[VIDEO] Moms: This Is What Your Government Expects of You

If you’re a mom of grown children, this is for you.

Did you know that the Obama administration and the state of Rhode Island are counting on you to nag your kids into signing up for Obamacare?

Good old-fashioned guilt and annoyance—that’s the ticket, apparently. But just giving your kids a call or sending them an email isn’t enough.

Rhode Island’s newest strategy is urging mothers to sign up for social networking and even online dating sites to send messages to their children.

The state’s Obamacare exchange has put together the “Nag Toolkit.” The website isn’t subtle. It says, “learn how to be where your kids are. And how to nag them mercilessly.”

If your child is on social networks and apps like Twitter, Snapchat, or Vine, the Nag Toolkit encourages you to get on there, too, and “Tweet ‘get health insurance’ @yourkids.” It sure is a lot of trouble to go to just to say that.

From NagToolkit.com

But the site goes even further by recommending that you, their mom—regardless of your own relationship status—create a profile on a dating site like OKCupid or Tinder. And then find your child’s dating profile and send him or her a message about health insurance.

Maybe what Rhode Island really wants is young people’s email addresses, though. Because after the tutorials, this message comes up: “If this all seems too confusing, give us your kid’s email address and we’ll do the nagging.”

If you’re not in Rhode Island, the Obama administration will bring in celebrities’ moms and the First Mom to nag your kids.

Via: The Foundry

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Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is “mining” Facebook and Twitter to improve its social media footprint and to assess how Tweets can be used as “change-agents” for health behaviors.

The NLM, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have software installed on government computers that will store data from social media as part of a $30,000 project announced last week.

“The National Library of Medicine is the world’s largest biomedical library and makes its stored information available online at no charge to consumers, health professionals, and biomedical scientists through a diverse suite of resources,” the agency said in a contract posted on Oct. 23. “Evaluating how its databases and other resources are utilized is an important component of continuing quality improvement and has long been an on-going program of NLM management through a potpourri of monitoring tools.”

“The world-wide explosion in the use of social media provides a unique opportunity for sampling sentiment and use patterns of NLM’s ‘customers’ and for comparing NLM to other sources of health-related information,” the agency said.

“By examining relevant tweets and other comments,” the contract said, “NLM will gain insights to extent of use, context for which information was sought, and effects of various health-related announcements and events on usage patterns.”

Via: WFB

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Calif. district aims to stop bullying by watching kids' social media use; tactic stirs debate

GLENDALE, Calif. –  A Southern California school district is trying to stop cyberbullying by watching what students post on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday (http://lat.ms/1dgGpBq ) that Glendale Unified School District hired the company Geo Listening last year to track postings by about 14,000 middle and high school students.

Chris Frydrych, the founder and CEO of the Hermosa Beach-based company, says he expects to be monitoring about 3,000 schools worldwide by the end of the year.

The Glendale district is paying $40,500 and in exchange, the company's computers scour public posts by students and alerts school administrators when they find something they think should spur an intervention.

So far, no students have been disciplined, but some say the program infringes on their privacy.

Via: Fox News

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Obama to Eastwood: ‘This Chair is Taken’

*President Barack Obama – or at least someone in his camp – tweeted a response to Clint Eastwood’s mocking of him with an interesting, cheeky response.

“This chair is taken,” said the tweet that came with a picture of himself in a chair. The president’s Twitter account, by the way, has 19 million followers.

As you can imagine, Eastwood’s strange attempt to “make the GOP’s Day” had Twitter and social media on fire Thursday evening.

As we reported, his rambling, sometimes confusing remarks pretended that Obama (depicted as an empty chair) was cursing Mitt Romney (and him) as he critiqued Obama’s policies. His deadpan delivery worked sometimes, but for the most part it didn’t and one was left wondering what the hell they were witnessing. In other words, it added up to one giant FAIL.

Within minutes Twitter was flooded with remarks in favor and making fun of the 82-year-old actor-director, reports The Wrap.

On top of that, a new Twitter account, “Invisible Obama,” was launched and quickly gathered 20,000 followers and counting.

Via: EurWeb.com

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