Lottery Winners: Entitled to Privacy?

You go to your local Quick Chek/ Wawa (they’re the same) and you walk up to the cashier. You ask him/her for a couple of lottery tickets because you were feeling lucky that day and had a couple extra dollars on you. They hand you your tickets and wait for the numbers to get drawn. They call out the numbers and they match yours exactly. YOU DID IT! You won the lottery. But now what?

Sure you get the billion dollar jackpot and can buy anything your heart desires, but what about the privacy? Obviously you bought the ticket knowing that if you were to win (what are the odds of that though) then their would be this big ceremony where the lottery people hand you that big-ass check with you name on it and $1,000,000,000.00 next to it, so why need the privacy?

Some obvious reasons are that people are greedy and might hurt you in order to get that money, people might mob you looking for donations or extra cash in a time of need, etc. So with that you would want some sense of security and/or privacy, and you’re entitled to that, or should be. In New Jersey, apparently that’s not allowed, which is dumb, but what do I know I’ve never won the lottery.

Montclair State’s Hockey Programs: What’s Up With Them

Montclair State has had sports programs throughout its history. Whether it the proclaimed women’s basketball team or any of the teams playing in the New Jersey Athletic Conference this season, everyone goes out to their games and celebrates their victories. My question for the entire campus is where is the love for their hockey programs?

Montclair State has two club hockey teams, one for women and one for men. They are relatively new to the school, both only being established this decade and finding some success. The women’s team has found the most success in recent years, winning their entire conference, the DVCHC, last year with only a handful of players, while the men’s team has been relatively mediocre to above average.

Even with that in mind, these hockey teams have gained more success than some of the actual sports the campus has. While the football team went .500 last season, again, the women’s team actually won the conference title with a fraction of the players most hockey teams have. So why doesn’t the school start a hokey program? Well, there was at one point.

Much like how the school had a golf team that competed against other teams in the New Jersey Athletic Conference, the hockey program was shelved due to lack of involvement, money, fans in attendance for games, etc. But I think as a club sport the teams do better.

They market themselves. The team’s have their own Instagram accounts and other social medias that reach out to every student at Montclair state and even at the high school level an give them a chance to join their teams. The men’s team actual broke a record, I believe, with the amount of recruitment’s they took in this offseason.

Introduction Post

Hi, I’m Anthony Gabbianelli, and I am the Sports Editor for the Montclarion, Montclair State University’s school newspaper. As Sports Editor, I cover all things sports on campus, from club sports, NJAC school sports, and even the New York Red Bulls II. My love of sports stems from an early age when I watched baseball, basketball, hockey, and football games. I want my blog to focus on all things hockey specifically because I believe is an underappreciated sports that has a lot of good storytelling. Between our club team’s here, the men’s and women’s team and the NHL, I want to talk and cover these for my blog. Whether that would be game recaps, player profiles, or anything NHL, I want to talk about that here.

Matt Lauer

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sexual-misconduct/nbc-news-fires-today-anchor-matt-lauer-after-sexual-misconduct-n824831

Waking up every morning, you would turn on the television and put the news on. The names and faces of the news anchors were all recognizable and friendly. Arguably, the most popular of these anchors was Matt Lauer.

Lauer was fired from NBC News Wednesday after claims of sexual misconduct came up from one employee. The number of claims has risen since news broke early Wednesday morning.

As the list of men who have sexually assaulted women extends, Lauer, out of all of the names to come up these last couple of weeks, is the most baffling to me. Lauer covered these stories and held this information back, which is absolutely wrong, and did nothing about it. He had a freaking button on his desk that would lock the door to his office, like who has that?!

Lauer was someone that people looked up to in the world of journalism. I looked up to him, to some extent, and now it feels just so odd that someone who you looked to done something like this. It’s very weird. I still don’t believe it, or want to believe it.

YouTube Losing More Ad Revenue

http://adage.com/article/digital/year-adidas-mars-spent-a-combined-15m-youtube/311422/

YouTube is losing more advertisers as more objectionable content is found on the website.

Earlier this year, YouTube lost a lot of major advertisers like Johnson & Johnson and Verizon due to the website having videos pertaining to terroristic, violent, and mature content. Now, more advertisers are pulling their ads from YouTube because content that objectifies underage girls.

Content like this has always and will always be on YouTube. It’s wrong that it exists but with 48 hours of content uploaded every minute, it will be difficult to catch every video that has content not suitable for the website. YouTube implemented an algorithm that demonetizes videos, but it has been well documented that this very rarely works. YouTube has no idea what it’s doing and it will eventually be it’s downfall as a company.

People have jobs as YouTubers, so when advertisers pull ads from the site, the people who create content lose money too; not just YouTube. When advertisers leave, so will content creators. When content creators leave, so do the people who watch them. Less eyes means less money. The article I linked says that these companies leaving will have little to no affect on YouTube. Any lost revenue is a bad thing, and you don’t need a Business degree to know that.

