Bad News for BuzzFeed
GIF Inventor Dies ~ Oiler Alert ~ These Kids Want Masks at School
~ Buzzfeed News Shutting Down
Buzzfeed will still buzz - just not with their news service.
Yesterday, the company announced it will shut down its news division, which is only a portion of its total content output. BuzzFeed News was losing $10 million per year, and 100 employees may lose their job. Some may shift to other content departments as BuzzFeed isn’t going anywhere: their content revenue increased 9% in 2021, pulling in $130 million.
& Some of Buzzfeed’s Best Editors are fleeing before getting the ax.
& The BuzzFeed News app is going away - but you can get their news with this app (Huh? I guess other content creators will be taking those news jobs, apparently.)
~ A Moment of Silence for Stephen Wilhite, Creator of the GIF
Gifs are silent, right? I can’t think of a better way to honor Mr. Wilhite, who died last week at age 74 than to post a GIF in his honor. He was a computer stud back in the 1980s with CompuServe, according to his obituary. Drop a gif in the comments on this post page as a tribute to the guy who made social media more fun decades before social media existed.
~ Oiler Alert
COMMENTARY: “Gas Stations Will Run Dry”: Catastrophic Scenario For Diesel Emerging
& “The more Russian oil supply comes off the market in the coming months, the higher the chances of a global recession later this year, economists and analysts have started to warn since Russia invaded Ukraine a month ago. The latest warning came this week from two economists from the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.” Déjà Vu: Skyrocketing Oil Prices Spark Fears Of A Global Recession
& Commentary: Oil price shocks have a long history, but today’s situation may be the most complex ever. “The world is in the grip of an oil price shock. In just a few months, prices have risen from $65 a barrel to over $130, causing fuel costs to surge, inflationary pressure to rise, and consumer tempers to flare. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices were climbing rapidly because of soaring demand and limited supply growth. Price shocks aren’t new. Viewed historically, they are an integral part of oil market dynamics, not anomalies. They have occurred since the birth of the industry. Many factors can trigger oil price shocks. They include large shifts in either demand or supply anywhere in the world since oil is a global commodity. Shocks can also result from war and revolution; periods of rapid economic growth in major importing nations; and domestic problems in supplier countries, such as political conflict or lack of investment in the oil industry. Overall, the worst spikes have combined two or more of these factors – and that’s the situation today.”
~ Not All American Schoolkids are Ready to Drop Their Masks
It’s hard to imagine a typical child still wanting to wear a mask after two years of being forced to wear a cloth shield on their face at school all the time. Are these kids insecure about their looks? Or has two years of fear porn media made them afraid of going back to a life without masks? “Every time we try to get hasty and toss our masks off, we have another spike and another thousand people die,” said Eridon Stewart, a 17-year-old senior at Nova High. It should be noted that this school is in Seattle, and it was only 100 students who protested. Seattle students walk out of school, demand mask mandates be reinstated
