Mediaboss Marketing

The role, he said, has increasingly gotten him attention offscreen. He is regularly stopped on the street and recognized, particularly after Biden called him a stupid son of a b---- for asking if inflation was hurting his partys chances in the looming midterm elections.

Since then, hes been written about in the tabloids, and become a punching bag for late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, who joked that the president should take a page out of Will Smiths playbook and slap the Fox News White House correspondent.

Im somebody that grew up watching presidents, watching late-night TV. So if I hear one of them referring to me in any way it is surreal, Doocy told Politico in an interview.

But if Doocy is the closest thing the Biden White House has to a high-profile antagonist, even his back-and-forths with the administration dont come close to the animosity on display between Trump and the assembled press corps, or the attention it generated. Doocy told Politico he has good relationships with the Biden communications office, who he talks to multiple times a day. He insists that he does not relish the chance to beef with the press secretary.

Earlier this month, Psaki was asked by former Obama communications official and current Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer whether Doocy really was a stupid son of a b----, or just plays one on TV?

Psaki replied by saying that Doocy works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a b----.

The exchange set off anger, including among Fox News personalities and executives, who said her comments were inappropriate. But they didnt seem to bother the Fox News correspondent himself. Doocy said that he had a private conversation with Psaki about her comments after the event, and told Politico that they were not mean-spirited.

I think thats a classic example of how stuff can be taken a little out of context, he said.

Excerpt from:
The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter - POLITICO

Sidechat is arguably the hottest online development to have struck Tufts campus this year. It is a smartphone application where users can post short messages and images completely anonymously in a domain accessible to anyone with an active Tufts email account.

On Sidechat, usernames do not exist. Other features include anonymous commenting, direct messaging between users and a system of points, known on Sidechat as karma. This feature tallies how many times a users posts or comments have been upvoted or downvoted: The karma level of an individual user can only be viewed by that user. The exception to this is a public leaderboard of the top ten levels of karma that users have reached none of which are attached to a name.

Sidechat was developed by the New York-based company Flower Ave Inc. The CEOs of Flower Ave Inc. declined the Dailys request for an interview.

Prithvi Shahani, a first-year in the School of Engineering, is an active Sidechat user and claims to hold one of the ten highest karma rankings at Tufts Sidechat at the time of his interview with the Daily.

Shahani estimated that Sidechat surfaced at Tufts at the beginning of the spring 2022 semester. He described how Tufts students have engaged with the platform.

I feel like its just a way for people to relate with their community and share funny memes that people at Tufts can relate to, or talk about whats currently going on, such as recently, some Senator visited, I believe, so everyone was like, Oh, my God, Elizabeth Warren was here, oh my God, she used the washroom in the Commons, Shahani said.

J.P. de Ruiter, a professor in the Computer Science and Psychology departments, shared his concerns with the applications anonymous feature, particularly as the lack of usernames on the platform disables users from verifying the continuity of the original participants.

Im a bit worried about [Sidechat] as a dialogue researcher because it does take away something extremely important in dialogue, which is coherence, de Ruiter said. Having no identity is something [different] than having anonymity. Anonymity is that there is an identity at the other end, but you dont know where they live, and how old they are, and how they look, but theres still a unique identity. Whereas [on Sidechat], you just also get rid of identity.

Shahani added that it can be difficult to determine whether the contents are credible in the first place.

Honestly, I just dont believe anything on the app Ill just assume everything on the apps a joke. That makes my life so much easier, Shahani said.

Samuel Sommers, professor and department chair of psychology, elaborated on the implications of Sidechats anonymity from a psychological perspective.

Being anonymous makes us feel less accountable to some of the social expectations and norms that otherwise govern our behavior. People put things online that they would never ever say to other people in regular conversations face-to-face, Sommers said.

Illustrating Sommers insight, de Ruiter cited the lyrics of Brad Paisleys Online (2007).

