Reveal – Center for Investigative Reporting: “Backing away from attempts at censorship, the National Park Service on Friday released a report charting the risks to national parks from sea level rise and storms. Drafts of the report obtained earlier this year by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showed park service officials had deleted… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: May 2018
Do you ride the DC/MD/VA Metro – this safety report is a critical read
WTOP.com: “The findings of the latest publicly available Federal Transit Administration inspection reports include dark tunnels, risks to workers, train operators failing to follow safety rules before opening doors, and Metro’s own compliance inspectors being unable to verify fixes. Federal inspectors found two stretches of consecutive loose fasteners on the Orange Line near Deanwood Jan.… Continue Reading
Librarian’s Guide To Finding Diverse Books Before They’re Published
BookRiot – Here’s how to find diverse books before they’re published so you can read and nominate them with plenty of time for them to show up on the monthly LibraryReads list. “When you can find these books and read them, you can become a better advocate for these titles and ultimately, a better advocate… Continue Reading
Dept. of Agriculture 2016 Pesticide Data on organic food reported inaccurately
Washington Post/ Tamar Haspel: “The Agriculture Department recently released the latest measurements of pesticide residues in our food, in the form of the 2016 Pesticide Data Program results, so it seems timely to talk pesticides and organics. And bias. I’ve been following these issues for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of evidence… Continue Reading
Supreme Court decision – companies can use arbitration clauses to block employees class action suits
The New York Times: “The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that companies can use arbitration clauses in employment contracts to prohibit workers from banding together to take legal action over workplace issues. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court’s more conservative justices in the majority. The court’s decision could affect some 25 million… Continue Reading
DOE Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit
“The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit is an update and expansion of the Eastern Wind Integration Data Set and Western Wind Integration Data Set. It supports the next generation of wind integration studies. The WIND Toolkit includes meteorological conditions and turbine power for more than 126,000 sites in the continental United States for the… Continue Reading
Analysis – China, Russia among countries embellishing GDP data
Center for Data Innovation – referencing this Washington Post article: Exposing Faked Economic Data – “Louis Martinez, a professor at the University of Chicago, has published an analysis of 25 years of satellite data that suggests China, Russia, and other authoritarian countries routinely falsify their gross domestic product (GDP). Martinez analyzed changes in nighttime light… Continue Reading
60 Minutes – How Did Google Get So Big?
60 Minutes reports on the power of Google, a company whose critics say has stifled competition – “This past week the Federal Trade Commission was asked to investigate the data collected by Google on its Android operating system, which powers most of the world’s smartphones. It was a tiny blip in the news cycle but another… Continue Reading
Meet the new boss same as the old boss only with more data
Via Dave Pell NextDraft: We Got Fooled Again – “In the early days of the internet, we rooted for web upstarts to disintermediate and disrupt the world’s biggest companies that we felt had conspired against consumers in an increasingly centralized system. Well, here comes the new boss. Same as the old boss (except the new… Continue Reading
Because – you can have a library anywhere
Via Reddit – This gas station in Finland has a tiny library Continue Reading
UK – Internet Safety Strategy green paper
“The Internet Safety Strategy looks at how we can ensure Britain is the safest place in the world to be online. The Strategy considers the responsibilities of companies to their users, the use of technical solutions to prevent online harms and government’s role in supporting users. The consultation covered various aspects of online safety including:… Continue Reading
Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning From Its Own History of Hate
The New York Times: A country taps its past as it leads the way on one of the most pressing issues facing modern democracies: how to regulate the world’s biggest social network. “Spread over five floors, hundreds of men and women sit in rows of six scanning their computer screens. All have signed nondisclosure agreements.… Continue Reading
