, but we're gonna go ahead and at least tag books by those six in the catalog, as well as the other books by these authors that we talked to about today. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us today, everybody, for the first episode of Redia. So remember, check us out every third Wednesday of the month, stay tuned and we'll see you next month. Don't forget the tag. See you.


I would like to talk a little bit about work on big data and democracy. I should mention that this work a couple of weeks ago received funding from the Data Science Center Tilburg, so now you see what you get. This is joint work with Fried van Hils, who's a PhD student right now and whose PhD position was partly funded for this money, and my dear colleague Erwinan Miller at the University of Vienna and also here Tilburg. So democracy, big data, social media. Since 2016 at the latest, so since the the US presidential elections that led to the election of Trump and since Brexit kind of had been accusations that social media would actually foster disinformation to be kind of transmitted to voters such that they would make actually election decisions that are not in their own interest. So thereby that social media and the type of information that will be provided by social media would manipulate election, elections democratic elections, which can lead to several problems. This only did not have, this did not only happen in 2016, but this is a picture from last week actually, where kind of a whistleblower from Facebook, Francis Hogan, kind of worked Facebook for long, kind of gave testimony to the US Congress and kind of revealed many internal documents of Facebook. And one of the things she brought up is that she claimed that actually the algorithms that Facebook used to distribute news and also political news would damage democracy. So these are a serious accusations. Now, where's the problem? The problem starts with the fact that actually we know right now that more than 50% of online news will be consumed by algorithm-driven platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and also Google News as a main source of political information, right? So it's not the old TV, it's not the, it's not newspapers anymore, it's social media basically which are the main source of political information for many people, not only about their friends and their parents. Now, we also know that some ideologically motivated information suppliers, of which we will call interest groups, disseminate disinformation on news platforms for several purposes. And so the two key problems that have been mentioned in the literature and partly that we also worked on theoretically in previous work are the, on the one hand side, the obfuscation of origin of news items. This basically means if you get a news item on social media, very often you only know, oh, I saw it on Facebook, but you do not recall who is the original sender because kind of that's not made so prominent. And the second major problem that has been mentioned is the kind of technological ability of micro-typing at services which implies that you get a different ad or use of different news than your neighbor because your neighbor has different characteristics and made different choices online at the point, right? So where's the true problem? The true problem is if it is correct that there is disinformation, that disinformation can affect people's voting behavior, then in the end we could, this could undermine trust in democracy. Because if we think that the person who just officially won an election and is not going to be sending the will of the people, then why trust the results of elections? So that's the main problem. Now, based on this research kind of by several people that kind of beforehand, some reform proposals have been proposed. For instance, by the European Commission in what they call the European Democracy Action Plan. And so the two key reform proposals here on the one hand side are to introduce mandatory disclosure rules for social media such that kind of the origin of political content must be made more transparent. And secondly, that micro-targeting technology should be more restricted. Yeah, so that's basically in the political discussion. But now, and this is a very interesting, so these are two quotes from political scientists and Josh Tucker is a pretty prominent one. So when they wrote, well, we're concerned that reliance on untested conventional wisdom based on folk theories of technologies impact on democracy is leading to misguided reform proposals that may even worse the problems they attempt to solve. So we just saw the previous slide that kind of policymakers are taking action, but they do not really know whether the action is warranted or not. And whether it goes in the right direction because there is not free empirical evidence. And why is there not so much evidence? That's kind of where the second kind of the second quotation here comes in, because kind of personally and Tucker write that it remains the case that the employees of the platforms are the only ones who really know the scale of the problems might be attributed to them. Those of us, we poor researchers, those of us on the outside must make do with the glimpses provided through publicly available data, which may or may not paint an accurate picture. So that's the problem. We need to know kind of we need to get some empirics about what actually is going on. And this is where we try to contribute. So what we try to to answer is a research question that says whether so we want to study these two technologies mentioned and so can a ban on micro targeting and or mandatory disclosure of interest by centers of political messages? Can this avoid election rigging and improve voters welfare? So that's the the overall question. And how do we operationalize that basically in the lab? So we go to the lab, we create our own kind of we create our own data. Before that kind of experiment is very well informed. We can first construct