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In the age of social networking, there's no such thing as privacy

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Surprise, surprise: Millenials are more willing than any other generation to share personal information online.

According to a new survey from the University of California's Center for the Digital Future, Millenials, ages 18-34, were more likely to share their location in order to receive coupons from nearby businesses: 56 percent vs. 42 percent of those 35 and over. More than half of the Millenials surveyed also said that they would share private information with a company if they got something in return.

This push for active participation in social media may seem harmless at first, until you look at the bigger picture and cringe at the Orwellian nature of it all.

For example, have you ever bought a product at your favorite store, and then saw an advertisement for a similar product pop up on your Facebook sidebar just moments later? Cue the Big Brother shiver up your spine: that's no coincidence.

Everything that we post to our personal websites can be tracked, and the Internet is always watching. Whether we admit to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we live in a surveillance state that is growing more efficient and eerily omniscient by the day.

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon rule the Web; and consequently, have delved deeper into our private lives and personal interactions than ever before. Apple tracks us on or iPhones and iPads. Google tracks us on every page that it has access to, and Facebook does the same, even following non-Facebook users in their pursuit of prime marketing data. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him, and discovered that 105 companies tracked his Internet use in one 36-hour period.

Sometimes we fight back, like when Instagram proposed giving advertisers free reign over all posted photos and then backed down when users threatened to boycott. Sometimes the Internet giants admit their wrongdoing, like when Google apologized (after being slapped with a $7M fine, of course) for "data-scooping" personal information from zillions of unencrypted databases.

But the truth is, these highly-sophisticated apps and websites thrive on monitering our every move, and we may be powerless to stop them. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

Consider the major data breaches of networking sites in 2012 alone:

LinkedIn: 6.5 million passwords stolen
Yahoo: 400,000 passwords stolen
Global Payments: 1.5 million customers' credit card numbers and PINs exposed

Facebook experienced yet another privacy breach in February, two weeks after Twitter made a similar admission. Also, users have been quitting Facebook in record numbers for months now. Perhaps people are finally catching on to the "privacy paradox" and deciding to forgo social media altogether, although the more likely scenario is that this decline is only temporary.

Statistics prove that most of these Facebook users will likely return (because, sadly, nearly 40 percent of Americans would rather have a root canal than give up their social networking profiles for good) so where does that leave us? We can combine forces to change the pervasive nature of the Internet, or we can look inward and start by changing ourselves.

If we really want our private lives to remain private, then we can't give up without a fight.

Leah Pickett writes about popular culture for WBEZ. She still uses Twitter and Facebook, but has given a year without Internet some serious thought.

Picture or it didn't happen

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Art punk trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been posting this sign at venues on their current tour: a polite reminder for fans to enjoy their shows without a "I must take a million blurry pictures/horrible sound quality videos to prove that I was here!" mentality.

"Please do not watch the show through a screen on your smart device/camera," the sign reads, "PUT THAT [BLEEP] AWAY as a courtesy to the people behind you and to Nick, Karen and Brian."

Understandably, the band has a zero tolerance policy for looking out at the audience and seeing a constellation of iPhones glowing back at them.

I will be the first to admit that I've been guilty of this behavior. I've snapped photos during shows for St. Vincent and Ty Segall, compelled to somehow immortalize the experience of seeing my musical idols in the flesh. I've also developed a fondness for photo-sharing other aspects of my life, like the best cocktail I've ever tasted or a new book that I can't wait to read. And I'm not alone in what appears to be a millennial-specific compulsion to photo-document even the tiniest minutiae, as the mobile app Instagram just topped 100 million monthly users this year.

My generation came of age with Facebook, then mobile photo-sharing on a mass scale. We've become a society of instant clickers, wracked with extreme anxiety when parted from our electronic devices and a constant needling desire to prove our worth through social media. We ask ourselves, "If I don't take a picture of this event, will my friends believe that I was there?" With the rise of tech addiction and smartphone cameras literally right at our fingertips, the answer to that question is usually no.

