A different March Madness: Online hate for the athletes

• March 30, 2023

By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer

HOUSTON — It wasn’t so much that social media was criticizing his son. That happens sometimes – especially after a loss like THAT.

But when a post came up suggesting Terrance Williams II, a junior forward for Michigan, be left for dead in a ditch, his dad decided enough was enough. Terrance Williams Sr.’s profanity-laced response to all the haters was, in many ways, an expected byproduct of social media vitriol that bubbled up after the Wolverines blew an eight-point lead in a one-point loss to Vanderbilt earlier this month – not in the NCAA tournament but in the NIT.

“You actually root for them when they’re good,” Williams Sr. said of the Michigan fans in an interview with The Associated Press two days after the season-ending loss. “But then they make a mistake, and a game doesn’t go your way and you turn to hate. That’s unacceptable.”

The episode was just one of the countless examples of the toxic minefield that athletes, coaches, friends and family face all too often on social media, all of it amplified for college basketball players when the calendar flips to March and the madness begins.

College administrators and coaches alike have warned for several years that students and athletes are facing increasing mental-health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. And never have there been more outside voices that not only scrutinize every move players make on the court but impact their emotional well-being away from it.

“The feedback right now, it can be so harsh and it’s so immediate, and I think that’s the hardest part,” said Melissa Streno, a Denver-based mental health consultant for high-level athletes. “It’s the immediacy of the feedback from people they don’t even know. And it can be so impactful on their identity and how they see themselves as a player on the court.”

Turning off social media is one option, but it’s not really practical, not with the way society interacts in the 21st century. And many athletes use social media to open the door to cash. It comes with a toll.

A survey conducted by the NCAA in the fall of 2021 found spikes among athletes who experienced mental exhaustion, anxiety and depression compared with a similar survey two years earlier – before the pandemic, and also before name-image-likeness deals became an everyday reality of college sports. The survey also found that despite a growing recognition of mental health as something to be addressed, fewer than half the respondents felt comfortable seeking support from a counselor on campus.

Even so, those counselors have been busy; a growing number of questions they field from the players involve how to manage social media.

“For some of them, social media brings pressure to put out information, to create content, build their brand and that can cause anxiety,” said Charron Sumler, a former college basketball player who is now an athletic counselor at Ohio State. “On the flip side, there’s the input where they’re receiving messages. And with phones in the locker room, sometimes they’re receiving that negative feedback and content before they’ve even had a chance to debrief with their coaches or with themselves.”

Just this month, Virginia’s Kihei Clark started trending for the wrong reasons when his ill-advised pass at the end of a first-round March Madness game against Furman allowed the Paladins to make the game-winning 3-pointer that sent the Cavaliers home.

After the game, Clark sat in the locker room and patiently answered every question. Predictably, social media was destroying him before the final buzzer even sounded.

Among those who knew the feeling was Matthew Fisher-Davis. He was the Vanderbilt guard who, thinking the Commodores were trailing, fouled a Northwestern player in the waning seconds of a first-round game in 2017. In fact, Vanderbilt was ahead by one; Northwestern made both free throws after the foul and won by a point.

Before the next season, Fisher-Davis released a slickly produced video showing him working out, the main theme of which was: “Everybody’s got something to say.”

“It gets to the point where, the stuff coming from outside the locker room doesn’t make anything easier,” Fisher-Davis told the AP in an interview this month.

Stanford’s Haley Jones was named the Most Outstanding Player at the women’s Final Four after helping the Cardinal win the national title in 2021. Two weeks ago, when Stanford made an early exit from this year’s March Madness, Jones’ performance – and her prospects for the upcoming WNBA draft – were being dissected, sometimes cruelly, on social media.

“Right after every game. I know what I did well, and I know what I didn’t do well,” said Jones, who is part of a program called Game 4 Good that focuses on mental wellness for athletes. “I don’t need to go and listen to thousands of people who don’t know me tell me these same things, and probably say it in a lot meaner way.”