If you just look at the lyrics youll see its about a kind of a loser type sitting in [his parents basement]. But online, hes like a superstar with a Maserati and 17 girlfriends. Its really interesting how Brad Paisley sings about that, de Ruiter said. So [the song] suggests that there can be, of course, a very big difference between peoples online personality and real personality.

Overall, Shahani recalled that activity on Sidechat increased after the leaderboard was introduced around what he estimated to be late February to early March. He also noticed a general shift towards more discussion around controversial subject matters over time.

At the beginning, it was pretty much really basic things like campus happenings, but people started actually making memes for the app. But at the same time, people have also started [talking about] edgy, controversial topics on the app since its anonymous and it cant be linked to them, Shahani said. [Its] sometimes good to have that kind of discourse but at the same time, [its] sometimes bad since their opinions could be harmful to the community.

In light of this development, Sommers and de Ruiter underscored the salience of community standards and moderation for social media platforms such as Sidechat.

It does feel like things can deteriorate on anonymous message boards to the point where they have to be moderated or they have to have some community standards in place, Sommers said. The kinds of bullying and kinds of problematic commentary that maybe we as a community dont want to see [is] always going to be at risk [on anonymous platforms].

According to Shahani, it appears that Sidechat may hire students to act as moderators on the app. Shahani was reached out to by Sidechat to become a moderator himself. He was not interested in the role, however, and he subsequently declined the offer.

Shahani shared that he has been banned from Sidechat multiple times, ranging from about one hour to 48 hours. When users are banned from the platform, they can still access the app, upvote and downvote, but they cannot post or send direct messages, Shahani detailed.

Shahani shared his misgivings about the way moderation is carried out on Sidechat.

I feel like they selectively choose what content they want on the platform and thats a really dangerous game to play because that pretty much, could like control the narrative. For example, I believe [there] was some sort of conflict outside of Hodgdon like a week or two ago, and they were banning people left and right for that, Shahani said. Otherwise, if there were fights on the app, or people going full anti-masker back when [COVID-19] was extremely bad, they were cool with that kind of content. So, Im not really sure whats up with that.

Sidechat does indeed have community guidelines, yet the only way the Daily was able to access them was through a hyperlink buried in their terms of service.

Brian Schaffner, Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies, first heard about Sidechat through a Slack channel of current and former students from his Public Opinion Lab. Schaffner suspects that self-moderation might naturally take place on Sidechat because each unique user belongs to the same institution.

An app thats sort of specific to one university is likely, even if its anonymous, to be less problematic just because theres already a sense of community, like a sense of physical community here, Schaffner said.

Moving forward, Schaffner added that Sidechat has the potential to shape wider campus public opinion as the application continues to become more popular among Tufts students.

People probably go on [Sidechat] to feel some sense of validation, [which] can probably help to crystallize opinion, I guess, in a more aggregate way. I think that would have an effect on public opinion in a way that might matter beyond the app, Schaffner said.

As Sidechat is still in the early stages of development, its users are the primary determinants of the ways in which students will engage on the forum. Sommers underscored the responsibility of the applications users in this context.

What I would suggest is that if people feel like an anonymous platform like this is a useful part of the Tufts conversation, then, you know, use it for good, Sommers said. Im skeptical because sometimes these things dont go [in] that direction. But hopefully we can make the best of this platform while its around and have it be a plus for the university and not a source of stress or disparagement.

Visit link:
The Sidechat storm: An anonymous social media application takes over Tufts campus - Tufts Daily

U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres walks with security personnel as his visits Borodyanka, a town outside Kyiv, Ukraine, that was devastated by a Russian attack and occupation on Thursday. Russia sent a deadly attack into Kyiv as Guterres visited. Sergei Supinsky | AFP via Getty Images

U.N. Secretary-General Antnio Guterres had recently met in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he was on a high-profile visit to Ukraine's capital but those circumstances weren't enough to prevent Russia from launching a deadly attack on a residential area of Kyiv while Guterres visited the capital city Thursday night.

Ukrainian officials are calling the attack a "postcard from Moscow" and an insult to the United Nations.