The papal conclave on March 12 was a glaring example of this phenomemon. Past popes (including Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) have been greeted with a smattering of camera flashes; but when the newly-elected Pope Francis appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, almost everyone in the crowd raised their glittering smartphones and tablets in response.

As the world's obsession with technology grows, so does our reliance on instant gratification and the gnawing impulse to photo-capture every moment. Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram have made oversharing easier than ever before, and "keeping up with the Joneses" through social media even more stressful.

According to the Pew study of millennials, 40 percent of young people surveyed feel like they "can't live" without their smartphones. However, our parents did just fine without them, and perhaps had even better memories of their good times as a result of being 100 percent unplugged.

Can you imagine the Beatles playing to a sea of iPhones, or a Woodstock audience glued to their Twitter feeds? Back then, concert-goers could experience music in the moment, allowing the songs to wash over them completely, and never once think about which Instagram filter they should use to prove how cool they were for being there.

To the compulsive photo-sharers: cutting back is key. Take one quick shot if you absolutely must, then sit back and enjoy whatever experience that you're supposed to be having. Pictures may last forever, but real-life moments are gone in a flash; so try really living them for a change, without the superficial barrier of your camera phone getting in the way.

Leah Pickett writes about popular culture for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @leahkpickett.

Divas in the board room

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, COO of Yahoo, are arguably the youngest and most well-known females in corporate America today. In the male-dominated world of business, where only slightly more than 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, Sandberg and Mayer are wunderkinds who achieved early success and rose to the top at a meteoric rate.

In both financial and feminist circles they are considered rock stars, trail blazers and gurus to be studied and emulated. And this dynamic duo has not been hesitant in word or deed to proclaim and demand a new set of rules for women in the workplace.

After 13 years at Google, where she was the twentieth employee hired and the first female engineer, Marissa Mayer left Google to become CEO of Yahoo in July 2012. Her first two challenges were obvious ones:

she needed to address the company’s declining ad revenues and stock prices
she was seven months pregnant

The pregnancy issue handled itself, and on September 30, 2013, she had a baby boy.

The company's financial issues remain ongoing, and Mayer returned to work just two weeks after having the baby to give them her full attention. (She has managed to balance the financial dilemma and the demand of diapers by having a nursery built next to her office.)

Since then, she has done everything in her power to right the ship. And her most controversial decision to date speaks directly to how she sees and wants the game to be played. Starting this spring, “working at home” has been banned.

“We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together”, Mayer said.

Although Yahoo’s new model has generated a considerable backlash, Mayer’s message is clear: “do as I do” or move on.

Sandberg, in her recently published book Lean In: Women, Work, and The Will To Lead offers advise about how women can advance their careers, and at the same time, admonishes women for being part of the problem of why more women are not in more leadership positions. If you want to get ahead and make it big time, says Sandberg, women need to “lean in”, assert themselves more, put in more time, take on more tasks, be more ambitious.

Yes, she says, it is a male dominated world. So work harder. Believe in yourself. Don’t doubt your ability to do it all. Make more demands. Take on more. Sandberg argues that women have to stop looking for excuses and reasons for failure or mediocrity. Success costs, and if you don’t pay the price, it won’t happen.

I’ve got a daughter who is a business person, my wife is a COO of her firm and I like to think I’m a card carrying feminist. But to tell you the truth, Sandberg and Mayer scare me. Or, perhaps more accurately, they confuse me. They want women to outwork the men. They are advocating putting in the big hours, and making the big compromises, so that they too can succeed on Planet Finance. But maybe they’ve all got it all wrong. Maybe it really shouldn’t be about the big job, the big hours, the big sacrifices. Maybe it’s the system and not the players that is all screwed up. Maybe none of us, men or women, should be eager to “lean in” because the world we are being asked to “lean into” isn’t, in the long run, humanly worth it.