On rare occasions, players get ripped for doing something good.

In an episode that illustrates the parallel explosive growth of both social media and online sports wagering, TCU’s Damion Baugh was the object of scorn in the second round this month when he launched a shot at the buzzer from near the midcourt logo in a game that had already been sealed by Gonzaga.

Baugh’s 3-pointer went in. It trimmed TCU’s final deficit to three, which allowed the Horned Frogs to cover the 4½-point spread. That shot did nothing to change the brackets, but it did flip millions of dollars across the country and Baugh was roundly ripped on Twitter.

Baugh barked back: “I don’t get how y’all mad because I played until the last buzzer.”

Former Ohio State guard E.J. Liddell also felt compelled to defend himself after he missed a late free throw that was key to an upset loss to Oral Roberts two years ago.

“Honestly, what did I do to deserve this? I’m human,” he said in a post in which he posted screenshots of some of the insults directed at him, including a death threat.

Even one of social media’s biggest stars, Oregon’s Sedona Prince, who became famous after her video outlining the disparity between men’s and women’s weight rooms at the 2021 NCAA tournaments went viral, had to take a brief break last year from TikTok.

“I’m not any different because I’m on TikTok. I’m still a person,” Prince said in a tearful video since taken down, while acknowledging her mental health had been declining.

Streno, the mental health consultant, said social media can exacerbate depression and anxiety.

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During a three-month stretch last spring, at least five college athletes died by suicide. Among the reasons given by friends and family was the constant pressure of performing at a high level, the pressure to maintain a certain weight or physique, the fear of being perceived as weak because of injuries and the limited social opportunities because of the demands of a sports schedule.

Given the amount of daily interaction athletes have with friends and family on social media apps, Streno said it’s more realistic to coach players on how to deal with feedback than simply advising them to shut down everything.

“If it were as simple as ‘don’t look at your phone,’ then this wouldn’t be an issue,” she said. “But there’s such a quick, immediate, ‘Oh, this must mean this about me. I’m not good enough, or I’m not living up to this level.’ And then your mind can kind of start going down into this spiral.”

Williams, the father of the Michigan forward, said his son does a good job of shutting out social media during the season. After the events of this month, the dad planned on going dark for a while, too.

“People said he didn’t play well, and I get that,” Williams said. “But when you say my son, who I’ve raised and who I love tremendously, that you wish him to be dead in a ditch, that’s when I’ve got to turn the switch.”

Stanford guard Haley Jones catches a pass in front of Utah guard Gianna Kneepkens during a Pac-12 game earlier this season in Salt Lake City. Jones was named the Most Outstanding Player at the women’s Final Four after helping the Cardinal win the national title in 2021. Two years later, when Stanford made an early exit from the NCAA tournament, Jones’ performance – and her prospects for the upcoming WNBA draft – were being dissected, sometimes cruelly, on social media. (AP Photo/Rob Gray, File)

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The crusade against ‘malinformation’ explicitly targets inconvenient truths

• March 30, 2023

Last month, I noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had repeatedly exaggerated the scientific evidence supporting face mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook attached a warning to that column, which it said was “missing context” and “could mislead people.”

According to an alliance of social media platforms, government-funded organizations, and federal officials that journalist Michael Shellenberger calls the “censorship-industrial complex,” I had committed the offense of “malinformation.” Unlike “disinformation,” which is intentionally misleading, or “misinformation,” which is erroneous, “malinformation” is true but inconvenient.

As illustrated by internal Twitter communications that journalist Matt Taibbi highlighted last week, malinformation can include emails from government officials that undermine their credibility and “true content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.” The latter category encompasses accurate reports of “breakthrough infections” among people vaccinated against COVID-19, accounts of “true vaccine side effects,” objections to vaccine mandates, criticism of politicians, and citations of peer-reviewed research on naturally acquired immunity.

