Empathy and sympathy are not just two different approaches to confronting the emotional challenges of others; they are diametrically opposite responses in many.

Drawing on unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters, The Great War tells the rich and complex story of World War I through the voices of nurses, journalists, aviators. On Wednesday, Facebook announced the rollout of Watch, what it is calling “a new platform for shows on Facebook.” It’s yet another foray by the social media. Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

If you’re currently relying on your smartphone, laptop, or some kind of monitor setup for your TV time, you can still get your red carpet fix by streaming the 69th.

Dogs are pros at making you feel better when you’ve had a bad day or you’re couch-bound while sick, and they can help other people feel the same expansive dog. “I think great artists don’t need the machine the way they used to. And consumers don’t care about getting it from that machine the way they used to,” Toffler. This articles weighs the pros and cons of Vimeo vs. YouTube to help you decide which video-hosting platform is best for your business. BibMe Free Bibliography & Citation Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard.

An MTV pioneer looks to remake media — and himself — for the You. Tube generation. The former MTV executive Van Toffler walked through the West Los Angeles offices of Gunpowder & Sky, the digital startup he co- founded, allowing his eyes to linger on a pet dog, beanbag chairs and the millennial coders.“It’s nice to be back making stuff again,” he said with a look of palpable contentment. For Toffler, who rose from 1. Viacom, the new role is a respite — a chance to return to tossing edgy, sometimes puerile content at the wall to see what sticks. As experts try to decode digital content’s new formats and slippery demographics, Gunpowder & Sky offers an early look at how a full- scale studio might operate in a post- legacy age.“I think great artists don’t need the machinethe way they used to. And consumers don’t care about getting it from that machine the way they used to,” Toffler said, referring to Hollywood’s traditional development and distribution system.

They just want the content and direct connection.”Such anti- conglomerate boldness is backed by a vast, if dizzying, array of initiatives. If it’s not always clear how they all work (or work together), that’s OK — it’s not always clear to the people behind them either. Apart from the relatively cheap cost of its content, Gunpowder & Sky doesn’t really have a niche. Instead, what it has is a series of chips on the table — from distribution to production, viral videos to feature films, comedy to horror — that it hopes will maximize its returns and appeal to a new generation of consumers. Gunpowder is the latest among several digital ventures attempting to navigate the future of entertainment amid rapidly changing consumer habits. Companies like Wndr. Co, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new venture that has raised more than $6.

And giants like Walt Disney Co. Google/You. Tube are continually expanding in new digital directions. Still, there aren’t many young companies with the range of Gunpowder. Toffler and Floris Bauer, a veteran of international TV distributor Endemol, founded G& S about a year ago with backing from Otter Media, the joint venture of the Chernin Group and AT& T, and Toffler’s own money. Since then, they have worked their way up to about 4. Under the Gunpowder umbrella are now independent digital content outfits — including Shareability and Cut. G& S either backs or helps produce and distribute.

Then there are in- house productions such as “Drawn & Recorded,” an animated series about music myths, narrated by songwriter and record producer T Bone Burnett, that debuted last year on Spotify, and a slate that includes a talk show involving alcohol and stoners reviewing kaleidoscopes. There are also movies, both a variety of low- budget titles (they include “Hounds of Love,” an abduction- rape drama that premiered to raves at the South by Southwest Festival) and a library that comes from Film. Buff, the indie- film digital distributor that Gunpowder acquired in the fall. There’s even a consumer- oriented science- fiction portal, Dust, which streams movies and TV shows. Underlying Gunpowder & Sky is a bedrock belief: that a digital player can maneuver into spaces traditional players have left vacant. And, maybe even more important, that it can do so with greater efficiency, targeting people in a way conglomerate marketing departments only dream of.“You can spend a lot of money not knowing who you’re reaching with a show. Or you can spend 2.

Silver Lake that go to ice cream shops liked it,” said Bauer, as he sat with Toffler in the exposed- brick conference room of the company’s headquarters on a stretch of digital outfits north of the 1. Freeway. Bauer said there is personalized information the company uses to fine- tune its targeting — responses given in surveys, preferences expressed on social- media — and that they’re getting better at it all the time. The cost for subscribers is just going to keep going down,” he said.“See, I talk in big picture and Floris says how it’s going to get done,” Toffler chimed in. A lawyer by training, Toffler joined MTV in 1. TV shows as “Beavis and Butt- head” and “The Real World.” He left the company two years ago, frustrated by the increasing demand he make short- term revenue cases to his bosses. Toffler says he doesn’t have such concerns at Gunpowder. He declined to reveal the company’s finances but said he expects the company will soon be profitable.