Maybe our two C-suite divas are on to something more important than success at work. Maybe their’s is a cautionary tale. Rather than “leaning in”, maybe all of us should start thinking about “leaning back”, and start trying to find success and accomplishments in other parts of our lives beyond our jobs.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Sheryl Sandberg tells Chicago women to 'Lean In'

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Is Sheryl Sandberg the most radical feminist to ever challenge the status quo of a man's world? No, but she is a powerful force in changing the way women feel about their own capabilities as leaders.

Sandberg spoke to a sold-out crowd at Chicago's Palmer House Hilton Thursday evening, in an event sponsored by Nielsen and presented by Trib Nation as part of the Chicago Tribune's "Press Pass" speaker series.

In a conversation with Tribune vice president and associate editor Joycelyn Winnecke, Sandberg shared advice and anecdotes from her new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, which has already stirred debate and provoked a backlash from some of Sandberg's female critics. In her book, Sandberg argues that women may be the ones holding themselves back from true gender equality in the workplace. She says that women need to "lean in" and "sit at the table" with their male peers in order to acheive the same levels of success.

During her talk, the effervescent Facebook COO (and multi-millionaire) elicited knowing laughter and spontaneous applause from her overwhelmingly female audience, as she delivered one quotable nugget of "girl power" inspiration after another. Here are a few of her most memorable soundbites:

- On the Marissa Mayer controversy at Yahoo:

"If a man did it, there would not be a single headline."

- On the self-confidence of women in comparison to men's:

"Women remember their performance lower, and men higher, in relation to their success."

- On the difficulty of finding a mentor as a young woman, especially when most seasoned pros in corporate America are older men:

"Searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming."

- On her desire for less restriction and more equality in gender roles:

"We need to teach our girls to be leaders and our boys to be nuturers."

Sandberg also described how assertive girls are often teased for being "bossy," a derogotary term that is never applied to boys when they attempt to take on similar leadership roles.

"I wrote this book for every young girl who has ever been called 'bossy' on the playground," said Sandberg, which made the bossy-pants Hermione Granger in me exclaim, "Hear, hear!"

Audience members were encouraged to tweet with the hashtag #TribNation during the hour-long event (Sandberg is a social media maven, after all) and Twitter users responded with a flurry of feminist discussion that continued long after Sandberg left the stage around 7 p.m.

And while the Internet mogul still has her critics, the palpable surge of female empowerment in the room last night proves that Sandberg's message of "let's change the conversation from what women can't do to what they can" has earned her many loyal fans here in Chicago – this sometimes-cynical blogger included.

Watch the full event here, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.

Leah Pickett writes about popular culture for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @leahkpickett.

Working women: can we really have it all?

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0500

Good news: the U.S. unemployment rate just dropped to 7.7 percent, the lowest number we've seen in 4 years. Bad news: most of the highest-paid jobs in this country still belong to men.

The outliers in this scenario are two incredibly successful women of the Internet age: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. However, these media mogals have recently been on the receiving end of some harsh criticism for the way that they choose to navigate through a man's world.

Women clamor for more female CEOs, but when one of our own does make it to the top, we're often the first to start tearing her down. Sandberg has been mocked by female critics as "a PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots" (nice alliteration, Maureen Dowd) who "doesn't do enough" to empower other women. Meanwhile, Mayer has received her own fair share of feminist backlash by telling her employees that they can no longer work from home, then building an office nursery for her child and not extending the same courtesy to other parents on staff.

I sympathize with the working mothers of Yahoo, especially since Mayer has the million-dollar luxury of bringing her baby to work while the rest of her lowly peons do not. Still, I believe that Mayer's decision was made with the best of intentions, even if she does come across as a bit of an elitist in doing so.

Mayer saw that her at-home employees weren't signing in on a regular basis, her company started slipping and she did what she had to do to get everybody back on track. Also, paying for her kid's nursery with her own money is, in a roundabout way, setting a positive example for her staff members: "I'm making you come to the office, so I'll be here every morning too--with my newborn baby in tow."

The hate for Sheryl Sandberg, on the other hand, seems even less justified. Her new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, encourages women to participate, or "lean in" to get ahead professionally. Sandberg earns a reported $30 million a year, so surely this is sound advice.