Five Russian missiles hit Kyiv "immediately" after Guterres and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finished a meeting, Zelenskyy said. It was an intentional affront to the global diplomat, he added.

"This says a lot about Russia's true attitude to global institutions," Zelenskyy said Thursday night. "About the efforts of the Russian leadership to humiliate the U.N. and everything that the organization represents."

Guterres arrived in Ukraine after meeting with Putin on Tuesday, hoping to de-escalate the war and guarantee humanitarian aid for civilians whose lives have been upended by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday, Guterres toured the ruined town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, which was bombed and occupied. For him, it evoked the evil and absurdity of war.

"I must say what I feel. I imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black," Guterres said. "I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed. So, the war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil."

Guterres also spoke about the need to respect international law and about being at "ground zero" remarks that later took on a chilling aspect after Russia sent a new attack into the capital.

"It is a war zone, but it is shocking that it happened close to us," Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the U.N.'s humanitarian office, told Agence France-Presse.

Before Thursday's strike on the heart of Kyiv, attacks on Ukraine's capital had mostly halted.

The Russian military says it used "high-precision long-range air-based weapons" to destroy buildings related to the Artem rocket and space enterprise in Kyiv. But a visit to the scene found that the most visible damage was to an apartment building nearby. The building stands next to a factory that makes missile parts, but also vacuum cleaners.

Rebar hung down like strands of hair from the bottom three stories of the towering apartment building. Officials say the residence was hit by a cruise missile that came out of Russian-controlled Crimea and knocked out the bottom. One person, a journalist, was killed in the attack, and nine people were injured.

The journalist was Vira Hyrych, who worked with U.S. government broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Ukraine and who lived in the building. The news outlet confirmed her death, saying her body was found under wreckage in the 25-story structure Friday morning.

Hyrych was also mourned by the Israeli Embassy in Ukraine, which said she formerly worked there. Radio Liberty said she worked in Ukraine's TV industry before landing a job in Radio Svoboda's Kyiv bureau four years ago.

The perception of the attack as an intentional slight was heightened by one of Guterres' main goals: to negotiate humanitarian corridors for civilians to leave Mariupol. People in that besieged port city, he said, "need an escape route out of the apocalypse."

As for what comes next in Ukraine, military experts see the Russians making a big push in eastern Ukraine and trying to seize control of the south. Analysts expect the Russians to engineer sham independence referendums in cities and towns so that Putin can present the invasion as a success to his domestic audience back home.

Ukraine's leaders have already said they'll reject the results of any such referendums.

Nobody expects a negotiated solution to end the war anytime soon including Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst with the International Crisis Group.

"They don't know how to stop this war right now, because both sides still hope that they can, or will, be able to win this war."

As Guterres visited Kyiv's ravaged suburbs on Thursday, he said that Ukraine's people are suffering the most.

"This horrendous scenario demonstrates something that is unfortunately always true,"

Wherever there is war, the highest price is paid by civilians, @antonioguterres said today after visiting towns around Kyiv impacted by the war. pic.twitter.com/aL2LHrDqT6

Read more:
Why Russia's rocket attack on Kyiv is seen as an insult to the U.N. - Houston Public Media

Online chess website

Chess.com homepage

Type of site

List of languages

Afrikaans, azrbaycanca, Bahasa, Indonesia, Bahasa, Melayu, bosanski, Catal, etina, Dansk, Deutsch, eesti, English, Espaol, Franais, Galego, Hrvatski, slenska, Italiano, Kiswahili, latvieu, lietuvi, Magyar, Nederlands, Norsk, Ozbekcha, Pilipino, polski, Portugus, Portugus, (BR), Romn, shqipe, slovenina, slovenina, suomi, Svenska, Tagalog, Ting Vit, Trkmene, Trke, Vlaams, , , , , , , , , , , , , , (bal), , , , ,

Chess.com is an internet chess server, news website and social networking website.[3] The site has a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others for accounts with subscriptions. Live online chess can be played against other users at daily, rapid, blitz or bullet time controls, with a number of chess variants available. Chess versus a chess engine, computer analysis, chess puzzles and teaching resources are also offered.