the game theoretic model making clear who has which kind of incentives. And so why would we then do this in the lab? Well, first to get to get the data about human decisions in in kind of in online environments about political elections in the first place. But in particular, that's nice thing, of course, about lab experiments. You can control everything, right? So we do not kind of we do not have the external validity that you do if you do have Facebook data, but we can control everything. And so at least we have complete internal validity and and then we can discuss external validity. Now, I will not go into too much detail about what how exactly it looks like, but I will I want to give you a glimpse about these about these experiments. So basically, we have subjects that students usually and they are matching groups of four. And in each group kind of you would have one person taking over the role of the interest group, sending a political message, and you would have three people who receive such a message and they take on the the role of voter. They get a message about the state of the world. And we're here kind of in the model kind of that the state of the world can be one or two. Think about state of the world one could be something like a more leftist policy is more appropriate state of the world two is a more right wing popular policies more probably exactly we don't write. So the end is the assumption is that the interest group sees what is actually the best, but the interest group has an own incentive because it belongs to one of two types. It's either what we call majority or what we call my narrative. And depending on the state of the world and its type, it prefers one of two parties, X or Y. And then basically the interest group sends this message, Oh, the state of the world is this or that. And this is cheap talk. So it can be pure lie or it can be truthful. And it sends this to to the voters, the voters see it. The voters also have a kind of have a type so two of them are majority one is minority, then they make kind of they make a voting decision. And the party that collects the most votes is very as it's supposed to be in a democracy. Now kind of what with the interesting part the interesting part is basically here, because we study on the one hand side games with public communication, think a newspaper or a TV. So in this kind of in this case, the interest group can can choose only one message and all of the voters see the same message. And they know that they see the same message, right? You read the moon newspaper and you know that your neighbor reads exactly the same piece. Alternatively, there is micro targeted kind of news dissemination, which implies Oh, it's possible that you see something different than your name, because your majority is minority or the other way around. And you know that. And secondly, the question is, well, do you know the identity of the center, for instance, oh, yeah, this message came from a majority interest group. I have some guests what they want me to do consequently, I can, I can make a kind of update my beliefs. And in this case, this would be disclosed identity of the center. Otherwise, we also check what's going on if they just don't know so as in social media. So all of this was implemented in Vienna actually with my co author due to Corona, it took a pretty long time. So October 2020 until July 21. So we ran a total we ran 36 sessions with 432 subjects. And importantly, I should mention in this kind of interdisciplinary environment, this was an economics and economics, sorry, experiment, which implies the decisions were incentivized. So the students on average made 40 euros for two and a half hours. But actually, if they made smarter decisions, they would make more money. And if they made made not so smart decisions, they would make less. So that's that's the game. We have some measures for kind of the outcome is for individual aggregate efficiency. That's not so important. But then actually what we did is that we first started kind of in one game, which is we call it and you here, which stands for micro targeting and undisclosed. So that's actually think of current social media. So where you the micro targeting exists, and you do not know as a as a voter actually who's sending your message. And then we study kind of starting from here. What happens if we introduce a ban on micro targeting, if this is not happening anymore. And what happens if we mandatory and disclose the interest of the center or both. So that's basically part one of the game or two of the game. Here we change position and we basically try to restructure the development of the media industry. So we start in the good old times when we had newspapers. So that would be the public game with disclosure of interest. And then we check what's going on if micro targeting is possible. And if the instantaneously kind of the groups types are not are not revealing. Now, what do we find that we have two major findings. The first is, well, as long as games are public, again, think newspaper. As long as games are public, then there is no major difference in the average individual efficiency of both minority and majority. So that's that's basically that's okay. However, as soon as micro targeting is in is included, so where messages can be customized to the type of the receiver, then this is a problem for minority voters, not for majority voters. Where's the intuition? The intuition is that with two thirds probability kind of the center is of majority type by definition, that's majority. And so majority interest groups have an incentive to report truthfully if they send a message to majority receivers, majority voters, and then kind of, which is why they why they report truthfully in the first sense. And then kind of despite the fact that they are not really keen on it, but they they also have to report truthfully to minority voters. So that's in a newspaper kind of minority voters also know I get correct news, and then