Disinformation and misinformation have always been contested categories, defined by the fallible and frequently subjective judgments of public officials and other government-endorsed experts. But malinformation is even more clearly in the eye of the beholder, since it is defined not by its alleged inaccuracy but by its perceived threat to public health, democracy or national security, which often amounts to nothing more than questioning the wisdom, honesty or authority of those experts.

Taibbi’s recent revelations focused on the work of the Virality Project, which the taxpayer-subsidized Stanford Internet Observatory launched in 2020. Although Renee DiResta, the SIO’s research manager, concedes that “misinformation is ultimately speech,” meaning the government cannot directly suppress it, she says the threat it poses “require[s] that social media platforms, independent researchers, and the government work together as partners in the fight.”

That sort of collaboration raises obvious free speech concerns. If platforms like Twitter and Facebook were independently making these assessments, their editorial discretion would be protected by the First Amendment. But the picture looks different when government officials, including the president, the surgeon general, members of Congress, and representatives of public health and law enforcement agencies, publicly and privately chastise social media companies for not doing enough to suppress speech they view as dangerous.

Such meddling is especially alarming when it includes specific “requests” to remove content, make it less accessible or banish particular users. Even without explicit extortion, those requests are tantamount to commands because they are made against a backdrop of threats to punish recalcitrant platforms.

The threats include antitrust action, increased liability for user-posted content, and other “legal and regulatory measures.” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said such measures might be necessary when he demanded a “whole-of-society” effort to combat the “urgent threat” posed by “health misinformation.”

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In a federal lawsuit filed last year, the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, joined by scientists who ran afoul of the ever-expanding crusade against disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, argue that such pressure violates the First Amendment. This week, Terry A. Doughty, a federal judge in Louisiana, allowed that lawsuit to proceed, saying the plaintiffs had adequately alleged “significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action.”

Doughty added that the plaintiffs “have plausibly alleged state action under the theories of joint participation, entwinement, and the combining of factors such as subsidization, authorization, and encouragement.” Based on that analysis, he ruled that the plaintiffs “plausibly state a claim for violation of the First Amendment via government-induced censorship.”

Whatever the ultimate outcome of that case, Congress can take steps to discourage censorship by proxy. Shellenberger argues that it should stop funding groups like the ISO and “mandate instant reporting of all communications between government officials and contractors with social media executives relating to content moderation.”

The interference that Shellenberger describes should not be a partisan issue. It should trouble anyone who prefers open inquiry and debate to covert government manipulation of online speech.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum.

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Group of swimmers in Hawaii cited for ‘aggressively’ chasing, harassing dolphin pod

• March 29, 2023

KONA, Hawaii (KITV) — A group of over 30 swimmers was cited on the Big Island after being caught chasing after a pod of dolphins at Honaunau Bay over the weekend.

Officers with the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ (DLNR) Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement (DOCARE) issued citations to 33 swimmers for the incident that took place on Sunday.

Using a drone, DLNR captured images and video of the swimmers “aggressively pursuing, corralling, and harassing the pod,” officials said.

DOCARE officers contacted the group in the water and alerted them to the violation. The group was met by officers back on land and a joint investigation was initiated by DOCARE and law enforcement officers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

DOCARE officers are deputized as federal officers and are authorized to enforce federal marine laws, such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act, under the Joint Enforcement Agreement.

DLNR did not say how much the swimmers were cited or what other possible punishment the group could be facing. Officials did not say if the group lived in Hawaii or if they were visitors.

This is the second incident in the month of March involving swimmers harassing marine animals on the Big Island. DLNR did not say if the two incidents are linked.

Click here for updates on this story

The-CNN-Wire & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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Former UC Irvine star Scarlett Camberos joins Angel City FC after leaving Club America due to safety concerns

• March 29, 2023

Scarlett Camberos is returning to Southern California.

