Grist: “The world is on fire, and so is our vocabulary. Merriam-Webster added 640 new words to its online dictionary last week. The additions include swole (“extremely muscular”), new meanings for snowflake (someone who is “treated as unique or special” or “overly sensitive”) and, you guessed it, a whole batch of neologisms tied to the… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2019
The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance
Sommers, Roseanna and Bohns, Vanessa K., The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance (April 10, 2019). Yale Law Journal, Vol. 128, No. 7, 2019. Available at SSRN “Consent-based searches are by far the most ubiquitous form of search undertaken by police. A key legal inquiry in these cases is whether… Continue Reading
Google Express – an alternative to Amazon?
Google Express – “Get your shopping done fast Hundreds of stores, one fast checkout. Shop Target, Best Buy, Petsmart, and more—all in one place. Enter your info once, whether you’re checking out from one store or five. Need it again? A few quick taps is all it takes to reorder things you buy regularly. [h/t… Continue Reading
Who Owns the Law? Why We Must Restore Public Ownership of Legal Publishing
LawAr Xiv – Who Owns the Law? Why We Must Restore Public Ownership of Legal Publishing, 26 J. Intell. Prop. L. 205 (2019). Authors – Leslie Street and David Hansen. Created on April 29, 2019. Last edited. April 30, 2019. Supplemental Materials osf.io/9enzr/ “Each state has its own method for officially publishing the law. This… Continue Reading
Using punctuation to pace and communicate effectively
Oxford University Blog – “…Punctuation-wise, most of us fall between these two extremes. We are neither staccato nor breathless. Instead, we use punctuation to establish a comfortable pace for readers by grouping and emphasizing certain chunks of information. And as we edit our own work, from first to final draft, we see how small differences… Continue Reading
History of commercial audiobook is one small window on evolution of ethic of efficiency
The Baffler: “…Audible is an arm of this effort. Audiobooks are the fastest growing part of publishing, “a tiny bright spot” for the industry, according to Bloomberg : revenue from downloads has roughly tripled in the last five years and reached $2.5 billion in 2017. But Amazon dominates the audiobook market, mostly through Audible. As… Continue Reading
From Clay Tablets to Smartphones: 5,000 Years of Writing
The New York Times – London – “The writing’s on the wall, we’re told. Whether it was Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century, the invention of the typewriter 300 years later, or the emoji of today’s smartphones, the act of writing seems to be forever on the precipice of extinction, without quite falling… Continue Reading
Unraveling the JPEG
“This article is about how to decode a JPEG image. In other words, it’s about what it takes to convert the compressed data stored on your computer to the image that appears on the screen. It’s worth learning about not just because it’s important to understand the technology we all use everyday, but also because,… Continue Reading
The Measure Of Things – search engine for finding comparative or relative measurements of physical quantities
“Wondering how big, small, tall, long, fast, heavy, or old something is? The Measure of Things is a tool to help you understand physical quantities in terms of things you (or your audience) are already familiar with. Need a metaphor to emphasize a written measurement? Try including a comparison to the size of a whale,… Continue Reading
Mapping America’s wicked weather and deadly disasters
Washington Post – “The fear of losing everything in a natural disaster sits in the back of our minds no matter where we live. The same diverse physical geography that gives us sunny beaches and crisp mountain air also generates devastating storms and wildfires. Climate change is only making things worse. Data collection for these… Continue Reading
CRS – The Emoluments Clauses of the U.S.Constitution
CRS In Focus via LC – The Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Updated May 1, 2019 “The Emoluments Clauses of the U.S.Constitution Recent litigation involving President Trump has raised a number of legal issues concerning formerly obscure constitutional provisions that prohibit the acceptance or receipt of “emoluments” in certain circumstances. This In Focus provides… Continue Reading
Administration Proposal to Reorganize the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
CRS Insight via LC – Administration Proposal to Reorganize the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), May 1, 2019. “The U.S.Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government’s central personnel agency, is an independent establishment in the executive branch. Created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the agency’s statutory authority is codified in… Continue Reading