I can update my own beliefs, I can make my thoughts about what is correct and what is my kind of in my own interest, and I can make a floating decision. However, as soon as a kind of micro targeting is possible, this this discipline effect of public communication signal default, that's what we can predict it theoretically. And that's also what we see in the data. And that's a pretty clear result micro targeting is bad for minorities. Second major thing, we found that the micro if we ban micro targeting, this alone has no significant effect for a majority and minority voters. However, disclosure is the elephant of the vote. So if we force the kind of social media to disclose the interests of the message standard, then this will have positive effects in particular for majority voters. And if we combine kind of this is closure with with a ban on micro targeting, it will have positive effect actually for both majority right. So that's that's basically the second major major message here. If we combine kind of a prohibition of micro targeting, and we ask them to disclose kind of the identity of senators, then this will be positive. If I conclude, so what we what I presented here is basically the first systematic evaluation of the effect of a micro targeting ban and mandatory disclosure of interest on voting behavior. Our experiment suggests that disclosure of interest is crucial to enhance the efficiency of voter decision making. And the micro targeting ban enhances the efficiency of voting actions by minority voters, but only in combination with mandatory disclosure. Thank you very much.


Hey what's up guys, this is the newer camera rig, it's a video stabilizer for your DSLR or mirrorless cameras. One of the reasons why I bought it is because I just wanted to have a quick and easy way to shoot videos which is very stable. What I'm going to do today is give you a quick comparison side by side to show you the camera mounted on top of this to see how smooth the footage is as well as me holding it handheld. If I don't want to spend time putting it onto my gimbal then this is a quick and easy solution for me as well. Although gimbals are a lot more expensive, you're going to get the best stabilised footage with those. This is just a camera rig for someone to maybe have steady smooth footage by standing in the same position or just doing smooth pans or anything like that. I wouldn't recommend this for doing a lot of walking or running or anything like that but let's go ahead and take a look at this in more details. Right, you can see there's plenty of tightening adjustments you can make at various different pivotal points. Now this has a release plate which is great. You can also have your own release plate of the same width. There's plenty of manfrotto ones out there. If I just unscrew this you'll see that this comes apart from that. This has a button here to release it so all you have to do is press that, lift it up and you have a sliding quarter inch screw there as well to mount it and you can reposition that accordingly. There's also a 3 eighth screw as well in case you wanted to put that onto something larger. So you just mount your camera on that. You can see there's the switch for the release. So I press that, I put it into place, clips in and then you tighten it. Once your camera is on there, there's no real weight limit. You can put loads of things on top of your camera, a monitor, a microphone, a light, whatever it may be. It should hold it very steady and it's quite sturdy. It also has a very nice grip there as well. You can see it's a rubberised grip so it won't slip and it's quite comfortable to hold. And there you have the level bubble as well to see if you're parallel to the floor. The shoulder pad you can actually reposition this to wherever you like. I will normally keep it to the end so you have enough space to see the camera and the video that's being recorded. If you wanted to replace your own shoulder pad, you can do that, you just need to make sure the holes in the shoulder pad are of the same width here. Then you have these caps at the end of the rods just to prevent any dust or rusting going into them. Alright guys, let's step outside. I'm going to take two videos. One with my Sony a7 III mounted on top of this. Another one with my Sony a7 III in just my hand and you guys can see the comparison to see the difference and if it's worth buying it. So let's take a look. Right, so even just holding the camera still you can see it's much more steady with the camera rig so I'm just walking left. Now this is where you can see the biggest difference. It's very impressive how stable this camera rig actually is. You can see it's very shaky when I'm walking and I'm trying to keep it as stable as possible with the camera in my hand. Now what I'm going to do is move forward towards the car, take a look inside. Now that's very shaky on the left. As you can see the stabilizer has made a massive difference in that. Even when walking backwards and I can't see where I'm going it feels like the camera is maybe on a gimbal as well which is so impressive. So the last test I'm going to do is just pan left and right. So now I'm just going to turn left. Both are relatively quite stabilized. Of course I'm not moving and there's no steps so it's done a good job on both of them but I can see the slight difference with the stabilizer overall I'm very happy with it. So although that comparison was quite brief hopefully it showed you guys the difference that this can make. I'm so happy with this if there's anything else you guys want to know about it do drop a comment down below. Otherwise check out the link it's £65 on Amazon and it's a very good deal for anyone that takes videos. Hopefully that was useful if you did like this video I do a whole bunch of camera accessory videos which I know you're going to like. So make sure you subscribe so you won't miss those ones. Make sure you like this video and I will catch you guys next time. Take care.