One of the largest chess platforms in the world,[4] Chess.com has hosted online tournaments including Titled Tuesdays, the PRO Chess League, the Speed Chess Championships, PogChamps, and computer vs computer events.

Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free but others are limited or unavailable in some respects until a subscription is paid.[17]

Visitors to the site can play on a live chess server and correspondence style games, called "daily chess" on the site. Players may also play against chess engines (computer chess), and participate in what the site calls "vote chess", in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, puzzle rush, chess forums, articles, videos, lessons, chess news, downloads, opening databases, groups, live broadcasts,[18] daily puzzles, team matches, online coaching and a game database of over 2 million games.

The company publishes a large number of articles on a variety of chess-related topics, including chess strategy, opening theory and history. Regular contributors include Gregory Serper, Bruce Pandolfini, Sam Shankland, Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky, Natalia Pogonina and Daniel Rensch.[19] The Financial Times rated it as having the best news coverage of any chess website.[20]

Users can play a number of variants on the live server, including crazyhouse, three-check, four-player, king of the hill, chess960, Racing Kings and bughouse.

Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except where "specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament)".[21] It utilizes algorithms and statistical data to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis,[22] and employs six moderators to prevent cheating.[4]

Chess.com also runs the subsidiary site chesskid.com for chess players of all ages. ChessKid focuses on a child-friendly environment aimed towards chess improvement for beginners to club players. It also has a guardianship program in which parents and authorized coaches can overlook the child's progress over time, to see statistics about their progress in tactics or how many videos they watched so that they can give encouragement and tips on how to improve.[23] ChessKid features no advertising.

ChessKid.com has run a yearly online championship called CONIC (the ChessKid Online National Invitational Championship), since 2012 which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation.[24][25] According to David Petty, the event organizer in 2013,

The online component [of CONIC] makes it unique because, normally, national championships require the players to fly in and stay in the same place. We had to ask special permission for the tournament because it is a rated tournament and there is a much higher chance for cheating.

ChessKid has made agreements and partnerships with chess associations to bring the educational benefit of chess to children in schools. In 2014, for a trial period, all signups to the ICA (Illinois Chess Association) included a free gold member subscription to ChessKid.[23] They also have a long-term partnership with the NTCA (North Texas Chess Academy) which gives children access to online instructors.[26]

The USCL was a nationwide national chess league in the United States between 2005 and 2016. Chess.com hosted the event in 2013.[27]

The PRO Chess League was the result of the US Chess League changing its name and format, with faster time controls and a focus on the flexibility of forming and managing teams.[28] Chess.com has hosted the PCL twice starting in 2017, having a regular and a summer series.[29]

Titled Tuesday is a 11-round Swiss-system 3+1 blitz chess tournament held on every Tuesday.[33] Grandmaster participants include Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Dmitry Andreikin, Wesley So, and Fabiano Caruana.[33] The first event was held on October 28, 2014, with a prize fund of $500 and was won by Baadur Jobava.[34] The prize fund was eventually upgraded to $1500.[33] GM Hikaru Nakamura has won the most events with a total of ten tournament wins, followed by GM Georg Meier with seven,[35] Magnus Carlsen has won three of the events in which he has partaken.[36]

In June 2018, Chess.com held a special version of the tournament for which the winner would go on to participate in the Isle of Man International which had a prize fund of 144,000.[37] Iranian GM Pouria Darini won the event.[38]

Chess.com has held six Speed Chess Championships since 2016, all involving a single-elimination tournament featuring some of the world's best players in matches that continue on in the vein of the Death Match format, with the addition of one chess960 game each time control. Nakamura has won four championships, while Carlsen has won two.[39]

Death Matches were introduced in January 2012. They feature titled players taking part in a series of blitz games over a non-stop 3-hour period (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with a one-second increment).[46] There have been 38 deathmatches, participants including the grandmasters Hikaru Nakamura, Dmitry Andreikin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, L Quang Lim, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Judit Polgr and Nigel Short.[47]

