The California Sunday Magazine – Then came 2020. “…Since the early 1990s,the portion of votes cast by mail has nosed upward in every presidential-election cycle, hitting an all-time high in 2016: 24 percent, or about 33 million ballots. But the national numbers mask a state-by-state variance. As a rule, voting by mail dominates the western states,… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: September 2020
Open is not forever
Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals – Mikael Laakso, Lisa Matthias, Najko Jahn – “The preservation of the scholarly record has been a point of concern since the beginning of knowledge production. With print publications, the responsibility rested primarily with librarians, but the shift towards digital publishing and, in particular, the… Continue Reading
Beyond the World War II We Know
The New York Times Magazine – “This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. This series documents lesser-known stories from the end of the conflict, through original reporting and first-person accounts from people who lived through it…We set out to explore the end of the conflict and its aftermath, focusing… Continue Reading
Mozilla research: Browsing histories are unique enough to reliably identify users
“A recently published study conducted by three Mozilla employees has looked at the privacy provided by browsing histories. Their findings show that most users have unique web browsing habits that allow online advertisers to create accurate profiles. These profiles can then be used to track and re-identify users across different sets of user data that… Continue Reading
Media Bias – Fact Check
“We are the most comprehensive media bias resource on the internet. There are currently 3200+ media sources listed in our database and growing every day. Don’t be fooled by Fake News sources. Use the search feature above (Header) to check the bias of any source. Use name or url.” Continue Reading
5 things to do to keep your ballot from rejection
NBC News – “Vote early by mail or in person. Know your state’s deadlines. Don’t mess with your signature. Check your registration status — and polling place. And definitely don’t vote twice. “The presidential election is fast approaching, and a constellation of factors has caused experts to fear unprecedented levels of chaos and uncertainty over… Continue Reading
Making Scholarly Articles More Accessible for Machine Learning
Making Scholarly Articles More Accessible for Machine Learning – “ArXiv, an open-access digital repository of scholarly articles maintained by Cornell University in New York, made available all of its 1.7 million research articles on Kaggle, a public online platform for machine learning training datasets. For each article, the dataset includes information such as the author,… Continue Reading
Google releases data set of search trends for COVID-19 symptoms
“This aggregated, anonymized dataset shows trends in search patterns for symptoms and is intended to help researchers to better understand the impact of COVID-19. Public health experts indicated that trends in search patterns might be helpful in broadly understanding how COVID-19 impacts communities and even in detecting outbreaks earlier. You shouldn’t assume that the data… Continue Reading
93 percent of protests this summer were peaceful, report says
Washington Post – “About 93 percent of the racial-justice protests that swept the United States this summer remained peaceful and nondestructive, according to a report released Thursday, with the violence and property damage that has dominated political discourse constituting only a minute portion of the thousands of demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in… Continue Reading
Nearly a Third of American Employees Worked Remotely in 2019
“This summer, NTIA reported initial results from our latest NTIA Internet Use Survey, which showed that Americans were increasingly using a larger and more varied range of devices. But with dozens of topics covered in the survey, there is a lot more we can learn from this data collection, including questions about online activities such… Continue Reading
Governor partisanship explains the adoption of statewide mandates to wear face coverings
Governor partisanship explains the adoption of statewide mandates to wear face coverings. Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen,Nancy Fullman, Beatrice Magistro, Grace Reinke, and John Wilkerson: “Public mask use has emerged as a key tool in response to COVID-19. We develop and document a classification of statewide mask mandates that reveals variation in their scope… Continue Reading
It’s not just cars that make pollution. It’s the roads they drive on, too
Science: “…The researchers estimated the annual emissions from new paving and roofing in parts of Southern California. They calculate that molecules released from asphalt could lead to between 1000 and 2500 tons of particulate air pollution—compared with just 900 to 1400 tons from gasoline and diesel vehicles. (Both sources pale in comparison to volatile chemical… Continue Reading