This is Stockhammer 10706. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used Dodge and sports car headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2017 Dodge Charger RT black top edition. This car has the 5.7 liter V8 Hemi motor that pumps out 370 horsepower. This car has been fully inspected and inspected as 100% ready to go. Red line 3 pearl coat is the color we shoot all of our videos in 1080p, 60 frames per second so if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it is definitely your best way to check out the vehicle quality and condition wise before seeing it in person. If you'd like to check out all the photos on this car in the upper right hand party screen is a link right to our website, click that and check us out there. Here's with the 20 inch painted black alloy rims part of the black top package. It has Firestone Firehawk GT 24545R20 tires with probably about I'd say 80% of the tread left on them. Red line pearl coat, really a good looking color. Has the projector lamp headlamps, the LED running lights and the LED fog lamps. Front bumper is in nice shape. I didn't see any major dents, dings or cracks. Degloss black center crosshair grille and bumper trim. The hood is in excellent condition, I didn't see any dents or dings on that. And the passenger side fender is in excellent shape as well. Passenger side rim, no scuffs or scrapes on that. And as you go down the rest of the side of the car, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can still see the car, hear the car and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here there's no surprises and you'll be all set to go. That's why we offer the Summit Auto Fastpass option in the upper right hand part of your screen, link right to our website where you can apply for financing, get pre-approved, see a payment code, even appraise a trade, all from the comfort of your own home. You drive the car, love it, you'll be all set to go. Back tires, I've just as much tried as front tires and you do get four-wheel disc brakes on this car. As we come around to the back of the vehicle, rear bumper is in nice shape, didn't see any major dents or cracks on it, you do get the dual rear exhaust with the chrome tips, deck lid spoiler, the LED racetrack tail lamps, the black RT logo, the trunk is in really nice shape. It's nice and clean and it does have the battery back here as well as the tire inflator kit. Those seats do fold down for extra storage and that trunk shuts nice and solidly. Going down this side of the car just as clean as that passenger side, no dents or dings on the rear quarter, the roof looks really good as well. And for full disclosure this back rim is in excellent condition, no scuffs or scrapes on there. Going down the rest of this side of the car, take note of how clean the body is, no dents, no dings, very, very nice. Has the heated mirrors, the entering-go system.  This one has the Alpine premium sound system as well. You can see that this one has 8,829 miles, you get the digital speedometer, outside temp, time display, and the instrument cluster is very nice and clean. Comes with the leather-wrapped steering wheel, cruise controls on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left, audio controls on the back and then you get your paddle shifters for your sport mode. This one has the 8.4, 4C radio, AM, FMN, Sirius XM radio capabilities.  You can do your heated seats right there as well. And this one has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay capabilities and you can project your cell phone to the screen, so if you have a navigation system on your cell phone you can project it right to the screen, control it with the screen and it's like you got navigation right on your screen there, like Waze or Google Maps.  You get the 8-speed automatic transmission, has the keyless entry right here with the remote start. Passengers side format is in excellent shape as well, no rips or tears on that passenger seat, smells very clean inside this car, I don't think it's ever been smoked in the headliner, it's absolutely perfect and you do get your HomeLink buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems right there. SOS and assist buttons in the rear view mirror and we'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll check out under the hood.  Factory floor mats back here, you do get two USB jacks and these seats like I said do fold down for extra storage, you can see they go down pretty decently flat so if you got to haul some extra stuff not a problem, you get the child safety locks on the back doors as well and the bottoms of the doors all look really good. This car came out of Georgia so I doubt there's any corrosion issues on it. And we'll take a quick look under the hood, I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today and hopefully from this HD video, you'll have been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around inside note, under the hood we have the legendary 5.7 liter V8 Hemi motor, 370 horsepower, this car has been fully safety inspected like I said, has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off, the car has been gone through mechanically 100% and is 100% ready to go. And if you want to see more pictures of this