With slick hair, sharp- casual dress a healthy tan — perhaps a function of his relocation from New York to Los Angeles as Gunpowder has grown — Toffler remains a breezy, this- isn’t- that- complicated presence.“We can all get a little lost in theory,” said Cut. Michael Gaston. “I sometimes feel like I’m in a meeting and I’m basically sharing a 1. And Van will repeat it back in one sentence.”Gunpowder & Sky (it derives its name from the Aimee Mann song “4th of July”) came about because Toffler, 5. After raising an undisclosed sum from Otter and putting in some of his own money, he set out to create the kind of brand MTV was in the 1. It hit me walking around the streets of Manhattan one day,” Toffler recalled.

There’s no central currency for youth culture’. When ‘TRL’ was on,” he added, alluding to MTV’s vintage live- music staple, “you knew exactly what the big band or moment was. Now people pass around bits of comedy and music and there’s no one place it all is collected or distributed.” Gunpowder was born shortly after. Of course, this is a much more competitive environment than those early days of cable. The sheer number of producers has multiplied. And the ways consumers — particularly teens and people in their 2. Simply putting something cool or catchy out there and hoping it takes off is a notion as retrograde as cable boxes.“The problem now isn’t distribution — it’s curation,” Burnett said.

It’s ‘what do you pay attention to?’”The appeal of the content — at least some of it — is hard to deny.“Drawn & Recorded,” for example, was the most successful original show for Spotify. And many of its videos do go viral. Shareability, an ad- oriented service, is known for such viral videos as a Cristiano Ronaldo- in- disguise segment that garnered 2.

You. Tube. But separating wheat from chaff isn’t easy: unlike traditional Hollywood and its hierarchy of established creators, it’s often hard to know who or what to invest in until it’s too late. And even if one commissions the right viral content, monetizing it is tricky, sinceconsumers don’t often want to pay for it. The Ronaldo video, forinstance, was part of an ad campaign for ROC headphones.)That’s one reason Gunpowder is also betting on more traditional longform material. At Sundance they surprised the tight- knit world of independent film by jumping into a competitive market and paying a reported seven figures for “The Little Hours,” a comedic tale set at a dysfunctional convent in medieval Italy.

Though the company’s specialty is short form, the addition of Film. Buff—as well as Toffler’s MTV experience with films like “Napoleon Dynamite” and“Election”—suggest features will be a key part of their plans as well. Gunpowder holds an advantage that others don’t have: unlike other startups, they have both deep pockets and a full distribution platform thanks to Film. Buff.“Traditional studios have the resources and not the vision,” said Tim Staples, who heads Shareability, in which Gunpowder has invested. And startups have the potential but not the resources. Gunpowder & Sky has both.”The company’s investors feel equally confident.

I think they've exceeded our expectations, not just in the creators they've attracted but financially,” said Jesse Jacobs, president of the Chernin Group. But they're a 1. 3- month old studio. We’re not going to impose too [many expectations] too fast.”So can a full- service studio like Gunpowder & Sky thrive in a world designed for the lean- and- mean?

Journalist Nearly Banned from You. Tube and Gmail For Posting Al- Qaeda Videos From Chelsea Manning Trial. You. Tube’s latest push to ban terrorist propaganda across its ubiquitous video platform is getting off to a rough start. Earlier this week, noted investigative reporter and researcher Alexa O’Brien woke to find that not only had she been permanently banned from You. Tube, but that her Gmail and Google Drive accounts had been suspended as well. She would later learn that a reviewer who works for Google had mistakenly identified her channel, in the words of a You.

Tube representative, as “being dedicated to terrorist propaganda.”This drastic enforcement action followed months of notifications from You. Tube, in which O’Brien was told that three of her videos had been flagged for containing “gratuitous violence.” None of the videos, however, depict any actual scenes of violence, except for one that includes footage of American helicopter pilots gunning down civilians in Iraq, which has been widely viewed on You. Tube for half a decade. While appealing You. Tube’s decision, O’Brien learned that the mechanism for correcting these mistakes can be vexing, and that a fair outcome is far from guaranteed.

By Wednesday morning, her channel was slated for deletion. The Google Drive account she was locked out of contained hundreds of hours of research—or years worth of her work—and was abruptly taken offline. She was then told that she was “prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other You. Tube accounts.” The ban was for life, and with little explanation and zero human interaction, O’Brien’s research, much of it not accessible elsewhere, was bound for Google’s trashcan. With the knowledge that You. Tube has faced increased pressure from the US and European governments to crack down on the spread of terrorist propaganda—a consequence of which has led to the disappearance of content amassed by conflict reporters—it wasn’t difficult to deduce what had happened to O’Brien’s account.

The problem was eventually addressed and representatives of both Google and You. Tube later called O’Brien to apologize and explain the error. Watch Code Red Vioz. When she was told that her channel had been misidentified as an outlet for terrorist propaganda, she could hardly contain her laughter.