Well, reviews from female critics have been decidedly mixed. While some offer a smattering of faint praise ("Sandberg's advice to young women, which can sound like a finger-wagging admonishment when taken out of context, is framed here in more encouraging terms," writes Anne-Marie Slaughter of the New York Times), most lash out with sharp-tongued vitriol.

As Connie Schultz attests in the Washington Post, "Sandberg barely mentions the millions of single mothers in the workplace. She does, however, advise women on how to find a supportive spouse--who in her book, is almost always male. Ambitious lesbians will have to find their tutorial elsewhere."

Yikes.

Okay, so maybe Sandberg isn't the next feminist icon à la Gloria Steinem or Rachel Maddow. She may not even be the best person to advise working moms on how to advance their careers, considering that her multimillion dollar salary doesn't make her all that relatable. But does she really deserve this much animosity from the women she's trying to help? I don't wholeheartedly agree with every theory that Sandberg lays out in her book, but I applaud her (and all the women featured in the PBS documentary Makers) for drilling holes in the glass ceiling that would not have been possible even 20 years ago.

Perhaps we should focus on building up our female leaders instead of bashing their every move, considering that we still don't have very many of them to represent us. According to Bloomberg, women only held 14.3 percent of executive positions at Fortune 500 companies and 16.6 percent of board seats in 2012, while over half of companies surveyed had all-male directors.

These statistics are troubling for several reasons. First of all, it is a proven fact that companies perform much better when they have more female directors. Massive corporations (with market caps of over $10 billion) that included women on their boards had stock prices that outperformed their peers by 26 percent over 6 years, which is no small feat. Also, there has been an overall lack of progress to closing the gender gap, with the number of women in leadership positions rising at a "glacial pace" of only 1.4 percent since 2011.

Ladies, we need each other. Instead of building walls out of spite, jealousy or sheer "mean girl" cattiness, let's try championing and supporting one another instead. If we band together and form a united front, lingering misogyny in the workplace won't stand a chance against us.

Follow Leah on Twitter @leahkpickett or add her on Facebook.

Is technology changing our lives too much?

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0500

In the last 10 years, the electronic age has us totally interconnected. Social networking of all kinds – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Socialcam, texting, platforms such as iPads, iPhones, smartphones and computers of all kinds.

These tools have forever altered the normal concept of time and space. They have replaced it with an immediacy that has taken on a life of its own. All of us are now no more than a click away from communicating with everyone we have ever met or known in real or virtual time.

Thanks to the wild, wild word of the web, we can be anywhere and everywhere with the stroke of a key or click of a mouse.

In essence, what all of this has done is to radically change the pace and rate of our lives. Not only are we bombarded with more input, information and data than ever before, we are now required or at least strongly expected to respond to it faster than ever before. At one level, the increased pace and rate of change is a good thing. It forces us to be more agile, more responsive, more adaptable to an ever-evolving world. It opens us to more options and possibilities.

On the other hand, the increased rate and speed of input and change is exhausting. Here’s the problem. When life becomes an Olympic endurance event (the Everydayathon), when the stopwatch is always ticking, when are we supposed to have fun?

When will there be a time to be human in the old fashioned way? As Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, professor of leisure studies, so aptly put it, “Having to go so fast to keep up, we miss stuff-our existence is truncated. Some things simply cannot be done going full speed: love, sex, conversation, food, family friends, nature. In the whirl, we are less capable of appreciation, enjoyment, sustained concentration, sorrow, memory.”

I think, if we can be honest with ourselves, we all do too much or try to do too much. My mother used to accuse me of having “eyes bigger than my stomach.”

She told me that I both literally and figuratively put too many things on my plate.

“Alfredó,” she’d say, “you do too much. Slow down, take smaller bites, or you’re not going to enjoy anything. Piano, piano arrive sano!” (Slowly, slowly, and you’ll get there surely, safely!)

You know what, maybe we should all slow down, take a moment, and reflect on the wisdom of my mother’s words. It couldn’t hurt.