car, one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, halftones, recorded tons, one tons, challengers, chargers, Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes, you name it, we got it, go to our website www.SummitAuto.com, full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at SummitAuto.com and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to YouTube.com slash Summit Auto, remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there, in fact in a second you will see links to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left, a link to more Dodge Charger videos like this one on your right. If you've not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website, click those, check us out and we really look forward to helping you with the Super Clean 2017 Dodge Charger RT and Red Line 3 Pearl Coat. Thanks again.


I am Joe commisar. I'm the assistant director and financial management services department for Capital projects. I developed or helped develop the the annual CIP for the city and also facilitate bond elections If they happen to occur, which they are certainly doing now what I'd like to talk about today is the very briefly the CIP development process And the reason I want to talk about that is so that you know what the process is in the city It's important for you to know that if it's July this is going on if it's if it's May This is going on and if you'd like to interject yourself you have a feel for where that is So we've got a pretty structured process put together It's important for you to understand and then I want to talk about some of the 2014 bond highlights That we have here today Fort Worth uses a four-step process. We introduced it last year We do the same thing every year in a repetitive kind of process and the goal is to develop that comprehensive integrated plan that we That we link to the city's comprehensive plan the city's comprehensive plan is the plan That projects out 20 years and it's important that our CIP be tied to that We're looking at the funding. We look at how much money we have to spend and then we develop the CIP All along that way. It's critical that we interact with you folks Regularly and routinely to get your input. This is your Fort Worth. This is your opportunity to present Information to us so that we know what you want. We we serve you and work for you as you well know And then if we need to we hold a bond election, which in fact we need to do This is a very briefly the four-step process and you can see that January through April. We're developing projects We have a summer CIP workshop with the city council in June and July or May June timeframe every year And we we go back to the city council ask them to verify the work that we're doing make sure that we're on track Then we use the fall to go out into the public to solicit feedback And we do that in conjunction with the comprehensive plan update We did that last year. We had 17 meetings last fall It was very successful in the sense that we were able to get feedback from you all on what you wanted And then in December November-December we come back to the city council and we say okay. Here's what we've got from the public Is it okay? What is the CIP? Okay, and we ask for approval of CIP. That's the process every year So you know you know that we're developing projects in the spring. We've got two city council meetings a year one in the summer One in the winter to talk about Capital projects and we're out in the public Public meetings typically in the fall. So if you want to interject yourself into that process, that's the way you can do that You can see that we've have had Public meeting or public meetings and city council meetings. I'm going to cover some highlights of those very quickly So let's that's the background on the CIDV development Process and again we can answer questions on those if you have those later I want to talk about the specific bond program now that everybody's probably most interested in you can hear me say The word projects a lot today, and I want to emphasize that I'm talking about projects that are funded through your property tax There's a segment a component of your property tax that's used to pay for Certain projects and those are the ones we're talking about there's hundreds of other projects in the city They're paid for by water your water bills your storm water bills your aviation Has projects funded by the feds through the FAA grants things like that. We're not talking about those today Those are ongoing. They're moving along. We're talking about those ones that are funded by our property tax And I also want to emphasize that everything you hear today There is no tax rate increase associated with it. We're using money that we currently have so no tax rate increase associated with anything you're hearing today, and I think that's an important thing to know We we have a substantial need. We're one of the fastest growing cities in the nation largest One of the largest met areas some metropolitan areas in the state And we're growing like crazy as you've seen in the newspapers and it's important that we get get infrastructure built to To take care of the services that you need and the infrastructure that you need to to get your jobs done and just to just to live so We've had four current programs The 2004 