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en:ecrit:articles-en [2025/01/06 17:39] – [Will New Year's Eve be loud or quiet? What are the top 2025 resolutions? AP-NORC poll has answers] natashaen:ecrit:articles-en [2025/03/12 07:58] (current) – [Trump signs order designating English as the official language of the US] natasha
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-===== Why Choosing Something To Watch Feels So Difficult =====+===== International Women's Day protests demand equal rights and an end to discrimination, sexual violence =====
  
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-By Michael Dinich | Wealth of Geeks undefined+By MEHMET GUZEL and ANDREW WILKS Associated Press
  
-Too much of a good thing? Streaming service subscribers report that content overload and hidden fees are leading to frustration and subscription fatigue.+ISTANBUL (AP) — Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere to mark International Women's Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.
  
-In fact, the new survey of 2,000 American streaming service subscribers revealed that the average person spends 110 hours per year scrolling through streaming services, struggling to find something worth watching — a stark reminder of the "too much content, too little time" dilemma.+On the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women's groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.
  
-Commissioned by UserTesting and conducted by Talker Research, the study revealed one in five believe it's harder to find something to watch today than it was 10 years ago. According to them, the underlying cause comes from being overwhelmed by too much content.+The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women's role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading "Family will not bind us to life" and "We will not be sacrificed to the family."
  
-Many struggled with having larger content libraries (41%) and feeling like there's too much original content being produced (26%).+Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women's rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.
  
-**Watch Recommendations: A Double-Edged Sword**+Erdogan in 2021 withdrew Turkey from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkish rights group We Will Stop Femicides Platform says that 394 women were killed by men in 2024.
  
-And although 75% appreciate streaming service algorithms serving them accurate recommendations, 51% admitted the quantity of recommended content is also overwhelming, explaining they want to watch everything recommended to them.+"There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further," Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.
  
-Nearly half (48%) do not have traditional cable anymore. And those that choose streaming platforms do so because they like the variety (43%), the shows they want to watch are not on cable (34%), and they find streaming more convenient for on-the-go viewing (29%).+**Women across Europe and Africa march against discrimination**
  
-However, people are generally dissatisfied with the current streaming services available. In fact, 51% would rather have more streaming service options — even if those options included ads.+In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific health care, equal pay and other issues in which they don't get the same treatment as men.
  
-When asked what their "dream" streaming platform would look like, top features included premium channels and networks for no added cost (40%) and an easy-to-navigate interface (39%).+In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.
  
-Further, 52% said a platform's user interface plays a massive or significant role in their decision to subscribe.+Opening the center on International Women's Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws.
  
-The average person said all of the above should be available for no more than $46 per month — although 11% admitted they'd willingly pay over $100 per month for the service.+From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.
  
-"The streaming landscape has evolved from solving the problem of content access to creating a new challenge of content discovery," said Bobby Meixner, Senior Director of Industry Solutions at UserTesting. "Our research shows that despite advanced recommendation algorithms, viewers are spending nearly five full days each year just trying to decide what to watch–time that could be spent actually enjoying content."+In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisele Pélicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pélicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.
  
-The study also found a number of frustrations streaming subscribers have experienced.+Thousands of women marched in the capital Skopje and several other cities in North Macedonia to raise their voices for economic, political and social equality for women.
  
-A substantial 79% expressed frustration with streaming services requiring additional subscription fees for select content.+Organizers said only about 28% of women in the country own property and in rural areas only 5%, mostly widows, have property in their name. Only 18 out of 100 women surveyed in rural areas responded that their parents divided family property equally between the brother and sister. "The rest were gender discriminated against within their family," they said.
  
-When encountering those added fees, the majority (59%) are unlikely to pay and would instead look for content on a different platform they subscribe to (73%), give up and watch something else (77%) or consider canceling their subscription altogether (37%). Nearly one in five (19%) would sign up for a free trial of a platform to find a show they want to watch.+In Nigeria's capital, Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson Stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple — the traditional color of the women's liberation movement.
  
-Respondents also showed disdain for platforms pulling shows without notice, which directly impacts loyalty.+In Russia, the women's day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St. Petersburg.
  
-Over the past year, 69% have opened a streaming service at least once to find the show they were looking for is no longer there.+**German president warns of backlash against progress already made**
  
-Forty-four percent said they would likely end their subscription to a streaming service and subscribe to a new one just to continue watching a favorite show, and 56% would cancel that subscription as soon as they finish watching said show.+In Berlin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.
  