Camberos, who grew up in Chula Vista and attended UC Irvine, is joining Angel City Football Club on a two-year contract after the club paid an undisclosed transfer fee to Club America in Mexico.

“I’m super excited to join Angel City,” Camberos said in a statement. “It has always been a goal of mine to play in the NWSL. It’s their second year in the league, and there is still a lot of story to write with this new club. I love the fans, the environment, and I’m glad that my family has the opportunity to watch me play in the wonderful city of Los Angeles.”

Camberos will wear No. 15.

Her move to Angel City has been in the works for weeks.

Last week she left Club America due to online threats by an individual that had been identified as “Jose Andres N” had violated a restraining order. Camberos also had her social media accounts hacked. According to Club America, the individual received just 36 hours of house arrest.

In a statement released by Club America last week, the club confirmed that, “In support of the request from our player Scarlett Camberos and in seeking to contribute to her psychological and emotional recovery, the clubs of America and Angel City FC are in the process of reaching a deal for her transfer.”

Club America’s statement added, “The response from (Mexican) authorities does not give the player and her family sufficient guarantees for her emotional stability, development as a person and or for a life free of violence.”

In February, Club America posted a tweet in support of Camberos: “We strongly condemn any type of violence against women. In accordance with our security protocols, the Club provides legal, digital and psychological support. Scarlett, we are with you, count on us!”

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Camberos earned her first Mexican national team appearance last August. She scored in Mexico’s win over Angel City FC last season. In two seasons with Club America, she scored 18 goals in 41 appearances. She signed with the Mexican club Dec. 30, 2021.

In her final season at UC Irvine, Camberos had 13 goals and seven assists and earned Big West Conference Player of the Year honors.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to bring Scarlett back to Southern California and to ACFC,” said club co-founder and president Julie Uhrman. “I can’t wait to see her bring her infectious energy and positivity to our players, club, and community. We are committed to supporting our players on and off the pitch and we know Scarlett will contribute to our success this year.”

Last season, in one of its initiatives, Angel City became the first professional soccer team in the U.S. to protect its social media channels from “online bullying, including abusive, racist, or derogatory language.”

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Anaheim pay proposal would destroy jobs and take the city in the wrong direction

• March 29, 2023

As a general rule, working conditions and pay rates in private companies ought to be determined in the open marketplace, through negotiations between companies and their workers – as well as their unions, when appropriate – and not at the ballot box.

We therefore oppose a proposal by a hotel-workers’ union to ask Anaheim voters to impose costly measures on the city’s hotel operators. The union claims it has gathered the requisite number of signatures to place such a measure on the 2024 ballot. Similar measures have had mixed results in other Orange County cities.

The measure would require that hoteliers pay hotel workers at least $25 an hour, which is $9.50 an hour above the state’s current minimum wage. It limits the amount of rooms that housekeepers could clean in a day – unless the hotels double that wage for the entire working period.

The city’s hotel and business groups have yet to publicly respond, but it’s easy to understand what such an aggressive minimum-wage proposal would do: reduce service, create layoffs and increase hotel room rates.

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The proposal also claims to protect hotel workers from harassment by mandating that hotels provide panic buttons monitored by security guards, but hotel owners already have security measures in place and the incentive to protect their housekeeping workers.

The union claims the wage hikes and security measures would boost Anaheim’s tourism industry, but we’d expect the reverse. This may be a tactic to pressure the City Council to pass higher wages that the union has been unable to secure through the negotiating process.

These measures are justified “because hotels and event centers receive benefits from city assets,” according to the initiative language. In 2018, Disneyland ultimately rejected city subsidies for a hotel as voters approved a measure that would have boosted the minimum wage for hotels that receive a tax rebate.

Anaheim’s subsidy culture created fertile ground for the recent corruption scandal, but that speaks to the need for less government meddling in the resort industry. Hotels shouldn’t receive subsidies, nor should voters or City Council determine wage rates.