bond program the 2008 program and a couple of other ones in between and we're running out of money this summer We're going to sell the very last of that money and that money no longer exists. Those projects will be underway this summer So we need additional dollars. I Mentioned in in spring. We're talking to the departments about what it is that we need They came back to us and here's some macro numbers On in general categories about what's needed. You can see that by far the largest Requirement in the city's transportation infrastructure. That's no surprise to anybody It's critical that we we have the streets and roads and road repairs necessary to get folks moving around the city facilities parks IT projects and a variety of other cities city economic development kinds of Projects as well as various services are also critically needed and this adds up to a very large number You'll see in a moment that we don't have the money to pay for all this So it's important that we pick the right projects as we go through this process And that's where we really need your help as we're as we're winding down to to getting this list Developed now We wanted to build we wanted to build a formal way To start this process in the past we haven't had the opportunity to We haven't we haven't had a structured process. We've just kind of started and said let's go but over the last Nine months we've developed a very strong strategic process to build a project list That we want to offer to you as a starting point for your deliberations on this whole thing and very briefly I will tell you that Department heads met several times we brought in a consultant We developed a matrix and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the best projects would be For the city going forward And so when you see this list, it's a result of the staff's work over many many months to try to find the right Recommendations for the city now naturally we've been to city council several times and asked for their Guidance and direction. They've offered their input to this process. It's been tweaked and so it's been a pretty comprehensive effort But I want to mention some things about this list it's very important that you understand that this list is Is just simply a recommendation to you. This is our this is our subject matter expert our staff's recommendation To where we think these projects Or where the dollars should be spent, however It is in no way a final list and it will not be a final list until December. We're going to go through this summer Councilwoman Alan Gray mentioned the several meetings. I'll mention them again. We want your input. We're soliciting your input We want to know what you want so when you see these lists you have the option of tossing all the projects out adding projects Increasing the scope of the projects decreasing scope of the projects anything is open for discussion So there's this list is no way shape or form a final list It's really important that you understand that and I'll talk about those milestones a little bit later So your your input is very valuable to us and it's very critical to making good decisions. I Mentioned that we've been to city council several times over the last 18 months This list has been tweaked. It's been generally determined to be okay City council has been pretty pretty direct with us and telling us what they wanted to see I wanted to see a strong emphasis on transportation infrastructure keep that Emphasis the way you've had it find ways to provide higher allocations for parks projects That's been a pretty pretty highly discussed subject as we've run these lists by city council and Continue to find ways to partner with other entities the ISDs the counties And other private entities if we can get their dollars in the mix then we then our dollars will go farther We can leverage our dollars and and that effort is underway full-time It's going on as we speak it will not stop just because we've got this bond election going on We're still going to try to find ways to partner with those folks so that we can free up dollars for other projects And that will occur all the way through the rest of the year and then Importantly as we're doing today stay out in the public and get input from the citizens on what they want So this list as I talked about now, which which is not a final list is broken down Categorically this way and I don't need to go into a lot of detail because I'll show you the projects in just a little bit But what should stand out here is the very strong emphasis in transportation infrastructure? 