“New York Attorney General Letitia James today filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association (NRA), the largest and most influential pro-gun organization in the nation. Attorney General James charges the organization with illegal conduct because of their diversion of millions of dollars away from the charitable mission of the organization for personal… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2020
Wear Your Mask. Please. No, Not on Your Chin.
The New York Times – More than 30 states have enacted mask requirements to guard against the coronavirus. But local authorities have had a difficult time enforcing them. “More than 30 states and an even larger number of cities have enacted a hodgepodge of mask ordinances and executive orders, but many municipalities are barely enforcing… Continue Reading
Elsevier OA CC-BY Corpus
Mendeley: “Description of this data – This is a corpus of 40k (40,001) open access (OA) CC-BY articles from across Elsevier’s journals represent the first cross-discipline research of data at this scale to support NLP and ML research. This dataset was released to support the development of ML and NLP models targeting science articles from… Continue Reading
Court says federal judiciary is overcharging for access to public records online
Washington Post: “The federal judiciary is overcharging for public access to online court records, an appeals court ruled Thursday in a decision that could result in lower fees to search and download case documents. In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said affordable access to public records is critical… Continue Reading
Trump’s radical lawsuit against Nevada’s vote-by-mail law, explained
Vox: “On Monday [August 3, 200), Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) signed legislation intended to ensure that voters in his state can still cast a ballot during the Covid-19 pandemic. Among other things, the new law (known as AB4) provides that registered Nevada voters will automatically receive a ballot in the mail, a common practice… Continue Reading
World’s Biggest Landlord Buys World’s Biggest Genealogy Website
Gizmodo: “The Blackstone Group will buy a majority stake in the genealogy website Ancestry.com in a deal worth $4.7 billion, according to a press release published Wednesday. Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, is the world’s largest landlord and Ancestry is the world’s largest genealogy website, with over 6 billion records on family history in… Continue Reading
How to sign a PDF for free, and 4 other tricks that don’t require Adobe Acrobat
Fast Company: “Whether you’re using Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader or fully functional Acrobat, most of us can agree that while reading PDFs using these tools isn’t so bad, once you start trying to actually work with PDFs, things can get clunky quickly. It doesn’t help that the programs launch slower than a frozen Buick in… Continue Reading
In These Neighborhoods, the Jobless Rate May Top 30 Percent
The New York Times: “The economic damage from the coronavirus is most visible in areas like Midtown Manhattan, where lunch spots have closed, businesses have gone dark and once-crowded sidewalks have emptied. But some of the worst economic pain lies in other neighborhoods, in the places where workers who’ve endured the broadest job losses live.… Continue Reading
Wireless Charging Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen
Medium OneZero: “Wireless charging is increasingly common in modern smartphones, and there’s even speculation that Apple might ditch charging via a cable entirely in the near future. But the slight convenience of juicing up your phone by plopping it onto a pad rather than plugging it in comes with a surprisingly robust environmental cost. According… Continue Reading
Disinformation campaigns are murky blends of truth, lies and sincere beliefs – lessons from the pandemic
The Conversation: “The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation. In this environment, false narratives – the virus was “planned,” that it originated as a bioweapon, that COVID-19 symptoms are caused by 5G wireless communications technology – have spread like wildfire across social media and other… Continue Reading
Public to Private Equity in the United States: A Long-Term Look
Morgan Stanley: “Over the past quarter century there has been a marked shift in U.S. equities from public markets to private markets controlled by buyout and venture capital firms. This change has had reverberations for asset managers, investors, executives, and policy makers. In this report we seek to answer the following questions: What have been… Continue Reading
Treasury and Federal Reserve Financial Assistance in Title IV of the CARES Act
Treasury and Federal Reserve Financial Assistance in Title IV of the CARES Act (P.L.116-136) Updated August 5, 2020: “The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act;H.R. 748)was signed into law as P.L. 116-136on March 27, 2020,to assist those affected by the economic impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019(COVID-19). This assistance is targeted to consumers,… Continue Reading