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Is coffee bringing people back to the office?

• March 29, 2023

By Julia Hobsbawm

I was in New York for in-person work meetings a few weeks ago. While there were the requisite lunches and cocktails at my favorite haunts, one thing stood out: coffee. My working assumption that coffee is an unremarkable and often undrinkable aspect of working life changed when I realized that it’s playing a central role in rebuilding corporate office culture in the new hybrid era.

For employees returning to offices on a hybrid basis, on average three days a week, having a coffee with someone is the perfect way to rebuild relationships with people they haven’t seen in possibly three years. As I wrote in this column recently, offices break the isolation and monotony of working from home and yet company leaders have to work hard at offsetting the drag of the commute, especially given the fact that the pandemic showed remote workers could be successful.

I took my anecdotal observations to the research firm Ipsos, which analyzed location data from nearly 10 million mobile phones in over 5,000 coffee shops in the New York City area for me. It showed that only 12% of visits occur during working hours, but outside lunch hours. It’s hard to argue with the appeal of free coffee in the office given surging inflation.

I saw the benefits of coffee in reviving office camaraderie first hand on a tour of the Park Avenue offices of corporate real estate consultants Savills Plc. Vice Chairman Gabe Marans showed me a plethora of newly refurbished work spaces from small, soundproofed booths to open plan cubicles and some offices complete with their own sofas and tables forming  a corner office look with privacy for senior executives. But the pride of the renovation is a vast kitchen/hangout area called “The Happy Room.”

The coffee break and its role in bringing people together socially isn’t new. In the 17th and 18th centuries, coffee became a competitor to tea as the beverage of choice for both elites and workers. In his book A History of the World in 6 Glasses, the writer Tom Standage describes European coffee houses as “the internet of the Age of Reason.” Today the coffee break is widely understood as much in a work context as anything, with the “Fika” break in Sweden, “Elevenses” in the UK or even “Smoko” in Australia or the frequently seen canned coffee in Japan, normally the home of tea. Although the US is the largest coffee machine market, the fastest-growing is Asia.

What’s new today is the way the office is aiming to emulate the coffee house in-house. Coffee consumption is rising while office use has halved in cities like New York compared to before the pandemic. Global green bean exports in November 2022 totaled 9.2 million bags up 10.8% from the same month of the previous year, according to the International Coffee Organization. On the ground, media magnate Sir Martin Sorrell told me that despite reducing his office space to factor in a three-days-in norm, he agrees “totally” that redefining offices around social space has become indispensable for clients and teams alike.

That’s especially true now that many workers don’t have assigned desks. “When the time came to reopen our London office, we switched to hot-desking. A more flexible use of office space ensures you always have room to grow your team if your revenue does,” said Drew Benvie, chief executive officer of communications agency Battenhall. Expanding the social space when people are coming in at unpredictable times is a way to mitigate there being nowhere for employees to sit. Battenhall recently posted “a day in the office” on TikTok to underscore that the hot desk life is fun, though the practice remains a topic of debate.

Now to the issue of quality. Gone are the stewed pots of tasteless water. It was notable on my recent trip that I was offered not even the pod-brewed coffee supplied by Starbucks, but the specialist, expensive expresso variety administered from top-of-the-range machines. But the one which got me most was delivered on tap:  nitro coffee  (Reader: it’s punchy).

Obviously, social life and office life have combined before, but the emphasis used to be on out-of-office bonding — happy hours and beers on Friday kind of stuff. These days, no one is in the office on a Friday if they can help it. So what happens during working hours to keep people connected matters a lot — and coffee is rising to the challenge.

Julia Hobsbawm is a columnist for Bloomberg Work Shift and founder of The Nowhere Office. Her Nowhere Office podcast series is here. email: [email protected]

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Big & Rich will headline the Old Town Music Festival in Temecula

• March 29, 2023

The Old Town Music Festival will return for a third year at The Temecula Stampede on Saturday, June 17.

