how to save the world – Dave Pollard: “…But perhaps equally-important in this century are the non-military wars battling for the “hearts and minds” of citizens — fights over votes, seats, laws, ideologies and tax dollars rather than land. It is hard to deny, for example, that the US is engaged in a so-far-non-military civil… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: April 2022
Examining Nearly Two Decades of Taxpayer-Funded Border Operations
ProPublica, The Texas Tribune & The Marshall Project – “…Over the next 17 years, Perry and his successor, Gov. Greg Abbott, persuaded the Texas Legislature to spend billions of dollars on border security measures that included at least nine operations and several smaller initiatives. Each time, the governors promised that the state would do what… Continue Reading
New York Public Library makes banned books available for free
NPR: “In response to the more than 1,500 books challenged to be removed from libraries in the last year, the New York Public Library launched an effort to make some banned books available for everyone — for free. The initiative is called Books for All and allows any reader aged 13 and older to access… Continue Reading
How to tackle workplace conflict head-on
NPR: “Conflict in any part of our lives can be the pits, but conflict at work? That can get especially complicated. On top of the work we already have to do, sometimes it can feel like it would take a herculean effort to deal with a conflict at work. The good news is that you… Continue Reading
Why you should schedule all your emails
Fast Company: “I can’t remember the last time I clicked plain old Send on an email. And it’s not because I’m neglecting my inbox—I’m actually at inbox zero and have very strong opinions about emailing people back. It’s because I schedule almost all my emails. Why you should schedule emails for later – Of course, there are times… Continue Reading
Ergonomics Experts Explain How to Set Up Your Desk
Open Culture: “Technological innovations are snowballing faster than ever in the third decade of the 21st-century. A home office set-up that would have been cause for pride in 2019 seems woefully inadequate now. Just ask anyone whose desk job pivoted to virtual in March of 2020. So, perhaps don’t take physical therapist’s Jon Cinkay’s nearly… Continue Reading
Book banning efforts are inspiring readers to form banned book clubs
CNN: “Book banning — or at least, book banning attempts — appears to be having a resurgence. The American Library Association recorded 729 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021, the most since the organization began tracking those attempts in 2000. While that might seem low overall considering the approximately 99,000… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 16, 2022
Via LLRX –Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 16, 2022 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex… Continue Reading
The History of Nazi Book Burning
Book Riot: “The rise in book censorship across the United States is reminiscent of the fascist tendencies throughout history. While book banners and censorship supporters paint their concerns as specific to contemporary issues, it’s a common way to consolidate power. The history of Nazi book burning is one of the most obvious antecedents to the… Continue Reading
Ten simple rules to ruin a collaborative environment
Lawrence-Dill CJ, Allscheid RL, Boaitey A, Bauman T, Buckler ES IV, Clarke JL, et al. (2022) Ten simple rules to ruin a collaborative environment. PLoS Comput Biol 18(4): e1009957. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009957: “Trigger warning: Here, you will find a bit of satire, written from the not-so-funny, real experiences of the authors who have been involved in “team… Continue Reading
Redditle.com
SK Lim: “I built redditle.com for those of us who append “reddit” to our Google searches. Reddit search isn’t great but it’s improving! In the meantime, some of us still use Google to search Reddit, hence https://redditle.com. Or for some of us, because Google’s results are increasingly filled with clickbait, “reddit” has been a cheatcode… Continue Reading
A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?
The New York Times: “OpenAI’s GPT-3 and other neural nets can now write original prose with mind-boggling fluency — a development that could have profound implications for the future…GPT-3 belongs to a category of deep learning known as a large language model, a complex neural net that has been trained on a titanic data set… Continue Reading
