when the American Customer Satisfaction Index in June announced its numbers for the broadband industry, we noted that internet service providers landed at the very bottom of all industries surveyed. Well, the news isn’t much better with the release last week of a study from JD Power.

American consumers are less satisfied with their ISP than they were a year ago, the study found, based on responses from nearly 23,000 people from November 2021 to August 2022. The study breaks the country into four regions: East, North Central, South and West . Scores declined in three out of the four regions.

The survey scores providers on a 1,000-point scale and tracks customer satisfaction of residential service in five areas:

• Billing and payment
• Communications and promotions
• Cost of service
• customer care
• Performance and reliability

Verizon took the top spot in the East region with a score of 758 (the same score it garnered last year), while the region’s average score dipped from 714 to 707. Cable provider Midco ranked highest in the North Central area, with a 734 score (which dropped from last

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The journal nature published a special issues on racism in science this week. In it, Black and Indigenous scientists, doctors, and researchers share how they’ve experienced racism in their work. Many of them experienced discrimination as they entered their chosen fields, then faced backlash as they called out wrongdoing in those same places. It takes bravery to share this kind of pain so publicly. Their stories are raw and revelatory.

This special issue of nature came about as part of the journal’s own efforts to grapple with racism. After the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020, there was an upswell of voices calling out systemic racism in all areas of society, including in academia and science. Ahead of a “Strike for Black Lives” focused on STEM industries in June 2020, nature wrote in an editorial that it “recognize[s] that Nature is one of the white institutions that is responsible for bias in research and scholarship,” the journal said at the time. It is committed to creating a special issue of the journal “exploring systemic racism in research, research policy and publishing.”

nature‘s special issue this week includes five features from Black and Indigenous folks in science who have pushed for more inclusion and accountability in their fields of work — and have faced appalling racism in the process. Nadine Caron, Canada’s first Indigenous female general surgeon, describe her horrifying experience while applying for funding to advance genetic treatments for Indigenous children, when she was