Promoters announced that country music act Big & Rich, the duo responsible for songs like “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” “Holy Water” and “Comin’ to Your City,” will headline along with support from Eddie Montgomery of Montgomery Gentry, Coffey Anderson, Creed Fisher, Runaway June and Cowboy Troy. Additional artists will be announced in the coming months.

Tickets are $59-$119 and are available now at oldtownmusicfestival.com.

Once again, the parking lot of The Stampede will be turned into the outdoor festival grounds with a large stage, several full bars, barbeque and other activities. The inside of the venue is a great escape from the heat and will include additional performances, full bars, line dancing and mechanical bull riding. The festival is all-ages and will take place from noon to 10 p.m.

The Old Town Music Festival’s inaugural year in 2021 was a big success. It was a two-day affair featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, Chris Janson, The Band Perry and Tyler Farr. The event returned in 2022 with headliners Nelly and Jamey Johnson.

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Recipe: This asparagus soup, made with fennel and basil, is irresistible

• March 29, 2023

Many spoons filled with asparagus soup have passed my lips. Some thick with cream, others thinned with broth or fat-reduced evaporated milk. I’ve enjoyed some more than others, but perhaps my very favorite along with the asparagus is packed with fresh fennel and basil, yielding a flavorful, creamy mix that is topped off with a little Pernod. A swallow of this tasty soup leaves irresistible flavors dancing in my mouth.

Pernod is made from distillates of star anise, fennel and 14 other botanicals such as coriander and mint. Truth be told, I sometimes make myself a small cocktail while the soup cooks, diluting the Pernod with ice water, a process that produces a tempting cloudy mix.

Cook’s notes: As with many pureed soups, if the soup is too thick, before serving add more broth to reach the correct consistency and return to heat to warm it. Use salted butter if you like but reduce the amount of salt that is added in step 2 by a little bit (soup will be tasted before serving and it may need more salt). To wash fennel and leeks: place the cut-up fennel and leeks in bowl of cold water. Swirl around to remove dirt. Drain in colander and shake colander to remove excess water. The soup can be refrigerated for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 6 months.

Asparagus and Fennel Soup

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter; see cook’s notes

5 cups (3/4-inch-diced) fresh fennel, tops and cores removed (2 fennel bulbs), see cook’s notes

3 cups coarsely chopped leeks, white and light green parts, (2 leeks), see cook’s notes

2 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)

1 pound medium-thick fresh asparagus

1/2 cup long-grain white rice

8 cups chicken broth

3 large sprigs fresh thyme, tied together with cotton kitchen string

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup julienned (leaves cut crosswise into thin strips) fresh basil leaves, plus extra for garnish

2 tablespoons Pernod liqueur

1/2 cup half-and-half

For serving: freshly grated Parmesan cheese

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large pot, heat oil and butter over medium heat and add fennel, leeks, and onions. Cut or break-off the tough bottoms of the asparagus and discard. Cut off 8 (2-inch) tips from the asparagus and reserve. Slice the remaining stalks into 1/2-inch thick crosswise slices and add them to the pot. Cook the vegetables for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, cooking until very tender.

2. Add rice to vegetables, pour in the chicken broth, add tied-up thyme, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until rice is very tender. Discard thyme bundle.

3. Meanwhile, bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Add the reserved asparagus tops and cook for 2 minutes, drain and transfer to a bowl of ice water. Set aside.

4. Puree the soup with an immersion blender. (You can use a regular blender but be careful not to overfill it; divide mixture into batches and hold down the lid with a potholder.) Stir in half-and-half, taste for seasonings, and reheat over low heat. Ladle into soup bowls and garnish with julienned basil, Parmesan cheese and a blanched asparagus tip.

Source: Adapted from “Cooking for Jeffrey” by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter, $35)

Cooking question? Contact Cathy Thomas at [email protected]

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