It was a series of unfortunate events,” a You. Tube rep told her.

The mistake, they explained, was the fault of a human reviewer employed by Google. A spokesperson for Google told Gizmodo on Friday: “With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video or channel has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”“This for archival purposes. This is not for propaganda purposes.”This year, You.

Tube has begun increasingly relying on machine learning to find and scrub extremist content from its pages—a decision prompted by the successful online recruiting efforts of extremist groups such as ISIS. With over 4. 00 hours of content uploaded to You. Tube every minute, Google has pledged the development and implementation of systems to target and remove what it calls “terror content.”Last month, a You. Tube spokesperson admitted, however, that its programs “aren’t perfect,” nor are they “right for every setting.” But in many cases, the spokesperson said, its AI has proven “more accurate than humans at flagging videos that need to be removed.” In a call Wednesday, a You.

Tube representative told Alexa: “Humans will continue to make mistakes, just like any machine system would obviously be flawed.” The machine, which prioritizes the content reviewed by human eyes, wasn’t “quite ready,” she said, to recognize the context under which controversial content is uploaded. The O’Brien incident demonstrates that Google has many miles to go before its AI and human reviewers are skilled enough to distinguish between extremist propaganda and the investigative work that even Google agrees is necessary to broaden the public’s knowledge of the intricate military, diplomatic, and law enforcement policies at play throughout the global war on terror.

Al- Qaeda and The As- Sahāb Tape. What prompted a Google reviewer to designate O’Brienas a purveyor of terrorist content? Well, for one, her channel contains actual al- Qaeda propaganda. But that propaganda is also an important piece of US history: A few years ago, it nearly cost former US Army Private Chelsea Manning a life sentence. O’Brien’s channel contain portions of a June 2.

Qaeda outlet As- Saḥāb Media featuring Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a US- born al- Qaeda operative in the Arabian Peninsula, who—in earlier jihadi propaganda tapes rebroadcast by US network news—referred to himself as “Azzam the American.” In 2. Gadahn appeared in an al- Qaeda documentary that features an introduction by Ayman al- Zawahiri, the al- Qaeda co- founder and current leader of the organization who succeeded Bin Laden in 2.

In January 2. 01. Gadahn was killed in Pakistan in a series of US drone strikes, which also claimed the lives of foreign aid workers Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein. O’Brien’s interest in Gadahn has nothing to do with spreading his views on the “Great Satan” or his prophesies of American streets run with blood. The footage she preserved using You. Tube’s service, which was also embedded in an off- site analysis, was used by military prosecutors to support criminal offenses at the court martial of Chelsea Manning. The criminal proceedings against Manning lacked contemporaneous access to the court record.

Only the work of reporters, like O’Brien, who personally attended the trial, is available to the public. The As- Saḥāb video featuring Gadahn came into play after the US government accused Manning of “aiding the enemy,” a charge that, unlike most derived from the military’s code of justice, can be applied to civilians. And it carries a life sentence.

Manning was accused of aiding Gadahn, legally defined in the court martial as an enemy of the US, because the As- Saḥāb video cites both Wiki. Leaks and the State Department cables that Manning leaked. An unidentified male narrator in the Gadahn video references, for example, the “revelations of Wiki. Leaks,” and claims they expose “the subservience of the rulers of the Muslim world for their master America.” The video also includes portions of the infamous “Collateral Murder” tape, which depicts American Apache pilots firing upon a group of men in Baghdad, killing among them two Reuters journalists.“The excerpts contained in all three videos were squarely in the public interest..”A stipulation in the criminal case reveals that the US government argued Osama bin Laden himself had been in receipt of, and consequently aided by, the intelligence Manning leaked. The evidence to support this, however, is classified—all of it collected during the May 2, 2. Abbottabad compound.

An analysis conducted by O’Brien, which includes the portions of the As- Saḥāb video she uploaded to You. Tube, suggests that Bin Laden may have somehow received a copy of the video while hiding in Pakistan. A digital copy of the tape itself may even have been recovered by the US Navy SEALs that breached his compound during the CIA- led mission that ended in Bin Laden’s death. The video of Gadhan had already been entered into evidence to support the aiding the enemy charge—but to prevent testimony, which would’ve involved an elaborate set- up to conceal the identity of a witness linked to the Bin Laden evidence, Manning’s defense agreed to stipulate that Bin Laden was in possession of information tied to Wiki. Leaks. The CIA recovered, for example, a letter from Bin Laden in which he requests from a member of al- Qaeda US Department of Defense material released by Wiki. Leaks. In another letter, an al- Qaeda operative attached a number of leaked battlefield reports.