-**Challenges in Cancellation**+"Globally, we are seeing populist parties trying to create the impression that equality is something like a fixed idea of progressive forces," he said. He gave an example of " large tech companies that have long prided themselves on their modernity and are now, at the behest of a new American administration, setting up diversity programs and raving about a new 'masculine energy' in companies and society."
  
-But when canceling, nearly a quarter (23%) have experienced difficulties, claiming it's hard for them to find the cancellation option on the platform's website (39%) or that the cancellation process was overly-complicated with multiple steps (36%).+**Marchers in South America denounce femicides**
  
-"We're seeing a fundamental shift in how streaming platforms need to approach user experience," continued Bobby Meixner. "With 52% of subscribers saying interface design significantly impacts their subscription decisions, and 79% frustrated by hidden fees, streaming services must balance content abundance with accessibility and transparency to maintain subscriber loyalty."+In South America, some of the marches were organized by groups protesting the killings of women known as femicides.
  
-Survey Methodology:+Hundreds of women in Ecuador marched through the streets of Quito to steady drumbeats and held signs that opposed violence and the "patriarchal system."
  
-Talker Research surveyed 2,000 American adults who subscribe to at least one streaming service; the survey was commissioned by UserTesting and administered and conducted online by Talker Research between Nov. 2 and Nov. 7, 2024. +"Justice for our daughters!" some demonstrators yelled in support of women slain in recent years. 
-===== AI is a game changer for students with disabilities. Schools are still learning to harness it =====+ 
 +In Bolivia, thousands of women began marching late Friday, with some scrawling graffiti on the walls of courthouses demanding that their rights be respected and denouncing impunity in femicides, with less than half of those cases reaching a sentencing. 
 + 
 +Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report from Berlin. 
 +===== How a canoe helped turn Hawaiian culture into a source of pride and even influenced Hollywood =====
  
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 + 
 +By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press 
 + 
 +KANEOHE, Hawaii (AP) — Hawaii's American colonizers once banned the Hawaiian language in schools. Some Native Hawaiians tried to lighten their skin with lye. Many people believed Polynesian voyagers had simply lucked into finding the islands by drifting on logs. 
 + 
 +But a canoe launched half a century ago helped turn Hawaiian culture from a source of shame to one of pride, reviving the skill of traveling the seas by decoding the stars, waves and weather. That vessel — a double-hulled sailing canoe called the Hokulea, after the Hawaiian name for the star Arcturus — would even influence the Disney blockbuster "Moana" decades later. 
 + 
 +To mark the anniversary, the Hokulea's early crew members gathered Saturday for ceremonial hula and kava drinking at the Oahu beach where the canoe launched on March 8, 1975, and where they began their first training sails. 
 + 
 +"It's a vehicle of exploration. It's a vehicle of discovery," Nainoa Thompson, the CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, said in an interview. "It's also been our vehicle for justice as Native Hawaiians, as Pacific Islanders, as a very unique, special culture of the Earth." 
 + 
 +In 1980, Thompson became the first Hawaiian in six centuries to navigate to Tahiti without a compass or other modern instruments — a span of about 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers). 
 + 
 +**Hawaiian culture had long been repressed** 
 + 
 +Thompson, 71, remembers stories from his grandmother, born less than a decade after the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Teachers beat her for speaking Hawaiian, and her uncle tried to wash the brown off his skin with lye.
  
-By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Associated Press+When she had children, she didn't teach them Hawaiian.
  
-For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as "rineanswsaurs" or sarcastic as "srkastik."+"If her children tried to be Hawaiian, they would get hurt in the new society," Thompson said. "And so you have to become something else."
  
-The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension. "I just assumed I was stupid," she recalled of her early grade school years.+A resurgence of Hawaiian pride and identity starting in the late 1960s and 1970s set off a cultural renaissance. Artist Herb Kane began painting ancient canoes based on drawings from European explorers and got the idea to build a double-hulled canoe with tall, triangular sails similar to those his ancestors had used hundreds of years earlier.
  
-But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has helped her keep up with classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits a customized AI-powered chatbot, a word prediction program and other tools that can read for her.+**Debunking the drifting log theory**
  
-"I would have just probably given up if I didn't have them," she said.+At the time, many people accepted the notion that Polynesians settled islands by accident.
  