CTA's Ventra fare scheme suffers riders' blowback

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0500

'THIS IS NO MORE THAN A DOG AND PONY SHOW.' That's one CTA rider's protest, as quoted in the Tribune, at last night's hearing on a new fare payment system set to take effect this summer, if the CTA board OKs it in a vote Wednesday.
-- DNAinfo.com Chicago: Chicago considers using red-light cams to spot parking violators.

GOOD AND WET. Yes, Chicago's winter has become wetter than usual. Yes, that's good news for farmers. No, it's not good for people who live near rivers, as the Sun-Times explains.

'THE MEDIA'S GREATEST FAILURE IN MODERN TIMES.' Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, Howard Kurtz says reports questioning the evidence or rationale for war in Iraq "were frequently buried, minimized or spiked."
* Conservative website Breitbart.com falls for a parody website's report that Paul Krugman of The New York Times filed for bankruptcy.
* Song celebrates "the girls on Fox News."

HISTORIC DECISION. In what could be a break for Senate Democrats, Dick Durbin's decided to run for another term, which could make him the first Illinois Democrat to win four terms.
* "Ward Room" blog: "Durbin is so popular he’ll win even if he’s caught robbing Lincoln’s Tomb."

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VATICAM. Watch live video from the Vatican for a sign the new pope has been chosen.
* Eric Zorn: "Who might be the next Pope? I don't care!"

'MY 9-YEAR-OLD SAID: "WHERE, BACK TO THE SLAMMER?"' Ex-Cub Mark Grace says that, when he has to leave early to return to his work-release sentence at an Arizona jail, his son gets it.

ARE YOU WHAT YOU LIKE? A new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes your Facebook "likes" reveal a lot about your personality.
* Simpler test on Web diagnoses personality with a single click. (Approach with caution: It found this blogger "shy and reserved." Also -- snicker if you will -- "well organized.")

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Jon Stewart's replacement knows the anchor desk

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0600

'THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART' ... WITH JOHN OLIVER. Jon Stewart's taking the summer off to direct a movie. His anchor-desk replacement? "Senior British Correspondent" John Oliver.
* Oliver's no stranger to hosting a comedy news show. Exhibit A: His weekly satiric podcast, The Bugle.

'GO ABOUT YOUR DAILY LIVES AS NORMAL.' Chicago's Streets and San chief gives the all-clear after only the 21st time since 1886 Chicago's seen more than 10 inches of snow in a single day.

* Chicago's bike lanes have their own snow-removal teams.
* Flow chart designed to help win any argument over climate change.

'BOY SCOUTS HAVE NO ONE FAMOUS TO PLAY AT THEIR JAMBOREE BECAUSE THEY KICK OUT GAY KIDS.' Dana Liebelson writes in Mother Jones: "This is the first year ... the Boy Scouts have been without any entertainment because of the ban."
* Carly Rae Jepsen's cancellation tweet:

As an artist who believes in equality for all people, I will not be participating in the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree this summer... — Carly Rae Jepsen (@carlyraejepsen) March 5, 2013

* Chicago's mysterious Twitter riddler, Marty Rudolf of Chicago.

THE SEQUESTER'S WORKING FOR SOME OF US. Despite the gloom that's descended on the federal budget, the Dow closed yesterday a record high. Will it be remembered as "the day investors ignored the boy who cried wolf"?
* Reasons the Dow's rally may feel empty.

GOOD NEWS FOR THE SWISS ARMY. Over flight attendants' objections, pocket knives will be allowed on U.S. airlines for the first time since 9/11.
* Blaming sequester, White House cancels tours.
* Obama dials down sequesteria.
* In new bio, Fox News chief calls Obama "lazy," misattributing the word to Obama himself.

RETURN OF THE PRINCESS. Carrie Fisher reveals she'll return as Leia Organa in the new Star Wars movies.
* Harrison Ford set for "Anchorman 2."

