Kyle Hull, Clarisse Warren, Kevin Smith. Politics makes bastards of us all: Why moral judgment is politically situational [full text free to read]. Political Psychology, 2024; DOI: 10.1111/pops.12954 – “Moral judgment is politically situational—people are more forgiving of transgressive copartisans and more likely to behave punitively and unethically toward political opponents. Such differences are widely observed,… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2024
Is Google Getting Worse?
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines. Janek Bevendorff, Matti Wiegmann, Martin Potthast, and Benno Stein.”Many users of web search engines have been complaining in recent years about the supposedly decreasing quality of search results. This is often attributed to an increasing amount of search-engine-optimized but low-quality content. Evidence… Continue Reading
US Census Bureau purposely fudges location data in census to protect people’s privacy
Via Kottke – The U.S. Census Is Wrong on Purpose: “…Full census data is only made available 72 years after the census takes place, in accordance with the creatively-named “72 year rule.” Until then, it is only available as aggregated data with individual identifiers removed. Still, if the population of a town is small enough,… Continue Reading
Does anyone even want an AI search engine?
Fast Company: “You’ve probably already noticed your search engines are starting to evolve. Google and Bing have already added both AI-generated results and conversational chatbots to their respective search engines. The Browser Company, a startup that made a big early splash thanks to its mission statement of building a better internet browser, has launched an… Continue Reading
Smiling is the secret to seeing happiness, new research reveals
Science Daily: “Smiling for just a split second makes people more likely to see happiness in expressionless faces, new University of Essex research has revealed. The study led by Dr Sebastian Korb, from the Department of Psychology, shows that even a brief weak grin makes faces appear more joyful. The pioneering experiment used electrical stimulation… Continue Reading
How to Edit a PDF on Windows
Make Use Of: “Key Takeaways To edit a PDF in Microsoft Word, convert the PDF to a Word document to freely edit it, then save it as a PDF again. To edit PDFs in Microsoft Edge, import the PDF and use the tools to add text, highlight, comment, and annotate, then save the edited PDF.… Continue Reading
The National Wetlands Inventory
Data is Plural: “The National Wetlands Inventory, maintained by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, provides interactive maps and bulk data containing “geospatially referenced information on the status, extent, characteristics and functions of wetland, riparian, deepwater, and related aquatic habitats.” With contributions from 160+ organizations, coordinated through a dedicated national standard, the inventory represents “more… Continue Reading
The Dignity Index is designed to prevent violence, ease divisions, and solve problems
“The Dignity Index scores distinct phrases along an eight-point scale from contempt to dignity. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity. In its pilot season, a trained group of students supported by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Hinckley Institute of Politics… Continue Reading
Fake Funeral Live Stream Scams Are All Over Facebook
404 Media [free reg req’d]: “Facebook is awash with scams that direct visitors to fake live streams of funeral services, preying on relatives and friends of the deceased when they might be at their most vulnerable, 404 Media has found. The scams involve pulling details of real deceased people from legitimate funeral services pages and… Continue Reading
This Tiny Website Is Google’s First Line of Defense in the Patent Wars
Wired: “TDCommons is a free space for inventors to lay claim to breakthroughs without having to file a patent. Why is it so off the radar? A trio of Google engineers recently came up with a futuristic way to help anyone who stumbles through presentations on video calls. They propose that when algorithms detect a… Continue Reading
Old’aVista
Remember the search engine Altavista? (I sure do). Via Wikipedia: “AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own search engine. On… Continue Reading
Misleading Food Labels
Consumer Reports – “When it comes to filling your grocery cart with the healthiest foods, careful label reading is critical. Yet even the savviest shoppers can be fooled by some of the claims found on the front of food packages. And that is intentional. “If the marketing is done well, it slips through the radar… Continue Reading