70% of the available dollars that we have we we would recommend Go to transportation infrastructure type projects. Obviously we want your feedback on that That may or may not be what you want, but it seems to be The common theme as we go through the prior public meetings in the city council's discussions And then the significant contribution to the parks projects you can see 22 million dollars here Allocated to parks the rest of the projects are distributed around the the various categories, and I'll show you those in just a second This is the project list the one that's not final, and I just want to walk through it with you briefly just to mention a Couple of highlights about the projects the department heads are here You know that there's their setup outside with their displays They can talk to you about detail on these projects or any other projects. You'd like to see so very briefly Transportation infrastructure I'll show you a breakdown a little bit, but you can imagine that's streets roads Bridges sidewalks intersections that sort of thing We have a fire station 42, which is in South Fort Worth. It's down around Spinks Airport The Holly water treatment plant needs a service center. I will say simply that this piece of it leverages Seven million dollars in of water money, which is how it got on this list in the first place This is not the complete project cost, but this is all that the bond fund would be asked to pay There's a facility up north consisting of a library and a thousand square feet for a municipal court kiosk complex and Again the the municipal court staff. Mr. Emerson is here if you need additional detail on that The downtown court it requires an expansion and so we have got that in the bond program The north part of Fort Worth above I-30 is serviced out of service centers in the south And there's a need for a service center up north. That's what this would be It would house transportation public works and parks folks The animal shelter in South Fort Worth or not South Fort Worth central Fort Worth down 287 and 820 Needs an expansion to accommodate more capacity in a medical treatment facility Walt ranch needs a fire station. That's far west Fort Worth a transit oriented development is a development associated with the Tech techs rail the the light rail that's coming into Fort Worth and it's important that the infrastructure around those stations be developed That's what that's all about. There's a playground equipment at 16 sites in the city Heritage Plaza Park in downtown Fort Worth. You may you may recall that's closed and it has a fence around it Enhanced CFA funds those are funds that we contribute to developers to encourage them to develop There's there's sometimes there's a gap in what they can do We help them with with their needs so that though their projects can be Accomplished urban village improvements improves things like walkability around the city Street scapes makes makes places a nicer Magnolia is a good example of that if you've been in that area North animal shelter again. There's nothing up there. They're there Have a need Oakland Express library. That's a an express library in this particular district that councilman Alan Gray has championed and she And I'm sure you all are aware that there's a need for that library here as well these other The remainder of the projects here are primarily parks related They're pretty self-explanatory the parks and walks and trails is quanta Parker Park That's out east and that would complete a park trail to Lake Arlington The rest I say as I say are pretty self-explanatory except for the public art component Which I'm going to talk to in just a little bit note that's five point eight million dollars And those are those are art projects that are related to capital projects that we're talking about here This is the breakdown of the the transportation line that I showed you earlier you see the Various categories that I talked about Street reconstruction rehab has its line and it's broken down to neighborhood streets and arterials and that's primarily repair of streets And that's a pretty critical line as well These are the this is a map. It's hard to see there's a there's a better map out here in the lobby But these are the arterials these are the major roads around Fort Worth you can see that they're distributed fairly well There's a lot of dollars that go into that $88 million worth of construction of Arterials as we went through the Council meetings the council members brought up various things They still think we should look at and emphasize. I wanted to bring those to your attention. There was discussion of Chisholm Trail Park improvements There you saw Chisholm Trail on the prior slide that is only half of what's required There's some there's some thought that the department can come up with additional dollars or private funding come up with additional dollars But the discussion is that if that's not possible, we may need to look at additional funding there Same for Como Community Center, which is a seven million dollar facility replacement What we have in the bond program recommendation to you is half that there's a hope that private Private partnerships can come up with the other three point five, but perhaps not Citywide Community Center renovations Zebo as park Rockwood golf course and citywide trail enhancements Those were those were brought to our attention as things we might want to take a look at so we offer them to you as suggestions for additional projects I Do want to mention very briefly the public art program Simply to say that it is integrated into our capital projects program These are the goals that they have you're familiar with a variety of projects. Miss Martha Peters is here She has a display out here about how these projects have incorporated public art in the past We fund those projects By ordinance the ordinance currently calls for two percent of the capital project dollars that would go to public art and So for 2014 two percent of our