In November 2017, Chess.com held an open tournament, called the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCCC, later CCC), with the ten strongest chess engines, with $2,500 in prize money. The top-two engines competed in a "Superfinale" tournament between the two finalists - Stockfish and Houdini. In the 20-game Superfinal, Stockfish won over Houdini with a score 10.5-9.5. Five games were decisive, with 15 ending in a draw. Of the decisive games, three games were won by Stockfish, and two by Houdini.[48][49]

In August 2018, the site announced that the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship has returned, this time as a non-stop tournament for chess engines.[50][51]

Chess.com has hosted PogChamps, an amateur online tournament featuring Twitch streamers, since 2020. The first PogChamps featured notable streamers including xQcOW, moistcr1tikal, Ludwig Ahgren, and forsen. Notable new participants from PogChamps 2 included itsHafu and Hafr Jlus Bjrnsson.[103] PogChamps 3, beginning in February 2021, debuted with a wider range of Internet personalities and celebrities, with new competitors including MrBeast, Neekolul, Myth, Pokimane, actor Rainn Wilson, and rapper Logic.

After publishing two articles that were critical to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and replacing the flags of all russian users of the website with their links, chess.com was blocked in Russia.[104] [105]

Read more here:
Chess.com - Wikipedia

The I'M Not A GM Speed Chess Championship (IMSCC) is back for its 2022 edition, starting on May 9. The competition is once more bringing fan-favorite IMs and other masters to vie for their share of the $10,000 prize fund and bragging rights among their non-GM colleagues.

Last year, Chess.com streamer IM Roberto Molina faced YouTube's greatest, IM Levy Rozman, in a thrilling final. In true Speed Chess Championship fashion, swindles and mouse speed played a major role in the match, with the cunning Molina eventually taking the crown.

This year, Rozman is back to fight for the title. As last year's finalist, he is undoubtedly among the favorites to win the event. However, the YouTube star will not have an easy road ahead of him as other powerful masters are joining the competition. Among them is the talented IM Polina Shuvalova, who had a great run during the 2021 Women's World Blitz Chess Championship and currently boasts one of the highest blitz ratings in the field.

Another player to watch is the IM Bibisara Assaubayeva. The young Kazakhstani talent showed she's comfortable with the SCC format when she defeated GM Humpy Koneru in the 2021 Women's Speed Chess Championship. Assaubayeva then made the news again after winning the 2021 Women's Blitz Chess Championship with a round to spare, showing she's more than ready to face this new challenge.

Other well-known players joining the field include the superstar streamers WGM Nemo Zhou, IM Eric Rosen, FM James Canty, and the IMs from the ChessDojo Kostya Kavutskiy and David Pruess. They will be joined by the always-strong IM Greg Shahade, current US Women's Champion IM Carissa Yip, IM Tania Sachdev, and more!

Chess.com's Chief Chess Officer and IMSCC veteran IM Danny Rensch is another master playing in the event. Danny, who was once the highest-rated junior in the United States, feels excited to once more return to the IMSCC arena in a quest to survive past the first round.

"The IMSCC is always one of my favorite events both as a player and a viewer," he said. "It's such a great opportunity for many players like myself who love competitive chess but have careers that don't focus on chess competition to enjoy the thrill of battle. I'm excited to dust off my Dvoretsky, hone my tactics, trash talk on Twitter, and ultimately get flagged repeatedly by my opponents."

I'm excited to dust off my Dvoretsky, hone my tactics, trash talk on Twitter, and ultimately get flagged repeatedly by my opponents. IM Danny Rensch

Don't forget to tune in to Chess.com/TV or to our Twitch and YouTube channels to watch the 2022 I'M Not A GM live on May 16!

Who do you think will win this edition of the IMSCC? Let us know in the comments below!

Read more:
Announcing The 2022 I'M Not A GM Speed Chess Championship - Chess.com