-Artificial intelligence holds the promise of helping countless other students with a range of visual, speech, language and hearing impairments to execute tasks that come easily to others. Schools everywhere have been wrestling with how and where to incorporate AI, but many are fast-tracking applications for students with disabilities.+Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had theorized that Polynesians arrived from South America, pushed west by the prevailing winds and currents. In 1947, he set out to prove it by floating from Peru on a log raft. He landed in the Tuamotu Islands north of Tahiti and wrote a best-seller.
  
-Getting the latest technology into the hands of students with disabilities is a priority for the U.S. Education Department, which has told schools they must consider whether students need tools like text-to-speech and alternative communication devices. New rules from the Department of Justice also will require schools and other government entities to make apps and online content accessible to those with disabilities.+Heyerdahl's theory took hold even though Hawaiians for generations had passed down stories of people who traveled from the distant lands -- including Kahiki, possibly what is today known as Tahiti — by canoe, bringing with them edible plants such as ulu, or breadfruit.
  
-There is concern about how to ensure students using it — including those with disabilities — are still learning.+Kane, University of Hawaii archaeologist Ben Finney and Honolulu surfer Tommy Holmes wanted to challenge the drifting log concept. They started the Polynesian Voyaging Society, intent on sailing a canoe to Tahiti without modern instruments.
  
-Students can use artificial intelligence to summarize jumbled thoughts into an outline, summarize complicated passages, or even translate Shakespeare into common English. And computer-generated voices that can read passages for visually impaired and dyslexic students are becoming less robotic and more natural.+They needed a navigator. Traditional long-distance voyaging skills had all but disappeared, but a Peace Corps volunteer on the isolated atoll of Satawal in Micronesia told them about Pius "Mau" Piailug, who had been taught navigation from childhood. Over about a month in 1976, Piailug guided the Hokulea from Hawaii to Tahiti — about the same distance from Hawaii to California.
  
-"I'm seeing that a lot of students are kind of exploring on their own, almost feeling like they've found a cheat code in a video game," said Alexis Reid, an educational therapist in the Boston area who works with students with learning disabilities. But in her view, it is far from cheating: "We're meeting students where they are."+Some 17,000 people thronged the Tahitian shore to greet them and witness what one crew member called "the spaceship of our ancestors."
  
-Ben Snyder, a 14-year-old freshman from Larchmont, New York, who was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, has been increasingly using AI to help with homework.+Former Hawaii Gov. John Waihe'e was in his 20s then, and a delegate to the 1978 state Constitutional Convention. The Hokulea's success spurred delegates to make Hawaiian an official state language even though few residents still spoke it, he said. They also created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to improve the well-being of Native Hawaiians.
  
-"Sometimes in math, my teachers will explain a problem to me, but it just makes absolutely no sense," he said. "So if I plug that problem into AI, it'll give me multiple different ways of explaining how to do that."+"It helped us believe in everything that we were doing," Waihe'e said.
  
-He likes a program called Question AI. Earlier in the day, he asked the program to help him write an outline for a book report — a task he completed in 15 minutes that otherwise would have taken him an hour and a half because of his struggles with writing and organization. But he does think using AI to write the whole report crosses a line.+Today, two dozen schools have Hawaiian language immersion programs, and Census data show more than 27,000 people in Hawaii, and 34,000 in the U.S., speak Hawaiian at home.
  
-"That's just cheating," Ben said.+**Bringing dignity to the elders**
  
-Schools have been trying to balance the technology's benefits against the risk that it will do too much. If a special education plan sets reading growth as a goal, the student needs to improve that skill. AI can't do it for them, said Mary Lawson, general counsel at the Council of the Great City Schools.+In 1978, an ill-prepared crew set out for Tahiti in poor weather, and the Hokulea capsized just hours after leaving port. Crew member Eddie Aikau paddled his surfboard to get help. The Coast Guard rescued the canoe, but Aikau was never found.
  
-But the technology can help level the playing field for students with disabilities, said Paul Sanft, director of a Minnesota-based center where families can try out different assistive technology tools and borrow devices.+The voyaging society overhauled itself in response, setting clear goals and training requirements. Thompson studied at a Honolulu planetarium and spent over a year under the tutelage of Piailug. In 1980, he navigated to Tahiti.
  