capacity, which is two hundred ninety two million would be five point eight million dollars There's discussion about whether the two percent is right or not. Is that the right amount? So we'll take your input on it. Would you like to see more? Would you like to see less? Would you like to see it go away? Any aspect of this is Discussable as well. So If you have thoughts on that let us know so What do we need from you what we really need from you as your feedback? We really need to know what your thoughts are on what projects that we have Remember we have two hundred and ninety two million dollars in capacity, and that's it. That's all we have so We've allocated that through the projects that you see which are not defined at all I mean those are not final But I would ask that if you have ideas for example if you want to see you know two or three new projects That you help us Understand how they might be paid for you know what what would go away or be reduced in order to pay for those because We're still limited just like you are in your checkbook to whatever is in there for us. It's two hundred ninety two million dollars That sounds like a lot, but it's really not in the in the business of construction. So But we have to have your input. It's critical to To what we're doing These are the variety of ways that we have we have set up so that you can talk to us Public meetings obviously I'll talk to more about those in a second. E-media will take I'll take email inputs My business cards and my colleagues Kristen glass are on the sign-up sheet if you want to email us. That's information social media and the crowd sourcing Facebook Twitter you can get us that way Crowdsourcing is new. We've got an application called my mixer back here where you can enter into the system and express your Your opinions that way you can get to it through our website or you can spend time here today Miss Michelle Goot is here. She's our communications officer in the city. She'll be happy to walk you through how to use this It's really a fantastic opportunity to interface with us This way at this time We have all kinds of written media the publicity in the newspapers that sort of thing We really want your feet will even take mail if you want to mail us something and and let us know About that just a quick word on the public meetings. You're obviously at one today Miss Alan Gray mentioned that the next one for this district is the 25th of July But there's a bunch of them there's 19 currently scheduled of which 16 are District specific and all that means is we're going to talk primarily about that just that district's projects But you're welcome to any of them if you want to come to any of these meetings You're welcome and the last three are city-wide All council members will be at those three the mayor will be at those three So you can come to one or all of those as well You're welcome at any of them if you leave today and you say man I forgot something and you want to express it in another public meeting. Please come out and talk to us You don't have to complete your thoughts today if you don't have them You might take notes today and come back later. You're welcome at any one of these meetings Quick look at the milestones just so you know how the rest of the year is going to go Between now and November 2nd We're going to be doing public meetings and I just showed you that schedule that's schedules in the publicity that we're putting out on the in the variety of various media We've got a compliment in November I'm going to take all that public input everything that you tell me and everybody else all the other citizens and all the other public Meetings tells me we're going to compile it and we're going to shape the project list based on what you say And we're going to bring it back to the city council on December 11th And we're going to say okay We had the list we went out as you've asked us to do we've gotten this information and this is what the new list looks like Assuming that's okay We'll spend the next month or so getting the the ballot and the ordinance and the propositions also all worked out and Then in February 11th the city council will actually call for the election which will be held on May 10th 2014 So that's how that process is going to work So nothing is going to be final until December nothing So you you can interject, you know three times a week if you want between now and December we'll take that information It's important to us that we hear from you, but that's kind of the milestones that we that we have December 11th is the schedule at this time


The Lumberjack's girls basketball team took the floor for the first time in 2019. Their five game winning streak was snapped in their last game of loss at Cambridge, I-Santi. They were looking to start a new one tonight against Salk Rapids Rice, where they've beaten the past two years. The storm played yesterday and Bemidji took advantage, jumping out to a 19 to nothing lead. Yes, that's right, 19 to nothing.  She makes the layup. A few possessions later, some good passing down low to Taylor Wade. The reverse is good. They're up 28 to 9. And the Jacks getting it done on the defensive side as well. Lindsay Hildenbrand forces the steal. Coast to coast for two points. Wire to wire win for Bemidji. 87 to 43.