Facebook Using AI to Save Lives

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-using-ai-to-spot-suicidal-tendencies-2017-11

Facebook is implementing a new artificial intelligence that will detect suicidal tendencies in user. In an announcement Monday, the social media giant says the AI will read posts and search livestreams and videos that have suicidal characteristics.

Social media is a large source of stress for people, and the fact that there is now technology that will help detect things like this is really important. Suicide is a huge problem in society and now that we have the technology to detect it, we can save more lives. Most people have Facebook, so rolling this out on this platform is a great start. Once this technology spreads to all forms of social media then we can make the internet a safer place.

There are drawbacks though. The AI won’t be available in the European Union due to laws and such.

Rotten Tomatoes and Justice League

Rotten Tomatoes Delays ‘Justice League’ Review Ratings

Two weeks ago, the movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, did not release critic reviews for the latest DC Comics movie, Justice League, until the release date of the movie. Usually, review sites and channels will push out reviews for movies days before the movie comes out in theaters.

Rotten Tomatoes is arguably the largest movie review site and their opinion affects the box office outcomes for most movies. If it’s not Certified Fresh, Rotten Tomatoes highest grade for movies, then it won’t do as well compared to a movie that is rotten.

DC movies, except for Wonder Woman, were all trashed by Rotten Tomatoes and those movies, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, all under-performed. Warner Brothers restricted the reviews from coming out until the day before the movie’s release date and restricted Rotten Tomatoes’ until the day of.

Movie reviews can come from anyone anywhere, so I find it ridiculous that WB held the reviews from coming out for so long. The movie turned out to be bad anyway, so regardless of whatever Rotten Tomatoes had to say, WB couldn’t change the general public’s opinions.

Opinions can be expressed through social media, much like these reviews. WB tried to cover up this bad movie in order to get more money from the movie goers who see this. As of right now, this movie flopped, and if that doesn’t make WB rethink their idea for a DC Cinematic Universe, then I don’t know what will.

Trump Vs. TIME

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/25/politics/donald-trump-time-magazine/index.html

Over the the Thanksgiving weekend, the President once again grabbed headlines by calling out TIME Magazine saying that he was going to be their “Man of the Year.” TIME has since said the President is incorrect about the selection process and it will not comment on their choice until December 6th.

This has since grown into another blemish on the current presidency. Current and former TIME employees from all across the spectrum have come out in support for the magazine, saying the President, once again, has no idea what he’s talking about.

The Person of the Year edition of TIME is the arguably the biggest for the publication. With the President now attached to the magazine, regardless of if he actually is named Person of the Year, the edition will be impacted for better or worse, like most things with the President’s attachment to it.

Retiring Fake News

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/26/opinions/fake-news-and-disinformation-opinion-wardle-derakhshan/index.html

Fake News is a term you can’t go a day without hearing at least 15 times on Twitter. With the President popularizing the term last year, it has since grown into something that just gets thrown around without any thought to it.

So what actually is Fake News? Fake News is news that is made up in order to get clicks online and generate revenue.  Also called Clickbait, it usually involves headlines that are only written to make readers click on the article. The article itself is full of preposterous information that is the farthest thing  from fact. Now, Fake News is used to describe something that people don’t like. The President calling CNN as Fake News is an example of this. The President calling The New York Times Fake News is also an example of this.

The article, along with the video it come with, discusses the evolution of the term Fake News. It’s interesting to read about the term itself instead of Fake News as a whole. The past year, just looking back at it, I didn’t realize how the term has changed.

President Trump vs. the NFL… Again

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/11/20/trump-hits-raiders-marshawn-lynch-for-standing-only-for-mexican-anthem-suggests-suspension.html

President Donald Trump just can’t seem to understand why players are protesting the national anthem.

NFL players are protesting the national anthem because of police brutality and injustice, according to the article, and not the country. Trump thinks otherwise.

It is perfectly American to protest, and police brutality and injustice should be addressed in this manner. These are subjects that should not exist in this day and age, or at all in the first place for that matter, but unfortunately exists today. The players are taking their high profiles to address these issues and they shouldn’t stop at taking a knee or sitting down. Some players have went to their state governments and discussed these problems with lawmakers. This is a step in the right direction, but everyone who participates should do the same and more.

The President, I believe, is addressing this just to spark headlines and put his name out there more than it already is. By dominating headlines and news broadcasts, Trump engulfs every piece of media we consume. Through this, his ideas get moved around until everyone understands and believes it. This, obviously, is just what I observe and think but it works.

Players kneeling is something I’ve written about for the school’s newspaper before and I don’t want to again simply for the fact that it really shouldn’t be this big of a headline. It’s how odd it is that makes it a headline. We take standing for the anthem as if it were like doing anything any other person would, like breathing air or drinking water. It’s when someone pushes a new idea towards people and they find it off putting when it snowballs into this fad. It is a fad, and it will eventually go away and people will remember it for what it is.