-"There are definitely going to be people who use some of these tools in nefarious ways. That's always going to happen," Sanft said. "But I don't think that's the biggest concern with people with disabilities, who are just trying to do something that they couldn't do before."+Thompson said he felt a deep obligation to fulfill Aikau's wish to follow the path of his ancestors and "pull Tahiti out of the sea." But he didn't celebrate when the Hokulea got there.
  
-Another risk is that AI will track students into less rigorous courses of study. And, because it is so good at identifying patterns, AI might be able to figure out a student has a disability. Having that disclosed by AI and not the student or their family could create ethical dilemmas, said Luis Pérez, the disability and digital inclusion lead at CAST, formerly the Center for Applied Specialized Technology.+"I just went into a quiet, dark place and just told Eddie we pulled it out of the sea," Thompson said. "There's no high fives. It's too profound."
  
-Schools are using the technology to help students who struggle academically, even if they do not qualify for special education services. In Iowa, a new law requires students deemed not proficient — about a quarter of them — to get an individualized reading plan. As part of that effort, the state's education department spent $3 million on an AI-driven personalized tutoring program. When students struggle, a digital avatar intervenes.+In decades since, the society has sailed the canoe around the Pacific and world, including New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and New York.
  
-More AI tools are coming soon.+It inspired other Pacific Island communities to revive or newly appreciate their own wayfinding traditions.
  
-The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding AI research and development. One firm is developing tools to help children with speech and language difficulties. Called the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, it is headquartered at the University of Buffalo, which did pioneering work on handwriting recognition that helped the U.S. Postal Service save hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processing.+In Rapa Nui, Chile — also known as Easter Island — islanders have embarked on long-distance canoe voyages. The University of Guam has a navigation program. Similar trends have surfaced in the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga, said Mary Therese Perez Hattori, the director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center.
  
-"We are able to solve the postal application with very high accuracy. When it comes to children's handwriting, we fail very badly," said Venu Govindaraju, the director of the institute. He sees it as an area that needs more work, along with speech-to-text technology, which isn't as good at understanding children's voices, particularly if there is a speech impediment.+"We come from very, very ancient societies," said Hattori, who is Chamorro, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands. "Hokulea sort of helped us remind the world of this."
  
-Sorting through the sheer number of programs developed by education technology companies can be a time-consuming challenge for schools. Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, said the nonprofit launched an effort this fall to make it easier for districts to vet what they are buying and ensure it is accessible.+**Hollywood makes a blockbuster**
  
-Makenzie wishes some of the tools were easier to use. Sometimes a feature will inexplicably be turned off, and she will be without it for a week while the tech team investigates. The challenges can be so cumbersome that some students resist the technology entirely.+Hokulea's influence spread in 2016 when Disney released "Moana," an animated film about a 16-year-old girl who learns wayfinding about 3,000 years ago.
  
-But Makenzie's mother, Nadine Gilkison, who works as a technology integration supervisor at Franklin Township Community School Corporation in Indiana, said she sees more promise than downside.+Thompson spoke to hundreds on the movie's creative team about wayfinding and the importance of canoes to Pacific culture, said Aaron Kandell, a Hawaii-born writer who worked on the movie.
  
-In September, her district rolled out chatbots to help special education students in high school. She said teachers, who sometimes struggled to provide students the help they needed, became emotional when they heard about the program. Until now, students were reliant on someone to help them, unable to move ahead on their own.+Kandell, who is not Native Hawaiian, spent a year studying navigation with the Polynesian Voyaging Society during his 20s and incorporated that into the script, including where Moana learns to use her outstretched hand to track the stars and runs her hand in the ocean to feel the currents.
  
-"Now we don't need to wait anymore," she said.+Crew members taught animators about coconut fiber ropes so they would look right when Moana pulls on them, Kandell said.
  
-This story corrects that Pérez works for CAST, formerly the Center for Applied Specialized Technology, not the Center for Accessible Technology.+The Polynesian Voyaging Society's initial plan was to sail to Tahiti once, supporting a documentary, book and research papers. Thompson remembers pushing Hokulea's hull into the water with the crew back in 1975.
  
-The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.+"It was really a moment — I didn't recognize it — but this was going to change everything," he said.
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