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Monthly Archives: September 2020

Book Review: A Short And Happy Guide To Advanced Legal Research

Via LLRXBook Review: A Short And Happy Guide To Advanced Legal Research Nicole L. Black’s review highlights this book’s breadth of coverage and its format, information about a variety of free online tools, including public records databases, newsletters, and encyclopedias, and case law and statutes, fee-based legal research tools, as well as traditional case law and statutory research tools, and cutting edge AI-based legal research and data analytics software.

Cornell Study – Trump Is ‘Single Largest Driver’ of Virus Misinformation

The New York Times – “Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and internet falsehoods about the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump. That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly… Continue Reading

So many communities are testing poop for Covid-19, equipment is running out

Quartz – “As the Covid-19 pandemic continues on in the US, state and municipal groups are scrambling to find ways to track of new cases and potential outbreaks. One such method: scanning sewage for bits of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself. As more cities try to implement wastewater-based epidemiology, they need to stock up on new… Continue Reading

TikTok: Technology Overview and Issues

CRS report via LC – TikTok: Technology Overview and Issues, Updated September 29, 2020:” TikTok is a globally popular video-sharing smartphone application (app) owned by ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company headquartered in Beijing, China. It is under increasing scrutiny by the U.S. government as a potential privacy and security risk to U.S. citizens. This… Continue Reading

Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

StatNews: “…Research unveiled on Thursday in Science finds that crows know what they know and can ponder the content of their own minds, a manifestation of higher intelligence and analytical thought long believed the sole province of humans and a few other higher mammals. A second study, also in Science, looked in unprecedented detail at… Continue Reading

Half a Million Sharks Could Be Killed to Make a Global COVID Vaccine

Vox – “Conservationists are worried that the mass production of a COVID-19 vaccine could devastate shark populations around the world, as a number of pharmaceutical companies are found to be using oil from the animals’ livers in the development of their vaccines. Squalene, a natural organic compound sourced primarily from shark liver oil, is most… Continue Reading

The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history

Washington Post article and charts – “Job losses from the pandemic overwhelmingly affected low-wage, minority workers most. Seven months into the recovery, Black women, Black men and mothers of school-age children are taking the longest time to regain their employment.” In the wake of widespread closings of schools and day-care centers, mothers are struggling to… Continue Reading

House Intel Cmte releases summary – The China Deep Dive

“Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) under Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) released the unclassified executive summary of its report, “The China Deep Dive: A Report on the Intelligence Community’s Capabilities and Competencies with Respect to the People’s Republic of China.” The Committee voted to approve the report by voice vote. This report… Continue Reading

40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction

State of the World’s Plants and Fungi – “Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of… Continue Reading

Judge orders DOJ to publish info redacted as privileged from Mueller report

The Hill: “A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged. District Judge Reggie Walton said the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016… Continue Reading