FACEBOOK OVERHAUL. A makeover to be announced tomorrow reportedly will include bigger photos -- and bigger ads.
* Study finds only about a third of your friends see typical Facebook post.
* Chicago cops warn of cell phone store robberies.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY TEXT SHOULD BE TEXT. It would've prevented embarrassing designs like this one.
* Supermarket magazine cover-up: Guns OK, breasts not so much.
* A new kind of newspaper subscription: Pay for Sunday print Tribune and online membership, get a tablet as part of the deal.

THIS WILL LITERALLY GENERATE COMMENTS BELOW THIS BLOG POST. The informal definition of "literally" -- the one that means not literally -- is creeping into dictionaries.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* Soundtrack for creation of this post: Latest issue of The Bugle.
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List: Sponsored ads in my newsfeed accompanied by images that don't make much contextual sense

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:16:00 -0600

How do some of these get chosen? These sponsored ads in my newsfeed are accompanied by images that don't make much contextual sense

(This last one maybe makes some more sense but is funny to me because this lady looks like she really doesn't have time for cancer to be starting inside her body.)

Know thy neighbor

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:00:00 -0600

My father has no interest in Facebook, rarely uses LinkedIn and is completely befudddled by the concept of Twitter. So when he called me the other day to rave about a neighborhood mobile app called Blockboard, I was a) honestly surprised that he even knew what an app was, and b) immediately intrigued by the concept.

Blockboard began in San Francisco as a way to connect neighbors on a uniquely personal level, effectively bridging the gap between the hundreds of "friends" that we have on Facebook and the untapped support systems that exist right in our own communities.

Prior to 2011, the startup was called BlockChalk and consisted of mostly neighborhood alerts, similar to a mobile Craigslist. Now under the umbrella of Klout, which made its first-ever acquisition by purchasing Blockboard this time last year, the system is rumored to become much more streamlined and social media-friendly in 2013.

When you download the free iPhone app, Blockboard will recognize your location via GPS and suggest neighborhoods for you to follow. Once you're plugged in, you can interact directly with your neighbors or contact your city government about hyperlocal issues such as graffiti, trash, potholes, vandalism, etc.

"Neighborhoods are more emotional than physical in many ways," says co-founder Stephen Hood, "So although Blockboard will suggest which neighborhood we think is yours, it's up to you to choose."

Blockboard hasn't reached Chicago yet, but another buzzworthy neighborhood app called BlockAvenue is already making the rounds. What began as community startup in Cambridge has since spread nationwide, allowing locals to connect, share ideas and discover communities block by block. The @BlockAve_Chi Twitter account has accumulated over 1,300 followers in just a few weeks time, and their trending numbers are growing exponentially by the day.

Some neighborhoods are taking the idea of hyperlocal connections one step further, creating mobile apps that specifically represent their individual communities. For example, the DUMBO region of Brooklyn (an acronym that stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is now the first neighborhood in New York City with its own app. As a devout Logan Squarian, I hope that my neighborhood will soon follow suit.

Growing up in a wealthy area of North Dallas, I existed in a bizarrely insular microcosm where neighbors exchanged subtle glances across perfectly manicured lawns, but never spoke a word of greeting to each other. I lived next door to the same people for 18 years, never knowing a single thing about them. This culture of seperateness was considered normal, and to be honest, I never gave it a second thought.

My life in Chicago couldn't be more different, and I'm grateful for it. Now that I live in a tiny three-floor walkup and know all of the tenants in my building by name, I find the whole idea of mystery neighbors to be strange, slightly scary and even sad. I feel my heart sink a little whenever I see the same people riding the train day in and day out, heads buried in their e-books, refusing to look up or even acknowledge one another. When did avoiding eye contact with strangers turn into a total aversion of community and denial of basic human interaction?

Neighborhood apps provide an invaluable public service: bringing people together through social media, as opposed to driving them even further apart. Will community-based startups like Blockboard and BlockAvenue soon eclipse Facebook and Twitter as our go-to sources for hyperlocal news? With the loss of EveryBlock still fresh in my mind, I certainly hope they'll be here to stay.

Since Twitter is still a thing (for now), you can follow me @leahkpickett.